Pineland Serenade

by Larry Millett

  Copyright © 2020 by Larry Millett

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced

  in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Book & Cover Design by:

  Erik Christopher | Ugly Dog Digital

  Author photo by Matt Schmitt

  Published by Millett & Ahern LLC.

  Millett & Ahern LLC.

  www.larrymillett.com/

  ISBN 978-1-7357278-1-3

  Contents

  Prelude

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Coda

  Prelude

  On the first day of April, in the central square of Pineland, Minnesota, someone posted an anonymous message only hours after the town’s wealthiest man vanished under suspicious circumstances. Typewritten on a plain sheet of white paper, the message appeared to implicate four local men in the disappearance. It also suggested an unknown woman might prove crucial to solving the case.

  The curiously old-fashioned message came with a modern addendum in the form of an attached thumb drive. The drive’s contents—a single audio file consisting of ten seconds of music performed by a not very proficient band—offered another mystery. The file was of poor quality, the music sounding tinny and distant, as though it had been recorded from far away. Technicians were able to enhance the recording, but no one recognized the melody.

  Strange and violent events followed, along with more messages and more snippets of music. The snippets, adding up to sixteen bars in all, were eventually spliced together to form an unremarkable melody. It was only after we’d heard the last of the song, and unraveled the terrible story behind it, that we learned its name.

  It was called “Pineland Serenade.”

  1

  Our troubles, like those of the universe, began with a big bang. It happened on April Fool’s Day and it was the high-decibel start to a month no one in Pineland will ever forget. Here’s how the Associated Press reported the news:

  PINELAND, MN—A massive explosion early this morning destroyed a hilltop mansion near this community 100 miles north of the Twin Cities, and its wealthy owner has gone missing.

  The mansion, located about five miles west of Pineland, belonged to Peter Swindell, a prominent local businessman.

  “At this point, we have reason to believe Mr. Swindell is in jeopardy, and we have begun an active search for him,” Paradise County Sheriff Arne Sigurdson said, but would not go into further detail.

  Sigurdson said it does not appear anyone was in the 12,000-square-foot home at the time of the blast. “We have not found human remains in the house,” the sheriff said, noting that Swindell wasn’t married and “as far as we know lived alone.”

  The explosion occurred just after 1 a.m. and could be heard as far as 20 miles away, the sheriff said. “I know it shook me and a lot of other people out of bed.”

  Fire crews from Pineland and three nearby communities responded to the scene. It took about three hours to bring the fire that followed the explosion under control.

  A team from the state Fire Marshal’s office will attempt to determine the cause of the blast, which tore through the roof of the sprawling brick mansion and left only a few walls standing.

  Sigurdson said the house was heated with propane stored in a large tank on the property. “The fire investigators will be looking at that,” he said. “They’ll have to determine if it was an accident or a deliberate act of destruction. We just don’t know at this point.”

  The sheriff said agents from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) will be brought in to assist with the investigation.

  “Obviously, this is a very disturbing situation,” he said. “Mr. Swindell is a very well-respected man here who’s made many contributions to our community.”

  Swindell, 70, built the Paradise Pines Resort Hotel, which opened in 2015. The hotel is next to the popular casino of the same name operated by the Grand Lac Band of Ojibwe.

  “The hotel has been a big success and brought a lot of new jobs with it,” said Martin Moreland, president of the Pineland Chamber of Commerce. “Peter is a tremendous force here and everyone is just stunned by the news.”

  According to Moreland, Swindell is a native of Paradise County who later became a highly successful real estate developer in Chicago. “He moved back here because he wanted to help the community where he grew up. He’s a great guy and a true friend. I just hope he’s all right.”

  Swindell’s mansion “was by far the biggest house in the county,” Moreland said. “He loved to throw parties and a lot of folks in town have had a chance to see the place. It was a real showpiece.”

  Swindell is “a millionaire many times over” and had been “welcomed with open arms” when he returned to Paradise County, Moreland added. “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to harm him. He’s done nothing but good things here.”

  Like any news story, the AP account requires some reading between the lines. Take Marty Moreland’s fawning comments, for example. Truth is, Marty and Peter were not so much friends as co-conspirators. Marty helped Peter close some rather unsavory real estate deals and so was among the lucky few invited to those parties at the mansion, where caviar, champagne and hookers were usually on the menu.

  Marty also lied about the Paradise Pines Resort Hotel, which hasn’t been a tremendous success. Just the opposite, in fact. Word around town is that the hotel—as managed by Peter’s deeply unlovable son, Dewey—lost piles of money from the start and may be headed for receivership.

  And as far as Peter doing “nothing but good things,” well, that qualifies as a howler. Yes, he spread around plenty of money, purchasing goodwill at the going price, as rich men always do. But he didn’t return to Pineland out of deep love for his old hometown. Peter came back because he wanted to be king, a position unavailable to him in Chicago, where he was just another fast-talking real estate guy making deals for crappy suburban office parks.

  Here, on the other hand, he became lord of all he surveyed, our very own royalty, Peter the Great. A man with wads of money in his pockets is always a local hero, and Peter received an adoring welcome when he returned to Pineland in 2010. There was no parade with confetti raining down on the streets, but our town’s leaders were quick to embrace Peter and his
marvelous plans for bringing a new age of prosperity to Paradise County.

  If the resort hotel was Peter’s signature project, the mansion was his ultimate personal statement, a shining testament to his regal aspirations. He named it Kingshill—subtlety was not Peter’s strong suit—and he supposedly spent well north of four million on the place. It was a plump, steep-roofed brick-and-stone extravaganza in the faux French Provincial style favored by people with more money than taste. The mansion’s carefully tended grounds included a formal garden, a greenhouse, and a pond stocked in summer by a small school of Koi carp said to be worth thirty grand. Presumably, when winter came, Peter ate them.

  I visited the mansion only once, when Peter staged a grand opening and invited the local peasants to see what the king had wrought. It was quite the affair. Uniformed caterers roamed the mansion and grounds, offering up tasty morsels concocted by a chef allegedly trained at a three-star restaurant in Paris. Peter, resplendent in a white linen suit, mingled merrily with his humble subjects. The mansion itself offered many marvels. There was a “great room” roughly the size of Rhode Island, a baronial fireplace outfitted with andirons as big as spears, six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, and a kitchen heavy with Angolan granite and Italian marble. All that was lacking was a throne.

  I suppose I should introduce myself. I’m Paul G. Zweifel, skeptic at large, occasional drunkard, failed husband, connoisseur of rue, and soon-to-be the former attorney for Paradise County, of which Pineland is the seat. As you’ll discover, I was thrust into the middle of everything that happened here last year, and I barely escaped with my life. Even so, some conspiracy theorists in town continue to insist I was no innocent party. As they see it, the real story has yet to be told and terrible secrets still lie buried like rotting bodies in the dark woodlands of Paradise County.

  But the “real story” is always elusive, if you think about it, and the best I can do now is tell the story as I lived it. Trust me when I say I’ll offer the finest version of the truth available. You have my word on that. After all, I’m a lawyer.

  One more thing: Zweifel means “doubt” in German, and a sublime sense of certainty has never been one of my defining characteristics. Maybe that’s why some people around town think I’m just a smartass who likes to question revealed truths. To that charge, I plead guilty.

  I may have been the only person in Paradise County who didn’t hear the explosion that leveled Peter’s mansion. Blame it on my friend Jack Daniel’s. I’d spent much of the previous night in his company, watching ancient “Perry Mason” reruns and hoping the great litigator might elicit a confession from me. No such luck. And yes, I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. How pathetic. There’s nothing sadder than a solitary drunk.

  But I have my reasons. I drink on Friday nights because I want to forget the ones long ago when my beautiful Meredith and I would go out on “dates” and then come home and drink and smoke pot and make love. Those were the best nights of my life—probably the best I’ll ever have. Meredith left me ten years ago, with good and just cause, and found happiness, along with substantial spending money, in the arms of a bald neurologist.

  Now, in the dead hours of the night, I often marinate in regret. I used to call Meredith now and then, eager to hear her voice and remember what we had, but she was curt and uninterested, and now we don’t talk anymore. As I like to say, the past is never free. I pay up with Jack.

  Once I nodded off I entered the kind of deep, sloshed sleep that is much like death, only without the benefit of lasting forever. So when the big blast came, I was oblivious. Camus, my existential border collie and faithful bedmate, was not. He began barking furiously and jumped on me just to be sure I’d wake up.

  “For God’s sake, Camus,” I said, rolling over and glancing at my alarm clock. “Do you know what time it is?”

  He didn’t, clocks being of little consequence to dogs, but he wouldn’t let me go back to sleep, much as I disliked the idea of being awake. My head felt like an overstuffed bean bag and my insides weren’t any better. Eggs ala Alka-Seltzer would be on the breakfast menu, with a Bloody Mary to wash it down. The television screen on the far wall, which I’d neglected to turn off before falling asleep, blared with an infomercial promising me the most amazingly robust erection of my life. I would have settled for more sleep, but Camus was having none of it.

  I stumbled out of bed and looked at my watch. One-ten a.m. I had no idea why Camus had started barking. After a while, I heard distant sirens. A fire somewhere? A big accident on the interstate? A mass shooting at the casino? I didn’t really care. A bad hangover kills curiosity, among other things. All I wanted was more sleep. I went to the kitchen and gave Camus a bowl of food to shut him up. Then I went back to bed.

  I should have stayed up and had the good sense to look at my phone.

  2

  My second awakening came just after seven, again courtesy of Camus. I peered out the bedroom window, toward my back yard, and saw nothing other than the usual vista of dim brown fields painted with gray piles of slush. Another glorious morning in Paradise County, which despite its name offers little in the way of sublime beauty. It looks especially dreary in April, Minnesota’s month of false spring and dashed hopes.

  My country manor, as I like to call it, is the only house on a cul-de-sac at the edge of town in a development known as Pine Ridge Estates, even though there’s not a ridge or pine tree in sight. An ambitious young developer planned the subdivision back in 2007 and managed to build just one house—mine—before the Great Recession arrived to plunge him into bankruptcy. The solitude suits me just fine, neighbors usually being more trouble than they’re worth.

  Camus wasn’t interested in the view. He raced to the front door, barking madly and circling, a sure sign someone was outside. I threw on sweatpants and a T-shirt and went into the living room to investigate. I looked out the sidelight and saw Sheriff Arne Sigurdson coming up the walk.

  Short and barrel-chested, Arne has a butch haircut, a silvery beard he keeps closely trimmed, a twice-broken nose that invites speculation and gray eyes as piercing as a welder’s torch. Although he’s well into his fifties, he’s still ox-strong and not a man to trifle with. A year earlier, he and five deputies raided one of the many small meth labs that do business in the woods of northern Paradise County. A wild shootout ensued. Two deputies were wounded and both meth makers—brothers with long criminal records—were shot dead. More than one hundred rounds were exchanged during the firefight. One of the brothers was hit three times, the other two. All five of the bullets came from Arne’s Glock.

  Arne wouldn’t mind shooting me either, given the chance. We don’t get along and never have. He’d been sheriff for twelve years by the time I came on board as county attorney and was used to doing things his own way. Like many sheriffs, he turned his office into a fiefdom, rewarding friends and even a cousin or two with jobs. But his vassals aren’t always competent when it comes to criminal investigations, handling some cases so poorly I’ve refused to prosecute them. This makes Arne extremely unhappy, and our working relationship is coated in ice.

  As soon as I let Arne in, Camus began to growl. He’s never liked men in uniform.

  “Go herd something,” I ordered, sending him off with a tap to his behind.

  “I tried calling you,” Arne announced once we’d taken seats in my living room, which offers two shelves crammed with books and CDs, a collection of cheap IKEA furniture in varying shades of beige and walls bare of decoration except for an expensive, limited-edition print of Gas, my favorite Edward Hopper painting.

  “Couldn’t get an answer on either your land line or your cell,” Arne complained. “I was wondering if you’d left town.”

  “In your dreams. I turn down the ring volume on my phones at night so people like you won’t bother me. Clearly, that strategy has failed, since here you are. What’s up? I’m guessing you didn’t stop by for toast
and jam.”

  Arne, whose sense of humor can best be described as deeply Scandinavian, stared at me and said, “So you didn’t hear the explosion? That’s funny, I’m pretty sure they heard it in Duluth. Maybe even in China. I’m thinking you should get checked for ear wax.”

  “Thanks for the hygiene tip. I’ll hop right to it. Now, what’s this explosion you’re talking about?”

  “Christ, it woke up most of the county. Do you sleep in a fucking vault?”

  “No, Arne, I don’t. But I do sleep soundly. Is that a crime?”

  Arne shook his head, clearly disgusted by my talent for nocturnal oblivion, and said, “Peter’s mansion blew up this morning and then it burned to the ground. It’s basically a heap of ashes. We don’t think the explosion was an accident. The fire guys believe somebody deliberately filled the house with propane. As for Peter, he seems to be gone with the wind. I’m thinking this all could be a big deal. How about you?”

  “Jesus,” I said. I don’t usually invoke the Lord’s name as a matter of surprise, but it was the best I could do at the moment. “How did it happen?”

  Arne filled in the details, including a piece of information that hadn’t been released to the media. “We found Peter’s SUV not far from the house. The driver’s side door was open and the engine was running. We think whoever blew up the house snatched Peter.”

  “So it’s a kidnapping?”

  Arne fired up a Marlboro, not bothering to ask my permission to smoke in the house. I passed a coffee cup his way to use as an ashtray. “Could be,” he said, sucking in the poison, “but if it was a kidnapping, why would somebody go to all the trouble of blowing up the mansion?”

  “Maybe the perp didn’t like the architecture.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m joking, Arne. If I had to guess, I’d say the kidnapper destroyed the house because he didn’t want to leave any evidence behind.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, he did a good job of it. I don’t think we’re going to get much out of the place.”