TWELVE

I called Anne Rehmann. She said if I wanted to talk, I could visit her home in Deephaven, not far from her office. She met me at the door dressed in a thick blue robe over flannel pajamas, heavy socks, and fluffy slippers. I didn’t know if she was cold or trying to make herself seem less like an attractive woman.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“No, McKenzie, I’m not okay. How ’bout you?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I asked a question. “Will you help me?”

“You or Riley Brodin?”

I was surprised by the question.

“Mrs. R,” I said.

“Come in.”

Anne held the door open and I slipped inside. The house was small, some would say cozy, and tastefully decorated. Unlike my home, it looked as if someone actually lived there and enjoyed the experience.

Anne led me into her living room. There was a sofa against the wall, a blanket and bedroom pillow tossed casually on top of it. Anne sat on the sofa, gathered the blanket around her legs, fluffed the pillow, and leaned against it. A box of tissues was on the coffee table in front of the sofa; a dozen or so used tissues were scattered around it.

“I’m having trouble sleeping,” she said. “I went to see the deputies this morning and afterward tried to take a nap, but…” She waved at a chair on the other side of the coffee table, and I sat. “They had me looking at pictures of criminals. So many pictures. I didn’t see him, though, or maybe I did, I don’t know. I’m tired, McKenzie. I can’t sleep.”

I was taught when I was a cop how to “chaperone” a sexual assault victim. I was taught about the feelings of fear, shame, anger, shock, and guilt they’ll experience; taught about their inability to sleep and the nightmares they’ll have when they do, the erratic mood swings, the sense of worthlessness that will come later. Yet all of it was in the context of keeping them composed enough to answer questions, to provide information that would help us catch their assailants. Listening to Anne, I knew there wasn’t much I could do to console her or help her get past what had happened to Mrs. R, what had happened to her, what might have happened if I hadn’t arrived at her office. Even capturing her attacker would do little to ease her pain.

“Tell me about Navarre,” I said.

“It all comes back to Juan Carlos, doesn’t it? I know the deputies are searching the lake for him. That’s what they said. I gather they’ve had no luck.”

“None that I’ve heard of.”

“I met Juan Carlos, it was early April.”

That caught me by surprise—Riley said he arrived in June.

“He came to my office,” Anne said. “He told me he was a Spanish national. He said he was interested in moving to Minnesota and wanted to see what properties were available on the lake. I’m not foolish, McKenzie. I understand the dangers of a woman working alone in real estate. At the conventions, that’s something we always talk about. Protect yourself; always protect yourself. So I checked to make sure that he was registered at his hotel. I took his picture. I made a copy of his passport—”

“Wait. He had a passport?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see the copy?”

“It’s in my office. You’ll excuse me if I don’t go there anytime soon.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I took him out on the boat. I have a speedboat that I dock across the street from the office. We toured the lake. He was particularly interested in Crystal Bay. He asked about the big white house with the purple flag on the dock. The Muehlenhaus estate. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Why would I? Then there was Mrs. Rogers’s house across the bay. He was interested in that, too. I told him it was for sale. He asked if it was possible to lease the property. I told him I didn’t think so, but we could ask Mrs. R to see if she was agreeable.

“We checked out a few more properties. He didn’t seem to have any interest in anything outside of Crystal Bay, though. I took him back to the agency. He thanked me for my time and said he’d be in touch. Only I didn’t hear from him again. That happens all the time. I didn’t think anything of it.

“Then Juan Carlos reappeared in mid-June, and suddenly he and Mrs. R, they were the very best of friends. What’s wrong with this picture, I asked myself. Juan Carlos told Reney that I suggested he move into her place to keep an eye on it while it was up for sale. It wasn’t true, but Mrs. R was adamant that he do just that.

“I did my due diligence, McKenzie. I did my job. You need to know that. It’s important that you know that because … I had Navarre checked out through a credit service. I demanded that he show me the money. His personal banker sent me a letterhead statement confirming that Juan Carlos had the liquid assets not only to lease the property but also to purchase it. Five-point-four million dollars, McKenzie.”

“The letter? Did it come from Lake Minnetonka Community Bank?”

Anne nodded.

“I called him, too,” she said. “The president. Brodin. I spoke to him to make sure the letter was legitimate. It was. Still, I shouldn’t have signed off on it. I knew there was something wrong.”

Anne closed her eyes. She was silent, and for a moment I was afraid she might have fallen asleep. I was wondering if I should wake her when her eyes snapped open.

“I did it because I liked the way he did me,” she said.

“What?”

“I slept with him, McKenzie. I slept with Navarre. Many times. Does that shock you?”

“A little.”

“Shocks me, too. I had sex with him that first day on the boat. I don’t know what I was thinking. He was so … I fucked him again in my office when we got back. That’s why I was so unhappy when I didn’t hear from him again. When he showed up two and a half months later … I can’t believe how stupid I was, selling out that way. I didn’t even like him personally. Just the way he did me … When he returned, we started up where we left off. Then it ended.”

“What ended it?”

“Ms. Riley Muehlenhaus Brodin. Juan Carlos met her at the club. Club Versailles, of which I am not now nor ever will be a member. He met her and completely forgot about me. Gave me up for a girl that looks like a character in Japanese anime.”

I didn’t get the allusion. I took it, though, that it wasn’t meant to be flattering.

“Then he tied up at my dock on Saturday morning,” Anne said. “He walked into my office like nothing had happened and asked for my help. He claimed a terrorist group called ETA was after him and he needed me.”

“Did you believe him?”

“I wanted to believe him, McKenzie. I wanted to be needed.”

“Why did he leave yesterday morning?”

“We heard that there was a fire at Casa del Lago. He wanted to check it out.”

Maybe that was his boat you saw in Gideon Bay, my inner voice said.

“He didn’t come back?” I asked aloud.

“No, he didn’t.”

*   *   *

I found Sarah Neamy behind the reception desk at Club Versailles. She looked as if she had aged three years since I had last seen her.

“The deputies were here,” she told me. She spoke quickly, as if she wanted to get the words out before someone came along to stop her. “They were here all morning, asking questions about Mrs. R and Juan Carlos. The club’s lawyer was here, too. I bet that comes as a surprise to you, Club Versailles has lawyers. He followed the detectives around, listening to the interviews. He was there to protect the club’s interests, he said. The detectives wanted to see the questionnaire that Juan Carlos filled out. The lawyer wouldn’t let them until he read it first. He claimed it was club property.”

Sarah looked to her right and left before she bent down to a shelf behind the desk and retrieved a white envelope printed with the Club Versailles logo.

“I made a copy just before they arrived.”

She gave me the envelope, and I said, “Thank you.” I was desperate to take a look inside right then and there, yet didn’t want to be seen doing so in the lobby. I slipped the envelope into my inside pocket, instead.

I asked the same question I had asked Anne Rehmann: “Are you okay?”

“I guess so,” Sarah said. “Didn’t get much sleep last night.” She brought both her hands to her cheeks. “Do I look awful?”

“You look wonderful,” I said.

“You’re just saying that. Did you get any sleep?”

After I arrived at Nina’s the evening before, I spent a half hour explaining myself, and the next two hours in her embrace. Afterward, I slept like a well-fed newborn. I couldn’t tell Sarah that, though.

“A little bit of sleep, not much,” I said. “What about your job? Has anyone said anything?”

“Not yet, McKenzie. They’ll wait until a mistake is made or someone complains. Club Versailles has lawyers, like I said. They won’t risk a wrongful termination claim.”

“It’s so unfair.”

“This is the rich and powerful, McKenzie. Fair is not a word they know.”

“Ms. Neamy.”

The voice came to us from the corner of the reception desk. We both turned to face it. A man stood there. He was handsome, in his late sixties, with the clouded-eyed expression of a man who has had made too many decisions he didn’t want to make.

“Mr. Curran,” Sarah said. She had expected him to ask a question or bark an order. When he didn’t, she gestured toward me.

“Mr. McKenzie, this is Mr. Curran. He’s the president of the club. Mr. Curran, McKenzie is a friend—was a friend of Mrs. Rogers. He’s also friends with Riley Brodin and the Muehlenhauses.”

I didn’t know if she added that last part to protect her or me.

I disliked Curran immediately. He said, “Mr. McKenzie,” in a conciliatory tone and shook my hand and added, “Mrs. Rogers was one of our great favorites.” Yet I went on disliking him.

“Were you friends?” I asked.

“Not friends exactly. We knew each other for a long time. That’s not the same thing, though, is it?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I’m told that when we die, we regret the things we didn’t do more than those we did. All day long I’ve been regretting…” Curran caught himself. He smiled at Sarah and said, “Thank you, Ms. Neamy.” To me he said, “Mr. McKenzie, may I have a moment of your time?”

I said, “Sure,” and followed him to an office not far from the reception area. It had a large desk and lots of chairs. The walls were filled with photographs of tennis matches, golf games, swimming meets, and all manner of social events. Curran was not in any of them.

He sat behind the desk and bade me take a chair across from him. He stared as if he wasn’t sure how to approach our conversation and finally just blurted what he was thinking—“Did Juan Carlos Navarre have anything to do with Reney’s murder?”

Wow, my inner voice said.

“Why ask me?” I said aloud.

“I’m told that you are … unofficially involved in the investigation.”

“Unofficially then, Navarre had no hand in it that I’m aware of. It’s possible, however, that the man who killed Mrs. Rogers was trying to get information about him. Why do you ask?”

Curran ignored my question and asked one of his own. “What kind of information?”

“I don’t know.”

The man stared at me some more before he said, “You’re not actually a friend of Mr. Muehlenhaus, are you?”

“I’ve never lent him money, if that’s what you mean.”

“But you’re working for him.”

“I’m working for Riley Brodin.”

“Ms. Brodin. I regret that I haven’t been her friend, either. I was an economist, McKenzie. Very successful. Made a great deal of money. Retired young. I promptly became bored out of my mind and let them elect me president of Club Versailles. I think I’ve done a good job here—with the numbers, I mean. The people … There are members that I have seen at least once a week for years and yet I’ve never called them by name, shaken their hands, or had a drink with them. The only time I spoke to Mrs. Rogers was when a member complained about her poker playing on the terrace. You know what I did? I asked her to move her games to the card room. She asked me if I wanted to play. I declined. What an ass.”

“Did you speak with Navarre?”

“Only concerning his application for membership in Club Versailles. He didn’t impress me. No, that’s not true. I was impressed by his bank account. The numbers. McKenzie, we’ve already told the sheriff deputies, so I don’t see any reason to keep it from you—Navarre withdrew his application Friday afternoon.”

“Why?”

“I think he knew I was onto him.”

“What do you mean?”

“It happened earlier in the week. He—Navarre—was sitting on the patio with Ms. Brodin. They had ordered drinks. It was busy and the waitstaff was falling behind, so I brought the drinks out to them myself. As I approached, I could hear that they were conversing in Spanish. I speak Spanish. I addressed them in that language. Ms. Brodin seemed pleased by it. Navarre became angry, almost violent. He ordered me to stop interfering with them—in English.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Spanish is like any other language; it has different dialects depending on where you’re from. Take English. It’s spoken differently in New England than it is in the South or the West or Minnesota or Canada, for that matter. I spent four and a half years in Spain, and Navarre’s Spanish isn’t Spanish Spanish, if that makes sense to you.”

“What Spanish is it?” I asked.

“Mexican, I think.”

“Are you sure?”

“I was sure enough that I nearly took steps to revoke his guest privileges. Navarre clearly did not belong here, and I have an obligation to protect the club.”

“I’m sure you’re very good at it.”

“I didn’t expel Navarre because he was Mrs. Rogers’s protégé, for lack of a better word, and because of his relationship with Ms. Brodin and the Muehlenhauses. It was my intention to inform Mrs. Rogers of my suspicions, and perhaps Mr. Muehlenhaus as well, depending on how Mrs. Rogers reacted to the news. When Navarre withdrew his application, I decided it was better to forget about it. I’ve been regretting that decision all day as well.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think it would have made any difference to what happened yesterday.”

He raised his hand a few inches and let it fall back on top of his desk as if he weren’t so sure.

“I don’t know why you took the time to tell me all this,” I said. “I appreciate it, though. I’d like to ask another favor, if I might. That young lady out there is convinced you’re going to fire her. Something about club morale.”

“No. I promise that will not happen. I’ve done enough things for this club that I’ve come to regret; I don’t give a damn what the other members say. I will resign first. You can tell her I said so.”

“It would be better if you did.”

We rose together and filed out of the office. When we reached the lobby, I went left toward the door and he went right toward the reception desk. “Ms. Neamy,” I heard him say. I turned my head just in time to see Curran give her a hug.

I decided I was wrong before. I liked him just fine.

*   *   *

With the Audi in the shop, I was forced to drive my old Jeep Cherokee with the heavy-duty rock bumper and swing-away tire carrier mounted on the back. I had parked it in the rear of the lot, but not because I was self-conscious. Club Versailles had lost much of its awe for me. Seeing Mrs. R that way, I was reminded that the rich could die just as badly as the rest of us.

I opened the envelope Sarah had given me and examined its contents. Navarre had claimed Mrs. R’s home as his address and Lake Minnetonka Community as his bank; there was a letterhead statement from Brodin confirming his accounts like the one Anne Rehmann had told me about. Navarre had also claimed ownership of Casa del Lago, which made me go “Hmm.”

Felipe and Susan were listed as his parents, now deceased; Madrid was given as his home, and under “Education” Navarre wrote that he had a titulo de máster in business studies from the Universitat de Barcelona. That should be easy enough for Victoria to check, I told myself. Navarre also included a photocopy of his passport.

“That I can check myself,” I said aloud.

I found my cell phone and used it to call U.S. Customs and Border Protection. After being put on hold for fifteen minutes—there were twelve callers ahead of me—I explained I wanted to determine the genuineness of a Spanish passport. A woman with a polite voice insisted that there was no way to authenticate a foreign passport number. I tried to argue with her. She asked if I wanted to report suspicious activity to Homeland Security. I thought about it, said no, I merely wanted to make sure the man using the passport for identification purposes was who he claimed to be. She suggested that I contact the Spanish embassy in Washington D.C., yet warned, “There’s no way they will give that information to a third party.” I called the embassy anyway. She was right.

“Well, dammit,” I said aloud.

*   *   *

You had to give Mary Pat Mulally credit—she wasn’t one to waste time. There was already a platoon of carpenters hard at work restoring Casa del Lago to its former glory by the time I arrived in Excelsior that afternoon. I had no idea exactly what they were doing, partly because it has long been established that I am hopeless when it comes to hammer and saw, and partly because of the CONSTRUCTION AREA DO NOT CROSS tape that surrounded the restaurant.

I walked up to the edge of the tape and peered through the open door. I could see Mary Pat and Maria. They were both dressed as if they were, well, tearing down and rebuilding a fire-scorched restaurant. Yet their clothes did little to disguise their generous curves, and I thought, one thing you have to say about Lake Minnetonka, the women are pretty.

I caught Mary Pat’s eye and gave her a wave. She waved back. A moment later, she stepped outside, squinting against the bright sun. Her smile was glorious.

“Isn’t this great?” she said.

“You’re not one to let life’s catastrophes get you down, are you?”

Mary Pat flung her hands up as if it were a silly question not worth answering.

“I bet you’re still looking for Juan Carlos,” she said.

“I am. Have you seen him?”

“Nope. You know what? Screw him. If he can’t be bothered to even make a call when his business burns down, screw him. I’ll buy him out.”

“Can you afford to?”

“No, but my new partner can.”

Maria moved to the door and leaned against the frame. Like her boss, she also shielded her eyes against the sun’s rays. I knew she was eavesdropping on our conversation while pretending not to.

“Who’s your new partner?” I asked.

“Riley.”

“Riley Brodin is investing money in your restaurant so that you can get rid of her boyfriend? Wow.”

“She was never happy that he was spending so much time here instead of with her, and besides—I doubt he’s going to be her boyfriend for much longer. She’s even more upset than I am that he hasn’t contacted her, that he hasn’t told her what’s going on.”

I flashed on Anne Rehmann’s confession.

Yeah, there’s a lot of things Navarre hasn’t told her, my inner voice said.

“The only reason she was dating him in the first place was because of her family, because the people on Lake Minnetonka thought she should be dating somebody,” Mary Pat added. “That’s what she said, anyway.”

“When was the partnership concluded?” I asked.

“This morning. During lunch, actually.”

“Lunch?”

“Well, I was having lunch. Riley called and said let’s do this. She seemed very excited. She said she should have invested in the restaurant from the very beginning.”

“Why didn’t she?”

“We were both afraid that it might get in the way of our friendship. Anyway, Alex Brodin already sent papers over to be signed. I’m waiting to have my lawyer review them first, though. I don’t entirely trust Brodin. If it weren’t for Riley, I probably would have taken my business elsewhere.”

Riley didn’t tell her what happened outside her building that morning, my inner voice said. I wonder why not.

“How long have you known Riley?” I asked.

“Couple years,” Mary Pat said. “We met at the U. I was taking a noncredit business course at the Carlson School of Management.” Her eyes took on a faraway look as she wrestled with her memory. “Riley was earning extra credit or something, working as a TA for the professor. She reviewed a paper with me that I wrote for class. I remember the dress she wore. It was blue, and I thought it was a little too revealing. For a while I was convinced she was involved with her professor, that she was more than just his teaching assistant. We went for coffee together and I found out it wasn’t true. Oh, here…” Mary Pat reached into her pocket and produced a business card. “Take this.”

On one side of the card was a photograph of Casa del Lago taken after the fire but before work began. A headline read: “We’re burned up, not burnt out.” On the back of the card was a photo of the club taken before the fire. The copy read: “Good for one complimentary dessert during our Grand Re-Opening” followed by the restaurant’s address and Web site.

“I didn’t have the nerve to put down a date,” Mary Pat said. “Why tempt fate, huh? If everything goes according to plan, though, and the county inspectors don’t mess with us, we should be up and running in two weeks. Three at the most.”

I flicked the card with my finger.

“I’ll be there,” I said. Mary Pat smiled some more. I glanced over her shoulder at Maria. She didn’t look happy at all. “In the meantime…”

“If I hear from Juan Carlos, you’re third on my list,” Mary Pat said.

“Third?”

“Right behind Riley and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department.”

*   *   *

I sat in my Jeep Cherokee for a few minutes, unsure where to go next. Navarre was still out there. I could have rented a boat, I suppose, and searched Lake Minnetonka, but if the county deputies couldn’t find him, I doubted my chances. Mrs. R’s killer was out there, too. I had no idea where to look for him. I searched the parking lot and the area around Casa del Lago, thinking he might have staked out the place the way wannabe gangster Arnaldo Nunez had. He wasn’t there. Nor were there any other members of the 937 Mexican Mafia loitering about.

I called on my long-ago partner.

“Well, Anita,” I said aloud. “What would you suggest?”

My inner voice answered, yet it was her words: You don’t know? When in doubt, you always follow the money, Rook. Who did you sleep with to get this job, anyway?