Death at the Door

by K. C. Greenlief

  Rose had told John that Thomas Lee had joked about hiding the barrel well because he knew that Iris would get into it if she could find it. She would have found it for sure if he had hidden it in the main house attic. Ann smacked her head and ran to her car.

  It was so simple, she thought as she raced the car back to the house. She ran inside looking for John. She found him studying a set of blueprints in the Thomas Lee room.

  “Who has the keys to the gatehouse?” she yelled as she burst into the room.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, seeing the excitement in her face.

  “I know where the barrel is. Who has the keys to the gatehouse?” She was so excited she could hardly stand still.

  “Ann, you promised you’d forget about the glass if we searched the house.”

  Ann waved his comment away. “All bets are off now that I know where it is. Does Rose have keys to the gatehouse?”

  “I think there’s a front-door key on one of the hooks in the mudroom.” They went to the kitchen to look. “Now calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

  “I thought I ran over a turkey on my way home and I got out of the car to check it out. I saw some light glinting off a window on the side of the gatehouse and realized it has an attic.”

  “You think the barrel is in the gatehouse attic?” John shook his head. “This is insane.”

  “Think about it. Thomas Lee wanted to hide the glass in a place where his sister wouldn’t find it. One of those big shipping barrels of glass would have stuck out like a sore thumb in this house. The gatehouse was perfect. Everyone says Iris and Hyacinth tore this house a part looking for the barrel. They didn’t find it because it was somewhere else. The gatehouse.” Ann shook a fist in the air. “I know it’s there. When Lark and the sheriff interviewed Minevra, she told them that most of the glass was still there a few years ago. She was retired then. How would she know where it was unless it was someplace where she could check up on it. It’s in the gatehouse. It’s in the damn gatehouse attic.”

  “We’re not going to break into the gatehouse just because there might be a barrel of old glass in the attic,” John said. “I’m not going to jail over something like that.”

  “It’s not breaking and entering if you have the key.”

  “At minimum it’s trespassing and it’s illegal.”

  “John, I know it’s there. Please, please, let’s go look.”

  He rubbed his hands across his face. “The things you get me into.” He handed her a key ring labeled Gatehouse. He shook his head, a wry smile on his face. “You’re probably going to get me fired, but what the hell, I’m tired of not being home with you in the evenings. Let’s go check it out.”

  They drove to the gatehouse and let themselves in. They went upstairs to the second floor and found the stairs to the attic behind a door by one of the bedrooms.

  “No wonder they had a hard time getting the barrel up the stairs,” Ann said, looking at the steep wooden staircase.

  “We don’t know it’s up here yet.” John turned on the flashlight he had taken out of the car’s glove compartment and started up the stairs.

  “I know it’s here,” Ann whispered as she followed him.

  They groaned when they got to the top of the stairs. The attic was crammed full of old furniture, old trunks, and boxes.

  “Why isn’t anything ever easy?” John asked as he began to pick his way through nearly a century of family detritus.

  “Minevra must have kept everything she ever owned.”

  “She was widowed during the Depression. She probably didn’t throw anything away.”

  They walked past a set of six chairs with faded needlepoint on the seats and moved dust-covered boxes labeled shoes, hats, and toys out of the way to get to a corner of the attic.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” John said.

  Ann watched his light play over the top of a large wooden barrel. Boxes were stacked on top of it and up high around the sides. John moved small tables and an old high chair to create a path to the barrel. He moved the boxes and found that the top had already been pried off.

  “Should we open it?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Ann said. “If I’m going to the big house for breaking and entering, I want it to be for a good cause. Let’s see what’s in there.”

  John lifted the top off the barrel and pulled out a dinner-size plate. He held it up to the dingy window and shined his flashlight on it.

  “Oh my God,” Ann said when she saw the center of the plate glow bright red. A deer with a large rack of antlers alternated with a sprig of leaves and berries around the underside of the plate.

  “What is it?” John asked.

  “Red Stag and Holly.” Ann was mesmerized by the plate. “I’ve never seen red Stag and Holly. Red carnival was thought to be made late in the production of carnival glass, in the mid 1920s. Rose said Thomas Lee brought this up with him in the summer of 1919.”

  “Maybe it was an early Fenton experiment.” John carefully put the plate down on one of the boxes near the barrel. “How much is that plate worth?”

  “I have no idea. I’d guess thousands of dollars.”

  John pulled another plate out of the barrel and put it on top of the first one. An hour later they had the barrel unloaded. Nearly 150 pieces of red Stag and Holly carnival glass had been pulled out of the old crumbling straw it had been packed in for more than eighty years. Iris’s brother had made her twelve red Stag and Holly dinner plates, and sixteen salad plates, cups, saucers, soup bowls, berry bowls, wine goblets, water goblets, and punch cups. A service for sixteen with the exception of the four missing dinner plates. Ann held the matching punch bowl against her chest, too stunned at what they’d found to put it down. The base for the punch bowl was sitting on the box beside her. A wine decanter and a large platter sat on another dusty old box. Two divided relish trays, two vegetable bowls, and a smaller platter sat atop each other on a long-ago-abandoned chest of drawers.

  John looked around the attic in awe at what they’d discovered. “I can’t even find words for this. Wonder why Fenton never made more of it?”

  Ann held the punch bowl up to the light to look at the cherry red color for the umpteenth time. “Probably for the same reason they didn’t make much red carnival period. It was too expensive because of the gold they had to use to make the color. Carnival glass was nearing the end of its popularity in the late twenties.”

  Ann dusted off a chair seat and put the punch bowl down on it. She walked over to the stack of dinner plates and bent down to count them. “There are only twelve of these and sixteen of all the other dinner service pieces. Wonder what happened?”

  “The barrel was open. Maybe Minevra sold some of them.”

  Ann nodded. “What do we do with this stuff?”

  John shrugged. “I guess we call the sheriff and tell him we have good news and bad news. The good news is we found the long-lost barrel of carnival glass. The bad news is we’re headed for the gray bar motel for breaking and entering.”

  They left the attic and went downstairs to find the phone.

  The sheriff came to the gatehouse with Lark in tow. None of them had any idea what the glass was worth, but when Ann got finished talking with them, they understood they were dealing with something priceless and most likely one of a kind.

  Sheriff Skewski got ahold of Paul Larsen’s wife, who called her lawyer. He requested that the glass be packed and stored until he could sort out the ownership issues. His initial read on the situation was that since Rose’s grandfather had told Paul’s grandmother to keep the glass and it was in Minevra’s home for eighty years, the glass belonged to whoever had inherited Minevra’s estate. Ann doubted that the glass would ever see the light of day if Paul’s wife and Rose got into a legal battle over it.

  Friday Afternoon

  June 8—Eighth District Police Station,

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  Burt Ladeau was waiting for Joel and the female officer
he’d brought with him to escort Celeste back to Wisconsin. Being a police officer had its benefits. His car was parked right out in front of the airport, his partner in the driver’s seat with the motor running and the air-conditioning going full blast. It was a good thing because Joel was mopping sweat off his face before he even got of the plane.

  “Your little lady has kept her mouth shut even though she knows she’s headed back to Wisconsin. I’d think she’d be trying to cut a deal by now,” Ladeau said as they pulled into the station lot.

  “Is her lawyer with her?” Joel asked. “We’d like to talk with her before we leave for Chicago. We’ve got a couple of hours. It sure would be nice to know where we stand with her before we head back. We’ve got her brother tagged for a murder and an assault, but we can’t link him to the robberies yet.”

  “Did you all find him?”

  Joel shook his head. “Last we heard he had rented a car in Escanaba, Michigan. We think he’s trying to get back to Canada. We’ve got the border patrol as well as state and local law enforcement on alert from Maine to Washington. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Joel said as he got out of the car. “How in the hell do you all stand this heat and humidity?”

  “Lots of air-conditioning,” Ladeau said, laughing. “We can’t figure out how you all stand the cold and the snow.”

  “Lots of alcohol,” Joel said as he walked into the air-conditioned police station.

  “Funny, we use it to keep cool,” Ladeau said as he led Joel and his partner to an interview room.

  Despite Celeste’s height, Joel’s image when she and her attorney walked in the room was of a sparrow being escorted by a peacock. Celeste, in plain prison garb, her face devoid of makeup and her blond hair pulled into a ponytail, looked like a gangly eighteen-year-old. Andrea Sinead, Celeste’s attorney, was decked out in a beautifully tailored dark purple suit over a red silk blouse that set off both her red hair and her cleavage. Her tiny feet were encased in stiletto heels so thin and tall that Joel couldn’t figure out how she walked in them.

  “Look,” Ms. Sinead said as she dropped her briefcase on the floor and leaned over the table toward Joel. “My client isn’t going to say a word unless she gets her charges plea-bargained down.” She waved a finger in front of Joel. “No jail time and she’ll talk with you.”

  “I can’t take that request to the DA unless I know what she has to say,” Joel replied, using most of his concentration to keep his eyes on the attorney’s face.

  “No deal,” Andrea said as she sat down in the chair across from him.

  “We’ve got a witness who makes your client’s brother good for the assault on a police officer and the murder of an architect.” Joel kept his eyes on Celeste as he talked. “Maybe she’d like to go down with her brother for those as well as the robberies.”

  Celeste grabbed her attorney’s arm.

  “My client and I would like to talk alone.” Andrea flicked her head toward the door. Joel and Burt left the room. They walked down the hall to get a soda while they waited to be called back in the room. It didn’t take long.

  “My client didn’t have anything to do with the assault or murder,” Ms. Sinead said. “In fact, she hasn’t been in Door County in several years. She has agreed to give you a statement in return for leniency for her part in selling the stolen goods.”

  “I want her signed statement before we leave here.”

  Celeste nodded and Burt turned on the tape recorder. “Simon called me last fall. He had an idea about how we could make some easy money. He was planning on divorcing Rose, but he had signed a prenuptial agreement that cut him out of everything except the money he made on the restaurants. Rosemary’s was doing well but the Café was barely breaking even. Together they weren’t making enough money to support him once he was divorced. He had this idea about robbing the houses of the rich people who only lived in Door County for a part of the year. Most of them ate in one or both of his restaurants, so he knew when their homes were empty.”

  “How did he get in and out?” Joel asked.

  “That was a piece of cake for Simon.” Celeste leaned over and whispered to her attorney.

  “Simon has experience with this kind of thing and can get in and out of just about anywhere. That’s all we’re willing to say on that subject,” Andrea said.

  “Simon agreed to only go after the best and we worked out a plan for me to sell the antiques.” Celeste turned her eyes to Detective Ladeau. “May I have a cigarette?”

  “Honey, we’ll take you out for a smoke as soon as you’re done with your statement.” Ladeau smiled at the withering look she gave him.

  “If you haven’t been to Door County in years, how did you get the antiques?” Joel asked.

  “Simon shipped them to me. He and Rose have property in Chicago. He drove them down there and used a trucking company out of Chicago to send them to me. We did everything we could to not be seen together.”

  “What can you tell me about Paul’s murder?”

  “Not much,” Celeste replied. “Simon told me that Paul was driving up from Chicago late one night and saw him pulling out of the driveway of one of the houses he had robbed. Simon didn’t see him but he believed him because Paul knew too much about the robbery. Apparently he had seen Simon drop some stuff off at the DuBois House, the place up the road from the Gradoute House where Rose’s mother and father stay for their annual summer trip to Door County. Once the robberies were reported in the paper, he put two and two together. He confronted Simon and told him he would go to the police if he didn’t agree to talk Rose out of converting the house to a bed-and-breakfast. He also told Simon that Daisy knew about his suspicions. Simon went to play golf with Paul to tell him that Rose wasn’t interested in stopping the bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Do you know anything about the attack on Daisy?”

  “Just that he was obsessed with what Daisy knew about the robberies. We didn’t discuss what happened to her.”

  “Where’s the money you made from the auctions?” Joel asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If we don’t get that information, there won’t be any deal.”

  “It’s in a bank in the Caymans under my name. Simon and I both have to cosign for any funds to be removed. When I get my deal, you’ll get the account number and my pin number.”

  “Account number now so we can confirm it, and your pin number when your plea bargain is done.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Anything else?” Joel asked.

  Celeste shook her head.

  Ladeau turned off the tape recorder. “We’ll get this transcribed so you can sign it and everyone can have copies before we part ways.” He grinned at Celeste. “Let’s get you outside for that cigarette.”

  Joel got Celeste back to Sturgeon Bay that night. She was assigned a public defender and arraigned. She was denied bail and placed in jail.

  Saturday Morning

  June 9—Door County, Wisconsin

  Sheriff Skewski got the call at 9 A.M. on Saturday morning. Simon Gradoute had been caught at the tiny Port of Entry between Emerson, Manitoba, and Noyes, Minnesota. The Michigan plates on the car had initially alerted the border patrol. Joel left for Minnesota to question him. The plan was to extradite him to Wisconsin to stand trial for the burglaries and the murder of Paul Larsen.

  Even after hearing about Celeste’s and Angelina’s statements, Simon refused to say anything. He was arrested for the attempted murder of Lacy Smith and remanded to the Door County jail in Sturgeon Bay pending charges for the murder of Paul Larsen, attempted murder of Daisy DuBois, and multiple counts of breaking and entering and felony theft.

  Saturday Morning

  June 9—Door County Memorial Hospital,

  Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin

  With his services no longer needed by the state police, Lark was free to go back to Big Oak. He packed his bags and checked out of the Edgewater Resort.

  He left a note for Ann and John. They were spending
Ann’s last day in Door County doing interviews about the carnival glass Ann had found. The mystery of the four missing dinner plates was solved. Paul had found two of the plates in his grandmother’s house. They were the two plates he’d tried to give Rose for the Thomas Lee room. The other two plates had been stolen from the Johansens’ house along with other pieces of rare carnival glass. They had been sold at auction, and Russ was tracking them down for the insurance company. The Johansens confirmed that they had purchased them ten years ago for $300 each from an elderly woman at a flea market in Sturgeon Bay. Skewski had gone to the nursing home twice to talk with Minevra about the carnival glass in her attic. She had gone from lucid to agitated and incoherent each time he mentioned the glass. Skewski had his suspicions that she was faking, but the nursing home staff said that frequently happened to Minnie and insisted that he leave both times.

  Rose and Paul’s wife had agreed to display the glass in a gallery in Ephraim. They were in discussions about selling the glass but were having some trouble coming to an agreement on how it would be done. Rose wanted to sell it only as a set, and Paul’s wife was fine if it was sold piece by piece. The one thing they both agreed on was that they wanted Ann to have the two plates Paul had found. Ann joyfully accepted the gift.

  Lark headed south for Sturgeon Bay after running a few last-minute errands. He walked into Lacey’s hospital room and was stunned to see Russ sitting on one side of her bed and Gene sitting on the other. The room was filled with flowers. He instantly regretted the dozen red roses he was carrying. He saw a box sitting in Lacey’s lap and was glad that he had also bought her a little something to cheer her up. Not that she looked like she needed it sitting there smiling at Russ and Gene. There were no more visitor chairs in the room so he stood at the foot of the bed.

  She smiled and waved her hand to acknowledge his arrival and went back to her conversation with Russ. Lark noticed that she was dressed in a washed-out hospital gown and still had an IV in her arm. Despite her smile she looked exhausted. Her face, normally pale due to her redhead’s complexion, was washed-out, emphasizing her large blue eyes and the bluish circles under them. Someone had pinned her hair up on top of her head, but, as usual, tendrils had escaped and hung around her face and neck as if her face was framed in silky vines. She finished her conversation with Russ and focused on Lark.