Friday, June 9
Who had taken the drawing? I asked myself as I left the police station. Had I been wrong about Weathers? Maybe he wasn’t the killer. But maybe he had known who the killer was, and it had cost him his life. I’d been so sure it was Weathers.
I needed to talk to Weathers’s girlfriend, Roz. If anyone had any insights into Weathers, she would. It was midmorning. Death’s Door would be open.
As I drove up Highway 42 to Gills Rock, I popped a tape into the truck’s cassette player: Mozart for Your Mind, guaranteed to boost your brainpower.
I mulled over Hallaway’s ludicrous accusations. I didn’t think Hallaway really believed I’d written the letters or faked Salinger’s kidnapping. It was all a strategy to intimidate me. To scare me off the case. Her threats and accusations only made me more determined.
But what troubled me was, if she didn’t believe I’d faked the letters and the kidnapping, then what did she think? Had she convinced herself that Weathers was some nut with an axe to grind with me? For what reason? For all her rigidness, I felt she was a competent policewoman. As head of the task force investigating the deaths of two young women, and with tourist season just beginning, I knew she was getting a lot of pressure from her superiors. Being female didn’t help. She couldn’t bend. She had to play by the book. And above all, she had to keep the press at bay. But she was wrong about the murders. Ritter wasn’t the killer. If nothing else, Weathers’s death convinced me of that. I could understand Hallaway’s position, but in no way was it going to alter what I had to do. She had her job and I had mine.
But what troubled me even more than Hallaway’s accusations and seeming indifference to other murder suspects was the missing drawing and all it implied. Had the person who took the drawing also been the person who put it there in the first place? If so, for what reason—to lure me to Weathers’s cottage, to implicate me in his death? Or if Weathers had left the drawing and taken Salinger, then the person who took the drawing had been at the cottage before Weathers’s death. Maybe even had been the cause of it?
The swirling mind-boosting symphony ended as I turned right off the ferry ramp road and parked in front of Death’s Door restaurant. A closed sign rested against the front window.
I pulled out the directory from under the seat, found the restaurant’s number and called it on my cell phone. Roz’s message said the restaurant was closed until further notice, due to a death in the family. Her voice had that monotone sound that sudden death and grief brought.
I flipped through the white pages and found her home number. Her home message was a little more forthcoming. She’d gone to Washington Island and left a number where she could be reached. Even if I hadn’t recognized Weathers’s number, I didn’t need a crystal ball to know where she’d gone. I called Weathers’s house. Roz told me she planned on being there for a couple days to get things in order.
I told her I couldn’t wait that long. I had to talk to her about Andy. I didn’t elaborate. I let her think it was for a Gazette obit on Weathers.
Like a good citizen, this time I took the ferry over.
All the front windows in the cottage were open. A boisterous breeze ruffled the white curtains. The place seemed lighter somehow.
Roz wore a black apron over red spandex pants and a tight black scoop-necked T-shirt. Across the front in white letters were the words Don’t mess with the Chef. Her mules had those three-inch block heels that looked like cartoon shoes. I didn’t know how she could walk around in them, much less clean a house.
“He told me he was leaving everything to me about a year ago. ‘It’s not much, Roz,’ he says, ‘but it’s yours free and clear. No encumbrances.’ Yeah, right.” She smacked the dust cloth she was holding against the desk. A rush of dust rose and twirled in the light.
She continued moving around the room with the dust cloth. “At the time I was surprised, but didn’t really think much about it. I mean, we’ve been together for a few years, but neither one of us wanted anything permanent. I’ve been down that road twice, and Andy just wasn’t the marrying type. Anyway, soon as everything settles down about his death, I’m going to sell the place. It’ll sell quick. Probably to some tourist. This is prime real estate. Besides, tourists will buy just about anything if the price is right.” She stopped dusting, her eyes darting around the room. “What the hell am I going to do with all these books? You should see upstairs. There’s even more.”
The police in their search had scattered the books everywhere. The floor was so littered, it was hard not to step on them.
“You can always donate them to the Sturgeon Bay library,” I said.
She nodded her head absently. “That was the only thing I never understood about Andy. He was never happy just to do his job and have a good time. He always had to be reading about something. He’d go on and on about this and that. Half the time I didn’t understand a thing he said. But I’d just let him talk. I’d be going over what I had to do at the restaurant in my head. Don’t get me wrong. I really liked the guy. I could always count on Andy. If he said he’d be there at eight, he’d be there at eight. He was real reliable. Never let me down. My exes had a problem with commitment. I could really pick ’em. But Andy wasn’t like them. He was real steady. You can’t say that about a lot of ’em. Can you?”
“I suppose not.”
“You want to sit down? You look tired.”
I was standing by the fireplace.
“No, I’m fine. Did Andy ever say anything about his family?”
“I asked him about them early on when we were getting to know each other. He said he didn’t have any. When I asked if they all were dead, he said, ‘Might as well be.’ When I tried to find out more, he got real angry and said something like, ‘What’s my family have to do with anything?’ I let it drop after that.”
“He ever say where he was from?”
“Nope. He was real secretive about before he came here. I always got a feeling something had happened to him. Something life changing. Maybe something tragic. But I learned from two marriages when a man don’t want to tell you something, he’s not going to tell you. Or he’s going to lie to get you off his back. So you might as well let it drop.”
Ignorance is bliss. I could see why it would be easy for men to lead secrets lives with Roz. I wondered if on some level she knew that.
“He ever say why he decided to live on the Island instead of the peninsula? He could have just as easily lived there and repaired boats and worked for the ferry line.”
“I think he liked the isolation. Especially in the winter, when Death’s Door froze over. He got a kick out of bucking the ice in winter. That it could take six hours to cross Death’s Door. ‘It should always take that long,’ he’d say. ‘If people slowed down, then they’d think about what they say or do to each other.’ That’s when I got the idea that all his talk was covering up the fact that he was a loner by nature. Not that he wasn’t sociable. ’Cause he was. But sometimes he just needed this distance between people. Like a rest or something.”
Maybe he’d been running away from himself, I thought. If so, no distance would ever have been enough.
“Didn’t you think it strange then when he joined that protest against Margaris’s development along the Mink?”
Roz smiled wistfully. “That’s because of me. I talked him into it. He was against the development and all. But he wasn’t going to do anything about it. I told him that once in his life he should stand up for something and not be such a loner. I showed him all the stuff from the Nature Conservancy. About what that rich guy Margaris was going to do. There was this article on Margaris in The Windy City Reporter with his picture and all. It told how he bought these run-down housing developments in Chicago and was building high-rise condos in their place. When Andy looked at that, it seemed to change his mind.”
“Any chance you still have the article?”
“Funny you should ask. I found it this morning when I was cleaning out Andy’s bedroom. He had it in, of all places, a box of garbage bags. It fell out when I took one. Can’t imagine why he put it there. But that’s Andy. Was Andy. Wait a minute. I’ll get it out of the trash.”
She walked back to the kitchen. I heard her rustling around. When she came back, she handed me the article. It was all rumpled and had a dark stain in the middle. But the photo of Margaris was pristine. He was dressed in an expensively cut suit and was standing beside the mayor and two aldermen. Margaris was about to plant a ceremonial shovel into the ground. The caption read: “Developer Russell Margaris breaks ground on new high-rise condominiums.” There was a sidebar story with the headline: “Many former residents homeless.”
“You mind if I take this?”
“It was in the trash.”
I was hedging about asking the next two questions, because I knew that once I did Roz would probably hate me, and that would put an end to her cooperation. But I had to know.
“Roz, one more thing. Was Andy with you on Saturday, May twentieth between twelve and seven, and on Tuesday, May thirtieth between say ten-thirty and five?”
“Why you asking me about those dates?”
I didn’t have to answer, because she figured it out. I don’t think I ever saw anyone change demeanor so quickly. Her whole body went rigid with rage.
“You get outta here. Now.” She was on her feet.
“I have to know, Roz. Annie Everson’s daughter was murdered. Lisette Cohen was murdered.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have talked to you. I kept telling myself, ‘You’re making a mistake. This woman found Andy. How do you know what really happened? But the police said he fell. That it was an accident.’ Why don’t you tell me what you were doing here that night?”
I explained once again everything, from the first letter to the drawing. It was like watching bullets bounce off steel.
But something must have gotten through. “He wasn’t with me. Those dates you said. I don’t know where he was. Like I said, we didn’t have that kind of relationship.”
Then I got it. For all her protests to the contrary, he’d kept her at a distance she hadn’t wanted. In the end, he was just like the rest of the men who had hurt her—leading separate lives that didn’t include her. Doing who knew what.
“Now I want you to leave.” She pointed to the door. Her red fingernail polish was chipped near the tip.
“If you think of anything else, anything out of the usual, call me.”
I put my card on a table.
* * *
I read and reread the Reporter article on the ferry ride back to the peninsula. Margaris really was an opportunistic scumbag. He’d paid the city off to free up the housing development sooner than the residents had been promised. Which made it difficult for the city to find them suitable housing in time. Many had ended up in homeless shelters. Those were the lucky ones. Others were on the streets. I wondered why this article had turned Weathers from a recluse to an activist. He hadn’t seemed like the kind who cared about issues larger than himself. And the coincidence of him being the person who found Margaris’s daughter? How did this all connect to Weathers murdering two young women near the Mink River? If he had murdered them. And had Weathers accidentally fallen down the stairs, or had he had some help? If so, who had reason to kill him? And was that the person who took the drawing?
As I watched one of the crew in a navy windbreaker loop a rope thick as a boa constrictor around the dock, I made up my mind that too many trails were leading back to Margaris.
* * *
On my way back to the office, I stopped by Margaris’s house. He wasn’t there. I tried the front door, but it was locked. I walked around the back and cupped my hands against a window. The room was in total disarray. White sheets were on the floor, falling off the furniture. Dishes, papers and clothes were everywhere, but no Margaris.
I turned around and looked upriver; here and there the red-banded development stakes were newly planted.
Disgusted, I walked back to my truck and called his number. When the answering machine beeped, I left him a message.
“Leigh Girard. I have to see you as soon as possible. An article about you was found in Andy Weathers’s cottage. He was the man who found Janell. In case you don’t know, he’s dead. The police are calling it an accident. But I have reason to believe his death is tied to the two murders. We need to talk.”
That sounded provocative and cryptic enough to elicit some response. In the meantime, my stomach was doing the two-step. My newly reformed self was going to have lunch.
I stopped at the Harbor Café off Highway 42 in Egg Harbor. The restaurant seemed to change ownership with each tourist season, which probably contributed to its food being mediocre. But regardless of ownership, the view remained splendid. And each new owner had kept the early bird breakfast special—two eggs, bacon or sausage, hash browns, and toast for $3.50, making the view almost free in my opinion.
I was too late for the early bird, so I ordered a BLT, bacon crisp, on wheat toast, with an iced tea. No fries. Fruit salad. It was a hard sandwich to mess up.
The Café was on the second floor of a building that housed a bookstore and a real estate office. Almost every table in the restaurant offered a view of the harbor. Towering arbor vitae crested the windows. The revolving owners always kept them below the ledge so as not to obscure the customers’ appreciation of why they tolerated the so-so food—Green Bay’s teal waters.
This afternoon a few boats bobbed against the pier. Out on the water a jet skier was pushing the season, and a sailboat was moving north at a leisurely pace. The sky blued the water; not a cloud anywhere.
I had brought the article, the envelope of photos, and a magnifying glass with me. I placed the article at the top center of the table and then took out the photos. The blow-up with Weathers standing I centered on the table. Then I took out the four other photos. One photo was of Guy Connors, the Nature Conservancy ecologist. He was standing by an easel, which held a plat map of the Mink River area. I used the magnifying glass trying to decipher what Connors was pointing at. It was Rogers Lake, where the Mink River emptied.
The next photo was of Margaris’s lawyer, who also was standing by the plat map. He, too, was pointing, but at an area farther down river where I guessed Margaris planned his development. The third photo was a group shot of the men and one woman seated at the table: Margaris, his lawyer, Guy Connors, and the three-man, one-woman county board. Someone in the audience must have been addressing the group, because they all were looking in one direction except Margaris. He was touching the Rolex watch on his wrist—a look of boredom on his face. He knew he was going to win. He always won. It was just a matter of waiting for everyone else to understand that. The fourth picture was of the audience. Martin had tried to focus on a few individuals to represent the whole. The shot was dark, and two of the individuals had their faces turned sideways, but I recognized Kolinsky, Brian and Lisette. At least it looked like it was Lisette. She was talking to someone beside her. But that person wasn’t visible. I moved Weathers’s photo next to the audience photo. There it was. The person next to Lisette was Weathers. Lisette was smiling at him.
“You look like the cat who swallowed the mouse,” the waitress said, putting down my plate.
“More like the mouse who swallowed the cat,” I said.
She gave me a quizzical look and left.
I took a bite out of the BLT. The bacon slid out of the sandwich. A rubbery, undercooked slice. I pulled the slice from my mouth, put it on the plate beside the curled orange slice, and opened the sandwich. Okay, an LT was better than no lunch.
* * *
“Marge, how do you do a trace search on someone?”
Marge had opted for an eclectic look today. Her silvery hair was teased and sprayed into a beehive. She had on spike heels and a shoulder-padded emerald-green pant suit. Her white ruffled collar blouse also must have had shoulder pads, because from the back, her shoulders resembled a linebacker’s.
“That only works if they have a record. For example, you could do one on yourself. Your person been arrested?”
“One of these days, Marge, you’re going to push me too far.”
“You know I’m only teasing you. You’re my hero, Leigh. You inspire me to be daring.”
“Okay, enough.”
I did a trace search on Margaris and Weathers—which turned up zilch. Then I did a bio search on them. As expected, nothing came up on Weathers. Margaris’s bio contained the usual PR stuff. The ruthless developer came off sounding like Mother Teresa providing shelter for the indigent. If you considered people who forked over half a mill for a condo indigent.
I printed up Margaris’s info and shut off the computer. It was near dinnertime.
“I’m heading out,” I told Marge. “If anyone calls, give them my cell number.”
“Anyone in particular?” Marge asked, patting the top of her stiff hair.
“Russell Margaris,” I said. “In particular.”
“Okay. You going home then?”
“Yes, ma’am. Got another date with a King tonight.”
“They all think they’re kings,” Marge said.
“Ain’t that the truth.”
* * *
The light lingered over the lake making me take my microwaved dinner outside. A vegetarian chili potpie made from soy products that I was trying not to look at too closely. The important thing was—it was healthy and tasted sort of like ground meat. I’d passed on wine in favor of a glass of water with a slice of lemon. I wanted a clear head. There was something I was missing in the killer’s literary clues, some common thread that explained why he’d chosen those two literary references.
Both referred to where the two murders had taken place. The line, “The wheel is come full circle,” echoed the killer’s words to me on the phone, “You know the place, where the circles end.” “A river running through her, soon you,” was a take off on the book title, A River Runs Through It, and specified the murder site, in this case, the Mink River.
Both the play and the book dealt with two brothers. But only one of the clues used the actual words of one of the brothers. So those words or that character had some special significance. When Edmund says those words, the two brothers who’ve been estranged throughout the play, are revealed for who and what they are. And Edgar finally accepts his brother.
I shivered. The light was nearly gone. Salinger, asleep by my feet, was also shivering.
Weathers, the well-read psychopath, would not have chosen the line for its surface meaning alone. He identified with Edmund. Now all I had to do was to find his Edgar, his “good” brother. Or was it the other way around? Was Weathers the good brother and the other brother the killer? If there was a brother, good or bad, it would explain who had taken the drawing. No, I was sure Weathers was the killer. His last words to me had been “nice seeing you.” Was I pushing it to make my case? Lots of people say nice seeing you.
The light faded over the water; the sky smudged violet. He’d been there all along. Right in front of me. From the very beginning. On the river that runs through her. Now through me.
But who was this she that Stephanie and Lisette, so similar in appearance, had represented? Someone significant to Weathers? A girlfriend, a sister, his mother? Someone who had died? More likely been murdered.
And was there a brother?
I gathered up my dinner container, drank down the rest of the water, and walked back to the trailer home.
When I pulled out of the driveway, Salinger was sitting in the passenger seat. I had to talk to Margaris. There’d been too many coincidences involving Weathers and Margaris. Weathers finding Janell. The evidence linking Ritter to the murders found after Margaris had filed the rape charge. Margaris’s development along the Mink River where the murders had occurred. The protest meeting. And the two articles in Weathers’s house.
But there’d be no faking out Margaris; he was too smart for that. I’d have to have proof—irrefutable proof that there were two brothers linked by some tragedy equal to a Shakespearean play. If they were brothers.
* * *
Saturday, June 10
I was on my fourth cup of coffee. The caffeine was keeping me awake, but it was also making me jumpy. Even though it was the middle of the night and I was in Jake’s office at the back of building, I hadn’t turned on the lights. Even with the blinds drawn, my outline would be seen. If some insomniac decided to take a stroll along Green Bay, I didn’t want him or her knowing someone was in the office. So the only illumination was the computer screen, a light much like a television’s in a dark room—harsh, unforgiving, disturbing. Conducive to my bad thoughts and self-doubt.
Salinger was having the same reaction and kept moving around the room, not able to settle anywhere.
Because I had so few concrete facts, and the time period involved was so large, and since both Weathers and Margaris were in their early forties, my only choice was to meticulously comb through the Wisconsin and Illinois major newspaper archives for the last thirty or so years. I figured I’d start with those states under the assumption that the killer would stay close to home. After hours and hours of reading the worst that people did to each other, I was no nearer to finding what I was looking for. My stomach was sour with coffee and disgust.
Only the Chicago Times archives remained to be checked. The archive went back twenty-five years. I typed in murderers/women, murderers/children and the year. A list of murders of women and children appeared. Each had a headline and a brief description. I scrolled down the list.
There had to be an easier way. Maybe my theory was all wrong. Maybe Weathers was just a crazy nut job who got off on murdering young, yellow-haired women and dumping their bodies by the Mink River. And Russell Margaris was just another greedy developer. Even so, if Weathers was the killer, and I was convinced he was, Erik Ritter was innocent. I didn’t like the guy, but he didn’t deserve to be sent to prison for life for two murders he didn’t commit.
I leaned back in Jake’s chair and caught my reflection in the small mirror on the opposite wall. My naturally wavy dark hair was a frizzy mass. My hazel eyes were dark and hollow. I looked haunted.
I typed in another year. Another list of murders of women and children appeared. I scrolled down the list and noticed the reporter Wallace Bernard’s name appeared throughout the list. His name had appeared in the first list. I typed in another year. Again Bernard’s name peppered the list. I jumped the chronology five years, then ten years and Bernard’s name appeared in each year’s list. He seemed to have covered a great many of the major crime stories for the twenty-five-year period I was checking. Maybe I was going about this all wrong.
I closed out the Times window and returned to the search engine. I plugged his name into the computer. A list of Wallace Bernards appeared—from wine experts to golfers. I scrolled down until I found Wallace Bernard, Chicago Times reporter. I clicked on his bio. He was still alive, retired and living in Chicago. It was a long shot. But I was out of ideas.
I looked at my watch. It was 3:30 in the morning. Even granting him senior sleeping habits, I doubt that he’d be up yet. I’d wait a few hours. I switched off the computer, grabbed Jake’s beat-up leather jacket from the hook, and stretched out on the floor. Salinger crawled into my body’s curve, finally settling down.