Deadline for Lenny Stern, Peter Marabell [sneezy the snowman read aloud .TXT] 📗

joined the parade of vehicles on their way to Petoskey.

“It’s obvious the brothers know something, or they wouldn’t have clammed up and escorted you out the office door.”

“They might just be protecting dear old Mom. Think she knows more than her sons?”

“Hell if I know,” Henri said. “But Fleener’s got her connected to at least two of the guys who’ve been after Lenny.”

“Time to see what Sylvia knows.”

42

“You’re in early this morning,” Sandy said when she arrived at the office at her usual time.

I was at my desk, chair turned, feet up on the window ledge. I drank coffee and watched the sun dancing on the light chop on Little Traverse Bay.

“Restless night,” I said.

Sandy put down her bag, poured a mug of coffee, and took her usual chair against the sidewall in my office.

“Did you run this morning, boss?”

“Didn’t have the energy,” I said, moving my chair back to the desk.

Sandy put down her mug. She hesitated for a moment.

“Did you talk to AJ last night?”

“Sandy.”

“I’ll take that as a no,” she said. “You want to tell me what happened when you and Henri dropped by the Carp Lake house?”

I did.

“Well, I think you have it right,” she said. “Sylvia’s all that’s left. There doesn’t seem to be any point talking to the Cavendish brothers again. And they might not even know what mama is up to. You’ve ruled out, shall we say, encouraging the teenage bad boys to talk. So, Sylvia.” Sandy picked up her mug and drank some coffee. “If it were up to me, I’d rough up the bad boys first.”

“You and Henri,” I said. “Were you a juvenile delinquent in another life?”

Sandy smiled. “I wanted to be, but Catholic girls start much too late.”

“You doing Billy Joel, now?”

“Don’t knock the oldies-but-goodies, boss. Where would we be without them?”

“Listening to Jay-Z, Billy Eilish, and Hamilton.”

“I think I need more coffee,” she said, faking a grimace.

“While you’re up,” I said.

“You want coffee?”

I shook my head. “No, thanks. Can you find Sylvia Cavendish?”

“Sure. It’s with the Cavendish info I pulled up the other day.”

I returned to my view of the bay. A small sailing skiff glided around the breakwater and picked up speed with fresh wind.

“I ought to get a sailing skiff, a high performance one,” I said when Sandy walked in.

“Stick to high performance cars,” she said. “At least you know what you’re doing.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” I said as Sandy handed me notepaper.

“Sylvia Cavendish lives just outside Gaylord. Use the nav system. The address is in the system, I checked.”

I folded the paper and shoved it in a pocket.

“You want me to call her first?”

I shook my head. “Better if I just show up, see if she’ll talk to me.” I looked at my watch. “Think I’ll stop at Diana’s first, have some breakfast.”

Diana’s Delight was a mom-and-pop eatery in downtown Gaylord known for breakfast, although lunch wasn’t bad either.

Sandy put her hands on her hips and glared at me.

“What?”

“You didn’t run, you didn’t talk to AJ last night, and no breakfast? Not even a banana? Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“You playing my mother now?”

“You don’t need another of those, but listen to yourself if you won’t listen to me. Pay attention.”

I pushed my chair back and stood. “Look, I know you mean well, Henri, too, but I’m tired of you jabbing me about this.”

“Well, good luck,” Sandy said. “Whatever’s going on with you and AJ’s eating at you, boss. It’s always in your head. It’s time to figure it out.”

I went to the outer office, grabbed a lightweight blazer from the hall tree.

“I’m going to Gaylord.”

I cut through Roast & Toast to the parking lot. I stopped in the middle of a row of cars, looking around: nothing. I beeped the door locks. I drove the back way, close to the North Central Michigan College campus, over to US 131.

The clouds, so welcome yesterday, had disappeared. The sun had returned undisguised high in the sky, alongside the humidity.

I shouldn’t have barked at Sandy. I had been short on patience with both of them lately, her and Henri. They were trying to help, but bringing up AJ over and over again wasn’t helpful. It hurt.

I was suddenly aware I was on the outskirts of Gaylord, about to join the congestion of downtown; I remembered little of the drive. Too preoccupied with AJ and me. More troublesome, I hadn’t once thought of Sylvia Cavendish on the trip over either.

I stopped at Diana’s downtown. I had no idea what Sylvia Cavendish would have to say, if she talked to me at all. But I decided to lead with the well-traveled story that a company employee had witnessed a crime. I finished some eggs and toast, took a coffee to go, and found my car in the lot.

O’Rourke Lake was a ten-minute ride east and a little south of downtown. I glanced at the nav screen. Off Kassuba Road, I turned on Lake Club Drive, a narrow stretch of tarmac that cut through the trees. Mailboxes were stuck at the side of the road. I watched for one marked “Cavendish.”

I counted only four driveways in a half-mile from the main road. Folks out here in the toniest area of Gaylord didn’t like to live too close to one another. Nor did they like to live where the common folk could see how they lived. It was the perfect refuge for the well-heeled from Bloomfield Hills, Evanston, or Shaker Heights.

I spotted the mailbox and turned in. At the end of the long drive, the trees broke into a large expanse of manicured lawn, elaborate flower beds and, in the center of it all, a huge cement statuary of a woman with water spouting out of wings on her back. At the far end of the lawn sat a two-story cedar-sided house at lakeside. A long porch stretched across the front. I counted six pairs of sash windows across the second floor.

I parked the car on the curved drive, walked up