Death Stalks Door County

by Patricia Skalka

  The ranger had slept poorly. Beck’s assurance that nothing would go wrong had not diminished his concerns. He was sure the killer would strike again but couldn’t predict where and when. The regatta was a prime target.

  A throng of spectators jostled past Cubiak. And still the boats kept coming. Their combined grandeur reminded him of Paradise Harbor.

  It was a plan spawned by arrogance and driven by ugly ambition. Beck said that folks in Door County didn’t mess with tradition. Maybe not, Cubiak thought, maybe some like Beck just plotted to destroy it. Cubiak knew he could never be part of the scheme. After the festival, he’d work with Jocko to try and stop Beck, whatever it took.

  A sudden light breeze carried snatches of conversation to shore. Cubiak listened to the mostly male voices, laced with bravado. The race kicked off day three of the festival. Boats competed for prize money, bragging rights, and trophies. Thirty vessels, including one flying the flag of Beck Industries, were registered for the event. The route ran north from Ephraim, around the tip of the peninsula through Death’s Door, and then down the Lake Michigan side to Baileys Harbor. It was the reverse of the run Ruby had described after dinner on Tuesday. Shading his eyes, Cubiak followed one of the mighty boats as it jockeyed into position at the starting line. He could imagine a young Ruby on the deck, the others as well: Beck, Dutch, Eloise.

  Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, where Cubiak had grown up, was less than a twenty-minute bike ride from Lake Michigan, but he had never been out on the water until he was an adult and could afford to treat Lauren to a dinner cruise. He’d expected so much from the outing. The view of the city had been stunning, but the boating experience was disappointing. The cruise ship was large and impersonal. From a deck three stories above the water, he looked down and imagined himself on a sailboat, close to the waves and working with the wind.

  He envied those readying for the race. And he hoped that Beck was right, that nothing would go wrong.

  At sunup, Cubiak had rendezvoused with Halverson to assign the sheriff ’s deputies to their stations. Those with sea legs were posted on board a half-dozen power craft that would escort the racers through the course. The rest patrolled the peninsula. Given the miles of wooded cliff on the Green Bay side and open shore along the lake, it was hardly a satisfactory arrangement.

  “You worry too much,” Halverson said, echoing Beck. To anyone who would listen, the sheriff bragged about the bikers he’d arrested before the start of the festival, implying that he had the situation well under control. Any additional security measures were merely for show.

  At seven, the starter’s pistol popped. As the boats swept past the starting point, the crowd cheered. Wrapped in a colorful cloud of billowing sails that bit the wind, the vessels flew toward the deep water. For the landlubbers, there was nothing to do but turn around and walk back to town.

  Following the waterfront roads, Cubiak tracked the race from the jeep. More often than he liked, his view was blocked by patches of forest, but occasionally he glimpsed the boats and felt his spirits lift at the spectacle.

  The lead boat crossed the finish line at 8:20. A new record. Cubiak lingered on the sidelines as the victorious crew hauled down the sails and made their way to shore. They were handsome, rugged, wealthy men, the kind who took winning for granted. Did they even notice him, the working stiff in the brown uniform? The guy who was supposed to keep them safe from harm? Probably not, he thought. People like him were invisible until they were needed. Cubiak tossed his empty coffee cup and reversed out of the lot.

  Early that afternoon, Cubiak pushed through the door at sheriff ’s headquarters. He had come to question Petey Kingovich. From the beginning he thought the man’s quick arrest was a convenient ploy to assuage the locals and keep the festival on track. Perhaps there’d been more to it. Maybe Petey knew something about Beck’s plans that Beck didn’t want blabbed around. Encouraging Halverson to put the younger Kingovich behind bars was a sure way to keep him isolated and out of touch.

  Halverson was none too happy to see Cubiak. “I don’t have to do this,” he protested as he got to his feet.

  “Yes, you do.”

  The sheriff kept his own counsel as he led the ranger across the lobby and through a series of heavy metal doors to the jail. A one-way glass wall separated the command center from the two-tiered pod of cells where a dozen inmates in bright orange garb played cards or watched TV in the lower-level common area. “Domestic abuse, drunk and disorderly, theft, you name it,” Halverson said. Kingovich was housed in a separate area for recalcitrant prisoners.

  “Visitor, asshole,” Halverson intoned as the cell door swung open. “Twenty minutes,” he said as he swiveled aside and let Cubiak pass.

  Petey lay stretched out on the bunk, arms behind his head. A reclining scarecrow, he appeared to be taking a detailed census of indentations in the off-white acoustic ceiling tiles.

  Cubiak leaned into his view. “I’m probably the only person within a hundred miles not ready to string you up for the murder of Alice Jones. If you’ve got more than two brain cells rubbing together inside that thick skull, you’ll talk to me.”

  He pulled back and let Petey think things over. After a few minutes, the young man sat up and folded his legs yoga style on the thin mattress. Face blank. Eyes flicking contempt and trained on Cubiak.

  “You had opportunity, but no motive as far as is obvious. The two usually go together. Maybe you know someone who had them both.”

  No reaction.

  “The axe yours?”

  Nothing.

  “Okay, I’ll answer for you. ‘Yes, sir. It’s mine all right.’”

  Petey glared at him.

  “How many keys to the shed?” Cubiak waited. When the prisoner didn’t respond, he went on. “Shall I continue in both roles?”

  Petey’s shoulders rose a millimeter.

  “One?”

  Petey’s tongue pried loose from its moorings. “Maybe.”

  “That’s better. And you had it?”

  “I had all the keys.” Petey yawned, open mouthed. “Wouldn’t have mattered nohow.”

  “Why?”

  “Lock’s busted.”

  “For how long?”

  This time the shoulder elevation was slightly more perceptible. “Month. Six weeks. Six years.”

  “Leaving the shed open to anyone who wanted access.”

  “Sure. No matter. Nothing in there worth taking.”

  “You never found anything disturbed.”

  “Not really. People’d go looking for oars. Tools sometimes, too. Once in a while a screwdriver’s missing. Didn’t matter any.”

  “There’s a shelf full of boxes. What’s in them?”

  Petey grinned. “Proof we paid our taxes. Shit like that. Junk my mother put aside for posterity. Hell, we even had a box my old man was holding for Dutch.”

  “Your father knew Dutch?” The news surprised Cubiak but he kept the question casual, taking things slowly.

  “Sure. No big fucking deal. Everybody knew Dutch.”

  “How did Dutch’s stuff end up in your shed?”

  Cubiak lifted a pack of cigarettes toward the ceiling camera and then held it out toward Petey. The inmate snatched a cigarette, jabbed the tip into the proffered match, and inhaled loudly.

  “What’s to say? He come by one day a couple years back when he was going round talking to people for some book he was writing. Shows us a box of shit he’s collected and starts asking about Kangaroo Lake. Looking for picturesque stories on marshes and bird migration. Like we’re taking serious notes for decades, ya know? My old man poured a couple of shooters, sat down, and told me to leave. Said he had private business to discuss with Dutch.”

  “You didn’t hear what your father had to say?”

  “Nah. He was just another bag of wind, far as I was concerned.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Hour or so later, I seen Dutch leave. He’s looking kind of wild, like he’d be
en kicked in the balls. ‘What did ya tell him?’ I asked my old man, but he won’t say. Just that he owed Dutch an apology for some kind of job he’d done once. Anyways, Dutch was feeling no pain when he left.”

  “And he didn’t take the box with him?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “Did he come back for it later?”

  Petey snickered. “Dutch? He never did nothing later.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He bought the ranch up the road a piece, somewhere near Institute. Looked like he missed a turn. What I heard, he sailed clear over the ditch, hit a fence post, and rolled two or three times. Killed instantly, like they say.”

  “Heart attack?”

  “Who knows?” Petey slid forward far enough to grind the butt into the floor with the toe of his boot. Cubiak handed him another cigarette, already lit. “My old man’s pretty shook up about this. He tosses the box on the shelf and won’t let nobody near it.” The words flowed out on a thin plume of gray smoke that rose in a straight line to an unseen vent. Petey’s gaze shifted from floor to ceiling to barred windows and back to Cubiak. He took another long hit and sagged back against the concrete wall.

  “The box still there?”

  “Far’s I know.” Petey scratched his chest.

  “With Dutch’s notes and maybe information on whatever job it was your father did for Beck.” Tossing out the name was a calculated risk. But whatever Beck had done to harm Dutch, Eloise implied that it was underhanded, just the kind of job for someone like the elder Kingovich.

  The heir to Kingo’s sniggered and motioned for another cigarette. “Beck? Biggest fucking asshole on the peninsula. I got nothing to do with him.”

  For the moment, Cubiak believed him. “How’d you know it was Beck your father worked for?” he said, holding the pack just beyond the prisoner’s reach.

  “Who else? He had one talent, my daddy. He was a master counterfeiter. Hell, the man could forge anything. Did time for it a ways back. Beck knew all about his special gift. Took advantage of it, too, every once in a while.”

  Cubiak let Petey grab another smoke. “Sounds like maybe your old man helped Beck put the screws to Dutch.”

  Petey popped the knuckles on his left hand. “Guess. Shit, he probably needed the money.”

  “So why the guilty conscience later on?”

  Petey looked up. “Man, you don’t know nothing, do you? ’Cause Beck made him fuck the guy who’d saved his kid, that’s why.”

  A story told in front of a dwindling fire flashed back to Cubiak. “You were the boy in the well.”

  Petey offered a lopsided grin. “Yeah. That would be me.”

  Cubiak tossed the remaining cigarettes to Petey. Whatever had gone down between Dutch and Petey’s father was important. The ranger paused at the cell door. “I need to talk to your father. Where can I find him?”

  “Go to hell,” Petey replied smugly.

  “You know, I’ve had just about enough of your bullshit.”

  Unperturbed, the prisoner eased himself off the cot and flexed his knees. “I ain’t bullshitting. You wanna talk to my old man, you gotta go to hell.”

  “Meaning what? That he died and now is paying for his sins?”

  “I ain’t said nothing about him dying. All I says is he’s in hell.”

  “You got an address?”

  “Yeah, he’s at the Green Oaks Nursing Home outside of Valmy. Notice I didn’t say he ‘lived’ there,” Petey quipped, pleased with himself.

  On his way out, Cubiak let the door slam.

  Dutch died on his way to Sturgeon Bay, probably to confront Beck. The former sheriff had driven off in a rage, so distraught by what he’d learned from the elder Kingovich that he left without the research material he’d spent years gathering. What great insult or injury had Beck engineered that would prompt a man known for his composure to react so impulsively and recklessly?

  If Dutch took notes during his meeting with Kingovich, the answer could be in a storage box in the shed behind the tavern. From the jail, Cubiak drove straight to Kingo’s Resort, trailing a thin cloud of dust through the empty parking lot. A hand-scrawled sign was taped to the bar door. Closed, it read. The house and cabins were shuttered as well. Despite the bank of tall pines that surrounded the property, the heat was oppressive.

  Four boys, ten or eleven, fished off the old dock, their bikes piled against a tree. Cubiak waved to the youngsters and ducked under the yellow police tape encircling the shed. The lock was weather worn and decrepit and offered no evidence of recent use. The ground was trampled and partially caked with mud. Recent rains would have obliterated any trail that might have been left by an intruder. The door gave way easily. He waited for his vision to adjust to the dim light and then started to pull the boxes from the shelf. Petey’s account was true; there were at least thirty years’ worth of tax materials neatly stored in carefully marked files.

  Dutch’s box was not in the shed. Either Petey had moved it and lied to him, or someone had taken it.

  The shed was accessible both from the road and from the lake. Anyone coming from the road took a chance on being seen, but someone approaching from Kangaroo Lake could sneak in undetected. Cubiak began circling toward the water. A hundred feet into the dense underbrush he found a nest of broken bulrushes and a patch of trampled weeds where a boat had been pulled up onto land. Could have been kids. Or someone looking for a back-door entrance to the storage shed.

  Figuring the boys on the pier for regulars, Cubiak asked them if they’d seen anyone snooping around. They shrugged and said the only guys they ever saw were Petey and his friends.

  The lake shore south of Kingo’s was undeveloped, so Cubiak headed north. About half a mile up he turned in at a sign for Archie’s Resort. The resort was a shabby fishing compound of eight one-room shanties and a single narrow pier where several dugouts and canoes were tied up. The sound of a car door slamming brought a white-haired man with an ancient face out the door of one of the shacks.

  “Howdy, mister,” he said.

  “You Archie?”

  “All day. Every day. You looking for a room?” He sounded hopeful.

  “No, but I might need a boat later this week. You rent them out?”

  “Don’t need to. Most people here are fishermen. They bring their own.” Not like you pansy city kind, he implied. Wouldn’t know an earthworm from a garden snake.

  “Then who are those for?” Cubiak gestured toward the pier.

  “Wives. Kids. Gives the family something to do. Quality time.” The sibilants whistled through the spaces between Archie’s narrow, pointed teeth.

  “You take reservations, for the boats?”

  “Nah. Got enough paperwork without worrying about that too. Them’s all first come, first serve. They always come back. Local kids use them, too, sometimes. They think I don’t know. But I do. I just don’t say nothing, being as they come back in one piece.”

  The old man coughed and then went on. “Funny though, had one disappear for a couple of days not too long ago.” He rubbed his chin and grinned. “It made its way home eventually.”

  “Remember when?”

  “Two. Three weeks maybe.”

  “Rowboat?”

  “Nah. Canoe. Probably some teenagers spooning under the full moon.” He paused. “They still do that?”

  “I guess.”

  Any hope Cubiak had that the elder Kingovich would be able to tell him about Beck’s scheme to undo Dutch evaporated when he arrived at the nursing center. Neither the woodsy setting nor the antiseptic corridors could disguise the fact that the facility was a warehouse for the dying. When he was shown to Mr. Kingovich’s room, Cubiak found pretty much what he dreaded—the skeletal frame of a man lying motionless on a high bed rimmed with safety rails. Massive stroke on top of everything else, the nursing director announced matter-of-factly but not without compassion.

  “Any chance he’ll ever recover enough to talk?” It was an inane question, but one Cubia
k had to ask.

  “Oh, no. Unless there’s some kind of miracle. It’s been more than six months. Unfortunately, Mr. Kingovich’s window of opportunity has closed,” she explained.

  The old man moaned and Cubiak started. But the nurse had already anticipated what he would ask next. “We have no way of knowing what, if anything, he hears.” She skewered Cubiak. “At any rate, he can’t chitchat, if that’s what you wanted.”

  Cubiak edged toward the door.

  “We turn him every two hours to prevent bed sores,” the director went on cheerfully as she reached over and fluffed the pillow that framed the vacant, ravaged face. Before she had the chance to say any more, Cubiak was gone.

  Outside, he fished a stale cigarette from his breast pocket and lit up. Petey’s assessment about his father had been right on the money. Whatever sins the old man had committed against Dutch, he was paying for them now in his own private earthbound hell. According to Petey, his father resented being forced to do Beck’s dirty work against Dutch. The younger Kingovich didn’t seem overly fond of his father but that could be an act. If Beck had put the arm on the old man more than once, there could be a catalogue of longstanding wounds festering between the two. Enough to prompt the younger Kingovich to try and avenge his father by torpedoing the festival and undermining Beck. How ironic, Cubiak thought, if Halverson had been right all along in blaming Petey for everything bad that had happened.

  SATURDAY MORNING

  Cubiak rose with the crows and ran an abbreviated track through the woods near Jensen Station. The forest was cool and quiet save for the birds, and the treetops shone like ebony against the wash of bright sky. Peninsula Park Golf Course was groomed and trimmed, ready for the festival tournament later that day. Below, the harbor’s warm water lay blue and still. Along the shore, the quaint village of Ephraim waited to reprise its role as perfect summer host for the final two days of the celebration.