Lewis & Ondarko - Best Friends 03 - Now and Zen

by Deb Lewis

  Table of Contents

  Also By The Authors

  Introduction

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Map

  Chapter One: June 20

  Chapter Two: April 15

  Chapter Three: April 16

  Chapter Four: April 18

  Chapter Five: April 19

  Chapter Six: June 20

  Chapter Seven: June 20

  Chapter Eight: June 20

  Chapter Nine: June 20

  Chapter Ten: June 20

  Chapter Eleven: June 20

  Chapter Twelve: June 21

  Chapter Thirteen: June 21

  Chapter Fourteen: June 21

  Chapter Fifteen: June 21

  Chapter Sixteen: June 22

  Chapter Seventeen: June 22

  Chapter Eighteen: June 22

  Chapter Nineteen: June 22

  Chapter Twenty: June 22

  Chapter Twenty-One: June 22

  Chapter Twenty-Two: June 23

  Chapter Twenty-Three: June 23

  Chapter Twenty-Four: June 23

  Epilogue: July 24

  Prologue for Upcoming Book: Murder on the Bridge Chapter One: Murder on the Bridge

  Recipes for Retreats

  About Madeline Island and Summer Solstice

  About the Council of Thirteen Grandmothers

  Dear Friends of the Best Friend Series

  Now and Zen

  Deb Lewis and Pat Ondarko

  Copyright © 2012 by Deb Lewis & Pat Ondarko

  Little Big Bay LLC

  76325 Church Corner Road

  Washburn, Wisconsin 54891

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

  Now and Zen is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the authors’ rich imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblence to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-938564-59-8

  Also by Deb Lewis and Pat Ondarko

  NOVELS

  Bad to the Last Drop

  Too Much at Stake

  TO YOU, OUR READERS

  GREETINGS!

  As you may have noticed, our Best Friends Series has taken you through the seasons. Bad to the Last Drop was set deep in the snow banks of winter. Too Much at Stake arrived with the greening of spring. Now and Zen, the one you hold in your hands, brings you into the heat of summer on the big lake.

  In this installment, we take you to Madeline Island, another of our favorite places. Madeline Island is located in Lake Superior about two miles offshore from Bayfield, Wisconsin. You can travel from Bayfield to Madeline Island seasonally by ferry or an ice road, if you can believe it. Now that’s a fun adventure if you’re ever in the area in winter! Madeline Island is the traditional spiritual center of the Lake Superior Ojibwe and was one of the earliest settlements in the area.

  We just love to leave our families behind and go to “the island” to get away from it all as often as we can.

  What will the turning of the leaves look like in northern Wisconsin? Watch for our next book, Murder on the Bridge. In it, you’ll get to know two delightful older women named Jessie and Millie, who go on a bridge tournament cruise to have some fun. As it turns out, bridge is not the only thing on the ship’s daily manifest. Don’t worry. We will be back in the future for another Best Friends Mystery.

  We hope you enjoy the reading as much as we enjoyed the writing.

  Deb and Pat

  Wisconsin, 2012

  DEDICATED TO

  The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers

  and grandmothers everywhere who, no matter their religious belief, know intrinsically that light and dark are as real as the sun and the moon. And who also know that the light will always be stronger because of the power called love.

  Prologue

  The day the woman disappeared, Captain Mike got up early and took his two black labs out for a run. Just like he always did.

  He ate his oatmeal, grabbed his thermos of hot coffee, and kissed his wife absentmindedly.

  Just like he always did.

  Checking the sky for weather, he started to get into his old red Ford pickup.

  Just like he always did.

  On this day, he noticed a mature female eagle overhead and stopped for a moment to follow her flight as she soared, riding the winds off the big lake. Breathing in deeply the scent of water and sand, and still captivated by her, he watched in awe as she dipped to water’s edge, effortlessly picking up a large whitefish.

  What might it be like, he thought enviously, to fly with those great powerful wings on the currents like she does?

  Smiling, he started his old truck. Turning left, he headed to the lake and his Island Queen Ferry, parked at the Bayfield dock. He was eager to get the old girl out and fly, in his own way, on the waves of Lake Superior. Twenty-three years as ferry captain, and his heart still beat a bit faster at the thought.

  Just like it always did.

  But this day wasn’t any other day. It was an ordinary day turned extraordinary by one single event. This was the day in which what he “always did” changed forever.

  Chapter One

  June 20

  Staring blankly at the open suitcase on the bed in front of her, Deb Linberg’s thoughts drifted from the task at hand. She knew that the plan she and her best friend Pat Kerry had set in motion two months ago for a women’s retreat on Madeline Island matched the dream they’d been hatching for years. Yet she was worried.

  Do we spend our lives just frantically chasing dreams? she wondered, feeling a certain peril in the approaching test of making this dream of an island retreat come true. This dream feels like it’s still stuck in the dead of night.

  “Wake up, Deb!” she said to herself out loud. She laughed at herself, shaking her head.

  First things first, if I’m going to pick up Pat on time.

  She started ticking off a checklist on her fingers.

  Candles, bottle of wine, bath oil, tie dyed shirt, underwear, white blouse, sandals, journal. She threw each item in turn into her overnight bag.

  What about toothpaste? I can’t take the only tube in the house. Pat will have toothpaste I can use.

  “A good book? Nope. No time for reading on this trip. Now, where is my cell, anyway?

  “Cliffy, can you come here for a minute?”

  “What, Mom?”

  “It’s time to play the phone game, hon. You know the drill. I’m going to dial my cell phone. You listen for the ring, and go find it for me.”

  “Okay, Mom,” Cliffy replied, a wide smile on his face. He was so eager to please, this youngest of her six.

  “Oh, and Mom, just thought you’d like to know,” he said, popping his head back in the door, “you were talking out loud to yourself again.”

  “Rats, pretty soon I’ll be like Gram,” she said out loud and then covered her mouth quickly to stop herself.

  She dialed and heard a ringing in a distant room.

  “Here it is, Mom,” Cliffy said breathlessly as he tossed the cell on the bed.

  “Thanks, love. What would I do without you?” Deb smiled at him, mussing his hair.

  Nice having a kid who still lets me do that, she thought. Cliffy beamed, his big brown eyes shining.

  “Is that all? I’m playing my new video game, and Mom? Don’t m
ess my hair like that in front of Gene, okay?”

  She nodded and sighed. They grow up so fast.

  Deb zipped her bag and dragged it down the stairs, eager to get on the road.

  “I have to go, boys,” she called cheerfully. “The ferry waits for no one. Pat and I have to get out to Madeline Island early to set up for the party… I mean… retreat.”

  Deb’s husband Marc was intently reading his newspaper at the breakfast table while their son Eugene was busy reading the comics. No one seemed interested in her departure.

  “See you in a few days,” Marc replied, without looking up.

  “Party? Can we come?” Eugene asked, belatedly registering her misspoken words.

  “Sorry, my boy. Not this time. I promise we’ll make a trip together yet this summer. This is girl time,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. After kissing them all and stroking Strider, her golden retriever, Deb heaved her bag up to her shoulder and swung the door open with her foot.

  Clicking the control on her keys, the trunk of her new red convertible opened like magic. It had been a gift from Marc over a year earlier after she and Pat had solved the mystery behind an unexpected death at Lake

  Superior Big Top Chautauqua. Marc had gifted the car after Deb and Pat had solved the mystery before the police managed to. Marc secretly hoped her new toy would keep Deb busy and away from any more dangerous adventures.

  Deb smiled at the memory of the gift. Then she giggled out loud. Almost sixty and married over twenty-five years, she still got the tingles whenever Marc came home early from sailing or work. Even so, they found little time to be alone since adopting their two youngest.

  Starting the car, she tooted goodbye to her boys and her cares.

  * * *

  Flipping through the TV channels while waiting for Deb, Pat looked for the weather report to see the forecast for the retreat. She stopped on channel ten, where a news report caught her ear.

  “The most amazing thing,” the reporter said, “is happening on the South Shore. You see behind me as I speak, live coverage of heavy traffic moving east towards Bayfield from Duluth, and…” Just then the phone rang.

  “Dang,” Pat said, turning off the T.V. Oh, it’s Martin, Pat thought, standing by the window and watching for Deb. I’d better take this call.

  “Mom, I’m so glad I caught you.”

  “What? The girls aren’t coming?” Pat interrupted.

  “No, no, Mom, they’re coming. I just have to tell you something. It’s important, listen… “

  Just then, Pat heard a loud rendition of Riding The Wind, a Big Top Chautauqua tune, coming from Deb’s car horn in the driveway. “Sorry, Martin, it’ll have to wait. I’ll call you later. Love you.” Hanging up the cell, Pat ran quickly out the door.

  Deb giggled at the sound of the horn.

  Tall, strong, small-waisted but Rubenesque, Deb didn’t need to be seated in a sporty red Miata for men to flirt with her. Short-cropped strawberry blond hair, a button nose, freckles, and curious blue eyes that get lost in the wrinkles at their corners when she laughs all cast her as the likeable woman next door who draws you in, invites your confidences, and tricks you into revealing your innermost self. And behind that welcoming face, a lawyer’s mind that suits her profession well.

  Pat came quickly out the back door with a skip in her step, carrying her small overnight bag.

  If you didn’t look closely at Pat, you might only see an older lady’s chunky body and cheaply cut clothes. But look into Pat’s dark brown eyes, and you see the gypsy who leads two lives. The first, as an in-charge Lutheran pastor, who started out being a collar wearer, mainly to remind herself who she was supposed to be. The other, as a yearner, a cynic with a deep need to know the truth at all cost, a trait that sometimes gets her into hot water in her first life.

  The gypsy-eyed Pat had recently decided quite firmly that if she had a choice between happy or sad, she would pick happy. And so she did.

  “Packing light as usual, I see!” Deb said gaily. “Roof up or down today?”

  “Is there any question? How will we ever hear that fancy new horn if we don’t?” Pat replied, squinting up into the bright morning sun. She put on her sunglasses. “We’re going to the island. Down, of course!”

  Tossing her satchel into the popped trunk, Pat slid easily into the front seat. Meanwhile, Deb was busy pushing buttons on the dash.

  “Wish I could remember how to do this,” she mumbled. “I have to look up the directions every time.”

  Pat reached into the glove compartment for the manual.

  The canvas roof began to lift up from the top front of the windshield and to fold accordion style toward the back seat. Suddenly it stopped with a whooo… wheee… crunch. Whooo… wheee… crunch.

  “What’s the matter with this darn thing?” Deb asked with annoyance, noticing Pat’s neighbors watching them from the yard across the street. She waved, and they smiled and waved back.

  “It’s stuck!” she said grumpily, glancing with embarrassment at the half-raised roof sticking straight into the air as the motor ground over and over. “Maybe if I just push this button…” Suddenly, the strains of Van Morrison filled the whole street. “Help,” she said, looking at Pat and frantically pushing one button and then another. Soon the windshield wipers were going to the beat and the lights were blinking off and on, and the neighbors were visibly laughing. Other doors were starting to open around them.

  Better than going to the circus, Pat thought, trying to keep herself from laughing and handing the manual to Deb.

  “We have to hurry. The ferry only leaves Bayfield every half hour and we have some signs to put up. We want to get there before our friends so they can find us,” Deb wailed.

  “Here, I can do it. Let me help,” Pat replied, standing up and giving the roof a swift push.

  “Wait a minute! This is my new car.”

  Amazingly, the roof came unstuck and slid down with a satisfying bang.

  “Sunny skies all around,” Pat said gaily, settling back into her seat and putting on her seat belt. “Nothing but a relaxing retreat in front of us.”

  Deb took a deep breath and started to drive away.

  “You might want to turn off the alarm system and radio,” Pat added. She waved to the neighbors, who, still laughing, turned to go into their houses.

  It was just another day in a small town.

  Chapter Two

  April 15

  The idea for a women’s gathering hatched a few months previously, while Pat sat waiting for Deb to arrive for lunch at the Second Street Bistro in Ashland.

  The waiter set down a cup of French roast and took away Pat’s wine glass, emptied now of her favorite Pinot Grigio. She’d been savoring the wine when the idea popped unexpectedly into her mind.

  As Deb sat down, Pat said, “Do you think we’ll ever have a retreat center like we dreamed about?”

  “Can’t have it unless you dream it,” Deb said, smiling, giving Pat back an answer she’d received often enough from Pat.

  “True enough,” Pat replied.

  Then Deb’s face became serious. “Truth is, we can do it if we really want to. The boys will be out of the house in…” She counted on her fingers, “…in four years. Four years!” she groaned.

  “Oh, I know, but no matter how we look at it, we could never afford a place big enough on Madeline Island.”

  “Don’t be too sure. Remember what my counselor told me when I was deciding whether to give up my law practice or not,” Deb said. Lay out a plan like a business plan for the next year or two, she said. What would it look like?” It helped then.”

  Deb reached for her coffee mug and glanced down at her Paraguayan sweater.

  “We could do that,” she added as she took a sip of coffee. “After all, I got to Paraguay, didn’t I?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Crunch the numbers,” Pat sighed with resignation. “Think of the backers we would need. We could never afford it. We’d have to kill o
ff our husbands for the insurance money.” She leaned her elbows on the table and looked off in the distance. “Of course, we’d have to make darn sure there was enough money in the policies before we went to such extremes.”

  “I heard that, ladies. No planning murders in my place. It’s bad for business. Besides, I thought you two solved murders, not committed them,” called the waiter, as he hurried by with an order.

  “Stop that! I don’t even like to hear you joke about it. But you’re right about the money.” Deb sighed, in agreement. “We’d have to win the lottery. What would it cost, do you think, five hundred thousand?”

  “Just for starters,” Pat agreed gloomily. “Then there’s fix-up costs, maintenance, a gardener, a masseuse - you know we would need one -and a cook.”

  “Even if we did all that ourselves, there’d be no time to enjoy the place, or our guests. We’d be like the chef who never gets to enjoy a great sit-down meal.”

  “Too bad. If it weren’t for the initial outlay for the building and property, we could probably make a go of it.” Pat conceded.

  Deb looked up.

  “Why do we have to?” she asked.

  “Have to what? Wait a minute… I know that look. I’ve seen it before. It’s like you have a light bulb shining above your head. You’ve gone and had one of your brilliant ideas, and it isn’t even…” She looked up at the clock on the wall. “… twelve thirty yet.”

  “No, just listen,” Deb insisted. “Why do we have to have a building at all? There are plenty of inexpensive meeting places on the island. Lots of bed and breakfasts, a church or two, and rentals. We wouldn’t have to run it all year round. We could do a theme retreat once or twice a year. It would be great. Just think of it. And we wouldn’t have to wait for the kids to leave home either.”

  “You’re the one who has to worry about the kid thing. I sent ours packing long ago.” Pat was quiet for a moment, a good sign as far as Deb was concerned, because she knew Pat was actually considering it.