by Sandra Balzo
‘Hell, yes. Even let ’em do make-up on me. We had a high time.’ With that, he turned to the group. Sarah and I looked at each other.
‘Good to see you again, ladies.’ He gave a little bow. The ladies twittered, while he turned to us. ‘And to our newcomers, welcome.’
Sophie turned to the Red Hat next to her. ‘I know them. Her husband –’ she pointed at me – ‘is wanted for murder.’
The ladies gasped, but more in delight than horror. I had a feeling I was going to be invited to the next Botox party.
Our tour guide, on the other hand, didn’t skip a beat. ‘My name is Beaumont Hertel and I’ll be your guide for our excursion through the colorful history of the Hamilton and the rest of the buildings on our tour.’
‘The Hamilton was built in 1914 . . .’ As he spoke he led us through a less than impressive catacomb of hallways. We were in the basement, after all.
‘Hope he takes us above ground,’ Sarah muttered. ‘Fat chance of condos being built down here.’
‘So the building is being made into condos?’ I asked. ‘Rachel told me the Slatterys were planning to turn it into a hotel.’
‘From what I hear, there are two buyers looking at it. The Slatterys and LongShore, a condo developer. I’m rooting for the condos.’
‘You handle LongShore’s sales,’ I guessed.
‘You betcha. And in a building like this with city and lake views, the units will be going for four-fifty on up, and I do mean up. The upper floors will be a million or more.’
‘Then my only hope would be a condo in the basement,’ I muttered, glancing around.
I didn’t know if Rachel had been there, much less where she would have gone if she was. As I opened my mouth to ask Sarah what she thought a potential buyer would be looking at, we emerged into a cavernous room.
‘The Hamilton stands on six thousand wooden pilings. This was necessary, because, as you’ll see by looking down, the hotel is built on an underground lake.’
The ladies edged over to the railing, peered down and gasped. Since they’d obviously done this tour before, I thought it was a bit of overacting for our benefit. Nonetheless, I went over to look. Sure enough, there were thick wooden poles – more like tree trunks, really – extending down into the murky water.
‘The level of the water is carefully monitored,’ Beaumont went on, ‘because if the submerged pilings are exposed, they’ll begin to rot.’
‘Tell them the story, Beaumont. Tell them the story,’ Sophie begged.
‘It’s an urban legend,’ he warned, turning to Sarah and me. ‘I have to tell you that by way of disclaimer.’
‘Which means it’s true and they won’t let you say it,’ one of Beaumont’s Red Hots teased.
Beaumont just tipped his head. ‘Legend –’ he emphasized the word – ‘has it that one day 132 construction workers and engineers worked on this building.’ He let it hang there dramatically. ‘But only 131 left, at least by the door.’
Sarah snorted. ‘It’s not unusual for someone to be killed during the construction of a building this size. Especially back then.’
‘You’re quite right,’ Beaumont said. ‘In fact, this building is unusual in that no one died during its construction.’
‘But you just said that one person did.’ I dug out my cellphone. Still nothing from Eric.
‘No, I said that one person never came out, at least through the door.’
Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘Then how did he come out?’
Beaumont shrugged. ‘We don’t know. He just disappeared one morning.’
‘They never found him?’ I asked, knowing full well I was playing into his hands.
‘They found him, all right,’ Sophie said in a mysterious voice. ‘But it’s where they found him that’s interesting.’
‘Lake Michigan,’ a Red Hot in a purple pantsuit piped up.
Sophie threw her a dirty look. ‘Be quiet, Lady Vickie. I’m telling it.’
Ahh, Vickie. The Botox Party lady.
‘Then tell it,’ Sarah snapped impatiently. She was still anxious to get to the penthouse units.
‘She frickin’ ruined it.’ Sophie stomped her foot.
‘Tell it!’
‘Fine. The man’s body was found a month later in Lake Michigan,’ Sophie said sullenly.
‘How can that be?’ It was another Red Hot lady, trying to smooth things over and give Sophie a chance to go for the dramatic finish. ‘We’re more than six blocks away from the lake.’
I was looking over the railing into the dark water below.
‘The underground lake is connected to Lake Michigan,’ I said, turning to Sarah. ‘She went into the water here in the basement and her body found its way into Lake Michigan.’
‘He,’ Sarah automatically corrected. ‘She –’ Sarah pointed to Sophie – ‘said it was a man who went missing.’
Then, as my meaning sunk in, she just stared at me.
Chapter Sixteen
‘That has to be the way it happened,’ I said.
Sarah and I were climbing down the loading dock steps. We’d left the tour early and I’d been filling her in on my theory. Knowing everything I knew, or thought I knew, I couldn’t just tag along with Beaumont and the Red Hots. I had to do something.
I just had to figure out what that was.
‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ Sarah said. She was still sulking about my making her leave before we could see the upper floors of the Hamilton. ‘But why are you so sure that Stephen did it? Couldn’t your beloved ex have murdered Rachel in the same way you think Stephen did?’
‘He could have,’ I admitted. ‘But if you think about it, everything starts with Stephen. Stephen is the one who “caught” Ted cheating and can read the hotel key cards. He also has the most to gain from Rachel’s death and the most to lose by the birth of Rachel’s child.’
I pulled out my cellphone and looked at it, before dropping it back in my bag. Still nothing from Eric.
Where was he? Lake Teree? Maybe Sarah, with all her real-estate dealings, would know where that was. ‘Have you every heard of Lake Teree? I showed her Eric’s text message.
‘No,’ she said, ‘not around here. You sure it’s not “terra”, like “terra firma”?’
‘Why? Is there a Lake Terra?’
‘No, just asking.’
She was a big help. ‘I’m going to text Eric again.’
I punched in: ‘What is’. When I got to ‘teree’, I looked down to make sure the phone was divining the letters correctly. Staring up at me was not ‘teree’, but ‘verd’. When I added an ‘e’, the readout changed to ‘teree’.
‘Verde,’ I said out loud. ‘Lake Verde.’
‘Lake Verde? That’s up north,’ Sarah said. ‘I thought you said “Teree”.’
‘That’s what the phone said.’ I showed it to her. ‘See when you text message “verde” the predictive function gets to the last “e” and then guesses “teree”, whatever the hell that is, rather than “verde”.’
‘Verde is Spanish for green,’ Sarah said. ‘Maybe the phone doesn’t recognize foreign words.’
‘Maybe not, but I recognize it,’ I said. ‘Lake Verde is where Ted’s family cabin is.’
‘You think he went there?’
‘I know he went there.’ And I was an idiot for not thinking of it earlier. If Ted was in trouble, he would run home. Given that his mom was in Paris or wherever, the fishing cabin on Lake Verde was the closest thing to home. ‘But that’s the least of my worries.’
‘Finding your ex-husband, who you believe has been falsely accused of murder is the least of your worries?’ Sarah looked surprised. ‘What has happened to the Maggy Thorsen I know and love?’
‘She’s concerned about her son,’ I said. ‘Our cellphone company has spotty service in the northern part of the state.’ I held up my cellphone. ‘That’s why I can’t get hold of Eric. He’s on his way to Lake Verde.’
While we were about a ninety-minute
drive from Lake Verde, Eric’s school was a good four or five hours away. Problem was, I didn’t know when he had left. Hell, I didn’t even know if he’d left. I texted him again with a ‘where are you?’ Still no reply.
‘He’d better not have cut classes,’ I muttered. ‘He said he had exams today.’
‘Unless he lied,’ Sarah said. ‘Then he could already be there.’
Sarah and I were on our way to Uncommon Grounds to pick up an old keychain I’d left in the office desk drawer. On it were keys I didn’t use any more. My old house with Ted, before I changed the locks. The house key a neighbor, long moved away, had given me to water her plants. Luggage keys for bags I could no longer lock. The usual. I was nearly sure that one of them was to the cabin in Lake Verde, a hundred miles due north of Brookhills.
‘I sure hope not,’ I said.
‘Why?’ Sarah glanced sideways at me. ‘If you don’t think Ted is a homicidal maniac, why are you worried?’
‘Because I think Stephen Slattery is a homicidal maniac and he was looking over my shoulder when Eric texted me.’
‘But you didn’t know what Lake Teree was. How would Stephen know?’
‘Because he’s probably a lot more technologically savvy than I am. I just tried his cell and he’s not answering either.’
Not that I’d have known what to say if he had. Excuse me, but did you kill your sister?
Sarah swung the Firebird into the back parking lot of Uncommon Grounds. I got out of the car and ran to the back service door.
If my theory was right, Ted had been telling the truth all along. Sure, maybe he’d fallen in love with Rachel and left me, but he hadn’t cheated on her. There also wasn’t any reason to believe he had been cheating on me. Except with Rachel, of course. Strangely enough, I felt like she and I were comrades-in-arms in some way. Death and hindsight will do that, I guess.
What a nightmare these last few days must have been for Ted. Nobody believed him about anything. He’d been accused of being a cheater, a womanizer and a murderer. And he’d had nowhere to go.
So he’d run to Lake Verde.
Making my way through the dark service hall, I tripped over a bag of garbage, splitting it open and sending coffee grounds flying. Cursing my stupidity for having left it there in the first place, I let myself into Uncommon Grounds and went directly to the office.
I switched on the light and opened the desk drawer. Rifling through the pencils, pens, rubber bands and tiny bottles of Advil and Tylenol, I came up with a ring of old keys attached to a leather tag with a snap.
The tag snapped into a purse I no longer had, one that dated back to the early days of my marriage. I might not remember what each key was for, but I remembered every handbag I’d ever had.
The key for the cabin was on the ring, and wonder of wonders, efficiently marked with an ‘LV’. It looked like Eric’s printing, which would figure. He was the most organized member of the family. When he was five he alphabetized the contents of the refrigerator. Sesame Street had a lot to answer for.
Tucking the keys into my pocket, I grabbed a new black trash bag and went back into the service hallway. I didn’t have time to do a good clean-up, but I stuffed the torn bag in the new one and lugged it out.
Letting the service door lock behind me, I lifted the key ring in one hand and the bag of garbage in the other to indicate to Sarah that I’d accomplished one mission and still had another one.
The box spring was still next to the dumpster. Friday was trash day and we’d see what they took then. I hoisted the bag into the dumpster, closed the gate and went back to Sarah’s car.
‘You had to take out the trash?’ she asked mildly when I slid into the passenger seat. ‘It couldn’t have waited until we saved the world?’
It could have, of course, but . . . ‘The bag broke and I couldn’t leave a mess.’
Sarah pulled around the corner of the store to exit on to Brookhill Road. As she did, I saw a couple of people standing outside the dental clinic.
‘Isn’t the clinic usually open on Wednesday night?’ I asked.
Sarah glanced at the clock on the dash. ‘It’s after eight. They’re probably gone.’
‘They should put up a sign then.’ I pointed toward the man and woman standing outside. ‘They look cold.’
The two were neatly but warmly dressed, like they were going to a soccer game or football game, where they would be outside for a long period of time. The woman wasn’t the same one I’d seen on Saturday, but she had that same fish out of water look.
The suburban poor, as Amy had suggested? Funny how I’d never noticed them until now.
Sarah pulled out on to Brookhill Road, heading east toward the interstate. She seemed to be puttering in comparison to her usual breakneck speed.
‘Could you step on it? Like you said, Eric could be there already.’
‘I’ve gotten caught at the speed trap on Brookhill twice already. I’m not getting another $250 ticket for you or anyone. Besides, why are you so sure that your son, who comes home only when he has to, is driving all the way from Minneapolis to Lake Verde?’
‘Eric may not be good at visiting or even calling, but he is nearly compulsive about texting.’
‘So?’ Sarah turned on to the ramp heading north and accelerated to her normal speed – ten miles per hour over the speed limit.
I settled in, feeling a little better now that we were on our way. ‘So he didn’t answer my original text. That means he’s avoiding me because he doesn’t want me to ask what he’s doing.’ E-mails and texting might be great for communication, but they were also wonderful for going incommunicado. You answered what you wanted and pretended you didn’t receive the rest. I was a great pretender.
‘Besides,’ I continued, ‘he thinks I believe Ted killed Rachel.’
‘Do you?’
‘No.’
Sarah looked at me.
‘Fine. Maybe I did. But the evidence seemed―’
‘Enough to convince you that your son’s father was a murderer.’ She shrugged. ‘You can understand why Eric took the opposite view.’
I could. And I did. ‘I think I was so hurt, thinking that Ted had cheated on me again, that it was easier to believe he was evil than . . .’
‘That he had never loved you.’
I glanced over at Sarah, startled. Getting this kind of insight from her was like seeing Attila the Hun turn into the Dalai Lama before your eyes. ‘That’s very, very . . .’
‘What?’ she snapped.
I searched for a word that wouldn’t set her off. ‘Perceptive,’ I settled on.
She seemed mollified. ‘I am perceptive,’ she said, sitting a little higher in her bucket seat. ‘No one gives me credit.’
‘I’m sorry.’
There was a silence and then Sarah said, ‘So you think Eric went to Lake Verde to help Ted?’
‘That’s my best guess.’ I was thinking back on my conversation with Eric last night. ‘He started to tell me something and then stopped. I think he was going to say that Ted probably went to the lake cottage, but then thought better of it. He probably assumed I’d tell Pavlik.’
‘Fat chance of that,’ Sarah grumbled. ‘That would mean you actually trusted the man.’ She slammed on her brakes to let a blue sports car she’d cut off in the first place back into the lane. ‘Idiot,’ she yelled.
‘Want me to open the window so she can hear you?’ I said, rubbing my ear.
‘Not necessary. My voice carries.’
Amen to that. ‘I don’t think it’s a matter of trust,’ I said as the other driver tapped her brakes to get Sarah off her butt. It didn’t work. ‘I just don’t want to be wrong again. I don’t want to feel stupid.’
‘You need to trust him with those feelings.’
‘What are you doing, writing fortune cookies in your spare time?’
Sarah flushed. ‘Emma dragged me to a yoga class.’
My mouth dropped open.
Sarah glanced ove
r and shrugged. ‘We meditate.’
I might be able to cope with the possibility Ted had been framed, but the thought of Sarah meditating? It would have to wait for another day.
Sarah changed the subject. ‘Why didn’t you think of Lake Verde in the first place?’
‘I put it out of my head years ago. I hated that cabin. Ted took me there when we were dating, but I refused to go again.’
‘Rats?’ Sarah guessed.
‘I thought so, but they might have been mice. They looked just like that mouse tonight. Either way, the cabin was dark, it was dirty and there were things living there that didn’t belong there.’
‘That’s probably not the way they looked at it. And it was a rat, by the way.’
‘In the cabin? How would you know?’
‘At the Hamilton. I just didn’t want you to freak.’
‘I didn’t freak. I was merely being prudent.’
‘Sure,’ Sarah said. ‘So if you never go to the cabin, how does Eric know about it?’
‘He and Ted went there to fish every summer when Eric was younger,’ I said. ‘It was Ted’s father’s favorite place. I don’t think anyone has been up there since he died.’
Sarah changed lanes to pass a semi-trailer. ‘If Eric didn’t want you to know that he thought Ted was at the cabin, why did he text you about Lake Verde?’
I’d been thinking about that. ‘Eric has a good head on his shoulders. Maybe he was scared of going up there alone, without anyone knowing where he was.’
One thing I’d stressed with Eric when he went away to school was that I needed to know when he left the Cities. Each year it seemed like students disappeared from universities around the country. Some turned up alive, some dead. Some were just never heard from again. ‘He could have gotten lost or hurt on the way. I think he showed good judgment.’
‘True,’ Sarah said. ‘But maybe he’s also not as sure of Ted as he wants you to think.’
‘Yeah, there’s that, too.’
‘So are we showing “good judgment”?’ Sarah asked after a moment.
We exchanged looks. Then I got out the cellphone and called Pavlik.
Two dropped calls and a bad connection later, I’d filled the sheriff in. As I expected, Pavlik dismissed my theory on Stephen or at least seemed to. He also wasn’t all that happy I was on my way to Lake Verde.