by Sandra Balzo
The last couple of years had been tough on Eric, both because of Ted and my divorce and Eric’s own realization that he, himself, was gay. Our son had told me and then his father and, relieved that we loved him and life wasn’t going to come crashing down around him – at least, more than it already had with the divorce – Eric had gone back to the ‘U’.
A huge relief because, though Ted was responsible for Eric’s tuition, my ex and I shared joint custody of a fervent desire to see our son graduate. And be happy.
I drove the short distance to Uncommon Grounds and pulled into the parking lot. Leaving the Escape, I moved around the track side of the building. The area that had been cordoned off yesterday still was, guarded by only one sheriff’s deputy next to the steps.
I said good morning and he nodded back, an Uncommon Grounds to-go cup in his left hand.
‘Can I get you a refill?’
‘No, thank you, ma’am. Amy just brought me this one.’
‘Great,’ I said as I started up the stairs to the platform. ‘Just yell if you need anything.’
I stopped and craned my neck down to see him. ‘Do you happen to know if Sheriff Pavlik will be by today?’
The hint of a grin, quickly stifled. That Pavlik was dating the local Typhoid Mary of untimely deaths was common knowledge, not that the department respected its sheriff any less. I wasn’t quite sure what his troops thought of me.
‘He’s inside, ma’am,’ the deputy replied, nodding toward the door behind the steps. ‘Would you like to speak with him?’
I did, though not necessarily in front of one of his subordinates. ‘No, thanks, I’ll—’
‘Maggy.’ Pavlik emerged from the half-door to the waiting room below. ‘A moment?’
‘Certainly.’ I backtracked down the steps and ducked under the tape, avoiding the deputy’s eyes. It felt uncomfortably close to being summoned to the principal’s office.
Pavlik moved aside to let me enter, then followed me down the two steps to the linoleum floor. In contrast to yesterday when he might have been dressed for court, today Pavlik was relatively casual. Dark-wash jeans and a dress shirt with the cuffs folded up. So simple and yet so, so . . .
I glanced behind me to see if the deputy had stayed close, but the coast was clear. ‘Permission to approach the sheriff, sir?’
The crinkle lines at the corners of his eyes showed the smile his mouth didn’t. ‘Permission denied.’
‘So put me in jail.’ I stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the lips.
His hand came up to steady me at the waist and with a groan he pulled me into him. ‘I’ve missed you, Maggy.’
‘Me, too.’ Twining my arms around his neck, I hung there for a second and then stepped back. We both knew it wouldn’t do for the county sheriff to be canoodling at a murder scene.
‘We’re going to secure the door and keep the area taped,’ Pavlik said, looking tired, ‘but Harris out there will be taking off once the crime scene guys are done.’
‘That’s fine.’ I shook my head. ‘Poor Brigid. How horrible to take your last breaths in there.’ I tilted my head toward the stuffy little bathroom. ‘And all alone to boot. She was beautiful and young, not much older than Eric. She should have been out having fun, not . . .’
‘Dying? I agree. But from what we’ve determined so far, she wasn’t killed here.’
‘No?’ I struggled to embrace the first arguably good news I’d had without jinxing it.
‘Ms Ferndale was hit in the back of the head.’ Pavlik used his right hand as a teacher’s aide. ‘And wherever that happened, there should have been a good amount of blood.’
‘But there wasn’t,’ I said, glancing toward the bathroom. Since Brigid had been face-up, I couldn’t have seen the wound without moving her body, not only bad crime-scene behavior but just plain yucky. I certainly didn’t recall any blood, though, much less ‘a good amount’.
‘But, Pavlik, if Brigid was killed somewhere else, how did she get here?’
‘Good question.’
‘Could she have been injured, but not realizing how badly? You know, internal bleeding?’
‘The brain or skull, you mean? Not likely. The deceased bled out, but somewhere else.’ He sagged down onto the couch.
‘You look exhausted. Did you get any sleep last night?’
Pavlik ran his hand through his curly hair. ‘Not much. The other two killings were real estate agents working alone. I was leaning toward someone with a grudge.’
‘Some kind of vendetta?’ I sat down next to him, thinking how melodramatic it all sounded for Brookhills.
‘A lot of people have lost their homes, Maggy. They’re angry, and the closest “messenger” around is probably a realtor.’
As in ‘don’t kill the messenger’. Except someone had.
But I knew Pavlik was right about feelings running high. One of our customers had bought a house at foreclosure, only to have it nearly destroyed by the original homeowner. Sad on both counts – the people who lost their home, but also my young customer. He’d finally scraped enough money together to buy a house, only to put thousands more into it to repair the damage.
Everybody loses.
I said, ‘Angry and frustrated, I understand, but . . . killing your real estate agent?’
‘Real estate agents, bankers, the person who’s buying your house out from under you. When you’ve lost everything . . .’
‘. . . you have nothing left to lose,’ I finished for him. ‘You said you were leaning toward someone with a grudge. Have you changed your mind?’
‘Only in the number of people who might be involved.’ Pavlik stood back up, the frustration exhibited by his restlessness getting the better of him. ‘This killing is different, though. Blunt force trauma to the back of the head instead of a bullet through the temple.’
‘Two different methods, two different killers?’ I mulled it over. ‘But the methods are similar in that the attacker had to be close-in. Didn’t you tell me there was stippling?’
Stippling – almost a tattoo on and under the skin caused by the unburned gunpowder of a shot at close-range. I might not know pistols from revolvers, but I did watch crime-scene TV.
‘Some irregular stippling on both gunshot victims. Almost like something had blocked part of it.’
‘Another attacker, maybe holding the victim?’
‘Perhaps, Sherlock,’ Pavlik said, with the ghost of a grin. ‘But if you see someone with weird powder burns, call me. No heroics.’
Since I’m about as far from hero material as you can get, I agreed. Mostly I take chances because I’m scared witless. ‘So an accomplice would explain the odd stippling, as well as the variation in method.’
‘Not to mention moving the body. It likely took two people. Brigid Ferndale wasn’t a big woman, but . . . well, she was a dead weight, in the very literal sense of the term.’
I gave a shiver and Pavlik pulled me close. ‘I have to get back to work.’
I hung on. ‘Be careful.’
‘I could say the same to you,’ he murmured in my hair. ‘I don’t like it when bodies are found around people I care for.’
‘You and me both. Though we probably should be used to it by now.’
Pavlik put one hand on each of my shoulders and held me at arms’ length, so he could see my face. ‘Understand one thing, Maggy. I will never get “used to” your being in danger.’
‘But I’m not in danger. You said yourself that Brigid wasn’t killed in the depot.’ Pavlik towering a half-foot over me, I tried to stand on tiptoes to kiss him.
He wouldn’t let me. ‘Someone moved the corpse here for a reason.’
‘Understood.’ The concept, if not the reason that he was talking about.
Pavlik kissed me properly before letting me go. ‘I have to go look for a primary crime scene. With a blood pool.’
Lovely image. ‘How will you find it, though? Thanks to the economy, there have to be hundreds – if not thousands – of empty properties in
the county.’
He shrugged. ‘We might be able to narrow our search field by tracking the deceased’s movements during her last day. Her parents are divorced and Ms Ferndale lived with her mother, who told me her daughter called Monday afternoon, saying she was going out to a club and wouldn’t be back until late.’
That fit with what Brigid had been wearing when we’d found her. ‘But she never got home?’
Sheriff Jake Pavlik shook his head. ‘And now she never will.’
###
Leaving him, I continued up the stairs, mentally slapping myself upside the head for not making a phone call last night.
Amy, our lead barista, would have arrived this morning to find police tape and a deputy stationed. With everything that had gone on yesterday, I’d completely forgotten to fill her in. I doubted that Sarah had thought of it, either.
But true to form, Amy had taken it all in stride and even gotten the deputy coffee. God, we were lucky to have her.
In the barista pantheon, Amy Caprese was a rock star. Brightly hued hair, multiple piercings, tats and a kick-ass knack for marketing. She’d even come up with our new logo – a stylized espresso machine that resembled a locomotive. You got ‘coffee’ and ‘train’ melded into a single glance.
Genius. And she deserved better from her employers.
In a real coup, my former partner Caron and I had lured Amy away from a competing coffeehouse. Now, with the addition of Tien and occasionally Luc, Sarah and I had built a full staff. And a crackerjack one at that.
With the last commuter train of the morning already chugging toward Milwaukee and no Barbies – tennis, broker, Malibu or otherwise – as yet arriving, the only person in the place was a man who looked like a grad student. He was sitting at the counter where he could plug in his notebook computer.
Amy was wiping tables and straightened up when I came in. Her hair looked like Fruit Stripe Gum. I didn’t comment on it: a waste of breath, since tomorrow’s do would be different anyway.
‘I am so sorry, Amy,’ I said. ‘I meant to call and warn you about all this.’
‘Not a problem.’ Amy flapped the dish cloth in her hand. ‘I caught the TV news last night.’
‘I didn’t. What did they say?’ I asked.
‘Just that the body of a woman had been discovered under the platform.’
‘They didn’t identify her?’
‘No, but Tien told me it was Brigid Ferndale. What in the world could she have been doing under there?’
‘You knew Brigid?’
‘Yes, from Sapphire,’ Amy said, moving to the condiment cart. ‘In fact, I’m not sure I was ever there when she wasn’t. Quite the party girl.’
Sapphire.
Brigid told her mother she was going clubbing the night she’d disappeared and Sapphire was just across the county line between Milwaukee and Brookhills. The dance place drew young professionals from both counties, as well as local media types, sports figures, etc. In other words, anyone who was anyone.
Or wanted to be anyone. Or wanted to do anyone who was anyone. Or become . . . well, you get the picture.
‘Sapphire?’ I repeated. It wasn’t that Amy didn’t belong in a place that catered to the beautiful people. She was beautiful in an offbeat, interesting way. ‘That doesn’t seem to be your . . .’
‘Scene?’ Amy completed for me. ‘It’s not, though it is fascinating people-watching. I’ve spent a lot of time there lately because the club is going green and hired me to do some consulting.’
Ah, now that made sense. Amy was involved in a number of environmental groups in the area and had spearheaded an effort to encourage local coffeehouses and restaurants to use Fair Trade and shade-grown coffees.
‘Fair Trade’ beans were certified to have been grown in a way that was environmentally friendly and also provided decent wages for the people in the fields. Shade-grown efforts helped to preserve forests that would otherwise be clear-cut in order to plant coffee.
Uncommon Grounds, of course, used both. Or Amy would have clear-cut us.
Then there was the worst-case scenario: Amy could just quit. She could survive – hell, thrive – beyond the walls of Uncommon Grounds, but it couldn’t survive without her.
I waved her to a table. ‘What can you tell me about Brigid?’
Amy sat, draping her cloth over the back of a chair and glancing over at the grad student before she leaned forward. ‘You do know that Brigid worked at Kingston Realty, right?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, but how do you know?’
Amy shifted in her seat. ‘Brigid was spreading the word that she was unhappy and looking for a new “opportunity”. Said Sarah was taking advantage of her good nature. Such as it was.’
‘I’m getting the impression Brigid wasn’t such a nice person.’
‘Depended. She was real nice to guys with money or fame. Or anyone, either sex, that Brigid thought could get her what she wanted.’
‘Which was?’
‘Anything and everything. Brigid struck me as a social climber who would scrabble over anybody to reach the ladder’s top.’
The way Amy said it made me think she had personal experience. ‘Was she “nice” to you because she wanted something?’
Amy shrugged. ‘Brigid asked about Uncommon Grounds and Sarah and you. At the time, I had the feeling she was looking for dirt.’
And had found it in her own backyard – Sarah’s admitted negligence in training her. And now Brigid had been killed and dumped in our backyard. But why?
‘But,’ Amy shifted uncomfortably, ‘now that’s she’s dead, I hate . . .’
‘. . . to speak ill of the dead?’ I finished for her. ‘Sometimes that’s the only way to find out why someone died.’
‘I suppose.’ She chewed on that for a second. ‘I understand her body was found under the loading platform?’
‘Believe it or not, there’s a furnished space under there with electricity – even a bathroom.’ I didn’t mention that it was in that small room Brigid was found.
‘Why in the world would anyone go to all that trouble? Did it predate the depot here?’ She held out her hand, palm up.
‘This building is 150 years old,’ I said. ‘The room we’re talking about looks pure 1970s. I think the only ones who ever used it were mobsters, preserving their privacy until the train to their destination arrived.’
‘Seriously?’ Amy asked, her eyes round. ‘That is so cool.’
'Cooler', perhaps, if it had happened under someone else's coffeehouse, but I got her point. To people Amy and Tien’s age and even mine, gangsters were the subjects of movies and television. There for entertainment value, not to be feared.
‘I guess it makes sense,’ Amy continued. ‘What with the Ristorante being right across the way.’
‘You know about it being used by the Mafia?’
‘Of course. It’s Brookhills lore.’
I’d lived here all of my married – and now divorced – life and I didn’t know Brookhills had any lore. Of course, I’d spent a lot of those years working long hours in downtown Milwaukee.
‘The shoot-out, the consigliere who got away with the money,’ Amy was saying, ‘I used to pretend he fell in love with me and we ran away together.’
‘You weren’t born yet,’ I said. ‘And, besides, he was a criminal.’
‘Didn’t matter. We were studying La Cosa Nostra in school and I’d been doing a little independent reading. Mario Puzo’s The Godfather and—’
‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘Page 23.’
Amy wrinkled her nose. ‘It was 26, I thought, though I suppose that would depend on the edition. But you get my drift.’
I did, as apparently my mother had as well. It was her copy of the novel I’d found, the spine forever cracked to the page where Sonny Corleone and his sister’s bridesmaid do the dirty.
Ahh, tradition. But that’s another movie.
‘Well, it’s not quite The Godfather,’ I said, ‘but Ward Chitown seems to
think there will be interest in his production.’
‘Chitown?’ Amy repeated. ‘There was something about him in . . .’
She reached over and snagged a stack of newspapers, sifting through them until finding the one she wanted. The thing had been folded inside out, so it took her a second to smooth it out on the table.
Amy pointed. Saturday morning. Page 1, and above the fold. ‘Hunt for Brookhills loot goes prime-time,’ was the headline.
I pulled the paper toward me and read aloud. ‘“Some twenty-five years after Geraldo Rivera’s The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault, Ward Chitown is betting his own treasure hunt will yield higher dividends.”’
Amy seemed puzzled. ‘Al Capone’s vault?’
‘I actually saw Geraldo’s special on TV,’ I said. ‘A construction company renovating the Lexington Hotel in Chicago stumbled on a series of tunnels and a vault of some kind. Rivera had just been fired from ABC and he hosted this program, trying to revive his career. You should have heard the hype. A two-hour live show, with the medical examiner there in case they found bodies and the IRS in case they found money.’
‘And?’
‘Beyond some empty bottles, they found squat.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Yup. But thirty million people watched. 1986.’
‘Wow. So that was the first reality show – before The Real World or Survivor, even.’
‘I never thought of it like that,’ I said. ‘But you’re right. And it was spellbinding, until the final reveal. I guess we all should have realized that reality shows had found their John the Baptist.’
Amy studied the paper. ‘The article doesn’t mention the space under the platform. It sounds like Chitown thinks the money is somewhere in the restaurant or slaughterhouse.’
‘He didn’t know about the so-called “Waiting Room”. Besides, the whole thing is a bunch of hooey.’
Amy blinked. ‘Hooey?’
‘You know, nonsense.’
‘I know what the word means, Maggy. I just never heard it actually spoken in real life before. So why do you think we’re in . . . hooey territory?’
‘Because if the money was stashed more than thirty-five years ago, surely someone would have found it by now.’