Missing Mark (27 page)

I had one spoke left and I wrote down M
ADELINE POST
.

I recalled my conversation with Professor Vasilis, the Harvard prosopagnosia researcher, and what he said about obsession and stalking should affection go unreturned. His research indicated facial recognition of a specific individual could be an astonishingly powerful lure to a face-blind subject.

What if the anonymous parking-lot kiss had been a prelude to Mark telling his bride the wedding was off? How might Madeline have reacted to such a rejection?

The timing required to shoot and bury a man seemed too tight for her to have left her mother’s mansion without her absence being noticed. But I’d never pressed Madeline, minute to minute, where she was following the rehearsal dinner. That shallow grave in Tamarack was not far from Peninsula Road, so while I considered her involvement improbable, I no longer considered it impossible.

nstage, the man sweated. Whether from nerves or the overhead lights, I couldn’t be sure. I was even sweating a little myself.

I sat near the front of the comedy club, but kept my head down and my collar up so Chad would not notice me in the crowd. I wanted to observe him up close to get a better feel for his speech pattern and body language. The bright lights and rambunctious audience might skew the results, but since he wouldn’t meet with me or call me back, this approach would have to suffice.

Chad’s name was listed last in the program. The closer for open-mic night. That meant he got seven minutes to wow the crowd instead of four. So I tried to relax and enjoy the preceding laughs. That’s one thing about laughter—it’s distracting. Amid the giggles and guffaws, I’d forgotten about my nerves until Chad walked onstage holding both hands against one shoulder, pretending to cast a fishing line into the audience. He opened his act with a joke about the best way for men to get their wives to let them spend more time fishing.

“Give them a choice,” he said. “Wake them up real early in the morning and offer to leave and go fishing or stay and have sex.”

The crowd laughed and several men stomped their feet in an atta-boy fashion.

“Either way, we win.” Chad pretended he had a bite on his imaginary line and mimicked trying to reel in a fighting fish.

“Don’t be surprised when she rolls over and mumbles those sweet words: ‘Honey, don’t forget to close the garage door.’”

A predictable punch line, but the audience clapped amiably. I’d purposely grabbed an aisle seat so I could follow Chad out once his seven minutes of glory ended.

He pretended that his next joke was also fishing related but it was actually a fairly juvenile double entendre about “hooking up.”

“And how about that big fish that went missing?” he asked the crowd.

My ears perked up. What about Big Mouth Billy?

“Did you hear about that case?” Audience members nodded and murmured that yes, they were knowledgeable about local current events.

“That fish was the pride of the state. Any guy who’d do that has to be a real basshole.”

I clapped spontaneously, along with the rest of the crowd. That “basshole” line was probably the cleverest of the night. I made a mental note to tell Tom McHale so he could work it into his anchor chitchat between weather and sports. Nothing the Federal Communications Commission could do about that. But then I wondered if appropriating “basshole” might be considered stealing material, and didn’t want to get Tom in trouble.

“Good thing Lent’s over or the FBI would be raiding every church fish fry,” Chad continued. Several women in the crowd tittered in amusement at that image.

“I don’t want to
cast
aspersions on law enforcement.” Chad did that funny casting motion again. He seemed fond of physical comedy. Also of using puns. He followed with a couple of humorous observations about the lack of progress in the investigation with a special emphasis
o
n
fishy, smells
, and
scales
of justice.

“When a fish goes missing, it’s serious business. Seems we should have a special Amber Alert for those cases. Oh wait, we do. It’s called a bobber.” A few men groaned and seemed to be tiring of the bit. I sure was.

“And what about the media?” he asked.

Yeah? I wondered suspiciously. What about us?

“They don’t seem to be closing in on the fish thief anytime soon.”

Noreen must be putting him up to this.

“And there’s that TV chick who claims she got a note from the fishnappers.” That would be me. I glanced around but Chad seemed oblivious to my presence. No one in the audience appeared to recognize me, either. “Next time I tune in to the news I expect she’ll be looking for suspects by doing one of those man-on-the-street interviews.” He took the microphone off the stand and held it out like he was a reporter. “Where were you when the fish went missing?”

A handful of folks laughed at his impersonation, but not me. I hadn’t realized I was standing until I started speaking. “Actually, Chad, I’m more interested in where you were when Mark Lefevre went missing.”

No chuckles, only confusion.

I had always figured comedians would be naturals at ad-libbing, but many aren’t. Interrupt their easy, practiced delivery with a heckle and many spook like a deer about to be whammed by a pickup truck. Same thing with some TV anchors. Lose the teleprompter and they lose their cool.

Chad was one of those. First he froze. Then he seemed to forget the crowd and took an angry step toward me.

“What are you talking about?” None of his friendly banter, he sounded pissed.

Some of the crowd might have started out thinking I was part of the act, but by now the scene was verging on uncomfortable.

“You heard me,” I said. “Do you have an alibi for the night Mark Lefevre disappeared?”

A few people gasped at the implication. After all, many in the crowd were familiar with Mark’s name. First, because he regularly did stand-up at the club for the last several years. Second, because his name had been banner headlines and lead TV news-story material for the last forty-eight hours. A whisper on my left suggested someone realized I was the journalist who found his buried body.

Chad remained silent.

“You wouldn’t
kill
for a laugh, would you?” I tried remembering some of the jokes Jason Hill, the club manager, and I had improvised the other night concerning the fine line between comedy and violence.

Then I heard a noise behind me, but before I could turn around, Jason and a bouncer-looking guy each grabbed me by an arm. No courtesy tap on the shoulder, they simply picked me up and moved toward the nearest exit.

“You’re not funny,” Jason said.

The crowd picked up on that and began chanting “not funny, not funny.” That hurt.

Chad suddenly got creative and shouted, “And let’s have a big round of applause for Channel 3’s Riley Spartz!”

He acted like our confrontation was all part of his act. The crowd bought into it and the last thing I heard and saw before being carried out the door was their standing ovation for my apparent cameo.

My feet didn’t hit the ground until the pair dropped me on the sidewalk outside. Off balance, I fell on my knees on top of cigarette butts and other unpleasant street litter. Jason leaned down and put his face next to mine.

“Don’t come back to the club,” he said. “Ever.”

Then his gorilla companion pushed me over and added his own one-liner: “Or the club will take a club to you.”

The sign of a mediocre joke is if the only one laughing is the guy who told it. Neither Jason or I laughed at the chuckling goon. But I got the message.

——

N
OREEN HAD A
scowl on her face. Miles sat in a corner of her fish-bowl office with a dark lawyer glare on his. As usual, I was the cause of their unhappiness.

“You practically accused a man, in public, surrounded by witnesses, of being a murderer,” Noreen said.

“And that’s no laughing matter,” Miles said.

How they could know that, one day later, puzzled me. But then Noreen pulled up an e-mail on her computer screen and clicked on an attachment. Video loaded and played. Closed-circuit security-camera video inside the comedy club.

The shot was wide so we could see Chad onstage, doing his fishing motions. We couldn’t hear his monologue because the tape had no audio. But that also meant that while Noreen and Miles could see me stand up and confront Chad, they couldn’t hear what either of us said.

In my mind, that made the whole incident a draw.

“That’s not how we see it,” Noreen said.

“And that’s not how Chad Griswold’s attorney sees it,” Miles interjected.

“If he’s not guilty of anything,” I asked, “how come he’s so quick to get a lawyer?”

I was especially curious after Miles explained that Chad’s attorney was Benny Walsh, one of the best criminal attorneys in Minneapolis.

Garnett had used him last fall when he was unfairly charged with the murder of a city councilwoman. Glib and confident, Walsh made it clear to me then that he didn’t much care whether his clients were killers or not—just whether they could afford him and whether the media spelled his name right. I couldn’t imagine that Chad could afford him.

“Benny Walsh has other legal specialties, too,” Miles said. “One of them is slander.”

“Slander?” I said. Slander meant Benny might take the case on a contingency, instead of making Chad pay up front. Suddenly Chad could afford top legal counsel.

“That’s right,” Miles continued. “Slander. The verbal defamation of one’s character. Accusing someone of murder certainly falls into that category.”

When Miles described my actions like that, he made me sound real bad.

Noreen banged her fist on her desk and a pen with a station logo rolled off the edge. “If this gets ugly, you’re out on your own. We’ll make it clear you were not representing nor on assignment from Channel 3 at the comedy club.”

I felt as isolated as her pen, now lying on the floor, waiting to be stepped on by powerful feet.

I braced myself in case Noreen’s next sentence included the F word. Fired. With media organizations in a financial free fall, I wouldn’t put it past Channel 3 to be looking for reasons to terminate employees for cause.

But then I realized if the station
was
sued, they’d have to circle the legal wagons around me. Benny Walsh wouldn’t settle for a judgment against little old Riley Spartz; he’d be drawn to the deep pockets of my employer.

“He offered to settle for fifty grand,” Miles continued, “and he said he wouldn’t file any paperwork in court, plus his client would sign a confidentiality agreement.”

“That’s extortion,” I said.

“No,” he said. “That’s a common legal maneuver.”

“I think we should tell him she went off her meds,” Noreen said. “And promise it won’t happen again.”

“What meds?” I asked. “I’ll sue you for slander if you say that about me.”

Noreen continued to brainstorm solutions that made me want to brain her. “What if we put Riley in rehab?”

I reached across Noreen’s desk but Miles waved his hands like a sports referee to separate us. “We might still get out of this. I declined Benny’s settlement offer. Then I thanked him for the videotape and told him it would be excellent evidence when we press charges against the comedy club for manhandling our reporter.”

That Miles is good.

Then he told me to keep quiet about what happened and cross my fingers that it might all blow over. “And stay away from that comedian. I don’t want you within a mile of him.”

“The club owner told me not to come back,” I said. “Actually he phrased it more like a threat.”

“Then it’s trespassing if you go back after you’ve been told not to. So don’t.”

I promised.

After he left, Noreen let me know where I stood with her. I believe the technical term is shaky ground.

“Riley, I don’t care how good the numbers are on this story. I’m suspending you a day without pay.”

“What?” The money meant nothing, the principle did. My face must have reflected my shock.

“Don’t give me that betrayed look,” she said. “I’m the one who should feel betrayed. Until this happened, I thought we were finally developing a good working relationship.”