A Murder in Mundelein

By Mike Larson

Our father is gone. And as for Monica, if she is out there somewhere, I can only imagine how she must have been haunted all along, maybe even daily, by all of this.

Benjamin and I, I dont believe either of us has any burning desire to find Monica and bring her to justice. Deep down, I guess I think that she probably has served her life sentence for her crimes several times over mental anguish that may have grown even beyond what I might imagine.

For now, Benjamin and I just plan to move on, to continue our lives as we have been living them. We will try.

I cannot speak for both of us, of course. But for me, the greatest difficulty will be learning to live with the legacy of my father. As I look back, I fear, it may be a diminished legacy.

Its always difficult when you first realize that someone you idolize might be mortal after all.

I am haunted by my father.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491756997

Mike Larson

Michael Larson spent most of his life in Mankato, Minn., first as a newspaper editor and then as a professor of journalism. As a journalist, he received a number of awards for in-depth reporting and writing. Today he teaches journalism classes at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

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Copyright © 2015 Mike Larson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-5698-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5700-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5699-7 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 01/08/2015

Contents

Prologue

Prologue – Chapter 1

The Interview

The Interview – Chapter 1

The Interview – Chapter 2

The Sun

The Sun – Chapter 1

The Sun – Chapter 2

The Sun – Chapter 3

The Sun – Chapter 4

The Sun – Chapter 5

The Sun – Chapter 6

The Sun – Chapter 7

The Sun – Chapter 8

The Affair

The Affair – Chapter 1

The Affair – Chapter 2

The Affair – Chapter 3

The Affair – Chapter 4

The Affair – Chapter 5

The Affair – Chapter 6

The Abyss

The Abyss – Chapter 1

The Abyss – Chapter 2

The Abyss – Chapter 3

The Abyss – Chapter 4

The Abyss – Chapter 5

The Abyss – Chapter 6

The Abyss – Chapter 7

Epilogue

Epilogue – Chapter 1

The author wishes to thank Cynthia Wall, Char Reid, Barbara Silvagni, Monica Peterson and Lynn Closway for their most generous help in producing this novel. All of these writers read the original manuscript and all of them made suggestions for improvements. The author is deeply indebted to them for their contributions.

PROLOGUE

Prologue – Chapter 1

Y ou can call me Charles. Or you can call me Doctor Charles. I don’t push the doctor part, even though I labored hard to work my way through the University of Minnesota, the University of Minnesota Medical School, my residency at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and a sports medicine fellowship in Minneapolis. It’s not comfortable for me to boast about it. My wife once said, The Wilson boys aren’t very big on talking of their own accomplishments, are they? My brother, Benjamin, wouldn’t do it. My father wouldn’t do it, either.

UNC had been my second choice for residency, behind the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, but we ended up with a match when North Carolina placed me first. I can still remember calling my father, making him guess where I might be going. Then I couldn’t control my excitement anymore, and I blurted out, I’m gonna be a Tar Heel! A pretty nice fit for a huge Michael Jordan fan.

I just tell you this so you know some of my background – and so you know I am not a writer. So please do not hold me to those high standards of prose you would expect from a Defoe or a Dickens or a Fielding – or even an Oscar Wilde.

As I take up my pen to write this, I am reminded of Daphne du Maurier’s words in her classic Rebecca, when she began, Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited.

I don’t mean to compare Grandwood Park in northern Illinois to Manderley. But I thought of Grandwood Park again last night. We lived there for three years – our father and our mother, and me and Benjamin. It’s in Grandwood Park where we lived in a light-pink aluminum-sided two-story house that had been built atop a crawl space for a basement. Our property spread behind that pink house in a pie-shaped slice sloping down to a small creek, a creek that crept closer to us as it widened into a shallow pond every spring and summer.

It’s in this pink house where our mother was murdered – 30 years ago, when I was just 4 years old and Benjamin was barely 2.

I had not thought of Grandwood Park for a long time, until last week when our father died. The last time we had visited Grandwood Park, everything had changed. Like Manderley. Everything had grown up – the small trees had matured, the shrubbery had thickened, the neighboring homes had been remodeled or deteriorated. The willow tree in our backyard had grown out of control, and it now nearly blocked the view of the pond from the picture window in the four-season porch addition just off of our family room. The peach tree in our back yard, which provided succulent fruit for us for the three years we lived there, had been removed, probably after a killing winter frost. Our driveway and the lawn were unkempt, not the neat, manicured grass our mother had nurtured while we lived there. When we went back for a visit, neighbors needed to give us directions to help us find the pink house, now faded and in some disrepair.

I’m saddened that the peach tree no longer stands. The memory of that peach tree is almost a religious experience for me. This is strange, I know, because I don’t consider myself overly religious. The first time we realized we had a peach tree was early during our first summer in Illinois. Both mother and father thought it was an apple tree. Coming from a colder climate in Minnesota, they could hardly imagine peaches growing on that tree. Dad discovered the peaches when he noticed birds collecting in the tree, pecking their way into the juicy fruit. He chased the birds and picked all the peaches, placing them carefully into a woven straw basket. I remember eating some of the large, fresh peaches right away. Mother used the rest to make us my first peach pie. Delicious, almost sinful.

This always makes me think of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, where Christ says, Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in the barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? So God, unbeknownst to us, had given us a peach tree. Well, to the birds first – and then us. Those thoughts have always left me with a cozy, warm feeling, knowing that dad would always take care of us.

It’s difficult to know what we remember as children. But I think I remember, as a 4- and 5-year-old, spending my summers in our back yard, walking down to the pond and watching fishermen along the shore squeeze squirming night crawlers onto their hooks in their quest for bullheads and catfish. I usually carried a little plastic bucket with some pond water in it. Every so often, a fisherman would let me have one of his fish, and I would carry it in my pail, occasionally setting down my pail to watch the fish flop around in the water. When Benjamin began following me down to the pond, mother asked us to stay in our own backyard, and to stay away from the water. Benjamin was only 2, and even though the pond was less than 3 feet deep at the shoreline, mother worried greatly that one of us might fall in and not be able to struggle out again.

It’s also in Lake County where, father told me, I almost did drown. Mother had brought me to the municipal pool in Libertyville. I loved adventure. I loved hurtling down slides. Mother had paid my way into the pool area, which was surrounded by a tall galvanized-wire fence. Mother decided to sit on a picnic table outside that fence, and she watched me from there. Which should have been fine, because lifeguards sat along all four sides of the pool. But when I crawled up the steps to the top of the slide, I didn’t realize the slide would send me flying into water over my head. Mother watched me go down the slide, but she never saw me surface. When I didn’t emerge, mother began calling to the lifeguard. Then she began crawling right up that wire fence, and she was about halfway up, screaming, when one of the lifeguards finally spotted her. The lifeguard looked toward the slide, saw me beneath the surface, jumped in for me and pulled me out of the pool. He had me stay reclined for a few minutes, and he may have had me spit some water out of my mouth. But I think a few coughs cleared my windpipe. It probably was not that big a deal, but my father’s description of that close call remains vivid in my memory.