by Gail Lukasik
“I know, I know. I forgot to call you,” she said apologetically when I sat down across from her. “Sorry, but it’s been crazy around here. You know, with Julian taking over Nate’s part, and Nate dying and the media hounding me and everything else.” She’d yet to make eye contact or to let go of the glass.
“No problem. I had to come by here to take more photos anyway,” I lied. “So what do you want to say about Nate?” I took out my notebook and pen. The gold key was practically throbbing in my pocket, but I was waiting for the right moment to show it to her.
“What can I say? It’s not like I really knew him. We worked together like, what? A month? But, I guess, if I had to say something, I’d say he was amazingly talented . . . um, taught me a lot about acting, and that’s it.” She looked up and met my eyes as if checking my reaction to her comments.
“What about when he kissed you on stage during the curtain call? Were you upset?” Sometimes an unexpected question broke through the niceties.
She crinkled her pretty forehead. And I knew she was buying time.
“Oh that?” She dismissively flicked her hand at me. “He was playing to the audience. He was good at that. Wish I was.”
“Anything else you want to add?” I wrote down a version of her words, which were generic at best. She’d deflected my attempt at getting a juicy quote from her about Ryan’s lascivious kiss.
“Why? You don’t think that’s good enough?” Her voice went up an octave.
“It’s really up to you.” Why was she sounding so insecure? “Is everything okay? You seem upset.” Her hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail that looked like a punishment.
She took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. “I’m just jittery about tonight’s performance, that’s all.”
Aha, the right moment. “You always have your gold key charm to rely on,” I said, smiling.
Her eyes went wide. “I can’t find it. I’ve looked everywhere.” Her hand went to her chest.
“When was the last time you saw it?” I was carefully leading her.
“After the performance when I was getting ready for the after-party. I remember distinctly taking it off and leaving it on my bedroom dresser in this little glass bowl I keep my jewelry in.”
I didn’t think she was lying, but with actors it was hard to tell. I slipped my hand into my pants pocket and pulled out the key, placing it on the table. “Is this it?”
“Oh, my God, you’re a life-saver! Where did you find it?” Harper picked up the key charm and kissed it.
I certainly wasn’t going to tell her the truth. “Over by the Shakespeare garden.”
“What? How’d it get there? Someone must have taken it from my apartment. But why? Why would someone take it? Oh, I just don’t understand people.” Her words were flying out so fast, I thought her head might explode. “You didn’t tell anyone about it, did you? Because no one else knows about it. No one.” She gave me a searching look full of recrimination. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you. Nina warned me about talking to reporters. I trusted you.”
She stood up, nearly knocking over her chair.
“Harper, I swear, I didn’t tell anyone.”
“Yeah, right.” There was disdain in her voice.
“Instead of lashing out at me, aren’t you curious about who took it from your room?” Now I was feeling aggrieved.
That stopped her rant. She leaned forward, put both hands on the table, her hazel eyes boring into mine. “What? Do you think I’m stupid or something? It was Nate. Who else?”
“Why Nate?”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “He probably thought it was funny. Duh. I gotta go.”
Rich was sitting where I’d left him with Salinger and Dixie asleep beside him. “You find Harper?” he asked as I bent over to grab Salinger’s leash. Too late, Rich’s eyes dove for my gaping neckline.
My instinct was to put my hand over my open blouse, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of my discomfort. Little did he know that the left bra cup held a prosthesis. “I did. How about you?” I asked, deciding to call him out. Guys like him always depend on a woman’s good nature. “You find what you were looking for?”
His face went deep red, but then he grinned. “Can’t blame a guy for taking a peek.”
“I’ve slapped guys for less,” I said.
He raised both hands in surrender. “Didn’t mean anything. You know, some gals consider that a compliment.”
“Just so you know, I’m not some gals. But thanks for watching Salinger.”
On my drive up the peninsula, I considered Harper’s explanation about her missing gold key charm. It was plausible. Nate could have dropped the key when he went to Lydia’s studio the morning he died and the police overlooked it. But Harper could have lost it when she attacked me. Or someone other than Nate could have stolen the key and planted it to throw suspicion on Harper.
But the bigger question that was plaguing me was, Why was I attacked? What had that person been looking for at Lydia’s studio? Lydia’s relationship with Nate had been carnal and brief. Did this person think Nate entrusted Lydia with something important? Like a signed statement withdrawing his donation to the BT? As far as I knew, there was no such document. And why would he even do that? He didn’t know he’d die that morning.
As I pulled up in front of the cabin, I sat for a moment, savoring the green coolness of the trees, idly running my fingers through Salinger’s fur as she continued to doze. Uneasiness crept through me as I thought about Bob. He never would have left his internship. No matter how much grief Alex gave him. Something else had sent him packing. Something had scared him. And it wasn’t a ghost at the Moyers’ cabin.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Camelot Inn, an upscale restaurant just north of Fish Creek on Highway 42, was a Door County incongruity. Armor-clad, life-sized knights astride horses guarded the entryway, which was surrounded by a moat. To enter the restaurant, you crossed the moat via a wooden bridge. A neon sign visible from the highway flashed Immediate Seating. As authentic-looking as the exterior décor was, it had little connection to the peninsula’s Scandinavian history. The medieval theme was continued inside with wooden chandeliers, heavy furniture and medieval wallpaper festooned with unicorns, dragons, knights and comely maidens.
At the last minute, I’d decided to meet Jake at the restaurant, even though his stone cottage near Newport State Park was about fifteen minutes from my rental cabin. If the “date” didn’t go well, I didn’t want that awkward drive home together. My uneasiness about our relationship was still with me like a dull ache.
We were seated at the back of the restaurant next to a young couple who’d beamed loudly to the waiter that they were on their honeymoon, having been married in Egg Harbor at a resort lodge overlooking Green Bay. She was a very tanned blond with overdone makeup and a plunging neckline who laughed at everything her new husband said. He was equally tanned and blond and, from what I heard, not all that amusing.
Try as I might to stop them, my eyes kept straying toward the young couple with a tinge of envy. They were so obviously lost in each other. Had I ever felt that way about Tom—or any man, for that matter? Could I feel that way about Jake? I sipped at my wine, letting its coolness flood me with ease.
Just as the waitress served our salads, Jake’s phone trilled, pulling my attention away from the couple. He squinted at the number and said, “Gotta take this, sorry.”
He opened the phone. “Uh-huh. Yeah, when?” He nodded his head as he listened.
While he talked, the young couple at the table next to us was shooting daggers at him. Clearly Jake was ruining their romantic dinner. “Okay, thanks for the heads-up, Chet.”
Jake hung up his cell and slipped it into his shirt pocket. “Ken Albright’s been arrested for the murder of Brownie Lawrence.” He picked up a slice of warm bread and slathered it with butter nonchalantly.
Though I wasn’t totally surprised by the arrest, I didn’t
want to believe Ken had murdered Brownie. “Based on what?” I demanded a little too loudly, again drawing glares from the couple.
Jake’s eyes glanced at the couple. “Keep it down, will ya?” He took a generous bite out of the bread. A few crumbs stuck to his goatee. I resisted the urge to pick them off and instead said, “Crumbs,” pointing to the same place on my face.
He swiped the napkin across his chin and then leaned in. “We’ll talk about this later.”
I wasn’t about to be shushed. “C’mon, you can’t drop that bomb and not expect me to react.” My crossed leg was bouncing up and down under the table in frustration.
He swiped at his chin again. “Based on the fact that his alibi didn’t pan out.”
“And?” I coaxed. I could tell there was more.
He knew it was useless to fight me. “And the cops found the baseball bat used to cave in Brownie’s skull. It had Albright’s fingerprints on it. He’d stashed it in the woods. Dumb bastard.”
The strolling minstrel picked that moment to start strumming his lute and singing “Greensleeves” as he wove his way slowly through the maze of tables.
Questions were swirling in my overactive brain. “Ken never mentioned that Brownie’s skull was bashed in,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the strolling minstrel now headed our way. I recalled that stain where Brownie’s body had lain, which had looked like blood.
Jake flinched at my loudness. “Why would he if he’d been the basher?” He speared a cherry tomato and popped it into his mouth. “How’s your new place?”
“Fine, great,” I answered, pushing my salad around my plate with my fork. “Don’t try and change the subject. It doesn’t make sense to me. Why would Ken bash in his skull?”
Jake put down his fork and leaned in again. “Maybe Albright was out of control. You have any experience with substance abusers?”
“Don’t tell me you have.”
He picked up his fork and loaded it with a slice of cucumber, lettuce, and several croutons. “One summer I interned at a social services agency in Chicago where drug-heads went for counseling. That’s where I learned the real meaning of selfishness. Some of these abusers would kill their own mothers for their next fix.”
In the year and a half Jake and I had been bedmates, he’d never said much about his past, which included a twenty-year-old daughter and an ex-wife. That had been the problem with our relationship: an inability to open up to each other. I’d been guilty of the same thing, keeping Tom in some dark corner. Maybe that was what had drawn us together, a self-protective need.
“But Ken’s been clean.” I stopped, remembering what he’d told me about his argument with Brownie and his bender in Green Bay.
“What?” Jake asked, knowing me too well.
“He did tell me that they’d had an argument and that he went on a bender in Green Bay and can’t remember much.”
The minstrel was now standing between our table and the honeymoon couple. Dressed in a puffy white shirt and black tights, with his long brown hair hanging over his ears, he looked more like a cast member of Spamalot than an Arthurian minstrel. His flounced shirt barely covered his backside. He was so close I could see the loose threads on his woven belt and the outline of his underwear beneath his tights.
“Could you play the most romantic song you know? It’s our honeymoon,” the woman gushed.
The minstrel, without saying a word, started strumming and singing a song about nymphs and shepherds. I could tell by the couple’s perplexed expressions that they didn’t find the song very romantic. When the minstrel finished, the man said, “That’s the most romantic song? Shepherds and sheep and stuff.”
The minstrel chuckled and tossed his head back. “In medieval times to ‘barley-break’ meant to have a roll in the hay.” He walked away, strumming softly.
“Jeez, you think he could come up with something better than that,” the man commented, then took a long swallow of his beer.
“I don’t know. I sort of liked it. Especially that breaking barley stuff.” The woman ran her tongue around her lips several times. “Want to break some barley later?”
Maybe those medieval troubadours were on to something with their hidden meanings and frolicking nymphs and shepherds.
“Did you tell the police about Albright’s bender in Green Bay and their argument?” Jake asked.
“I don’t think Ken had anything to do with Brownie’s murder,” I answered defensively. “Besides I only know what Ken told me.”
“Just tell them.”
I shrugged my shoulders, mulling over Jake’s explanation that Ken was so enraged he hit Brownie with a bat. I didn’t buy it. Ken cared about Brownie. He’d never take his rage out on Brownie like that. Brownie was Ken’s check on his temper. But if he’d been drinking before he left for Green Bay, who knew what he was capable of. Maybe the wine bottles he’d smashed were his, not Brownie’s, as he told me.
“Were there other wounds on Brownie’s body?”
Jake shook his head in disapproval. “How’s the BT piece coming?”
“Jake, c’mon,” I pushed. “You know I’m not going to let this go.”
He tore off another piece of bread, buttered it and shoved it in his mouth, chewing it a little too aggressively. “Chet didn’t say.”
“What about the tox screen? Did he mention that? I’d be curious to know what Brownie’s alcohol level was.”
It was standard procedure to run a basic tox screen in any sudden death. The medical examiner had no doubt run one on Nate Ryan as well. I cut my cucumber slice into tiny pieces and popped a piece in my mouth, chewing slowly, mulling over what Jake had just told me.
“Enough already, Leigh.” Jake held up his hand. “Your homeless stray dog Albright killed Brownie. They probably were doing drugs, got into a fight, and Ken bashed him one. Now can we talk about something else?”
“Addressless, not homeless,” I corrected him. “Ken is addressless.”
“Okay, addressless. Whatever,” Jake conceded.
Jake was probably right. Why was I so certain Ken didn’t kill Brownie? And if Ken didn’t kill him, then who did?
“I’ve been following up on some things,” I said wanting to throw some doubt on Jake’s conviction that Ken had murdered Brownie in a drug-induced fit of rage.
“What things? And how come I don’t know about these things?”
“It was on my own time.” Lying was getting too easy. “And I don’t know how it fits yet. As it turns out, Browning wasn’t Brownie Lawrence. He had Lawrence Browning’s dog tags. How he got the dog tags I don’t know, especially since the real Lawrence Browning went MIA during the Vietnam War. I tracked down his mother in Milwaukee, and that’s about as far as I’ve gotten. I have no clue who Brownie was.” I held back the Anthony Rossi connection and my hunch that Brownie might be Rossi.
I glanced over at the honeymoon couple’s table before I continued. The woman was feeding her new husband pieces of her chicken, having lost interest in our conversation.
“Maybe someone from Brownie’s past found him and killed him,” I suggested, knowing full well how far-fetched it sounded. “You know my piece on the two guys was picked up by the Milwaukee and Green Bay newspapers.”
Just then the waitress appeared, took our salad plates and asked if we wanted refills on our drinks. I said no and Jake said yes.
I waited for Jake’s inevitable lecture about him being the boss and how everything goes past him. Instead, that familiar ironic grin spread across his face, the one that always had the power to sway me. A man with a good sense of irony was hard for me to resist.
“What?” I fiddled with my spoon.
He put his hand over mine to stop my fiddling. “You find out anything, I’m the first to know. Okay? Anything at all, no matter how trivial. I trust your instincts.”
Then he took his hand away, leaving me with a feeling that he was saying something else that had nothing to do with my journalistic instincts. I s
tared into his blue eyes, searching for what he meant to say. But it was like trying to read a perfectly blue sky, no hint of anything else but endless blue.
The waitress returned with our food and Jake’s drink. As the warm, lemony scent of my whitefish dinner wafted toward me, I wondered if I should prod him. Jake, how much do you really trust me? Enough to open up to me? Or were you asking about my ability to trust you?
“Leigh,” Jake said, bringing me back to reality. “Talk to Martin about his interview with Brownie and Ken.” He cut into his steak, not bothering to look up. His prickly demand shoved aside all thoughts of hidden meanings and ironic grins.
“What? Why?” The very thought of talking to Martin about anything put my teeth on edge.
“Martin said something was off about Brownie,” he said, chewing on his steak. “When he interviewed him, he’d asked him if he was related to an Edward Lawrence from Green Bay. Brownie stumbled around and said something about Lawrence being a common name or something like that. Then Ken got bent out of shape.”
As I listened, I silently fumed. Jake and I had had an argument about Martin’s interviewing Brownie and Ken, which I felt encroached on my article. Jake thought differently. Martin was to cover the environmental angle; I was to cover the human-interest angle. Now I learn that he’d stepped into my territory. Even as I fumed, I felt petty. Martin had made a passing comment about Brownie. If it had been anyone else, it wouldn’t have bothered me. But it hadn’t been anyone else.
“So what?” I tried not to sound as petty as I was feeling.
“Martin said Brownie was hiding something. And as it turns out, he was right.”
“He should have pushed him harder. Or better yet, he should have told me. So I could have followed up.”
“Leigh, look,” Jake paused. Whatever he was going to say, he’d changed his mind. “Swallow your pride and talk to Martin about Edward Lawrence.” He pushed his plate away. There was nothing left on it except a sprig of parsley and a faint pink river from his steak.