The St. Paul Conspiracy

by Roger Stelljes

  “Well, all I can tell you is that I didn’t find anything that seemed related to what we’re doing or looking for,” Rock replied. “These women make it easy to look for stuff. It’s all organized. I mean if you were looking for something you wouldn’t have to ransack the place, just give yourself time to go through it and find what you’re looking for.”

  “And PTA has had five weeks to do precisely that before we got around to it,” Mac replied.

  “Assuming they had anything to do with this in the first place,” Riley replied. “We sure aren’t finding anything this way.”

  “No, we’re not.” Mac looked at his watch. Noon. “Why don’t we get something to eat and go from there.”

  Rock and Riley nodded and pushed themselves up from the table. Lich was still looking at the fridge.

  “You coming?” Mac asked Lich.

  “Yeah. I’ll be right with you.” Lich replied as he continued to stare at something on the fridge, his hands on his hips.

  Mac joined Riley and Rock outside, holding the key to lock the door. The temperature was back up a little, mid-thirties, a bright blue sky. With no wind, it was comfortable, a trenchcoat sufficient for warmth. None of them wore gloves.

  Lich came out a few minutes later, and they started to file into the Explorer. Mac turned the key asking, “Where should we go?”

  “Franco’s is five minutes away,” Rock replied.

  “Yeah,” Riley added, rubbing his hands together.

  “Franco’s it is,” Mac replied, dropping the truck into gear. They sat in silence for a few minutes, the sports station playing on the radio.

  “Was James Stephens’s wife named Yolanda?” Lich blurted.

  “Riles?” Mac asked. Riley opened the Jones file and started leafing through the notes. “Yeah, Yolanda. Second wife it says here.”

  “Is Landy short for Yolanda?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Riley replied, “Why?”

  “Because,” Lich replied, “There was a note on the fridge that said-”

  “-coffee with Landy at 10:00,” Mac finished it for him. “What was the date on that, Dick?”

  “October 25th.”

  “At lunch I’ll give Ms. Stephens a call and see if we can pay her a little visit.”

  “Probably just a coincidence,” Rock added.

  “Yeah, but so is this whole case,” Mac replied.

  After lunch, they made their way over to the Stephens home, a sprawling two-story stucco mansion in the wealthy Highland Park neighborhood, close to the Mississippi River.

  “My, we are jet setting today aren’t we?” Rock mused.

  The house was set back a hundred feet from the street, and one could tell that, in the summer, it had numerous flower gardens in the front following a serpentine cobblestone sidewalk from the street. It looked like a home you would find in California, with off-white stucco, red tiles on the roof and tall, perfectly manicured shrubs framing the windows along the front.

  A housekeeper answered the door. She welcomed them in and asked that they wait for Ms. Stephens in the foyer. Mac admired the winding staircase up to the second level and a couple of the art pieces on pedestals.

  Mac recalled having seen a picture of Stephens. He wasn’t a homely guy by any stretch, just kind of an average Joe in his fifties. He had clearly overachieved in his second marriage. The second Ms. Stephens, who had answered the phone “Landy,” was a stunning beauty in, Mac guessed, her late thirties. She was tall, with strawberry-blond hair that fell stylishly to her shoulders. Two words came immediately to Mac’s mind-Trophy Wife. No reflection on her intelligence, just that he seriously doubted it was Stephens’s magnetism that drew this woman to him.

  Landy was ever the polite hostess, seating everyone and offering coffee. She sounded almost excited to speak with them when Mac called. Now she was serving coffee and what not, and he got the feeling that she was happy to have company. He wondered if having the mansion and the money still had left her a little lonely. Stephens probably had her running with an older crowd. Now that he was gone, all she had was the house and the money.

  “So, Ms. Stephens…” Mac asked.

  “Landy,” she replied, smiling warmly at Mac.

  “Okay, umm, Landy. As I mentioned when I called, we’re following up on some things from the Jamie Jones murder, and we noticed that she had met with you shortly before she died.”

  “Oh, yes. I remember. Probably a week beforehand.”

  “Were you and Ms. Jones friends?”

  “Yes. I really liked Jamie, and so did James. She was really nice, and we kind of hit it off because we were the same age.”

  “So, why did the two of you get together on the…” Mac looked down at his notes.

  Lich finished for him. “… the 25th.”

  “Oh. I had her meet me for coffee out at the Yacht Club. I had been up to our lake home, I guess my lake home, up north on Gull Lake. James had an office up there, and I ran across a banker’s box with a bunch of PTA stuff in it. I think it was called Cross or something like that. Anyway, I didn’t just want to throw it out. It might be something important. I figured if James had it, it was something financial, and I should give it to Jamie. We met for coffee, and I gave her the box.”

  “Do you recall what was in the box?” Mac asked.

  “No, I really don’t,” she replied and then looked thoughtfully towards the ceiling. “There was some sort of book, like for accounting I think.”

  “A ledger book?” Rock added helpfully.

  “Yes. That’s right. Thanks.” She shot him a warm smile. “A ledger book of some type.”

  “Anything else?” Riley asked.

  “Not that I can recall. Just papers, some folders, stuff like that. Most were in those brown file folders. I don’t know much about finance and, like I said, it was PTA related, so I gave it to Jamie.”

  “After that day, did you talk to her again?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “When you gave the box to her, what did she say?”

  “Nothing much. Thanks, maybe. She might have said, ‘I’ll look it over’ — that kind of thing. We were friends. Giving her the file was just an excuse to get together for coffee.”

  “Did you discuss anything else?”

  “We chatted about lots of things. Her work. What I was doing…”

  “Ms. Stephens…”

  “Landy.”

  “Sorry,” Mac replied, “Landy, did you talk about anything else related to the box you gave her.”

  She thought for a moment, then shook her head, “Not that I recall. We talked for an hour or so, said good-bye and that was that.”

  “And the name on the box was Cross?”

  “I think so. Cross. There was that ledger book and some other papers that all looked Greek to me. That was it.”

  They went through it one more time, but nothing additional came to light. Mac worried that they were pushing it, but Landy never asked what their questions were all about.

  They got up to leave, thanking her for her time. She walked them to the door, saying good-bye to each, with Mac being last. He left her a card and asked that she call if she remembered anything else. She promised she would, giving him a warm smile as he left.

  Alt and Bouchard watched from a block and a half north, waiting for McRyan and Company to leave. Kraft and Hansen were in another van a half block behind, waiting for their cue. Alt had been on the phone with Lindsay. Finally, they had an idea of where the Cross documents might have come from.

  “When they leave, you’ll talk to her?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When that’s done, call me. It’s time for us to put a stop to this little investigation of theirs.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alt hung up and turned his attention back to the house. The front door opened, and the cops filed out, McRyan being the last. They all got into the Explorer and drove down the driveway, took a right turn, in the opposite direction from Alt and Boucha
rd.

  “Kraft. They’re yours.”

  “Copy that.” He heard the engine start behind him and Kraft pulled by, settling in behind McRyan and company along Mississippi River Boulevard.

  “Let’s go.”

  Mac and company headed back downtown to the Pub. Mac called Sally to fill her in on what they had found.

  “Is this enough to go after them?” he asked.

  “No. You don’t even know what this Cross thing is. You have to know about that before we could go forward. Sounds like you’re on the right track though. You guys are finding things.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure how long we can keep doing this until people start finding out.”

  “Hopefully something will pop soon.”

  “We’ll be at the Pub. Come when you can.”

  Shamus told them to use Patrick’s Room in the basement if they needed and that seemed like the place to go. They each grabbed a beer from the bar and headed downstairs. Mac closed the unique cabinet door behind them and everyone took a seat.

  “So, what do we think?” Mac started.

  “Stephens was a lucky man,” Lich said, his mind ending up where it usually did.

  “Yeah, she was a looker,” Riles replied, “But did we learn anything?”

  “Cross. We learned that. Whatever that is. We need to find out what that means. Is it a place, a name, what?” Mac replied.

  “How do we find that out?” Rock asked.

  “I know somebody I could ask,” Mac replied. “I’m going to go make a phone call.” He left the small conference room, found a spot in the corner of the basement and punched up Lyman’s number. Mac filled him in on what they had learned the last couple of days.

  “Mac, as best I remember, Cross was an old explosives facility out in West Virginia. The company owned it for years, but it’s closed now, has been for a while.”

  “Anything unusual about the place?”

  “Off the top of my head, no. It was an explosives facility we had. It was old and out in the middle of nowhere. Nothing like a modern operation. They finally shut it down a few years ago.”

  “Do you know why they shut it down? Any questions or controversies?”

  “I’m not sure. I think we just had more modern facilities for producing explosives. I suspect it was determined that it wasn’t worth keeping open, probably because it would have cost a lot to modernize it and what not.”

  “What was out there, just a manufacturing facility?”

  “Pretty much. There was a big warehouse or two, so I don’t know, we might have been storing stuff there or something. The place was out in the middle of nowhere as I recall. I was never actually there myself, but I looked Cross up on a map once and it was a little town in the hills. The facility itself was well out of town, being an explosives plant and all.”

  “Anyone you could talk to about the place?”

  “I could try. I still have some friends at PTA.” Lyman didn’t sound hopeful.

  “It’s a long shot I know, but I’d appreciate it just the same. We’re kind of up against the wall, and this is the only thing we have found.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Mac flipped his phone closed and headed back to the conference room. When he opened the door, Riley was hanging up his phone. He didn’t look happy. “What gives?” Mac asked.

  “We have to go see the chief.”

  “What for?”

  “He wants to know why we’re looking into PTA.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “I’m a cop, not a politician.”

  A few days earlier, it had been a happy occasion to come into the chief’s office. The Irish whiskey had been out. Smiles and backslaps all around. Not now. One look at Flanagan’s face told the boys that he was not pleased. His tie was loose, his hair messed, the dark circles around his eyes had suddenly returned. “Sit,” was all he said when they walked in.

  Helen Anderson was already sitting on the left side of the couch and didn’t look any happier. Her arms were crossed, and she had a stern look on her face. Sylvia Miller sat on the other end and looked pensive. While Mac didn’t like making the chief mad or causing Miller discomfort, he could give a shit about Anderson. What did concern him was Sally. She was conspicuous by her absence from this little meeting. Helen knew they were dating and he imagined that if it hadn’t happened already, Helen would be asking her what she knew.

  As they all sat down and the chief came around his desk, the mayor came in, also unhappy. He’d been their friend a few days ago. One look told Mac, the mayor wasn’t here to be friends.

  “So,” the chief started, “can someone tell me what in the hell you four have been up to?”

  Riley started, but Mac put his hand on his knee and jumped in. The investigation was his idea. “Chief, you can put it on me.”

  “What the hell, Mac?”

  “Chief, I found some things a few days ago in finishing up Knapp, that caused us to go back and look at a few things related to the Claire Daniels murder, as well as one of Knapp’s alleged victims, Jamie Jones.”

  “What?” Helen Anderson replied, aghast. “Why in the world, detective, would you dig up all of that?”

  “I’d like to know as well,” the chief added, doubt in his eyes.

  Mac walked them through the whole story. Flanagan and Miller looked intrigued, Anderson incredulous, and the mayor sick. They all had their individual reasons.

  “Hell of a theory, Mac,” Flanagan said, with a little smile and shake of his head.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Pat, you went along with this?” the chief asked, looking over to Riley.

  “Yes, sir. We all did,” Riley replied assuredly. “Mac’s onto something here.”

  “Excuse me?” Anderson accused. “From where I’m sitting, I don’t see it. You have no evidence to implicate PTA in anything. You have a number of coincidences that make an interesting story, perhaps, but nothing that would hold up in court.”

  “We’re not in court yet,” Rock replied. “We’re investigating…”

  “And who authorized that?” the mayor interjected. “Obviously this is news to the chief.”

  “Couldn’t tell the chief,” Lich added.

  “Why not?” Flanagan, surprised.

  “Sir, we were trying to protect you. If we found something, we’d come to you. If we found nothing, then you’d never know that there were some possible questions, not so much about Knapp, but about the Daniels killing,” Mac said.

  Riley jumped in. “It’s been rough enough for the department as it is, sir. We didn’t want to come to you with this, unless we found something to support the theory.”

  “Well, on that account, I’d say you’ve failed,” Anderson replied.

  Mac held up two fingers, “We’ve had two days! TWO! If we’re right, PTA has had five weeks or more to try to cover this up, which puts us way behind. But in two days of poking around, we found this Cross lead and link between Landy Stephens and Jamie Jones. We’ve already linked Jones to Daniels. And I just can’t get past two women, lifelong friends, both from a small Ohio town who die in St. Paul on the same night. Something’s going on here. If we keep looking, we might find more.”

  “If you keep looking, all you’ll do is embarrass the department and my office.” Anderson answered. “You have a theory that, while I can see where you’re going, doesn’t have any evidence to support it. PTA’s lawyers would make monkeys out of us if we went after them with this. They’ll paint you as a bunch of rogue detectives who investigated without authority. It’ll be a disaster for you, the chief, the mayor and, yes, my office.”

  “I thought we were on the same team?” Mac replied, disbelief on his face. “We haven’t asked to go to court yet. Who knows what we might find if we keep looking. If we develop a good case, then you can decide.”

  “I won’t take this into court against PTA.”

  Mac, pissed, raised his voice. “We wouldn’t ask you. We’d ask someone wh
o’s actually seen the inside of a courtroom, not a chicken-shit politician more interested in protecting her bony little ass and her senate run.”

  “That’s enough, detective!” the mayor replied angrily.

  Mac ignored the mayor and glared at Anderson, not backing down.

  “Calm down, everyone,” the chief stated, a wry smile on his face. “Let’s have a drink and cool down.” He got up and went to his desk and grabbed a bottle of whiskey and several glasses. While filling them, he asked, “Mac, what would you and the boys here suggest is your next move?”

  “We were discussing that when you called, sir. I don’t know that we had decided as of yet.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” the mayor replied. “You go poking around PTA without more than you have, we’ll lose them.”

  “Sir?” Riley asked.

  “I got the call from Ted Lindsay over at PTA. We’re currently in discussions with PTA to keep them here in St. Paul. Their lease is up next summer, and they bring over four thousand employees downtown alone. My office is working with the building owner, trying to keep PTA and all those jobs here in St. Paul. If we’re investigating them on something as thin as what you’ve put forward here, we’ll lose them, especially if the media gets wind of it. I don’t need to tell all of you what the loss of those jobs would do to this city.”

  Rock, stunned. “Jobs? What about murder? Does that count for anything, Mayor?”

  “Yes, detective, it does,” the mayor replied. “I’m no lawyer, but from what you’ve laid out here, you don’t have a case, do you?”

  “Not yet,” Mac replied.

  “Not ever,” Anderson interjected. “Ever heard of reasonable doubt, detective McRyan?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Mac replied with a wicked grin. “Graduated summa cum laude from law school.” He knew Anderson didn’t have any Latin on her diploma.