Murder in Death's Door County (5 page)

Once I put my stuff in the room and
washed up, I grabbed my purse, made my way back down to the bar, and settled
in. It felt good to be sitting still. For the past couple of days, I felt like
I had been moving non-stop.

“Do you need a drink?” Without waiting
for my answer, she went behind the bar, opened a bottle, and started pouring.
Done pouring, she thrust the heady brew at me, “Here, I owe you. The first one
is on me and I think you’ll really like this beer. If you don’t, I’ll get you
something else. Thanks again for helping me out!” She walked away to help the
only other patron at the bar, a guy who looked like he had been sitting there
for ages.

Taking a deep breath, I let out a huge
sigh, and took a long drink from the beer.

“Wow!” Everyone else in the bar turned
to look at me (fortunately, there were only three other people there, Lizzy,
the other bar patron, and one of the kitchen guys getting a soda). I turned
bright red, and sheepishly said, “Sorry. That’s just really good.” The Lighthouse
had taken advantage of Door County’s cherry orchards and created a wonderful
beer.

Completely embarrassed, I fumbled around
in my purse for a book. I had resolved to bury my shame in a book while I ate
lunch.

“Whatcha reading?” Lizzy popped over
just as I pulled out the book.

“A mystery.”

“Who’s it by?”

“M.C. Beaton.”

“Oh, she’s such a fun read!”

“She is, isn’t she?” Warming to the
topic, I began to lose my embarrassment.

“Oh, definitely! Glad you like that
beer. It’s my favorite, too. Guys don’t usually like it, so they tend to leave
more for us,” Lizzy winked. She began wiping the bar in front of me, then laid
down a menu. “You had mentioned you’d want lunch. Just let me know when you’re
ready to order.” With that, Lizzy went off to unpack boxes.

I found what I wanted immediately: a big
hamburger and artery-clogging French fries. Yum. Once I gave the universal sign
that I was ready to order (putting a closed menu back on the table, or bar),
Lizzy stopped by and took my order. After dropping off my order, she stopped
back to check on my drink and ask me how it was going.

I told her and somehow or other, we got
on the topic of how I ended up in Egg Harbor. I gave her the complete scoop on
my new ghostwriting gig and how I had quit my job in Milwaukee.

By the time I had finished, my food was
ready. Lizzy went back to the kitchen to get it. When she came back, she was
still shaking her head over how I quit my job.

“Wow!” Lizzy stared at me, open-mouthed.
Her mouth sputtered like a fish. “Did you really walk out of a meeting like
that?”

“Yup.”

“That’s what most people dream of doing
and you did it!” she said with seeming admiration. “You have guts.” She nodded
for emphasis.

“Guts. Stupidity. It’s a very fine line
and right now I think I'm a little on the stupid side.”

“Oh, don’t be so modest. Honestly, I
think this book sounds great! It sounds like just the project you needed! Why
aren’t you more excited?”

I shared my apprehension regarding
Marcos Landrostassis and his criminal record.

“He expects this book to vindicate his
family.” I punctuated my words by stabbing my coleslaw with a fork. “And Harry
is really putting a lot of pressure on me. Subtly, you know what I mean?”

“Yep. He’s putting out his neck for this
guy, for whatever reason. Therefore, you are on the hook to turn out a good
product. Hmm… Landrostassis… why does that name sound familiar?”

“I know, I was thinking the same thing.
The name sounds so familiar, but I just can’t place it. Maybe it’s just one of
those names.” I gnawed thoughtfully on a fry. “I know what you mean about
producing a good book, though. And, despite giving me some of the weirdest
projects ever, Harry has treated me pretty well. No, there’s something else
intangible here. Something feels ‘off’. Oh my gosh, you have no idea. This guy
is a whacko. I’m not sure if he’s a narcissist or has multiple personalities.
Or has a combination of that. I suppose it’s a good thing he lives close to his
psychiatrist—he certainly needs one.”

“You’ll be okay. Just write this book.
Make a name for yourself in publishing circles, then you can be a little
choosier. Also, then we can read your book for our book club!”

“Yeah, you’re right. This isn’t like my
first ghostwriting book.” At least I could laugh about it now.

“What was it about?”

“This woman thought dolphins were aliens
from another planet. She also thought they were key to our victory in the
Revolutionary War.”

“Oh my gosh. I think we did read that
for book club. You wrote that?” Lizzy threw back her head and laughed. I joined
her. We laughed until our sides hurt and made tentative plans to have lunch
together the next day. Lizzy promised to show me some of the sights and sounds
of Fish Creek, a town north of Egg Harbor.

“And here is one of the members of our
book club! Hey, Janie, come here a sec!” I waited while a stylish woman in her
mid-thirties made her way over to us. With her sleek, dark bob, she looked
chic, but not snobby.

“Hey, Lizzy! Who do we have here?”

“Janie, this is Annie Malone, she’s
going to be staying here for a while. And, Annie, this is Janie Nicholson, she
is Kitty’s sister and co-owner of the Lighthouse.”

We exchanged pleasantries and shook
hands.

“Where is she anyway?”

“Kitty?”

“I thought she was with you, actually.”

“Can you let her know I stopped by?”

“Of course! Oh, and Janie, get this… do
you remember that book we read with the robots?

Janie laughed in recollection, “Yes,
that was one crazy book.”

I turned bright red. Lizzy gestured
towards me, “Meet the author!”

“You wrote that? But wait, wasn’t it
about an older woman from another culture? Like, it was her autobiography or
something, if I remember correctly.”

“Yeah, about that. I was just telling
Lizzy here about my ghostwriting project. And I happened to write that book.”

“What book?”

“The one you were just talking about.”

Janie looked perplexed, “But wasn’t that
an autobiography?”

I cleared my throat uncomfortably. Why
did I feel uncomfortable? I wasn’t the lady who claimed it was my “autobiography.”

When I didn’t answer, Lizzy interjected,
“So, do you mean to tell us that most autobiographies are written by people
like you? Ghostwriters?”

“Yeah. Um, I gotta go unpack,” and with
that, I smiled, waved, and headed upstairs to my room.

—
–

I went back to my room and unpacked.
According to rumors, my room was the most haunted and I wondered if I’d have
any ghostly visitors.

Not only was there the possibility of
meeting the ghost of Al Capone’s stepson, but I had read online that a lady in
white often appeared on the staircase. Why is it always a lady in white anyway?
In any case, I wasn’t sure whether or not I hoped to see a ghost. Apparently,
the lady in white had died in the late 1880s after she heard her fiancé’s boat
had sunk in the lake.

In preparation for the interview, I
changed into sweats and got the prerequisite tools: a can of diet soda, pen,
and pad of paper. I regretted not having a phone-recording device. I resolved
to get one and hook it up to my phone before this project ended. I had found it
was really difficult to hold the phone, keep the receiver up to my ear, and
write notes at the same time. Of course, if I could get him to meet me in
person, I could use the recorder on my spiffy new laptop.

I started pacing my room. At three on
the dot, my phone rang.

Breathe, breathe, I told myself. I
answered the phone.

“Hello? This is Annie,” I said, slightly
out of breath.

“Hey, hey, Annie. Why didn’t you call me
today?” demanded Marcos. “I waited for you to call.”

“You did? Because I thought we had
arranged for you to call me. I thought you preferred it that way.” You wanted
that, since you are a control freak with extreme trust issues, I silently
added.

“What do you mean, what I prefer? How do
you know what I prefer? Do you think I prefer being persecuted by everyone?” He
sounded a little angry. And a lot crazy.

“Um, yeah. I mean, no, not at all.” I
hoped not all of our conversations would be so circular and fuzzy. In the
corner on my mind, a huge, gonging warning bell went off, but I plowed through
and ignored it. Since I had so gloriously and irreversibly quit my day job, I
had to keep this project.

“Okay, well, I don’t know what to tell
you then. I guess we’ll just have to talk now.”

Now? Inwardly, I wondered when else he
was planning to talk. We had supposedly arranged to talk
now
. Was he all
there?

Outwardly, I said, “Sure, of course,”
and ran over to the desk to get a pen and paper. I settled onto a chair and
held the pen poised.

“What do you want to know?” he asked,
amiably. Okay, seriously, I felt so confused now. First he was all angry, now
he was all nicey-nice. I really needed to get used to these mood shifts. It
seemed like he could go from disgruntled to gruntled and back again in seconds.

Gathering my courage, I asked Marcos if
we could meet in person soon. I pointed out, quite reasonably, that I had moved
up to Door County to work on this book.

With this request, I encountered a mini-,
and not altogether unexpected, explosion. My mercurial client emphatically
stated, “No! We will not meet until I say we can meet. And I am not ready for
us to meet.” Well, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

“Oh, Okay. Sure, no problem. Why don’t
start with your issues with the bank? After you sued them, it seems to be when
all of your troubles started.”

“Good thinking. My wife and I had a
great relationship with the InterGlobal Bank for many years. We enjoyed the
bank’s services as customers and borrowers. This bank had enabled us to get a
loan for a $350,000 condo up here, while I worked a seasonal forestry job and
my wife worked as a cashier at a clothing store. We planned to use that rental
property to better ourselves. Sadly, everything changed when the InterGlobal
bank severely screwed up one of our loans, they raised our monthly payment by
forty percent. Our mortgage payment had been $1500, but now it was $2100.”

“Wow, that’s a huge jump.” I wondered
how people in forestry and retail could afford a $350,000 duplex, but I figured
he would get to that.

“It was. We weren’t prepared for it and
we sued the bank to get them to fix the error. We needed to get their
attention.”

“I’m sure you did get it,” I said.

“Get what?”

“Their attention.” Oh my goodness, I
wondered what I had gotten myself into. I felt like I had fallen into the “Who’s
on First” routine.

“Are you gonna let me tell the story?”

In a small voice, I said, “Sure, go
ahead.”

“Anyway, the bank seemed to have bought
our attorneys. And, the cops started harassing us. After we won the suit
against InterGlobal bank, my downstairs tenant got into a huge fight with her
boyfriend. This tenant, Tina Delvecchio, drank like a fish. When she drank, she
became loud and had combative arguments. On this particular occasion, she
started screaming at and threatening her boyfriend, Ray Harris. They became
extremely disruptive. They actually broke my window!”

“Wait, let me get this straight. Were
they in your apartment or Tina’s?”

“Tina’s. When I say ‘mine’, I mean mine
as the landlord. Are you gonna let me finish?” Not surprisingly, Marcos did not
wait for an answer. “Anyway, they smashed the window to pieces. Most of the
glass landed outside. Since I had heard everything, I went outside to start
cleaning up the mess. Suddenly, the cops showed up and started accusing me of
beating Tina. And they accused me of doing damage to my own property. What, am
I crazy?”

I withheld comment at this time.

He continued, “Naturally, I denied the
allegations and stated that I was just cleaning up the mess. I told them the
fight was between Ms. Delvecchio and her boyfriend. I told them to ask the
witnesses. I went back inside my apartment. I figured that would be the end of
it.”

I waited a few beats before asking, “But
it wasn’t?” I dared not breathe lest he get on me for interrupting again.

“No, it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. The
cops came back to my apartment and beat me up in front of my wife! They said
that I had issued a death threat for Tina! I kept telling them to ‘ask the
witnesses’. A few weeks went by, and Tina got into another fight with Ray. This
time, she stabbed the guy.”

“She stabbed the guy? Really?” I shook
my head. Truth really could be stranger than fiction. I imagined Tina with a
black, pink-tipped Mohawk haircut and sharp features, holding out a
jackknife.