Full House

by David Housewright

  “The Sultan of Seduction” (aka “How To Trick A Woman Into Having Sex”) Copyright ©1999 by David Housewright. First published in True Romance Magazine, April 1999.

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  Author’s Note: Calling themselves the Minnesota Crime Wave, some friends of mine named William Kent Krueger, Ellen Hart, Deborah Woodworth and Carl Brookins, decided to publish an anthology of mysteries, all of them written by Minnesota authors. They asked that I contribute a piece and I said, “Sure.” But there were two strings attached. String one—the story had to incorporate at least four of eight clues provided by the editors: a headless Barbie doll, a page torn from a dictionary, footprints in snow, the sound of a train whistle, a temporary tattoo, the scent Obsession, a wig, a soiled ballet slipper. String two—the story had to take place in Fertile, Minnesota, about ten miles from the village of Climax. Apparently, the Wave was impressed by a newspaper headline that they teach to JO students here, an example of what not to do: Fertile woman killed in Climax. So I drove to Fertile, a mere two hundred ninety mile jaunt from my house, spent the day doing research, then came home. I mentioned the trip to the Wave and told them I didn’t think they could get that many good stories from a town with a population of eight hundred fifty. “Oh, yeah,” Krueger told me. “We decided not to do that. Didn’t we tell you?” No, no you didn’t. But at least I got a decent story for my trouble. The St. Paul Pioneer Press wrote: Housewright’s ‘A Domestic Matter,’ about a guy who helps friends, has such a perfect O. Henry ending you want to reread it to figure out how he did it.”

  A Domestic Matter

  I answered the phone at my desk in the city room of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

  “I’m in trouble,” Jack said. He didn’t bother to say “hello” or to identify himself, but then it wasn’t necessary. We grew up together, went to school together, played on the same hockey teams since we were pee wees—it might have been a month since I spoke to him last, yet he could’ve just stepped outside for a smoke for all the difference it made.

  “What now?” I said.

  “My wife wants to kill me.”

  “Tell her if she needs any help to give me a call.”

  “I mean it, Danny…” He was one of the few people who still called me that. To everyone else I was Dan or Daniel or Thorn or to the occasional bartender, Mr. Thorn. “She wants me dead.”

  “Why should she be any different than the rest of us?”

  “Dammit, Danny, I’m not kidding. Do I sound like I’m kidding? Tess is going to kill me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she found out I’ve been cheating on her.”

  “Oops.”

  “She found out and now she’s, she’s—you can tell just by looking at her that she wants to rip my heart out.”

  “Jeezuz, Jack. You’ve been married for fifteen years. How did you think she’d feel?”

  “You know the way she’s been. When you came up for the holidays, Tess could barely stand to be in the same room with either of us, always finding an excuse to be somewhere else.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Well, nothing’s changed. We don’t talk, we don’t have sex—the love is gone, Danny.”

  “And you decided to cheat on her.”

  “I didn’t decide to cheat. It’s just—I met this girl. This woman. I was jogging and she was jogging and how many people do you know up here in Fertile, Minnesota, who go jogging? Especially in the winter.”

  “You’re the last of a dying breed.”

  “We don’t even have sex that often. Mostly we just talk. We talk about everything. We talk about the things that Tess and I used to talk about.”

  “I’m sure that’s a lot of comfort to your wife.”

  “She wants to kill me.”

  “Hell, Jack. I want to kill you.”

  “Danny, you’re not listening. Tess took out a half million dollar insurance policy on my life without telling me. She gets another hundred fifty thousand if I’m murdered.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Hell, yes, I’m serious. What do you think I’ve been trying to tell you?”

  I pulled out a tan-covered Reporter’s Notebook. This wasn’t a story I intended to write, but I had learned long ago—take lots of notes.

  “Tell me everything, Jack. From the beginning.”

  Three days and a lot of frantic long distance calls later, I was in Fertile, Minnesota, population eight hundred eighty-seven, home of the Fertile-Beltrami Falcons. You can find it about two hundred seventy-five miles northwest of the Twin Cities on Highway 32, which came as a surprise to me. Until a couple of years ago, I didn’t know you could take Highway 32 to the ends of the Earth. I learned different when I helped Jack and Tess move. She was a hospital administrator and Bridges Medical, a forty-nine bed facility just down the road in Ada, needed someone to run the place. He was a day-trader and figured he could earn a living anywhere he could plug in his PC.

  It was late March. Light snow had just begun to fall when I pulled off the main drag and parked in front of Eats ’N’ Antiques on Mill Street. I told the woman who ran the place that instead of the curios she displayed in her glass counters, I had come for a cup of joe and a slice of blueberry pie which my good friend Jack Edelson said was the very best in Minnesota.

  The woman actually blushed, something you don’t often see these days, and said, “That Mr. Edelson.”

  She served my coffee at a window table, but I told her I’d hold off on the pie until Jack arrived. The woman glanced at the electric clock on the wall. It was quarter-to-ten, about the time Jack usually came in for his daily fix. Fifteen minutes later she refilled my coffee mug and said, “I don’t know where that boy could be.” At ten fifteen she served me a slice of pie that made me question Jack’s taste and a third cup of coffee. By ten thirty the woman was pacing. You might have thought she was Jack’s worried mother. I was starting to become anxious myself.

  At ten forty I said, “I bet Jack is at home waiting for me. Maybe he thought we’d meet there and then go out for pie.”

  The woman looked at me like I had just tracked mud into her kitchen.

  “Don’t you think you should find out?” she told me.

  Snow continued to fall but it was nearly thirty-five degrees and the flakes melted on contact with my windshield while I drove west on Summit Avenue. I had my wipers going but they couldn’t do anything about the hard gray sky or the dark, dreary woods. Jack and Tess had a place overlooking the Sand Hill River. To reach it I had to turn off the blacktop and follow a sand and gravel driveway that meandered nearly a quarter mile through the forest—Tess would rather go around a tree than cut it down. At the end of the driveway I found all the bright lights I could want: red, blue and white. They flickered silently from the bars on top of the Polk County Sheriff Department cruisers that blocked my way. I counted them: one, two, three. I had been a reporter long enough to know that three cop cars meant serious trouble.

  I parked my car and dashed the rest of the way to the house, slipping and sliding in the melting snow, but not falling. The garage door was open and Jack’s SUV and Tess’ Audi were parked inside—Jack’s golf clubs were leaning against the wall. I could have reached the back door through the garage, but went to the front instead. I pounded on the door. A deputy opened it like it was a great inconvenience to him.

  “Who are you?” he wanted to know. His nametag read B. Hermundson.

  “Danny?” Tess was sitting on a sofa beyond him next to a female deputy. “Danny,” she called again.

  I brushed past the deputy as Tess left the sofa and rushed straight into my arms. “Oh. Danny,” she moaned, her face pressed hard against my chest. I embraced her even as a deputy with chevrons on his sleeve shook his head - a message to Deputy Hermundson at the door I guessed.

  “Tess, what’s happened?” I said. “Where’s Jack?”

  “I don’t know. Last night… He… Danny, Jack has disappeared.”

 
She felt my body tense, felt my arms release her shoulders. Her eyes found mine.

  “Danny?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Jack has disappeared.’”

  “He wasn’t here when I came home last night. I haven’t seen him since I went to work Monday morning.”

  I stepped away from her, moving backward until I bumped into the deputy.

  “Tess, what did you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sir.” The sergeant slid past Tess. “Sir, could you identify yourself.”

  “Daniel Thorn. I’m a reporter with the Minneapolis Star Tribune.”

  “Why are you here, sir?”

  “Jack Edelson is my friend. My best friend. He asked me to meet him at ten this morning at the Eats ’N’ Antiques. I came here when he didn’t show.”

  “Why did he want to meet you?”

  “He was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “He said his wife was plotting to kill him.”

  “What?” Tess moved between the sergeant and myself. “What did you say?”

  “Jack said you were plotting to kill him because you discovered he was having an affair. He said you took out a half million dollar life insurance policy on him.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for a woman to hit a man as hard as Tess hit me. She caught me just to the left of the point of my chin and snapped my head back so violently I thought my neck was broken. I left my feet and flew against the door—I would have fallen if the Deputy Hermundson hadn’t braced me by the shoulders.

  The sergeant didn’t seem to mind. He gently guided Tess by the elbow back to the sofa.

  “Is it true, Mrs. Edelson, what your friend says?” the sergeant asked.

  “He’s not my friend. And of course it’s not true. I would never hurt my husband. Never. You have to…”

  The sergeant squatted next to Tess and patted her knee. “It’s okay,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder at me.

  “I only know what Jack told me,” I said.

  “Mrs. Edelson, is your husband having an affair?” The sergeant asked the question with as much sympathy as he could muster, but it sounded like a slap in the face just the same.

  “Absolutely not. How dare you?” Tess glared at me. “Jack loves me.”

  “Mrs. Edelson…”

  “He does.”

  “Mrs. Edelson, I need you to do something for me. A favor. I need you to go upstairs and go through your husband’s belongings. His razor. His toothbrush. Clothes he might wear. A suitcase he might pack. I need to know…”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “When you called, you said your husband might have been kidnapped. That’s why we dispatched three units. I need to be sure that he didn’t leave of his own free will before we investigate further.”

  Tess glared at me some more. She leaped so quickly to her feet that the sergeant fell backwards. “Fine,” she said and rushed upstairs. The sergeant and I followed.

  Tess went first to the bathroom where she opened and slammed a cabinet door and threw a toothbrush cup that shattered in her bathtub. She went to a bureau in her bedroom, opened one drawer, then the next, then the next; starting at the bottom and working upward like a burglar. Finally, she yanked open a closet door, rifled the jackets and slacks and dress shirts hanging inside and kicked something on the floor.

  “It’s true,” she said. She closed the closet door and rested her forehead against it. “Oh, God, it’s true. My husband left me.”

  Tess slowly sank into a puddle on the floor, her voice singing an aria of anguish and pain that the sergeant couldn’t silence with all the “there, theres” in the world.

  All in all, I thought it was a fine job of acting.

  It took a while before Tess was calm enough to answer questions. She was again sitting on her sofa surrounded by the deputies. The female deputy—her nametag read C. Moore—kept repeating “It’ll be all right,” but I don’t think she believed it.

  “Who was Jack having an affair with?” I asked. I already knew the answer, but I wanted her to say it.

  “Leave me alone, Danny, can’t you?”

  “No, I can’t. Who was he having an affair with?”

  “That’s enough, buddy,” said the sergeant.

  “You’re thinking Jack ran off with his girl,” I told the sergeant. “You think this is just a domestic matter and the police shouldn’t be involved. If that’s true, then why is Jack’s SUV parked inside the garage?”

  From the expression on his face, the sergeant thought that was a good question.

  “Mrs. Edelson, I need to know,” he said. “Who was Mr. Edelson involved with?”

  Tess stared at him for a long time while her face registered the five steps of the grieving process from denial to acceptance. Finally, she exhaled slowly and said, “Jodi Bakken.”

  Tess spoke the name so softly I could barely hear it. But the sergeant heard just fine. He stood straight and crossed his arms over his chest, a classic defensive posture.

  “Who?” asked the sergeant.

  “Jodi Bakken, all right?” Tess answered, choking out the words. I had the distinct impression that she would have been a lot happier if Jack had been kidnapped.

  “Are you sure?” he wanted to know.

  Tess nodded.

  “Do you know her?” I asked the sergeant.

  “She’s married to one of our deputies.”

  I followed the sergeant outside; told him I wanted to be there when he interviewed Jodi Bakken. He didn’t like the idea and I had to give him the old indignant reporter routine—“what do you have to hide?” A Twin Cities cop probably would have blown me off. But the sergeant didn’t have much experience with the press and I convinced him that terrible things would happen if he left me out of the loop. Finally, he agreed, only he told me I had to take my own car. “I ain’t running no taxi service for muckrakers,” he said. Before we left I made him tell me about Deputy Bakken.

  “Professionally, he’s very good at his job,” the sergeant said. “He’s one of the few deputies we have who’s willing to do knock and talks.”

  “Knock and talks?”

  “About seventy-five percent of Minnesota’s meth labs are outstate. People cook their crank out here because it’s easier to get farm fertilizer and other ingredients, because distant neighbors are less likely to smell the odor and because there are plenty of places to dump the waste—a pound of crank yields about seven-eight pounds of hazardous waste. The problem is so big and there are so few of us—a dozen patrol officers and one investigator—that whenever we hear about a lab, we’ll do a knock and talk. We’ll show up at the suspect’s door and warn them to shut down, leave or prepare to be arrested. And it usually works. These people are so paranoid it’s easy to drive them out.”

  “Deputy Bakken is good at these knocks and talks?” I asked.

  “He’s fearless. See, these people, these meth users, they’re unpredictable and completely dangerous. Yeah, you can drive a lot of them out with a stern lecture. But the rest—their aggression is far above and beyond any other drug users. There are more guns, more explosives, more violence. Most of us don’t want to deal with them. But Deputy Bakken, he just goes up there and does his thing. Mostly he goes alone.”

  “Alone?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. Maybe Bakken says and does things that maybe he shouldn’t. But because of him we have control of our meth problem. There are still dealers our here, still labs, I’m sure of it. But you don’t see it like you do in other counties.”

  “You said professionally Bakken’s good at his job,” I reminded the sergeant. “What about personally?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Sure.”

  “Personally, he’s an asshole.”

  Deputy Bakken lived in a double-wide trailer in a large clearing deep in the woods on the other side of two railroad tracks. It was a nice looking trailer, well kept up, with a wooden deck leading to
the front door. But there was an unsightly pit of dirt and ash and melted snow about a dozen steps in front of the wooden steps where someone, probably Bakken, recently had a large fire. The sergeant parked in the driveway and I parked directly behind him. An old, single-car garage stood at the top of the driveway with a window in the door. In front of the garage was another Polk County Sheriff Department cruiser. The country supplied a cruiser to its deputies and encouraged them to use it. “Everyone’s on call twenty-four-seven,” the sergeant said.

  I went to the garage and peeked through the window. Inside was an old Buick Regal. I told the sergeant and he said, “Jodi’s.” We followed the shoveled path from the driveway to the wooden deck. Deputy Bakken answered our knock almost immediately.

  “Sarge, what are you doing here?” Bakken asked. He gave me a hard look, but didn’t ask for an introduction.

  “Truth is, Deputy, we came to speak with Jodi. Is she in?”

  The sergeant moved to step through the doorway, but Bakken blocked his path.

  “Jodi? What do you need to talk to her for? Have people been sayin’ somethin’? Has she been sayin’ somethin’? I got a right to know.”

  Bakken spoke quickly and used his hands to punctuate every other word. I thought he was acting as paranoid as the crank heads he dealt with. The sergeant didn’t seem to notice.

  “It’s about Jack Edelson,” the sergeant said.

  “The stock guy? What about him?”

  “You know him?” I asked.

  “I’ve seen him around.”

  “He’s gone missing,” the sergeant said.

  “What’s that got to do with Jodi?”

  “We’re hoping Jodi might be able to help us.”

  “Why would Jodi be able to help you with that? What’s going on here? What’s this about?”

  “Where is your wife, Deputy Bakken?” I asked.

  “Who are you?”

  “Is she here?”