Once I returned to my Mustang, I glanced at Louise’s list. She had written down about twenty names complete with addresses and phone numbers. I spent more time studying the silver tea set, though. There was a teapot, creamer, and sugar bowl with a small spoon on top of a rectangular tray with handles. They were fairly plain in appearance and whoever painted it gave the set a faintly yellow tarnish. Yet there was enough ornamentation around the handles and feet to make it easily identifiable. The brass candlesticks should also be clearly recognized, I decided.
I accessed my smartphone and surfed for the names of pawn shops in the area. I found only two. There were, however, a boatload of antiques stores located up and down the North Shore. I figured they were my best bet. I had to decide though, should I go north into Canada or south toward Duluth, checking every store along the way? The answer was easy—south—yet only because I neglected to bring my passport. There was a time when you could cross the border with just a driver’s license, but an irrational fear of immigrants had changed all that. The way things were going in Washington, more and more we were headed for a strict federal ID card to be carried by every citizen at all times. Any day now I expected guys in dark trench coats to start patrolling the streets, stopping people at random and demanding “papers please” like they do in all those Nazi spy movies—for our own protection, of course.
I worked my way south, stopping to examine every antiques and collectibles store in every town along Highway 61—Lutsen, Tofte, Schroeder, Little Marais, Silver Bay, Beaver Bay, Castle Danger. It was a glorious drive and I highly recommend it if you’re not in a hurry. Three and a half hours after I started I got lucky in a town called Two Harbors.
Originally, it was two separate towns located on Lake Superior, Agate Bay and Burlington, which were located on Burlington Bay. They merged and became Two Harbors at the turn of the last century and like many communities in northeastern Minnesota, it flourished while the iron ore industry did the same. When it faltered, so did the town. Still, it remained a vibrant community with several tourist attractions, a couple of nice restaurants, and three antiques stores.
One of them was called Second Hand Treasures. It wasn’t much different from the other antiques stores I had already visited except that instead of an electronic ping that sounded when I opened the door, I was greeted with the tinkling of a bell. Still, no one rushed to see if I needed assistance. I had never been in an antiques store that wasn’t laid-back and Nina and I had been in a lot of them.
I made my way to a desk situated in the middle of the store. There was an older man sitting behind the desk and reading a Brian Freeman thriller. I said, “Good afternoon.” He waited until he finished a passage before looking up. Can’t say I blame him. That Freeman is a spellbinder.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
“I’m looking for a silver tea set.”
“I think I might be able to help you out.” He stuffed a page marker into the book and set it down as he rose from the desk. “In fact, I got something in just this morning that you might want to take a look at.”
He led me deeper into the store to a section that seemed devoted to kitchen supplies including dinnerware, silverware, glassware, serving platters, and pitchers. I saw it even before he pointed it out—teapot, creamer, and sugar bowl with a small spoon on top of a rectangular tray all with a faintly yellow tarnish. I didn’t need to compare it to the photograph to know it belonged to Louise, yet I did so anyway.
“You have a picture of it?” the store owner asked. “What’s going on? Oh my God, was it stolen? All the years I’ve been in business I’ve never bought anything that was stolen. That’s the truth, Officer.”
“I’m not a policeman.”
“What are you?”
It was a question I’ve been asked many times. I have yet to come up with an adequate response—unlicensed private investigator, semiprofessional busybody, unabashed kibitzer, bored rich jerk. An acquaintance had recently called me a “roving troubleshooter.” I liked the label very much but I sounded like an idiot saying it out loud.
“I’m doing a favor for a friend,” I said. “Here.”
I gave him a good look at the photograph of the brass candlesticks.
“Oh God,” he said. “I have these, too.”
“Show me.”
He did, leading me to a section of the store that was devoted to lights and lanterns. A $135 price tag had been tied to the base of one of the candlesticks with a blue thread.
“Oh God,” he said again.
“You say someone brought these in this morning?”
“Yes. He was, oh God, he was waiting for me outside the front door. It was just before ten A.M. I open at ten and he was already here.”
How convenient, my inner voice said. And considerate, too, waiting until this morning to fence his ill-gotten gains.
“Do you know who sold them?” I asked aloud.
“Yes.” He seemed happy to say it. “Yes, of course I do. At my desk.”
I picked up the candlesticks and followed him there. Along the way we stopped to retrieve the silver tea set. Its price tag read $379.
He kept a metal box in a drawer. He pulled it out, set it on top of the desk, and opened it. Inside was a large collection of handwritten five-by-eight index cards, some new and some that had faded over time.
“I’ve always followed the rules that pawn shops are supposed to follow even though I’m not a pawn shop,” he said. “Here it is.”
He pulled out a card and handed it to me. It contained the name, address, and phone number of the man who had sold the tea set and candlesticks to the antiques store, including his driver’s license number and physical description, as well as a complete description of the property, and the date and time of the transaction.
“I didn’t know the property was stolen,” the man said.
“Can I keep this?” I asked.
“Yes, but no, here.”
The shop owner took the card and scanned it into his computer before returning it to his metal box. He printed the scan on an 8½-by-11 sheet of paper and gave that to me. I asked him why he didn’t just write down all the transaction information into his computer instead of using an index card and he looked at me like I was kidding him.
“I guess I’m old-school,” he said.
“Old-school is a good school.”
“Who are you, anyway?”
I told him. He wrote it down.
“I don’t want any trouble,” he said.
“Neither do I.”
“Can I see some ID?”
“Sure.”
He transcribed that information, too. Afterward, he gestured at the tea set and candlesticks.
“Take these, too,” he said. “I don’t want them if they’re stolen.”
“Let me pay you.”
“No, no…”
“At least let me give you what you paid for all this stuff.”
He thought about it for a moment and offered me a price—$125.
Nice markup, my inner voice said.
After paying, I took the tea set and candlesticks to my Mustang and set them on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Once inside the car myself, I found the list Louise Wykoff had given me and checked it against the name on the index card. David Montgomery, third from the top. Louise had indicated that he was a former art student. The address put him on the far side of Grand Marais.
It couldn’t possibly be this easy, my inner voice announced.
The end to daylight savings time was still a month and a half away, yet it was already dark by the time I turned onto Eliasen Mill Road. There were no streetlights on the road, which made travel a little dicey, especially when it converted from worn pavement to packed dirt. Finding Montgomery’s house, though, turned out to be an easy matter because it was lit up like a shopping mall. Every light had been turned on inside and out, including the yard and garage lights.
I had decided during the drive over there to keep my pitch simple. Return the paintings of That Wykoff Woman and we’ll forget all about this, give me an argument and I’ll see you go to prison for five years. I was practicing the speech in my head when I knocked on the door. There was no answer, so I peeked through a window and promptly forgot about the speech.
I returned to the door and twisted the knob. It opened easily. I stepped inside. I was immediately assaulted by the smell of iron and copper. Or maybe it was just the smell I had expected when I saw the pool of drying blood on the floor around Montgomery’s head. I based my identification mostly on the size, weight, and hair color that the proprietor of Second Hand Treasures had given me. There wasn’t much else to go on.
I kept clear of the blood as I squatted next to Montgomery’s body. I didn’t touch him but it seemed to me that he had been dead for at least a few hours. Much of the top right side of his head was shattered. I examined the side of his head where the bullet had entered. There was a lot of searing around the hole in his temple and a deep abrasion ring, which told me that the gun had been pressed against the side of his head when it was fired.
I inspected Montgomery’s left hand. The butt of a revolver was resting on the palm. However, the fingers were not wrapped around it, gripping it tightly like they would if he had suffered a cadaveric spasm. There was no gunshot residue that I could detect. A watch was wrapped around his left wrist. Typically right-handed people wear their watches on the left wrist and left-handed people wear them on the right wrist.
I began chanting, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” until I covered my mouth with my hand. It seemed so disrespectful to curse like that.
Eventually, I stood, took a couple of deep breaths and looked around as best I could without actually moving. It was not a big house, more like a cabin in the woods. There were no telltale signs of a struggle. All the drawers in the kitchen and the living room that I could see were firmly closed, although a couple of cabinet and closet doors were wide open. The place had been searched, I decided, for something fairly big.
The left side of my brain wanted to search the house myself. The right side wanted to get out of there just as fast as it could. I went with the right side.
My cell didn’t work; I was out of range of the nearest tower. I had to drive back toward Grand Marais to get coverage. Along the way I reminded myself that it would be an easy matter to just keep driving. Don’t even stop for Nina’s donuts. If it was still open when I got there, I could pull off the highway at Betty’s Pies just outside of Two Harbors instead and get her a French cherry or a five-layer chocolate pie. She liked cherries. She liked chocolate. Except—Two Harbors …
The proprietor of Second Hand Treasures in Two Harbors will remember you, my inner voice said. He’ll remember giving you Montgomery’s name and address. The proprietors of all those other antiques stores will remember you, too. So will Louise Wykoff. And Jennica Mehren. And the neighbor, Peg Younghans.
“Yes, they will,” I said aloud.
Besides, you don’t actually retire from the cops, do you? You just leave active duty, am I right?
“That’s what is said about cops.”
You knew you weren’t going to take off.
“Dammit!”
Once I got near enough, I used an app on my smartphone to locate a low-slung red stone building on the Gunflint Trail just outside of Grand Marais. A woman in her late forties or early fifties and wearing beige khakis and a black fleece jacket with the words COOK COUNTY LAW ENFORCEMENT CENTER embroidered above her breast greeted me just inside the entrance. She had a pleasant if somewhat tired smile. It occurred to me that she must smile all day long at people who were undeserving of the energy it took and was now giving me her best effort following an eight-hour shift.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sir?”
“I need to report a murder.”
The smile went away.
“Sir, is this some kind of joke?” she said.
“What’s your name?”
She answered as if she wasn’t sure she should—“Eileen.”
“Eileen, is there anyone on duty?”
The woman summoned a deputy. He was a full decade younger with an expression on his face that suggested he didn’t like being disturbed just before his shift ended. His name tag read WURZER.
“All right, all right, what’s all this then?” he said. I had to stifle a laugh thinking about all those Monty Python skits making fun of Scotland Yard cops I saw when I was a kid. He noticed the effort and was not amused.
“Sir, have you been drinking?” Wurzer asked.
I told him that David Montgomery was dead.
“Who?” he asked.
I did everything but draw him a picture of the crime scene. He didn’t seem concerned. Eileen covered her mouth with a hand and looked away as if what I described was taking place directly in front of her.
“Sir, there are laws against filing false police reports,” the deputy said.
I turned toward the woman in the fleece jacket.
“Eileen, are there any adults working here?” I asked.
“Sir?”
“Call the sheriff.”
Three minutes later, Deputy Wurzer locked me inside a holding cell.
I spent the next few hours examining my life choices. Except for committing to Nina Truhler now and forever, none of them seemed particularly well thought out.
I was resting uncomfortably on a one-inch thick blue mat stretched over the top of a two-foot high concrete bed with no pillow when the door opened. I stood abruptly. My jeans slipped down and I nearly lost one of my Nikes because they had taken away my belt and shoelaces along with my watch, keys, wallet, and cell phone.
The man who entered the holding cell was old enough to be my father if my father had children in his late thirties. He was taller than me and dressed in a crisp white shirt with dark brown epaulets and a dark brown tie that matched his slacks. There was a five-pointed star above his pocket and a gold pin that spelled SHERIFF on his collar. I noticed that he didn’t close the door behind him.
“Mr. McKenzie, I’m Sheriff Bill Bowland,” he said. He extended his hand. I extended mine. Instead of shaking it, though, he took me by the wrist and pulled it close. After giving my hand the once-over he said, “Let me see the other.” I gave him my left hand to examine.
“Those Smith and Wesson wheel guns kick out a lot of soot,” Bowland said. “Your hands are nice and clean. ’Course, you could have washed before coming over.”
“What bothers me is that Montgomery’s hands were nice and clean, too.”
“You noticed that?”
“I did.”
“How come you noticed that?”
“Am I under arrest?”
“No.”
“Am I a suspect?”
“Of course you are.”
“Kinda puts me in a difficult position. I mean, I’d like to cooperate…”
“This is where most people try to talk themselves out of trouble.”
“Most people are idiots. I’d rather you arrest me and read me my rights so I can call my lawyer because I have no intention of answering any questions without my lawyer present. Actually, I’m kidding. I have no intention of answering your questions whether my lawyer is present or not—if I’m a suspect.”
“Spoken like a hardened criminal or an ex-cop who did eleven and a half years with the St. Paul PD before retiring to collect a multimillion dollar reward on an embezzler you tracked down.”
I felt better knowing that Bowland had checked me out. ’Course, a lot of cops were angry that I accepted the reward. They say I sold my badge. It occurred to me that he might be one of them.
“I know how bad it looks,” I said. “The guy I was hunting is found dead.”
“An apparent suicide.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think the odds are that a right-handed person would shoot himself with his left hand?” the sheriff asked.
“About the same that he would be holding the gun afterward without having a cadaveric spasm.”
“You talk like you’ve seen this sort of thing before.”
“I have seen it before, haven’t you?”
“We had a killing down in Tofte about four years ago. After a holiday party, two men bumped into each other in a parking lot. Words were exchanged. One of the men was high on booze and grass. He pulled a forty-five and started shooting. Eventually, he pled guilty to second-degree murder. He’s currently doing twelve and a half. Do you know when the last murder in Cook County took place before that?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. That’s how long it’s been. I’ve already contacted the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.”
“Why?”
I didn’t mean to say that out loud, it just kind of slipped out. The sheriff gave me a look that said I was questioning his command and that he didn’t like it.
“We don’t have the resources for this kind of investigation,” he said.
Resources or confidence, I thought but this time was smart enough not to so say.
Don’t antagonize the man while you’re a guest in his holding cell, my inner voice suggested.
“It’s sending a team up from its field office in Duluth, should be here in a couple of hours,” the sheriff added. “You can talk to me or wait on them.”
“Since I’ll probably have to talk to the BCA, anyway…”
“My intention is to maintain the integrity of the crime scene, and you, until they arrive. You are not under arrest, McKenzie, but I’m not kicking you loose, either. According to the book I can hold you for thirty-six hours before I need to charge or release you. You can stay here or I can transfer you to the county jail. You decide where you would rather spend the rest of the evening. We have plenty of room.”
“I’ll stay here. You never know what kind of riffraff you might meet in jail.”
“Make yourself comfortable. It’s going to be a while.”
“Sheriff, I’m sorry about all of this.”
Bowland nodded his head like he believed me.
“I knew Dave,” he said. “One of the reasons I’m handing the case off. I knew him personally. His little girl played baseball on the team I coached. He couldn’t get along with his wife so they divorced, but he got along with everyone else. A nice guy.”
“Like I said, I’m sorry. I really am.”
Bowland stepped out of the holding cell. This time he did close the door.