Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7) (24 page)

44

Howard had long ago memorized the jewelry that Janine Snow lost when her husband was murdered, but he still reviewed the photographs every time he entered a pawn shop. Six items. All expensive. A black pearl ring in a white gold setting. Matching earrings and a matching necklace. A bracelet of twisted gold chains interspersed with diamonds and blue sapphires. A hummingbird pin with a breast of real rubies. An emerald brooch in the shape of the letter J. Each piece was a custom design.

He parked in the ramp of the Fond-Du-Luth casino and emerged onto Superior Street. The casino was next to him, belching cigarette smoke when the doors opened. He’d never been inside. He didn’t gamble. It was a sweltering afternoon, and he thought about stopping at a bar, but beer fogged his head. He needed to be sharp as he perused the jewelry locked under the glass of the pawn shop counters.

For eight years, he’d visited the same shops again and again. Duluth. Cloquet. Grand Rapids. Hinckley. Even down to the Twin Cities. Dozens of them, from the upscale mall shops buying gold and silver to the alley-side joints that served up fast cash and payday loans. The owners all knew him, although he’d never told them what he was looking for. Howard was paranoid that if any of the owners knew they were fencing property stolen in a murder case, they’d make those items quietly disappear before he could identify them.

He climbed 2nd Avenue in the heat. He wore a red Kohl’s polo shirt, tan khakis, and sneakers with reinforced arches for his flat feet. The shoes were new, and the soles squeaked. Zenith Pawn was at the next corner, garish with neon.

Black pearl ring in a gold setting.

Hummingbird pin.

Emerald J brooch.

All these years, all these fruitless hours spent hunched over display cases, and he’d never lost faith.

Howard thought about his last visit with Janine and the odd confession she’d made. It shocked him, until he’d realized that she was trying to drive him away. He’d been too honest with her about his frustrations with Carol. Janine blamed herself for his dissolving marriage, and maybe she was right. Even so, he refused to let her send him away.

‘Say whatever you want,’ he had told her. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Howard opened the glass door of the pawn shop. Inside, the air conditioning made his damp skin cold. It felt good. Another customer was at the counter, a silver-haired lady dickering with the owner over the price of an old penny. The shop overflowed with inventory. Jewelry. Guns. Video games. Stamps and coins. Leather. Cutlery and knives. Electronics. Some items were new, but most were used, the litter of the Great Recession. Three balls were the universal symbol of boom times gone bust.

‘This is a 1933 wheat penny,’ the old woman insisted. ‘I looked it up. It’s worth twenty dollars. I cleaned it up for you, too. Nice and shiny.’

The owner was bald and big and reminded him of a pro wrestler like Jesse Ventura. He wore jeans and a black leather jacket. Somewhere inside the jacket, Howard assumed the man carried a bad-ass gun.

‘Beverly, sweetie,’ he replied in an Aussie accent, ‘it’s twenty dollars in uncirculated condition. This penny looks like it’s been through a stretchy machine at Fun Land. And cleaning it makes it worth less, not more. I’ve told you that.’

‘Twenty dollars,’ she repeated.

‘Sweetie, I can give you two dollars and a cup of decaf, and that’s because I’m in a good mood.’

The old woman continued to argue. Howard ignored her. He saw the owner shoot him a wink and a grin.

Howard slipped reading glasses onto his face. He bent over the long counter crammed with one-off jewelry items, and the glasses slipped down to the end of his sweaty nose. He tried to stay focused. After a while, the jewelry all looked alike. The same stuff week after week, most of it cheap paste.

He checked the tag on each item. Ring – four hundred dollars. Necklace – seventy-five dollars. Elvis tie tack – ‘priceless’. The owner had a sense of humor. Each piece was nestled in a velvet sleeve, and when Howard had surveyed the entire counter, he moved on to the next one.

Watches. Earrings. Murano glass charms.

But again – nothing.

It had been nothing all day in the other shops. It had been nothing every month since he began his search years ago.

He’d hoped today would be different because of the gun. The police had finally found the gun that killed Jay Ferris, years after the crime. The same gun had been used in a murder in West Duluth the previous month and in a Chicago robbery shortly before Jay’s death. No one could explain it.

Howard didn’t know how or why this particular gun had made its way from one crime to the next, but he felt vindicated. He’d been right all along that Jay’s own gun had played no part in the shooting. This was something different. This was what you’d expect from a home invasion, just as Janine had insisted. A stranger came to the door. Killed Jay. Stole the jewelry. Disappeared, along with the gun.

Now the gun was back.

Where had it been for eight years? Howard didn’t know, but he was willing to bet that wherever the gun had been hidden, the missing jewelry had been hidden there, too. If someone had used the gun, then it made sense that the jewelry might show up at the same time. The truth was coming to light.

‘Howie!’ the owner bellowed at him. His name was Caffy, which was short for his last name, Cafferty. ‘Mate!’

Caffy loomed on the other side of the counter like a brown bear. Wheat Penny Lady was gone, clutching two dollars in one fist and a styrofoam cup of Green Mountain Nantucket Keurig coffee in the other.

‘Want an old penny?’ the owner asked, flipping it in the air with his thumb and catching it in his giant palm. ‘Only twenty bucks.’

Howard stopped his search and looked up, his mouth falling open. A grin bent across the owner’s face.

‘Kidding, mate. This penny ain’t worth a dime. If you’ve got a chair that wobbles, stick it under one of the legs.’

‘So why’d you give her two bucks?’ Howard asked.

‘Oh, Beverly’s all right. Likes a yank on the crank in the casino now and then. Who knows, maybe she’ll take my twofer and win a Cadillac or something.’

Howard smiled. He actually liked Caffy. Most of the pawn shop owners he met were too slick by half, but Caffy dealt straight with people. If he didn’t have a soft spot, he had a thinner plate of steel near his heart. They’d talked over the years. Sports. Chinese history. Irish poets. Caffy was surprisingly well read, and well traveled, which Howard found fascinating. The man had led the kind of unattached wanderer’s life that Howard envied.

Even so, he’d never shown the photographs of Janine’s jewelry to Caffy. You could like someone face to face and not trust them when your back was turned.

‘That watch over there,’ Caffy boomed. ‘That would look good on your wrist.’

‘Who wears watches anymore?’ Howard asked.

‘Ah, they’re coming back. Smart watches. That’s the new thing.’

‘No, thanks.’

Caffy never took rejection personally. ‘Sure, whatever. You’re in earlier than usual, ain’t you? Thought it would be another couple weeks before you showed up again.’

‘Yes, I’m early,’ Howard admitted.

He was at the end of the last counter. He’d looked through hundreds of pieces of jewelry, ranging in price from five dollars to a thousand dollars. He’d found nothing even as interesting as the wheat penny.

‘Might help if you gave me a clue what you want,’ Caffy told him. ‘After all these years, the I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it game gets old, doesn’t it?’

‘One needle, lots of haystacks,’ Howard said.

‘Come on, mate, give me a hint. Cheap, expensive.’

‘Expensive. Very expensive.’

‘Oh, well, why didn’t you say so?’ Caffy told him. ‘I do have a little private stock this week. Best customers only. Which don’t exactly include you, Howie, but you want to see it anyway?’

‘I do – thanks, Caffy.’

The owner retreated into the back. As he did, he pressed a button that locked the shop door, which told Howard exactly how far trust went between them. He could see the big Aussie disappearing inside an oversized steel vault, and he emerged a moment later with a typewriter-sized box. He set it on the glass counter in front of Howard and opened the top, revealing several dazzling felt rows of jewelry that were probably worth more than everything in the storefront counters combined.

‘Nice stuff, huh?’ Caffy said.

‘Very nice.’

‘Look, but don’t touch, mate.’

‘I won’t.’

Howard bent over, securing his reading glasses on his face. This collection wasn’t thirteen-to-a-dozen rings and bracelets. This was beautiful work. Multi-carat diamonds. Rubies and emeralds that glowed as if the inside of the stone were on fire. Gold that belonged on the bare neck of a perfect young starlet.

‘People really pawn this kind of stuff?’ Howard asked. ‘Why?’

‘You’re in the museum of lost dreams, Howie.’

Lost dreams or hot property, Howard thought. He took his time examining the pieces, because each was beautiful and distinctive, with a story behind it that he wished he knew. Divorce? Inheritance? Mistress? He wanted to pick the stones up in his hands, but he restrained himself.

Even so, there was nothing and nothing and
—

Howard stopped. He stared at the fourth velvet row, where engagement rings nuzzled with bejeweled pinky rings. He stared, stopped, and stared again. His mouth went dry. His heart took off, beat beat beat beat.

There it was. After all these years, there it was.

Black pearl ring. The setting – two thick white gold bands intertwined to form a wreath. The stone as dark and ominous as the sea, swallowing all light. That was one of six pieces of jewelry missing since a winter’s night, January 28, almost nine years ago.

That was Janine’s ring.

45

The bartender directed Serena to a dirt lot behind the Grizzly Bear, where she found Fred Sissel. The bar owner sat on a picnic bench with his long legs stretched out and his dress shoes coated with dust. A cigarette perched between his lips, and his tie was slung over his shoulder to avoid ash. He sat uncomfortably close to Anna Glick, who texted on her smartphone. Sissel had his hand on the young woman’s thigh, and his face sported the kind of grin that men use when they’re being cocky and cool. Anna didn’t remove Fred’s hand, but the way she held her body didn’t offer encouragement.

Serena had done her research on Sissel. He was fifty-three years old. He’d lived his whole life in Duluth. He’d worked in sales and marketing for a small advertising agency until he lost his job in the recession. At that point, he’d scraped together enough savings and debt to buy the bar on Raleigh Street. He had more debt than savings, and the revenues had gotten worse, not better, in the six years he’d owned the bar. He was unmarried. The smile, the slick hair, the stained ties, were all lines on the business card of the perennial bachelor. His colleagues said he thought of himself as a ladies’ man, but that was mostly in his head. He had a paper-thin ego that could be blown away by the mildest breeze.

‘You said you had information for me?’ Serena called to Sissel. She’d received a text message from the bar owner an hour earlier.

Sissel whispered to Anna, who clambered off the bench. Serena saw the man’s hand graze Anna’s ass as she wandered away, still engrossed in her phone.

‘You can do better,’ Serena murmured as the girl passed her.

Anna shrugged, as if nothing could be more obvious. ‘I do.’

Serena crossed the lot and sat on the opposite side of the bench. Sissel, still sucking on a cigarette, smoothed his hair and rubbed two greasy fingers together. The smoke on his breath mingled with beer.

‘Some guy came into the bar this afternoon,’ he told her. ‘He was asking a lot of questions about that woman who was killed. Kelly Hauswirth.’

‘Who was he? A sailor?’

‘No, he wasn’t from the boats.’

‘What did he look like?

‘He was hard to miss. Blue glasses, blue pants, a white button-down shirt. Short, maybe five-six, skinny.’

‘So what did this guy do?’ Serena asked.

‘He came in mid-afternoon when the place was pretty empty. He ordered a beer, and then he asked me if I knew which table this woman Kelly was sitting at before she got shot. It was weird, but hey, people have their kinks. I told him which table it was, and he took his beer over there and sat down. When I went to take his order, he grilled me with more questions. Did I talk to the woman? How long was she there? Did I see what happened to her? That struck me as more than the average freaky curiosity, so I went out back and sent you a text. By the time I got inside again, the guy was gone. He finished his beer and told Anna to make his burger to go. Paid cash.’

Serena frowned. They often found hangers-on at murder scenes, but this one sounded odd. ‘Did he say where he was going?’

‘No, but I talked to one of the guys who came in right after Blue Pants left. He saw him get into a red compact. Headed toward Grassy Point.’

Serena stood up. ‘Thanks for the information, Fred.’

‘You’re welcome. Maybe you’d like to have dinner sometime.’

‘Maybe I wouldn’t,’ Serena replied.

She left Sissel on the bench and went around the side of the bar to the street. In the distance, the Bong Bridge slashed across the bay to Superior. She put out an alert with the description of the man and the car, and then she drove her Mustang into the industrial area near Grassy Point. This was where the business of Duluth got done. Boats belched iron ore down gravity feed ramps. Trains and trucks came and went. Lumber got stacked like matchsticks, and taconite was piled into black pyramids. The air always smelled of cut wood, and engines thundered like storms that never moved off. White columns of steam rose from the plants and merged into the white clouds.

Where the road turned toward the bay at 50th Street, she got lucky. A hundred yards away, she spotted a red Corolla. There was a splash of blue on the hood, where the man in the turquoise pants sat watching the rolling train cars. She parked her Mustang not far away and got out. She let a truck pass, then crossed the road to approach him.

‘Afternoon,’ she called to the man.

He was probably about thirty years old but looked younger. He had a baby face and nervous eyes behind the blue-framed glasses that matched his pants. He looked as if he wanted to jackrabbit across the train tracks toward the water.

‘Uh, hi,’ he said.

Serena let him see her police shield. ‘Do you mind coming down here for a minute?’

‘Uh, okay.’ He slid off the hood, scattering French fries from a white foam box. ‘Is there a problem? Am I not supposed to be here?’

‘Can I see some identification?’ Serena asked.

‘Sure. I guess.’

He dragged a wallet out of his pants and gave her his driver’s license. His name was Mort Sanders, and he was from the Twin Cities suburb of Eden Prairie. Mort looked like a geek who’d never outgrown his high school science classes. His short hair was curly and mocha-colored.

‘What do you do for a living, Mr. Sanders?’ she asked.

‘I’m a field service tech for a big gaming company. I test and repair their video slot machines.’

‘Is that what you’re doing in Duluth?’

‘Uh, no. I’m just up here doing tourist stuff.’

‘I understand you were in the Grizzly Bear Bar asking questions about the murder of Kelly Hauswirth,’ Serena said.

‘You know about that?’ His voice screeched like a badly played violin. ‘Holy crap, I knew this was a mistake. I swear, I didn’t kill her!’

‘I didn’t say you did, but I’d like to know why you’re so curious about this crime. Did you know Kelly?’

‘Sort of. I mean, I never met her, but I knew her. Online. I’m on the road for work a lot, so I’m stuck in hotel rooms. I like to follow the chat rooms. It’s a big party in there, you know? Everybody’s drunk and hitting on everybody else.’

‘So you met Kelly in one of these chat rooms?

‘Yeah. She was Dream_on223, and I was . . .’

He stopped.

Serena said, ‘What was your handle?’

‘Beccababe911.’

‘You pretended to be a woman?’ she said.

‘Yeah, but it’s no big deal. Most people use fake IDs. They’re not dumb enough to put their real identity out there, okay? Kelly wasn’t Kelly online. If you talked to her, she said her name was Corinne, and she was from Maryland. And it’s not like gender-bending is so odd. The fact is, women will talk to other women. They’re on their guard whenever men approach them. So Beccababe can get to know women, which Mort Sanders can’t. I’ve made a lot of great women friends that way.’

‘By lying to them,’ Serena said.

‘I lie about my outer self but not about my inner self.’

Serena rolled her eyes and waited for the noise of a passing train to diminish. ‘Let’s get back to Kelly. Why are you here asking questions about her murder?’

‘I was reading a copy of the
Star Tribune
, and I saw an article about this murder victim in Duluth being identified. Kelly Hauswirth from Colorado. I saw the pic, and it was her. It was a shock. I felt really bad. So I just wanted to find out more about what happened to her.’

‘You said Kelly had a different identity online,’ Serena reminded him. ‘How did you know who she was? Did she tell you her real name?’

Mort wet his lips with his tongue. ‘No.’

‘So how?’

‘It’s kind of a hobby of mine.’

‘What is?’ Serena asked.

‘I collect people.’

‘Collect them? What does that mean?’

‘You’re going to think it’s weird,’ he said.

‘Oh, we’re way past weird.’

‘Look, I swear, it is totally innocent. I never do anything to them. I told you, it’s just a hobby.’

Mort slid a smartphone out of his pocket and punched a button to pull up his photo stream. He held it so Serena could see the screen, and he used his thumb to flick through a series of photographs. They were all unposed shots of ordinary people in ordinary places. A middle-aged woman in a grocery store. A teenager coming out of school. An older man in a suit getting on a bus. And then – Kelly Hauswirth. Serena recognized her. She saw Kelly jogging on a treadmill at a suburban gym.

‘Where did you get this photo?’ Serena asked.

‘I took it.’

‘How?’

‘I told you, I’m a collector. It’s what I do. The thing is, when you meet people online, most of them use fake personas, right? Different names. Different hometowns. Sometimes different ages and genders. But most people who create fake IDs also use some elements of the truth. It’s easier than making everything up. Maybe they tell you their real job, but not the real place they work. Or real stories about friends or family. Or the real car they drive. Get it? For me, the fun is to see whether I can meet a person online with a fake ID and figure out who they really are from the clues they give me. And if I do, when I happen to be in that city on a casino job – well, I track them down. Take a picture for my collection. See?’

‘You stalk them,’ Serena said.

‘That’s an ugly way to describe it.’

‘That’s because it’s the accurate way to describe it.’

‘No! I told you, it’s innocent. I don’t have any contact with them. I don’t want to be part of their real lives. I just want to know who they are. It’s harmless.’

Serena felt an urge to go home and take a shower. And never to boot up a computer again. ‘So you
collected
Kelly Hauswirth.’

‘Right.

‘You figured out that she wasn’t Corinne from Maryland. How?’

‘She wasn’t too tough. Parents are always a good way in. People lie about themselves but not about their parents. We talked about her being estranged from them, and she mentioned that they lived in Montana. Another time, she mentioned their first names. And then another time, she told me what her dad did for a living before he retired. I keep notes on all this stuff. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. She gave me enough to find her parents, and they helped me find her when I called them. Old people like to talk about their kids.’

‘So when you figured out that Corinne was really Kelly Hauswirth, you went to Colorado and followed her and took her picture.’

‘Uh, yes. I told you, it’s just a game.’

‘Then you read that she’d been murdered and you figured you’d come up here and ask around about what happened? Because you felt bad for her?’

‘Yes, exactly.’

Serena shook her head. ‘Sorry, Mort. No way. What are you not telling me?’

The man danced back and forth on his feet. ‘Okay, I was a little scared, too.’

‘Why?’

‘I wanted to make sure that someone wasn’t going to come
after me
,’ he told her.

‘Who would do that?’ Serena asked.

Mort slid off his blue glasses and cleaned them. He repositioned them on his face with both hands. ‘Kelly told me about this guy that she met online. She was really into him. Used the L-word. She told me who he was, the things he said, romantic stuff. I knew it was all bogus.’

‘How?’

‘Because the same guy hit on me, too. His handle was Lakelover. I tried to collect him, but he was way too cautious. Nothing he said about himself checked out. I knew why Kelly fell for him, though. He was cool, a good listener. As much a girlfriend as a boyfriend. He never pushed me for sex, which is pretty rare, but he asked me lots of questions about myself. Something about it felt – off. I had a bad feeling about him.’

‘Did you warn Kelly?’

‘I tried, but I sort of let on that I knew who she was. She got totally creeped out, and she blocked me. When I read that she’d been murdered, I thought about this Lakelover guy. I began to think – what if he was able to track me down the way I do with other people? I’ve been looking over my shoulder ever since.’

Lakelover.

That was a good handle for someone in Duluth.

Serena studied the young man next to her and realized he was genuinely scared. He was probably on the razor’s edge of violating privacy laws – and he was definitely on the far side of the moral line – but she didn’t sense any violent intent from him.

‘Here’s some free advice,’ she told Mort. ‘Take your collection and punch the delete button. And next time you feel like going into a chat room somewhere, go buy a book. Sooner or later, with what you’re doing, something bad is going to happen to you. Let Kelly’s experience be a lesson, okay?’

Mort swallowed hard. ‘Yeah, okay.’

But she knew he wouldn’t stop.

‘Now get out of here before I feel the need to arrest you for something,’ she said.

‘Listen, there’s one other thing you should know,’ Mort went on. ‘I was in another chat room last month, chatting up another girl. Cute, innocent, a lot like Kelly. She told me about her online boyfriend and how cool he was. His handle was Mattie_1987. The thing is, I know it was the same guy. Different room, different alias, but the personal details were identical.’

‘Mattie_1987 was Lakelover?’ Serena said.

‘I’m sure of it. No way two different guys would use the same background, same story, do the same seduction routine. It was him.’

Another alias. Another girl.

‘Who was she?’ Serena asked.

Mort drummed his fingers nervously on his blue pants.

‘Come on, don’t play innocent with me now,’ Serena said. ‘This other girl. Did you collect her?’

He nodded. ‘Okay, yeah. I did. I never got her picture, but I found out a few details about her. Her name was Erin. She was from Grand Forks.’