Jelly's Gold (20 page)

“What are you wearing?”

12

The woman standing behind the counter of the Vital Records Office in the St. Paul-Ramsey County Public Health Center in downtown St. Paul looked at me as if I had called her a dirty name.

“You want the birth and death records of Brent Messer, Kathryn Messer Dahlin, and James Dahlin,” she said, “but you don’t know when they were born or when they died.”

“That’s correct.”

She sighed heavily. “To receive a certified death certificate you must have proof of tangible interest,” she said. “Do you?”

“Define tangible interest,” I said.

“Are you a child, grandchild, spouse, parent, grandparent—”

“No, no, nothing like that. Anyway, I don’t need a certified record. I just want to know the dates when they were born, when they died, that sort of thing.”

The woman sighed again and slowly slid a Ramsey County Death Record Application across the counter and told me to fill it out.

“It might take a week or more to get the information you seek,” she said.

“A week?”

“You don’t have any dates for us to work with. That means giving you the information you request will require a physical search. We’ll have to go back eighty years or more and hunt through all of our ledgers page by page.”

“Isn’t the information on computer?”

“We have birth records from 1935,” she said, “but death records start in 1997 and marriage licenses start in July 1999.”

“I’d be happy to look through the books myself, if you like,” I said.

From her expression it seemed I had insulted her again.

“If you don’t actually need a certified copy of the certificates, you could save us both some time and go to the Minnesota Historical Society,” she said. “The History Center is only a few blocks”—she waved more or less east—“that way. They have a Death Certificates Index that has records for the entire state dating back to 1904, and a Birth Certificates Index—”

“Wait. Is it all on computer?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’ll try that.”

The woman slapped her hand on the application as if she were afraid it would escape and quickly slid it off the counter.

“I have a question, though,” I said. “If the Historical Society has everything on computer, why don’t you?”

She replied with a snarl—the woman didn’t like me at all.

It turned out that the Minnesota Death Certificates Index could be accessed from any PC by way of the Minnesota Historical Society Web site. I could have done the research in my jammies from the comfort of my own home and received the same results:

DAHLIN, KATHRYN
Date of Birth:
05/07/1905
Place of Birth:
Minnesota
Mother’s Maiden Name:
Conlick
Date of Death:
10/25/1974
County of Death:
Ramsey

DAHLIN, JAMES
Date of Birth:
11/28/1903
Place of Birth:
Minnesota
Mother’s Maiden Name:
Ussery
Date of Death:
2/12/1975
County of Death:
Ramsey

MESSER, BRENT
Date of Birth:
11/19/1882
Place of Birth:
Out of State
Mother’s Maiden Name:
Strand
Date of Death:
08/29/1936
County of Death:
Ramsey

After I examined the statistics, I scooted next door to the Ronald M. Hubbs Microfilm Room, where the Minnesota Historical Society stored images of nearly every edition of every newspaper printed in Minnesota, including some high school and club periodicals. From the Death Certificates Index, it appeared that Kathryn and James Dahlin had lived a long life together, Messer not so much. I found the microfilm for the
St. Paul Dispatch
from August 1 to August 31, 1936, and carefully threaded it into a projector. The newspaper had thought enough of Messer to print his wife’s vacation plans in its society columns. I figured it would have printed his obituary as well. I was shocked by what I found.

ARCHITECT KILLED IN EXPLOSION

BLAST SET OFF AS MESSER TRIES TO START CAR

“Mystery Witness” in Corruption Probe

Police and Explosive Experts Conduct Inquiry:
Kinkead Pledges Protection for Grand Jury

Brent Messer, for many years one of the city’s most prominent architects, was killed by a mysterious explosion believed to have been a bomb when he attempted to start his car at his home early this morning.

Both of his legs were shattered above the knee, and his right arm was nearly torn off. He was taken to St. Paul Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:47
A.M.

Mr. Messer had entered his garage at 337 Summit Avenue and attempted to start his car after eating breakfast. Neighbors and members of Mr. Messer’s household staff heard a loud explosion and rushed out to find him sitting in the driver’s seat unconscious, his legs shattered, and the car wrecked by the blast.

Hood of Car Blown Off

The engine was undamaged. The car stood sideways in the driveway, halfway out of the garage. Police believe that a bomb had been attached to the starter, and the ignition contact of the starter set it off. The explosion apparently had occurred directly under the floorboards of the automobile, beside the starter lever. The floorboards were blown to bits, all the windows shattered, and a large hole made in the top of the car. Detectives believe that the force of the blast had hurled Mr. Messer up with such force that his head broke through the top.

The cowling of the car was torn open, and the wooden rim of the steering wheel blown off the post but left unbroken. Holes in the steel sides of the automobile’s body showed where bits of metal had been hurled through with bullet-like velocity. The hood was thrown 20 feet.

Messer Was Mystery Witness

Just hours after he was declared dead, it was revealed that Mr. Messer was the “mystery witness” who had been scheduled to testify before the Ramsey County Grand Jury at 2:00
P.M.
today. Mr. Messer, who designed and built the Public Safety Building to much acclaim in 1930, was expected to tell the grand jury about kickbacks, bribes, and other criminal acts between city and county officials and members of the underworld.

“This was a gangland killing, pure and simple,” said Ramsey County Attorney Michael F. Kinkead. “It was meant to put a lid on our investigation of public corruption. It won’t succeed.”

Kinkead revealed the grand jury for several weeks has been receiving information concerning illegal activities among public officials and that evidence sufficient for returning criminal indictments has been uncovered.

Mayor Demands Action

Immediate investigation by a special grand jury into the murder of Mr. Messer will be demanded by Mayor Gehan.

The mayor said shortly after noon today that he will make his request before District Court Judge J. C. Michael, presiding member of the bench.

Mayor Gehan’s announcement followed a brief conference with Kinkead, who was reluctant to comment further on the bombing …

I hit the reverse button on the projector and held it until I found a story that appeared in the
St. Paul Dispatch
just five days earlier.

MYSTERY MAN ENTERS CORRUPTION PROBE

GRAND JURY SET TO SIFT CRIME AND GRAFT

Inquiry to Probe Connection Between Officials and Gangsters

Kinkead Hears Secret Witness,
Mayor Promises Immediate Action

Developments today in the sensational investigation of ties between city and county officials and members of the underworld indicate the existence of a secret witness who is prepared to name names before the Ramsey County Grand Jury.

H. E. Warren, commissioner of public safety, refused to confirm that a witness with personal knowledge of the scandal has come forward. However, even as he conferred with reporters, Ramsey County Attorney Michael F. Kinkead was closeted with an unidentified man, John A. Pearson, assistant county attorney, and Wallace Jamie, the public safety commissioner’s chief investigator.

Kinkead refused to identify the mystery man, except to say that he is a witness in the investigation of alleged irregularities in city and county government uncovered by investigators during the past months.

“We are not going to disclose anything else until we have reached the bottom,” Kinkead said.

It is understood from information through a reliable source that the witness is volunteering to testify to what he knows in exchange for immunity from prosecution for his own past misdeeds …

It looked like Violet Peifer was wrong, I told myself. It looked like some members of the St. Paul aristocracy did pay for their crimes. Did one of Messer’s crimes involve Jelly’s gold? True, Messer and Nash were celebrating the evening Nash hit the Farmers and Merchants Bank. That didn’t mean they were accomplices. I’d bet a lot of people partied with gangsters without being involved in their criminal enterprises. Mike had talked about
rich dandies who liked to hang out with the trouble boys.

Something else. The gold was never recovered. It was possible, I supposed, that Kathryn smuggled it to Europe and then divorced Messer so she didn’t have to share it with him. Only that meant whoever blew up Messer in his car didn’t do it for the gold. They probably did it, as the newspaper articles suggested, to keep him from testifying, to protect themselves. I wondered if the cops ever found out who the bomber was.

I called Bobby Dunston and asked. He told me he had better things to do than search seventy-five-year-old homicide files for a confirmed reprobate like me.

I agreed and told him that’s what secretaries were for.

He told me his secretaries were vital members of his department and their time was far too valuable to be squandered on fantastical treasure hunts.

I told him if I did find Jelly’s gold I’d make sure he and Shelby got a taste.

He put me on hold.

Ten minutes later, a woman named Ruth told me in a careful voice that the Messer murder case was never closed. She said the police had fragments of the bomb, most of them recovered from the architect’s body, and an eyewitness account from a neighbor who said that she thought she saw two men loitering near Messer’s driveway shortly before daybreak. Ruth said that the detectives did learn that a gang of eastern gunmen and bomb experts had been in Minneapolis two days before the bombing and departed immediately after. “This,” Ruth said, “fit in perfectly with the police theory that Messer’s murder was committed by outsiders.”

“Outsiders?”

“Yes.”

“Did the police explain why outsiders would want to kill Messer?”

“No.”

“Did they investigate any insiders?”

“I don’t know,” Ruth said. “The file is awfully thin.”

I thanked her for her efforts and hung up.

“So much for that,” I said.

Only I didn’t stop there. I remembered Heavenly said that Kathryn and James Dahlin returned to St. Paul in September of 1936, so I went to one of the massive metal filing cabinets where the microfilm was stored and located the roll labeled
“St. Paul Dispatch:
Sept. 1-Sept. 30, 1936.” I threaded it into the projector and started surfing through the images. It took me about ten minutes to find a photograph printed on the September 22 Home Magazine page that showed the Dahlins and their child. Kathryn was waving Tim’s hand at the camera. The headline read
HOME TO STAY.

After spending three years living abroad and in New York, Mr. James Dahlin, son of wealthy builder Mr. John Dahlin, returned to St. Paul with his lovely wife, Kathryn, and two-year-old son, Timothy, “for good this time,” according to the boy’s father …

I studied the photograph for a long time. Kathryn truly was a lovely woman, yet it wasn’t the first time I had seen her. She was the one posed with Jelly Nash in the photo taken at Guardino’s. Uncle Mike had been right about the two of them.

I also studied Dahlin’s image. I compared it with the shot of Messer printed inside a small circle in the bombing story. Dahlin was better-looking and two decades younger—nearly Kathryn’s age. It made me think that Whitlow might have been on to something with his love-affair theory.

Still, there was another image in the photograph that intrigued me even more, a woman in the deep background that seemed younger yet every bit as attractive and aristocratic as Kathryn. The cutline identified her as “Kathryn’s sister, Mrs. Rose Pederson.”

“I wonder if they ever wrote to each other,” I said aloud.

Back to the computers in the Weyerhaeuser Reference Room and the Minnesota Death Certificates Index. There were eight listings for Rose
Pederson, but only one that had the same mother’s maiden name as Kathryn’s: