Mule House

Reid came around the corner of an empty trailer as a woman in a bathrobe pulled open her storm door. He had been watching her place for ten minutes, the one at the end of the gravel row with a faded tarp over the carport and a window unit dripping onto dead grass. He crossed toward her before she could go back inside.

"Is Gary Boyd home?" he asked.

The woman stopped with her hand on the door. She looked past him toward the white cargo van parked at the far end of the row, then back at his empty hands.

"He's not here," she said.

"His car is."

She looked over her shoulder at the sedan parked crooked behind the carport, two flat tires on the passenger side and weeds starting to grow around the wheels.

"Car's been there all week. Doesn't mean anything."

"I only need to speak to him."

"Who sent you?"

"I'm working for a law firm."

She kept her hand on the door. Down the lane, the van sat where Tessa could see the back of the trailer if Boyd tried it.

"If he isn't here, I'll leave," Reid said. "If he is, he gets the papers and I go. Nobody has to come back."

The woman looked at the sedan again. "Fine. Gary. Gary, it's for you."

A man came to the door in sweatpants and no shirt, holding a video game controller. He looked at Reid's jacket, then at the empty stretch of gravel behind him.

"You the lawyer?" he said.

Reid took the folded papers from his jacket. "I'm here to serve a subpoena."

"I told them I'd call."

"You didn't."

"I been busy."

"The firm has tried to reach you at the other places you gave them."

"I don't live there anymore."

"That's why I'm here."

Boyd looked down at the papers in Reid's hand. His girlfriend stood behind him, her eyes on the top page.

Reid checked the name. "Gary Boyd?"

"Yeah."

Reid held out the papers. "You're served. The court date and where you need to appear are on page two."

Boyd took them without looking down. His girlfriend moved away from the door, leaving him standing in the opening with the controller in one hand and the subpoena in the other.

"I'm just a witness," Boyd said. "I didn't do anything."

"Then you can tell the court what you saw."

"If I don't show?"

"The subpoena explains that, too. You should read it."

Boyd unfolded the first page. Reid gave him time to find the date, then turned toward the row. Boyd didn't call him back. No one came running after him, and for once Reid didn't have to put a hand on anybody.

Reid signed his proof of service against the van's hood and wrote the time and place on his copy. No magic, no chase, and a bill the law firm would pay for actual work.

Tessa had the van in gear before he'd finished his seat belt.

"That's it?" she said. "Under an hour, and nobody even tried to run?"

"He had two flat tires."

"I was ready to cut him off if he went out the back."

"You can still go around back. He's got a girlfriend who answers for him and a game he wants to finish."

She pulled onto the main road. "Some skip tracer you turned out to be, Maddox. I thought people at least made you chase them."

"Those were fugitives. This one has to testify."

"I had a whole plan."

"Put the plan on the law firm's bill."

"I will. A plan still counts on an invoice."

"Still counts," he said.

Tessa took the turn off the frontage road hard enough to rattle the metal shelving in the back. The van belonged to Maddox Skip Tracing, bought used on a documented small-business loan against Reid's retainer from Rapid Refunds. The retainer provided legitimate income he could account for and spend.

Behind his duplex, the Bronco sat on gravel with a new water pump and the same rust bloom chewing the left rear wheel well, kept off jobs. Most of his $192,000 share of the first Estate sat under a drop cloth in the floor safe in Tessa's garage, because a duplex behind a strip mall was no place for that much cash. Tessa had given him the combination and Ezra had cut him a second key, and he'd taken out enough to cover groceries and gas for a while. Anything bigger, a deposit or a better vehicle, his company's income couldn't explain.

She swung around a delivery truck and hit a patch of buckled asphalt. The shelving clattered again, tools shifting in their bins. Tessa had quit the security company to work beside him full time, trading steady commercial alarm work for whatever Maddox Skip Tracing pulled in. Neither of them had said a word about the paycheck she'd walked away from.

"You eat lunch?" she asked.

"I had a granola bar."

"That's not lunch."

"We've got Patricia Deane at one."

Tessa checked the dash clock. "Then eat before we get there."

"What did you bring?"

"Nothing for you. I asked whether you'd eaten. I didn't say I'd packed your lunch."

He put the folder with his service papers behind the seat and dug a second granola bar out of the glove box. Tessa glanced at the foil wrapper, shook her head, and kept both hands on the wheel. "Cardboard and sugar," she said. "Don't get crumbs on the seat."

Patricia Deane lived in a brick ranch house with a worn welcome mat and a narrow front walk. Nadia's car was in the driveway when Tessa stopped the van at the curb. Tessa kept the keys and said she'd finish the job paperwork while Reid went in. He took his notebook and went up the walk.

Patricia answered before he knocked. Her gray-streaked hair was pinned back, and she had a thin cardigan on despite the heat. The worn vinyl purse she'd carried to the Rapid Refunds office two weeks earlier sat on the hall table beside the door.

"Mr. Maddox," she said. "Nadia's here already. I made coffee, but I won't apologize if it's bad. I never learned."

"I've had worse."

"Everyone says that. Nobody means it. Come in."

Her front room was orderly, with framed family photographs on the shelves and a thick folder on the table. Nadia sat beside it with her notebook closed, listening while Patricia finished telling her which papers had come from the bank. Her Claim had opened during her visit to the office two weeks earlier, $61,000 and still outstanding. Today's visit was to work through the wires, one at a time, and see what the paperwork could establish.

"I wanted you here for the first one," Nadia said. She moved a chair out for him. "Patricia has the receipts and the messages that went with them."

"And I know which is which," Patricia said. "You can ask me anything you need to. Just don't ask whether Richard was real. We've covered that."

"We have," Nadia said.

"I know I sent money to a man who lied to me. The bank told me the wires couldn't be called back, and the police took a report. That's where things stood when I came to your office." Patricia sat. "I'd like to do something besides talk about how foolish I was."

"That's why we're here," Nadia said. "We'll take them in order. If you don't remember something, say so."

"I remember the bank. Every time I went in, I wondered if the teller knew."

Patricia opened the folder. Her grandson had printed Richard's messages in a font she could read without putting on her glasses. Beneath them were wire receipts, each clipped to the instructions that had arrived before it. The papers had been handled often enough to curl at the edges. Patricia flattened the first set with the palm of her hand.

"He made me a copy of everything," she said. "Sat with me while I read it, too. He thought I'd throw it away. I told him I was angry, not stupid."

"May we take these copies back to the office?" Nadia asked.

"That's why I brought them out. I have another set." Patricia slid the stack toward her. "I want you to look at every one."

"Let's start with the first wire," Nadia said. "Last winter."

Patricia put a finger on the date. "I'd been talking to Richard for a while. He was supposed to be an engineer on an oil platform overseas. The first money was for a customs fee, equipment he said couldn't get released until somebody paid. I asked why a company wouldn't cover that. He had an answer ready."

"What was it?" Nadia asked.

"I couldn't tell you his exact words now. He sent a message explaining it, and I believed him. That's the part I remember." Patricia pushed the printed exchange toward Nadia. "You'll find what he said in there."

Nadia read the page without reacting. "Did he give you the information for the wire in that message?"

"The next one. All the details. He told me to copy them exactly, because a mistake could hold things up for days."

"You went to the bank yourself?"

"I didn't trust doing it on my phone. I'd never sent money that way before. I took the instructions, got in the car, and went to the branch where I've banked for years."

"What happened when you got to the counter?" Reid asked.

"I asked for the wire form. The teller handed it over and waited while I copied down what Richard sent. I thought it was important to get every number right."

"You didn't ask anyone at the bank to help fill it out?"

"The teller told me where to sign. She asked whether I knew the person receiving the money. I said I did." Patricia glanced at the message beside her receipt. "But I only knew what Richard had told me."

"Did she ask you anything else?" Nadia said.

"Whether I understood I couldn't take it back after it went through. I told her it was my money and I knew what I was doing." Patricia ran one finger along the edge of the receipt. "She was trying to help. I thought she was treating me like a child."

Nadia let her finish. "You kept the form they gave you?"

"They gave me a receipt. The form stayed at the counter. I kept Richard's printed instructions with everything else."

"What did the officer say later, when you reported it?" Reid asked.

"That men like Richard worked overseas. He was kind, but he said there was very little local police could do about people operating in other countries. He didn't promise me anything he couldn't do."

"And the money?" Nadia asked.

"Gone, as far as the bank was concerned. They told me I had authorized it." Patricia drew the receipt back toward her. "I know that. My signature is right there."

"Let's stay with the first wire," Reid said. "You had Richard's instructions in front of you at the counter?"

"Folded in half. I remember unfolding them because I kept losing my place. The teller had a line behind me, and I didn't want to hold anybody up."

As she spoke, the front room thinned at the edges. The table and folder slipped away. Reid stood at a bank counter in winter, close enough to see over Patricia's shoulder while a teller waited on the other side.

Patricia wore a coat over her cardigan. She unfolded a printed sheet, smoothed it against the counter, and took a pen from the teller's cup. The teller pushed a wire form through the opening below the glass and pointed to the first blank. Patricia bent to write. Her finger tracked slowly beneath the printed ink, holding its place under each digit while the pen moved across the line.

Reid couldn't move the paper or touch the counter. When her finger covered a line, he waited for her to shift her hand, then leaned to one side as she wrote the beneficiary's name onto the form and copied an account number beneath it.

The teller was waiting, but she wasn't rushing Patricia. She turned the form slightly when Patricia reached the last set of blanks and pointed to where the receiving bank information belonged. Patricia checked Richard's printout again, ran her finger down to the bank's name and branch address, and copied both onto the form in her careful hand. Her eyes passed over them the way they had passed over every other line.

Reid held the memory there, her pen just lifting from the last blank. The beneficiary was a person's name. Nothing on the form said oil platform or engineering company. The police had told her men like Richard were overseas.

He leaned closer and read the branch address on the wire form. Whatever happened to the money afterward, it first landed at a bank on the boulevard, three miles from the front room where she was sitting.