“Not all the time,” she said. “I move; he finds me. I move again, and a few years later, he finds me again…”
“Maria, what does he want from you? Does he hate you that much just because you married his partner instead of him?”
“It’s not that,” she said. “There’s more to this than just a personal vendetta. A few years before Arthur died, they bought about seven hundred acres up near Traverse City. There was nothing up there then, but now the whole county is booming. There are so many new resorts up there right now, and this land they bought, it’s right next to one of the big golf courses, with a little ski mountain even. We could sell that land for twenty million, easy.”
“So why don’t you?”
“Alex, the old partnership still owns that land. Harwood-Zambelli. And there’s a provision in the partnership that both partners have to agree before selling any jointly owned property.”
“And you can’t agree? Why wouldn’t you both want to sell it?”
“It’s not so simple,” she said. “The terms are very specific about what happens if either partner dies. A surviving spouse takes over the partner’s vote and is entitled to half of the profits. A divorced spouse only gets twenty percent, and no vote. Harwood’s ex-wife is fighting that one, even though she signed the prenuptial agreement. Michigan’s a pretty strong common-property state, so she has a shot at it.”
“So what does that have to do with you?” I said. “You’re a surviving spouse. He can’t change that. Unless-”
“Unless I’m no longer surviving,” she said. “There’s a provision for that, too. Just like the divorce clause. Twenty percent to my estate, and no vote. Arthur didn’t realize what he was doing when he signed that agreement, Alex. He didn’t know he was signing my death warrant.”
“So twenty percent instead of fifty percent,” I said. “Out of twenty million. He’d kill you for the difference of what, six million dollars?”
“I think it’s safe to say that he would do that for six million dollars, yes.”
I took a hit off my beer and thought about that one.
“I can’t see your brother running away,” I said. “Ever. How come he hasn’t killed this guy by now?”
“He almost did,” she said. “When Arthur died, I told Leopold what I suspected. He went after Har-wood, tried to kill him. Thank God he didn’t. He would have gone to jail. Since then, Leopold has always wanted to make a stand, to stay in one place and dare Harwood to come get me. That house in Farmington, that’s the first house that any of us have owned outright. Delilah’s in high school now. I want her to finish there. Leopold promised me that she’d be safe. They watch her every minute.”
“I know,” I said. “I saw that firsthand.”
“So you did,” she said. “So you did. And I’m close enough, I can see her sometimes. We’re very careful about it. We meet on weekends. We make sure nobody follows her.”
“Randy wasn’t careful,” I said. “That white Cadillac, it belongs to a private investigator.”
“How do you know?”
“My partner ran the plate,” I said. “His name is Whitley. He works out of Detroit.”
“Harwood must’ve hired him,” she said. “He’s done that before.”
“Well, we could contact him ourselves,” I said. ‘Tell him to lay off.”
“He’d send somebody else,” she said. “Now that he’s found me again. Or he’d come himself…”
“Maria, why don’t you just sign away the full partnership money? Tell him you’ll take the twenty percent and forfeit the rest?”
She looked at me.
“You could stop running,” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s what I should do.”
“You already have money. You said so yourself. The money your husband left you, right?”
She looked out at the lake. “It may be too late,” she said. “I should have done that eighteen years ago. Maybe even ten years ago. It’s an obsession with him now. After all this time, I don’t think he’d settle for less than everything. Every dollar, Alex.”
When she faced me again, I saw tears in her eyes. God help me, all I could think about was how lovely she was. That was the only word for her. Not beautiful, not pretty. Maria was lovely.
“Every dollar,” she said. “And my life, Alex. He wants me to die.”
I wanted to reach out and take her hand. But I didn’t. “Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’m sure I can’t imagine what it’s been like.”
“And now Randy shows up,” she said. “It’s unbelievable.”
“Maria, you still haven’t told me why you said that stuff in the bar, about not remembering him.”
She looked down at the glass in her hand. It was empty.
“Maria?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Maria, what’s the matter?”
“It was me,” she said, her voice so low now, I could barely hear her.
“What do you mean?”
“It was me,” she said. “I shot him.”
CHAPTER 17
She opened the front door. She didn’t follow me out onto the landing, just stood leaning against the door frame, her arms folded across her chest. The landing was made of flat bluestone, with tall plants on either side that were nothing more than tangled bare branches at this time of year. The air was cold. I’d left my coat behind, somewhere in the living room. But I didn’t care. I stood there looking down at the landing while she told me what had happened.
“I came home three days ago,” she said. “As soon as I walked in, I knew somebody had been here. Everything was where it was supposed to be, and yet not exactly. Something was just… wrong. I could feel it. I called Chief Rudiger, but he swore he hadn’t come here. Even though he has a key, he doesn’t do that. Not without asking me. Then when I started seeing the white Cadillac around town, it didn’t take me long to figure it out. Harwood had found me again. Somehow. And the man in the Cadillac, he broke in here. He had touched everything in the house, Alex. Everything that belonged to me, he had put his hands on it. I called the chief again. He told me he’d keep an eye out for him but that he could only do so much. He’s the only full-time officer in town.”
“So I’ve learned,” I said. “One professional and a lot of amateurs with guns. So what happened next? Did the car come back?”
“Yes,” she said. “I saw it the next day. There’s a room up on the second floor; you can see out onto the road, through the trees. The car was just sitting there. I called the chief, but by the time he got over here, the car was gone. It came back later, just after dark. I was upstairs, watching for it. He pulled up there in the same spot on the road, just through the trees there where the fence starts. I was just about to call the chief again, when I heard somebody coming up the walkway.”
She stopped. She stood there with her arms still folded in front of her, staring out at nothing.
“What happened?” I said.
“I had a gun,” she said. “One of Leopold’s shotguns. He keeps one at the house, and he made me take the other one. I was sure it was Harwood, or somebody Harwood had hired to kill me. I got the gun, and when I looked out the little window by the door here, I saw something in his hand. It was dark, but I could see he was holding something. It’s a gun, I thought. It has to be a gun. He was coming to kill me, Alex. It didn’t matter if the door was locked. He had already gotten into the place before. Nothing could stop him. There was nothing I could do, except… open the door and shoot. I shot him, Alex. I threw the door open and shot him. Then I ran past him, got in my car, and drove away. As I was driving, I started seeing the man’s face. Like I looked at him but I didn’t really see him until later, when I had time to think about what had happened, you know what I mean? I could still see his face, just before the gun went off. And I knew him. I knew that face. He has a beard and mustache now, doesn’t he? He looks different. Yet he’s still the same. All these years later, he’s still the same. And I shot him.”
