Sibley's Secret

by Frank Perry

Manchester a couple hours ago and it was a nice drive up here in the cool mountains. It’s raining and brisk, but the mountains looked good in the swirling clouds between downpours.”

  “Okay, this is kind of an official call, but first I wanted to say that it was nice having dinner with you and Chad. He’s a great kid and I think we hit it off.” They had both probed about relationships at dinner in Ann Arbor, concluding that both were completely unattached. Some of the local bachelors in Tranquility had made passes at Kiki, but none interested her. She and Jim had both been divorced and living alone for several years; neither one felt desperate to get attached again. They both were open to a relationship, but they were careful about making another mistake. After so many years as singles, they might never bond with anyone again. Jim had dated off and on, mostly when friends and co-workers insisted, but he didn’t have anyone serious. Kiki had not dated.

  She sat at the kitchen table, “Thanks for that. I’ve tried hard to bring him up right. It was hard without a father figure, but he’s kinda beyond that now. I just want him to get through college.”

  “He’ll do fine.”

  “So, what’s the official part of the call?”

  He answered, “Oh, nothing much. I was driving by your farm today and saw a car, so I stopped in to see who was there. I ran into Whit Fiske walking around the house. He said he was your lawyer and was just trying to get a scope on what would need to be done to sell the place.”

  “Yeah, I met with him in Jackson. Do you know anything about him?”

  “No, not really. He doesn’t do criminal law that I know about. Most of the lawyers I know are defense lawyers. I think he’s more of an estate or real estate guy.”

  She thought about Fiske’s red nose. “That’s what he told me. Did he seem sober to you?” She regretted the insinuation as soon as she said it.

  “He seemed okay. Older and out of shape, but he was moving around the place pretty good, so I think he’s trying to do a good job.”

  “Did you tell him to leave or anything?”

  “No, he seemed harmless, but I wanted to check with you to be sure. If he’s okay, then I don’t think I scared him off.”

  “Yeah, he’s okay.”

  Neither of them wanted to end the call. He continued, “So, when will you come back again?”

  “I don’t know. When I have to, I suppose; maybe when the property goes up for auction.”

  She felt a little guilty being gone as the new Police Chief in Tranquility. She wanted to get into the office soon and was reluctant to think about leaving again anytime soon. She did, however, want to see Jim again.

  She went on. “I need to get back on the job here.”

  He didn’t want to make a crack about living in a place called Tranquility. “Well, I’d like to get to know you better.” He’d taken a chance saying it.

  “Well, you should come here over the 4th of July.” She almost offered to let him stay with her using the sleeper sofa, but stopped short.

  “Maybe I’ll do that.”

  They ended with short pleasantries.

  After the call, Kiki called her office and decided to stay home until tomorrow. Nothing extraordinary was happening that needed her attention that afternoon.

  She decided to make another call. He answered his office phone on the first ring, “Fiske.”

  “Hello, Whitten, it’s Carmen Joyce.”

  “Hello, Ms. Joyce, I was going to send you an email. I went out to your father’s farm, sort of to get the lay of things. He’s got quite a spread of buildings, equipment and land. Rather poorly maintained, I might add.”

  “I know, Whitten. Dad wasn’t able to keep up in the end.”

  “Well, I only bring it up since the market is poor here with the recession and all, so we might not be able to get much.”

  “I don’t really care. I just want it gone, and all the bills paid.”

  “Well, you should at least have all the weeds mowed. I know a farmer next door that would do it cheap. And if you could get the trees pruned and cleaned out, I think some weekend farmer wannabe might buy it. Otherwise, it’ll barely clear taxes.”

  She rubbed her forehead. She couldn’t afford to be paying for any of this, including his fees. It all had to come out of the auction. “Look, have him mow it, but everyone (including you) needs to know that I’m not able to pay anything. It all has to come out of the sale.”

  He sounded less enthusiastic. “All right then, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Fiske.” Every conversation with the attorney seemed to end the same way. He always disregarded her situation at first, then ended up sounding deflated when she brought up the money issue. Maybe he’s perpetually drunk.

  Report

  Gregori Jelavich was annoyed with himself as he looked through the open doors of his office into the waiting area where Karina sat. He’d asked for the meeting and had not expected the phone call that he was now ending, shouting, “I don’t give a fuck. You know the deal, and you know I’m serious!”

  He didn’t wait for a response. She was not supposed to know anything about his business, even if it was only a closing remark. He composed himself and gestured for her to enter. From more than fifty feet away she shouldn’t have heard much, except the enormous amount of masonry and woodwork didn’t mute anything; it all reverberated clearly enough for anyone to hear. That’s why he usually kept his door shut.

  “Karina, please come in.” His demeanor had shifted immediately. It would be hard for any man to remain upset with such a lovely woman in his presence.

  She approached the same chair she’d used in their initial meeting, and he stayed sitting in shirt sleeves, his gold cufflinks glimmering from the diamond inserts. “Hello, Gregor, I hope everything is all right?”

  “Oh, it is nothing, my dear. Do not concern yourself. I must be emphatic with some of the people on my payroll.”

  She was just getting to know the man, but she knew enough about his reputation to be concerned. “Well, I hope you will never need to be emphatic with me.”

  “Do not worry; you are not an idiot like some people. Now, tell me about your progress.”

  She pulled her notepad from her portfolio and only had a few cryptic notes. “You know Gregor, there is no fast way to reconstruct the past. There are almost no reliable records from the revolutionary period, so we must reconstruct the truth from many different pieces of data. There is no concise information for our purpose.”

  “You said ‘we’?”

  “I am sorry, I was thinking generically about the people locating archived information at the libraries and museums. They do not know my final objective.” She did not want to divulge her relationship with Evan, even though it didn’t cross the lines of propriety in her contract with Gregor.

  He commented, “I notice you have a beautiful way of speaking. Where are you from?”

  She blushed, “My family is originally from Estonia.”

  He smiled, “Very pleasing, now, please continue.”

  “I am now focusing on Anna Timiryova. She was Kolchak’s mistress when he died, and she may have known his secrets.”

  “Have you given up on the train?”

  “No. But I want to focus on one thing at a time, partly as an elimination process. There are large amounts of information about Anna, but it is all secondary information, not from her or the Admiral directly. I want to find it.”

  Gregor knew this would be an exhaustive process and was prepared to be patient. The payoff would be huge.

  At the museum, Evan had moved away from the microfiche machine. There was nothing in their archives about Sonya after she left in 1919. At least there was nothing reliable. He was using Google to find whatever published information he could after she moved to Paris. He was coming up with nothing except death records and pictures of the cemetery where Rostislav was buried. Karina was not at the museum today, and he was get
ting a headache.

  Title Search

  Whit Fiske was getting frustrated. He’d done this so many times that the county clerk just let him rummage through the old file cabinets on his own. At least he would bill every fractional hour he spent finding the damn title. He was concerned that she would never pay him; it wouldn’t be the first time a client stiffed him, and he wasn’t the only lawyer who ended up doing work for nothing. She was going to pay him if she got enough money from the farm sale. Good luck! He’d be last on the list, and the place was decrepit. But, his immediate problem was finding a record of the damn title. From what Kiki told him, the family moved to the farm around the time she was two, around the mid ’70s. He was at the Jackson County Registry of Deeds, and it wasn’t there. There wasn’t anything for the property. He’d searched for titles back fifty years on routine closings and never had any problem. Michigan didn’t require searches over fifty years because the records were unreliable; they could use a Quitclaim Deed if the title was that old.

  The problem in this case was that the owner was dead and the estate would need to be probated, so a court could determine the owner. That might not be easy. The old man had been married and his client didn’t know if there had ever been a final divorce.

  He decided to call his client. She answered and he asked, “Hello, Ms. Joyce, this is Whit Fiske. I’m at the registry and can’t find any record of your father owning the farm. I can’t find any records of anyone owning the farm.”

  “Well, Mr. Fiske,