by Mark Zubro
Dowley said, “Sorry if we woke you up.”
“Hard to miss.”
Olsen asked, “Did you hear what we were saying?”
“Was it something I wasn’t supposed to hear?”
“You’re too new,” Olsen said. “Can we trust you? If you’re getting a chance after being out of the game maybe you owe Knecht or Smith.”
Dowley said, “He’s not stupid. We were too loud. It’s not going to work anyway. None of the guys on this team have the balls to do what it takes.”
“Takes to do what?” I asked.
Dowley said, “Stand up to Knecht. Tell him we’re not going to be treated like cattle. He and Smith make dumb decision after dumb decision. And we’re supposed to respect them. Ha! I’ve been trying to contact the major league players’ union. I think we have to have contracts all the way up and down in all the organizations.”
Olsen shook his head. “Nobody listens.”
Dowley said, “We even approached Tyler Skeen. Ha! That was a joke. He had his, and he doesn’t care about the rest of us. That asshole wasn’t getting back to the majors anytime soon. He had performance clauses in his contract and all he needed to do to fill them was to get fifty-two more at bats and five more runs batted in up there this season. Maybe a couple other minor things. If he got that little bit then he’d get a guaranteed contract extension and an automatic five million dollar raise. He didn’t give a shit about us.”
My brain dinged with motive for murder.
Olsen said, “You’re going to get yourself and anybody who talks with you thrown out of the game.”
Dowley snapped, “They can’t just discard talent.”
“Sure they can,” I said. “They can declare you a troublemaker.”
Olsen said, “We’re friends, Mal, but you’re asking a lot.”
I asked, “The guys who left disagreed?”
“A lot,” Olsen said.
“They won’t betray you?”
Olsen said, “They’re good guys.”
Dowley turned to me, “Are you in?”
I said, “As much as I can be, which may not be enough. I’m probably too new to do much good.”
“Every bit helps.”
I said, “Just one favor. Could you do your organizing at a few decibels under what you were doing just now and maybe later in the day?”
They nodded.
I went back to my room and used my cell phone to call Duncan. He had updates. He began with, “Your presence in Butterfield has not been noted on any social media.” If Duncan couldn’t find it, then it wasn’t there to be found.
His next news concerned Georgia De’Jungle who was on her way back from France and was dating the fourth place finisher in this year’s competition.
“He’s from where?” I asked.
“Lithuania.”
“And she thinks this is going to work long distance?”
“He’s on the plane with her.”
“Oh.”
“I set up the satellite office.”
“You were here?”
“I was near there.” He gave me directions.
“How’s Caesar?”
“You want to talk to him?”
After my silence, Duncan told me Caesar was fine and that Andy was with him and all was well.
At least the dog was always faithful and didn’t make sarcastic cracks.
I gave Duncan details on last night’s activity. I could hear him typing away taking notes. When I got to the missing dead body he said, “That’s kind of fast even for you isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“For the relationship to end.”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“It never is. Although you usually don’t turn them into corpses. That’s extreme even for you.” I could picture the hint of a frown on his face. I’d permitted his first intrusive commentary on my life several years ago. Pointed and sometimes amusing but, in this case, unwelcome, frustrating, and accurate.
Duncan’s been with me for years and he’s a treasure, but I wasn’t in the mood for this. Without comment, I resumed. “I’ve got to figure out who would have the wherewithal to steal a body and have a place to put it. It’s not easy dragging a body around and hiding it.”
“Your room would have been most logical.”
“Donny Campbell was here. The killer might have seen a light on or maybe recognized his car.”
“Lots of woods around the place,” Duncan suggested. “Or dump it in the Mississippi. It’s only a few miles away.”
“Okay,” I said, “it might be easy to dispose of. Might. But why?”
“You’re the detective. I’m only the secretary. You want us up there?”
“Please.”
“Give us a few hours. Should we bring the dog?”
“Yes.”
I walked down to Millie’s for coffee. The place was jammed. I recognized a few of the guys from ESPN sports talk idiot fests, where they trade wild, inane predictions and sniff jockstraps. It must have said something about me that I knew enough to make that observation.
WEDNESDAY 8:55 A.M.
I took my coffee to go, got in my rent-a-wreck, and drove out to the condo complex. I wanted to examine as much of the terrain as I could in daylight.
The busted up cars were gone. Crime scene tape surrounded fifty square feet of parking lot. More of it cordoned off Skeen’s condo.
I judged as best I could where the first shots had originated from and then walked into the thick woods. The ground was damp. I hunted for an hour and a half. I didn’t find a clue.
I was a little surprised I didn’t see any cops. Had they been through and found spent shells the shooter had left behind? Examined any footprints, taken pictures of or made impressions from them? Or was the area never gone over?
I couldn’t imagine in the few hours of daylight that had passed that a thorough inspection could have been made. Large numbers of cops would be needed for something like that. If Rotella had even ordered a sweep.
Two Butterfield officers had been shot and their colleagues were doing nothing? That made no sense. If he didn’t order a sweep, or permitted a cursory one to be done hastily and ineptly, did that mean he was involved, maybe even the shooter? Rogue police gone mad a la the town cops in the movie Mississippi Burning? I told myself to keep it in mind but not let my imagination get ahead of actual observable facts.
Back in my car, I called Murray. He told me Glinga was okay and Raul was stable. After his report on them, I asked, “When’s the press conference?”
“Every half hour they announce it’s going to start in half an hour. Something’s up.”
“But what?”
He didn’t know.
I asked him about Old Charlie Hopper, told him I was planning a visit.
Murray said, “If it’s okay, I’d like to go with. I can fill you in about him on the way.” A few minutes later we were driving through cornfields alternating with wooded rolling hillsides. It was late morning.
Murray added to the local gossip Orenstein had given me on the twenty-first century woodsman, lawyer, and dairy farmer. “Don’t let him fool you. He did build the cabin he lives in. He made it look all rusticky and environmentally friendly. Rumors flew it had no electricity or running water. They had to use an outhouse in the woods out back, and then had a hand pump in the front yard for water. Ha! It’s all fake! It may have started out as one room, but now it’s a rabbit warren of a mansion.”
“But why go to the bother?”
“He’s a contradiction. Half the town hates him. Half the town loves him. And it’s not always the same half. It depends on who he’s suing and why. People love the elixirs he sells.” Ornstein had told me pretty much the same thing.
The colors were fading and paint chipping on a gigantic quilt painted on the side of a barn that we passed. Murray pointed to it. “You’ll see a bunch of those around here. They were Old Charlie’s wife’s last project before being institutiona
lized. She used to own a gift shop, but it went bust. Those were her misguided attempts to be industrious.”
“Sounds sad.”
“It might have been, but the town had strong polarized feelings about her too. Emotions tended to run even stronger about her than him. More hated her and more strongly than they hated her husband. She was an even bigger asshole.” He paused. The barn faded in the rearview mirror. There were no other cars on the road. The Escort chugged along leaving a haze of unrepentant smoke behind.
“What asshole things did she do?”
“Put people’s stores out of business in town.”
“Come on, how could she do that?”
“One woman owned a small dress shop. Been in business for years. Then Mrs. Hopper set her sights on her. Started by propounding gossip and viciousness. Then she got an ordinance passed that the dress shop could never meet the requirements of. Then she set up a small dressmaking business as part of her Downtown Butterfield Emporium. That went bust as well, but her enemy was out of business.”
“People do that kind of thing?”
“She did.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died. Horrible, painful cancer. Threw herself off a bridge into the Mississippi to escape the pain.”
“Hell of a thing.”
“After she died, Old Charlie kept right on being an asshole.”
“Maybe he didn’t know any other way.”
“They were evil. He is evil. They are pathetic people who are rich, not a good combination.”
We passed a mobile home park that must have originally been built in the forties; a row of slanting single wide mobile homes, rust oozing from corners and weeds creeping up the sides. On the tops I saw TV antennas, a few satellite dishes on the sloping roofs of the metallic gray pods.
“Who lives there?” I asked.
“Immigrant labor for Charlie’s farm and everybody else’s.”
I thought for a moment then asked, “Could he force them to do damage to the ballpark?”
Marty raised an eyebrow. “Probably force them to do anything he wants.”
“I smell manure.”
Murray pointed ahead to the right. “Pole sheds. They don’t build barns anymore. They cram in a million cows. Cheap to build.”
“He could have drug labs galore. Rotella doesn’t shut him down? He’s not worried about Rotella?”
“You’d have to prove there were illegal drugs. He makes all those pills and energy drinks. I think everything Charlie does is all crap and fake. Anyone with any sense does.”
“Except when you buy them.”
He blushed but said nothing in his own defense.
As we got close to the house, the first building I saw was the outhouse on the side of a cabin that was away from the water pump and set on an incline. Down a long slope, through breaks in the trees’ leaves, I caught glimpses of the broad sweep of the Mississippi.
After we stopped, barking dogs raced towards us then circled the car. A thin man with a bald head and gray goatee opened a screen door and stood on his wooden porch. He whistled and the dogs backed off.
We got out of the car and walked up to him.
He smiled at Murray, said hello to him, turned to me, shook my hand and said, “How come a fancy investigator from Chicago like you is out here bothering old crank Charlie Hopper?”
Why anyone had suggested keeping my identity a secret was beyond me.
Old Charlie led us into a spacious living room that blended into a large well-appointed kitchen. Wooden carvings rested throughout, from a six-foot grizzly bear next to the hearth to miniature squirrels on the mantelpiece. The work was exquisite. A full-sized loom took up one corner of the room. Light flooded in from six-foot-high, three-foot-wide windows on three walls. I imagined in the winter these same windows must allow in a whole lot of cold. Maybe the old guy was tough. This was a cabin the same way homes in the Hamptons were cottages to the rich.
I said, “The carvings are beautiful.”
“I only use what nature has discarded. Trees felled by the wind or rain or lightning or old age. I get more wood than I need every year.”
I noticed the rack of rifles and shotguns, which were not safely locked behind a glass case. He noticed my noticing. He said, “Heard you guys got shot at last night.”
“Nearly killed!” Murray sounded as if he was still scared.
“If it had been me,” Hopper said, “I wouldn’t have missed.”
“The shooter hit a couple cops.”
“I like Raul. I hear he’s going to be okay. They should have shot Glinga’s leg off. Might have made him a better person. He’s a whining loser. Tea?”
I nodded. He put on a kettle and settled himself into a rocker. Murray and I sat on carved wooden kitchen chairs.
“You have an alibi for last night?” I asked.
“Nope. Nor for when Skeen keeled over either. I’d of sort of like to have seen that.”
“I hear you have college kids out here sometimes. Maybe they would miss what they were shooting at.”
“Hasn’t been anybody out yet this month. Expecting a few kids next week.”
“What are you making and supplying out here?”
“You didn’t check me out on the Internet?”
“I like to ask face to face.”
“I make quite legal, useless supplements.”
“What if I told everybody you make placebos?”
“Please do. You’re an outsider. You wouldn’t be the first, but others swear by them. I’m not the first to make money off the stupid. Ask the Republicans.”
“How far would you go to stop Connor Knecht?”
“I’d go pretty far to stop any developer, but I don’t take human life.”
“How about the people who might want to take your life? The ones who lost jobs because of your politics.”
“Nobody’s shooting at me.”
“Maybe they’d be tempted.”
“The environment is more important than jobs.”
“To you maybe, but not to them.”
“So you think they were out to get me so they shot at you. How does that work? So far I’m not impressed by your investigative insight.”
The tea kettle whistled. He placed kettle, cups, sugar, milk, and spoons on a carven tray and placed it on a small table between us.
I said, “I also heard you do a lot of feuding with Connor Knecht.”
“I do a lot of feuding with everybody. Been feuding with some people in this town for over fifty years. No one I’ve feuded with has died except from natural causes. Skeen was some fancy ballplayer. Not sure that amounts to much, ‘cept to his family, I suppose.”
Murray said, “Lot of fans paid a lot of money over the years to see him.”
“Doesn’t matter in my life. He wasn’t about to give me a lot of money or get out of town.”
I said, “He was playing for Knecht.”
“Lots of people in town play for Knecht and not just ballplayers. You hear more sucking up in this town than from a herd of vacuum cleaners. That man’s got a passel of cash. People will suck up to money no matter what.”
“Who hated him?”
“Me.”
“You the one sending threats?”
“Is that what this is all about?”
“I’m investigating everything connected with negative occurrences and the team.”
“I have no idea who sent threats. I didn’t.”
I said, “It’s not a great leap to suspect someone is trying to ruin the team and maybe run Connor Knecht out of town.”
“Hell of a lot of people on that list.”
We sipped for a moment, then Murray spoke up, “They think Skeen might have died from a combination of drugs.”
“Ah, and I have drugs, of sorts. So drugs plus drugs equals death?”
Murray said, “Maybe.”
Hopper gave Murray a condescending smile. “Don’t let your ambition get ahead of you kid. I
understand you take my supplements.”
Murray turned very red. “Just once or twice.”
I said, “It would help if you could give me some names of other people to talk to.”
“And the reason I should help Connor Knecht is?”
I said, “Justice as an esoteric concept?”
“Try again.”
“You’re a good suspect, and it might be good for you to try and shift possible blame onto someone else?”
“Better.”
“You’re known to concoct herbal remedies out here. Maybe you could have come up with something to mix with Tyler Skeen’s pills that would kill him.”
“Ah, people overestimate how good I am at cures. People will believe in almost any placebo.”
“At least one of them pointed you out as a possible suspect.”
“Could be a lot of people done that. Don’t much care.”
“Why not help? Maybe somebody you don’t like will be caught and convicted.”
While he considered, he walked to the rack of weapons, picked up a shotgun, broke it open, sat down, reached next to himself, took some cleaning materials, and began to swab away.
I got up to leave. Murray stood as well.
“Stay,” he said. “I can give you some stuff. I enjoy being the biggest pain in the butt in town. However, I didn’t kill anybody, which means somebody else in this burg did. I’d like to cause Knecht and whoever did the killing some trouble. Might be fun. Secrets could get spilled.”
“Such as?”
“Well, there’s Bunny Fitzwilliams. She’s a hard case. Been around since before me and that goes back a long ways. She’s the social maven in town. Hates Knecht’s wife, Connie. She’s not from here. In lots of small towns that’s a sin. In this small town it’s a sin bordering on a catastrophe. And Connie Knecht has less couth than her husband. Doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut. I kind of like her because she’s outspoken, but she’s not rational, got no tact and no sense. She’s got lots of enemies, but all that’s gossip, Peyton Place. You’re worried about murder.”
“You think they’d go after her for what you described?”
“Gossip can kill.”
“Yeah. Do you supply any drugs to the players?”
“Sometimes. They can’t afford much. I got nothing that’s gonna get them kicked out. I’ve got mostly vitamins mixed with aspirin. Skeen himself never came under my radar.”