Sinister Heights by Loren D. Estleman Page B

anything. “Thank you,” she added.
    â€œFor?”
    â€œFor not saying you’re sorry. That would be just a little more than I could take.”
    â€œYou were wrong about me before, Mrs. Witowski. I’m not still a young man. I’ve got ten years left to call myself middle-aged and I don’t plan to spend them feeling sorry for relative strangers. For what it’s worth, I hope you and your daughter work things out. I don’t guess it’s worth much.” I put away the Stutch family tree and rose. “Thanks for seeing me. Mrs. Stutch will be calling you.”
    â€œPlease tell Constance her mother’s in good health. If you see Matthew”—she shook her head and returned her hand to her thigh—“I’m not in a position to ask favors.”
    â€œI’ll let you know how he’s doing.”
    She murmured something I didn’t catch, a first in that conversation. Her speech in general was as clear as a seventh-grade English teacher explaining diphthongs. I told her I’d missed it.
    Her chin went up another click to accommodate my manly height. “It’s worth something,” she said. “I said it’s worth something.”
    I just made it outside without disturbing the dog. It started coughing again when the doorlatch snicked home behind me.
    I’d earned half my fee and it was still morning. I grabbed an early lunch at a cafeteria on the Dix Highway and belched onions at the wall by the telephone waiting for someone to pick up in the house in Iroquois Heights. I got Mrs. Campbell. “Mrs. Stutch is out on her bicycle, Mr. Walker. May I take a message?”
    â€œJust tell her I’m halfway home and I’ll call her from Toledo if I don’t snag a run in my hose.”
    â€œYou’ve found the daughter? That was fast work.” Her voice was warm. “I should tell you Mrs. Stutch and I have few secrets. Has she agreed to a meeting?”
    â€œI have plenty of secrets, and I mean to keep them. Please give her the message.”
    â€œI will. Thank you for calling.” The receiver plopped on her end. Her tone had gone to an early frost.
    I tried the number Carla Witowski had given me for her daughter in Toledo, got a busy signal, smoked part of a cigarette and tried again. Same thing. Well, it was a nice day to drive.
    They were tearing up I-75 again, looking for pirate gold or maybe just for the hell of it, because it didn’t seem as if anything could have gone wrong with it since the last dig, and so I slalomed among orange barrels and got the fantods from stern signs saying FINES DOUBLED IN WORK ZONES all the way to Ohio. At one point I followed a complicated series of detour signs and actually went back in time. My right cheek felt as if it were drawing up, but when I looked at it in the rearview the burn was just a healthy blush. The Red Badge of Stupidity. It didn’t pay to backtalk an Iroquois Heights cop without knowing what they were serving that week at County.
    When I left the lane shifts behind and entered the wide boulevards on the outer edge of Toledo, I cranked into a Total station and used the telephone. The Glendownings’ line was still busy. I bought a city map and charted a route along the southwest shore of Lake Erie. Following it I glimpsed afternoon sunlight sparking off blue water, a couple of sailboats playing midweek hooky out beyond the dirty foam where the lake had no choice but to make contact with the State of Ohio, and far out on the clean horizon the profile of an ore carrier shaped like an overturned telephone receiver, deadheading back to Superior for a fresh load of iron. My skin prickled for no good reason, as it always does when I’ve crossed the Michigan line going the wrong way into Buckeye territory; one hundred sixty years ago, Andrew Jackson deeded the City of Toledo to Ohio, throwing Michigan the Upper Peninsula as consolation for the loss of a key port.