Gone With The Whisker

Chapter 3

The next morning, the first morning of Katrina’s life as a retail clerk, I bounced out of bed early enough to get us a proper breakfast of doughnuts and bagels from Tom’s, the local bakery. Tom, who had to be the skinniest baker in the history of the world, had a soft spot for the bookmobile and not only gave me a reduced rate on the bag of cookies I picked up every bookmobile day, but in the summer also let me in the back door so I didn’t have to stand in line.

Being the morally upright person I aspired to be, that morning I stood in line like everyone else, and made friends with the people on either side of me. We’d reached the Facebook friend stage and were approaching an exchange of cell numbers when it was my turn at the counter. Five minutes later, I had a bright pink bag in hand, waved good-bye to my new friends, and hurried home.

When I got back to the houseboat, Katrina was in the shower, using far more water than I would have liked. I went all out and put the breakfast options on a plate and even found napkins that didn’t have a restaurant name on them. Eddie had nestled himself into Katrina’s sleeping bag, but when I removed the clear plastic lid from the cream cheese, he opened his eyes a small sliver.

“Not for you, pal,” I said.

Katrina’s hair dryer went on. Eddie’s eyes flipped wide open. In one sudden motion, he leapt to his feet, off the sleeping bag, and onto the floor, where his scrambling feet found purchase on a small rug. The rug crinkled up under him, and for a second he looked like a cartoon cat, feet moving furiously without forward motion. Then his paws hit the floor and he shot forward like a rocket.

Of course, since it was the houseboat, he couldn’t go very far, but he did go as far forward as possible; up on the dashboard, pressed against the windshield, back arched, fur fluffed, and growling the teensiest bit.

I looked at him. “I suppose you don’t want me laughing at you?” Hair dryers did not pair well with my curly mass, and the boardinghouse was big enough that he’d been able to hide from the noise of Aunt Frances’s morning routine, so Eddie had never dealt with up close and personal exposure to the evil things.

“Mrr!”

“Right.” I padded up to him and scratched the side of his head, murmuring soothing phrases like “You’re the best cat this houseboat has ever seen, she didn’t mean to scare you, she doesn’t know hair dryers are the enemy, you’ll get used to it, I’m sure you will.”

His fur soon de-fluffed and the two of us were sitting outside on the houseboat’s deck, soaking up the morning sun, when Katrina came out, a glazed doughnut in one hand and a naked bagel in the other. “See you tonight,” she said. “Not sure when I’ll be back.”

“You’re leaving already?” I tried to sit up from the chaise lounge, but Eddie was making it difficult. “I didn’t think you had to be there much before ten.”

After breakfast yesterday, I’d sat down with Katrina/Kate and essentially forced her to write down her work schedule. Which was complicated, what with three part-time jobs and all, but after a while I started to see the pattern. We’d spent the rest of the day in mild accord and I’d been looking forward to chatting with her over breakfast, just like Aunt Frances and I did during the winter.

“Mitchell texted me and said I could come in earlier.” Katrina shrugged. “Not sure I need to learn much more about toys, but I’m awake so I might as well go in.” Then, before I could say another word, she’d hopped off the boat, onto the wood-decked pier, and was gone.

I looked at Eddie. “Now what?”

He jumped off my lap, pawed open the screen door to the houseboat—something I had no idea he was able to do—and slipped inside.

“Well.” I stretched and stood. My intentions when I’d scheduled this as a vacation day had been to spend time with Katrina, but now that she was working, the day was empty of plans. I pushed away the temptation of my To Be Read book pile, wandered inside, and put the remaining parts of breakfast back into the waxed bag.

Five minutes later, Rafe had scarfed down a chocolate-covered doughnut and was slathering cream cheese on a pumpernickel bagel. “How is the teenager formerly known as Katrina doing this morning?”

“Still not talking about it. But she’s not sleeping well.” About three in the morning, her sobbing had pulled me out of a deep sleep. I’d gone up to talk to her, to give her a hug, to make it all go away, but she’d been snoring softly by the time I got there.

I hesitated, wanting to tell him everything, but also wanting to protect my niece’s privacy. “Last night she had bad dreams and I’m sure they’re related to the murder. She slept fine until two nights ago.”

“What are you going to do?” Rafe asked through a mouthful of bagel.

Easy question. “Find out who killed Rex Stuhler.”

Rafe swallowed and grinned, his teeth white against his tanned skin. “Surprised it took you this long to say that out loud. Want some help?”

“Depends,” I said. “Will it be the good kind of help or the interfering kind?”

“Whatever kind you want.” He held out his hand to seal the deal with a handshake, then pulled it back. “On the condition that you talk to your sheriff buddy, or at least your detective friends.”

My buddy the sheriff was Kit Richardson, a woman who seemed to intimidate almost everyone except me. At five foot nothing, I’d inured myself to intimidation early on in my career, otherwise I’d never have managed to achieve any professional goals. My detective friends were Hal Inwood, a sixtyish downstate transplant, and Deputy Ash Wolverson. Ash was a friend of Rafe’s and was training to be a detective. I’d also dated him for a few months, but our relationship had never truly kindled and we’d parted as we’d started—friends.

“Deal.” I extended my hand and Rafe used it to pull me in for a kiss. Which was nice, and went on for some time. But even good things come to an end, and when we eventually went back to the pastries, I told Rafe what little I knew about Rex Stuhler.

“He and his wife own a pest control company.” I swallowed a bite of apple fritter. “He was about fifty, and he grew up around here somewhere, but I don’t think it was Chilson. Petoskey, maybe?”

Rafe reached into the pink bag and pulled out a powdered doughnut. “All that will be in his obituary. It might be on Birtrand’s website already.”

The local funeral home was a few blocks away. I glanced in its direction. “Really? I didn’t know obituaries would go up so fast.”

“Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depends on the family.”

I frowned. “How do you know this?”

“Because I grew up next door to Birtrand’s. I know more about being a mortician than anyone who isn’t in the business should.”

The idea creeped me out a little, so I nodded and went on. “The only other thing I know about Rex is he was big into bicycling and cross-country skiing. He’d been looking for books about establishing and running nonprofit organizations. He said he was helping create a group supporting a new nonmotorized trail connecting Chilson to Petoskey.”

Rafe looked down at his dark gray T-shirt, which was lightly dusted with powdered sugar. He gave it a halfhearted brush, smearing the white, and said, “None of that sounds like it should have led to murder.”

I sighed. “No, it doesn’t.”

But something had, and my niece was suffering, so I was going to do my best to figure out who had killed Rex. And a good start to doing that was to figure out the why of it.

* * *

I stepped inside the front door of the sheriff’s office and looked around at the lobby. Empty. Was I the only one who ever walked in like this?

The deputy at the front desk slid open the glass door. “Morning, Minnie.”

“Hey, Carl. Still on light duty?”

Carl rubbed his shoulder. “Had to have a third surgery a few weeks ago. If this one doesn’t take, I’m toast. This desk stuff is driving me nuts.” He shook his head, then summoned a smile. “So what’s up with you? Hang on,” he said, tapping his nose. “You were with the kid who found the murder victim during the fireworks. You want to talk to Hal and Ash?”

I nodded. “Are they here?”

“Inwood’s out on a call, but Ash is in the back. Just a sec.” He slid the window shut and picked up the phone. I could see his mouth moving, then, still on the phone, he opened the window. “Go on back, he’ll be right there.”

The interior door made a buzzing sound and I reached for the handle. “Thanks,” I called over my shoulder, and walked down the hallway. I made a right turn into a small windowless room and sat in what I’d long ago come to think of as my chair, in front of a bland laminate-topped table that looked like it had been born in a decade when every man except members of the military sported long hair.

I looked at the ceiling tiles, which for years had been discolored with a water stain that, to me, looked exactly like a dragon. Last fall, however, due to a leak in the fire suppression system, all the tiles had been replaced and the dragon was a thing of the past.

Ash came in, saw me looking up, and laughed. “The ceiling isn’t as much fun now, is it?”

Sighing, I said, “Hard to believe I’m missing a stain.”

“Yeah, sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.”

More like always. “Thanks for making time for me,” I said.

“No problem.”

He leaned back, and once again I was reminded what an incredibly good-looking man he was. Square jaw, great hair, and the legs of someone who spent his free time running and biking. He was also kind, smart, and funny. Why our short stint of being girlfriend and boyfriend hadn’t sparked was a mystery we’d both shrugged off to the bizarreness of human chemistry.

“Have you or Kate remembered anything else from the other night?” he asked.

I looked at him blankly. Kate? Who was Kate? Oh. Right. “No. At least not yet.” In the last couple of years I’d been entwined with a number of incidents that had introduced me to police investigations. One of the things I’d learned was that most people’s memories worked like mine did, like a filing cabinet that didn’t have folders, wasn’t organized in any way, and had one big label of miscellaneous.

“Do you have anything new?” I asked. Then, because I knew I was about to get the can’t-discuss-an-ongoing-investigation talk, added, “Anything that you can tell me about?”

“Well.” Ash rubbed his chin, roughing the stubble. For me that noise was equivalent to the proverbial fingernails on a chalkboard, so maybe the answer to our nonspark was simpler and far more shallow than I wanted to think.

He gave his chin one last rub. “There’s one thing I could tell you, because it happened in public. The afternoon and night of the Fourth, Rex Stuhler and his wife, Fawn, were on Janay Lake with friends. On a big pontoon boat. You know that parking lot where the city is letting food trucks park? Well, someone from the boat placed a food order and they dropped Rex off so he could pick it up. Only he never got there.”

“This was during the fireworks?”

“The order was sent in about an hour before. But Rex sent a text to his wife that the food truck was backed up, and that he was going to walk around for a bit. That he’d let them know when he picked up the food, so no one thought too much about how late he was.”

The implication was clear. “So Rex’s wife—what was her name, Fawn?—was on the boat and didn’t murder him.”

“That’s the way it looks.”

I grinned. “Spoken like a true law enforcement officer. Reassuring, yet leaving your options open. You sure you don’t want to go into politics?” An odd expression came and went on his face so quickly it took me a second to interpret.

My smile went even wider. “You’re thinking about sheriff, aren’t you?”

“Shh!” He made frantic quiet-down motions with his hands. “Don’t say that out loud! Sheriff Richardson is a long way from retiring.”

I stood. “Your secret is safe with me. And for the record, I think you’d make a great elected law enforcement official.”

He gave me a pained look, which made me laugh, and smiling, I headed back outside.

* * *

The sheriff’s office was just up the street from Chilson’s main downtown blocks. I stood there for a moment, considering my options. I could drop into the toy store to see how Katrina—Kate—was doing, but there were two drawbacks to that. One, it would annoy her, and two, now that it was late morning, the sidewalks were packed with tourists.

Tourism was a critical part of the Up North economy, and I appreciated every dollar they spent in our town, but there were days that I just plain didn’t feel like elbowing through the crowds, and today was one of them. So I headed up the hill to the boardinghouse, tracing a path I’d walked many times before, a path I would probably walk less and less in the future.

This made me sad, and I decided not to think about how life changes were never one hundred percent positive, that even changes you desperately wanted came along with things you’d miss. Instead I focused on how I was going to get into the boardinghouse without being seen by Aunt Frances, who now lived right across the street.

Not that it really mattered if she saw me, of course. She was a reasonable adult, and if I wanted to stop by the boardinghouse she’d run by herself for decades, there was no reason to assume that if she caught me going in she’d buttonhole me afterward, quiz me on what I’d seen and heard, ask what was different, and roll her eyes at the answers.

Then again, that was pretty much what she’d done the last time I’d popped in to say hello to Cousin Celeste. If I’d been thinking ahead, I would have contacted Otto and asked him to get my aunt into the kitchen, where she couldn’t see the street, or even better, out of the house altogether.

But I hadn’t, and it was too late now, so I squared my shoulders and prepared myself for the doom that could soon await me.

I climbed the boardinghouse steps and onto the wide wooden porch. A swing at the far end swayed lightly. It was a bit ghostly, but then I saw the newspaper open on the swing’s seat.

“Well, hello there, Minnie honey.” Cousin Celeste popped out the front door. “How are you?” She nodded at the tray of drinks and cookies she was carrying. “It’s like I knew you were coming. Have a sit.”

“Um.” I glanced over my shoulder at Otto and my aunt’s house. “Have you seen Aunt Frances this morning?”

“She and Otto left about an hour ago on a tandem bicycle after loading what looked like a dandy picnic.” Celeste set the metal Coca-Cola tray on a small table and sat in the swing, patting the seat next to her. “Now sit.”

Feeling slightly disloyal, I lowered myself as Celeste handed me a glass filled with water, ice, blueberries, and strawberries. I took it, feeling a pang of loss for the lemonade my aunt had always served on the porch, but as soon as the berried water went down my throat, I forgot all about it. “This is wonderful!”

Celeste beamed, crinkling her weathered face into tiny wrinkles. Her long gray hair was tidied up in a braid that she’d rolled into a bun and secured with magic. Sitting or standing, we looked each other straight in the eye. It was immensely refreshing to know I wasn’t the only person in our extended family who didn’t have an excessive amount of height.

“Thought you’d like it.” Celeste nodded decisively. “The guests can’t get enough. After all, they’ve never been here and they don’t know Frances used to serve lemonade.”

Some might, if they read the scrapbooks from previous years, and sometimes the children of previous boarders came up to stay, but I kept drinking to avoid a response.

“I hear you were mixed up with that sad business at the waterfront the night of the fireworks,” Celeste said.

“Only peripherally.” I told her what had happened.

“That poor girl!” Celeste put a hand to her throat. “Is she going back home?”

“She started working at the toy store this morning, so not today anyway.”

Celeste smiled. “Ah, the resiliency of youth. Do the police know who killed that poor man?”

“They’re working on it.”

“Well, I’m sure they’ll figure it out soon,” she said comfortably.

For a moment we swung gently to and fro, then Celeste sighed. “Minnie, your aunt is a wonderful woman, but I need to talk to someone about her and I don’t know where else to turn.”

I’d known this was coming. It was, in fact, why I’d walked up here, when I would rather have returned to the houseboat and spent the rest of the morning reading. I half smiled. “Aunt Frances is driving you nuts, isn’t she?”

“And how,” Celeste said fervently. “I thought we had an agreement. She said she’d be hands off, that this place was mine to run and that whatever I wanted to do was fine by her, and that she wouldn’t say a word about how I was running the boardinghouse.” She stopped. “Well, I suppose that’s true in fact. She hasn’t said anything, but she stops and gives me that look. You know the one.”

I did indeed. My aunt was an imposing figure, and not just because of her height. Years of teaching community college woodworking to classes of young men who thought they knew more than she had given her the ability to quell an unruly mob with a single glance.

“And she’s sending me text messages.” Celeste offered me a plate of butterscotch cookies. “Reminding me about things I’ve already done. I’m being polite as I can, but I’m afraid it’s going to get worse.”

I made sympathetic noises around bits of cookie, and braced myself for what was sure to come next.

“Minnie, I hate to ask, but can you talk to her?” Celeste turned, beseeching me with her light blue eyes. “Please?”

And there it was.

On the outside I smiled. On the inside I heaved a huge sigh. “I’ll do what I can,” I said.

“Thank you!” Celeste lunged at me and gave me a hug. “Thank you so much! I’m no good at confrontation. I know you’ll straighten this out in no time.”

“No problem,” I murmured, as I wondered how in little green apples I was going to make both Celeste and my aunt happy.

* * *

Donna, one of the library’s part-time clerks, frowned from behind the front desk. “What are you doing here?”

I looked around. “Are you talking to me?”

“Do you see anyone else?” she asked dryly.

The lobby, entry, and main room of the library were quiet and, except for the two of us, completely empty. A low patron count was normal on nice summer days, but this was a little ridiculous. And a bit eerie. Then I heard the distant voice of a child and an adult murmuring in reply, and relaxed. The zombie apocalypse had not overtaken the Chilson District Library and swooped away all our library-goers.

“So again I ask,” Donna said, putting her elbows on the counter and her chin in her hands. “What are you doing here? You took the day off. So take yourself outside and go play.”

I grinned. Donna was in her early seventies and had already retired from a full-time job. She had children and grandchildren and a husband who was within a year of retiring from his much-loved job as the local barber.

Donna was also an active long-distance runner, and the primary reason she worked at the library was to help fund trips to run marathons in faraway places. And for Donna, far away meant Norway, Ethiopia, and Argentina. And the trips weren’t just to run. Last winter she’d traveled to Antarctica, and she and her equally adventurous daughter had enjoyed themselves immensely.

“Couldn’t stay away,” I said, spreading my arms. “I mean, look at this place.”

The building around us had once upon a time been Chilson’s elementary school. The town’s young demographic had eventually expanded to the point where a new, larger building had been necessary and this handsome L-shaped brick building, filled with Craftsman details, had been shuttered.

For years it sat empty, deteriorating slowly but surely, and then, just before the roof collapsed, the library board put a bond proposal on the ballot to renovate the building. The people of Chilson had overwhelmingly voted in favor, and the school was transformed into a stupendously gorgeous library that was the envy of all.

Well, maybe not all. I’d heard the Library of Congress had a decent space. But what other small town library had a reading room with a fireplace and window seats? What other library had a vaulted ceiling over the main stacks? Who else had gorgeous metallic tile in the restrooms and lobby?

“It is nice,” Donna said. “But it’s nice outside, too.” She tipped her head toward the massive oak front doors. “And while this building will stay nice, out there could change in the next five minutes.”

“The Wi-Fi at the marina is painfully slow,” I said. “I’m just here to look something up.”

“Research? Ooo, let me play, please?”

I looked at her and decided I might as well get it over with. So I told her about the night of the fireworks, and Rex Stuhler, how Katrina—Kate—was having a rough time of it, and how I was going to do my best to help track down whoever killed Rex.

“The poor girl,” Donna said sympathetically. “But at least she has you. How many other aunts have also found murder victims? You two could create your own support group.”

My penchant for finding dead bodies was not something I wanted to discuss at length with Kate, but I half nodded. “I was going to look on the county’s website to see where Rex and his wife live.”

“Foundation research. Good idea.” Donna rotated her large monitor so I could see, pulled out her keyboard, and started typing. “Tonedagana County, parcel search . . .” She clicked away. “Do you know what township? Never mind, there can’t be many Stuhlers . . . okay, here we go. ‘Owners Rex and Fawn Stuhler,’” Donna read out loud. “So that’s their property.” She pointed at a yellow rectangle on Ayers Road. “Let’s see what we can find out about the neighbors. If they’re people I know, I can ask about Rex.”

A few clicks later, we learned that the parcels to the west and south of the Stuhlers were owned by the county. “Forestry parcels, is my guess,” Donna said. “The county forester sets up parcels to get logged off every thirty years or so. Makes the county a little money, and wow, would you look at that?” She’d turned on the aerial photography layer, and the Stuhlers’ roof practically popped us in the eyeballs. “That’s a bright red roof.”

It certainly was. “Who owns that?” I nodded at a smaller parcel to the north.

“Hang on . . . here we go. Somebody named Vannett. First name ‘Barry.’”

“Do you know him?” I asked. Except for a short stint at college, Donna had never lived anywhere but Chilson. If she didn’t know someone, or at least know of them, odds were approximately a hundred percent they weren’t from here.

“Nope.” She drummed her fingers on the countertop. “But the name sounds familiar. Let me think.”

Meanwhile, something was twitching inside my own brain. “Hang on,” I said slowly. “Isn’t Ayers Road part of the route for that new bike trail?”

Donna shrugged. “I haven’t been paying close attention. If it ever gets built, I’ll be long gone. Those things take forever.”

I asked Donna to let me know if she remembered anything about Barry Vannett, then wandered out into the sunshine, wondering who might know about the trail. All I knew was from the newspaper, which had reported that a group of local folks had banded together to plan a route connecting Chilson to Petoskey via back roads and county-owned property. I could talk to my friend Camille at the paper, but what I wanted was insider information.

“Got it,” I said, making a 180-degree turn and marching the other way. I was on nodding-acquaintance terms with Jeremy Hull, director of the nonprofit Northern Lakes Protection Association. If Jeremy didn’t have information on the trail, he was bound to know someone who did.

I entered the blue lobby of the Protection Association’s office and saw Jeremy and his wife sitting together at his desk, picking apart the delectable treat that was an elephant ear, that classic deep-fried, cinnamon-sprinkled doughy goodness.

“Hey, Minnie.” Jeremy waved a piece of ear at me. “You’ve met my wife, haven’t you? Honey, Minnie Hamilton, the bookmobile librarian. Minnie, this is my wife, Honey Hull.”

Honey and I murmured nice-to-meet-you’s and Jeremy asked, “Don’t suppose you’re here to make a sizable donation to our new project. We’re raising money to rework that undersized culvert on the Mitchell River.”

“Sorry,” I said, pulling the pockets of my shorts inside out. “Nothing here. I just stopped by to ask if you knew anything about that new trail they’re proposing, the one that would connect Chilson to Petoskey . . .”

Jeremy was shaking his head. “I don’t, but—”

“But I do.” Honey smiled. “I’m on the planning committee. If you’d like to help, we’re holding a meeting next week.”

“Um.” I shifted from one foot to the other. I’d hit the jackpot! Too bad I didn’t have a good explanation of what I wanted! “It’s about Rex Stuhler. My niece is the one who found him the other night, and . . .” And what? But I needn’t have worried.

Honey’s face flushed a fast red. “That poor girl. But I knew something like this would happen, I just knew it. Rex didn’t take him seriously, though. Fawn laughed it off, too. The whole thing makes me want to—” She broke off and covered her face with her hands.

Jeremy reached out to comfort his wife. “It’ll be okay,” he said.

“No, it won’t,” she choked out through sobs. “Rex is dead. It’ll never be okay for him or for Fawn. And if they don’t arrest Barry Vannett, then something is seriously wrong with the universe.”

I inched closer. “Why would Barry Vannett be involved?”

Honey looked up. Tears streamed down her face, but she made no move to wipe them away. “Because,” she spat out, “when Rex talked to Barry about an easement for the trail, Barry threatened him. Told Rex to get off his property, that the red roof had been the first sign of bad judgment, and that if he ever tried to get a trail across his farm again, he’d get a face full of shotgun.”