Fifteen

Roelke forced himself to wait until an hour after opening to present himself at the Bar. He wanted to see the place busy, the workers preoccupied. He followed a noisy group of construction workers into the tavern. Kip was behind the bar. The brunette waitress he’d seen the day before plunged from the kitchen with a tray of red plastic baskets holding burgers and fries.

No blonde. No Erin.

Roelke walked to the kitchen door, startling a Latino man working at the sizzling grill. “De nada,” Roelke said. He checked the single bathroom. The door was open, the room empty.

No Erin.

“Hey, Roelke,” Kip called from behind the bar.

Roelke took a stool at one end of the polished expanse, away from other customers. Kip finished filling three mugs for the brunette before grabbing a towel to wipe his hands and walking over to Roelke. “What’s up?”

“Where’s the other waitress I saw here yesterday? The blonde?”

Something in Kip’s face changed. It was almost imperceptible, but Roelke saw the shift. “Why do you care?” the bartender asked.

“I think she’s an old friend of mine. Just wanted to say hi.”

“Joanie doesn’t work here anymore.”

Damn. “Since when?”

“Since last night. The end of the shift she comes to me, says she’s got to quit.”

“That’s what she said? Exactly? ‘I’ve got to quit’?”

Kip looked down and seemed startled to see that he was still drying his hands. He tossed the towel beneath the bar. “Yeah. That’s exactly what she said. Completely out of the blue.”

“Kip!” the brunette—Danielle—called impatiently. “Two more Millers.”

Left alone, Roelke stared numbly at the wall. Had Erin quit because of him? But—why?

Roelke had met Erin Litkowski only once: the night her husband ignored his restraining order and tried to kick in her door. Since the husband was gone by the time Roelke arrived, there hadn’t been a whole lot he could do. The call had come in the middle of a very busy shift, and when a woman had come to see him at the station a week later and identified herself as Erin Litkowski’s sister, Roelke—to his shame—hadn’t been able to summon a mental picture of the woman.

Then the sister pressed the photograph into his hands and explained that Erin had fled Wisconsin. “Thank you for trying to help. Erin said you were kind.” Roelke had always regretted that he hadn’t been able to do more. The only salve had been those final words: “Erin said you were kind.”

If that’s so, Roelke thought, why would she run again only after I show up?

He was still trying to figure that out when Kip returned. “Sorry you missed your friend,” he said. “Can I get you something to drink?”

Roelke stared at Kip’s right eye. “I don’t want anything to drink, Kip. I want to know what’s going on.”

Kip met his gaze without blinking. “Nothing’s going on.”

“Bullshit!” Roelke’s curse was a small explosion. A woman at the nearest table turned her head with a disapproving frown. Roelke struggled to control both his voice and his growing fury. He leaned closer. “C’mon, Kip, it’s me. I’m off duty. Tell me what you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Roelke reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the photograph of Erin Litkowski. “Look familiar?”

Kip studied the photo. “There’s a resemblance, but I don’t think it’s the same girl.”

“Well, I do.” Roelke slipped it away again. “I also think that Rick Almirez dashed off his beat on Saturday morning between one a.m. and one forty-five and came here, which means you lied to me yesterday.”

“Roelke—”

“And, I think those two things are connected.”

“Roelke!” Kip’s voice was low, but sharp. “Shut your mouth.”

The brunette was back at the bar. “Kip?”

“Just a minute,” he called, his gaze never leaving Roelke’s. Then he lowered his voice again. “Leave. Now. I do not want you back in my bar. You got that?”

Roelke blinked. “You don’t want—what?”

“You heard me. This is my bar, and I decided a long time ago that I would not take crap from anybody. Get up, walk out of here, and do not come back.”

The words make me quivered on the very tip of Roelke’s tongue. He slowly rose to his feet and clenched his fists. Rick was dead, Erin was in Milwaukee, and people were lying.

He thought, I have—had—it. He needed to punch somebody. He didn’t really want to punch Kip, but right that moment, he’d do.

Before Chloe could ask Sister Mary Jude more questions about the mill’s residents, someone shouted, “We’re not cops!” A few moments later Owen and Jay emerged from the shadows. “Hey, ladies,” Jay said. He gave Chloe a quizzical glance. “I thought you’d gone home.”

“I came back.”

“Have you talked to Ariel today?” Owen asked.

“I called her at work a little while ago to let her know I’d arrived.” She left it at that, since the men didn’t seem to know that Ariel had been arrested and released. “Anything new from the police?”

Owen and Jay exchanged a sober glance. Jay said, “Still nothing. It seems like we should know something by now.”

Chloe was still hoping that despite the bizarre entombment, the cause of Dr. Whyte’s death was natural. In the brooding stillness, she sensed listeners in the shadows. A shiver flicked over her skin.

O-kay, enough of this. “Well, I’m sure the police will find answers soon,” she said briskly. “In the meantime, I’m here to help Ariel develop ideas for the interpretive plan. You guys want to weigh in on educational themes, stuff like that?”

“I’d focus on the heyday for the Minneapolis milling industry,” Owen said. “This city led the world in flour production between 1880 and 1930. All the technology was perfected during that era. It was the beginning of the end for rural gristmills.”

Jay nodded. “All of the mill structures still standing date to that period, and there’s still a lot we can use.” He patted an iron beam fondly. “We’ve got the engine house and rail corridor, grain elevators, a wheat house with nine storage bins, and of course the milling rooms and machinery. It will take decades and dollars to get everything stabilized, but with even a small portion made accessible, we’ll have plenty to interpret.”

“I think you’re overlooking something.”

Chloe had almost forgotten Sister Mary Jude. “What do you mean?”

“I hope you’ll include the entire continuum,” the nun said. “The mill’s story didn’t end in 1930, or even the day it shut down in 1965. There are still people here. Their stories matter, too.”

“Good point,” Chloe told Mary quietly. “I’ll suggest to Ariel that recent history is part of the plan.”

“That’s all I ask.” Mary nodded. “Since you three obviously have work to do, I’ll leave you to it.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Jay said. His voice was casual, but Chloe didn’t miss the undercurrent. Jay didn’t want Mary walking alone through the mill’s dark corridors.

The nun didn’t miss that either. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’ve been visiting this mill for years.”

Jay picked up her baskets. Sister Mary Jude looked exasperated. Jay returned her gaze, imperturbable. After a moment the stiffness left her shoulders, and she relented. “Very well. I suppose an escort isn’t a terrible idea.”

Chloe and Owen watched them walk away. “She’s right,” Owen said. “We need to tell the story of all the people who have spent time here.”

I do like this guy, Chloe thought. She hoped Owen would follow his instincts and ask Ariel out.

As if reading her mind Owen asked, “So, how did Ariel sound when you talked to her earlier?”

Chloe considered her response carefully. “Shaky, to be honest.”

Owen frowned. “I wish her brother didn’t live in Duluth. I met him on Friday, and he seemed like a stand-up guy.”

“Good thing she has friends in the Cities who care, too.”

“Yeah.” Owen smiled.

Chloe wanted to steer the conversation away from Ariel. “It’s been fun to help with the interpretive proposal. The mill represents a phenomenal opportunity. Even historically, the conversation can’t be just about process. It’s about people.”

“Jobs in the flour mills gave many people a chance to move from poverty to middle class,” Owen said. “Wages were better here than at nearby factories, but the work could be brutal, especially in the early years. I think part of the story has to be the dangers workers faced.”

“You mentioned the problem with workers getting trapped in grain.”

“Mind if we walk while we talk? I’ve been working on the dust collectors, up on the eighth floor.”

“Sure!” Chloe said with as much false cheer as she could find. Her first foray to the eighth floor hadn’t ended well.

Owen led the way back to the stairs and they began the climb. “Actually, the mill itself was a single machine.”

Chloe figured she better participate in the conversation now, before she was gasping for breath. “A single machine?”

“The vibrations were so great that the builders designed two structures, with free-standing wooden walls inside the limestone exterior to absorb the movement.” They rounded a corner and started up the next flight of steps. “I wish I could go back in time and see it, just for a few moments,” Owen added wistfully. “Everything was connected. Mechanics replaced belts on the fly, without shutting anything down.”

“Seriously?” The thought made Chloe’s toes curl.

“And believe me, the machinery was powerful enough to chew up anyone who got distracted for even a second. But all the dangers weren’t mechanical. There was also the dust.”

“Dust?”

“I’ll show you.”

They wound their way up several more floors. When they emerged from the stairwell, Owen flashed his light on a labyrinth of pipes and gears overhead. The beam illuminated a rainbow of graffiti that defied the gloom too—a solar system near the floor, as if created by a child; stick figures soaring near the ceiling, as if painted by a giant; elaborate initials proclaiming at least transitory occupation of the space.

Owen gestured toward several large funnel-shaped things. “Those are dust collectors. Nobody paid much attention to the build-up of flour dust in those early days, but it was an enormous danger. Did you know that flour dust is flammable?”

“My grandfather always reminded my grandmother not to put flour sacks into the burn barrel, back in the days when people burned their trash.”

“In a burn barrel, a bit of flour dust would cause some popping. The starch molecules in flour expand rapidly in the presence of heat. You know this building isn’t the original mill, right?”

“Um … I’m not sure I did know that.” Chloe thought back to her first tour of the mill, abruptly aborted when Jay discovered Dr. Whyte’s body. “What happened to the first mill building? Did it burn down?”

“No,” Owen said soberly. “It exploded.”