by Julie Kramer
I laid Gracie on the pillow next to me as I turned off the lights, soothed by her company.
ithout Shep to feed and walk and brush, I got into work early the next morning. I bought a hot chocolate, topped off by whipped cream, at the coffee shop down the block from the station and settled in at my desk, content with my treat.
The St. Paul and Minneapolis newspapers gave major play to Mark Lefevre’s murder. I skimmed both versions but didn’t see anything new. Just as journalists hate following a competitor’s exclusive, we also hate getting scooped on our own story.
Checking the normal comings and goings at Tamarack, the cops had narrowed Mark’s time of death to a twelve-hour window after he left the White Bear Country Inn. Otherwise they figured he’d have shown up for the ceremony. They speculated the killer had buried him before park workers arrived the next morning. Certainly the deed had been completed before the big snowstorm hit less than forty-eight hours later.
I continued charting clues in my office and focused on people who might want Mark dead. The bullet markings tied his death to his mother’s. I had no solid idea why she ended up dead, but I had a hunch—find the killer’s motive to harm Mark and I might solve both murders.
I put Mark’s name in a circle in the center of a board hanging on my wall. I drew lines outward for suspects like spokes on a wheel. Each getting equal weight. Now came the time for brainstorming. No idea too outlandish at this stage. Get them down. Flesh them out. Eliminate later.
Mark’s old girlfriend came to mind. I wrote down SIGOURNEY NELSON on one of the spokes, but was no closer to locating her than when I’d hypothesized that she and her old beau might have reconciled and run off together. Clearly that hadn’t happened. But maybe that kiss in the parking lot had been the kiss of death.
The comedian who replaced Mark seemed to get a career boost after his rival’s disappearance, so I added CHAD GRISWOLD to another spoke. He hadn’t returned any of my phone calls. I pondered how much to read into that and how best to handle the situation.
I wrote DRUGS on another spoke. And it felt solid. Could Mark be involved in dealing? That much cash in a safe-deposit box was suspicious since Mark didn’t appear to be living high and loose. He even owed his best man money.
Or could the murder motive be as simple as that? Revenge on an unpaid debt. Seemed unlikely, especially since Mark would be in a good spot to pay back the loan after his honeymoon. But I wrote GABE MURRAY on the board just to keep all options open—after all, people have killed for bus money.
My ad hoc theory about Mark’s mother returned. Since Mark hadn’t murdered her, could the cops have been right about her committing suicide? Might she have been driven to it over the guilt of murdering him? That, more than parking tickets, might explain why she waited to contact police. The suicide note, in his handwriting, gained in importance. I wrote down JEAN LEFEVRE.
Though it seemed a long shot with the prenup, I wrote down VIVIAN POST, mother of the bride. Although she’d assured me she was happy for Madeline, if I had a daughter and a bunch of money, I’d have done more to help when her lover went missing. I recalled how quickly Mrs. Post hired a bodyguard. How come she never hired a private eye? Maybe she had hired a professional—a professional killer. But in the case of such a methodical murder, Mark’s body probably would have been hidden better, encased in cement, and never been found.
I had one spoke left and I wrote down MADELINE POST.
I recalled my conversation with Professor Vasilis, the Harvard prosopagnosia researcher, and what he said about obsession and stalking should affection go unreturned. His research indicated facial recognition of a specific individual could be an astonishingly powerful lure to a face-blind subject.
What if the anonymous parking-lot kiss had been a prelude to Mark telling his bride the wedding was off? How might Madeline have reacted to such a rejection?
The timing required to shoot and bury a man seemed too tight for her to have left her mother’s mansion without her absence being noticed. But I’d never pressed Madeline, minute to minute, where she was following the rehearsal dinner. That shallow grave in Tamarack was not far from Peninsula Road, so while I considered her involvement improbable, I no longer considered it impossible.
nstage, the man sweated. Whether from nerves or the overhead lights, I couldn’t be sure. I was even sweating a little myself.
I sat near the front of the comedy club, but kept my head down and my collar up so Chad would not notice me in the crowd. I wanted to observe him up close to get a better feel for his speech pattern and body language. The bright lights and rambunctious audience might skew the results, but since he wouldn’t meet with me or call me back, this approach would have to suffice.
Chad’s name was listed last in the program. The closer for open-mic night. That meant he got seven minutes to wow the crowd instead of four. So I tried to relax and enjoy the preceding laughs. That’s one thing about laughter—it’s distracting. Amid the giggles and guffaws, I’d forgotten about my nerves until Chad walked onstage holding both hands against one shoulder, pretending to cast a fishing line into the audience. He opened his act with a joke about the best way for men to get their wives to let them spend more time fishing.
“Give them a choice,” he said. “Wake them up real early in the morning and offer to leave and go fishing or stay and have sex.”
The crowd laughed and several men stomped their feet in an atta-boy fashion.
“Either way, we win.” Chad pretended he had a bite on his imaginary line and mimicked trying to reel in a fighting fish.
“Don’t be surprised when she rolls over and mumbles those sweet words: ‘Honey, don’t forget to close the garage door.’”
A predictable punch line, but the audience clapped amiably. I’d purposely grabbed an aisle seat so I could follow Chad out once his seven minutes of glory ended.
He pretended that his next joke was also fishing related but it was actually a fairly juvenile double entendre about “hooking up.”
“And how about that big fish that went missing?” he asked the crowd.
My ears perked up. What about Big Mouth Billy?
“Did you hear about that case?” Audience members nodded and murmured that yes, they were knowledgeable about local current events.
“That fish was the pride of the state. Any guy who’d do that has to be a real basshole.”
I clapped spontaneously, along with the rest of the crowd. That “basshole” line was probably the cleverest of the night. I made a mental note to tell Tom McHale so he could work it into his anchor chitchat between weather and sports. Nothing the Federal Communications Commission could do about that. But then I wondered if appropriating “basshole” might be considered stealing material, and didn’t want to get Tom in trouble.
“Good thing Lent’s over or the FBI would be raiding every church fish fry,” Chad continued. Several women in the crowd tittered in amusement at that image.
“I don’t want to cast aspersions on law enforcement.” Chad did that funny casting motion again. He seemed fond of physical comedy. Also of using puns. He followed with a couple of humorous observations about the lack of progress in the investigation with a special emphasis on fishy, smells, and scales of justice.
“When a fish goes missing, it’s serious business. Seems we should have a special Amber Alert for those cases. Oh wait, we do. It’s called a bobber.” A few men groaned and seemed to be tiring of the bit. I sure was.
“And what about the media?” he asked.
Yeah? I wondered suspiciously. What about us?
“They don’t seem to be closing in on the fish thief anytime soon.”
Noreen must be putting him up to this.
“And there’s that TV chick who claims she got a note from the fishnappers.” That would be me. I glanced around but Chad seemed oblivious to my presence. No one in the audience appeared to recognize me, either. “Next time I tune in to the news I expect she’ll be looking for suspec
ts by doing one of those man-on-the-street interviews.” He took the microphone off the stand and held it out like he was a reporter. “Where were you when the fish went missing?”
A handful of folks laughed at his impersonation, but not me. I hadn’t realized I was standing until I started speaking. “Actually, Chad, I’m more interested in where you were when Mark Lefevre went missing.”
No chuckles, only confusion.
I had always figured comedians would be naturals at ad-libbing, but many aren’t. Interrupt their easy, practiced delivery with a heckle and many spook like a deer about to be whammed by a pickup truck. Same thing with some TV anchors. Lose the teleprompter and they lose their cool.
Chad was one of those. First he froze. Then he seemed to forget the crowd and took an angry step toward me.
“What are you talking about?” None of his friendly banter, he sounded pissed.
Some of the crowd might have started out thinking I was part of the act, but by now the scene was verging on uncomfortable.
“You heard me,” I said. “Do you have an alibi for the night Mark Lefevre disappeared?”
A few people gasped at the implication. After all, many in the crowd were familiar with Mark’s name. First, because he regularly did stand-up at the club for the last several years. Second, because his name had been banner headlines and lead TV news-story material for the last forty-eight hours. A whisper on my left suggested someone realized I was the journalist who found his buried body.
Chad remained silent.
“You wouldn’t kill for a laugh, would you?” I tried remembering some of the jokes Jason Hill, the club manager, and I had improvised the other night concerning the fine line between comedy and violence.
Then I heard a noise behind me, but before I could turn around, Jason and a bouncer-looking guy each grabbed me by an arm. No courtesy tap on the shoulder, they simply picked me up and moved toward the nearest exit.
“You’re not funny,” Jason said.
The crowd picked up on that and began chanting “not funny, not funny.” That hurt.
Chad suddenly got creative and shouted, “And let’s have a big round of applause for Channel 3’s Riley Spartz!”
He acted like our confrontation was all part of his act. The crowd bought into it and the last thing I heard and saw before being carried out the door was their standing ovation for my apparent cameo.
My feet didn’t hit the ground until the pair dropped me on the sidewalk outside. Off balance, I fell on my knees on top of cigarette butts and other unpleasant street litter. Jason leaned down and put his face next to mine.
“Don’t come back to the club,” he said. “Ever.”
Then his gorilla companion pushed me over and added his own one-liner: “Or the club will take a club to you.”
The sign of a mediocre joke is if the only one laughing is the guy who told it. Neither Jason or I laughed at the chuckling goon. But I got the message.
——
NOREEN HAD A scowl on her face. Miles sat in a corner of her fish-bowl office with a dark lawyer glare on his. As usual, I was the cause of their unhappiness.
“You practically accused a man, in public, surrounded by witnesses, of being a murderer,” Noreen said.
“And that’s no laughing matter,” Miles said.
How they could know that, one day later, puzzled me. But then Noreen pulled up an e-mail on her computer screen and clicked on an attachment. Video loaded and played. Closed-circuit security-camera video inside the comedy club.
The shot was wide so we could see Chad onstage, doing his fishing motions. We couldn’t hear his monologue because the tape had no audio. But that also meant that while Noreen and Miles could see me stand up and confront Chad, they couldn’t hear what either of us said.
In my mind, that made the whole incident a draw.
“That’s not how we see it,” Noreen said.
“And that’s not how Chad Griswold’s attorney sees it,” Miles interjected.
“If he’s not guilty of anything,” I asked, “how come he’s so quick to get a lawyer?”
I was especially curious after Miles explained that Chad’s attorney was Benny Walsh, one of the best criminal attorneys in Minneapolis.
Garnett had used him last fall when he was unfairly charged with the murder of a city councilwoman. Glib and confident, Walsh made it clear to me then that he didn’t much care whether his clients were killers or not—just whether they could afford him and whether the media spelled his name right. I couldn’t imagine that Chad could afford him.
“Benny Walsh has other legal specialties, too,” Miles said. “One of them is slander.”
“Slander?” I said. Slander meant Benny might take the case on a contingency, instead of making Chad pay up front. Suddenly Chad could afford top legal counsel.
“That’s right,” Miles continued. “Slander. The verbal defamation of one’s character. Accusing someone of murder certainly falls into that category.”
When Miles described my actions like that, he made me sound real bad.
Noreen banged her fist on her desk and a pen with a station logo rolled off the edge. “If this gets ugly, you’re out on your own. We’ll make it clear you were not representing nor on assignment from Channel 3 at the comedy club.”
I felt as isolated as her pen, now lying on the floor, waiting to be stepped on by powerful feet.
I braced myself in case Noreen’s next sentence included the F word. Fired. With media organizations in a financial free fall, I wouldn’t put it past Channel 3 to be looking for reasons to terminate employees for cause.
But then I realized if the station was sued, they’d have to circle the legal wagons around me. Benny Walsh wouldn’t settle for a judgment against little old Riley Spartz; he’d be drawn to the deep pockets of my employer.
“He offered to settle for fifty grand,” Miles continued, “and he said he wouldn’t file any paperwork in court, plus his client would sign a confidentiality agreement.”
“That’s extortion,” I said.
“No,” he said. “That’s a common legal maneuver.”
“I think we should tell him she went off her meds,” Noreen said. “And promise it won’t happen again.”
“What meds?” I asked. “I’ll sue you for slander if you say that about me.”
Noreen continued to brainstorm solutions that made me want to brain her. “What if we put Riley in rehab?”
I reached across Noreen’s desk but Miles waved his hands like a sports referee to separate us. “We might still get out of this. I declined Benny’s settlement offer. Then I thanked him for the videotape and told him it would be excellent evidence when we press charges against the comedy club for manhandling our reporter.”
That Miles is good.
Then he told me to keep quiet about what happened and cross my fingers that it might all blow over. “And stay away from that comedian. I don’t want you within a mile of him.”
“The club owner told me not to come back,” I said. “Actually he phrased it more like a threat.”
“Then it’s trespassing if you go back after you’ve been told not to. So don’t.”
I promised.
After he left, Noreen let me know where I stood with her. I believe the technical term is shaky ground.
“Riley, I don’t care how good the numbers are on this story. I’m suspending you a day without pay.”
“What?” The money meant nothing, the principle did. My face must have reflected my shock.
“Don’t give me that betrayed look,” she said. “I’m the one who should feel betrayed. Until this happened, I thought we were finally developing a good working relationship.”
I wished I could take back that confrontation with Chad at the comedy club, but I couldn’t. But I also wished that Noreen could grasp that sometimes in the course of a chase, stuff happens. She was a desk head, with no field experience. She didn’t complain when I used unconventional approaches and thi
ngs worked out. But hit a snag, and finger-pointing became second nature. It was that old We’re Behind You One Hundred Percent Until You Get in Trouble policy.
“You should have talked to me before you went to that comedy club,” she continued. “I might have gone with you. I could have pulled you back in your seat and prevented all this craziness.”
Was Noreen suggesting that she actually wanted to get out in the field? Or just hang with me? For a girl night? I was starting to wonder if her anger might stem from her own circle of loneliness. Then, just as I was feeling sorry for my boss, she reverted back to beast mode. The empathy passed immediately.
“And maybe if you’d spent more time looking for that missing fish, we wouldn’t be in this legal jam.”
I kept my mouth shut, not reminding her that I’d already found a meth dealer and a dead body this sweeps month. It seemed greedy to expect me to find Big Mouth Billy, too.
I CALLED NICK Garnett from my office to tell him what happened at the comedy club, and because I needed to hear someone tell me not to worry, that things could only get better.
“I don’t know about that, Riley. In my experience, things are never so bad that they can’t be made worse.”
He made me so angry that I hung up without saying Humphrey Bogart, The African Queen, 1951.
AS I LEFT the station to walk to my car, a man came up to me and asked if I was Riley Spartz. Just what I needed, an autograph hound.
“Yes.” I sighed, reaching for a pen.
He handed me some papers. “You’re served.”
When I read the word “defamation,” I turned and went back inside the station where Noreen greeted me with “What are you doing here? I thought I told you to leave.”
I handed the libel lawsuit to Miles, who quickly paged through it, then suggested Noreen forget the whole suspension thing. Under the circumstances, he didn’t think it wise for the station to take a formal position that I’d done anything wrong at the comedy club.