Missing Mark (28 page)

I wished I could take back that confrontation with Chad at the comedy club, but I couldn’t. But I also wished that Noreen could grasp that sometimes in the course of a chase, stuff happens. She was a desk head, with no field experience. She didn’t complain when I used unconventional approaches and things worked out. But hit a snag, and finger-pointing became second nature. It was that old We’re Behind You One Hundred Percent Until You Get in Trouble policy.

“You should have talked to me before you went to that comedy club,” she continued. “I might have gone with you. I could have pulled you back in your seat and prevented all this craziness.”

Was Noreen suggesting that she actually wanted to get out in the field? Or just hang with me? For a girl night? I was starting to wonder if her anger might stem from her own circle of loneliness. Then, just as I was feeling sorry for my boss, she reverted back to beast mode. The empathy passed immediately.

“And maybe if you’d spent more time looking for that missing fish, we wouldn’t be in this legal jam.”

I kept my mouth shut, not reminding her that I’d already found a meth dealer and a dead body this sweeps month. It seemed greedy to expect me to find Big Mouth Billy, too.

I
CALLED NICK
Garnett from my office to tell him what happened at the comedy club, and because I needed to hear someone tell me not to worry, that things could only get better.

“I don’t know about that, Riley. In my experience, things are never so bad that they can’t be made worse.”

He made me so angry that I hung up without saying Humphrey Bogart,
The African Queen
, 1951.

A
S
I
LEFT
the station to walk to my car, a man came up to me and asked if I was Riley Spartz. Just what I needed, an autograph hound.

“Yes.” I sighed, reaching for a pen.

He handed me some papers. “You’re served.”

When I read the word “defamation,” I turned and went back inside the station where Noreen greeted me with “What are you doing here? I thought I told you to leave.”

I handed the libel lawsuit to Miles, who quickly paged through it, then suggested Noreen forget the whole suspension thing. Under the circumstances, he didn’t think it wise for the station to take a formal position that I’d done anything wrong at the comedy club.

But Noreen insisted, saying we’d make it a “private” suspension. By then I didn’t care anymore. A day away from the station was actually starting to sound like an overdue vacation.

——

G
ARNETT’S PREDICTION OF
things getting worse continued to play out the next morning when I opened the Minneapolis
Star-Tribune
and saw a picture of me being physically ousted from the comedy club in the local gossip column. The story noted that the entire video could be seen on their Web site and also reported a rumor that I’d been suspended.

Noreen was quoted as saying Channel 3 doesn’t comment on personnel matters.

et eternal rest be given to the departed.”

Father Mountain was presiding over a double funeral for Mark and his mother, arranged by the Post family. Low-budget compared to the almost-wedding. A trio of tasteful floral wreaths reading
MOTHER, SON, FIANCÉ
decorated the closed caskets.

Short obits. No lunch. Small turnout.

I went to pay my respects even though I wasn’t being paid to attend in my role as suspended journalist. But I’d slept late and that was almost worth the grief over Noreen.

For the funeral, Madeline wore a short black dress with a small black veil as if unconsciously spoofing the wedding she never had. She appeared in genuine mourning, yet also held her head high, relieved to have a reasonable explanation for why her groom pulled a no-show on the most important day of her life.

That clarification seemed especially important to Madeline, maybe even more important than exactly how Mark ended up dead. Since I’d met her, Madeline had seemed tormented that her groom’s disappearance was a rejection of her. Spurned. Jilted. Ditched. Somehow my finding his body in a shallow grave validated that she remained undamaged goods. So while she was unlucky in love, she was not unworthy.

“While on earth we cannot understand the evil amidst us,” Father Mountain was delivering the eulogy since no one else offered.

Madeline’s mother and brother sat beside her, each holding one hand. I saw no sign of the bodyguard and figured his gig ended when Mark proved no menace.

“Jean Lefevre saw beauty in the world around her and cherished flowers as a gift from the Almighty,” her priest continued.

The best man, Gabe Murray, got there late and scooted in next to me even though the church was practically empty. He whispered did I think there was any chance the police would pay him back the money Mark owed him out of the safe-deposit cash? That nugget hadn’t been reported in the news, so I figured the local gossip grapevine to be at work. I ignored Gabe’s question and wished I’d stayed home, but I also know sometimes the killer shows up at his victim’s funeral.

The police know this, too, and a plainclothes detective casually waited in the back of the church. We caught each other’s eye, but gave no overt sign of recognition. I first noticed him lingering near the guest book, watching who did or didn’t sign in. Upstairs in the choir loft, another cop discreetly videotaped all the observers.

Except for Libby, the maid of honor, I didn’t recognize the other female mourners. Mostly older women, probably friends of Mrs. Lefevre.

My comic nemeses, Jason Hill and Chad Griswold, sat in a pew in the middle of the church along with a few other performers from the comedy club. They looked uneasy, like they’d rather be joking than praying. They were probably trying to prove that brotherhood-of-comedians thing and downplay any talk of jealous rivalry.

I was also uncomfortable, since I’d promised Miles I’d stay away from those guys. But I felt I had more of a right to be at the funeral than Chad, who claimed to barely know Mark. And if I left now, in the middle of the ceremony, people might talk.

“Mark Lefevre saw humor in the world around him and cherished laughter as a gift from the Almighty,” Father Mountain told his flock.

The row from the comedy club nodded in agreement and gave one another friendly punches on the shoulders in a display of comic camaraderie.

But Father Mountain’s remark about the gift of humor also elicited a sound best resembling a snort of indignation. I glanced behind me and that’s when I saw her sitting near a stained-glass window depicting Madonna and child.

Mark’s old girlfriend.

When Sigourney Nelson stood for the Our Father, she looked like an extremely pregnant scarlet woman in a snug, screaming-red T-shirt with black leggings. Her belly was obvious, but at least covered, probably because we were in church.

Father Mountain sprinkled the caskets with holy water and incense and said a prayer about an escort of angels. The funeral workers wheeled the Lefevre bodies out of the church to the sound of an uplifting tune on the organ. The best man reacted to Sigourney’s lack of waistline with widened eyes.

But Madeline walked by Sigourney like she’d never seen her, or even a picture of her, ever before. Face blindness in action.

I missed the graveside ceremony because I wanted to steer clear of Jason and Chad. They seemed to feel the same way and avoided eye contact with me on their way out.

I also had another reason for skipping the interment. I wanted to chat up Sigourney. I unobtrusively clicked a full-body photo of her with my cell phone to document her pregnancy. Then a head shot. She’d stopped dying her hair black, trading her goth look for a mousy but natural brown. I walked up and introduced myself.

“Yeah, I know you,” she said. “I’ve seen you on TV.”

“Did you know I’ve been looking for you?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to be on TV.” Sigourney used both hands to frame her stomach. “This baby’s already added forty pounds to my girlish figure and I hear the camera adds another ten.”

She turned and walked away, a defiant look on her face.

“I’m trying to piece together Mark’s final hours,” I said, catching up with her outside the church. “When was the last time you two spoke?” She continued to ignore me. “Come on, Sigourney. You must still feel
something
for him. You came to his funeral.”

That got her attention. “Let’s get one thing straight,” she said. “I came to say a prayer for his mother. Not him. Far as I’m concerned, no amount of prayer will keep that man out of hell.”

I was right. She still did have feelings for him. Contempt.

To keep her talking, I apologized for causing her to miss the burial service, but she just laughed. “Don’t you worry about that, I got plans to come back later, with my baby. Together we’re going to spit on his grave.”

That remark didn’t leave much doubt as to who the father of her child was.

And I was starting to have a strong suspicion who Mark’s killer was. Sigourney suddenly owned the leading motive. But if she was guilty of murder, she certainly had style.

I stopped short of thinking he asked for it, but admired her irony in burying him near the place where he was supposed to be married to another woman. A murderess with chutzpah. Take that, you philanderer!

I pressed her for a phone number in case I came across some new information, or in case I was actually able to build a criminal case around her, but she refused.

“Sorry, no interest in being on TV.”

I suspected her goal was not so much avoiding a television appearance as avoiding a prison sentence.

As she awkwardly fit her stomach under the steering wheel of a compact car, I told her I knew about the kiss in the parking lot.

She denied knowing what I was talking about.

“A witness saw you kiss Mark the night he died,” I said.

“You’re confusing me with someone else.”

But when I confronted Sigourney about being a registered guest at the hotel during the rehearsal dinner, she admitted that she’d hoped to see her old beau that night, but had fallen asleep.

“Wait till you’re in your first trimester,” she groused, patting her belly.

I made a note of her license plate as she drove away. I didn’t try to follow her, because if she had already killed two people, I didn’t want to be Father Mountain’s next funeral.

he next morning, my “suspension” over, I returned to the newsroom, waved at the assignment desk, but said nothing to Noreen. Half an hour later she brought me a high-end coffee drink from down the block and tried to engage me in a discussion about the fish story, but I wasn’t biting.