Nina said, “Yes, it is cute. By the way that’s presidential elections, dear. American Idol doesn’t count.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Heavenly said. “I don’t watch TV. I read books. You must have seen a few when you were a little girl.”
“McKenzie told me you were an English major. That’s all right. A girl as pretty as you doesn’t need a real major to get an M.R.S.”
The bartender poured the whiskey just in time.
“Tell me, Nina, how long have you been a waitress?” Heavenly asked.
“Since about nine years ago when I first opened the doors. How long have you been a bimbo—oops, I meant blonde.”
Heavenly cocked her head as if she had just heard something interesting. “You own this place?” she said.
“Most of it,” Nina said. “The bank still owns a small piece.”
“Really? It’s very nice.”
Nina seemed surprised by the compliment. “Thank you,” she said. She glanced at me and shrugged.
“It must have been hard, building all this,” Heavenly said.
“It had its moments,” Nina said.
“Did it help or hurt that you’re pretty?”
“Both.”
Heavenly nodded as if that one word spoke volumes. “It’s tricky to be a blonde and get respect,” she said.
“It’s tricky to be a woman and get respect,” Nina said.
Heavenly saluted Nina with her wine cooler. Nina returned it with her coffee mug.
How ’bout that, my inner voice said. A truce.
“I only hope I’m doing as well as you when I’m your age,” Heavenly said.
“I can see that you and your hair have been through a lot already,” Nina said.
Or maybe not.
“I would like to speak to McKenzie,” Heavenly said.
“Go ’head,” Nina said.
“Privately.”
“Why? McKenzie is only going to tell me everything you say later. Won’t you, McKenzie?” “Oh, boy,” I said.
“Will you, McKenzie?” Heavenly asked. “Probably.”
“I thought we were partners.”
“Yeah, well, there are partners and then there are partners. What do you want, Heavenly?”
“I want to know what Tim Dahlin said.”
“He said if I don’t lay off he’s going to make my life a living hell.”
“He said that?”
“Words to that effect, yeah.”
“Did he say anything about me?”
“Truth be told—no. The only time your name came up is when he mentioned that he knew you had made me an offer for the letters. How did Dahlin know that?”
“I don’t know,” Heavenly said.
“Neither do I.”
“Do you think he’s been following me?”
“Why not? He’s been following me.”
Heavenly turned and surveyed the club. Her eyes were wide and bright, and her bottom lip trembled just so. I wondered if she practiced or if the look came naturally.
“I’m frightened,” she said.
“Me, too.”
“How can you sit there drinking at a time like this?”
“Can you think of a better time?”
She gestured toward the door. “He could be out there,” she said. “He could be planning—who knows what he could be planning?”
“Heavenly, Dahlin cares only about the letters. You don’t have them, and he knows it. He isn’t going to bother you.”
“Do you have the letters?”
“Go home, Heavenly.”
“What are you going to do?”
“That depends on how soon you leave.”
I smiled at Nina, and she smiled back. Heavenly took note of both smiles and shook her head in disgust. “I don’t believe it,” she said. She slammed her wine cooler on the bar top, turned, and tramped from the club. Nina and I both watched her until she was out the door, although I suspect I enjoyed the sight more than Nina did. I turned back to find that she was now staring at me.
“Ten presidential elections?” Nina said.
“Four. I said four.”
“I remember when it was three.”
“Yes, well, we’re both getting older.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“Did I say older? I meant more mature.”
Nina crossed her arms over her chest and sighed dramatically.
“Did I say more mature? I meant—never mind. Are you coming over later?”
“I don’t know. A woman my age …”
“I’ll put on a pot of oatmeal and chill some prune juice.”
“How can I resist? I should be able to sneak out in about an hour.”
“Make it two. I need to run an errand first.”
According to his business card, Boston Whitlow lived in an apartment above a women’s clothing store in a bustling Minneapolis neighborhood called Cedar-Riverside. A hundred years ago it was known as Snoose Boulevard—I have no idea why—and was home to the Scandinavian immigrants that worked the mills and lumberyards along the Mississippi River. It now had probably the most diverse population in the Twin Cities. About seventy-five hundred people lived in the immediate area. Two-thirds were black, Native American, Hispanic, Asian, or some other minority; two-thirds were under the age of forty. When I was a kid, Cedar-Riverside was claimed by hippies, pseudo-intellectuals, poets, musicians, actors, artists, and activists of every persuasion, and it seems as if they never left. Stand at the busy intersection that inspired the neighborhood’s name and look for yourself. It has some of the best people-watching in the Twin Cities. It also has some of the worst parking. It was past nine and most of the shops and stores were closed, but the theaters, clubs, bars, and cafés were still humming. Which is why I was forced to plug a meter nearly a block and a half away from Whitlow’s place.
The entrance was jammed between the clothing store and a boutique that sold the most outrageous hats I had ever seen. The apartment itself was at the summit of a long flight of wooden stairs. There was a light at the bottom of the stairs and another at the top. I licked my fingers and unscrewed the bulb at the top as soon as I reached it, hiding in the shadows.
On the drive over, I had contemplated the various ways I could deal with Whitlow. Trickery came to mind. So did outright lying. I even considered the assorted handguns I have stashed in the safe embedded in the floor of my basement—after all, Whitlow was armed. Carried an Undercoverette, of all things. In the end, I decided there was nothing like the direct approach. So I rapped on Whitlow’s door. He looked through the spy hole, but, of course, he couldn’t see me. He did a foolish thing, a Minnesota-nice thing—he opened the door. A sliver of light appeared between the door and the frame as he peeked out. “Can I help you?” he said. I could see there was no chain, so I rammed the door hard with my shoulder. It flung open, knocking Whitlow backward but not down.
“McKenzie,” he said.
I snapped a fist deep into his solar plexus. That knocked the wind out of him. He covered up and dropped to his knees.
I closed and locked the door and went to Whitlow’s side. I squatted next to him. He didn’t want to look at me, so I gave his cheek a gentle slap.
He rasped out a question. “Why?”
“You lied to me,” I said. “That means we’re not friends anymore. I don’t want you to think this is a friendly conversation.”
I helped Whitlow to his feet and deposited him on a sofa. He was still clutching his stomach.
“What do you want?”
“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“What truth?”
“Let’s start with this—you’re still working for Timothy Dahlin.”
“I admit I was once employed—”
“Still employed. That’s how he knew about the letters, that both you and Heavenly made me an offer for the letters. That’s how he knew to position his man at Rickie’s to follow me. You told him.”
�
�That is mere speculation on your part.”
“How about I start speculating on your face,” I said.
Whitlow was a young man and proud. My first strike caught him by surprise, and he folded like I knew he would. Now he was alert; now he was thinking. Mostly he was thinking that he should fight back. I had to do something to convince him that he shouldn’t try.
“Boston.” I spoke softly, my hands at my side. I held my right hand open with the thumb down, tensed the fingers, and bent them slightly. In karate terms it’s called the nukite, or spear hand, and is used to strike soft targets such as the eyes, throat, and solar plexus. I rested my left hand on the back of the sofa and leaned toward Whitlow. “Boston,” I said again.
I drove the spear hand into his groin.
The explosion of pain took his breath away; he had none left to scream with. His hands went to his groin and he rolled over on his side. For a moment I thought he would weep, and maybe he would have if I hadn’t been watching. Instead, he masked his hurt with a long string of obscenities. I had no doubt that I deserved most of them. On the other hand, so did he.
I gave Whitlow a few moments to compose himself before I asked, “Are you ready to talk now?”
“I don’t know anything,” he said.
“You know plenty.”
“What do I know?”
“You know that Josh Berglund wrote that he had passed off the letters to me—that’s what you told Dahlin; that’s why you arranged to meet me at Rickie’s the day after Berglund was killed. The only way you could have known is if you broke into Ivy Flynn’s apartment and tore the page from Berglund’s log.”
“I didn’t—”
“Hey!” I leaned in close again. Whitlow pressed his head back against the cushion to avoid my stare. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I mean—I took the page and some other stuff, but I didn’t break in. Ivy gave me a key.”
That made me back up.
“You didn’t know that, did you?” From his expression, Whitlow seemed empowered by having information that I didn’t possess. He actually grinned.
“Tell me about this,” I said.
Whitlow made me wait while he repositioned himself on the sofa, sitting up straight, ignoring his pain, reaffirming his manhood.
“I went to Ivy last week,” he said. “I knew that Berglund abandoned Heavenly. I knew that he had absconded with her research and, if I may so assert, my research as well. My impression was he was far ahead of us in the race for Jelly’s gold, and I grew concerned that he might discover its whereabouts before we did. I began to follow him. I learned that he was speaking to someone at the nursing home, but I could not determine whom. I also learned of his relationship with that little slattern Ms. Antonello.”
“What did you call her?”
The tone of my voice must have startled Whitlow, because it took him a few extra beats before he answered.
“A student at an evangelical Christian university gives a man oral sex behind a tree near Lake Valentine so she can tell her husband she’s a virgin when they marry,” he said. “However, I’ll defer to you for a label.”
“I don’t like labels,” I said, even as my inner voice was chanting, Dammit, dammit, dammit, and then, Poor girl. I had no doubt that Berglund was responsible for her corruption. Poor Genevieve.
“Keep talking,” I said.
“I conspired to meet Ms. Flynn without Berglund’s knowledge. I informed her that Berglund was using her as he had Heavenly, as he was using Ms. Antonello—”
“You felt the need to do that.”
“I admit to being desperate.”
“Go on.”
“I convinced Ms. Flynn to ally herself with me. I assured her that together we would not only acquire the gold, we would make sure that Berglund received the reward he so justly deserved, the reward being nothing but the knowledge of his own failure. Ms. Flynn agreed. She began feeding me information. She told me that Berglund discovered the existence of Ms. Seidel’s letters. Alas, I was too late to intercept them. So we arranged for Ms. Flynn to take Berglund to the cinema while I searched the apartment, gaining entry with a key that Ms. Flynn gave me.”
“Was it your plan or hers?”
“Mine.”
That didn’t make Ivy any less culpable, but I felt better about it.
“Later, you panicked when they came home, and you killed Berglund,” I said.
“Certainly not. You must believe me, Mr. McKenzie. I completed my task quickly. I had departed the apartment long before Ms. Flynn and Berglund returned.”
“Did you tell the police that?”
Whitlow’s reply came in a series of hems and haws and mumbles.
“I’ll take that as a no,” I said.
“I was terrified that I would implicate myself in Berglund’s murder,” he said.
“A reasonable fear.”
“What happens next? Are you going to—”
“Do you still have the key to Ivy’s apartment?”
He nodded.
I didn’t tell him how utterly stupid that was. Instead, I told him to give it to me. He did. I put the key into my pocket.
“What are you going to do?” Whitlow said. “Are you going to the police?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
I had nothing more to say to Whitlow, so I left him sitting on the sofa. Once outside the apartment, I reached up and screwed the bulb until the light above my head flicked on. It didn’t give me any ideas.
Ribbons of light flared on both sides of my driveway, leading me to the garage that I opened by remote control. I parked, shut down the Audi, closed the garage door, and made my way to my house, entering through the back door. Once inside, I managed to punch my code into the security system before it activated. A couple of weeks after I had it installed, I accidentally “forgot” to set the code to see how long it would take the St. Anthony Police Department and a private security firm to respond to a home invasion. Four minutes, eleven seconds by my watch. I was very impressed. I was even more impressed by the bill they sent me for triggering a false alarm.
I killed time waiting for Nina by watching SportsCenter followed by a rerun of Scrubs. Afterward, I laid out a spread of bread and cheese from Panera and opened a bottle of 2003 Clos Beauregard Merlot blended with grapes from the Pomerol region of France. The wine cost me forty-two bucks. Why it was better than a ten-dollar Merlot from, say, Sonoma Valley, I couldn’t tell you, but Nina liked it.
A few minutes later, she rang my front door bell; Nina had a key and my security code—IMSPARTACUS—but she never used either. I opened the door to find her balancing a huge bubble-pack envelope against one shoulder while holding the outer screen door open with the other. The envelope was the kind you buy at the post office.
“I found this jammed between your doors,” Nina said. “What, you don’t pick up your mail?”
“I came in through the back,” I said.
I held the door open for Nina, taking the envelope from her as she passed.
“You didn’t buy another kitchen gadget from Europe, did you?” Nina said.
My address had been printed by hand. I checked the return address. The envelope had come from Josh Berglund. The postmark said it was mailed Tuesday.
“I don’t believe it,” I said and rushed to my dining room table. I pushed the plate of bread and cheese aside to make room.
“What is it?” Nina said.
“In his log, Berglund wrote that he passed the letters on to me. This must be what he meant.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He must have known he was being followed, followed by Whitlow. To keep them safe, he mailed the letters to me.”
I tore open the envelope and slid out a carton about the size of a large shoe box. The carton was old and had a kind of spongy feeling even though it wasn’t wet. I pulled off the top. Inside were dozens of envelopes, most ivory, but many were light blue and pink, as well. I withdrew one at random and held i
t up to the light. It was addressed to Rose Pederson. The return address written on the back flap read KATHRYN MESSER, HOTEL CRYSTAL 691 RUE ST. BENOIT, PARIS, FRANCE.
I reached out and grabbed Nina by the wrist with my other hand.
“We got them,” I said. “Kathryn’s letters. We’ve got them.”
16
Penmanship has become a cultural artifact. These days most people are uncomfortable writing by hand; we find it clumsy and exhausting. Instead, we keyboard—we type e-mails, type reports, type essays, relying on computer software to correct spelling and grammar mistakes. I read that only 15 percent of SAT essays are written in cursive; the rest are printed in block letters. That’s because students learn to write cursive when they’re in the fourth or fifth grade—if at all—and never use it again; it isn’t required in school and on most jobs, so they forget. Kathryn came from a time when cursive writing was a cornerstone of American education; it wasn’t just taught, it was demanded as evidence of industry, intelligence, and maturity. Yet in her hand, writing with a fountain pen, it became more than a practiced skill. It was an art form. Long, fluid letters, with neat loops and tight flourishes, danced gracefully across the pages with style and grace. It made me embarrassed for the scarcely legible scratches and squiggles bearing only a passing resemblance to the letters of the alphabet that I called handwriting.
Nina and I scooped the letters out of the carton and arranged them in chronological order. We counted seventy-three letters spanning approximately three years. They were written on personalized stationery with Kathryn’s name and her 337 Summit Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota, address printed at the top. However, she struck out the address and filled in her current location in each letter. We read them to one another, first Nina and then me.
June 24, 1933
Aboard the Carmania somewhere in the Atlantic
Dearest Rose:
I am lying naked in my stateroom aboard the good ship Carmania as I write this, a bucket next to my bed. I am nauseous, my body trembles, and my head aches, yet I do not believe I am suffering from seasickness. The ocean is quite calm, and a fog has engulfed the ship, so we are moving at a sedate pace. No, it is fear that has brought me to this distressed condition. Fear of my uncertain future. I am now a woman alone, a mean and pitiful thing. I long for it to be otherwise, only it is impossible to go back, to return to the comfort of my previous existence. Not after what Brent has done. Not after what I have done. The foghorn blows at regular intervals. My head throbs. Oh, what a wretched thing I have become …
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