Collinwood closed the door behind him. Smoke scanned the room, then turned the computer around and moved the chair to the opposite side of the desk.
“You can start with his desk, and I’ll see what I can pull up on the computer.” Smoke pulled on his reading glasses and signed on.
“What exactly am I looking for?” I asked, peering into a neatly arranged shallow drawer.
“See if there is a calendar, names in a notebook or on a scrap of paper—anything that seems suspicious. We’ll compare what we find here to what we find at Kelton’s office, see if we can make any kind of connection.”
We worked in silence for over an hour. Smoke was intent on his work, and I didn’t want to break his concentration. I read through each page on Arthur’s daily planner, but it was mostly notes to himself about court cases. If he kept a personal calendar, it wasn’t in, or on, his desk. Since there wasn’t one with his personal effects in evidence, I made a note to ask Marion about it.
I pulled the plastic divider trays out of the drawers to see if there was anything hiding beneath them. Nothing. Arthur Franz had had a reputation for being a stickler on the job, and I noticed that also applied to the way he’d kept his supplies and papers.
After taking his desk apart, I moved to the file drawers. This could take a while.
“Shit,” Smoke said in an exhale.
“What?”
“Well, we can’t say he didn’t have his affairs in order. At work, at least. Everything seems very organized—I’m almost jealous. I’ve looked through letters he’s written, all work related. E-mails he’s sent, e-mails he’s received. Aside from the usual junk we all get, the only personal ones I’ve found are from Marion, his brother, and two friends who seem to be lawyers.”
Smoke sucked in a cleansing breath. “Nothing that would indicate any kind of trouble, personal or professional, for Franz. The last fifteen websites he’s visited are newspapers—apparently read them online. No mental health sites. And Marshall Kelton isn’t in his mailbox or address book, but I haven’t looked at his deleted files yet.” He tapped his pen on the desktop a few times. “You’ve been quiet over there.”
“Not a thing to report. So his suicide note isn’t in his computer?” I asked.
Smoke shook his head. “No reason to save it, I guess.”
“What could have happened to make him snap? It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. I mean, he had to buy the dryer hose and the pillow—it was a new pillow.”
“Got me. So you haven’t got any of your weird feelings going, touching his stuff?”
“Not a one.”
“Good.” Smoke continued to hit buttons on the keyboard. “It won’t take me much longer—not much in the recycle bin.”
I pulled a file out of the drawer and paged through it. “You want me to read through each file?” I asked.
Smoke broke his concentration to consider my question. “Naw, take a look at them, see if they’re what they say they are. If not, or if they aren’t county attorney related, pull them.”
After nearly three hours, the only positive conclusion we had was that Arthur Franz was the organized professional everyone had thought he was. If he was hiding something that led to his death, he hadn’t left the evidence of it lying around the office.
Smoke clapped his hands together then stretched. “We need a break before we head over to the public defender’s office. Wanna grab lunch at The Sandwich Shoppe? Let’s see, Tuesday it’s clam chowder or chili.”
News vans from four Minneapolis stations, WCCO, KARE-11, News 9, and KSTP, were parked near the courthouse and public defender’s office. The reporters jumped to attention as Smoke and I crossed the street after leaving The Sandwich Shoppe and headed toward the office of the public defender.
“Detective Dawes, any idea what led to the suicide of two Winnebago attorneys within days of one another?” asked a young WCCO woman, one who knew Smoke.
Smoke turned his head, so the camera caught his profile. “No, no idea.”
“Can you tell us why you were in the Winnebago County Attorney’s office all morning, and why you’re going into the Tenth District Public Defender’s office now?” a sandy-haired man from News 9 asked.
“No.”
I broke into a jog to keep pace with Smoke’s long-legged strides. A KARE-11 reporter caught up with us and extended his microphone. “What did you find in County Attorney Arthur Franz’s office?” he asked.
Smoke looked into the camera and said, “No comment.”
He pushed me in the door ahead of himself when a reporter stuck a microphone near my face.
Marshall Kelton’s desk was piled high with files. Glancing around the room, I spotted more piles on the chairs and floor. Going through his office would be like looking for needles in haystacks.
“Now this is a guy I can relate to,” Smoke said.
“Yeah, I hate to admit the same thing. I think Marshall is a more creative organizer than Arthur is, or was, I should say.” I looked around, wondering how to start. “I can’t believe they’re both dead.”
Smoke pinched the top of his nose between his eyes, making them water. “It’s best to just concentrate on the job at hand. If we can find out why they died, everyone can move on in the grieving process.”
I moved several stacks of papers on Kelton’s desk to uncover his large desk calendar that also served as a placemat, given the coffee stains on it. “Nolan Eisner.”
“What?”
“Nolan Eisner,” I repeated. “Marshall wrote his name on July fifteenth.”
Smoke walked over, stopped beside me and bent over the calendar. “That was the day of Judge Fenneman’s funeral. Funny he didn’t write that in—he was at the funeral.”
I nodded. “It doesn’t look like Marshall uses the calendar for appointments. He mostly has little notes scribbled here and there. You know, I just met Nolan’s daughter and mother in the hospital the day after Judge Fenneman died. Rebecca was a patient on the same wing, and when I was talking to her, her grandma came.
“And now Marshall has Nolan’s name on his calendar on the day of the judge’s funeral. Isn’t that strange, kind of a weird coincidence, like when you hear a word you’ve never heard before and then you hear it all the time after that?”
Smoke was so close I could smell chocolate brownie on his breath. “Yeah, more of your doo, doo, doo, doo stuff.”
I gave Smoke a little nudge with my elbow. “There must have been a reason why Marshall wrote Nolan’s name down. I mean, he’s been dead for eleven years.”
“Something could have triggered a memory of that kid and he jotted it down, more as a doodle than anything else.” Smoke lifted the calendar sheet to look at the month of August. “Nothing written there.”
“Probably right. I did see Nolan’s mother at the service. Maybe Marshall talked to her that day.”
Smoke nodded. “Marshall couldn’t help but feel bad when the kid hanged himself. We all did. Marshall was a good attorney, did his best to represent his clients, whether he knew they had done the crime or not. He did the job he was hired to do.”
I sat down on Marshall’s brown desk chair, and the wheels clicked against the front of the desk. “What happened at Nolan’s trial?”
“To tell you the truth, from what I remember, it was pretty routine. The other kid, what was his name . . .” Smoke closed his eyes to think.
“Jason Browne.”
“Oh, sure, that’s right. They were both in your class?”
I nodded.
“Anyway, remember Browne confessed and named Nolan Eisner as his partner in crime. When they were found guilty, Eisner got the worse end of the deal. Browne went to jail, but Eisner got years in prison. Kelton didn’t have a chance of getting him acquitted,” Smoke said.
Smoke stepped out of the room and returned with Barbara Jacobs, secretary and receptionist for the attorneys. Barbara was somewhere over sixty, and she was the pulse of the office. For at least four years in a row
, she had said she would be retiring, but hadn’t. Her co-workers were her adopted family, and I suspected leaving them would make her too lonesome. Barbara’s normally flawless makeup of powder, blush, mascara, and lipstick was smudged and tear-streaked. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot.
Smoke wandered over to Kelton’s desk, and Barbara followed. “Barb, any idea why Marshall would write ‘Nolan Eisner’ on his calendar?”
“No. I saw that there and thought it was more than a little curious. Marshall also had the Eisner file pulled, but it’s been such a zoo around here lately, I never got the chance to ask him why. Heavens, the Eisner case was years ago.” Her spitfire business front was back in place.
“Was he working on a similar case and wanted to review his notes?” Smoke asked.
“None that I can think of. You know, Marshall Kelton was a unique man. His office was always a mess, yet he kept few notes. He was brilliant and remembered the minutest details.” Barbara studied the desk calendar for a few seconds. “I can’t imagine why he was looking at the Eisner case.”
Smoke glanced around the room. “Where is the file now?”
“Put back in the drawer in the file room. Do you want to see it?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Barbara returned with the file, then went back to her own office. Smoke scanned the pages and handed them to me. The criminal complaint was three pages long and contained the details of the armed robbery as reported by Terry Holmers, night clerk at the store, to Deputy Vince Weber, who had taken the call and written the initial armed robbery complaint.
Detective Elton Dawes had arrested Nolan following Jason Browne’s confession and filed the report. The case sheet, containing Nolan Eisner’s personal information, had been completed by Marshall Kelton. Arthur Franz had signed the Winnebago County versus Nolan Eisner criminal complaint, and Judge Nels Fenneman’s signature was on the sentencing decree.
I wondered how many criminal cases Marshall Kelton and Arthur Franz had tried on opposite sides of the aisle before Nels Fenneman, and all the other district judges, over the years. And Smoke and I had the unpleasant job of scouring their offices and personal effects to find out why they had killed themselves in the same week.
I read through Nolan’s case sheet. “Smoke, under ‘Father’s Name,’ it says, ‘Unknown.’ What do you think that means?”
Smoke raised his eyebrows. “That his mother slept around?” He shrugged. “I have no idea. See anything that reminds you of any case pending in Winnebago right now?” I couldn’t think of one and shook my head. “Not to me, either,” he said. “So, let’s finish up here and you can have a talk with Nolan Eisner’s mother, see if she knows anything.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like why Nolan’s name is written on Marshall Kelton’s calendar eleven years after the fact.”
“Maybe she asked Marshall something about the case at Judge Fenneman’s funeral, since Nolan’s name is written on that date.”
Smoke let out an audible burst of air. “There you go—a speculation that needs to be settled.”
“Ms. Eisner is just so strange,” I said.
Smoke flinched slightly. “She is that. When I went to their house to arrest Nolan, I can tell you I have never gotten a colder stare from anyone in my life. And that’s saying a lot, considering all the characters I’ve dealt with over the years.”
That was easy to believe. “Where does she live?”
“If she’s still there, south on County Twelve, then west on Barton about a mile. Check the number on the file. Old farmhouse.”
I looked at the address listed for Nolan. “Is that the place on the right, long driveway, remote?”
“Yup.”
“I get all the fun.”
Arthur Franz had kept copious notes and Marshall Kelton very few. If there was any kind of personal or suspicious connection between them, we couldn’t find one in our sweep through their offices.
On the way out we stopped at Barbara’s desk. “Have the funeral arrangements been made for Marshall yet?” Smoke asked.
“Yes, Stefany Kelton phoned earlier. It’s set for eleven a.m. Saturday at St. Mark’s Catholic Church. His folks live in California, so they need to make travel arrangements.” Barbara’s voice cracked. “Stefany says they are just devastated.”
My heart went out to the Kelton family: Stefany, Brock, the children, parents. My mother had told me many times that children should never die before their parents.
I drove to the Eisners’, convincing myself it would at least be nice to see Rebecca again. The driveway ran about a quarter of a mile and was lined with twenty-foot-tall Norway pines, the house barely visible from the road. I don’t know what I expected, but what I found was a small, white two-story home with a detached garage, a small red barn, and two modest outbuildings.
Everything was orderly and neat. There was a tire swing hanging from a mammoth oak tree on the side of the house, swaying slightly in the breeze, the only movement I detected on the farmstead.
I walked to the front door and knocked loudly. No answer, so I knocked again, harder and louder. Still no answer. I wandered to the side of the house and admired the old twisted oak for a minute. At least Rebecca had a decent place to live and the simple pleasure of swinging on her tire from this sturdy tree.
Chills prickled up my arms and spine. On that hot, humid July evening. “Someone walked over my grave” popped into my mind. It was an old expression my Grandma Brandt said from time to time when she had one of her “intuitions.” I wasn’t sure what it meant. Finally, when I asked her, the only explanation she could give was, “I got a chill for no good reason.” And now I had a chill for no good reason.
I moved away from the oak tree when a little creature creeping close to the barn caught my eye. A tiny tabby kitten. I wasn’t soul alone at the isolated farmstead.
I reached Smoke on his cell. “Eisner’s not home,” I said.
“I suppose she could be at work. It’s not quite three.”
I glanced at my watch. “Any idea where she works?”
“Seems to me she is a janitor at one of the nursing homes. Call Barbara, I think it’s listed in Nolan’s file,” Smoke suggested.
“No, when I read the file I noticed it gave her occupation, but not employer. Thanks, I’ll call Sara. She was Nolan’s P.O.”
“Corky, it’s probably not a good idea to show up at Eisner’s place of employment. She seems like the kind of person who would be especially put off by that.”
“Okay, then how about a phone call?” I strolled around the oak tree, appreciating how old it was, a survivor of countless years of climate extremes in Minnesota.
“That’d work.” Smoke talked through a yawn. “You’re off for the next three days?”
“Yes.”
“If you don’t find Eisner today, this can keep until your next evening on. Marshall isn’t going anywhere fast.” Smoke sounded a bit defeated.
“True.” I walked back to my squad car, ready to change the subject. “Smoke, I didn’t get a chance to ask you, how did dinner go last night?”
There was an extended moment of silence on the other end. “Ah, your mother is a wonderful cook—dinner was wonderful.”
Two “wonderfuls” from a man of few words. “What did you have for dessert?”
“Ah, I guess we didn’t have any.”
Right.
Pushing the image of Smoke kissing my mother to the back of my mind, I dialed Sara’s number. “Hey, you with anyone?”
“No, just keeping company with my usual stack of paperwork. What’s up?” Sara asked.
“I’m trying to locate Nolan Eisner’s mother. Do you know where she works? I’m just leaving her place.”
“Does it look like the movie set for Frankenstein or Dracula?” she asked in a low voice, trying to sound scary.
I laughed. “Actually, it’s pretty pleasant, an old farmstead. Of course, having grown up in the country, I love old farmhouses. I fe
lt a little creeped out walking around the place, but I think I’m just tired.”
I heard a file drawer open. “I got his file here. Well, eleven years ago, Alvie Eisner worked in the housekeeping department of Parkside Nursing Home.”
“Got a phone number?” I jotted the number in my memo pad. “Thanks. I’ll check with them.”
“Still working on Judge Fenneman’s case? I thought that was closed,” Sara said.
“As much as it can be. His death was ruled accidental drowning. It’s true, we never did get an answer to why the emergency alarm didn’t go off. And I got a strange note, but that’s another story.”
“What?” Her voice took on an edge of worry.
“I’ll tell you about it sometime. It’s more of a curiosity at this point. Actually, I need to talk to Ms. Eisner about something else, not about the night the judge died. Marshall Kelton had Nolan’s name scribbled on his desk calendar on July fifteenth, and we’re wondering why.”
“Of this year? Yeah, that is odd.”
“You don’t have any idea why?”
“Not at all.” Sara was silent for a second. “You think there’s a connection between Nolan’s case and Marshall’s suicide?”
“There’s no reason to, but that’s why I have to talk to Ms. Eisner.”
Sara let out a little “ooh” then said, “Better you than me.”
“I think that’s why Smoke sent me to talk to her. He didn’t say it, but I think she creeps him out at least as much as she does the rest of us. Change of subject—I’m heading to Nisswa tomorrow. You still going back home Friday after work?”
“Yeah, my monthly journey. Too bad we’ll just miss each other, since Nisswa is only about ten miles from Brainerd. We could have gotten together for a meal or some shopping. My folks keep asking when you’ll visit again,” Sara said.
“One of these months my weekend off will coincide with your Brainerd trek again. Tell your family ‘hi’ from me. I miss them, too.”
I phoned the nursing home, but Alvie Eisner wasn’t working. I spoke with the scheduler, who was happy to cooperate with the sheriff’s department and gave me Eisner’s work schedule. She was working the next day and Thursday from eleven a.m. to seven p.m., then off Friday and Saturday. I would try to catch her at home one more time instead of trying to talk to her on the phone.
Murder in Winnebago County Page 16