A Carnival of Killing

by Glenn Ickler

  “We attempted to reach Mr. Carlson for questioning this morning, but were told that he left his office immediately upon learning from a reporter that we had received the DNA test results. We have issued an APB on Mr. Carlson, and we ask that you folks inform the public that we are looking for him. We’re e-mailing a photo obtained from the Winter Carnival office to all media outlets. Now, are there any questions?”

  O’Malley looked expectantly at Trish, and she didn’t fail him. “Who was the reporter and why did he warn Carlson?” she asked.

  “The reporter will remain unidentified,” the chief said. “When this person learned of the new development, he, or she, called Mr. Carlson for a comment, not knowing that he was, shall we say, intimately involved. I wouldn’t categorize it as a warning.”

  After a couple of more questions, the trio called a halt and retreated, leaving the media mob to disperse. Large, wet snowflakes were still falling and sticking to every available surface when Al and I hit the sidewalk.

  “Looks like it’s up to our ankles so far,” I said.

  “Think it’ll get chest high?” Al asked.

  “We’ll never bust through if it does,” I said.

  “That girl really got around,” Jayne Halvorson said as we sat sipping our ginger ale in Herbie’s after the Monday night AA meeting. “Screwing one guy regularly and getting pregnant by another one. Anybody you’ve talked to mention any other boyfriends in the picture?”

  I said I hadn’t heard of any, but that at least one of this year’s Vulcan Krewe had been hoping to get into her bloomers.

  “Bet he’s damn glad he didn’t score right now,” Jayne said.

  “If he had, she might still be alive,” I said. “He was beaten to the draw in O’Halloran’s that night by the guy who killed her.”

  “Such slender threads our lives hang on. How often are we at the mercy of other people’s decisions?”

  “Too often. Right now Martha is at the mercy of her boss’s decision to send her to Duluth. They had a hell of a ride up there through the snow and could have had a serious accident.”

  “Even a minor accident could be serious in this kind of weather.” The snow was still falling and the accumulation reported in the Twin Cities on the 5:00 p.m. news was ten inches. Farther north, the totals were higher, with Duluth reporting fourteen inches, accompanied by winds gusting up to thirty-five miles per hour.

  “Martha could be stuck up there for the rest of the winter,” I said. “She wasn’t even sure they could start jury selection tomorrow because some of the prospective jurors lived out of town, up along the north shore.”

  Jayne took a swallow of her drink and said, “I take it things are going okay with you two.”

  “Okay and then some,” I said. “Martha even mentioned the word honeymoon last Friday.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “Scared. For two reasons. One is the thought of actually taking those vows. The other is that she wants the honeymoon to be on Martha’s Vineyard.”

  “You’ve got to get over the first reason. I don’t know what to say about the second one.”

  “I can probably talk her out of the Vineyard. The question is can I talk myself into saying the vows.”

  “I’m betting that you can.” She drained the glass and pushed back her chair. “And now I have to go home and make sure my two girls have talked themselves into doing their homework.”

  I slip-slid through a foot of snow on the sidewalk for three blocks to the serenity of my building, all the while thinking about Martha’s out-of-the-blue remark about a honeymoon. I felt like I was teetering at the brink of a precipice, about to topple either into or out of a commitment demanding lifelong fidelity. This seemed even more treacherous than the slippery stuff under my feet.

  Sherlock Holmes met me at the door with a meow and a request to have his ears scratched. I knew which way he’d want me to fall. He’s always liked Martha best.

  Tuesday was my day off for the week, and Martha called while I was putting peanut butter on my toast much later than usual. The snow had stopped in both St. Paul and Duluth, but she said the prospect of starting the trial was dim. Several members of the jury pool had called the clerk of court to say the roads were blocked and they couldn’t get to the courthouse. If the roads weren’t cleared by noon, which was doubtful because the total snowfall around Duluth was twenty-one inches, the start of jury selection would be postponed until Wednesday.

  “So what are you going to do up there all day?” I asked.

  “Luckily, I packed an extra book,” Martha said.

  “It better be the size of War and Peace. You could be stuck there until after Groundhog Day.”

  “How much snow would a groundhog hog if a groundhog could hog snow?”

  “You’d better give up and catch a plane for home. It sounds like your mind has already gone south.”

  “Just a variation on the old woodchuck theme. Anyhow, I’ll talk to you later, sweetie. Sara’s ready to go downstairs for a mid-morning doughnut.”

  I spent the rest of the morning cleaning up the apartment and running some clothes through the washer and dryer in the basement. Martha called back at about 12:30 with news that jury selection had been postponed until Wednesday morning. I professed a profound lack of astonishment. We talked for half an hour without either of us mentioning the word honeymoon before she had me lift Sherlock to the phone so she could instruct him to continue keeping me warm. We made our usual kissy sounds and hung up.

  “What do you think about a honeymoon?” I asked Sherlock Holmes.

  He cocked his head slightly, turned around and strolled into the bedroom. Was there feline symbolism in that response?

  At 5:00 p.m., I turned on the TV and flipped to Channel 4 in hope of seeing Trish Valentine reporting live about the snowstorm. Sure enough, she was at the airport interviewing some of the hundreds of passengers still waiting for flights delayed by the weather. She looked fetching in form-fitting black ski pants and another form-fitting sweater, this one featuring various shades of red.

  Back at the studio, the perpetually-smiling anchorman, Todd Gilmore, announced that St. Paul police had issued a warrant for the arrest of Ted Carlson, who was still missing and considered to be a fugitive from justice. Carlson’s picture was shown for fifteen seconds while Gilmore asked residents to watch for him. Police believed Carlson was still in the city because of the difficulty of traveling in the storm. I thought it would be amusing if Trish inadvertently tapped him on the shoulder and asked him for an interview while reporting live from the airport mob scene.

  Al called during the next commercial and asked if I’d like to help dispose of a substantial portion of Carol’s meatloaf at dinnertime. I jumped on this invitation quicker than a coyote pouncing on a drowsy field mouse. If there was a list of the world’s ten worst cooks, I would be near the top, and I had been contemplating a supper consisting of two nuked hotdogs slathered with mustard and wrapped in slices of bread. A chance to feast on Carol’s meatloaf was definitely worth plowing through the snow.

  After a magnificent meatloaf and mashed potatoes dinner, capped with a slice of hot apple crisp, Al suggested a ritual that we perform at various stages of pursuing a story. This ritual consists of sitting at the computer and culling photos that we were sure wouldn’t ever be printed or needed for the files. Because the Klondike Kate murder story was nearing its denouement, pending the arrest and arraignment of Ted Carlson, Al figured he could clear some space on his hard drive by deleting most of the shots pertaining to that story and storing the survivors on a CD.

  We started with shots of Lee-Ann Nordquist’s body lying in John Robertson Junior’s driveway and slowly worked our way toward the Monday press briefing about Carlson’s paternity. We were flipping through the dozens of photos Al had shot at the Vulcan Victory Dance when something caught his eye.

  “That’s different,” he said. We were looking at a shot that included a trio of Vulcans toasting thei
r triumph over King Boreas. It had been taken near the end of the evening, a few minutes before Toni Erickson’s blood-curdling scream sent everyone scrambling for the ballroom exits.

  “What’s different?” I asked.

  “On the left side, behind those guys. See that Vulcan with his back to us? He’s wearing red boots. All the Vulcans I’ve ever seen wear black boots.”

  “Oh, shit!” I said. “I know somebody who wears red boots.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Booting Up

  Al flashed through the entire collection of Victory Dance shots again, and we found one more that showed a red-booted Vulcan in the background. It also had been shot only a few minutes before the scream.

  “Okay, so your friend Kitty wears red boots,” Al said. “But where would she get a Vulcan costume and why would she wear it to the dance?”

  “Beats me,” I said. “And early in the evening we all saw her—and you photographed her—wearing regular clothes.”

  “So the red-booted Vulcan probably isn’t her.”

  “Probably not. But we need to find out for sure.”

  “So, how do you plan to do that?” Al asked. “Call her up and say, ‘Hey, Kitty baby, did you wear a Vulcan costume and your sexy red boots to the Victory Dance?’”

  “It’ll take somewhat more finesse than that,” I said.

  “Do you have a plan based on this finesse? Or even a plan based on your usual lack of finesse?”

  “Not off the top of my head, but I’ll think of something. If we can eliminate Kitty as the Vulcan in red boots, we can go to work on finding out which member of which Krewe has red boots.”

  “What if this is Kitty in the picture?”

  “Then we find out why she’s wearing this get-up. And I think I’m getting an idea of how to do it.”

  “So enlighten me as to how you’ll quiz Miss Kitty.”

  “Well, the best way to catch a kitty is to entice it with food and petting, right?” I said. “This Kitty has been coming on to me since the day we met, but I cooled her off the last time by saying I was working on a commitment with Martha. Suppose I call Kitty and use that commitment thing—tell her that Martha has dumped me—and ask her to have dinner with me? And suppose I invite her to my apartment after dinner? As you know, Martha is away until God knows when. Then, when the moment gets mellow, I show Kitty a print of your photo and ask if it’s her.”

  “And what if she says yes, it is her?”

  “Then you’ll pop out of the closet, where you’ve been hiding, and record the moment with your trusty camera.”

  “Are you going to get the lady naked before you pop the question?” Al asked.

  “As close as possible,” I said. “I figure the less clothing she’s wearing the less likely she’ll be to run out into the cold when I show her the picture.”

  “In that case, how about I drill a peephole in your closet door?”

  “I’m shocked that you’d even think of resorting to voyeurism,” I said.

  “I’m just thinking that you might need an eye witness,” he said. “Think of it as your witness protection program.”

  “Keeping you in the dark is the best witness protection program I can think of.”

  I was itching like a monkey with its armpits full of fleas to call Kitty Catalano the minute her office opened at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, but timing was important. I was afraid that if I jumped on the phone first thing, I’d sound impetuous. I wanted her to think I’d been brooding, so I controlled the urge to call for almost an hour. My goal was to come across as wounded and down in the mouth, not salivating over prospects for an after-dinner roll in the hay. If I could convince her that I needed solace, I was sure that she’d suggest a suitable method.

  I filled part of the waiting time with a call to Detective Curtis Brown. He informed me that Ted Carlson had not been apprehended, but that every possible means of departure was under observation.

  “You can’t have every road blocked,” I said.

  “His wife told us where he parks his car when he’s downtown, and we found it there,” Brownie said. “He’s either going to bail out by air, train, or bus. We’ve got all those stations covered.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t beat you to the draw? He could have been long gone before you set up surveillance.”

  “That’s true, but nothing has showed up on any of his credit cards. No tickets for transportation of any kind, no motels.”

  “Maybe he’s a cash customer,” I said.

  “Whatever. Have a good day, Mitch.”

  When I finally called Kitty, I got her voice mail. She was either out or on another call. “Please, God, don’t let her be out for long,” I whispered after I left a message and put down the phone.

  She wasn’t. The return call came exactly sixteen minutes later. Not that I was watching the clock.

  “Hi, Mitch,” Kitty said. “What can I do for you?”

  “You can give my shattered ego and sagging morale a boost,” I said in a flat, expressionless voice.

  “Wow, that’s quite an order. What’s going on?”

  “It’s what’s not going on. You know that commitment project I told I’ve been working on? It’s been de-committed, so to speak.”

  “The woman left you?”

  “She took off for Duluth with somebody else,” I said. I didn’t even have to lie.

  “That sucks,” Kitty said. “You want to have dinner or something?”

  “Maybe dinner and something,” I said.

  “Ooh, that sounds like fun. Where do you want to eat? Before the something, that is.”

  I really liked the way this conversation was going. I suggested a restaurant and Kitty said that would be great. “I’ve got some errands to run after work, but I could meet you at the restaurant at seven,” she added.

  “Sounds great,” I said. “I feel better already.”

  “Glad to hear it. See you soon.”

  “Oh, hey!” I said, catching her before she hung up. “Wear your red boots. They’re really a turn-on.”

  “Anything you say, Mr. Shattered Ego.”

  I put down the phone and walked quick-time to the photo department where Al was working on his late-morning coffee and doughnut.

  “She bit,” I said. “Took it hook, line, and sinker.”

  “Great,” Al said. “When do we reel her in?”

  We estimated that dinner would take about an hour and a half, which meant that Kitty and I would be starting for my place to do our “something” at about 8:30. Al would use the key I keep hidden in a shrub near the parking lot door to get into my apartment. I would go to the men’s room before leaving the restaurant and call his cell phone so he could tuck himself away in the bedroom closet.

  The layout of my apartment is simple. From the hall, you enter through the kitchen/dining area and turn left to go into the living room. From there it’s a straight shot to the bedroom, where the bathroom is on the right and the closet, with sliding doors, faces the foot of the bed. My plan was to get Kitty into the bedroom and at least partially undressed before showing her the picture. My thought was that the lack of clothing would prevent a sudden departure, and the element of surprise would bring forth an honest answer if she was, in fact, the Vulcan in red boots.

  At noon, Martha called to say that jury selection had been postponed again because at least a dozen people in the pool were still stranded on unplowed roads. The judge vowed to begin the process on Thursday morning, no matter how many prospects were missing, but it looked like Martha’s sojourn in Duluth would carry over into the following week.

  “Bummer,” I said. “I want you home tomorrow.” I refrained from adding, “But not tonight.”

  “Me, too,” Martha said. “I miss sleeping with Sherlock Holmes.”

  The afternoon dragged by, the way time does when you’re eager for it to fly. When the clock finally got around to 5:00 p.m., I shut down my computer, put on my coat and went home. I took a shower and changed int
o a fresh powder-blue shirt and black pants. I topped this combination off with a red tie and my best navy blazer. Just before leaving the apartment, I tucked a tiny tape recorder loaded with a thirty-minute tape into my shirt pocket. I arrived at the restaurant at 6:58 and was led to the table that I’d reserved. Five minutes later, when Kitty was escorted to the table and took off her coat, every head in the restaurant turned in her direction.

  She was wearing the red boots all right. And above them she was dressed in full Klondike Kate regalia, a low-cut red blouse with puffy short sleeves and a red skirt with black trim over a full white petticoat. Her long, dark-brown hair was flowing free and her green eyes were sparkling. The effect was as spectacular as it was surprising.

  I rose from my chair, and she wrapped her arms around me and kissed me on the mouth, letting her lips linger longer than necessary for a friendly hello. When we parted, the other diners were all studying their plates or staring at their table settings. Being Minnesotans, they were embarrassed by Kitty’s un-Minnesota-like public display of affection and they couldn’t bear to look at us.

  “My ego is rising already,” I said when we were seated. Her signature perfume, which teased my nostrils during the kiss, had permeated my mustache and was lingering there.

  “My mission is to raise your ego and anything else that needs raising,” Kitty said.

  “I’m sure you’ll be able to accomplish your mission. You can look forward to my complete cooperation.”

  This witty repartee was interrupted by our server, a round, rosy-cheeked young man named Taylor, who took our drink orders—wine for Kitty and coffee for me—and hustled away.

  “I asked for the red boots, but I wasn’t expecting a full Kate costume,” I said.

  “I wear this when I introduce the Kates at special occasions,” Kitty said. “And I figured this was a special occasion.”

  “I’m flattered, and flattery will get you everywhere.”

  “Everywhere is a good destination. I’d say I’m sorry that your friend ran off to Duluth, but I’d be lying. I think most media people are assholes, but you’re different somehow.”