Shake Down Dead (11 page)

“I need to know more about Whitney. I
know you don’t like to talk about people, living or dead. So, be
prepared to answer some questions you won’t like. I need to know
more about her if I’m going to help Harold get out of this. Who
would want to see Whitney dead and why?”

“Oh, Jennifer. You know that this goes
against everything I believe in. I try to look at the good in
people, not their dark side. We all have a dark side, you know.”
She pursed her lips to let me know she knew all about my dark
side.

“I know that, Bernie. I’d love to see
your dark side,” I joked. She just gave me one of those looks that
make me cringe. “I wouldn’t ask you to speak ill of anyone if it
wasn’t important,” I quickly added.

I gave her some time to get herself
prepared to talk about Whitney. Sometimes it pays to just shut up
and wait, which isn’t easy for me to do. Bernie poured the boiling
water into a small teapot. She then spooned loose tea into an
infuser, replaced the lid and continued our conversation while the
tea steeped.

Bernie took a deep breath and began.
“Whitney grew up a very privileged young lady, Jennifer. She was
lavished with everything she ever wished for and more. It gave her
a sense of entitlement that spilled over into every part of her
life.”

Bernie went on to tell me, “Whitney
felt she was above others and looked down on people who she assumed
were beneath her, and that was just about everybody. She attended
St. Theresa’s grade school. At her father’s insistence, went to
Hermann High School, rather than a private prep school. It appears
that he realized she was too spoiled and tried to ground her to
reality.”

“It doesn’t appear that it worked,” I
said.

Handing me a piping hot cup of tea she
said, “I’m afraid it didn’t. She convinced her father to send her
to a fussy girl’s college in the east for her first two years.
Apparently, she wasn’t the queen bee there and came back home. She
completed her college education at the University of Minnesota in
Minneapolis. She came home every weekend to hang out with her high
school friends who still put her on that pedestal. Whitney liked
being a big fish in the small pond of Hermann,
Minnesota.”

I had a few more questions for her, now
that I better understood Whitney’s lifestyle. What I didn’t
understand is why her friends put up with her.

“Why do you think her friends didn’t
move on after she left for college?”

“I’m not sure, Jennifer. I know they
were always there for her. Maybe they knew she needed their
friendship.”

“Who are these loyal friends?” I asked,
trying not to sound sarcastic. Either they were just like her or
she had something on them. People like Whitney don’t bring out the
loyalty in others, usually just envy and disdain.

“She was still best friends with her
high school buddies. Let’s see. Kimberly Reese, her maiden name was
Adler. Then there is Olivia Zimmerman-Brooks, why don’t these woman
decide on a name and use just one?”

I didn’t answer. I knew she was just
rambling. I kept quiet, hoping she’d add something I didn’t
know.

“Gina Lange. I don’t know if she kept
her husband’s name; it was Cooper when she divorced him. He was a
nasty man. He beat her, poor thing.”

It was time to get her back on track
before she went off on a tangent about spousal abuse. “Who is
Pamela Frey? I’ve seen her in pictures with Whitney and she doesn’t
seem to fit in with the group.” I kept to myself what Bonnie Sue at
the Sheriff’s office told me.

“She didn’t. Fit in, that is. Whitney’s
friends, like Whitney, I’m sorry to say, were snobs. They had their
own little clique in school. They felt they were privileged and
often didn’t bother to follow rules they didn’t think applied to
them.”

“What about Pamela?” I asked trying to
keep her focused.

“Yes, Pamela,” Bernie said and sighed.
“A lovely young woman. She’s actually Whitney’s cousin, a year
younger and much nicer. Henrietta’s maiden name was Frey. Pamela’s
father was Henrietta’s brother. The Freys were working class
people. They never had a lot of money. Pamela’s father was drunk
when he was killed in a car crash. By God’s grace, he hit a tree
instead of another car.” Bernie shook her head and
continued.

“The family was left without a
breadwinner and with only a small life insurance policy, barely
enough to bury him. Pamela’s mother never got along with Henrietta.
At the funeral, Henrietta offered to help with the funeral
expenses. At first, Mrs. Frey refused any help. She took a job
waitressing to support the family.

“A few months after the funeral, Graham
asked her to let him help Pamela with some money for her school
expenses and other things. Graham always tried to include Pam and
her mother in family events, especially those involving Whitney.
Graham insisted that Whitney give her hand-me-down clothes to
Pamela. Luckily, Pamela’s mother knew how to alter the clothes
since Pamela was graced with a nice figure, while Whitney was
always plump.” There was that “plump” word again.

“How did Whitney feel about having her
poor cousin tag along in her social life?”

“Oh, she minded, no doubt about that,”
Bernie said and took a sip of her tea. “She complained about it to
anyone who would listen. However, it was the one place where her
father wouldn’t give an inch. Pamela was part of the family and
Whitney knew better than to cross her father. I’m not sure how she
treated Pamela when Graham wasn’t around, but she was the loving
cousin whenever I saw them together.”

“What about the people Whitney worked
with at the group home? Did she have problems with any of
them?”

“Jennifer, you must understand, Whitney
thought she was the princess of Hermann and didn’t bother with
people other than her chosen circle. I think that most people who
knew her had a problem with her. She was not a very pleasant
person.”

Bernie started fiddling with her pen.
“I hate to say this but she was a nasty little girl and didn’t get
any better as she grew up. Oh, I give her credit for taking the
responsibility of caring for her mother since her father’s death.
She needed to work to support herself and her mother and she
resented that, but she did it. She became bitter and mean and a
little snoop. Poking her nose into everything and everyone’s
business. I just don’t know what got into her.”

“What kind of snooping?” I
asked.

Her hands were now twisting the
pen—loose, tight, loose tight. “Once I caught her looking at group
home personnel records. She actually was poking around in my files!
In my own office! There’s no excuse for that and I told her
so.”

I felt my face turning red, since I had
done the same thing to Bernie last summer when I was trying to help
her out. The look on her face now told me she hadn’t forgotten the
incident, even though she hadn’t caught me red-handed.

I put my hand over Bernie’s and she
stopped twisting the poor pen she was strangling. “Did you see her
doing anything else? Maybe her snooping led her to something she
shouldn’t have known. Maybe that’s what got her killed.”

“No, I didn’t actually catch her doing
anything else like that. However, she was always asking questions
about people. I refused to gossip with her, even though I’m sure
others fell into her trap and told her whatever she wanted to know.
She did have a way of getting people to talk. It was one of the
things that made her a good social worker.”

“Was she good at her job?” I hadn’t
even given that a thought.

“She was surprisingly good with the
residents. I think after her father died she somehow related to
them. She said once that she understood how her clients felt when
people were cruel them. And she fought for them when
necessary.”

“Why would she have to fight for them?”
I had no clue as to what a social worker did in the first
place.

“The residents are in our program to
enable them to live their lives much like other citizens. They can
vote, buy alcohol and get a driver’s license when they are of age
and pass any tests required. They are quite independent. Several
have jobs in the community, the rest work at our workshop.
Sometimes people don’t understand that they are full members of our
society and are entitled to all the benefits as well as the
responsibilities.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“
I’ll give you an example.
Once they all went to the German Haus Restaurant for dinner and one
of the residents ordered wine. The waitress wasn’t going to give it
to her until she was told by Whitney that the resident was of legal
drinking age and had just as much right to a glass of wine as she
did.”

“Any other examples?”

“Things like that occur every day.
Whitney was always educating people that our residents need to be
treated just like anyone else. Most of the time people got the
message and behaved accordingly. Once in a while a person was just
too stuck in their ways to see our residents as anything more than
large infants or worse.”

“What do you mean by worse?” Admitting
to myself that if I had ever bothered to think about
developmentally disabled people at all, it was usually in terms
like “retarded.” I, too, was guilty of seeing these people as less
than full-fledged citizens.

“People often confuse mental
retardation with mental illness. They are usually ignorant of both
conditions. They are afraid the person will do something ‘crazy.’
Then they try to ban our residents from public places. A group of
parents even tried to keep them out of the public swimming pool
last summer. They were afraid their children would be molested.
It’s so absurd!”

“And Whitney stood up for
them?”

“Absolutely! She was first on the
agenda at the city council meeting. Threatened to sue the city if
they tried to keep her clients from their legal right to use city
facilities. There was a lot of good in Whitney that she could have
used in all areas of her life had she chosen to do so.”

“She chose not to?” I asked.

“She just couldn’t seem to get past the
death of her father and the loss of money and prestige in the
community. She was very angry with her father for leaving them in
such a mess. I think that the reason she fought so hard for her
clients is that she related to them. She often felt left out.
Although she couldn’t do much about her own situation, she could
help them. Unless, of course, she found a way to be rich and
powerful like her father had once been. Social work never made
anyone rich. It’s all so sad.”

I thanked Bernie for sharing her
insight with me and told her I needed to get going. Sitting in my
car, waiting for it to warm up and melt the snow that had fallen on
the windshield, I thought about all Bernie had told me. Whitney’s
snooping stood out in my mind. If she had the nerve to snoop in
Sister Bernie’s files, she had the audacity to snoop anywhere. She
could draw people out. What information had she gotten and what had
she done with it? The word “blackmail” jumped into my head and
stayed there.

16

It had quit snowing by the time I got
home. Cloud cover kept it from getting any colder. Decker was
sitting on the red cedar swing hanging from the ceiling of my front
porch when I pulled into the driveway.

“Hi,” I greeted him when I stepped out
of my car. “What are you doing here in the middle of the day? Did
you solve Whitney’s case already, Mr. Detective?”

“No, I need to talk to you.”

Looking at his face, I realized that he
was dead serious. “You sound grim, what’s wrong?”

He patted the seat next to him and I
sat down, twisting a little so I could see his face. The last time
I’d seen him this upset was when my car had been sideswiped on my
way home one night.

“You know how I’m always telling you to
stop snooping into my cases?” he asked.

I nodded, thinking that he didn’t
really want an answer.

“What would you think if I asked you to
help me figure out who killed Whitney?”

“Really? What happened to ‘Keep your
nose out of police business?’ And what about Jacobs, will he be
okay with it?”

“Jennifer, Jacobs can’t know we’re
doing this. I’ve been taken off the case and put on
leave.”

“Whatever for?” Decker was a great
detective; they wouldn’t take him off the case unless it was
personal. I felt a rock in the pit of my stomach. Had he had a
relationship with Whitney?

Decker heaved a big sigh and said, “We
found Whitney’s cell phone in her pocket. I was paging through it
looking at her contact list to see who her friends were. Then I
checked out her Memo. People put the darndest things on those
lists.”

I knew what he meant. Mine had the
dimensions of my dining room table, since I was contemplating
crocheting a tablecloth for it. It also included passwords for
websites I frequented.

“We came across one memo that appears
to be a list of names. They’re dollar signs behind some of them. My
name was on the list.”

“Why?’ I asked, blowing on my hands to
keep them warm.