Kendall assured them she would try to find out what happened. Then, knowing there was nothing more she could do for them, Kendall left for her next stop, the bar where Charles Wetzel had his last drink.
The R-Bar was a renovated gas station that sat north of Eau Claire on old highway 53 across from a discount department store and a used-car dealership. The stores in the area had suffered since the new highway was completed and they had been replaced by chain stores like Walmart, McDonalds, Culvers, and at least three new strip malls.
More spacious inside than it looked from the street, the tavern had a long bar along one wall, a small dance floor in the middle of the room, booths along the other walls, and about two dozen tables surrounding the dance floor. A small back room held two pool tables. The place was a recently established watering hole, and Kendall appreciated that it didn’t have the residual smell of years of cigarette smoke still seeping from its walls.
Nick Goracki stepped from behind the bar to greet her. In his twenties, he still had a boyish appearance, with short, neatly cut hair and a nicely muscled body. After she showed him her creds, he shook her hand and offered her something to drink. As he poured her a diet cola, she noticed his hands trembling. Of course he’d be upset—a guy died after drinking in his tavern—she’d broken the news when she phoned.
“Mr. Goracki, I have to ask you a few questions about last night. Even though Charles Wetzel’s death appears to be an accident, we have to explore why it happened.”
“I understand,” Nick said. “I feel terrible about it. Chuck was a great guy except for the drinking. But I take every precaution about things like this. I normally don’t serve anyone more than three or four drinks, then they either have to prove to me they aren’t driving or turn over their car keys. Usually when they give me the keys, they have someone pick them up or call a cab. Otherwise, I take them home myself after closing.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened last night?” Kendall asked.
“Chuck was drinking again. For a while he was coming in and ordering soda, but last night he was back on the vodka. He gave me his keys pretty early in the evening. I’ve given him a ride home quite a few times.”
“Then how did he end up in front of the wrong house?”
Nick wiped his face with a clean towel. “I told him I’d take him home when I finished closing up, like I always do, but someone else gave him a ride. To be honest, I was glad. Chuck’s house is a long way from where I live, and the weather really sucked.”
“I’ll need to talk to the person who gave him the ride,” Kendall said and opened her notebook. “Can you give me a name or a number?”
Goracki’s face oozed sweat. Kendall felt bad for the guy. Like Patti’s mother, he was no doubt feeling the weight of Wetzel’s death on his shoulders.
“I didn’t see who he left with. We had a good crowd and they were all hanging on. I was busy making last-call drinks.”
Kendall needed to find out who drove Wetzel home. “Is there anyone who might have seen him leave?”
“The waitress, maybe. I let my bartender leave at eleven. But like I said, we were busy.”
“How about regulars?”
“Yeah, you could try talking to them.”
Kendall got the name of the waitress, then she handed Goracki one of her cards and asked him to call her if he thought of anything that could help identify the driver. She would come in again on a night the regulars were around.
Kendall left the bar, thinking it was unfortunate that on a night the weather was so dangerously cold, someone other than Nick Goracki had taken Wetzel home. The guy must have been too drunk to give the driver accurate directions. And because of that, he ended up at the wrong house, a house where a young girl feared to let him in because she’d been taught never to open the door to a stranger.
3
Detective Ross Alverson watched a heavy-set young woman approach his desk. The support staff at the front desk was screwing with him—they said she was hot when they called to ask him to talk to her, told him she was an author wanting police input for a crime novel. He had been prepared to wow her with everything he had—his good looks, his enticing charm, his exceptional wit, and a freshly brewed cup of coffee. The two coffees centered on the front of his desk betrayed his gullibility.
“Uh, hi. I’m Courtney.” The girl in front of him seemed to be deciding whether to shake his hand. Clutching a three-inch black binder and toting an oversized book bag on her back, her balance could have made a handshake impossible. But he figured she had enough weight to keep her grounded.
“Detective Alverson,” he said without offering his hand. A real knockout might have gotten his first name added after he announced his title. He was feeling down on women today, and it would have taken at least a “nine” to reverse his mood. Kimberly, his latest love interest, an attractive, leggy blonde he’d been having wild sex with for nearly four weeks, had unceremoniously dumped him when she met a younger, hotter man on a trip to the casino in Red Wing.
Her loss, he thought bitterly.
He had agreed to talk to this Courtney and figured that he may as well get it over with. As shy and timid as she appeared, she would be easy to blow off.
“Have a seat.” He gestured to the chair next to his desk.
Courtney unloaded the book bag to the floor and balanced the binder on her lap, her gaze darting nervously around the room. Ross was used to the effect he had on women, especially women who weren’t his equal in the looks department. He described himself as tall, dark, and handsome, but in reality, his angular face fell short of the description, as did his rangy build. Six feet four inches tall and thin, Alverson never had to worry about how much he ate.
“Have a cup of coffee.” He pushed one of the cups closer to where she sat. At first she looked at it like he had just offered her a joint, then she reached out to pick it up, her fingers covered to the pink tips of her nails by the sleeves of a purple sweater. She sipped the coffee, still not meeting his eyes. He groaned inwardly; this was going to take forever if she wasn’t going to get to the point. All he’d been told—other than the whopper that she was hot—is that she was a writer looking for advice about police procedure. If he had known what she looked like, he would have shined her on to public relations.
Courtney finally spoke. “Um, I wanted to ask you some questions. You know, for my book.” Despite her size, or maybe because of it, she appeared to be shrinking into the chair.
“Sure. What do you need?”
“Um, well, my storyline kind of follows a real case. Like, one that wasn’t ever solved—a cold case.” She forced a half-smile and whisked back a wayward strand of dark hair.
Since the popularity of that TV show about old, unsolved cases, the public perceived cold cases as sexy and thought that any of them, no matter how old, could still be solved.
His skepticism must have shown. She quickly added, “My story is fiction, but I thought I’d try to find out more about the real case that I’m basing it on. I have a lot of information that I got on the Internet. You know, from old newspaper articles, things like that.”
“So what’s the case? Something I’ve heard of, or before my time?”
She finally met his eyes, and he was startled to see she had a pair of unique, pale-brown eyes enhanced by the deep purple of her sweater.
“It happened about twelve years ago. Three couples—all of them engaged to be married—disappeared before their weddings. The disappearances were over a three-year time span. One was in Menomonie, one in Osseo, and the last one in Bloomer.”
It was a popular case, Ross recalled. One that had drawn a lot of speculation over the years. For a while, it had been known as “The Fiancé Murders.” Opinions were split at the time on whether it was a case at all; people disappeared every day and not always under suspicious circumstances. Studying her for a moment, he realized Courtney would be very attractive if she weren’t overweight. He knew women didn’t consider that a comp
liment, so he didn’t offer it.
Her long, dark hair was a glossy brown and tied back with a scarf in shades that complemented the purple sweater. Her complexion was pale, creamy and pure as freshly poured milk. She didn’t look much more than sixteen years old.
“I remember that one,” Ross said. There had been more than one book written about the case. Each one spun a different theory for the disappearances, none of the theories at all plausible, at least not to a cop. Sensationalism sold books, not reality. The case had always intrigued him, which made dismissing her somewhat difficult. He was aware of being eyeballed by the shrews who sent her to him. “None of the disappearances were in our area, so I can’t help you with any of the specifics of that case.”
Her face fell. “Could you help me get in touch with someone who worked on it?” She reached for her backpack, looking like she expected him to show her the door.
“How did you get interested in this case?”
“I belong to a book club. We read and discuss mysteries. Most of us do some writing, too. A guy in our group always goes on and on about those disappearances. Anyway, when it was his turn to pick a book for us to read, he chose one of those true crime stories about the Fiancé Murders. After I read the book, I thought it would make a great plot for a fiction novel.”
Damn, this was something Ross would actually like to discuss. He felt like a prick for admitting it, even to himself, but he didn’t want to be seen spending time with her. Anything he could get for her would take time, anyway, so it was best to put her off for now and talk with her later. “Let me look into it and give you a call.” A vague answer that gave him room to back out. “I think I might know someone who worked on that case. I’ll get in touch with you after I talk to him.”
Hank Whitehouse, a detective who recently retired, had worked it back in the day, and loved to go on about it, especially touting his opinion of how badly the case had been fucked up. Hank had only been in on it because the couple from Menomonie was originally from Eau Claire. Ross had heard him talking about his friendship with the detective from Menomonie who’d headed the investigation.
Ross took Courtney’s phone number and handed her one of his cards. She smiled—a smile that brightened her face and made her light-brown eyes sparkle. He watched her leave, aware that the abruptness of the meeting wasn’t going unnoticed. He’d gotten her out of here in less than five minutes; so much for their plan to stick him with talking to an author.
4
After a lunch break at a downtown deli, Kendall talked to Merilee Olson’s neighbors. Not surprisingly, none of them had heard a thing. There wasn’t much more she could do other than wait to see if the guy who had dropped off Chuck Wetzel showed up at the R-Bar. Maybe she’d drop in there tonight. Of course, once the media exposed the details of Wetzel’s death, it was likely the guy would never show his face in there again. Like Merilee Olson, who owned the house where he was found, and Nick Goracki, owner of the R-Bar, he was certain to be beating up on himself for his part in the man’s death. Unless it was a deliberate act. But no matter how Kendall looked at it, she couldn’t buy into murder by freezing as a feasible possibility.
She made a quick stop at the station to tell her boss, Lieutenant Schoenfuss, that the case appeared to be just what it looked like, an unfortunate accident. He agreed that she should try to find the driver before closing out the case.
Kendall headed for home, an apartment above a bar in a building located on the west side of the river that bisected Eau Claire’s downtown area. She’d moved into the apartment when she had been desperate for a place to stay. In the short time she had lived there, a lot of changes took place in her life. Now it felt like home.
The bar, the Rat Pak, had a following of people over the age of fifty, and the music on the antique jukebox catered to their taste with music from the forties and fifties. Morrie, the owner of the bar and the building, happy to have a detective living in one of the upper apartments, had redecorated hoping to keep Kendall in residence.
Sunday tended to be a quiet day in the bar, but lately Morrie had been serving baskets of chicken strips, which increased the number of patrons. On Mondays, burgers and fries were the single menu item, and on Friday, Morrie had a popular fish fry. Kendall took a stool near the kitchen and ordered chicken strips and a beer. There weren’t many other customers, but those who had braved the weather to come in were also taking advantage of the hot food.
When she finished eating, Morrie came over and stood in front of her, his right hand, in a perpetual bar-wiping motion, clutching a damp sponge.
“Kenny, have you heard from Snow White?” Morrie and the regulars had started using the term for Brynn, a tenant who lived across the hall from Kendall and suffered from albinism. Brynn, a seventeen-year-old emancipated minor, not only did card readings but was also an accomplished hacker. A reformed hacker in the eyes of the law, Brynn had helped Kendall find a missing baby a few months earlier.
“She should be back in a couple days,” Kendall said. “The last message I got from her, they were shopping in Aruba.”
Brynn, who was estranged from her mother at the time Kendall moved in upstairs, had mended those fences, and now the two of them were on a South American cruise. Kendall feared the trip wouldn’t be a pleasant one for Brynn, who couldn’t spend time in the sun without being completely protected from it. She went in order to appease her mother, who’d just bought Brynn the latest, cutting-edge computer equipment as a peace offering.
“I’d love to take the missus on one of those cruises,” Morrie said. “Maybe we’ll go next year, before we get too old.”
Kendall suspected that he wanted to ask her about Nash. Grateful that he hadn’t, she went upstairs. At her door, she admired the textured glass panel advertising Phillip J. Parkins, Private Investigations. The other apartments had similar panels—a dentist, an insurance office, and an attorney. The offices had been divided up as apartments decades ago, with the antique doors left in place. Brynn’s apartment across from Kendall’s had a unique door with a lovely stained glass panel depicting a sunrise; brilliant rays streamed out from the sun in a myriad of small panes of gem-colored glass. When Brynn was home, the light from inside the apartment created a kaleidoscope of shimmery, colored lights in the hallway.
Before Brynn’s residence, a fortuneteller, Madam Vadoma, who had died a year earlier, had rented the apartment. A faded, aging sign advertising her craft still hung above the outside entry to the apartments.
Kendall whipped around when she heard footsteps approaching behind her, and without thinking she reached toward her gun. Kendall’s apartment and Brynn’s were the only two in this hallway. An elderly woman dressed for the weather in a heavy tweed coat, a woolen scarf, and a black cloche came to an abrupt stop in front of Brynn’s door. She dropped her purse and raised her hands above her head.
“Please, don’t shoot me. I’m just waiting for Callandra.”
Callandra was the name Brynn had adopted as her fortunetelling persona after she’d decided to follow in Vadoma’s footsteps. Vadoma’s specialty, Brynn had discovered, was predicting when elderly women would die. She had begun doing the readings partly for the money, and but mostly because she felt sorry for the women who came looking for Vadoma seeking answers to the big question of when it would happen. There weren’t many asking for her services these days; today’s women were savvier than those from Vadoma’s time. Most of Brynn’s readings had become about things like relationships and finances.
Kendall lowered her hand from where it hovered over her holster. Obviously the woman had seen her gun. “You startled me. I didn’t mean to frighten you.” She bent down to pick up the woman’s purse.
The woman grabbed the proffered purse and clutched it to her bosom.
“You must not have an appointment,” Kendall said. “Callandra is out of town right now.”
“I have to apologize for my bad manners,” she said. “I should have known I startled you. I’m Mrs.
Leona Lindblad. My friend Edna sent me here. You see, I’m thinking about selling my house, and it would be very helpful if I knew how long I have. Do you know when Callandra will be back?”
“It’ll be at least a few more days.”
“Oh, dear.” She looked up at Kendall who, at five foot eleven, stood nearly a head taller. “The matter is actually quite urgent. Do you think you could get in touch with her? Maybe she could do a reading for me over the phone. Those psychics on the television do that, don’t they?”
The woman seemed close to tears, and Kendall finally understood how Brynn had been sucked into doing readings. It was hard to resist imploring eyes surrounded by so many wrinkles. “I’ll tell you what. Go downstairs and have a glass of wine or something. I’ll see if I can contact her for you.”
Kendall finally entered her apartment and felt Malkin, Brynn’s cat, rubbing against her ankles, purring. The cat was boarding with Kendall while Brynn was on the cruise. She felt sorry for the poor guy; her hours had been crazy lately. She opened the refrigerator to get out the cat food and her gaze went to a magnetized photo holder in the shape of a jukebox that advertised the bar.
The frame held a photo of Kendall and Nash with their arms around each other at the party she’d thrown for him before he left. Her throat thickened. He was the love of her life, and she’d had to let him go while having absolutely no idea when or if she’d ever see him again. Kendall still hadn’t resolved how to live with knowing he was on an undercover assignment so dangerous that the Milwaukee Police Department had actually hired him, an outsider, to complete the elite group of men responsible for the mission. She was terrified for him but loved him too much to hold him back from doing something he’d dreamed of for so many years.
Malkin, eager for his dinner, meowed at the delay. Kendall fed him and then sent Brynn a quick email, explaining the situation with Mrs. Lindblad. She hit send, and then picked up her mail where it had fallen from the slot in the door. There were only ads and an electric bill—nothing from Nash.
Iced Malice Page 2
