The Chornbrook Mysteries Book Four The Oyster and the Fisherman

By George Chornbrook

The road map of events in Book Four of the Chornbrook Mysteries will meander from East Coast to Cancun, then back to New Hampshire and California, only to return later to New York via New Jersey. After a short break, the reader will have an opportunity to jump over the pond to London, then to Paris, come back to London and travel by rail to Edinburgh, take a flight for Vienna, spend a summer in a small village in Italy, and then go back to Connecticut for a Thanksgiving dinner with four murders in the menu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887633794

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

(M12) The East Coast Blues

(M28) The Oyster and the Fisherman

(M35) The Mystery of the Second Shot

(M41) The Renovation in the Hotel Palmira

(M42) A Fish in Troubled Waters

(M43) A Horse of Another Color

(M44) The One-Way Ticket

(M46) The Midnight Lunch

(M47) That Thursday When the Landscaper Didn't Come

(M48) The Accidental Murders

(M59) The Thanksgiving Dinner Mystery

About the Author

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The Chornbrook Mysteries Book Four

The Oyster and the Fisherman and Other Stories

George Chornbrook

Copyright © 2023 George Chornbrook

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2023

Disclaimer: These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 979-8-88763-378-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88763-379-4 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

To Elena and Felix Kovner,

without whose enormous help

at the most difficult time for our family

these books would never have been written

Еленe и Феликсу Ковнер,

без чьей огромной помощи

в самое трудное для нашей семьи время

эти книги никогда бы не были написаны

(M12) The East Coast Blues

Day One

Brooklyn, New York

In the beginning, there was a word. Then another word. And another. Then a shot. As a result, there was a dead body. End of a chapter.

It would be impossible now to find out who said that first word. Actually, no one had even heard the shot. When a person collapsed, the first thought was about a heart attack, and only a small red spot on the side of his jacket proved the heart attack theory wrong.

There were just too many people in the room where the celebration of the silver jubilee of Marta Dubrovin and Peter Zhukovsky took place.

It meant that it was twenty-five years ago when they said I do, and they did it at least for these twenty-five years. That time, Marta Dubrovin was twenty-five years old; Peter Zhukovsky was twenty-seven years old, two years and three months older, to be exact.

She worked as a secretary for a lawyer, and he was an engineer in an electric company. It happened that it was a case of missing money in the company, and the company invited a lawyer from the law firm where Marta works as a secretary. The lawyer found the money and the culprit, and Peter found a wife. Fair enough.

Now there were more Zhukovskys: two daughters and a son, daughters Malvina (twenty-four), Corinna (twenty-two), and son Vernon (eighteen).

The celebration was in the Tuscan Roadhouse, and Marta looked gorgeous in a long silver dress and white elbow-length gloves of Italian kidskin leather and silk, with Peter at her side in a tuxedo with white bow tie.

There was a professional photographer with a tripod and two cameras, one on the tripod and another in his hands as he made tours between the tables, snapping multiple shots.

The party started promptly at noon, and the shot was fired at 12:33 p.m.

It was a total of thirty people at the party and one dead body.

Detective Davis from the Brooklyn PD did not like that arithmetic. He would prefer thirty-one people and zero bodies, but life had its own logic.

Now he had to solve the equation: whodunit or, figuratively speaking, 29 + X = 1 (dead).

The first question was about who that man was.

The body belonged to a man in his forties, above average height and weight, dressed in a gray double-breasted suit.

His face had Slavic cheekbones, but after the Napoleonic Wars, half of Europe acquired Slavic cheekbones. To be fair, people did not personally blame Napoleon but the Russian dragoons who, by the way, introduced bistro in Paris as an equivalent to a British pub.

Somehow, that simple question of identity became a question mark.

Nobody really knew him. Logically, the second question would be whether he was a guest or a passerby, a party crasher, because the roadhouse was not closed for public.

But at the same time, he was dressed for a party with even a white carnation in his buttonhole.

He had a wallet in the inner pocket of his jacket. His driver's license proclaimed its owner as one Antonin Kowalsky, forty-eight years old, who lived until that day in Westport, Connecticut.

There were car keys to the Oldsmobile Omega parked on a metered parking lot. But his cell phone, something that everybody would always carry in those days, was missing.

The third question to ask was, who had a gun?

Nobody had admitted the gun possession. Quite the opposite, everyone had denied having a gun. Now, you could not search thirty people without a search warrant, and you could not get a blank search warrant anyway.

So the only thing available to the police represented by Detective Davis was to ask all attendees to provide their name, addresses, and relation to the Zhukovskys. He told the photographer to submit the copies of all photos to the police.

The paramedics removed the body, the crime lab took pictures, and the restaurant owner announced that špekáček, steaks, and kielbasa were ready to be delivered.

It changed the somber mood of a death passing through the room into a realization that life still went on. Detective Davis politely declined the invitation to join the party. He congratulated the couple and removed himself from the premises. End of a chapter.

Marta and Peter lived in a town house by the Sheepshead Bay.

They bought it when Peter joined the ConEdison as the chief field engineer for the Westchester branch. It was a very good position, with a nice salary, great benefits, annual bonuses.

Marta continued to work for the same lawyer's firm Dombrowsky & Son. Now it was with the son of the lawyer with whom she started years ago.

Marta and Peter raised three children who did well in school and later in college.

They had many friends, professionally and residentially, through the golf club and the Catholic school that their children attended.

After the news was splashed over newspapers and the internet, they received phone calls expressing support and understanding.

But there were some other phone calls gloating on the fact of murder and hinting on some dark sides in their life. Those calls bothered Marta even though Peter shrugged them off.

Then there were some altercations between Vernon and other students in his high school. Malvina said that some coworkers in the design studio where she worked after the graduation looked askance at her, and Corrina said the same about her coworkers.

Later, Malvina's boyfriend, who dated her for two years, suddenly stopped seeing her.

All these facts of life pressed them to press the police to find the murderer. But with New York's average of three murders a day, the police were overworked and understaffed.

The police found that the victim was a bachelor who lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Westport and had no relatives. He worked in a local library since he was twenty-two, was promoted to senior librarian, and was known for his phenomenal memory of all books and papers he read.

The police searched his apartment, seized his laptop and some papers, but the bulk of items was moved to a storage unit in the basement.

His bank records did not reveal any suspicious activity. His salary was on direct deposit, and his withdrawals were mostly to pay his rent and his credit card. His credit score was above 800. His combined checking and saving accounts totaled $150,000. He had his 401k with $100,000 provided by his employer through the union.

Among the papers seized, there were photo albums, some of them with family pictures of his childhood; others had contained the group photographs in school and in college as he graduated from the UConn with a BA and later an MA in English literature.

His coworkers considered him a loner but a very polite one who would never have any argument with any of them but would never share anything about his private life as well.

He was often seen at the gatherings of a local literature society and book presentations, and if one of the attendees would talk to him, he would recall when they had talked last or had heard or read about that person. If it were an author, he would remember all books written by that person, when they were published, and by what publisher. That was the most remarkable thing about Mr. Kowalsky, that he had a phenomenal memory.

He had a car, an Oldsmobile, that showed a substantial mileage. The coworkers said that he liked to travel by car during vacations and always brought some photos of exotic places taken during his travels.

But why did he choose that special event to get killed?

Both Marta and Peter denied any knowledge about him. It meant someone else knew him, invited him, and killed him.

Day Two

Westport, Connecticut

In the Westport library, a building that covered the area of a small city block with a park on one side and a pond on another, Monday morning meeting started as usual.

The staff, the senior and junior librarians, department managers, and maintenance, altogether forty-two persons of different age and sexes, gathered in a large hall that was used for events like a book signing or a meeting of the local poetic society.

After discussing a planned weekly activity, Ms. Lavinia Kettering, the library director for the last twelve years, announced the changes in the staff positions.

Because of the tragic death of Antonin Kowalsky, Ms. Joan Morales would be temporarily fulfilling the duties of the senior librarian with the purpose of her permanent appointment to be approved by the city council.

Consequently, there were other changes in the employment hierarchy with the possibility of new openings.

After the meeting, Ms. Kettering retired to her office to meet Detective Davis from the NYPD who asked the usual questions about the deceased, his friends, habits, attitude.

Ms. Kettering mentioned that Antonin Kowalsky's hobby was photography and that he usually would create an exhibition of his photographs after returning from vacations, the exhibitions to be placed in the hallway of the first floor. She believed that the latest, this year's exhibition, was still on display.

Detective Davis wrote down her answers and then asked permission to look through his personal items if any. Ms. Kettering called her secretary Amalia Jones, a young woman in her late twenties, and asked her to accompany Detective Davis to the cubicle on the second floor where Antonin Kowalsky had spent his working hours.

There was a desk with a desk monitor, a bookshelf, and a folder cabinet. The personal items from the desk were already placed into two plastic trays with the US Mail logos, very popular storage items in offices across the country.

There were multiple catalogs from major publishing houses filling the bookshelf. The file cabinet contained folders with the receipts of book requisitions for the past ten years.

Detective Davis asked permission to look through the files on the computer. As the monitor was locked with the deceased personal password, it required the intervention by the system administrator. That created a certain delay, as the library did not have its own help desk but was maintained by the citywide network. When the monitor was finally opened, the detective dumped all files to his flash drive.

The abovementioned exhibition of photographs was still in the hallway on the first floor. It featured about two dozen large format printouts, some done in black and white, others in colors and represented all genres—portraits, landscapes, still life.

With Ms. Kettering's gracious permission, Amalia Jones disassembled the exhibition and handed the photographs to Detective Davis.

Day Three

Brooklyn, New York

Detective Davis found that the laptop that belonged to the deceased was also locked with his password. He sent the laptop to the crime laboratory and asked to make access possible.

When the detective restored files from the flash drive to his office computer, he found multiple folders and subfolders. Most of them were related to the librarian's daily routine as they were dated annually and contained mostly the receipts for the books' purchases and sales.

Other folders were more interesting, especially one with a spreadsheet that contained a list of names sorted alphabetically. Altogether there were 217 names, most of them with dates of birth, and some of them with dates of death. A few names had both fields empty.

The dates of birth were mostly of people in their eighties and even nineties.

Detective Davis went through the list by comparing its names with the guest list at the party. He did not find any matches, and he abandoned that list for the time being.

Instead, he started to look through the list of all people who were in the room with the body.

There were several coworkers from both sides of the couple, mostly couples approximately the same age as the couple were. There were their daughters with their boyfriends, and the junior with his high school sweetheart.

Interestingly, Dombrowsky-son, Marta's boss, who took over the firm after his father's retirement, preferred to skip the party. He sent his congratulations, a huge bouquet of white roses and a check for five thousand dollars or two hundred dollars for every year of matrimony.

So it was not a gathering of people the detective would expect to routinely carry a gun. Nevertheless, it was a Kimber .38 handgun as the coroner quickly determined. In his checklist, Detective Davis made a note to verify if any of the guests ever applied for a gun permit.

Working methodically, he compiled the list of all people who were in the room:

Marta Zhukovsky, née Dubrovin

Peter Zhukovsky

Malvina Zhukovsky and her boyfriend

Corinna Zhukovsky and her boyfriend

Vernon Zhukovsky and his school sweetheart

Three guests from the associated law firms

Six guests from ConEdison (three couples)

Four guests, their neighbors (two couples)

Four guests from Peter's golf club (two couples)

Three guests from their church

Priest Nicklas Witkowsky

Antonin Kowalsky

Bartender John Brendan

Waitress Ximena Ruiz

None of the guests expressed his or her knowledge of the deceased.

Back to square one, the detective decided to look closely at the murder victim, especially at the fact that Antonin Kowalsky liked to travel.

Usually, he took his vacations in summer around the fourth of July. Could it be that in one of his travels he crossed paths with one of the guests and saw something that would eventually bring his untimely demise?

Detective Davis returned to the files of the deceased. He found that last year, Antonin Kowalsky spent his summer vacation in Burlington on the Lake Champlain, Vermont, near the Canadian border.

In the Pictures folder in Antonin Kowalsky's computer, there were subfolders in chronological order, year by year. Last year's subfolder contained pictures of old buildings on streets paved with cobblestones, churches, and small shops on the streets carrying a flavor of bygone years.

There were photographs of people sitting outdoors, mostly elderly couples but some were also from a younger generation, obviously students on their summer vacation.

From the pictures, the detective again got the impression that Antonin Kowalsky was an avid photographer who carefully chose the subjects for his shots and the position, the angle, the way to underscore certain details.

The camera found in his belongings was the expensive Nikon D7500 DSLR 4K video two-lens kit with 18–55mm and 70–300 mm lenses, with both auto and manual settings to choose the shutter time and depth of field.

In his choosing of setting, Kowalsky followed the rule of thirds that was the common practice among professional photographers.

The folders contained about a thousand shots made at different times and different locations.

As for Lake Champlain, there were many shots of its shores done during the day, early in the morning, at midday, in evenings, and even after sunsets. The image resolution was amazing, and zooming provided clear details without pixilation.

There were some photos including people fishing, swimming, and sunbathing on the lake. The deceased managed to capture the moments when a fisherman pulled out a fish or a kid diving in a splash of water.

There were several photographs of some couple—she, young and beautiful blonde in her midtwenties and he, mature, in his late thirties or early forties, sunburned, with a small mustache. Some shots were done during the day, others close to sunset.

The time stamps provided day and time for each frame. For example, one photo of the couple was done on July 7, at 2:30 p.m., and another one on July 11, 8:10 p.m. Both photos were made from behind, so it was either profiles or three-quarter images.

Obviously, Kowalsky was looking for the perfect portrait shot because he did not care to make full-length photos.

Scanning other photos, Davis discovered the images of the same man, sitting alone at the table outdoors drinking beer or taking the driver's seat in an expensive convertible and being alone. Whether these photos were taken during casual encounters or Kowalsky followed the man became an open question.

Detective Davis browsed through the latest photos in the current year folder.

That time, he found that Kowalsky went for his vacations to Milledgeville on Lake Sinclair in Georgia, the lake that spread on the map like a fractal created by a computer simulation.

Again, there were several hundred photos of the colonial-style houses, streets, shops, and log cabins hiding in the forest. There were several photos made on the grounds of the Georgia College and Georgia Military School. There were numerous photos of Lake Sinclair and the forest surrounding it.

Antonin Kowalsky was a man of infinite patience in searches for his best shots like a woodpecker catching a bug, an osprey with a fish in its talons, a squirrel in the flight between the trees…

There were also people, people on the streets, in pubs, on the beaches… The beaches of the Lake Sinclair offered a vast variety in their landscapes. Some of them were open sand beaches; others were hidden by the coups of trees.

That time, Kowalsky was making photos mostly of families. He chose the images of children playing together or with their parents, or young mothers building sandcastles with their little ones.

Occasionally, his camera would catch teenagers swimming on kickboards or playing Frisbees or beach volleyball. Sometimes it would capture a couple sitting in beach chairs or swimming together.

There was a photo of a couple—she, young and beautiful, red-haired, in her midtwenties and he, mature, in his late thirties or early forties, sunburned, with a small mustache.

The detective stopped. There were no doubts that it was the same man. The time stamp showed July 6, 1:10 p.m. Davis scanned the other photos but that was the only one with this man.

Davis opened the subfolder two years back.

He checked the vacation photos. Now it was Lake Michigan and the same photos of town streets, houses, beaches.

Yes, here they were, that couple—she, young and beautiful, dark hair, in her midtwenties and he, mature, in his late thirties, sunburned, with a small mustache.

There were several photos of the couple, not only on beaches but in outdoors pubs and even sitting in his convertible. The time stamps were for July of that year.

Detective Davis called the police archives and asked for the reports of missing persons in July for the last three years in Vermont, Georgia, and Michigan.

He received the response that there were several missing persons in each state in July during these years, among them young women in their midtwenties.

Davis took their names and sent a memo asking for information if these women were residents or vacationers and, in the last case, where they stayed—motels, hotels, bed-and-breakfast—and the name of their escorts.

So Mr. Antonin Kowalsky decided to play a little sleuthing or tried a little blackmail?

The detective was leaning to the first option. At least, so far, no money besides his salary was found. Maybe he just wanted some excitement after days spent among old books.

Or because he could not do anything.

He could not go to the police and say, I think this is a bad guy.

Maybe in his belongings he had, besides photographs, some material proof of some evildoing. So the detective would need to sift through the things in the storage unit.

Could it be that the name of that person was in his list?

It was reasonable to expect that if it were a case of serial killer, he would use different aliases. Nevertheless, one thing should be the same, his age plus or minus a couple of years.

Kowalsky must know his name because he followed him for three years or maybe more because there were more annual folders to be examined.

Now, no one from the guest list matched the image of the man on the photographs. But someone must know him and helped him bring Kowalsky down.

After looking through the list in the spreadsheet, Davis chose about a dozen of names. One of the things with the list was that it did not provide sex information, and some names could be misleading. Another thing missing was the location of a person, as no address, not even a state, was mentioned.

Davis made a bold move, googled the names, and gave it up; Google produced hundreds of thousands of matches.

Davis decided to check the camera's memory. He took out the chip and inserted it in his laptop. The memory, sixty-four gigabytes, was almost full. There were several movie files. Detective Davis opened the first one with time stamp two years ago. Grand Haven, Lake Michigan. Obviously, the camera was mounted on a tripod because it contained images of Kowalsky sitting with a fishing rod.

There were other movies of the kind, and then Detective Davis found the clip where the couple was making love in the semidarkness of the evening shadows behind the trees at the far end of the beach. The camera was set at full zoom, so it clearly recorded the face of the girl with her eyes closed, her