For the second time in less than two weeks, Mars came back to Minneapolis from Richmond on a late-night flight and headed straight from the airport to see Chris.
“Before you go in to see Chris,” Denise said, “I should tell you …”
Mars turned to look at her. She shrugged. “He’s taking care of the neighbor’s dog for two weeks. The dog is with him in his bedroom. Just didn’t want you to jump out of your skin when you went in.”
Chris wasn’t visible when Mars went into the bedroom. All Mars could see on the bed was an immense mound of brown, white, and black fur. The mound was on its back, four legs that could have supported a grand piano, splayed in the air. A deep, rattling snore rose from the mound. Mars walked quietly around to the side of the bed where a sleeping Chris was partially visible. Mars extended a hand to touch Chris’s hair. The motion woke the mound, who sprang sideways with a loud snort. Freed by the dog’s move, Chris opened his eyes.
“Dad! You’re home! I thought you weren’t coming back till tomorrow.”
“Wasn’t sure I could get home tonight, so didn’t want to get your hopes up. But I always planned on trying to get home tonight.” Mars found a place on the side of the bed and sat down. He reached over and scratched the dog’s head. “What’s his name?”
“She. Penelope. She’s a St. Bernard.”
Penelope didn’t seem particularly interested in her name, but she did decide that if conversation was taking place, she wanted to be in the center of things. She rose, shaking violently, then stepped half over Chris before dropping down. Immobilized and gasping, Chris said, “She’s real cuddly.”
“Cuddly could kill you. So. You finally got your dog.”
“Only for two weeks. Till the Castwalls get home.”
“Yeah, but two weeks with Penelope is like the equivalent of two months with any other dog. So if you take care of her six weeks out of every year, you’ve got a whole dog. I’m glad your mom decided it was okay.”
“The Castwalls are paying me fifteen dollars a day, so it’ll be three hundred and sixty dollars. It’d cost them, like, thirty dollars a day to put her in a kennel. Mom said I could do it if I saved one hundred and eighty for soccer camp next summer and ninety for my college savings. I get to keep ninety for myself.” Chris grinned, thinking about something. “Penny drools a lot. She totally slimed Mom. We were in the kitchen, and Penny’d just taken a big drink of water. When she shook her head, all the drool hanging off her lips went all over Mom’s pants.”
“And Mom didn’t blow up?”
Chris’s smile widened. “Mom didn’t know it happened. But I heard her saying later she wondered what she’d gotten all over her pants.”
They grinned at each other. Silent conspirators in the Land of Neat. Mars scratched Penelope’s head, and the dog rolled her eyes back at Mars, panting with pleasure.
“You know who she reminds me of?” Mars said.
Chris lifted his head and squinted at the dog. “Who?”
“That weird actress, model, whatever. The one with real blond hair—kind of a cartoonish sex bomb. Can’t remember her name—Anna Nicole Smith. Penny’s got that same big-girl voluptuous look as Anna Nicole Smith. And a real short nose.”
“Does Anna Nicole Smith drool?”
“Probably.”
They sat quiet for a bit, each rubbing a different part of the dog. Then Chris said, “I’ve put all the newspaper articles about what happened at the cemetery in a scrapbook. You wanna see it?”
“I do—but not tonight. Let’s look at it this weekend.”
“So you got everybody, right?”
Mars thought about it. “There’s still an issue about Hec Macintosh’s wife. She says all she knew he was doing was planning a way of getting the flag back. Maybe, maybe not. It will be just about impossible to prove what she did know. Glenn will take a look at it, but I doubt we’ll take any action. Hard case to prove, different jurisdictions …”
“I wanted to see the flag again before they took it away. It was our flag, Dad. Why did we have to give it back?”
“We didn’t have to. It was the right thing to do. I didn’t start out thinking that, but I guess I think so now. Sharing it, anyway. You’ll still get a chance to see it.”
“Why did you change your mind?”
“I think mostly it was reading about the Battle of Gettysburg. One of the things that really struck me was how much respect both sides had for each other. Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the war—I don’t remember exactly, but thousands of men died. And there was regret on both sides over what they had to do as soldiers. I started to feel like it just didn’t honor what those guys did for us to still be fighting about a flag. I wouldn’t feel that way if the Virginians wanted to fly the flag in public as a symbol of the Confederacy. But all they want is to have the flag in an exhibit that’ll be part of the history of the battle.”
“If we share it—that would sort of be like saying the war’s over …”
“You got it in one.”
“Number three, Dad. Probably number one, too.”
“What?”
“You’ve been saying ‘You’ve got it in one’ a lot. Number three. And you should think of something else to say. Number one.”
Three months to the day after Frank Beck had been hanged, Mars picked up Chris and Evelyn for dinner at Restaurant Alma.
It had been Chris’s idea to take Evelyn out for dinner the evening she was leaving for England. Evelyn and Chris had an easy friendship that had begun with Mars’s hospitalization. They had maintained the friendship separate from Mars. Mars had begun by being uncomfortable at the prospect of Chris being hurt if Evelyn dropped out of his life, but the more he saw the two of them together, the more confident he was that Evelyn and Chris could be trusted to manage their friendship without Mars’s intervention.
And Chris and Evelyn shared a passion for food in general and chocolate in particular that had become an unbreakable bond.
What Mars hadn’t worked through was how Evelyn’s leaving made him feel. A small hollow feeling emerged somewhere between his heart and his gut when she’d set her departure date. It took up more space every day. So, when Chris suggested the farewell dinner, Mars immediately thought of Alma’s, hoping a happy evening with good food would fill the hollow spot.
“Would the young gentleman like a kiddy cocktail?” The waitress smiled at Chris.
The young gentleman barely contained his disdain. “No. I want a fat Coke.”
As the waitress walked away, Chris said, “Dad? Remember when Gloria asked me to go with her?”
Mars nodded. “Yeah. And neither one of us could figure out what ‘going with’ someone meant when you were eight years old.”
“Well,” Chris said, “going with Gloria was like that,” he
jerked his head in the direction of the departing waitress. “Going with Gloria was a kiddy cocktail.”
Evelyn said, “He’s gonna do great on the analogy section of the SATs.”
After dropping Chris off, Mars took Evelyn to the airport. They didn’t talk until they took the exit to the airport approach road. Then Evelyn said, “I can’t imagine writing to you. But I don’t want you to think that means you won’t be on my mind.”
The funny thing was, Mars understood exactly what she meant. “But you’ll write to Chris.”
Evelyn said, “Of course.”
Hoping it sounded only half-serious, Mars said, “Not even a postcard? No words, just the postcard?”
“That I could do.”
Back at the apartment, Mars turned on the television, sound off. Then he went into the kitchen, got a can of Coke, and walked back into the living room, watching the silent screen. The news was on, and the face on the screen looked familiar. The woman was elaborately made-up, and even with the sound off, it was obvious she was mighty pleased to be on the evening news.
A tag line appeared under her image on the screen. As soon as he saw it, Mars remembered why she looked familiar. He turned the mute off and listened to the last few seconds of the interview. Then he made a phone call and left the apartment, driving downtown to city hall.
He stopped in at the property room and picked up the box, which they had waiting for him. He carried it back up to the department, relieved to find the squad room empty. Dropping the box on his desk, he dug around until he found what he was looking for. Then he made another phone call, punched buttons on the automated response system, and wrote down the recorded message.
After he’d compared what he’d written with what he’d found in the box, a big grin broke out on his face.
Sleeping that night wasn’t an option, so he stopped by a Video Update on his way back to the apartment and picked up three videos, Pulp Fiction, The Insider, and—what the hell—The Sound of Music. Looking at the times for each of the films on the back of the boxes, he calculated they’d get him through to a reasonable hour the next morning when he could make the last phone call.
He got to the Dunn Brothers on the corner of Sixth Avenue and University Southeast ahead of Joey Beck. He was annoying himself by not being able to stop humming the melody to “Climb Every Mountain.” And he was antsy. Playing with the cigarette box nonstop.
“Mr. Bahr,” Joey said, a big grin on his face. “I was really glad to get your call. Mom and I’ve been talking about calling you. We want you to know how much we appreciate what you did.”
Mars held up a hand. “Not why I wanted to get together. Fact is, we should be thanking you. If you hadn’t pushed, Macintosh would have kept going until he was finished. I called because—” Mars reached into his pocket, pulling out a white envelope.
“Because of this. I was watching television last night and heard something that I connected to the case.” Mars held up the white envelope, then pushed it across the table to Joey.
Looking puzzled, Joey opened the envelope. He took out the pink Powerball ticket and the slip of paper on which Mars had written the winning Powerball numbers for the December 7 Powerball drawing.
Joey’s face was blank as he looked at the ticket and Mars’s numbers. Then he said, “Where’d you get this?”
“It was taken with your dad’s possessions by the officer on the scene when your dad died. I’d looked at the tickets early on—thinking the numbers on the tickets might have been related to the numbers on your dad’s arm. Your dad
bought the ticket at the convenience store just across the street from the Dachota maybe an hour before he died. I’d interviewed the clerk during the investigation, and I recognized her on the television news last night. They were doing a story on a Powerball jackpot that hadn’t been claimed.”
Joey put his hand to his mouth and slowly shook his head. “I just can’t believe this.” He looked up at Mars. “Do you know what this would have meant to my dad?”
“It would still mean a lot to him to know that you and your mom were provided for, Joey.”
The story ran on the front page of the Strib, above the fold, with a picture of Mona and Joey Beck holding a big mock-up of a Powerball jackpot check. The headline read, “Dead Man’s Lucky Legacy.”
The story’s angle was what interested Mars. The Beck family was using the proceeds of the win to pay off Frank Beck’s investors. Joey was quoted as saying he was happy there’d be enough left to allow his mother to live comfortably.
When he was asked if he was disappointed that finding the lucky ticket hadn’t left him a wealthy man, Joey’d said, “I can make my own luck.”
“Got it in one,” Mars said out loud.