AHMM, April 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Backhanded compliments aren't your style."

  I waited while Larry eyed me with a glass of ice water raised halfway to his lips. “One,” I continued, “I don't work for free. Two, the trail is stone cold frozen. Three, there doesn't seem to be any reason to care. It was a prank or the act of a fanatic."

  He drank most of the water in the glass, then replied, “In reverse order: The Star-Bulletin cares because Jay Tommasin's byline was in it for thirty years—that's three. In 1977 you picked up a trail that was eighteen years old and ran it right up the back of a senatorial candidate—that's two. We're offering five big ones for your byline, R. J., on the solution to the mystery and how you found it out—that's numero uno."

  "Is this your idea?"

  "Nope. I'm just known to know you, so I'm the messenger boy. In the new austerity regime, though, if you turn me down the lunch is on me, not the expense account."

  "Why me?"

  "Why?” he echoed. “Last summer in that river boat business you were all over our front page and all the other news outlets in town—and, yeah, you didn't like it. But now, R. J., you're hot. You're Mr. Private Eye. You'll sell papers."

  "Right. As in ‘How I was baffled by the Council Overhang mystery.’”

  "Not a chance.” He waited, so I did too. “Okay. I'm authorized to go to seventy-five hundred to seal the deal.” He made a face. “And expenses."

  I exhaled a lot of air, then asked him, “So which of the two would be better for you personally, Larry? Five or seven-five?"

  "What do you think?"

  "I think you think I'm the world's biggest sucker."

  "Well?"

  "All right. For five thousand and expenses because I guess you must be right."

  "Welcome to the wonderful world of journalism—sucker."

  * * * *

  Questions of gullibility aside, saying no to Larry on any legitimate request was impossible, and in this instance, as he went on to explain, there was more to it than just bumping circulation for a few days. Two other papers and Chicago magazine were all digging into the story, and Larry's superiors couldn't stomach the thought of seeing a headline like “Mystery of Star-Bulletin Reporter's Death Solved” under another publication's banner. “Subhead,” Larry had remarked, “Mass Panic Attacks Editorial Board."

  Not that this made the problem any easier, since the trail was not only “stone cold frozen,” to quote myself; most of it was obliterated by the footprints of the cops and reporters who'd come up with nothing trampling over it in the previous weeks. When I'd expressed this thought to Ginny that night, she'd replied, “Yes. And to vary slightly from that same tired metaphor, what's needed now, I think, is a shortcut. Or wouldn't you agree?"

  Twenty years into our marriage Ginny was still pretty much the same as she'd been on our wedding day—beautiful without trying, in other words. Black hair, fair complexion, icy blue eyes, perfect features, and a perfect frame to match. She wasn't a goddess, though—Larry's implication had been off the mark there, which was lucky for me. Goddesses don't often marry linebacker-sized detectives with birthmarked, bespectacled faces.

  "Shortcuts are fine when you know the destination,” was my reply of the moment, anyway. “I talked a little with the Star-Bulletin reporter who had the assignment—"

  "You pumped him, I trust."

  "Her—but, yeah. That goes without saying."

  "And?"

  "It's the woman's view. Generational too, I'd guess. Tommasin was seventy, she's thirty-three. Marybeth Reineke by name. Views provided over beverages at the Billy Goat."

  "My, my."

  "I was after a couple of things, but the first was just a basic profile of Jay Tommasin. A man without friends, she told me, which I already knew. Lived in the condo out in Lombard since his last divorce. Wrote unpaid restaurant reviews for the suburban Angle Press chain, quite a comedown for a guy who was the paper's star crime reporter in the eighties. Neither of his ex-wives still living would agree to go out and identify him—that's why Larry and the others went. According to Marybeth, he could charm the birds out of trees when he wanted, but he had a habit of turning on people and berating them with a nasty, quick tongue. He flayed all three of his wives verbally, especially after they found out about his habit of hitting on younger women in bars, any young woman, any bar—and not too surprisingly, he spent most of his time in bars."

  "He sounds rather like a Ngaio Marsh murder victim."

  "Maybe. Except he wasn't murdered. I'll give you a little more on that subject in a minute, but let me finish with Marybeth. She and the Trib reporter pooled resources and tried to check out people who might have found some kind of satire or poetic justice in lighting candles and putting scripture in the hands of a deceased old reprobate—"

  "But, R. J.—"

  "Right. Big stumbling block. Why drive all the way out to Starved Rock to hold the ceremony? So that was the next bright idea of the journalistas—to find out what connection the guy had with Starved Rock or that general vicinity. Nothing.

  "So Marybeth went on her own and actually tried to trace his movements. The police, according to her, hadn't done a very thorough job, since the business didn't involve a serious crime. She didn't get a lot further, though. Tommasin lived alone and didn't have any friends. The local bar he frequented gave her a definitive No. And although he wasn't a recluse, his neighbors in the apartment complex only saw him occasionally coming in or going out. The person who saw him last—so far as we know—was a cab driver who picked him up at his condo and dropped him in front of a theater in downtown Naperville at about five in the afternoon two days before he was found dead."

  "Two days before. That sounds less than promising."

  "Yeah. And nobody within a three block radius of the theater could remember ever seeing the guy in the photo Marybeth showed around, so the point is moot."

  "For the moment it is. True. What about ... or rather, you said he was a restaurant critic. Mightn't he have been on an assignment, the next night if not that one?"

  "That's what Marybeth thought, so she talked to his editor at Angle Press and learned a little. He wrote the reviews under the name of The Food Dude, and like any restaurant critic he had to be as anonymous and forgettable as possible. Also secretive, according to this editor. He didn't tell anyone what place he was going to review next. He just filed his story by a certain deadline and the editor printed it if he liked it and had space.

  "This is where Marybeth got stalled, and if any other reporters got farther it wasn't by much, or I'd be superfluous to the affair."

  "Yes. I ... You said something about his death—"

  "Oh. I talked long distance to the doc who did the autopsy. He said it was a plain old coronary, nothing special, the kind caused by an unhealthy lifestyle, only big enough to stop a truck. I wanted more but he was busy, so I made an appointment for tomorrow at one thirty."

  "And you're going to Starved Rock, too, I trust. The school year ended yesterday.” She was a guidance counselor. “Mightn't I come along?"

  * * * *

  Ginny Carr

  "Is this stop really necessary?” I asked as R. J.'s Chevy slowed to a halt across from a sprawling condominium complex. We had been on our way to Starved Rock State Park and then to an interview with the medical examiner of LaSalle County, not to a residence the third suburb over from our own.

  "Yep,” my husband replied. “Forgot to mention it."

  "Conveniently. Since you knew that I wouldn't approve."

  "Marybeth couldn't stomach going through Tommasin's things, that's all. I'm guessing the cops made some kind of search when he was reported missing, but at that point they didn't know what to look for."

  "Do you?"

  "Nope."

  "Then I'll come in with you, and after we're arrested, perhaps we can share the same cell.” Because, of course, R. J.'s design was to break into Jay Tommasin's living quarters. After twenty years of marriage I knew him well enough to understand both
his aim and his logic: Illicit entry was always quicker and generally far more private than requesting keys from a potentially suspicious caretaker who could demand to be present during any search and who might refuse access. I also knew that R. J. had no peer in this particular line of disreputable enterprise. He had an uncanny ability to make himself inconspicuous, for one thing—in spite of his enormous size—and as I watched he slipped on a cap that matched his trousers, grinned at me, then got out of the car to don a similarly colored workman's shirt that had been hidden under the driver's seat.

  "Give me seven minutes, then buzz 311 in the building to the right,” he told me, an indication that he had surveyed the property earlier. “I'll let you in."

  "Meanwhile, I'll keep the engine running for a getaway,” was my unfunny reply.

  After he had removed a pair of toolboxes from the trunk and ambled off, I experienced the first of several frissons that in retrospect seem to highlight my part in what then appeared to be an unremarkable investigation. That the excitement I felt stirring in my blood wasn't pleasant ought to have warned me, I suppose, but upon joining R. J. in Jay Tommasin's residence without eliciting so much as a curious stare, my sense of unease passed away.

  The apartment, contrary to my expectations, was reasonably neat and pleasantly furnished in a masculine style, although I could have foregone the atmosphere of stale cigar smoke. “What are we looking for?” I asked.

  "You tell me."

  "We-e-ll ... A calendar or appointment book. Any notations about restaurants, I would say.” I looked around, but when I noticed the row of liquor bottles on the kitchen cabinet below the phone my imagination failed me. “What else, do you think?"

  "Oh—address book. Will. The guy had no living relatives—two ex-wives, no children—but somebody benefits, unless he died intestate."

  "As for his dying, I understood you to say he succumbed to heart failure."

  "Just repeating what I was told. Coroners have been wrong, and there's no use doing this with an entirely closed mind, especially if somebody benefits. What about shoes?"

  "Shoes? True—because his were absent. They wouldn't be here, though, unless he died here, and...” My second frisson. Prior to that moment I hadn't seriously considered the darker element of the affair: How Jay Tommasin's body, a large, conspicuous dead weight, had to have been transported not merely to Council Overhang but also from another place, all in secrecy.

  "It didn't happen here,” R. J. proclaimed.

  "How do you know?"

  "You're the logical thinker, but ... All right, too hard, too far. The candles would have been lit out in that courtyard.” He gestured toward a sliding glass door, beyond which lay a balcony overlooking an enclosed expanse of lawn. “Plus, I've broken and entered too many places not to spot a fix-up. This place says Tommasin walked out on his own power."

  And so we searched, I slowly, R. J. with the speed of experience and expertise. He discovered an address book which he “borrowed” by stashing it in one of the toolboxes. I found a calendar, but nothing was written on it. We listened together as an answering machine played back six inconsequential messages.

  In the bedroom we found an old-fashioned desk upon which sat a very modern personal computer, a device we both approached with trepidation, though for different reasons. It was not until the following year that R. J. gave in to the inevitability of learning the uses of computers, and so he felt at a loss. As for me, although an identical computer terminal sat on my work desk at the high school and I used it for various professional tasks, I was leery of “booting up” someone else's PC and more leery of what we might find. We searched the rest of the desk together without positive result until R. J. finally gave me a meaningful look and said, “Well?"

  I sat before the machine reluctantly, returning an equally meaningful look, then switched it on and waited for it to come alive.

  "I'll just check out the closet,” R. J. said from behind me.

  Icons and windows and the barricade of logins and passwords eventually appeared. Like many people, however, Jay Tommasin had his code words pre-entered, allowing me to skip over the first hurdle. “Good,” I commented over my shoulder. “He wasn't online."

  "What?"

  "He didn't have Internet access—thank God. No e-mail, no x-rated downloads. He's rather behind times. This is just his typewriter and record keeper.” I scrolled through file titles: old restaurant reviews; what looked to be a draft manuscript called “Life of Crime: a Reporter's Notebook"; tax worksheets. The title “Possibles” caught my eye, and a few seconds later I had before me a list with occasional comments, the final seven items being: Turnkey's—No; Cucina Sicilia—Done; Haven Grill—Hold; Mandar-Inn—Done; Popoudopolous; 48; Andalusia.

  "R. J.!” I turned in the swivel chair. “I've found the names of three—no, four—restaurants he was thinking of reviewing."

  "Good.” His head emerged from a closet. “I've found shoes. I need your opinion."

  "Oh?” I joined him at the closet entrance where he gestured toward the interior floor. “Wing tips, three pairs, and what I think of as old-style summer ventilator shoes, one pair. Nothing else but house slippers, suggesting an anachronistic fashion sense. So ... what was he wearing around May fourth?"

  "Wing tips or ventilator shoes, I would guess, depending on the weather."

  "I suppose.” R. J. glanced at his watch, then said, “Departure time. Can you copy those restaurant names while I tidy up?"

  * * * *

  At 11:17 we pulled into the parking lot nearest Council Overhang after a drive of nearly two hours that included a stop at the park entrance for a fresh map. Having become avid summer and weekend hikers over the years, we were fairly well acquainted with Starved Rock. It was the uncontested monarch of Illinois’ state parks, for one thing, especially given its unpromising locale. It was a place of lush forests, magnificent river bluffs, deep canyons, and high waterfalls virtually hidden in the heart of the flatland cornfields that dominate the northern two-thirds of the state. Notwithstanding our several trips there, however, we hadn't managed to explore the somewhat isolated eastern end and so had never seen the famous Council Overhang, a negligence soon to be remedied.

  The sky was a high gray overcast that morning, and against it as I got out of the car I sighted a pair of long-legged white egrets circling lazily over the river to the north.

  For a moment we stood and watched, but only a moment. We had come dressed for hiking with the aim of combining pleasure with business, and our time was short.

  "They must have used this parking lot,” R. J. commented as we crossed to the trail junction. “From the map it looks as if the overhang isn't that far, a quarter of a mile or so, but still..."

  Yes, I thought after we entered under the forest canopy, but still, carrying a heavy corpse a quarter of a mile through what must have been the darkness of night ... over what is turning out to be a hilly, meandering, root-plagued path. And later, A path that drops steeply to a plank bridge over a stream ... before following the stream around a high bluff to—

  Suddenly through the foliage above us we could make out a gaping cut in the bluff, a broad arch with a receding interior, the depth of which was impossible to judge from the forest floor below.

  "Wow,” R. J. said in an uncharacteristic tone of wonder. He looked back to assess the wooded trail we had traversed thus far, then forward at the moderately steep ascent up to the council chamber. “I don't know,” he muttered.

  "I don't either."

  We made the fifty-yard climb in silence, then strode across the flat, sandy floor until we stood at the epicenter of the near-perfect sandstone arc. Here, I thought, in this place in centuries past, Pontiac and his warriors may have sojourned; Jacques Marquette celebrated Mass; Illiniwek from across the broad river came to hold tribal council.

  A new frisson chilled me eerily: In this mystic, golden place a mock funeral had been put on in travesty ritual over the gross corpse of a man far less sacr
ed than profane.

  "And now,” R. J. remarked as if continuing his previous comment, “I know even less."

  "Yes, because what happened makes no sense as an act of cult fanaticism, and even less sense as a prank."

  "It's almost insane.” R. J. looked down at the trail. “If there's such a thing as group insanity. It took a minimum of three people to get the body here, one to light the way and two to carry. More likely five, though, given the state of the path and the dead weight."

  "The candles too.” I looked at the golden sand at my feet and found it difficult to envision their grotesque arrangement.

  We stared out through the leafy woods and down to the stream below, then south toward the point where two canyons joined to make one. Sounds came to us of other hikers’ voices, feet splashing as they forded the stream beyond our sight.

  "Well,” R. J. said, “let's explore while we can."

  * * * *

  After a hurried fast food lunch in Ottawa, we drove to the new hospital on the eastern border of the town to meet with David Roeper, M.D., the physician who had performed the autopsy on Jay Tommasin. Dr. Roeper proved to be a tall, balding man in his forties, brisk but not brusque in manner, who took in R. J.'s size and birthmark and my mud-spattered Levi's—ourselves generally, I felt—with a panoramic gaze that bespoke intelligence and curiosity.

  "Been out to the overhang, I see,” he stated in a droll tone. “I went myself."

  A faint uncertainty in his expression inspired me to ask why, and he made a quizzical face with raised eyebrows. “Three women were murdered in the park in 1960—way before my time—but this is probably the biggest Starved Rock mystery since. Not just kids setting off M-80s to get an echo."

  "But you stand by your findings that Tommasin died of natural causes,” R. J. said, “so it's not really on a par with the three women either."

  "It was for a while as far as the sheriff was concerned, not that he cares now. When the deceased turned out to be from Chicago, well—you folks are crazy up there.” After shrugging like a deadpan humorist, he glanced at his watch, then back at R. J. “You had questions?"