The Hike

by Landon Beach

  “The mask, snorkel, and fins shouldn’t be a problem, but the wetsuit might.”

  “See what you can do. If we have to get in the water for any extended amount of time, we don’t want to freeze our asses off in Lake Erie. I’ll check around down here because we’ll need tanks too. Call me when you get to the park.”

  “Will, do, Ms.—”

  She cut him off. “Allison,” she said. Her confident tone was back.

  “Good,” said Brad.

  “Why good?”

  “I live by myself and am pretty informal. I just prefer using first names with people.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be standing by.”

  The call ended. He picked up his Speedway travel mug and took a long pull on his coffee. He’d call Larry and see if there was any dive gear in the boat; if not, he’d try to pick some up in Alpena.

  7

  Present Day

  It was just past 8 p.m. when Brad pulled Rusty into a large parking lot that ended at a seawall right on Lake Huron. He had struck out in Alpena, but a family friend had told him about a hardware store in Hampstead that carried dive gear. His friend knew the owner and had called ahead for him; the store closed at eight, but the friend said that the owner would keep the store open for him. When he had called Larry, he had found out that Larry did have dive gear but that, unfortunately, it was inside a cabinet in Larry’s garage.

  The truck and trailer rolled to a halt a few yards from the end of the asphalt, and Brad shut off the engine. The lowering sun behind him cast a warm glow onto the lake, and the shadow from the hardware store made the water just offshore look dark gray. There was only one other car in the parking lot—a shiny black Mustang parked near the back of the store.

  The Friday traffic had thinned out, and 23 was quiet as he walked to the entrance of—he looked up at the sign above the door—Beecher Hardware. The sound of waves striking the seawall drew his attention, and he saw a dock that stretched out the back of the hardware store. Near the end of the dock, there was a platform that extended out over the water on the left-hand side. Enough two-by-fours were still in place for Brad to make out the rough framing of what he guessed had once been a shed or something—one side still had a sheet of plywood up but the other sides, minus the two-by-fours, were bare. He heard laughing, and his attention was drawn to a boy and girl, teenagers he deduced, who were exiting the lake by climbing up the swim ladder that had rounded aluminum bars like grappling hooks bolted to the end of the dock. When they were both on the dock, they lined up next to each other, counted to three, and then dove back into the water. Seconds later, two heads appeared ten or fifteen yards away from the dock, and the boy and girl trod water. Brad grinned, remembering swimming and splashing with Conrad and Heidi in the lake while his mom and dad read paperbacks on an Alpena beach. He let the memories clear out as the two kids made it back to the swim ladder, climbed up, and dove in again. He continued across the parking lot.

  The bells on the door chimed as he entered, and he immediately smelled fresh lumber mixed with some flowery scent of Febreze. Off to the right, behind the counter, a stately Native American woman with silver hair pulled back into a ponytail sat on a chair reading a hardcover book that she had removed the dust jacket from.

  She set the book down. “Brad?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said back, walking toward the counter.

  She extended her hand, “Levana Norris.”

  “Brad Cranston,” he replied and shook. Her hand felt delicate, and yet there was a warmth and sense of reserved strength behind her grasp as if she could turn a dial and out-squeeze him if she wanted to. “Thanks for staying open.”

  “No problem,” Levana said. “The owner, Marty Leif, is on vacation with his family for a week. I’m covering for him.”

  “Oh, I thought you were the owner.”

  “No, my brother used to run the store before Marty. I’m retired now, so I don’t mind covering for him now and then. Keeps me busy.”

  “Does the dock out back belong to the hardware store?” Brad asked.

  There was a noticeable pause, but her face remained the same—kind and welcoming. However, her eyes stared past him for an instant, giving him the impression that she was in another time, if not another place. And like that, she returned her attention to him. “Technically, yes,” she said, “but the store doesn’t really use it anymore. Why do you ask?”

  “I saw a couple of kids diving off of it on my walk across the lot,” he said.

  She smiled. “Well, it is still good for that,” she said. “Those are my twin grandkids, Lucien and Nina. I brought them in to help me out today, and since they did a good job, they are enjoying some time off now.”

  “Good to see their faces not buried in a screen, if you don’t mind me saying,” Brad said.

  “Don’t mind at all,” she said. “So, I hear you need some dive gear.”

  He was about to answer when the door to the store chimed open, and an older man with closely cropped white hair and a full white five o’clock shadow entered.

  “Everything okay, Levana?” the man asked and approached the counter.

  She gave him the kind of knowing smile of appreciation reserved only for those people in life that you trust and have known for a long time. It was unmistakable and endearing. Brad knew because he had just had a similar exchange with Larry over an hour ago.

  “Everything is fine, Abner. Just helping out a final customer, then we’re heading home.” She turned to Brad. “Brad, this is an old friend of mine, Abner Hutch.”

  Brad put out his hand, and Hutch gave it a quick, tight shake. “Nice to meet you,” Hutch said, and then his eyes swiveled to Levana. “Saw the truck and trailer outside and knew it was past closing time. Thought I would poke my head in and see what was cookin’.”

  “I appreciate it,” Levana said. “Kind of late for you to be in town, isn’t it?” she teased him.

  “Nonsense. Lucille’s got me on a mission to pick up a bottle of wine to have on the porch tonight.” He looked around the store. “Those two little rascals still around here?” Hutch asked.

  “Out on the dock, doing what we used to do half a century ago.”

  “Ahem,” he said. “I’m still doin’ it.” Hutch walked past them and stood at the back door, looking out the small window. “There they are.” He lowered his voice and said, “Good on ya, kids,” almost as if saying it only to himself. “Trist and Jill still out at the house?” he said louder.

  “Yeah, they’re staying for another week and then all heading home.”

  “Good,” Hutch said. “You sure Marty doesn’t want me to rebuild that shed? I could have that thing up in no-time.”

  “You’re going to keep at it until he lets you, aren’t you?”

  “Yep. Don’t like change,” he said. He turned back toward them. “I’m gonna go out and say hi to these squirts. Nice to have met you, Brad.”

  “You too,” Brad said. Levana waved.

  Hutch opened the door and was gone.

  “Sorry about that,” she said to Brad. “I know you’re kind of in a hurry.”

  “No need to apologize,” he said. “I’m a bit old school and like to see people who can carry on a conversation for more than thirty seconds without looking at their phones.”

  She nodded in agreement. “We’re trading conversation for what we think is connection.” She paused. “And we don’t have much time left to reverse course.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Now, what can I get for you?”

  “I need a mask, snorkel, fins, and...” he surveyed the store, “you wouldn’t happen to have any wetsuits, would you?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” she said. “We’ve got it all.” She started to move around the counter. “You should also have a dive knife,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “Follow me.”

  Ten minutes later, he was back on the road headed south—his new gear neatly stowed in the Stingray’s cabin. At the checkou
t counter, Levana Norris had pulled out a piece of paper—he swore it had nothing written on it—and told him that it was a fifty percent off coupon. She did that all on her own; he hadn’t told her why he needed the gear or any details about his trip. It was a simple act of kindness—still some decent people left in the world. He gripped the leather steering wheel with his left hand and sat back as cool air came in through the window and ran through the brown hairs on his arm. To the left, the woods that had been hiding his view of the water opened up as US-23 curved by an old lakefront inn that had been leveled for construction to start on a block of condominiums. Lake Huron had darkened to a blue-black—choppy, powerful, and yet indifferent. And as quickly as the wall of trees had disappeared, giving him a view of the endless horizon of water, it reappeared, and the lake was gone again—a ten-second portal. As he took a sip of coffee, his thoughts shifted to his brother. A question emerged: How much of Conrad was still decent? A part of him didn’t want to know. He wanted to go back to when they were young—climbing trees, drinking water from the hose, and playing basketball in their driveway—before things changed. Before Conrad changed.

  Don’t do this to yourself. You can’t change him, he told himself.

  Brad stepped on the accelerator, and the needle on Rusty’s speedometer nudged past seventy.

  8

  Present Day

  It was just after 9 p.m., and Allison Shannon sat at her desk and sipped on a cup of tea, waiting for the results of who Conrad Cranston had talked to and texted with in the past month. Dionne Warwick’s “Déjà vu” was playing loud enough from her computer’s speakers for her to hear it from her desk chair but not loud enough to fill the room. Through the room’s only window, she saw that it was now dark outside, and the array of red, blue, green, and yellow city lights blinked in the distance. She knew that beyond the lights, the mighty Interstate 75 ran north like a circuit cable through Michigan, passing through cities like Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, and Bay City, eventually going over the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula and running all the way up to Sault Ste. Marie on the Michigan-Canadian border. She estimated that by now Brad Cranston was southbound on I-75 and would pick up US-23 again in Flint, taking it straight down to state highway 50. Once on 50, it was around twenty minutes to Monroe and another fifteen or so to Sterling State Park.

  Allison’s eyes left the window and surveyed her office, which was now finished due to the downtime she had had waiting for information about the phone. The only light came from a corner lamp, illuminating the wall with her four pictures—one of Allison with her family at a reunion, one of Allison with just her mother and father, one of Allison in uniform at an awards ceremony…and then there was the fourth picture, which she had pulled from the bottom of her last box while unpacking and decided to add to the wall around an hour ago. The photograph was of her and Keller.

  She fought back the memories and continued her scan. The pictures hung neatly over the cozy black leather couch that had her Detroit Tigers throw blanket draped over one of the armrests. The lamp’s light also cast shadows against the far wall, which had a small bookshelf filled with manuals and her growing collection of crime-thriller paperbacks penned by a variety of her favorite authors. Above the bookshelf hung a shadowbox with an American Flag inside, which had been presented to her when she retired from the Coast Guard. A rectangular purple area rug was centered on the room’s wooden floor, and there was a closet on the wall next to the lone window.

  Her eyes returned to her desk, and she wondered how much time she would actually spend in this room. If she was busy with cases, then probably not much. If she wasn’t, then at least the space felt comfortable. Plus, Larissa seemed like someone she could lose a few hours with, shooting the breeze about work and life. Perhaps the other two P.I.’s were also personable, and the group would start to feel like a family after a while.

  The lamp and the glow from her computer screen provided enough light to work by but were also soft enough to allow her to relax and enjoy her cup of tea while she waited for Conrad Cranston’s phone and text log. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to go back any farther than a month to get what she needed. In fact, she had never reviewed a month full of texts before. She wondered if he wrote in some sort of shorthand fashion or if he texted in grammatically correct sentences. Was he pro-emoji, anti-emoji, or uncaring? She was mostly pro-emoji but hated when friends overdid it. One heart is all you need to post—not seven. Her texts were written in the same manner as if she was composing a business letter. Her friends said she came across as ice-cold—maybe that was why they overused emojis—but she refused to alter her messages. This might be why her friends rarely texted her now. She didn’t mind. Most of the messages were unnecessary anyway—distractions camouflaged as matters of importance and immediacy.

  Larissa was gone when she had returned, but the scent of her perfume still lingered in the hallways and in her office. The building was quiet, and it made her uneasy. She didn’t like a lot of noise—just enough to know that other people were around and going about their own routines. She was somewhat embarrassed that this gave her comfort. She should be able to be alone and work alone, but sometime in the past few months, she had realized that when she stripped away many of the other layers of life—family gatherings, working out, watching college sports, sleeping, coffee and books, the Sunday paper—she was lonely. And what disturbed her more than being lonely was that she was doing next to nothing to stop being lonely.

  Warwick’s smooth tune ended and a pitter-patter sound from behind the wall next to her desk jolted her from her thoughts. Larissa had warned her of the mice problem the company was working on; every once in a while, she would hear tiny feet scurrying behind the walls and sometimes a thump when a rodent would bump into one. This time, it sounded like an entire family was on the move, evading a predator. She listened for a few more seconds, and the sounds of the miniature stampede faded.

  Hope they made it home, she thought.

  She pulled a cream-colored shawl over her shoulders and then took a sip of hot tea. What in the hell am I doing? The tea warmed her, and she shook off the thought. “Concentrate,” she said out loud to herself.

  On her computer screen was a private investigator checklist and notes she had entered. Since this was her first official case, she was reviewing the list to ensure that she would be prepared. Private investigators were known as professional investigators in Michigan, and the average yearly salary for a professional investigator working in the mitten was $43,000. But she knew that to achieve that salary, she would need referrals, and to get referrals, she would have to establish a good record of delivering results to her clients. When she looked at the distribution of P.I.s in Michigan, she shook her head. Over two hundred were employed in the state, with half of them located in the Detroit area.

  Sweet Lord.

  She looked at her self-typed notes on the screen and laughed to herself, remembering when she typed it up months ago at her mother’s kitchen table.

  -Car: comfortable, nothing flashy—use landscape colors, no license plate frames or stickers, no identifiable marks—have dents and paint smudges fixed, mid-size SUV best (can see over smaller cars and yet blends in well)...go with new instead of used, use limo tint on all windows—can still sit in front seat while conducting surveillance, economical—need good gas mileage (don’t pass on cost to client!), 4-wheel drive—God damn Michigan winters!, GPS is a must.

  -DC to AC Power Inverter: at least two outlets and a USB port.

  -Binoculars: Dad’s Bushnell’s?

  -Battery Jump Starter

  -Compressor

  -Tire Repair System: Can of Fix a Flat & Universal Tire Repair Kit

  -Tri-Pod: Compact?

  -Video Camera: Hand-held & Covert (pen camera?), charger, backup battery, backup/secondary video camera

  -Toilet Paper: Duh. Wipes and tampons too. Sometimes I hate being a woman.

  Ain’t that the truth.

  -Money: Cas
h—$200.00 in 20s, 10s, 5s, and 1s. Change: $10.00 in Quarters

  -Overnight Bag: Evening dress, heels, flats, sweater, scarf, earrings, matching purse, jeans, sweatshirt—definitely overthinking this shit, oh well—t-shirt, running shoes, hiking boots, underwear, socks, nylons, shorts, swimsuit, winter hat, ballcap, winter gloves, winter scarf, toiletries. Well, Allison, you’ll definitely be ready. Sure you want to do this?

  Guess so.

  -Food and Water: Use Hurricane prep list—also, don’t move to Florida!

  -Portable Camping Toilet: Why am I doing this?

  -Flashlight

  -Tools: Basic, and a socket wrench set

  -Window Shades

  -Laptop

  -Pen and Paper: Old school...like me

  Definitely. Got my legal pad and pen right here, baby.

  -Cell Phone: Get iPhone app that masks my number

  Yeah, yeah, yeah…cell phones can be evil, but sometimes I love them.

  -Gas: Never let your tank get below half-a-tank! Gas can in back?

  -Trash bags: Obvious.

  The next page contained her checklist for becoming a Professional investigator.

  -Must be licensed by the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA). Requirements:

  -25 years of age or older: check

  -U.S. Citizen and earned at least a high school degree: check

  -Provide 5 character references from Michigan citizens who have known you for at least 5 years and are not family members and earn a Certificate of Corporation: check—what a pain in the ass.

  -Military History: no dishonorable discharge: check—I’m a highly decorated veteran, bitch.

  -Personal Finances: won’t be examined: score! Got a little bit of a credit card problem...

  Workin’ on it…but still packin’ plastic everywhere I go.

  -Mental Disease or Defect: no restrictions based on mental health: check—thank God they aren’t checking into my dysfunctional family. Does thinking a lot about Keller count?