Feather From a Stranger

by Marianne Schlegelmilch

  “That's Steve Bitten,” he had told his new wife.

  “That is Brad Edwards, Mara's husband, who supposedly died in a plane crash in Brazil four years ago,” Sarah, who herself was shaking now, said frantically to Ken. “He was just declared legally dead right before Mara moved to Alaska. You have to stop him, Ken!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The Past Becomes

  the present

  MARA SAT TREMBLING ON THE GROUND AS SARAH HELD HER TIGHTLY.

  “It was Brad,” she choked. “I know it was. There's no mistake. You saw him, too, Sarah, didn't you?”

  Mara's tears were streaming all over Sarah's wedding dress as she held Mara tightly.

  “He ran when he saw me,” Mara cried out. “He saw me and he just ran! I thought he was dead. All these years I thought he was dead! He let me think he was dead for four years, Sarah. It can't be true!” she screamed. “This can't be happening!”

  Sarah continued rubbing Mara's back gently, trying to soothe her. Ken Tandry walked across the parking lot to where his new wife sat trying to soothe her best friend. Doug Williams arrived from the other direction with Sgt. Pilson walking right behind him. Doug and Sgt. Pilson helped Mara up and into the squad car, while Ken took Sarah aside.

  “They picked him up for speeding just north of Soapstone Rd.,” he told her. “They're on their way back now. What's going on, Sarah?”

  Sarah filled Ken in on the story of Mara's husband's plane crash during their work in Brazil, telling him every same detail that she had heard Mara tell her over and over since her friend had first called with the news. She told him how Mara had surprised everyone by coming up to Alaska—something that no one, not even Brad—would have ever dreamed she would do alone. She told her new husband that she was so proud of Mara and how she had finally come to terms with her loss and decided to take this major step in reclaiming her life.

  “It's unbelievable!” Sarah told her husband. “That man who you said calls himself Steve Bitten is really Brad Edwards. There is no doubt in my mind.”

  “Sarah, I know this is going to sound strange,” Ken began, “but is there any possibility that Mara knew her husband was still alive and was maybe meeting him up here or something?”

  “None,” Sarah said adamantly. “Absolutely no way. I've known Mara for fifteen years and no, there is absolutely no way.”

  “Did you know her husband, too?” Ken asked her.

  “Not really,” Sarah replied. “I met him once or twice in a group setting, but they eloped when they got married and left right after for Brazil. I am guessing he would never have remembered meeting me.”

  Sarah was becoming upset and Ken was, too. This was their wedding day. Nothing about the last few months, though, had been normal and they both knew they would have to see this through.

  “Sarah, I love you so much,” Ken told her.

  “I love you, too, Ken,” she answered. “I'm sorry this is all ruining our wedding day.”

  “As long as I'm with you, nothing is ruined,” Ken told her.

  “Mara's been devastated, Ken. First by Brad's death and now finding that he has been alive for the last four years while her own life has been so sad. Not only alive, but right here in Alaska; and not only that, someone connected to my sister's husband who just was murdered. It can't get any more bizarre than that. It is unbelievable, Ken, totally unbelievable.”

  Ken hugged his bride, holding her in what would be their only chance to embrace on their wedding day for now.

  “I know you need to get to work,” Sarah told him. “Better get to it. I'll be waiting for you. I love you more for taking care of Mara.”

  “I think we need to talk to Karen Steele, but no one seems to know where she went,” Ken told her.

  SGT. PILSON HAD BEEN WITH THE ALASKA STATE TROOPERS FOR THIRTY years. He knew the Valley intricately. Mara had finally stopped crying and sat with him at the police station where he had taken her for her safety, since no one seemed to know how the situation with Brad Edwards would evolve. Doug Williams sat beside her, having no idea what was going on when Ken and Sarah walked in. While Sarah took Mara into the restroom to wash her face, Ken Tandry filled Doug and Sgt. Pilson in on what he knew. When the two women returned, the three men were sitting quietly with both Ken and Doug looking stunned.

  “Miss Edwards,” Craig Pilson began, leaning forward in his chair. “Before we talk about what just happened outside, I want to fill you…I want to fill all of you… in on what we found during the investigation into the leaking hose on your SUV.”

  Pilson handed each of them a copy of the report that he had just received and which he had originally intended to discuss with Mara before the incident with Steve Bitten/Brad Edwards outside.

  “You can see that our investigator found the problem with your vehicle to be very problematic. Although we can't say so with certainty, it appears your mechanic was right in assessing that someone has been tampering with your vehicle.”

  Mara gasped and began to tremble again.

  “Normally we would think of this as just an isolated incident of vandalism, but due to the circumstances surrounding the death of Dan Williams,” he paused to give a sympathetic look to Doug before continuing,” Due to the circumstances of the death of Doug here's, brother, and the fact that your vehicle was apparently tampered with at Dan's residence, we have reason to suspect that someone is intent on doing you harm.”

  Mara felt the blood drain from her face. Why would someone want to harm her? Pilson continued, “As if all this weren't strange enough, now we learn that your long dead husband is not only alive, but right here in Palmer. I know this is difficult, Miss Edwards, but is there any possibility that your husband could have known you were in Alaska?”

  “No. I don't think so,” Mara answered. This name, Steve Bitten, he was going by—I heard the name mentioned so often during the search for Dan— but I never saw him, or met him, or knew what he looked like, and as far as I know our paths never crossed. “

  “Ellie, neither,” Sarah piped in. “Ellie only knew him as Steve Bitten and as far as I know, he never came to the house at any time since Mara's arrival or would have had any reason to know she was even in Alaska, even if somebody had mentioned that a friend was visiting.”

  “I can attest to that,” Doug said. “No one except Sassy knew Steve Bitten was even back, and she only learned of it a week or two before Dan's plane crash. I'm almost certain that the only contact she had with him was to beg him to take her back, which he refused to do. As far as I know, she only talked to him that once, and then only for a few minutes. That was before Mara ever got here.”

  “I'm terrified, Sgt. Pilson,” Mara said in a whisper. “I can't even think straight anymore.” She began to tremble so hard that both Ken and Doug took off their jackets to wrap around her. Sarah grabbed her hand and tucked it under her arm.

  “Miss Edwards—Mara,” Sgt. Pilson said, trying to find a way to calm her fear. “This was not a serious attempt on your life. I want you to know that. At most, it would have resulted in inconvenience and possibly a couple of days’ delay in your departure. It's more like a warning of some kind, an attempt to either scare you or delay you. This would have been a big enough concern if it had happened without all the other circumstances that have occurred and especially without the mechanism of attack, if you will, being so similar to that used with Dan and his plane. My plan was to warn you to use caution and watch your back. Now, in view of what just happened, it seems to have taken on a whole new level of importance. I know it is difficult, and I have heard what the others had to say, but in your own words, could you please tell me what just happened out there and why you are so upset?”

  Mara began talking, at first hesitatingly and then less so. She told of meeting Brad Edwards in college and how they had been sweethearts, how they eloped, and had moved to the Amazon to begin their life together. She told of the plane crash and of the several investigations that turned up no sign of
her husband and of how, after four long years, he had finally been declared legally dead, allowing her to move on with her life.

  She explained how she needed closure and needed to come to terms with her loss, and how she had decided to fulfill their joint dream of moving to Alaska. She described how she had stopped in Palmer for just a few days to see her best friend's sister and then planned to move on, but was held there by the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Dan Williams—a person she had only met the night before he ended up missing.

  She told of how odd it had been to meet Doug Williams on the Alaska Highway, only later to learn that he was the brother-in-law to her best friend's sister, Ellie. Even Ellie, she told him, had been a stranger to her before her arrival.

  Turning her hat in her hands, Mara stared at the feather in the band and told how she had met an old man on the ferry who said: Your present is the future of your past, and how she would need the feather to protect your future from your past.

  Craig Pilson silently listened to her story. Beside her, Doug Williams’ eyes filled with pain as he watched her.

  “The old man was right,” Mara said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Uncertainty

  DOUG COULD HARDLY BELIEVE WHAT HE WAS HEARING. THE FAILED business relationship between the man he knew as Steve Bitten and his brother Dan had been strange enough. The fact that his girlfriend, Sassy, had been in love with Steve Bitten was another angle to this story that he had tried to dismiss. Now his brother was dead and Steve Bitten was not only not the person he claimed to be, but also the husband of a woman Doug had met under unusual circumstances on both the ferry and on the Alaska Highway.

  Not only that, but this same woman had turned up at his own brother's house, and had received the shock of her life when learning that her husband, who she believed had been dead for four years, even having recently been told so by a certificate declaring him legally dead, was actually alive.

  If that wasn't strange enough, this woman just happened to be the best friend of his sister-in-law's only sister—a woman now married to the cop who was investigating his brother's murder. Doug got up and walked outside. He needed time to think this all through. His mind was racing. Suddenly, he felt like nothing in his life was real. Ken Tandry followed him outside.

  “Doug, I know this is pretty much more than anyone could be expected to absorb. I can't even believe it myself. Twenty years in the police force and just when you think you've seen it all…” Tandry's words trailed off.

  Doug didn't answer. Instead, he lit up one of the thin cigars he liked to smoke every once in a while just for the heck of it.

  “Mara's a good person, Doug. Sarah says there's no way she had even a clue that her husband was still alive. What we've got to figure out, what seems almost impossible to imagine, is how he ended up as the business partner of your own brother. Strange, isn't it, how Mara pulled all these players together when all she was trying to do was to move on and start a new life? Now your brother is dead, Mara is in danger…” Tandry stopped himself. “I'm sorry, Doug. I'm talking to you like the friend you have become. I should remember that you just lost your only brother.”

  “No offense taken, Ken,” Doug said, letting the cigar hang on the edge of his lower lip as he talked. “I wonder how Sassy fits into all of this?”

  “There's a lot I wonder about, Doug,” Ken answered. “Like how much Karen Steele knows about the man she is supposed to marry in a few weeks. And who is Karen Steele? No one seems to know much about her except that she signed on with Talkeetna Realty about six months ago and they say she recently moved here from Idaho.”

  “I know Mara is innocent,” Doug said. “Thor took to her right away and in my book, that's a sure sign that she is exactly who she says she is. I've had Thor for close to three years and he's never taken to anyone like he has to Mara, no one except Anna, that is.

  I don't know how much more of this Mara can take. How many women would be able to face learning that the man they were married to, their college sweetheart, even, was alive after having been thought dead? Not only thought to be dead, but determined to be dead by practically every international investigative agency on earth. Discovering him alive this way, and in the company of another woman, must have just shattered the only shred of goodness that remained of what she had believed to be a perfect marriage.” Doug took a couple of more puffs on his cigar before stomping it out.

  “What's going to happen to her?” he asked Tandry.

  “Well, first of all, we're gonna need to make sure she stays safe,” Tandry answered. “That tampering with her brakes has taken on a whole new meaning now that her husband has turned up; although from everything I can piece together so far, and judging by both their reactions on seeing each other this afternoon, Brad Edwards is not the person who is trying to hurt Mara.”

  Tandry thought some more.

  “No, Doug, it's starting to look like there is something a lot bigger than brake tampering and plane tampering going on here, and it's looking more and more to me like your brother, Dan, and now, Mara, just happened to fall into the middle of whatever the hell it is.”

  “I'm staying at Ellie's,” Doug said. “In the bunkhouse. I'm close enough to the house to hear if anything is going on over there. I can keep an eye on both Ellie and Mara.”

  “That sounds like a good idea.”

  “What about Steve Bitten or whatever his name is? You said an officer just picked him up,” Doug asked Tandry.

  “Sgt. Pilson is going to keep him in Palmer Correctional for tonight. He's already talked to the D.A. and received a court order denying bail due to flight risk. If he's Brad Edwards, then how is it that he has been declared legally dead? That is not an easy process. If Brad Edwards is dead, then who is this person?”

  “No, we have Brad Edwards, legally dead or not, in our custody. We have two witnesses saying he is Brad Edwards, and until we figure out why he is here in Alaska, there is suspicion enough to hold him. Besides that, we have him clocked at doing a hundred in a fifty-five mile per hour zone and so we are going to hold him for reckless endangerment pending toxicology tests as well.”

  “Do you think Mara is going to want to see him—talk to him?” Doug asked. “What if she says she wants that? I'd want that if I were her.”

  “Pilson has a call into the Federal Marshall's office and the FBI is involved, just based on the fact that he was declared legally dead in South America and has now turned up in Alaska. Pilson tells me they'll be taking him to Anchorage in the morning. I don't think Mara and he are going to be allowed to talk to each other by any of the factions of law enforcement that are involved, until their investigation is done. If…” Tandry paused and shuffled his feet, “If they suspect that Mara knew her husband was not dead and accepted insurance money, or in anyway assisted in concealing his identity, then we could be looking at a whole new scenario, Doug. Judging by what I've seen and learned so far, though, she is a tragic victim in all this and if my gut feeling is right, she'll be vindicated soon enough. Meanwhile, we'll assure her that you are up there to watch out for both her and Ellie.”

  “Not to worry, Ken. I'll stay right near, and for good measure I think I'll put Thor outside to keep an eye on things around the homestead. If anything unusual moves up there, Thor will let me know.”

  “I can't tell you in strong enough words, Doug, that we don't know what we're dealing with here, and until we do, we can't stay too vigilant.”

  Ken Tandry removed his hat, brushed the back of his hair from his forehead and put the hat back on.

  “One more thing, and this is not something I normally recommend, but I know you well enough now, and I know you have a level head…I think you should keep a firearm handy, maybe one in the bunkhouse and one in the house. If I were you, I'd make sure both women know how to use it.”

  “And little Anna,” Tandry added, “talk to Ellie about sending her to a friend's house for a couple of weeks, okay? I just don't l
ike the way things are coming down. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if Ellie is also in danger.”

  “I'll talk to Ellie,” Doug answered. “I'll leave my shotgun at the house and carry my .45 on me…just in case.”

  “I'm not one to want to overreact or frighten people unnecessarily,” Tandry said, “but I think both women have seen enough already to know that it would be wise to be careful until we get this situation sorted out. In the meantime, I'm going to order some extra patrols up your way. If I were you, I'd keep the barn and the hangar locked up tightly.”

  Once back inside, Ken and Doug met Mara and Sarah.

  “Sarah…Ken,” Mara stumbled. “Your wedding day is ruined. Thank you for helping me. I don't know what to say…”

  “Hush, Mara,” Sarah told her friend.

  “Doug and I were just talking outside,” Tandry began talking to Mara. “He's going to take you back up to Ellie's and stay up there in the bunkhouse near both of you. I'm recommending that Anna stay at a friend's house. You should be safe there with Doug and Thor and the extra patrols I've set up.”

  “Okay, Ken,” Mara said limply. “Thanks, Doug…for helping.”

  “I'm going to need to talk to you soon, Mara,” Ken told her. “I know you need some time to absorb all that's happened. Sarah and I are going to spend the next two nights up in Hatcher Pass as planned. We can at least start our honeymoon.”

  He squeezed Sarah around the waist before continuing.

  “It's close enough that I can be back here in short order and it will also be good if no one suspects that anyone's plans have changed.”

  “Steve Bitten…Brad…is in jail without bond, so don't worry about him finding you.”

  Tandry looked at Mara as he spoke, trying to read her reaction. What he saw confirmed his impression that Mara was as shocked as they all were to find her husband not only alive, but also right here in Palmer, Alaska.