Crazed Reckoning, a Nick Spinelli Mystery

by Valerie J. Clarizio

  “They don’t have the groom and won’t until 10:00 or so. And in the event Davin’s truly not in cahoots with the real abductors, we need to figure out how they intend on getting their hands on him. That said, I can only assume they’ve lined something up here in town as to save time,” Walker said as he grabbed Spinelli’s laptop, cracked it open, and started plotting all the Door County Catholic churches on the map.

  Spinelli swallowed the lump in his throat. “What if Davin’s just a decoy and Riordan marries Shannon? Maybe Emmet doesn’t really care who makes good on the deal as long as it’s done.”

  Walker stopped clicking keys and scratched his chin. “Well, for one thing, they’d need a marriage license with both Riordan and Shannon’s name on it.”

  “Yeah, true, but how hard is that to get? They already bought one with Shannon and Davin’s names.”

  Marsh bounded into the room with a satisfied grin on his face, his little spiraled notebook in one hand and a few 8 ½ by 11 sheets in his other hand.

  “What do you have?” Spinelli asked.

  Marsh’s smile grew. “Oh, just a detailed description of the man who delivered the envelope with the bogus marriage license to the waitress, and a couple of still-shots of him from the resort’s surveillance system. The photos aren’t great, but between them and the description the waitress gave we have a little something to go on.”

  “Just to verify, the waitress had never seen him before?” Spinelli asked.

  “Nope, nor did any of the other staff who worked this morning. I asked them all.”

  The first photo caught a shot of the deliveryman talking to the waitress at the restaurant’s checkout station. The man, dressed in jeans and a bright green hoodie with the hood up, wore a jacket zipped to the top. The photo was blurry. Spinelli assumed the poor quality was a result of exporting a still-shot taken from a video recording. But even through the fuzziness and narrow opening of the hoodie, he could see the man’s dark goatee, high cheekbones, and narrow chin.

  According to Marsh, the waitress figured the man to be in his late twenties or early thirties with dark brown eyes.

  The second photo showed the man exiting the hotel through the front lobby doors. Judging from the clearance between the top of the man’s head and the doorframe, he looked to be slightly less than six feet tall and of medium build.

  Spinelli sighed. “Great, we’re looking for a guy of medium height and build, with dark hair and brown eyes. Yeah, he should be easy to find,” Spinelli growled. Seriously, why did Marsh look so happy about this? Probably 2,000 men in this small town fit that average-Joe description.

  “Take another look at the photo of the man exiting the building,” Marsh suggested, his smile now stretching from ear to ear.

  Spinelli pulled the photo closer to his eyes. Walker leaned in to get a better look before he lifted his finger and pointed at a blurry picture and patch of words, silk-screened on the hoodie across the man’s back. “What is that a picture of? And what does it say?”

  Spinelli squinted. “It looks like a four-leaf clover, but I can’t make out the words. I wonder if we can blow it up.”

  Marsh cleared his throat. “I knew you’d ask that,” he replied as he handed Spinelli the third printout with a larger, clearer version of the picture. Spinelli sucked in a slow breath and silently counted to ten. Why hadn’t Marsh just shown this picture to them in the first place? Why did he always have to play these little games? Ten seconds of Spinelli’s life he couldn’t have back. Ten seconds of time wasted in search of Shannon and Anna. Did Marsh not realize how important ten seconds could be?

  Spinelli refocused, he couldn’t chance losing any more time. He’d deal with Marsh later.

  With the larger picture, there was no need to squint, the white four-leaf clover nearly leaped off the page along with the words ‘McGrath Clan.’

  Walker sat in front of the laptop and googled ‘McGrath,’ narrowing his search to Door County. Several names flashed across the screen and their locations peppered the entire county, including Washington Island. Hoping this McGrath still had a landline, they’d start calling all the numbers immediately in hopes to reach anyone who could identify the man in the picture. Once they locate the deliveryman, perhaps he could shed some light on who asked him to deliver the package and why, where, when, and how he’d been contacted for the job.

  Walker stood with the laptop in his hands. “I’ll run downstairs and see if I can use the hotel’s printer to make some copies of the plotted maps, contact information, and the McGrath contact list. We can split them up and start searching.”

  Spinelli grabbed his coat and followed, Marsh in tow.

  Marsh went to get the car, Walker printed off the documents in the hotel’s business center and Spinelli talked with some of the hotel staff. Walker returned a moment later with the laptop in one hand and a fist full of papers in the other.

  “Okay, so we only have two churches to check out right here in the city. We’ll go to the one on the east side of town first,” Walker said as he climbed into the backseat.

  Spinelli slipped into the passenger seat.

  Marsh exited the parking lot and Spinelli motioned for him to turn left at the stop sign. He drove up another four blocks before Spinelli told him to hang a left. Walker clicked on the keyboard in the backseat until Marsh pulled up to the curb and parked in front of the church.

  Walker leaned between the seats. “There aren’t any weddings listed in March on the church’s website. But who knows, maybe they don’t list them there or maybe this was scheduled so late they didn’t list it on the calendar.”

  Spinelli stared out his window at the multiple rows of stone steps leading to the front doors of the church. The weathered stone church with twin towering steeples looked exactly like what he envisioned Shannon would marry in someday. In fact, it looked a great deal like the church she belonged to in Milwaukee, only smaller.

  At present, the building looked quiet but it was early.

  Walker leaned between the front seats again, his phone still pressed to his ear. “I got the church’s answering machine. According to their automated attendant, they don’t have regular office hours on Saturdays, and it doesn’t mention an alternative number to call.”

  Marsh flipped the car in reverse and slowly backed up a couple of car lengths.

  “What are you doing?” Spinelli asked.

  Once he reached the corner of the street, Marsh put the car in park again and pointed out Spinelli’s window. “The church has a sign over there. Maybe it lists the daily events. Can you read it?”

  “Not from here,” Spinelli responded as he flung his door open. With a few long strides, he found himself combing over the church’s regular mass schedule through the glass of the church’s display sign.

  He raked his fingers through his hair as he eyed the words on the sign again. Nothing. A frustrated laugh escaped him. What did he expect? That the sign would actually read, “Here Spinelli, you’re on the right track, this is the church where Shannon will be forced to marry some stranger today to secure his inheritance.”

  Shifting his gaze back to the church, he glanced up at the twin towers. They looked like silent guardians meant to protect those who enter their place of worship. An aura of peace seemed to surround them. Spinelli found himself secretly asking them to watch over Shannon if she entered here today.

  Spinelli tore his gaze from the steeples and fixed it on the stained glass windows lining the side of the church. The dingy, gloomy day darkened the normally bright stain-glass windows. Was it some sort of sign? He squeezed his eyes shut and took a moment to tamp down the irrational thoughts that invaded his mind. They would be of no use in finding Shannon.

  Spinelli stuffed his cold fingers into his pockets and spun on his heel. He hadn’t taken two steps before a spurt of warm air brushed over him from behind. He spun around to find a bright ray of sun piercing through the overcast sky, shining directly on him. His gaze glued to the beam. The n
arrow opening in the clouds shifted, causing the beam to move slowly until it reached the side of the church. The ray landed on a set of two small rectangle stained glass windows. They were shorter, slimmer, and shaped differently than the rest of the tall arched windows lining the length of the church wall. He hardly noticed the single flowers located in the center of each of the two windows before the bright ray disappeared as if someone shut it off with the flip of a switch. The blue hue spawned by the overcast sky darkened the windows blending the colors into one gray mass. Another sign?

  Spinelli shot a glance to the sky and considered praying. What could it hurt?

  Though Walker’s phone call to the church’s office went unanswered, Spinelli couldn’t resist the urge to test the side door of the church. It was locked tight. He stepped around the corner and scooted up the stone steps leading to the church’s grand entrance, taking two at a time. Those doors were locked as well.

  As Spinelli slid into the car, he couldn’t help but catch the strange looks on Marsh and Walker’s faces. “What?”

  “That was just the weirdest thing,” Marsh replied.

  “What do you mean? What was weird?”

  “Just as you stepped away from the sign we were joking about how the church might crumble to pieces if you actually entered it. Then it was like the freaking clouds parted and put some sort of spotlight on you. I swear on my grandmother’s grave, it was like you were glowing.”

  Spinelli gave his hard-eyed scowl to shut Marsh up.

  Walker leaned forward and pointed out the windshield. “Take a left at the corner, go around the block, and get back onto Michigan Street. Hang a right and then head over that junky old steel bridge next to the hotel. According to this map, it looks like there’s a Catholic church located on the block between Maple Street and Juniper. It doesn’t look that far away.”

  Marsh did as Walker instructed.

  Spinelli huffed.

  “What?” Walker asked.

  “We’re never going to find her this way. It’s too early. Nobody will be at these churches.”

  “Well, I’m not sure what else you want us to do right now. We’ve got nothing further to go on at the moment. I’m monitoring Shannon and Anna’s credit cards. There’s been no activity since yesterday when they checked into the hotel. We don’t have enough reasonable cause to ping their cell phones yet. And every church contact number goes unanswered as well,” Walker replied.

  Spinelli sank further into his seat. “I know you’re doing what you can.”

  Marsh drove past the main downtown area. Spinelli looked up and down each cross street. The city looked deserted.

  Just as Marsh pulled onto the dated bridge, the red lights flashed and the gates dropped down, stopping what little traffic moved about. A loud, low-tone grinding noise started the second the bridge-tender set the draw in motion to open. Spinelli eyed the slow-moving, thousand-foot freighter as it edged its way toward the open draw. At the rate the ship moved, Spinelli was sure he’d be fifty years old before it passed completely through and allowed the draw to close again. Now of all times!

  The second Marsh pointed at the ship, Spinelli knew they were in trouble. He didn’t dare look at Marsh and encourage him to ramble on with useless information about large cargo-moving vessels or bridges.

  “It’s hard to imagine a ship that size actually fits through the opening in this small drawbridge,” Walker commented, causing Spinelli to cringe knowing he just gave Marsh the open ticket to share his wisdom.

  “Well, lucky for us we’ll see it firsthand.” Marsh beamed as excitedly as a kid in a candy store did. “It’s my understanding that these large ships lay over for the winter at Bay Shipbuilding, once the Soo Locks close for their annual maintenance in January. Some of the ships are as long as one thousand feet and over one hundred feet wide. I read somewhere that as many as fifteen or so dock in this port. Of course, some of them are only seven to eight hundred feet long. Oh, and just for the record, this bridge opening is 140 feet wide.”

  Spinelli stared out the window and wondered if jumping off the bridge into the icy waters would be less painful than listing to Marsh.

  Marsh cleared his throat before he continued, “You know, I’ve always wanted to take a trip up to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and check out the Soo Locks. It must be a fascinating sight when the ships pass through. There are two canals and four locks for vessels to negotiate the 21-foot elevation drop of the St. Mary’s River connecting Lake Superior, Michigan, and Huron. You know how the Soo Locks got their name?”

  Spinelli didn’t dare answer honestly because ‘no’ would surely inspire Marsh to continue. Plunging into the icy waters was beginning to look like the preferred option.

  “As a matter of fact, I do, so there’s no need to go there,” Walker stated flatly before he changed the subject and reiterated the directions to the next church.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the draw closed and Marsh drove to the church. Pulling into the small parking lot near the entranceway to the parochial school, he drove into the stall next to where a minivan had just parked. He slid down his window and waved at the woman in the van. She didn’t appear afraid to talk to three strange men and rolled down her window as well. The benefits of a small town, Spinelli supposed.

  Marsh cleared his throat. “Good morning. Can you tell me if there is a wedding scheduled at this church today?”

  The woman’s warm smile radiated with kindness. “Yes. In fact, I’m here to drop off the floral arrangements.”

  Spinelli’s heart leaped into his throat. He feared, yet welcomed, the woman’s answer to what he knew would be Marsh’s next question.

  “Can you tell me the names of the bride and groom?”

  “Sure can. The bride is my niece, Morgan Hansen, and the groom is Ryan Baudhuin. Are you relatives of the groom?”

  Marsh shook his head. “No, ma’am, we have the wrong church.”

  The woman cocked a brow. “What is the name of the church you’re trying to find?”

  “Honestly, we don’t know. We forgot the invitation and someone,” Marsh answered with a glare at Walker, “forgot to plug the address into his phone like he said he would. All we remember between the three of us is that it is a catholic church in Door County. You’re not delivering to any more churches today, are you?”

  “The only other wedding we have today is the Bley wedding at the Lutheran Church in Egg Harbor.”

  “Are you the only floral shop in town?”

  “Nope, beside us there’s one on 3rd Avenue and one on County S, plus the grocery stores do floral arrangements for weddings as well.”

  Spinelli hadn’t thought to check with the floral shops for wedding schedules. Though he doubted Shannon’s captors took the time or cared enough to have flowers at the wedding. Checking with the floral shops could help reduce the number of churches to contact, unless of course, the church had more than one wedding booked for the day. It’s not like Shannon and Davin’s wedding would take very long. Spinelli imagined there’d be no guests, no hoopla, just the ‘I do’s.’ The mere thought of it made him nauseous.

  Marsh thanked the nice lady for her time as Walker googled the location of the floral shops.

  “We may as well go to the floral shop on County S first. It doesn’t look like it’s that far from here. Marsh hung a left on Duluth Avenue. With the help of the grimly lit sky, they could easily see the stoplights lying ahead at the highway intersection. The green light illuminated a wide radius. Crossing over the highway, Walker leaned forward and held his phone between the front seats so Spinelli could look at the screen. The purple bubble indicating the location of the shop was just ahead on the left. Spinelli pointed in that direction letting Marsh know they were nearly there.

  Marsh signaled and turned into the driveway. Spinelli shot out of the car before Marsh put it in park. Walker stayed in the car to call all the McGraths on his list in hope of finding the man who delivered the marriage license to Spinelli. />
  Bells clinked against the glass door as Spinelli pushed his way through. He ignored them and kept his attention focused on a woman behind the counter snipping the stems of a flower. Not just any flower, but a hot-pink lily with a white edge. Figures. Of all the flowers, it has to be the flower of death. How could such a heavenly-looking flower symbolize something so awful? Why was he thinking about the flower’s meaning? Who cared? In fact, if it hadn’t been for his psycho ex-girlfriend, who went by the alias ‘Lady Lily,’ he wouldn’t have known anything about the death flower. A month ago, that crazy woman had murdered all of Shannon’s past love interests. He was next on her list, but they caught her in time. Now the stupid death flower haunted him again. Was this some sort of sign? Spinelli inhaled. The lily’s fragrance was strong, almost overwhelming. He fought his building sneeze.

  The woman set the flower down and caught Spinelli’s gaze. “It’s a Stargazer Lily.” She smiled warmly. “They mean purity, prosperity, or hope.”

  ‘Hope’ was all Spinelli had to go on right now.

  “I thought the lily was the flower of death,” Marsh interjected.

  The woman pulled a frown. “Hmm, you know, I’ve heard that about the Red Spider Lily but this is a beautiful Stargazer.”

  Spinelli nearly rolled his eyes. More useless information for Marsh to store in his encyclopedia brain and bring up at some inopportune time in the future.

  The woman shifted her curious gaze between the two of them. “What can I do for you gentlemen today?”

  Marsh stepped forward. “We’re wondering if you are doing any weddings today.”

  The woman cocked a brow.

  Marsh blew out an exaggerated sigh, “At the risk of sounding like idiot males, here’s the deal. We drove up here from Milwaukee to attend our friend’s daughter’s wedding only we forgot the invitation and directions to the church. All we can remember is that it is a Catholic church in Door County.”

  The woman shook her head and chuckled. “We have one wedding today at the Catholic church in Maplewood.”

  “Maplewood,” Marsh repeated.