Tradition of Deceit (21 page)

Thirty-Two
July 1921

“You must do better,
Lidia,” Thomas said curtly. “Mr. Windom is waiting.”

Lidia concentrated on the tiny replica of a Gold Medal Flour sack she was stitching. The company had offered the pincushions as premiums, and when demand had far surpassed expectations, all the women employees had been asked to help out. “I have been asking questions, Thomas.” Lie number one. “But even in No Man's Land, the girls are uneasy about discussing union activities.” Lie number two.

They were on the grinding floor this evening. The Money Floor, the men called it. The place where 150 roller mills marched in rows right above the mighty turbines that harnessed the river and powered the whole works. The floor vibrated. The miller on duty was circulating, grabbing handfuls of flour from each machine with a little metal spatula. He could tell if a machine wasn't working properly just from rubbing the flour between his fingers.

Routine problems fell to the millwrights like Thomas. He knelt before one of the roller mills, listening to the whirring gears. “We know some women are supporting the union,” he said. “We just don't know who they are.”

“I'll try harder.” Lie number three.

“See that you do. Do you want to jeopardize all that I've worked for? I'm trying to make a better life for us. For
you
. Union agitation here at the mill will only bring trouble. Don't you see that?”

“Yes.” Lie number four.

“Then for God's sake,
do
something about it.” Thomas's face was taut as he slowly slid his hand through the maze of moving parts.

Lidia had to look away as she pictured a belt snapping, a shirt sleeve tangling in gears. Marriage had proved more difficult than she'd expected, but she still loved this man: the curls on the back of his neck, his dream of creating a better life, his energy. When he gave her one of his old smiles, something still tingled inside. When he worked on these machines, she still worried.

If only he weren't
quite
so driven, she thought. If only he weren't so moody. If only the bad tempers weren't growing more commonplace. If only he didn't make her feel as if—aside from working her shift—she didn't dare leave his side.

Thomas held his breath, making the mechanical adjustment by feel alone. Lidia's mind shivered, and she imagined her own hand easing toward the gears. Not to help her husband, but to—

Lidia crossed herself almost convulsively. God forgive me, she thought. She leaned against the wall—trembling, sick to her stomach. Where had such an evil thought come from?

Thomas sat back on his heels. “Hand me the oil can.” He gestured to the long-spouted can resting on top of his wooden tool box.

“Thomas. I … I would like to go back to the Flats for a little while.”

He rose slowly, turned to face her. “What did you say?”

“Just for a visit,” Lidia said quickly.

“Absolutely not.”

“I just want to be with my mother for a couple of days.”

“And what will everyone think of me if you do so?”

“Perhaps we could say that my mother is ill.
Please
, Thomas. I need to see Grandfather Pawel
and
Matka
.”

The Polish word was a mistake. His face hardened. His fingers closed around her wrist with such strength that she had to bite back a whimper. In the middle of this enormous mill, she felt very alone.

“I said no,” Thomas hissed. “If you leave my house, I will kill you.”

Thirty-Three

Chloe clutched the telephone,
struggling to parse Libby's words. Roelke had a brother? How could she not have known that?

“Are you still there?” Libby sounded worried.

How could Roelke have kept something like that a secret?

“Chloe?”

“I'm here.”

“I am so sorry. I can't believe Roelke hasn't—I never dreamed—”

“Where is it, exactly, that Roelke is visiting his brother today?”

“Look, I should let Roelke tell you—”

“Libby,” Chloe said, “I swear to God, if you don't tell me where Roelke is going today, I will drive to your house and shake it out of you.”

Another long sigh. “Patrick is in prison. He's at Waupun.”

Chloe had trouble wrapping her brain around that, too.

“Chloe?”

“You know what? You're right. This is something that Roelke and I need to discuss.”

“I am
so
sorry.”

“It's not your fault,” Chloe said. “I'll talk to you later.” She hung up.

Then she stared at the wall, thinking back through every conversation she could remember about families—his, hers. “It's just me and Libby and the kids,” he'd said once. She was sure he'd said that.

Roelke McKenna, cop, had a brother named Patrick, felon.

Chloe prowled the tiny living room, clutching her elbows, getting angrier and angrier. It was bad enough that Roelke had pushed her away after Rick got killed. But this was worse. What else didn't she know about?

There's nothing you can do about it right this minute, she told herself. Go back to Betty Crocker.

She flopped down on the sofa and picked up the article she'd been reading. Two minutes later she put it down. She picked up one of the cookbooks and flipped through the pages. She put the book down, too. Even the glorious Tunnel of Fudge cake held no allure.

Suddenly Ariel's tiny house felt way too confining. Chloe grabbed her car keys, shrugged into her parka, and left.

But where to go? She wasn't going to drive to the Minnesota Historical Society and dump this on Ariel in the middle of a pressure cooker workday. She was too angry to talk about it, anyway.

She spotted a sign for the Red Owl market and dove into an empty parking space. She might as well stock up on flour, sugar, butter, and so on. Once inside, she got an even better idea. “You take credit cards, right?” she asked the clerk. He nodded. She reached for a cart.

Half an hour later she parked by the Washburn A Mill. When she got out of the car, she heard a mechanical rumble coming from the gravel beds on the river side of the complex. A bulldozer and dump trucks chugged along the river while several men in hard hats watched.

One of the men broke away. “Hey, Chloe!” Jay called. “What's up?”

Chloe shrugged with what she hoped was a believable smile. “I needed an excursion, so I came to help Sister Mary Jude with lunch. I didn't know this was going on.” She pointed toward the heavy equipment.

“The gravel yard owners agreed to let us clear enough away to expose some of the ruins buried underneath for the big tour on Friday. It's like tearing wrapping paper off a gift.”

“What's down there?”

“The mill was the largest direct-drive water-powered operation on the planet! That gravel covers canals, tailraces … who know what else. I've got a handful of students who are happily trading some heavy labor for extra credit.”

“This whole place is an archaeological site.” Chloe thought of the artifacts Owen had shown her from the day in 1965 when the mill closed, all perfectly preserved in place. “Layers over layers over layers.”

“I've never worked on a project like this one, that's for sure. The buildings don't preserve some grand architectural style. They were designed for function. And yet, that function led to something grand.” Jay shrugged, looking a little sheepish. “If you see what I mean.”

“I do,” Chloe assured him. “I didn't at first, but now that I've spent a bit of time here … it's utterly compelling. Professor Whyte captured that intangible sense of hidden stories in his photographs.”

“I suppose you heard the latest?” Jay asked. “The cause of death?”

“Ariel and I heard last night. Is it likely that Dr. Whyte would have been walking along the river?”

Jay removed his hard hat and raked a hand through his hair. “Sure. Maybe he wanted to photograph a bit of old wall showing through the gravel. Maybe he tripped, hit his head, and fell into the Mississippi. The police said from the start that he had a head wound, and maybe they jumped to the wrong conclusion about what caused it. I doubt he drowned in one of the turbine pits—if he'd fallen in, it would have taken a monumental effort to get him back out. But in either case, how do you explain getting his body to the eighth floor?” He made a wide arc with his arm, pointing.

“That question gives me the creeps.”

“Yeah.” Jay settled the hat back on his head. “Listen, Owen's working in the mill with a couple of undergrads, well within a shout of the spot where Sister Mary Jude serves. If you need any help, just holler.” He went back to the excavation.

Chloe headed to the mill. She approached just as a police squad car pulled up to the curb. Officer Crandall and his partner emerged.

“I remember you,” Crandall said without preamble. “Where's your pretty little friend? The one who got arrested for breaking into the murdered guy's office?”

“My
colleague
is at work,” Chloe told him coolly. Jerk.

The black officer—Ashton, according to her nametag—was standing behind Crandall, and actually rolled her eyes. “Didn't you say you wanted to check around the far side?” she asked him.

“Yeah, yeah. I got it. I'll let you ladies have your confab, or whatever.” Crandall sauntered away.

Chloe looked at Officer Ashton. “I don't mean to be disrespectful, but how can you work with that man and not go insane?”

The officer watched her partner disappear around a corner. “At least with Crandall, what you see is what you get. The ones that scare me are the guys who set me up to fail. My first sergeant gave me a quota for parking tickets that was three times the norm.”

“Because you're a woman?”

She shrugged. “I'm a woman with black skin. It's hard to know what rankles the good ol' boys the most.” Then her impassive cop face slipped back into place. “Forgive me. That was inappropriate. How is your friend?”

“Pretty shook up,” Chloe said. “The rest of us too, of course, but Ariel is a bit more fragile. The incident that led to her being arrested was an unfortunate misunderstanding, of course. Ariel made a dumb mistake, she explained the situation to the officers, and that was the end of it.” A new worry slid into Chloe's mind. “Officer Crandall doesn't honestly believe that Ariel had anything to do with Professor Whyte's death, does he?”

“I couldn't speak to that.”

Shit, Chloe thought, I bet that's exactly what Crandall thinks. “Ariel had nothing to do with it. If you could have seen her face when we found Dr. Whyte, and heard her scream … No
way
she faked it. She was in shock.”

“As anyone would be,” Officer Ashton said. “Good afternoon, Ms. Ellefson. Let us know if you see anything suspicious.”

Chloe was still fretting over that exchange when she saw Sister Mary Jude park a yellow VW Bug down the street and pull her picnic hampers from the back seat. The nun walked briskly toward the mill and smiled when she saw Chloe. “I didn't expect to see you again.”

“I'm staying with my friend and came to help you. I've got some groceries in my car. Chocolate chip cookies, among other things. Dog food and diapers, too.”

“That's kind of you, and much appreciated. But”—Mary studied Chloe for a moment, head tipped—“are you all right?”

“Oh, I—I was just talking with Officers Crandall and Ashton, and got the impression that Crandall, at least, believes Ariel had something to do with Professor Whyte's death. It's preposterous.”

“I wouldn't put much stock in what Officer Crandall thinks.”

“I know, he's an
idiot
, but the very idea …” Chloe was astonished to feel tears well in her eyes. She blinked hard, but suddenly she was outright crying.

Mary found a packet of tissues and handed one over. “Is it possible that something else is troubling you?”

“Not really,” Chloe sniffled, wiping her eyes. “It's just that …
well … I learned that someone I care about has been keeping a pretty major secret. I can't say he out-and-out lied about it, but he sure danced around the truth.”

“You must feel a little betrayed by that,” Mary observed. “And angry. And hurt.”

“Kind of.” Chloe blew her nose and took a deep breath. All right, that was enough of sounding pathetic.

“Are you a religious person?”

“I'm a spiritual person,” Chloe said with sudden caution. If the good nun starting getting all religious-conversion on her, she'd have to deposit her groceries and go.

“Then you won't mind if I say a prayer for you and your friend tonight?”

Chloe started to cry all over again. “That would be quite nice. Thank you. And … if you don't mind, could you request some extra protection for my friend? His name is Roelke. I'm angry at him, but I'm worried about him, too.”

Roelke found a little café on Main Street with a decent salad bar and an empty corner booth. He boxed up whatever emotional fallout there was after seeing his brother—he'd deal with that later—and focused on what Patrick had said about Lobo.

Finally,
finally
, a few links were presenting themselves. According to Patrick, a man had hired Lobo to kill his wife, and Lobo had come close to succeeding. So, domestic violence was common to Lobo and Steve Litkowski. Rick had been seen talking to Lobo. And although he still had no proof, Roelke believed that Rick had been helping Erin.

So. Maybe Erin came back to Milwaukee, Steve Litkowski found out and came after her, and Erin turned to Rick for help. Rick might have done some digging of his own, maybe learned that Lobo was still willing to freelance. Maybe, Roelke thought, Erin didn't run away from Kip's to avoid
me
. Maybe she ran away because she feared that after shooting Rick, Lobo was probably coming for her.

What Roelke still didn't know was how any of that involved a cop. Someone took the gun from Evidence lockup. Someone examined Rick's FI cards before they reached the detectives assigned to the case. Those two facts didn't fit with his theories.

Maybe one of Rick's FI cards had referenced Lobo. If a cop had hired the ex-con, that cop would want to be sure that Rick's cards didn't reveal anything that could eventually implicate said cop.

After eating his last tomato, Roelke got out his index cards and added what he'd learned about Lobo the Wolf, AKA Alberto Marquez. Rick must have had a good reason for sharing a brewski in the Rusty Nail with him. Maybe Rick was trying to string the asshole along, get some intel.

Next, Roelke updated his task list:

1. Ask Dobry to look up arrest record for Alberto Marquez
2. Canvass the block where Donny D said he saw Rick
3. Check Eve's House

Eve's House was a battered women's center. It seemed unlikely that Erin would be hiding there. The last time Steve threatened to kill her, she'd felt compelled to flee the state. Still, it was worth checking.

Roelke gathered his cards, tapped the edges, and tucked them away. Then he thought hard about the prospect of returning to the Old South Side. In the course of his police career he'd been punched, kicked, and spit on more times than he could count. Once a woman came at him with a skillet, once a drunk came at him with a knife, and once someone tried to run him over. But it was particularly chilling to picture a sniper taking deliberate aim at his back.

Equally chilling was the knowledge that it had happened in densely-populated Lincoln Village. Roelke did not want to get shot at again. He also didn't want a shot aimed at him to hit somebody else. How reckless was it to return to the neighborhood?

Okay, he decided finally. The shooter had struck twice in Kozy Park in the middle of the night. So—stay away from Kozy Park, and get the heck out of Milwaukee before sundown.

The waitress stopped by his table. “Can I get you some dessert?”

“No thanks,” Roelke said. “I've got places to be.” Enough thinking, for now. It was time to
do
something.