by Glenn Ickler
“Exactly. I really think he’s our man. Go hang out within sight of the lobby and see where he goes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Wait here and talk to the sheriff when he comes out. You come back when you’ve got a bead on our suspect’s cabin.”
Al went to hang out near the lobby and I plopped into a chair. Ten minutes later, Al was back. “Our suspect must be close,” I said.
“Very close,” Al said. “He went into the dining room for lunch.”
I groaned. “Then we need to do the same. We’ll get something we can eat fast so we’re ready to follow him when he finishes.”
“Okay, one fast lunch coming up.”
“I hope it doesn’t come up,” I said.
“Yuck. Your humor is strictly from hunger,” Al said.
In the dining room we spotted our man at a table near the exit. He had joined a group of men who were halfway through their meals. I didn’t recognize any of them and I had no idea which state office they were from.
We decided to have ham-and-cheese sandwiches, and I was chewing my first bite when my cell phone rang. The ID said it was Martha Todd. I swallowed my food and answered.
“Well, aren’t you the Twin Cities’ biggest TV star?” Martha said. “That’s quite a live interview you had with Trish Valentine.”
“Oh, god, is that playing already?”
“It’s playing on every Channel Four news break. You’ve been on the tube more than Katie Couric this morning.”
“Don O’Rourke will kill me,” I said. “I can’t believe he hasn’t called me.”
“Maybe he’s not speaking to you,” she said.
“That isn’t funny. Don’s opinion of TV news is even lower than mine. And for me to be talking to Trish . . .”
“Then you’ll probably hear from him later.”
“Are my stories about the autopsy results and the missing woman playing on our online edition?”
“They’re right up on top of the ‘most read’ list. Maybe that’s why Don is sparing you.”
“I’ll try to keep him in a sparing mood with another update on the missing woman before he goes home.”
“And I suppose that update and the new development in Alex Gordon’s case are going to keep you up there on the lake for another day.”
“Unfortunately, you’re right. Don has already told us to stay. Luckily I brought along extra underwear and socks to put on in case I got wet fishing. But I’ll be all out after tomorrow.”
“Then Don will have to let you come home before you stink up the resort. He can’t have you giving the paper a bad reputation in Brainerd.”
“Good thinking. I’ll mention that to him when he calls. What’s new with you?”
“I’m working on getting asylum for Grandma Mendes. They’ve set up a court hearing for Wednesday, after which they could order her shipped off to Cape Verde if I don’t convince them that she deserves a chance at citizenship. Would you believe it’s a five-year process?”
“With our immigration laws I’d believe anything. Do you have any feel for how it will go in court?”
“None. But the only person in our firm who has dealt with an immigration case says the judge was not at all sympathetic.”
Al leaned across the table and whispered, “Our boy is leaving. See you later.” He got up and circled a couple of tables to put himself sufficiently behind the departing fisherman. In the doorway Al almost collided head-on with Val Holmberg, but he rolled around the sheriff like a running back spinning away from a tackler and disappeared. The sheriff made a quick stop, scanned the room and started walking toward me.
“The sheriff is coming to talk to me,” I said into the phone. “I’ll call you later. Love you.” Martha made kissy sounds but the sheriff was too close for me to respond before she went away.
“Where’s your buddy going in such a hellfire hurry?” Holmberg asked. He pulled up a chair from a nearby vacant table and sat down. He was looking at Al’s plate, which contained a half-eaten ham-and-cheese sandwich.
I took a bite of my sandwich while I searched my brain for an answer. “He, uh, had to see a man about a horse,” I said.
“He seems to have that problem a lot,” Holmberg said. “What’s he going to dig up this time when he pees?”
“Nothing, I hope. I mean, I hope that there’s nothing buried in the men’s room.”
“I hope you’re right. Especially no little brunette whore. I came to tell you that I’ll be having a press conference on that investigation at about four o’clock.”
“Was one of the men you just questioned with Roxie last night? The first guy kind of fits Angie’s description.”
“I’ll be talking about that at the four o’clock press conference. I need to check out some alibis and talk to one of the men I questioned this morning again before I can give out any information. While I’m busy doing all that, I’m putting Leo in charge of the search.”
“Does Leo have a last name?” I asked. “I’ll need it for my next story.”
“LeBlanc,” Holmberg said. “With a capital ‘B.’ He’s French-Canadian.”
“Thanks. When Al gets back we’ll go see Leo. How are you conducting the search?”
“We’re knocking on cabin doors and we’ve got a couple of master keys to use when nobody’s inside. We’ve also got people working the beach and the woods and the golf course. Be a bitch to find her in a sand trap.” He rose and walked away, leaving me with a graphic image of a body in a sand trap in my mind—and without an appetite for the remainder of the sandwich in my hand.
My brain was wandering through the day’s events when its journey was interrupted by another visitor. “You sneaky bastard, how did you get a quote from Mari Gordon?” asked Trish Valentine as she slid into the chair vacated by the sheriff. She was smiling at me like we were the best of buddies. She leaned toward me, giving me a generous view of the cleavage exposed by the always open buttons at the top of her blouse.
“My personal charm,” I said. “Women just naturally want to pour out their hearts to me.”
Trish leaned closer. More cleavage appeared as she poured out her heart externally. I observed a tiny brown mole I’d never seen before on her right breast. “Never mind the crap; tell me where she is.” Still smiling.
“She’s in a cabin at Madrigal’s Resort.”
“Which cabin at Madrigal’s Resort?”
“Oh, shucks, I can’t seem to remember the number,” I said “Sorry about that. I hope it’s not early Alzheimer’s coming on.”
She backed away and sat up straight. No more smile. No more cleavage on display. “I don’t suppose you can remember the directions to her cabin, either.”
“You’re absolutely right. My mind is a total blank. But thanks for reading my story.”
“You’re not welcome. And I’ll find Mari one way or another. Who needs you?” She popped up out of the chair like a spring-loaded jack-in-the-box and turned to leave.
“If you run across the missing Roxie Robideaux while you’re searching for Mari Rogers, let the sheriff know, will you?” I said to her retreating back.
She flipped me the bird.
I was staring at the partially eaten sandwich on my plate, trying to decide if I’d done enough to get even with Trish for the impromptu interview, when Al returned.
“Your buddy Trish is really pissed about something,” he said. “I said hi to her outside and she called me a name and flipped me the bird.”
“Welcome to the club,” I said. “Trish is in a bit of snit because I wouldn’t tell her where to find Mari Rogers.”
“She thought you’d give her a break like that after the sneak play she pulled on you this morning?”
“It’s called chutzpah. Goes with being a TV sta
r. She did give me a nice titty show before she gave me the bird.”
“Well, she’ll really be in a snit if the guy I followed turns out to be Roxie’s customer last night. I followed him all the way to his cottage without any other reporters in sight. It’s up the hill near the golf course.”
“Why don’t we go knock on his door?” I said, rising from the chair.
“Going to finish your lunch on the way?” Al said. He picked the remains of his sandwich off the plate.
“I lost my appetite talking to the sheriff.”
“My god, what did he say?”
“Nothing you want to hear if you plan on eating that.”
“Tell me what he said. You know I have a cast iron stomach.”
“You’ll be casting away that sandwich if I tell you, so let’s just cast off for the possible bad guy’s cabin.”
Seventeen
Packing Up
Al led me across the parking lot and up the hill toward the golf course. At the crest, he pointed toward a cabin set in front of a grove of trees. A black Ford SUV was parked in front of it. “Again I quote the famous Mormon,” he said. “This is the place.”
“You seem to be awfully familiar with Brigham Young,” I said. “Did you know him personally?”
“Young was old before my time. But I’ve visited the college of his youth.”
“In other words, you’re just Young at heart.”
“But I’m an old school kind of guy. So now that we’re at our prime suspect’s cabin, how are we going to play this?”
“First I was thinking we’d play it dumb. Say we didn’t know why the sheriff brought him in and wondered about it. But now I think we should go for the throat. Tell him the sheriff told us he’s a prime suspect in Roxie’s disappearance and ask him for a comment for my story.”
“That should get a reaction,” Al said. “I can probably get a picture of him with his mouth open when his jaw drops in surprise.”
“Don will love that,” I said. “And right now I can use anything that makes Don happy.”
“The Trish thing?”
“Right. Well, come on. Let’s go do it.”
We marched to the front door and I knocked. No answer. I knocked harder and yelled, “Anybody home?”
“Who wants to know?” came the reply from inside. A deep voice. The tone of a man with authority.
“St. Paul Daily Dispatch. Mitch Mitchell and Alan Jeffrey,” I said.
“What do you want?” This was not a friendly query.
“We want to ask you a couple of questions. It won’t take long.”
Heavy footsteps approaching, then the door opening about a foot. Behind it, peering through the gap, was our suspect. He was taller and broader of belly than he’d looked beside the sheriff. His face had no outstanding features other than a neatly clipped beard and a downturn at the corners of his mouth. His blond hair was clipped short and his face was pink from exposure to the sun. I guessed his age at a shade past thirty.
Not too bad looking, I thought. The sour mouth is probably temporary.
“What kind of questions?” he asked.
“We need to get your reaction to something Sheriff Holmberg told us,” I said. “Can we come in?”
Behind the man I could see an open suitcase on the bed but I couldn’t see what was in it. I also noticed a small patch of red on the floor underneath the bed. I thought maybe he’d dropped a sock or something. The man backed up and swung the door open all the way. I marched in with Al nearly in lockstep behind me. “Thanks,” I said. “I’m Mitch and this is Al.” I offered my right hand for shaking.
The man grasped my hand briefly but with substantial strength. “Ronald,” he said. “But you already knew that.”
“We did, but I’m glad you confirmed it. The sheriff wasn’t sure exactly how to spell your last name.”
Ronald’s eyebrows went up. “Christ, how many ways are there to spell Jones?”
Oops, my cute little trick was backfiring. I paused a moment to consider how to remove my foot from the verbal mud I’d stuck it into. “Some people spell it with two N’s,” I said. “I knew a man like that. He said the first ‘N’ was silent so his great-grandparents decided to add the second one.” I tried to project a smile of humor and self-effacing innocence. Al turned his back to us, pretending to survey the cabin while hiding his struggle to keep a straight face.
“You’re shittin’ me,” Ronald Jones said. “Jones with two ‘N’s?”
“Swear it on a stack of style books,” I said. I looked past him at the suitcase and saw it was partly full of crumpled clothes ready for the laundry. “Checking out today?” I asked.
“Yeah. Time to get back to doing the taxpayers’ work.”
“What do you do for the taxpayers?”
“The sheriff didn’t tell you?”
“He didn’t give us any details. Just that you work for the state, which describes almost everybody up here this weekend.”
“He’s got that wrong,” Jones said. “I actually work for Ramsey County. For the treasurer. My job involves dealing with the state treasurer. I’m here because he invited me along on this crazy, fucked-up weekend.”
“Lucky you,” I said. “Have you been having fun?”
“Just loads of fun. First I watch a dead body being brought in and then I’m yanked off the lake by the sheriff to answer some stupid questions about a missing whore.”
“That’s what we need your statement about. The sheriff named you as the most likely person to have been with the missing whore last night.”
Ronald’s pink face turned several shades brighter. “That’s a goddamn lie. I gave him a solid alibi.”
“What was the alibi?”
“I was in Brainerd with three other guys last night. We all got drunk in a bar together. We even got stopped by a state cop on the way back to Madrigal’s because the driver was so sloshed that he was weaving all over the center line. The trooper let us go without a ticket because we were from the governor’s weekend. He made us change drivers, which didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference because we were all equally shit-faced. Why’s the sheriff handing out this crap? He said he’d check my story with the other three guys before he made any statements to the press.”
“Maybe they were so drunk they didn’t remember you were along,” I said. “Obviously the sheriff thinks you’re the man who can tell him what happened to Roxie.”
“Well, I can’t. I don’t know nothing about anybody named Roxie. I’m a married man; I don’t go around picking up whores.” He held up his left hand to display a gold wedding band on the appropriate finger.
“If you’re innocent, why are you packing up to go right home just minutes after talking to the sheriff?” Al asked. He’d been quietly shooting pictures while Ronald Jones talked.
“I’m leaving because I’m done here,” Jones said. “I was going to hang around and fish for a couple more days but I’ve had all I can take of this goddamn nuthouse.”
“Okay, let me get this straight. Your statement is that you were drinking in a Brainerd bar with three other men?” I asked.
“You could leave out the part about drinking in a bar. Just say I was in Brainerd with three other men. People don’t need to know what we were doing.”
“People being your wife?”
“Well, uh, yeah, that’s part of it. But I meant nosy people in general that are going to read your story.”
“And you know nothing about a woman named Roxie?”
“Absolutely not.” His voice was getting louder with each response.
“Never were in her cabin?”
“Goddamn it, no!” Jones yelled.
“And she was never in your cabin?”
“No, no, no and double no.” He
was practically screaming now.
“Okay,” I said. “Want some help packing?” I’d been thinking about the red object I’d seen under the bed from my vantage point outside the front door. It wasn’t visible from where we were standing at the moment and I was curious about what it was. Jones didn’t seem like the type of man who would wear red socks.
“I don’t need any help,” Jones said.
“You might be forgetting something you can’t see.” I went to the bed, swept my hand across the floor underneath it and came out holding a red item of clothing.
It was a woman’s thong panty.
“You wear this very often?” I asked.
Eighteen
The Chase
Ronald Jones stared at the thong. I let it dangle full length from my thumb and index finger and jiggled it, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know where that came from,” he said.
“I think I do,” I said. “It looks like something a girl in Roxie’s line of work would wear on a date with a paying customer.”
“I told you, I don’t know nothing about Roxie.”
I turned to Al. “I think the sheriff should see this. Why don’t you go get him? I’ll keep Mr. Jones company while you’re gone.
“Like hell you will,” Jones said. He swung his fist and caught me on the left cheekbone with enough force to send me reeling toward a low wooden coffee table, which I fell across with my rib cage hitting the edge. The table collapsed with all four legs splayed out at the corners. I sprawled across the wreckage on the floor, from where I watched Jones slam Al to one side and dash out the door. Al bounced off the wall and followed Jones through the door. I hauled myself to my feet and got to the doorway in time to see the black Ford’s wheels tearing up the gravel as it took off toward the blacktop road.
Al raised his camera and took a shot. “Got his plate,” he said. “We can give the sheriff his number.”
I felt a stabbing pain in my right side where my body had crashed against the coffee table. “You go get him. I need to sit for a minute.” Bending over and holding my hand against my ribs, I hobbled to a chair and sat down.
