Tradition of Deceit (13 page)

Mary balled a paper napkin. “Not that I've heard.”

Chloe hesitated, then came out with it. “Do you think it's possible that one of the residents here killed Professor Whyte?”

“Some of them do struggle with mental illness. Some are addicted to drugs. I can't pretend that I know
any
of them well. Beyond that …” Mary made a gesture of futility.

“Was there tension between Professor Whyte and the tenants? Might somebody have resented him because he represented the forces intent on turning this place—their home—into a museum?”

“The police asked me that, too. But Dr. Whyte actually advocated
for the homeless population. Most people just want them to
disappear quietly. But he suggested that a permanent shelter be included in the master plan for the heritage corridor rede-
velopment.”

Chloe considered every master planning meeting about some historical building project she'd ever attended. “I can't imagine that notion was met with rounds of applause and open checkbooks.”

“I wasn't there, but—no.”

Chloe leaned against the stone wall, feeling the chill leach through her parka. Homelessness was an enormous and complex problem, but nobody should have to live in an abandoned mill.

Mary sighed. “Certainly many of the residents do resent plans for redevelopment. All I can say for certain is this: I use caution, but I've never felt frightened here.”

And yet Ariel won't come inside alone, Chloe thought. And in the silence, if she allowed her senses to open, Chloe perceived a frisson of fear amidst the sense of hustle and labor lingering in the rusting machinery and crumbling stone.

Fifteen

Roelke forced himself to
wait until an hour after opening to present himself at the Bar. He wanted to see the place busy, the workers preoccupied. He followed a noisy group of construction workers into the tavern. Kip was behind the bar. The brunette waitress he'd seen the day before plunged from the kitchen with a tray of red plastic baskets holding burgers and fries.

No blonde. No Erin.

Roelke walked to the kitchen door, startling a Latino man working at the sizzling grill. “
De nada
,” Roelke said. He checked the single bathroom. The door was open, the room empty.

No Erin.

“Hey, Roelke,” Kip called from behind the bar.

Roelke took a stool at one end of the polished expanse, away from other customers. Kip finished filling three mugs for the brunette before grabbing a towel to wipe his hands and walking over to Roelke. “What's up?”

“Where's the other waitress I saw here yesterday? The blonde?”

Something in Kip's face changed. It was almost imperceptible, but Roelke saw the shift. “Why do you care?” the bartender asked.

“I think she's an old friend of mine. Just wanted to say hi.”

“Joanie doesn't work here anymore.”

Damn
. “Since when?”

“Since last night. The end of the shift she comes to me, says she's got to quit.”

“That's what she said? Exactly? ‘I've got to quit'?”

Kip looked down and seemed startled to see that he was still drying his hands. He tossed the towel beneath the bar. “Yeah. That's exactly what she said. Completely out of the blue.”

“Kip!” the brunette—Danielle—called impatiently. “Two more Millers.”

Left alone, Roelke stared numbly at the wall. Had Erin quit because of
him
? But—why?

Roelke had met Erin Litkowski only once: the night her husband ignored his restraining order and tried to kick in her door. Since the husband was gone by the time Roelke arrived, there hadn't been a whole lot he could do. The call had come in the middle of a very busy shift, and when a woman had come to see him at the station a week later and identified herself as Erin Litkowski's sister, Roelke—to his shame—hadn't been able to summon a mental picture of the woman.

Then the sister pressed the photograph into his hands and explained that Erin had fled Wisconsin. “Thank you for trying to help. Erin said you were kind.” Roelke had always regretted that he hadn't been able to do more. The only salve had been those final words: “Erin said you were kind.”

If that's so, Roelke thought, why would she run again only
after
I show up?

He was still trying to figure that out when Kip returned. “Sorry you missed your friend,” he said. “Can I get you something to drink?”

Roelke stared at Kip's right eye. “I don't want anything to drink, Kip. I want to know what's going on.”

Kip met his gaze without blinking. “Nothing's going on.”

“Bullshit!” Roelke's curse was a small explosion. A woman at the nearest table turned her head with a disapproving frown. Roelke struggled to control both his voice and his growing fury. He leaned closer. “C'mon, Kip, it's me. I'm off duty. Tell me what you know.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Roelke reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the photograph of Erin Litkowski. “Look familiar?”

Kip studied the photo. “There's a resemblance, but I don't think it's the same girl.”

“Well, I do.” Roelke slipped it away again. “I also think that Rick Almirez dashed off his beat on Saturday morning between one a.m. and one forty-five and came here, which means you lied to me yesterday.”

“Roelke—”

“
And
, I think those two things are connected.”

“Roelke!” Kip's voice was low, but sharp. “Shut your mouth.”

The brunette was back at the bar. “Kip?”

“Just a minute,” he called, his gaze never leaving Roelke's. Then he lowered his voice again. “Leave.
Now
. I do not want you back in my bar. You got that?”

Roelke blinked. “You don't want—
what
?”

“You heard me. This is my bar, and I decided a long time ago that I would not take crap from anybody. Get up, walk out of here, and do not come back.”

The words
make me
quivered on the very tip of Roelke's tongue. He slowly rose to his feet and clenched his fists. Rick was dead, Erin was in Milwaukee, and people were lying.

He thought, I have—
had
—it. He needed to punch somebody. He didn't really want to punch Kip, but right that moment, he'd do.

Before Chloe could ask Sister Mary Jude more questions about the mill's residents, someone shouted, “We're not cops!” A few moments later Owen and Jay emerged from the shadows. “Hey, ladies,” Jay said. He gave Chloe a quizzical glance. “I thought you'd gone home.”

“I came back.”

“Have you talked to Ariel today?” Owen asked.

“I called her at work a little while ago to let her know I'd arrived.” She left it at that, since the men didn't seem to know that Ariel had been arrested and released. “Anything new from the police?”

Owen and Jay exchanged a sober glance. Jay said, “Still nothing. It seems like we should know
something
by now.”

Chloe was still hoping that despite the bizarre entombment, the cause of Dr. Whyte's death was natural. In the brooding stillness, she sensed listeners in the shadows. A shiver flicked over her skin.

O-
kay
, enough of this. “Well, I'm sure the police will find answers soon,” she said briskly. “In the meantime, I'm here to help Ariel develop ideas for the interpretive plan. You guys want to weigh in on educational themes, stuff like that?”

“I'd focus on the heyday for the Minneapolis milling industry,” Owen said. “This city led the world in flour production between 1880 and 1930. All the technology was perfected during that era. It was the beginning of the end for rural gristmills.”

Jay nodded. “All of the mill structures still standing date to that period, and there's still a lot we can use.” He patted an iron beam fondly. “We've got the engine house and rail corridor, grain elevators, a wheat house with nine storage bins, and of course the milling rooms and machinery. It will take decades and dollars to get everything stabilized, but with even a small portion made accessible, we'll have plenty to interpret.”

“I think you're overlooking something.”

Chloe had almost forgotten Sister Mary Jude. “What do you mean?”

“I hope you'll include the entire continuum,” the nun said. “The mill's story didn't end in 1930, or even the day it shut down in 1965. There are still people here. Their stories matter, too.”

“Good point,” Chloe told Mary quietly. “I'll suggest to Ariel that recent history is part of the plan.”

“That's all I ask.” Mary nodded. “Since you three obviously have work to do, I'll leave you to it.”

“I'll walk with you,” Jay said. His voice was casual, but Chloe didn't miss the undercurrent. Jay didn't want Mary walking alone through the mill's dark corridors.

The nun didn't miss that either. “Oh, for heaven's sake. I've been visiting this mill for years.”

Jay picked up her baskets. Sister Mary Jude looked exasperated. Jay returned her gaze, imperturbable. After a moment the stiffness left her shoulders, and she relented. “Very well. I suppose an escort isn't a terrible idea.”

Chloe and Owen watched them walk away. “She's right,” Owen said. “We need to tell the story of all the people who have spent time here.”

I do like this guy, Chloe thought. She hoped Owen would follow his instincts and ask Ariel out.

As if reading her mind Owen asked, “So, how did Ariel sound when you talked to her earlier?”

Chloe considered her response carefully. “Shaky, to be honest.”

Owen frowned. “I wish her brother didn't live in Duluth. I met him on Friday, and he seemed like a stand-up guy.”

“Good thing she has friends in the Cities who care, too.”

“Yeah.” Owen smiled.

Chloe wanted to steer the conversation away from Ariel. “It's been fun to help with the interpretive proposal. The mill represents a phenomenal opportunity. Even historically, the conversation can't be just about process. It's about people.”

“Jobs in the flour mills gave many people a chance to move from poverty to middle class,” Owen said. “Wages were better here than at nearby factories, but the work could be brutal, especially in the early years. I think part of the story has to be the dangers workers faced.”

“You mentioned the problem with workers getting trapped in grain.”

“Mind if we walk while we talk? I've been working on the dust collectors, up on the eighth floor.”

“Sure!” Chloe said with as much false cheer as she could find. Her first foray to the eighth floor hadn't ended well.

Owen led the way back to the stairs and they began the climb. “Actually, the mill itself was a single machine.”

Chloe figured she better participate in the conversation now, before she was gasping for breath. “A single machine?”

“The vibrations were so great that the builders designed two structures, with free-standing wooden walls inside the limestone exterior to absorb the movement.” They rounded a corner and started up the next flight of steps. “I wish I could go back in time and see it, just for a few moments,” Owen added wistfully. “Everything was connected. Mechanics replaced belts on the fly, without shutting anything down.”

“Seriously?” The thought made Chloe's toes curl.

“And believe me, the machinery was powerful enough to chew up anyone who got distracted for even a second. But all the dangers weren't mechanical. There was also the dust.”

“Dust?”

“I'll show you.”

They wound their way up several more floors. When they emerged from the stairwell, Owen flashed his light on a labyrinth of pipes and gears overhead. The beam illuminated a rainbow of graffiti that defied the gloom too—a solar system near the floor, as if created by a child; stick figures soaring near the ceiling, as if painted by a giant; elaborate initials proclaiming at least transitory occupation of the space.

Owen gestured toward several large funnel-shaped things. “Those are dust collectors. Nobody paid much attention to the build-up of flour dust in those early days, but it was an enormous danger. Did you know that flour dust is flammable?”

“My grandfather always reminded my grandmother not to put flour sacks into the burn barrel, back in the days when people burned their trash.”

“In a burn barrel, a bit of flour dust would cause some pop
ping. The starch molecules in flour expand rapidly in the presence of heat. You know this building isn't the original mill, right?”

“Um … I'm not sure I did know that.” Chloe thought back to her first tour of the mill, abruptly aborted when Jay discovered Dr. Whyte's body. “What happened to the first mill building? Did it burn down?”

“No,” Owen said soberly. “It exploded.”

Sixteen
May 1878

Pierogi
would cheer everyone,
Magdalena thought. Her boarders were new-comers to Minneapolis. They never complained, but surely each man longed for familiar food.

The murmur of conversation drifted through the front door. Magdalena stood and fetched her last candle from the shelf. “I can't burn this for long, but we can at least have light enough to finish our meal.”

Once the tiny flame was flickering, she sat down again. Pawel met her gaze. “I have … that is … I have a small gift for you.”

Magdalena put down her spoon. “Another gift?”

“It's nothing, really, I—I just like to keep my hands busy at lunchtime.” He scrabbled in his pocket, pulled out his hand.

Magdalena accepted his offering: a wooden crucifix about three inches tall. Pawel had strung it on a chain braided from thin leather cords. “How very kind.” She put the cord over her head and let the cross fall against her bodice. “Thank you, Pawel.”

“Well.” Clearly embarrassed, Pawel gently put Frania aside. “I believe I'll sit outside with the others before sleep time. Anastazy offered to share some tobacco he received from home.”

Magdalena put her hand on his arm. “Pawel, if I put Frania to bed, will you listen for her? I have an errand to run.”

He frowned. “Of course, but … an errand? By yourself?
Now
?”

“Yes, now.” Magdalena stood. “Just leave your bowl in that kettle, all right? I'll wash up later.”

In the loft, she kissed her daughter's forehead and tucked her under the sheet. “Sleep, little one,” she whispered. “Tomorrow you shall eat bread.”

Back downstairs, she pulled her shawl over her head and walked outside. Her boarders tipped their hats politely, and she felt Pawel's worried gaze following her. She turned northwest and didn't look back.

A half-moon in the cloudless sky lent pale blue-gray light to the night. The fat Czech woman next door was pulling laundry from her line. One of the Danish women was shooing her chickens into their coop. Magdalena exchanged waves and greetings—they didn't speak the same language, but they understood each other. She sidestepped to avoid a goat trotting down the narrow lane, and again as a boy raced past in apparent hopes of getting home before full dark.

A nervous twinge fluttered in Magdalena's stomach as she left the Flats. She had vowed never to return to the Washburn A Mill. It's not too late to turn back, she reminded herself.

Her fingers found the wooden cross, and she took strength from the gift. She would not waver. Frania needed bread. And Pawel missed his mother's cooking.

The huge stone building loomed solid and forbidding. It ran night and day, but only a few millwrights worked through the dark hours—making rounds, listening, watching, making sure nothing was amiss among the rattling machines.

Magdalena picked her way across railroad tracks and slid through the shadows to the mill. Maybe, she thought, no one will see me. Maybe I can get what I came for and slip quickly away.

The doors were locked at night, but the black-haired man had shown her the key hidden beneath a loose stone. “If you don't find the key, that means another girl beat you to it,” he'd said, laughing.

Magdalena's fingers trembled as they traced along the rough stones. Maybe the decision had been made for her. Maybe she could scurry back to the Flats knowing she'd done her best …

But the key was waiting.

She crept to the door, worked the lock, slid inside.
He must keep the hinges oiled, she thought, for the heavy door moved silently
. The huge water-powered turbines were spinning a level below the ground floor. Magdalena walked quickly to the closest stairs. She paused, listening for footsteps or a man's voice, but heard nothing but the machinery. Pawel had once told her that the entire mill operated as a single machine, all the smaller machines yoked together by pulleys and belts. Entering the mill this way felt like creeping into the mouth of some great beast.

She climbed to the packing floor. Rows of tall machines stood silent here, gears still, empty barrels left in place under big black funnels. This is where Pawel works, she reminded herself. She imagined him tipping a heavy barrel the instant its lid had been pounded into place, rolling it away from the packing machine to the rail corridor, running back for the next … hour after hour after hour.

Even now, flour dust hung in the air. She could see it in the glow cast by a kerosene lamp bracketed high on a wall, taste it with every inhale. She felt it beneath the soles of her shoes, too. No matter how careful the men were, a mill producing four thousand barrels every day spilled a lot of flour.

Magdalena knelt and pulled out the sack she'd tucked under the waistband of her skirt. The cleanest piles of flour were along the walls, out of the main walkways. Sweepers shoved it there and left it. Even in the gloom, the leavings glowed like snow drifts. She'd never seen such pale, light flour before moving to Minnesota. It occurred to her that the fine ladies of Minneapolis in their bonnets and dainty hats likely ate white bread every day.

She was scooping flour into her sack when she heard footsteps. Her heart sank like a stone in the river.

“Well now,” he drawled. “I have a visitor.”

She scrambled to her feet. “
Please
. I need just a little flour, and there's so much going to waste—”

“Oh, I don't mind about the flour.” He was a big man. Not strong like Pawel but paunchy, jowly; a Pole hired to patrol the mill so the millwrights could tend their machines without worrying about intruders. Magdalena didn't know his name.

She'd met him soon after her brother, Dariusz, was killed, when the pantry shelves were empty and Frania whimpered in her sleep. Magdalena had left her child with the fat Czech woman and trudged to the mill, desperate. They say flour drifts on the floor inside, she'd thought as she pounded on the door. He'd answered the door; she'd begged. “I think we can come to an understanding,” he'd said.

Magdalena had looked into his eyes and heard her uncle, grunting like a hog while she beat his back with her fists. “No.”

He'd considered her, shrewd and appraising. “I thought you said your girl was hungry?”

And so began their dangerous game. She had bartered and bargained and, that first night, gone home with flour purchased with only a long, disgusting kiss. But he raised the price with each visit. The last time, he'd left her breasts bruised green and purple. She'd strode home blinking back tears and promising God and herself that she'd never go back to the mill again.

But Frania needed bread, and Pawel dreamt of
pierogi
.

“So,” the black-haired man said. “You need flour. And I need something, too.”

“I can't. I
won't
. I only need flour. Not so much, just a little.”

The corners of his mouth quirked. “I could lose my job just for letting you come in here. You got to make it worth my while.”

She clutched Pawel's wooden cross. “
No
.”

He shoved her roughly against the wall. She gasped as her head struck stone. Planting his feet, he pressed against her. “You've been trying to play a fancy game, and I'm tired of it.”

One day I shall own a hat.

He grinned. With movements almost lazy, now, he pulled a cigar from one pocket, and a packet of Lucifers, too. “You and I are going to get to know each other better.”

“You,” Magdalena spat, “are going to hell.”

He struck the match.

In the half-instant remaining, Magdalena somehow understood that hell had come to get him.

Then the Washburn A Mill exploded.

Two miles away, the Polish men sitting in front of their boarding house were knocked to the ground by the explosion. Pawel staggered to his feet, watching a ball of fire rage into the sky and consume the darkness. “Holy Mother of God,” he whispered, crossing himself. He felt a sense of dread like he'd never known. In that instant, Pawel somehow understood that his heart was about to break.