Ms America and the Whoopsie in Winona

by Diana Dempsey

  I’m thinking that what she’s really terrified of is missing her appointment with Anita the lawyer to talk about life insurance benefits. Playing Weak Woman is just a way of getting what she wants. But I restrain myself from voicing that suspicion. Instead I race outside, exchange quick goodbyes with Hubble, and rev up the rental.

  The hospital is not in Winona so my mother and I have a drive ahead of us. Fortunately the sky is blue and the roads are clear of snow and ice. I have the presence of mind to give Detective Dembek a quick call to ask if she might put a squad car outside Damsgard so “Priscilla” doesn’t use this opportunity of the house being empty to try to steal her favorite painting.

  “Your father was only in the hospital once in all these years,” my mom tells me about ten minutes in. “That time he took a bullet.”

  It was more of a grazing wound but now is not the time to quibble. “I remember. He’s strong as an ox, mom. He’ll be fine.” Maybe if I say it, and think it, it will be so.

  My mother was in a perpetual state of worry during Pop’s decades as a cop. Now as an adult, I don’t understand how the spouses of law-enforcement personnel handle the daily danger to their loved ones. Props to them.

  We’re close to the hospital before something else occurs to me. “So were you the first person the hospital called, Mom?”

  “I’m number one on your father’s speed dial.”

  She’s too upset even to gloat. But I find that a memorable tidbit.

  My father is asleep when we get to his hospital room. He’s bundled up in blankets and looks just fine but even so it’s an unpleasant jolt to see him in that bed, a monitor at his side beeping with all his vital stats. My mother tucks the blankets in tighter, smoothes the hair back from his forehead, listens to his breathing, and then settles in at his bedside. Nothing will pry her away from there, I know.

  I pull a young Asian female doctor into Pop’s room to give us the 411. It turns out that a fellow fisherman saw Pop fall through the ice, helped pull him out, and got him here. Pop was smart enough to dress in layers and wear a personal flotation device but he shouldn’t have been fishing alone.

  My heart thumps a few times. “So he was lucky.”

  The doctor nods. “He certainly was. The other fisherman says your father got most of the way out on his own but he did need some help. And as you may know, people can succumb to hypothermia in just a few minutes.”

  “The second he recovers from this, I’m going to kill him,” my mother says.

  Now that we’ve been assured that my father will be okay, my mother is returning to normalcy. I take a place by his bedside, too, and we watch him snooze. Usually that would not be my activity of choice but right now there is nothing I would rather do.

  “He snores pretty darn loud,” I remark.

  “Always has,” my mother replies.

  And he twitches. And he mumbles. After one particularly noisy bout a smile spreads across my mother’s face. “You hear that?”

  “Hear what?” I say.

  “Hazel,” my father mumbles.

  There can be no doubt what he said that time. My mother arches her brows at me. “You notice what name he didn’t call in his sleep?”

  I certainly did. I hope Maggie is having a successful meeting with Anita the lawyer because at the moment she’s not doing too well on the Lou Przybyszewski front.

  A while later the nurse bustles in to check on him. Her prodding wakes him up.

  My mother reaches around the nurse to poke him in the side. “You nearly got yourself killed out there with that ice fishing! Now look at you.”

  His expression turns sheepish. “I’m sorry to be so much trouble, dragging you both out here.”

  “I bet you didn’t catch anything, neither,” my mother goes on.

  “How could I?” he cries. “I fell in the lake!”

  “Well, we’re really relieved you’re safe now, Pop.” But I can’t resist one dig. “I can’t believe you went out there alone! You know you’re not supposed to do that.”

  “I had my auger with me! I checked the ice!” He looks away. Then, “Truth is I did something else wrong, too.” He turns to my mom. “I ate four slices of your fruitcake before I left the house. I’m not sure I was thinking straight.”

  “Oh my God!” my mother hollers. “You were soused from my fruitcake! It’s me who put you in that hospital bed!”

  Pop grabs her hand. “Don’t blame yourself, Hazel. I knew I shouldn’t have been eating so much but I just can’t resist it.”

  “The second I get back,” my mother says, “I’m going to throw the rest of it out.”

  “Don’t do anything hasty,” I say. “We’ll just put everybody on a one-slice limit.”

  My father straightens to look around the hospital room. “Hey, where’s Maggie?” Then he falls back against the pillows. “Oh, I get it. She’s not here.”

  This is awkward. I clear my throat. “She said you would understand.”

  “She’s scared of hospitals,” he says. “Ever since her father died in one.”

  My mother harrumphs softly, as if to say: That’s no excuse. I have to say I agree with her.

  “I know she has that meeting with the lawyer today, too.” Pop sighs. “Hope she gets what she wants out of it.”

  “Well,” my mother says, “whether she does or not, we’re here.”

  Pop reaches for her hand. “Yes, you are. I’m real glad of it, too.”

  We’re having a family hug when my cell phone rings. It’s Shanelle. “We found out something pretty weird from the body shop here in Minneapolis,” she tells me.

  I excuse myself and make for the hospital corridor, leaving my parents in amiable conversation and trying to force my mind back into investigative mode.

  Shanelle goes on. “The car Ingrid had work done on wasn’t her Mercedes. It was a rental.”

  “What? She took a rental car to a body shop?”

  “The guy I talked to said Ingrid told him she was too embarrassed to tell her husband that she crashed the rental. So she brought it in here to get it repaired before she returned it.”

  I watch an elderly male patient push his walker slowly down the corridor. “But didn’t this happen in the summer? She didn’t have a husband then. Erik was long dead.”

  “I don’t know how to explain that.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to admit that she didn’t want her insurance company to find out that she crashed a car.”

  “She did tell the guy here that she didn’t want to involve her insurance company. By the way, he said she crashed the car but good. He’d hate to see what she ran into.”

  We fall silent. I know for my part I’m remembering the fender benders in my past.

  Then Shanelle pipes up again. “I’ll say this. If I ran into something with my rental car and I wanted to keep the whole sorry episode a secret from Lamar and the rental-car company and my insurance, I would take the vehicle to a body shop. And not the one we usually use, because I know the minute I walked out of there that mechanic would get on the horn to my husband.”

  “In my case my husband is my mechanic. And in those circumstances I could see myself doing exactly what you would do. I don’t know why I’d bother, though, because I’d end up confessing anyway. At least to Jason.”

  “I would, too.” Shanelle sighs. “But why would Ingrid Svendsen, a rich widow who lives alone and doesn’t have to hide anything from anybody—”

  “Well, except for the prison cell on her third floor and hiring a private investigator to dig up dirt about Galena Lang and worshipping the heathen goddess Freyja—”

  “Except for all that stuff. Does it really make sense that she’d go to the trouble of taking a rental car to a body shop in Minneapolis or anyplace else just to hide the fact that she had an accident?”

  “Even if it cost a lot to fix and her insurance went up, I find it hard to believe she’d care.” And I am certain Ingrid would have no fear of standing up to even the most
formidable rental-car clerk.

  “There’s another bizarre thing,” Shanelle says. “She paid in cash. And the bill was a few thousand bucks.”

  Elderly Walker Man finally makes it to the end of the corridor. He painstakingly turns around to do it all again. “Who pays that big a bill in cash?” I ask.

  “You know how she explained it? She told the exact same lie about having a husband. She told the guy here that if she paid by credit card, her husband might see the charge on the statement and she couldn’t risk that.”

  We fall silent. Then, “I don’t understand how,” I say, “but this seems like a big deal to me.”

  “I agree,” Shanelle says. “Ingrid was obviously trying to hide something.”

  I watch Walker Man make his slow but steady progress. He’s kind of like me, methodically advancing step by step. “Now I need to find out what she was trying to hide,” I tell Shanelle. “And from whom.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “So Pop landed himself in the hospital,” I tell Shanelle by way of introducing a new topic of conversation.

  I give her the lowdown on his ice-fishing accident and of course she wants to drive back immediately to join Mom and me at the hospital.

  “No, no,” I say, “you and Trixie have a nice lunch in the city.” I don’t need to look at my watch to know it’s lunchtime. My stomach is telling me. “I may drive back to Winona soon myself. Pop is out of danger and I know my mom will stay with him so he won’t be alone.” And I’m fretting about my investigation.

  We arrange that Shanelle and Trixie will swing by the hospital on their return trip both to visit Pop and to ferry my mother back to Damsgard. I’m getting the idea the docs will want to keep Pop overnight just to be on the safe side.

  An hour later, after my mom and I watch Pop make a manful attempt to eat the hospital food that is put in front of him and we strap on our own feeding bags at the cafeteria, I am once again on the road. No sooner have I pointed the car toward Winona than my cell rings with a call from Jason. I share the major news of the day.

  “I’m going to read your father the riot act about going out on the ice by himself,” Jason says. “Isn’t it too early for ice fishing, anyway? I thought the season was more like in February.”

  “I guess it’s not too early because there was another fisherman out there. Thank God for that. I hope somebody got his contact information. I want to thank him.”

  “There must be something in the air today. Kimberly was telling me there was an accident at her climbing gym.”

  “Who’s Kimberly?”

  “I told you about her, remember? She was the photographer for the calendar.”

  That’s right. He did mention her before.

  “Anyway,” Jason goes on, “some woman apparently forgot to clip herself into the safety harness and just let go about fifteen feet up as if she thought she was clipped in. I guess she’ll be okay. Kimberly says she was an experienced climber, too.”

  “So did Kimberly call you?”

  “I called her to let her know I’d be back in Charlotte later this week. I hope you’re back by then. Zach needs me to do a few things and actually Kimberly wants to take some new shots. Maybe we can do that this week.” He chuckles. “She’s thinking she could sell a calendar with shots of just me. Can you believe that?”

  I’m dubious but I keep that to myself. “So does this Kimberly woman live in Charlotte?”

  “She lives in New York but lately she’s been spending a lot of time in Charlotte. Her sister’s going through some stuff so she’s helping out.”

  “You think if she lived in New York, she’d be in New York.”

  “Well, you live in Cleveland but how often are you here lately?”

  I guess I don’t have a leg to stand on.

  “I know it’s crazy to ask,” Jason goes on, “but Mario’s not in Minnesota, is he?”

  Shoot. I hoped this would never come up. Now that it has, I could lie. But I won’t. “Actually, he is here.”

  Silence. Then, “You are kidding me.”

  “There’s a huge amount of paranormal activity here in Winona—”

  “Happy, do not try to tell me that’s why Mario’s there. I can’t believe this.” He pauses, then, “Everybody in the world would understand if I flew out there and punched that guy in the nose.”

  “I know.”

  “I am really glad you’re moving to Charlotte with me, Happy, really glad. But I am telling you we are going to have to do a few things differently from now on.”

  “I know what you’re saying.”

  “Geez, I was thinking you might be jealous of Kimberly. But the only one who should be jealous is me.”

  “Don’t be jealous of Mario, Jason.” Heck, Mario is jealous of Jason. But this is not the time to point that out. I honk at the driver ahead of me who hasn’t noticed the red light turned green ten seconds ago. “Should I be jealous of Kimberly?”

  “Well, she did tell me I’m the hottest guy she’s ever photographed.”

  “What about the other guys in the calendar? Aren’t they hot?” I bet some of them are hot and single.

  “Well, I made the cover.”

  Kimberly may be an excellent photographer but I don’t think I like her much. I decide that just this second.

  Jason speaks up again, and this time there’s that husky note in his voice that I love so much. “Sweetie, I’m glad we’ve got this whole moving thing sorted out because I did not want to move down to Charlotte without you.”

  “Even though you’ve got Kimberly to keep you company?”

  He chuckles softly. It sounds sort of like it does when we’re cuddling. You know. After. “Kimberly doesn’t keep me company the way you do.”

  “She better not.”

  “Maybe you two could have a catfight. You might be able to take her. But she’s pretty buff. I don’t know. Either way I’d like to watch.”

  Now I’m chuckling, too. And relieved that Jason sounds like his usual easygoing self. “You are a very naughty boy,” I tell him.

  “I’ll prove just how naughty when you get home.”

  Ironically, that kind of kills the mood. Because as impatient as I am to see Jason, and Rachel, I don’t want to leave Winona until I solve Ingrid’s murder. I hope I have my priorities straight. Sometimes I wonder.

  We end the call with Jason assuring me that as soon as she gets out of school, he’ll tell Rachel about her grandpa being in the hospital. I am unnerved as I drive the rest of the way back to Winona. I find it startling that Jason has forged enough of a friendship with this Kimberly woman that he’s calling her to alert her to his whereabouts. And what’s this about her spending more time in Charlotte lately? Is it really because she’s going all out to support her sister? Or could there be another draw? Like a six-foot-two-inch hunky pit-crew guy? Who, if she hasn’t noticed, is wearing a gold band on the ring finger of his left hand?

  Then again, Mario tries to slide right past the diamond ornamentation I’ve been sporting on my left ring finger for the past seventeen years. And sometimes I’m pretty darn close to letting him.

  Thanks to Winona’s finest, the Erskine still hangs above the mantel in the library when I get back to Damsgard. I brew fresh coffee, allow myself only a nibble of my mother’s killer fruitcake, and try Detective Dembek one more time. I called her unsuccessfully from the car to share what Shanelle and Trixie learned at the auto-body shop and also Hubble’s speculation about Galena Lang. I didn’t leave a detailed voicemail then but I do now. Then I boot up my laptop so I can input my new information about Ingrid and stare at my suspects spreadsheet. I know from experience that if I gaze at it long enough, eventually a synapse or two fires. In this case I don’t have to gawk for long at those columns crammed with bits and pieces of information. I realize that even now, six days after Ingrid was murdered, this beauty queen has left a few investigative stones unturned.

  So even though it’s already pitch dark out and hence my pl
an scares the bejesus out of me, I force myself up one staircase after another until I reach the third floor. With selfish disregard for Damsgard’s electric bill, I switch on every light I pass.

  I don’t care that it’s drenched in fluorescents: the room that holds the prison cell gives me a serious case of the creeps. Let’s assume that Peter Svendsen was speaking the truth and this cell did not exist while he was growing up at Damsgard. Did it go in during Erik’s marriage to Ingrid? Was it a kinky sexual thing between them? Or did Ingrid have it constructed after Erik was dead for some freakish reason of her own?

  In one way this room is a lot like the secret room. There’s not much in it so it doesn’t make for a good place to hide things. As usual, I’m not looking for anything in particular. I’m simply looking. I ignore my squeamishness and enter the cell itself, examining it inch by excruciating inch. I find nothing of interest. The only thing that’s notable about this prison cell is that it exists at all.

  I move on to the room next door. It has no furnishings. Dusty cardboard boxes collapsing from age are stacked in one corner, on a dry and uneven hardwood floor. The walls, now chipped and faded, are painted a sort of Shamrock green. I can’t even guess when that color was popular.

  With the overhead light on I can’t say I’m frightened, although it is mildly uncomfortable to be alone on this abandoned floor in this century-old house. You have to wonder what’s happened here at Damsgard over all these years. Arguments. Parties. Lovemaking. Births. Betrayals. Secrets. Deaths.

  I shake off my morbid mood and lift down the top box from the stack. Fortunately I’m not scared of spiderwebs, because if I were I’d be paralyzed. I don’t hesitate to blow the dust off the box and open it up. One thing I’ve learned about solving murders: you can’t be afraid to pry into people’s private business. Either you make their business your business or you’re done.

  It soon becomes clear that this is a box of mementoes from Erik Svendsen’s undergraduate career at the University of Minnesota, class of 1953. He majored in econ, I see, and played football. I can tell from his transcripts that he performed well academically but the Gophers were only middling, at least his senior year: five wins, three losses, and two ties. In another box I find old clothes of Erik’s, perhaps items Ingrid couldn’t bring herself to donate or throw away.