“I wonder if it’s that carnival glass Rose Gradoute and Paul Larsen were arguing about?” Joel pulled out his notebook and began flipping back through the pages.
“You mean that missing barrel of glass that supposedly came off the Card Line steamer umpteen years ago?” Skewski snorted.
“Yep.”
“The old-timers have discussed that off and on for years. Rose and her grandmother were obsessed with it. It’s a bunch of crap. Either that barrel never made it here or somebody stole it or dropped it and everything in it was broken. If it was around, it would have showed up by now. Something that big would be hard to hide from as many busybodies as there are in this county. I can assure you Iris and Hyacinth tore the old Card House apart looking for it.”
“John Ranson has the attic torn back to the studs. He didn’t find an old barrel.”
Skewski nodded and held up the smaller stack of letters tied with a blue ribbon. “These are letters that Minevra wrote to Joshua. There are four of them. He must have given them back to her.”
“Probably so Hyacinth wouldn’t find them.”
Skewski shrugged and unfolded one of the letters. “This one is dated June twenty-third, 1939.” He read from the letter: “‘I remember my uncle Ludwig helping Thomas roll the barrel up to the attic. It looked very heavy and they were groaning and laughing as they shoved it up step after step. Uncle Ludwig shook his finger at me said it was a secret and not to ever tell anyone where it was. I never saw Thomas or Ludwig again. The Bay swallowed them up a few days later.’”
“He must have been the guy killed in the boating accident with Thomas Lee, the one Rose told us about,” Joel said.
Skewski nodded and opened another of the letters from the small pile. “This one is dated August thirtieth, 1939. This is at the end of the letter: ‘I will do as you ask and say nothing. You are right that Iris and Hyacinth have rooms full of glass that is worth much more than what is in the barrel. Maybe our grandchildren will enjoy it long after we are gone.’”
“What does this have to do with the murder of Paul Larsen?” Joel asked.
“Damn if I know. Maybe this is nothing more than a bunch of old love letters that mean absolutely nothing to the case. I’m sure Rose Gradoute would like to know that the barrel of glass did exist and that it should be somewhere in her attic. I’m sure she’d shit if she found out her grandpa had an affair with the household help. She’d probably have a stroke if she knew it produced a bastard child.”
“What if her grandfather gave her precious barrel of glass to the help he was screwing around with?”
“You mean maybe Paul was killed because he read these letters and knew he was an other-side-of-the-blanket member of the Card family and the owner of the missing barrel of carnival glass? Wherever the hell it is?” Skewski asked.
“Do you think Rose would kill over that?”
The sheriff looked at Joel in dismay and shook his head. “I’d have to see it to believe it, but stranger things have happened. Does Rose have an alibi?”
“She told us she was home alone,” Joel said.
“Damn, this could turn out to be a real cluster.” Skewski put the letter back in the evidence bag. “I’ll put these in lockup until we figure out who they belong to.”
“I’d guess they belong to Minevra Larsen.”
Skewski shook his head. “Not anymore. Paul was her legal guardian and his ex-wife is the executor of his estate. The letters now belong to her, as does his property. She and her children will be in Chicago for the funeral day after tomorrow.”
“I can talk with her then.”
“I wonder if old Minnie Larsen is out to lunch or if she can still talk sense?” Skewski asked.
“It might be worth a trip to Bay Haven Nursing Home to find out.”
Skewski called the nursing home and was told that Minevra was “in and out” but always her most alert in the morning. They made an appointment to see her at 8 A.M. the next day.
“I’d like to make copies of the letters and have Lacey go through them. It will give her something to do and it might help us figure part of this out. Do you have any objections to me taking a copy of them with me?” Joel asked.
Skewski had one of his deputies copy both sets of letters. While the copies were being made, he and Joel discussed the rest of the keys. They had checked all the banks in Door County without success. They concluded that the next logical place to look for a safety-deposit box was in Chicago. They spent another half an hour putting together a plan for how they would begin the search.
No one had seen or heard from Bazil Rassmussen or his wife, and Skewski and Joel were both getting nervous about what that meant. They decided to notify the state police as well as the city and county officers in Chicago and southern Wisconsin to be on the lookout for them.
Saturday Morning
June 2—White Gull Inn, Fish Creek, Wisconsin
Joel walked into Lacey’s cottage and found her sorting through a mound of paper. Ann was at her side writing things down on a legal pad. “I thought you were supposed to be on bed rest,” he said as he handed her purse to her. He poured himself a glass of lemonade.
Lacey held up her glass for a refill. “For some reason, this lemonade settles my stomach down better than anything else I’ve had to drink.” Her eyes were bright but a little glassy. It was obvious she had pain medicine on board.
“How’s your headache?” Joel asked as he sat down at the table.
“Gone.” She flipped her hands up and gave him a lopsided grin. “It’s all gone. So’s the pain in my side. I’ll have my credit cards and purse sorted out in about an hour. You got any other assignments you want me to take on?”
Joel caught Ann’s head shake. “Did you take your pain pills?”
“She’s had two Vicodin this morning, that’s why she isn’t feeling any pain,” Ann said. Joel got both Ann’s meanings. Lacey didn’t. She was loopy enough that all but the obvious floated over her head.
“First time I’ve taken that stuff. It knocks the pain right out of you.” Lacey began sorting her credit cards into two stacks, the colored ones in one pile and the gold and silver ones in another. She then lined up the cards, alternating the colored ones and the metallic ones.
“If they steal your credit cards, do they also steal your credit card bills?” Lacey giggled at her own joke, not noticing that Ann and Joel did not join her. She rummaged through her purse again. “My notes are missing.” She looked up at Joel. “The bastard stole my notebook, and my badge, and my ID.”
“We put your notes from the burglaries into the computer,” Ann said.
“The notes on my interviews with Fred Johnson and that guy over in Baileys Harbor are gone.” Lacey stopped sorting her credit cards and leaned back in her chair, willing herself to concentrate on what she had done yesterday. “Both these guys have clean records since their convictions more than twenty years ago. They both had alibis that need to be checked out.”
“We re-interviewed Johnson last night and got him all squared away. He has an alibi for Larsen’s murder and was out of town when most of the thefts took place. He also has an alibi for your assault.”
Lacey smiled at Joel. “Good. I liked him so I’d hate to have to kick him in the balls. Do you have any work for me? I’ll go crazy just sitting here until Monday.”
“As a matter of fact I do.” Joel ignored Ann’s head shaking and pulled two manila folders out of his briefcase and handed them to Lacey. He showed her the copies of Minevra Larsen’s letters. “I need these read and organized and the contents summarized in chronological order.” He looked at Lacey. “Do you think you can do that by Monday morning before I go to Chicago for Paul’s funeral?”
Lacey and Ann both nodded.
“Where’s Lark?” Joel asked.
“He and John are playing golf.” Ann looked at her watch. “They should be back about one-thirty.”
“Have you seen Russ?” Joel asked.
“He wa
s here right before you came. He dropped off some flowers.” Lacey pointed at the bouquet of roses and daisies on the kitchen counter. “He talked about his Internet searches on the stolen goods and said you should give him a call.”
Joel called Russ and arranged to meet him for lunch at the inn at noon.
Saturday Afternoon
June 2—White Gull Inn, Fish Creek, Wisconsin
Joel got to the restaurant first and asked to wait at the table. In retrospect he decided that was a mistake because it gave him time to study the menu, which gave him time to figure out how hungry he was. He gave himself a talking to and decided to order the Cobb salad. Russ showed up just as Joel closed his menu vowing not to look at it again. They placed their order, Joel sticking to his Cobb salad and adding a lemonade. He came close to changing it when Russ ordered the pork loin, potatoes, asparagus salad, and iced tea.
Russ flipped open his notebook. “I’ve got good news and bad news. Since there’s so little of it, I’ll give you the good news first.” He helped himself to one of the homemade rolls the waiter had dropped off with their drinks. “I haven’t found any evidence that your items are being sold on the on-line auction services.”
“On-line auction services?” Joel looked puzzled as he buttered a roll. “The main one is eBay. I’ve done an item-by-item search on eBay. I’ve found some items from the list on sale, but they are items that aren’t unique. Mr. Gorean’s coins for example. I’ve found several Morgan silver dollars from his list. They’re from the same year and same mint, but they are not always in the same mint state.”
“‘Mint state’?” Joel said.
“Mint state is the term used for condition of the coin. Collectible coins are graded, or assigned a mint state value, based on a set of standards for each coin. The higher the grade or mint state, the higher the value for the coin.
“None of his exact coins are on eBay or any of the other on-line auction sites. I’ve found some individual pieces of pottery that match some of the insurance company descriptions, but none of them are being sold by the same person or coming from the same geographic area, which leads me to believe that none of our stolen goods are being sold on-line.”
Both men sat back as the waitress brought their food. Joel’s salad looked delicious but it paled in comparison to Russ’s heaping plate. Joel looked at Russ’s trim physique and wondered where the guy put it.
“I think I’ve figured out where some of the missing glass went.” Russ glanced at Joel, noticing he looked curious.
“That’s the bad news. I think several pieces have been sold at auction on the West Coast. Some pieces of carnival glass from the Johansen list have turned up in auctions in Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. It doesn’t look like the auction houses were trying to hide anything. In fact, the pieces were photographed and placed in their sale catalogs. Looks like the Rookwood, Galle, Tiffany, and some of the coins and pottery from your list may also have been sold through these auction houses.”
“Why would they sell it without knowing where it came from?” Joel asked.
“They have the name of the owner of the glass as well as their bank name and address.”
“Hot damn,” Joel said. “One mystery solved.”
“Not really. The two bank accounts are closed, and in both cases, the forwarding address was one of those mail-drop shops. The mail drops don’t have forwarding addresses. They do have a photo ID of the woman who rented the box, but they’re also fake. It’s the same photo of a woman but a different name on each ID. The social security numbers are real but came from the oldest trick in the book.”
“From a dead person?” Joel said.
“Yep. A Katarina Farrell, born February twenty-third, 1964, in Seattle and died one month later. Same situation, different name, in Portland.”
“I never thought it was a woman who pulled off the robberies.”
“Why not?” Russ asked, surprised by Joel’s comment. “Whoever it is gets in and out like a stealth bomber. The scene is clean and neat as a pin. The burglar is meticulous about prints and tracks. There are a lot of women in the antiques field. This is a perfect female crime.”
Joel raised his eyebrows. “I hadn’t thought about it that way, maybe you’re right.”
“Setting up these auctions has taken some work. These are reputable auction houses that get top dollar for their goods. They’d never sell anything they thought was stolen. Whoever’s doing this is good enough to make them believe they own this stuff.”
“We’ll never be able to prove the auction houses sold goods from these robberies since none of this stuff is one of a kind except the two paintings,” Joel said.
“Was it marked in some way?”
“No one’s told us that.”
“The insurance companies don’t have any of it listed as registered other than the coins that have been graded by grading companies.”
“How did all this stuff get into the West Coast market from out here in Wisconsin?” Joel asked. “This woman must be a pro.”
Russ showed him a picture of a slim woman with long blond hair and large octagonal glasses with rose-colored lenses. “She raked in $514,320 before taxes in those auctions.”
Joel’s jaw dropped. “When was this stuff sold?”
Russ flipped through his notes. “Four different auctions in March and early April.”
“Have you talked with any of the staff at the auction houses. Do they know anything about who consigned this stuff?”
“I’ve talked with both of them. In each case a woman inquired by telephone about selling some coins and glassware from her grandmother’s estate. She then brought in the goods with the understanding that they were to be sold prior to the first of May because she was moving to the East Coast and wanted her mother’s estate closed when she left town.”
“Did she say where on the East Coast?” Joel asked.
“Funny you should ask.” Russ consulted his notes. “She told each auction house she was going someplace different. She told Wetheralls Auction House in Seattle she was going to New York, and Goridano Auctions and Antiques in Portland she was going to Boston.”
“Why would she go to all the trouble to do that?”
“As long as she can keep her stories straight, it makes it that much harder for her to be tracked down.” Russ shrugged his shoulders. “Not that the auction houses would ever figure it out. She sold the carnival and Tiffany glass in one auction, and the coins, Galle, and Rookwood in the other. She spread some of the more readily available pottery out between the four sales. The auction houses would have less chance of making a linkage when the types of collectibles aren’t the same.
“I’ve talked with the insurance companies I’m representing, and despite the fact that they probably aren’t going to retrieve many of their stolen goods, they are going to keep me on the case. A thief this organized will keep doing this, which means they’ll get hit again. I’m on a per diem plus expenses and a percentage of any items we recover.”
“Are you thinking about going to Seattle and Portland to get more information?” Joel asked.
“I can get all the information I need about the sales from my computer and over the phone. I’m thinking about going to Seattle to check out the mail drop she was using. While I’m out there, I could also check out the bank she used to see if anything turns up. Do you want to send someone with me if I go?”
“If we send anyone, it would be Lacey, and I don’t know when she’ll be cleared for travel. I’ve got this murder case I can’t seem to get on top of and I need to be able to get a few days at home soon or Molly is going to divorce me and take the kids with her.”
Russ’s smile was wistful. “Whatever you do, don’t lose out with your kids. That’s what really matters.”
“My marriage is every bit as important,” Joel said as he got out his wallet.
“Well, then, you’re one of the lucky ones.” Russ threw tip money on the table. “I’ve still got inquiries out t
o antique shops and auction houses all over the country. I think twenty percent of what was stolen was sold in those auctions. None of the shops have responded with anything I can use, so I’m guessing this stuff either already has or will go through big auction houses. I’ll keep you posted. Think about who you want to send when we track this person down.”
Joel’s phone rang just as he stood up from the table. He nodded good-bye to Russ as he took the phone call.
Saturday Afternoon
June 2—Ephraim, Wisconsin
Bea Whitlock dragged her suitcases into her room cursing her son, who couldn’t be bothered to drive up and help her with her luggage. Her daughter had driven her back up to Ephraim and had offered to carry her suitcases to her room, but then had gotten a call on her cell phone and had to leave in a hurry. Hell could freeze over before her son would find the time to come and help her. Thank God she’d moved into the downstairs guest room last year or she’d have gotten a hernia dragging her suitcases to the second floor.
Once she’d lugged her three suitcases up onto her bed, she decided she needed a break and went to the kitchen for a glass of tea. She didn’t remember until she opened the refrigerator door that she didn’t have any sun tea. She got the sun tea jar out of the cabinet and put together the makings for her tea and carried it to the back porch. She got herself a glass of ice water and sat down at her kitchen table. That’s when she noticed that her answering machine light was blinking. There’s just no rest for the weary, she thought as she shoved herself up out of her chair and went to see who had called her.
After listening to two messages to call the sheriff’s office and three messages from her neighbor Juanita Tyson to call her as soon as possible, she immediately dialed Juanita’s number. She got her answering machine and remembered that Juanita had also gone to visit her grandchildren. She called Juanita’s daughter’s house only to be greeted by an answering machine. She slammed the phone back down without leaving a message.
Death at the Door Page 17
