Death at Gills Rock

by Patricia Skalka

  “Come in,” Ida said when he knocked.

  Big Guy’s widow sat at the kitchen table, her hands folded on top of a typed sheet of paper. The morning’s warmth and sweet aroma had seeped from the room just as the softness had vanished from Ida’s face. Her mouth was set and her eyes hard.

  “Now you know,” she said.

  Cubiak lingered inside the doorway. She had not invited him to sit down.

  “Why didn’t you say anything about Agnes when I was here after the funeral?”

  “It didn’t seem relevant.”

  “Even after she accosted you and Olive and Stella? Even when you knew that she’d shot Joe?”

  “It was her place to say why she did those things, not mine to speculate.”

  “You may think that, but in a murder investigation information of any kind can be useful.” He took several steps into the room. “May I sit down?”

  Ida dipped her head slightly.

  In the heavy silence, Ida uncurled her hands and laid them flat as if bracing herself for what was to come. “Do you think Agnes killed my husband and the others?” she said after a moment.

  “No.”

  “I see.”

  He waited. “Do you think Olive or Stella could have done it?”

  Ida looked up. “I can’t speak for my friends. You’ll have to ask them yourself, Sheriff.”

  “I did, and they both denied any involvement. What about you, Ida? Did you kill Big Guy and his boyhood friends?”

  Ida smirked. “Why? Because they were homosexuals? No, I did not.”

  “You weren’t angered then, by what you’d learned last December?”

  “Surprised, yes, but not angry. I had long suspected that something was going on.”

  “But you said nothing to your closest friends?”

  “I couldn’t have imagined doing so. What if I was wrong? Think of the embarrassment.”

  “You and Big Guy were married for more than five decades. That’s a long time to go without physical intimacy. Didn’t you resent all you’d missed?”

  The familiar softness returned to Ida’s face as she relaxed against the back of the chair. “I can see where you might think that but it wasn’t like that at all. I have my memories and a good imagination, and I used them both when I had to. Sex isn’t everything. And I had Walter to care for. You don’t understand, Sheriff. You can’t begin to know what it was like for me. I was just seventeen and pregnant when my husband was killed in the war. In the government’s eyes I was a widow entitled to a few dollars, but in reality I was a scared kid with nothing. I had no education. No job. And no place to call home.”

  “You had your family. Couldn’t you…”

  “My family! They were the worst. I’m not going to sit here and resurrect my childhood nightmares for you. But I will tell you this: Christian Nils rescued me from my family, and I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—crawl back to them, not even with a baby. I had no one and no decent options. Terrence marrying me was like a miracle, an answer to all my prayers. He saved us, me and Walter. That’s all I cared about.”

  Ida looked at Cubiak. “You don’t believe me?” She pulled a small notepad and pencil stub from her pocket and scrawled something on the top sheet. “Here’s your lists and an address. Take a good look where I live now and then go there and see what I came from.”

  Cubiak folded the paper. “You were his cover.”

  “Yes, and he was my salvation.” She frowned and then brightened. “Maybe Agnes didn’t kill them. Maybe no one did. Accidents do happen.”

  Cubiak blinked back vivid memories of the hit-and-run that had killed his wife and daughter. “I know,” he said.

  FRIDAY

  Cubiak walked into headquarters balancing three large lattes on a cardboard tray. A chai tea brew for Agnes, vanilla for Lisa, and plain for himself. In exchange for her drink Lisa handed him four messages. Two complaints about barking dogs, a dispute over a backyard fence line, and a reminder from the local crackpot that the end was near. Cubiak tossed the last note in the trash, put the others on Rowe’s desk with a Post-it that read “Look into. No rush,” and carried the remaining two cups through the lobby to the cellblock.

  Door County treated its incarcerated guests well. Prisoners ate nutritious meals, slept on firm mattresses, and lived in freshly painted and tidy quarters. They had access to television, playing cards, and counseling services. Some even commuted to local day jobs. In Cell 6, Agnes Millard perched on the edge of her bed wearing the orange shift that Rowe had special-ordered. The garment hung from her shoulders as she hunched over the Bible that lay open on her lap. She’d asked to be allowed to have the book and Cubiak had seen no reason to object.

  “Good morning, Agnes.”

  The prisoner continued reading.

  “Morning,” Cubiak said again.

  Agnes put a finger on the page to hold her spot and looked up. “Sheriff.”

  “I have hot tea waiting. I thought we could talk a little more this morning. You can bring that with you,” he said, indicating the Bible.

  In the interview room, Cubiak held the chair out for Agnes and then slid the chai toward her.

  She glared at the drink as if it were toxic.

  “Go on.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, she took a sip. Her eyes widened. “This ain’t tea. What is it?”

  “It’s a special kind of tea. There’s steamed milk in it.”

  Agnes pressed her mouth to the lid. “I ain’t never had one of these,” she said, almost smiling.

  Cubiak gave her time to enjoy the hot, sweet drink before he activated the video recorder and announced the formal start of the interview, identifying date and time and those present.

  His actions startled the prisoner. She set the cup down and looked at him as if he’d betrayed her by ending the party.

  “Last week you confessed to killing your husband but you refused to give a reason for your action. I believe I have a clearer understanding of the situation now,” Cubiak said.

  Agnes bristled.

  “Joe was sexually involved with other men, specifically with your neighbor Terrence Huntsman and his longtime friends Eric Swenson and Jasper Wilkins. When I got here this morning, you were reading the Bible. There are some who believe the Good Book condemns homosexuality as an abomination.” He paused. “I feel I have reason to count you among them.”

  Cubiak reached for the holy book. “May I?”

  She let him take it.

  “You know what I’m looking for, don’t you?” he said as he turned the tissue-thin pages. “The book of Leviticus. Chapter eighteen, verse twenty-two.” He paused and waited for a reaction but Agnes remained stoic. In the best preacher’s tone he could muster, he read, “‘If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.’”

  Cubiak set the Bible down, open to the page. “I don’t imagine you have to look, do you? That’s one passage you know by heart. In fact, you probably know a large portion of the Good Book by heart.”

  He nudged the tome toward Agnes but she continued to stare past him.

  “You shot your husband because you thought you were fulfilling the scriptures. You thought you were doing the work of the Lord.

  “I saw you in church that morning, sitting a couple of rows behind Joe. Everyone in the church went to communion, including the two of you. I was raised Catholic. I know how it goes. You can eat the consecrated bread and drink the blessed wine only if you’re in a state of grace. So both of you had been to confession beforehand.”

  Cubiak stood and leaned forward, towering over the prisoner.

  “You shot Joe to save his soul.”

  “Yes,” Agnes screamed, her spittle hitting his chin. “I shot Joe to save him from temptation. I shot my husband to save him from sinning again.”

  “And by doing so, you sacrificed your own soul.”

  Agnes grabbed
the Bible and clutched it to her chest.

  “Or has God forgiven you?”

  She snatched his wrist. “You understand!” she cried, her eyes pleading with him.

  “I understand the laws of men,” he said, loosening her calloused grip.

  “The laws of men!” she said and kicked at the floor.

  “They are based on God’s law.” Cubiak sat down again and gentled his voice. “‘Thou shall not kill.’”

  Agnes looked at him, and then she turned away and lowered her head. “I will pray for you.”

  For several minutes her soft whisperings were the only sound in the room.

  When Cubiak interrupted, his tone was firm and official. “Did you kill Terrence Huntsman, Eric Swenson, and Jasper Wilkins?”

  Agnes wheeled toward him. “No!”

  “But you wish you had.”

  “They got what they deserved.” Her face flushed with anger.

  The exact words used in the hateful note to Ida.

  “You sent the anonymous letter.”

  “What letter?”

  Her puzzlement seemed genuine.

  “You defaced the shed.”

  “No. I didn’t do that! I heard it was kids. You know, being mean. Kids are nasty these days, Sheriff, not like before.”

  “Something I don’t understand, Agnes. When exactly did you discover the nature of the relationship between Joe and the other three men?”

  “The morning of the funeral.” Agnes yanked the lid off the cup and picked at the rim. “When we came back from the cemetery I didn’t see Joe anywheres and figured maybe he was in the church basement helping set up for the lunch. I’d forgotten the salad I’d made for the luncheon so I went back to get it. When I walked into the house, I heard men’s voices in the living room. They were talking dirty and laughing. I knew one of them was Big Guy. It didn’t make sense. He was dead. I tiptoed through the kitchen to the doorway and saw my husband sitting on the couch watching that filth on the television. The four of them.”

  Her voice caught. “Joe was crying, sobbing like a baby.”

  The shards from the paper cup were scattered across the table. Agnes gathered them into a neat pile and nudged it over the edge, waiting for the pieces to settle on the floor before she went on.

  “I ran to the VCR and pulled out the tape. Joe tried to get it away. I shoved him and we started fighting and he punched me in the face, here”—she pointed to her bruised eye—“and I fell into the couch. I must have laid there a minute or so, and when I sat up he was kneeling in front of the VCR player trying to put it back in. That’s when I went and got the rifle and shot him.”

  “And the tape?”

  “I burned it.”

  Cubiak blinked and remembered the thin plume of smoke rising from the trash barrel behind the garage. “Were there more tapes?”

  “No.”

  “You looked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Joe didn’t hear you drive up?”

  “No.”

  “The dog didn’t bark?”

  “He knows my car.”

  “Did you try to help your husband after you shot him?”

  Agnes pulled her hands into her lap and clasped them contritely. “He was dead. There was nothing more I could do for him.”

  “Why did you go back to the church?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do. I thought maybe I should tell the priest what I’d done, that I’d sent Joe to heaven. And I’d made the salad. I couldn’t let it go to waste. I figured they’d need it for the lunch.”

  Cubiak looked at his cup of steamed milk and coffee. He’d yet to have a swallow. Waste not, want not, his mother had always said. Even under the most extreme circumstances he could imagine her doing just as Agnes had. “I see. Then why throw the beets at the three women?”

  “I had to, Sheriff. Joe wasn’t a nice man but I thought he was a decent person. Only he wasn’t. He was filthy and I’d been living with his filth. I couldn’t bear the shame and when I saw the three of them—Ida and Olive and Stella—standing there all proper and ladylike and holier-than-thou, I filled up with some kind of awful fury. I wanted them to feel dirty like I did. Ida especially. All those years, cleaning the mud off her floor, scrubbing the toilets for her and that man.”

  As if offering proof of her humiliation, Agnes held out her rough, red hands for the sheriff to see. He’d already realized that her life had been unduly harsh, especially compared with those of the other three women. But Joe had denied her far more than material comfort, and in that she was not alone.

  “For years, you’d accepted your husband’s excuse about a war injury to explain the absence of physical relations in your marriage.”

  Agnes started. “How did you… ?”

  “Olive Swenson told me about the confrontation between you and her and the other two women last December. According to Olive, you said you had no use for the books they read—trash, you called them—and that you’d made your peace with your situation and didn’t need to fantasize about something you couldn’t have. You told the three widows that Joe didn’t bother you, ‘because of the war injury,’ and that you didn’t need to be teased into wanting something you couldn’t have. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did the other women say to you?”

  “They didn’t say anything. They looked at one another and then stared at me like I was a freak.”

  “You had no idea that their husbands had also claimed to have similar war injuries?”

  Agnes gaped. “What?”

  “They had never confided in each other. Sex was something they didn’t discuss, so each of them thought it was her own burden to bear, until you brought it out into the open.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Agnes blushed and crossed herself. A quick laugh escaped her lips. She brightened and then laughed again. “The princesses didn’t know!”

  “Princesses?”

  “That’s what they acted like. That’s what I called them.”

  “You didn’t like them, did you?”

  “Had no reason to.”

  “Just the women or their husbands as well?”

  “I had no use for any of them. Especially Big Guy. You have to understand, Sheriff, that nobody ever cared much for Joe. He wasn’t a likable person, but Big Guy? Everybody liked him. He made sure of that.” Agnes picked up the Bible again. “It just all seemed so unfair, you know? I hope him and the other two rot in hell.”

  It was nearly noon when Cubiak finished with Agnes. He escorted her back to her cell, where a tray waited. In town, he picked up two turkey sandwiches, chips, and water and drove to Bathard’s. The doctor was in the boat barn. Perched on a board that was balanced between two work horses, his feet dangling off the ground, he pried a stubby strip of dried caulk from the hull of the Parlando and tossed it on the floor with the rest of the droppings from his morning’s labor.

  “This is a pleasant surprise. Playing hooky?” Bathard said as Cubiak lowered the volume on Aida.

  “It’s a working lunch.” The sheriff held up the white paper bag and circled the boat, peering at the gaps between the curved planks.

  Bathard dropped off the scaffolding and rapped on the hull. “Hear that? Sounds hollow. When I’m done, it’ll have the fine timbre of a taut drumhead.” He pulled off his gloves. “You want to go to the house?”

  “This is fine.” Cubiak handed a sandwich to his friend. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Not necessarily wrong. But complicated.”

  They stood at the counter and, as they ate, Cubiak told Bathard what he’d learned about Joe and the three dead friends from the widows and Agnes.

  At one point, Bathard put down his lunch, inclined his head, and listened until Cubiak finished.

  “Well.” The physician folded his arms to his chest and sighed. “I had no idea. But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? If they hadn’t conformed to societal norms, t
hey’d have been ostracized and condemned. Now they’ll be condemned for a lifetime of deceit.” Bathard looked up. “This certainly casts a different light on their deaths.”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t help clarify the circumstances. I still don’t know if Big Guy and the other two were murdered of if they died accidentally.”

  “Agnes?”

  “She killed Joe, but I believe her when she says she had nothing to do with the other three dying.”

  “Assuming they were killed, you still think their deaths are connected with gambling?”

  “I can’t rule it out yet. And it’s certainly one way of explaining why their incomes were so over the top.”

  “You said Stella attributed their success, at least hers and Jasper’s, to hard work and luck. You have to allow for that possibility.”

  “Lots of people work hard.” Cubiak crumpled the empty chip bag and tossed it into the trash.

  “But not everyone in this world enjoys good luck.” Bathard brushed an invisible crumb off the counter. “Of course, there may be more to it than good fortune. Why is it, I wonder, that I see Huntsman’s trucks all over the peninsula? There are scores of plumbing firms around, good ones, too. You have to ask yourself why someone at the south end of the county would bypass local businesses and hire someone from forty miles away.”

  “Longstanding friendship or even loyalty that stems from their service days might account for some of it. Maybe he charged less than the others.”

  “Perhaps. But what about Swenson and Wilkins? They seem to have been fairly adept at empire building as well.”

  Cubiak leaned back and looked up at the boat. Once in the water, more than half of it would be submerged and hidden from view. Like much of what went on at Huntsman’s Rec Room. “Besides the weekly card games, the men hosted parties as well. A little too much alcohol during one of the gatherings or on a charter run, a compromising situation, a convenient photograph, and a gentleman’s agreement: silence exchanged for business.”