by Glenn Ickler
“How do you know that?”
“I saw them.”
That got my attention. “You’re the anonymous witness?”
“That’s right,” he said. “The cops—a detective Brown—ordered me to keep my mouth shut about that.”
“Have you told this height thing to the cops?”
“Not yet, but I will,” Costello said. “I stopped here to see you on the way to the station so you won’t slander Eddie anymore.”
“I haven’t slandered Eddie,” I said. “Slander is verbal. It has to do with the spoken word. Newspapers libel people, they don’t slander them. But my story can’t be construed as libelous because I was quoting the police verbatim. You can talk to Brown about slander, but he’ll tell you where to stick it.”
“Jeez, you’re a walking dictionary. That’s a shit load more than I wanted to know about slander.”
“Well, you haven’t told me anywhere near what I want to know about Lee-Ann and the badass Vulcan. Tell me exactly what you saw in O’Halloran’s that night.” I had picked up a small tape recorder off my desk and I flipped it on to record his response.
“It’s pretty much what you had in your story about the police chief saying a Vulcan was the last one to see Lee-Ann alive. I was watching Lee-Ann because I was hoping to get next to her myself. But, this Vulcan, and I don’t have a clue who it was, except I’m sure it wasn’t anybody from our Krewe, was cozied up with her at a table in the back, buying her drinks and shooting the shit. She was obviously feeling no pain when she got up to go to the can because she did the old zig-zag on the way.
“Anyhow, Lee-Ann was barely out of sight when the Vulcan got up and headed in the same direction. I figured he was going to the men’s room.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You were watching Lee-Ann because you wanted to be the one getting her drunk?”
“Not drunk, just mellow,” Costello said. I smiled and gave what I considered to be a knowing nod, a gesture from one horny male to another. “Hey, don’t give me that fisheye,” Costello said. “I’m single and I thought Lee-Ann was cute.”
“Okay. Sorry I interrupted. Finish your story.”
“I wasn’t watching for Lee-Ann to come back from her piss call because Marcus, Count Embrious, was telling a joke and I turned around to listen to it. When he finished, I looked back just in time to see the two of them, the Vulcan and Lee-Ann, go out the back door to the parking lot. It looked like he was pretty much supporting her, which didn’t surprise me considering how wobbly she’d been on the way to the ladies’ room.”
“Do you think she might have been dead when they walked out the door?”
“That’s spooky, but yeah, I do now. The bastard must have killed her back there in the ladies room, just like he went after the other girl, Toni What’s-her-name, at the dance Saturday night.”
“But you didn’t see the Vulcan who attacked Toni?”
“No. The action was all over by the time I got through the jam-up in the ballroom door. Obviously, that wasn’t Eddie, ’cause he was somewhere out in New York.”
“Obviously,” I said. “And you’re going to tell Brown or whoever about this height differential?”
“As soon as I leave here, which I guess is now,” Costello said. “Unless you got more questions.”
“Not at the moment.” I offered him a notepad and a ballpoint pen. “Leave me your phone number in case I have some later.”
Costello accepted the pad and pen, scribbled his numbers at work and at home, apologized for accusing me of slander and went on his way to the police station, leaving me to wonder how this square peg fit into the round hole with everything else I knew.
I ran my conversation with Costello past Al in the lunchroom at noon.
“This case gets screwier all the time,” Al said. “It seems like the more we find out the less we know. I was sure there were two Vulcans involved, a killer and a wannabe, but now it looks like we’re back to one Vulcan. Who the devil could it be?”
“Beats hell out of me,” I said.
The St. Claire scenario took an even bigger hit from another square peg two days later. I was shutting down my computer late Friday afternoon when my plan to leave the office was sidetracked by a call from Brownie.
“You want the bad news or the worst news?” he asked.
“Give me the worst news first,” I replied.
“The worst news is that Edward St. Claire’s DNA test came back, and his DNA doesn’t match that of the Nordquist fetus.”
“And the not as bad news?”
“We had to release him for lack of evidence, even though he’s still a person of interest in the case.”
“If he’s not the father, why would he still be a person of interest? What would be his motive for killing Lee-Ann?”
“Jealousy. He was screwing the woman at least three times a month. Then she goes out and gets knocked up by somebody else.”
This was news, although I wasn’t quite sure how I’d write it. “Did he admit to screwing her at least three times a month?” I asked.
“Not at first, but he quit denying he’d been banging her regularly when we told him that we had evidence to prove it,” Brownie said. “Because Mr. St. Claire is a car salesman, he belongs to a number of civic organizations in order to make contacts. These organizations meet once a month, the Kiwanis on a Tuesday, the Elks on a Wednesday and the Lions Club on a Thursday. He would tell his wife he was going to one of those meetings when his real meeting was with Ms. Nordquist in a motel up I-494 in Woodbury.”
“How’d you discover that?”
“By talking to Mrs. St. Claire. It seems that the Kiwanis treasurer called the house a couple of weeks ago to remind Mr. St. Claire that he needed to pay his dues, and Mrs. St. Claire took the call. Said the treasurer told her that they hadn’t seen her husband at a meeting for eight or nine months and asked if he was okay.”
“I’ll bet he wasn’t so okay after that,” I said.
“She was smart,” Brownie said. “She kept her mouth shut, but the next time he left for a Kiwanis meeting she got in her car and followed him. She watched him check into the motel, then went home and dug through his old credit card bills. And guess what? She found a regular pattern of visits to that particular motel.”
“The idiot used his credit card to shack up with Lee-Ann?”
“Apparently he doesn’t carry much cash. Anyway, the wife was just about ready to let the shit hit the fan right when Ms. Nordquist was murdered and the coward took off. Now we have the credit card records for the motel and a list of people from the Kiwanis, Elks and Lions to talk to about Mr. St. Claire’s attendance record.”
“So you still think St. Claire might be the killer?”
“We can’t write him off. He’s still got a motive.”
“What about the physical thing?” I asked. “You know, the fact that he’s short and that other Vulcan, Costello, said he saw a taller man with Lee-Ann?”
“Witnesses are always making mistakes about height, weight, age, color of hair, number of arms and legs, what have you,” Brownie said. “Somebody else who was there that night told us that the Vulcan hanging around Ms. Nordquist was average height, whatever the hell that is.”
“So what’s the official police line on all of this?”
“That Mr. St. Claire was having an affair with the victim, but that his DNA test was negative as far as being the father of her unborn child, and he has been released from custody at this time. You can dress it up anyway you want, but go easy on his poor wife. Have a good day, Mitch.”
Chapter Twenty
North by Northeast
That night Martha and I dined with the Jeffrey family again. Martha had baked a pecan pie, which made her even more popular than usual with the teenagers, Kristin and Kevin. After the pie had been demolished and the adults were sipping the last of their coffee, Martha dropped a bomb not at all popular with me.
“I’m going to be away probably
all next week,” Martha said. “We’re trying a civil case in Duluth and the lead attorney wants me to be second chair.”
“Congratulations,” Carol said. “That could be great experience for you.”
“Take your long johns,” Al said. “If you think it’s cold here, wait until you feel the winter wind whipping off Lake Superior.”
“Who’s the lead attorney,” I said. I had visions of Martha spending a week in the same hotel with an up-and-coming law office stud muffin.
“Sara Norris,” Martha said. “You met her at the Christmas party.”
Indeed, I had met Sara. She was slim, brunette, in her early forties, and best of all, the married mother of two teenagers.
“How am I going to keep warm while you’re gone all next week?” I asked about three hours later as we were undressing for bed.
“You’ve always got Sherlock,” Martha said.
“It ain’t the same,” I said, doing my best not to sound whiny.
“Sorry, sweetie, but duty calls. If the paper sent you to Duluth for a week, I’m pretty sure you’d go.”
“Don would never send me that far.”
“He once sent you to Martha’s Vineyard, which is a heck of a lot farther.”
“That was a very unpleasant special assignment,” I said. “And I’ll never have to go there again.”
“What if I want to go there?”
“You can go with Sara Norris.”
“That wouldn’t be much of a honeymoon.”
That froze my tongue for a moment. “Did I hear you say honeymoon?” I asked after the pause.
“That’s a possibility sometime down the road, is it not?” she said. She was naked on the bed, stretched on her right side like a svelte, nubile feline, and was staring up at me with wide hazel eyes. Talk about timing.
“I possibly could be persuaded, sometime down the road,” I said, dropping my under shorts to the floor and stepping out of them as briskly as if I was dancing on a bed of hot coals.
“Then don’t do any more whining while I’m keeping you warm for the next couple of nights.” Apparently my best effort not to sound whiny had been insufficient.
“Should I get the book and look up Number 63?”
“Let’s leave the book alone until I get back from Duluth. That old time lovin’ was pretty good last night.”
When the alarm went off Monday morning, I turned my head toward the bedroom window and discovered that it had become opaque during the night. The outside surface was plastered with a wind-driven layer of white. The TV weather pundits had forecast high winds and several inches of snow, and this time they were right.
I turned back toward Martha, who lay on her back to my right. “Not a nice day to fly to Duluth,” I said.
“Who said anything about flying,” Martha replied. “We’re driving up in Sara’s Subaru.”
“You’re driving northeast for 150 miles in this shit?”
“It’s an all-wheeler. We’ll be fine.”
“Better wear your ski pants and snow boots. You’ll probably be out shoveling.”
Martha sat up and let the covers slide off her bare breasts, an erotic unveiling that always disarmed me. “You think because we’re women we can’t drive in a little old snowstorm?” she said.
“I didn’t say anything about you being handicapped by your gender,” I said. “I don’t think anybody of any sex, color, or creed should be driving to Duluth today. In fact, I’d rather not be driving to downtown St. Paul.” I turned away from Martha, curled into the fetal position and pulled the covers over my head. Her response was a knee applied solidly to my glutei maximi.
“Okay, weather wimp, you can lay there and suck your thumb until I’m out of the shower,” Martha said. I felt the bed shake as she rose, and I sat up just in time to watch her wondrous ass disappear through the bathroom door. I sank back onto the pillow and reminded myself that a few hours ago this gorgeous woman had talked about the possibility of a honeymoon.
Such a possibility was both exciting and scary. Would I really have the guts to tie the knot officially? Maybe. Would she? Who knows?
And if we did tie the knot, would I go along with a honeymoon on Martha’s Vineyard if that’s what she really wanted? No way. Hawaii would be a lot more fun if Martha had her heart set on an island honeymoon.
The snow was the heavy, wet variety that stuck to everything. By the time I gave Martha her tenth and final goodbye kiss while standing outside the door to the parking lot, the trees, shrubs, and cars had been coated with at least two inches of prime snowball material. I resisted the temptation to scoop up a handful, scrunch it into a sphere and fire it at Martha’s back as she slogged toward Sara’s Subaru. When she reached the car, I waved and turned to go indoors. A solid whack between the shoulder blades told me that Martha had been unable to squelch the same devilish desire before getting into the car.
After a long session of brushing and scraping, I got the windows and lights of my Civic sufficiently uncovered to make the trip downtown. Thanks to the Weather Bureau’s forewarning, the plows had been out and the streets were in what Minnesotans call “good winter driving conditions,” with the emphasis always on “winter.” My biggest problem was keeping the windshield clear because the heavy, wet flakes glued themselves to the glass.
Martha had agreed to keep me posted on the progress of the Subaru at regular intervals, and her first call came moments after I shook the snow off my storm coat and hung it on the rack in the newsroom. They were on I-35 north, creeping along in heavy, slow-moving traffic.
I’d no sooner wished Martha better luck and hung up than the phone rang again. When I picked it up, I heard the dreaded voice of Morrie.
“The Russians have got their radar aimed at my building and they’re bombarding me with snow,” he said. “You’ve got to write about it and stop them.”
“It’s snowing everywhere, not just on your building,” I said. “The storm is all over the state.”
“That’s their trick. They want to make you think it’s everywhere, but it’s aimed at me and my dog.” Morrie owned a nondescript white dust mop of a pooch that he sometimes took downtown on a leash.
“Your best bet is to stay indoors and be as quiet as you can until the snow goes away,” I said. “If you keep trying to stop it, the Russians will keep sending more.”
“You mean I should just sit in my apartment all day?”
“I mean stay there without talking to anyone until the snow stops. You might even go to bed with a nice glass of wine.”
“Oh, I never drink alcohol,” Morrie said. “But I will go back to bed.”
Thank God he doesn’t drink alcohol, I thought as I hung up. I couldn’t imagine what phantoms a drunken Morrie would conjure up.
At last I had time to call Brownie. After nine rings, I heard, “Homicidebrown.”
“Dailydispatchmitchell,” I said. “Anything new on Klondike Kate?”
“As a matter of fact, there is,” Brownie said. “The lab has reported a positive match on the fetus’s DNA.”
“Oh, my god, who?” I yelled loud enough to cause every reporter in the newsroom to look my way.
“The chief will announce that at a 10:00 o’clock media briefing here in the station. Have a good day, Mitch.”
“You could have given me a heads-up,” I said into the dead phone, making no effort not to sound whiny.
Chapter Twenty-One
Who’s Your Daddy?
Al and I arrived at the station ten minutes early, only to find the room already jammed with TV cameras and reporters bearing microphones. As always, Trish Valentine was right up front.
I wriggled through the mob and pushed in beside her. “Hey, Trish, did you spend the night here or what?” I asked.
“Are you implying that I slept with somebody here?” she replied.
“I didn’t say that. I’m just wondering how early you have to get here in order to latch onto the best spot, front and center.”
�
�My cameraman and I took off as soon as we heard about the briefing. I think we’ve been here about twenty minutes, long enough that my feet are starting to hurt.” She was wearing boots with heels high enough to add a couple of inches to her height.
“Those heels must be a pain. Why not wear something more practical?”
“When you’re as short as I am, you need a boost. I guess a tall person like you wouldn’t understand.”
“Well, I’m sure the chief will be happy to see you in the front row anyway.”
Trish’s reply was cut short when Police Chief Casey O’Malley, Ramsey County Attorney Howard Albert and Homicide Detective Curtis Brown entered the room.
The chief stepped forward and looked sternly over our heads while waiting for the babble to stop.
“We’re here this morning to announce that we have determined the identity of the father of the late Lee-Ann Nordquist’s unborn baby,” O’Malley said when all was quiet. “As you know, we took DNA samples from a several men in this effort. We have been rewarded with a positive match, and we’re now searching for the man in question.”
The chief paused, which he knew would play well on the TV sound bites, and held the silence until I was ready to scream, “For God’s sake, tell us who!”
“The man we are seeking is named Ted Carlson, age thirty-three, who lives in Roseville and works downtown in the Winter Carnival office as liaison for the Vulcans,” O’Malley said. Again he paused for effect.
After a collective gasp of amazement from his audience, O’Malley continued, “Mr. Carlson is married, but has been known to be quite friendly with several women connected with the Winter Carnival, including the late Ms. Lee-Ann Nordquist. Mr. Carlson is also known to have been wearing a Vulcan costume on the night of Ms. Nordquist’s murder. He also is known to have been in the Crowne Plaza Hotel, again wearing a Vulcan costume, on the night of the attack on Ms. Toni Erickson.