October Fest: A Murder-by-Month Mystery (16 page)

“Thanks, Mira. You’re a pal.”

If by “pal” she meant “village idiot,” then we were on the same page. I left with a head full of snot and for the second time in a week would have given any four of my toes to be going home to bed. Instead, I was heading to the Otter Tail County jail in Fergus Falls, a 20 minute drive with the wind at my back.

If you drive in on the east side, Fergus is a bucolic river city, an old village whose downtown has retained much of the charm of turn-of-the-century buildings. The county jail was blocks from this pretty downtown area, a 1987 block of brick appended to the historic, cream-colored limestone and brick courthouse. The only good thing I could say about the jail was that I wouldn’t have to run into Gary Wohnt here. I hoped. I was still confused by his electric resemblance to my twenty-three-foot fiberglass love bucket. How could I have not noticed that before? Maybe it was just the lack of sleep and my head cold. Probably Gary didn’t look anything like my sweetheart Wenonga. I’d click my heels three times, and the world would return to normal.

I was in luck. Thursday visiting hours were 6:30 to 9:00, which gave me a good fifteen minutes with Glokkmann. I was escorted down industrial hallways to a secured visiting room with rough-clothed couches and bolted-down tables. It reminded me of a high school teacher’s lounge. Inside, Glokkmann was seated at a table with a Bible and a handkerchief. I was surprised to see her in the same clothes she’d been arrested in. I assumed she’d be forced to wear a zip-up orange jumpsuit, but here was one more thing
Charlie’s Angels
had misinformed me about.

“No interview,” she told me, her voice icy. Her hands were clasped tightly in front of her but they still visibly twitched. “I agreed to see you because of my daughter.”

“She called?”

“My husband did. He said you’d be on your way.”

“Then I’ll be brief. Kenya has agreed to tell the police that she was with you the night of the murder.”

“The police claim my hair was found tangled in the murdered man’s fingers.” Her composure was chilling.

“Ick. Did you give them a DNA sample?”

“Not yet.”

I’d learned in the past that what the police can accuse you of is completely different than what they can formally charge you with. “Did you kill Bob Webber?”

Her eyes sliced me, fried me, and ate me for supper. “No.”

The crapper was, I believed her. I was confident she was a stone cold bitch, but I didn’t think she’d murdered Webber. “Look. I know what time period Mr. Webber is believed to be murdered in, and I know you were sleeping during that period. I’m going to tell the police, and Kenya has agreed to substantiate the claim.”

I didn’t know what emotion I’d been expecting, maybe relief, a little gratitude. Instead, she said, “Fine.”

“Fine? I just drove from Battle Lake to help you out. And I have a fever.” I might have sounded a little whiny, but I couldn’t help it.

“It’s not my fault I’m in here.”

“It’s not mine either.”

She held up her nose. “Of course I knew Kenya was in the room with me all night. I was waiting for her to come around and support my story. She’s a willful child, but she loses interest in her tantrums fairly quickly.” She leaned in closely, her gaze intense. “I love my children. Every one of them. And I will go to the ends of the earth to protect them.”

I didn’t know what we were talking about, but it was important to her. “You’re protecting Kenya? From what?”

“From herself. How much do you know about attachment disorder?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s common in children adopted between the ages of one and three, at least if they were severely neglected before they were adopted. They have a hard time creating positive attachments and bounce between clingy behavior and distance. They’re also manipulative and defiant. Kenya is all these things, and it’s because she spent her first two years in an institutional orphanage, the only physical contact once-daily diaper changes and twice-daily feedings. It’s made her a difficult person, though she’s getting better with medication and therapy. Because of her disorder, she lied about my whereabouts the night of the murder.”

I was following, but slowly. “So why didn’t you tell the police?”

“Her father and I have spent our lives protecting her, trying to fill the holes in her heart. It’s time for her to see the consequences of her actions without our interference.”

I wondered if Glokkmann had ever second-guessed a decision she’d made. Some might call it confidence, but from where I was sitting, it was the worst kind of hubris. “So you’re letting yourself be put in jail?”

“A mother would understand.”

I didn’t know why her words stung. “Then you don’t need my help.”

“I appreciate your coming. This has been a breakthrough for Kenya, it sounds like. She’s telling the truth. But no, I don’t need you. I can clear myself. The case against me is flimsy, always was.”

I’d had exactly enough brain stretching for today. I stood. “Great. Good luck with that.”

A horrified expression crawled across her face. She must have assumed that since I’d driven this far that I’d see this pony over the finish line and tell the police what Kenya had said. No reason to waste too much gratitude on me, in that case. But as she realized her miscalculation she stood and gathered her possessions, as if she could leave just as freely as me. I stomped out, stopping on my way only long enough to tell the officer at the front counter what I knew about Glokkmann’s alibi, which left me with a clear conscience and absolutely no closer to knowing who had killed Bob Webber.

The ring of the
phone woke me like a slap. Outside my window, the morning was gray, either indicating a crazy early hour or a cool and rainy day. I peeked at my clock before the phone rang a second time: 8:34 a.m. This was a perfectly reasonable time to call, and if it weren’t for my head cold, general exhaustion, and the overcast day, I would have been up and about. As it was, I just wanted another ten minutes in bed. Too bad the person on the other end of the phone line didn’t know this.

“Hello?” More frog croak than birdsong, but the best I could do.

“Mira James?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Glenn Vanderbrick.”

Why did that name sound familiar? I wished I wore glasses so I could slide them on now and make the whole world clear. Unfortunately, this was as good as it was going to get. “I’m sorry, who is this?”

“Glenn Vanderbrick. You e-mailed me, asked me to call?”

Now I remembered. He was the guy who’d reserved the room at the motel where Bob Webber’s body had been found. I rushed out of bed and into the kitchen for a pen and paper. “That’s right! Sorry. Thanks for calling.”

“No problem. Did I wake you?”

“Nope.” Hardly counted as a lie if it kept someone from feeling bad. “Mind if I ask you a few questions about Bob Webber?”

“I figured that’s what this is about. So you’re a reporter at
The Recall
?”

“You’ve heard of us?”

“Not exactly. I picked up a copy of the paper when I was in Battle Lake. Looked good for a small operation.” His voice was mellow and deep.

“I’m a part-time reporter.”

“Doing a story on Bob?”

“No,” I said truthfully. “I was staying in the room next door—next door to the room you were in the night before—and was one of the first people on the scene when he was found. I want to know who killed him.”

“The Jacuzzi suite?”

I blushed. “Yes. Any idea how Bob ended up in your room?”

“The police asked me the same thing, and I’m afraid I’m clueless. Bob and I worked on some articles together because we had similar interests and wanted to share research, but we lived in different towns and hung in different circles.” His voice grew even deeper. “He was a nice guy. We’d had a drink Friday night and sat next to each other at the Saturday morning debate. That’s the last time I saw him.”

I replayed the debate. Vanderbrick was the reporter Webber had been talking to after he made his comment about one of the candidates drinking. “Did he say when he was leaving Battle Lake?”

“He said he was checking out Sunday morning. I told him I was staying until Saturday around eight because I had a lead that Glokkmann would make official her future run for governor that night. When he caught wind of that, he booked his room for another night. She never did, of course, and I left for home around 6:00 that Saturday. Never saw Webber that whole day after the debate.”

That explained Webber’s length-of-stay alteration on the cleaning lady’s room list. He was the one who had changed the date of his stay and likely the motel staff had modified the list. “So Bob hadn’t even been in your room when you were there?”

“Nope. Nor I in his.”

Another dead end. “Not to be rude, but you have a witness for where you were Saturday night?”

“About 300,” he said. “There was a gaming convention in the Cities that I was at that night. We played Magic: The Gathering all night.”

Pretty airtight. What was I missing? “Any idea who might have done Bob in?”

“I don’t like to make accusations I can’t support, but I do know that Representative Glokkmann wasn’t running for president of his fan club. Other than that, no idea.”

“I checked out
The Body Politi
c. Why was Bob the only one in the media to pick up on Glokkmann’s dirty dealings?”

“
Was
is the operative word there. He had a source on Glokkmann’s campaign, don’t know who, and that person gave him the dirt. Nothing he could prove, though, and it wasn’t ever a big enough story for the straight news to risk a libel case over. That was until he got killed. Now everybody with a computer and two fingers is digging into Glokkmann’s business. If Bob was right about her taking bribes and drinking herself into an early grave, his murder is the worst thing that could have happened to her.”

That jibed with what my instincts were telling me. Glokkmann didn’t kill Webber. She might be small-minded, but she wasn’t stupid. Whoever killed the blogger did it to hurt her, and I could think of four people right off the top of my head who’d like a piece of that pie: Swydecker, Swinton, Kenya, and Randy Martineau. Swydecker was the most obvious suspect. Glokkmann stood in the way of his fulfilling his life dream. And, he’d just tried to kill himself, which was the action of a man with tremendous guilt. Swinton must have a great deal of inner conflict working for Glokkmann while sleeping with her opponent, too, but was it enough to kill? I thought it more likely that she was Webber’s informant, though maybe that entanglement had led to murder.

Kenya did not strike me as mentally well, but if she wanted to hurt her mom, there were much easier ways than committing murder. She surely could gain access to Glokkmann’s financial information as well as her personal secrets. Randy Martineau was a wild card. He was in the motel parking lot the morning after the murder, and he had an axe to grind against Glokkmann. I couldn’t see a guy switching from murder to tomato-throwing, though. Too inconsistent. And I hadn’t even thrown Bernard Mink into the mix. I still didn’t know why he hadn’t liked Webber, but I did know he had a hot temper. So who’d killed the blogger?

“It makes sense that someone out to get Glokkmann would have killed Webber. You know she’s in jail, right?”

“Again,
was
,” he said, not unkindly. “Her lawyers sprung her last night. The case against her was weak.”

“Oh.” Must be nice to be a real reporter who actually knew stuff.

“Anything else you want to know?”

“Yeah. How can you bloggers afford high-end motel rooms?”

He laughed. “It’s the future of news. You should look into it. Do some freelance work. You can actually make money.”

“I might take you up on that. Can I call you if I have more questions?” He said yes, and we exchanged information and said our goodbyes.

I returned the phone to its cradle, nursing a feeling that the only way to find the killer would be to discover why Bob Webber was in room 19 Saturday night. But how to do that? I couldn’t ask Webber, obviously. I also didn’t know anything about his family and didn’t feel comfortable tracking them down to bother them in their time of grief. I could always scour his blog one more time searching for a clue among his posts, maybe an in-progress investigative piece that I hadn’t read closely enough. Anything that would have called him to room 19 of the Big Chief Motor Lodge would have been related to Battle Lake. Had I been overlooking something in focusing on the political candidates because the room Webber’s body was found in was on the same floor that Swydecker, Swinton, and Glokkmann were staying on? What if Webber had met someone at the Octoberfest celebration and they had rendezvoused in a room that Webber knew would be empty, and their illicit activities had taken a dark turn? Dangnabbit, I’d have to call Kennie again to find out what else she knew. It seemed like I was missing something obvious, and I still felt that way when I pulled into the library to start my Friday shift. At least my head cold seemed to be clearing.

I squeezed my sleuthing to the side to prepare the library for children’s hour, my most favorite library event of the week. Some days up to a dozen kids showed, from diaper-bound toddlers to preschool-aged. The boys inevitably smelled like farts and stowed at least one plastic toy in each pocket. The girls were bossy and cute. Although it didn’t give me much hope for the procreation of the species, it was glorious to bask in the open and honest joy of the children.

They loved when I employed different voices to tell the stories. When I dropped to all fours to act out a wolf sneaking up on a sheep, they squealed. If the book had a joke that involved someone’s pants falling down, they laughed until their faces were red and wet with tears. I wished I could bag them all up and bring them home with me, but I bet they were a lot of work if you had to tend to their needs for more than an hour a week.

My reading selections for today were
Peaceful Piggy Yoga
because I thought they’d get a hoot out of practicing yoga positions while I read,
Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus
because it was an awesome book and I’d had a tough week,
But Not the Hippopotamus
because they loved the silly, cheerful pictures, and
You Think It’s Easy Being the Tooth Fairy?
because a couple of my regulars had some loose front lower teeth that they were holding onto like gold.

My books stacked, I finished some odds and ends in preparation. I was just throwing out the too-stubby coloring crayons from the art bucket I kept on hand when in strolled Elizabeth Berns.

“I hope I’m not bothering you.”

I looked from the stack of books to her and decided I might as well be gracious. “I suppose not.” I didn’t say I was good at it.

“Can I talk to you?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a minute. Is it about your mom?”

She fiddled with her expensive-looking amber bracelet. “Conrad wants her admitted to the new home before Halloween.”

My heart hardened. “What? I thought you two were going to monitor her for a little bit first, get a feel for her day-to-day life.”

“I wanted to, but Conrad said there isn’t time. He thinks she’s marrying that Bernard guy so she won’t get sent away and that we better move fast or we won’t have any say in her life.”

Was there steam coming out of my ears? I was too angry to even speak.

“I know how that sounds, believe me I do. Conrad and I fighting her fiancé for control of her life.”

“Then why’d you say it?”

“Can I tell you a story?” She smiled uncomfortably. “When I was a little girl, my mom was my hero. Life wasn’t easy but she always made time to read to us, sewed beautiful clothes for us, and made the best from-scratch food in the county. She was famous for her buttermilk biscuits. They were rich and crusty, and we’d smother them in her homemade raspberry jam. When I was eight, my brothers and sisters and I decided we were going to make those biscuits for her for Mother’s Day. She would get breakfast in bed.” Elizabeth’s eyes grew sad.

“What happened?”

“We ruined them, of course, and almost burned down the kitchen in the process. Dad, bless his Swedish heart, was livid. He yelled at mom for being foolish enough to let a bunch of little kids cook. She had to spend the rest of the day scrubbing the soot off the wall and cleaning her kitchen and cookware. We never ventured in her kitchen again, even though she didn’t say one mean word to us. In fact, she thanked us kindly for trying to make a special morning for her. Don’t you see? How could I forgive myself if I let something happen to that woman?”

A frustrated tear leaked out the edge of Elizabeth’s eye, and I realized in a rush of joy that she’d already made up her mind, had, in fact, made it up before she’d walked in the door. She wasn’t going to sign the papers, but she needed me, someone who knew and loved her mom as she was now, to convince her it was okay. “You and your family are very lucky,” I started tentatively. “Your mother sounds like she had a level head.”

Elizabeth pulled a tissue out of her purse and nodded.

“She still does, despite her escapades,” I continued. “I can’t promise she’ll be fine, because I can’t promise that about anyone. I can tell you that she’s happy, and that sending her away would ruin her.”

“Do you think she loves Bernard?”

“No,” I said honestly. “I think she’s just marrying him to get you and Conrad out of her hair.”

Elizabeth sniffled. “Are we that bad?”

I raised my eyebrows. They’re my best feature when it comes to conveying judgment.

“Don’t be too hard on us. Conrad means well. It was hardest on him to lose Dad, and then to feel like he didn’t know his mom anymore. He’s been trying to fix that ever since Dad passed, to bring back the mom he remembers.”

“Don’t help him to force his needs on Mrs. Berns.”