Death at Gills Rock (15 page)

“Anything for you, Dave?” she said as she refreshed her drink at a liquor table along the far wall.

“No, thank you. I'm on duty.”

“Of course.” Olive floated past him and dropped into an upholstered love seat. “I had an early appointment at the hairdresser's in Green Bay. Can't get anything decent done around here,” she said as she ran her fingers up the side of her neck and into the soft folds of her fresh cut.

“I wouldn't know.”

“Of course not. Men.” She tried to sound nonchalant. “You're here to talk about Eric.”

“All three of them, actually.”

Olive set her glass on a low table. “Ida called and told me about the space heater. But that doesn't mean anything, does it? It was still an accident, right?”

Cubiak wondered if her urgent undertone stemmed from concern about the nature of her husband's passing or the disposition of an accidental death insurance policy. “Most likely, yes.”

“Most likely? But maybe not?”

“There's the possibility someone wanted to harm Eric and his friends.”

Olive dismissed the notion with a quick shake of her head. “You wouldn't say that if you knew Eric. He was a complete milquetoast, always anxious to please. Everyone loved him. My husband was the ultimate Mister Nice Guy, Sheriff. The only one with reason to hate him was me.”

She challenged him with a look but he said nothing. Death sometimes prompted people to open up about circumstances they would normally not reveal, and Olive seemed ready to talk. In one sweeping movement, she grabbed her glass and rose from the couch. Cubiak waited. At the window, Olive threw her head back and shivered. Then she took a long pull on the drink and began to pace.

“You wouldn't know it to see me now, Dave, but I was quite the looker. I could have had any man on the peninsula.”

“And you chose Eric,” Cubiak said, his tone encouraging.

“Why not? Why wouldn't I? I was the prom queen one year and Miss Door County the next. Eric was eleven years older than me and the best-looking man on the peninsula. Unlike the silly boys I'd known in school, he was sophisticated and charming. A war hero. Handsome in his uniform. When he smiled, the world stopped just to take it in. He was the most fun and the best dancer, too. I thought we'd have a wonderful life together, like his parents and mine. They were happy here. Eric knew I wanted children, but he'd been hurt in the war and the odds were against his ever fathering a child. When things between us got serious, he told me about the injury and what it meant—he gave me a chance to back out but I wouldn't hear of it. I was headstrong and naïve. I thought he was being noble! I thought we'd figure something out, I thought that if we loved each other enough, nothing else mattered.”

She hunched her shoulders and began to cry.

“You don't have to …,” Cubiak said, hoping she would.

Olive straightened, defiant again. “I want to. I've kept quiet about things too long. With a little help.” She swirled her glass, the ice cubes clinking, and then turned to the window again as if telling her sad story to the trees was easier. “There was more to it, however. The injury also affected his ability to perform.” She almost choked on the word. “For a long time we got by on hand holding and hugs. Innocent kisses and sweet endearments. He called me ‘Doll' and was gallant, to a fault, especially in public. All the women adored him. My friends burned with envy. After a while he stopped bothering with the niceties when we were alone. At home I became as invisible as air. He spent most of his time working or out with his friends, came and went as he pleased. So I started to do the same. Eventually, I learned to get by with the occasional lover, the casual affair. I'm not proud of what I did but not ashamed. It was either that or go mad, and I was halfway there already.”

The silence of the confessional pulled the walls in. Cubiak lowered his eyes, like a priest burdened with heavy secrets. “You never discussed the situation with anyone?”

“No.”

“Not even your mother?”

Olive sniggered. “My mother would have told me to bear my cross with dignity and the love of the Lord.”

Which is probably what the priest would have said, Cubiak thought. “Your friends?”

“Never!
That
wasn't a topic of conversation for any of us. We talked cookies and diets, drapery fabrics and chicken recipes, what we were giving our husbands for Christmas.”

“Your physician? There may have been alternatives…”

“That dear sweet man who sometimes went fishing on Eric's boat? How could I? At first, I didn't want to embarrass my husband or make him feel lacking. For god's sake, he was wounded defending his country! After a while, after all those years, who cared anymore? I read silly romance novels with Ida and Stella and waited for time to take its toll. We all wear down eventually, Sheriff.”

Olive poured another drink. She seemed distracted, and Cubiak sensed that there was more she wasn't telling him. If he was wrong, she'd sit down and the conversation would be over. If he was right and the alcohol was liquid courage, she'd remain on her feet and keep talking.

Olive sucked greedily at her drink and then walked back to the window. She stood motionless for a long while, her forehead pressed to the thick pane. Suddenly she straightened and whirled around. “Damn that Agnes,” she said, flinging the empty tumbler to the floor. The glass thudded and for several seconds the walls echoed the sound of the cylinder rolling across the wood.

“Agnes Millard?” Cubiak couldn't help himself.

“Yes, Agnes, that dried up old hag.”

“What did Agnes do?”

“She opened her big mouth and spoiled everything. It was last December, two weeks before Christmas. Ida, Stella, and I were listening to carols and baking cookies at Ida's house. She and Big Guy hosted a community party every year on Christmas Eve, and Agnes was there cleaning. Ida had packed up a tin of cookies for her. There were some books on the counter that we'd read recently and when Agnes was finished, Ida asked her if she'd like to take them as well. Agnes got all huffy. She said that the books were nonsense and that she didn't need any of that stuff. ‘Joe don't bother me none, because of the war injury,' she said, ‘and I don't need to be teased into wanting something I can't have.'

“When she left, the three of us stood there in our silly red aprons trying not to look at each other—the cold ugly truth staring each of us in the face. Ida spoke first. I remember her voice being very quiet. ‘Terrence's got one of those, too,' she said. Then Stella started laughing almost as if it was some kind of inside joke. I wanted to laugh, too, but Stella was already shrieking, almost hysterical. ‘Yes, yes, the war injury,' she said. And when they finally looked at me, all I could do was cry.”

The color had drained from Olive's face and she swayed, steadying herself against the wall.

Cubiak helped her back to the sofa and poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the tray. Then he took his seat and waited again.

After a while, Olive clasped her hands and leaned forward, pressing her balled fists between her knees. “We're not stupid women, Sheriff, but we sure were naïve. One man, yes. I'm sure it happened. But three—four, if you include Joe—all with the same story? We tried to rationalize that this lie, this excuse, was cover for interest in other women, but we didn't get very far with that argument. Suddenly, everything that had been going on for all those years made sense. The overnight poker games. The camping trips. The fishing expeditions to Canada. For a while it seemed they went moose hunting every winter.

“That afternoon, over cookies, I think we all figured out the truth. Again and again, the three of them plus one. Joe wasn't the first, that's for sure. Seems there was always the extra. But ultimately to have to settle for Joe Millard? Couldn't they do any better than him?”

She looked at Cubiak defiantly. “What they did was wrong but, well, at least it's not a crime, is it?”

“No, it's not a crime.” Not now. But there was a time… Cubiak was stunned. The pieces were falling into place but not the way he'd expected. He waited and then he asked the question he couldn't avoid. “Did you kill your husband and his friends?”

Olive looked up, astonished, and shook her head. “I wish I had. Eric used me. I was his cover, his façade. I gave him the respectability he craved and needed. He stole my life so he could have the life he wanted. If you want to know the truth, I'm glad he's dead. I only wish he'd died sooner.”

Cubiak wasn't sure he believed her claim of innocence. Of the four women, only Agnes could have killed Joe. But any one of them, including Olive, had enough motive and possibly the means to kill the other three.

Olive stood. “I need some coffee,” she said.

The Swensons' kitchen gleamed with stainless steel appliances and ceramic tiles of slate and white against oyster-colored walls. Cubiak sat on a high stool at the island and watched Olive work. She was efficient and calm; he took a cue from her demeanor and continued his questioning in a businesslike fashion.

“How long was Joe the fourth man?”

“Two or three years.”

“And before him?”

“I don't recall. It started with just the three of them, and I thought it was so sweet the way they stayed together. Childhood friends, war buddies and all. Then the fourth man started appearing. I don't know when, twenty years ago, probably more.”

He'd have to ferret out the names. If Huntsman, Swenson, and Wilkins had been murdered, all their close male acquaintances were potential suspects. “Your husband's business, how did he get his customers? Through advertising?”

Olive sat down across from him. “Most of the clientele were referred by the owners of the big resorts.” She named a dozen prominent businessmen.

Cubiak recognized them all. Civic leaders, like the three dead men, and potential suspects, as well.

H
alf an hour and half a pot of coffee later, Cubiak left Olive to her memories and misery. In Gills Rock, he called Bathard. It was going to be a longer day than he realized, Cubiak explained, and he needed someone to look after the pups. Especially Kipper. He started explaining how she needed to be fed when Bathard interrupted. “I'm a doctor. I think I can figure it out,” he said.

S
tella Wilkins lived two miles south of the fishing village, and the farm she'd operated with her late husband took up a generous portion of the landscape along the way. Cubiak passed carefully tilled fields waiting to be planted and herds of Holsteins and sheep grazing in separate pastures. A long gravel driveway ran between a stretch of low white wooden fence to the farmstead where a new metal barn and seven sleek silos caught the rays of the late-appearing afternoon sun. A neatly landscaped yard surrounded the old red brick farmhouse, and on the front porch Stella waited, hugging a long brown cardigan to her rigid, slim frame. Her mouth was set, and deeply chiseled lines laced her face like roads on a map.

“Olive called,” she said as Cubiak made his way up the stone walk. Before he could respond, she turned and entered the house. With quick, stilted steps she led the sheriff through rooms filled with Shaker furniture and into the kitchen to a round oak table in the corner where two large windows met to offer a nearly one-hundred-eighty-degree view of the garden and the rolling countryside beyond.

“Please,” she said, nodding to an empty chair. Despite knowing the nature of his visit, she served slices of pumpkin bread and poured coffee while Cubiak took in the fine-crafted cherry cabinets and designer appliances, the kind he and Lauren had coveted but couldn't afford when they'd talked about remodeling.

“You know about the potential problem with the space heater?” he said.

Stella nodded.

“That morning when your husband and his friends were found dead and you said, ‘They killed him,' you meant Olive and Ida, didn't you?”

Stella's eyes grew moist. She nodded again.

“Why?”

“Because of what we learned from Agnes last Christmas,” she said, turning her head away.

“Do you still think Ida and Olive killed your husband?”

“No. I think Agnes did it.” Stella's composure crumpled as she looked back toward Cubiak. “She's a murderer, isn't she? She's confessed to shooting Joe, and if she killed him then she probably killed the other three as well. She started all this!”

“With her talk about Joe's war injury?”

“Yes.” Stella flushed with anger.

Cubiak sipped his coffee. When Agnes threw open Pandora's box, he was sure she didn't realize what she was doing. Based on what he knew, Joe's killing was a spontaneous act of rage. From the beginning, he'd assumed that Agnes didn't understand the true nature of the men's involvement until the day of the funeral. But what if he was wrong and she'd known all along? Stella could be right, but he remained unconvinced.

“There are other possibilities,” he said finally.

“What do you mean?”

“It seems that none of you three women knew much about the card games at the cabin. Your husbands could have been running a high-stakes poker ring and been killed by someone who'd lost big and owed more than he could pay back.”

Stella scorned the idea. “Impossible. None of them were any good at cards. Poker was just an excuse for their parties and get-togethers.”

The sheriff made a point of surveying the room again and studying the landscape outside the window. “You live well and own a lot of prime farmland. It takes a considerable amount of money to support this kind of comfortable lifestyle.”

Stella glared. “We worked hard. We were lucky.”

“Luckier than most.”

She shrugged.

“Olive said that the three of you women never discussed the intimate details of marriage.”