Beer Money (A Burr Ashland Mystery)

by Dani Amore

  "Hi..."

  "I'm-"

  "The girl from the funeral..."

  "Julie," she said. "Julie Barina."

  I swung the door fully open and she stepped inside. She had on black slacks with a baggy white sweater. Her face looked tired and withdrawn.

  "You knew my nickname," I said. "At the funeral."

  She looked up at me. "I know a lot about you."

  I closed the door behind me and dead bolted it. She looked at the lock, then at me.

  "I'm head of the neighborhood crime watch."

  She looked at me again.

  "I have to set a good example, you know."

  She nodded, uncertain.

  "Do you want something to drink?" I asked. "Coffee? Soda?"

  "A soda? Diet?"

  I went into the kitchen, found a can of Diet Pepsi in the back of the fridge, behind microwave dishes full of spoiled food. I grabbed a glass, filled it with ice from the ice maker, then poured the soda and watched it fizz.

  "Since we haven't been officially introduced, my name's Michael,” I said. “But as you know, my friends call me Burr."

  She shook my hand.

  "Hello, Burr. It's nice to finally meet you."

  She sat in the club chair, I took the end of the couch. “Excuse me if I seem a little groggy,” I said. “But I had a late one last night.”

  She sipped from the glass of soda.

  "So what brings you to my neck of the woods, Julie?" I asked.

  "Well," she said, spreading her hands out on her slacks. Wiping the perspiration from them. "After I saw you at the funeral, I thought it might be a good idea to talk to you. I haven't been able really to talk to anyone about...about Tim."

  "Why not?" I asked, although I'd already guessed.

  "Well, our relationship sort of...prevented it, I guess."

  "You were his student?"

  She nodded.

  "And his lover?"

  She nodded again.

  "You were going to be the first person we told,” she said. “Tim talked about you all the time. And how happy he thought you would be for him. But you know, a professor and his student…"

  "I understand," I said.

  "Plus, it was…I know it sounds like a little girl cliché, but…it was a whirlwind romance. It just happened so fast for both of us. We just…connected."

  She hung her head, as if the weight of her loss was going to crush her, drive her right through the floor.

  "And when Tim wasn't with me, he was totally absorbed in his project,” she said. “He wouldn't talk about it with me, but I know he was…almost obsessed with it."

  I silently cursed Tim's penchant for compartmentalizing everything in his life. Damnit, he should have told me what was going on. All of it. I knew he couldn't, though. It wasn't his nature.

  "You were his best friend, right?" she asked me. Tears were forming at the edges of her eyes.

  "We'd been friends since third grade."

  The thought of Tim being a child made her cringe and I could see that the tears were going to come even faster. I got up and went into the bathroom for a box of Kleenex. I came back and handed the box to her. She took one and pressed it to her small nose, which had started to turn slightly red.

  I watched her struggle to pull herself together, then got up and started a pot of coffee. When I came back, she'd stopped crying and was staring at the empty fireplace.

  "I'm not here for your sympathy," she said. "Or to in any way soil your memory of your friend. I'm here to help you find out what happened. For real."

  My eyebrows went up.

  "I owe them that."

  "Them?" I asked.

  "Tim. And the baby."

  I looked at her and she met my gaze, her green eyes like laser sightings on a rifle. She nodded.

  "I'm pregnant."

  Sixteen

  A gunmetal gray sky welcomed me as I left the house. Fast-moving clouds, pushed by a fierce wind that rocked the tops of the trees, flew past overhead with surprising speed.

  There were no cars parked on the street in front of the The Milwaukee County Historical Society, so I pulled into the space closest to the door. I checked the Audi's dashboard clock. 9:57. I had three minutes to wait.

  Mr. Paul Jenkins had called and said that he had information regarding the still pictures I'd brought in. My anticipation was running high; I felt that the beginning of the answer to what happened to Tim resided in those pictures.

  I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and watched as a homeless man tried the main door of the building. He pulled on the handle, but the door didn't budge. He squinted at the hours marked clearly on the glass, but didn't register the information. He shuffled off, carrying a shopping cart stuffed with aluminum cans.

  At last, the digital clock clicked to 10:00 even and I saw a woman appear inside the entry way. I locked the Audi and went inside.

  The same damp, dusky smell filled the air, even the woman at the information desk had on the same blue sweater she'd worn when I last visited. History repeating itself.

  I climbed the stairs to the research office. The door was locked. I knocked, re-read the sign stating that any research cost one dollar to non-members of the Historical Society.

  I heard the shuffle of loafers on the dusty tile behind the door. A faint scraping of a sleeve on the doorknob before the lock's latch was thrown and the door opened to reveal Paul Jenkins. This time his sweater was a cardigan, and worn blue slacks.

  "Ah, Mr. Ashland," he said. His voice as dry and crackly as a sheaf of parchment paper.

  "Mr. Jenkins. Thank you for contacting me."

  "Come in, come in." He held the door for me and I walked past him, catching the scent of coffee and perhaps a pipe. Aromatic tobacco.

  The gray clouds hovered outside the tall windows at the far end of the room and filled the space with a gloomy, shadowy light.

  "Come to my office, please." I followed him in and sat on the opposite side of his desk.

  "If you may recall, when you approached me with these photos, such as they are," he began, and held up the stills I'd pulled from the fuck film Fred and I had watched. "I told you that I was intrigued, and that was the truth."

  "I figured you for an honest man," I said.

  "I was intrigued," Mr. Jenkins continued, "I began to work on the project immediately. I began, as any historical research project proceeds, by talking with relatives. Now, you're probably wondering, how could I know who the relatives are if I don't know who the people are to begin with?" He tapped his temple with his index finger. "Simple, I spoke with several of the oldest living people in Milwaukee, people who were 'connected' socially and historically, so to speak."

  Here, Mr. Jenkins reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a thick scrapbook of sorts. The cover had seen better days. It was battered and sported frayed edges. From the same drawer, he pulled out a second item, a bulging manila folder stuffed with photographs.

  "I started with a dear friend of mine, her name is Gloria Streusen. She was the daughter of one of Milwaukee's early prominent politicians. She's an amazing woman, one hundred and one years old. I should think neither one of us will live that long. If we do, I highly doubt we will have the same mental and physical competence that Gloria demonstrates."

  "I've been eating a lot of bran, Paul, I might make it,” I said.

  "Gloria," he continued, "Did not recognize the man in the photograph, but she had an inclination that the young girl," and here Mr. Jenkins slapped a hand on the picture of the girl, "may have been one of the Schletterhorn girls."

  "The Schletterhorn girls?"

  "...were the daughters of William Schletterhorn, a prominent banker in Milwaukee during the early 1900s. He moved in the circles of the rich and famous."

  "And his daughters did, too, I assume?"

  Jenkins pulled a pipe from the top drawer of his desk and tamped some tobacco into the bowl. He puffed, got it going and exhaled a cloud of smoke into the air.r />
  " They were quite the...butterflies...I believe is the correct term these days."

  "Are any of them still alive?"

  "One. Mary. The youngest."

  "What do you know about her?"

  "I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Schletterhorn. You see, she’s a bit of a legend around the Milwaukee art circles. She is a patron saint, bestowing, from time to time, enormous sums of money on carefully selected entities."

  "What do you consider enormous?"

  "Upwards of seven figures."

  I let out a low whistle. "So do I."

  "Quite," Mr. Jenkins responded. He continued, "I called Ms. Schletterhorn, hoping to ask her about the photo as well as talk to her about supporting the Historical Society."

  "And what did she say?"

  "She said no." He flipped open the scrapbook, and turned a few pages, then back a page. He grabbed a pencil and with the eraser hand, tapped a photo.

  "Here she is."

  I looked, and felt my heart skip a beat.

  "Where does she live?" I asked.

  "She shuns publicity, and values her privacy above all else. When she has made donations, she has summoned the recipients to her home. There have never been any public ceremonies to mark her philanthropy. You'll never see her standing with a six-foot long check posing for reporters."

  "And that home would be located where?" I asked.

  "On Pewaukee Lake," he said.

  "Do you have an address?"

  He jotted it down on a notepad, tore off the sheet and handed it to me.

  I looked at my still photo pulled from the film, and compared it to the photo in Jenkins' scrapbook. Studied the young woman in both pictures.

  They were one in the same.

  "Can I borrow that?"

  He nodded silently.

  I stood and scooped up the photos from his desk.

  "I hardly suspect she would agree to see you, Mr. Ashland."

  I looked at the photo in my hands.

  At the door, I turned back to him, peered at him through the thick cloud of pipe smoke.

  "Thanks for your help, Mr. Jenkins. I’ll tell her you say hello."

  Seventeen

  Pewaukee Lake offers some of the state's best muskie fishing, although you'd never know it because the majority of boats on the lake during the summer are drunken water-skiers from Illinois. The lake is long and narrow, with lots of small bays that during the summer are choked with weeds. Now, during the winter, it was a frozen wasteland save for the occasional ice fishing shanty surrounded by its orange-flagged tip-ups.

  I drove along Highway G as it began to dip and wind through the postcard-quality scenery. The homes surrounding Pewaukee Lake were a hodgepodge of architectural styles and sometimes, atrocities. A quaint Victorian cottage could be side-by-side with a broken down trailer home that looked like something out of the Depression-era South. Most of the nicer-looking cottages appeared to be vacant, while the more run-down homes most often had a telltale tendril of smoke curling from a chimney pipe, signifying year-round inhabitants.

  I passed at least ten corner bars in the first five minutes on the frontage road. Bars with names like Tasmanian Devil, Pete's, and Frog's Landing. I made a mental note to stop at a couple of them on my way out for a beer or three.

  Across the road was property that commanded a view of the lake, but didn't come with any lake frontage. Here it was mostly new construction. Big three and four bedroom monstrosities with giant picture windows set high in an attempt to overlook, both physically and psychologically, some of the real estate eyesores that lay below them.

  I rounded a curve and pulled into the town of Pewaukee, which during the winter months was really more of a hovel than a town. The sign said 'Population, 1,058." But I suspected that it was less than that. Maybe they'd counted the muskies in the lake when they'd taken the census.

  I passed through the small town and as I wound my way around the lake, the sun peeked out from the thick, gray clouds, and the shadows of branches fell across the road. A dead deer lay on the shoulder of the road, its tongue lolling to the side, its stomach bloated.

  I checked the slip of paper Jenkins had given me and spotted an address number. I still had a way to go. I watched as the yards continued to get bigger, the homes more elaborate, the forest thicker, most likely to disguise the increasing wealth of the property's inhabitants.

  This was Pewaukee's version of the Gold Coast, home to the summer "cottages" of Milwaukee's titans of commerce. They all had summer homes out here; the bankers, the brewers, the lumber barons. Even some of Chicago's rich and famous had summer homes here.

  To call them cottages of course, was a gross misrepresentation of fact. I braked the Audi as I came down a small hill and gazed upon a mansion that had to have at least ten bedrooms, and at least that many bathrooms. It was a three-story monument in rock.

  This is where the wealthy families gathered and allowed their children to play together, to form alliances, both physical and political, with other members of the landed gentry. Where sons were introduced to daughters and daughters were pointed in the direction of certain young men. This is where picnic baskets overflowed with champagne and shrimp, fine breads and cheeses, and of course, beer. I pictured the men in their starched shirts and ties, the women in long white dresses with elaborate sun hats, prim and proper in stilted photographs.

  The driveways here were gated, with their addresses posted clearly, which made it easier for me. I double-checked the number on the slip of paper, then looked ahead for it. Two more driveways down, I found it.

  I pulled into the driveway and rang the buzzer on the gate. The trees that surrounded the estate were thick but since it was winter, were totally without leaves. There were some evergreens scattered about, but not enough to entirely block the view.

  Even among the homes that surrounded it, the Schletterhorn estate was spectacular. A gigantic, sprawling three-story home with three turrets, at least seven fireplaces, judging from that same number of chimneys, and God knew how many rooms. It’d been built with stone. Probably imported from the old country, whichever old country that might be. During the summer months, ivy most likely clung to a good portion of the structure’s face, because now I could see the bare vines clinging to the rock.

  Huge windows carved out of stone looked out over the sprawling grounds. I caught a glimpse behind the house of the servants cottage, which was nearly twice as big as my house.

  I pulled up, rolled down the window and pushed a small button at the base of what looked to be an intercom system. A man appeared from the side entrance to the massive house. He walked toward the driveway without an ounce of urgency. As he got closer, I could see that he was a big man. He had on white pants and a dark blue winter jacket that was buttoned firmly against the chill. He had on thick black leather shoes. I had the fleeting idea that he might turn out to be Sasquatch in disguise.

  When he got to the gate, he stepped inside a glass enclosed booth, moved slightly to the side and pushed a button. Next to my ear, along the gate's wall, a speaker popped. I turned, and saw the small speaker recessed into the stone.

  "How may I help you, sir?" the man asked.

  "I'm here to see Mary Schletterhorn."

  "Do you have an appointment?"

  "No." He looked at me, bored.

  "I apologize sir, but I'm afraid you need an appointment. Good day."

  He let go of the button and started to turn.

  "Tell her I'm a big fan of her early work in film."

  His stride caught, and he turned back to me. His eyes ran over my car and he peered more closely at my face. He then gave an imperceptible nod and headed back toward the house, his gait patient and measured.

  I turned on the radio and listened to the song, a jazzy piano instrumental that had me tapping along in rhythm on the steering wheel.

  Suddenly, I felt good, I felt like I was doing something. Taking action. Making progress. I didn’t know if the
woman in the big house before me could help me find out who threw my best friend out a third-story window, but I was going to try to find out.

  Without warning, the iron gate slowly began sliding open. When it clanged into place, I pulled through and drove slowly toward the house.

  Eighteen

  The driveway, made of old brick fastidiously placed to look quaintly haphazard, wound its way through the winter-thinned trees and spilled its travelers out onto a semicircular drive. In the center was a giant fountain that looked like a Roman sculpture created by an ancient artisan in the last stages of hemlock poisoning.

  I pulled the Audi directly in front of the house's main entrance, four huge wooden doors that looked like something out of medieval times. I half-expected them to lower like a drawbridge. Upon closer inspection, the house wasn't massive. It was gargantuan. It was without a doubt the largest private residence I'd ever bullied my way into. I craned my neck in order to look toward the roof, and felt like I was at the bottom of a mountain, wondering how I would ever be able to achieve its summit.

  I looked back toward the massive doors and looked for a doorbell, probably some kind of giant iron knocker. I caught sight of the small video camera nestled between two giant wood beams that supported a small overhanging roof and knew there would be no doorbell or iron knocker. The alarm and security system on the house would be extensive to say the least.

  With perfect timing the big doors opened and instead of a stony grate, there was a faint whisper of frequently oiled machinery. The man appeared again. His coat was gone revealing a stiffly starched white shirt. A nurse, most likely.

  Albeit a nurse with broad, thick shoulders and powerful arms. Two beady blue eyes hovered above his nose that had been broken at least once, if not several times.

  His face had apparently been chiseled from the same type of stone that was used in the driveway fountain.

  "Come this way," he said to me, his voice smooth and metered. He turned and walked back through the large doors, not bothering to wait for me. I walked up the three steps that led to the doors, then walked through them, and saw that the man had in fact waited for me just inside, his fingers resting on a level of sorts that acted as a switch for the giant doors. I had the idea that he may have considered throwing that switch a bit early and catching me in the middle.