Pineland Serenade

by Larry Millett

  “Well, three thousand a month wasn’t all that much for a man like Peter. There must have been a charity over in St. Cloud he was supporting. That’s about all I can figure.”

  “Maybe. I’ve got someone looking into that. It must be quite a charity. What did he spend on that fund in all?”

  “I can’t say off hand, but it was a substantial amount of money.”

  “Well, I hope the money went to a good use,” I said, although I doubted it had. Instead, I suspected Peter was being blackmailed. What I didn’t know was why or by whom.

  I couldn’t pry much else from Toby, so I thanked him for his time and then walked over to the courthouse. The day had turned dreary under a deck of slate-colored clouds newly arrived from Canada, and snow flurries danced in the air. I was hoping to spend what remained of the day in profound cogitation, but since I’m not good at that, I opted instead for several games of solitaire on my computer. I lost them all, a sign of things to come.

  I didn’t mention the “cloud fund” right away to Arne or the BCA investigators. They weren’t sharing much information with me so I was in no mood to help them. And there was no doubt they needed help because the investigation into Peter’s disappearance, only a few days old, already felt as though it had gone cold. His telephone and credit cards remained black holes of inactivity. The same was true of all his bank and investment accounts. No one reported seeing anyone who remotely resembled him, in Paradise County or anywhere else. There was still no ransom note. He remained in the wind.

  My own father had also been lost in the wind, at least to me, for many years. That afternoon, as I ruminated over Peter’s disappearance, the Honorable Phillip Zweifel, lawyer at large, kept creeping into my thoughts. For better or worse, I was in Pineland because of him. I’d come back seven years ago to usher him out of the world, not knowing how much his death would change my life.

  I was living then in the Twin Cities, serving as a public defender. Helping poor defendants get a fair day in court sounds like a noble occupation, but mostly it was an endless slog of paperwork and plea deals, and a grateful client was as rare as an innocent one. I was burned out, sick of my job and afraid to look in the mirror because I knew I wouldn’t like what I saw. Taking stock, I came up with this: I was thirty-seven years old and had absolutely nothing of any consequence to show for myself. I was divorced, childless, barely solvent, drinking every day and all too well aware that my life had turned to utter shit.

  And then the invisible man, a.k.a. my father, called on my cell phone one winter night when I was knocking back Manhattans at Mancini’s, an old-style steakhouse in St. Paul with a bar straight out of a Staten Island mafia hangout. It had become my watering hole of choice, and maybe I was secretly hoping to get whacked so I’d be put out of my misery. Instead, my long absent father made an offer I couldn’t refuse. In a weak and raspy voice, he announced he’d returned to Pineland to die, and would I care to join him there while he did it?

  The details came out later. He had advanced lung cancer, the product of years of smoking, and the doctors had given him two months at most. At the time he was still living in Las Vegas, alone. Once he received the grim diagnosis, he put his condominium up for sale at a below-market price, sold it within a week, and then had himself transported to the Riverview Care Center in Pineland. Phillip Zweifel had decided to die at home, or as close to it as he could get.

  “It’d be nice to see you,” he told me on the phone that night. “Besides, I don’t have anyone else.”

  Well, yes, I wanted to tell him, of course you don’t. You killed my mother in a car accident, abandoned me to her sisters, and eventually alienated everyone else in your life. You deserve to die alone, you fucker. Yet I also knew he hadn’t been entirely deficient as a parent. I learned from my aunts after the fact that he’d quietly footed most of the bill for my undergraduate education. He probably would have helped with law school, too, but when I found out about the college financing, I refused to accept any more help from him. To me, it was dirty money and I wanted no part of it.

  And now he was a sick old man on the phone, begging to see me. I swallowed my stupid pride and said, “All right, I’ll come up for a visit.”

  I imagine this is the part where you expect me to tell you about the wonderful reconciliation that occurred, father and son reunited at last, confessions made, truths revealed, apologies given, grievances vanquished and love finally triumphing before the old man went off peacefully into the sunset. It didn’t happen that way. For one thing, my father was heavily sedated and close to comatose by the time I got to his bedside, and he looked so small and damaged, his once robust body turned into a thin bony shell, that I hardly recognized him. But when he was awake, I found he hadn’t changed a bit. He was still as selfish, cynical and mean-spirited as he’d ever been, and he had no interest in reconciliation.

  What did interest him was his “legacy,” and that was all he wanted to talk about. It seemed ridiculous to me—what the hell was the legacy of a life so badly lived?—but he insisted he’d done “very important legal work” in Pineland that would no doubt fascinate future generations. I told him, honestly, that no one would ever give a shit about his legal career. That made him so angry I’m sure he would have punched me in the nose if he could have.

  Later, I regretted saying it, in more ways than one, because someone actually did care very deeply about one of my father’s cases, for all the wrong reasons.

  After my father died and was duly lodged in the good old earth of Paradise County, I decided, to my own surprise, to stay in Pineland. My friends in the Twin Cities were stunned when I told them of my plans. Even Meredith, married by then to her bald neurologist dreamboat, called to say she thought I was crazy. I think she believed I’d be exiling myself to a Siberian gulag. And maybe I was, a prisoner of my own memories.

  Truth is, I can’t really explain why I did it, except to say that once I returned to Pineland I felt as though gravity was pressing on me with some extra force. Maybe it was just the weight of my ancestry, of all the Zweifels who’d come and gone in Pineland. Whatever it was, I couldn’t resist it. I had to stay and start sorting out my own life, just as I’d tried to sort out my father’s.

  There was also the fact my father left his entire estate to me. It included investments, annuities, a cache of gold coins and the old family home in town, which he’d rented out for years. All told, the estate didn’t come to a princely sum, but there was enough to pay off much of my law school debt and also provide seed money to set up a law office in town. I found a fine old terra-cotta storefront on Paradise Avenue that had once been a Woolworth’s store, hired a couple of handymen to remodel it, and in 2011 opened my one-man law firm.

  I fared pretty well, initially doing meat-and-potatoes stuff—wills, contacts, real estate—and later taking on some criminal cases as well. It took a while, but I gradually blended into the fabric of life in Pineland. Then, as county attorney, I became, for the first time in my life, part of the establishment, sort of. But unlike my father, who was connected to all the right people in Pineland, I’m still viewed as something of an outsider, the guy who doesn’t play small-town ball the way it should be played. Maybe that’s a good thing.

  That night, I stayed up late, as I usually do, reading and then watching some bad television in hopes it would put me to sleep. Instead, I came across a channel showing Captain Blood, the old Errol Flynn pirate epic, and it touched off a cascade of memories and regrets.

  When I was ten or so, my aunts, who were great readers, gave me a copy of Treasure Island, and once I’d devoured it I desperately wanted to be a pirate, despite the inconvenient fact that I lived a thousand miles from the nearest salt water. But when you’re ten, dreams are golden and reality not yet a cage, so I built a model pirate ship and sailed it whenever I could in a slack pool of the Paradise River, imagining mighty battles with roaring cannons and cutlasses flashing in the
sunlight. What I was really imagining, although I didn’t fully understand it then, was an escape from Pineland’s narrow world into the great wide ocean of possibility. Being a pirate meant adventure and freedom and the swagger do as I pleased.

  I often think now that I should have been a pirate—not in any literal sense, of course—but by living a life closer to the edge. Instead, I settled into a career in law and then married, and if I’d been a good husband I might have had kids, a four-bedroom house in the suburbs, and a Volvo with all the latest safety features. And maybe that would have been the right life for me after all.

  Now, I wasn’t sure what my life had become. I was neither pirate nor suburban husband, and I hadn’t managed to escape Pineland. I was just another middle-aged guy stuck in a small place, blowing through the calendar on my way to nowhere in particular.

  Happy thoughts indeed. And yet, as I pursued insomnia, I realized that the last few days had been insanely invigorating, courtesy of the Serenader. Maybe he was the pirate of my dreams, I thought, come to either save or kill me.

  16

  The next day, a rainy Thursday, began with no great drama on the crime front. I went into town early to drop off Camus with a dog groomer. He was looking ragged and dirty, but he hates baths. He growled unhappily when we reached the groomer’s house because he knew what was in store and didn’t like it.

  “Be nice,” I said as I handed Camus to the woman who’d take on the terrible task of making him presentable. “You’ll thank me in the end.” Then I headed to the office to catch up on routine work.

  Doug was already there, and I asked him for the latest update on Peter’s disappearance, since Arne and the Jasons had continued to shut me out of their investigation. Doug reported that detectives were hacking away at the case but it remained a stone wall without any signs of a breakthrough. One small mystery had been solved, however. Specialists at the BCA determined the Serenader had typed his messages on a 1960s-vintage Smith-Corona Sterling. It was a commonly used office typewriter in its day but now a museum piece. In time inquiries were made around town as to who might own such a typewriter, but they went nowhere.

  By afternoon a handful of newspaper reporters and TV types from the Twin Cities drifted into town, looking for leads. A correspondent from the Chicago Tribune also showed up but spent most of his time in the Dead Lumberjack ogling Kat and angling for information from the local barflies, who gladly spread whatever misinformation they could. I had nothing to say—a first for me. All of this outside media attention didn’t produce any revealing stories, just the usual microwaved rehashes.

  Then Tommy Redmond scooped everybody. That afternoon, his blog popped up with some sensational news. “The Paradise Detective Bureau,” he wrote, “has learned exclusively that Cassandra Ellis, the Chicago lawyer who arrived in Pineland earlier this week, is trying to determine if she’s the long-lost daughter of Peter Swindell. According to reliable sources, a letter written by Mr. Swindell just before his disappearance stated he is in fact her father, by a relationship he had long ago. Ms. Ellis could not immediately be reached for comment, but it is known she has been making inquiries with County Attorney Paul Zweifel and others regarding the matter. Further details to follow.”

  I wasn’t surprised Tommy had found out about Cassandra’s mission in Pineland. Still, I wasn’t happy he’d mentioned me in his brief post, which would quickly produce gossip spreading like fine dust all across Pineland. Cassandra and I were bound to be covered head to toe in it, complicating everything.

  I soon had bigger worries. Egged on by Vern, the Paradise County Board of Commissioners decided to defenestrate me from any further involvement in the matter of Peter’s disappearance, voting unanimously to fling my sorry ass out the window and replace me with a special prosecutor to be brought in from the Minnesota Attorney General’s office. This was accomplished at an “executive session” to which I was not invited.

  I found out what the board had done, not from Vern, but from Tommy Redmond. He knows everyone in the courthouse and has the place wired with sources, so it was literally only a matter of minutes before he learned of the board’s supposedly secret action. Then he called me. Once he’d passed on the big news, he asked what I intended to do.

  “Is this for attribution, Tommy?”

  “Only if you want it to be.”

  “Let’s just say I’m considering my options.”

  “What would those be?”

  “Well, I could accept the board’s judgment and bow to their superior wisdom.”

  “Yeah, and I could have sex with Scarlett Johansson.”

  “Doubt it, but keep dreaming.”

  “I’m serious, Paulie. What are you going to do? Take the board to court?”

  “As I said, I’m thinking about it. But I’ll tell you what. How about we do a little information sharing and go from there? What are you hearing about the investigation into Peter’s disappearance? From what I’ve been told, it’s already going cold.”

  “Maybe it’s a little warmer than you think,” Tommy said.

  “In what way?”

  “Let’s just say those BCA fellows are beginning to suspect Dewey might have some involvement in it.”

  “You’re kidding. Why would they suspect him?”

  “Two words: Jill Lorrimer. The story I’m told is that daddy was getting ready to throw Dewey under the bus over that prostitution stuff at the hotel. In exchange for his testimony, he’d face no charges.”

  Tommy had covered the Lorrimer story extensively and knew about Dewey’s supposed role as pimp in residence at the hotel. But he was waiting for Dewey to be charged—if in fact that happened—before writing a story. Otherwise, Tommy would be fair game for a career-ending libel action. I didn’t doubt Tommy had good sources of information. Still, I wasn’t quite ready to believe a plea deal with Peter was in the works, if only because I knew he had really good lawyers capable of papering over anything he might have done with Jill Lorrimer.

  “It sounds to me like a tall tale,” I said. “Where’d you hear it?”

  “Come on, Paulie, you know I can’t tell you that. Anyway, it’s time for some quid pro quo. Tell me all about this lawyer lady who says Peter’s her father. Do you think it’s true?”

  “I have no idea. But she isn’t saying she’s his daughter. She doesn’t know for sure. It’s just a possibility.”

  “Well, it’s hot stuff, she being Black and all. Then there’s also the KKK thing. Had no idea your grandfather was mixed up in that shit.”

  “Not something to be proud of,” I agreed.

  “I guess you never know about people, do you? Anyhow, like I was saying, this business with that Ellis woman has got everybody buzzing. You wouldn’t believe how many comments are on my blog post already. Some of them are kind of nasty.”

  “No doubt the trolls are having an ugly field day,” I said. “In any case, there’s nothing more I can tell you about Cassandra Ellis. But I do have a tip for you. Stop by the offices of the district court clerk later on. You’ll find a newsworthy motion there.”

  Tommy was on hand when I filed the motion just before the clerk’s office closed for the day. I claimed the county board’s action to bring on a special state prosecutor was illegal under Minnesota law, which for all I knew it could have been, not that I really cared. I just wanted to buy some time. The longer I stayed officially connected to the case swirling around Peter’s disappearance the better the chances I’d be able to figure out what was really going on.

  It had been an interesting day. The evening would prove downright fascinating.

  I rescued Camus from the dog groomer just after five and headed home. As I pulled into the driveway, I saw a sheet of paper posted on my front door. A small black object was attached to it with a piece of tape. I knew at once I was looking at a message from the Serenader, and I felt a sharp shudder, as though the po
int of a knife was poking at my spine. Maybe for the first time in my life, I wished I had a gun in my pocket. I wanted to get out and read the message, but I thought better of it. What if the Serenader was inside the house, waiting to ambush me or whisk me away?

  I rolled down my window as Camus started barking. If he was suspicious, so was I. Best not to take a chance. I backed out of the driveway and swung into the street, stopping at a point where I had a sweeping view of the house. Then I dialed Arne’s office.

  Robby Lindquist was the first deputy to arrive. He pulled up next to my car and asked, “What’s going on?”

  I explained the situation, but Robby didn’t seem all that alarmed. “Maybe the UPS guy left a message or something.”

  “Trust me, it’s not a message from UPS.”

  “Okay, if you say so. Arne is coming so we’ll wait for him.”

  Arne was on the scene within fifteen minutes, and as usual he wasn’t happy to see me. He invited me into the front seat of his cruiser and said, “So, are you writing more mysterious messages?”

  “Right, and now I’m putting them on my own front door, just so no one will suspect me. I’m a regular criminal genius.”

  “Maybe you are. Well, let’s go have a look.”

  “You need to clear the house first. He still could be in there.”

  “I doubt that, but we’ll take the usual precautions.”

  We drove up the house, Robby right behind us. The front door was locked—maybe no one had gone in after all—and I opened it. Camus started barking again as Arne and Robby, Glocks drawn, went inside. I stayed by the door with Camus and read the message. The thumb drive attached to it presumably contained another audio file.

  “Nobody in there,” Arne said when he and Robby emerged from the house, “and it doesn’t look like anything was disturbed. So I guess there’s no need for you to tremble in fear, counselor.”