Shock Wave

ID case out from his pocket, took out a business card, and scrawled Davenport’s office number on it. “This is my boss. Call him up and tell him you need a new investigator.”
    “That don’t worry you, huh?” Pye cocked an eye at him.
    “Not much,” Virgil said. “Davenport will either tell you to kiss his ass, or, if you’re important enough, he’ll pass you on to the governor, who’ll tell you to kiss his ass. So either way, somebody’ll tell you to kiss his ass, and I’ll keep investigating.”
    Pye frowned. “Huh. Your goldanged governor’s got almost as much money as I do, and it’s older.” He scratched his head, then asked, “How long will it take you to catch this nut?”
    He and Virgil were now almost toe to toe, and the woman was still taking notes, writing at such a pace that it had to be verbatim.
    Virgil looked at his watch, scratched his cheek, then said, “I can’t see it going much more than a week.”
    Pye nodded. “All right. You get me this guy in a week, and I will kiss your ass.” To the woman, he said, “You got that? One week and I kiss his ass.”
    “I got it,” she said. Her eyes flicked to Virgil: “Good luck, Mr. Flowers. I’ll prepare an appropriate ceremony.”
    Virgil thought, Hmm. But then, his sheriff had been in Hollywood for a while.
     
     
    AHLQUIST AND VIRGIL WENT on to their trucks, and Virgil followed the sheriff out of the parking lot. Virgil had worked with Ahlquist a couple of times, to their mutual satisfaction. A former highway patrolman turned to politics, Ahlquist probably knew half the people in the county on sight, and, since the sheriff’s department ran the jail, all of the bad ones. As a politician, he’d know all about any local pissing matches over the PyeMart site.
    Mable Bunson’s Restaurant and Cheesery was on the other side of the Butternut downtown from the highway, all the way through the business district to the lake, and then a couple blocks down the waterfront. A solid brick building with a peaked roof and small windows, it looked as though it might have been a rehabbed train station; it turned out, when Virgil asked the hostess, that it was a rehabbed bank.
    Ahlquist got a booth in the back, a couple places away from the nearest other customers. Ahlquist ordered a bourbon and water, Virgil got a Leinie’s, and as they started through the menu, Virgil said, “I hear you’re still fighting over the PyeMart.”
    “ I’m not fighting over it,” Ahlquist said. “But there’s sure as shit some questions floating around. The mayor was against it, but then she says she saw the youth unemployment figures, and she does an about-face and now she’s all for it. We got seven city councilmen, six against and one in favor, and somehow, time passes, and four are in favor and only three against.”
    “You’re saying that they might have been encouraged to change their positions.”
    “ I’m not saying that, but some people are. And not in private. One of the councilmen, Arnold Martin, lived here all his life, doesn’t have a pot to piss in. Never has had. He’s worked retail since he got out of high school, he’s now a stock manager out at a car-parts place. Him and his wife took a winter vacation last February, took off in their car and went to Florida, Arnold says. The Redneck Riviera. But the rumor is, they went to Tortola and took sailing lessons, and this spring they’ve got a nice little sailboat out on the lake. Not a big one, and it was used, but, it’s a sailboat.”
    “You look into it?”
    “Not the Tortola part. But I was chatting with a guy over at Eddie’s Marine, and he said the former owner wanted fourteen grand for the boat. It’s called a Flying Scot, it’s two years old, and I’m told it’s got a high-end racing rig. I had one of my deputies, who can keep his mouth shut, talk to the former owner, and he said Arnold financed it through the Wells Fargo. I got a friend there , and I found out Arnold did finance half of it, over three years, and he’s been making regular cash payments on the deal.”
    “So what does that make you think?” Virgil asked.
    “What it made me think was, Arnold got some money from somewhere, but wasn’t dumb enough to just go plop it down on a boat,” Ahlquist said. “He financed the boat, and is making payments out of the stash.”
    “That’s not very charitable of you,” Virgil said. “Maybe he saved the money.”
    “And maybe the mold on my basement door will