A Toast to Murder Read online

  I opened up the bar later on Christmas, and Duncan hid away in my apartment for the duration of the evening and into the night, allowing us to share some rare but treasured time together. But in order to avoid detection in case anyone might be watching, he had slipped away in the wee hours. I awoke the next morning with his side of the bed empty and a note by my coffee machine that he’d call me later.

  After showering, dressing, and grabbing a quick bite to eat, I’d headed downstairs to help my oncoming staff get the bar open by eleven. Mal had shown up shortly after I opened the doors—an arrangement we had made the day before—and the two of us headed out shortly thereafter.

  So it was that I, armed with my tiny key and with Mal at my side, approached the Pabst Mansion just before noon on the day after Christmas. We purchased two tickets and began our tour at the stately front entrance. Given the size of the place, and the fact that I had no idea exactly what I was supposed to be looking for, I figured it could take us a couple of hours to go through it unless we got lucky early on. Complicating things was the cast I had on my left leg and the crutches I had to use to get around. I’d had a car accident on my way to the Public Market—the destination indicated by clues in the letter I had misinterpreted. That accident had broken bones in my leg and cost Gary Gunderson his life.

  We entered the mansion through its massive front door and found ourselves in a huge foyer complete with its own fireplace and an old-fashioned bell service center for calling servants.

  “Fascinating architecture,” Mal observed, studying the intricate wood carvings in the foyer and the painted coves in the adjoining dining and music rooms.

  “The architecture might be at its finest, but the décor is ostentatious,” I said.

  Mal shrugged. “That’s the way they did things back then. If you had money, you flaunted it. And at the time, this sort of intricately carved woodwork, along with richly painted ceilings and walls, were a sign of wealth.”

  The house, despite its overly ornate décor, was a beautiful specimen. There were hand-carved moldings and trim in every square inch of the place, and each room had its own theme and individual architecture. The doors separating the rooms were giant slabs of wood hung with humongous hinges, and each side of them sported a different carved design to match the décor of the room it was in once the door was closed.

  I managed well enough for a while, enjoying the details and historical anecdotes provided by the various guides positioned throughout the place, and observing the painstaking restorations being done by the historical preservation group that had saved the mansion from destruction in 1978. It was fortunate that the home had been bought and used as a residence for the archbishop by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. For sixty-seven years after the Pabst family moved out, it served as home to a host of archbishops, priests, and nuns, who left most of the original details in place, though they painted over much of the décor. Removal of that paint allowed the original details to be revealed in all their original, ostentatious glory, everything from hand-painted ceiling designs to silk wall coverings. It was a slow, arduous process that was still ongoing, and I imagined the restorers must have experienced a thrill each time they exposed some of the underlying treasures.

  Sensory overload is an ongoing, persistent threat for me. I’ve spent a lot of years and effort learning how to dampen the effects some environments have on me, and I’ve gotten relatively adept at it. I had to if I wanted to survive and stay sane. But there are still times when new places or experiences overwhelm me. As detailed and ornate as everything on our tour was, I managed well enough with my vivid and effluvious synesthetic responses until we got to the captain’s wife’s sitting room. Apparently, Frederick Pabst’s wife, Maria, had a close and fervent love affair with the color pink. Her sitting room was a pink nightmare that made me feel like I was trapped inside a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. For some reason, all that pink triggered a synesthetic overload of smells, visual manifestations, and tactile responses.

  “Too much,” I said, closing my eyes and rubbing at my temples. “It gives me a headache.”

  Mal put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m with you on this one,” he said, steering me in a different direction. “Fortunately, the room is roped off, so I doubt what we’re looking for is in there, unless the letter writer wants us to get arrested during this search.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” I grumbled. What we were looking for, we guessed, was some kind of small box that our key would fit.

  “Let’s move on,” Mal said. “I want to see more of this architecture.”

  “You shouldn’t be focusing on the architecture,” I said in a mildly chastising tone. I kept my voice low so I wouldn’t be overheard by the other people touring along with us. “Remember why we’re here.”

  “I know, I know,” Mal admitted. “But I can’t help myself. It’s hard to stay focused on the task at hand.”

  As we made our way through the various rooms, I found those words as applicable to me as they were to Mal. Maybe more so. It was a struggle to stay focused because of the many conversations going on around us, and the voluminous, colorful arrays of Christmas décor. Every minute or so, I reminded myself of our original goal and tried to look for something the key might fit, something that didn’t appear to belong, or if it did look like it belonged, something that could easily be lifted. Yes, I was resigned to becoming a thief if necessary, but I justified this decision by reminding myself I could be saving a life by stealing. And if I found the item I needed, odds were it would be something someone had slipped into the décor rather than something that originated with the house. I couldn’t be sure of this, however, which is why both Mal and I were wearing bulky coats and he was carrying a large satchel. Since the house was plenty warm despite the cold outside air, this didn’t make our task any less arduous. I was sweating beneath my coat, and this fact triggered reactions all its own.

  We tried to take our time and be as thorough as possible, and this garnered us some odd stares from other tourists and the guides who were stationed throughout the house whenever we looked under or behind furnishings. This also made us some of the slowest-moving people, and our lingering was eyed with suspicion. We hung for a long time in Frederick’s study as Mal admired the coffered ceiling with its dark, thick, oak beams framing painted German proverbs and the intricately carved, built-in cupboards, each with its own secret latch to release the door. At the start of the tour, we had been instructed not to touch things or take any photographs, but whenever I had a chance and the guides’ attention was focused elsewhere, I shifted things on shelves and tugged open drawers, looking for our objective.

  We struck out in the study and moved on to the second floor, where we toured bedrooms and baths. Mal got down on his hands and knees a couple of times to peek under furniture and beds while I stood by, serving as sentry. Though we tried not to be too obvious and to do our spying when other people weren’t around, there was enough of a crowd going through the place to make it impossible at times.

  A little over two hours later, we reached the end of the tour without finding anything that looked like something my key would work in. I felt a niggle of panic setting in.

  “There’s still the gift shop,” I said to Mal, as a guide directed us toward an exit that led into it. “Maybe it’s there.”

  “And if not?”

  “If not, I don’t know where to go or what to do next. Maybe we got it wrong again. Maybe we’ll have to hit up the theater.” My mind resisted as I thought about what would come next if we failed: the death of someone I knew. “It has to be at the gift shop,” I said with a tone of desperate hope.

  We entered the small area, which was attached to the house but was an add-on to the original structure. It had originally been built as an open-air pavilion for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago back in 1893, an expo where Captain Pabst, the beer baron, had had the honor of serving his beer and his beer only to the millions of attendees.

  Built fr
om polished terra-cotta and embellished with a beautiful art-glass dome, the pavilion served as a display of the Pabst family fortunes and Frederick’s dominance over his beer-producing empire. Once the fair had ended, Pabst had the structure dismantled and moved to the house, where it was rebuilt to serve as a summer conservatory. At some point, walls had been added to it, turning it into an enclosed room. Compared with the other areas of the house, this portion hadn’t been as lovingly and carefully restored. Peeling paint, hastily patched walls, and a general whitewash of everything set it apart.

  There were two people behind the cashier desk near the entrance: a man and a woman, both of whom looked to be well into their eighties. They were busy waiting on other customers, and Mal and I settled into the queue that had formed. Mal grabbed a set of Pabst coasters so it wouldn’t look too strange to be standing in line. When we finally made it up to the desk, the woman, who was sitting on a stool, looked up at me with a tired smile stamped on her age-etched face.

  “May I—” She paused, and squinted at me, and I saw a hint of recognition. My heart leapt. “Are you Mackenzie Dalton?” she asked.

  “I am.” I smiled, trying not to look as anxious as I felt.

  “I have something for you.” She slid off her stool and turned around, putting her back to us. It was curved and arthritic-looking beneath the cheery red Christmas sweater she was wearing. Slowly she tottered toward some shelves on the wall behind the desk, and with an audible creak, she bent over and removed a wrapped box from the bottom shelf. She shuffled her way back to us and handed me the wrapped package. “Someone left this for you the other day,” she said.

  “Was it a woman?” I asked. We had good reason to suspect that the letter writer might be Suzanne Collier, the very wealthy and influential wife of Tad Amundsen, one of my regular customers and a member of the Capone Club. Tad was a trophy husband, a ridiculously handsome man who had owned a small business as a CPA before he met Suzanne. Now he provided tax, financial, and stock market services for many of Suzanne’s wealthy friends and acquaintances. As such, he regularly rubbed elbows with most of Milwaukee’s elite, although he had remained the same down-to-earth, easygoing, relatively humble person he had been before he married Suzanne.

  The woman behind the desk shook her head. “No, it was a man, a young fellow. He said he had to leave town and knew you’d be coming here, and wanted to leave this for you. He gave me a picture of you, so I’d know you when you stopped by.”

  “What did he look like?” I asked her, hearing the impatient sigh of the woman in line behind me, who was undoubtedly eager to pay for her items and get out rather than listen to me interrogate the old woman.

  “He was average height,” the woman said. She paused, glanced at Mal standing beside me. “Shorter than him by a couple inches.” She looked away, gazing off into the distance. “Brown hair, brown eyes . . . nice smile,” she added, reminiscing with one of her own.

  “Did he give you his name?”

  The woman stared at me for a moment, brow furrowed. Then her face brightened. “Why yes—yes, he did,” she said, and my heart leapt again. “It was John Smith.”

  My heart sank. I felt certain John Smith wasn’t the man’s real name. “Thank you,” I said, and then Mal offered up his coasters, which the woman dutifully rang up and bagged.

  As soon as we were outside, I wanted to tear the package open. Mal must have sensed my eagerness because he put a staying hand on my arm. “We need to be mindful of any evidence,” he said, “even though we know there probably isn’t any.”

  We knew this because there had been no evidence of any sort on any of the other packages or letters—no fingerprints, no fibers, nothing that wasn’t supposed to be there other than a stray bit of pollen in the misinterpreted letter that may or may not have been included intentionally. The letter writer had been extremely careful.

  “I don’t want to go all the way back to the bar before I open it,” I told him. “What if it isn’t what we need? What if it’s just another clue to something else here on the property?”

  Mal frowned at this, thought a second or two, and nodded. “Then we’ll open it in the car. I have some stuff in the trunk we can use to conserve evidence if need be.”

  It was a compromise, a reasonable one, I felt. Mal’s car was parked several blocks away, so it meant a hike—not my favorite thing to do these days, thanks to my crutches and cast—but at least it was closer to the Pabst Mansion than my bar in the event we had to return.

  The sidewalks were clear of the recent snowfall, making it easy going, but it was bitterly cold outside, with tiny but fierce tendrils of icy wind that snaked their way under our coats, down our collars, and through our pants. My cheeks were burning from the wind chill by the time we reached the car. Ironically, the stinging in my cheeks triggered waves in the air like one might see rising from the road on a very hot day. The cold on my skin made my mouth taste tart.

  I settled into the passenger side of the front seat while Mal went around to the trunk and removed several paper bags, a box of latex gloves, and a roll of tape. We were wearing winter gloves already, and by the time he climbed into the driver’s seat, I already had the outer wrapping on the box loosened and had slid the box out. I handed Mal the paper, and he put it inside a large brown paper bag, folding the top of the bag over.

  As Mal started the car, the heater came on full blast, meaning there was likely to be some fiber or dust contamination. Mal turned the blower down, as much because it was only spewing cold air at the moment as because he was trying to minimize contamination.

  The box I held was plain cardboard with no markings, the kind you can buy at any shipping or mailbox store. It was closed with a single strip of tape down the middle of both the top and the bottom, though the bottom tape was a paper type, whereas the top piece was plastic. After examining it, Mal flipped the box over, reached over to his glovebox, removed a screwdriver, and opened the box on the bottom where the two flaps of cardboard met.

  “The type of tape used to seal this thing closed on top is great at picking up fibers and fingerprints, so the less we disturb it the better,” he explained. He held the box out to me. “Be careful.”

  I was. I raised the cardboard flaps to reveal a second, smaller, white box. Gently, I removed it and turned it right side up. It had a shoe box type lid on it that wasn’t taped closed, and like the outer box, it had no markings on it. I removed the lid and saw yet another, smaller box, this one made of wood. After handing the shoe box lid to Mal, who examined it closely before setting it inside the outer box, I reached in and lifted up the smaller box.

  I held it over the shoe box and examined it. It was a decorative wooden box covered in a variety of geometric designs, and I was disappointed—and more than a little worried—to see there was no locking device on it. In fact, I couldn’t see any obvious opening.

  “It’s a puzzle box,” Mal said. “I got one of those years ago as a birthday gift. They’re intricately carved so that the seams are virtually invisible. In order to open it, you have to figure out which parts of it move and in what direction and order.”

  I removed my gloves and turned the box over in my hands, studying it.

  “You should keep your gloves on,” Mal chastised. “There might be fingerprints.”

  I shot him a look of skepticism. “You know as well as I do that there won’t be,” I said. “Whoever is behind this has been far too careful. I need to be able to feel it without the gloves in order to figure it out. Besides, if we do get lucky and find any prints, mine can simply be eliminated, right?”

  Mal frowned but said nothing more on the matter. Instead, he went back to discussing the box. “These types of boxes can be very difficult to open, depending on the number of moves involved. Some of them open with only three or four moves. Others take ten or more. Maybe we should take it back to the bar and saw it open, because it could take forever to figure . . .”

  His voice tapered off as I slid a small panel on
one side a half inch or so.

  “Wow,” Mal said with a grudging look of admiration. “That was lucky.”

  “Not really,” I said, running my fingers lightly over the surface and then sliding another panel. “I can see and feel the subtle differences in the structure.” I found a third panel and pushed it up. Turning the box over each time I moved a section, I could sense the piece that had to move next. “This is kind of fun,” I said, moving two more sections. Three moves later, the box opened, revealing yet another smaller box inside. This one was metal with inlaid glass, and with a sigh of relief, I noticed it had a locking mechanism.

  “You are freaking amazing,” Mal said. “And a little scary,” he added with a frown.

  “This is easy for me,” I said. I put my gloves back on and lifted out the smaller box. “This is one of those times when my extra-sensitive senses come in handy.”

  I fished the tiny key I’d been carrying out of my pants pocket and inserted it into the lock on the metal box. With a quarter turn, the lid sprang open, revealing a folded piece of paper inside.

  “Don’t take it out yet,” Mal cautioned. “Let’s get it back to the bar.”

  I nodded, familiar by now with the necessary precautions we had to take to ensure we captured any trace evidence or minute clues that might be inside the box or within the folds of the paper. Granted, we had already risked any trace evidence by simply opening the boxes and by my handling of the puzzle box without gloves. But some of the clues we’d encountered in the past had been tiny—a flower petal, a bit of pollen—and I didn’t want to risk missing a clue. I closed the lid on the box and slipped the key back into my pocket. Then I nested the little box back inside the puzzle box and slid the panels back into their original positions. Once I set this in the shoe box, Mal handed me the lid. I replaced it and then handed it all to him. He put it inside the larger outer box and then handed it all back to me.