by Julie Kramer
“Why do you keep saying that?”
If Sigourney would lie about the kiss, I wondered what else she was lying about. Sven suddenly fussed like she was holding him too tight.
“You don’t think I killed him?” she asked.
Now it was my turn to stay silent.
“Look, the guy got what was coming to him,” she said. “But I didn’t do the honors.”
Just then the door to her hospital room opened and Sigourney’s reinforcements arrived. Grandpa Sven and an older woman, most likely his wife, walked in. He pointed at me like he was identifying a suspect in a lineup, and said, “Ja, she’s the one who came to the house.”
Baby Sven started crying full blast. And three generations of Nelsons made it clear that visiting hours were over.
ee, this has possibilities.” Noreen was reacting to a script she’d made me draft on Sigourney Nelson after she’d reviewed my expense sheet and spotted the baby gift.
((RILEY/SOT))
CHANNEL 3 HAS LEARNED
THAT A FORMER
GIRLFRIEND OF MARK
LEFEVRE WAS A
REGISTERED GUEST AT THE
HOTEL WHERE HE WAS
LAST SEEN ON THE NIGHT
HE WAS KILLED.
I didn’t expect this version to hit the air; it seemed a bit tabloidy: high on innuendo, low on context.
THE WOMAN, WHO
RECENTLY GAVE BIRTH,
CLAIMS LEFEVRE IS HER
CHILD’S FATHER.
But I also didn’t object to writing it as an exercise to see where the pieces fit. Sometimes that simple task makes it clear whether you are close to nailing the story—or not. Even though Sigourney was my top suspect for Mark’s murder, Noreen favored airing the report more than I did. But I didn’t mind being ready if something new broke loose.
“I’m not naming her.” I thought it important to point that out. “And obviously I’d seek reaction from her before we broadcast anything.”
“Absolutely.” Noreen nodded.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Miles. For once, our attorney came down against my boss. “She’s not a public figure. She has privacy. So unless the police call her a suspect, it’s dicey for us to hint that she should be.”
“But everything in the story is true,” Noreen insisted.
“Doesn’t matter,” Miles said again. “We’d be implying she was a murderer. We don’t have enough for that kind of accusation.”
“What about motive and proximity?” Noreen hated to let the story die, and I wondered if she sensed the ratings book slipping away.
But it was a good question, so we both looked at Miles.
“What about proof?” Miles responded.
Another good question, this time they both looked at me.
“I’m working on it,” I replied.
“If we reported this and the cops never charged her, or even worse,” Miles continued, “if someone else was convicted, she could end up owning this TV station.”
So Noreen shook her head in regret, crumpled the pages into a paper ball, and threw it in her wastebasket.
I STOPPED AT the White Bear Lake cop shop on my way home, using the excuse that I was checking to see if they’d found my lost cell phone in the wilds of Tamarack Nature Center. But what I really hoped to learn was where their homicide investigation into Mark’s death stood.
As far as I could tell, the city has had only two other murders in the past forty years and neither was routine. The most recent involved a high-profile bail jumper who allegedly killed his wife and set fire to their house. The other involved a woman who beat her adopted son to death, but wasn’t prosecuted until his birth mother went looking for him some twenty years later.
Mark Lefevre’s murder also promised to be anything but routine.
Detective Bradshaw checked some records and verified the cops had recovered my phone during a sweep of the woods, but said he’d have to check with the chief before releasing it to me.
“That’s fine.” I didn’t want to make a big deal about the phone. I’d already bought a spiffy new cell with a full texting keyboard, Internet, and GPS. The wireless company had deactivated my old one so I didn’t have to worry about a thief running up my bill. But I sweated the cops scrolling through my contact list with source names and numbers. Luckily my faves were under first names or nicknames. So I kept casual and admired a white bear figurine on Detective Bradshaw’s desk.
“So how’s the investigation going?” I asked.
“We’ll call a news conference when we’re ready to announce an arrest.” That’s cop talk for none of your beeswax.
“Any luck tracking where all that cash came from?”
“What cash?” he bluffed.
“The ninety-eight grand in Mark’s safe-deposit box.” I called.
His eyes narrowed. “How’d you know about that?” His inquiry was the verbal equivalent of throwing in his hand.
I ignored the question. Reporters don’t like going there on how we know stuff, especially not with cops.
“I’ve held off reporting that particular detail,” I said, “because I wasn’t sure how relevant it was to the case. Specifically when I thought our comedian was the killer.”
“We would have liked it to wrap it up with him, too.”
“Do you have an alternate theory?”
“Are we on the record or off the record?” The detective was wise to clarify that point. Many a source mistakenly thinks that detail can be worked out after the fact.
“We can go off the record.” If he said something earth-shattering, I’d try negotiating that nugget back on the record later. In most cases, this reporter source business is pretty one-sided. Our purpose is clear: we seek news. True, journalists need to take care they’re not used for ulterior motives, like politics, revenge, or profit. But usually, our motives mesh with those of our sources. And in this case, we both wanted to find a killer.
“So what have you got, Detective Bradshaw?” I asked.
“Not much, I’m afraid.”
Not worth going off the record for this. “Any idea where the money came from?”
“It’s cash. Almost impossible to trace,” he said. “We’re thinking drug money. And the Wisconsin cops agree. That’s pretty much the focus of our investigation. We’ve subpoenaed his phone records, both cell and home, as well as financial records.”
Those avenues certainly needed to be explored. But I pressed him about the gun linking Mark’s murder with his mother’s. “It looked like an old handgun to me. Not something a drug gang would use.”
“They tried to stage an old lady’s suicide,” he said. “They probably figured she wouldn’t have a semiautomatic lying around the house.”
I did have one advantage over the cops; I’d been able to size up Mrs. Lefevre before her death. She didn’t act like a woman worried about danger. “Why would druggies kill his mom?”
“He might have stashed some inventory and the killer went looking for it. Plus any cash and records he might have kept. They might have been chasing the loot and thought she knew something. As you know, boxes of his belongings are missing from his mother’s garage.”
I knew that. “How about old girlfriends? Have you checked them out?” After what happened with Chad, I didn’t want to push Sigourney as a suspect any harder myself.
Detective Bradshaw shrugged.
News folks continually struggle with the edict that journalists shouldn’t be the source of unpublished information for law enforcement. Or else the cops start wanting our notes and raw tape. Then sources dry up and subpoenas complicate life. So if I have stuff I’d like to share, I get around that quirk by phrasing it in the form of a question. Because my job is to ask questions.
So I decided to get specific. “Have you checked out his former girlfriend, Sigourney Nelson? The one who recently had a baby who sort of looks like him?”
He raised his eyebrows and asked me to spell her name, and double-checked whether Nelson
was son or sen. I was being especially careful to seek only his reaction and not to bring up any of my suspicions because the last thing I needed was Sigourney crying slander.
ur station meteorologist claims he merely predicts the weather. Calls it as he sees it. Even though he was forecasting sunshine, his movements in front of a green chroma-key map earlier today looked enough like a rain dance that when a severe thunderstorm suddenly whipped through the area, viewers called to complain.
On my drive to Madeline’s home, I watched as lake waves rippled over the water. Her building parking lot was flooded in many places and I was reluctant to leave the car. But I found an umbrella under the seat and made a run through ankle-deep puddles for her lobby. By then the rain was blowing sideways.
“It’s Riley” I called out as I buzzed Madeline’s condo. I could see why she lived in a security building. For her, a peephole was useless. I tried imagining life looking through one and never recognizing your visitor or anyone else.
She buzzed me in and was waiting with her door open when I got upstairs. “You look like a wet rat,” she observed.
I’d been called a rat plenty of times so I took no offense. She went to get me a towel while I shed my coat and shoes. I felt the warmth from her gas fireplace across the room and moved over there to dry off.
“Hey, Madeline, did you know F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in the place where you almost had your wedding reception?”
“Anybody who’s lived in this town longer than a year knows that,” she answered.
“Well, I guess I’m ahead of the curve.”
She picked a framed photo of Mark off the mantel and held it against her chest and closed her eyes.
“I wish—” I never officially learned what she wished, because she started to choke on her words just then; but what she wished was obvious and impossible.
We talked about how closure would eventually help her move on, but how until Mark’s killer was found, it would be difficult.
“I’m the only one he has,” she said. “If I move on, who will push for answers?”
“You might not like the answers you find,” I warned her, thinking again of the possibility he might have been involved in drug dealing.
“Better to know than not know.”
I wasn’t as sure about that philosophy as I once was. Mark had secrets. No doubt about that. What those secrets revealed about her lover might change Madeline’s mind.
I hadn’t told her about baby Sven because I was still waiting to see what the police found out about Sigourney.
“Do you ever hear from the cops?” I asked.
She explained that her brother and their family attorney stayed in touch with the police chief. “We were stunned when Mark’s comedian colleague was cleared as a suspect. He seemed so guilty. Especially after he attacked you.”
“I was just as surprised.”
The boundaries between source and journalist were starting to blur between us. That’s usually a bad idea. But when she asked me to come over because she needed someone to talk to, it seemed exploitive to only listen when the camera was rolling. So I’d said yes and ventured out into the rain. A loud clap of thunder lent sound effects to the storm inside my head.
To change the subject, I took the Mark picture from her grasp and put it back on the mantel. As I turned I knocked a small basket of light-blue note cards off. I apologized and as Madeline helped me pick them up off the floor, I noticed they each had a line or two of writing, but no signature. Some of the notes were romantic, others clever.
Those were Mark’s trademark cards, she explained, he used them to write jokes for his stand-up routine and rearranged them until he had the pacing right. He picked blue because that’s what his idol David Letterman uses to keep his jokes straight. She showed me a political one that probably was funny last year but didn’t do much for me now. Mark also used the cards to pen one-line love notes to Madeline. She cherished them.
I didn’t mention to Madeline that I recalled a blue note card by Jean Lefevre’s body. Police initially called it a suicide note, until they learned the handwriting matched son, not mother.
If Mark gave such notes to his fiancée, it’s possible his mother received some as well. Could she have been looking at one, reminiscing, when she was killed? That seemed too coincidental. Especially since the content was ambiguous enough to suggest suicide to the cops. Perhaps the note said something like “I can’t go on like this.” That’s open to plenty of interpretation.
Could the killer have selected such a note from a personal collection and planted an appropriate one at the murder scene to confuse investigators?
Madeline had a stash and she knew I was going to Mark’s mother’s house to search through his belongings. I remembered sharing that information with the Post family at the Peninsula House. It’s not unusual for reporters to reassure all players in a story that everybody is cooperating. That’s how we keep everybody cooperating. Because they all want their role to be dominant. But could my own loose lips have put Mrs. Lefevre in jeopardy? She wouldn’t have hesitated to open the door to her almost daughter-in-law.
“Riley?” Madeline nudged my shoulder and held out the basket for the last note card, still in my hand. It read “I am less without you and more by your side.”
As I looked at her, I wondered if Mark might have a good reason to be haunting Madeline with his face. A crack of lightning mixed with thunder reinforced that thought.
“Riley?”
“Oh, sorry, Madeline, I zoned out just then.”
“I can tell you’re thinking about work,” she said. “You need to step back now and then, and live life in the moment.”
If she only knew my mind was considering whether she might have been so flipped out over the parking-lot kiss as to kill her groom. She’d have no choice then but to play jilted bride to cover up the crime.
Maybe being alone with Madeline wasn’t such a good idea. I was starting to miss her bodyguard. If Mr. Muscle hadn’t been chaperoning that day in Tamarack, she might have buried my body next to her dead fiancé. Maybe Madeline was a sociopath who got a sexual thrill walking so close to his covert grave, me unaware.
I glanced at my Swiss Army watch, pretending to be surprised at the time, like I suddenly needed to be somewhere real important. As I dropped the final blue note card in the basket I realized I’d concocted a highly implausible scenario involving Madeline based on a piece of vague correspondence. Mark probably gave similar notes to lots of people. Including his old girlfriend. Sigourney probably had her own personal stash.
And she had a much more plausible motive.
t seemed like everybody in White Bear Lake, a place I’d only lived a few months, knew my name and my business. I grew up a fourth-generation farm girl used to small-town nosiness. And for the past 130 years, my family has coped with worrying about what the neighbors might think. But now I craved urban anonymity. So during my lunch hour I lost myself in the skyways of downtown Minneapolis.
Minneapolis has the largest skyway system in the world. Eight miles of glass tunnels, one floor above the street, linking attractions, buildings, and restaurants. Outside, rain still drizzled down, but I walked in climate-controlled comfort except for the final forty-yard stretch when I rushed from the Hilton lobby across the street to the back door of Channel 3.
Inside, I felt cooped up. My mind kept drifting back to the open grave, thwarted wedding, and suspect wheel hanging on my office wall. I paged through my source Rolodex as a distraction. It needed updating—some had moved, one was serving time behind bars, and another no longer returned my calls because he’d recently been appointed to a post in the governor’s office. I paused at Toby Elness’s phone number. The animal rights activist was home and welcomed a visit. So I drove out to his place in the northwestern suburbs.
He owns a small, rundown farmhouse on an acre of land, enough for his menagerie to roam. His Lab, Blackie, and a husky named Husky greeted me as I drove up. What Toby lacks in im
agination, he makes up for in heart. If I could be reincarnated as an animal, I would choose to be one of Toby’s dogs. I can’t imagine a more pampered pet life. Dogs sleep on his bed. Cats curl up on the dresser. Birds fly in and out of cages to perch on lampshades or shoulders. Even the fish in his tanks seem to be smiling.
Though the air was cool, I insisted on chatting at a picnic table outside because past visits had taught me that the house sometimes reeked of an unpleasant combination of fur balls and pet urine.
“Anything new on the Big Mouth Billy investigation?” I asked.
Toby shook his head. “I told your boss again the other day that the Animal Liberation Front is not involved with the missing fish, but I’m not sure she believes me.”
“Again? This was after that day in the newsroom?”
“Yes, she insisted we meet at the dog park. She brought Freckles and I brought Blackie. The two got along well.”
Noreen meeting with a source? So unlike a desk head to leave the office. She could only be trying to scoop me so she could rub my face in the fish story. She was probably in touch with that annoying FBI guy, too.
“You didn’t tell her anything, did you?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“But if you did know something … now listen, Toby, because this is important. If you were to learn something about the Billy Bass Case, I need you to tell me, not Noreen. I’m your first call. Got it?”
“Got it, Riley.”
“Good,” I told him. “And good doggy,” I told Husky who was resting her head on my lap and gazing at me with happy good-doggy eyes. Then Toby and I spent a few minutes talking about Shep and all his K-9 adventures.
“You know I miss him,” I said. “For companionship, but also for protection. I always sleep better with him around.”
“Shep’s meant for more important things than your sleep. And he’s happiest as a working dog,” Toby said. “But I could let you borrow Husky for a while.”
Husky would be about as much protection as a pillow, so I declined.