“Changed my mind.”
“For this?” I indicated the pork-bellied Mr. Mink, who had gone back to nervously running his hands through his hair and had added timid mustache twirling to the repertoire.
“Love is a capricious thing. Now shut the hell up. Are you in?” Her voice was feisty but her eyes were fading.
“Wait, how did you know the blogger was murdered?”
Mrs. Berns pointed at Bernard. “Heard it through the grapevine.”
“And how does me finding the killer help Bernard?”
“It helps all three of us, pudding head, because we were all in Dead Body City, Minnesota, at the wrong time. It especially helps Bernard, however, as he has some past issues that might make the law treat him unkindly if they learned he was sleeping next to the room where his rival was hung.”
“Rival?” I asked Bernard.
“Just a friendly opposition among newsmen,” he said. “Nothing worth mentioning.”
“Would Bob the blogger have called it friendly?”
He shrugged and then looked away to twirl his mustache like he was hoping to jumpstart an escape helicopter.
“Crap,” I said, looking back at Mrs. Berns. “This is really what you want?”
She nodded, her eyes already closed.
“Fine.” How do you refuse a woman you love in her hospital bed? And the fact of the matter was I’d been lying to myself about not caring who murdered Webber. Like an accidental vampire, I’d had my first taste of blood-or in my case, the thrill of solving a mystery-last May, and I was hooked, despite all my internal protestations to the opposite. Mrs. Berns was just giving me an excuse to do what I wanted to do anyway. “But only if you tell me why Conrad and Elizabeth were in Battle Lake.”
“Tomorrow,” she croaked, and then she drifted back into her drug haze.
12
Taking advantage of the late opening of the library, I sat at one of the public computers, the guest list that I had pinched from the cleaning cart at my side. I’d dug it out of the garbage during a quick home pit stop on my way back from the hospital. I hadn’t slept or eaten in going on thirty hours. I felt as fuzzy as a dishrag, but I had a plan. I was going to research all the guests who were at the motel the night of the alleged murder. Most people can be found online, even if we’re not public figures, though I was willing to guess a fair number of the Saturday night guests had been in town for the debate, either on one of the politician’s teams or a reporter. Then, I’d generate a list of possible suspects, putting Bernard Mink at the top. I wasn’t going to break my promise to Mrs. Berns to exonerate Bernard of potential charges, but that didn’t mean I was going to be an idiot, either. Even if he wasn’t a murderer, he didn’t feel like one of the good guys, and I wasn’t letting my best friend go into anything blind.
After I’d narrowed the list, I’d suck in my pride and good sense and call Kennie to find out if she knew any more than she’d told me yesterday, or if she’d found out anything since then. Finally, I would be trying to track down the suspects, all of whom should still be in town if Deputy Wohnt had delivered to them the same message he’d given me about staying put, and see if any of them had a free moment to confess to murder.
If my scheme was a movie, it’d be more
The room list showed that every room but two had been booked Saturday night: room 4, the room Webber had vacated on Friday, and room 19, the site of the dead body, which had “Glenn Vanderbrick” listed as occupant. Mr. Vanderbrick’s departure date column had 10/18 with an asterisk next to it and the words “pm checkout” penciled in. That explained why room 19 was empty the next morning, but why hadn’t room 4 been filled after Webber checked out? Between the debate and Octoberfest, the town had been packed for the weekend. With only two motels in town, I couldn’t imagine there’d be a Saturday night vacancy to spare.
Humoring a hunch, I held the list up to the cold October sunshine and was rewarded-the date next to Bob Webber’s name had a tiny blot on the bottom of the “8” that didn’t let in light. I placed the list on the desktop and used the edge of my fingernail to scrape the white-out off the lower left edge of the “8” on 10/18, revealing that he had originally intended to check out on the 19th. Someone had blotted the sleek bottom of the nine and replaced it with a tiny circle in pen the same color. Had his date change been so abrupt that the hotel hadn’t had time to reprint a list, or had someone tampered with the cleaning list, and if so, to what end? I didn’t suppose I could call the motel to find out what their computer system said about the dates he’d booked, but I’d sure like to know.
Tabling what I couldn’t address right now, I typed an alphabetical list of the twenty names so I didn’t have to mess up the original list with scribbled notes. Ignoring the alphabetical order, I started with Glenn Vanderbrick, the most likely suspect by virtue of location, and quickly found that he was a blogger as well as an on-call political columnist for various Midwest newspapers. Scanning his blog page, I didn’t see the thoroughness or sleek writing style of Webber’s, but he was good enough. As an off bet, I did a site search on his page for the name “Bob Webber” and came across several articles they’d cowritten. I didn’t know what that meant, that Webber had been killed in the room vacated by a coauthor, so I chose the direct route and sent Vanderbrick an e-mail explaining that I was a reporter from Battle Lake and would like to speak with him if he’d be so kind as to send me his phone number. I also included mine.
Returning to alphabetical order, I investigated Karl Bachin, whose room location between Glokkmann and Swydecker suggested he was a member of one of their campaigns. However, his two fame Googles consisted of his bowling team’s second place trophy in a Southeastern Minnesota bowling tourney and his post to a listserv regarding his preference for Brewer’s Best home beer brewing kits over True Blue Gold. A better online profile for an Octoberfest expert I could not have written. The next three names drew equal dead ends.
Glokkmann was the fifth name, and she understandably called out a whole slew of hits, the first couple pages of which I’d already read. A few deep blog postings hinted that Glokkmann was off her rocker, referring to her recent immigrant comment as well as statements she’d made about the baseless global warming scare being an anti-American conspiracy, but the only direct accusations I could find originated at the blog of Bob Webber. I perused his articles on Glokkmann more closely. In several pieces covering the alleged bribes she’d received from the oil industry, Webber cited her tax returns and her public campaign fund record as evidence of her illegal behavior, but when I cross-referenced those, I saw that while she had taken money from oil companies, she’d been up front about it. It might not be the height of ethics, but it didn’t seem out of line with what every other politician was doing. Same with her voting on a bill that could have potentially helped her husband’s business. If she thought it was a good bill for the state, she had a right to vote on it, regardless of how it benefitted her family.
When it came to her alleged drinking problem, though, Webber claimed to have several reliable sources who might in the future be willing to go on record stating that Glokkmann sometimes got so drunk during the day that she couldn’t even be wheeled into the Congressional chambers, and several key votes had been missed as a result. Unfortunately, none of those “reliable sources” were willing to go on record at this time.
The only issue Webber had really pinned her on was taking two of her daughters to New York City on the state’s dime. Glokkmann testified that she’d had to attend a conference and didn’t know she wasn’t allowed to bring her children. The issue had been scheduled to come before the House Ethics Committee last month, but Glokkmann sidestepped that by repaying the money and issuing a formal apology for her “honest mistake.” So, even in the issue that she was likely guilty of, she came out smelling like a rose. In reading the article, I was drawn to a throw-away line mentioning that she and her husband had adopted or fostered eighteen children. Wow. I was stretching myself thin with a cat and a dog.
