by John McEvoy
Late the next morning, Bledsoe paid the admissions for the three of them, $19.50 per person, using three $20 bills. He’d converted all of their racetrack profits into currency no larger than $20s. Flashing bigger bills was inviting attention.
None of them had ever been to the famed House on the Rock, a huge monument to untutored taste that had been created in the early nineteen-forties by a man with a lust for curiosities and the wherewithal to acquire them with abandon. Located some forty miles west of Madison, just outside Spring Green, the House on the Rock each year attracted thousands of visitors from all over the country and around the world.
Vera was agape as they began their tour. The House sat atop a sixty-foot chimney of rock, high above a valley. The original structure of fourteen rooms had, over the decades, mushroomed into a kitsch depository that now covered more than two hundred acres. The fourteenth room set the mind-boggling tone of the whole place: called the “Infinity Room,” it boasted 3,264 windows. Its glass walls extended out over the valley, two hundred feet below. Visitors could gaze downward at the forest through a glass cocktail table.
Slowly, they worked their way along, past the “world’s largest carousel,” with its two hundred and sixty-nine animals, through the building with the two hundred and fifty dollhouses, the “Oriental Room” with its tall porcelain vases, the collections of armor and cannons and jewels. As Vera broke away to enter the “Organ Room” (thirteen bridges and walkways beneath a forty-five-foot-high perpetual motion clock), Bledsoe and Jim visited the weapons exhibit, one of whose features was a derringer hidden in a wooden leg built for a woman.
By 1:30 p.m. Jimbo and Bledsoe had had enough. Vera, however, was not about to sit down. She moved eagerly on toward the circus building as the men seated themselves in the Garden Café and ordered coffee and sandwiches.
“This is really something, isn’t it Claude?” Jimbo said. He had to lean forward to make himself heard over the noise coming from the next table, where a party of German tourists was babbling excitedly as they examined House on the Rock brochures. “How about the weapons room, man? Ever seen anything like it? I didn’t have any idea there were that many kinds of handguns.”
“Not to mention rifles,” Bledsoe answered.
“Yeah, you’re right, pretty impressive,” Jimbo said. He took a large bite of his liverwurst and onion sandwich. “Talking about weapons,” Jimbo said, as he tried to lead up to what was on his mind, but Bledsoe cut him off. “Not here,” he said, indicating the many people nearby.
Jimbo said, “I don’t mean exactly that subject,” he whispered, “but I wanted to tell you, Claude, that I’m sorry for the way Vera acted about the money last night. Wasn’t my idea,” he said sincerely. “But she’s got her own ways. You know her,” Jimbo grinned, “pretty gutsy little broad.”
“Yes, I do,” Bledsoe replied. “And I see her point. I thought it over last night. I’ve decided we go to a sixty-forty split for the final Pick Four. How does that sound?”
Wiping mustard off his chin, Jimbo grinned. “That’s terrific, Claude, that’s just great. Thanks. That’ll make Vera a happy camper. When will that come up, do you know?”
“The second weekend of October,” Bledsoe replied, well aware that the date would never work for him, since it was past his deadline. “I haven’t done all the planning yet.”
Jimbo nodded. “You sure are good at this stuff, Claude. It’s an honor to be working with you. I really mean that.”
I know you do, you poor sap, Bledsoe thought.
“You know,” Jimbo continued, a solemn expression on his big red face, “Vera’s been getting a little worried lately about us getting caught for what we’ve done. You don’t think there’s much chance of that, do you?”
Bledsoe said, “Caught how? Doing what? After our one incident with Bernie Glockner, which has gone completely undetected, all you’ve done is cash some tickets. You’ve got nothing to worry about, man.”
“Yeah,” Jimbo said, “but we are connected to you, and you’ve done some things…” He leaned forward to whisper, “What if they find out about us, Claude? Prison just about killed me. I can’t go back inside. I just can’t.”
“There’s absolutely no chance of that happening,” Bledsoe assured him. He reached over and patted Jimbo on the shoulder. “Just cool it, my man.”
They were quiet as Jimbo worked on his second sandwich. When he’d finished he said, “Claude, when you, ah, deal with those jockeys the way you do, do you ever feel, like, guilty afterwards? I’ve always wondered about that.”
Bledsoe gave Jimbo a long look. He waited until the party of German tourists had departed the nearby table, leaving a tip so small the advancing busboy cursed audibly when he saw it. Bledsoe picked up a plastic knife from the table. “See this?” he said to Jimbo, holding it between two fingers. “An object.” He snapped the knife in half. “That’s how I see those jockeys,” he said softly. “Objects. I don’t think about them any other way. I don’t know them. They mean nothing to me, except as a means to a wonderfully remunerative end.”
Jimbo said, “Remuner what?”
“Never mind,” Bledsoe said, getting to his feet. “Let’s find Vera and get out of here. Enough is enough. Not that the people running this place would understand that.”
Jimbo didn’t know what Bledsoe meant, but he didn’t say so. He looked at his watch. “She’ll be in the gift shop by now,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“He ran over my dog. The bastard ran over my dog.”
Matt said, “When? Where?”
His questions were directed at a small, dark-haired woman in her early thirties who was strolling with him on a path that wound through the Madison Zoo. Her name was Andrea Greco. They had first met when they’d covered a Milwaukee county plane crash involving a prominent area businessman and his family. That was back when Matt was working for the Milwaukee News and Andrea for the Madison Herald. She’d kicked his butt with her coverage and impressed the hell out of him with her intelligence, sense of humor, and work ethic. Her looks weren’t in the same league with her talent—she was skinny and plain, with piercing black eyes her most notable feature—but Matt had liked her from the start. They’d stayed in touch for the past dozen years, during which he moved into racing journalism and Andrea became the Herald’s star investigative reporter.
“You forgot Who? And Why?” Andrea said caustically. “That horse racing beat must have blunted your reporter’s edge.” She’d always ragged him like that, giving him a hard time in a good-natured way that usually made both of them laugh. But she wasn’t laughing today.
“That bastard, Bledsoe, you’re asking me about. That’s who. As to why, I have no idea. It looked like an accident. But I have my doubts. I’d come home from having dinner with Bledsoe. He asked me if he could come in for a drink. I said no. He was turning out to be a domineering know-it-all. Everything was about him. He didn’t like that response, I could tell. He didn’t say another word, just turned his back on me and trotted over to his car.
“My dog Emma was just a pup, five months old, a beautiful black Lab. She’s at the door waiting when I open it. Then she spots a goddam squirrel in the driveway, right behind Bledsoe’s car. Makes a bee line for it. I swear to God he saw her running to the driveway, but he throws the car into reverse and squashes my pup. I wanted to kill him. I still do.”
They were walking now past the section of the zoo housing elephants. Matt, thinking of the death of Andrea’s dog, found himself recalling the famous incident of years before when an aged elephant named Blinky suddenly, uncharacteristically, reached through the bars with her trunk one morning and throttled a toddler to death. Blinky, a much-beloved attraction for two previously peaceful decades, was put to death the following week upon the controversial order of zoo officials, a decision met with vociferous but unsuccessful protests from animal rights activists.
Matt returned to his questioning. “What were you doing,
having dinner with Bledsoe?”
Andrea said, “It started when I was assigned to do a feature story on him for the paper. ‘A Madison Special,’ that was the hook. People had evidently talked about Bledsoe for years but not much had ever been written about him. Sounded interesting to me. I mean, what kind of person would choose a life like that? Going to class your whole life.
“Bledsoe is super, super smart,” Andrea continued. “He just intrigued the hell out of me. I wasn’t interested in him romantically, but I was fascinated with the way he had chosen to live. Permanent Student. At a Remove From Reality. It’s amazing how you start thinking in headlines in our business, isn’t it? Anyway, it turned into a good feature that was picked up by papers all over the country.
“I interviewed Bledsoe twice. The second time, he asked me to have dinner.” Andrea gave a mirthless chuckle. “He’s a long way from movie star material, but there isn’t exactly a corps of collectibles trying to hit on your pal Andrea,” she said, kicking at a leaf that lay before them on the pavement.
“Guys I work with, I think I intimidate a lot of them. And I work so much I don’t have a lot of opportunities to meet men who aren’t in the business.”
Andrea put her arm through his as they sidestepped a slim woman runner pushing an infant buggy bearing two chubby babies. The woman flashed them a smile as she huffed past. “You, of course,” Andrea said, “were never intimidated by me. But you still never asked me out.”
Startled, Matt did not reply, and they walked on in silence until Andrea, looking straight ahead, said, “You still seeing what’s her name down in Chicago? The female horse whisperer? I mean horsewoman?”
Matt said, “That’s beneath you, a statement like that. Yes, I’m still seeing Maggie O’Connor, the horse trainer.”
Still not looking at him, Andrea said, “I’m sure she’s a lovely person.”
“That’s not worthy of you, either,” Matt replied.
“You’re right,” Andrea sighed. “You are right. Let’s get back to Bledsoe. Like a fool, when he asked me out, I said yes. My thinking was, what the hell did I have to lose? Well, it turned out to be my sweet pup,” she said bitterly. “Emma was lying there in the damned driveway, her head mashed into the concrete, and Bledsoe showed about as much remorse as a rutabaga. He muttered something about being sorry, all the while looking around for a place to dump Emma so he could back up his car and get the hell out of there.
“I was crying. I lost it. And Bledsoe never even looked me in the eye before he left. I called my buddy Bobby Keefer at the paper. He came right over and took poor Emma away. I didn’t ask where. I don’t want to know. Then Bobby came back with a bottle of Wild Turkey and we got smashed. I’ve never seen Bledsoe since that night. Bastard!” Andrea, usually so strong, so voluble, was silent then, eyes averted. They walked another dozen or so yards. Finally, she turned to him. “Anyway, Matt, what’s your interest in this weirdo?”
Matt motioned toward a bench that faced the lions’ den. Two female lions paced back and forth in front of a huge male, who drowsed on a sun-warmed rock, golden mane shining. Matt said, “He looks like he’s going to roar and start a movie.” He took off his sunglasses and turned to Andrea.
“This may sound insane,” Matt said, “but I think Bledsoe might be a killer. A killer whose goal is manipulating the results of horse races in order to win bets.” He paused, waiting for what he expected would be a look of incredulity. Andrea never blinked. “Go on,” she said, and he did, recounting everything he’d learned, beginning with the suspicious death of Bernie Glockner.
When he had finished filling her in, Matt shook his head. “The major thing I can’t figure,” he said, “is motive. Why would a guy like this, longtime student, never involved in any crime that anyone knows of, suddenly decide to get into something like this?”
Andrea said, “How about one of the oldest motives of all? How about money?”
“Money! What do you mean? I thought Bledsoe was on permanent scholarship. And planned to stay there.”
Andrea smiled. “Well, maybe he did plan to keep on riding his grammy’s gravy train into his dotage. But Grandma Bledsoe had other ideas.”
“How so?”
“Grandma set a limit on her largesse,” Andrea answered. “She put a possible cut-off date on the bequest that financed Claude’s continuing ed, as he called it. Age fifty. Finito. Maybe grandma suspected her pride and joy would take advantage of her generosity and never set out on his own. Maybe that’s why she didn’t make the bequest open ended.
“Whatever her thinking, she put in the will that if Claude didn’t have a net worth of $1 million by the proscribed date, the deal was over. And Mr. Bledsoe turns fifty next month. Considering the fact that the guy has never held a steady job in his life, I suspect that his gravy train is about to derail,” Andrea said, relishing the thought.
“However, there’s another wrinkle to this. If Bledsoe somehow manages to live up to his granny’s monetary expectations, he’d be in for a huge reward. If he can prove he’s got a million bucks by his birthday, the bulk of her estate would go to him instead of to charity. It’s a very sizable estate, somewhere over $15 million. The beauty part as far as I’m concerned is that Bledsoe never knew anything about this codicil in the will until last September. That’s when the pressure on him started to rev up.”
Matt said, “How do you know this? Did Bledsoe tell you?”
“No. When I was dealing with him, even he didn’t know it.”
Andrea hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t be telling even you this,” she said. “You can never reveal me as your source. One of the few men in this town that I occasionally date is a lawyer named Jim Altman. His firm has handled all the Bledsoe family work for a couple of generations. He can’t stand Claude, whom he considers one of the most arrogant assholes he’s ever met. That’s why Jim took such satisfaction last year when he was obliged to inform Bledsoe of a Grandma-imposed deadline.”
Matt shook his head. “Hell, Andrea, I don’t know,” he said. “Would a guy be so cold he’d take to murdering athletes to preserve a lifestyle?”
“Matt,” Andrea answered, “you’ve known me what, a dozen years? Haven’t I proved to be damn good judge of character?”
“I can’t argue with that.”
“Well, then, let me assure you that Claude Bledsoe is definitely capable of doing something like that if it’s in his best interests. Those interests come first, foremost, and forever for this bastard. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.”
Matt stood up and stretched, then sat back down on the bench. The male lion shot him an inquisitive glance. “Thing is,” Matt said, “as smart and talented as this guy is, couldn’t he just have used one or more of his degrees to get a good job?”
Andrea shook her head. “Sure, years ago, when he was younger. It’s not that easy today. My older brother, Angelo, got downsized by his company after twenty-seven years with them, all on an upward career path. Then, boom, he was expendable. Angelo tried to get a new job. Months of frustration, nothing. Finally, a career counselor told Angelo, ‘You’ve got the worst trifecta there is working against you. You’re over fifty, you’re white, and you’re male.’
“I don’t care how smart Bledsoe is. Except for his tutoring of the jocks here, he’s never been employed in his life. His background screams eccentricity. I can’t see personnel directors swinging open their doors for him. And he’s smart enough to know it.
“I think Mr. Bledsoe is in need of money now, I really do. And a fine thought that is,” she grinned.
Matt’s disapproval was obvious. “Look, Andrea,” he said with a frown, “I appreciate the fact that you hate this creep and would like revenge for what he did to your dog. But there’s nothing remotely humorous about his financial situation. There’s a damn good chance Bledsoe’s money troubles have made him into a murderer.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Jimbo drove west ou
t of Madison on Highway 18 in Bledsoe’s blue Toyota. On this Friday, at this early morning hour and heading away from the city, traffic was light. Vera rode in the passenger seat. Bledsoe sprawled across the back seat. He was reading the latest issue of The Economist while trying to ignore Vera’s rummaging through the available country music stations on the car radio.
Bledsoe had risen before 5 a.m. to make his final preparations. The dawn sky was just beginning to brighten as he opened the trunk of the Toyota. Bledsoe reached in and removed the spare tire. Two nights before, he had stolen four concrete blocks from an eastside Madison construction site and hidden them in his storage bin in the basement of his apartment house. Now, he effortlessly lifted each of the blocks, placing two in the tire well, shoving the other two under a blanket at the rear of the trunk. He laid the cardboard flooring and carpet over the tire well. The added weight of the blocks dropped the rear bumper of the Toyota a noticeable several inches. But Bledsoe was the only one noticing. Then he tossed in his duffel bag and the three sleeping bags he’d purchased the day before. He took the spare tire down to the basement storage unit. “Way my luck is going,” Bledsoe said softly, smiling as he climbed back up the basement stairs, “I won’t be getting any flat tires.”
Minutes later, when he’d pulled up to the apartment building on Dahle Street where Jimbo and Vera lived, they were waiting outside, sleepy-eyed but eager, like kids ready for camp. Bledsoe gave them a cheery “good morning,” then took their luggage—an old gym bag of Jimbo’s, a dark pink suitcase that belonged to Vera—and tossed them into the trunk before quickly closing it. “Jimbo, how about you driving?” he said. “And Vera can ride up front with you. I’ll navigate.”
“Sure,” Jimbo said. “But are you sure we’re going to need those sleeping bags you bought?”
“Why take a chance?” Bledsoe replied. “We might want to sleep up on the top deck one night. I understand a pretty good breeze sometimes comes down the river. Could be a little cool. The bags could come in handy.”