Man in the Water, page 15
Nevaeh leaned forward, propped her elbow on her desk, and rested her head in her hand.
“Cancer,” she said. “Such an emotional word. Filled with fear and anger and grief and resignation. Dad came home for the funeral. The army gave him five days. Then he was gone again. I was eleven at the time. The following year was Dad’s twentieth in the service. He could have retired with a nice pension. Instead, he reenlisted. He was afraid of raising a child alone. Even at the tender age of twelve I understood that. He didn’t abandon me, though. Not completely. I saw him. He’d come home on leave. When he was stationed in Germany, I went to visit him. He’d call. Send money. Send emails. Send presents. After serving another ten years, he finally retired. Could be the army pushed him out, I don’t know. He was forty-eight. I was twenty-two. We barely knew each other.
“It wasn’t like I didn’t feel loved, McKenzie. My grandmother took care of me. I had aunts and uncles and cousins, mostly from my mother’s side. And I knew that my father loved me. It’s just that we were strangers to each other. We’d spend time together but that’s all we did, spend time. He was adjusting, trying to adjust to life in the real world and not doing a very good job of it. He drank, did drugs, got involved with people my grandmother said were gangsters, some of them actually his childhood friends. Keith Martin. God, how my grandmother hated Keith Martin. I tried to help Dad. Gave him advice about what he should be doing with his life. Imagine. Me. The daughter providing guidance to the father, like he was one of my students. Finally, he was busted for burglarizing a store with Martin, which he swore he didn’t do, and for concealing stolen property, which clearly he did.
“Then a miracle happened. Looking back it seems like a miracle. Dad hooked up with Bizzy, who at the time was just as fucked up as he was. I was so angry, both at him and his white bougie slut who was seventeen years younger than he was; who was only nine years older than me. Yet somehow the two of them seemed to solve each other, gave each other a reason—I wanted to hate her so much. I tried so very hard. The two of them together, though, the way they fashioned this unlikely partnership and started maneuvering through the world around them; they just rose up.
“Bizzy treated me—not once did she try to be my mom. Instead, she treated me like a kid sister. It didn’t take long to figure out why. Turns out her family was even more fucked up than she was. She went to the street when she was sixteen because the street was safer than her family. At the same time, Bizzy desperately wanted a real family. Wanted a sister. Someone she could talk to; someone she could trust. Suddenly, we were a real family. Like I said, McKenzie, it was a miracle.
“That’s why I was so upset when Dad fired me. I missed—I missed the family. It’s not like I didn’t see him and Bizzy. I saw them all the time. Bizzy would take me shopping. No one loves to shop more than Bizzy. Only it wasn’t the same.”
A bell rang. The kids came inside all at once; the corridor was filled with their playground noise. Nevaeh didn’t shut her office door, though. She seemed to enjoy the noise; took pleasure in watching the kids as they stomped past her office.
“Let’s talk about money,” I said.
“The root of all evil.”
“Not all evil; just most of it.”
“You want to know about the insurance policies,” Nevaeh said. “I was surprised when I heard how much they were worth.”
She shook her head abruptly.
“No, I wasn’t. McKenzie, when my mother died, my father knew he wasn’t going to be there for me yet he wanted me to know that I was going to be okay living with my grandmother, my mom’s mother. The words he kept repeating—‘You’ll be all right; you’ll be taken care of.’ To prove it he sat me down before he went back to base and showed me an insurance policy, a life insurance policy with my name listed as beneficiary. He told me the policy was worth $500,000. He told me that if anything ever happened to him that I would get this money plus the money from a servicemembers group life insurance policy offered through the Department of Veterans Affairs worth another $400,000. Plus, there was other money, he said. I would be a millionaire if something happened to him, he said. Imagine telling that to your child. ‘If I die you’ll be rich.’ I know now that this was his way of showing that he loved me, yet at the time I wanted to slap his face. I might have, too, if my grandmother hadn’t been holding my hand. ‘Just come home, Daddy,’ I said. ‘Please come home.’ I begged him.”
Nevaeh rose from her chair and went to the window, looking out at the now empty playground. The noise in the corridor outside her office door had slowly faded to silence like someone turning down the volume on a radio.
“Anyway, there was an accident at a worksite,” Nevaeh said. “A near accident. What I was told, a log slipped out of the grapple attached to an excavator that they were using, bounced off the side of a bucket truck, and missed my dad’s head by this much.”
Nevaeh held her thumb and index finger an inch apart.
“Dad said he could feel the air brushing his face as the log passed it. That was the nearest anyone had ever come to being seriously hurt on the job since Dad started the company; he was very keen on safety.”
“That’s what I was told,” I said.
“Bizzy was in his face, telling him that he shouldn’t be out there at job sites anyway. Let his employees do the heavy lifting, she told him. Like that was going to happen. Half of Dad’s workforce were veterans and half of those came from Potzmann-Schultz. No way he was going to let them do the work while he watched. No way he was going to appear less capable than them. This was only a couple of years ago, too. I think he had just turned sixty and was feeling it. Old man can’t step up anymore? C’mon, now. What he did do, though, was start buying up life insurance policies.”
“E. J. did this,” I said. “Not Bizzy.”
“That’s what I was told.”
“Who sold your dad the policies?”
“I have no idea. I doubt it was one guy, though. From what I was told when the lawyers became involved, insurance companies frown on what Dad was doing.”
“It’s because your dad bought so many policies in such a short period of time before he passed that the insurance companies believe they have a reason to deny coverage.”
“My father did not commit suicide, McKenzie.”
“His therapist agrees.”
Nevaeh spun away from the window to face me. Her eyes flared and her mouth opened as if she was about to shout at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I did warn you, though, that if we continued to do this you might learn things that you didn’t want to know.”
“Tell me.”
“Your dad was receiving therapy from a woman named Tara Brink. She has an office, Brenda Smieja and Tara Brink Counseling Services, in Red Wing. E. J. had been seeing her for at least five years. I haven’t been able to pin down exactly why he was seeing her. Ms. Brink refused to breach client confidentiality. At least with me.”
Nevaeh moved to her chair, sat down, and swung the chair to face me.
“I didn’t know this,” she said. “That he was receiving therapy.”
“Did Bizzy know?”
Nevaeh shook her head slowly. “If she did she never said.” She shook her head some more. “McKenzie, Red Wing is like a hundred miles from here, isn’t it?”
“Closer to fifty,” I said. “Southeastern corner of the state.”
“Why would Dad go all that way to see this Tara?”
“Apparently, he became a client when she had offices here in the Cities. When she moved her business to Red Wing three years ago he followed because he liked her, because he trusted her and he didn’t want to start over with someone new.”
“Is she hot?”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Tara Brink. Have you seen her?”
“We’ve met, yes.”
“Well then?”
“I guess she’s attractive. I hadn’t thought of her that way.”
“Dad liked what was hot. He was a connoisseur of what was hot. Trust me. He especially had a weakness for white women with blond hair. Gentlemen prefer blondes, tell me it ain’t so. You’ll notice that Bizzy has blond hair. What about this Tara?”
“She has blond hair, too…”
For some reason I flashed on Barbara Deese.
She’s also a blue-eyed blonde.
I shook the thought from my head.
“You can’t believe your father was having a sexual relationship with his therapist,” I said.
“I’m saying she wouldn’t have been the first,” Nevaeh told me. “I don’t know if Bizzy ever cheated on Dad. I want to say no. Just a feeling I have. Dad, though, oh yes, he cheated on Bizzy. I don’t think he could help himself. Some men can’t. You need to remember, he literally grew up in the army surrounded for thirty long years by high-testosterone guys just like him who were trained to take it to the limit. Once he hit on a close friend of mine. A fellow teacher. And yes, she was a blonde. This friend? She spent a weekend with him and later told me she’d be happy to do it again.”
“Does Bizzy know?” I asked.
“Bizzy knows everything. She knows the who, the what, the when, and probably the where. You know what else she knows? The why. Should I tell you what Bizzy used to do for a living?”
I flashed on the thirty-two citations I found beneath her name on the Minnesota court records website including the felony for Soliciting/Inducing/Promoting Prostitution, Sex Trafficking.
“Yes, I know what she did for a living,” I said.
“Bizzy understands human nature. If nothing else, she knows why men do what they do.”
“I was told by several people that she and your father got along famously; that no one ever saw them bickering. I was told by people who knew them well that E. J. and Bizzy always seemed to be having fun.”
“That’s true.”
“If he was cheating on her…”
“I have a hard time wrapping my head around it, too; why she didn’t freak,” Nevaeh said. “I think that’s because we’re taught to demand all or nothing from our partners. Only Dad and Bizzy, they were both damaged people when they hooked up. Yet, somehow they managed to seize the best of what each had to give and ignore the rest. Somehow it worked. When they were together, they were together. In the things that mattered most—McKenzie, in the things that mattered most they were intensely loyal to each other.”
“Comrades in arms.”
Nevaeh wagged a finger at me.
“That’s one way of looking at it,” she said.
“I’ve seen some of Bizzy’s social media posts. She doesn’t seem—excuse me, but in her social media posts, at least the most recent ones, she doesn’t appear particularly grief-stricken. The one where she’s dressed in a blue evening gown at the Commodore in St. Paul…”
“How long should a person grieve after someone dies, McKenzie? A wife, a lover, a friend, a daughter—how long should they wear black? If you see them going about their lives as best they can, maybe even looking happy and prosperous, does that mean they’re not grieving? You don’t always smile because you’re happy or laugh because you’re having fun. Sometimes you smile and laugh because it’s the only way you can deal with the pain.”
“I appreciate that,” I said. “I really do. The only reason I bring it up, I was wondering who took the photos of her that Bizzy posted.”
Nevaeh stared at me as if I had just asked her to explain quantum physics.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Who was your father’s business partner?” I asked.
“You mean besides Bizzy?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t have a partner.”
“Yes, he did. In his obituary, it said ‘founder and partner of E. J. Woods Tree Care Services.’”
“That was just a figure of speech,” Nevaeh said.
“I checked with the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State website. It says that E. J. Woods Tree Care Services is owned by Norfolk LLP.”
“You must have misread it. Norfolk is an LLC—limited liability company. McKenzie, I’m the one who set it up.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said.
“Are you serious?”
“Norfolk is definitely listed as a limited liability partnership.”
“Why would Dad take on a partner? When would Dad have taken on a partner?”
“I’m guessing it must have been sometime after you left the company.”
Nevaeh picked up her cell phone and started tapping the screen.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I want to know about this.”
I jumped from my chair, reached across her desk, and pushed the cell against the leather desk mat.
“Who are you calling?” I asked.
“I’m calling Bizzy.”
“No. I told you, we don’t want to involve her or her lawyer in this. Not yet.”
“I want to know who inherits my father’s business. If it isn’t Bizzy…”
“I wanted to know, too, but there’s someone else we can contact.”
“Who?”
* * *
“I have no frickin’ idea,” Marilyn Staples said. “I didn’t know E. J. had a partner, I mean besides Bizzy.”
Maybe Bizzy is listed as a partner on the LLP? my inner voice said.
“Who’s running the business now?” I asked.
“Bizzy is. Well, actually me and Jack Matachek are. You remember Jack.”
“I do,” Nevaeh said. “How is he?”
“The same. As long as he has something to complain about he’s good.”
Nevaeh and I had arranged to meet Marilyn at Neumann’s Bar and Grill, which claimed to be the oldest bar in Minnesota, after both she and Nevaeh finished work. While she was under orders not to discuss E. J. Woods Tree Care Services with strangers, Marilyn had no problem talking to the woman she called “sista” and “girlfriend.”
Marilyn took a deep swallow of the expensive cognac she was drinking while we sat on the patio adjacent to the 106-year-old building located not far from E. J. Woods Tree Care Services, but that was on me. Even as she ordered the drink I could hear my father’s voice in the back of my head telling me, “Never offer to pick up the tab until after people place their bets.”
Even during happy hour.
“Bizzy’s in charge,” Marilyn added. “Except it’s been me and Jack running the place since your dad passed. Bizzy and her lawyer came in a couple of days after he passed; right before the funeral it was. They said not to worry, the business wasn’t going to close; they said that we would keep operating as usual. A lot of people were worried that it would close. I was worried. Anyway, we stayed open and, you know, everything is going along pretty much the way it was going before except it’s not as much fun. Your dad made it fun.”
Nevaeh nodded her head as if that’s what she had expected to hear.
“How does the business work?” I asked.
“It’s a simple system,” Marilyn said. “Customers call us, send us an email, sometimes walk through the door like you did, but not often. They explain what they need, trees cut down or trimmed or planted or even moved, and then we send a guy to check it out, either Benny, Lucas, or Tom—you know those guys.”
Nevaeh nodded some more.
“They’re in charge of our crews. We have three full-time crews. We also have emergency crews on standby only we haven’t had much work for them lately. Anyway, we send a foreman out and he reviews the job and gives the customer an estimate. The customer contacts the office. That’s me. They accept the estimate and we schedule the job. That’s me, too. The crew goes out, completes the job, and we send the customer an invoice. Mostly this is done electronically or over the phone. The customer can pay by cash, check, credit card, Venmo, sometimes a bank transfer. The crews do not accept payment, though. Not ever. Often when they do the job, the client won’t even be there.”
“Do you do the bookkeeping?” I asked.
“No. I keep track of everything, you know, make sure the client pays on time. That’s never been a problem. But the bookkeeping—we have a guy who comes in who does the books and writes the checks; been doing it ever since Nevaeh left to become a teacher. How’s that working?”
“It’s mostly great,” Nevaeh said. “I love the kids; the school district not so much.”
“Anyway, the guy always comes in on Friday to write the checks and Bizzy signs them and off they go, usually on Monday. Used to be E. J. signed everything. Should I be telling you this? The only reason I am is because you’re family.”
Marilyn turned to gaze at me across the small table.
“Nevaeh, she’s family,” Marilyn repeated in case I was confused.
Afterward, she held up her now empty glass.
“Can I have another one of these?” she asked.
“Sure.”
I waved a waitress over and placed Marilyn’s order. The waitress returned a few minutes later.
“Why is this all such a deep, dark secret?” I asked.
“I told you about the guy.”
“What guy?” Nevaeh asked.
“Bizzy didn’t tell you about the guy?”
“No.”
“It was like a week after they buried E. J.,” Marilyn said. “Actually no, more like two or three weeks. This brother comes in and demands to speak to the owner. We tell him that the owner just died and he says he already knows that. He wants to know who’s running the place now. He was very loud and very angry and my first thought, one of our crews musta accidentally dropped a tree on his house or something. So, we’re trying to calm him down, Jack and me, and figure out what’s going on. Guy keeps asking who’s in charge here and I keep telling him that I am, sorta. He doesn’t want to hear that. He’s yelling ‘I want my money,’ and I’m thinking what? Is he a vendor or somebody that we forgot to pay? Only he’s not giving us nothin’. Finally, Jack says, ‘Sir’—he actually called him ‘Sir’ because you know what? The brother never told us his name. Anyway, Jack says if he doesn’t get out of here he’s going to call the cops. So the guy left. He stared at Jack for a minute, turned around, and walked away. Just like that. So we call Bizzy and tell her what happened and she says not to worry, she’ll take care of it.”
