setup to do some digital recon. He should have known Cage was already on it. Mad Dog, who had gotten up close and personal with Eisenheiser’s truck, was there, too.
“How’s Tina?” Mad Dog asked.
“She’s fine. A little shaken. I think she was more pissed off than anything.”
Cage chuckled. “Yeah, I got that impression. She’s pretty tough.”
“She has to be with brothers like hers,” Mad Dog said. “Cage has been doing a little digging. They’re real pieces of work.”
“How so?”
“Besides their questionable taste in friends, you mean?”
“Yeah, besides that.”
“Friedrich isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Reached his peak in high school as a star linebacker. He actually got drafted by a Division I school but got himself kicked out after several drunken brawls and half a dozen charges of sexual harassment. Most of it got buried; apparently, the school didn’t want the bad publicity. He came back here, citing a knee injury and the need to help with the family business. Oh, and you’ll never guess who his BFF was. Dwayne Freed.”
“Shocker.”
The ne’er-do-well son of the Sumneyville police chief had a reputation for being a troublemaker and was, thanks to some poor choices, now serving time in a federal prison.
“Gunther Obermacher isn’t much better. He’s not a linebacker like Rick, but what he lacks in brawn, he makes up for in cunning. According to Sandy and Kate, he considers himself quite the ladies’ man and likes to hobnob with the big dogs.”
When Doc raised his eyebrows, Cage grinned and put up his hands. “Hey, their words, not mine. But it’s pretty apparent Gunther likes to live beyond his means. Expensive clothes, expensive dinners, expensive car.”
“Where’s he getting the funds?” Doc mused.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” asked Mad Dog. “On paper, it looks like he doesn’t have a pot to piss in, but he and his wife have been racking up some impressive tabs. They’re not just wining and dining Phillip Dumas. They’re branching out, contacting heavyweight real estate developers, some of whom have known mob ties.”
That didn’t sound good at all.
“We do know that Gunther is tight with Luther Renninger,” Cage said. “He might even be the mastermind behind Renninger’s financial schemes. Church always said Renninger didn’t have the brains or the stones to pull off something like that on his own.”
“If Gunther is pulling the strings, he’s damn good at covering his tracks.”
“And Ian Callaghan is a damn good tracker. If there’s more there, he’ll find it. We reached out to him earlier.”
“What about the third brother, Kiefer?” asked Doc.
“We don’t know a lot about him,” admitted Cage. “If we look close enough, he’s always there, lurking in the shadows, but his name rarely comes up on the radar.”
“That’s what worries me,” Mad Dog said. “He’s a little too boring, if you know what I mean. But back to your woman. We’re pretty sure Eisenheiser was the one tailing her.”
Doc liked the way Mad Dog referred to Tina as his woman even if it wasn’t a done deal. Yet.
“It all fits,” Cage added. “Tina’s description of the vehicle, his alliance with Freed, his propensity for road rage. And he just happens to be Eddie Schweikert’s cousin.”
“Is everyone in this fucking town related?” Mad Dog murmured.
“Apparently. But it’s not really surprising, is it?”
“No, I guess not,” Doc said on an exhale. “All right. Thanks, guys.”
“Oh, one more thing. We managed to extract a few pieces of glass from Tina’s grill while she was with you. We’re going to hand them over to Ian, see if he can pull any prints.”
“Good thinking.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tina
After a busy morning in the orchards, Tina left the crew to it. She was anxious to get to The Mill; her time with Doc had provided inspiration for a new project. But first, she took a detour toward the old outbuilding that had been converted into an office way before her time.
“Does your brother make all the decisions for the family business?”
Doc’s question kept rolling around in the back of her mind. It wasn’t so much the question itself as the way he’d said it. As if he knew something she didn’t.
That seemed unlikely. How would he?
Regardless, it continued to bother her until she felt compelled to do something about it.
Gunther was a creature of habit, and lately, one of those habits was taking a particularly long lunch. Tina didn’t know where he went, but if the rumors were to be believed, he wasn’t heading back to his house to spend time with Giselle.