Jelly's Gold

by David Housewright

  “Precious few people are killed by strangers,” I said. “Ninety percent of the time we’re murdered by people who know us. The police always start with those closest to the murder victim and then work outward. It’s SOP. Don’t worry. The cops will be moving on to other suspects, if they haven’t already. They’ve interrogated Heavenly Petryk and her pals; they’ll be talking to Boston Whitlow soon.”

  “Boston?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “No, I … It’s the name. Who calls their child Boston?”

  “Probably the same people who name their children Rushmore.”

  “Or Ivy. They called me Poison Ivy when I was a kid. Beware of Poison Ivy. I hated it.”

  “I could tell you stories that would bring bitter tears to your eyes,” I said.

  “Please don’t.” Ivy brushed her eye with a knuckle. “I’ve had enough of tears.” She laughed as if she had said something funny, but there was no humor in her voice. When she finished, she said, “This Boston Whitlow, what’s his part in all this?”

  “He came to me this morning with a deal. He offered me half of Jelly’s gold in exchange for some letters that he believed Berglund had given me. He was convinced that these letters would lead us to the treasure. He was very surprised when he discovered that I didn’t have them.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I. How did he know I was working with Berglund? What made him think Berglund gave me letters? Then there’s the big question—what letters?”

  From her expression, Ivy seemed even more confused than I was.

  “Did Berglund mention anything about some letters to you?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “When I last spoke to him, Berglund said he was looking into some private collections. Do you know what he meant by that?”

  “Some families keep heirlooms—diaries, letters, photographs—handed down from one generation to the next. Some even put them on display.”

  “Perhaps he found something in one of the collections.”

  Ivy thought about it for a few beats before shaking her head. “No,” she said. “He would have told me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Most of Josh’s research led to dead ends. He said there was no sense in discussing it. He always shared the information that seemed important.”

  “That’s what he told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “Of course I believed him.”

  “Do you know who he was talking to yesterday? Who he went to see?”

  Ivy hesitated before she answered. “He didn’t tell me.”

  “I have a tough question for you,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Could Berglund have been working with someone else? Someone he would have been comfortable leaving the letters with?”

  “Do you mean another woman?” Ivy said.

  “Doesn’t have to be another woman. Could be a friend, someone in his family.”

  “Josh didn’t have many friends, at least none that I met, and he didn’t get along all that well with his family. As for a lover—they say that the woman is the last to know. That’s not true. If Josh were cheating on me, I would have known. I might have been the last one to admit it, but I would have known.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You don’t believe me.” Ivy took a deep breath and pushed herself off the chair. “You sound like the cops, like that guy Lieutenant Dunston. I’ll tell you what I told them. I loved Josh and he loved me and there were no secrets between us. We trusted each other. It was like—Josh once said it was like we were ancient spirits who have known each other for a millennium.”

  Tell it to Heavenly, I thought but didn’t say.

  “Have the cops asked you about the gold?”

  “Of course. When they’re not asking how well Josh and I got along, they’re asking about the gold. So has the TV.”

  “The TV?”

  “The reporter, what’s her name, Kelly something. She asked about it, wanted to interview me. She was very insistent. I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about. She kept asking what I had to hide. Finally, I just shut the door.”

  “Good move,” I said. “Somebody leaked the story to Bressandes, but right now it’s just gossip. If she finds a second source to verify it, someone she can put on camera, then it becomes news and she’ll broadcast it. That’ll make it more difficult to find Berglund’s killer. It’ll also make it harder for us to find the gold. It’ll be like the St. Paul Winter Carnival Medallion Hunt. Everyone with a metal detector will be out there.”

  Ivy crossed her apartment and looked out of the sliding glass doors that led to her balcony. Whatever she saw out there held her attention for several minutes. She didn’t speak, and neither did I. I was starting to feel uncomfortable when she spun to face me. Her eyes were moist with tears that didn’t fall.

  “You think we should keep looking for the gold.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It doesn’t seem very important anymore.”

  “I’m not saying it is, but I want to make sure whoever killed Berglund doesn’t get it. Besides, it’ll give you something to think about other than your troubles.”

  Ivy closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and held it as if she were making a difficult decision. “Yeah, why not,” she said with the exhale. She opened her eyes and extended her hand. “You and me, McKenzie. Fifty-fifty.”

  “Deal,” I said. Ivy always had a strong handshake.

  “I’ve been cleaning up, trying to put Josh’s notes in order,” she said.

  “Let’s take a look.”

  Ivy led me to the room they used as an office. Photocopies of newspaper articles and other documents were neatly stacked on top of the desk, along with scores of handwritten notes and a log in which Berglund had recorded his progress.

  “I have no idea if anything is missing,” Ivy said.

  “It would help if we knew where Berglund went yesterday.”

  Ivy gave it a moment’s thought, then reached for the log. “The police missed this. I found it just a little while ago.” She opened it to the last page that contained writing. “McKenzie,” she said and handed the book to me. Berglund had headed the page with the word “Sunday,” followed by the date. On it he had recorded everything that had happened, including our meeting and the incident at Rickie’s. The next page, which would have been Monday, had been torn from the book. Ivy said, “The person who killed Josh …”

  “Yeah,” I said. I dropped the book on the desk. “We need to tell the cops about this.”

  “Now?” Ivy asked.

  “In a minute. Let’s see what else we can find.”

  I sat at the desk and started rifling through the pile of remaining research. Much of it was in chronological order, and most of it was fascinating—a glimpse of history day by day that kept me reading for hours even though the information didn’t seem particularly pertinent. Ivy brought coffee and suggested sandwiches. I accepted the coffee but declined the free lunch. Eventually I became discouraged by the lack of relevance I found. None of Berglund’s research seemed to point to Jelly’s gold. Even what little investigating I had done on my own the previous day had greater value. I began to think that Heavenly had spoken the truth, that she really was the brains behind the search. I also wondered if Berglund’s killer had filched everything that was useful, which meant he knew what to look for. Finally I came across an excerpt from the St. Paul Dispatch that Berglund had photocopied. The piece had been printed under the heading “Society and Club News” on the paper’s Home Magazine page:

  TO SUMMER IN EUROPE

  Mrs. Kathryn Messer, wife of Brent Messer, 337 Summit Avenue, will set sail June 22 aboard H.M.S. Rotterdam for a summer vacation trip in Europe. She will visit England and Ireland. Mrs. Messer, who departed for New York on Sunday morning, had not set a return date. Mr. Messer, well-known architect and builder of the city’s Pu
blic Safety Building, will remain in St. Paul for the present, perhaps to join his wife at a later date.

  I recognized the name. Brent Messer and his wife had partied with Frank Nash at the Boulevard of Paris nightclub after Nash hit the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Huron, South Dakota. Berglund had recognized it, too—he underlined it twice. Along with the date. The item appeared in the June 19, 1933, edition of the paper. Kathryn Messer departed for New York the previous morning. Which meant she up and went to Europe on the eighteenth—the day following the Kansas City Massacre.

  “Call Lieutenant Dunston,” I said. “Tell him about the missing page in the log book.” I held the photocopy of the gossip item up for Ivy to see. “This we’ll keep to ourselves.”

  The Toyota Corolla was waiting for me when I swung my Audi onto Hoyt Avenue. It was parked down the street with a clear view of my house. I figured the driver must have driven there after I lost him, hoping to pick me up when I came home. I drove past the car as if I didn’t know it was there; the driver ducked down when I approached from behind, so I couldn’t see his face, not that I was looking hard.

  I pulled into my driveway and parked in front of the freestanding garage. Normally I enter my house through the back, but this time I used the front door so the tail could see me and wouldn’t suspect that I’d spotted him. I didn’t want him to change his tactics, change his car, hide better—I wanted to know where he was all the time. At least until I decided what to do about him.

  Once inside the house, I grabbed a pair of binoculars and examined the driver from behind the drapes in my living room. He was clean-cut with sandy blond hair, about twenty-five—the same age as Heavenly and all of her friends. I could only hope he wasn’t another English major.

  I changed clothes, which for me meant clean jeans, a polo shirt, and a black sports jacket. I paused in front of the mirror, telling myself that I looked the way Russell Crowe would look if only he could, but I didn’t linger long. Prudence Johnson was fronting for Rio Nido at Rickie’s, and I wanted to be sure to get a front row seat. I used to listen to Prudence when I was a student at the U and she and the quartet played classic jazz and swing at West Bank joints like the New Riverside Café and Extempore Coffeehouse. Eventually they disbanded, and Prudence went on to a pretty good career singing jazz, folk, and country in honky-tonks, clubs, theaters, and even Carnegie Hall, becoming a regular guest on Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion radio show and appearing in Robert Redford’s film A River Runs Through It. Now she and Rio Nido were together again, and I didn’t want to miss it.

  Which is why I was so impatient when I answered my telephone, why I snapped “Hello” as if the caller had insulted me.

  “Umm, Mr. McKenzie?”

  It was a woman’s voice, sounding tentative and unsure, and I figured that was my fault, so to make up for it I said, “Yes, it is. How may I help you?” as cheerfully as I could.

  “I don’t know that you can. I was asked to call you. I’m not sure why.”

  No, not a woman’s voice—a girl’s. It had a kind of raspy quality as if she had just finished crying.

  “Who asked you to call me?” I said.

  “Josh Berglund.”

  “What?”

  “Josh Berglund. He … yesterday he told me … we spoke … Josh said …”

  She paused for a moment to gather her thoughts. When the moment stretched into half a minute I said, “Miss?”

  “I’m sorry—it’s just… it hasn’t been a good day for me. I just learned that Josh was … a little while ago I learned that he … that he was killed, and I still … I can’t believe it happened. They say—the reporter on the news—the TV was on at the Life Center and I glanced at it …”

  She paused again. This time I filled the silence by asking questions, trying to draw her out.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Genevieve Antonello.”

  “That’s a pretty name. Are you Italian?”

  “Half Italian, half Irish.”

  “You said Life Center before, what’s that?”

  “The Community Life Center in Benson Great Hall. It’s a kind of student center.”

  “You’re a student?”

  “Yes. At Bethel University.”

  “What are you taking?”

  “I’m thinking about economics, but I’m still a freshman, so I have time before I declare a major.”

  Now for the tough questions, my inner voice said.

  “How did you know Berglund?” I asked.

  “I met him at the nursing home,” Genevieve said. “I volunteer at the nursing home, and he came to interview Uncle Mike and we—he and I—we became … He was very kind to Mike. I can’t believe he’s gone.”

  The catch in her voice almost brought me to tears.

  “You said he told you to call me,” I reminded her.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not… I don’t know.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He called me. Called me on my cell. He said he was in a hurry. He said things were happening quickly, but he didn’t say what things. I asked, but he didn’t say. Now I see—I saw on TV that he was killed. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Genevieve, he gave you my name, right?”

  “Yes. He gave me your name and phone number. He said if anything should happen to him—he didn’t say what could happen, but he said if anything happened I should call you.”

  “Why?” I asked again. I was becoming more and more annoyed that Genevieve wouldn’t just spit it out, yet at the same time I was trying to sound sympathetic to keep her talking. “What did he want you to tell me?”

  “He wanted me to tell you not to let—he said ‘bastards …’ ” She spoke the word as if she were afraid of it. “He said not to let the bastards get it.”

  “What bastards? Who was he referring to?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “What did he not want the bastards to get?”

  “He didn’t say. Mr. McKenzie, I asked, but he laughed like it was a joke. Like it was a riddle.”

  “Genevieve, may I see you?”

  “Now? No. No. Not—no. Not tonight. Not—not in person. I can’t see anyone. I can’t—”

  “Tomorrow, then? Can I see you tomorrow?”

  “I suppose. Yes. I don’t have classes until … I don’t know if I’m going to go to class.”

  I asked for her phone number, and Genevieve managed to get it out. I asked where she would like to meet; I said the earlier the better. She told me that freshmen aren’t allowed to keep cars on campus and she didn’t want to leave the school grounds anyway. I certainly couldn’t blame her for that. After all, she was meeting a stranger who might or might not have been involved in the killing of someone she obviously cared for. She suggested I meet her at 10:00 A.M. outside Benson Great Hall. It was just inside the gate on the left. She said that I couldn’t miss it. I told her she was welcome to bring friends. She thanked me and said she was sure she would be okay.

  I tried to ask her a few more questions, but the few minutes she had invested in our conversation seemed to have exhausted her.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. McKenzie,” she said. “I can’t talk anymore.”

  A moment later, I was staring at a dead phone.

  There are plenty of paintings in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, as well as other museums all over the world, that people glance at and say, “That’s pretty,” before moving on to the next one. The paintings mean nothing to them; they’re just things hanging on the wall that are pleasant to look at but after a couple of viewings, who cares? True works of art, on the other hand, have much more going for them than just prettiness. They have depth, character; they speak to the beholder on an emotional level, on an intellectual level, on levels that we aren’t even aware of. That’s why we never grow tired of them, why we observe them over and over again as if for the first time. Great art has value that goes well beyon
d mere surface beauty.

  Nina is like that.

  I’ve known her for several years now; probably know everything about her. I’ve seen her in a five-thousand-dollar red velvet gown and in torn jeans and a ratty T-shirt. I’ve seen her angry, happy, distraught, silly, ingenious, selfish, charitable, indefatigable, exhausted, frightened, and courageous beyond words. I’ve seen Nina at her best and at her worst. Yet there are moments when I see her at an unusual angle or in a different light or just unexpectedly out of the corner of my eye and it catches my breath. Like when she was in her kitchen, happily dodging a ferociously busy Chef Monica until Monica stopped and announced, “One of us has got to go.”

  “That’ll be me,” Nina said. She grabbed my arm and led me from the kitchen. “I love watching Monica work,” she said. “It’s kinda like watching Iron Chef on the Food Network, except I actually get to sample the dishes.”

  I hugged her and kissed her cheek.

  “McKenzie, where did that come from?”

  “I enjoy your company,” I said.

  “Oh, my,” she said and fanned her face with great exaggeration.

  “You said something about food.”

  “Don’t worry, McKenzie. I’ll feed you.”

  She did, too, in her office, serving a salad of white and green asparagus with Parmesan-lemon sabayon, pancetta, and butter-poached pheasant egg, followed by grilled beef tenderloin with braised short rib, parsnip purée, and red wine—Monica’s special du jour. We were nearly finished with the meal when Monica stopped in to check on us. She picked up a twelve-inch-high trophy that Erica had won at the state high school fencing championships and given to her mother, held it like a club as she fixed her unblinking eye on me, and said, “What do you think?”