Deadline for Lenny Stern Peter Marabell (best ereader for comics .TXT) 📖

thumbing through the file, thin as it was … the only real paperwork was on Jarvis.”

“The one who beat on his girlfriend?”

Fleener nodded. “Mac City officer made a note about a tattoo on the kid’s forearm.”

“Really?”

Fleener nodded. “A 44 inside a circle.”

“Do you believe in coincidences?” I said.

“You bet I do,” Fleener said, “but I know you don’t. Figured you’d want to see the file.”

“You figured right.”

“However.” It was Hendricks. “We wouldn’t be able to show you, since there is no official paperwork.”

“So, I saved you the trouble of being a pain in the ass,” Fleener said. “I dug a little deeper.”

He had my attention now.

“The two guys who work, Dexter and Jarvis? They live together in Gaylord, downtown. That’s where a familiar name popped up.”

“Cavendish?” I said.

“Yep,” Fleener said. “Wouldn’t have meant a thing, but I’d just checked DMV about that old truck that took a run at LaCroix in Harbor Springs.”

“The two guys,” I said, “they work at Cavendish Company?”

“Yes, they do, and there’s more. My guy in Lansing thinks Sylvia Cavendish is supplying the drugs.”

“Mama Cavendish is a drug dealer?”

“No,” Hendricks said. “Sylvia Cavendish supplies the drugs to Dexter and Jarvis. That’s all, she doesn’t deal.”

I described my visit with Sylvia’s sons, Daniel and Walter, in Gaylord, relating how Walter lied about their father and the vanity plate. Pieces of my puzzle were dropping into place. A few of them, anyway.

“The Cavendish sons run the family business,” I said. “So why does Sylvia supply employees with drugs?”

“Good question,” Fleener said. “I thought Cavendish might be connected to Lenny Stern and the Kate Hubbell murder investigation, so I took it to Don. But it’s all pretty thin.”

“Just out of curiosity,” I said, “the other two, the unemployed pals? They live in Carp Lake, by any chance?”

Fleener shot a glance at Hendricks, then they both stared at me.

“What do you know,” Hendricks said, “that we don’t know?”

I told them about Henri’s car, the phony blood, and the two guys who were followed to Carp Lake. I skipped that it was Jimmy Erwin who did the following.

“All right,” Hendricks said. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

Hendricks tugged at his already-loose tie, then ran his hands over his head as if his hair needed rearranging.

“Ms. Hubbell’s murdered,” Hendricks said. “No leads …”

“No leads until Russo asked me to check with the DMV,” Fleener said, “and maybe a gangbanger or two in our neighborhood.”

“Then pieces started falling all over each other,” Hendricks said.

“That prosecutor lingo, Don?”

Hendricks almost smiled. “You bet it is. Look, the pieces start with a number, ‘forty-four.’ A vanity plate, a tattoo. The same tattoo shows up on the arm of a guy yelling at Lenny Stern in a parking lot, on the arm of a guy whose girlfriend says he gets drugs at work. Then ‘work’ turns out to be the Cavendish Company, owned by the widow of a central figure in Stern’s book. That company owns a truck with forty-four on a vanity plate.”

Don Hendricks took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and looked at each of us. “The hell’s going on here?”

40

“It’s got to be more than a license plate or a tattoo,” I said.

“That’s stating the obvious,” Don Hendricks said as he returned to his desk with freshly made coffee. “Can’t you do better than that?”

If I could have done better, I would have thrown it out there, I thought about saying. But it was a rhetorical question. Hendricks was starting to feel the pressure. Kate Hubbell’s murder investigation was not following predictable patterns, not leading to the predictable culprits. Experience was less helpful than usual. Hendricks knew that; so did Martin Fleener.

“One more thing,” Fleener said, “before we adjourn for the day.”

Fleener tipped his chair back, leaning it against the wall.

“Nothing’s come together on this one, Don. Kate Hubbell was killed. Since then, what? Leads? Suspects? Motives? Usually things start to fall into place with good police work.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Hendricks said.

“That list you just ran off? The tattoo, the rest of it.”

“What about it?” Hendricks said.

Fleener was good at this, adding things up.

“Remember where they found Kate Hubbell’s body?”

“Behind a warehouse, wasn’t it?” Hendricks said.

Fleener nodded.

“So?”

“It’s amateur hour, Don,” Fleener said. “That list of yours adds up, but we don’t recognize it. We expected the usual, the familiar, and haven’t gotten it. These aren’t professionals, Don. They’re careless amateurs.”

“Go back to Kate’s body,” I said.

“The rope around her neck, remember?” Fleener said. “The kind of line used on boats?”

“But she was shot,” I said. “One to the head.”

“Right,” Fleener said. “So we figured the rope was some kind of message, maybe another threat.” Fleener shook his head. “Sloppy police work. I was sloppy. Stern’s book was about the mob, about corruption. I jumped all over Joey DeMio. The mob killed her, the mob was sending a message …”

“But you concluded DeMio isn’t involved,” Hendricks said.

“Right. That rope on Hubbell was an amateur’s idea of the mob’s code of silence. Violate omerta and you die.”

“A red herring?” I said.

“It was a bad one, and I fell for it,” Fleener said. “I was so eager to tag Joey I wasn’t paying attention.”

“You weren’t the only one,” I said.

“What’re you thinking, Marty?” Hendricks said. “Now, I mean.”

“All roads lead to the Cavendish Company. The truck, the plate …”

“Yeah, yeah. Got that,” Hendricks said. “Now what?”

“Cavendish is in Otsego County,” Fleener said. “If we move on Sylvia or her sons, we tip them off. Besides, we have nothing solid that connects any of the Cavendish family to a murder in Emmet County.”

Fleener looked my way. “What was your next move going to be, Russo, if we weren’t having this little chat?”

“The two at Carp Lake. Thought we’d see what they’re up to.”

“‘We’ means you and LaCroix?” Hendricks said, with a touch of annoyance.

“Of course,” I said. For several years the prosecutor, not to mention the State Police, had regarded Henri as trouble. Henri did nothing to dispel the idea.

“Just keep him in check,