December Dread (The Murder-By-Month Mysteries) Read online

  “Who suddenly peed in your corn flakes?” She gathered up her purse. “You’re making me feel rushed.”

  “Well, you’re making me feel slowed,” I snapped.

  A hurt look crossed her face.

  “I’m sorry.” I dropped my head on my steering wheel. “They treated me like a child. I just felt so stupid, you know? I hate it when someone does that to me.”

  She flicked the side of my head. It stung. “I’ve definitely seen you act stupid, but no one else can make you feel stupid. Trust me on that, and follow your instincts. They’ve always been good.”

  I knew she was right, but I intended to wallow in feeling bad for a little while longer. “What time should I pick you up?”

  “Five o’clock. That’ll give us time for a quick bite before our Toe Can Do class tonight.”

  I didn’t have the energy to correct her, though I did accept her peck on the cheek before driving to Willmar. I arrived 20 minutes late for my fifth and final day of PI class. If I passed the cumulative test today, all that stood between me and my PI license was 5,960 hours of supervised investigating.

  The only new topics Mr. Denny covered were writing a final case report and successful billing. The rest of the lecture was a review of everything we’d learned to date, which, as it happened, was a lot. We now knew the basics of managing and promoting a small business, finding cases, working with the police, surveillance, research, and investigative ethics. I was impressed with his organization and comprehensiveness as well as the amount of information a PI had to juggle on any given day.

  The last hour of class found us in a computer lab where we completed a multiple choice and true-false test. I’m a fast reader, which makes me a fast tester, even when I’m fuzzy from lack of sleep. I completed all 50 questions in under 25 minutes, which left me the rest of the hour to research Lynne Bankowski, Sharpie Trevino, David Fleece, and the Candy Cane killings.

  The bonus of researching someone with a name like Sharpie Trevino is that you can be certain every hit is the guy you’re looking for. He was actually a co-owner of Chi-town Candies, according to their website. I wondered why he was on the road. Surely, a subordinate could handle that level of marketing. Then again, if what he told Mrs. Berns was true, it would make sense for an owner to be directly involved in scoping out a new factory site. I found his permanent address in Elgin, Illinois. I couldn’t uncover any personal information about him, even after running his name through the paid database. No connections between Wisconsin and Sharpie existed, though he’d be hard-pressed to travel from Chicago to Minnesota without driving through the cheese state. I filed that information away and gave up on Sharpie for the moment.

  David Fleece, DDS, showed up even more frequently online. The first hit was his current dental practice, the second the practice he’d left in Alabama three years earlier. He was also linked to his wife’s obituary. She had died two years ago, exactly as he’d said in the coffee shop. The numerous remaining hits all referred to his extensive volunteer work, including the Dentists Across Borders organization he’d started with his wife before she passed. The man was a saint, so much so that I’d be suspicious if I hadn’t gotten a good vibe from him other than the little self-scare I’d given myself outside his house last night. I decided that had been entirely in my head, and I wrote him off definitively as a suspect.

  Lynne Bankowski’s name pulled up 58 matches, the most out of the three of them. After skimming them all, I deduced that four different Lynne Bankowskis existed. One lived in Florida and was retired, the second was a high school student in Ohio, the third an attorney in Colorado, and the fourth, my traveling nurse. She was on LinkedIn and Facebook, but her information on both was the basic name-job-home state. I don’t know if it was interesting or sad that she only had seven friends on Facebook. Since I had only just now opened a Facebook account so I could spy on her, my vote was for interesting. Her Facebook posts were scarce and mostly updates of online games she was playing, but her info page linked to a blog. I clicked on it.

  The blog was titled “Cherry Pits,” and the red fruit decorated the borders of the page. The top post was made two days ago, and its headline was, “What’s Wrong with River Grove.” The post complained about the lack of a movie theater, irregular road plowing, and mean people, among other grievances. Below that was a post called, “What’s Wrong with TV,” followed by, “What’s Wrong with Teachers,” and “What’s Wrong with Health Care.” I counted 127 posts, all of them complaints by their titles. According to the info page of the blog, it was started two years ago last November. The complaints seemed petty, for the most part, and none of them had comments. I saw only one title in the compendium that interested me: “What’s Wrong with Me.” I clicked on the title and was brought to the blog post. It was empty.

  “Time’s up!”

  Mr. Denny’s voice goosed me. I’d been so focused on Lynne’s blog that I’d forgotten where I was.

  “Your tests have just automatically closed. Any unanswered questions will be marked incorrect, I’m afraid. We’ll mail out your test scores and final percentage for the class within seven days.” Mr. Denny clapped his hands, once. “It’s been a good week. I hope you agree. Any questions before we call it a day?”

  Gene was sitting at a computer near Mr. Denny. “The extra assignment,” he said.

  Of course. I’d given up on those questions after I’d realized I lacked the resources to verify whether I was on the FBI list and didn’t want to knock on legs to discover who had the flesh and who had the wood. Come to think of it, did anyone even wear wooden legs any more? It was probably a prosthetic so well-made that it’d be hard to tell from the real thing in casual contact.

  “Ah, yes,” Mr. Denny said, eyes twinkling. “The extra assignment. You mean the secrets, right? How about this? I’ll write them on this white board. Each of you write down your guesses as to who owns which secret on a sheet of paper right now. I’ll tell you immediately if any of you matched them all correctly.”

  I ripped a piece of paper out. Gene was ex-military, Leo Albanian, Kent unemployed but still going to work, Edgar a cheater. I guessed Roger, the guy who’d arrived late to class three out of five times, had a drinking problem. I put myself down as FBI watch list and Dale as having a wooden leg. I scribbled my name on the top and walked the list to Mr. Denny, then sat back down until everyone else had done the same.

  He smiled distantly as he read the answers. Once he had gone through them all, he addressed the class. “No one got them all right. One of you answered only one wrong.”

  We all looked at each other.

  “Mira James, good work. Since no one answered them all correctly, you’ll receive the extra points. Any questions?”

  I was surprised, then happy, then, ultimately, so curious that my ears buzzed. How could I, or anyone for that matter, answer only one incorrectly? Seven secrets had to be matched with seven names. If one name was assigned the wrong secret, that meant another one had been as well. I waited until the rest of the class shuffled out and it was just Mr. Denny and me. I studied his back while he erased the board. He seemed unsurprised to see me still in my seat upon turning.

  “A question, Ms. James?”

  “Which one did I answer wrong?”

  The grin spread slowly across his face like a sunrise. “That curiosity will serve you well in this profession.” He lifted his foot onto the small table in front of him and hiked the leg of his pants to his knees. Underneath was a red-and-black argyle sock. Peeking over the top of that was a pink but plastic-looking calf. He knocked on it. It made a dull sound. “Fake from the knee down. Lost it in a motorcycle accident.”

  “I’m sorry.” Those words were automatic. The next were not. “Isn’t that cheating? To hide your secret in the pile, I mean.”

  He pushed his pants leg down, still smiling, and placed his foot back on the ground. “Not at all. It’s the nature of the business. Assumptions are your enemy. You have to look at information from
every possible angle.”

  I watched him line up the papers in front of him and stick them into his briefcase. “You’ve done this exercise before, haven’t you?”

  “Every time I’ve taught the class. Only twice has someone gotten them all right. Usually, students average about 50 percent correct. Rarely do they consider me. We often let a person’s position or authority distract us, don’t we?”

  His final comment brought up a mental picture of Agent Briggs, which caused me to flush painfully. I’d let him use his position to intimidate and embarrass me. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind. “I guess.”

  He studied me. “There’s something else?”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, yeah. So I am on the FBI watch list?”

  “Yes and no. You’re not in the official Terrorist Screening Database, or, obviously, on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. You are a person of interest, though.”

  “For what?”

  He studied me. “You tell me.”

  Two nights of too-little sleep, a humiliating morning, and seven months of dancing with dead bodies weighed me down. I asked rather than answered a question. “You found out about me being a person of interest through unofficial routes?”

  He nodded. “I called in some favors. I do it for all the students, but rarely do I find an FBI connection.”

  I sighed. What great news. “Do you mind if I stay here for a little bit? I have some research I need to finish.”

  “Not a problem. Make sure the door closes behind you, and it’ll lock automatically.”

  I nodded my thanks and returned my attention to the computer screen in front of me. It took a full minute to realize Mr. Denny had stopped at the doorway and was considering me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He shook his head as if dismissing an idea, then seemed to think better of it. “I think you’ve got a gift, Ms. James. Let me know if you ever need my help.”

  “Okay,” I said, uncomfortable with the praise, especially since I hadn’t even matched up all the secrets correctly in his little game. “Thanks.”

  He smiled, tapped the door jamb with his hand, and left.

  What a day it’d been, and it was hardly even noon. I closed out Lynne’s Cherry Pits blog and returned to the Google main page, using “Candy Cane Killer” as my search term. The articles that I pulled up focused mainly on the White Plains and River Grove killings in Minnesota, with only a cursory mention of the Wisconsin and Chicago killings. I skimmed all of those, but none of them offered me any new information. Digging deeper, I located an article from three years ago with Adam De Luca’s byline. It was coverage of the third murder in Chicago. The victim was named Betty Cyrus. An unopened package of candy canes had been found on a table near her murdered body. That wasn’t the detail that caught my attention, however. Instead, my eyes were drawn to a brief paragraph toward the end where the name of the Candy Cane Killer’s first victim was mentioned: Monica De Luca, aged 37.

  twenty-five

  “Do you have family?”

  Adam De Luca sat across the table from me at Tucks Café in Paynesville. The restaurant was exactly as I’d remembered—a lunch counter with a pie case behind it, comfy booths covered in red Naugahyde, and the delicious smells of broasted chicken and homemade soups. Strings of red and green garland were draped across the pie case and over the doorways, and a small, fake Christmas tree sat in the window, strung with lights. We’d snatched a booth in the back, though the small restaurant was mostly empty. Adam appeared more haggard than when I’d last seen him, almost a perfect reflection of how I felt. The murders were getting to both of us. “Just my mom and me,” I said.

  He thanked the waitress as she slid him a cup of coffee and a caramel roll. “Don’t ever stop appreciating her. Family is all we have in this world. One day they’re there, the next day they’re gone.”

  I felt a pang of guilt. Appreciating my mom was the opposite of what I’d been doing ever since my dad had died. “Monica was your sister?”

  “Yes. My sister, my best friend, my only family. She was the oldest. Our dad disappeared when I was still in the crib. Mom ditched out on us shortly afterward. It was Monica and me against the world. Nic basically raised me.” He drank his coffee black. His caramel roll sat untouched.

  The waitress began to clear the circular table next to us. A large party must have left shortly before we’d arrived. I raised my voice to be heard above the clatter of plates. “I’m sorry.” I felt like I’d been saying that a lot lately.

  He raised a shoulder in a noncommittal gesture. “Me too. I get sorry all over again every time I see other people go through what I did. Did you see the look on Mrs. Garcia’s face at the funeral? That was shock so deep it knocks you out of this world for a while. I saw it all the time when I used to cover war zones. And I saw it on my own face when I found out about Nic.”

  I leaned forward, trying to get him to look at me. “Why do you do it?”

  He blinked, surprised. “Do what?”

  “Cover this serial killer. It must be torture for you. I’m surprised your editor lets you.”

  “Yeah, me too.” He ran his hands through his hair and lifted his cup for more coffee. “She didn’t, not at first. Said I couldn’t be objective, that it wasn’t healthy. Then the writer she originally assigned to CCK moved to LA, and I wouldn’t let up.”

  “CCK?” I translated the initials as soon as the question left my mouth: Candy Cane Killer. “Oh.”

  He nodded. “I convinced her that I’d be obsessing about the case anyhow, so she might as well take advantage of that. By then, CCK had struck twice. My sister and a woman named Audrey Jordan. He killed twice more before he left Chicago. Do you know the crazy thing?” He tipped his head, a bitter smile on his face. “I was furious when he went underground that first time. How could we catch him if he stopped killing? That stupid fury lasted right up until he struck in Wisconsin the next December. That’s when I decided I didn’t care if I ever found out who he was, so long as another woman wasn’t murdered. If he could just die a nameless death and the killings would stop, that would be enough.”

  I tried to imagine how difficult it would be to let go of the need for justice if someone I loved had been brutally murdered. “You still feel that way?”

  “Yes.”

  He appeared so desperately alone for just a moment that I wanted to hug him. I obviously didn’t know him well, but I could see he was driving himself crazy following this case. I was reaching over to comfort him when his pocket chirped. He reached in and yanked out a phone.

  “Yeah.”

  I watched in amazement as five years were added to his face. Lines around his mouth deepened and his eyes sagged. He rubbed his hand over his forehead and leaned into the phone as if it were whispering to him.

  “Jesus. Yeah. Got it. Yeah.” He ended the call and fumbled the phone into his pocket. He brought his eyes slowly to mine, and they looked like two holes drilled into his face. “There’s been another murder. Northern Minnesota. In a place called Orelock.”

  Twenty-six

  Orelock was located approximately two hours northeast of Battle Lake. Depending when the murder had taken place, the killer would have had ample time to drop orange begonias off at the Recall office last night before driving to Orelock to seek his next victim. Adam had no more information; he’d gotten the call from his editor, who’d gotten it from an FBI contact. He’d left immediately for Orelock. I gathered Mrs. Berns from the nursing home and filled her in on the terrible news on our way to self-defense class. She was so struck by the horror of it that she didn’t even have a comeback. It had all become too much.

  By the time we arrived at the gym, everyone was talking about the news. The room was tense, a mixture of outrage and fear. Master Andrea, knowing she had no chance of getting the class started until everyone was focused, brought us into the workout room and clicked on the television above the treadmill.

  “… in Orelock, Minnesota
. The town of 1,700 people is reeling from the news. At noon today, the body of Samantha Keller was found in her home. Police say the time of death was between midnight and four AM this morning. While they have no suspects, they have taken a woman in for questioning. She currently lives in River Grove, Minnesota, the scene of the Candy Cane Killer’s previous murder, though she is originally from Orelock.”

  I grabbed Mrs. Berns’ arm. “Did you see that?” It had been just a flash, a split-second shot of a tall brunette with short hair being led into the Orelock police station.

  “What?”

  “Lynne Bankowski. She’s their main suspect!”

  Mrs. Berns’ considered this. “And the timing of the Orelock murder clears Sharpie. We watched him in his motel room until early this morning.”

  “You watched the inside of your eyelids.”

  Mrs. Berns smiled, immune to shame. “Good thing you’re the private dick.”

  The rest of the newscast recapped what we already knew about the killings in Chicago and central Wisconsin. It ended with a panoramic shot of Orelock, a sleepy, Iron Range town drifted with snow and dotted with snug houses and shops. We all watched, shell-shocked or riveted. The instructor snapped off the TV.

  “Back to work,” she said.

  _____

  Saturday, December 22

  Mrs. Berns and I were up at 4:00 AM to drive to Orelock. I felt guilty leaving my mom in charge of two animals in a hotel room, but she promised me she’d be fine. Her eyes made it clear that she was worried about me, but she held her tongue. I knew she didn’t want me to be a PI, couldn’t understand why I wasn’t happy being a librarian, or an English teacher, but she was going to support me if it was the last thing she did. I thought back to Adam’s words and vowed to be more appreciative of her.

  It was too early to even be called morning, and the accumulated wear of three nights of little sleep made me twitchy. I kept seeing movement out of the corner of my eyes, but when I’d look, there’d be nothing there. We poured ourselves old coffee in to-go cups in the hotel lobby, tempered it with powdered creamer, and headed into the bracing cold.