Dead Lock (18 page)

“Here,” said the doctor, reaching into his breast pocket, “take one of mine.”

The deputy reappeared a few moments later. “The Bergmans say they never heard of you. They’re going to press charges.”

“If I could just talk to them. . .”

“I’m afraid they don’t want to talk to you,” said the deputy. “They’ve said as much. You do, however, have the right to make a phone call.”

I was considering whether to call my uncle or Scotty when a thought struck me.

“Deputy, will you call the Bergmans for me again?”

“I’m afraid it won’t do any good, ma’am. They seemed very adamant.”

“I think it will, if you mention a certain word to them.”

“What word?”

“Snuggles.”

76

“How do you know about Snuggles?”

Mrs. Wilson, now Mrs. Bergman, stood beside my bed. At her left was Mr. Bergman; tall, rather slim and wearing rimless glasses. Mrs. Bergman was shorter and wore her hair back in a bun. Seeing them standing side by side was like viewing a living copy of Grant Wood’s
American Gothic
.

“Mrs. Bergman, this is all a terrible mistake. Shirley and I were best friends. We graduated together from Soo High.”

“Shirley never mentioned you, Kathryn. You couldn’t have been best friends.”

“Kathryn? My name is Kate. Kate Brennan.”

“You’re Kate Brennan?” Mrs. Bergman appeared shocked.

“Yes, of course.”

“We didn’t dream . . . your drivers’ license said Kathryn Brennan, not Kate,” said Mr. Bergman. “And your home address is Detroit, not the Soo.”

“It’s Detroit now,” I said. “But I lived with my uncle in Sault Ste. Marie during my senior year in high school. And my friends knew me as Kate . . . not Kathryn or Kathy.”

“Shirley did mention Kate Brennan; many times. You and Shirley must have been very close for her to tell you . . . you know, Snuggles.”

“We were very close.”

Mrs. Bergman’s stern look reappeared. “What were you doing in our home?”

“I’m sorry. Shirley’s resume had listed the Stop Inn at your address as her last place of employment. When I saw it was a private home and not a restaurant I got suspicious. I was trying to find some clues that might lead to the person who killed her.”

Mrs. Bergman turned to the deputy. “If we don’t press charges, can Miss Brennan leave now?”

The deputy shook his head. “I don’t know, Mrs. Berman. Sheriff Sandstrum would have to approve that and he’s over in Marquette for the next two days.”

“Deputy Hightower, I’ve known you since you were a boy,” Mrs. Bergman said. “And I also know Sheriff Sandstrum’s jail has just one cell. Isn’t that right?”

The deputy began to blush. “Well . . . yes.”

“How many prisoners are you holding?”

“Three. But . . .”

“And I’m sure they’re all male. Where are you going to house Miss Brennan? The doctor isn’t going to keep her here if she’s healthy enough to leave.”

The deputy was backed into a corner. His arms were crossed in front of him, his face wore a frown.

“Let me see if I can reach the Sheriff.”

“You do that, deputy,” said Mrs. Bergman. “Meantime, Miss Brennan will be in our custody. She’s going home with us.”

77

My car was still where I had left it when we pulled into the gravel driveway of the Bergman’s house. We had picked up Mick on the way, and he and I took up most of the backseat of the Bergman’s ’36 Chevy.

The Bergmans didn’t object when Mick followed us into their house, in fact they seemed to enjoy having a dog around. The four of us sat in the small, but comfortable living room. There was a vase of flowers on the coffee table along with issues of
Life
and
National Geographic
.

“May I ask why Shirley listed this address as her former place of employment?” I said. “It’s obviously not a restaurant.”

The Bermans looked at each other before Mr. Bergman spoke. “You and Shirley knew each other in high school,” he said. “What do you know about Shirley’s life afterwards?”

“Not much,” I said.

Mr. Bergman paused again, carefully choosing his words.

“When Shirley graduated from the University of Michigan, she joined the staff of Neil Roberts, the U.S. Representative from the Ann Arbor district.”

“She followed Roberts to Washington. What happened between them I don’t know. Could have been a romantic relationship that didn’t work out. Anyway, Shirley left him and joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in thirty-nine.”

“The FBI?” I was shocked.

“Yes. The fact that she joined the Bureau was strictly hush-hush,” Mr. Bergman continued. “But as her closest living relatives, we of course knew. We were questioned during their background check.”

“At first, she was assigned to Atlanta, Georgia,” said Mrs. Bergman. “But the Bureau apparently feared some sort of attack on the locks, and she come up here to Sault Ste. Marie.

“It seemed important to Shirley to keep her identity with the FBI a secret,” Mrs. Bergman continued. “But she’d call us from time to time, and visited for a few days last April. She never went into any great detail, but she seemed grateful to have someone to talk to. Someone who knew her situation.”

“We’re telling you this now only because you were a friend of Shirley’s and because . . .” Mr. Bergman paused, gathering himself. “Because it doesn’t seem to matter now that she’s gone.”

“Shirley’s friends would be proud to know she was serving her country when she died,” I said.

“Shirley felt taking a job as a waitress in a popular restaurant would give her a listening post,” Mrs. Berman said. “People often converse during a meal with little thought to who’s listening; especially their waitress.”

“She needed a history of previous employment, so we made up the Stop Inn,” Mr. Bergman said. He smiled. “The name was my idea. Shirley liked it.”

“The name ‘Mrs. Wilson’ was a code of sorts,” said Mrs. Bergman. “If someone called asking for Mrs. Wilson we’d know we were supposed to act like the proprietors of the Stop Inn. When you called, we were caught off guard; we got suspicious. Why would anyone be asking about the Stop Inn now?” She paused, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. “I mean now that Shirley’s gone.”

“I don’t understand what’s taking them so long to find the killer,” Mr. Berman said. “The newspapers say the soldier the sheriff arrested turned out to be innocent.”

“That’s right,” I said. “They don’t seem to have any other leads.”

“Why, what about Shirley’s journal?” Mrs. Bergman asked. “That ought to give them some clues.”

“Journal?” Shirley had never mentioned one to me.

“Shirley told us she kept details of her investigation in some sort of journal,” Mrs. Bergman said. “If the person who killed her had anything to do with that investigation, I’m sure her journal would provide some answers.”

My suspicions that an intruder had searched Shirley’s house for something other than money came roaring back.

“The authorities don’t have Shirley’s journal,” I said. “I don’t think they even know it exists. Who else besides you two knew about it, Mrs. Bergman?”

“As far as I know, we’re the only ones. Shirley kept things like that to herself. She mentioned the journal when she was here in April.”

“I’ll look for it when I get back to the Soo,” I said. “I’ll go over the house inch by inch.” I didn’t mention the fact that someone else had probably already done that.

It was suppertime and there was no point in keeping the Bergmans from their meal. It was time to leave.

“Thank you so much for trusting me,” I said, standing up. “You’ve been a great help.”

“Shirley spoke about you so fondly that I feel we know you,” said Mrs. Bergman. “And you remind me very much of her. I was fixing a beef roast when the deputy called and I can have it back in the oven in a jiffy. Won’t you stay for dinner?”

I’ve never been one to turn down a home-cooked meal.

78

The Bergmans invited me to stay the night, but I decided that with Mick and all, it would be better to go back to the cabin I’d rented.

As I lay in bed later that night, a chilling thought went through my head. I knew from experience that Joe Zerilli and his mob cohorts wanted me out of the picture. That’s what got me to the Soo in the first place.

Now there seemed to be a suspicious stranger in town. How long had he been there?

Shirley and I had looked enough alike to be mistaken for each other from time to time. Could Shirley have been murdered by mistake? Was the stranger really after me?

The idea sent a shiver through my spine.

But then my thoughts returned to Shirley’s work with the FBI. It seemed much more logical that she had been murdered in the line of duty. If the Bergmans were correct, the answers lay in a journal she had been keeping. I vowed to find it when I got back to the Soo.

If Shirley’s murderer hadn’t already beaten me to it.

79

Wednesday evening, Sault Ste. Marie

Where was Kate Brennan?

The clock on the bed stand marked the time at ten-thirty p.m. and Jimmy Shoes Pecora paced the floor of the rented cabin. He’d grown tired of hanging around this hick town; it was time to get the job done and get the hell out of Sault Ste. Marie.

A city boy all his life, Pecora found the wilderness of northern Michigan unsettling. This was country that stretched for miles without buildings or even people. Country inhabited by huge moose, bear and coyote. A country bordering on a body of water that was more ocean than lake. He had read that depths in Lake Superior plunged almost fifteen hundred feet in places and its violent November storms were known to devour giant freighters and the men who sailed them.

There was something else. Maybe just nerves, but he had the feeling over the past day or so that someone was following him. He was tailing the Brennan woman, and someone was tailing him.

Then Kate Brennan disappeared. Fearing she had gotten wise to him, he phoned the
News
, posing as a reader who wanted her to do a story on a giant bass he had caught in the St. Marys River.

“Sorry, Kate’s not in the office today,” said the woman who answered the phone. “She won’t be back here until late tomorrow afternoon. But we can send one of our other reporters to interview you.” Jimmy Shoes hung up. Knowing the Brennan woman would be back tomorrow made him feel better. He’d be heading back to Cleveland soon.

He glanced around the small cabin. He felt restless, not at all ready to sleep. He noticed a web in the corner of the cabin and walked over to it. At first it appeared to be just a cobweb, but then he saw the spider, almost invisible against the dark wood of the wall.

In the web was an insect, probably a fly, wrapped in silk and ready to serve as the arachnid’s breakfast tomorrow morning.

Percora heard buzzing near the top of the window just to his right. A fly. He reached up and, when the insect landed for a brief moment, took a swipe at it. He missed, but caught it when it landed on the window a second time.

He reached into his fist with the thumb and index finger of his other hand and watched the fly as it moved its legs in panic, trying desperately to escape. He reached down and tossed the insect into the spider’s web.

The spider raced out to greet it, holding the fly to its mouth, biting and then wrapping it in a sheet of silk.

Lunch.

Pecora glanced around the cabin looking for another victim.

A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.

80

The knock startled him. Who could know he was here besides Palazzolo’s uncle, and what the hell would anyone want at ten-thirty at night?

Pecora strode to the door and opened it a crack, peering out into the darkness, seeing no one. Must have been his imagination; he closed the door.

Looking about the cabin again, he spotted a tiny white moth fluttering against the window over the sink. Pecora grabbed it with a single swipe and walked back to the web. He threw the moth into the web and enjoyed watching as it struggled helplessly against the silk strands. The spider raced over and soon the thrashing ended.

Supper.

Another knock. This time he was sure. He flung the door open, ready to confront whoever stood there.

No one.