With Mouse in tow, Jane began her search for David by covering the bars closest to the Linden Building and then fanning out. It was slow, tedious work. She had a photo of him in her wallet, a close-up, one he’d sent her several years ago. He and Diego had taken a cruise to the eastern Caribbean. He was standing on a beach in St. Maarten, looking windblown and happy. Examining his face, she had a hard time believing it was the same ravaged-looking man she’d seen last night in the stairwell.
At the Gay Nineties on Hennepin, one of the best-known gay bars in the Twin Cities, she talked to lots of people who hesitated over the snapshot. One man, a dark-haired preppy type in his early thirties, hesitated the longest, but in the end, said David looked like a man he’d talked to last night, but he couldn’t be sure.
At the Brass Rail, Jane spoke with anyone who would talk to her. She must have handed out thirty cards. Before she left, she ran into a real lowlife character—a seedy-looking guy with tin-colored hair. He smelled bad and looked dirty. His face lit up when he saw the picture, but he turned back to his drink without comment. When she pressed him on it, he said he’d never seen the man before and to leave him
alone. Jane pulled one of her cards out of her pocket and set it down next to his beer.
Around seven, feeling tired and dispirited, she took Mouse for a walk down by the Mississippi River. They both needed some fresh air. She’d been racking her brain all afternoon trying to think of where David might have gone. She had a headache from all the thinking.
As she sat down on the bench, she gazed at the water. It was a gray, dreary evening. The river looked hard, like it was made of liquid slate. If David wanted to drink and be invisible, he’d probably pick someplace dark and divey, someplace out of the way. Considering all the dark, out-of-the-way dives in the Twin Cities, Jane figured she could be at this for years.
“Okay, Mouse. Just listen. If David thinks he’s losing his mind, and if you add to that the knowledge—real or imagined—that he may have killed someone, I think it’s possible he took off. He ran away from Atlanta. I think there’s a better than even chance that he’s done the same now—left Minneapolis. You agree?”
Mouse liked to listen, but he wasn’t quick with opinions.
“It’s a hard call.” Looking down at the phone in her hand, she pushed in the number for Nolan. When he picked up, she said, “It’s Jane. Where are you?”
“Working at home.”
“Did you hear about the roses Joanna received today?”
“Got an earful from both her and her boyfriend.”
“What do you think?”
“I think,” he said, releasing a breath, “that we’ve been spinning our wheels. All this time we thought Luberman was sending the flowers. Now it turns out it was someone else.”
Jane had come to the same conclusion.
“Hitchcock called me a few minutes ago. Get this. Around one this afternoon, they pulled a woman’s body out of Whitefish Lake.”
Her eyes fastened on the river. “Is it—”
“They found a ring on one of the fingers. The father ID’d it. The
body’s pretty badly decomposed, so they’ll have to do tests to make sure, but Hitchcock sounded pretty positive.”
Jane’s thoughts started to ricochet like pinballs. “That means whoever killed Luberman thinking he was doing Joanna a favor, if he’d just waited, if he’d just given it a little more time, none of it would have been necessary.”
“The police would have done their job and Luberman would be behind bars by now.”
Jane shook her head, trying to absorb what it all meant. “So if Joanna hadn’t hired you and sent us chasing after him, none of this would have happened. It was her fear that drew him back into her life. Talk about a tragedy of errors.”
“That about covers it. But we’ve got to move on because there’s someone out there who may still present a danger to Joanna.”
“I wondered about that, too.” She looked down at Mouse, pulled his ear.
“I had Joanna’s people in L.A. send me the current files on the crazies in her life. It’s all on a CD. I never looked at it because I thought Luberman was our man.”
“Do the police have a copy of the CD?”
“I burned two copies. Sent one over to Drea. That’s what I’ve been looking at for the last half hour. What fries me is the bizarre stuff people do. Get this. One fan in Florida sends her his hair clippings—every time he gets a haircut. You wouldn’t believe the kind of crap people mail her. ’Course, I shouldn’t be surprised after what I’ve seen in my lifetime, but I have to admit, I am. Hey, I don’t suppose I could get you to take a look at this file.”
“Is the file divided by areas of the country?”
“No, by levels of potential danger. You got anything on your agenda for the rest of the night?”
“I’ve been out looking for David.”
“Any luck?”
“Nope.”
“Then stop by. I’ll give you the disk and you can take it home. If you find something, let me know.”
Jane figured she might as well keep busy. She had no desire to spend any more time running around the city, looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
As she hung up, a runner came past. Mouse tugged at the leash. And that’s when Jane remembered Brandy. At least she was safe now that Gordon was dead. But she probably hadn’t heard the news.
Using her cell phone again, she called directory assistance and was put through to the IHOP in Eagle Ridge. The man who answered said that Brandy wasn’t there. She was supposed to be working the evening shift but hadn’t come in and hadn’t called. He sounded frustrated, said he’d called her house about an hour ago, but there was no answer.
Panic squeezed Jane hard. She disconnected and tapped in 411 right away, asked to be connected to the sheriff’s office in Eagle Ridge.
“Hi, my name’s Jane Lawless. I live in Minneapolis. There’s a woman in your town you need to check on—something might have happened to her. Her name is Brandy Becker. She was dating Gordon Luberman. You know who he is?”
The officer said he did.
“Brandy didn’t show up for work tonight, and she doesn’t answer her home phone. Can you send someone over to her house to see if she’s okay? It’s urgent. She could be hurt—or worse.”
Once Jane was assured an officer would be sent immediately, she asked if someone could call her back, let her know that Brandy was safe. She gave the man her cell number, thanked him, then hung up.