Name Games (21 page)

Pierce opened a file he’d brought along. “This might help for starters,” he said, extracting a sheet of paper that appeared to be a printout of raw data. “We got a record of his cell-phone activity since his arrival in Wisconsin. Mostly calls to California, probably business. Quite a few Chicago calls too. It proves
one
thing”—Pierce chortled while passing the page over the table to me. “He talked a lot.”

I could tell at a glance that the rows of numbers would be meaningless to me, so I passed the printout to Lucy, asking, “Could you run a check on these?”

She nodded, placing the document atop her to-do pile. When it came to hard research skills, few could match Lucille Haring. This would be child’s play at her computer terminal.

“Back to the extortion note,” I said, returning to our original topic. “Moneywise, the murder-to-silence-blackmail scenario doesn’t seem to fit our profile of Doug or the victim. So let’s maintain our assumption that the note was faked and planted. What else does the word
dalliance
tell us?”

Lucy whirled a hand in the air, rattling off, “It’s affected, it’s stilted, it’s poetic, it’s old-fashioned, it’s academic…” She ran out of adjectives.

“Which could be Bruno,” Pierce summarized, “but it doesn’t fit our other active suspect at all. Deputy Kerr is as corn-fed and plain-talking as they come.”

Glee suggested, “He’s also smart. The question is, is he clever enough, devious enough, to invent an extortion note that doesn’t ‘sound’ like himself?”

“
No,
” Pierce answered emphatically. “I’ve worked with Dan Kerr for years. Granted, I don’t agree with his stand on the pornography issue, and I certainly don’t appreciate his ambition to take my job, but I refuse to believe he’s capable of criminal action. He’s a cop to the core.”

“But he also has a motive,” I reminded Pierce. “The circumstances of his involvement in all this are highly suspicious—the note he found,
supposedly
found, on a computer that he didn’t bother to check first for fingerprints—”

“Hey,” said Lucy with a snap of her fingers. “Computers always notate their files with a date-and-time stamp. Do we know exactly when the extortion note was written? That should easily clarify whether Cantrell wrote it or not.”

“Good point,” said Pierce, jotting something. “I’ll try to find out.”

Something Pierce had said was triggering a new thought—then it came to me. “Pornography,” I blurted.

The others looked at me.

I elaborated, “Doug just mentioned that he doesn’t agree with Kerr’s stand on the pornography issue. That’s an issue that keeps popping up—not only in the context of the obscenity trial, but also in the context of this murder. Why?”

Lucy looked up from her notes. “You’ve lost me, Mark.”

I related to everyone the details of my Saturday-morning visit to the coach house: the odd “welcoming committee” that consisted of antiporn crusaders Harley Kaiser and Miriam Westerman, the piles of porn strewn about Cantrell’s quarters, and—that most intriguing of details—Cantrell’s telephone reference to the Miller standard.

“I’ve since learned that the Miller standard is a set of legal guidelines used in judging obscenity—an odd thing indeed for the king of miniatures to be chatting about on the phone in his bathrobe on a Saturday morning—the morning before he’s killed. Harley Kaiser overheard the telephone conversation as well. At the time, I didn’t understand what Cantrell was talking about, but it was clear from his reaction that Harley did. Then yesterday, when Roxanne and I joined Doug and Harley at lunch, Roxanne raised the topic of the Miller standard. Harley got uncharacteristically sheepish, acknowledging that he’d heard Cantrell mention it, but insisting that it took him by surprise. Squirming, the DA went on to tell us that the visit was entirely Miriam’s doing, that he’d had no idea what he was walking into.”

The others looked at each other in silence for a moment. Glee asked, “What
was
he walking into?”

“
I don’t know.
But it strikes me as unlikely that a pair of antismut zealots would just ‘happen’ to waltz in on a visitor’s conversation regarding the legalistic definition of obscenity.” I sat back, as if resting my case, but in truth, I was wondering, What next?

Glee answered my unspoken question. “We should talk to the defense team,” she said, adjusting her reading glasses while scribbling a note.

Lucy’s eyes widened with interest. “
Of course,
” she said, adding something to her own notes, “let’s check with the legal team handling defense of the porn shops in the obscenity case. It’s a big-city firm somewhere—I’ll find them. Maybe they can shed some light on the ‘coincidences’ of the Saturday visit.”

“Sounds promising,” Pierce conceded with a thoughtful nod.

It
was
a promising new turn, perhaps one too many, and I felt compelled to rein in the various possibilities we’d discussed that morning. “Okay, Lucy”—I was now writing notes of my own—“you need to do a bit of digging. Track down those numbers from Cantrell’s cell phone, see what you can find out about his finances, and talk to the pornography defense team. Meanwhile,” I told the others, “we were weighing the possibility that Deputy Kerr might have played a role in this—if not in the murder, then at least in planting the extortion note. Kerr ought to be the subject of a separate investigation.”

“Have you forgotten?” asked Pierce. “Kerr’s now in
charge
of the investigation.”

“Not
our
investigation. We need to at least talk to him, question him.”

“Good luck.” Pierce closed his notes. “Kerr won’t talk to you. Why would he?”

Stymied, we sat in silence for a moment.

“Hey.” Glee again. “The endorsement. Tell him that ‘circumstances’ have caused the
Register
to reconsider its endorsement in the sheriff’s race.”

I told the others, “I’ll bet he’d trot right in for an editorial-board interview.”

Pierce said, “I’ll bet he would too.”

Lucy said, “I’ll phone him right away.”

We had our plan.

Neil was meeting me for lunch that day at the First Avenue Grill, and I invited Glee Savage to join us as well. When Glee and I arrived shortly after noon, I found the crowd considerably sparser than it had been on Monday. The hostess, looking less harried, greeted me at the door and showed us to my usual table, a prime spot between the fireplace and a corner window. The fireplace was dark and bare—though September had brought its cooler weather, it would be many weeks, I hoped, before winter would justify a fire.

Waiting for Neil, we ordered tea, hot for Glee, iced for me. I could predict with near certainty that Neil would want iced cappuccino (a recent kick of his), so I ordered this for him in advance, as it was apt to throw the kitchen into a panic.

Glee straightened her hat—it looked for all the world like a priest’s biretta, except that it was made of a leopard-print damask that matched her flat two-foot-square purse. She said, “I can’t thank you enough, Mark, for including me on this project. Your predecessor, Barret Logan, wouldn’t let me anywhere near ‘hard news.’ I think he considered it unladylike.”

“Barret and I are products of different generations,” I reminded her.

“Thank God,” she told me under her breath, in spite of the fact that her own age, fifty-two, nearly split the difference between Logan and me.

“Truth is, keeping you on this story was common sense. One way or another, this all seems tied to the miniatures world, and that’s
your
area of expertise.”

Glee had arranged with Grace Lord to do a follow-up story at The Nook that afternoon, assessing the impact of Carrol Cantrell’s death on the convention that would open on Saturday. When Glee invited me along for the interview, I gladly accepted, eager to get a firsthand impression of the situation. Now she told me, “Few publishers would take such an active interest in a story.”

Pretending to weigh her comment gravely, I figured, “Maybe I should spend more time at my desk.”

“Don’t you dare!”

Laughing at this exchange, I noticed that Neil had arrived. Well acquainted with “my” table, he knew exactly where to find me and was already headed across the dining room in my direction. Glimpsing him now as if for the first time ever, I found him as attractive as on the evening three years prior when Roxanne had introduced us at a cocktail party she’d thrown in his honor.

Does anyone really understand physical attraction? Sure, Neil was and still is an undeniably handsome man; anyone would say so. But in our case, the instant vibes were much deeper. It wasn’t just sex—I wasn’t even out yet. Nor was it just our intellectual mating, which was immediate and complete and extraordinary. I’ve never put much credence in the notion of love at first sight, but I can think of no other words to describe what brought us together.

“Look who’s here,” I said to Glee, who sat with her back to the room.

“Judging from your doe-eyed grin, I hope it’s Neil.”

I didn’t need to answer, as he had just arrived at the table. Standing, I met him with a hug, a peck on the lips. I told him, “It’s great to see you during the workday, just like old times.” Back in Chicago, we often met for lunch. Those opportunities were rare in Dumont.

He gently reminded me, “This setup was your idea.”

Avoiding that, I told him, “I didn’t think you’d mind if Glee joined us today.”

“Mind it? I love it. Hi, Glee.” And he bent to kiss her.

“Hello, treasure. You look smashing, as always.”

He answered, “You’re looking pretty hot yourself,” as we arranged ourselves around the table.

Glee and Neil had struck up an instant friendship when they met shortly after I moved north last winter—in fact, it was New Year’s Eve, a dinner party at the house on Prairie Street. Neil (the big-city architect) and Glee (the small-town cultural authority) discovered common ground in their ability to discuss trends in art, decorating, fashion. Despite Neil’s being born nearly two decades later than Glee, they seemed to view each other as contemporaries—due, no doubt, to their mutual interest in the here and now. On matters of style, they shared a mind-set that was purely of the moment.

A waitress arrived with our tea and Neil’s iced coffee. She also distributed menus, telling us, “You might want to consider our Tuesday special—chicken potpie with fresh-baked corn bread. It’s real good.” She winked, implying that she’d sampled it on many a Tuesday.

I’d done so myself, and I had to admit, the Grill had redefined chicken potpie—it bore no resemblance to the frozen, seventeen-cent supermarket brand I’d subsisted on during college, when I’d rented my first apartment and learned to use the oven (that was in the Dark Ages, just before microwave ovens became standard household appliances).

“Thanks,” I told the waitress. “We’ll need a few minutes to decide.”

Mimicking an English matron, Glee quipped, “But we really mustn’t dally.”

Laughing, I assured the waitress that we weren’t rushed, and she left.

Neil watched this exchange quizzically. “I don’t get it,” he said, licking froth from the edge of his drink. “What’s the joke?”

He already knew about the previous day’s discovery of the bogus extortion note, framing Pierce. So I brought him up-to-date, explaining, “We had a discussion at the office this morning, regarding the wording of the blackmail note. It referred to Doug and Carrol’s fling as a ‘dalliance,’ which we all found odd.”

Neil considered this for a moment, then commented, “It
is
odd—hardly the expected vocabulary of a ruthless killer.”

I added, “We had a promising hunch. It seemed that
dalliance
might be a common French word, but it’s not.”

“It derives from
dally,
” said Glee, clarifying her earlier remark. “So Bruno’s off the hook—linguistically, at least.” She poured her tea, which had been steeping.

“To my mind,” I told them, “he’s still the suspect with the clearest motive. Call it ‘professional rivalry’ if you will, but what it really boils down to is greed—money—which tops the list of classic murder motives.”

“There was certainly a lot at stake,” Glee conceded, sipping.

I told Neil, “Bruno said that Carrol was charging as much as fifteen thousand dollars for one of his—what’s it called, Glee?”

She answered, speaking to Neil, “Bruno’s miniature cylinder-top desks are absolutely marvelous, and yes, they do fetch top dollar.”

Neil’s eyes widened with interest—he and Glee were now on their own special turf. He asked, “Which period?”

“Louis Quinze.”

“Of
course.
” He rolled his eyes. “I’d love to see such a piece.”

“He has them at The Nook. It’s an extraordinary exhibit.”

I’d been squeezing lemon into my iced tea, stirring it, but I stopped with a thought, telling Neil, “Glee and I are going over to The Nook right after lunch. Why don’t you join us?”

He considered. “Why not? I have a late-afternoon meeting back at Quatro, but otherwise my time’s my own. I’ll follow you in my own car.”

“Where are you parked?”

“Just up the block, near the
Register.
”

Happy to know that I’d be spending some extra time with Neil that day, I opened my menu to ponder lunch. The others did likewise. I mentioned to Neil, “By the way…”

He looked up from his menu. “Yes?”

“I noticed a vacant storefront up the street, on the next corner.”

“Oh? What about it?”

“It’s nice. Handsome. Good location. I’ll point it out on the way to the car.”

“What for?”

I didn’t bother to answer, as he knew very well what I was thinking.

With a grin, his gaze dropped again to the menu.

After lunch, Glee, Neil, and I walked the block or two back to the
Register
’s First Avenue offices. Monday’s rainy weather had moved out, and the sunny afternoon had the dry, crisp feel of autumn. Along the way, we stopped at the intersection to wait for traffic, and I pointed out to Neil the vacant storefront on the opposite corner. He made some noncommittal remark, but I could tell from his long, intent gaze across the street that he liked the place despite his stated indifference. Standing at the stoplight, I studied Neil as he studied the building, hoping to glean from his features some clue as to whether he might actually consider moving his practice to Dumont.