A Lonely Way to Die: A Utah O'Brien Mystery Novel (Minnesota Mysteries Series Book 2)

by Jonni Good

  “No. Why break up?”

  Gavril pulled the cribbage board closer to him, and started fiddling with the pegs. Mort kept a watchful eye on the musician’s hands.

  “Son, it is hard to explain, but I think it was the right decision. You know the music doesn’t sell on the Internet now.”

  “Yeah, I know, Dad.”

  “Most of Blue Malachi’s biggest fans are in Europe. The other band members, they have families and they don’t want to be away from home so much. They want to try smaller gigs at bars and clubs without having to travel. They would have to play different music, of course. Our kind of music—it won’t work in a bar. I told them I don’t want to do that, so we’re splitting up, but amicably.”

  Mort kept laying down cards, occasionally moving one to give himself a better chance to win his game. I’ve never understood why people cheat at solitaire.

  Josie came to join us at the table, taking the chair at the end near the heated bench. Grace was still in her arms. The bottle was half empty. Sam came, too, sitting at the opposite end of the table.

  Sam asked Gavril what he intended to do, now that the band was breaking up.

  The musician looked up at him and shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly. Maybe I’ll play solo gigs. One of the bigger churches might hire me. Or maybe I’ll get a real job. I intended to make plans on the plane, but then I picked up Gabe’s messages on my phone, and I couldn’t reach him. My mind was not on my career, you know. But something will come up.”

  He reached out his arm and put it around Gabe’s shoulder, pulling the boy closer to him.

  “Son, I am so sorry this has happened. Your mother was such a good woman, a wonderful mother. This is all so unfair.”

  “Then why didn’t you want to live with her anymore?” Gabe said. “How come you’re such good friends, but you didn’t want to stay married?”

  “Ah. Such a good question.” He dropped his arm and went back to inspecting the tiny cribbage pegs. “She and I had many long talks, trying to understand that very problem. We did love each other, but I love music, and crowds, and lots and lots of people. I even love noise. Your mother, she had a good ear for music, but her life was solitary, a writer. She loved quiet, and getting to bed at a reasonable hour every night. She thought we should try to find partners who fit us better. Does this make any sense?”

  Gabe brushed away a tear and picked a red peg off the cribbage board. “I guess. Not exactly, but kind of.”

  Mort watched Gabe, and the peg. Then his eyes darted to Gavril’s hands. He looked at the board, probably counting the pegs that were left.

  Nobody spoke for a moment. Sam smiled at me. I smiled at him. I wanted to get up from the table and crawl onto the couch, cover myself with the afghan, and fall asleep. The day had been truly exhausting.

  “Gavril,” I said, “we’ve been told that your wife often used bits and pieces from conversations she had with other people, putting them in her books.”

  He shook his head, then nodded. “She did that, yes, using people’s stories. Every writer does, I think. But she would change it so it could not be recognized. This is what writers do—they borrow people’s lives, but they mean no harm. And with all that magic in her stories, and the witches, and all the gods, who could believe any of it was real?”

  He smiled, remembering something. “I liked to tell her some of the stories I remembered from my childhood in Romania, and pretend I was the little boy in the fables. She wrote nothing down, but the next time I came home, she would show me the pages in her book where the stories appear. They would be changed, perfected, and it made me happy to see them there, for people to read. And sometimes I told her funny stories that really happened to me, or to my parents, and she would use them, too. It made me proud to be a part of her stories.”

  Gabe said, “Me and Mom did that, too. It was fun. If something really cool happened at school, or maybe somebody was mean, I’d tell her and we’d make up a story, and then she’d write it down. But you couldn’t tell who it was. Unless somebody was really super mean, like they made somebody cry. Then my mom wouldn’t change it very much, and you’d be able to tell if you knew the person.”

  Gavril smiled. “Son, do you remember when we would all cuddle up on the couch and we would tell stories until late at night? We would drink hot chocolate, and—”

  “Yeah, and sometimes you played the guitar. It was really nice.” A tear escaped and fell down his cheek. “I wish this didn’t happen, Dad. I really wish it didn’t.”

  The baby fell asleep, and Josie stood up so she could tuck the baby into the laundry basket. “I’m going to miss this little lady when she goes home,” she said. “Gavril, you have the nicest baby.”

  The man turned in his seat and thanked her for her compliment to his child. So far, he hadn’t moved to hold Grace or even to touch her. Single-fatherhood was going to be a challenge for this newly-unemployed musician.

  Mort retrieved his pegs, reaching across the table and gently pulling one last red peg from Gabe’s hand. He stowed them safely away in the little cubby at the back of the cribbage board.

  “Gavril,” I said, trying to get back to our informal interrogation, “was there any sign lately that Sonje was depressed? You know what the reporters are saying …”

  “I heard it, but it isn’t true. She was happy to finally be speaking with her family again. And there’s a new book a few weeks from being finished. She had the house up for sale for months, and she finally got an offer. She was not depressed.”

  Gabe said, “See? I told you.”

  Mort said, “Constantin, do you know anybody who would want to harm your wife?”

  The musician shrugged and held up his hands, helplessly. “Everyone who knew her loved her. I can’t imagine anyone hurting her on purpose.”

  Maybe Sonje wasn’t depressed, but I was getting there. Nobody wanted her dead, and she wasn’t unhappy. The only thing left was accidental death, and an accident wasn’t possible because Sonje wouldn’t go walking around in a strange field all by herself in the middle of the night.

  I said, “Her friend, Carol Kramer, told us that Sonje may have left town many years ago because someone here was bothering her. An older man. Did she ever say anything about that incident to you?”

  He shook his head and shrugged.

  Mort stood up. “You’ve got to be tired, Constantin. I know I would be after flying from Europe and then following the snow plows all across the state. Josie will let you take a nap in her trailer, won’t you, hon?”

  “Of course, dear. I put new sheets on the bed. It’s all ready for you, Gavril.”

  “Thank you. Thank you all for everything, for taking such good care of the children, for—well, for all you’ve done for us today. You have been so kind.”

  Mort handed my old tan jacket to Gavril. “You don’t want to take your nice coat out to the trailer. There’s no good place to put it out there. The trailer’s kind of small.” This was a major understatement. When Jocko and Molly are both in there, they create a wall-to-wall dog-body carpet that takes up the entire floor space.

  Mort and Gavril left through the back door, to walk through the garden to Josie’s trailer.

  When Mort and Gavril were gone, Josie handed the baby to Gabe and jerked her head towards the door to the museum. I followed her out while Gabe and Sam looked on curiously.

  We didn’t go far. It was dark and cold, and we both hugged ourselves to stay warm.

  My mother moved over to look at the paper mache Clovis man standing on the wooden platform with his six-year-old son. Their outlines were barely visible.

  Without turning to look at me, she said, “I changed my mind. That man can’t be given two children to raise all on his own. He’s a nice man, but he doesn’t have a clue. The boy loves him—that’s obvious. But Gabe needs more stability in his life.”

  She turned to look at me and said, “I’m sorry about the way I acted today. It was selfish of me. I wasn’t thinking
about what would be best for the children.”

  I reached out a hand and laid it on her shoulder. “I’ll tell Sam tonight. He’s going to need some help if Gabe stays here. So will I. And someone will have to negotiate with Gavril. A shared custody sort of thing, perhaps. Will you talk to Gavril? Try to make it work for everyone?”

  There was just enough light for me to see her nod. She said, “Gabe told me you’re turning this area into a living room.”

  I put one foot over the other to warm up my toes, and looked at the paper mache family standing, unfinished, on their platform. “So, are we good?” I said. “No more evil eye?”

  She gave me a lopsided smile before turning to go back into the kitchen. She stopped so suddenly that I almost ran into her. I backed up, and she turned around to face me. “Mort got a call from the sheriff while you were talking to Emma. A man walked into the station this afternoon claiming to be Sonje’s fiancé. He followed the family from the city, all the way out to that ratty old house, so he’d know where to find them when she called this morning. He says he stopped at the diner for a cup of coffee and then went back to Randall. He checked into a motel and spent the night. He was expecting her call this morning, and then saw the news on TV. The sheriff says he didn’t see any reason to keep him.”

  “Do we know his name?”

  “Mort has it. And I looked him up on your laptop. He’s a businessman, so I found his photo.”

  I thought about this new development while we walked into the kitchen. Gabe told us earlier that his mother had a surprise for him. Maybe this guy was the surprise.

  TWENTY

  I looked at my watch. It was ten minutes to six. I couldn’t believe it wasn’t later, but I had a few phone calls to make.

  “Gabe, could you get the afghan off the heater bench for me?”

  He brought it over and we made Josie comfortable on the couch.

  While Sam and Gabe sat at the table and played one more game of cribbage, I pulled my cell phone out of my sweatshirt pocket and showed it to Sam. Then I headed back out into the studio area at the back of the museum, and made my first call.

  Mark Price confirmed what we’d heard from Emma earlier, about Sonje’s will. And he told me, without prompting, that he called Sonje while she was in the diner with Carol Kramer. He asked her for a loan, and she refused him. He’d already asked before and she refused then, too. She said he didn’t need a handout, he needed a job. She didn’t come to his place after he talked to her on the phone.

  Mark sounded dejected as he talked, and depressed, and a little bit drunk, but I didn’t get the feeling that he was lying. Of course, even when you’re standing in front of someone, looking them straight in the eye, you can’t always tell.

  I asked him about the older boy or man who might have been bothering Sonje before she moved to the city. Was it John Meecham? He laughed at that idea. “She wouldn’t have anything to do with Meecham. She was never that stupid.”

  He said there was a boy in her class who kidded her about being overweight in front of her friends, but he didn’t think it bothered her enough to move out of town. “She fought back like she always did. She let it simmer for a week or two and then she wrote a really good story that got read out loud in English class. The main character was the spitting image of the guy who teased her, and she made him look like a fool.

  “That’s how my sister fought, you know. The pen is mightier—well, you know. But he was in the same grade as her, he wasn’t older. She never told me about anybody else bothering her, but I was out of school by then, and we didn’t talk all that often.”

  My next call was harder. I called Carol Kramer’s phone number, the one she gave me before she drove away from the old house that morning. I had an idea about that money, and I wanted to confirm it.

  When she answered I said, “Carol. It’s Utah O’Brien. I have a couple of quick questions for you. Are you in a place where you can talk?” There was no hockey game in the background, nobody shouting at moving pictures on TV.

  “Yes, I can talk. I’m at a motel in Randall. I’m on my way to the city to stay with my sister for a while. I wanted to drive the whole way, but the weather was so bad.”

  “How are you? You were upset this morning, and I worried about you.”

  “I’m fine.” Her voice was calm, stronger than normal. Being thirty miles away from her husband was probably the reason for that.

  “Carol, I have to ask you something. The sheriff found a check stub in Sonje’s purse for a large amount of money, and it was made out to you. We thought it might be a gift, but it wasn’t, was it? Did Sonje intend to buy your grandmother’s house?”

  She took a few beats before answering, then said yes. “The paperwork is already signed and recorded. We did the whole thing through a real estate attorney in the city. She could have sent the money to my account, but we wanted to do it in person. It’s totally legal, you know. I’ll give the lawyer’s number to the sheriff, if he needs it.”

  “Was she intending to live in that house?”

  “That was the idea. It would cost a fortune to make that old place livable again, but she had the money and wanted to spend it. It’s on a five-acre lot, and she had some idea about having a big garden. I thought she was getting in over her head, but it was her choice.”

  I said, “Did she say anything about getting married as soon as her divorce was final?”

  There was silence for a few moments. Then, “Yes, she told me that, at the diner. She wanted it kept secret until she could tell her son, but there’s no point in keeping her secrets now, is there? She was keeping it low-key because she didn’t want the guy to end up in the gossip columns, like those women that Gavril dated this last year.”

  “There’s one more thing I’d like to know for sure. It’s not about Sonje, though. It’s about Gabriel—”

  I was holding a dead phone.

  When I came back in the kitchen, Josie was still curled up on the couch. Sam and Gabe were looking at the wood stove, and Sam was explaining how the innards worked. Mort was sitting at the table, playing solitaire.

  I reached over Josie and pulled my laptop off the bookshelf. Then I asked Sam and Gabe if they’d like to come have a lie-down in the loft. Sam grabbed Sonje’s book off the table, where it had been sitting all day, and we headed upstairs.

  Sam and I were on the second step of the stairway when Gabe went back to Gavril’s coat. As Mort looked on, Gabe unfolded the coat so he could reach into one of the deep pockets. He pulled out two iPhones, looked at them for a second, and put one of them back. Then he carefully arranged the coat again so it looked the same as it did before.

  He and Jocko joined me and Sam, and we went up the stairs. We crawled onto the bed and propped ourselves up against the headboard, with Gabe in the middle. I pulled the comforter over our legs.

  “Comfy, Gabe?” Sam asked.

  The boy nodded.

  “Good. Now tell us why you swiped your dad’s phone.”

  Gabe showed us the screen on his step-father’s iPhone. “This is the one he uses for recording their practice sessions. He didn’t know how to install a recording app, so I did it for him. I wanted to listen to a song Mom wrote last year. Her church choir sang it at a recital. It’s really good.”

  He clicked on a square app tile on the iPhone’s home screen.

  “I told him to name the songs or use the date or something, but he never does, so you just have to—” He started clicking the file icons inside the app. We heard the first few beats of three or four different gospel songs, a snare drum solo, and a few recordings with nothing but voices talking in the background.

  “What are those for?” I asked. “The ones with people talking?”

  “He probably hit the record button by mistake. Wait, here it is—”

  It was an old bluegrass song, “You've Been a Friend To Me.” Since Sonje McCrae was a writer, I thought it would be a new song with her own lyrics. Instead, the words were traditional but t
he arrangement was changed, modernized. There were no banjos, and it had a warm harmony. A piano accompanied the singers, with a saxophone playing lightly during the chorus.

  Gabe started it over, and we listened a second time.

  Misfortune nursed me as her child

  And loved me fondly, too

  I would have had a broken heart

  Had it not been for you.

  “That was beautiful,” I said. “Was your mother singing?”

  “Yeah. She did the solos. They had a mic set up at the recital, and a video camera, but I don’t think they put it on YouTube. Maybe they will, though. Everybody said the song was really good.”

  “Everybody was right. I’ll call them and ask if they can make a CD for you. Would you like that?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. That would be really nice.”

  “It sounds a lot like your dad’s music. Did your mom write the arrangements for his band, too?”

  “Sometimes. It was her idea to use the old songs. They started out writing everything from scratch, but their songs kinda sucked so they didn’t get very many gigs. And they were trying to do some retro punk rock, but it wasn’t working. Mom said Gavril’s voice was a blessing, and he was hiding it behind all that noise, so they started over with the plantation songs, but made them different, more bluesy but modern. They really took off after that.”

  Sam said, “Your mother had amazing talent. She wrote books that millions of people read, she could write music, and sing. And she was obviously a very good mother.”

  “She was the best,” Gabe said.

  The bell over the front door of the museum tinkled, and a few minutes later we heard Emma and Josie talking down in the kitchen, in that tone of voice women use when they’re admiring a baby.

  Gabe clicked on a few more files. While he listened to Gavril’s music and Sam read a few pages of Sonje’s novel, I fired up my laptop. I opened up an old file I’d built several years earlier in SketchUp. It was a 3D plan of the museum and the apartment at the back.