Missing Mark (31 page)

I had the feeling I might be talking to a new grandpa, but he seemed so Scandinavian stoic that I thought it best to play dumb because I wasn’t sure just how happy everybody was about the pregnancy.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Nelson. I must have got my days crossed. I thought she was coming home today.”

“No, she and the baby are still at Unity. My wife is leaving there just now.”

He was talking about Unity Hospital, a few miles away. “Shall I tell her you stopped by?” he asked.

“No, I’ll swing by the hospital. I want to surprise her.” Boy, was she going to be surprised. “Has she picked out a name yet?”

For the first time, he beamed. “Ja, Sven.”

“Oh, congratulations, Grandpa.” I gave him a playful punch in the arm and said goodbye, reminding myself that Minnesota’s Scandinavian stereotype exists for a reason.

I swung by Target to pick up a baby gift to help smooth my way into Sigourney’s hospital room. I enjoy shopping for babies and knew better than to buy a newborn outfit that might already be too small. A maroon-and-gold University of Minnesota onesie beckoned from the racks of blue and pink. I selected a twelve-month size with a gift bag and some tissue paper. I inserted my Channel 3 business card in a “baby boy welcome” card as well as scribbling my congratulations for the arrival of little Sven into the world.

I’d put some heavy-coverage makeup on my face that morning, so my bruises just barely showed. Anyway, a hint of black-and-blue wasn’t unusual in a hospital corridor. The receptionist at the patient information desk gave me Sigourney’s room number and I headed up, carrying a pot of bluish tulips as well as the baby present, because bearers of flowers are generally welcome anywhere.

I counted three babies in the nursery window, all wrapped in pink, so I figured Sven was with his mother down the hall. From my perspective, Unity Hospital was the perfect place for us to talk about the murders of her former boyfriend and his mother. Holding a baby would make it more difficult for her to attack me. And if she succeeded, medical care was on-site.

Sigourney was nursing Sven and needed only seconds to recognize me as That TV Reporter. No face blindness for her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Just wanted to see the baby.” I set the gift bag on the bed next to her and the tulips on the nightstand. With his frizzy black hair, Sven looked like Mark’s baby picture. I thought it best not to mention the resemblance.

“Well, you’ve seen him,” she said. “You can go now.” She held Sven to her shoulder for a burp. He complied.

Both times I’d been with Sigourney were emotional events. Life and death. Birth and burial.

“Can I hold him?” I asked.

Please say yes, I thought to myself.

I really wanted to hold him. Not to use him as a human shield should his mother turn homicidal but because I like holding babies. I’d practiced on nieces and nephews, and on visiting infants in the newsroom. Recently I had to acknowledge that I might never hold my own. That reality didn’t consume my waking thoughts, but it came up when friends became pregnant or babies stared at me from grocery-store carts.

Sigourney seemed to sense my sincerity, so she handed Sven over, opened his present, and politely remarked about the new outfit.

I snuggled him. He yawned, but didn’t cry. “See, he likes me.”

Please, Sigourney, I thought to myself, bring up Mark on your own. Don’t make me have to go there. But it was as if she had taken a vow of silence and awaited my next move.

“So how are the two of you doing?” I coochie-cooed Sven as he kicked one foot loose from his blanket. His toes were so tiny, his toe-nails barely visible. “Going home soon?”

“We’re fine. But you still haven’t explained why you crashed my hospital room uninvited.” She glanced at the red call button at her bedside, but didn’t reach for it.

“I just wanted to check on you, Sigourney. Make sure you were okay after the funeral. You seemed agitated that day and I was worried.”

“Well, nothing like motherhood to calm you down.” She reclaimed Sven from my arms.

“I was hoping to learn a little more about how your relationship with Mark ended,” I said.

“What’s to know? He dumped me for the rich bitch.”

“For a while, when I couldn’t find you or him, I thought maybe you’d run off together and that’s why he skipped out of the wedding.”

“Well, you thought wrong.”

“Did he know you were pregnant?” Her answer would say something about the kind of man Mark was and might also give Sigourney a chance to vent.

“I found out a few weeks after we broke up. It wasn’t the kind of news I wanted to leave on an answering machine. I wanted to tell him in person, but he wouldn’t see me. Then he started screening my calls and wouldn’t even pick up.”

That’s when she decided to look for him after the rehearsal dinner. “And if his fiancée happened to overhear my news, fine.”

“She did see you kiss him.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

If Sigourney would lie about the kiss, I wondered what else she was lying about. Sven suddenly fussed like she was holding him too tight.

“You don’t think I killed him?” she asked.

Now it was my turn to stay silent.

“Look, the guy got what was coming to him,” she said. “But I didn’t do the honors.”

Just then the door to her hospital room opened and Sigourney’s reinforcements arrived. Grandpa Sven and an older woman, most likely his wife, walked in. He pointed at me like he was identifying a suspect in a lineup, and said, “Ja, she’s the one who came to the house.”

Baby Sven started crying full blast. And three generations of Nelsons made it clear that visiting hours were over.

ee, this has possibilities.” Noreen was reacting to a script she’d made me draft on Sigourney Nelson after she’d reviewed my expense sheet and spotted the baby gift.

((RILEY/SOT))
CHANNEL 3 HAS LEARNED
THAT A FORMER
GIRLFRIEND OF MARK
LEFEVRE WAS A
REGISTERED GUEST AT THE
HOTEL WHERE HE WAS
LAST SEEN ON THE NIGHT
HE WAS KILLED.

I didn’t expect this version to hit the air; it seemed a bit tabloidy: high on innuendo, low on context.

THE WOMAN, WHO
RECENTLY GAVE BIRTH,
CLAIMS LEFEVRE IS HER
CHILD’S FATHER.

But I also didn’t object to writing it as an exercise to see where the pieces fit. Sometimes that simple task makes it clear whether you are close to nailing the story—or not. Even though Sigourney was my top suspect for Mark’s murder, Noreen favored airing the report more than I did. But I didn’t mind being ready if something new broke loose.

“I’m not naming her.” I thought it important to point that out. “And obviously I’d seek reaction from her before we broadcast anything.”

“Absolutely.” Noreen nodded.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Miles. For once, our attorney came down against my boss. “She’s not a public figure. She has privacy. So unless the police call her a suspect, it’s dicey for us to hint that she should be.”

“But everything in the story is true,” Noreen insisted.

“Doesn’t matter,” Miles said again. “We’d be implying she was a murderer. We don’t have enough for that kind of accusation.”

“What about motive and proximity?” Noreen hated to let the story die, and I wondered if she sensed the ratings book slipping away.

But it was a good question, so we both looked at Miles.

“What about proof?” Miles responded.

Another good question, this time they both looked at me.

“I’m working on it,” I replied.

“If we reported this and the cops never charged her, or even worse,” Miles continued, “if someone else was convicted, she could end up owning this TV station.”

So Noreen shook her head in regret, crumpled the pages into a paper ball, and threw it in her wastebasket.

I
STOPPED AT
the White Bear Lake cop shop on my way home, using the excuse that I was checking to see if they’d found my lost cell phone in the wilds of Tamarack Nature Center. But what I really hoped to learn was where their homicide investigation into Mark’s death stood.

As far as I could tell, the city has had only two other murders in the past forty years and neither was routine. The most recent involved a high-profile bail jumper who allegedly killed his wife and set fire to their house. The other involved a woman who beat her adopted son to death, but wasn’t prosecuted until his birth mother went looking for him some twenty years later.

Mark Lefevre’s murder also promised to be anything but routine.

Detective Bradshaw checked some records and verified the cops had recovered my phone during a sweep of the woods, but said he’d have to check with the chief before releasing it to me.

“That’s fine.” I didn’t want to make a big deal about the phone. I’d already bought a spiffy new cell with a full texting keyboard, Internet, and GPS. The wireless company had deactivated my old one so I didn’t have to worry about a thief running up my bill. But I sweated the cops scrolling through my contact list with source names and numbers. Luckily my faves were under first names or nicknames. So I kept casual and admired a white bear figurine on Detective Bradshaw’s desk.

“So how’s the investigation going?” I asked.

“We’ll call a news conference when we’re ready to announce an arrest.” That’s cop talk for none of your beeswax.

“Any luck tracking where all that cash came from?”

“What cash?” he bluffed.

“The ninety-eight grand in Mark’s safe-deposit box.” I called.

His eyes narrowed. “How’d you know about that?” His inquiry was the verbal equivalent of throwing in his hand.

I ignored the question. Reporters don’t like going there on how we know stuff, especially not with cops.

“I’ve held off reporting that particular detail,” I said, “because I wasn’t sure how relevant it was to the case. Specifically when I thought our comedian was the killer.”

“We would have liked it to wrap it up with him, too.”

“Do you have an alternate theory?”

“Are we on the record or off the record?” The detective was wise to clarify that point. Many a source mistakenly thinks that detail can be worked out after the fact.

“We can go off the record.” If he said something earth-shattering, I’d try negotiating that nugget back on the record later. In most cases, this reporter source business is pretty one-sided. Our purpose is clear: we seek news. True, journalists need to take care they’re not used for ulterior motives, like politics, revenge, or profit. But usually, our motives mesh with those of our sources. And in this case, we both wanted to find a killer.

“So what have you got, Detective Bradshaw?” I asked.

“Not much, I’m afraid.”

Not worth going off the record for this. “Any idea where the money came from?”

“It’s cash. Almost impossible to trace,” he said. “We’re thinking drug money. And the Wisconsin cops agree. That’s pretty much the focus of our investigation. We’ve subpoenaed his phone records, both cell and home, as well as financial records.”

Those avenues certainly needed to be explored. But I pressed him about the gun linking Mark’s murder with his mother’s. “It looked like an old handgun to me. Not something a drug gang would use.”

“They tried to stage an old lady’s suicide,” he said. “They probably figured she wouldn’t have a semiautomatic lying around the house.”

I did have one advantage over the cops; I’d been able to size up Mrs. Lefevre before her death. She didn’t act like a woman worried about danger. “Why would druggies kill his mom?”

“He might have stashed some inventory and the killer went looking for it. Plus any cash and records he might have kept. They might have been chasing the loot and thought she knew something. As you know, boxes of his belongings are missing from his mother’s garage.”