Pineland Serenade

by Larry Millett

  The e-mail, sent to my official Paradise County address, arrived just after three p.m. It read, “Go to the quarry. You know why.”

  The message came from an AOL account identified as “rmhiller.” I had no idea who that was but I was pretty sure who’d actually sent the message and what it meant.

  I briefly considered my options, then made another phone call to Jason Braddock.

  Ten miles northwest of Pineland the Paradise River races through a foaming stretch of rapids at the bottom of a narrow sandstone gorge. Known as Paradise Dalles, it’s the county’s beauty spot and it forms the centerpiece of a popular state park. The mile-long run of whitewater attracts canoeists and kayakers from miles around, and in late spring when the river is high the gorge can get downright crowded with thrill seekers. A thick second-growth forest laced with trails overlooks the gorge, which has the look of a wild, untouched place.

  It isn’t. Long before the whitewater enthusiasts arrived, the southern end of the gorge, where cliffs rise forty feet, was the site of a quarry operated by the Paradise Stone Company. My great-grandfather Johannes Zweifel was a founder of the company, which opened in 1889 amid the usual high hopes. A spur railroad line was built to serve the quarry, and a small village called Rockledge sprang up nearby, complete with two saloons and a general store.

  Neither Rockledge nor the quarry lasted for long. Like Johannes, twenty of Rockledge’s inhabitants perished in the Great Fire of 1892, and the town was never rebuilt. The quarry survived the fire and did well for a few years, shipping stone to as far away as Chicago and St. Louis. But its signature product—the smooth, radiantly colored sandstone known as Paradise Pink—fell out of favor after 1900 and the quarry closed for good in 1907.

  An unmarked dirt road known only to locals leads to the old quarry. Jason and I, joined by two state troopers familiar with the area, drove down the deeply rutted road late that afternoon. Jason had been skeptical when I showed him the e-mail message, but he was just curious enough to go out to the quarry, which is mostly used these days as a late-night rendezvous for teenagers interested in the ever popular trifecta of alcohol, drugs and sex. A thickly overgrown jumble of waste rocks littered with bottles, cans and used condoms forms the base of the main quarry face.

  “You stay put,” Jason said when he parked his state-issued SUV. “I’ll look around with the troopers.”

  The three men fanned out as I stood by the SUV. They stumbled around the ragged piles of rocks for fifteen minutes before Jason returned, cell phone in hand, and told me to get back into the SUV. It wasn’t a request.

  “Did you find something?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” he said but wouldn’t elaborate.

  Arne showed up a half-hour later with a retinue of deputies. Looking royally pissed, he had an animated conversation with Jason out of my hearing range. Then he came over to Jason’s SUV, where I was still ensconced in the back seat.

  “Why didn’t you call me, you fucker?” he said when I rolled down the window.

  “Why would I? I don’t trust you, Arne.”

  “And you trust that shithead from the BCA? Well, go ahead and see where that gets you. Now that they’ve found Peter’s body, he’ll be looking to nail your ass.”

  Other pleasantries were exchanged before Arne stomped off, but at least I knew what Jason and the troopers had discovered.

  Just before sunset a BCA mobile crime and evidence team rolled in from St. Paul. I learned all the details later. Under banks of bright lights, the crime technicians dug into the stony ground and found Peter Swindell’s partially decomposed body, wrapped in black plastic lawn bags. Curiously, he was naked and no clothes were found nearby. It didn’t require the expertise of a forensic scientist to determine the cause of death. Peter had been executed with a shot to the back of the head, and by the look of his body, he’d been dead for at least two weeks.

  All police interview rooms tend to look alike, and I suspect there’s a malicious designer somewhere who specializes in making them as claustrophobic and discomforting as possible. The interview room at Arne’s department is a fine representative of its kind—windowless, walled with gray acoustic tiles and just big enough for a table and four chairs. It also offers the usual two-way glass mirror so that the proceedings can be observed by parties unknown.

  “So, let’s go over this again,” Jason Braddock said as he stared at me from across the table. “How’d you know which quarry to go to? I understand there are several of them up along the river.”

  We’d been at it since eleven o’clock and by my watch it was now half-past midnight. Arne was sitting next to Jason, forming the usual interrogatory tag-team. As teams go, however, they weren’t very cohesive. Jason wanted to take the lead but Arne kept horning in, and occasional bouts of bickering broke out. I wondered if Jason had taken my warnings about Arne to heart. Or maybe he just didn’t like him. Even so, the two lawmen were in complete agreement that the evening’s events cast me in a dubious light.

  As for how I’d led Jason to the right quarry, I said, “It was the logical choice because it was established by my great grandfather. The Serenader has been targeting me from the start and that’s why he sent me that e-mail. He knew which quarry I’d go to.”

  Arne said, “This Serenader fellow must be quite a Zweifel family historian. The quarry’s been closed forever and yet he knows all about it. How do you suppose that is?”

  “Maybe he reads, Arne. Some people do. As I recall, there was a story in the Tattler a few years back about the quarry and its history. It’s not a big secret.”

  Jason ignored the history lesson and said, “And you’re telling us you had no idea Peter’s body was buried out there, correct?”

  “No idea whatsoever, until I got the e-mail. That’s when the possibility occurred to me.”

  In truth, I’d begun to suspect Peter’s body might be at the quarry after the Serenader referred to “buried secrets” lying “among the stones.” I’d even been tempted to go out to the quarry to look around to see if I was right. But I decided against it because I didn’t want more suspicion coming my way. That’s why I’d called Jason after receiving the e-mail. Better to have authorities find the body than I.

  “And you think the e-mail was from the Serenader?”

  “That’s my guess. I’m sure your tech people can track down where it came from.”

  They did. The AOL account belonged to Roy and Mildred Hiller, an elderly couple who live in Pineland. Someone had hacked into their account by the simple expedient of breaking into their house while they were gone. The burglar then logged on to the couple’s computer, the passwords to which were conveniently written down in a desk drawer. It was a hack that couldn’t be traced.

  I was about to call it a night when Chad Barrington joined the interrogation. He’d apparently been watching and listening and now he had a few questions of his own. He was wearing a banker’s three-piece suit—no casual late-night garb for him—and he took the last available chair in the interview room, next to me. I smiled at him. He didn’t smile back.

  After adjusting his perfectly knotted red silk tie, he swung around to face me, his blue eyes as cold and sharp as icicles, and said, “I’m struck, Mr. Zweifel, by how much everything that’s happened here seems to involve you in one way or another. The text messages from the Swindells, both now deceased. All those postings from the Serenader you have an uncanny way of finding. The note in the late Mr. Moreland’s pocket. And now an e-mail that leads you to direct the authorities to Peter Swindell’s grave. It’s really quite extraordinary. How do you manage it?”

  A dozen smart-ass responses came to mind but I opted for a straightforward answer. “It’s obvious someone is very deliberately putting me in the center of things for reasons I don’t understand. But I’m sure now that you’ve joined the investigation, Chad, the mystery will be solved in no time.”

 
“Oh, we’ll figure this out, Mr. Zweifel,” Barrington said, “I assure you of that.”

  I did not take those to be comforting words.

  I got home around one o’clock in the morning and called Cassandra despite the hour. She picked up immediately.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” I said, “but I’ve got some bad news.”

  I told her about the discovery of Peter’s body and filled in what details I could. “He was shot, probably not long after he was kidnapped. Beyond that, I don’t know very much.”

  There was a long pause before Cassandra said, “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It wasn’t likely he’d still be alive. But damn, I would like to have met him, just once, you know, and talked.”

  “I understand. You wouldn’t have cared much for him—Peter really was an asshole—but maybe at least you could have gotten some answers.”

  “Like why he abandoned me and never even tried to get in touch? Yeah, that would have been nice.”

  We talked for a good half-hour. I could tell Cassandra was shaken even if she’d never known her father, and about all I could offer were the standard consolations. As always, they seemed grossly inadequate.

  “What will happen to the body?” Cassandra finally asked.

  “The medical examiner will have to perform an autopsy, of course, and then I guess it’ll be up to somebody to bury Peter. You may be the only family he has left.”

  “Unless I have a brother,” Cassandra said. “But I doubt he’d be interested in attending the funeral. So what about you? I imagine you’re under suspicion again.”

  “When haven’t I been? I feel like the Serenader’s pawn-in-residence. Whenever he needs to make something happen, he moves me into place. I’m getting sick of it. In any case, the BCA guys are particularly eager to pin something on me.”

  “Well, if you need a good lawyer, you know who to call.”

  “I don’t know that I could afford you.”

  “Don’t worry,” Cassandra said. “I’d give you a special deal.”

  “Thanks, I may need it.”

  After I got off the phone, my old buddy Jack began to beckon, but I didn’t give in. Sometimes painful sobriety is the suffering a person requires, and I was in that situation. I couldn’t afford to let the world get away from me. I went straight to bed, Camus plopping down beside me, and slept until nine a.m.

  By the time I reached my office, Doug was well into his usual dissection of the day’s press coverage. “The StarTribune and the Pioneer Press have the story online. It’s a big deal now that they’ve found Peter’s body and of course there’s also that new message from the Serenader.”

  Well, shit. During their hours of questioning me, Jason and Arne hadn’t mentioned any new message.

  “Where did you read about the message?” I asked Doug. “Does Tommy have it already?”

  “He sure does. Right in his blog. Word for word. I don’t know how he does it. Arne and those BCA guys must really be pissed.”

  Too bad for them but good for me. I opened Tommy’s blog and there it was:

  Now there are two, Zweifel and Sigurdson. What do they know and how do they know it? THE WOMAN is searching for an answer, but will she find it? Let the truth shine forth.

  The Serenader

  Tommy’s blog included a photo of the message, which had been affixed to a smooth slab of stone near Peter’s body. The usual thumb drive was taped to the bottom of the message.

  Like Doug, I wondered how Tommy had insinuated himself so thoroughly into the investigation that he had access to crime scene photos. More importantly, I wondered what was coming next. The Serenader had alluded to five men in his first message. Now, in just over a fortnight, three of them were dead. The odds weren’t comforting. Was I the next target? Or Cassandra? I had no idea.

  Maybe it was time to dig out my father’s old revolver.

  32

  I called Cassandra right away to report on the Serenader’s latest communication, which we agreed wasn’t especially revealing. She also had some news for me.

  “I just heard from Jocko. He’s located a daughter of Earl Bradley. She lives in Minneapolis and works there. I’m going to drive down today and try to make contact with her. I’m hoping she’ll be willing to talk to me.”

  “Sounds promising,” I said. “Let me know what you find out.”

  I tried to keep a low profile for the rest of the day but it wasn’t easy. The discovery of Peter’s body touched off a new media frenzy. I received a dozen phone messages and e-mails from TV news people, all eager to tell my side of the story in a thirty-second sound bite. Good Morning America thought I’d be an interesting guest, and a writer from Vanity Fair wanted to insert me into his impending saga of trouble in flyover land. I stiffed the lot of them and spent most of the day holed up in the courthouse law library, away from the news-hungry hordes.

  Services for Marty Moreland were scheduled for ten o’clock Wednesday morning at Swaboda’s Funeral Home, which is known around town as the “pregnant spaceship.” The building, perhaps not one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpieces, is round, bows out slightly in the middle and has small circular windows. Wright came down from space and landed in Pineland because of my uncle, Jack Swaboda, who built the funeral home.

  Crazy Jack, as everyone in the family called him, was my mother’s only brother and a famous character around town. He might still be alive if he hadn’t, at age seventy-five, tried to run his snowmobile across a lake coated in ice about as thick as his fingernails. He and his sled were found a day later under thirty feet of water and everyone agreed it was a suitably outlandish way for him to die. Long before his final snowmobile adventure, Jack had become smitten with Wright’s work after seeing a gas station the legendary architect designed in a nearby town. So Jack ordered up a Wright of his very own, at great expense.

  Although the building proved to be trouble from the start—Jack had to patch the leaky roof every year—he loved his big architectural toy and in the end his faith was rewarded. A small but steady stream of tourists, some from as far away as Japan, began arriving in Pineland to gaze upon the wonders of what was billed as “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Only Mortuary.” Jack happily accommodated them by offering “special guided tours” for a mere twenty dollars a head, turning his house of death into a nice little money machine.

  My cousin-in-law Dale Shiffley still provides tours, for thirty dollars, but he doesn’t share Jack’s passion for the building. Dale would like to sell it if he could, but a buyer has yet to appear out of the Wrightian woodwork. I don’t usually communicate much with Dale, since mortuary science isn’t among my fervent interests, so I was surprised when he called Wednesday morning shortly after seven.

  “Are you coming to the service for Marty?” he asked.

  An odd question, I thought. What did it matter to Dale whether I showed up or not? And why the hell was he calling me at such a ridiculous hour? “A little early to be asking that question, isn’t it? Don’t worry, I’ll be there. But the service is at ten. What’s going on?”

  “It’s hard to explain, but could you come to the funeral home right now? There’s something you need to see.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Just come over, okay? I don’t know what to do here. I need your advice.”

  I couldn’t get any more out of Dale, so I told him I’d be there as soon as I could. When I drove up to the funeral home a half-hour later, Dale was waiting for me outside the front door.

  “Thanks so much for coming,” he said. His face, normally caked in mourning makeup, was alive with agitation. “This is all very weird, Paul. Very weird. I’ll show you. He’s in the basement.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Marty. That’s what I called you about. You’ll see.”

  I followed Dale down the basement into a large, tile-lined
embalming room equipped with all the handy tools morticians use to make the dead look even deader. The odor of formaldehyde wafted into my nostrils. A dark steel casket, its lid open, was propped on a cart in the center of the room. Marty was in it, dressed in a black suit with a red tie.

  “Have a look for yourself,” Dale said.

  I did, and it was certainly an unexpected sight. Carefully placed atop Marty’s crotch was an eight-by-ten-inch color photo that showed Arne with a topless young woman sitting on his lap. She was well endowed, and there was a striking tattoo of a nude, winged female figure beneath her breasts. Arne, who had a drunken grin on his face, was playing with one of her nipples. The photo included a message, neatly typed on a half-sheet of paper. It read:

  Sigurdson at Peter Swindell’s mansion. Reward for services rendered. Bring the sheriff to justice and let the truth shine forth. The Serenader.

  Although the woman’s face was turned away from the camera, I knew who she had to be. Marty had been right about Arne and a dalliance with the late Jill Lorrimer. Arne’s supposed investigation into her death suddenly looked like a sham, and he was about to be in the deepest of deep shit. I couldn’t say I felt bad for him.

  “Any idea how the photo got here?” I asked Dale.

  “Somebody broke in last night and must have left it. I found the back door jimmied open when I came in this morning. I thought we’d been burglarized, but I didn’t find anything missing.”

  “Are there any surveillance cameras by that door?”

  “No. I mean, why would there be? Who’d want to break into a funeral home?”

  “Okay, so what happened after you discovered the break-in?”

  “I looked around to see if anything had been disturbed but everything seemed to be okay. Then I opened Marty’s casket for a final check and that’s when I saw the photo. It was a real shock, I’ll tell you that. Have you ever heard of such a bizarre thing? Anyway, I thought I should call you before anyone else. What should we do?”