by Mary Bowers
“No, honey, it wasn’t like that. She was . . . beat up. By somebody. It’s definitely murder.”
“Who would want to kill that silly old bat? She may have had some cockeyed ideas, but she was harmless, right? Sending hate mail to obscure journals doesn’t get people killed, does it?”
“I beg your pardon,” he said, trying to kid me out of it. “Are you suggesting that only obscure journals publish my work?”
“Don’t be an idiot. Hey! What’s that up ahead? Is that Matthew?”
Logan groaned, so I knew I was right.
An old pick-up truck was pulled off haphazardly to the side of the road at the outskirts of Ephraim, and a bike was laying down on the grass beside it. Next to the bike was a man, sitting on the ground holding a bike helmet and cranking his neck to look up at a man crouching over him, talking very earnestly.
“I think Matthew got hit by a truck,” I said.
“Not hard enough, from the looks of it.”
I gave Logan a sharp look, but he was already pulling over behind the pick-up. “Good thing you’ve got enough room to take his bike, too,” I said. “It probably cost as much as a used car. Of course, we’re going to have to take him back to Trollhaven with us.”
Logan made a kind of growl, but when I said, “What?” he told me he hadn’t said anything.
Chapter 15 – Logan vs. Matthew, Again
It turned out that the driver of the pick-up had managed to swerve at the last minute to avoid hitting Matthew. It had been a near thing, though, close enough that Matthew had fallen off his bike. If he’d swerved hard enough, the truck’s driver had probably had a terrifying moment when he’d thought he was going to roll it over. They were both pretty shaken up. The driver seemed in worse shape than Matthew, actually, and he kept offering Matthew his insurance card.
Other than falling off his bike, Matthew was unbroken, but not entirely unscathed. He kept rubbing his right elbow.
“I couldn’t get my shoes out of the clips fast enough,” he said more than once, as if he were ashamed of falling off his bike like a rookie.
Ollie (the truck’s driver), overwhelmed us with explanations of what had happened, interspersed with expressions of a deep and sincere love for all mankind, lest we suspect him of going through the world mowing down bikers intentionally. He had a little white moustache, and as it bristled over his moving lips, I felt a growing affection toward him. He was short and slightly pudgy, wearing a corduroy jacket and droopy brown slacks, and was altogether like a character out of Heidi. Within a very few minutes, Matthew, Logan and I found ourselves comforting him.
To finally demonstrate his virile indestructibility, Matthew stood up and faced the breeze, letting his blond hair blow back and rippling his muscles beneath the spandex in a pose vaguely reminiscent of George Reeves at the beginning of Superman.
He carried off the look pretty well. I was awed for a moment or two. Also at a loss for words.
Logan noticed.
“Well, let’s get you and your bike into the cargo bay and let Ollie go home and get himself a nice, stiff drink,” Logan told Matthew.
“I don’t touch strong drink,” Ollie said.
“It has its medicinal uses,” Logan told him gently. “Make an exception for yourself, just this one time. Go home and see if one of your neighbors can give you a brandy, spend the afternoon talking it out with them. There’s no need to be upset, Ollie. You didn’t hurt anybody here, so don’t feel bad about it. I’m sure it was all Matthew’s fault. Okay, Matt, let’s give the bike a heave ho and get you back to your cabin so you can rest.”
The bike looked about the same way Matthew did: a little scratchy, but probably good to go. Still, by that time, Matthew was willing to accept a ride from us. He and Logan lifted the bike into the cargo bay and slammed the door down on it. The bay was big enough to take the bike without the back wheel having to come off.
The encounter had ended with everybody shaking hands with Ollie and trying to reassure him. We stood behind his truck waving as he started it up and drove away at a slow speed. Then Matthew got into the backseat, looked mournfully into the cargo area, gave Logan a leery glance and buckled himself in.
The three of us began the ride back to Trollhaven in an awkward silence. At first, I couldn’t get the men to say anything at all.
Then I suddenly remembered that morning’s other drama.
“It’s terrible about Gerda, isn’t it?”
Matthew gave a little grunt. He was sitting behind me, but I could still see his face by looking in the right-side rear-view mirror. “What’s she up to now?”
I blinked. “You don’t know?”
Logan put it more directly. “She’s not up to anything anymore, Matt. She was murdered last night.”
There was an eruption from the backseat. “You’re freakin’ kidding!”
“No, we’re not freakin’ kidding,” Logan said. “She’s dead.”
“What happened?”
“Faye and her parents found her after breakfast this morning,” I told him.
“Where?”
“Down by the bayside, where that troll’s mound is supposed to be,” I said. “So don’t be surprised if Trollhaven is still full of cops when we get back.”
He whimpered out an “Oh,” like a dying swan.
“Why? Were you near that area today?”
Logan had asked it, and I turned to look at him, confused. What had made him say that?
“No I wasn’t,” Matthew answered fiercely. “I left for a ride up to Gills Rock at sunrise this morning. I wasn’t sniffing around down by the water looking for trolls. Besides, why would I go down there? You can’t ride a bike down there – not safely.”
Which seemed to sum things up in Matthew’s world.
We unloaded Matthew and his bike at his cabin, right next door to mine. I got out of the SUV and offered to help him inside. “You can just leave the bike out here,” I said, as he totally ignored me and carried it up the stairs to the porch. I went up and held the door open for him after he unlocked it, determined to take his baby inside and make it comfortable.
I stood inside the doorjamb, just far enough that I could see inside, but I didn’t step in. He didn’t seem to want me to.
He leaned the bike up against the little table in the alcove, then looked around at me. Our eyes locked, and he stared. At first I was a little embarrassed, wondering if he thought I was being nosey.
His cabin was exceptionally neat, almost as if nobody was staying there at all. He sure wasn’t like most of the guys I had known. There were no clothes draped over the furniture, no crushed beer cans on the table, no half-eaten pizza congealing in a box. Nothing, in fact. But then he’d arrived with nothing but a couple of saddlebags and a backpack, and he must have had everything in them that he needed. Even they were nowhere in sight. Now that I thought about them, he hadn’t had the saddlebags on his bike that day, and he wasn’t wearing his backpack.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked. “I’ve got some aspirin if you need it.”
“What I need is a good bike shop,” he said. “I think he threw off the derailleur. I don’t want to get too far into the woods without getting it tuned up.”
“Well, let me know if you need a ride. I know you don’t have a car.”
He thanked me with more warmth than I’d been able to get out of him so far. The fact that he suddenly seemed human made me realize how distant he usually was. The switch to friendliness left me a little breathless.
And maybe it encouraged me, because I said, “I’m a little more worried about you than I am about the bike. Bike parts are easier to replace than . . . .” I made a comprehensive gesture up and down the length of his body. I hadn’t meant anything but friendly concern, but his eyes steadied on mine and held the moment about four heartbeats too long. “Matthew,” I began, and I had no idea what I was going to say next when I heard somebody coming onto the porch behind me. I turned and saw Logan.
“Everything alright?” he asked. “All in one piece – both of you?” he added, making pretty much the same gesture I’d just made, taking in Matthew’s body, only Logan was including the stupid bike.
“I think the old girl’s going to need to see a bike doctor, but I’m fine,” Matthew told him with a twisty little grin.
His eyes were aquamarine. An extraordinarily clear aquamarine. Like real gemstones.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he said suddenly, coming towards us. But instead of coming to stand in front of us, he took hold of the edge of the door and looked at the inside of it, where a bar of hooks was hanging. “Somebody’s been in here. I hung my camera bag on the hook on the right side, and now it’s hanging in the middle. I told that freakin’ maid to stay out of here.”
“I’m sure it was the Sheriff’s people,” Logan said reasonably. “They searched all of our cabins this morning, too.”
“They can’t do that without my consent, unless they have a warrant,” he said indignantly.
“Actually . . . .” Logan took a minute to think it through. “I think you’re right. Are you sure you left your camera bag on the other hook?”
“Of course I am.”
I felt Logan take hold of my right arm from behind. “Well, we’ll leave you alone to rest now. Or to find a bike doctor.”
“Feel better,” I said, taking one last hit off the aquamarine eyes.
After that, I was escorted out of Matthew’s cabin and I heard the door being locked behind us.
“That’s odd,” I said once we were in the driveway again. “If he was going out sightseeing along the peninsula, why didn’t he bring his camera?”
“Yeah, I’m wondering about that, too.”
“He didn’t say he forgot it. He said he left it hanging on the hook.”
As we began to walk along, Logan was silent, brooding. My own cabin was right next door, but apparently we were going to Logan’s cabin, at the far end of the row. He had parked his omnibus down by his own cabin, the one all the way at the opposite end from the main house, and when we got there he said, “Come on inside.”
It was an order, not a request, and he made it while his mind was whirring almost audibly, working on something.
Inside Cabin 7, which was exactly like Cabin 2 and probably all the others, except for the larger model where Faye and her family were staying, I cocked my head at Logan and said, “And then there’s the other thing. I noticed it, too, you know.”
“Noticed what?” he said.
“He says he biked up to Gills Rock today. Well, he was on the right road, but if he’d been on his way while we were driving up there, we would have seen him.”
“Maybe not. Maybe he was off in the bushes taking care of business, or maybe we just went past him without noticing him.”
I looked him in the eye. “Oh, I would have noticed him.”
He twisted his lips at me. “Is that a fact, Sherlock?”
“I prefer Miss Marple.”
“Never heard of her.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would have. She’s part of the myth and magic of western folklore. You know, west of Scandinavia.”
“More south than west.”
“Really?”
He was sneaking up on me, and I knew it. I’d figured it out so early on, I was getting used to it by now, but he wasn’t going to slip past my defenses just by being slow and steady.
On the other hand, fast and thrilling, like Matthew, had always turned out pretty much the way my mother told me it would, back in the day. Oh, Matthew had those eyes, but he never sent out a signal without suddenly shutting down again, like he’d remembered he had something to hide.
Logan had probably never hid anything from anybody in his entire life, and he was right there in front of me, sending out signals with a pair of ashy-blue eyes that were also very pretty, in a less dramatic way. But the real thing about Logan was, there was something . . . right about him. Exciting guys like Matthew always came with deal-breaking issues, and the ride was over way too soon.
Was I growing up? I wondered briefly. Was my taste in men maturing?
Nope. That wasn’t it. Either way, it was only a vacation fling. And Matthew was so scratchy, and Logan was so . . . well, comfortable. Like a big warm teddy bear.
Grown-up girls need teddy bears, too.
So here I was alone with Logan in his cabin, and he was sneaking up on me. I had also noticed the “honey,” earlier in the car, which had slipped out as if we were old pals. And of course, we’d already started up a germ pool with the cocoa mug. So I’d had plenty of time to make up my mind whether or not I was going to allow it when he finally slid his arm around my body and pulled me up against him for a kiss.
I was glad I didn’t resist. There was something pent-up about that kiss that did catch me by surprise, though. For those of you who don’t know any folklorists, they aren’t up on a lot of ordinary, everyday things, but they do know how to kiss.
* * * * *
I began to realize that I must have been a natural-born detective. I’d just never noticed before, because my life so far had involved so much time staring at computers and answering media posts that I hadn’t run across any murders before. A waste of a great natural resource, I told myself, once I figured it out.
That didn’t hit me until later, of course. While I was exploring the natural-born abilities of my new friend the folklorist, I wasn’t thinking much about anything in particular. Just sort of letting myself be pleasantly surprised.
We were standing just inside the door of his cabin, and when there was a sudden pounding on the door behind us, we came out of the ether pretty fast.
Still gripping me stubbornly, he called over my head, “Who is it?”
“Room service,” said a woman’s voice.
Logan and I stared at one another. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” I said.
Apparently, she heard me. “Cops been underfoot all day, getting in my way. I’m running late, and I need to get done and get home to my cat, so if you two have your clothes on, let me in. My cat needs feedin’, and if he doesn’t get his meals on time he starts shootin’ things where they don’t belong.”
Logan and I had been maintaining eye contact during this cry from the working masses, and our frowns had turned to smiles, then grins, then wild grins.
He murmured softly, so she wouldn’t hear. “I guess we’d better let her in. She probably has a master key.”
“Or a battering ram.”
“Are you in there?” she called again.
It crossed my mind to tell her that we’d sneaked out a window, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t in the mood. Logan unwrapped me, stepped around me and let her in.
“We wouldn’t want to discommode your cat,” he said, standing aside with the door held wide open for her to enter with her bundle of linens.
She gave him a look. “Commode is the word. If you only knew him, you’d understand. He’s a vengeful little cuss. I don’t know why I keep him, except if I threw him out he’d probably just come right back. Once you feed them, it’s all over.”
She was comfortably dressed in a flowered top and black pull-on pants, with shoes that were battered but still serviceable. She was older than a cleaning lady should be – at least 75 – but she was spry and ready to dig in. Her hair was a color nobody had ever been born with, kind of like dying marigolds, but at her age, her hair color was her choice.
As she walked by us, Logan asked her what the cat’s name was.
“Napoleon. He was like that from the moment he walked into my house and took over. I’ll start in the bedroom. Thank heaven this is the last cabin.”
“Don’t bother changing the sheets, if that’s any help,” Logan called after her.
She turned around and gave us a filthy leer, then disappeared around the u-turn to the bathroom.
“What was that all about?” I asked him.
“Just don’t think about it,” he said, shak
ing his head with his eyes closed.
“You know,” I said suddenly, lowering my voice. “I think that’s Paula. She’s the only housekeeper Evaline mentioned, and this one seems like a character.”
“You know her name?”
“Oh, that’s right. You left before she got mentioned yesterday morning. Paula is the one who was telling Faye about the troll legend while she cleaned the O’Neil’s cabin. She’s an old trooper around here – knows everything, lived in Fish Creek forever . . . .”
“Gotcha,” he said, sitting back to wait.
That was when I began to appreciate my natural instincts for detection. Paula may not have been a suspect, but I put her down as a secondary character, a source of background information, and I began to formulate my plan of attack. My technique turned out to be impeccable.
Who knew?
* * * * *
“A lot of drama around here today,” I began, getting her onto the subject, but being oblique.
“Wait until I’m done vacuuming,” she said.
We were sitting down at the alcove table, and she didn’t give us a chance to respond before she turned on the vacuum, so we were left staring at one another for a while. There was a laptop computer and mouse set up on Logan’s side of the table, and beside the mouse was a print-out of what I assumed to be a research paper.
During the next little while there was too much noise for anybody to be heard, even the two of us at the table. I idly reached across and slid the print-out toward myself, but Logan trapped it with his right hand. I looked up at him, making myself winsome, and he finally lifted his hand and let me take it.
It wasn’t what I had expected. Not anywhere close. It was a work of fiction of some kind, with characters who had strange, unpronounceable names. I had expected strange, unpronounceable technical terms, used to break down fairytales until they were excruciating, and this was nothing like it.
I became engrossed immediately. It had a strong beginning, introducing an unidentified female (I think) in peril. As I read, I began to understand that this was a priestess of some kind, dedicated to a god named Ran, and she glancingly described horrors from her past while obviously leading up to some greater horror about to overcome her.