Dead Creek (18 page)

“My
father was a psychiatrist at Menninger’s and old Mrs. Bowers brought Robert to Dad for therapy when he was fourteen. She trusted Dad, so when he wanted to bring Robert home to spend time with our family—there were five of us kids—that was fine.

“I was a little tyke and always thought of Robert as one of my big brothers. I never knew there was anything wrong with him. That was Dad’s point: if Robert had a chance to build a sense of self-esteem before the social taboos set in, maybe he’d be strong enough to make it as a whole human being, even though his body was so different from everyone else’s.”

“What exactly was wrong with him?” asked Lew.

“As a young child, he had been absolutely beautiful. Delicate features, big eyes with long, long lashes, lovely, soft skin. A stunning-looking child, the kind that’s always picked to play the angel in school plays. The problem was that at the age of fourteen he was
still a beautiful child.

“Delayed puberty turned him into a Dresden doll instead of a growing boy. He went from being the perfect child and everyone’s pet to the runt of the class—picked on, made fun of, everything that happens to you when you’re so different from everyone else. I don’t know if it was that or body chemistry or what, but Robert was suffering from severe clinical depression by the time Mrs. Bowers brought him to Dad.

“No one knew what to do. They tried giving him shots of testosterone to bring on puberty, but he had severe reactions to the medication, so they had to stop. I don’t know all the details. I do know that in his late teens, they found something to work—at least he grew to normal height, but his body never developed the way a boy’s should. Even as a grown man, for example, he never had to shave, and he put on weight like a woman does, in his hips and lower torso.

“But bright! Robert was smart and good and kind, a thoughtful, sensitive person. He was also a very pleasant-looking man. He never lost those lovely, gentle features.

“My older brothers and I, we all loved Robert. He’d come for weekends, and he came all one summer to stay with us. Then Mrs. Bowers did something that my father urged her not to do. She sent him to an elite prep school on the East Coast. I think it was Choate. Maybe he was there for a month. Not much longer. Dad got a call in the middle of the night and flew out there to get Robert. Something terrible had happened to him. I never knew what exactly, but I can imagine.

“Dad kept him at Menninger’s through high school and, I believe, most of the college years. He came by the house sometimes, but I was all wrapped up in my own life and really didn’t pay too much attention.

“I got married in college, divorced in law school, worked for a New York law firm for nearly ten years. I moved back to Kansas City three years ago. Mrs. Bowers was ninety-seven years old and fading fast. One afternoon, Dad gave me a call and asked me to meet with Robert.

“I hadn’t seen him in nearly fifteen years. He asked me to meet him out south at the big house. Robert had never married and he lived there with Mrs. Bowers and a housekeeper. He wanted to see me for advice, relative to the effect on the estate, on whether to donate Mrs. Bowers’s magnificent antique English silver collection to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kanas City or to Yale University. Mrs. Bowers had received a letter from an antiques dealer who bought for very wealthy collectors, and that individual was coming into Kansas City to meet with Robert.

“That’s when I met Brad Kirsch. I thought he made a rather curious dealer….” “In what way?” asked Lew.

“To begin with, he had the social skills of a spider—at least with women,” said Julie. “He would be so charming in a social scene, then bait you in a subtle way and thoroughly enjoy making you look like a fool. Always in front of a crowd. When it came to business, I couldn’t get straight answers out of him on financial details. He was a master at putting me off. For weeks.

“Meanwhile, two things happened: Mrs. Bowers died, leaving Robert sole heir to a fortune worth seven hundred and fifty million dollars. Two weeks after her death, while Robert was off on a business trip, the house was robbed of almost the entire silver collection. Actually, he was on one of these YPO trips when it happened.”

“How long ago was this?” asked Lew.

“I have a question—sorry to interrupt, Lew,” said Ray. “This antique dealer—what did Robert think of him?”

“That’s what was so difficult,” said Julie. “Robert liked him. He trusted him. Apparently they had some soul-to-soul talks, and Brad had some elaborate story how he had been abused as a child, so Robert felt all this sympathy for him. I think it was a big fat lie, but at that point, I couldn’t say so. Brad was gay, and he made like he’d been discriminated against for that, too.

“Anyway, Robert trusted him, and I didn’t, but I couldn’t come out and say so. It was so bad that when I called a few of his supposed clients and they had never heard of him—I couldn’t tell Robert. I was going to be the bad guy for telling the truth. Get the picture? This had become an absurd situation and, I know now, a very dangerous one.”

“Do you think that Robert and this Brad had a relationship?” asked Osborne.

“On the surface you might think so,” said Julie. “Certainly Grant Moore thinks they did. But I don’t.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked Lew.

“I asked Robert, and he said no, and I believe him,” said Julie. “He said he felt great affection for Brad, but not a sexual attraction.”

“What does this Brad guy look like?” asked Ray.

“He’s a small man. Pudgy, just short of being a real tub. He has a round face, white, white hair. Very thick and bushy. Too bushy—I think he wears a piece. He is exceptionally fair-skinned and always flushed in the cheeks. For lack of a better description, he looks like Santa Claus.”

“So the silver was stolen. Anything else taken?” asked Lew.

“Well … I think so,” said Julie. “Brad said he had a written approval from Robert to pack up all his art and send it to Brad. Supposedly, Brad was assembling an international art exhibit featuring works owned by YPO members. All very hoity-toity and very hush-hush. Not a public exhibit, you see, but one for YPO members
only.”

“Interesting,” said Ray. “Was everything sent off?”

“Yes, it was,” said Julie. “I think Brad has stolen the art. The Bowers family has …
had
…” Julie seemed to correct herself with effort, “some very fine pieces, about ten in total. A complete folio of original Audubon prints, which is priceless today. Several Impressionist paintings, including a Monet. Robert himself had two phenomenal early Georgia O’Keefe watercolors that are museum quality. Mrs. Bowers was given them by her uncle, who lived next to O’Keefe in New York years and years ago. He pulled them out of the trash.”

“Serious capital gains on those babies,” chuckled Ray.

“You know art?” Julie’s voice did not disguise her complete surprise that Ray would have the vaguest idea what she was talking about.

“Just because I trap leeches doesn’t mean I’m uncivilized,” said Ray, ever so slightly petulant.

“Ray’s older sister has one of the finest Japanese print collections in the country,” said Osborne. “She and her husband also collect some large paintings—Ray, who’s the artist?”

“Helen Frankenthaler.”

“I see,” said Julie. “Serious collectors.”

Lew interrupted again. “What else was missing. Any other valuables?”

“I have a list,” said Julie. “Robert and I had inventoried his mother’s estate for probate purposes. I kept a separate list of Robert’s properties so there would be no confusion. I would ballpark the value of the missing art and several pieces of jewelry to be well above five million dollars. Not the silver. It was an exceptional European collection, but the police and I agree that the pieces were probably melted down within hours of the heist.”

“Have you run a check on Brad Kirsch?” asked Lew.

“Of course,” said Julie, obviously pleased to be asked and quite willing to share her findings. “Yes. He is listed as a member of all the professional antique and art dealer associations, which is how he gets his leads on collections to rob. There were reports filed suspecting him of theft, but no one has ever nailed him.

“When I called the Las Vegas police to check the profile of the silver thief, Fred Shepard, I hit pay dirt. Shepard’s photo matched Brad. No question. Unfortunately, I did not run these checks until after Robert was gone. By that time, Brad was gone. The only clue I had that he might be up this way was the new house.”

“The new house?” Osborne, Lew, and Ray exclaimed simultaneously. “What new house?”

“Robert wrote me a lovely letter the day … several weeks ago,” said Julie, starting to say one thing and looking again as though she was trying to remember something. “I have it at home, but I’ll send you a copy. In it, he describes a beautiful log home he was having built up here on property formerly owned by the Cantrell trust and part of his mother’s estate. It has its own private lake. Did I tell you he had taken up fly-fishing? Brad was helping to design the interior. Robert planned to move his favorite paintings and art objects up here.”

“Where is this?” asked Osborne, curious she hadn’t mentioned the home earlier.

“I don’t know,” said Julie. “He said it was in a hidden wilderness area with trout streams nearby, but he never told me where exactly. When he left Kansas City the last time, he said that he would be at a YPO retreat, then stop to see how work was going on the house. The house was supposed to be a surprise of a certain sort.”

Julie sighed deeply. “If I sound matter-of-fact about this, it’s only because I have reached a point of complete despair. I just … I see so many ways I might have been able to stop Robert had I just been more alert to what was happening.” She sighed again and dropped her face into her hands.

Ray patted her on the shoulder. “What makes you think you sound matter-of-fact? You sound like someone who’s lost a very close friend.” Everyone in the car was silent for a few minutes as they sped toward Wausau.

Finally, Lew broke the silence. “I checked my fishing maps yesterday. Ray?” She didn’t take her eyes off the road, but she made sure she had Ray’s attention.

“My geographical surveys are from 1955, and I went over the area real carefully up behind Moen Lake, Stella

Lake, Angelo, looked over by the Nelson and Brown Landings; I followed the Gudegast way north and over to the right by Hutchinson Creek. I drew a triangle between Moen, Mud, and Shepard Lakes. Nothing. No lake. Totally different terrain from what we found yesterday. I don’t understand. What do you think? The new surveys were just finished, and we won’t have new maps for another six months.”

“Could you see where the old Cantrell plant might have emptied into Crescent Creek, flushing down toward Lake Kecheewaishke?”

“Yep. On the maps. But that’s not what we saw yesterday. The maps show swamp, some high ground—they don’t show another lake.”

“Beaver,” said Ray. “Must be beavers.”

“Explain to Julie what you mean by that,” suggested Osborne.

“We have a bounty on beavers up here,” said Ray, “because they’ll go in, build their dams, and reroute the creeks and streams that feed the lakes. One dam can drown or parch several thousand acres, completely devastate entire forests and lakes. Lew, you know who remembers that area real well is old Herman the German. Let me talk to him about it. He might remember when the terrain changed.”

“I sent one of my deputies over to the county clerk’s to check deeds and titles,” said Lew. “We might find something on file.”

“I doubt it,” offered Osborne. “If I were Bowers and I owned that land and I found I had a nice little unregistered lake on it, I wouldn’t make waves. Hell, the DNR’ll come in and tell you where and how to build. Whoever put that house in there—with a boathouse that big—has violated more than a few lakefront regulations. No need to register a building on property no one knows is lakefront unless you have to.”

“I’ve been thinking about the building itself,” said Ray.

“It reminds me of something, but I can’t put my finger on it. Something strikes me as very familiar, but I’m not sure what exactly.”

“What building are you all talking about?” asked Julie. “Do you mind my asking?”

“Well,” said Lew thoughtfully as she drove, “I think we may have found Robert’s surprise.” Neither Osborne nor Ray contradicted her.

“Let me repeat this, and see if I read the coroner’s report correctly,” said Julie, three and a half hours later as they waited for their lunch orders at the Loon Lake Pub. “Those bodies sank like rocks in the icy water and didn’t decompose because the temperature stayed below thirty-eight degrees, which is why they have no easy way to set time of death. But they do know that they didn’t die in the water. They froze to death but not in the water. But … they can’t explain
how
if not in the water. Right?”

“You’ve repeated that six times now,” said Ray, tempering his words with a pull on his beard and a gentle grin. “Repetition does not lead to change.”

“The Wausau lab doesn’t have the staff and know-how to tell us more.” Lew ignored Ray as Julie gave him a look of mock irritation. Osborne could see she was quite charmed by Ray’s fishin'-huntin’ old-man-of-the-forest persona. “I’m not sure we can’t get some better results elsewhere,” said Lew, “but I’ve gotta work the politics and the logistics, and this is a small town with a modest budget for these kinds of things.”

“I understand,” said Julie. Osborne was liking her more as the day went on. She was a direct, no-nonsense type of person. He noticed that Ray, too, was responding very seriously to her queries and, a first for Ray, not teasing her with the put-downs that he used on most women, including Donna. Ray had once told him that Donna wouldn’t marry him because “she makes more money than me and she doesn’t want to put up with my bullshit.” He wasn’t even trying the latter on Julie. Lew, on the other hand, still seemed edgy, almost rude at times.