A Carnival of Killing

by Glenn Ickler

  “It’s about what he found in his driveway this morning,” I said. It seemed so obvious that I almost prefaced my answer with, “Duh!”

  “What was that?” Liz asked.

  “He hasn’t told you?” My voice went up an octave in incredulity.

  “He came in, said he was running late and dashed off to the meeting. What hasn’t he told me?”

  “Check the Daily Dispatch website,” I said. “And have a good day.”

  I almost ran to the city desk to tell Don that the man who found the body was an Enquirer reporter and that he hadn’t said anything about the discovery to his colleague at the Capitol bureau. “I wonder if he bothered to tell his city desk that his driveway was the center of a crime scene,” I said.

  “Let’s look,” Don said. Both the Daily Dispatch and the Enquirer deliver printed editions of the newspaper to subscribers’ doorsteps and newsstands in the morning. The print edition is augmented electronically by Website pages that are updated frequently throughout the day. Don called up the Enquirer’s home page and scanned it. Whereas our home page was headlining what few details we had about the Mississippi River Boulevard body discovery, the Enquirer was showing nothing.

  “What’d you say this clown’s name is?” Don asked.

  “John Robertson, Jr.,” I said. “And I’m aware of who that is.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Don said. He stood and shouted across the newsroom. “Hey, everybody, want to hear a funny story about the son of the publisher of the great Minneapolis Enquirer?”

  It was after ten o’clock when Franny Furness finally called. I set my half-full coffee cup to one side and prepared to copy the information.

  “The victim’s name is Lee-Ann, spelled with a hyphen and an upper-case A, Nordquist,” Franny said. “She was twenty-seven years old, single, and the mother of a little girl named Sarajane, all one word no hyphen, age five. She is also survived by her parents, Leonard and Sophie Nordquist of St. Paul.”

  Franny gave me the parents’ address, which was on the East Side where many of the city’s Scandinavians are clustered. “She also has a sister, Lori-Luann, spelled with a hyphen and an upper-case L, who lives in Fargo, God help her.”

  “The parents seem to have a great affinity for hyphens,” I said. “Anything special about Lee-Ann? The name sounds vaguely familiar.”

  “As a matter of fact, there is something kind of special,” Franny said. “She was Klondike Kate at last year’s Winter Carnival.”

  Chapter Three

  The Legacy of Klondike Kate

  The original Klondike Kate was a weather-hardy woman named Kathleen Rockwell, who made her way across the snow-capped Alaska mountains to the gold fields around the Yukon and Klondike rivers during the Gold Rush of 1898. The St. Paul Winter Carnival’s Klondike Kate presided over a make-believe northern-frontier casino known as Klondike Kate’s Cabaret.

  “Do we know the cause of death?” I asked.

  “It appears to be strangulation,” Franny said. “But that’s not official. Autopsy results should be available sometime late tomorrow.”

  “How about motive? Any signs of sexual assault?” That question must always be asked when a woman is murdered.

  “No comment on that until after the autopsy,” Franny said.”

  “Time of death still around midnight?” I asked.

  “The body was probably dumped in the driveway about midnight. She may have been killed an hour or so before that. Again, we’ll know more after the autopsy. You won’t want to print this little tidbit because you’re not a tabloid, but it’s taking a while to get the body thawed out.”

  I remembered how stiff the corpse had been when it was lifted onto the gurney. “That’s more than our readers need to know,” I said. “Is the chief planning to make a statement, or is this all until tomorrow?”

  “The chief has scheduled a briefing for all media here at the station at 1500 hours,” said Franny. Great, I thought. Just in time to allow the TV evening news to tell everyone the story more than twelve hours before our printed edition subscribers would see it in the morning paper.

  I thanked Franny and put down the phone just as Al found an open patch big enough to accommodate half of his butt on the corner of my desk.

  “What do you know about Klondike Kate?” I asked.

  “Not much,” Al said. “Some of the old ones perform with the current winner at the saloon, and they all dress like 1890s Gold Rush bar floozies. Why are you asking?”

  “Because our frozen dead woman was last year’s Klondike Kate. I’ve got to get some background on the program.”

  “Didn’t we see her a couple of weeks ago at the contest?”

  “We did. Her name is Lee-Ann Nordquist.”

  Because I gag while watching anything resembling American Idol, I don’t normally attend the Klondike Kate competition. However, Al’s wife, Carol, knew one of the contestants, so Martha Todd and I went to the show with the Jeffreys to cheer for her.

  Carol’s friend had lost to a hydrant-shaped 180-pound blonde (have I mentioned that Klondike Kate is traditionally “kind of chunky”?) with a voice that could shatter storm windows all the way to the Wisconsin border. Lee-Ann had helped the new Kate, whose name was Angela Rinaldi, put on the winner’s sash and joked about the need for a longer piece of satin to encompass the expanse of Angela’s substantial bosom.

  “I need to tell Don who the victim is,” I said.

  “Good luck,” Al said. “You know what he’s going to say.”

  I knew, but I walked to the city desk and told Don anyway. And, as if on cue, he replied, “Call the family. See if you can get a picture.”

  These were the most dreaded words a reporter could hear. Nothing in this business was more distasteful than asking for a comment and/or a photograph from the parents or siblings of a crime, accident or suicide victim. There’s a fifty-fifty chance the person you contact will want to send you off to join their recently departed relative, so reporters have developed two rules: If phoning, hold the receiver at arm’s length after identifying yourself. If ringing the doorbell, step back out of arm’s reach before the door opens. If you don’t hear a scream or feel the breeze from a punch, you’ve got a chance of achieving your objective.

  Given my druthers, I’d go on one of those god-awful TV reality shows where contestants eat raw cockroaches soaked in snail slime or fall 200 feet into a barrel of bubbling green acid than ask a mother for a comment on her daughter’s murder. But Don had given the order and, good soldier that I was, I obeyed.

  A man answered the phone. “Nordquist residence.”

  “Mr. Nordquist?” I asked.

  “I’m his next door neighbor,” the man said. “Are you a reporter?”

  “Yes, sir, I am,” I said, and stretched the receiver away from my ear.

  “Go fuck yourself,” he said loud enough for me to hear and slammed down his receiver.

  Satisfied with this response, I reported it to Don.

  “Okay with me,” Don said. “But don’t do it on company time.”

  I was off the hook for talking with grief-stricken family members, but I still needed some quotes and a picture of Lee-Ann Nordquist. My next call went to the St. Paul Festival and Heritage Foundation, which ran the Winter Carnival. After wading through the usual routine of “press one, press two, press three,” I finally got an operator who connected me with Bob Sherman, the executive director.

  I phrased my request for a reaction carefully in case Bob hadn’t heard that Lee-Ann Nordquist wouldn’t be entertaining at the Klondike Kate Cabaret any more. Bob was a skeletal, white-haired man in his seventies, and I didn’t want to give him a heart attack.

  Bob had heard the news while watching Trish Valentine broadcasting live from the St. Paul police station. He expressed his personal sorrow and said he’d call me with an official statement in half an hour.

  “I don’t know if I can find a photo,” he said. “Why don’t you call the Royal Order of the Klond
ike Kates?”

  “The what?” I asked.

  Bob repeated the words and explained that the Kates didn’t limit their performances to the Winter Carnival anymore. “They make over a hundred appearances a year at parades and benefits and even the State Fair,” he said. “It’s a big deal with those girls now.” He gave me a phone number and said to ask for Kitty.

  “Kitty Kate?” I asked.

  “Kitty the coordinator,” he said.

  I hung up and my phone rang immediately. “She was not nude,” said Martha Todd when I picked up. “You lied to me.”

  “Sorry. I couldn’t resist,” I said. “How’d you find out?”

  “I just watched a rerun of Trish Valentine broadcasting live from the scene. Did you see her out there?”

  “I saw her eyes and her nose. She was working undercover.”

  “Deep cover,” said Martha.

  “Gotta go,” I said. “I need to call a Kate named Kitty.”

  A minute later I was talking to a woman who identified herself as Kitty Catalano. Again I broached the reason for my call with caution. This time I got a scream.

  Police Chief Casey O’Malley’s 3:00 p.m. media briefing was a waste of time, but Al and I were sent as a means of showing the Daily Dispatch flag. Al got a picture of the chief and Detective Curtis Brown together, which was sure to score points with Brownie if it ran in the morning edition, but I learned nothing new except that the medical examiner’s autopsy report wouldn’t be released until Monday morning. Apparently the defrosting was taking even longer than expected.

  Our only reward for attending was the appearance of Trish Valentine, reporting live. The outdoor temperature was still ten below zero, but the briefing was indoors, and we got to see Trish sans mushroom-shaped coat. Trish, who was known for her provocative wardrobe, was wearing a hot pink sweater that provided a heart-warming display of her charms. Every man present, the chief included, appreciated and admired her choice.

  Back at the office, I found a woman about my age, which is a youthful forty, sitting at my desk with her long, lavender coat draped over the back of the chair. She rose, shook my hand with a surprisingly-strong grip and introduced herself as Kitty Catalano, the Klondike Kate coordinator who had screamed in my ear. After she’d recovered a modicum of aplomb, she’d promised to deliver a photo of Lee-Ann and an official statement of grief from the Royal Order of Klondike Kates.

  On the phone Kitty had told me that she’d competed for the title of Klondike Kate a year ago, so I was surprised to see a woman who could pose as AFTER for one of those BEFORE AND AFTER weight-loss commercials. She was tall, close to six feet, and I surmised from the breadth of her shoulders that she was a regular at the gym.

  She was wearing a white sweater and gray slacks that emphasized the sleek curves of her breasts and hips and the slenderness of her waist. A fashionable red wool cap was pushed back on her head and her slacks were tucked into western-style red leather boots that went up to the middle of her calves.

  Apparently my face gave away my thoughts about her figure. “I’ve dropped a few pounds since last year’s contest,” Kitty said.

  “On you it looks good,” I said. “Or maybe I should say ‘off you.’”

  Kitty gave me a half-smile, brushed a wisp of dark-brown hair away from one of her green eyes and handed me the large manila envelope in her left hand. “Thanks,” she said. “Here’s the statement and the photo I promised you. If you have any questions I’ll be in the office until five.”

  I did have questions. “How well did you know Lee-Ann?”

  “I got acquainted with her after I got the job as coordinator six months ago, but I didn’t know her as well as the other girls. All the past and present Kates are pretty tight. It’s like a sisterhood.”

  “Can you have one of the sisters who was really close to her call me?” I asked.

  “I can try. It won’t be a popular request.”

  I handed her my business card. “I’d like to be able to describe Lee-Ann as she was in life, rather than as the victim of a tragedy.”

  “That’s nice of you. I’ll tell her friends that when I ask them to call you.” She shook hands, slung her coat over her arm and walked away before I could tell her how nice I really am. Every male eye in the newsroom followed her until the elevator doors closed behind her.

  I opened the envelope and pulled out a color photo of a round-faced blonde with wide blue eyes, a snub nose and a dazzling smile that said she loved life. She was wearing the same short-sleeved purple dress that I’d seen in the frozen driveway.

  “It’s always the pretty ones that the bastards kill,” said a voice behind me. I turned to face Fred Donlin, the night city editor, who’d been peeking over my shoulder.

  “I can’t imagine looking into this face and having the urge to kill her,” I said. I handed Fred the picture and went to work on my computer, inserting the official Kates’ statement into my story. I’d just punched the send button when it occurred to me that John Robertson, Jr., had never returned my call.

  I punched in the Capitol number and the extension. A man answered and identified himself as Ray Walker. I asked for John Robertson and was told that he’d left for the day. “He was in early for one of those stupid sunrise breakfasts that our governor loves so much,” Walker said.

  “Who was the governor stuffing with doughnuts this morning?” I asked.

  “Gun nuts,” said Walker. “They were stuffing him with bullshit about the need for allowing folks to carry concealed weapons. Only for self-protection, of course.”

  A few years previously, the Minnesota gun lobby had won a well-financed campaign to allow people to carry guns in public as a means of self-protection. Facilities that wanted to be gun-free, such as churches and hospitals and gambling casinos, were required to post signs to that effect. Now the gunners were firing the next shots at their target of universal hidden armament.

  “Oh, goodie,” I said. “My tax dollars at work so we can all pack pistols in our armpits.”

  It was past time to go home. I put down the phone and picked up my coat. I had one arm in a sleeve when the phone rang. I contemplated letting it go back to the central operator but succumbed to curiosity.

  “Brownhere,” said the caller. “Don’t you ever go home?”

  “People like you keep me here at all hours,” I said. “If you want, I can go home right now and you could call me there.”

  “I already called you there. Your sweetie said you were so late she’d been thinking about calling me to see if we had any bodies that looked like yours.”

  “Well, here I am, alive and relatively well. What’s up?”

  “I’ll tell you something that you can’t print yet if you’ll promise to give me some help.”

  “What kind of help?” I asked. I rarely dealt with sources off the record. This sort of cooperation would not come cheap.

  “You’ll be covering a lot of the Winter Carnival crap, right?”

  “Right. Of course I won’t describe the gala carnival events in quite so crude a manner.”

  “I’m sure. What I’m asking is that you keep your eyes and ears open for anything that might be related to this morning’s not-so-gala event.”

  “You’re thinking the murder is connected to the carnival?” I asked.

  “Everything points that way. Number one, the victim was last year’s Klondike Kate. Number two, we’ve been told that the victim attended a party for the Queen of the Snows candidates last night and was later seen leaving a downtown bar with a man wearing a Vulcan costume.”

  “A Vulcan costume? Are you shittin’ me?” I asked.

  “Have I ever?”

  “Not that I’ve ever caught you.”

  “Good enough. All I’m asking is that you pay close attention when the Vulcans are around. We’re going to be talking to all of them individually, but we can always use another set of ears. And remember, you can’t print that yet.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “I
t might get a response from somebody who saw them after they left the bar.”

  “It might also totally destroy the Winter Carnival,” Brown said. “Can you imagine the reaction people would have when they saw the Vulcans coming if they thought one of them killed that woman?”

  “Good point. I’ll keep my mouth shut and watch the Vulcans like the proverbial hawk.”

  The latter wouldn’t be difficult. Al and I had a feature story assignment to ride with Vulcanus Rex and his Krewe from morning until night the next day.

  Chapter Four

  Uneasy Rider

  Let me explain the St. Paul Winter Carnival, which many people find inexplicable. The Carnival begins the last weekend of January and runs into the beginning of February. The scenario, in a nutshell (and you have to be a nut to come out of your shell and run around outside in Minnesota at that time of year) is this:

  King Boreas, who represents the forces of snow and ice, rules the Carnival along with the Queen of Snows, who represents sugar and spice and everything nice. Vulcanus Rex and his red-clad seven-man Krewe ride around the city in an over-the-hill fire truck bringing chaos and confusion to many Carnival events. On the final night of the Carnival, the Vulcans summon warmer weather by driving away the winter king and queen, along with their retinue of princes, princesses and royal guards.

  As silly as all this sounds, the Carnival attracts approximately 350,000 visitors each year and generates an estimated $3.5 to $5.0 million in economic activity, according to the press release delivered to my desk by the St. Paul Festival & Heritage Foundation.

  Carnival events include toboggan runs, ice fishing contests, parades, ice sculpture exhibitions, dog team rides and, of course, the Klondike Kate Cabaret. Not bad for a celebration that began in 1886 to showcase the fast-growing city and disprove the insult written by a New York newspaper reporter who had described St. Paul as “another Siberia, unfit for human habitation in the winter.”

  The Vulcans have been rebuilding their image ever since a woman filed a complaint against one of the Krewe, claiming that he reached too high up her thigh while putting an honorary garter in place. Nobody would be installing any garters on the morrow. Also verboten was the traditional kiss, during which Vulcans marked the face of every available female with a greasy black smudge transferred from their cheeks and beards. The mark of the reformed, politically-correct Vulcan is a black V, made with a stick of greasepaint and applied only after asking for the fair damsel’s consent.