Polkacide (26 page)

Because, until now, he'd been our main
suspect in the murder of Polish Lou.

So now, an old question
needed a new answer: Who killed Polish Lou?

And a new question arose
alongside it: Who killed Eddie Kubiak, Sr.?

Chapter 37

Fifteen minutes after I
called the police, Otto Duranko showed up with two cruisers, sirens
blaring. I met him out in front of Polka Central, where I'd just
finished my third straight cigarette. Even after all those calming
smokes, my hands were still shaking.

Otto had his hand on his gun
as he walked toward me. He looked around with fierce alertness, as
if the killer might still be nearby, waiting to be dealt
with.

Otto was all business when
he reached me. "You're sure it's him? You're sure he's
dead?"

"It's Eddie Sr., all right."
I shrugged. "I didn't check his pulse, but he definitely looked
dead. He has a bullet hole right here." I pointed to my
forehead.

Otto nodded curtly and headed around
the corner of Polka Central with gun held high. Just as I lost
sight of him, an ambulance roared up and screeched to a stop behind
the cop cruisers.

Otto's two
deputies--gray-haired Frank and blocky young George--jogged over
and split up. Frank followed Otto, and George sheared off to loop
around the other side of the building.

As a pair of paramedics
leaped out of the ambulance, laden with gear, I noticed the
neighbors were starting to flow out of their homes. An old lady
hobbled out of a gray house across the street, using a ski pole as
a cane. A heavyset young woman stood on her front stoop two houses
down from the old lady, bouncing babies in both arms as they tugged
at her long, dark hair. Further down the street, a small crowd had
gathered, craning their necks and pointing in my
direction.

Feeling conspicuous, I sighed and
strolled around the corner after Otto and Frank. Since I hadn't
heard any gunshots, I figured the coast was clear.

I stepped around the back of
the building, taking care to make enough noise so I didn't get
shot...but no one even looked up. Otto, Frank, and George were
huddled around the back door, gazing down at the body on the
ground.

"Coming through!" The two
paramedics charged up behind me, and I ducked against the wall to
let them pass. Otto, Frank, and George also got out of their way,
parting so they could access the body.

As the paramedics went to work, Otto
walked over and stood beside me. "You just found him like that? You
don't have any idea what happened?"

I nodded, watching as one of
the paramedics pressed the bell of a stethoscope to Eddie Sr.'s
chest. "I was trying to go out back for a smoke, and I couldn't get
the door open because he was..."

"Dead," said the paramedic.
"He's long gone."

Otto shook his head sadly. "First Lou,
now Eddie. Both Polka Princes gone in one week."

I gave him a meaningful
look. "What a coincidence, huh? Hard to believe they're not
connected."

Otto pulled off his glasses,
then tugged a white cloth from his pocket and used it to polish
them. "Are you trying to do my job for me, Miss
Kachowski?"

An answer came to mind about
how
someone
needed
do it, but I thought better of putting it out there. "Of course
not, Chief."

"Glad to hear it." Otto
turned and raised an eyebrow at me. "Because we only need one
Police Chief in this town, don't we?"

"Yes, Chief."

"And he might not be perfect," said
Otto, "but he is still more than capable of smelling a rat when
someone hits him over the head with it. Wouldn't you
say?"

I nodded. "Yes, Chief."
Maybe Otto wasn't so oblivious, after all.

"Good to know we're on the
same page." He pocketed the cloth, plugged the wire-framed glasses
back onto his head, and returned to Eddie Sr.'s body. "Talk to me,
fellas."

The paramedics hurried past
with their gear, leaving Frank and George to explore the crime
scene. I lingered off to the side, taking it all in while staying
out of the way.

"No shell casings yet."
George walked slowly around the body, bent over and staring at the
dirt. "And I'm not seeing signs of a struggle."

Frank, who was hunkered down
beside Eddie Sr., slipped on a pair of latex gloves. He gingerly
lifted Eddie's right arm and gazed at the underside, which looked
lighter in color than the top side. "Lividity indicates he was
moved."

"So he was killed elsewhere and dumped
here." Otto scratched his head. "I wonder why?"

"Maybe it's a message." The
words were out of my mouth before I had time to second-guess. "Peg
got a death threat yesterday like Dad did before he
died."

Otto turned back, raising both
eyebrows. "Do tell? And where is she right now?"

Something in the look on his
face made me wonder if I should've kept the threat to myself.
"Uh..." As I stood there, meeting Otto's gaze, a new equation took
shape in my mind, adding up to a possibility I hadn't considered
till that moment.

Peg had gone out looking for
the killer, planning to get to him before he got to her. What if
she'd done exactly that? What if she'd taken out her chief suspect
in a very permanent way?

It might explain why she was still off
the radar. "I don't know where she is, Chief."

I could tell from the look
on Otto's face that he was thinking along the same lines regarding
Peg. "Let me know if you think of where she might be. She might
need some protection."

It was more likely he wanted
to question her about Eddie Sr. "Will do, Chief." I wasn't about to
hand her over, even if I'd had any idea of her
whereabouts.

Just as Otto turned his full attention
to the body, I heard a beeping sound from somewhere nearby. I
ignored it at first, and it stopped...then started
again.

Frowning, I followed the beeping
around the side of Polka Central. The closer I got to the front of
the building, the louder it got. And then I was right on top of
it.

Looking down, I saw the glow
of a cell phone screen in the middle of a scraggly hedge. I reached
in carefully, trying not to scratch my arm, and fished it
out.

When I brought it up, I saw
a name on the screen: Adrianna. A number went with the name, but it
had too many digits, starting with 011...then 48...then nine more
after that. I barely managed to commit it to memory before the
phone stopped beeping.

And Otto snatched it out of my hand.
"Okay, Miss Kachowski. That's enough helping for one day, I
think."

With that, he walked me out
front and left me by the curb. Next thing I knew, Polka Central was
surrounded by yellow crime scene tape, and I was stuck outside it
with all the other spectators.

Chapter 38

As soon as Otto walked away, I pulled
out my phone, typed in Adrianna's number, and saved it to my
contacts list. I'd have to look into it later.

Then, I waited and watched
among the looky-loos, unfairly sidelined from the investigation
going on in back of Polka Central. Glynne showed up for work, and I
filled her in on what had happened.

Soon enough, the coroner
pulled up and hurried under the tape with her silver case of
instruments. Next, the same WNKK news crew who'd been on-site for
the big meeting the day before came jogging up the street, complete
with camera and mic.

As the reporter and
cameraman closed in, I decided to leave. The last thing I wanted
was to be interrogated on camera about Eddie Sr.'s
murder.

"I have to go find Peg," I told
Glynne. "Do you mind holding down the fort a while?"

"There isn't much of a fort
to hold down, since I can't go in." She gestured at the yellow
police tape wound around the site. "So yeah, I guess I can handle
that."

"Let me give you my cell number." I
rattled it off, and she typed it into her phone. "Call if anything
crazy happens."

Glynne dropped the phone in
the pocket of her pink hoodie and raised a red eyebrow. "Gee, what
are the chances?"

Since I had my keys with me,
I was ready to roll. I was glad I'd left my purse on the seat. I
doubted the cops would've let me back inside Polka Central if I'd
needed to retrieve it.

I started the engine and
rolled slowly away from the curb. The spectators parted
reluctantly, giving me dirty looks as if they thought I was a
criminal making a getaway.

But I still made it out of
there in the nick of time. In my rear-view mirror, I saw the news
crew trotting after me, waving and shouting. As slowly as I was
moving through the crowd, they still couldn't catch up with
me.

And then I turned left, and
the way opened up ahead of me. The cross street was empty and
quiet; everyone was around the corner where the action was, at
Polka Central.

I turned right and then
right again, ending up on busy Solid Avenue, which cut across the
bottom edge of Katyn Borough. As I rolled onward in the steady flow
of traffic, I breathed a sigh of relief, glad to be away from the
craziness.

Now if only I knew where to
go next.

Should I head for the
DeeLite Efficiency Motel and hide away for the time being? I could
hide at Baba Tereska's just as well, but she might ask some awkward
questions if the news about Eddie Sr. had already traveled the
grapevine.

It seemed to me the most
critical task was to track down Peg, dead or alive. I needed to
find out if the killer had made good on his threat, or if Peg had
followed through on hers.

Grabbing the phone from my
pocket, I dialed her number and waited. It rang six times, then
kicked into voice mail. I tried again, with the same
results.

Without being able to simply
ask her where she was, I needed to consider the possibilities. In a
worst case scenario, she could be anywhere--dead in a ditch, tied
up in a basement, buried in a back yard. In a best case scenario,
if Peg were alive and kicking, she could be on the run, hundreds of
miles away by now.

Or maybe she was closer to home. Much
closer.

In other words, maybe she
was
at
home. So
that was where I headed. I made a left and crossed the bridge over
the Oderina River, driving toward the hilltop neighborhoods of
Upper Gdansk Township. I knew the way to Peg's place like the back
of my hand.

After all, it was the house I'd grown
up in.

Chapter 39

Upper Gdansk had been the
ritzy part of town since long before I was born. Back when coal
mining was big in the region, the bosses had all lived in the
township. It was still home to most of the officials, doctors,
dentists, and attorneys in New Krakow.

Until recently, it had also
been home to Polish Lou.

As I drove along the broad
streets under canopies of oak trees, I watched the stately old
homes slide past on both sides. Modern, generic "McMansions" were
nowhere to be seen; the sprawling structures lining the streets,
overflowing with character, were more likely to have been built
fifty years ago than five.

Lou's place wasn't a palace,
but it matched the Upper Gdansk aesthetic just fine. It occupied a
shady lot in a corner of the township where the houses were less
ostentatious and more crowded. "Cozier" is the word that comes to
mind.

As I turned down the
sun-dappled street where I'd once lived, the familiar turret of our
old Victorian came into view, jutting up between the oaks. I
remembered playing in that turret, spending many blissful hours in
the round, sunny room...imagining it was the tower of a castle, and
I was the princess trapped inside.

Drawing closer, I saw the
sharp peaks of the roof angling down to the faded yellow rounded
shingle siding. The trim around the windows had also faded, gone
from dark brown, almost chocolate, to light tan.

As I rolled toward the
front, I could see the giant porch wrapping around the place, its
roof upheld by slender white columns. It was another of my favorite
haunts as a child, especially on long summer days.

My heart beat faster as the
memories rushed through me...and then it beat even faster because
of something else. When I pulled into the driveway and got my first
clear view of the front of the property, I saw a familiar car
parked off to one side. It was Peg's clunker, the white Oldsmobile.
It was parked at an angle, blocking in another vehicle that was
nosed up against the fence along the driveway.

The blocked-in vehicle was a silver
pickup, a Ford. Just like Eddie Kubiak Jr.'s.

Not exactly what I'd expected to see
at my dad's house. Peg's car, maybe; Eddie Jr.'s, never in a
million years.

So what was going on here?

Frowning, I pulled in behind
Peg's car, blocking her the way she'd blocked Eddie. Then, I got
out and walked slowly to the front steps, wondering what else I was
going to find. If there was a single good reason for Peg and Eddie
Jr. to be together at the house at that moment, I couldn't think of
it.