Death by the Bay Read online

  With her wrinkled blue dress and disheveled hair, Kiel looked like the local dog walker. But her appearance didn’t fool Cubiak. She was on high alert, excited to be on the scene with another dead body.

  He had a litany of questions for the journalist, questions that went far beyond asking the reason for her presence at Sage’s house, but he would save those for later.

  “Do you mind waiting outside?” he asked her.

  Kiel ignored him and glanced at the other woman, as if seeking permission. A look passed between them, and Kiel got up. She moved slowly, carrying her mug to the sink and then sliding out the back door, leaving Cubiak alone with Klyasheff.

  “Are you drinking tea?” he asked.

  She arched forward and looked into her cup, as if she couldn’t remember and needed to check. “Yes.”

  “Would you like more?”

  “No.”

  Cubiak eased into the chair that the younger woman had vacated. “I’m sorry for this. And that you had to be the one to find Doctor Sage, but it’s important that you tell me everything you remember.”

  She stared at him with vacant eyes.

  “In your own words.”

  She blinked. More time passed in silence but Cubiak waited. He knew this was hard for her.

  “I was worried,” she said finally. The statement was definitive and seemed to open a floodgate of memory.

  “Doctor Sage hadn’t been in the office this week since . . . well, you know. It wasn’t like him to stay away so long and not call or email. Not to return my messages. He lived alone and I worried that maybe something terrible had happened. What if he’d fallen down the stairs, or had a stroke or . . .” Her voice trailed off. She shuddered. “My mother always said I had an overactive imagination, but I couldn’t help it. These things do happen, you know.”

  “They do,” Cubiak said. Not often, he thought.

  “This afternoon, I decided I’d call one more time, and if there was no answer, then I’d come by. I brought some letters to be signed and figured that gave me an excuse, that I needed his signature.”

  “Were you ever at his house before?”

  “Many times. Doctor Sage often worked from home on the weekend. If he needed me, he’d ask me to come out for an hour or two. Usually we sat in his study, at the back of the house, but sometimes he’d be working in that room . . .” She grabbed a green cloth napkin from the table and twisted it in tight, angry swirls. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You’re doing fine.” He waited and then he began again. “When you got here this afternoon, was the door locked?”

  “Of course. It’s always locked. I had to let myself in.” She wrenched the fabric into a tight tourniquet. “I wasn’t sure if I had the right to do that, but he didn’t answer the bell and his car was in the garage.”

  “You checked that first.”

  She nodded.

  “You know the alarm code?”

  Klyasheff blushed. “Doctor Sage gave it to me a couple of months ago. He’d left some documents at the house that he needed, and he asked me to retrieve them.” She studied the twisted napkin in her lap. “I don’t know what I would have done if he’d changed the code!”

  “What did you notice first?”

  “I saw Doctor Sage!”

  Having come through the front door, the sheriff knew that wasn’t possible, given the location of the body relative to the entrance. “You walked in and saw him immediately?”

  “No,” she stammered. “You’re right. I didn’t, not right away. I came in and stood in the hall and listened, thinking I’d hear him, but it was so quiet, and cold, too. The AC must have been on high. I went directly to his study—he spends so much time there—and then to the kitchen. It was almost dinnertime and I thought maybe he was fixing something to eat. But he wasn’t there either. I came back to the hall and glanced into the living room and finally the library. That’s when I saw his arm hanging over the side of the chair. At first I thought that maybe he’d fallen asleep or, you know, something worse, like a stroke.” She pinched her mouth. “I walked around to the front of the chair and saw the blood. So much blood.”

  “Did you touch him?”

  The woman shuddered. “I couldn’t. I was afraid to. I was certain he was dead. He had to be.” She caught her breath. “At first I couldn’t move. Then I wanted to run. I thought that whoever had shot him might still be in the house. I didn’t know what to do. But when I saw the gun on the rug I realized the horrible truth of what had happened.” She looked at Cubiak, her eyes full of pleading. “How could anyone do that? Why would someone do that to themselves? It was horrible. Just horrible. The poor man . . .”

  Cubiak brought her a glass of water and waited until she was calm.

  “Anything else?”

  A lace-edged handkerchief had replaced the tortured napkin in her lap and was being subjected to the same fate.

  “The phone rang. It was the one on his desk in his study—where I’d come for the papers that one time. I didn’t know what else to do so I went in and answered it.”

  “Why?”

  “Out of habit, I guess. I answer his phone at the institute, so it was an automatic reflex, and it got me out of that room. Maybe I thought that if I left and then came back I would find everything would be back to normal. Maybe I worried that I’d been hallucinating or seeing things, you know, letting my imagination get the better or worse of me.”

  “Who called?”

  “It was that writer. Linda Kiel. She said she had an appointment with Doctor Sage and was calling to confirm. She seemed surprised that I answered the phone. I don’t know why but I told her what had happened, and she said she’d come right over, that I shouldn’t have to deal with the situation on my own.”

  Pretty considerate of her, Cubiak thought. “Did she say anything else?”

  “No. Oh, only that I shouldn’t touch anything.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “I hung up and called nine-one-one.”

  The murmur of voices drifted in from the front of the house. Cubiak couldn’t make out what was being said, but he picked out Pardy’s voice and figured she was talking to the EMTs.

  “When you arrived, did you notice anything unusual outside the house?”

  She frowned. “I don’t think so. But I wasn’t really paying attention. I was thinking about what I’d say to Doctor Sage. Everything seemed fine. Normal.”

  “Where did you wait for Ms. Kiel?”

  “I went outside and sat in my car. I couldn’t stand being in here.”

  “Did you have to wait long before she arrived?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know, Sheriff. I was distraught. It seemed like only five minutes or so went by before she pulled up, but it could have been much longer.”

  “Did she get in the car with you?”

  Klyasheff’s frosty response told Cubiak that she did not allow anyone to invade her private space. “There was no need. I got out as soon as I saw her car in the driveway. We hugged, as one does in those circumstances, and then she said she had to go inside the house.”

  “She wanted to see the body?”

  “Yes. I told her it was gruesome, but she insisted.”

  “Did you go into the room with her?”

  “No, I waited in the doorway.”

  “What did she do?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t pay attention.”

  Cubiak didn’t believe her. Her antipathy toward Kiel had been obvious at the conference. She would have watched her every move in the library.

  “Did she say anything when she came out?”

  “Oddly no, just that she’d left some papers with Doctor Sage and needed to see if they were in his study. Before I could say anything, she went there and then came right back.”

  “Did she find what she was looking for?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see any papers, but she could have shoved them in her bag.
Should I have tried to stop her?”

  Cubiak ignored the question. “How long have you worked for Doctor Sage?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “And before that?”

  “Before he joined the institute staff, I was Doctor Melk’s assistant. And now both of them . . .” She pressed the handkerchief to her mouth and stifled a sob.

  Cubiak touched her arm. “It’s okay, you’re doing fine, and I’m sure that both of them would want you to help as much as possible.”

  The assistant sniffled and sat up in the chair. “Of course,” she said, but Cubiak could see the doubt creeping into her eyes.

  “The questions I’m asking are all routine.”

  “I understand.”

  “Were there problems at the clinic involving Doctor Melk? Anything you’re aware of?”

  She sat up as if startled by the suggestion. “Nothing. Absolutely not. He hadn’t been involved in the day-to-day operations for ten years. During the past year, he rarely even came to the institute.”

  “What about Doctor Sage?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did either man have any enemies?”

  “Enemies, no. Jealous colleagues, maybe, but enemies, no. Do you think someone tried to hurt them? That doesn’t make any sense. Doctor Melk had a heart attack. And Doctor Sage—bless his soul—took his own life.” She hesitated. “It was suicide, wasn’t it?”

  “It appears so.”

  Klyasheff sank back into the chair, as if relieved that Sage himself and not an intruder had blown the hole in the doctor’s chest.

  “Were the two men friends?” Cubiak said, shifting tactics.

  “Friends?” She repeated the word as if she had never considered the possibility and was unsure what to make of the question. “I don’t know. After all, there was a considerable age difference between them. I can’t say if they ever got together socially, but I know that neither of them golfed or had any other interests that I was aware of.”

  “How did they get along at the institute?”

  “Oh, very amiably. Their interactions were always congenial, as far as I was aware.”

  Cubiak noted the qualification. “What about family?”

  “Doctor Melk was widowed some thirty-five years ago. He and his wife had no children. Doctor Sage never married. They both lived for their work.” She said the latter with pride, as if determined to convince Cubiak that they were good men and that she’d been right to dedicate her life to them. Instead, she aroused the sheriff’s suspicions.

  Working that closely with the doctors, she could have been privy to their secrets. If what she had discovered tarnished them in her eyes, she might feel she had been maligned. Noreen Klyasheff was an intelligent, attractive woman. Had she forsaken marriage and family for Melk, Sage, and their precious institute? Her unyielding good posture, the upright tilt to her chin, and overall manner spoke to more than strict professionalism. Cubiak sensed a deep well of fierce pride lurking beneath her competent façade. Those who crossed her would suffer dire consequences. The more serious the insult, the more grievous the response.

  Cubiak remembered something she had said earlier. “You mentioned that you sometimes went to Doctor Sage’s house for an hour or two on the weekends to help with work. That sounds like an inconvenience.”

  “Not really. I live just outside Sturgeon Bay, about twenty minutes from his house.”

  “You’re from here originally.”

  “I inherited my parents’ house. I don’t see what that has to do—”

  “Did you ever go to Doctor Melk’s house?”

  “Of course. He and his wife had me out for the occasional dinner. What are you trying to get at?” She was becoming indignant.

  “Nothing. These are standard questions,” Cubiak said. But her answers could have a lot to do with things. She had grown up near enough to the Fadim farm to have heard the story about the missing girl. What if she had stumbled onto the old files in a back room at the institute or hidden away at Melk’s house?

  The sheriff couldn’t picture Klyasheff breaking into Mrs. Fadim’s barn, but he didn’t doubt that she had the acumen to assemble the collage. At the conference, she had been near Melk minutes before he died, and she had been the first to report finding Sage’s body in his home library. If there had been a way to kill both men without tipping her hand, she was smart enough to have figured it out.

  Cubiak knew he was reaching. He also knew that at times it was the only option.

  Noreen Klyasheff wanted to go home when they had finished, but Cubiak asked her to wait for a while on the chance he might have more questions for her. “You’re still distraught and probably shouldn’t drive, anyway,” he told her.

  He made her a fresh cup of tea—he was getting good at this, he realized—and left her on the patio under a tall heat lamp.

  From there Cubiak ducked behind the garage. He needed a moment to think. Based on what Bathard had gleaned from the old hospital files, Melk had plenty to hide. If Sage was tainted as well, then both physicians were prime targets for blackmail.

  Noreen Klyasheff was the last person to see Melk alive and the first to find Sage dead. But Linda Kiel was also on the scene both times, and the files were found in her great grandmother’s barn, meaning she might have either put them there or seen them. In public, the two women acted as if they despised each other, but what if that was a ruse? If they’d uncovered the truth about Melk and Sage, they might be implicated in the men’s deaths and could be working together to profit from what they knew.

  The sheriff called the circuit court and requested an emergency warrant for the release of Klyasheff’s and Kiel’s financial records. Then he texted Lisa and told her to run the necessary background checks on the pair.

  “The usual. As fast as possible,” he said.

  Out front, the sheriff found Kiel leaning against the hood of the second black car. As he walked toward her, he pretended not to notice the tire tracks that cut across the grass. She watched him approach, at the same time appearing to draw his attention to the onslaught of boisterous chatter that she directed into the cell phone pressed to her ear. Something about the scene seemed contrived, and Cubiak wondered what she had been up to before she saw him.

  “I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” he said when he reached the car.

  “Five minutes?” She flashed an open hand at him.

  “Two.”

  The sheriff found Rowe in the library with Pardy. “Don’t do anything about the tire tracks until Linda Kiel leaves,” he said.

  The deputy’s question was written on his face, but he swallowed his curiosity and said he would see to it after he finished his calls about the security cameras.

  In the kitchen, Cubiak took the same chair he had sat in for the interview with Klyasheff and waited for the journalist. More late than on time, she strode through the door with a studied nonchalance, as if it wasn’t at all unusual or upsetting to be interviewed by the sheriff in the home of a man who appeared to have put a bullet through his heart. But she wasn’t fooling him; he could almost see the tension in her step.

  He pointed her to the seat across the table. As soon as she was settled, he started in, not bothering to ask if she would like a cup of tea.

  “Do you live nearby?”

  “No.”

  “How did you get here so quickly when Ms. Klyasheff told you about Doctor Sage?”

  “I was on my way to Green Bay. In fact, I was just a few miles from here when I called. I was surprised when she answered the phone, but then she told me what had happened.”

  “What did she say exactly?”

  “She told me that Doctor Sage had committed suicide and that she was alone in the house with his body. She sounded hysterical. I couldn’t just leave her here by herself.”

  “When was the last time you saw the doctor?”

  Kiel pulled her chair in, stalling for time. “We met at one on Friday, last week. Then I saw him on Monday at the conf
erence, of course.” She took a breath and frowned, pretending to take a mental sprint through her calendar.

  She’s wondering how much to tell me, Cubiak thought.

  “After that, I heard from him on Tuesday morning. He said he needed to see me and asked me to come out to the house.”

  “Had he done this before?”

  “I’d met with him here once or twice when I was researching the book, but this was the first time he ever called and invited me to come out.”

  “What did he want?”

  Kiel laughed. “It was kind of embarrassing, really. He said that he thought I deserved a bonus for my work on the book. I’d already been paid so it was a real surprise, something out of left field.”

  “Does that kind of thing happen often?”

  Kiel smirked. “Maybe to other writers, but it was a first for me. Usually I end up dealing with people who have no concept what’s involved in a project and think they’ve overpaid for the agreed-upon work.”

  “Did Sage write you a check?”

  She shook her head. “He paid me in cash.”

  “That sounds odd,” he said. Also, it meant that there was no paper trail, no proof that she was telling the truth. Just her word.

  Kiel hurried to agree with his assessment. “It seemed strange to me, too, but hey, money is money.”

  “What was his mood like?”

  “He was very subdued. I think we both were, having witnessed Doctor Melk’s death the day before. But he seemed resolute. He thanked me for all I’d done to document the institute’s history, and then he said that the work had to go on.”

  “He didn’t seem despondent?”

  “Not at all, just thoughtful, maybe a little preoccupied.”

  “And you didn’t see him after that? Not until today?”

  “I didn’t see him today, at least not in the way you mean,” she said.

  “Why did you call Sage this afternoon?”

  “He’d asked to see things at every stage of production. The first typeset pages had just come in, and I figured he’d want to take a look at them.”