The Chessman

by Jeffrey B. Burton

  “You got a desk or table I can steal for a few hours?”

  “Anything to help.”

  “Excellent,” Cady said. He began to fetch his wallet, and then stopped. “Would you like any dessert?”

  “In my dreams.”

  “What in holy hell did you think you were doing?!”

  Cady had to hold his cell away from his ear. He had answered his phone in the parking lot of the Forest Lake Restaurant while Chief Irwin stopped to talk to a table of Chamber of Commerce suits eating pancakes the size of Frisbees.

  “Doing?”

  “I just got off the horn with Steve Kellervick’s pit bull. I had to grovel, Agent Cady—and you know how I despise groveling. If he follows through on his lawsuit threat, I’ll have your butt in my briefcase.”

  “Steve Kellervick?” Cady squeezed a word in edgewise to the assistant director’s tirade. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  “You demanded that Kellervick come clean because, quote, ‘We know you gutted your wife. A squad is on the way over. Enjoy your new roommates in county lockup,’ unquote.”

  “I have never spoken to Steve Kellervick in my life,” Cady said, shaking his head. “I’m in northern Minnesota, for Christ’s sake.”

  “His attorney said you called him on the phone.”

  “If I brace someone, I do it in person.”

  “Oh, shit!”

  “It’s him.”

  Cady heard voices in the background, but could not make out what was being said.

  “I’m putting you on speakerphone,” the AD said. “Liz is here.”

  “Hi, Drew,” Agent Preston said. “I knew you would never have done anything that stupid.”

  “Thanks for the rousing vote of confidence.” Cady saw Chief Irwin exit the restaurant and head his way. “Was that all the Chessman said to Kellervick? ‘We know you gutted your wife’?”

  “No,” the AD answered. “Kellervick took the call from a male identifying himself as Special Agent Drew Cady. Evidently, the caller grilled Kellervick for ten minutes on what his wife did at Koye & Plagans, who she reported to, worked closely with, what projects she was on. Then faux Cady starts in with the stiff arm, accusing Kellervick of murder.”

  “Sounds like he was fishing. He rattled Kellervick to gauge his reaction.”

  “We’ll trace the phone records,” Preston said.

  “Good idea,” Cady replied. “But I guarantee he used a prepaid throwaway.”

  “At least this takes the heat off us. I’ll call Kellervick’s attorney back. Damn it, Drew, I don’t know why, but he’s dicking with you. Finish up in Minnesota and get back here ASAP.”

  “Nice to know I’m loved.”

  Chapter 21

  “Of course Bret was murdered,” Terri Ingram said. “That’s what I’ve been telling Fife all these years.”

  Cady had called Mrs. Ingram late that afternoon from the Grand Rapids Police Department—Chief Irwin had made good on his word and found Cady a broom closet to work in. He introduced himself and asked if he could stop by her resort in Cohasset that evening and ask her some questions regarding her late husband. She responded in the affirmative. Cohasset was a small blip on Cady’s highway map of Minnesota, a five-minute drive west of Grand Rapids. Grand Rapidians might get away with calling the little town a suburb but more than a few Cohassetians might take umbrage. Mrs. Ingram had sounded pleasant on the phone but as Cady’s line of in-person questioning proceeded, she let her frustrations be known in no uncertain terms.

  “Fife?” Cady asked.

  “Police Chief Leigh Irwin. I call him Fife, like in The Andy Griffith Show, except lacking Barney’s reassuring poise. Chief Irwin’s IQ is lower than whale poop—please let him know I said that.”

  Cady tried not to gawk at Mrs. Ingram. The police chief had been correct on at least one point: Terri Ingram was easy on the eyes. She was short, maybe a hiccup or two over five feet tall, with dirty blond hair done up in an informal schoolgirl bun and white-cream skin that shouted Norwegian ancestry.

  “The police report stated that Mr. Ingram had been filling the outboards with gasoline in order to prepare them for the next week’s guests.”

  “Bret never fueled a boat tank in his life. Tommy Reckseidler from across the lake comes over every Saturday morning and takes care of all that mechanical stuff. Guests don’t check in until noon and mostly they bring their own boats. There are only three or four boats that Tommy needs to rig up in a given week.”

  “But you weren’t here the night of the fire?”

  “I was living in town at that time. We were separated, but I still ran the day-to-day functions here at Sundown Point.”

  “The blood tests placed your husband’s alcohol level at a .2.”

  Terri Ingram shrugged. “What else is new? Bret was an alcoholic. Hardcore. He drank every night of his life. That’s why I lived in town.”

  “Any chance he was intoxicated and just messing around in the barn?”

  “No way is Bret fartskulling with gas tanks in a closed barn at midnight. Bret would begin drinking at lunch, cheap beer and vodka. He’d be passed out no later than nine.”

  Cady scratched his temple, looked into Terri Ingram’s blue eyes, and pushed. “Addictive personalities tend to have dependency issues that crop up in other avenues. You’ve probably heard of ‘huffing’—inhalant abuse of chemical vapors to achieve some kind of euphoric rush. It’s primarily adolescents huffing household products out of a plastic bag, but considering the gas vapors, could Mr. Ingram have—”

  Terri burst out laughing. “No, Agent Cady, Bret had discovered his drug of choice years before I met him. And it had more to do with gulping than huffing.”

  “But he did smoke, right?”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Ingram suddenly seemed weary, as if she’d had this same conversation ad nauseam. “Bret was an alcoholic, not the village idiot. He would have passed out by nine o’clock, ten at the latest. Even in his most inebriated state he wouldn’t be playing with gas and Marlboros. Bret didn’t screw up and set himself aflame. And he didn’t commit suicide, either, if that was the next item on your checklist.”

  Cady noticed a single tear swim down the side of Terri Ingram’s nose. He swiveled in his plastic deck chair to watch two girls go ever higher on the swing set while a younger brother instead opted to smack the side of the miniature schoolhouse with a stick. Then Cady turned forward and squinted at the sun-specked water.

  Sundown Point had a hundred yards of shoreline. A row of eight white cabins with red-shingled roofs were set about twenty feet back from the water with a tic-tac-toe board of wooden docks in front of them. Another row of eight cabins stood about thirty yards farther back, with a winding dirt road between the two rows, and a third row of eight sat a further thirty yards inland. Ingram’s lake house stood apart from the rows of cabins, divided from them by the playground and a shed stuffed with inner tubes and life jackets. Across the way was a rec field with tetherball, horseshoes, and shuffleboard, but between that field and the road stood Sundown Point’s equipment barn. The barn was brand new for all practical purposes, having been rebuilt in the years since the fire that claimed Bret Ingram’s life.

  Cady twisted back to face Terri Ingram. “Do you know of anyone who had a motive to harm your husband?”

  “Of course,” Terri answered. “Me. Bret and I were in the middle of a divorce proceeding. This way I wound up with Sundown Point and a quarter mil in life insurance. The whole kit and caboodle—everything came to me.”

  The two stared at each for several seconds.

  “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. If you cannot afford an attorney….”

  Terri Ingram slowly began to smile which then broke into a full grin. “So the G-Man has a sense of humor after all.”

  “Not really.”

  “Are you that agent from the Twin Cities? The one that phoned a few years back?”r />
  “No.”

  “Good. I got the feeling he’d already been Fifed by the time he called me.”

  “What about your husband’s life insurance policy? Any investigation there?”

  “I screamed from the rooftops at ING, too, trying to get them to check into it. A couple of days later an investigator shows up—more Frank Cannon than Jim Rockford. I think after my phone call, ING was hoping to find a way to pin Bret’s death on me. A couple days of Fifing and he left. I put the insurance money into modernizing most of the cabins.” Ingram shrugged. “If you want to kill someone, Agent Cady, I’d highly recommend doing it in Itasca County. With that imbecile Irwin at the helm, it’s the Bermuda Triangle of homicide.”

  She was a firecracker all right, Cady thought. A firecracker in a jean jacket.

  “ING didn’t try to point the finger at suicide?”

  “Unless you’re a Buddhist monk, suicide by fire is the road less traveled. Bret’s burns were intensive, most of his skin layers destroyed. If he had survived, he’d still be in burn therapy treatment—and that’s only if the skin grafts and plastic surgery took.” Terri shuddered and looked away. “Seeing Bret lying on that table at the hospital that night was the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life. The poor man. Skin all melted away. He didn’t look…human.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I couldn’t wish that on anyone.” Her voice wavered.

  The sun was almost down and Cady gave Terri another moment to compose herself. He turned and looked out across Bass Lake. It was calm at twilight. A couple fishing boats, a canoe, and a kayak were coming in to dock up for the night. Cady caught a quick movement in the sky.

  “Is that an eagle?”

  “Yes.” Terri pointed across the lake. “She keeps a nest in that crop of elms. Do you see the slight V in that tree line?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s right in there. Too bad it’s getting dark otherwise I’d get the binocs out and you could watch her feed her two fledglings.”

  “Interesting,” Cady said. “Are there many bass in Bass Lake?”

  “Some bass, some rock bass, lot of pan fish and walleye. Northerns as long as your arm. Do you fish, Agent Cady?”

  “Please call me Drew.”

  “Do you fish, Drew?”

  “It’s been years. My grandparents lived near Fayetteville in Ohio. In the summer my parents would dump me in their laps. Grandpa Paul and I did our best to empty Lake Lorelei.”

  “Good,” Terri said, adding, “I don’t trust a man who doesn’t fish.”

  “Mr. Ingram go out quite a bit?”

  “Never.” Terri leaned back in her chair. “Bret hated the water.”

  “So why’d a guy from out east who hated the water buy a lake resort in northern Minnesota?”

  “Life’s an odd duck, Drew.”

  “Do you know who helped him with the financing?”

  “At first I thought Bret was loaded, came from money—until I met his family. The resort is mine now. No liens. Bret may have had some financial backers in the early years, but he was the sole owner by the time I came into the picture.”

  “When did you come into the picture?”

  “I met Bret about six years back in a—surprise, surprise—bar in Grand Rapids. I was a year out of college, teaching art to elementary schoolers during the day and bar-hopping at night. All very cringe-inducing in retrospect. I bumped into Bret one Ladies’ Night at Rapids Tavern. We tied the knot three months later.”

  “A whirlwind romance, huh?”

  “When I was young and foolish,” Terri Ingram looked over Bass Lake and spoke more to the past than to Cady, “I was young and foolish. The first year of marriage I was your classic enabler to the point of getting lit with Bret. Second year I got him into detox. Repeatedly. Even forced him into AA and finally marriage counseling. I gave up teaching—not because Bret was paying this lame management company a gold mine to run Sundown Point, to do the basic stuff he should have been doing himself—but because I thought that my being around twenty-four-seven would keep him dry. Silly me. Year three was spent greasing the skids for the divorce. It was in the cards, I guess.”

  “But you did see something in Bret—at first, anyway, not just the drinking?”

  “The only thing that came out of our year in counseling was my discovery that I have a serious rescue compulsion. Bret was inherently a good man, he really was. His heart was in the right place, but he couldn’t get this monkey off his back, couldn’t give up the firewater, and after all the bullshit we’d sludged through, it occurred to me that he wasn’t really trying. That’s when I finally left. Hardest thing I ever did.”

  “Did his family have a history of alcoholism?”

  “Teetotalers stretching back to his great-grandparents.”

  “Did Bret ever talk to you about an incident at a party that occurred back east when he was in college, where a young woman he was with drowned in a lake?”

  Terri Ingram looked as if she’d been stabbed with a hot fork, big eyes and dropped jaw. “He never once mentioned anything like that, Agent Cady. What happened?”

  Cady gave her the Reader’s Digest abridged version of the events that occurred at Dane Schaeffer’s party that long-ago night. Cady stuck to the objective facts, kept any editorial comments to himself, and let Terri’s own synapses click together and fill in any blanks.

  “Bret never let me in on that. Not even in our counseling sessions, when the therapist had us brainstorming any trigger mechanisms that led to Bret’s drinking. Perhaps that was the demon he couldn’t exorcise.”

  The two sat quietly in thought. The sun finally ended its descent over the distant horizon. The kids had left the playground for the night. Moths bounced off the deck light.

  Terri Ingram stood up, arms at her hips. “Why are you here? You’re the second FBI agent to contact me regarding my husband’s death. Aren’t you guys too busy tracking terrorists or something to be poking around a small-town drunkard’s accidental death? Don’t you think it’s about time you leveled with me, Agent Drew Cady, and told me what you’re really doing at my door?”

  Cady could have used a stiff drink himself at this moment—a moment he had known would come sooner or later. “Like you, I don’t believe for one instant that Bret’s death was an accident. Have a seat, Mrs. Ingram. I have some things to say that may be of interest to you.”

  Cady told her about the slayings that had followed her husband’s death and the subsequent investigation. Uncomfortable discussing it, Cady left out his role at Farris’s Woodley Park brownstone, and, after a half-dozen caveats, disclaimers, and other stipulations, Cady let her in on one or two of his less wild assumptions.

  “Wow,” Terri said when Cady had finished.

  “Yes,” Cady replied. “Wow.”

  “So you think that Bret was murdered by Dane Schaeffer as a vengeance killing for what occurred the night Marly Kelch drowned?”

  Cady paused to parse his words delicately, stingily, in regard to the current investigation. “There were enough loose threads to gag a kitten, but it was wrapped up in a neat package that screamed closure. It should have been me who talked to you about this situation three years ago, but by then I was indisposed and, for better or worse, off the case. Recent events have caused us to question quite loudly whether Dane Schaeffer was the Chessman killer or yet another in a line of his victims.”

  “Bret never spoke about his Princeton years and he was already dead when the news about the two Zalentines came out.” A pensive look washed over Terri Ingram’s face. “Bret drank to escape his part in the cover-up of this girl’s death? My God. Everything I’ve worked so hard for these past five years—this entire place—has been built on guilt and blood money.”

  “I didn’t come here to shatter your world, Terri,” Cady said, using her first name for the first time. “None of this is your fault. The wheels were set in motion years before you ever met Bret Ingram.”

&nbs
p; “If what you’ve told me is true, I should give Sundown Point Resort to Marly Kelch’s family.”

  “I doubt her mother would take it. Look, Terri, that’s not where the investigation is leading. You’re not culpable in any of this.”

  “But it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Seems to me your husband paid all outstanding debts with his life.”

  “I appreciate your honesty, Drew. It’s…refreshing. You’ve certainly given me a bit to chew on.”

  Cady nodded.

  “I want the man responsible for Bret’s death to be brought to justice.”

  Cady nodded again. “Would you be willing to let one of our forensic auditors sift through Sundown Point’s ownership records, deeds, title transfers, and sort out who your husband’s financial backers may have been?”

  “In a New York second.”

  “If some front company or subsidiary of a holding group that sugared the deal has ties to the Zalentines, it won’t take our auditor long to find out.”

  “The important stuff is in a safety deposit box. Jim Sweeny is my tax guy. Jim’s done the accounting for Sundown Point since long before Bret’s death.”

  “I’ll set it up, have our guy fly in and meet with you both.”

  “Do you travel a lot on these cases, Drew?”

  “I used to all the time.” Cady didn’t want to muddy things up by getting into his current status at the bureau. “Wherever a case would lead, I’d find myself there.”

  “Does your wife enjoy that?”

  “I’m not married.”

  “You’re wearing a ring.”

  “So are you.”

  “Touché,” Terri said. “Sundown Point is a family place. I don’t want to get hit on by any of the men who pass through here. And I don’t want any wives getting any wrong ideas. I apologize if I brought up a personal issue. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “No need to apologize. I’m the one who’s spent the evening raking you over the hot coals.” Cady said nothing for a second. “We got divorced a year ago. I imagine my being AWOL was a big part of it.”