Jelly's Gold (14 page)

“What?”

“Sending Kelly Bressandes to my office. I’ve been up all night with this and you give me a pushy reporter. Because of your phone call, the woman thinks I’m holding you as a material witness in Berglund’s homicide and deliberately keeping you from speaking to the media. The more I say it’s not true, the more she refuses to believe me. Thanks, pal.”

That made me laugh. Bobby said it wasn’t funny. I asked him if my alibi checked out.

“Yeah, much to everyone’s disappointment.”

“I’m allowed to leave town, then.”

“Need a ride to the airport? There are a lot of angry and bitter people over here who’d be happy to take you.”

Now it was Bobby’s turn to laugh, although I didn’t get the joke.

“What else did you and Kelly talk about?” I asked. “Her big brown eyes or yours?”

“Stop it.”

“I liked the way she called you Bobby instead of Lieutenant.”

“C’mon, McKenzie,” he said. “I don’t necessarily like these people,
but it doesn’t hurt to have friends in the media. Sometimes they can be quite helpful to us.”

“Really? I’m sure Shelby will be happy to know that Kelly Bressandes is your friend in the media. Handsome woman, our Kelly.”

“The less said to Shelby the better, okay?”

That made me chuckle.

“What do you want?” Bobby said.

“I have another suspect for you.”

“I don’t need another suspect.”

“You’ll like this one.” I described Boston Whitlow and told Bobby that he was looking for some letters that he thought Berglund had shared with me and carried a .32 wheel gun.

“Anything else?” Bobby asked.

“Yes. Whitlow said he didn’t know Berglund, said they had never met, yet he described Ivy as ‘the lovely Ms. Flynn.’ ”

“So? She is, isn’t she?”

“How did he know what Ivy looked like?”

Bobby thought about it for a moment. “I love it when you give me these little tidbits of information,” he said.

“Just doing my civic duty, Officer.”

“I wish you’d stop.”

9

I picked up the tail almost immediately after I pulled out of Rickie’s parking lot. I couldn’t guess if he was Whitlow’s man or Heavenly’s, but he seemed to know his business. He drove a beige Toyota Corolla—is there a vehicle that’s any more ubiquitous?—and stayed well back, alternating between the left and right lanes, while allowing other cars to come between us. He even disguised his license plate so I couldn’t get a read. Very smart. I might not have noticed him at all except that it’s extremely difficult to maintain a loose tail with only one car if the subject is suspicious, and I’d been suspicious for two days now.

“I am so damn tired of being followed,” I said aloud.

Still, I didn’t want him to know I had spotted the tail. That would make it harder to find him next time. So I drove normally until I stopped at the light at the intersection of Selby and Snelling, not far from the apartment building where the cartoonist Charles M. Schulz grew up. There were two cars between us, all four turning right off Selby. In Minnesota you can make a right turn on red, and that’s what I did at the first
opportunity. The traffic on Snelling was brisk, and the other cars couldn’t immediately follow. I accelerated, took three quick rights, and managed to get behind the Corolla just as it also turned right onto Snelling. This time I went left.

I continued on, halting twice to see if other cars would stop with me or drive by and try to pick up my Audi a couple of blocks down the road. None did.

Ivy Flynn opened the apartment door as if she were expecting someone. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Sorry, McKenzie. I was sure it was the police, again.”

She wrapped her arms around me, but it had none of the exuberance of her hug two days earlier. This time it felt like she needed something to hold on to to keep from falling. Ivy seemed exhausted. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face was swollen, and she was wearing the same clothes as the day before. I directed her to a chair.

“The police were here for a long time,” she said. “They kept asking me questions, the same questions over and over again. Did you and Berglund have an argument, were you seeing other people; they even asked me about life insurance. They dusted for fingerprints, too. Took my fingerprints so they could eliminate them from, well, from the other fingerprints, I guess. They searched everywhere, went through all of my things. I told them they could, didn’t say they couldn’t, but—they were searching for a gun, weren’t they? They think I killed him, don’t they?”

“Precious few people are killed by strangers,” I said. “Ninety percent of the time we’re murdered by people who know us. The police always start with those closest to the murder victim and then work outward. It’s SOP. Don’t worry. The cops will be moving on to other suspects, if they haven’t already. They’ve interrogated Heavenly Petryk and her pals; they’ll be talking to Boston Whitlow soon.”

“Boston?”

“Do you know him?”

“No, I … It’s the name. Who calls their child Boston?”

“Probably the same people who name their children Rushmore.”

“Or Ivy. They called me Poison Ivy when I was a kid. Beware of Poison Ivy. I hated it.”

“I could tell you stories that would bring bitter tears to your eyes,” I said.

“Please don’t.” Ivy brushed her eye with a knuckle. “I’ve had enough of tears.” She laughed as if she had said something funny, but there was no humor in her voice. When she finished, she said, “This Boston Whitlow, what’s his part in all this?”

“He came to me this morning with a deal. He offered me half of Jelly’s gold in exchange for some letters that he believed Berglund had given me. He was convinced that these letters would lead us to the treasure. He was very surprised when he discovered that I didn’t have them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I. How did he know I was working with Berglund? What made him think Berglund gave me letters? Then there’s the big question—what letters?”

From her expression, Ivy seemed even more confused than I was.

“Did Berglund mention anything about some letters to you?” I asked.

“No.”

“When I last spoke to him, Berglund said he was looking into some private collections. Do you know what he meant by that?”

“Some families keep heirlooms—diaries, letters, photographs—handed down from one generation to the next. Some even put them on display.”

“Perhaps he found something in one of the collections.”

Ivy thought about it for a few beats before shaking her head. “No,” she said. “He would have told me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Most of Josh’s research led to dead ends. He said there was no
sense in discussing it. He always shared the information that seemed important.”

“That’s what he told you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you believe him?”

“Of course I believed him.”

“Do you know who he was talking to yesterday? Who he went to see?”

Ivy hesitated before she answered. “He didn’t tell me.”

“I have a tough question for you,” I said.

“What?”

“Could Berglund have been working with someone else? Someone he would have been comfortable leaving the letters with?”

“Do you mean another woman?” Ivy said.

“Doesn’t have to be another woman. Could be a friend, someone in his family.”

“Josh didn’t have many friends, at least none that I met, and he didn’t get along all that well with his family. As for a lover—they say that the woman is the last to know. That’s not true. If Josh were cheating on me, I would have known. I might have been the last one to admit it, but I would have known.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You don’t believe me.” Ivy took a deep breath and pushed herself off the chair. “You sound like the cops, like that guy Lieutenant Dunston. I’ll tell you what I told them. I loved Josh and he loved me and there were no secrets between us. We trusted each other. It was like—Josh once said it was like we were ancient spirits who have known each other for a millennium.”

Tell it to Heavenly,
I thought but didn’t say.

“Have the cops asked you about the gold?”

“Of course. When they’re not asking how well Josh and I got along, they’re asking about the gold. So has the TV.”

“The TV?”

“The reporter, what’s her name, Kelly something. She asked about it, wanted to interview me. She was very insistent. I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about. She kept asking what I had to hide. Finally, I just shut the door.”

“Good move,” I said. “Somebody leaked the story to Bressandes, but right now it’s just gossip. If she finds a second source to verify it, someone she can put on camera, then it becomes news and she’ll broadcast it. That’ll make it more difficult to find Berglund’s killer. It’ll also make it harder for us to find the gold. It’ll be like the St. Paul Winter Carnival Medallion Hunt. Everyone with a metal detector will be out there.”

Ivy crossed her apartment and looked out of the sliding glass doors that led to her balcony. Whatever she saw out there held her attention for several minutes. She didn’t speak, and neither did I. I was starting to feel uncomfortable when she spun to face me. Her eyes were moist with tears that didn’t fall.

“You think we should keep looking for the gold.”

“Yes,” I said.

“It doesn’t seem very important anymore.”

“I’m not saying it is, but I want to make sure whoever killed Berglund doesn’t get it. Besides, it’ll give you something to think about other than your troubles.”

Ivy closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and held it as if she were making a difficult decision. “Yeah, why not,” she said with the exhale. She opened her eyes and extended her hand. “You and me, McKenzie. Fifty-fifty.”

“Deal,” I said. Ivy always had a strong handshake.

“I’ve been cleaning up, trying to put Josh’s notes in order,” she said.

“Let’s take a look.”

Ivy led me to the room they used as an office. Photocopies of newspaper articles and other documents were neatly stacked on top of the desk,
along with scores of handwritten notes and a log in which Berglund had recorded his progress.

“I have no idea if anything is missing,” Ivy said.

“It would help if we knew where Berglund went yesterday.”

Ivy gave it a moment’s thought, then reached for the log. “The police missed this. I found it just a little while ago.” She opened it to the last page that contained writing. “McKenzie,” she said and handed the book to me. Berglund had headed the page with the word “Sunday,” followed by the date. On it he had recorded everything that had happened, including our meeting and the incident at Rickie’s. The next page, which would have been Monday, had been torn from the book. Ivy said, “The person who killed Josh …”

“Yeah,” I said. I dropped the book on the desk. “We need to tell the cops about this.”

“Now?” Ivy asked.

“In a minute. Let’s see what else we can find.”

I sat at the desk and started rifling through the pile of remaining research. Much of it was in chronological order, and most of it was fascinating—a glimpse of history day by day that kept me reading for hours even though the information didn’t seem particularly pertinent. Ivy brought coffee and suggested sandwiches. I accepted the coffee but declined the free lunch. Eventually I became discouraged by the lack of relevance I found. None of Berglund’s research seemed to point to Jelly’s gold. Even what little investigating I had done on my own the previous day had greater value. I began to think that Heavenly had spoken the truth, that she really was the brains behind the search. I also wondered if Berglund’s killer had filched everything that was useful, which meant he knew what to look for. Finally I came across an excerpt from the
St. Paul Dispatch
that Berglund had photocopied. The piece had been printed under the heading “Society and Club News” on the paper’s Home Magazine page:

TO SUMMER IN EUROPE

Mrs. Kathryn Messer, wife of Brent Messer, 337 Summit Avenue, will set sail June 22 aboard H.M.S.
Rotterdam
for a summer vacation trip in Europe. She will visit England and Ireland. Mrs. Messer, who departed for New York on Sunday morning, had not set a return date. Mr. Messer, well-known architect and builder of the city’s Public Safety Building, will remain in St. Paul for the present, perhaps to join his wife at a later date.

I recognized the name. Brent Messer and his wife had partied with Frank Nash at the Boulevard of Paris nightclub after Nash hit the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Huron, South Dakota. Berglund had recognized it, too—he underlined it twice. Along with the date. The item appeared in the June 19, 1933, edition of the paper. Kathryn Messer departed for New York the previous morning. Which meant she up and went to Europe on the eighteenth—the day following the Kansas City Massacre.

“Call Lieutenant Dunston,” I said. “Tell him about the missing page in the log book.” I held the photocopy of the gossip item up for Ivy to see. “This we’ll keep to ourselves.”

The Toyota Corolla was waiting for me when I swung my Audi onto Hoyt Avenue. It was parked down the street with a clear view of my house. I figured the driver must have driven there after I lost him, hoping to pick me up when I came home. I drove past the car as if I didn’t know it was there; the driver ducked down when I approached from behind, so I couldn’t see his face, not that I was looking hard.

I pulled into my driveway and parked in front of the freestanding garage. Normally I enter my house through the back, but this time I used the front door so the tail could see me and wouldn’t suspect that I’d spotted him. I didn’t want him to change his tactics, change his car,
hide better—I wanted to know where he was all the time. At least until I decided what to do about him.

Once inside the house, I grabbed a pair of binoculars and examined the driver from behind the drapes in my living room. He was clean-cut with sandy blond hair, about twenty-five—the same age as Heavenly and all of her friends. I could only hope he wasn’t another English major.

I changed clothes, which for me meant clean jeans, a polo shirt, and a black sports jacket. I paused in front of the mirror, telling myself that I looked the way Russell Crowe would look if only he could, but I didn’t linger long. Prudence Johnson was fronting for Rio Nido at Rickie’s, and I wanted to be sure to get a front row seat. I used to listen to Prudence when I was a student at the U and she and the quartet played classic jazz and swing at West Bank joints like the New Riverside Café and Extempore Coffeehouse. Eventually they disbanded, and Prudence went on to a pretty good career singing jazz, folk, and country in honky-tonks, clubs, theaters, and even Carnegie Hall, becoming a regular guest on Garrison Keillor’s
Prairie Home Companion
radio show and appearing in Robert Redford’s film
A River Runs Through It.
Now she and Rio Nido were together again, and I didn’t want to miss it.