Death Stalks Door County (28 page)

“And he didn't take the box with him?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Did he come back for it later?”

Petey snickered. “Dutch? He never did nothing later.”

“Meaning?”

“He bought the ranch up the road a piece, somewhere near Institute. Looked like he missed a turn. What I heard, he sailed clear over the ditch, hit a fence post, and rolled two or three times. Killed instantly, like they say.”

“Heart attack?”

“Who knows?” Petey slid forward far enough to grind the butt into the floor with the toe of his boot. Cubiak handed him another cigarette, already lit. “My old man's pretty shook up about this. He tosses the box on the shelf and won't let nobody near it.” The words flowed out on a thin plume of gray smoke that rose in a straight line to an unseen vent. Petey's gaze shifted from floor to ceiling to barred windows and back to Cubiak. He took another long hit and sagged back against the concrete wall.

“The box still there?”

“Far's I know.” Petey scratched his chest.

“With Dutch's notes and maybe information on whatever job it was your father did for Beck.” Tossing out the name was a calculated risk. But whatever Beck had done to harm Dutch, Eloise implied that it was underhanded, just the kind of job for someone like the elder Kingovich.

The heir to Kingo's sniggered and motioned for another cigarette. “Beck? Biggest fucking asshole on the peninsula. I got nothing to do with him.”

For the moment, Cubiak believed him. “How'd you know it was Beck your father worked for?” he said, holding the pack just beyond the prisoner's reach.

“Who else? He had one talent, my daddy. He was a master counterfeiter. Hell, the man could forge anything. Did time for it a ways back. Beck knew all about his special gift. Took advantage of it, too, every once in a while.”

Cubiak let Petey grab another smoke. “Sounds like maybe your old man helped Beck put the screws to Dutch.”

Petey popped the knuckles on his left hand. “Guess. Shit, he probably needed the money.”

“So why the guilty conscience later on?”

Petey looked up. “Man, you don't know nothing, do you? 'Cause Beck made him fuck the guy who'd saved his kid, that's why.”

A story told in front of a dwindling fire flashed back to Cubiak. “You were the boy in the well.”

Petey offered a lopsided grin. “Yeah. That would be me.”

C
ubiak tossed the remaining cigarettes to Petey. Whatever had gone down between Dutch and Petey's father was important. The ranger paused at the cell door. “I need to talk to your father. Where can I find him?”

“Go to hell,” Petey replied smugly.

“You know, I've had just about enough of your bullshit.”

Unperturbed, the prisoner eased himself off the cot and flexed his knees. “I ain't bullshitting. You wanna talk to my old man, you gotta go to hell.”

“Meaning what? That he died and now is paying for his sins?”

“I ain't said nothing about him dying. All I says is he's in hell.”

“You got an address?”

“Yeah, he's at the Green Oaks Nursing Home outside of Valmy. Notice I didn't say he ‘lived' there,” Petey quipped, pleased with himself.

On his way out, Cubiak let the door slam.

D
utch died on his way to Sturgeon Bay, probably to confront Beck. The former sheriff had driven off in a rage, so distraught by what he'd learned from the elder Kingovich that he left without the research material he'd spent years gathering. What great insult or injury had Beck engineered that would prompt a man known for his composure to react so impulsively and recklessly?

If Dutch took notes during his meeting with Kingovich, the answer could be in a storage box in the shed behind the tavern. From the jail, Cubiak drove straight to Kingo's Resort, trailing a thin cloud of dust through the empty parking lot. A hand-scrawled sign was taped to the bar door. Closed, it read. The house and cabins were shuttered as well. Despite the bank of tall pines that surrounded the property, the heat was oppressive.

Four boys, ten or eleven, fished off the old dock, their bikes piled against a tree. Cubiak waved to the youngsters and ducked under the yellow police tape encircling the shed. The lock was weather worn and decrepit and offered no evidence of recent use. The ground was trampled and partially caked with mud. Recent rains would have obliterated any trail that might have been left by an intruder. The door gave way easily. He waited for his vision to adjust to the dim light and then started to pull the boxes from the shelf. Petey's account was true; there were at least thirty years' worth of tax materials neatly stored in carefully marked files.

Dutch's box was not in the shed. Either Petey had moved it and lied to him, or someone had taken it.

The shed was accessible both from the road and from the lake. Anyone coming from the road took a chance on being seen, but someone approaching from Kangaroo Lake could sneak in undetected. Cubiak began circling toward the water. A hundred feet into the dense underbrush he found a nest of broken bulrushes and a patch of trampled weeds where a boat had been pulled up onto land. Could have been kids. Or someone looking for a back-door entrance to the storage shed.

Figuring the boys on the pier for regulars, Cubiak asked them if they'd seen anyone snooping around. They shrugged and said the only guys they ever saw were Petey and his friends.

The lake shore south of Kingo's was undeveloped, so Cubiak headed north. About half a mile up he turned in at a sign for Archie's Resort. The resort was a shabby fishing compound of eight one-room shanties and a single narrow pier where several dugouts and canoes were tied up. The sound of a car door slamming brought a white-haired man with an ancient face out the door of one of the shacks.

“Howdy, mister,” he said.

“You Archie?”

“All day. Every day. You looking for a room?” He sounded hopeful.

“No, but I might need a boat later this week. You rent them out?”

“Don't need to. Most people here are fishermen. They bring their own.” Not like you pansy city kind, he implied. Wouldn't know an earthworm from a garden snake.

“Then who are those for?” Cubiak gestured toward the pier.

“Wives. Kids. Gives the family something to do. Quality time.” The sibilants whistled through the spaces between Archie's narrow, pointed teeth.

“You take reservations, for the boats?”

“Nah. Got enough paperwork without worrying about that too. Them's all first come, first serve. They always come back. Local kids use them, too, sometimes. They think I don't know. But I do. I just don't say nothing, being as they come back in one piece.”

The old man coughed and then went on. “Funny though, had one disappear for a couple of days not too long ago.” He rubbed his chin and grinned. “It made its way home eventually.”

“Remember when?”

“Two. Three weeks maybe.”

“Rowboat?”

“Nah. Canoe. Probably some teenagers spooning under the full moon.” He paused. “They still do that?”

“I guess.”

A
ny hope Cubiak had that the elder Kingovich would be able to tell him about Beck's scheme to undo Dutch evaporated when he arrived at the nursing center. Neither the woodsy setting nor the antiseptic corridors could disguise the fact that the facility was a warehouse for the dying. When he was shown to Mr. Kingovich's room, Cubiak found pretty much what he dreaded—the skeletal frame of a man lying motionless on a high bed rimmed with safety rails. Massive stroke on top of everything else, the nursing director announced matter-of-factly but not without compassion.

“Any chance he'll ever recover enough to talk?” It was an inane question, but one Cubiak had to ask.

“Oh, no. Unless there's some kind of miracle. It's been more than six months. Unfortunately, Mr. Kingovich's window of opportunity has closed,” she explained.

The old man moaned and Cubiak started. But the nurse had already anticipated what he would ask next. “We have no way of knowing what, if anything, he hears.” She skewered Cubiak. “At any rate, he can't chitchat, if that's what you wanted.”

Cubiak edged toward the door.

“We turn him every two hours to prevent bed sores,” the director went on cheerfully as she reached over and fluffed the pillow that framed the vacant, ravaged face. Before she had the chance to say any more, Cubiak was gone.

Outside, he fished a stale cigarette from his breast pocket and lit up. Petey's assessment about his father had been right on the money. Whatever sins the old man had committed against Dutch, he was paying for them now in his own private earthbound hell. According to Petey, his father resented being forced to do Beck's dirty work against Dutch. The younger Kingovich didn't seem overly fond of his father but that could be an act. If Beck had put the arm on the old man more than once, there could be a catalogue of longstanding wounds festering between the two. Enough to prompt the younger Kingovich to try and avenge his father by torpedoing the festival and undermining Beck. How ironic, Cubiak thought, if Halverson had been right all along in blaming Petey for everything bad that had happened.

C
ubiak rose with the crows and ran an abbreviated track through the woods near Jensen Station. The forest was cool and quiet save for the birds, and the treetops shone like ebony against the wash of bright sky. Peninsula Park Golf Course was groomed and trimmed, ready for the festival tournament later that day. Below, the harbor's warm water lay blue and still. Along the shore, the quaint village of Ephraim waited to reprise its role as perfect summer host for the final two days of the celebration.

It was the kind of summer day that resort brochures hyped and the county tourism board coveted, the epitome of nature in prime, A-one condition. The kind of day that ensured large crowds at every festival event.

In his room, Cubiak retrieved his police service revolver from his worn Army duffel. Trying hard not to overthink what he was doing, he secured the holster around his right ankle and slipped the .38 Smith & Wesson into place. The gun felt all too comfortable in the familiar hollow above his foot.

Dressed, he followed the aroma of breakfast sausage and fresh-baked rolls into the kitchen. Johnson was pushing food around his plate while his nephew inhaled a molehill of eggs and sausage, seemingly oblivious to any but his visceral needs. Cubiak limited himself to coffee and toast. While Ruta fretted in the background, the park superintendent and his furloughed assistant went over the day's staffing logistics. Six part-time workers had been hired specifically to help during the festival. One of them was Barry Beck, who had yet to show up for duty at the Nature Center. Assuming he wouldn't be on the job that day either, Johnson had slotted his nephew into Barry's spot.

“You need anything from us, you just let us know,” he said to Cubiak.

After the two left, Cubiak asked Ruta if she would stay in that morning. “I'm expecting a long distance call at noon and I need someone here to answer the phone. You'll miss the parade, but it's important,” he said.

“It will help, with this?” The housekeeper pointed toward the window and the forest beyond.

“Yes, I think so. I hope so.”

“Then I will stay. I do not need parades,” she said, brushing toast crumbs from the table into her cupped hand.

Cubiak was rinsing his mug when Beck called.

“Didn't I tell you not to worry? Imagine the fiasco if we'd canceled the regatta and cut back on things like you wanted,” he taunted.

“Day's not over.”

Beck chortled. “You keep up this happy patter, we're going to have to start calling you
Grumpy
. But you're right, the day's not over. Except it's a magnificent day. Look out the window, you don't believe me,” Beck said and hung up.

A
ll of Door County seemed caught up in Beck's feel-good mood. After the dreary spring and the tragedies of early summer, a feeling of civic pride and optimism reverberated over the landscape. The peninsula would reclaim its fine reputation. The festival promised to continue in its traditional sterling fashion and to go out in fine style. Only Cubiak could not shake free from the gloom that had dogged him for the past three days.

The day's events kicked off in Ephraim with the parade. Macklin had died in Fish Creek, along the south edge of the park, and the other deaths had occurred in the park. If the killer wanted to complete the symmetry, Ephraim was a logical choice for the next attack. The previous day, Cubiak had established a dozen checkpoints in the town and instructed Halverson to station a man at each by 8 a.m. At thirty minutes past the deadline, when Cubiak cruised through the village, the posts were vacant. He found Halverson and his squadron of deputies hunkered around two picnic tables outside the town's pancake breakfast tent. The men were devouring stacks of buckwheat cakes awash in syrup.