Dead Man Below Deck

Chapter 10. The Old Guy at the Burger Joint

It was raining on Tuesday morning, so I drove to the convenience store. The Democratic convention was still the big news item. The nomination was locked up by John Kerry, so the whole thing was theater. Even so, the press seemed to think it was important for reasons that escaped me.

My computing that morning focused on cancer. Dr. Lee, an oncologist, was interested in why some people with terminal cancer chose not to be resuscitated while others preferred that everything possible be done for them. My opinion was that when you were a goner, you might as well check out. Interestingly, our survey data showed that the closer to death the patients were, the more likely they were to want heroic efforts to keep them around. Maybe my own attitude would change if I was at death’s door. I hoped I would be more consistent than that, but you never could tell, could you? And that was Dr. Lee’s point: people changed their minds and doctors should listen to what patients preferred in extremis, not what they originally thought they would prefer.

With these morose thoughts in my head, turning off the computer at noon was not difficult. Betty was about to go out for lunch with her cousin Wendy. Wendy worked at the Fort Atkinson hospital. She was a dietitian.

“Hey, Jorgenson called this morning,” I told her. “He invited me over to the Club for drinks this afternoon.”

“That’s nice. It’s a boy’s thing, I assume.”

“Yep. No girls allowed.”

“I didn’t want to go anyway.”

“Well, you can’t even if you want to.”

“You couldn’t make me.”

We grinned at each other. “Oh,” she said. “Wendy invited us to a church supper tomorrow evening. I told her I would check with you.”

Wendy and her family were members of some kind of bible church. I hesitated.

“You don’t want to go, do you?”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Really?”

“Really.” This would be an opportunity to probe the secrets of the bible thumpers. It might help me understand the Fist of God crowd.

Cranking up the chariot, I headed over to McDonald’s to meet my supervising secret service agent. While I was nursing a cup of coffee in my usual spot, a smiling fellow whom I had never met sat down across from me.

“Thought I better introduce myself,” he said, “since we are neighbors. I’m Skip Cavanaugh.”

“Neighbors? Oh, you must have the unit right next to ours. Nice ta meetcha.”

We shook hands. Cavanaugh appeared to be in his sixties. He was a dapper fellow, wearing Dockers, a nice pair of shoes, a sport shirt, and a fishing hat.

“We don’t make too much noise for you, I hope?”

He smiled at that. “No problem there.”

“Oh, by the way, I have a router for my internet connection. You might be able to get a free connection since you are right next door.” I was trying to be neighborly in my own geeky way.

This amused him. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said with a broad smile.

“You’re a fisherman, I guess. We saw your boat parked by your garage.”

“Yes indeed,” he said. “I get out whenever I can.”

“Lived around here long?”

“No. I just retired. Used to be in banking. Moved here from Madison.”

He seemed to be a nice fellow, easy to talk with and interested in everything. Before long I was telling him about the mystery of the corpse. I even spilled the beans about the mysterious deposit into my account, something I still had not confessed to Betty. I figured since he was a banker he might have some useful ideas about what to do with that situation.

Cavanaugh thought about it for a few minutes, stirring his cream into his coffee thoughtfully. “Well,” he said. “The first question is, of course, how did they get your account number? Your bank has your account number, so, most likely, they made an error. If so, then they will figure it out eventually. When that happens, they will take it back. So you better not spend it.”

That seemed like good advice. He was more interested in the dead body. I could not give him any theories about why the murder was committed or why the body was placed under my deck.

“What do think might be going on with that?” I asked him.

Skip grinned. “Bankers always think everything can be traced back to money,” he said.  “Somebody is protecting money or trying to get more.”

“How does killing somebody help you get or keep money?”

“Look at it this way,” he explained. “What might you expect would be the consequences of this death?”

We mulled that over for a minute when an idea struck me. “A dead body could slow down sales of the condos, don’t you think?”

“Sure it could. Buyers might be put off by that. And there have been no new sales since it happened.”

“Why would somebody want to derail the development?”

Cavanaugh had an explanation for that one. “These small towns often have a strong resistance to economic development. Local folks are concerned that the quality of life they have always enjoyed will go downhill. Traffic increases, crime waves hit, prices go up. Some places have passed strict ordinances to make it hard for developers because they don’t want village life to change.”

This made him chuckle. “When I was in banking, I hated that attitude. Now that I’m retired, I am a lot more sympathetic to the local yocals. After all, I am one.”

It was a pleasant chat, but both of us were ready to move on with our day’s activities. We split up and I mounted my trusty steed to head for home.

Before I could go, however, a sedan pulled up next to me. My old friends, detectives Broder and Schmidt, leaped out and stood on either side of me. This looked ominous.

“Still in town I see,” said Broder.

“Yes sir.”

“That’s good because we have some concerns that we need to discuss with you.”

“Oh? What’s up?”

“There’s been another murder.”

“No kidding. Who?”

Schmidt leaned over toward me. “Don’t play dumb with us,” she snarled.

Now I was getting nervous. “Why would you think it had anything to do with me?”

“Because the stiff is a friend of yours, fella by the name of Johnson. You were seen talking to him right here a few days ago.”

This shook me up pretty badly and the cops noticed my reaction.

“What can you tell us about it?” Broder asked me.

“Well, it’s kind of a long story.” They waited with blank stares. “It’s like this. Johnson was a secret service agent. Somebody from this area was threatening a politician and he wanted me to keep my ears open.”

Their faces showed frank disbelief. “You don’t expect us to swallow that cockamamie story, do you?” Schmidt’s irritability was straining her ability to control it.

“It’s true.”

“Yeah and maybe the real truth is that you killed him.”

“That’s crazy! Why in hell would I want to do that? I had no reason to want to kill him!”

“Really? We figured you had lots of reasons.” Broder was giving me the once-over like I was already convicted and sentenced. “Like maybe a hundred thousand reasons.”

“What?” Then it hit me. One hundred thousand reasons. Uh oh.

“We will be talking about this with you soon. Don’t leave town.” Broder was about as menacing as anybody could be without actually attacking you.

My ride back to the condo was a blur. How did they find out about the money? I had to admit, now that they knew about it, they had to think it looked suspicious. How was I going to explain why I suddenly had that big wad of cash? Damn. What a mess.