The Taking of Libbie, SD (Mac McKenzie #7)

I had a long conversation with H. B. Sutton, my financial adviser, who assured me that my finances were unaffected by the Imposter’s use of my name, although she ran every check she could think of to make sure. She said I wasn’t a victim of identity theft so much as the credit card company was a victim of fraud, since the Imposter used my name yet nothing else that could be linked directly to me.

I had an even longer conversation with the FBI, who seemed reluctant to drop the kidnapping investigation. They wanted to prosecute the bounty hunters as an example to all the other punks out there who like to play fast and loose with the law. I told them I was all in favor of that—they could arrest Dewey Miller, too, for that matter—as long as the cops were left out of it. This precipitated a somewhat acrimonious discussion over exactly who in hell I thought I was to dictate policy to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We decided to get back to each other at a later date.

“You’re lucky they didn’t throw your sorry ass in jail,” Bobby Dunston told me.

“Bobby,” Shelby said. She gestured with her head toward her children sitting at the picnic table.

Katie giggled. Victoria rolled her eyes. “Mom, we go to a public school,” she said.

I had known the girls their whole lives; I’d greeted them while they were still in the hospital and wearing tiny pink hats. I have worked tirelessly to spoil them ever since. So far I had been only moderately successful, largely because their mother would give me that look whenever I attempted to give them something expensive and wholly frivolous. It was more than enough, Shelby insisted, that I had made them my heirs. They were still both quite young, though. Katie was eleven, and Victoria was pushing fourteen. One of these days they were going to need cars.

I buttered the corn on the cob that Bobby had roasted on the grill. The grill and picnic table were on a brick patio behind Bobby’s house in the Merriam Park neighborhood of St. Paul, the house Bobby grew up in, that he bought from his parents when they retired. It was just a stone’s throw from the house where I grew up, although I think I might have spent more time in Bobby’s home than I did my own. I had helped Bobby build the patio—brick by brick—and I was proud of it.

“I’m surprised that the news media didn’t pick it up,” Nina said.

Normally she and I wouldn’t get together on a Wednesday until after closing time, which was never a problem with me—one of the advantages of having a lot of money is that a guy can sleep in. She had taken the evening off for the Dunstons’ backyard barbecue. Lately she had been doing things like that with increasing frequency, abandoning Rickie’s to spend “normal” hours with me. I convinced myself it was solely because she had her jazz club humming like a well-oiled machine and didn’t need to be constantly on-site to work the controls.

“If I were a pretty thirteen-year-old girl, the media would have been all over it,” I said.

“I’ll say,” Victoria said.

I saluted her with my bottle of Summit Ale. She returned it with a can of orange pop.

“I guess that’s the end of that, then,” Nina said.

“Well…”

“Well, what?”

“The Imposter used my name.”

“I understand, but if he had called himself Bill Smith, I’d hardly think that would be reason enough for all the other Bill Smiths in the world to be outraged.”

“He didn’t use Bill Smith.”

“Why do you think the Imposter used your name?” Shelby said. “Do you think it’s someone who knows you?”

“I doubt it.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Bobby said. “He called himself a Raider. He could have gone to Cretin–Derham Hall.”

“He could have gone to Roseville or Hastings or Norwood–Young America for that matter,” said Victoria. “Nicollet, Northfield, Greenway, Fulda…” She stopped reciting teams when she found Bobby and me both staring at her. “What? I read the sports page.”

“Geez,” Katie said.

“I doubt the Imposter and I have ever met,” I said. “Everyone I know is here or from here, and this guy doesn’t know diddly-squat about the Twin Cities.”

“Does it matter?” Nina asked. “What is it you guys like to say—no harm, no foul?”

“There was plenty of foul.”

“Yes, but nothing lasting. ‘Living well is the best revenge.’ How many times have you quoted that at me? I thought it was your code.”

I shrugged my reply and gnawed more corn. It seemed as if Shelby purposely waited until my mouth was full before she changed the topic.

“So, when are you kids going to get married?” she said.

I damn near choked to death. The expression on Bobby’s face was of pure horror—he couldn’t believe Shelby had said that.

“That’s a good question,” Victoria said. “You guys have been sleeping together since when?”

This time it was Shelby’s turn to be shocked. “Victoria,” she said.

Only Nina remained calm. She flicked away Shelby’s question as if it were a bothersome fly. ’Course, she had practice. Her daughter, Erica, had asked the same question a few days earlier.

“McKenzie asked me,” she said. “He asked a couple of times, only I keep turning him down.”

“I don’t blame you,” Bobby said. “You could do so much better.”