by Matt Goldman
“If she works in vacuum repair, can I take the day off?”
“Get up, Shap. We got a big day.”
“We can’t joke anymore. What’s happened to us?”
“I’m calling back in fifteen,” said Ellegaard. “You’d better be out of the shower.”
“I’ll keep my phone in the soap dish, just in case.”
I told Ellegaard what happened on the creek. He thought I probably just scared the shit out of a nosy neighbor who took me for a creep in the night, but he said he’d send CSU over to look for footprints and the cigarette butt.
I took a long, hot shower. The bump on my head wasn’t too bad as bumps on heads go. I thought of Ansley Bell, the unknown frequent caller. She was nothing more than a name on a piece of paper, but she was the first real clue the gray dust couldn’t cover up.
I knocked on Beth Lindquist’s door at 11:30 A.M. It was three degrees outside but the morning sun had created tiny icicles on her gutter. Beth Lindquist lived in a Cape Cod sided with cedar shingles that had been painted instead of stained. Some patches of the previous paint jobs had been scraped away, and other patches had not, making the shingles look like a monochromatic relief map of blue gray. I rang the doorbell. A wreath of fresh juniper hung on the red front door. A moment later, Beth Lindquist opened it. She wore a mint green robe that could have come from her grandmother’s closet. Or Sears. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Lindquist. My name is Nils Shapiro and I’m sorry to bother you.” We Minnesotans are not tough-talking people. It doesn’t work here. We sand off our rough edges to play nice and keep our hardness buried deep. “I’m a private investigator looking into the murder of Maggie Somerville. We met yesterday at the crime scene when you identified Ms. Somerville’s body.”
Beth Lindquist pulled a sodden wad of tissues from her robe pocket and dabbed her wet eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be. I know this is an awful time, but can you spare a few minutes to talk? I understand you and Maggie were good friends.”
She nodded and stepped aside. I entered.
The house differed from most in the neighborhood because no one had added on to it since it had been built in the 1940s. Most every other home in the area had grown like cancer. If the Lindquists’ house had been remodeled within its existing footprint, the work had been modest and some time ago. For that, the Lindquists gained my respect. A small foyer led to the staircase. I removed my shoes and entered the living room to my left. It was modestly furnished with a couch, two chairs, and a desk with a Dell laptop on it. The couch faced a bay window that looked out on the front yard. The furniture was upholstered in plaids of navy, forest green, and cardinal red. A painting hung on the wall behind the couch. It depicted a fox hunt in the English countryside with horses carrying red-coated English riders flanked by hounds. I was about to look for the fox when Beth Lindquist spoke.
“I have coffee if you’d like some.”
“Thank you. Black is great.”
Beth Lindquist disappeared into the kitchen. A steady ticking filled the silence. I glanced into the dining room and saw a grandfather clock built of bird’s-eye maple, its pendulum swinging back and forth. There was nothing about the woman or her home that tried to be current. The place felt void of desperation, and I found it comforting.
Beth returned with two cups of coffee. I took one and sat on the couch. She chose the chair opposite me. A robe-wearing woman in mourning doesn’t invite idle chitchat so I got right to it. “Mrs. Lindquist, I’m sorry to ask you such a direct question at such a sensitive time, but do you know of anyone who would have wanted to hurt Maggie?”
“The police already asked me that. I told them no, but I never liked that man she was seeing.”
“Andrew Fine?”
“Yes. He’s quite perverted.”
“Maggie told you about their sex life?”
“At first, but I asked her to stop. I didn’t want to hear those things.” Beth sipped her coffee. The muscles in her pencil-thin neck rearranged themselves to let the liquid pass. “I guess it goes with the territory of getting divorced,” she continued. “According to Maggie, it’s quite promiscuous out there, people getting out of long marriages, especially when the you-know-what wasn’t the greatest.”
“The sex?”
She nodded.
“Do you know of anyone else Maggie dated?”
“There was one fellow,” said Beth. “Maggie saw him on and off for a short while. He had dark hair and a beard.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Maggie called him Slim, but I don’t think that was his real name.”
“What happened to him?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t see him around anymore so I asked Maggie where he was. She told me she’d ended it. Apparently Slim was fun while he lasted, but he wasn’t—what was the word she used?—a ‘love match’ or something like that.”
“So she broke up with Slim because he wasn’t the one?”
“Maggie said Slim was too artsy for her.”
“What do you think she meant by that?”
Beth checked her robe, pulled the belt tighter and retied it. “Well, probably that he didn’t make much money.”
“Was money important to Maggie?”
“Money’s important to everyone, don’t you think? Maggie wasn’t a snob about it. Perry and I live quite modestly—she couldn’t have cared less. Maggie liked nice things, though.”
“Did Maggie ever mention a person named Ansley Bell?”
“I don’t think so. The name doesn’t sound familiar.”
“I hope I don’t embarrass you with this next question.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Nothing could be worse than what I had to do yesterday.”
“Yes, well. I promise it won’t be that bad.” I took a sip of coffee. “Did Maggie ever talk about having any female lovers?”
Beth set down her cup and saucer. They rattled and hit the table a little too hard. “No. Lord, no.” She began to cry. “I’m sorry. I … I … I just can’t stop seeing what I saw yesterday.”
I let her cry for a minute and waited for her breath to even. “Do you think if Maggie was romantically involved with a woman, she’d tell you?”
“She wasn’t. I know. I know she wasn’t. We talked about everything. Every day. She had no romantic anything with any woman.”
“You seem pretty sure of that.”
“She would have told me. You know, we had dinner last night.”
“Detective Ellegaard mentioned that. You went to Beaujo’s on France.”
“Yes. They have good food. We had a lovely dinner. She was happy.”
“Did she ever talk about even the idea of having a woman lover?”
“Why are you asking me that? That doesn’t have anything to do with whoever killed her!”
The front door opened and a man in his midfifties walked in. He, too, seemed older than he was, like the way you saw your father when you were a child. His hair was gray and neatly combed. He wore tortoiseshell horn-rimmed glasses, a camel overcoat, olive wide-wale corduroy pants, and Weejuns with rubber overshoes stretched over them. He carried the torch for the previous generation—old Edina, WASPy, conservative, genteel, and dignified. He was in a race against pluralism, even in this white-bread suburb of a white-bread city in a white-bread state, and he might win if he didn’t live too long. I admired his facade of being the most civilized creature on earth. He looked at me and smiled, more out of courtesy than being happy to see a stranger in his home.
“Hello,” he said.
“Honey,” said Beth. “This is Nils Shapiro. He’s investigating Maggie’s murder.”
“You’re not the detective who was here yesterday.” He leaned against the foyer wall, lifted one foot then the other to snap off his overshoes. He opened the coat closet, set them inside, then took off his coat and hung it up.
“No, sir, I’m a private detective.�
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“Working for?”
I smiled. No one liked to hear this. Ever. “I’m sorry. I can’t say. Part of the job.”
“How mysterious.” He smiled and walked into the room. I stood and shook his hand.
“Perry Lindquist,” he said. “Nice to meet you.” He turned to Beth. “Everything okay, honey?” She nodded. “Please keep it short, Mr. Shapiro is it?”
“Yes.”
“Beth hasn’t slept in the past twenty-four hours. I’m hoping she gets some rest.”
“Of course.”
“I’m about to make myself a turkey sandwich. Can I interest you in one?”
“No, Perry. I’m good. Thanks.”
“I’m trying a new gourmet mustard. Let me know if you change your mind.”
He walked through the living room and the dining room then into the kitchen.
“I’m sorry for those last questions,” I said to Beth. “I’m just trying to narrow down who possibly could have killed Maggie.”
“Who is that Ansley you mentioned?”
“I have no idea. Just a name that’s been tied to Maggie. One other thing. The medical examiner said Maggie had quite a high blood-alcohol level last night. How much did she drink at Beaujo’s?”
“Well, it’s kind of embarrassing, but we drank two bottles of wine, which is an awful lot. We were just having so much fun. I know. We shouldn’t have driven home.”
“Whose car did you take?”
“Maggie’s. She drove.”
“And you didn’t stop anywhere else on the way here?”
“No, it’s just a few blocks away. The end of the evening is a bit fuzzy. I’m sorry. I barely remember going to bed. I do remember us talking about how it was good we beat the storm.”
“And what time was that?”
“Oh, golly. Not too late. Maybe 9:30.”
I stood. “Thanks, Mrs. Lindquist. I don’t want to take up any more of your time.”
She nodded and followed me into the foyer. As I slipped back into my shoes, I glanced into the open coat closet and saw two pairs of running shoes. A pair of men’s and a pair of women’s.
“I hope I was of some help.”
“You were quite helpful.” She smiled. “Um, I’m so sorry to ask you this, but I left my cigarettes at home. You wouldn’t happen to have one around, would you?”
“No. Neither of us smoke.”
“No one does anymore. It’s become quite a sign of weakness. It’s embarrassing, really. I’m down to about four a day and was hoping to avoid making a trip to the store. By the way, here’s my card. Please call if anything else comes to mind.”
I turned toward the door and saw a key rack. Two hooks. One labeled PERRY. One labeled BETH. Both labels made with a label maker. I once dated a woman who I now call “the mistake.” She labeled everything with a label maker. It only took once for me to learn never to date a labeler again. Do not ask for whom the label maker tolls, it tolls for thee.
“One more question, Mrs. Lindquist. Do you have a key to Maggie’s house?”
“Oh. Of course,” she said. “I’d keep an eye on her place when she was out of town. She did the same for us.”
“Thank you.”
I called Ellegaard from the car and asked him to run a check on Beth and Perry Lindquist to see if their DNA was in the system.
“Anything suspicious?”
“No, but they have a key. And I still think our killer is in the system, so let’s eliminate people as we go.”
“On it.”
“I have another call. Gotta go.” I looked at my phone. It was Micaela. “Hey.”
“Are you working the Somerville murder?”
“How’d you know?”
“The paper quoted Ellegaard and I figured he may have hired you. Be careful. Whoever killed that woman is smart.”
“Don’t worry. If I end up covered in dust, it’ll be because I cleaned under my bed.”
“I’m serious, Nils.”
“So am I.”
There was a long pause. The silence lasted so long I thought the call might have dropped. Then she spoke. “Call me if you need anything.”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“All right. Well. I’ll talk to you soon, Nils.”
“Good-bye, Micaela.”
“Good-bye.”
6
Stevey Fine managed the Hyland Lakes Office Park near the Hyland Lakes Recreational Area where highways 100 and 494 intersected in “prestigious” West Bloomington, which was dubbed by realtors and wasn’t all that prestigious unless you liked McMansions, draconian homeowners’ associations, and people who looked as similar to one another as their houses did. The north end of the office park is bordered by Highway 494 and the south end is bordered by Normandale Lake, the Hyland downhill-ski area, and a ski jump because ski-flyers need somewhere to practice before going to the Olympics. Paths for running and, during winter, Nordic skiing crisscross the recreational area, bending to accommodate lakes and ponds connected by Nine Mile Creek, which held trout in the days before mowed-down prairie and chemically fertilized lawns.
I parked in the ramp and took the skyway to the 400 Building. Stevey Fine’s name was on the directory as Steven Fine-Bldg Mgmt. I climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and stepped into the lobby decorated in postmodern corporate bland, boasting neutral walls and carpeting. The art looked like it had been commissioned by a can of beige paint. I followed the signs to suite 428 where an assistant sat behind a modular desk with its own built-in wall and filing cabinets.
The woman was young and pretty but looked like her mom had dressed her from the “You’re a Grown Up Now” collection, with hues as neutral as the rest of the place. Within five years she’d cut her hair to a more practical length, have a ring on her finger and a three-year plan to bring two babies into this world. She was a young Beth Lindquist, anxious to put her youth behind her and get on with sensible living. When I approached she smiled. “Hi. May I help you?”
“I’m here to see Mr. Fine.”
She looked at her computer screen, her forehead wrinkled. “Do you have an appointment?”
“I do not. Tell him Shap is here.”
“Shap!” said a voice from inside 428. “I’m on the phone. Get your ass in here!”
A pained disappointment betrayed the assistant’s sunny facade. Her boss had taken away her raison d’être, but she pushed the disappointment down with an impressive force of willpower. She stood. “Hi, I’m Kelsey. Can I get you some coffee or water or pop?”
“Hi, Kelsey. Nils. Thanks, but I’m good.” She threw me a Minnesota-nice smile and pushed Stevey’s door open. I walked through it.
Stevey Fine had dark curly hair and dark eyes that were always smiling even if his mouth wasn’t, but it usually was. He sat at a desk littered with so much shit I couldn’t see the desktop. Papers and envelopes, some opened, some not, a house made out of Legos, pencils and pens, a dog leash, an Uglydoll, a sweater in a bag from J.Crew, a box of Asics Gel-Kayanos, a windup toy robot, a wad of bubble wrap, a juicer, and that was just the visible layer. A phone cord connected him to the pile. He smiled when he saw me and held up his finger to tell me it’d be a moment.
“I can’t give you the entire eighth floor,” he said, “unless you commit to a three-year lease.” He lifted his eyebrows to tell me he was just as surprised he was playing the part of a businessman as I was.
Stevey and I met in Hebrew school at Temple Israel when we were eleven, then spent the next seven years going to bar and bat mitzvahs, confirmation class, youth groups, and working at Camp Teko, the synagogue’s camp on the North Arm of Lake Minnetonka. I still saw him as the sixteen-year-old boy who once stood with a can of beer in one hand and a lit bottle rocket in the other before throwing it into the air where it launched itself over the bay and exploded with a weak pop.
He was a happy kid with little ambition other than to ride the sound waves of
Radiohead, Nirvana, and Minneapolis musicians—the Jayhawks, Semisonic, and Paul Westerberg—all of whom he befriended working part-time at Willie’s American Guitars.
I slept over at his house at least a dozen times during our middle-school years, where we were exposed to the dickheadedness of his older brother, Andrew. Andrew Fine liked to fire projectiles at us while we played on the Sport Court in the backyard. These came in the form of chipped golf balls or hurled snowballs. Sometimes he’d shoot BBs at us with an air rifle. They’d usually bounce off, but one time he lodged a BB in Stevey’s forehead, and when Stevey ran toward the house crying to tell his parents, Andrew intercepted him and said if Stevey told his parents he would kill Stevey and it would look like an accident. He said it with such calm intensity that Stevey believed him. I did, too. Stevey pulled the BB out himself and told his parents he’d run into the end of a branch.
The worst projectiles came from Andrew’s tennis-ball bazooka. It was a contraption made of three tennis-ball cans, held together with duct tape and hollowed out at both ends, except for the bottom can, which only had airholes punctured into each end. Andrew would soak a tennis ball in lighter fluid and drop it into the open end of the bazooka. The butane from the lighter fluid collected in the bottommost can. Andrew would then point the bazooka in our direction and hold a flame to the bottom can. The gas ignited and shot out the tennis ball at a frightening velocity. I don’t know how fast, but when he shot the tennis ball straight up, it went out of sight. He never hit either of us, which I’m pretty sure was on purpose, but it scared the shit out of us and sent us running inside and eventually led us to sleep over exclusively at my house.
The former tennis-ball-bazooka-wielding Andrew Fine dated Maggie Somerville until she was murdered the night before last. I hated to gather intel from Stevey before reconnecting with his douche bag of an older brother, but I didn’t hate it enough to prevent myself from doing it.
Stevey hung up the phone. “Shap, good to see you! What are you doing here?!”
“I just met someone for coffee at Parma and remembered you told me something about managing this utopian office park, so I thought I’d stop by. Hope I’m not interrupting.”
