Gone with the Whisker

Chapter 2

The next morning I was bleary-eyed and feeling raw from turbulent dreams and disturbing thoughts. I couldn’t fathom that Rex Stuhler, a bookmobile patron, was dead. At some point during the Chilson fireworks, someone had taken advantage of the show’s bangs and explosions and shot him.

I’d seen Rex just two days ago, at the temporary stop. He’d been waiting for us when we’d arrived late, and he’d patted Eddie on the head. Rex was maybe fifty, and a voracious reader. His profession as a pest exterminator out of his home office meant he worked irregular hours, and the combination of those facts made him a bookmobile regular.

He was also one of those guys who loved gadgets, especially electronic gadgets, and when we’d teased him about preferring paper books over e-books, he’d whispered it was a secret he was trying to keep from his buddies, and what did he have to do to buy our silence?

At the time we’d laughed, but now I was having a hard time swallowing my tears. Rex didn’t have to worry about anything any longer.

But life went on for those still living, and last night Rafe had asked me to pick up a box of drywall screws at the hardware store first thing. “Sorry,” he’d said after we’d been questioned and dismissed by a sheriff’s deputy and he’d walked us back to the houseboat, “but if you get those, I can keep working.”

“No problem,” I’d told him, putting my arm around a shivering Katrina. Her life in Florida had not prepared her for cool summer evenings in northern Michigan, but she continued to shrug off recommendations for always having a sweatshirt at hand. “I’ll take care of it.”

So now, though I deeply wanted to roll over and sleep for twelve hours, I yawned, yawned again, slithered out of bed to avoid waking Eddie, and got showered and dressed as quietly as possible.

Not that Katrina moved a muscle, other than those involuntary ones that kept her heart and brain going. As I wrote my whereabouts on the kitchen’s whiteboard—Hardware store, house, back by noon—I listened to her soft, regular breathing. Last night, she hadn’t taken well to my command to call her parents and tell them what had happened, but when I’d asked if she was going to text any friends about it and did those friends have parents who knew hers, she grudgingly saw the need.

My brother and his wife had been understandably shocked and concerned, and after Katrina curled up in her sleeping bag and went into coma mode, we talked into the wee hours of the morning. We eventually agreed there was no immediate need for her to go home or for them to fly up, but that I’d keep a close eye on her and let them know immediately if she was exhibiting signs of emotional trauma.

And now it was morning. Gently, I tucked the sleeping bag around her shoulders and hoped what I’d told Matt and Jennifer had been right.

“Kids are resilient,” I told the blue sky as I stepped outside. At least that’s what people said. But I wasn’t so sure. Maybe kids were just resilient on the outside, same as adults. Who knew what was going on inside?

I made a solemn vow to watch over my niece, to take careful note of any changes in her behavior, and to deepen our relationship so that she’d feel free to talk to me about anything. In the long run, this would all work out, I was sure of it.

Well, almost.

But the future would work itself out in due time, so I tucked my worry about Katrina into a back corner and made up my mind to enjoy the morning. Which was easy to do, because the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and so many things in the world were amazing and wonderful.

A hop, skip, and a jump from the marina was the old, large, 1900s Shingle style house that was rising up from the metaphorical ashes of having been divided into apartments decades earlier. It had a deep front porch, lake views, and my vote for being the most beautiful house in Chilson. Plus, in a few short months it would be my own home. Rafe was already living there, because he didn’t mind living in a state of perpetual renovation. And I might have been living there with him this very moment if it hadn’t been for my recently discovered inability to tolerate the fumes of paint primer.

I walked on tiptoes as I went past the house, looking for signs of Rafe. There was no visual clue, but then I heard the drywall saw start up. I blew a kiss in his general direction and headed up the hill.

The hardware store was on the outskirts of downtown, a short walk from the marina, and by the time I arrived, my spirits had risen and I was darn close to one hundred percent awake.

In many places, hardware stores were closed on Sundays or opened late. In Chilson, as in many other northern resort towns, businesses had one hundred days to make money, more or less Memorial Day through Labor Day. Being closed on any one of those days was close to unthinkable. And here it was, barely eight o’clock on the fifth of July, and the hardware store was so crowded and noisy that I barely heard the door’s bells jingle as I went inside.

I picked up a big box of number seven by two-inch drywall screws, walked away, went back for another box, then headed up to the counter, where a small group of men I didn’t recognize clustered together. Not long ago I’d been intimidated by hardware stores, but thanks to Rafe’s constant need for fasteners—a catch-all term I’d formerly made fun of, but now accepted as part of the construction vocabulary—I was on a first-name basis with the hardware store owner and his staff.

“Hey, Minnie.” Jared, the owner, took the boxes and put them into the bag. “Sure you got enough?”

“I got double what he asked, so maybe.”

“On the account?”

When I nodded, he started typing into the keyboard. Rafe and I needed to have a serious chat about money and construction costs and mortgages, but every time I brought up the subject, he diverted the conversation. It had to be soon, though, because I wasn’t moving in until we were both happy with the financial situation.

“Probably one of those random killings. Bet it wasn’t anyone from around here,” a man to the left of me said, and I realized the male cluster was talking about last night’s murder.

I shook my head, trying to wish away the image of Rex Stuhler’s unseeing eyes.

“Downstater. Had to be.” Luke Cagan, one of Jared’s part-time employees, leaned against the counter, crossing his arms, which were covered with thick blond hairs.

The rest of the men nodded agreement and their cluster dispersed.

But I stood there, staring at the space where they’d been, because up until that moment my brain had been more occupied with the shock and aftermath of Katrina literally tripping over a murder victim. Up until now, I hadn’t thought about the obvious implications.

Who, indeed, had killed Rex Stuhler?

Why had someone killed Rex?

And would that someone kill again?

* * *

I delivered the screws to Rafe, who accepted the double delivery without batting an eye, and looked around for an out-of-the-way place to sit. Rafe and a friend of his were installing drywall on the basement ceiling and there wasn’t a role for me, other than having my phone at the ready to call 911.

Yes, I could have tried to be useful, but the couple of times I had done so during drywall work, things hadn’t ended up well for me, Rafe, or the drywall. I could do other things, though, especially when it was a benefit to be efficiently sized. A five-foot-tall body fit far better into an attic space for placing insulation, for instance, and my compact-size fingers were much better than Rafe’s big ones for installing tiny pieces of trim.

I spotted an upside down plastic five-gallon bucket that had once held paint, carried it near the work area, and sat on my new stool.

Rafe glanced at me through his upraised arms. “How’s Katrina?”

“Asleep,” I said. “At least she was when I left.”

“She seemed pretty shaken up last night.”

“Who’s Katrina?” Bob asked. “Is she hot? And single?”

I wasn’t sure exactly how Rafe knew Bob, but if I asked, I’d get a long story that may or may not have provided a real answer, so I imagined a story about a late blizzard and a lost puppy, which was almost certainly a much better explanation than reality.

“She’s seventeen.” Rafe pulled his screw gun from his tool belt.

“And my niece,” I said over the noise of drywall screws being screwed in tightly.

Bob gave a heavy sigh, which fluttered his thick, dark blond beard. “So my bad luck is holding.”

“Right now it’s more important that you hold up your end of the drywall,” Rafe said, installing screws faster than I would have thought possible for a guy who wasn’t a professional contractor.

As I watched them work and listened to them banter, I thought about the other revelation I’d had last night, the one from my sister-in-law. My brother had gone to bed, but Jennifer and I had talked a little longer, and one of her questions had come across as so odd that I’d pursued it.

“Is Katrina acting . . . secretive?” she’d asked.

I’d been puzzled by the question. And curious as to the reason behind it. “Why do you ask?”

Jennifer hemmed and hawed and eventually said, “Well, there was this boy . . .”

And so I learned that the reason behind my niece coming north had almost as much to do with her parents wanting distance between their eldest daughter and her erstwhile boyfriend as it did with aunt-niece bonding and summer employment.

Jennifer had sighed. “We should have told you, I know we should have, but somehow . . . somehow it never came up.”

Last night I’d been too tired and emotionally fraught to deal with family drama, but now that I was awake and chipper, I was taking it out and looking at it.

Yes, they absolutely should have told me. So how was I going to react?

After thinking for a bit, I decided not to react at all. I’d gone through a few rounds of bad judgment myself, and since I wasn’t a parent, my viewpoint of appropriate parental action was bound to be skewed. But now what did I do? Did I tell Katrina that her parents had told me about The Boy? Or did she assume I already knew?

I stood, still having no idea what my next steps should be, niece-wise.

“Headed out?” Rafe asked.

“Much as I’d like to sit here and watch other people work, I have a niece to tend to.”

“Say ‘hey’ for me. She had a rough night.”

I sent a kiss in his direction and left them to it.

Outside, the sky was starting to cloud up. I sent the sun and sky a fervent wish to stay strong and walked the two hundred feet to the marina. My tiny houseboat shared a short pier with a large Crown powerboat owned by Eric Apney, a forty-ish divorced downstater who made his living as a cardiac surgeon. He was an excellent neighbor, quiet and conscientious about following marina etiquette, and was sitting on his deck with a cup of coffee and a newspaper.

“Morning, Minnie,” he said. “Been out running?”

“Sort of.” I explained about the screw delivery, and he looked interested. There was something about other people’s renovation projects that got a certain slice of the population to volunteer their time, sort of a small-scale version of the classic Amish barn-raising.

“Ceiling work?” Eric settled back into his chair. “Maybe I’ll go up after lunch.”

I grinned. Which was when Rafe and Bob would be done.

“Want some?” Eric gestured with his mug.

Since I hadn’t had any caffeine in almost twenty hours, of course I did, but I tried not to look too eager. “Sure. That’d be great.”

He got to his feet and went into the cabin, and I stepped aboard. The view from Eric’s taller boat was different than mine. Just a few feet of elevation allowed me to look over the top of my houseboat, the boat owned by Louisa and Ted Axford, and all the way to the marina’s slightly dilapidated office.

Chris Ballou, the marina’s manager and head mechanic, was sweeping the office’s front sidewalk and talking with Skeeter, a guy about my age. Skeeter was a slightly mysterious figure. He had a very nice boat, lived at the marina from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and disappeared completely the rest of the year. And that was the sum total of my knowledge about him.

“Do you know Skeeter’s last name?” I asked Eric, who was handing me a steaming mug of happiness. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, and it’s Conlin.”

Eric was a wealth of Skeeter knowledge. “I have no idea what he does for a living. Or where he lives the rest of the year. Do you?”

“Huh.” Eric put his forearms on his boat’s gleaming metal railing. “I do not.”

“Seems odd, doesn’t it?” I mused.

“It does.”

We stood side by side, watching Chris and Skeeter pull chairs into the sun and promptly drop into them. I knew as much about Chris as I wanted to know, but how was it we knew nothing about Skeeter?

“You going to find out?” Eric asked.

I thought about it, then shook my head. “Some things are best left to the imagination.”

* * *

A still-sleepy Katrina and a hungry Minnie stood in line at the local diner. I’d decided against making breakfast—although since she hadn’t opened her eyes until almost eleven o’clock, calling it breakfast was questionable—and I was now questioning the Round Table decision.

We’d been standing here five minutes and the line hadn’t moved an inch, which shouldn’t have surprised me considering it was the busiest weekend of the year, but somehow did because nine months of the year there was never any line at all.

I stood on my tiptoes and craned my neck left and right, trying to see inside. My niece eyed me. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for . . . ha!” I dropped down onto my heels. “Wait here,” I told her, and eeled my way through the crowd and into the heart of the restaurant, because I’d spotted a possible solution to our problem. “Hey,” I said, coming up to the booth in the back corner. “Got room for two more?”

Holly Terpening, a fellow library staff member, smiled up at me and pushed her lovely straight brown hair behind her ears. “Hey, Minnie. We can shove over, can’t we, Brian?”

“Sure.” Holly’s husband, Brian, a strapping man who towered over me when sitting, let alone standing, slid over and patted the seat beside him. “Make some space for Miss Minnie, Anna. You too, Wilson.”

Anna, aged seven, and Wilson, a year older, were miniature versions of their parents. They obligingly made room and I fetched Katrina. Holly had already met her, but Brian and the kids hadn’t, so I introduced her saying, “This is Katrina, my niece from Florida and—”

“Kate,” Katrina said.

I blinked. I’d completely forgotten about last night’s name change. “Sorry. Kate.” I made the Terpening introductions, forgoing the description of Brian’s mining job out west, which meant he was gone three weeks out of four, and instead told Anna and Wilson that Kate’s dad worked at Disney World.

Anna’s eyes went wide. “Does he get to ride the rides every day?”

Kate shrugged. “If he wanted to, I guess.”

“Do you get to ride the rides every day?”

My niece shook her head. “I have school and stuff. But we used to go a lot when I was little.”

Wilson started asking questions about Mickey Mouse, and I leaned behind him to look at Holly. “Did you hear about last night?” I asked quietly. “About Rex Stuhler?”

Holly nodded. “I heard a tourist found him. What a horrible thing to happen on your vacation.”

“It was Kate.” I glanced at my niece. “We were leaving the fireworks and she literally tripped over him.”

Holly’s mouth opened, and at first no sound came out. Her jaw went up and down a couple of times before she could say, “The poor girl.” She sent a soft, sympathetic Mom look in Katrina’s direction. “Is she okay?”

Was she? I had no idea, not really. She seemed fine, but how could I possibly know for sure?

“Menus.” Carol, our waitress for the meal, put two on the table. “Not that you need one,” she said, glancing at me. “I’ll bring you coffee. What would you like to drink, miss?”

Katrina/Kate tucked her chin toward her chest. “Coffee, please,” she muttered.

I smiled. “Nicely done. I’ll have you in espresso by the end of the summer.”

“It’s just I’m tired,” she said. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“How come, Kate?” Anna asked. “Was it too noisy with fireworks? Our dog doesn’t like them at all.”

Kate shrugged. “No, I was having night . . .” She stopped, looked at Anna’s open, interested face, and said, “Having silly dreams.”

I desperately wanted to put my arms around her and tell her it would all be okay. There she was, being nice to a child she’d just met, keeping her pain inside, while I’d mostly been wondering why she wasn’t talking to me.

But of course she wasn’t. She barely knew me. Why on earth would she confide in an aunt she saw once or twice a year? And if she was suffering from a boyfriend breakup, that was one less person she could rely upon. Jennifer had said that Katrina/Kate had numerous friends, but not really a best friend. So who was she talking to?

Maybe no one. And that couldn’t be good.

Katrina sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Hope that coffee comes soon. I’m still pretty tired.”

I glanced at the Terpenings, and saw that the foursome was focused on the breakfast-or-lunch decision. Leaning forward, toward Katrina/Kate, I put my hands on the table. “Kate,” I said softly, “I know how you feel. About finding . . . a body.”

“Doubt it,” she said stiffly.

I hitched a little closer. “It has happened to me.” More than once. “Your dad doesn’t know, and neither does your mom or grandparents.” Mostly because I didn’t want to deal with what would surely have been my mom’s overreaction. “But Aunt Frances does.”

“Yeah?” Kate looked me full in the face. “How long did it take for the nightmares to stop?”

“Honest truth?” I asked. She nodded, but I hesitated, not wanting to tell her that I still occasionally woke shouting out for help, still sometimes sat straight up in the middle of the night with my heart beating too fast.

“It gets easier,” I finally said, “when the killer is arrested and put in jail.”

“In jail?” she asked, staring at the table. “You know, that might help.” She spoke with, if not animation, at least interest. “If that guy was in jail, I bet I could sleep. I mean, right now, he’s still out there, when Mr. Stuhler is dead. If the killer was in jail, that’d be a sort of closure, right?”

“Sure,” I said.

Kate looked at me. “How long did it take to arrest the killer?”

That depended on which murder she was talking about. “We found out—”

My niece cut right into that. “What do you mean ‘we’?”

Uh-oh. “Well . . .” I stared at her questioning face, trying to form the appropriate words. “Um.”

“Did you help the police? I bet you did.” She leaned forward, talking fast. “You know the sheriff, don’t you? And that really cute deputy? You know all of them. And I bet you looked into that murder yourself and helped put the killer in jail.”

I patted her hands and smiled. “Not if you ask Detective Inwood.”

“You’re not denying, which means you did.” Kate almost glowed. “You helped out with a murder investigation and got your own closure. The best ever kind of being proactive.”

Um. “That’s one way to look at it.”

Kate grabbed my hands. “So help me get my closure. You’ll help that detective and figure out who killed Mr. Stuhler and . . . and . . .” She blew out a fluttery breath. “And then I’ll be okay to go to sleep again.”

I held her hands tight, because her face was two shades paler than it had been yesterday afternoon, because her fingers were trembling, and because she was biting her lower lip to keep from crying.

“Absolutely,” I said.