Beer Money (A Burr Ashland Mystery) (5 page)

I stood and went to the door, then listened for any sound. I heard none. I looked back at Tim's office one more time. I knew it would be the last time I ever set foot in it.

It was a bigger, better office than Vanderkin's, and with a better view.

I figured William Vanderkin would be moving in any day now.

Ten

The Milwaukee County Historical Society at the intersection of Old World Third Street and Kilbourn Avenue was an impressive building, designed in the French Classical tradition with massive pillars and elaborate detailing. It sat on the banks of the Milwaukee River, next to Pere Marquette Park, named after the French explorer who in 1677 was the first white man to set foot there.

I entered the main doors of the Historical Society, the smell of dust and sequestered humanity was overpowering. I spotted the information desk where an older woman with a light blue shirt and dark blue sweater complete with a Historical Society name tag looked up at me. Her face was a mixture of kindness, curiosity and more than a bit of surprise. Apparently she didn’t get a lot of visitors.

"May I help you?"

"Yes," I said. "I was wondering if there might be someone who could help me identify people in an old photograph."

"You'll want the reference desk," she said, her wrinkled cheeks swinging with each word she uttered. She raised a hand with bulging arthritic knuckles and pointed to a balcony behind me. "Second floor, northeast corner."

"Thank you."

"There are exhibits on the first floor here," again, a vague wave around the area, "as well as on the second floor."

I headed for the stairwell, then stopped to take in the impressive interior. The space was oblong, with a stairwell located in the center, leading downstairs. Two stairwells on either side of the main room led to the second level and more exhibits. Giant marble pillars led to an elaborately painted ceiling, replete with complex scrollwork. The outer walls were broken up into sections, each section being an exhibit. I looked them over. There was a World War I exhibit featuring Milwaukeeans who fought in the great war. Another exhibit chronicled the history of the Milwaukee River. Another one focused on the great fire that destroyed the Third Ward in 1892.

I took the stairwell that led to the second level and spotted the research library across the divide. I walked around the second floor, past more exhibits until I found myself in front of a door with a small placard next to it that read simply enough, 'Research.'

The sign said there was a one dollar charge for utilizing the research library's resource, unless you were a member of the historical society.

I pushed the door open and went inside. The room was a long rectangle, dominated by two large windows at the far end. Closest to the windows were six circular tables with four chairs each. A service desk sat unoccupied and along the far wall, a door to a small office was partially opened, with soft yellow light spilling out onto the faded tile floor.

I crossed the room knocked gently on the door.

"Yes?" a man said.

The door swung gently inward and a short, portly man looked toward me. He had heavily worn, frayed wool pants, a white Oxford shirt and an equally frayed tan sweater. Small eyeglasses were perched on the end of his nose.

His office was small and cramped, his desk covered with papers and legal pads, manila folders and newsletters, and a nameplate that read: Mr. Paul Jenkins, Ph.D.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

I pulled the still frames of the hairy man and the young girl from my pocket.

"My name is Michael Ashland and I’m a private investigator, looking into the death of a friend of mine. I was wondering if you could help me find out who these people might be."

I set the photographs on the desk in front of him. He produced a white handkerchief with a flourish, pulled his eyeglasses gently from his face and wiped the lenses vigorously. The glasses had left an impression. A red, sweaty horizontal bar across the bridge of his nose.

He put the eyeglasses back on and peered over the photographs for the better part of a minute before laying them back down on the desk and once again focusing on me.

"Could you tell me where you got these?" he asked, his voice nasal and thin, like a badly scraped note during a violin recital.

"No."

He leaned forward. "Excuse me?"

"I can't tell you where I got them from because they were given to me by a friend. This friend of mine is interested in history and seems to feel that these people may have some significance."

"Local significance, I assume?" he asked.

"Probably."

He murmured a "hmm." He tapped the surface of his desk with his short, thick fingers. At last, he said, "I have good news and bad news for you."

Out of habit, I asked for the bad.

"The bad news is, and forgive me my immodesty here, even with my encyclopedic knowledge of local history, I can't tell you offhand who these people are. The girl," he tapped the photo, "the girl definitely looks familiar. But the man, no."

He looked again at the picture, as if a second glance would give him more information.

I waited and then said, "The good?"

"The good news is, I'm intrigued. I will look into this for you, but first, you must pay a dollar, unless of course you are Society member.”

Luckily, I had a single, which I pressed into his hand. I gave him my name and phone number and he said he would get back to me when he knew something.

Eleven

The Wauwatosa Memorial Cemetery was located just off of 76th and Center. It was behind Roosevelt elementary school and across from a nursing home. A short, albeit inevitable trip for the elderly. The area was small, marked by a rolling hill and a few towering pine trees.

It was a crisp, cold morning, with bright blue skies and a sharp wind that would occasionally pick up, dropping the wind chill into the teens.

I parked on an adjacent street and walked through the winding path toward the small group gathered near the back of the cemetery. I passed by markers with names I didn't recognize, and absently checked the time elapsed between the dates. Mentally, I did Tim's.

Thirty-five years.

The wind whipped down from the pine trees above and I hurried to Tim's gravesite.

The service itself had been simple. A very small group in the church. Both of Tim's parents were dead, and he was an only child.

The group standing around the open grave in the middle of the cemetery huddled against the wind, their faces wrapped in scarves, their long coats doing little to protect them from the wind. The casket stood next to the grave. There would be no headstone until spring, when the ground was soft enough to pour the concrete. Until then, Tim would be buried in an unmarked grave.

Emily was there. Her black dress was simple, a black hat with a white flower was perched on top of her head.

As I watched, she looked up directly into my eyes and gave a gentle nod of acknowledgment. I nodded back to her.

I moved to get a better vantage point of the crowd. I scanned the group and picked out faces that seemed vaguely familiar: a woman who attended a faculty party, a man both Tim and I knew in college, one of Tim's neighbors.

Fred appeared next to me.

"It's cold," he said to me.

I turned to look at him. His nose was red, his eyes watery behind the big glasses. He was visibly shivering.

I caught sight of a pale young woman with blonde hair. She had on jeans and a leather jacket and stood apart from the rest of the group. She was young; I guessed her to be in her early to mid-twenties and was probably a student. Tim had been a popular professor, one of the few who cared about as much about teaching as he did about publishing.

The girl pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped a tear from her eye. I would have to go back to the funeral home and go over the names of people who signed the guestbook.

Finally, the priest began reading a passage from the Bible. I could barely hear him. I could see his breath form words as they hung, frozen, in the air. At last, the priest blessed the casket and Tim was lowered into the ground. Someone threw the first shovel of dirt after him. The mourners turned as one to go. It had been a short ceremony, the bitter cold chasing Tim into his grave.

I stayed, looked at the hole in the ground. The wind whipped around my head, stung my eyes, but I stayed. I wanted to remember it. Remember what it felt like to stand next to my friend’s grave.

At last, a hand tugged on my arm. Fred was standing there.

“That’s enough,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He was right, but I knew that my true mourning would come later. After I’d found out who had done this. When that person was also fitted into a custom-made hole in the ground.

I walked toward the parking lot, saw that the young girl had waited, too. She seemed to be lost in thought. I could see she was crying. As the crowd thinned out around her, I made my way over to her.

"Excuse me," I said.

She turned, startled. Her eyes were a brilliant, deep green, rimmed by red. Her nose was running and her lips were chapped.

"Yes?" she said. Her lower lip quivered slightly.

"My name's Michael Ashland and..."

I stopped as her eyes grew wide, a startled expression on her face.

"Burr?" It came out like a whisper.

Now it was my turn to be surprised. "Yes and you-"

"Look," she said. "I'd like to talk to you, but I've got to get going." Her face had paled. Her voice was unsteady. She started to move off.

I fished a card out of my pocket.

"Here, call me when you get a chance." But by then, it was too late and she was walking away.

My eyes followed her down to the small parking lot just off the entrance to the cemetery. She turned a corner and walked off, disappearing among the small crowd.

As I looked over the crowd departing, I once again caught sight of Emily. She was shaking hands with several people. A woman put her arm around her and gave a half-hearted hug.

I walked toward my car, keeping Emily in sight.

The last of the well wishers said their good-byes and Emily walked along a row of parked cars to a dark green Explorer.

She reached for the passenger door, and I saw the silhouette of a man in the driver's seat.

Emily stopped and threw a quick glance over her shoulder before getting inside. As she did, I stopped behind a tree and waited for the door to open wide enough to give a glimpse of the driver.

William Vanderkin sat at the wheel, a cigarette in his mouth and a bored look on his face. Emily plopped down on the passenger seat and slammed the door closed.

The Explorer pulled an illegal U-turn and headed back out onto 76th street, then roared back up past the cemetery. I watched it pass over the top of the hill, and when it vanished out of sight, I looked toward the foreground, to the sight of Tim's freshly dug grave.

Twelve

I accepted another beer from Fred, who was busy acting as the gracious host of his infamous Christmas Eve party.

Fred lives in the ghetto, in a section known as The Core. He is The Lone White Guy in a sea of black faces. Fred's neighborhood, near 4th and North, is quite possibly the worst, most dangerous neighborhood in Milwaukee. Murder, mayhem, and plenty of crack are the cornerstones of social activities for Fred's home turf.

His house was a dilapidated Victorian with a grand turret and fish scale shingles. It desperately needed a wrecking ball right between the eyes.

New visitors to Fred's house usually come with the stereotypical expectation that because Fred is gay and an artist of sorts, that the interior will be done in impeccable taste. Straight out of Architectural Digest. They are surprised to discover that the interior looks like it came straight out of Agricultural Digest. Scenes from the Dust Bowl.

Once through the small entryway, there was a large living room, with a door to a bedroom on one side, and a hallway that led to the kitchen. It looked like either a work in progress, or an abandonment in progress. Where there were once baseboards there was nothing but long, empty trenches. Holes in the walls were scattered around, like someone turned a pitching machine loose and it flung baseballs every which way. Not exactly Martha Stewart.

"Where's Ordell?" I asked Fred.

He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, 'who knows?'

Ordell Lewis was a light-skinned black man, Fred's latest lover. Ordell was easily 6' 4", two-twenty, and didn't have an ounce of fat on his body. Fred had told me that he was bright, articulate, and an incorrigible crackhead. He had no job, but lived off of a trust fund set up by a wealthy relative in Chicago.

"What did you ask Santa for?" Fred asked, trying to inject some degree of normalcy into the occasion.

I thought about that answer. The name of Tim's real killer. A chance to put a bullet in that person's head.