Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
As soon as Sheriff Crocker handed me the reward check I glanced at it and was completely horrified.
They’d taken taxes out. Who does that? That meant instead of fifteen thousand dollars, I received eight thousand, nine hundred and forty-two.
Apparently, they decided to tax me as though I made fifteen thousand a week, which I most certainly did not.
Sure, I would get a lot of it back if and when I filed a tax return—except I wouldn’t be filing a return. My student loan was seriously in default, and I had it on good authority that the IRS would not send you a refund if that was the case. Sucks, right?
Not to mention, I hadn’t actually seen any of the money yet. It hadn’t made sense at all to open a bank account in Michigan since I did not intend to stay more than another few weeks. Months? Oh God, I was trying not to think about that.
Anyway, using a deposit slip from the back of my checkbook, I’d made out the deposit and mailed it off to Bank of America in California. It should get there any day now.
Of course, it’s still enough money to get a decent secondhand car but not much else. And that’s only if no one else gets to the money first.
And yes, it was a very real possibility the money might get taken from me.
Two days after I was given the check, I’d gotten a phone call from Los Angeles General Hospital—yes, the same General Hospital shown every afternoon for those of you who enjoy soap operas.
Someone named Robbie Hale. My first question was, “How did you get this number?”
“Your mother gave it to us,” Robbie said. “She’s your emergency contact.”
“This is not an emergency.”
Ignoring me, Robbie—who I think was a man, though it might have been a woman who smoked heavily—said, “You’re responsible for your bill: Twenty-seven thousand, five hundred and eighty-three dollars. How do you intend to pay it?”
“I don’t. Call my mother back and ask her for the money.”
“She said you would be responsible.”
“See, here’s the thing. I was 5150’d, put into your hospital against my will. Essentially, kidnapped and held hostage. You should be paying me. Damages.”
“You have no insurance?”
“I worked as a barista. Nine dollars an hour plus tips. No insurance, no vacation, no sick days—”
“And what do you do now, Mr. Milch?”
“Mostly, I’m taking care of my grandmother who recently had a stroke.”
“Can she pay your bill?”
“Let me put her on.”
I held my flip phone to my chest for a moment and then did my spot-on imitation of my grandmother in the days following her stroke, “Hewwo, naaway aper mingle whip cwwwee…”
“Very amusing. I’m sure your grandmother appreciates the imitation. Could you ask her to pay your bill?”
“No. I’m not going to do that.”
I mean, seriously. Would I accept twenty-five thousand dollars from her—yes, in a heartbeat. Would I turn it over to a freaking hospital? No, absolutely not.
I decided it was an opportune moment to hang up on Robbie, which, for a brief moment, reminded me that it’s so much less satisfying to hang up a flip phone than it was a desk phone or even a wall phone. You just don’t get the same bang for your buck.
After Nana’s friends left, I straightened up the kitchen just to prove a point. I peeked at each of the casseroles and asked my grandmother which one she’d like for dinner. She chose the tuna casserole. I turned on the oven and slipped it in. As I did, I began thinking about money again.
I suppose I didn’t have to spend all the money on a car.
I could imagine getting around Wyandot County in a car that cost a few thousand.
I could even imagine getting around L.A.
in a car that cost that. What I couldn’t imagine was driving from Masons Bay to Los Angeles—through gigantic mountain ranges and sizzling deserts—in a cheap used car.
Something could easily go wrong. Something was likely to go wrong, and cost me every cent I had left.
Or land me in the middle of some B-grade horror movie scenario: Extremely attractive city boy’s car breaks down in the front yard of a family of cannibals.
It could happen.
Oh, and then I remembered car insurance. And registration fees. (Necessary if you didn’t want to get arrested by some aviator-wearing sheriff in a backwoods Texas town.) I had no idea how much those things cost in Michigan. Or Los Angeles, for that matter. My mother had taken care of all that.
The best part of her breaking up with whichever boyfriend she happened to be seeing was that she often didn’t want the things he’d given her.
My 1990 Honda CRX had been a gift to her from Frank, who she’d been with from 1991 to 1996.
They broke up just in time for her to give me the car as a high school graduation gift.
Except, of course, she didn’t really give it to me.
She just let me use it all through college right up until the time she 5150’d me.
I wondered what she’d done with it? If I flew to L.A. , would she give it back?
“I’m serious about Sheriff Crocker,” Nana Cole said as I fed Riley a can of dog food, which he practically inhaled. He really was a disgusting eater.
“So am I,” I said. “I’m serious, too. I’m not going to talk to him.”
“I’ll give you five hundred dollars,” she said, and I had the uncomfortable feeling she’d been reading my mind. Five hundred wouldn’t make a lot of difference, but it would—
“Why?” I asked. “They said it was a robbery gone wrong. Why isn’t that enough?”
“You don’t believe that. You don’t… think it was a robbery. You said so.”
“Two thousand.”
“What!?”
“You offered five hundred. I’m negotiating.”
“One thousand.”
“Fifteen—”
“No. One thousand. Take it… or leave it.”
Well, I thought, at least she won’t take taxes out.
The next night, the Tony Awards began at eight after a repeat of 60 Minutes.
I was entranced. Nana Cole was less than pleased.
They kept mentioning Hairspray, which she couldn’t believe didn’t take place in a beauty parlor—not that she thought a beauty parlor was a good location for a musical.
About a half-an-hour in they did a number from the show.
When Harvey Fierstein joined in my Nana Cole frowned at me and said, “That’s a man in a dress. Singing.”
“Oh. Is it?”
“I’m done. Help me to bed.”
Which meant I missed the end of the number and the next twenty minutes of the awards.
After I helped her get ready for bed—by pulling a nightgown over her head and then accepting her clothing as she stripped each piece off underneath, thus preserving her modesty—she said, “So… you haven’t… seen the sheriff yet.”
“It’s Sunday.”
“It’s the sheriff, he works every day.”
“I’ll go tomorrow,” I promised. “I’m going to take Reilly out and then I’ll lock up.”
“Lock up? Why would you—”
“Someone murdered your minister. I’m going to lock the doors.”
“I don’t know what this world is coming to,” she muttered.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I forgot, ‘And then everyone locked their doors’ is the first line of Revelations.”
“Oh, it is not. Don’t talk… foolish…ness.”
I managed to avoid seeing the sheriff for three more days.
Getting involved seemed like a bad idea.
Seriously, I did nearly get killed. But then, a trip to the sheriff’s office in itself wasn’t dangerous.
To my ego, maybe, but other than that it was basically safe.
Finally, I decided to go—mainly so my grandmother would stop harassing me.
The sheriff’s office was located in the Wyandot County Municipal Center on the first floor.
Along with the sheriff, the recently constructed building—yellow brick with squinty little windows—housed the county clerk, a court, senior services, county treasurer, the board of commissioners, and a raft of other departments.
I knew all that because I read the board on the way in.
I decided not to bother Sheriff Crocker at all. Instead, I went directly to Detective Rudy Lehmann, who’d once been a detective in Grand Rapids. For some reason that impressed people.
The Wyandot Sheriff’s Department featured one whole detective to investigate everything from vandalism to murder. Since that still didn’t amount to a lot of crime, I was able to find Detective Lehmann sitting in his cramped, messy office.
In his early forties, the detective had brown eyes that were sad rather than kind, and a receding hairline. He wore a wrinkled gray suit that was probably out of style before it was made.
While I had no reason to think that he liked me any better than Sheriff Crocker, he hadn’t suggested I leave town, so it seemed logical I might get more information out of him.
“Hello. My grandmother wanted me to come by and ask a few questions about Reverend Hessel’s death.”
The sheriff would have said something about my grandmother being good people, and then given me a look that suggested I wasn’t. But as I said, Lehmann was from Grand Rapids, so there were a lot of social niceties he didn’t bother with.
“Oh, well, if your grandmother sent you I guess I’ll have to tell you everything.”
I ignored his comment and launched right in, “It doesn’t make sense to me why the Reverend was killed during a robbery on a Thursday. There wouldn’t have been any money in the church.”
Lehmann raised an eyebrow at me. “And a meth head would have thought that through?”
“Meth head? You think it was an addict trying to get money for drugs?”
I could tell he was uncomfortable having given me that much information. I stood there in the doorway to his office attempting to square what I knew with what he’d just said.
Of course, I was familiar with meth or crystal or Tina as the boys called it.
Personally, I didn’t much like it no matter what it was called.
In L.A. tweakers were everywhere. As far as I could see, Tina was a disaster.
She gave you acne, rotting teeth, a nasty chemical smell, and to top it all off made you super horny.