A Rendezvous to Die For (4 page)

“
How did the sheriff treat
you?”

“
Law enforcement was fine.” I
massaged my forehead. “A deputy put me in the back of a squad car
for privacy and briefly interviewed me. He followed me all the way
home to make sure I could drive safely.” I gave her a lopsided
smile. “But the sheriff’s not going to be too happy with me. The
contents of my stomach became part of the crime scene.”

“
For once in my life, I’m
speechless,” Anna said. “I don’t really know what to say to
you, except this will eventually be over. Whoever would have thought
something like this would happen, when we discussed the Rendezvous a
short month ago. Do you have to talk with the sheriff today?”

“
Uh-huh.” I stared emptily at
the wood floor. “Well, actually, I have an appointment with someone
from Clayton County . . . a deputy sheriff. He’s using space in our
police department to interview me. I’m sure it’s just routine,
but—”

A man entered the store and
disrupted my pity-party discourse. Anna went to greet him. “Hello,
Mr. Lansing.”

“
Good morning, Anna,” he
said, bowing slightly. “And please call me Willis. Mr. Lansing was
my father.”

The old joke fell flat coming
from a man who looked as if he wouldn’t know a joke if it jumped up
and bit him. Tall and slim, he carried himself rigidly erect. A
well-trimmed gray goatee framed a square chin that was set off by a
thin mouth. Steely, focused eyes glared out under severe brows.
Doffing his Greek fisherman’s cap, he revealed a stubbly salt and
pepper crew cut. He looked to be Anna’s age or older. I had the
urge to add a thin mustache and photograph him in a World War I
German Kaiser uniform.

Anna gestured toward me, to bring
me into the conversation. “Willis, this is Cassandra Cassidy, a
dear friend.”

“
I am happy to make your
acquaintance, but I wish it were under more auspicious
circumstances,” he said stiffly. “I am so sorry for your terrible
experience yesterday.”

“
Willis was here earlier and
told me what happened,” Anna explained, taking Willis’ arm. “He
reenacts the part of fur trade characters.” She glanced up at him.
“Those of you who participate in such events take your characters
very seriously, don’t you? It seems that most of you have
meticulously researched everything—how your characters would talk,
what they would eat, and so forth.”

I examined Mr. Lansing more
closely, while this exercise in adoration was going on. “Yes, I
remember seeing you there,” I said finally. “You took part in the
tomahawk competition.”

“
Yes . . . yes, I did.” He
tore his gaze away from Anna. “And did well this time, since Marty
was inconvenienced by not having his favorite tomahawk.”

My ears perked up at the mention
of my landlord. “Do you know Marty well?”

“
He has deep roots in this part
of the country,” he said, his gaze drifting to the back of the
store. “His father was a town lawyer or politician, or something of
that sort. He was successful enough to build a lovely house outside
of town. Excuse me, please. I see what I came to purchase.” He
moved to walk around me.

“
I rent Marty’s carriage
house,” I said, starting to follow him.

He stopped and turned. “I am
sure he is a fine landlord,” he said. He smiled with his lips
closed and continued on his mission.

“
Marty was a helicopter pilot
in Viet Nam,” Anna said, fussing with a dress hanging on display.
“He suffered even more, after he returned, because his wife had
taken their son and disappeared.”

“
You never told me you knew
Marty,” I said.

She glanced at me and then
resumed her activity. “I know of him mostly through what I read
about him in the newspaper. He runs a helicopter business in our
county . . . mostly emergency stuff. You know, flying people to the
hospital in the Cities and sometimes around the country. He’s also
on one of the town commissions.”

“
Sounds like an upstanding
citizen,” I said.

Willis Lansing was rifling
through a rack of military uniforms. Anna patted my arm. “I’ll be
back after I see to Willis,” she said.

“
No, no,” I said, swooshing
her away. “That’s okay. I’m okay. Really. Take care of your
customer. I’ll talk to you later.” I examined my watch. I had
just enough time to make my meeting with the Clayton County deputy.
Arriving late would not put me in his good graces.

Chapter
3

On the way to the police station,
I reminisced about how I had met Marty. When I first saw his house,
it had loomed out of the Minnesota pine forest like a prop in a “B”
horror-movie set. As I drove around the circular driveway, its gloomy
image was heightened by the specter of unclipped, still spindly
hollyhock skeletons drooping forlornly against the foundation. Above
them, a peaked roof jutted over the stone sidewalk, like a crouching
animal about to pounce.

I remember wondering how could I
have lived in Colton Mills for almost a year and not known the place
existed? I had checked the newspaper ad again:
carriage
house for rent. with studio
. A two-story brick building stood
about a hundred yards to the right of the main house. Ivy crept up
one side toward its shake-shingled roof. It looked perfectly
charming.

But getting to the “charming”
entrance meant I had to walk up several wide wooden stairs. My
five-feet-four inches weighed in at about 125 pounds, and I wasn’t
one to throw my weight around when I felt a little spooked. I had no
more guts than the bear making up the rug under my coffee table,
which regarded me glassy-eyed out of his beautiful six-foot-long
pelt.

I stepped out of my Jeep and
stared up at the house. For some inexplicable reason, it gave me the
jitters. The stairs led to two curtained double doors opening onto to
a shadowy front porch that wrapped around the front and east side.
The vision of my studio apartment, tacked onto the end of a dingy
hall above the hardware store, flashed through my mind. It was broad
daylight on a lovely sunny day in a safe, post-card-perfect small
town. What could possibly go wrong?

I ascended the stairs. The porch
and steps were in good repair and freshly painted. A good sign. I
rang the doorbell. No response. I tried it again. Still no response.
From somewhere in the back, I heard a peculiar sound.
Thunk.
Thunk. Thunk
I retreated down the stairs and crept along a stone
walk that led to the back of the house. The walk ended at a weathered
iron gate. I opened it and peered around a massive lilac bush that
could have been planted when George Washington was a child.

Thunk.

A burly man was throwing an ax at
a foot-thick ring cut from a massive tree, which he had propped up on
its side. He took aim and flung one ax after another. Some stuck into
the tree-trunk target, while others bumped off and flew into the
bushes. He stopped throwing and went to retrieve the implements.

“
Hello!” I called out. Not
too loudly. If he didn’t hear me, I could turn around, get into my
vehicle, and forget I’d ever seen the house. But he had heard me.
He turned and waited for me to speak. “I called earlier about the
carriage house for rent,” I yelled, never taking my eyes off him as
he marched toward me.

Tall and well built, he looked as
if he could model for a middle age Marine recruiting poster, if there
were such a thing. A gray bushy beard framed his weathered face,
suggesting he was as old as my father would probably be, but I had no
way of knowing that. “I’m Marty Madigan,” he said, extending a
meaty hand over the gate. He had a deep, gravelly voice. His intense
gray eyes didn’t quite meet mine.

“
Cassandra Cassidy,” I said,
grasping his hand.

Offering no explanation for his
ax-throwing activity, he got right down to business. “Come this
way.” He led me back along the walk toward the carriage house,
reciting history as he went. “The carriage house was built in 1880,
the same time as the first part of the main house. Originally, it had
three bays that provided housing for the Swanson family’s
carriages. That area has been converted into a modern garage. Olaf
Swanson had the first and biggest flourmill near here and built this
place five miles out of town, because he liked the view. He must have
been a determined fellow to manage this kind of construction so far
out.”

“
Sounds like he had a long,
bumpy road to town for a sack of sugar.”

Marty nodded, ignoring my attempt
at humor, and continued with his commentary. “Swanson’s flour
mill was located in the area where the bridge crosses the Oxbow,
about two miles toward town. The river was dammed up there to provide
power for the mill. So, his place was really not that far from where
he worked every day.” He opened a side door that led into the
garage and fingered the end of the exposed wall. “You won’t find
another building with brick walls this thick,” he said, caressing
the side of the wall. “I don’t think a tank could take them
down.” He gestured around the interior of the garage. “Plenty of
room here for a couple of vehicles.” He turned in my direction, but
still didn’t meet my gaze. “How many do you have?”

“
Just one,” I said, nodding
toward my ten-year-old Jeep sitting in the driveway.

“
Well . . . that will leave
plenty of room for storage. If you’re a pack rat like me, you can
never have enough room for storage.”

The garage spanned the front of
the building. A door at the rear led into a hall. Light filtered down
from an open stairway at the end leading to the second floor. Another
door led to what had been the harness room and was, for me, the
clincher. The area had been converted for the former tenant into a
darkroom. It was large enough for all my equipment and then some. I
asked questions, such as whether the water was filtered. But I could
already picture my enlarger on the shelf against the far wall.

“
The tenant who left a couple
of months ago was a nature photographer,” Marty said, leaning
against the doorjamb. “He’d pack up and take off for weeks at a
time. He finally decided to move further north, closer to the places
where he took most of his pictures. He even produced a calendar
that’s sold in Books on Main.” He glanced my way. “You take
nature pictures?”

“
Not on a regular basis.” I
chose not to elaborate. Somehow, taking wedding pictures paled next
to Mr. Former Tenant’s beautiful nature calendars for sale on Main
Street.

We mounted the stairs and emerged
into a bright, sunny loft. The wall opposite was white-painted brick,
with a fireplace halfway down the wall. White ceilings arched toward
a peaked roof that was punctuated with brown wooden beams running
horizontally wall-to-wall, about three feet beneath the peak,
producing a dramatic effect. Three skylights let in the afternoon
sun, adding to the light filtering in from the oversized windows
above the staircase. The sitting area blended into the narrow kitchen
at the back of the room. A door led to the bedroom and another to a
roomy studio/office, also lit by a skylight.

Resisting the urge to shout,
“I’ll take it!” I had put on my businesswoman’s cap and
strolled back through the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and
checking out the dishwasher and cabinets. I didn’t tell my
soon-to-be landlord, but my mishmash of unmatched plates and mugs
would barely fill one cabinet. My baking equipment—consisting of
one flat round pan big enough to bake a frozen pizza—would be lost
in the other cabinet, and I could fill one small drawer with my
discount-store silverware and assorted kitchen tools. I inquired
about heating and lighting costs.

Marty had listed those for me.
“You can see it’s move-in ready,” he said.

“
Yes, I see that.” He hadn’t
known it at the time, but as long as the kitchen had an electrical
outlet for the coffeepot and a microwave oven, it was move-in ready.
“The lease on my downtown studio is up in a month, but I’d like
to begin moving my things in here this weekend, if that’s okay.”

He had presented me with a lease.
My prudent self had said I shouldn’t sign it, but my audacious self
had whipped out a pen, trumping the twinges that were running down my
spine as I signed it.

Now, as I turned into the parking
lot of the police station, I wondered if I had signed that lease a
little too hastily. What did I really know about Marty, except that
his favorite tomahawk had somehow found its way into Eric’s scalp.

Chapter
4

Monday—Police
Station

The murder hadn’t
made a big splash in Colton Mills, a hundred miles or so south of
Clayton County. Regional TV ran a short clip on the Sunday night news
and the Minneapolis paper had covered it briefly in its Monday
edition.

Eric
Hartfield, a columnist for
Minnesota Issues Review
, was killed
Sunday in Prairie River Township, at the site of the annual Prairie
River Rendezvous. The Rendezvous is an annual event in which
participants portray authentic characters of a nineteenth-century fur
post.

Hartfield’s
body was discovered in a sweat lodge that had been erected by the
Prairie River Band and periodically used for ceremonial purposes. The
apparent weapon was a tomahawk of the kind that Rendezvous
contestants use in tomahawk throwing competitions. The sheriff has
not named any suspects.