Dead Man's Mistress

by David Housewright

  “I was wondering—why were all of Montgomery’s lights on?”

  The agents gave it a few beats before they announced, “We will, of course, investigate your movements to make sure you’re telling us the truth. In the meantime, McKenzie, you’re free to go.”

  “I suppose you’re going to run to see Ms. Wykoff now,” Krause said.

  “I think she’d like to know what’s going on.”

  “Fine, you do that—after we talk to her.”

  “Should we make a race of it, see who gets there first?”

  “Should we lock you in the holding cell for another twenty-four hours?” Plakcy asked.

  “Or we could arrest you for obstruction of an ongoing criminal investigation,” Krause said.

  “That would never hold up,” I said.

  “I don’t care.” Krause turned toward Plakcy. “Do you care?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “What’s it going to be, McKenzie?” Krause asked.

  “Say please.”

  * * *

  I traded Louise’s stolen property and her photographs for my belongings and a receipt from Eileen. Her cheerful “Have a pleasant morning, Mr. McKenzie” was a nice bonus. It occurred to me as I headed for the door that she smiled more than anyone I had ever seen who worked inside a police department.

  Don’t ever change, Eileen, my inner voice said.

  Sheriff Bowland decided to walk me to my car. As we were leaving, we bumped into Deputy Wurzer.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked. “You’re not letting him go?”

  “No reason to hold him,” Bowland said.

  “I don’t believe this. Give me twenty minutes alone with the sonuvabitch, Sheriff. I’ll give you plenty of reason.”

  Bowland stared at the man for a few beats, not out of anger but surprise, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “I don’t much like that kind of talk, Peter,” he said.

  “This asshole probably zeroed Montgomery.”

  “There’s no evidence to support that allegation.”

  The deputy shook his head like a poor teacher who was unable to get through to a dull child, although in this case the student—it was difficult to determine the sheriff’s exact age. Studying his face in the bright morning sun made me wonder if Cook County had a mandatory retirement age.

  “We did things differently where I came from,” the deputy said before throwing up his hands in disgust and walking into the Law Enforcement Center.

  “Where did he come from?” I asked.

  “Minneapolis.”

  “That hellhole?”

  “It’s a long story.

  “I bet.”

  “The BCA and Wurzer—my advice, McKenzie, is to stay away from them both. Stay away from Ms. Wykoff, too, at least until the BCA and I have a chance to interview her.”

  “Why? Do you think the boys would make good on their threat?”

  “Of course they would.”

  “What about you?”

  “Despite what they say in the movies and on TV, a sheriff doesn’t have the legal authority to tell someone not to leave town, but McKenzie—don’t leave town. Not just yet, anyway.”

  “I don’t know, Sheriff. I think I’ve already outstayed my welcome.”

  “I’m relying heavily on the BCA, but it’s still my investigation. I’ll be asking a lot of questions on my own, including a few more of you.”

  “Such as?”

  “Why were Montgomery’s lights on?”

  “Grand Marais is crawling with tourists. I doubt I can find a room.”

  “There’s a motel out on the highway called the Frontier. I’ll give them a call. They should be able to help you out.”

  “The BCA won’t like it, me hanging around.”

  “Do you care?”

  “Not particularly. You should know, though, if I stay, I’m likely to make a nuisance of myself. It’s in my nature.”

  “I’m kinda counting on it.”

  * * *

  The owners of the Frontier Motel across the highway from Lake Superior were waiting for me when I arrived. They said they were happy to help a friend of the sheriff. It made me wonder what rowdiness had occurred in their place that Bowland had helped them with.

  The motel was shaped like a horseshoe with all of the rooms facing the great lake. Mine was right of center and small, with hardwood floors, walls, and ceiling. I tossed my bag on top of a queen-size bed that took up more than half the space. The remainder was occupied by a small table with two chairs in front of the lone window and an even smaller bureau with a sixteen-inch flat-screen analog TV that picked up five channels. The room was clearly designed for hunters, cross-country skiers, and hikers, people who had no intention of spending a lot of time inside.

  There was a two-cup coffeemaker on a small shelf built into the corner. I set it to brew before using the tiny bathroom to shave and shower. I poured one of the cups and drank it while I dressed. The second cup I took with me to the resort chairs arranged in a semicircle in the center of the horseshoe. I sat there and gazed out at the lake.

  I decided I liked the bare-bones charm of the motel very much. ’Course, before I met Nina I ate most of my meals off paper plates. I checked my cell phone and was astonished to find that I had bars—Good for the Frontier, my inner voice said. I called Nina hoping to catch her at home before she went to Rickie’s.

  “Hey, you,” she said. “I was starting to worry. I thought I’d hear from you last night.”

  “Things got a little complicated. I’d explain, but you know how much I hate to bore you.”

  “In other words something nefarious is going on and you don’t want to worry me.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about, seriously. I just hate to start telling a story without knowing how it ends. Maybe by tonight I’ll have it figured out. How was Sophia Shorai?”

  “She was very, very good. She did a cover of ‘One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)’, but she didn’t sing it the way everyone else does, making it a requiem to lost love. She wasn’t sad that she lost the boy, she was angry.”

  “I’m sorry I missed it.”

  “I’m going to bring her back the first chance I get. Which raises the question—when are you coming back?”

  “I don’t know. The sheriff told me not to leave town.”

  “Can he do that?”

  “Technically no, but he was so nice about it. Listen, I’ve been living on coffee for the past twenty-four hours, so…”

  “Call me tonight?”

  “I will.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later I was ordering fresh herring, hash browns, eggs, and toast at the South of the Border Cafe. Twenty minutes after that I drove to Louise Wykoff’s art academy. If that wasn’t enough of a head start for the BCA then too damn bad. Once again I had to park up the street because the academy was surrounded by vehicles including the documentary company’s white van.

  Before I got halfway to the church, Peg Younghans rushed out of her own house as if she had been waiting for me. She crossed the street and intercepted me on the sidewalk. This time she was wearing a dress, sweater, and heels that made her appear very proper indeed.

  “Going to church?” I asked.

  “To work in a few minutes. Must look nice for the tourists. McKenzie, did you hear what happened?”

  “No, what happened?”

  “David Montgomery was killed last night.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  You are the best liar, my inner voice said.

  “The sheriff was here this morning,” Peg said. “Agents from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, too. They think Louise killed him.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “They have to eat, don’t they? At the Blue Water Cafe. They were overheard talking while eat
ing breakfast.”

  “Who heard them?”

  “You don’t think I have friends? You don’t think they talk to me?”

  “What did they say?”

  “My friends?”

  “The BCA.”

  “Someone found David’s body in his house last night. It looked like he committed suicide, but the agents don’t think so. They think he was murdered and the killer tried to make it look like he committed suicide.”

  “What does that have to do with Louise?”

  “I don’t know, but they were over here talking to her bright and early, so—something.”

  She doesn’t know that you’re involved and she has no pertinent details. Good.

  “Just because they spoke to her, that doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “This guy…”

  “Dave Montgomery.”

  “Were he and Louise friends?”

  “I don’t know if ‘friends’ is the right word.”

  “What is the right word?”

  “Actually, ‘friends’ might be the right word after all, friends with benefits.”

  “You told me yesterday that Louise didn’t have any male visitors.”

  “I said she didn’t have many male visitors. She’s not a cloistered nun, for God’s sake.”

  “How often did you see him here?”

  “I couldn’t say. Once, twice a month.”

  “Could he have been one of Louise’s art students?”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Still, you don’t know for a fact that he and Louise were intimate.”

  “He was a good-looking boy and divorced in a place where there aren’t many good-looking girls who are equally unencumbered. Besides, sometimes I’d get up early in the morning and his car would still be parked in front of her place.”

  I remembered the description of Montgomery that the owner of Second Hand Treasures had given me.

  “Wasn’t he about thirty years younger than Louise?”

  Peg shook her head like I had insulted her. She set her hand on my wrist.

  “McKenzie,” she said. “Please.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  “Not very. Just enough to nod and say hello to. I have the same relationship with just about everyone else in town. At least those that stay here year-round.”

  “Do you know who his friends were?”

  “No.” Peg had kept her hand on my wrist, but now she moved it to my hand. “You’re not wearing a wedding ring.”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Interesting.”

  I came thisclose to telling her about Nina. I didn’t because I decided Peg might be more talkative if she thought I was available.

  “I notice that you’re not wearing a wedding ring, either,” I said.

  “I found it cumbersome, even when I was married. You’re what? Forty-five?”

  “Somewhere in there. You?”

  “Old enough to know better, young enough not to care.”

  “A good age to be.”

  She let her fingers dance across mine.

  Careful, my inner voice said.

  “When did the documentary crew get here?” I asked.

  “Same time as yesterday.”

  “Were they loud?”

  “Very. I thought they had finished last night, but—you were right about that walking and talking thing. What they did, the director pretended to surprise Louise at her front door and then they walked down the street toward the lake. They did this a half-dozen times before they called it a day and packed up. That was right before sundown. I thought documentaries were supposed to be like TV news. Spontaneous. Or at least unrehearsed.”

  “What happened then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “With Louise.”

  “I don’t know. Went back into the church, I guess. It’s not like I spy on her, watch her every movement.”

  “I need to talk to Louise,” I said.

  “Right this minute?”

  “Before I forget why I came.”

  “Can’t have that.”

  I gave her my best I’ll-see-you-soon smile and moved toward the converted church.

  “You remember where I live, right?” Peg said.

  I spun toward her as I continued to walk away, smiled, and spun back.

  You are such a slut, my inner voice said.

  Yes, it was me I was talking to.

  * * *

  I slid inside the doorway without knocking and bumped into Jennica Mehren. She turned and glared at me with such fury that I nearly gasped. She quickly pressed her index finger against her lips, the universal signal for “shut the hell up,” and gestured at the interior of the church. There were a half-dozen people inside including her old man, as silent and unmoving as stone even as they directed their cameras, lights, and microphones. Louise Wykoff was sitting on her stool, leaning forward, and gripping the seat with both hands to keep from sliding off. She was wearing a thin black lace dress, bare legs, and no shoes and looked as lovely as she did in one of Randolph McInnis’s paintings of her. She was weeping as she choked out the words.

  “He was everything to me,” Louise said. “Every day that he was gone was empty. I would pray, ‘Come back. Please, please come back to me.’ And then he would for a few days, or a week or longer, and I’d be so happy that my heart felt like it would burst until he left again. I knew it wouldn’t last, couldn’t possibly last, yet it did for five wonderful years. Then the accident—a stupid, silly way for a great man to die. I’ve had good days and bad, thirty-five years of them, but I don’t think I’ve ever been truly happy since before that day.

  “Now this. The last thing I had of him taken from me. Stolen. I don’t think I’ve gone more than a few weeks at a time without looking at those paintings and remembering. The hole in my heart now is so great it would have been more merciful if the thieves had killed me. No, no, that’s not true. If I was gone, there would be no one left to tell his story, no one who actually knew his story instead of the myth that grew up around Scenes from an Inland Sea. The myth that Mary Ann helped create.”

  His voice had such a low sonorous quality that at first I couldn’t tell where it came from. I saw him, finally, standing between two cameras.

  “Are you ready to tell the story at last?” Jeffery Mehren asked.

  The way I had glanced about must have caught Louise’s attention because she was now staring directly at me when she spoke.

  “Yes, at last.”

  She slipped off her stool and started toward me.

  “Cut,” Mehren said. “Louise, please.”

  “I must speak to this man. I must find out about my paintings.”

  The entire company turned to look at me, including Jennica. I nearly gasped again.

  The BCA isn’t going to like this at all, my inner voice said.

  SIX

  Louise’s apartment above the art academy reminded me of my own place. It was divided into areas—kitchen area, living area, bedroom area. There were large windows with a spectacular view of downtown Grand Marais and the great lake beyond.

  “This is where I kept the paintings,” she said.

  She gestured at a spot against the wall inside a large walk-in closet, the only room with a door besides the bathroom.

  “Describe them to me,” I said.

  She did, telling me that the first painting was nearly all white. Footprints in deep snow in the foreground led to a solitary figure in black, her back to the artist, who was trudging toward Eagle Mountain, the highest point in Minnesota.

  “Randolph called it The Climber,” she said.

  The second was painted in the Village of Ontonagon in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A naked Louise stood with her back to the artist and leaning against a door frame. Featured within the frame was Ontonagon Lighthouse, built where the Ontonagon River flowed into the great lake.

  “I was never sure what Randolph was trying to say with this painting; I’m no
t sure he knew himself,” Louise said. “I liked it very much, though. He called it Superficial Light.”

  The third painting was called Awake—Louise had difficulty telling me about it. It showed her lying nude on the far side of a bed, a sheet covering only her legs. The near side was empty, yet the sheets were ruffled and the pillow was dented.

  “You were supposed to wonder if the absent lover had just left the subject or if she was waiting for him to come to her.”

  She called herself the subject, my inner voice reminded me.

  “It was Randolph’s last painting,” Louise said. “I didn’t know that, though. I thought it would be his last painting of me.”

  “How big are they?” I asked.

  Louise laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I don’t know. It just seemed an odd question given … The first two are the same size—twenty-three-by-thirty inches. Awake is forty-four-by-thirty-five inches.”

  “Not something you can stuff in your pocket.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Or a kitchen drawer. Louise, after thirty-five years of keeping them secret, why would you tell the world that these paintings exist now?”

  “I didn’t mean to. It just kind of slipped out when the sheriff and those BCA agents were questioning me. The one, I think his name was Krause, he frightened me.”

  “He meant to.”

  “He kept saying that a silver teapot and brass candlesticks wasn’t reason enough to kill someone. My cheap paintings, either. He called them cheap. That’s when I said—when I told him that they weren’t my paintings. That they were—they’re gone, aren’t they? Really gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “They weren’t inside Montgomery’s house?”

  “I didn’t spend much time there, but I had the impression that the place had been searched before I arrived.”

  “By who?”

  “By whoever knew he had the paintings. An accomplice, perhaps.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  Louise found a corner of the bed to sit on, her hands folded in her lap, her head bowed as if she was lost in prayer and I thought, Damn she’s a pretty woman. As pretty as a picture. Most beauty fades upon close examination. Suddenly we see the flaws, the nicks and scratches and blemishes of life. Over time, if we take the time, it’s the flaws that we come to appreciate most. They’re what give beauty its character. Yet That Wykoff Woman had none of these. She remained flawless, even at her age. It made me a little uncomfortable, although I couldn’t tell you why.