Chapter Twenty
Seth was obviously losing what was left of his sanity. He wasn’t thinking clearly or logically and that’s why he was here standing outside the front door of one Matt Ardell, who used to be Danny Harbaugh’s cellmate, hoping to find out…what? If Danny had ever said where he hid the money? It was highly unlikely but here Seth was in a rundown apartment just outside of Billings, knocking on the door and hating himself for it.
The door swung open and a strikingly thin man with a shock of dark curly hair stood in the doorway. A scar dissected his left eyebrow and his knuckles and arms were covered with jailhouse ink. He looked to be around thirty but he was probably much younger. Seth had learned quickly that the criminal life and prison tended to age people faster than normal.
“What do you want?”
It wasn’t the friendliest greeting but at least Ardell had answered the door. It was more than Seth had hoped for, frankly.
“Are you Matt Ardell?”
The man scowled and curled his lip. “Who wants to know?”
I don’t have time for this shit. I don’t even want to be here. Not really.
“I’m not a probation officer and I’m not collecting a debt or selling anything so you can relax.”
“Good for you. Who are you?”
“My name is Sheriff Seth Reilly and I’d like to talk to you about your former cellmate Danny Harbaugh.”
It was a gamble telling Matt his name but if Danny had behaved true to form it just might get him inside.
Matt laughed and grinned, a smug expression coming over his gaunt face. “Sheriff Seth Reilly, huh? I’ve heard about you but I never thought we’d meet. I’d always assumed Danny would take care of you the first day he set foot outside prison. Yet here you are. Alive and kicking. It’s a surprise, really.”
“He didn’t get a chance.” Just in case Matt hadn’t heard the news. “Ended up dead in a meth lab explosion.”
The other man blinked in surprise. “Danny’s dead? I don’t get the paper so I hadn’t heard.”
“Nobody told you?”
Matt’s chin lifted. “I’m keeping my nose clean. I don’t hang out with any of my old friends.”
Was he making any new ones? Did he know anyone in that cartel? Seth was curious but he wasn’t about to waste any time or questions on Matt. This was about Danny.
“Can we talk about Harbaugh?”
Matt shrugged and stepped back, letting Seth pass. “Seeing as how he’s dead I guess he can’t object, but it’s going to cost you.”
The inside of the apartment looked as bad as the outside. Maybe worse. The furnishings were sparse and had seen better days, including the small kitchen table in the corner that looked lopsided. Seth sat down on the edge of the faded flowered couch and went straight to the point.
“I’m here trying to get some information about Harbaugh and you shared a cell with him for three years.”
Matt sat in the old rocking chair and stretched out his legs. “Don’t cops pay their informants? If I’m going to talk I need some sort of compensation.”
Seth almost rammed the cocky little asshole against the wall to scare him but decided at the last minute that wasn’t a good idea. Matt Ardell wasn’t Seth’s problem, Danny was. He needed to keep his eye on the ball and not get sidetracked.
Honey just might get more flies than beating the shit out Ardell. But if that didn’t work…
Seth reached into his pocket and fished out a twenty, tossing it on the coffee table. Ardell reached for it and wadded it up in his fist.
“You want to know about Danny Harbaugh? I’ll tell you about him. He was an asshole most of the time but a loyal one, you know what I mean? If you were his friend he stood by you. That’s hard to find in the joint, ya’ know.”
It was a real bromance story. Danny was a Prince Charming. Matt? Not so much. It had only taken twenty bucks and he was talking.
“And he stood by you?”
“He sure as hell did and I stood by him. We were friends.” Matt laughed and pointed to Seth. “That’s how I knew about you. Danny fucking hated your guts.”
“Because he thinks I killed his wife Lyndsey?”
“He knows you did.”
Seth could tell Matt about the ballistics report but it wasn’t the point of the visit.
“So he told you that he wanted me dead because I killed the woman he loved?”
Matt cackled and shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you? You didn’t take the woman Danny loved. He didn’t love Lyndsey. But she was his meal ticket and you took that away. She was the brains behind their entire operation. Danny was a two-bit criminal knocking over convenience stores for gambling and liquor money when he met Lyndsey. She was the one that taught him how to rob a bank, score the big money. He was nothing without her and when she died he knew he was heading back to the minor leagues. When he was ripping off gas stations he was nobody, but a bank robber? They’re somebody.”
The criminal hierarchy had always been something of a mystery to Seth but this kind of made sense. Anyone could rob a store but a bank was different. It made Danny look smarter.
“So he wanted to kill me because he blamed me for losing his ticket to the big time. Was there anyone he really did love?”
Matt leaned forward, his eyebrows waggling. “Danny had a couple of chicks on the side. Hot ones, too. I guess he probably liked or loved them. Kind of, anyway. I think he was good to them. He said he didn’t hit them or nothing.”
Romantic devil. What more could a woman ask for?
“Did he trust them?”
Matt shrugged. “Danny didn’t trust anybody but Danny. You get a little paranoid in this business, man, and for good reason.”
“But if he had to trust someone,” Seth pressed. “Would he have trusted them? Would they have helped him if he was on the run from the law?”
“You’ll have to ask them.”
Seth pulled a small notebook and pen from his breast pocket and slid it closer to Matt. “I will if you can give me their names. Do you remember?”
At first the man hesitated but then relented, scratching out two names in the notebook, apparently deciding that Seth would get them one way or another.
“You didn’t get these names from me.”
“Hell, you and I have never even met. I’ve never heard of you in my life.”
Matt grinned. “Exactly. Strangers.”
“What else can you tell me about Danny?”
“He was a typical guy. He liked women and beer. He liked betting on sports but was lousy at it. That’s what started him robbing stores.”
Seth hadn’t heard the gambling angle but it explained how Danny had gone in a much different direction than his brother Eric.
“Did he continue betting in the joint?” Seth assumed that he had. Addicts couldn’t go without their fix. “Where did he get the money?”
That had Matt clamming up, the smile wiped from his face. “You ask too many questions. It’s time for you to leave.”
Not yet. Seth didn’t budge from the couch.
“You were in for possession with the intention to distribute, correct?”
“It was a set up. I was just holding for a friend.”
“I’m not your parole officer or your priest. I just want to know if Danny was involved with the cartel before or after he met you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No wonder you were found guilty,” Seth snorted. “You’re a lousy liar. Now tell me how Danny got involved with the cartel and ended up owing them money.”
Seth reached into his wallet and pulled out a second twenty dollar bill, tossing it on the table.
Matt was silent for awhile but Seth had been in way too many interrogations to lose patience. He simply sat quietly as well, waiting for Matt to break. People in general abhor a vacuum and seek to fill it with talking.
“He needed the money,” Matt finally said, sighing heavily, reaching for the bill. “He’d lost big on the playoffs and he needed some cash. I introduced him to a buddy of mine and Danny started to do some deals but some of the merchandise was…misplaced…or stolen. Anyway, he owed them for it and he said he could get it when he got out. That he could get money on the outside plus he was planning on continuing to work for them. They didn’t seem too worried about the cash as long as they had Danny doing their dirty work.”
Now Seth was getting somewhere.
“He said he could get money on the outside? The bank robbery money? Is that what he was talking about?”
“I don’t know.” Matt shrugged helplessly. “Danny never said specifically but they kept him alive because he was working for them. I got out before he did so I don’t know what happened after that. Are we done now?”
“One more question.” Matt’s jaw tightened but Seth wouldn’t be deterred. “If you had to guess – and it can be a wild guess – but if you had to guess where Danny hid his money, where would it be?”
“Shit,” Matt scoffed. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Knowing things is what gets you dead in this world, Sheriff. You ought to know that. It’s better to be stupid and know nothing.”
Then this guy should live forever.
“But Danny’s already dead,” Seth pointed out. “He can’t hurt you. C’mon, he must have said something in three years. That’s a long damn time.”
“He never said where he put his money, but…”
“But,” Seth prompted. “But what?”
“There was this place he liked to go, some fishing shack near Glistening Lake. He talked about it all the time, constantly. If he was going to hide anything I’m thinking it would be there.”
That was pretty vague but still nowhere near where Seth had caught Danny. If the money was hidden there someone had to have done it for him.
“You don’t know exactly where it is?”
“No, he only said that it was quiet and peaceful. That’s it. That’s two more questions.”
Tucking the notebook and pencil back into his pocket, Seth nodded in agreement. “You’re absolutely right. Thank you for your time.”
They both stood and moved toward the door. “And we never met, right?”
“We never met,” Seth replied. This hadn’t been the waste of time he’d assumed it would be. “Never heard of you. Never met you. Complete and total strangers.”
By the time Seth was driving back toward Harper, he had a smile on his face. Maybe it wasn’t so crazy for him to be obsessed with where the money went because it just might still exist. Danny might have thought so. Seth needed to talk to the two girlfriends and see what they had to say and if they agreed with Matt.
Seth might be able to find that bank money and solve this mystery once and for all. It had only cost him forty bucks.