There was a cluster of businesses near the center of Arona that could be compared to Grand Avenue in St. Paul or Uptown in Minneapolis if you were being exceedingly generous. I found antiques, jewelry, ski and bike supplies, candy, a bakery, a couple of cafés and coffeehouses, a wine bar, a wildlife art gallery and supplies, a glassworks, a florist, designer clothes, and something called Legend of the Celts.
At the end of the street was a one-story building built of redwood that somehow reminded me of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police outpost even though it had an American flag flying in front. A sign read CITY HALL and listed in much smaller type offices for the mayor, city council members, planning and zoning, public finance, parks and rec, public works, building inspection, and storm water management. The police had their own entrance around the corner. The door was unlocked; there wasn’t even a bell to announce when visitors entered. I parked myself in front of a desk reserved for the receptionist/secretary/dispatcher. The desk was unoccupied. On the wall next to it hung the names and photographs of the chief of police, three officers, and two dispatchers.
I leaned against the desk and watched a woman sitting at a blue-metal desk at the far end of the room and reading a newspaper. I recognized her from the photographs on the wall. It could have been a college library it was so quiet; my voice was like a roar of thunder even though I spoke softly.
“Good afternoon, Chief,” I said.
The woman dropped the newspaper and leapt to her feet. Her hand went to her heart, not her gun, which, believe it or not, disappointed me. If it had been Scalasi, she would have pumped two rounds into me by now.
“You startled me,” she said.
“I apologize for that, but honestly, this place is about as secure as a box of cornflakes. Even the public library has better security.”
The chief quickly crossed the room. She was wearing sneakers, black Dockers, and a blue short-sleeve knit shirt. Except for the nine-millimeter Glock and badge attached to her belt, she looked like a playground monitor.
“We’re kind of informal around here,” she said.
“Sure.”
Yet I didn’t approve. Too many cops get shot these days for them to be careless over security. Probably, because they lived in a small town, the Arona officers thought they were safe. They weren’t.
She offered her hand.
“I’m Chief Maureen McMahan. I bet you’re Holland Taylor.”
I shook her hand.
“How did you guess?”
“We don’t get many men wearing sport coats in Arona. Besides, the sheriff called. Said, ‘Honey’—he likes to call me honey. ‘Honey,’ he said, ‘I’d take it as a personal favor if you help Taylor out, except not too much.’ He was particularly keen that I not let you read the paper we generated on the mayor’s murder. Taylor, there’s something you should know.”
“What’s that?”
“I hate being called honey.”
The door behind me opened, and a woman entered the station house who was as casually dressed as the chief. She was sucking a soft drink through a straw and carrying a bag from the Subway down the street.
“I’m back,” she said in case we hadn’t noticed.
“I’m going to step out,” the chief said. “Let me know if anything happens.”
“Of course.”
“Taylor, walk with me.”
We followed a sidewalk in the opposite direction of the retail cluster to a well-worn path that led to a clearing in the woods with a park bench. From the bench, we could watch the sparse traffic churning through the town.
“I’m not going to let you look at our records, and not just because the sheriff asked me not to,” the chief said. “I’d be happy to tell you what’s in them, though, as long as you keep it to yourself.”
“I appreciate that.”
“What do you want to know?”
I pulled the smartphone from my pocket, pulled up Emily’s pic, and showed it to her.
“Do you know this woman?” I asked.
The chief studied it for a moment.
“No, I don’t,” she said.
“Do you have any missing person reports resembling her.”
“I don’t have any missing person reports at all. Who is the girl?”
I explained.
“Why do you think she was from around here?” the chief asked.
Although neither the sheriff nor McGaney had mentioned it, I knew they would be mighty displeased if I told anyone about the matching nine-millimeter slugs. If Emily Denys’s killer was from Arona and heard about it, he’d be a complete moron if he didn’t ditch the gun immediately. ’Course, you could argue that he was a complete moron for not getting rid of it in the first place. The question was—how much could I trust Chief McMahan? I had no doubt that she was honest, yet she didn’t strike me as being particularly professional. On the other hand, if I didn’t answer her questions, it was unlikely that she would answer mine.
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“I’m listening.”
I proceeded to tell her about my involvement with Mrs. Barrington, adding nothing that she couldn’t learn for herself by reading the articles posted on the website of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. I concluded with a question.
“Do you know Esther Tibbits?”
“What does she have to do with your killing?” the chief asked.
“I’m not saying she has anything to do with it.”
“Last I heard, Esther was working as a secretary, community liaison, whatever you want to call it, for a team of U.S. Sand executives who are negotiating to open a silica sand mine and processing plant near the river.”
I explained about Emily’s reaction to her encounter with the lobbyists, ending with my meeting them and Esther in their offices.
“The next day I was ambushed by a couple of kids dressed in camouflage,” I said. “I identified one of them as being Eric Tibbits.”
“Esther’s brother?”
“I’m not sure if he was the one who was shooting or not. I was moving pretty fast.”
“Does the sheriff know this?”
“I didn’t even know it until a half hour ago.”
The chief stood, but she wasn’t going anywhere. She was just one of those people who liked to move around when she was thinking.
“What do you want me to do about it?” she asked.
“Nothing at all.”
“I could arrest him. I could hold him for Ramsey County.”
For a brief moment, I wondered if it would be worthwhile to bust Eric Tibbits. You’d be amazed what some people say while they’re trying to talk themselves out of trouble.
“Maybe later,” I said.
Chief McMahan stretched her arms, her back, and continued to move to and fro.
“I don’t know what I should tell you,” she said.
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I said nothing. Instead, I sat there and watched as she paced back and forth in front of me. Finally she stopped.
“What do you know about the murder of Mayor Franson?” she asked.
“Almost nothing,” I said. The information I had gleaned from the internet was sketchy at best.
“No one realized what a thoroughly corrupt individual he was until after he was killed. The things he did…”
The chief paused and shook her head as if after thirteen months she still couldn’t believe it.
“Taylor,” she said, “before she went to work for U.S. Sand, Esther Tibbits worked as the mayor’s secretary. She claims she didn’t know what was going on. I don’t believe her. The fact that U.S. Sand hired her so soon after the mayor was shot only reinforces my opinion.”
“What was it that Esther pretended she didn’t know?”
“As it turned out, Franson knew that U.S. Sand was negotiating with individual property owners to buy or lease land that they could convert into silica sand mines. He purposely kept it a secret from the rest of us until after he had arranged for the company to buy property owned by both his mother and brother. Permits, everything was put in place. They were actually digging when the mayor made the announcement, and he only did it because the story got into the paper. Later, we discovered … The newspaper printed a story the day after he was killed that accused Mayor Franson of working in secret with the city planner and the city attorney to have Arona annex four hundred acres and make it available to U.S. Sand.”
“The four hundred acres the company wants for its new facility?”
“He was going to seize the property and have the city sell it to U.S. Sand. How much Arona would make on the deal, no one knows. How much he was going to get paid under the table, him and the others—no one knows that, either. Or at least they aren’t saying. U.S. Sand and Esther aren’t saying.”
“This included Mrs. Barrington’s property?”
“Eleanor Barrington? I think so, some of it anyway. Nothing came of it, though. That’s because someone shot the mayor in the back of his head while he was unlocking the door to his house, shot him before he could make it happen. People around here call it ‘the Conspiracy.’ There were so many suspects at the time that we didn’t even consider the militia.”
“What militia?”
“They call themselves the Red Stone Patriots. Their politics are somewhere far right of the Tea Party; preaching the anti-government gospel, all rights to the individual, that sort of thing. They’ve never been a problem, at least not until … If Esther told her brother what Mayor Franson was doing and he told the militia, he’s a member, you see … These guys, they believe that private property is sacrosanct. If they thought … I need to make a few phone calls.”
“Chief…?”
“Call me tomorrow. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
* * *
Chief McMahan moved briskly down the path, to the sidewalk, and back to City Hall. I followed at a more sedate pace, so she reached the building long before I did. I circled City Hall, heading for my car. I stopped when I came across a parking space with a sign that read ACTING MAYOR. The space was filled with an SUV badly in need of a wash and wax. I flashed on Richard III systematically eliminating his rivals for the English throne. Or was that Kevin Spacey? The thought caused me to smirk. At the same time I told myself, that’s what homicide cops do, what I used to do—question suspects who might have benefited by the victim’s untimely demise, including acting mayors. Besides, what’s the worst he could do? Throw me out?
Apparently, City Hall employees took security more seriously than the chief of police, because I had to get past three of them before I could get anywhere near the acting mayor. Along the way, I learned that he was a she—Dawn Gischler, a woman with silver hair, a puffy figure, and piercing blue eyes. She was wearing a peasant shirt, flared jeans with a wide belt, and sandals when I found her leaning on her desk, a bundle of white typing paper between her hands. She was staring at the bundle as if she were trying to set it on fire with her heat vision. I knocked on the door.
“Are you a reporter?” she asked.
“No.”
“What do you want? If it’s about U.S. Sand, the town hall meeting is scheduled to start at seven P.M. at the school auditorium. You can make your statement then.”
“None of the above.”
“Well…?”
“My name is Taylor. I’m a private investigator.”
“Oh, God. Now what?”
“I’m investigating a murder that took place last week in St. Paul, Minnesota.”
“What does that have to do with Arona, Wisconsin?”
“Probably nothing. On the other hand, it might be connected to the murder of your mayor.”
“I need this today. I really do. Oh-kay.” The acting mayor gestured at a chair in front of her desk. “Sit.”
I sat.
“What’s your name again?” Gischler asked.
I gave her a look at my license.
“Holland Taylor,” she said. “I thought Holland was a gal’s name.”
“A lot of the guys I grew up with will tell you the same thing.”
“What brings you here, Mr. Taylor?”
“As I explained to the chief—”
“That nit?” Gischler waved a hand. “Sorry. Talking out of school. Go on.”
“My killing might be connected to the Red Stone Patriots, and the Patriots might be connected—”
“Is that what Maureen told you? The county sheriff investigated the killing from here to Sunday, and he didn’t find a connection to the militia. She’s just trying to prove her worth to the community now that her job is up for review. Do you know how she got her job?”
I had no intention of answering the acting mayor’s question. I had no intention of saying anything at all. She was upset and in a mood to vent. So I let her.
“Maureen was a dispatcher, for God’s sake. The way she got her job—the mayor, Mayor Franson, hated the police department. We had a chief named Philipps. Good man. Used to work as an officer in Chicago. He was a sergeant, I think.
“One day he gets a call about a dog running loose on the property next to Franson’s place. The mayor made the call. He wanted the owner cited. Instead, Philipps gave the dog owner a warning. The mayor was upset. He said, this was in Philipps’s report, he said, ‘We’ve got two hundred and fifteen ordinances, and if these people’—his neighbors—‘if they breathe wrong I want them cited.’
“The next day, the mayor calls Philipps again, saying he wanted his neighbor cited for blowing grass clippings into the street. The chief sent the mayor a letter stating that the Arona Police Department would not become a tool in Mayor Franson’s personal vendetta against his neighbors. He sent copies of the letter to the city council and to the city attorney. The city attorney backed Philipps, and so did we.
“Next thing we know, the mayor is ordering Philipps to use city police officers as crossing guards near the school. In retaliation, Philipps gave Franson a ticket for parking in a police-only spot right here at City Hall. The mayor ordered him to tear it up. Philipps refused.
“Finally, Mayor Franson proposed at our regular Thursday meeting that the city disband the police department. The resolution caught us all completely by surprise. According to Wisconsin state law—our attorney made this clear to us—state law requires that any municipality large enough to be classified as a city must have a police department. Franson wanted to disband our police department anyway, and worry about the consequences later, meaning let’s fight this thing in court, and while we’re at it, leave Arona without police protection for what—a year? Two?
“Obviously something had to be done, and that something was replacing Chief Philipps. Who did the mayor have in mind for a replacement? Maureen McMahan, who had a law enforcement degree, who was certified to be a Wisconsin police officer, yet who didn’t have a single day of experience. Somehow, he got the votes and Maureen was in.
“You have to give her credit, though, because one of the first things she did was to investigate the mayor for misconduct in office for making the city pay for all of his personal expenses during a trip he took to Washington. Franson went ballistic. He claimed that the investigation was retaliation because he took someone else to D.C. with him instead of Maureen. He told me that the chief was trying to get revenge because he was now sleeping with someone else instead of her.
“What is wrong with people? The man was married. Maureen was married. I’m begging him, don’t do this in an open city council meeting. Franson wouldn’t listen. He said he was tired of being punished for being the mayor. That was on a Monday. By Tuesday he was dead. On Thursday they made me acting mayor until the election in November because I was the senior city council member. Isn’t life grand?”
“It worked out for you,” I said.
“You think so? Look at this.” Gischler took the sheaf of papers she had been staring at when I arrived and shook it at me. “It’s a petition started by the Red Stone Patriots demanding that the city council vote to make English the official language of Arona. I’d ignore it except that ten percent of the city voters signed the damn thing, which means I have to bring it before the council, which means all hell is going to break loose, never mind the potential legal ramifications if we adopt it. This on top of the controversy over the silica sand mines. I hate this job. I just hate it. There’s no way I’m running in the election.”
“The story you told me about Chief McMahan sleeping with the mayor, does the county sheriff know?”
“Ask him.”
“We’re not on speaking terms.”
“Guess you’re out of luck. Taylor, you’ll have to excuse me. I need to get ready for that damn meeting tonight. It’s going to be a nightmare, a real nightmare.”
“Are you planning a vote of some kind?”
“No. That comes in two weeks. Tonight we’re just giving everyone a chance to have their say. Democracy at work. God … God, I hate this job.”