Beer Money (A Burr Ashland Mystery) (16 page)

“Mind if I grab a beer?” I said.

She shrugged her shoulders, then flicked the remote control and the television went to black.

"Nothing but repeats,” she said.

I came back with my beer, took a long drink, and watched the television as it faded to black.

"I like movies, but those are getting so expensive. Jeez, it's like, seven-fifty, eight bucks to go see a flick. Popcorn? Add on another three bucks. Two people go, you could have dinner at Bartalotta's for that kind of mon-"

She was looking at me.

"Burr. What is it?"

A thought had occurred to me.

"Do you have a camera?'

"Sure, a Nikon-"

"No, a movie camera."

"Like for film? Real film?"

"Anything."

She gestured to the entertainment center.

"Just a plain old camcorder. Sony. Or is it a Panasonic? Whatever. Lower right door."

I stood, walked and then knelt in front of the television.

"I got it at Target. On sale. It was like four hundred bucks. Now they're down to..."

I pushed the lower right hand door and it sprang open. Inside was a gray case with two handles and a shoulder strap. It had nylon pouches on the outside, and the main compartment had a zipper around it.

"...like two ninety-nine. So much cheaper now," she said.

I unzipped the main compartment.

A Sony videocamera was nestled in the bottom, along with a spare battery. A nylon pouch was on the underside of the main flap. And next to it, something else.

From the couch, Emily asked, "What is it?"

It had once been a silvery color. But now it was pitted on the sides with rust.

It was an old film can.

Thirty-Six

My cell phone rang. It was Paul from the Historical Society.

The rustle of papers again and then Mr. Jenkins sighed. "Mr. Ashland, I have located as you say, the 'Hairy Man.'"

"Who is he?"

A few puffs of the pipe.

"Perhaps you'd better come to my office.”

"I'll be right there," I said.

Traffic was slow, but so far there had been no accidents.

In less than an hour, I pulled into a parking space on the western side of the historical society, slammed the door shut and stepped out into the slush. I walked around the Audi and started for the main door of the historical society, then turned around. I scanned the surrounding streets for cars, for people I might recognize or who just seemed out place. Nothing jumped out at me.

The historical society doors were covered with frost on the inside. I stepped into the vestibule that was only a few degrees warmer than outside. Brown slush covered the flimsy mat. I shook off my shoes, the mat squeaked underfoot. I went through the inner doors into the main foyer. A thick trail of brown slush led from the entryway into the foyer until it thinned out and disappeared.

The elderly lady at the front desk looked up from her People magazine as I passed her for the stairs to the second story. The door to the research room was open and I found Jenkins in his office, puffing on his pipe, reading an old newspaper. He had on a thick green sweater and brown corduroy pants. Apparently taking wardrobe cues from Captain Kangaroo.

"Good morning, Mr. Jenkins," I said. I had pulled myself together after the episode on the parking structure, and now I clapped my hands together. Jenkins set down his paper and hefted a thick manila envelope.

"Could you tell me anything more about where you found these pictures?" he asked, holding up the original still photos I'd lifted from the film.

"No, I can't." I lifted up my hands. "You see these?"

He nodded.

"They're completely tied."

"Very well."

He set the folder back down and packed some more tobacco into his pipe, lit it and got it going with a flurry of consecutive puffs. At last, smoke tendrils emerged from his nostrils.

"Are you familiar, Mr. Ashland, with what happened, way back when, when the owner of a brewery died?" He sucked on his pipe and let the smoke curl outward from his lips.

"Not a friggin' clue," I said.

"Typically," he answered. "The brewmaster would ask for the widow's hand in marriage."

"Really."

"It was often a marriage of convenience. A business proposition. The widow inherited the brewery. The brewmaster was the man who ran the business. Who knew the most about how the entire operation worked. He would be the man to whom the widow would turn. So, in order to keep simple, the two would marry."

"Isn't that a bit…"

"Calculated?"

"Yeah," I said. "To the extreme."

"You have to remember something, this was a long time ago. If anything, business was more cutthroat and even more political. There were fortunes being made and a misstep in running the brewery would have caused a lot of people a lot of headaches. So they were playing for keeps."

He then ceremoniously reached into a drawer on the left side of his desk and pulled out a large scrapbook. It was the same one that he had used to retrieve the photos of Mary Schletterhorn.

He opened it up to a page and spun the book around so it faced me.

"Tell me what I'm looking at," I said. The picture before me was a shot of at least fifty men, all standing with beer mugs in their hands. Behind them, hung a sign.

"Krahn Breweries,” Jenkins said. “Taken in 1908. It’s a shot of the brewery and its workers on Water Street.”

There he was. In the very middle. Next to an older man with a full white beard. I would have recognized his square block head and beady little eyes, even without some underage girl wrapped around him.

"The man with the beard," Jenkins said. "That's Jacob Krahn. The founder of Krahn breweries."

"And the man-" I said.

"-the man to his right is...your man."

I peered closer.

"And he would be..."

"Otto Hilgert. Brewmaster for Krahn Breweries from 1899 to 1909."

"What happened in 1910? He get fired?"

Jenkins flipped through some notes.

"On the contrary. He married Krahn's widow. Ruth Krahn. And became the head of Krahn Breweries."

My mind struggled to sift through the implications.

"A year later," Jenkins said. "He died in a fire. The newspaper said it was an accident."

"An accident," I repeated.

"The other body was never identified," Jenkins added.

"The other body?" I asked.

"There was an unidentified body in the room with Hilgert. It remained a mystery."

Thirty-Seven

The Milwaukee Antique Center was in the Third Ward, just off the freeway at the corners of Buffalo and Chicago. Just up the street was the Manly Building, which housed Planned Parenthood. Another city planner with a sense of humor.

The Antique Center was run by Don Chambers, a friend and drinking buddy of mine from way back.

I found him in the back room, unpacking a set of vases from a box. He was wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt.

"Hit another garage sale?" I asked.

He turned around and the easy smile I'd always remembered him wearing sprang to his face. "Burr Ashland!" We shook hands.

Don was a small man but his blue eyes were alert, his handshake firm. The kind of sixty-year old guy who runs four miles a day and will probably live to be a hundred.

"Estate sale," he said.

I looked at one of the vases.

"Rookwood?"

He shook his head. "Weller. Louwelsa."

I could tell by the small smile on his face that he was quite pleased with himself.

"How much did you pay for them, Don?"

"Fifty."

"Each?"

"Total."

I stepped forward and peered into the box. I could make out four more vases in the box. Ten bucks a pop.

"How much will you ask?"

"Two hundred. Each."

"And I thought my business was a racket."

He put the top vase back in the box and we walked down a narrow hallway piled high with boxes. We got to his office which was nothing more than a tiny, eight foot by eight foot space dominated by an old wooden desk buried beneath a mountain of paper.

He put his feet up on his desk which caused an avalanche of papers to fall to the floor.

Don merely smiled. "So what can I do for you?" he asked.

"I need a projector, one that I can watch an old eight millimeter film on. It has to be in good working condition, though. I don't want to ruin the film in the process."

"No problem. Follow me."

Don's shop was really a giant brick warehouse, four floors packed top to bottom with stuff. The whole place smelled like dust.

The first and second floors were full of knick-knacks. Glassware. Jewelry. Nostalgic collectibles. The third and fourth floors were devoted to all kinds of furniture. Giant armoires, beds, chests of drawers. You name it, you could find it.

Don led me to the second floor, past rows of cameras and photographs until we came across a shelf of old film projectors. He moved with certainty to one on the end. It was in a cracked plastic case covered with dust. Don opened the case for me and inside I saw a cumbersome machine made of black metal, with two arms, one forward, one back. It had a glass lens and controls on one side.

"This is the best one I have," Don said. "I know it works, the guy I bought it from actually played some stuff on it for me. Said he took good care of it. Even showed me how to take it apart and clean it."

"How long ago was that?"

"About a month."

I looked at the price tag. A hundred bucks.

"Do you remember how it works?"

"Sure," Don said.

"Show me how and you got yourself a deal."

Thirty-Eight

I closed the blinds in my living room. Set up the screen, which Don had thrown in for ten bucks.

When I began to thread the brittle film into the projector, I winced and thought about Gabby. She'd kill me if she knew I was doing this with a key piece of evidence.

But I needed to see this. Had to see what my friend died for. I'd be damned if I'd let the cops get their hands on it first and then refuse to tell me what was on it. Although I had a pretty good idea before I even flicked on the projector.

I let out a deep breath, hit the switch, and made sure the film caught.

An image flickered onto the screen.

Without Fred's high-tech equipment, the film looked even grainier, more lurid.

The images wavered in my living room like ghosts. It was the same room. The same bed. The same camera angle. But the girl wasn't the same. Gone was the pale, wide-eyed beauty of Mary Schletterhorn.

In her place was a girl.

A black girl.

She stood next to the edge of the bed. Naked. Probably the same age Mary Schletterhorn had been, maybe sixteen years old. Her hair was cut short, pulled back. Her face was more strong than pretty. Chiseled. Sharp. Her legs were longer, more muscular. She seemed more sure of herself than Mary Schletterhorn had been. More comfortable. More at home.

The hairy man I now knew to be Otto Hilgert walked from behind the camera to the bed. His body looked especially crude and vulgar in the black-and-white grainy world playing itself out before me.

He stood before the girl.

And then something happened that never occurred in the other films.

They smiled at each other.

The black girl dropped her hand and began to stroke. They laughed about something. He raised his hands to her shoulders, caressed them. They kissed. Hugged. Otto bowed down and kissed her breasts, licked the dark nipples.

They moved eagerly to the bed. Otto gently pushed her back onto the pillows and he knelt before her. He spread her legs with his hands, then moved between them and pressed his face between her legs.

The black girl looked up at the ceiling. Her fingers wrapped themselves around a fold in the sheet. She slowly lifted her legs. Otto reached up and put his hands on her breasts.

Several minutes passed before the girl let go of the sheets and put her hands on Otto's head. She wrapped her legs around his back and pulled his face against her pelvis. She bucked once. Twice. And once more, her back arched until she collapsed back onto the giant pillow.

Otto smiled and climbed up next to her. Stroked her stomach, her face, her hair. Leaned over and kissed her on the mouth.

I leaned back in my chair, looked at the projector that was humming smoothly. I couldn't erase the image I'd just seen before me. Suddenly, my head was spinning with ideas, thoughts and revelations.