“Yeah, well, you dicked around, and I had a client ask for an extra session. Come in if you’re going to come in.”
They followed him into the apartment. Mark McGwire was staring down at them from his frame. On the TV, a pair of talking heads rehashed a Cardinals game from the night before. Auggie had seen the show, but he couldn’t remember what it was called. He caught a whiff of the beer when Wayne picked up the Miller High Life, and as Theo closed the door, Auggie pretended to stretch so that he could look over his shoulder into the kitchen. The recycling was full of brown glass bottles.
“Ok,” Wayne said. “So how are you going to find this guy?”
“Who’s that?” Theo said.
“The guy who killed my brother.” Wayne waved the sandwich at them. Bologna, Auggie guessed. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? Peepee said you guys were smart.”
“Don’t call him that,” Auggie said.
“He’s my brother. I’ll call him whatever the fuck I want. He might have popped your little cherry, but that doesn’t give you the right to get involved in family business.”
“Let it go,” Theo murmured.
Auggie swallowed, but his face was hot.
“You said guy,” Theo said. “Did you use that word for a reason? Do you have an idea of who killed Cal? Or is that just a general term?”
After another moment of silent contemplation, Wayne said, “What the fuck are we paying you for?”
“I guess that means it was general,” Auggie said.
“I guess so,” Theo said. “We were hoping you could tell us a little bit about your business.”
“What?” Wayne said. “Why?”
“Because money can be a powerful motive.”
“Hold up. Are you talking about me? Fuck that. Fuck both of you.”
“We’re talking about anybody who would have a financial reason to want Cal gone.”
“What’s my financial reason? We owned the business fifty-fifty. We’d repaid the original loan. We rent a practice facility, but we were talking to the bank about a bigger loan so we could buy our own place. That’s dead in the water, by the way. They won’t even talk to me now that Cal is out of the picture. We were making good money when Cal was alive. Now I’ve got two options: either I lose half my clients, or I hire somebody who’s going to do a shit job at what Cal did for twice the money. Tell me how I benefit.”
“You’re the sole owner of the business,” Auggie said.
“Dumbshit, use your brain. His half belongs to his estate. It’ll go to Mom and Dad or whoever gets it after probate. Yeah, I know my brother didn’t have a will. That’s just one more reason I wouldn’t want him dead. Probate is going to fuck my business up beyond belief.”
“Ok,” Theo said, squeezing Auggie’s arm when Auggie opened his mouth again. “You won’t mind if we look at your finances, will you? Just to verify.”
“No fucking way.”
“Really?”
“Not a fucking chance.”
“Mind telling us why? It could help us figure out what happened.”
“Sure. Here’s why: mind your own fucking business.” Wayne devoured the last bite of sandwich and chugged the beer. “That all?”
“What about angry clients?”
“We don’t have angry clients.”
“Orlando said Genesis, his ex, had some sort of disagreement with you guys.”
The transformation in Wayne’s face was immediate. “Don’t get me started on that cunt. I’m not even going to talk about that.”
Auggie didn’t cut his eyes to Theo, but he could feel how Theo responded to the words, feel the same shocked curiosity.
“What—”
“I said I’m not going to talk about it. I’ve got to go.”
“Anybody you guys have had money problems with?”
“No. I told you. I feel like I’m just talking to the air here. What’s going on with you two? Don’t you listen?”
“Ok, just one more thing,” Theo said. “Where did you say you were that weekend?”
“Midwest Boys’ Basketball Expo. It’s an off-season expo. They get some recruiters.”
“You deal with recruiters?”
“We train top athletes. You can’t do that without at least one recruiter trying to crawl up your butt.” Wayne stood and shot the Miller High Life at the recycling can. It went in perfectly, with the sound of glass breaking. “That’s time, boys.”
They followed him down to the parking lot, and Auggie guided the Civic out onto the street. He went around the block and parked until they saw Wayne leave in the BMW. Then they pulled back into the lot, went upstairs, and retrieved the spare from under the doormat.
“I should probably go in by myself,” Theo said. “You’d better stay—ow, ow, ow, Auggie, all right, stop.”
The dumb son of a bitch laughed like it had been the funniest joke in the world. And, Auggie had to admit, he smiled a little bit himself once Theo’s back was turned.
20
They split up, with Theo heading for Wayne’s room and Auggie going into Cal’s. Wayne’s room could have been the mirror of Cal’s: a 2015 Cardinals poster, featuring the full lineup; a Lucite display case holding a baseball autographed by Ozzie Smith; a Rams jersey; a football autographed by Kurt Warner; a pair of battered football cleats mounted on a plaque, next to an award for Missouri All-State Football 2001. The floor was covered in clothes, mostly mesh shorts and t-shirts, and a mixture of mentholated foot powder and funk made Theo stand in the doorway, swinging the door back and forth to clear the air.
The lucky part was that Wayne had piled all his important documents in one place: on top of his dresser and underneath a plate that looked like it had held a grilled cheese sandwich at some point. Even his Social Security card was in the mix, which Theo learned when he picked up the pile and the card slid out. He also suspected that he could do anything he wanted with the papers except organize them, and Wayne would never know. The foot funk and mentholated smell made it hard to focus, so Theo carried the pages out to the living room and left them on the couch.
He went back to the room to do a few more sweeps. On the first pass, he examined the clothes—those on the floor and those in the closet and dresser—for any sign of blood. Cart had said Cal had died from a blow to the head, but he hadn’t said anything about defensive wounds or other injuries. Without that knowledge, Theo didn’t know how likely it was that the killer might have some sort of biological material on his or her clothes, but he didn’t want to miss the chance to inspect Wayne’s garments. He considered setting aside all the clothes that had dirt and grass stains, with the theory that the killer might have soiled his clothes in the tall prairie grass at the truck stop. But so many of Wayne’s clothes had grass and dirt stains that Theo eventually gave up—and, when he thought about it, a guy who trained kids out on fields all day was bound to have those kinds of stains.