Death Stalks Door County (23 page)

“That was a pretty gutsy move on Dutch's part,” Cubiak said.

“It gave people pause, let me tell you. But what Dutch really focused on was the park's future and Otto's reputation as a conservationist. Someone who would defend the county's natural resources. Dutch and Ruby circulated petitions supporting Otto. They got hundreds of signatures. All this played into the hands of the governor, who pressured the forestry director to give Otto the job.”

“And Beck never made amends with Otto. How about with Dutch?”

“Things between them got worse. Then Beck announced plans to build a new bridge over the canal. ‘Vision Bridge,' he called it. Oh, he painted a glorious picture. Instead of the old bottleneck in town, we'd have a major highway leading straight into the heart of the county, bringing in more tourists, their purses and wallets bulging with cash. The new bridge represented progress, he said. It was forward looking. It meant prosperity and growth. Everyone would benefit. He hired a New York ad agency to conduct a promotion campaign. Posters, billboards, TV ads full of promises. By then we had a new governor who bought into the project and convinced the legislature to appropriate funds. He even lobbied Washington for money. A lot of locals liked the idea, too, but many were opposed.

“Beck asked Dutch to support it but he refused. For months, Dutch tried to persuade Beck to change his mind. Then Dutch and Ruby launched another petition drive and started a letter-writing campaign to the legislature. I suspect they knew it was a lost cause. Dutch as much as admitted to Beck that he had rallied the forces more to ensure the opposition sufficient standing so that they'd have some credibility in the future than to derail this particular project. But Beck took their opposition personally. He won, of course, but by then merely winning wasn't enough. Beck needed to punish Dutch, as well. He needed to put him in his place. Eight years ago—I remember because it was my birthday—my husband came home almost silly with glee. He got thoroughly drunk and told me he'd found a way to shut up Dutch for good. The next day, when I asked him about it, he said I was imagining things. But I knew something was up. Every once in a while, I'd catch him with that gleam in his eye.”

A clock chimed softly in the distance.

“Dutch was best man at our wedding, you know,” Eloise said. “At the reception, Beck proposed a toast, from us to Ruby and Dutch: ‘May our lives always mirror one another's.' That's what he said.” She stopped abruptly and clasped her hands together.

“You never found out what Beck did to Dutch?”

“No. Whatever it was, Dutch soon retired as sheriff. Bad heart was the excuse he gave.” Eloise moistened her lips and then abruptly stood. “I've told you everything. Probably said more than I should have. I have to go now.”

She left the room. The pinched-face maid showed him out as resentfully as she'd allowed him in.

A
fter the frigid interior, Cubiak was glad for the heat outside. Soothed by the quiet drone of insects, he relaxed into the driver's seat and ran through the conversation with Eloise. She had plenty of dirt to shovel and seemed to enjoy throwing all of it at her husband. Cubiak was beginning to realize that beneath the peninsula's picturesque veneer, streams of animosity rippled fast and deep. Bad feelings seemed to run between Beck and a number of other people. His wife. His son. Otto Johnson. Dutch Schumacher. Who else? He hadn't had a chance to ask about Ruby's relationship with Beck. Eloise hinted that her husband had humiliated and wronged Dutch, destroying their lifelong friendship. How much did Ruby know about the falling out between the two men? Was any of this linked to the recent series of tragic deaths?

Maybe Eloise wasn't the simple downtrodden wife she pretended to be, but would she commit murder to avenge herself on her husband? She had access to money, and if she was orchestrating a campaign to ruin Beck by torpedoing the festival, it was to her benefit to throw suspicion on others. But Otto had already been proven innocent. And Dutch was deceased. Cubiak was annoyed realizing that he might have just wasted an hour listening to local gossip.

Ready for lunch and a cold beer, he drove to Sturgeon Bay and was backing into a parking spot when he spied Barry shuffling past the bank. Barry Beck, seventeen, almost good looking, almost intelligent. The long-awaited son. His parents had called him their bonus baby and heaped all their expectations on him, a heavy burden for an infant to bear.

Cubiak caught up with the boy near the corner. “Long time no see,” he said.

Barry shot him a nervous glance and kept walking.

“We have to talk.” Cubiak maneuvered the sullen teen into an empty doorway.

“Lemme be,” Barry said.

“Not till you tell me what's going on.”

“About what?”

“Let's start with your job. The one you wanted so badly. I've had to get other people to do your work because you never show up.”

Barry scuffed the ground with his expensive Topsiders. “I don't need it,” he insisted.

“But you wanted it before.”

Barry was tight lipped.

“Tell me what's going on.”

The boy's face contorted. “The park is bad news for me,” he yelped.

Cubiak took a guess. “Problems with your suppliers? That's it, isn't it?”

Barry paled. “I don't have to talk to you.”

“No, you don't. But it might be useful if you did. You might tell me something that will help.”

Cubiak let Barry consider the novel notion as he steered him down the sidewalk toward the waterfront. They sat on a bench near a small rose garden where a group of children ignored the large Do Not Feed the Birds sign and tossed popcorn and handfuls of crumbled bread to a flock of tame geese.

“Why's the park bad news?” Cubiak said.

Barry looked up, surprised. “Oh, man, you gotta be kidding. Some guy who just happens to be wearing the same kind of jacket as mine falls off the tower. Then a girl
wearing
my jacket gets killed. What am I supposed to do, stand there with a bull's-eye on my back?”

“No, of course not,” Cubiak said, stalling. Alice had been wearing Barry's navy blue jacket when she was killed. But Wisby's jacket was black, wasn't it? Cubiak cursed silently. The coat had been soaked from the rain; maybe it only looked black. He'd never seen it dry, and made a mental note to read Halverson's full report.

“Your deals went down at Falcon Tower?”

“Yeah.”

“But you didn't show that one day, why? You owe them money?”

The boy turned a frightened face to him. “Promise you won't tell my father. He'd kill me if he knew.”

Barry's story was the pathetic tale of a small-town kid who was in over his head to a couple of Milwaukee drug suppliers. He'd owed five thousand dollars at Christmas, and with help from Eloise he'd managed to pay off half by Easter. He'd promised full payment on the rest that Sunday morning.

“What time were you supposed to meet?”

“Five. But I didn't go 'cause I didn't have the money.”

Bathard had estimated the time of Wisby's death at about 6 a.m.

“How long would they have waited?”

“My phone rang a little after six. I didn't answer. But I guessed it was them.”

“No one else picked up the call?”

“I got my own line. No one else would have heard it ring.”

He'd stayed in the rest of the day, he told Cubiak, and then hung by his mother's side for several more days. “They always found me before when I owed something. This time, I figured they gave up. I knew they were planning on splitting for Mexico—reconnaissance, they called it—and I thought maybe they just finally went. Then Alice was killed.”

“And you thought they were after you again?”

“Sure. Next day, I told my mother enough to get some more bread out of her. I got in touch with them and paid up.”

“You met them here?”

“No. Manitowoc. It's midway.”

“And now?”

“They're gone. I think. I hope.” Barry looked at Cubiak. “They said they'd be in touch later.”

“I need names.”

Barry nearly flew from the seat. “No way,” he said.

Five minutes later, Cubiak had two names, probably aliases. “Where'd your mother get the money?”

“She's been squirreling away dough for years. Probably used some of that.”

Cubiak offered the boy a ride home. “By the way, I saw your mother this morning,” he said as they drove from town.

Barry tittered. “Quite a treat for Mom. Two visitors in one day.”

Cubiak wasn't going to let this pass again. “Ruby, wasn't it?” he said, approaching a four-way stop.

“Oh, right. The vestal virgin of Door County. Not literally speaking, of course. Nope. She doesn't come to our house anymore.”

“So who was it?”

“Nobody you'd know. This old dude, Jocko Connelly. Used to be a ferry boat captain. Totally pee-o-ed, he was. Came down from Washington Island, drunk as a skunk and railing about some kind of harbor plan. ‘Top secret shit,' Jocko called it. Mother didn't have a clue what he was talking about. Anyway, my dad shows up and sends her out of the room, me too, and then tears into the old man. What did he know? How'd he find out? Had he told anyone else? Jocko just kept raving that it wouldn't happen again.”

“I thought you were sent from the room.”

“I listened on the intercom.”

“Why was Jocko so upset about a harbor?”

“Who knows? Just another local drunk, you ask me.”

“What do you know about it, this plan Jocko was talking about?”

“Nothing.” The boy rubbed his jaw. “My father doesn't tell me or my mom anything. We're shit on his list.” He paused. “Unlike you.” The sarcasm was obvious. “Security hotshot.”

“You got that wrong. I work for the park.”

“Not for long. Not if my father has his way.”

“What are you talking about?”

Barry shrugged. “Just something I overheard. Why don't you ask him?”

“Maybe I will.”

Beck has his reasons, Eloise had said, talking about how her husband had pulled strings to bring Cubiak to the peninsula. What the hell had he gotten himself into?

Near Beck's driveway, Cubiak pulled onto the shoulder. “By the way, where is your father?”

“Green Bay, I think. He went to pick up a couple of foreign dudes. Probably for the golf tournament.”

F
ree from the congestion around Sturgeon Bay, Cubiak skated up the spine of the peninsula on the county's two-lane back roads. The route was marked by cherry orchards and hay fields, by cows grazing lazily in open pastures, and by the weathered barns that denoted the failed farms and the occasional silo clusters that earmarked the ones that were prospering against all odds. He made good time. Near West Jacksonport he came up behind a mud-spattered, orange tractor pulling a wagonload of straw. The driver drifted onto the shallow shoulder, opening up the view of the road, and as Cubiak passed, the man raised a hand in greeting. Cubiak returned the gesture. A nice custom, he realized, and one he was coming to expect.

Cubiak was on his way to the ferry at Northport Pier. Before Eloise aired her bushel of dirty laundry, she had tried to steer his interest toward Jocko, the retired ferry captain. Cubiak didn't think anything of it until Barry mentioned the old seaman as well. Cubiak wasn't sure how much credibility to award a vengeful recluse or a spiteful son, but it was clear that Jocko was pissed enough about something to trek from Washington Island to the mainland amidst the chaos of the area's biggest festival to make his feelings known. And the something that upset him was linked to Beck. If Barry was right about the jacket and being the target of the attacks, perhaps there were dots to connect. Cubiak had to find out.

He could have called Jocko but knew it would have been a wasted effort. Cubiak remembered seeing him in Amelia's photo of the Survivalist Club. Jocko was the instructor. At the time the picture was taken, he couldn't have been more than twenty-five, but the fierceness of his eyes and the firm set of his jaw portrayed him as a man to be reckoned with. Before he left town, Cubiak had stopped to ask Bathard about Jocko and learned that during World War II, he'd parachuted behind German lines. Later, as a ferry captain, he was renowned for the ease with which he piloted vessels through ice floes. No, Jocko didn't sound like the type who'd warm to a friendly telephone chat. Cubiak needed to confront him face to face.

The road to the ferry landing wound past The Wood and then Ruby's house before it dead-ended at the water. Northport wasn't even a nub of a town, just a dock with a restaurant and a parking lot cut into the forest on a rocky stretch of Lake Michigan. At the water's edge, a robust, red-haired man motioned for Cubiak to follow a beige van onto the ferry, a bilevel box that looked barely seaworthy to the ranger. In a leap of faith, Cubiak rolled over the loading ramp, pretending not to notice the boat's shuddering. He squeezed the jeep between two cars and eased out as a group of teenagers wheeled their bikes past. One flight up, he made his way to the bow. Despite the bright sun, the air was cool. Cubiak pulled up his collar and jammed his hands into his pockets. He wished he'd worn a cap and hoped the Dramamine Bathard had given him would work. As a gas truck maneuvered over the loading ramp, the ferry shimmied in response. Cubiak grabbed the handrail.