Pineland Serenade

by Larry Millett

The Moreland family home, near the northern edge of town, is one of those foursquares from the early 1900s you’ll find everywhere in Minnesota. It’s sturdy and unpretentious, like all of its kind, with white clapboard siding and an open front porch. Marty and Doris had lived there ever since their marriage.

  Doris met me at the door. She was wearing jeans, a checkered blouse and a bright red bandanna around her neck. Her salt-and-pepper hair looked a bit unkempt and there were bags around her eyes suggesting she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a long while. Tall and well-built, Doris is German to the core—she came from a well-known family of Schultzes in Pineland —and she always seemed stronger to me than Marty. She’d been a teacher for years before becoming the principal of Pineland’s only elementary school.

  “Come on in,” she said. “The boys are back in school—I didn’t want them to sit around and mope—so we’ve got the place to ourselves.”

  She ushered me into a cozy living room furnished with what looked like mostly hand-me-down items. In one corner a gas fireplace flickered with welcoming warmth. A long row of family photos decorated the mantel. I didn’t see Marty in any of them.

  “Coffee?” Doris asked as I sank into a big leather chair with rolled armrests.

  “No thanks, I’m fine. How are you doing?”

  “I don’t really know, but I guess I’m all right,” she said, sitting down across from me on a well used couch. “At least, that’s what I tell myself. But the boys are taking it hard.”

  I hadn’t really known Doris well until she won the role in Pinafore. She was delightful to work with—she had no big ego but plenty of self-confidence—and we’d been casual friends ever since. I’d talked with her enough to sense that her marriage wasn’t flourishing, but she never went into details, even though Marty’s unsavory adventures at Peter’s mansion were much discussed round town.

  “That was a nice service yesterday,” I said by way of making conversation. “I imagine you had to plan the whole thing.”

  “Actually, I let Dale do most of it. But I did insist on the Warren Zevon song. I wanted to make sure the boys understand how important it is to keep their father’s memory alive.”

  “Important for you, too.”

  “Sure,” Doris said, but the assurance wasn’t delivered with much conviction. “Truth is, Marty and I lived separate lives for years. But neither of us wanted a divorce until the boys were out of high school and on their own. I give Marty credit for that. He cared about his sons.”

  “I know he did.”

  Doris nodded and said, “Maybe that made up for his sins. I’d like to think so. There’s something else you should know. Marty was in a really bad way before he was killed. He was hiding a secret, and it was something a lot worse than the fact he was fucking all those hookers up at Peter’s place. I knew about that.”

  I thought back to my last conversation with Marty in my office and decided to share with Doris what he’d told me about Arne and Jill Lorrimer.

  “Oh God,” Doris said, her head sagging. “Marty always trusted people too much. Everybody except me, that is. Maybe I wasn’t a good wife to him. He just wouldn’t share anything. Why didn’t he tell me what was happening?”

  “I think you were a fine wife,” I said. “Marty was one of those guys—there are a lot of them—who have to keep secrets, especially from the people closest to them. So instead of talking to you he took his problems to me. He also talked to the Reverend Ronnie.”

  “I hope you know the reverend is a fucking snake,” Doris said with surprising vehemence. “I can’t tell you how much money Marty threw into that stupid church. Ronnie the fake—that’s what I always called him. I mean, who really believes in God anymore?”

  “Lots of people,” I said.

  “Well, more power to them, I guess.” She paused, heaven lost with her husband, and started to sob.

  I waited quietly for a few moments before offering that universal bromide, “It will be okay.” As if I knew.

  “Sorry,” Doris said. “It just happens sometimes.”

  “There’s nothing to apologize about,” I said. “I’m here to listen if there’s more you want to tell me.”

  She daubed her eyes with a tissue and said, “Yes, there’s more. I talked to those two agents from the BCA last night. From what they said and what you’ve told me, Arne is a suspect in Marty’s murder. Honestly, do think he did it?”

  “I truly don’t know. Arne’s capable of killing—we know that—but executing Marty point blank? I’m just not convinced that’s something Arne would do.”

  “Me either,” Doris said. “Maybe it was someone else who knew what happened to Jill Lorrimer and wanted to silence Marty.”

  “Could be. Did Marty ever say who the regulars were at Peter’s parties?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, from what I’ve heard half the men in town showed up there at one time or another. Did you ever go?”

  The question caught me off guard. “Actually, no. Peter didn’t much care for me.”

  “But would you have gone if you’d been invited?”

  “That probably would have depended on how drunk I was at the moment. Sober, I’d like to think I would have passed, but—”

  “If your dick was calling, you couldn’t resist.”

  The conversation was veering off into weird territory. Was Doris flirting with me or just expressing her general disgust with the male of the species? I wasn’t sure. Maybe both.

  “Doris, let’s forget my libidinous instincts for the moment and get back to those parties at Peter’s mansion.”

  “Well, I can’t answer your question because Marty never talked about who was at the parties. It’s not as if he came home afterwards and said, ‘Honey, let me tell you all about the wonderful time I had at Peter’s place with his friends and his hookers.’”

  “Okay, it was stupid of me to ask. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s not your fault. I sound angry, don’t I?”

  “You do, but you have a right to be. Marty could have been a better husband.”

  Doris slowly shook her head, her eyes closed. She opened them and said, “Do you ever wonder what happened to your life, and how it could have been much different?”

  “All the time.”

  “Yeah, I guess everybody does. And so here I am, age forty-three, two teenage boys still to raise, precious little money in the bank, looking out my window at the glories of Pineland, Minnesota, where the odds are strong I’m going to die.”

  “Well, as my no-good father used to say, you could do worse. And, of course, you’ve got the boys, which is more than I have.”

  “God, aren’t we a pair! Well, screw it. Life goes on and all of that. So, there’s actually a reason why I invited you over. I want to show you something.”

  She went to a desk behind the couch and brought back a copy of Paradise Consolidated High School’s 1988 yearbook. “It’s Marty’s senior yearbook. I found it down in the basement rec room last night. It was left open to page sixty-six. Marty wrote something there. It’s kind of strange.”

  I turned to the page and found an article about the high school’s band director, a man named James Biersdorf. The article, which included a photo of Biersdorf leading the band, mentioned he had written a “special composition” for the school’s annual ice cream social and fundraiser that year. The composition was called “Evening Song,” but it was the subtitle—“A Serenade to Pineland”—that caught my eye. Marty had circled the subtitle in pencil and written next to it, “Serenade. Serenader? Strange what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Biersdorf. Any connection?”

  “You’re sure Marty wrote this?” I asked Doris.

  “Yes. It’s definitely his handwriting.”

  “Did he ever show you this or talk about it?”

  “No, but he was always circling things he found in books and new
spapers or whatever. It was a habit he had. Maybe it was just the word ‘serenade’ that got his attention, you know, because of everything that’s been happening here.”

  “I take it Marty would have known Biersdorf.”

  “Sure. Marty played trombone in the school band. You must have known him, too.”

  “Not really, I was a few years behind Marty. I think Biersdorf was gone by the time I got to dear old Paradise Consolidated.”

  “Same here. I could try googling his name if that would help.”

  “No, I can do that. But I would like to borrow this yearbook if I could. I’ll get it back to you.”

  “Sure. Keep it as long as you like.”

  “All right. I really should be going. Thanks for all of your help.”

  “You’re welcome,” Doris said with a smile. Before I left, she went into the kitchen and returned with a bag of her legendary chocolate-chip cookies, which I’d first sampled during our Gilbert and Sullivan rehearsals.

  “You’ll need some sustenance,” she said. “And please let me know if you find out more about Marty’s death. You’re the smartest person I know. If anyone can get to the bottom of it, you’re the one.”

  “If I’m the smartest person you know, Doris, you need to meet more people. But I’ll do what I can.”

  “I know you will,” she said, and kissed me on the cheek. There was yearning in it, and I knew that if kissed her back we could have made love right there in the living room with no one the wiser. But it didn’t seem right, for me or her, and I said, “Let’s talk again when everything calms down here.”

  “I’d like that,” she said. “But you need to be careful. There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said. “Maybe your cookies will help me figure everything out.”

  When I got into my car, I wolfed down two cookies and decided it was the best thing I’d done in a quite a while, so I had a third. The sugar rush worked and by the time I reached my office thoughts of “A Serenade to Pineland” were making music in my head.

  I googled “James Biersdorf” on my office computer. His name generated a surprising number of hits because of how he and his wife, Janice, had died. The couple had been murdered in 2001 in a foster home they operated in St. Cloud, about seventy-five miles from Pineland. Both had been shot to death. As far as I could tell, no one had ever been arrested for the murders. There was something else of interest. Two months after their deaths, the Biersdorfs’ vacant house, described in one account as “St. Cloud’s finest Victorian-era residence,” burned to the ground. Investigators determined the fire was arson, but as with the murders, the crime went unsolved.

  So where was I? Maybe on the edge of a breakthrough, or maybe nowhere. It all hinged on Marty’s scribbled words in the yearbook. They seemed to suggest that an obscure school song, and the murder of its composer and his wife sixteen years ago, were linked to the Serenader. But was there any proof of such a connection? Or had Marty simply made a wild guess based on the title of an old song he remembered? I didn’t know, but I intended to find out.

  35

  Cassandra was in touch first thing Saturday morning. “What are you doing tomorrow?” she asked over the phone.

  “Nothing much. It’s a Sunday. Maybe I’ll spend the day doing penance and praying for divine intervention.”

  “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go out to Freedom Beach.”

  “Why? Are you just curious?”

  “It’s more than that. I talked to Earl Bradley’s daughter and she had some very interesting things to say. It’s quite a story.”

  “So what’s the gist?”

  “I don’t have time to get into it today. I’m really jammed up with work. The partners are getting antsy in Chicago. They think I’m spending way too much time up here.”

  “They’re probably right. As I’ve said—how many times now?—you’d be better off—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m not changing my mind. I’m driving up from the cities tomorrow and I’m going to Freedom Beach. Period. Now, do you want to come along or not?”

  “All right. I guess two fools are always better than one.”

  We arranged to meet at a Cenex truck stop along the interstate ten miles south of Pineland. From there, we could take a county road directly to Freedom Beach.

  I pulled into the Cenex lot Sunday morning and found Cassandra standing by her rental car, the same BMW Series 7 sedan I’d seen in the parking lot at Pembroke Woods. She was looking very sharp in dark gray slacks and a sleek, peplum-style leather jacket that had a thousand dollars written all over it.

  I parked next to her in my Prius, and when I got out she said, “I don’t think I can handle another ride in that sporty beast of yours. Let’s take my car.”

  The Beamer was a beauty and I quickly discovered why Cassandra had rented it. She liked to drive fast, and once we got onto the lightly traveled county road leading to Fortune Lake and Freedom Beach, she rarely let the speedometer dip below eighty.

  “Any late news from Pineland?” Cassandra asked before I could jump in with questions of my own.

  I filled her in on my talk with Doris Moreland, including the odd item she’d found circled in Marty’s high school yearbook. I also told her how James and Janice Biersdorf had died.

  “Shit, that’s really weird. And you think this Biersdorf guy may somehow be connected to the Serenader because of that song he wrote? Sounds like a stretch to me.”

  “I agree. Still, I’d like to find a recording of his ‘Serenade to Pineland’ to see how it compares with the melody on those thumb drives.”

  We took a sharp turn at high speed and I grabbed the handle above my door.

  “Before you kill us both, tell me why we’re taking this little trip,” I said. “Nobody will be at Freedom Beach this time of year.”

  “I know,” Cassandra said, “but there’s a guy who lives not far away we can talk to. His name is Arlen Sandquist and he’s expecting us.”

  “How did you happen to run across him?”

  “I learned about him from Earl Bradley’s daughter. Her name is Dorothea. I was finally able to reach her Friday night. Once I told her what I was looking for, she invited me over to her condo in Minneapolis and we had a long talk.”

  “I take it her father is dead?”

  “Yes. He passed in 1995 and his wife, whose name was Clementine, followed two years later. I asked Dorothea about the family cabin at Freedom Beach and what happened in nineteen eighty-five when her father’s name came up in connection with the adoption of Baby Doe. Long story short, she was working in Louisville in the 1980s and didn’t spend much time at the cabin. But she did have an album of family photos. I went through them with her and I found one photo that explains a lot.”

  Cassandra tapped the brakes and pulled over to the shoulder. She scrolled through her iPhone. “Here’s the shot I took. The development date on the actual photo is June nineteen eighty-five.”

  The image showed a matronly, white-haired Black woman. Posing next to her was a much younger, light-skinned Black woman, who was cradling an infant in her arms. Behind them was a wall paneled with knotty pine. Part of a curtained window was also in view.

  “The older woman is Clementine Bradley, Earl’s wife,” Cassandra said. “The younger woman must be Patricia Gordon. The photo was taken in the Bradleys’ cabin.”

  Patricia was beautiful and I was struck by how closely she resembled Cassandra. “Can’t be any doubt she’s your mother,” I said. “I assume you think the baby is your brother, the second child Patricia had with Peter.”

  “Has to be.”

  “Is that what Dorothea told you?”

  “No. She didn’t know the baby’s identity. She said her parents—and this was a surprise to me—never talked about Patricia or the baby. She didn’t find out about them until
she ran across the photo when she putting together the album of family pictures just before her mother’s death. According to Dorothea, her mother’s memory was failing by then and she couldn’t remember the name of the woman with the baby or how she’d ended up at the cabin or even if the baby was a girl or a boy. But everything adds up. That’s why your father wrote Earl Bradley’s name on that court file. I think the Bradleys cared for the baby before he was adopted.”

  “And where was Patricia in all of this?”

  “Excellent question. She just disappeared. Jocko hasn’t been able to find a thing about her after June of eighty-five. And if he can’t track her down, nobody can.”

  Cassandra nudged the Beamer back into gear and quickly got up to speed. “Are we close to Freedom Beach?”

  “Yes, and you need to slow down. The turnoff to the lake isn’t far now.”

  Where the county road makes a sharp right to follow the shore of Fortune Lake, a weed-filled clearing marks the site of Gentry’s Supper Club, which burned down years ago.

  “This is where my mother died,” I said. “Supposedly it was an accident.”

  “What? You never told me about that,” Cassandra said, braking to stop.

  “There was no need to. It’s ancient family history.”

  “What happened?”

  I gave her the three-minute version of the car crash and my dead mother and my lost father and the aunts who raised me.

  “Do you remember your mother at all?”

  “No. She’s just a name and some old photos.”

  “What happened to your father?”

  “Nothing. No charges were ever filed. He knew all the right people.”

  “And then he more or less abandoned you?”

  “I’d emphasize the ‘more’ part,” I said.

  “Jesus,” Cassandra said, “no wonder you seem fucked-up sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?”

  “Okay. Most of the time.” Then she broke out in the widest smile I’d ever seen from her. “But I like you anyway.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” I said. “Drive on. We’re almost there.”