“It sounds that way now, but it didn’t look quite so sinister when it happened.” Lacey darted a look at Lark’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “We even discussed whether we should call the Washington Island police and decided against it thinking it was just the owner of the cabin coming over to get something.” She glanced at Joel’s angry face and threw one hand up in the air. “I know it sounds lame now, but it didn’t then. The guy used a light on his boat and a flashlight. It wasn’t like he was trying to hide what he was doing.”
“Oh, no,” Joel said, his voice dripping sarcasm. “It doesn’t sound like he was trying to hide anything. He just took his boat over to the island at one in the morning for shits and giggles. He went into a house with a flashlight and didn’t turn on any lights because he’s got the vision of a goddamned great horned owl. Then he leaves in the same stealthy way. Why would you ever think there was something wrong?” Fortunately, they had just pulled into the Edgewater parking lot.
Lark opened his passenger door before Lacey had completely pulled into a parking space. “Why don’t we talk more about this in the morning,” he said as he got out of the SUV.
“Hold it, Romeo,” Joel said as he opened his car door. “We’re going to go upstairs and hash this out right now.” He got out of the car and slammed his door. He brushed past Lark and ran up the wooden stairs, his feet pounding on the treads. He stood by Lark’s door tapping his foot until everyone else caught up with him.
Resigned to what was to come, Lark opened the suite door. Joel stormed inside and headed for the refrigerator. He got himself a beer and threw the twist-off cap down on the counter. He took a big swig and paced back and forth in the living room while everyone else sat down. Lark had only seen him this angry one other time. Lacey was trying to think if she’d ever seen the easygoing Joel so stirred up. Russ, just along for the ride, sat down away from the other three at the bar. Joel finally quit pacing and sat down. He pulled a small notebook and a pen out of his jacket pocket and faced Lark and Lacey.
“Okay, let’s go through this again. What day was it?” He looked over at Lacey and waved his hand for her to hurry up.
“Tuesday.” She sat in the armchair, her face angry, her arms crossed over her chest. She had crossed her legs and was swinging her top leg back and forth impatiently.
“So, Wednesday around one in the morning you and Lark are out on the beach doing your Kirk Douglas–Lana Turner number when you witness a robbery.”
“No.”
“What?” he snapped, shooting her a look that would have withered most people on the spot.
“It didn’t happen like that,” she snapped back.
“Exactly how did it happen?”
“We weren’t on the beach, we were in lounge chairs. We weren’t screwing around, we were just sleeping out on the beach.”
Russ started laughing.
Joel glared at him. “Shut up or get out.”
Russ held up his hands as if to surrender.
Joel whipped his head back in Lark and Lacey’s direction. “You two need to quit screwing around and just get it over with.”
“What we do or don’t do in our private life is none of your damn business,” Lacey said.
“It is my business when you’re acting like a couple of oversexed teenagers and it starts to affect the job.” Joel shook his pen at them.
Lacey stood up and glared at Joel. “I’m not going to continue this conversation with you until you settle down. You’ve already heard the gist of it. We can finish the rest in the morning. Do you want a ride back to the White Gull or are you bunking with Lark tonight?” She headed for the door with Russ trailing behind her.
Joel closed his notebook and jammed it and his pen down in his pocket. He glared at Lark as he walked by him. “In all the years I’ve known you, this is the dumbest damn thing I’ve ever known you to do. You need to figure out what you’re doing here. We’ll talk tomorrow.” He slammed the door behind him.
Lark rubbed his face and decided to take a shower. He had just stepped under the water when the telephone rang. “Shit,” he yelled as he stormed over to the nightstand to pick it up.
“What,” he barked into the phone.
“Lark, it’s John.”
“Sorry, I thought it was someone else.”
“We heard you all come in and the rest of them leave. I thought the stairs might fall down. Are we on for golf tomorrow or are you working?”
“We’re on,” Lark said, deciding that he’d had more than enough of Joel’s crap. If he was in Big Oak in charge of these cases, golf would be the last thing on his mind. But he wasn’t. He was Joel’s hired help, and as of this moment, there was no one higher on Lark’s shit list than Joel. They agreed to meet at 8 A.M. to drive down to Sturgeon Bay for their 9:30 tee time at the Idlewild course.
Friday Morning
June 1—Edgewater Resort, Ephraim, Wisconsin
The phone awakened Lark. Each ring set off an alarm bell in his head. He groaned and rolled over to grab the receiver so the noise would quit.
“Lark, did I wake you up?” Lacey asked.
“What do you think?” Lark groaned and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The alarm clock said it was seven-thirty. He could have sworn that it was the middle of the night.
“Joel wants us to go over to Washington Island to do the investigation on Lily DuBois’s robbery.”
“Joel can go to hell.”
“I’ll pick you up in an hour so we can get on the nine-o’clock ferry.” She hung up before he could tell her he had planned on playing golf with John. He hung up and picked up his alarm clock, trying to figure out why it hadn’t gone off at 7 A.M. Disgusted, he slammed the clock down on the nightstand. The damn thing had to be set to go off. He sauntered into the kitchen to make coffee, cursing himself for being so careless as to go to bed without setting his alarm. If he’d set it, he wouldn’t have been sleeping when Lacey called and he could have avoided her and another trip to Washington Island. Once the coffee was going, he went back in the bedroom to get dressed and call John.
Ann picked up the phone on the first ring. “Lark, you’d better not be calling to cancel your golf game.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
“Who else would be calling us fifteen minutes before you guys are supposed to meet?”
“Ann, I’m so sorry about this. Lacey has commandeered me to go over to Washington Island to help her investigate another summerhouse robbery.”
“Now I’m going to have to golf with John. You’re going to owe one of us big time. You can buy the drinks at dinner tonight.”
They briefly discussed their dinner plans before they hung up. Lark was sitting in the garden being stared down by a female mallard on her nest when Lacey pulled up. He got in her SUV without comment. They were halfway to Sister Bay before Lacey spoke.
“I’m sorry about Joel’s behavior last night. We had it out last night and he’s going to apologize when he sees you.”
Lark waved away her comments. “Let’s move on and discuss what we’re doing on Washington Island. I want to get over and back as soon as possible.”
“Joel got an update on Daisy this morning. She’s still intubated and sedated, but she does have some purposeful movement to painful stimuli. The doctor says that’s a positive sign.”
“With our luck she’ll probably wake up and have no memory of who shot her.”
“Don’t even think that way.” Lacey slowed down for the curves along Northport Road. “Joel sent that list of business owners you gave him to Wausau last night. He wants to narrow down the investigation to anyone who has prior arrests for assault or robbery.”
“Good idea, otherwise you guys could still be up here on Labor Day.”
“He’s going to meet us at the Edgewater as soon as we get back to go over our assignments for the afternoon.”
They continued to discuss the investigation until they pulled up to the ferry line. Several cars were already
in line. Lacey went to buy their tickets and Lark went to the Northport Pier Restaurant to get them some breakfast. She was back in the car when he returned with two doughnuts and a coffee for each of them.
The ferry pulled out of the pier exactly at 9 A.M. As they had done on their last trip, they got out of the car and leaned against the back rail of the ferry as it pulled away from shore.
They couldn’t have wished for a more beautiful day. The sun shimmered on the calm, gray waters of Lake Michigan. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Dozens of white gulls followed the ferry, diving into the waves from the wake. The ride across Death’s Door was always windy, but the midseventies temperature made them comfortable despite the breeze that whipped Lacey’s hair and their windbreakers back behind them.
They stood quietly at the rail until Washington Island came into view. They got back in the car and sat in companionable silence until they disembarked from the ferry. John Seaman, a Washington Island police officer, met them at the dock.
Officer Seaman explained that Lily had been so upset when she had discovered that her cottage had been broken into that she had insisted on going back to the mainland. After taking her statement, the Washington Island police had taken her back to Gills Rock on their police boat. Lily had been picked up by her brother-in-law and had given them Simon and Rose Gradoute’s number in case they needed to contact her. The officer gave Lark and Lacey a copy of Lily’s statement and then led the way to Lily’s place.
Just as they’d thought, the cottage was the one just down the road from the Horizon Resort. The cottage’s dock was the one they had seen the boat pull up to in the middle of the night.
Officer Seaman unlocked the front door and walked them through the house, showing them the empty china cupboard that had housed Lily’s collection of majolica plates. Fingerprint dust was the telltale sign that the house had already been processed by the state police evidence technicians. Lily had not been able to find anything else missing. The house had been locked when she got there and she’d had no idea anyone else had been there until she noticed her empty china cupboard.
The cottage was neat as a pin, just like the other houses that had been burglarized. White sheets still covered the furniture in the three upstairs bedrooms. The sheets from the furniture in the living room, which faced the beach, had been removed and folded neatly on one of the ottomans. Six of the eight dining room chairs were still covered. The sheets from the table and two of the chairs were piled haphazardly on the floor in the corner of the dining room. Heavy, lined curtains hung at the living and dining room windows, explaining why there hadn’t been any light visible from the house when Lark and Lacey had watched someone enter it on Tuesday night.
Without Lily to question, there wasn’t much Lark and Lacey could do once they’d gone through the house. They thanked Officer Seaman for his assistance and drove back to the ferry. Lark read Lily’s statement during the drive back to the pier.
“Lily’s majolica plates were insured. The insurance company has photographs and appraisals on each one.”
“We’ll have to add these to the list Russ is researching on the Web.”
Lark moved on to the police report. “Wow. The police report lists the value of the plates at twelve to fifteen thousand.”
“Five hundred bucks a plate. Sounds like the admission to a political fund-raising dinner.”
“This was a big fat bust,” Lark said as he folded up the police report.
“We’ve spent the morning doing the same old thing,” Lacey said. “I’m sick and tired of following this prick around and watching him make another high-dollar, low-labor haul.”
“That’s the problem. We’re not following him, he’s leading us around like we have rings in our noses.”
They got to the pier fifteen minutes before the 11 A.M. ferry departure and lined up behind four other cars. They had just enough time to grab a soda and call Joel and set up an appointment to meet at the Old Post Office Restaurant before they boarded the ferry.
The ride back to Northport helped them both understand why the channel was called Death’s Door. They departed Washington Island standing in their usual spot at the back of the ferry, but the waves were so high they were getting wet from the spray. The water was so rough that it was nearly impossible to believe that two hours earlier they had traveled across tranquil waters. They went back to Lacey’s SUV to wait out the crossing. The ferry rocked back and forth like a cradle, causing Lark and Lacey to hang on to their armrests and gulp air to keep from losing their stomachs.
They spoke little as they pulled off the ferry and drove south to Ephraim. They were still pale and nauseated when they walked into the restaurant to meet Joel. Unfortunately, Joel wasn’t alone. He waved them over to the table where he was sitting with Sheriff Skewski.
“We’ve already given our orders,” Joel said, as he signaled the young, blond-haired waitress back to their table.
Lark and Lacey waved away the menus. They each ordered ginger ale in hopes that it would settle their stomachs.
“What’s wrong with you two?” Joel asked
“Did you just get off the ferry?” Skewski asked.
Lacey nodded.
“It sucks to be seasick.” Skewski patted her hand. “It’ll pass in about an hour.”
The waitress delivered their cheeseburgers and fries. Skewski took a bite and pointed to the three rings of keys lying on the table.
“We’ve figured out what most of the keys go to. These two rings were found in Paul Larsen’s golf bag.” He pointed down at the table. “This one is pretty standard stuff.” He picked up one of the key rings and held up each key as he described it. “Key to the front door of the gatehouse in Ephraim, key to the garage in Ephraim, key to Larsen’s Land Rover.” He laid that set on the table and picked up the other ring from the golf bag. “This set is a different story. There’s an old safe key on here. We found an old wall safe built into the closet of the master bedroom in the gatehouse. One of the keys on this ring fits it. It was empty. The safe was manufactured in the sixties and we think Larsen’s grandmother must have had it put in.” He put the ring down.
“Those other two keys look like safety-deposit-box keys,” Joel said, nudging one of the smaller keys with his finger.
“We think so too. They have numbers on them but nothing else to identify what bank they came from,” Skewski said. “We’re going to check every bank in Door County to see if either one of these keys belongs to a box up here.”
“We’d better hope they do. Otherwise we’ll have to repeat the search in Chicago. I don’t even want to think about that nightmare. I’ve got enough problems.” Joel took a bite of his cheeseburger.
Skewski picked up the third ring. “This is the key ring we found by his coffeepot in the gatehouse.” He held up each key as he talked about it. “These are his Chicago keys. Business front-door key, his office key, his desk key, car key, and his house key. All pretty routine.”
“I spent the morning interviewing two more men on the list of people who had problems with Paul Larsen’s Door County Zoning Board decisions,” Joel said. “A dairy farmer from Baileys Harbor and the owner of an orchard just south of Egg Harbor. The both have solid alibis for Larsen’s accident.”
“We’re going nowhere fast,” Lacey said.
Joel nodded. “Your Mr. Gorean. The guy with the coin collection from Washington Island.”
Lacey cocked her eyebrows and Joel noticed that the color was returning to her cheeks.
“His wife has an alibi. She was in Indianapolis at a quilt show.” Joel dipped one of his fries in ketchup. “She swears her ex staged the robbery to get rid of the Hockney painting.”
“He is a piece of work, but I don’t think he’s that devious,” Lark said. “I might buy that if the painting was the only thing missing, but he’s way too upset about his coin collection.”
Joel finished the last of his fries. “I’m beginning to wonder if we will ever get this sorted out.”
“The pieces will eventually fall into place,” Skewski said as he scooped the key rings back into the evidence bag and set them off to the side. He smiled at Lacey and attacked the rest of his burger and fries with gusto.
Once the table was cleared, Joel gave them each a computer printout listing the names of five Door County business owners who had criminal records. They divvied up the names. Lacey agreed to interview the Baileys Harbor restaurant owner and the Sister Bay antique-shop owner with burglary convictions. Lark took the three bar owners in Ellison Bay and Fish Creek who had been arrested for assault. Joel was driving to Sturgeon Bay to interview two more farmers on the list of people who had issues with Larsen’s zoning board decisions.
Friday Evening
June 1—Sister Bay, Wisconsin
Lacey walked into the Old Times Old Treasures antique shop and realized she knew nothing about the many toys and pieces of glass that sat on the shelves lining every bit of the shop’s wall space. She pulled her purse into her side as she threaded her way through a maze of small pieces of furniture topped with what she called clutter, what Ann would have called antiques. The last thing she wanted was to have to buy something she broke. She noted that she was the only person in the store. This didn’t surprise her since no other cars were in the parking lot.
The man standing at the counter looked a bit like Santa Claus. He had a full head of white hair and a short, neatly trimmed white beard. He stood in front of a wall of sparkling crystal glassware. Rainbows of color reflected onto the walls as the lights from the room caught a display of cut glass.
“Are you Mr. Fred Johnson?” Lacey asked as she picked her way to the counter.
“Sure am. What can I help you with, young lady?” His blue eyes twinkled into hers as his face creased into a welcoming smile.
Lacey’s instincts told her this man was harmless but she had been fooled before. She gave him a perfunctory smile and put her purse on the old glass case he was standing behind. She found her identification near the top of her purse and pulled it out. He leaned over the counter as she flipped it open and held it out for him to see. His smile faded like the last rays at sunset.
Death at the Door Page 14