BETSY was in her small kitchen, moving awkwardly on her crutches—the old-fashioned kind that offer support under the arms—while she got out the crackers, then stirred the pan of soup heating on her stove. She couldn’t think how she would transfer the soup to a bowl and the bowl to the table, and so proposed to eat it out of the pan.
Sophie had already learned that for the time being (though she didn’t know there was to be a limit on it) she was allowed on the counter, because Betsy couldn’t put the animal’s bowl on the floor and so fed her up there.
Then the doorbell rang. With an aggravated growl, she swung around clumsily to head for the intercom near her front door. The bell had rung again before she got there.
Holding down the intercom button, “Yes?” she said in her crispest voice, a warning to someone with something to sell.
“It’s me, I’ve got news!” Godwin, sounding cheerful.
Her physical therapist had been here earlier and had her doing more leg lifts than she ever thought she could. Her leg still ached, and she was in no mood for chirpy conversation. But Godwin said he had news, and if he could tell her something useful she could put up with chirpy, right?
“Come on up.” She pushed another button, one that released the lock on the door downstairs, and went back to stir her soup, which was starting to bubble around the edges.
In less than a minute he was opening the door to her apartment. “Hi, good to see you up on your feet!” he said, coming into her kitchen. “And cooking, too, better and better.”
“Well, I hate to say it, but all those lovely hot dishes people keep bringing are too high in calories for someone who does nothing but lie around all day. Which reminds me, my freezer up here is full of them, and three more came this afternoon. Can you take most of them down to the basement, to the big chest freezer down there? I’ll write my name on them so my tenants will leave them alone.”
“Sure, after I’ve told you what I found out.”
She went to stir her soup. “Supper first. I’d’ve made a salad, but my lettuce has died. I figure chicken noodle soup can’t do my figure much harm, even with crackers. Would you like some?”
“No, thanks, I’ve wined and dined and dined some more.” He smirked just a little; he was dating that handsome fellow known as Dex who worked at Needlework Unlimited, so life in that respect was good. “And I’ll hint in the shop tomorrow that what you need is not another hot dish, but someone to do some grocery shopping for you.”
“That would be lovely. Thanks.”
“But now to the big news: Bob Germaine has been very active in the gay community.”
Betsy turned toward him so fast she staggered and nearly fell. “What?” she said. “You saw him? What did he say?”
He reached out to steady her, taking her by the shoulders. “No, no, I didn’t see him,” he said, mildly aggravated. “And no one I talked to has seen him for at least a week.” He let go and stepped back. “Okay now?
“I’m fine, just fine,” she said impatiently. “Well, then what did you mean that you found him active in the gay community?”
“I mean people I talked to know him. When I described the man I saw at the banquet, a lot of people said they’ve seen him around. He’s kind of a party animal, they say. Only he uses a different name: Stoney Durand.”
She snorted faintly. “Sounds like the main character in an old television show: Stoney Durand and his sidekick Giggles, fighting for justice in the Old West.”
“Can I help what a man picks for a pseudonym? Maybe he watches old westerns a lot. Maybe he smoked a lot of weed in college.”
“How did you describe him?” Betsy was thinking Godwin had only seen Bob Germaine once, and then from a distance.
“He’s a little taller than me, with a better-than-average build, and dark brown hair kind of wavy on top and short on the sides. He has brown eyes and thick eyebrows. No earring. His hands are not the kind you get when you’ve done hard labor like construction or landscaping.” Godwin held out his own slender hands. “Not as nice as mine, of course. His nose is just the least little bit retroussé. He wears a silver ID bracelet on his left wrist, the kind with flat links—I noticed it when he reached for the check and at the same time was shaking hands with the President of EGA. And people who know Stoney Durand say he always wears an ID bracelet like that.”
Betsy, duly impressed with this detailed description, said, “Sounds as if you were really paying attention. Good for you. Still, that description could fit more than one person.”
“Not the whole thing taken together,” argued Godwin. “The hair, the nose, the eyebrows, the bracelet—”
“The name,” said Betsy, by her tone only appearing to agree with his list. “I understand most people pick a fake name close to their own so they’ll turn to look when they hear it. So I’d’ve thought he’d pick something like Hob LaLane rather than Stoney Durand. And also, if he’s bi, has this Stoney ever been seen with a woman?”
“Not in the places I looked,” said Godwin with a smile. “And anyway, he’s got a woman at home.”
Betsy turned off the burner on her stove. “So you are relatively sure this Stoney Durand is actually Bob Germaine?”
“Not relatively: positively!”
Betsy grimaced and shook her head. “What a shock this is going to be for poor Allie!”
Godwin’s cheer dimmed considerably. “Yes. And while there’s no need to tell her this, some of the people who say they know him aren’t as sweet as I am.” He waggled his eyebrows to underline this.
Betsy’s heart sank and she sighed. Then hunger prodded, and she turned back to the pan. She couldn’t eat right from the stove with Godwin looking and so was at a loss.
Then he was beside her, putting a bowl on a plate, pouring the soup into it. “Crackers?” he asked.
She nodded toward them on the counter, and he took a few from the package and set them on the plate. The second drawer he opened held her silverware—he found it before she realized what he was looking for and told him where to look.
“This way,” she said and went to the little dining nook at the other end of her kitchen.
She bumped her foot against the table leg and sat down with a grimace of pain she hoped he didn’t see. He put the soup in front of her. “But he’s still missing,” she said. “You said no one’s seen him for at least a week.”
“That’s right.” Godwin went back for a napkin, then sat across from Betsy, watching as she crumbled a cracker into the bowl. “But I did find out the important thing, right?”
“Yes, unfortunately.” Her ankle was throbbing.
“Do you think he stole the money to spend on his secret life?” He filched a cracker off her plate and nibbled at a corner of it.
“Do you think he thought he could just ride off with the check and no one would come after him for it?” retorted Betsy.
“Maybe he thought no one would go looking for him. You know, not guess he’s gay.”
“If he didn’t want people to guess, he shouldn’t go making eyes at handsome young men until he’s away from the hotel.” Betsy knew she was sounding grumpy, but now her whole leg ached. “Did anyone see the look you two exchanged?”
Godwin preened a little and touched his blond hair at the back. “I don’t know, I wasn’t looking anywhere but at him. But I see what you mean.”
“So you see how something’s very wrong about this.”
“I don’t see anything wrong. I’m thinking he met the love of his life a month or two ago and now they’re starting all over again somewhere far from here.”
“What are they living on then? Allie Germaine says he hasn’t emptied their bank accounts. If he was willing to steal a check, you’d think he’d take at least some money from their joint accounts.”
“Maybe the love of his life is rich.”
“So why steal the check?” Betsy asked.
Godwin considered that a few moments. Then he said, “Maybe it was like a good-bye thing, taking that check. Good-bye to his job, good-bye to his wife, good-bye to everything and everyone who thinks they know him. Taking the check meant he was burning his bridges. He can’t come home again now.”
Betsy considered that. There was an ugly logic to it. A man living a lie decides to come out of the closet—and makes sure he can’t go back in again. “It’s hard to believe Allie could be so wrong about her husband. They have children—two or three, I think—and the oldest is in high school, right?”
“Two, and I think both are in high school,” said Godwin.
“She said they’d been married sixteen years. That’s a long time to carry off a lie, don’t you think?”
Godwin shrugged. “It happens.” He leaned forward and repeated more strongly, “I know for a fact that it happens.”
“All right. But is it even remotely possible Stoney Durand is not Bob Germaine? That we’re not talking about the same man here?”
The intensity of her look and voice made him squirm just a little. He said, “Look, I described him as best I could, and only two people named someone else—and one of them took it back when his friend said no, it was more likely Stoney Durand I was talking about.”
“And the other person, the one who didn’t take it back?”
“He said I was describing Al Gore.” Godwin snickered. “I said, ‘In your dreams,’ and he said—” Godwin sighed romantically, and drawled, “‘Yeah.’”
Betsy sighed, but not romantically. She shifted slightly on the chair. Her leg was like a bad toothache.
“But you see,” Godwin continued, “the consensus is, it’s Stoney Durand. We both know the man I saw at the banquet is Bob Germaine. So I’m positive the man I asked everyone about is really Bob Germaine.” Her doubting face made him uncomfortable. “I would have taken that photo from the newspaper with me, but it was such a bad picture. Could you ask Mrs. Germaine if she has a better picture? I’d ask her, but if she wanted to know more about why I want one, I might forget and tell her where I’ve been looking.”
“Didn’t they take pictures at the banquet?” asked Betsy.
“Some people at the tables did. You can just imagine how awful they are, with those little flashes, and too far away to do any good. But I didn’t see them do that posed thing, where they hold on to a check big as a coffee table and smile pretty.”
Betsy said, “I think the decision to send an exec from the National Heart Coalition came too late to have that humungous check made.”
“How do you cash a check like that?” asked Godwin, diverted. “Can you imagine trying to put it in the car? Wouldn’t it be funny to watch someone trying to get it through the door of the bank? Could you still cash it if it was in two or more pieces?” He grinned and popped the remainder of his cracker into his mouth.
“They aren’t real checks,” said Betsy, dipping her spoon into the bowl. “It’s just for show. I remember reading somewhere that the real check is the normal size.” She took a mouthful of broth and noodles, then put the spoon down. Pain had taken her appetite away.
Godwin asked, “Did you talk to the police about what they’re doing?”
“Oh, yes. I called Jill, and she called the investigator on the Minneapolis police force in charge of the case. His name is…O-something. Orrick? He told Jill his investigation is going nowhere. Germaine, he said, seems a very unlikely thief, but he is their only suspect. Jill told me he said it’s because of the eyewitnesses.”
“What about them?” Godwin asked.
“There are too many to doubt, and they’re all telling the same story. They heard him make the speech, watched him put the envelope with the check into his pocket, and some of them walked him out to his car. So that part is clear. Orrick thinks it possible Bob Germaine got carjacked, but if so, where is he?”
“Do you think that’s what happened?” asked Godwin.
Betsy repeated Allie Germaine’s story about her husband going for a drive after the speech. “Jill said Allie told that to Orrick when they first talked to her, and that Orrick put out a call to law enforcement in the five-county area to look for signs of a car going off the road, and to check ravines and rivers for a light blue Lexus. But nothing so far.”
“So maybe the car is on its way to New Mexico, driven by Bob Germaine. And in the passenger seat is this good-looking older guy with big bucks.”
“Why older and good looking?” asked Betsy, thinking Godwin had someone in mind.
“Why not?” said Godwin with a shrug, reaching for another cracker. “It’s just that when I think of someone breaking loose at last, running off with a new lover, he’s rich, handsome, and has these beautiful silver streaks in his dark, wavy hair.”
TONY Milan sat on his dilapidated couch, his left leg in its dark canvas-and-metal brace resting on the stained old coffee table the landlord had probably rescued from the sidewalk. What a dump, he thought.
Beside him was a black plastic bag containing the stuff he’d brought home from the hospital. He’d already dug out the pain meds they’d given him, but he was still resting from getting from the curb into his garden apartment. He was afraid that if he didn’t gather his strength before he stood to go into his bedroom, he might fall. And he was afraid that if he fell, he wouldn’t be able to get up—his broken arm and leg were on the same side, plus his overall bruises and scrapes made even ordinary movement painful. He wished he’d accepted pissant Mitch’s offer to help him into his apartment, even at the risk of seeing the packed suitcase inside the door. And the passport and airline ticket to Madagascar sitting on top of it.
Maybe it was just as well. Mitch thought he’d be coming back to work—and maybe he was. The airline ticket was no good anymore.
Anyway, he had no reason to run now, did he? He frowned over that for a while. Because he had been stealing checks from the mail room and depositing them in a special account he’d set up. There was absolutely no sign from Mitch that he, Tony, was suspected in that way. Of petty theft, maybe—but Tony hoped with all his heart that there were other petty thieves at the Heart Coalition, because a sudden stop to all theft during his hospitalization would be all the proof they needed of his guilt.
Thinking about his check-stealing scam brought up the question again: What happened last Friday? Tony had a good-enough plan to get hold of that check written by EGA. Okay, both Mr. Germaine and the check were gone—but why assume Germaine and the check had gone together? Maybe Tony had the check. His car accident may have been just that, an accident, with no link to the theft of the check. After all, no one said they’d found this big check written to the Heart Coalition in a pocket—they did search his pockets, didn’t they?
Whoa!
Tony stopped thinking while he ripped open the black plastic bag that contained his personal effects. A big brown envelope contained his cell phone, his good ID bracelet with the flat links, a nice gold watch with a leather band—which he’d never seen before—and his wallet, which itself contained his driver’s license, Social Security card, two credit cards. And $147, which was a lot more than he remembered, but nowhere near $24,000. In the big envelope was also a little brown envelope containing about two dollars in loose change, a small brass key with the number 36 written in ink on a strip of white tape on it, and a pair of what looked like real-gold cuff links. The change he remembered, but not the key or the cuff links. He put them aside and continued pulling things out of the bag. Up came a white dress shirt, covered with dried blood. His blood. It was odd to look at that and think that huge amount of blood had come out of him. He touched the big bandage on his head tenderly.
Hold on, he owned a white dress shirt, but he hadn’t worn it to work last Friday. And this one had French cuffs, which his didn’t. That explained the cuff links, in a way. But why had he been wearing someone else’s dress shirt and cuff links? Had he gone to a drunken hot tub party and put on the wrong shirt after? He smiled at himself—that would have been a typical accidental-on-purpose “mistake” for him. And it would explain the watch, too. But he had no memory of a hot tub party, and, in fact, didn’t currently know anyone with a hot tub. He picked up the cuff links. They were plain, a small square sitting on a bigger square, and not new; but the weight and shine suggested high-carat gold. He put them down again, more respectfully. The watch was only a Bulova, but the strap looked like real crocodile. Taken from the same person who owned the shirt and cuff links?
In the bottom of the bag, in a big wad, was a black suit. He pulled it out. It was torn, cut, stiff with what was probably more dried blood, and here and there, caught in the folds, were a very few little cubes of glass. Oh, windshield glass, sure.
But the suit was once a very nice one. And it wasn’t his. Tony didn’t own a black suit.
He went through the pockets anyhow and didn’t find the check. Had he left it at the party? In the car? Did the people who towed wrecked cars away go through them looking for valuables?
Wait a second, maybe he’d deposited it. He opened his cell phone and was pleased to find he had turned it off, so when he turned it on, it had a charge. He thought a few moments, then dialed a number that connected him to First Express Bank’s automated service. He had a checking account there that would give the Heart Coalition a fit if they knew about it, and he loved not having to talk to a person who might later remember his call. Some more numbers and he got the balance on the National Heart Fund account he’d set up: “Four thousand four hundred thirty-two dollars,” the female robot voice told him.
He disconnected. Okay, he hadn’t deposited the check.
Maybe Mr. Germaine had it after all. Tony felt a stab of anger. He hoped Germaine was found and sent to jail. That would teach him to steal from Tony Milan!
Tony cast about for something to do. He wasn’t able to go out of his little apartment and had always been careful not to let anyone know where he lived unless absolutely necessary. His home was a den, a place of safety, and the wise predator didn’t leave hints to its location. So he couldn’t invite anyone over.
His bank had his address, as did the bank unwittingly taking part in the Heart Fund scam. Some Heart Coalition employees also knew where he lived; for instance, the two women in Personnel and the pissant.
But no one else. Well, except the Domino’s Pizza that he sometimes ordered a delivery from. He drew a lonesome sigh. But hold on, no need for a pity party. Tony could still talk to people, couldn’t he? Some of his friends must be wondering why they hadn’t seen him in a while.
Tony picked up the cordless phone on the coffee table, thought a few moments, then dialed. A male voice answered, and Tony said, “Hey, Billy, it’s me, Stoney Durand!”