“Meaning, this English lady Czernin was balling.” He watched to see if vulgarity would make a do-gooder detective wince, but I kept a look of polite interest on my face. “I hear she was in the car, not Billy, and no one knows how she got hold of it.”
“I see,” I said slowly. “So you didn’t know about her until she showed up next to Bron on the golf course yesterday morning?”
“If I had, Bron would have been at the unemployment office on Monday. We don’t tolerate rules violations, and having outsiders in the cab is a big By-Smart no-no.”
“But if she was in Billy’s Miata, she wasn’t in the cab with Czernin.”
“Czernin was—” He cut himself off. “He’d been driving her around the neighborhood the last two weeks, that’s what I learned on the floor when I told the men what had happened to him.”
“You tell me Marcena Love was in Billy’s Miata and also that she was in Bron’s cab,” I said. “But the truck and the car weren’t together, so Bron was driving for By-Smart that night, right?”
He looked at me, stone-faced. “He signed out a load at four twenty-two. He reached his first delivery in Hammond at five-seventeen. He was thirteen minutes late to his next delivery, in Merrill, and twenty-two minutes late to the third, in Crown Point. After that, which was ten-oh-eight, we didn’t hear from him again. Now, if that’s it—”
“That isn’t ‘it,’ although it’s interesting that you have those times down so exactly. What did you and Bron fight about Monday afternoon?”
“We didn’t.”
“Everyone heard you shouting,” I said. “He thought you’d help with his kid’s medical bills.”
“If you knew that, why’d you ask?” His tone was belligerent, but his eyes were wary.
“I’d like your version.”
He studied me for a long moment, then said, “I don’t have a version. Truckers are a rough bunch. You can’t manage them if you’re not ready to go head-to-head with them, and Czernin was the worst in that regard. Everything was a fight with him, his hours, his routes, his overtime. He thought the world owed him a living, and fights were a regular part of life with him.”
“I always saw Bron as a lover, not a fighter, and I’ve known him since high school,” I objected. “If he was so obnoxious, why’d you keep him on for twenty-seven years?”
Grobian distorted his mouth into an ugly leer. “Yeah, you broads all saw his loving side, but in the shop we saw his fighting side. Behind the wheel, we didn’t have a better driver—when he kept his mind on the job. Never had an accident in all those years.”
“So going back to his pitch for By-Smart’s help with his daughter’s medical bills—”
“It didn’t come up,” he snapped.
“Hnnh. I have a witness who heard you promise Czernin you’d discuss—”
“Who’s that?” Grobian demanded.
“Someone in the witness protection program.” I smiled nastily. “This person said Bron had a document, businesslike, shipshape, that showed you promised to help with April’s medical care.”
He sat very still for a minute. The light reflected on his glasses, so I couldn’t read his expression. Was he alarmed or just thinking things over?
“Your witness showed you the document, right?” he finally said. “So you know I never signed anything.”
“So you agree that there was a document? Just not one you signed?”
“I agree with nothing! If you have it, I want to see it—I need to know who’s making stuff up about me.”
“No one’s making anything up, Grobian. Unless you are, with your stories about how you knew Billy wasn’t driving his car, or how you and Bron weren’t really fighting. Bron died right after he had his fight with you. Is that a coincidence?”
A pulse jumped over his right eye. “You say that again and you’ll say it in court in front of a judge. You have nothing on me, not one goddamn thing. You’re fishing without worms.”
His phone rang and he jumped on it. “Yeah?” He looked at his watch again. “Damn spic is twenty-six minutes late. He can cool his heels for another five…And you.” He hung up and looked at me. “We’re done here.”
“No wonder you’re the ideal manager for trucking routes—you’re like a talking clock. Your so-called spic is twenty-six minutes late, not half an hour, Bron was twenty-two minutes behind schedule. The family will never promote you—you’re the perfect clerk-manager for them.”
He jumped up from his chair and stood over me, looking furious, but somehow also scared—I had put his worst fears into words. “The family trusts me,” he cried. “I don’t believe they ever even hired you. Prove it to me.”
I laughed. “We’ll call Mr. William, shall we? Or would you like to put some money on it first—say, a hundred dollars?”
He was so caught up in his swirl of emotion that he almost bit; I was picturing dinner at the Filigree or paying a third of my phone bill. At the last second, he recovered his poise enough to tell me he didn’t have time for crap like this and that I needed to leave. At once.