Mystic Secrets: Death Visits the Mystic Drawbridge

By Ann Hallum

Leslie Leonard meets Dr. Gerard Martinson at a creative writers’ conference where both escape their professions and embrace a shared literary avocation. Their short-term attraction at the conference continues as they celebrate together Thanksgiving in Manhattan and Christmas in Mystic, Connecticut, where Gerard makes his home. No longer able to deny their romantic feelings, once in Mystic, they embark on a heated love affair soon interrupted by a ghoulish murder in the town’s center. The murder jars the tranquil historic village with its charming drawbridge and sailing ships. Imagine the lovers’ surprise when they realize each may share a tenuous connection to the victim.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jun 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483431024

Book preview

situations.

Prologue

Mystic, Connecticut

June 2003

The two men stood in the spacious foyer of Gerard Martinson’s Mystic condominium. Dr. Martinson towered over his guest, Kim Hyang Woo. They had not met before this arranged encounter, and each was silently evaluating the possible outcome.

It was an exquisite gallery-like setting for Martinson’s collections of Korean antiquities, some mounted in graceful wall-niche arrangements, others dwelling on teak shelves. An imposing, magnificent Buddha figure, brushed with gilt, reached up to the ceiling at the far end of the gallery and watched silently over the scene.

Celadon pots and jars, lustrous in the soft glow surrounding their blue-green glazes, imparted a luminous splendor to the displays aligned in their museum exhibits. Creamy white pots and white jars decorated with cobalt blue and copper-red designs tried to compete.

The men stood closely together in front of a glass-encased treasure, a golden-crown tomb relic. Delicate spangles of gold and jade pendant teardrops, attached by gold filigrees, dangled from the piece.

Kim Hyang Woo smiled in appreciation of what he was seeing before him.

The crown is unique, Dr. Martinson. Your father was fortunate—and wise, I might add, to acquire it. The burial mounds of the Schilla tombs have given us such rich accessories. So many of them have been removed from Korea, awakened from long sleeps since their burials in the sixth century so many hundreds of years ago. He paused.

Perhaps the crown yearns for its real home? the South Korean gentleman chided, looking up at Gerard Martinson gently. Gerard returned his glance.

Woo paused thoughtfully. Then, turning to face Gerard Martinson directly, he discarded English and spoke in his native Korean.

Dr. Martinson, I am amazed by what I see here, as I’m sure others competing for your treasures would be. Perhaps you don’t fully realize the forces we are dealing with. Or the urgency of the situation.

"Perhaps I don’t. You see, I’m a scientist. I’ve been trained to study data and form conclusions carefully from facts, not emotions. Although, granted, emotions can sometimes augment or even trump the data.

My time is limited. I’ll be going back this summer to my university in the Midwest for a short break. I want to research more thoroughly the value of the collections, which will take some time. And later this fall I’ll be making a couple of prolonged trips to Europe on company business.

Gerard finished up his points speaking in Korean to make sure his visitor understood his message.

I can’t give you a conclusive answer to all this right now, Woo. Will another nine months or so matter in the scheme of the years of their long journeys? He meant to put a lighter spin onto a weighty situation, but he saw from the strained expression on Woo’s face that he obviously couldn’t easily relate to this touch of levity. Gerard Martinson hesitated and then added, I won’t be able to reach any decision until early spring. I’ll need your understanding and patience in this. You see, I don’t yet know if I shall keep the collections to enjoy, or sell privately, or want to consider your country’s offer.

Kim Hyang Woo stepped back from their closeness without commenting. He did not smile but nodded gently and then replied. Ah, yes, then we’ll await your decision. Please understand I am excited by all I see here, Dr. Martinson. But perhaps patience will demand too high a price. He did not wait for any comment before continuing. I am a gambler. And I feel the odds against you in this venture may be stacked. You must not lose control. He waved his right hand, perhaps signaling the conversation was over. It was an inscrutable gesture.

Gerard Martinson laughed softly. I’ve heard all this before in connection with my research work. It may not be probable, but it is possible to beat odds, even when they’re stacked. I really want to do it my way. He felt the conversation had ended.

Let’s move into the library. I’ll show you photos of the other pieces still in storage in Seoul. He led his visitor out of the gallery into his living areas.

When their meeting was over, Gerard escorted Kim Hyang Woo to his limousine waiting in the courtyard of the condominium. Both men were seemingly pleased with this introductory meeting that had been arranged by Woo through an antiquities dealer in Manhattan, well known to both of them. Their polite farewells covered undisclosed thoughts but carried overtones of optimism for meeting again in the not too distant future.

Woo settled into the car that would take him on to Ledyard, Connecticut, and the Foxwoods Resort Casino. He looked forward to further negotiations with Martinson. At their next meeting, he would suggest Martinson take some firm steps toward the end result Woo wanted.

He would keep his excitement about the collections he had just seen from his wife, Lili Mei Ling Woo. He knew she was not on his side in the ethical matters of business. Her birth family made up some of those forces he had warned Gerard Martinson about.

He smiled slightly, because he loved his wife and still thought of her as the piquant Chinese girl he had pursued and won against many odds. Now both of them were older and wiser. They had agreed to disagree. In essence, they had a silent pact that she would, as his wife, respect his views about not joining her brothers in their family businesses. Ruthless businesses, Woo thought, pursuing illegal gains from trade transactions, often dealing in contraband antiquities.

In recent years, Woo had retreated into his gambling pleasures and his own business deals. He knew he had lost the romance and the love of his wife. Now he wanted to win approvals from his countrymen and recapture a personal pride.

Part I

July 2003

1

Manhattan in July was steamy. Too hot, Leslie thought, to endure much longer. Especially since she knew the end was in sight. She’d be out of there in a couple of weeks.

Her planned escape route from New York City was to Iowa City, Iowa, a place she’d never been and a place she suspected would be as hot or hotter. But certainly it would be less of a pressure cooker.

The idea of going off for a week to the University of Iowa for a writers’ conference was probably an unusual choice for her escape, she admitted, even though it had seemed logical when she made the reservation.

Leslie Leonard had wanted to write seriously for a long time. The journals she’d retreated into over the past years to record private thoughts and observations had accumulated. The stories she had mined from them had started to intrude and demand exposure. So she’d go for it and go off to Iowa, where no one knew she was a damned good interior designer in New York. There she could mingle with other wannabe writers and find out if her written work was publishable. She’d already worked her way through chapters of a novel manuscript that included romanticized elements of her own life and the sometimes hilarious, yet often somber, tales out of her design career.

Courtland Bakker, her beloved design partner, understood almost everything about Leslie. He had encouraged her ambitions and taught her all he knew about room design and decoration after he hired her out of Parsons School of Design a dozen years ago. He became her mentor and, although a taskmaster at times, seemed to Leslie more often a caring avuncular figure.

He had listened to her and guided her with as much wisdom and advice as he was capable of giving. In late-night sessions at their studio as they put together design schemes, they had discussed almost everything, from art history to politics, finance, and even sexuality. All part of the design process, Leslie, he was fond of saying.

Rather than stir up premature fears in clients that she might cause embarrassments by writing expositions on paper or in a blog, Leslie passed off her upcoming trip to Iowa as a family reunion, perhaps to include a watercolor rendering class. But there was no family in Iowa. In fact, Leslie was bereft of relatives. Her father had walked out early on family life, and her mother had died sooner than she deserved. She had no siblings.

She had not yet married nor had children. Her design work was the most important part of her life—until the writing bug started biting. Only her closest friend, Kitty, and Courtland Bakker knew why Leslie was going to Iowa City. Courtland did not quite understand it, but he realized it was important to her and for that reason gave her his blessing.

And so it happened that Leslie Leonard and Gerard Martinson met in late July at the university where each had come for the weeklong summer writing festival, sponsored by the famed University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

The conference couldn’t guarantee success as a writer. But as workshop literature stated, it might teach them a few things and put them into a community where they could mingle with other neophyte writers and, perhaps more importantly, be critiqued by published writers as well as by peer groups of classmates.

Their lecture rooms were adjacent, and Leslie and Gerard had noticed each other as the groups coalesced during breaks that first day. Both of them were tall, carrying themselves well, standing out in the crowd of anxious participants as their eyes met and sent undeniable signals that they would like to meet. At the evening lecture, appropriately on the subject of the agony and the ecstasy of getting a first book published, they were attracted like moths to a flame. They began a conversation and learned they both lived in the Northeast. Mentioning their hopes of going for a run along the river before breakfast, they agreed they’d like to meet for morning runs while there.

Housing was up to participants. Most were staying on campus in dormitory rooms vacated by students for the summer, taking meals in the cafeteria or local eateries. Lively conversations centered around their own writings, old and new famous writers, and bits of gossip about their faculty and fellow participants.

Leslie enjoyed staying on campus in the spare, small room assigned to her. She pronounced it a writer’s room, almost monastic in feeling, adorned with her laptop and the few belongings she had brought with her, including an antique Paisley shawl to throw over a dorm chair, adding swirls of color to the monochromatic setting.

The layout of the university soothed her, resting beside the meandering Iowa River, with its contrast of old brick and the looming new constructions amid spreading landscapes under green tree canopies. It gave a sense of the history of the place and pointed to bold, new directions being taken.

Leslie appreciated that Gerard Martinson was definitely a part of the laid back yet stimulating atmosphere. She admired this sometimes serious man, seemingly different from New York men she’d known. As the week progressed, she noticed his mindfulness and helpfulness to her and others around them as he might guide Leslie and a few classmates to a choice table for lunch in the cafeteria. He was apt to encourage a disgruntled writer to rise above a critique or to compliment another on what he believed a well-considered plot.

She was aware of a simmering physical attraction to him. It began with his noticeable good looks. She’d heard him described by two wannabes lingering at the mirror of the community restroom as that hot scientist. But for her, mostly it was his manner that was attractive. He had about him a decidedly romantic air, especially when he laughed and his warm voice spilled out, coaxing her toward him. She felt as though he were touching her, even though he wasn’t. A kind of pleasing sensation crept through her when she was around him.

He called her Les.

I’m a scientist, Les. Got my PhD in chemistry right here, and I have a soft spot in my heart for the place. Sure, I’m a true Hawkeye! But it goes beyond sports mania here. It’s really a hotbed of intrigue, in a true sense of the words. There’s real accomplishment in the arts and sciences, you know. A smile traveled his face.

That it’s a hotbed of intrigue wasn’t spelled out in the brochures I got. But tell me, why are you really here? she asked.

"Actually, I came along a couple of days early because I wanted to take a closer look at some of the research the university is doing. Taking advantage of the writing workshop appealed to me as a real getaway from my professional world. My fiction writing efforts are a hobby of sorts, a diversion from scientific work. I’m not planning to change careers! The stories I write are short and are based mostly on the memory of times I spent in South Korea during my middle years, visiting with my father who was living there.

I’ve written, or perhaps I should say ‘scribbled,’ quite a few of these stories, from time to time sending them out to small literary magazines and presses. He laughed. They come right back to me. Often polite notes accompany them, but more often there’s not a word of encouragement or a reason for rejection. So while I’m in the neighborhood, I decided to do the workshop to see if I have a fiction writer’s talent. I do very well with scientific papers and grant writing. Perhaps I should just stick to that?

Well, that makes sense. But I’d like to read one of your stories.

She liked the sort of slight formality Gerard had in his manner and often in his speech, belied by his smile and penetrating eyes.

They browsed the Prairie Lights bookstore together and took in an evening poetry reading. He asked her to photograph him, dwarfed among the tall columns as he stood at the entrance to the original brick sciences building. Emblazoned above the doorway was the word Chemistry spelled out in fading gilt letters.

For my memories, Les. Thanks!

Tuesday evening he showed up with two tickets to a summer drama production, pulling her across the footbridge to the theater building. During intermission, he turned to her in his particular way, as though he was going to say something profound.

Have you noticed we sort of resemble each other? We’re tall, dark, and good-lookin’. At least you are, I observed on our run this morning.

But you don’t have bangs, and your eye color doesn’t match mine.

Thank God. I can’t imagine my life if I had aquamarine eyes and a hairdo.

Blue-green, it says on my passport.

Well, aquamarine is the transparent beryl, if you wish. ‘Blue-green’ is a color variant of the seawater designation. It could also be ‘green-blue’ or …

Spoken with scientific authority, I guess. I give up.

He was looking at her intently. "You know, your eyes are incredibly beautiful. Maybe more interesting than my coming back here, what brought you to the heartland of America?"

She skipped past his compliment. I’ve been a reader all my life. I started writing down some of my own thoughts years ago. They helped me to understand things going on in my life. Last year, the urge to do something with the writing in a professional way pushed through. I realized I could continue to do journals up the ying-yang, but it was time to organize the material. It’s evolving into a light romantic novel.

And why come here to Iowa?

I’d never been to the Midwest, just flown over it, but had read about the writers’ workshop over the years. I’m glad they take the romantic novel seriously. Some of our best classic fiction is romantic––not that I think I’m capable of writing the great American literary novel. But neither do I intend to write a sexually sizzling novel. Maybe I’m not qualified to write that either. She smiled. Why is it that mentioning writing a romance equates to bodice-ripper in people’s minds?

She laughed fully, not at all apologetically, making it clear she had a sense of humor about it. And I won’t consider I’m a serious writer until I publish. That’s why I’m here, and I’m a little bit nervous about it. She found herself sharing thoughts with him that she hadn’t voiced to others.

He had been amused by her discourse, but his next comment was serious.

"It’s an added tragic element to the story, isn’t it, that takes a romance into the serious, classical turn? Like Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Will yours take it there?"

She shrugged. I don’t think so. We’ll have to wait and see. Sometimes novels seek directions of their own as they progress or when their center of attention changes. At least that’s what I’ve learned this week. Mysterious, isn’t it?

Sure is. I’m just hoping the spirits of Wallace Stegner and some of the other writers who graced this place early on will come around and haunt us.

Gerard told her on their last day of classes that his final submission story to his leader had received applause when parts of it were read aloud. He wanted to celebrate and suggested they go off together for dinner alone, dodging the groups after the farewell cocktail.

Some of the research guys from the Chemistry Department treated me to a memorable dinner of barbecued pork ribs after the day we’d spent together hashing over some of their research projects. Pork is Iowa’s gift to modern mankind, you know. Can I tempt you?

Lead on, my friend.

At a corner table in the small family restaurant on the edge of the campus, they hoisted a beer to each other’s literary success. Gerard suggested they meet soon, perhaps in New York City. But he wanted in the meantime to read her manuscript, even partially, he confessed. In turn, he handed Leslie a slim, ring-bound notebook of his stories.

Don’t say no. He was looking at her earnestly. Go through them. At least a few of them? Leslie nodded and smiled warmly at him, carefully taking the notebook and tucking it behind her purse.

They walked through the campus that night, settling finally on the steps of the Old Capital Building, not wanting to call it a day. The night was warm and still. The scent around them was summer’s perfume, the only noise a silky hum of small insects. She felt his arm