Death by the Bay Page 14

  “You told Noreen Klyasheff there were papers here that you wanted to pick up.”

  Kiel looked sheepish. “I lied to her. Technically no one is supposed to see the book yet, and I didn’t want her to know what I was doing.”

  “Did she show you the body?”

  Kiel colored. “Actually, I asked to see it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure I fully believed what she’d told me on the phone. I said that she sounded hysterical. What if Doctor Sage was badly wounded but still alive? What if he needed help?”

  “Did she go in with you?”

  Kiel shook her head. “She wouldn’t go near the room. She said she couldn’t bear to see him again, not like that. I went in alone.”

  “Did you touch anything?”

  Kiel’s eyes snapped open. She’s wondering what I’m trying to get at, Cubiak thought.

  “Of course not. I know better.”

  Cubiak let the assertion go unchallenged.

  “It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

  Kiel turned her head away, as if to emphasize the truth of the statement.

  “Then you went into Sage’s study, even after you realized that he was dead.”

  She looked at the sheriff and primly folded her hands together on the table. “I had to. I’d told Noreen I had to pick up the papers and didn’t want her asking any questions.”

  Kiel’s answer didn’t sit right. “That was pretty clear-headed thinking, considering what you’d just seen in the library.”

  She said nothing.

  “May I see the book?”

  Kiel quickly reached for her canvas bag, her nonchalance an attempt to hide her relief at the change in direction. “It’s not quite Hoyle but why not?” she said as she rummaged in the tote. After a moment, she handed him a thin volume with Proof Only stamped across the front cover.

  Cubiak set it aside. “You knew the code?”

  Kiel stiffened. She knew what he meant, he was certain of that.

  “Excuse me?” she said, in a voice that feigned surprise.

  “The code that allowed you to unlock the front door without setting off the alarm. Did you know it?”

  “No. As far as I’m aware, no one did, unless maybe Noreen. Why would I?”

  “No reason.” Not unless the tire tracks across the lawn were from her car and her story about Sage calling and inviting her to the house was a lie meant to cover up the real reason for her coming to his house prior to today.

  Kiel pushed her chair back and started up. “Are we done? Can I go now? I have a meeting in town.”

  Dressed like that? Cubiak thought. Her appearance seemed decidedly unprofessional. “I’m afraid you’ll have to reschedule. I need you to come to the station and make a full statement about the events here.”

  She looked at him, incredulous. “Why? I didn’t find the body.”

  “You were on the scene minutes after it was discovered. You may have seen something that Ms. Klyasheff missed. It’s important.”

  Her tone grew strident. “But Doctor Sage committed suicide. Didn’t he?”

  Cubiak left the question hanging.

  “Follow me,” he said, pushing to his feet.

  Kiel hesitated again.

  The sheriff opened the back door. “Please,” he said as he motioned toward the patio where Noreen Klyasheff waited.

  14

  SETTING THE TRAP

  With the sun low in the west, Cubiak led the four-car parade from Sage’s estate. They cruised into Brussels at five miles under the limit and then at slightly faster speed onto the highway that led back to Sturgeon Bay and the justice center. The sheriff kept his eyes on the road with an occasional glance at the rearview mirror just to make sure neither of the women decided to bolt. Noreen Klyasheff was directly behind the jeep in her compulsively tidy, like-new black sedan. Then came Linda Kiel in the lived-in compact, also black. Rowe took up the rear in a departmental patrol car. The sheriff had already gotten as much information as he could from talking with each of the women, but given the circumstances, he felt that formal statements were in order. There was always the chance that they would remember more details than they had first recounted. Beyond that, he wanted to keep them busy and out of his way for as long as possible.

  At the station, Rowe put each woman in a separate interrogation room.

  “Which one should I tackle first?” he asked Cubiak.

  “Neither. I’ll have one of the other deputies take their statements. You and I are heading to the Fadim farm. You go now. Bathard’s already there. I’ll call Mrs. Fadim and tell her to expect you as well. When I’m finished here, I’ll meet you at the house.”

  “What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

  Cubiak grinned. “You can start by making a cup of tea for the nice old lady. Then get her to start talking and listen carefully to everything she says. She can be a little dotty at times, so she may think you’re her son or nephew or someone else from her past. Don’t let that put you off.”

  With Rowe on his way, the sheriff briefed one of the other deputies on the situation and the background on the two women.

  “Start with Noreen Klyasheff. I want a detailed accounting of what she did from the time she arrived at Sage’s house until Rowe got there. Make her go through the sequence of events step by step. Don’t rush. Take your time with her. There’s no hurry getting to the second one, and when you do, follow the same line of questioning. It’s critical that you keep both of them here as long as possible without them making noise about calling their lawyers.”

  Lisa was gone for the day, but her reports on the two women were on Cubiak’s desk.

  Noreen Klyasheff was a frugal lady and a shrewd investor. She had a quarter million in the bank, and besides having clear title to the house and land she had inherited, she owned three farms in Southern Door that totaled more than seven hundred acres. She had one credit card, which she used for groceries, the occasional meal out, and her utility bills. She didn’t shop for clothes often, but when she did, she bought quality. The monthly balance was paid in full. Taken together, the numbers revealed the type kind of woman who lived modestly and who would stun the world at her death with a generous bequest to her church or the local animal rights foundation. As Cubiak surmised, Klyasheff’s life centered on her work at IPM.

  In contrast, Linda Kiel’s bank balance teetered toward zero. What had she done with the thirty thousand dollars from IPM and the additional cash bonus from Sage?

  The writer appeared to exist on credit. She charged everything—cat food, her morning latte, a notepad, two pens. She had fourteen different cards, issued under her name and that of her alter ego, Cody Longe. All of them were maxed out.

  Lisa had flagged one of the statements from April. On it, a series of twenty charges was highlighted in yellow. Each was for an ad Kiel had placed in a local small-town Wisconsin newspaper. Cubiak had told his assistant to look for anything out of the ordinary and she had. “See attached,” she had scrawled in the margin.

  It was a copy of one of the advertisements.

  “Missing Children: Were they taken from your town?” Pictures of children bordered the text. They were copies of the photos from the collage. At the bottom was a number to call. It was Kiel’s cell number.

  “What the hell?” Cubiak said.

  He emailed Lisa and asked her to pull up the telephone exchanges for the locales where the ads had run.

  “Once you have those, trace any calls made from Kiel’s phone to numbers with those exchanges. Forward anything you get ASAP,” he said. Then he pulled Kiel’s credit card statements from the previous two months. In early March, she had charged two nights at a motel in Cleona, the one-time home of the Northern Hospital for the Insane.

  “I’ll be damned if she wasn’t there,” Cubiak said.

  When the sheriff reached the farm, Mrs. Fadim was entertaining Bathard and Rowe with stories about the one-room schoolhouses of her youth. As usual, she occupi
ed the chair by the window, a cup of tea in her gnarled grasp. The two men stood to one side. From the front hall, Cubiak heard her urge them to “take a seat and get a load off,” but they demurred, presumably fearful that they would splinter the antique furniture into matchsticks. They both looked relieved when the sheriff stepped in from the entryway.

  “Such a nice young man,” she said of Rowe when she saw Cubiak.

  “Indeed,” the sheriff said, adding to the deputy’s embarrassment. “He’s here to help catch the person who’s been sneaking into your barn.”

  The old woman skewered Cubiak with her blue eyes. “Isn’t that your job?” she said, her sharp tone reinforcing the message that she did not approve of those who shirked their duties. Nor did she suffer fools or take kindly to being treated like one.

  “It is, but my deputy is part of the team.”

  She took his response under consideration. “Well, if it helps you to find Margaret, okay.” With that, she settled into her chair, picked up the mug from the side table, and thrust it at Bathard. “It’s empty. Could you make me another cup of tea, please?”

  Cubiak left the coroner in the kitchen and slipped into the yard with Rowe. In the fading light, dark shadows fell across the jungle growth and twisted into grotesque shapes.

  “Man, this is creepy,” the deputy said as he followed the sheriff through the undergrowth.

  Cubiak’s abbreviated tour around the barn ended at the silo door on the far side of the building.

  “The lock is new. Unless there’s a hole in the roof, this has to be the intruder’s way in,” Rowe said.

  “That’s why I’ve left it untouched. I don’t want to give away our hand,” Cubiak said.

  From there, he walked his deputy across the pasture and into the woods to the overgrown track.

  “The lane comes out about a quarter mile east of the house across from a cornfield. It’s the only way in by car without going past the house, but someone on foot could walk in from any direction. This used to be pastureland,” Cubiak said, flashing a narrow yellow beam at the trees that loomed around them. “But I doubt that the fences have been kept in good repair. I want you to look around for a trail or pathway and set up a twenty-four-hour stakeout. It won’t be easy, given the terrain.”

  “Starting when?”

  “Now. This evening. You can make the necessary adjustments in the morning.”

  “How many deputies do you want out here?”

  “As many as you need. They’ll be happy for the extra pay.”

  Rowe toed the soft earth and looked around. “Where will you be?”

  At that moment, the sheriff’s phone lit up with a text from Lisa. The message was succinct, but it contained the information he needed: George Wilcox, Pikesville. And a phone number.

  Cubiak glanced up. Overhead the first stars were emerging. In Chicago, light pollution dimmed the night sky, but on a cloud-free evening in Door County, the stars would keep appearing, so many that he wondered if it was possible for anyone to count them all. The sheriff allowed himself a moment to consider the matter. Then he turned back to Rowe.

  “Me? I’ll be looking for a ghost named Margaret.”

  15

  TWO SMALL TOWNS

  Over a quick, late dinner Cubiak explained his last-minute plans to Cate.

  “What do you expect to find out there?” she said.

  “A trail that’s still warm enough to follow.”

  “After all these years, do you think it’s even possible?”

  “I won’t know until I’ve looked,” he said.

  Before he left, Cubiak read a story to Joey. Unlike Cate, who occasionally traveled solo on assignment, he rarely ventured far from home without either his son or his wife, and Joey was not happy to see him leave.

  “Where are you going?” Joey asked as he stood in the doorway with his father.

  “Pikesville and Cleona. Two small towns you never heard of.”

  Joey glanced at the overnight bag on floor. “Are you running away from home?”

  Cubiak smiled and tousled the boy’s dark curly hair. “No. I’m off on official sheriff’s business. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Promise?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Joey grinned and, just as Mrs. Fadim had done hours earlier, gave him permission. “Well, in that case, okay,” the boy said.

  It was nearing ten when the sheriff departed. In the past, he enjoyed driving in the dark, but not so much anymore, as his night vision had become increasingly compromised. Oh, he could see all right, just not as well as when he was younger. Mostly he worried about deer and about his reaction time if one leapt out onto the highway.

  He was near Shawano when the first text from Rowe came in. All set. An hour later, there was a second message: Nothing.

  At midnight, the sheriff pulled up to the Wayside Inn outside Pikesville, where he had booked a room. This early in the season, there was only one other car in the motel lot. He checked in at the small, overheated office and was crossing the gravel parking lot to his room when his phone dinged with Rowe’s third text: No one. Yet.

  Klyasheff and Kiel had been released from the station several hours ago. From the information Lisa had garnered, Cubiak suspected that the journalist had organized the material on the barn wall and assumed she would make a quick trip to the farm to retrieve it. Either she had outwitted Rowe and the deputies and snuck in without their noticing, or he had been wrong about her. Unless she was playing her own game of wait and see.

  The sheriff’s phone dinged again at 1 a.m. No sign of anyone at the Fadim barn.

  On Friday morning, Cubiak was up at six, but there was still no news about the intruder. At the local diner, he downed three cups of bitter coffee and, with a silent apology to Bathard, ate a farmer’s breakfast: eggs, bacon, hash browns, and pancakes smothered in butter and maple syrup. He was finishing up when Lisa texted him the address that went with the name and phone number she had forwarded the previous evening.

  In Pikesville, the sheriff passed a row of empty storefronts, a scene that was sadly emblematic of many small communities across the state and the nation. He was practically out in the country again when he reached his destination.

  George Wilcox lived in a one-story frame ranch on the eastern edge of town. The house was painted a sickly olive green and sat in the middle of a weed-choked, cluttered yard, the kind that would draw tsks from the nearby neighbors, if there were any.

  Cubiak made his way past a collection of old tires, metal fence posts, and wooden tubs to a front door marred with long, deep gouges. Claw marks. He knocked and a deep growl came from inside, then silence. When the door finally creaked open, a round, wrinkled face appeared and a pair of dark eyes blinked into the light from behind thick glasses.

  “George Wilcox?”

  The stooped figure nodded. Seeing the sheriff’s ID, he reacted not with alarm but with curiosity.

  “What’d I do?”

  “Nothing that I know of. I just have a few questions for you. May I come in?”

  “Sure. I guess,” Wilcox said and stepped back to make way.

  Cubiak hesitated. “You’ve got a dog?”

  “Yep, sure do, but he’s as old as me. He won’t bother us none.”

  Crude pieces of art made from the stockpile of junk outside were scattered around the claustrophobic living room. “My hobby,” Wilcox said as he pointed the sheriff to one of the two chairs in the room.

  Cubiak refused the offer of coffee, and when his host settled into the other seat, he showed him a copy of the ad Linda Kiel had placed in the Pikesville newspaper.

  “Oh, that. I already told that Cody Longe gal everything I knew. I’m not in some kind of trouble, am I?”

  “Did she come to see you?”

  “She called. Well, actually I called her and she called me back. We talked on the phone for about an hour. She had a lot of questions.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Exactly wh
at she asked for in the ad: information about kids who went missing years ago. She said she was a reporter and that she was writing an exposé about the hardships and abuses suffered by immigrant farmers. Not only about how they struggled to raise decent crops in their rocky soil but how they were taken advantage of. She said she’d heard rumors about doctors, or people pretending to be doctors, who convinced people that they could cure their sick or feebleminded kids and then made off with them. She wanted to know if the stories were true and said she had money to pay for information.” Wilcox colored, as if embarrassed by admitting as much.

  “And you knew someone that this happened to?”

  “Not in my family, thank God. But I’d heard about it happening. Years back the son of the people who lived on the farm next to my uncle disappeared. I think his name was Henry.”

  “His folks lived near here?”

  “About twenty miles from town. They were small-time dairy farmers, a whole bunch of them who’d come from the same village in Czechoslovakia. When I was a kid I spent summers on my uncle’s farm and, well, you know how you hear things. Little kids, big ears. Henry was a cripple. Polio, I gather. And he was an only child. His folks needed him to help on the farm, and when this doctor said he could fix the boy up, well, they believed him. I guess they needed to because they sent him away to be healed.”

  “The parents never saw Henry again, did they?”

  Wilcox shook his head. “Nope, not as far as I ever heard.”

  “Did you recognize his picture from the ad?”

  “I wasn’t sure, but there was something about one of the boys that made me think of him.”

  Wilcox peered at Cubiak. “What’s this all about anyways? First this Cody Longe calls and now you show up. Something must be going on, and I’d like you to tell me what.”

  While the man talked, a mangy bullmastiff plodded into the room and flopped at his feet. The dog looked big enough to swallow a sheep. Cubiak didn’t like big dogs.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”