Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set Nanci Rathbun (i love reading books txt) 📖

storage bin, he asked me to load them on his office computer. Then he said, “Recognize any of this, Angie?”

“No. But I’ll find out and get back to you. The uniforms are similar to U.S. issue, but something tells me they’re not ours.”

“For now, we’ll prepare another statement for the police. I want Adriana to come in so she can tell us what she knows about these items. You make the arrangements with her and I’ll call Bertha for the statements. I’ll messenger those to Wukowski and let him know you have the key to the storage unit.” I started to protest, but he interrupted me. “You may need to take another look. Wukowski can always get the key from you, right?” His grin was wicked. I ignored it.

Bertha was there within thirty minutes. “It’s too bad that you had to come into the office on a Saturday. My apologies.” I kept my voice cheerful, knowing it would irritate her.

“What can’t be cured, must be endured.” She compressed her lips and frowned. The lines from the corners of her mouth to her chin deepened, giving her a marionette appearance.

Bobbie and Adriana arrived soon after Bertha. “How are you?” I asked Adriana, giving her a real hug.

“I’m good, Angie,” she said. “Maybe a little tired. Bobbie’s place is great, but it’s hard to sleep well when you’re not at home.”

I decided not to press her. It took a short while to review what I found in the attic.

Adriana knew about the wedding dress. “Never would I wear that on my wedding day,” she said. She was ignorant of the contents of the trunk and rolling clothes rack.

Bertha joined us to capture our words in the lost art of stenography, for later transcription. I settled down to be deposed by a master. Bart knew how to frame a question to elicit the response he wanted. So the stash in the attic of the Johnson home, which I suspected was connected to the time before the Johnsons left Yugoslavia, became “personal jewelry, clothing and books of unknown origin.” The bedroom furniture, which I presumed to be valuable antiques, was “a high quality bedroom suite and bed linens.” I told Bart that I’d shared his suspicions about the killings being executions and he included that in the statement. Adriana’s was simpler. She knew of the wedding dress, but not of the other items.

Bobbie and Adriana invited me to join them for a meal downtown and a movie at the Oriental theater. I pleaded work and left. The odor of cigarette smoke was making me feel slightly nauseated. I drove home and showered, ran a small load of wash and bagged my woolen slacks for the cleaners.

Chapter 10

In the spider web of facts, many a truth is strangled.

—Paul Eldridge

Half a ham-and-cheese on rye later, I settled at the kitchen island with my laptop plugged into the Ethernet—Wi-Fi is too easy to tap into, and I would have to provide credit card information to pay the county’s fee—and accessed the Milwaukee County web site for property searches. “Serbian Society LLC” owned both houses on the lot where the Johnsons lived. A limited liability company, with the same name as the church group the Johnsons were part of. Interesting.

The Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions is the place where all corporations, companies and partnerships who do business in the state must register. Their web site told me that Serbian Society LLC was formed in 1999, with Attorney Herman Petrovitch listed as the registered agent, organizer and manager. The Society’s annual reports were not filed electronically, so I requested a paper copy be mailed to me.

A property search based on “Serbian Society” made my eyebrows rise. Both houses on the two-house lot, the hardware store and the buildings on either side of it were all owned by the company, as were Petrovitch’s home and the premises that housed his office. They were all purchased in 1999, the year that the Johnsons became U.S. citizens.

A new thought occurred and I went back to my case notes. Aha! Not only was the front house where the Johnsons lived vacant, but so were the buildings on either side of the Johnsons’ hardware store, and the offices that abutted Petrovitch’s. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Had someone built a buffer around all the places where the Serbian Society LLC had interests? What about Dragana? I knew who held the power and had the most knowledge in any organization—the secretary. I needed to know more about Dragana.

Phone listings showed Josif and Dragana Zupan, with an address in Whitefish Bay. The image of her dead body, head blown apart, floated before me. I could smell the gunpowder and blood. My stomach turned and I breathed deeply and slowly. I rose and filled a glass with cold water from the fridge. The clear clean taste of the filtered water helped.

Back at the laptop, I accessed property records for the address from the phone listing. There was a single owner, Josif Zupan. No Dragana. No third party corporation. I had to talk with Josif, but my mind and heart resisted. If he was indeed Dragana’s husband, should I tell him the truth about what I saw in the office that morning, or soothe him with lies? Would he know some of it already, from the MPD or even the funeral home? I was sure that her funeral would have to be a closed-coffin affair. I added to my to-do list: interview Josif Zupan. It made me feel more in control, to have it on a list. I could set it aside until the time came to cross it off.

As I reviewed the data, one thing stood out clearly. Herman Petrovitch was the spider in the middle of the web of crisscrossing threads. He was the agent for the Serbian Society, which owned properties involved in the Johnson and Zupan murders. He assisted the Johnsons in establishing a new home in the United States. He knew