He brushed past me and moved to his cruiser, slid inside, started it up, and drove off without so much as a backward glance.
A few moments later I reached my own car. The brunch had finally broken up. David Tuseman was among the first to leave the clubhouse. I thought he might linger outside the door and hobnob with his supporters. Instead, he moved quickly toward two cars parked in the first row of the parking lot, his staff fast on his heels. I threw him a wave. He didn’t acknowledge it.
“I liked the way you handled the cops.”
The voice startled me, and I spun toward it.
A man I knew only as Norman stood ten feet away.
I immediately drew my hand to the place on my hip where I would have holstered my gun if I had thought to carry one. The last time I saw Norman, he was drilling holes into my Audi with a stainless steel Charter Arms .38 wheel gun. In return, I put a nine-millimeter slug into his shoulder. I was pretty sure he was still nursing a grudge.
“Norman,” I said.
“McKenzie.”
“How’s the shoulder?”
“Hmm? Shoulder? It’s fine. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
He was wearing a black sports jacket over a slate gray polo shirt. His hands were hidden behind his back. It worried me that I couldn’t see them. I edged toward the Audi, trying to put it between us as I had during our last encounter.
Norman grinned. He brought his hands out slowly to show that they were empty.
“Our personal business can wait until another day,” he said.
My sentiments exactly.
“Mr. Muehlenhaus would like to see you.”
Seven words. That’s all it took to convince me that Sergeant Moorhead was correct. This was bigger than Merodie Davies.
Mr. Muehlenhaus was sitting alone in the backseat of a black limousine, the car’s engine running and the air-conditioning up full. He was so pale that I wondered if he survived on transfusions of milk.
Norman held the door open, and I slipped inside.
“Nice ride,” I said. “I didn’t know you were a limo guy.”
“My granddaughter’s idea,” he said. “I prefer my old Park Avenue.”
“Less ostentatious,” I said.
“Yes, but it doesn’t have this.” Muehlenhaus leaned forward and opened a refrigerator built into the back of the driver’s seat. There were several soft drinks and bottles of water there—Muehlenhaus was not a drinker. “May I offer you something?”
“Do you have ice?”
“Of course.”
Why wasn’t I surprised? I declined a beverage, and Muehlenhaus closed the refrigerator.
“It seems, Mr. McKenzie, that once again we find ourselves on the same side.”
“I know I’m going to regret asking this, but what side would that be?”
“Should we give it a name? How about the Anti-David Tuseman League?”
“I have nothing against Tuseman.”
“Tuseman wants to prosecute Merodie Davies for murder to further his political ambitions. You wish to stop him from doing so.”
“How do you know?”
Muehlenhaus sat back in his seat, spread his hands wide, palms up, and said, “Mr. McKenzie. Please,” as if I should have known better than to ask. He was right. I should have known better.
To suggest that Muehlenhaus was a mover and a shaker would be belittling. He was more like the village wise man—if you think of greater Minnesota as a village. It was he who told people what to move, what to shake. He possessed immense wealth, power, and the desire to meddle in the lives of other people. Yet he was no zealot. From what I was able to observe, he had no desire to shape the world into one of his own liking. He had no agenda beyond proving that he was smarter than everyone else.
“Genevieve Bonalay,” I said. “She’s one of yours.”
“A lovely young woman, not that it matters to a man my age.”
“Who’s kidding who, Mr. Muehlenhaus?” He might have been on the other side of eighty, but he wasn’t dead.
He grinned, and suddenly his face was transformed from the stoic puppet-master to the gregarious uncle that your parents didn’t want you spending too much time with.
“What’s your angle, Mr. Muehlenhaus?”
“Angle, Mr. McKenzie?”
“You juggle governors and U.S. senators. A state senator—that’s beneath your notice.”
Muehlenhaus’s grin broadened into a full-fledged smile.
“For decades now, the Democrats have controlled the Minnesota State Senate,” he said. “However, lately their margin has been thinning. A few wins in key districts in the coming election, and the Republicans might take over. If they do, they will have control of both houses of the state legislature as well as the executive branch for the first time in a generation. With that power, they can transform the state. That is decidedly not beneath my notice.”
“Check me if I’m wrong, but I thought Tuseman was a Republican.”
“Not the right Republican, if you’ll excuse the pun. I do not believe he can defeat the incumbent. My candidate will, if we can remove Tuseman in the September primaries. You can help.”
“Why would I want to do that?”