Dead for the Money (28 page)

It started with Leland saying something to Cher. Brodie heard her own name but no more. The tone, however, was coaxing.

“Look, Lee. I told you not to do this, but you did it anyway. That was stupid.”

His reply was unintelligible.

“They’re gonna know you were in Frankfort.” At his reply, she made a rude sound. “Yeah, right. You just happened to be there. Who’s gonna believe that?”

Again he said something in a soothing tone that Brodie could not make out, but Cher’s smoky voice was clear. “You’d better have a plan, that’s all I’m saying. You need to think about how we can cover our tracks if things don’t go the way you want.”

S
EAMUS
FOUND
IT
HARD
not to shout aloud when Bud finally got the message he’d repeated over and over. After several hours of motoring at almost top speed, Seamus was at least as nauseated as his host but kept repeating “Racers.”

Finally, it sunk in. Scarlet, who was piloting the boat, watched the water ahead while Bud made several phone calls. Her expression revealed curiosity, but true to her word, she remained quiet.

“I talked to the sheriff’s department,” he said, closing the phone. “Reiner called them, and they’re on the lookout for Leland’s boat.”

“But can they cover the whole area at night?”

“Probably not, since they’re still dealing with the aftermath of the storm. Apparently some boats suffered damage and there’s a kayaker missing over on the Cheboygan side.” He slid the phone into the zippered pocket of his shorts. “I called my buddy Jim who sailed in the race. Quite a few people I know are still up there, and he promised to round up some help.”

Scarlet looked doubtful. “What can a bunch of celebrating yachtsmen do?”

“Help the Coast Guard and the sheriff’s department with their patrols.”

“All night?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

Her doubt turned to approval. “That’s wonderful, Bud!”

“They’re good people.” Bud rolled the tension from his shoulders. “I got out of racing because I didn’t like the pressure. Looking back, I realize it was Leland and his father who took the fun out of it for me. But a lot of the guys were great. Jim says finding Leland will be a challenge, but they’ll love it.”

Scarlet frowned at the bandaged spot on Bud’s scalp. “All right, then. There isn’t any more you can do right now, so let me handle things for a while.”

Seamus felt Bud’s brief inner battle between doing what he felt he should do and doing what made sense. “Four hours,” he finally told Scarlet. “Then it’s your turn. You’re as sleep-deprived as I am.” He hesitated, looking at the darkening sky. “Sure you’re all right?”

She chuckled. “How hard is it to keep going straight ahead? Now go!”

Bud gave Scarlet a comical salute and moved to the bench seat that spanned the boat’s stern. No sooner had he made himself comfortable than his phone rang, vibrating the pocket of his shorts.

“Hello?”

“Buddy, it’s me.”

“Callie.” His voice was flat.

“I heard about Brodie going missing. That’s terrible.”

“Is Arnold still providing inside information?”

“Buddy, don’t be mad at Arnold. I wanted to know about you, about what you were like and what you were doing. He didn’t really do anything wrong.”

Seamus agreed with Bud’s unspoken thought:
That’s your opinion
. What Bud said was, “I’m sort of in the middle of things right now, Callie.”

“I understand, Babe, and I wouldn’t bother you for anything, but it’s kind of important. What we were talking about before. Have you thought about it?”

“Honestly, no.”

“Look, Buddy. I’m your mother. I loved your father very, very much, and if he hadn’t died, we would have been a perfect little family. I was a wreck for a while, I admit that, and I let that old coot talk me into things I should never have agreed to. Now that he’s out of the picture, you and I need to get to know each other. Start over.”

Bud reacted to “old coot” and “out of the picture.” Seamus felt his anger, but his voice was even as he asked, “What exactly do you need?”

Callie’s pleased tone easily crossed miles of lake water. “I need twenty thousand right away, Babe. I mean, as soon as you’ve dealt with this Brodie thing. Maybe Monday?”

Her phrasing, her repeated fake endearments, and her confidence turned Bud cold. This woman, as close to him in blood as a person can be, was using that relationship in the most calculating way possible. Her reference to “this Brodie thing” was offhand and dismissive. Brodie’s life was in danger, and Callie’s concern was that it delayed her acquisition of a share of the Dunbar fortune, a share she had given up along with her only child two decades ago.

Bud massaged the back of his neck with his free hand, trying to ease the knots. “I’ll call Collin right away and tell him to arrange it. He won’t get the message till morning, but he’ll contact you. Is this the number he should call?”

There was a pause, as if she hadn’t expected it to be quite that easy. “Well, yes.”

“Good. Here’s the deal. Collin will send you twenty thousand. Then he’ll set up with a monthly stipend.”

“Babe, that’s so—”

“Wait until you hear the rest. The stipend will be enough to keep you in a modest apartment with reasonable expenses. It only lasts until you remarry. In return, you’ll agree to never contact me again.”

“Buddy—”

“That’s what you have to do to get a share of my money, Callie. You have to give me up, like you did all those years ago.”

“But I’m your mother!”

“That’s something I’ll always have to deal with. But I don’t have to deal with you.”

He almost hung up, because there was no response for some time. When Callie finally spoke, her voice was different. “I’ll take fifty, in a lump sum.” The odd streak of honesty showed up again. “That will catch me up, and then I’ll marry Nick. He’s a bore, but he’s got more than a ‘modest’ apartment with ‘reasonable’ expenses.” Her voice was bitter as she emphasized the words she objected to.

“That’s our deal, then. I hope it works out well for you, Callie,” Bud said. “I really do.”

After that call, Seamus did not think Bud would ever go to sleep. He lay back on the bench seat and watched the stars for some time, his mind a twisted skein of tension. However, the rhythmic movement, the drone of the engine, and exhaustion from last twenty-four hours combined at last to lull him into slumber, much to Seamus’ relief. It was after ten, and he hoped Brodie might also be asleep by now. He needed to know what was happening on that sailboat.

“Millie!” he called out softly.

“Seamus? Where are you?”

The answer was terse. “Boat.”

“A boat? I thought you hated boats.”

“Like poison. Sometimes a guy doesn’t get a choice.”

“You got Bud to come after us?”

“Not quite the way I planned it. Bud and Scarlet and I are behind you in Dunbar’s powerboat. They plan to travel all night and catch Leland before he reaches the straits. Coast Guard is out looking for you, along with the sheriff’s department and some boaters from the race.”

“That’s good, but we have to be careful. I’m worried about Cher—” her voice faded for a moment, and then he heard, “could be violent.”

“Share? Share what?”

“Cher! C-H-E—. She’s Leland’s—friend.”

He tried to piece together what he was hearing. “You never said there was a fourth person.”

“Well, it’s a little—icult to keep every—straight.”

There was a pause that went on a little too long, and Seamus said, “Mildred? Are you there?”

Her voice came faintly. “Yes.—Leland—awake, and—conversa—is upset—him.”

“Leland? You’re with Leland?”

Mildred’s voice crackled and faded, and all he got of her response was, “—thrown out.” After that was silence. Seamus wanted badly to call to her again but concluded that an answer was unlikely. With a wakeful host, there could be all sorts of bad results. They did not want Leland in a frantic state in which he might do something unpredictable.

Mildred had said “thrown out.” He guessed she had “encouraged” Brodie to the point that the girl rejected her. It could be done. Free will meant no one could be forced to serve as a host. They simply didn’t know they were hosts most of the time. Aware of Mildred’s voice in her head, Brodie might have asserted her will and expelled the interloper.

If the situation had not been otherwise desperate, Seamus might have enjoyed the fact that Mildred now understood from real world experience what she had refused to accept from the advice of an expert.

Chapter Nineteen

I
T
WAS
DARK
WHEN
B
RODIE
WOKE
with a feeling that something had changed. She sensed a slowing of forward progress and realized Leland had shut down the motor. Everything went silent. A sharp pull to the right tipped her sideways in the bed. The boat had turned toward shore.

His voice came down the hatch, low-pitched and tight. “Something wrong up there, Cher. Gotta heave to and see what’s up. Brod, you stay out of sight, hon.”

Apparently satisfied when Brodie did not actively deny their relationship, Leland had taken to acting as if the two of them were of the same mind. He called her “Brod” in an apparent attempt at casual familiarity. Cher gave her a hostile stare, and as Brodie watched, took a bread knife from a drawer and held it at her side, ready.

As the boat swung to the south, Brodie peered out the porthole. There wasn’t much to see. Not only was it the middle of the night, but lights ahead of them were cloaked in mist. South of their position was a town, but its lights were mere blurs. Ahead was the Mackinac Bridge. A graceful arc of amber bulbs illuminated its highest points, but below that, a low-lying bank of fog clung to the bridge deck, leaving the massive twin towers of the bridge exposed above it as if they floated unsupported in the air.

Struck by the odd effect, Brodie almost failed to notice what Leland had referred to as something wrong. Under the bridge was a second, different line of lights, some high over the waterline, some just above it. Definitely not part of the bridge, these lights were obscured but not invisible in the fog. In several places a dozen lights clustered together, in other spots, only one or two penetrated dimly. It added up to an irregular string that stretched all the way along the bridge, thin in places and thick in others, but definitely in the way of anyone passing through.

Brodie stared, unable to figure it out. Finally she heard Leland mutter, “They’re boats.”

He was right. Boats of differing sizes and shapes had lined up along the bridge. Each one had whatever lights it possessed focused ahead: running lights, searchlights, floodlights. It was clear those on board intended to make passage under the bridge without notice impossible.

Someone knew they were coming and planned to stop Leland from getting to Canada. What would he do now?

The answer became obvious as the boat continued southward. They were heading for land.

B
UD
TOOK
THE
HELM
AT
MIDNIGHT
, insisting that Scarlet retreat to the bench seat and rest. He traveled as fast as he dared, careful to watch the charts, the instruments, and the water ahead in order to steer clear of hazards they might encounter in the dark: floating debris, sandbars, even other boats.

With several hours’ time to himself, he thought again of Brodie, trying to concentrate on what he would do once she was safe again rather than what might happen or might have happened to her already. The long trip gave him a chance to think, really think, about things, and he realized that Brodie had grown up while he was not paying attention.

He knew she was intelligent. He could see that she was growing up to be a real beauty. And he trusted Scarlet’s judgment that she was a good person. She had seen that Gramps’ mind was failing and protected him the best way she could, taking the heat rather than have others find out what Gramps hadn’t wanted them to know—what he had not been able to admit, even to himself.

With Gramps’ love and Scarlet’s help, Brodie had overcome most of the early neglect of her so-called mother. He knew how it felt to be the kid with no parents, the kid whose grandfather showed up for Parents’ Night and the Little League picnic. Brodie had had it worse, though. That was obvious. Even so, the wounds her mother had inflicted were beginning to heal, if such wounds ever really healed. He should have seen their likenesses, should have been more help to her. Bud hoped he would get the chance to let Brodie know he was proud of her. Despite her odd ways and her stubborn refusal to conform, she was by far the best of the family he had left.

His phone tingled its cue that a text message had arrived. Digging it out of his pocket, Bud read a note from Reiner:
Found Arnold at LR casino. Knows nothing. No sign of B on trains
. Bud grimaced. He should have thought to tell them to check at Little River. Arnold’s love of the slots was well-known, and he was no doubt consoling himself on the loss of his job by hoping he’d strike it big and never have to look for another one.

As the night passed and the lights on the shore slid by, Bud returned to what lay ahead. Brodie was in danger, and thoughts of what might happen to her if he was wrong, if he was too late, if he was too rash, rattled in his head like tennis shoes in a dryer. He tried to push the worry to the back of his mind so that he could think about how to do this right, but it took constant effort. Fears leaked around the edges of the walls he erected to keep them out, and his head hurt worse than he’d ever experienced before.

M
ILDRED
DID
NOT
LIKE
being part of Leland Voorhies’ thoughts. The man was completely unprincipled, unable to imagine that anything he did to get what he wanted could ever be wrong.

Leland’s attitude toward Brodie seemed somewhat affectionate. He liked the idea of having a daughter, a pretty young woman with eyes like her mother’s. He hoped to win the girl to his side.
Poor kid needs somebody,
Leland thought more than once as he piloted the boat through the night.
Now that the old man is gone, she’ll be grateful to have a real home and somebody to help her handle her money.
He did not dwell on how William Dunbar had been removed from the earth, but Mildred heard enough to confirm her suspicions.