Practice to Deceive (33 page)

Authors: David Housewright

Tags: #Mystery

So while the cops held her arms, I leaned in real close and told her: “I did not steal from the sick and elderly, your husband did. I did not try to defraud the government, your lover did. I did not murder your husband or try to kill you, your daughter did. Don’t blame me. Blame them. Blame yourself.”

Amanda screamed again, this time more in pain than anger. If the cops hadn’t held her arms, she would have collapsed. As it was, they had to carry her to a squad car and tuck her into the back seat. I watched from the front lawn, Anne Scalasi now at my side.

“I’m not responsible for any of this,” I told her.

“No, of course not,” Anne agreed. “You’re as pure as a Christmas snow.”

I
WAS INVITED
to the St. Paul Police Department again, but at least this time they let me drive my own car. And I spent a second consecutive night in various holding cells and interrogation rooms, talking to a wide array of law enforcement officials. Only this time they didn’t offer donuts. Bad coffee, but no donuts. I finally emerged after rush hour traffic the following morning. When Anne sent me home, she said I should shower and shave before I went to bed unless I intended to wash my sheets real soon. I thanked her for her advice and drove to Minneapolis.

S
TEVE DID NOT
smile when I walked through the steel door into his loft. I think he knew why I was there. He managed an unenthusiastic “Good morning,” then an “Are you OK?” when he noticed the cut on my chin and the swelling on my head where the kid had hit me. But I was just too damn tired to be polite. I went directly to Steve’s clothing racks and started pushing garments around.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

I didn’t tell him until I found it: a red hooded scarf.

“Very stylish, you slut,” I said, repeating Crystalin Wolters’s words to me. Steve cringed at the insult, and I tossed the scarf on the floor.

“Where’s the money?” I asked him.

“What’s happened?” he asked me. I told him. He turned his head away. “I didn’t think anyone would get hurt,” he said.

“What did you think would happen?”

He didn’t answer.

“You knew when Levering was going for his money, didn’t you,” I told him more than asked. “You told me you had a sniffer working in the bank’s computer system. You knew when Levering’s accounts were being accessed, didn’t you?”

Steve didn’t respond.

“
Didn’t you!
” I yelled.

He nodded.

“How did you know he would go to Crystalin Wolters’s apartment?”

“I didn’t,” he answered. “I went to the bank. He was just leaving when I arrived. I followed him.”

“And waited at Crystalin’s until he left.”

Steve nodded. “I told him that I worked for you. I told him that you didn’t trust him to deliver the money at his home, that you thought it could be a trap. I told him I would take the money.”

“And he gave it to you? Just like that?”

Steve snickered. “First he tried to pick up Sara—put his hand on her thigh. He was a pig. He deserved what happened to him.”

“No, he didn’t,” I said. I stared at him for a few moments. He avoided my gaze. Finally, I asked, “Why? Why did you do it?”

“I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“My parents. I can’t keep Sara from them forever. Sooner or later they’re going to find out about her and when they do …”

“They’re going to cut you off,” I guessed.

“I can’t live without money.”

“You have plenty of money,” I told him. “Your business—”

“I mean real money!” Steve shouted, adding in a soft voice, “Sara has expensive tastes.”

I could only shake my head at that. Real money, Christ. Real money is what Sid and Bob made climbing in the damn gondola every day, washing skyscrapers for thirteen bucks an hour.

“You didn’t have to steal from me,” I told Steve.

“I guess I didn’t see it like that. Stealing from you, I mean. The way I figured it, I was stealing—”

“From Levering Field,” I volunteered.

“Yeah,” Steve said, still avoiding my gaze. “That’s what you were doing, wasn’t it?”

“I guess I didn’t see it as stealing, either,” I admitted.

“I took a lot of big risks for that money,” he told me, finally looking me in the eye.

“Didn’t we all,” I answered. “Where is it?”

Steve walked slowly across the warped floor to his bed, dropped to his knees, and slid Levering’s briefcase out from beneath it. He brought it to me, and I opened it on his desk.

“Is it all here?” I asked.

Steve nodded.

I counted out eight five-thousand-dollar packets and the two-thousand-dollar packet—forty-two grand—and dropped them on his desk.

“I usually tip fifteen percent,” I announced, then slapped the briefcase shut. I was at the door in four strides, stopped, turned. “I’ll return your cell phone by parcel post,” I said.

“No hurry,” Steve said, counting the money, a disappointed expression on his face. “You can drop it here anytime.”

“No,” I told him. “I don’t want to see you or Sara for a while.”

T
HE BRIEFCASE DID
not fit into my office safe, so I took out the cash and stacked it neatly next to my passport. Then I called Fort Myers. Mom answered.

“Let me speak to Dad,” I told her without much of a greeting.

“He’s not home right now, Holly,” Mom said. “He just left for the funeral parlor.”

“Funeral parlor?”

“Something about a mistake on the invoice.”

“Invoice?”

“Your dad thinks they charged him for the wrong casket.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your dad thinks the funeral parlor charged him for the wrong casket.”

My mother has this annoying habit of relating only little bits and pieces of information even when she knows you want the whole story. I lost my patience with her.

“Holly, watch your language,” she told me.

“Whose casket?” I demanded, adding, “And don’t call me Holly.”

“Mrs. Gustafson’s.”

“What?”

“Didn’t your father tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“He said he was going to call; I told him he should.” I could actually hear her shake her head in exasperation. “He’s always doing that, forgetting things. I keep telling him, you have to write things down. But does he listen?”

“
Call about what?
”

“About Mrs. Gustafson.”

Mom apparently thought the conversation was over after that, and I had to yell, “Mother!” to get her talking again.

“Mrs. Gustafson died five days ago. Heart attack. Went just like that. I was telling your father—”

“Five days ago?!”

“Your father didn’t tell you? See what I mean about forgetting things?”

“Dammit, Mother! People up here have been getting shot over this. I was shot. Again.”

“Well, you certainly can’t blame me for that. I didn’t shoot anybody. If you would get a real job that kind of thing wouldn’t happen.”

What can you do? She’s your mother.

“Have Dad call me,” I told her softly. She said she would, and then she started telling me about poor Mrs. Gustafson’s funeral. While she was talking I did something I had never done before. I hung up on my mother.

I
FOUND
C
YNTHIA
dressed all in white and waiting for me beneath my willow tree. It was a nice place to see a beautiful woman. I went to her after parking the car and hugged her hard, hoping she would hug me back. She did. And then she said, “Want to tell me about it?”

I told her about Amanda and her daughter. Cynthia shook her head and said, “Good God.” Then I told her about Mrs. Gustafson. She seemed truly saddened by the news; saddened over the death of an eighty-five-year-old woman she had never met or spoken to.

“I love you,” I told her. And I meant it. I kissed her, but I wasn’t looking for romance. I was seeking absolution. “I botched the whole deal,” I confessed. “I should have listened to you. If I had listened to you, if I had let the courts do their job, none of this would have happened.”

“You’re right,” she agreed. “If it weren’t for you, Levering Field would have gotten away with stealing three-quarters of a million dollars from his clients. Carson Saterbak and his friends would have bilked the goverment out of over eight-point-seven million dollars. Two professional killers would still be on the streets. And Emily Field would have killed her mother as well as her father.”

I wrapped my arms around Cynthia’s shoulders like she was a life preserver and walked her to my house.

“Don’t be sorry for them,” she told me.

“And Amanda?”

“It’s a dangerous world. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. There’s nothing you can do about it.” Cynthia said it, but I knew she didn’t believe it. She merely wanted me to feel better about what I had done to Amanda, and I thanked her.

“What are you going to do about the money?” she asked me.

“You mean after expenses? I don’t know. What are my legal obligations?” I asked her.

“Legally, the money belongs to the State of Florida,” Cynthia advised me.

I shook my head with disgust. “I don’t like that idea at all.”

Cynthia shrugged. “You might consider donating it to a worthy cause. Anonymously, of course, since the IRS, among others, might be interested in where it came from.”

“Cash can be easily laundered,” I told her.

“I wouldn’t know about such things.”

“I do.”

“I’m not surprised.”

We were on the front steps now. You could still see the faint outline of the swastika on the door.

“I could keep it, I suppose,” I suggested.

“I suppose,” she replied in a way that made me think she didn’t like the idea at all. And she had a point. Ill-gotten gain just doesn’t spend as well as money that belongs to you. Still, it was a lot of dough. Stash it in an IRA, in a tax-deferred annuity, I’d be sitting pretty by the time I retired. Course, I didn’t really need the money. And I did have a rich girlfriend.…

“Maybe I’ll donate it to a charity that provides low-income housing for the poor,” I said, savoring the irony—wondering if I meant it.

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This edition published in 2011 by
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