Death Stalks Door County: A Dave Cubiak Door County Mystery

2. Monday

18 2 Mon­ day­ Fueled by too much cof­ fee and too lit­ tle sleep, Cu­ biak ­ headed south to Stur­ geon Bay. After a tor­ tured night, he’d risen early and ­ singed his lungs on a gruel­ ing ­ five-mile run. ­ Besides al­ co­ hol, which ­ helped him for­ get, phys­ i­ cal ac­ tiv­ ity was his only other de­ fense ­ against the re­ morse that de­ fined his life. He ­ needed to keep mov­ ing. At break­ fast he fin­ ished a stack of ­ Ruta’s pan­ cakes and then vol­ un­ teered to spend the day clear­ ing­ trails or ­ cutting fire­ wood. “Bath­ ard and Hal­ ver­ son are meet­ ing at ten at the ­ coroner’s of­ fice to go over the tower in­ ci­ dent. You need to be there,” John­ son said, push­ ing back from the ­ kitchen table. “Me? Why?” “’Cause Bath­ ard asked for some­ one from the park to come, and I­ choose you,” the super said as he ­ walked out the door. Sit­ u­ ated on the west­ ern edge of Door ­ County, the city of Stur­ geon Bay had grown up on ei­ ther side of a deep fin­ ger­ ling of water that bled off Green Bay into a long, nat­ u­ ral har­ bor. Stur­ geon Bay’s his­ toric geog­ ra­ phy ­ matched its con­ tem­ po­ rary dual per­ son­ al­ ity, with one seg­ ment of res­ i­ dents work­ ing the ship­ yards and the other serv­ ing the tour­ ists. 19 When Cu­ biak ­ turned off the high­ way, the in­ dus­ trial sites were al­ ready deep into the first shift while the tour­ ist shops re­ mained shut­ tered and dark. He drove mind­ lessly, well above the limit, and ­ braked hard to keep from slid­ ing past the stop sign by the Kozy Kafe, one of the few busi­ nesses in town that ca­ tered to both tour­ ists and lo­ cals. A ­ luxuryedition Mer­ cedes, li­ cense JDB-1, ­ hugged the curb out­ side the res­ tau­ rant. Cu­ biak rec­ og­ nized the car. The sil­ ver sedan be­ longed to J. Dugan Beck, a local big wheel and head of the Pe­ nin­ sula State Park cit­ i­ zens ad­ vi­ sory board. A few weeks after he ar­ rived on the pe­ nin­ sula Cu­ biak ­ learned that Beck had pres­ sured Otto John­ son into tak­ ing on an as­ sist­ ant. The­ ranger felt that made him in­ di­ rectly be­ holden to Beck for his job and he­ didn’t like that. For that mat­ ter, he ­ didn’t like the man, pe­ riod—too slick and pom­ pous. Cu­ biak ­ scanned the ­ café’s break­ fast crowd for a­ glimpse of ­ Beck’s dis­ tinc­ tive shock of gray hair but came up empty. He was half­ way ­ through the inter­ sec­ tion when he saw Beck ex­ it­ ing the of­ fice of the Door ­ County ­ Herald. Close be­ hind was ­ Herald ed­ i­ tor in chief Floyd Touhy. Cu­ biak ­ didn’t owe any­ thing to Touhy but he ­ didn’t like him ei­ ther. The ­ weekly news­ paper was sched­ uled to come out the next morn­ ing. With the ­ Fourth of July Fes­ ti­ val start­ ing in nine days, Cu­ biak could im­ a­ gine the dis­ cus­ sion that had taken place ­ between the two men. Touhy would sug­ gest that the un­ for­ tu­ nate do­ ings at Fal­ con Tower could not be ig­ nored in the name of jour­ na­ lis­ tic in­ teg­ rity, and Beck would con­ cur, while in­ sist­ ing that, for the sake of the ­ county’s rep­ u­ ta­ tion, the ac­ ci­ dent be men­ tioned in the con­ text of the ­ park’s long ­ safety­ record. Both men would agree to focus the ban­ ner head­ line on the up­ com­ ing fes­ ti­ val. If Cu­ biak were a bet­ ting man and he had any­ one to bet­ against, he’d lay a wager on it. The pros­ pect of the fes­ ti­ val, with thou­ sands of happy tour­ ists in­ vad­ ing the pe­ nin­ sula, de­ pressed Cu­ biak. He ­ doubted if there were some cor­ ner of the park where he could hide from the cheer­ ful fam­ i­ lies and manic joie de vivre...