by Glenn Ickler
“Give me a hint,” Johnansen whispered, leaning an ear my way.
“The suspect was seen with the victim by the light of the silvery moon,” I said.
“That could be anybody that was here.”
“Exactly. See you tomorrow when we finally check out of your crime-ridden establishment.”
“Oh, please, don’t use that word when you write your stories,” he said.
I couldn’t resist pulling his chain. “I’ll have to mention that you were harboring a killer,” I said.
“Then please don’t mention us at all.” He walked away shaking his head.
With the entire Governor’s Fishing Opener party gone, the dining room was only about half full. Most of the diners were men who would be skipping work on Friday to start a long weekend of chasing walleyes. Trish Valentine and the others who’d been with us at the sheriff’s office apparently had decided to eat somewhere else. The only familiar faces we saw appeared at our table a few minutes after we’d sat down.
We were discussing the possibility of Joe Weber accusing Ann Rogers in order to divert suspicion from himself, a trick that criminals sometimes use, when two familiar voices chirped, “Mind if we join you?”
“Of course,” we said in unison and pulled out chairs for Roxie and Angie. They were dressed for business in those painted-on jeans and form-fitting T-shirts with no visible bra lines.
“What are you guys doing still here?” Roxie asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I said.
“You first,” Roxie said.
We told the young women where we’d been and what had happened, without naming any names. “I’ll bet it’s the woman that got the dead guy’s job,” Angie said. “She’s a tough bitch; tried to get us arrested for soliciting. Imagine, us soliciting?”
“So now it’s your turn to tell us why you’re back here,” Al said.
“New crop of clients,” Angie said, sweeping her arm toward the other tables that were occupied mostly by men.
We asked them where they’d been and they said they’d been working a resort a couple of miles down the road. “It’s the one you can see on the point across the bay,” she said. “It’s called Crabtree’s.”
“Yeah, nobody there from the governor’s weekend,” Roxie said.
“Well, there was one,” Angie said.
“Oh, yeah, the guy that smokes cigars all the time,” Roxie said. “He’s over there with a really high maintenance broad.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you talking about the lieutenant governor?”
“I’m talking about the tall guy with the pot belly who’s always got a cigar in his mouth and stinks like his clothes are on fire,” Angie said.
“That would be the lieutenant governor,” Al said.
“Let’s get this straight,” I said. “When did you see the man with the cigar at the other resort?”
“Right after I got away from that crazy maniac that kidnapped me,” Roxie said. “The sheriff moved us over there and we saw the cigar guy that night. They put us in a cabin way on the end, as far from the main lodge as possible so nobody would find us. The cigar guy was in the next cabin—the very end one.”
“And you say he was with a woman?”
“Was he ever. Gorgeous big-ass blonde with tits you wouldn’t believe,” Roxie said. “Designer blouses and decorated jeans that must have cost megabucks. They stayed in the cabin together and never went any place beyond sitting on the porch. A guy from the kitchen delivered their meals.”
“Could the woman have been his wife?” Al asked.
“She didn’t look like a wife, if you know what I mean,” Roxie said.
“A one-night stand, perhaps?” I said.
“She’s been shacked up with him at least since the night we were moved there . . . what was it? Tuesday, I think it was. So that’s three nights going on four. It looks to me like it’s a long-term kind of deal. Probably costing him a lot of money but I’ll bet she’s really something in the sack.”
Now this was news worth checking. Aaron Ross, who had proclaimed himself the state’s next governor, was officially on a pre-campaign tour of northern Minnesota, but he’d been hiding with a woman at a Gull Lake resort most of the week. His campaign tour hadn’t generated any noticeable publicity, but we’d chalked that up to the concentrated coverage of the goings-on at Madrigal’s and its surroundings.
And Ross’s hidden playmate was a beautiful “big-ass blonde” who in the eyes of a discerning sexual practitioner was not his lawfully wedded wife. Oh, baby, wouldn’t I like to write this story and see it run with Al’s pictures of Ross and the blonde.
This had to be played coolly and cautiously, with stealth equal to the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. We swore Roxie and Angie to secrecy and asked them if they knew the lieutenant governor’s cabin number. They not only gave us the number but also drew us a map on a table napkin (it was cloth; the Daily Dispatch would be owing Madrigal’s for one missing napkin).
We decided the first thing we needed to do was make certain that the woman with Aaron Ross was not his wife. That would require a phone call to their home on Friday morning. We could only hope that the wife would (a) be home and (b) be willing to talk to a reporter.
After that, assuming Roxie’s assessment of the big-ass blonde was accurate, we had to get a look at Ross and the woman. Al would have to do the paparazzi thing and get some sneaky pictures of the couple together. Finally, we would have to decide how to approach Aaron Ross with the photos and the revelations gleaned from our two little informants.
Of course, all our careful planning could be thrown into disarray at any time by a phone call from the sheriff announcing a press conference in Brainerd. Whatever we did concerning Aaron Ross and his female companion, we couldn’t get ourselves trapped in a corner that interfered with our coverage of the Alex Gordon murder. The murder story was, after all, our reason for being where we were.
Oh, yes, there was also the little timing problem of a Saturday afternoon wedding in St. Paul.
Thirty-Two
Stealth
We slept on it, our theory being that the morning sun would clarify our thinking. Besides, there was nothing we could do until we were positive that the woman sharing Ross’s cabin was not his wife.
There were no familiar faces in the dining room at breakfast Friday morning. Apparently the rest of the group chasing the Gordon murder story had taken cheaper overnight quarters in Brainerd. We hadn’t been instructed to do that and the only move we planned to make was toward St. Paul.
I e-mailed Don O’Rourke to let him know we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and eager to excel. “What have you been smoking so early in the day?” was Don’s reply. We finished breakfast a few minutes after nine and decided it was a decent enough time to call Mrs. Aaron Ross.
A woman answered and identified herself as “Frances speaking.” Having no clue who Frances might be, I asked for Mrs. Ross. “Who may I say is calling?” Frances asked. I told her and she asked me to wait a moment.
Soon she was back with another question. “What do you wish to speak with Mrs. Ross about?”
I was ready for that one. “Her husband has declared himself the next governor of Minnesota and is on what he calls a pre-campaign tour. My editor has tasked me with asking Mrs. Rogers for her reaction to her husband’s decision to begin his run for governor.” Again Frances asked me to hold for a moment. I crossed the fingers on my free hand and waved them at Al. He responded with a similar gesture.
A new voice spoke into my ear. “Good morning, Mr. Mitchell, this is Karen Ross. I understand you’re looking for my reaction to my husband running for governor. Is that correct?”
“Good morning, Mrs. Ross,” I said. “That is correct. Did you know he had made this decision? And h
ow do you feel about him taking this step? It’s a much bigger obligation than lieutenant governor.”
“Please call me Karen, Mr. Mitchell. As far as Aaron running for governor, I’ve always supported his political ambitions even though I’m not a political person myself, and I’ll support him on this one. Actually, when he ran for lieutenant governor it was sort of understood between us that the next step would be governor.”
“And please call me Mitch,” I said. “It will be difficult to have him gone on the campaign trail for the summer and most of the fall, won’t it? I mean, already you haven’t seen him for more than a week now, what with the fishing opener and the pre-campaign trip and all.”
“Oh, yes, it does get lonely. The trip he’s on now came as a surprise, but he calls me every night from wherever he is and he’s even been sending me pictures from his smart phone. Last night he called me from Alexandria and sent a couple pictures of where he was staying by a very pretty lake.”
Pictures already. Now there was a nice touch. “Where all has he been since he left Gull Lake?” I asked.
“Let’s see now,” she said. “He sent a picture of Paul Bunyan from Bemidji and something from Detroit Lakes. There was one other place; I can’t remember off-hand. Maybe Waconia, wherever the heck that is. Would you like me to get my iPad and look it up?”
“No, no, that won’t be necessary.” I was already feeling like a sneak from the National Inquirer so I didn’t want to put her through any more work than necessary. However, I did lead her through a series of additional questions to make it sound like I really was gathering material for a story. All through the interview she was pleasant and cooperative and supportive of her cheating son of a bitch of a husband. When our conversation ended I felt genuinely sorry for what my story about her husband and his phony pre-campaign would do to her.
“The military would call it collateral damage,” Al said when I told him how I felt about the pain we were about to inflict on Karen Ross. “Knowing what we know, we can’t let that scumbag off the hook unless you want to see him as your honorable governor.”
Al was right. It was our job to inform the voters of Minnesota about the tomcat morals of the man who wanted to be their governor, no matter what the fallout was on his wife.
“Sending her pictures of the places he’s supposedly been is a really nice touch,” I said. “I wonder how he does that.”
“Probably has them stored in his smart phone from a previous visit,” Al said. “I could send you a picture of Yellowstone National Park taken when we went there last summer and tell you I was there today and you’d never know the difference. That’s one of the wonders of the digital age.”
“Some of those wonders really get misused.”
“I won’t argue that. So what’s next on the scandal trail?”
“I guess it’s you playing paparazzi and getting some real-time pictures of the happy couple at their hideaway in the woods.”
“Sounds good, but why don’t we check with the sheriff to see what his schedule might be before we set up surveillance on Smokey and his big-ass blonde?”
I made the call and talked with Shirley, who had no information about Sheriff Holmberg’s plans. “The person he was interrogating was released a few minutes after all you press people left,” Shirley said. “I think it was a case of her lawyer saying either arrest her or get off the pot, if you know what I mean.”
“Do you know if Sheriff Holmberg has ever investigated a homicide before?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. I can’t remember another killing around here in the last twenty years. I think he’s kind of feeling his way along on this case. Oh, hey, you aren’t going to print that, are you?”
“No, your job is safe. I just had the feeling that despite his many years as sheriff he was new at homicides—come to think of it, he may have mentioned it at some point—and of course the sideshow of the climbing kidnapper hasn’t helped.”
“Yes, he’s had a lot to deal with all at once. I hope there’s peace and quiet for a while after he cleans this up.”
Oh, man, I thought as I put away the phone. Wait until the fireworks start with the lieutenant governor. Holmberg won’t have to deal with that as a criminal case but it will give folks in Crow Wing County plenty to talk about.
“I guess we’re clear to start Operation Smokey,” I said to Al. “Ann has been released and there’s nothing on the sheriff’s schedule for the press this morning.”
Al slung his camera bag over his shoulder. “Let’s go play tabloid journalist,” he said.
* * *
Crabtree’s Resort turned out to be considerably larger than Madrigal’s. The office, the main building and the cabins were spread out along high ground with a steep drop to the water. An upper row of cabins looked down over the rooftops of the beachfront cabins. The main building was three stories tall and looked like a giant motel.
We were glad we had the map because it would have taken half an hour to find the lieutenant governor’s cabin, which was at the far north end overlooking Gull Lake. We parked the car with the giveaway Daily Dispatch logo on it at the south end of a one-row parking lot and started hiking north along the blacktop road. As soon as we found an opening we abandoned the road and slipped into the grove of pine trees, throughout which the northern cabins were scattered.
Our informants had told us that Aaron Ross and his blonde were in the very last cabin in the line. When we saw the last cabin in the distance we ducked behind a pine with low sweeping branches and stopped to study the layout.
Our hope was to get some shots of the two cabinmates together on the porch Roxie and Angie had talked about. Said porch turned out to be a very handsome deck that faced the lake. Our lucky break was that the developers had left a line of trees in front of the cabins, removing only those that directly blocked a view of the lake. This allowed Al to hide behind the sweeping, ground-touching branches of a huge pine tree at a forty-five-degree angle from Ross’s cabin, and zero in on the deck through a gap in the branches with his biggest telephoto lens.
“Just like a duck hunting blind,” Al said. “Only in this case, we’re shooting weasels.”
“I was going to say skunks,” I said.
“We can let Mrs. Ross decide on that.”
“Oh, please don’t mention her. I feel like such a bastard doing this to her.”
“Collateral damage, Mitch. Unavoidable collateral damage.”
Al fastened his camera atop a short-legged tripod, set it under a low pine branch, sprawled on his belly to peer through the viewfinder and lined up the lens to cover the cabin deck. “We’re going to get a low angle shot, but I don’t dare jack it up to a height where they might see me from the deck,” he said.
“Whatever angle you need. Just be sure to get their faces.”
“Be even better if I get their faces joined in a passionate, tongue sucking kiss.” I almost gagged at the thought of anyone swapping tongues with our cigar-smoking target.
Al lay on his belly behind the camera and I sat on the ground behind the tree trunk. The ground was covered with a layer of dead brown pine needles but the cool dampness of the earth gradually seeped through. The minutes ticked slowly away. We’d been there long enough for my calves to start cramping when my phone, which I’d had the foresight to set on vibrate, vibrated. I whispered “phone” to Al and crawled away to a more distant tree before taking the phone out of my pocket. It was the sheriff’s office calling.
Thirty-Three
A Touchy Situation
Sheriff’s gonna talk to the press in one hour,” said Shirley. “Has he arrested the woman?” I asked.
“Can’t tell you anything more,” she said and hung up.
We were about a twenty-five-minute drive from the sheriff’s office and it would take us at least ten minutes to pack up the camera and wa
lk back to the car. Our Friday morning skunk and weasel hunt was over.
“When we come back I’m going to bring a blanket to lay on,” Al said on the way to the car. “My belly button got so cold it crawled inside and snuggled up to my backbone.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “My calves were mooing for a warm barn.”
“Okay, you’ve milked that one for all it’s worth.”
* * *
Sheriff Val Holmberg had rounded up all the usual suspects, so many in fact that we were told to remain outside for the briefing. Trish Valentine was right up front as always and, also as always, I pushed into a spot behind her. Barry Ziebart was to my right, and Roy Winston was behind him. We had some new arrivals from Twin Cities Channel 11, along with TV and newspaper teams from Duluth, Bemidji, St. Cloud, Moorhead and of course Brainerd. The Alex Gordon murder had relevance again, at least with the Minnesota media.
I had e-mailed Don about the event, which was to begin at 11:00 a.m., and he had replied: “When you’re done with that, come home.” So now we had a dilemma. Did we go home immediately or did we tell Don about Operation Smokey and stay until we either got photos or the sun went down? I had a feeling it would be the latter, which would create a storm in another port: the heart of Martha Todd.
A three-ring circus of scenarios was scrambling through my mind when Sheriff Holmberg walked out the front door and stood on the top step. The group came to attention like a squad of military recruits and even answered in unison when the sheriff said, “Good morning.”
“Did you arrest her?” someone yelled from behind me. The sheriff held up his hands in a plea for silence.
He let that silence sink in for a moment before speaking. “What we have here is a very touchy situation,” he said. “Depending on how you folks report it, it can be a very embarrassing situation for at least three people, two of whom have done nothing wrong. I know the TV cameras are running and you’re ready to report, as you call it, live, but I wish you would turn them off for a couple of minutes and let me give you some background. After that, it’s up to you what you put it on the news Do I have your cooperation?”