The Last Kind Word (Mac McKenzie #10)

The Last Kind Word (Mac McKenzie #10) Page 73

A smile crept slowly over Fenelon’s face. “What do you have in mind?” he asked.

“If I take them off the board, Brand is likely to be more reasonable with the split, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know about that. I’d love to see those assholes in the jackpot, though. They’re bent worse than a paper clip.”

“What I need is evidence so strong that even a crooked county attorney couldn’t cover it up.”

“I’m not testifying…”

“I’m not looking for testimony. That’s just he said, she said stuff. Besides, it’ll put you in trouble with your boss, and we don’t want him to know what we’re doing, do we?”

“Uh-uh.”

“What I need is something you can hold in your hand.”

Fenelon drank some of his bourbon and followed it up with a sip of beer. “They don’t just take cash payoffs,” he said. “Not that much cash around these days, you know? Sometimes they take merchandise. People’s ATVs and boats and shit. They get Brand to fence it for them sometimes—that’s how I know. Brand’ll have me move it for ’im, get it to the right people in exchange for envelopes filled with money.”

Fenelon finished first his bourbon and then his beer.

“Go on,” I said.

“I know where they store the shit.”

A few minutes later I opened the passenger door of Josie’s Ford Taurus. She turned in the seat and looked up at me. “Is he on our side now?” Josie asked.

“Brian is on Brian’s side. Don’t ever forget it.”

“Oh, I won’t.”

“Do you know where a small lake, might not even be a lake—they call it Cody. Do you know where it is?”

“Yes. I sold some property over there a couple of years ago.”

“You drive.”

Josie had to backtrack toward Krueger and then turned east. That made it easier for me to memorize the route, knowing I’d have to drive it myself later, probably in the dark. We eventually turned down a dirt road that led to the lake. Josie slowed, not because it was hard to drive, but because we were looking for a little-used track that veered off of it. We found it easily and followed it to a clearing just big enough to turn around a car and trailer. On the edge of the clearing was a prefabricated pole barn. We left the car to take a closer look. There were no windows. A single door large enough for a small SUV to pass through was sealed with a cheap combination lock like the kind you find on high school lockers.

“This shouldn’t be too difficult,” I said.

“How are you going to open it?” Josie asked. “Listen to the tumblers like a safecracker?”

“I need a can. A pop can. Beer can.”

When Josie saw me searching the clearing, she did the same, eventually finding an empty beer can that had been lying in the tall grass so long that its logo had faded. I asked if she had a knife. She did, handing me a pocketknife with the emblem of the Swiss Army on the handle that she carried in her glove compartment. I used the knife to cut a 1?-inch square of aluminum out of the can and then trimmed the square until it resembled the block letter M. I folded the top of the M down and the legs of the letter up to create a sturdy shim. I slid the shim in the space between the shackle and the body of the lock and pulled upward. The lock popped open easily.

“Ta-da,” I said.

“Where did you learn that?” Josie wanted to know.

“Public school.”

I dropped the shim where I could easily find it again, removed the lock, and swung open the large door. I stepped inside the barn. It was crowded with a bass boat and trailer, an ATV, a big-screen TV, some PCs, a couple of sets of tools, and a lot of boxes that I didn’t bother to open.

“I bet they don’t have receipts for any of this crap,” I said.

“What do we do now?” Josie asked.

I closed the door and relocked it. “Head to St. Paul,” I said. “I’ll drive.”

Josie stood there, her hands on her hips, and watched as I circled the Taurus and opened the driver’s-side door.

“What?” I asked.

“Aren’t you going to tell me what you’re up to?”

“Plausible deniability.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You can’t testify about what you don’t know. Are you coming?”

THIRTEEN