Fatal Judgment. Andrew Welsh-Huggins

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СКАЧАТЬ in my van. And some superhero bandages from when my kids were little. The Spiderman ones usually do the trick.”

      We were back in the parking lot after a slower-than-normal walk up the trail. She had agreed, reluctantly, not to call the police, at least not right then.

      “I’ve never heard of a private eye driving a Honda Odyssey,” she said. “My husband always says they look like they’ve got a big butt.”

      “What can I say? My Karmann Ghia’s in the shop. Plus you wouldn’t believe the gas mileage. And you can fit a decent-sized magnifying glass in the glove compartment.”

      “Where are you going now?”

      “I guess I’m going to find some country cooking.” I explained about the receipt. “I’m overdue for some biscuits and gravy.”

      “Isn’t that a bit, I don’t know, dangerous?”

      “Maybe. But my cholesterol’s pretty decent. I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables—”

      “I mean just going up there, without any idea who that guy is or what’s going on?”

      “It’s what I do, I guess. And it beats finding lost puppies. Usually.”

      “I hope you’re right. And I hope your job works out, whatever it is.”

      “Me too.”

      I opened the door to the van. I stopped and turned around.

      “Thanks.”

      “For what?”

      “For showing up when you did.”

      “My pleasure, I guess.”

      “Mine too. Because there’s a good chance I would have been fish food if you hadn’t stopped by.”

      12

      I PULLED OUT OF the parking lot, returned to Sawmill, drove up the road, and took the entrance onto 270. I followed it to I-71 and joined the traffic headed north, busy even on a weekday. As I traveled I pondered the obvious question: Why had Tear Drop, aka Gary Phipps, attacked me? What connection did he have to the judge? And how had he found me at the pond? I recalled the van parked behind Laura and me last night. Odds were even that whoever he was, he’d been following Laura yesterday and followed me today. And planned to eliminate me, which meant the stakes—whatever they were—were even higher than I realized at first.

      Twenty minutes on I stopped at Wendy’s in Sunbury for a couple of hamburgers and coffee. Back in the van, hunger sated and the ache in my head diminishing, I called Bonnie. She picked up on the third ring.

      “I thought you were at the gym. I was going to leave a message.”

      “I had to stop.”

      “Everything OK?”

      “I got tired. Plus I’m starving.”

      “Time for some pickles and ice cream?”

      “Gross. I’m going to New Harvest Cafe. I love their food.”

      “Me too. And I’m not even pregnant.” The soul food joint off Cleveland Ave was down the road from Bonnie and Troy’s house in North Linden.

      “Anne too,” Bonnie said.

      “What?”

      “I’m meeting Anne there. She loves their food too.”

      “Great,” I said, unclenching my jaw.

      My ex-girlfriend, Anne Cooper, had an annoying habit of staying friends with a lot of people we both knew even after our breakup. She and I dated following the end of things with Laura, and I prided myself on maintaining an actual grown-up relationship for a change. Until Anne dumped me, pointing out that missed dates, a chronic failure to communicate, and my hand-to-mouth existence weren’t necessarily all that adult. Even now, there were times when I thought of her and—

      I shook my head. I’d been beaten up enough already today.

      “Tell her I said hi.” That obstacle surmounted, I asked Bonnie to add Gary Phipps from Springfield, Missouri, to her research. I asked her to pay special attention to any connection she might uncover linking him with Rumford Realty or Mendon Woods or Judge Laura Porter. She said she’d do what she could.

      Next, I called the two Kevins. That is to say, I called Kevin McGovern, who lives one street over on Beck in our German Village neighborhood with his husband, Kevin Hessler, and their two pugs. Over the years we’ve traded dog-sitting duties, for their part when they’re both out of town on business, and for me on days—and nights—I end up stuck on a stakeout of a straying spouse or a guy claiming workers’ comp for a back injury that hasn’t stopped him schlepping landscaping stones from his truck to his garden. The kind of no-deadline jobs that drive girlfriends crazy. I explained I had to make an unexpected trip out of town and might need to enlist their help, which also included feeding a stray cat.

      “Not a problem.” Kevin said. “Everything all right?”

      “That’s what I’m hoping to find out. I shouldn’t be gone long. Maybe even back tonight.” Even as I said it I wondered if that were true, or if I even knew what I expected to find farther north.

      “Take as long as you need. Plan to come by for dinner when you’re back. Kevin got a new smoker he’s dying to try.”

      “It’s a date.”

      The rest of the drive passed in a blur of tall cornfields on either side of me, stretches of forest, interchanges offering identical fast food and gasoline options, and dueling single and double tractor-trailer rigs jostling for position back and forth on the three lanes of Interstate 71. I thought briefly of the wildlife biologist’s question. Isn’t that a bit, I don’t know, dangerous? I considered a final call, to Otto Mulligan, a bail bondsman I know and do business with occasionally, enlisting him as backup. But no, too late now. Besides, backup for what? Another run-in with Tear Drop? Unlikely, since I planned to keep my eyes open from now on. Seeing signs for Mansfield up ahead, I pushed the speed past seventy-five, focusing on Laura and 1 percent milk and the Down Home Buffet. Because there was no question about it now. The judge was definitely in trouble. The only question was what kind, and how big.

      13

       HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

      The flier was the first thing I noticed as I pulled open the door of the restaurant and stepped inside. The question in bold black type, above a grainy color photograph of a young man named Todd Orick, missing for the past two months. The paper pinned with thumbtacks dead center on a cork bulletin board, surrounded by business cards advertising hair cutting, log splitting, auctioneering, and more. The number for the Mohican Township police department printed below the photo, asking anyone with information on Orick’s whereabouts to call.

      Down Home Buffet sat half a mile from the interstate, on a two-lane road off Route 13, at the bottom of a ridge of tree-covered hills running parallel with the highway. It was a long, two-story red-plank-sided building with a peaked roof meant to summon images of a classic Ohio barn. A high school–age girl СКАЧАТЬ