“Maybe she did or said something to her father she regrets.”
“Her brothers each have an arm around her.”
“They are all good kids. And now they can get on with their lives, not worrying what their father is up to.”
“No one else has joined the party, so we best get back to work on phone records.”
“What about a motion-detector camera, pointing at Leder’s grave?”
“What about it?”
“I’d be curious to see who stops by in the next week or so.”
“You mean to spit on his grave?”
“Maybe.”
Smoke gave the steering wheel a tap. “Little lady, you might be on to something. Whoever helped finish off Gage Leder may enjoy visiting his final resting place.”
We found Edberg in our war room, poring over records and circling numbers. “Back already?” he said when we joined him.
“It took all of thirteen minutes for the service,” I said.
Bob shook his head. “That’s about how long mine will be, if I have anything to say about it.”
Smoke’s phone rang. He spoke for a minute then disconnected. “Hastings didn’t find any pings for the past month on the number we had for Leder. He offered to go back the two to three months, see what he could find, but what’s the point? We need Leder’s location the days before he died.”
Bob stood up. “I’ll go check to see if any more records are in.”
“Sure. When you get back, we’ll take a look at the loose ends. It seems like the list keeps growing. And I’m thinking Twardy will let us borrow a couple of secretaries to help us with these records.”
“Good idea.”
“On second thought, let’s meet in the sheriff’s office, see if we can sit down with him for a half hour and take a look at the long punch list we keep adding to.”
Sheriff Twardy pushed aside his stack of paperwork and said our business was more important. Edberg, Smoke, and I all pulled chairs close to his desk and sat down. I gave the sheriff a report on the brief funeral service. He pursed his mouth and shook his head.
Smoke flipped over two sheets on his legal pad. “Sheriff, for every step we take forward, it seems like we take two steps back.”
“And all we can take is one step at a time. What have you got, and what do you need?”
“I read Detective Conley’s report on Leder’s past employers, past co-workers. Some liked him, some didn’t, but nothing there to indicate any real ill will.”
“That was my conclusion, also,” Twardy said.
“We’ve got to ask Nora, wife two, and Bridget, wife four, why they failed to tell us they went to the same church as Tonya, and that their daughters were in the same youth group with Tonya. The one Gage Leder helped lead a few years back.”
“Say what?”
Smoke gave Twardy a summary of what he had found out at Peace Lutheran Church. The sheriff quietly tapped his pen through Smoke’s entire story. “I’ll reserve judgment, but the word hypocrite comes to mind.”
“That’s a given.”
“I can talk to Nora and Bridget,” I said.
“Good.” He made a check on his paper. “As a matter of formality, I want to verify that Sheila Walker, wife one, was in South Dakota when Leder died.”
“I’ll do that,” Edberg said.
“Got it.” Smoke made another check. “I’m bothered that Leder went through money left and right, but we haven’t been able to locate any bank records. Zip. Tonya wrote out the checks for the household expenses.”
“Quite the deal when you get other people to pay your bills,” Twardy said.
“But no one seems to know what he spent money on. We have a possible lead. He may have been helping to support a woman.”
Twardy drummed his fingers. “What’s that about?”
“Don’t know. As soon as we can connect with her, we’ll ask her. Her landlord will open her door for us if she won’t.” Smoke paused to read. “Another thing, Tonya said Leder had a post office box, but we couldn’t locate one in the entire county.”
“Maybe it’s outside Winnebago County,” Twardy said.
“Smoke, it just occurred to me. Maybe it wasn’t at an actual post office. You know, they have mail boxes at the UPS stores,” I said.
“Now that’s thinking outside the box.” He grinned at his pun then jotted it down. “We’re waiting on the test results of all the snowshoes we hauled down to the BCA. I checked and they should be done by Tuesday of next week.”
“That’s not bad for how backlogged they are,” Twardy said.
Smoke nodded. “Except when you want everything yesterday. A couple of things. Can you spare a couple of secretaries to help us go through the phone records? We’re still missing a few that will hopefully come through today, maybe tomorrow, but we got enough to keep us plenty busy.”
“I’ll check with Dina.” He looked at his watch. “What time do you need ‘em?”
Smoke consulted his own watch. “It’s almost eleven. We’ll have nearly an hour to work before lunch if we start now.”
“Okay.”
“And the last thing—for now at least—Aleckson suggested we put a camera out by Leder’s grave, catch a glimpse of who stops by there.”
The sheriff scratched his chin as he thought. “What kind of camera? One that’s activated by motion? Still shots that take a picture every few seconds? Video?”
“What about one of those new wallet-size cameras we’ve got, the ones with the LED lights? They’re wireless and we could hook it up to a computer where you could watch it. You can also set it up to record,” I said.
The three men all nodded.
“I like it,” the sheriff said.
“It’d be easy to attach it, either to a tree or a light pole. A light pole might be better. Someone might notice the little light in the camera if they’re there at night, and wonder why it’s coming from a tree,” Smoke said.
Twardy looked from me to Bob. “Sergeant, why don’t you take Edberg to the cemetery, show him where you want the camera, and he can set it up when the coast is clear.”
Bob and I said “Okay” at the same time.
“Anything else?”
“That should do it for now,” Smoke said.
The two secretaries Dina chose followed Smoke in the direction of the conference room we were using, and Edberg and I raided the equipment storeroom in search of a surveillance camera. I reached for one on the second shelf.
“Holy smokes, I’m glad you know what you’re looking for,” Bob said as he surveyed the shelves filled with an array of cameras, monitoring devices, and laptop computers.
“I put one outside my garage last month after my car got keyed. It’s pretty slick. I can access it remotely if I want to, look to see if anyone’s sitting in my driveway.”
“That is slick.”
I handed the camera and mounting kit to Bob, and filled out the required form which asked for the piece of equipment I was taking, my name, and the date. “We’re all set.”
I rode with Bob in his squad car to Lakeside Cemetery. Leder’s body had been lowered into the ground and covered with dirt. A single bouquet of flowers, tied together with a ribbon with word the ‘Dad’ printed on it lay near the center of the mound. Bob and I were the only living creatures around so we could complete our task without drawing anyone’s attention.
“Looks like there’s no time like the present.” I pointed the way to Leder’s grave.
“It’s the newest grave with the freshest flowers lying on it, but otherwise it may be hard for a guy to find,” Edberg said.
“His parents’ graves are next to it, so it’s easy that way. Someone looking for it can read their headstone and figure it out.”
“That’s true.” He looked around. “So, where’s a good place?”
I walked around, checking angles and inconspicuous spots. “What do you think?”
“Since there isn’t a light pole with a good view c
lose enough, I’d say the crook in that pine tree looks fine to me. And I don’t need a ladder to mount it.”
“Go for it.” I kept watch while Bob stretched his long arms to the seven-foot point, and screwed the equipment in place. The task took mere minutes. We studied the camera and its angle and called it good.
“Are we all set?” Bob said.
“Almost. I have a quick stop to make as long as we’re here.” My Grandmother Brandt’s grave was in the next section, and I jogged over and checked on the mini flowerbed my mother had planted next to her stone. The pansies and sweet alyssum were thriving and would make Gram happy if she could see them. I bent low and quietly said, “Mom is engaged! And we’re taking good care of Gramps. Rest well. I gotta go, Edberg is waiting for me. I love you.” I jogged back to Edberg’s squad car and climbed in. He was already inside. “My grandmother is over there.”
Edberg nodded, shifted into gear, and slowly drove away. My work cell rang, reminding me I had to get a new personal phone. “Hi, Eric.”
“Hello, Corinne. Are you going to be able to break away for lunch?”
I glanced at my watch. Eleven-forty-two. “Sure, I can do that. What time and where?”
“How about The Sandwich Shoppe? Is twelve too soon?”
“That should be fine. I’m a few minutes away from the courthouse. After I check on some things, I’ll meet you there.” When I hung up I told Bob, “You’re welcome to join us.”
“Thanks, but I brought my lunch.”
Edberg and I found the crew diligently working in our temporary war room, and exchanged updates with Smoke. “I called Leanne Gosser again, and she’s still not picking up, so I talked with Landlord Larry, and he said he’d be back at the apartment building by four. He has a part-time job a few days a week.”
“Okay, good.” I pointed at the piles of records and noticed a number of circles. “Looks like you’re making progress here.”
“About ready to start slapping some dates and times on the board for comparison. We’ll plug in our missing numbers if we get any matches to the ones we’ve got.”
“You’re breaking for lunch at noon?”
Smoke glanced up at the wall clock. “Yeah, and it’s about that time.”
“I’m meeting Eric.” I looked from Smoke to Trudy and Kate. “Anyone’s welcome to join us.” They all had other plans. “All right then, I’ll see you back here later. After lunch, I’ll talk with Nora and Bridget to ask them about church and the youth group.”
Smoke nodded. “Good.”
The Sandwich Shoppe was one of my favorite places for lunch, and noon was the worst time to be there. I arrived before Eric and was near the front of the line—prepared to order for him—when he excused himself past a dozen or so people to reach me.
“This is one busy place,” he said, holding my eyes with his.
I smiled and patted his arm. “It’s okay, it’s worth it.”
“In more ways than one.”
“More ways than one?”
“It’ll always be a special place for me. It’s where we shared our first meal together.”
My face grew warm, and I willed myself to stop before I broke into a full-fledged blush. It was silly. There was no reason to be embarrassed. Prior to the day we had our first lunch there, following a team building exercise, Eric had been barely civil to me. I thought it was because he couldn’t stand me, but it turned out he was, in his words, “awed by me,” and thought I was “quite beautiful.” I turned red when he’d said it, and whenever I brought the memory to mind after that.
Eric leaned close to me, and I felt his breath on my cheek. “You are so sexy when you blush.”
I was getting sexier by the minute. “Stop it,” I whispered.
He grinned and gave me a small nudge. My friend Sara thought Eric looked like a young and more handsome Harrison Ford. Eric had hazel eyes, like Ford, and a similar face shape, but his nose was narrower, and there was no scar on his chin.
“Our turn,” he said.
We gave our soup and sandwich order to the clerk, then wiggled our way through the crowd to a table against the back wall. My preferred spot in the house. I liked being able to see the whole room. When my name was called, I rose, but Eric put his hand on mine, “I’ll get it.” He returned with our tray and we talked as we sorted his food from mine. “Any good leads yet on your field find case?”
“So far they seem to be mostly bad ones.” I took a bite of my sandwich.
“Bad ones, huh?”
“We’re not moving forward very fast, which is frustrating. When you have a pool of potential suspects as big as Bison Lake, it takes a long time to sort it all out. I’ve got to pay visits to a couple of people today and ask why neither one of them disclosed something that may or may not be important.”
He nodded. “People like to hold onto their secrets. So you’ll be on special duty for the foreseeable future?”
“At least through this week. Hopefully the things we’re working on will give us the answers we need to hone in on the right people soon, and the same thing goes for the results on evidence we sent to the BCA. I kind of like the Monday through Friday schedule, but I miss patrolling, too.”
“When you get back on the road, I’m looking forward to my ride-along. I want to see what you do, the calls you get.”
“Friday and Saturday nights are usually the busiest, but I’ve had some wild Wednesdays. And Sundays when couples have been together all weekend, maybe drinking too much, can get busy with domestic disputes.”
“A Friday or Saturday is best for me, in case it gets to be late, but any day is fine.”
It was a few minutes after one when I walked into Nora Leder’s office in human services. The stacks of paperwork on her desk were almost as high as the ones in our war room. “I can see you’re busy, but I need a minute of your time.”
“Oh. Okay.” Her face was grim.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d be here, after going to the funeral this morning.”
Nora’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t see you there.”
“I stopped by briefly. Small group.”
“I only went there for my daughter.”
“That’s understandable. How’s she doing?”
“She’ll be fine. She moved back home for the summer, and it’s good to have her here again.”
“She’s part of the reason I’m here.” Nora’s mouth turned down slightly. “I wanted to ask you about Peace Lutheran Church and why you didn’t mention that Tonya and Bridget and you are all members there.”
That caught Nora off guard. “I didn’t think of it as being important.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well. Bridget and Lea joined our church after Morgan and Lea became friends. We have a lot more for youth than they had at the church they belonged to. And they stayed, even after Bridget’s whole marriage fiasco to Gage.”
“You said you knew of Tonya, but there was more to it than that, wasn’t there? She was in the youth group with Morgan and Lea, and Gage was one of the leaders for a year.”
She looked down. “Yes. Embarrassing, isn’t it?”
“Did that cause any disputes between you?”
“I avoided Gage. I didn’t know Bridget well, and I didn’t know much of anything about Tonya. I still don’t.”
“What about Rennie? You trust her enough to let your daughter spend spring breaks with her.”
“She’d do anything for Morgan.”
“Anything?”
“It’s just an expression.”
“Is there anything else you’ve forgotten to tell me?”
She blinked and held her eyes shut for a second, like she was hoping the question hanging in the air would disappear when she opened her eyes again. She finally looked at me. “No.”
I stopped by the conference room on my way from Nora’s office in human services to the sheriff’s department. Trudy and Kate, our loaners from the sheriff’s secretarial pool, were bent over t
he tables, running their pens down the long lists of calls on the sheets in front of them, glancing up at the white board every few seconds to cross-reference the numbers.
“We’re all getting a serious case of eyestrain,” Smoke said when I asked how it was going.
“I can see why.” I relayed what I’d learned from Nora.
“I’m going through her cell records now. She phoned Rennie a few times over the past months, which seems reasonable, given the relationship Morgan has with her.”
“And that Morgan was with Rennie for a week in April.”
“True. Edberg worked with IT, and they got the camera hooked up. It’s in communications, and if they notice any action worth watching, they’ll let us know. We’ll be able to log in to watch if we’d like to.”
“Cool. I know it’s a long shot—”
“But it’s worth a try.”
“I’m heading over to see Bridget Regan now, and get her take on the church youth group deal.”
Edberg nodded. Trudy and Kate were intent on their work and didn’t appear to hear me. Smoke waved. “See you later.”
Bridget was with a student, so I waited in the hallway for her to finish. When the young man walked past me, I scooted into the office. “Ms. Regan?”
“Oh! Sergeant.”
“I didn’t mean to startle you. I have a couple more questions.”
“Really? About what?”
“About your church.”
“My church?”
“We found it a little curious you joined the same church as Nora Leder so your daughters could be in youth group together—the same group Gage helped lead for a year. But you acted like you barely know Nora.”
“Well, I didn’t see the importance, I guess.”
“Sometimes what people don’t say says a lot.”
“Oh, well Nora and I never socialized, barely ever talked about anything besides our daughters’ activities.”
The Noding Field Mystery Page 17