Door County, Before You Die

by Mary Bowers

  Logan caught my eye. “Should we increase our tips?”

  I nodded. “Napoleon’s gotta eat.”

  He laughed.

  “Oh, heck,” I said, “we didn’t ask her to describe the mysterious lady.”

  He gazed at me obtusely, then suddenly remembered. “She won’t be in there long. She has to skip Gerda’s, and after that, mine’s next. We’ll wait for her down there, okay?”

  “Sure. Go ahead. I’ll be along in a minute. I’m going to get my knitting project. With everything that’s been going on, I haven’t been able to work on it much.”

  It turned out to be a very good idea, because Paula liked to knit, too, and she was impressed with the advanced pattern I’d chosen. She began to treat me like a friend.

  After we’d bonded over the knitting needles, I felt like I could ask her anything.

  “So who was that woman you saw Mark with yesterday? What did she look like?”

  “Redhead, wearing an orange anorak that looked awful against her hair, kinda skinny . . . I don’t know. Oh! She was wearing a pair of those ugly glasses girls wear these days. The kind that make them look like they’re half-blind and mad at somebody?”

  I nodded. “Were you able to find out exactly who she is?”

  “Not yesterday, but this morning I asked Evaline, and she said the woman was an investigator of some kind.”

  “A detective?” I turned to stare at Logan; it was absolutely not what I had expected. He managed to hide his surprise.

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “What’s she detecting?”

  “I already told you. Mark O’Neil.”

  “You don’t think they’re working together somehow?” I asked. Apparently, when opposite sexes were involved, Paula only saw one possibility.

  “He’s not working,” Paula said, as if I were being monumentally stupid. “He’s on vacation.”

  And that was enough for Paula. She thanked Logan for the generous tip, gave an approving look to the expert way I was knitting away, wished me luck with the pattern and went home to Napoleon.

  Chapter 19 – The Mystery of the Saddlebags

  When we came out of Logan’s cabin, discussing ways to casually look around Trollhaven for a redhead in ugly glasses, we saw Nettie and Henry coming towards us from the main cabin. By common consent, we all went into Cabin 2 and closed the door.

  “How’s Gail?” I asked my aunt.

  “A little fragile, but holding up. Evaline is taking good care of her, and even Karl seems to like her.”

  I snorted. “At least he likes somebody,” I said. “He was making a lot of snarky remarks after you left us. I gather he doesn’t treat his dad with much respect.”

  “Oh, you’re wrong there,” Nettie told me. “When his father is around, Karl is a different person. I think that whatever his business venture is, it must not be doing well, because I get the idea he’s back trying to get into Arnie’s good graces again, at least enough to wind up with a piece of Trollhaven someday. He’s so busy behaving himself I think it hurts.”

  “You figured out all that?” I asked admiringly, not doubting for a second that she’d read the situation correctly. “How does Evaline seem to feel about Karl stopping by for a visit?”

  “I think for now she’s just glad there’s peace in the family. Things may change in a day or so, when she’s had enough of him. You’re right, he’s very snarky when Arnie’s not within earshot. He criticizes everything without lifting a hand to help.”

  “Any news on the other thing?” Henry asked Logan quietly.

  Logan shook his head.

  I slewed my eyes between the two of them. “What’s going on, guys?”

  “Well, Sleepy, there’s been a murder,” Logan began. I had resumed my knitting, and I had to pause so I could glare at him across the little table.

  “Oh, so murder is the other thing? And you’ve got no news on that? Why couldn’t you just say so?”

  I was at the end of a row anyway, so I bundled up my knitting and put it away. Then I faced the three of them. “So what’s the plan for today?”

  “We go on an Easter egg hunt,” Henry said.

  “Easter eggs,” I repeated, nodding, and I would have been annoyed with him if I hadn’t felt like I knew exactly what he was talking about. “You want to go beat the bushes and see if we can find Matthew’s saddlebags laying around anywhere.”

  Henry was surprised I’d caught on, and called me a good girl.

  “Are we seriously going to go outside and crawl through the underbrush?” I said. “Haven’t the police already done that? Besides, a lot of that area is off-limits just now. The part behind this cabin is, since it’s where Matthew was up to no good, and the area around the troll’s mound is probably taped off too, because that’s where Gerda’s body was found. So what’s the plan?”

  Right on cue, I heard Loki barking outside.

  Henry angled his head, listening, turned back to me and said, “I feel like taking a dog for a walk this morning. Work up an appetite for lunch. Think they’ll let us borrow Loki?”

  “I don’t see why not,” I answered. “I’m sure it’s part of his job to walk the customers. It’s a shame that dogs always want to take you into the weeds and off into the forest somewhere.”

  Henry gave me a knowing smile, stood up and said, “Let’s risk it. Get your coats on, everybody.”

  It was only getting up into the 50s that day and the temperature wasn’t anywhere near that yet. We figured it was going to be even colder down by the bayside.

  * * * * *

  Loki’s days of snuffling around in the underbrush were over, apparently. He was an old dog, and he tired easily. He wanted to take the easy path down to the water’s edge, and it looked like we were going to have to carry him back into the trees if we wanted to use him as an excuse for being there. He was definitely a house pet now, and was way more particular about trudging through dead leaves than any dog I ever knew.

  To go to the bay, we had to walk between the main house and Henry’s cabin, passing by the toolshed, which was between the two and closer to the house. Loki was fine with that. But once we were beyond the bark-mulched path, it was a little comical watching him navigate his bulky body over roots and branches, daintily tip-toeing along. And when we got down to the water’s edge, he sat down to rest.

  About fifty yards away to our right, we could see a corral of yellow tape around some brutal-looking rocks, near the reputed troll’s mound. In his former career, Henry had no doubt gotten used to ignoring that kind of barrier, and he made straight for it then, leaving the rest of us to decide whether to stay with Loki or go with him.

  Somebody had to stay with the dog, and at that moment I was holding the leash, so until the old boy was ready to move on, I was stuck shielding my eyes and looking at the others as they went up to the scene of the crime without me.

  “They’ll probably all be arrested for interfering with a death investigation,” I told the dog, and I could see by his melting brown eyes that he agreed with me, and on top of that, he adored me. The tail thumped, but he was still conserving energy, so it only thumped once.

  We enjoyed the scenery, Loki and I. The shoreline was sandy and pebbly, then rocky, with ever-larger boulders leading up to a fieldstone breakwater to our right. Outside the breakwater where the shore was more graded, there were open sections where waves were coming onshore to fan out over the pebbles, then slide back into the bay again. The two visible islands were viridian smudges across the horizon. The nasty old troll had lived on the big island, not the small one, I remembered. I tried to visualize the hairy creature paddling madly across the water to abduct Essie, eyebrows blowing back behind him, mermaids turning their backs to him and combing their beautiful hair.

  The water maidens who rested under the sands, keeping Essie with them in their cold underworld, were sleeping today. The bay was quiet. The water was still. The old troll was dead.

  Essie’s mother, if s
he existed, would come to the pebbly edge of the water and sing songs to her girl when the night came, perhaps trying to coax her home again. That would have been something to add to the legend, like an epilogue, I thought. I liked the idea, but I wasn’t going to mention it to Arnie Klausen. Maybe I’d tell Logan.

  Lazily, I turned my head to the right to look at my fellow investigators. Henry was leaning over the yellow tape, trying to keep his balance on the rocks. Nettie and Logan had hung back slightly, and were watching him. What they hoped to find out by messing around over there I couldn’t imagine. We were looking for saddlebags, right? If the bags were there, they would have seen them by now. They were wasting time.

  Loki’s panting had subsided into happy little huffs with the tongue bouncing around, and I was comfortable where I was, sitting on a smooth boulder. The stone was cold, but my new anorak was just long enough to make a seat, and the cold hadn’t penetrated yet. I decided we had some time to waste, so I looked back over the bay’s water and let my imagination float out. If the trolls really did live here, they had a right to be fed up with us by now. We humans, I decided dreamily, should just leave them alone.

  I began to hum to myself, and then to sing, a wordless, nonsense melody, something with long lines and mysterious turnings. Something Essie’s mother might sing. Loki turned to look at me, then looked off to the left and started to wag his tail.

  I stood up suddenly, and when Loki took off, I dropped the leash.

  “Faye!” I said, angry and concerned and confused, all at the same time. “What are you doing here all alone? Where’s your dad? Where’s your mom? Are you with Justin?”

  She had picked up Loki’s leash and was leading him back towards me. “Mommy went shopping and Daddy is talking to Abigail. I don’t know where Justin is.”

  “Who’s Abigail?”

  She didn’t seem to want to talk about it. “She’s just somebody Daddy knows. Mommy’s mad,” she added quietly.

  “Does Abigail have red hair?” I asked, just as Henry, Nettie and Logan came up to us.

  Faye nodded. Then she looked out over the water. “Did you see her?”

  I looked in the same direction. “No, honey, I didn’t.”

  “I didn’t see her either, but I heard her. She was singing. She was trying to get her daughter to come out, but she won’t come out with all of us here. Maybe we should go away now.”

  “I think that would be a very good idea,” I said steadily. The realization that Faye had gotten away from both of her parents and was in a place where she could get hurt was making my blood boil, but I was trying not to let Faye see that.

  I turned to the other three and said, “Loki and I are going to take Faye back to her Mommy and Daddy now.”

  “What’s she doing out here by herself?” Logan asked, almost in a whisper.

  “Looking for trolls, of course.”

  He looked shocked, then nodded. “Well, we’re going to walk north along the shoreline for a bit, you know, just looking around. Text me when you’ve got her back safe and we’ll figure out where to meet up again.”

  “Will do.”

  * * * * *

  I considered whether I should take the leash from Faye, since Loki was so big he could easily get away from her, but looking at the two of them together I was pretty sure he wouldn’t try. He was too happy to be connected to her by the leash to want to break away. So I let them stay together.

  Which just shows that it’s been a while since I’ve had a dog. We got about three-quarters of the way back to Trollhaven through a wide-spaced area of trees when Loki took off.

  Faye shouted his name and ran after him.

  I shouted something too, I didn’t even know what, and went after the both of them.

  The area around the cabins was raw forest, and though we were already close to the Trollhaven house, the ground was thickly carpeted with dead, wet leaves. I kept slipping, but I wasn’t letting that puffy pink jacket get out of my sight as it turned off to go behind the guest cabins. In the end, it was lucky they didn’t go far, and they didn’t venture any deeper into the wasteland. Before I could catch up to them, they stopped.

  Loki was digging at something just at the base of a tree, one of the first in the tree-line behind the cabins, and Faye was standing over him saying, “Bad dog, you’re a bad dog, Loki. Stop it!”

  I picked up the leash from the ground, looking down at what the dog had found. “No, Faye, tell him he’s a good dog. A very good dog. Good job, Loki.”

  Under a shallow layer of dirt, still half-buried, were a pair of saddlebags, and they looked exactly like the ones Matthew had had on his bicycle.

  Chapter 20 – The Changeling

  I wondered why the Sheriff’s people hadn’t found them. I figured they must have given the grounds at least a general look-around after Gerda’s murder. The woods were deep and the ground was thick with autumn leaves, but still, the bags hadn’t been buried very deeply. I wished I’d had a chance to see the spot before Loki got at it. It seemed to me that it must have been obvious that that little patch had been disturbed recently, but there was no way to be sure of that now.

  Granted, the Door County Sheriff doesn’t deal in murdered tourists much, but this seemed like a pretty big oversight. Maybe the Sheriff had been planning on doing a more thorough search of the woods today, and Loki just happened to find the bags first.

  My fingers itched to pick them up and take a peek inside, but I knew better. And I didn’t even have much time to think about it. I was still responsible for Faye and I wanted to get her back to her parents and get Loki back to Evaline, and at the same time I needed to let somebody know what we’d found.

  I called Logan. Within a few seconds, when he realized what it was all about, he put me on speaker for Nettie and Henry to hear. Then he told me that Henry was on his cellphone with the Sheriff, and he took me off speaker. He spent a few minutes letting me repeat myself and generally let off the pressure, then he told me the Sheriff’s orders, via Henry: I was to take Faye and Loki and get out of there. Don’t touch anything, don’t step on anything (I guess we were supposed to fly), don’t take any cellphone pictures (I hadn’t even thought of that one), and in effect, don’t breathe within ten feet of those bags.

  Gathering up my charges, I headed for the front side of the cabins by walking between Gail’s and Matthew’s.

  To give Mark credit, he was frantic with relief when he saw us. Gillian was nowhere to be seen, and neither was the redhead. In fact, I still hadn’t seen her. But within thirty seconds Gillian came storming back into the Trollhaven driveway from the direction of town, demanding answers. She calmed down a little when she saw that her daughter was safe and sound, but it seemed to me she was more furious with Mark for losing her than worried that she’d been missing. Mark, in the meantime, was holding his cellphone up to his face and dictating a text. “It’s okay. Call off the search. We found her.”

  Yeah, right, “We,” I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.

  Then he knelt down in front of his daughter and listened as she babbled away about what a clever dog Loki had been, and what he had found. Within seconds he got an answering text, and still kneeling in front of his daughter, he took the time to read it.

  It was just about the last straw for both Gillian and me when Mark suddenly acted completely distracted, shot himself upright again and told his wife to look after Faye. Without giving any explanation, he turned away from us and strode back between the cabins, towards the place we’d found the bags.

  I looked at Gillian and she looked at me and then we both looked down at Faye, who said, “I want a juice box.”

  That snapped Gillian back into mommy mode. “Come on inside the cabin, baby, and I’ll give you one,” she said.

  Faye looked up at me shyly and said, “You come, too.”

  “I will,” I promised, “as soon as I get Loki back to Evaline.”

  “He can come,” Faye said.

  “No, sweetie,” I t
old her. “Loki’s not allowed in the guest cabins.”

  I turned with the leash in my hand only to see Evaline making straight for us.

  “What’s happened now?” she asked a little wildly.

  I waited until we were closer together and told her.

  I finished up with, “Loki has been a very good boy.”

  He was thrilled, hearing his name and “good boy” in the same sentence. Evaline was thrilled, too, and she immediately promised him a “chew-chew,” whatever that was. It must have been something fabulous, because Loki yelped for joy and took Evaline back to the house at a gallop.

  Faye was waiting for me on the porch of Cabin 5, where her mother was trying to coax her inside. Once I got onto the porch, the girl backed away and held the door open for me to come in.

  It was more than twice the size of the other cabins, with a sitting room in the middle, a kitchenette at the near left, and bedrooms at the left and right ends. I thought vaguely about the night I’d seen Faye’s face in the window. Her bedroom being on the opposite side of the cabin from her parents’ explained why she was up late at night, talking through the window. The fireplace was in the middle of the wall facing the door instead of on the wall to the left, as it was in the smaller cabins. All it needed was a Christmas tree and a roaring fire in the fireplace with a basket of pinecones beside it to make it the perfect cabin in the woods, like they show in vacation ads.