by Susan Sey
“I give credit where it’s due,” Lila said softly.
An angry flush stained Einar’s cheekbones. “And withhold it where it’s not, is that it?”
“This isn’t about you, Einar.”
“I’ve earned your trust, Lila. I’ve earned my place here.”
“You have,” she said as Goose wondered what the hell was going on. “I don’t dispute that. But I deserve your trust as well, for my experience if nothing else. And while I’m still the head of this family, you’ll respect my authority.”
“Even if your authority threatens the future of the family?”
She shook her head slowly. “Our financials aren’t our future.”
“Of course they are. This place is a gold mine, Lila, and I don’t understand why you won’t at least consider tapping into it.”
“I’m not going to have this argument again. If you want to turn this island into a theme park, you’ll have to wait until I’m dead and gone.”
“I hope you’re planning to kick the bucket sometime before 2024, then.”
Lila drew back sharply.
“What? That’s years away.”
She continued to stare at him in offended silence until he held up hands. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. It was a joke.”
“And not a very good one.”
“Granted. But come on, Lila. Money’s important. Maybe it isn’t everything, but it matters. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to admit that.”
She relented enough to give him a crooked smile so like Rush’s that Goose stared. “Probably later rather than sooner, then.”
Einar leaned over the counter to press a kiss to Lila’s cheek. “Probably.” He zipped up his jacket and threw a cocky grin at Goose and Yarrow. “But hey, it wouldn’t be a week without our usual go-round. I’ll check it off my to-do list.”
“Fly safely,” Lila said.
“Will do.” He scooped up the half Danish still on his plate and sauntered out with the same cocky assurance he’d sauntered in with. Goose watched Lila and Yarrow as their eyes followed him out the door with patient love.
The door jingled shut and Lila turned to Goose.
“Any more questions, Agent di Guzman?”
Yeah, Goose thought. What the hell was that? Also, do you know your granddaughter has a raging crush on your nephew? And, hey, did you know that nephew is harboring a raging resentment toward the other nephew? And nursing a healthy resentment toward you as well?
And that was just off the top of her head.
But all she said was, “That’ll do for now, I think. Thanks for the doughnut.”
Lila blinked at her, then at Yarrow. “I thought you were going to have the cherry cheese Danish?”
Goose gave Yarrow her biggest, shiniest smile, which the girl met with a flat, brittle indifference. “I was. The doughnut went better with my shoes, though.”
TWO DAYS later, Goose had chatted with every last soul on Mishkwa. She’d lost count of how many doors she’d knocked on, how many cups of tea she’d sipped and how many cookies she’d choked down under the guise of common courtesy.
Aside from that first conversation with Rush’s family, the visits had fallen into a predictable pattern. Hello, badge flash, refreshments, chitchat. Nobody claimed close friendship with Rush, or even the friendship of proximity a small, isolated community normally forced, but everybody seemed fond of him.
As well they should, Goose thought as she sipped yet another cup of tea, this time with Bernie and Veronica Samuelsson. The Samuelssons ran what they claimed was the island’s most popular fudge shop. Goose didn’t doubt it. Both short and round, Bernie and Veronica looked like people who knew quality fudge when they saw it.
“So,” Goose said as she nibbled at the half-pound slab they’d pressed on her with the requisite cup of tea, “how long has Ranger Guthrie been killing rabbits for you?”
Bernie scratched his ample stomach and squinted into the middle distance, perhaps at some mental calendar. “Started last summer, yeah, Ronnie?”
Veronica shook her head. “Spring.”
Bernie turned the squint on his wife. “This or last?”
“This.” She wagged her head at Goose. “Rabbits around here are just heck on gardens. And you know we do a decent mail-order fudge business in the winter, but it’s our herbals that keep us afloat.”
“Herbals?”
“Natural remedies. Tinctures. Dietary supplements. Teas.” She pointed her chin at the teacup on Goose’s knee. Goose lifted it for an obliging—and vaguely weedy—sip. “We depend on those gardens. But the rabbits.” Veronica pursed her lips and her jowls waggled sorrowfully. “Merciful heavens. Greedy little things ate a good half of everything we put out.”
“We tried everything,” Bernie said. “Fences, chicken wire, Tabasco, egg whites, little bundles of hair. Even put out cups of beer one time.”
“That was for the slugs.”
“Slugs,” Bernie echoed sagely. Veronica gave him a fond smile.
“Finally we decided to trap ’em.”
“The rabbits?”
Bernie laughed. “Who else? The slugs?”
Veronica chuckled, too. “Not those drunkards.”
Goose forced a smile. Why not? Rush wasn’t here to judge her. “It didn’t go well? The rabbit trapping?”
The Samuelssons sobered abruptly.
“No,” Veronica said.
“What happened?”
“We ordered a bunch of traps—off the Internet, see?” Bernie said. “They were supposed to be no-kill.”
Veronica pressed her lips together. “You should’ve seen the letter I wrote to that company. Gave them a piece of my mind, I don’t mind telling you.”
Bernie nodded. “Ronnie does a real good poison-pen letter. Used to do it for money in college.”
“And when you discovered the traps were harming the rabbits?”
Veronica paled and looked away. Bernie drew a breath so deep it rattled in his lungs. “Middle of the night,” he said finally. “Sounds so awful I can’t describe them. Coming from the gardens. Thought maybe some raccoons were fighting, and I went out back to turn the hose on ’em.”
“It wasn’t raccoons?” Goose prompted when Bernie paused.
“No. Half-killed rabbit.” Tears started in his eyes but he blinked them back. “Full moon,” he said. “Plenty of light to see how the trap had broken the thing’s leg near in half.” He swallowed hard. “Rabbit was finishing the job with its teeth when I found it.” His voice wobbled and he cleared his throat. “Should’ve just hit it with a shovel. Tried to, tell you the truth. Couldn’t do it. Didn’t have it in me to kill something that small and defenseless.”
“Of course you didn’t. You don’t need that kind of ugliness in you.” Veronica touched her husband’s knee then turned her gaze on Goose. “Not when Rush has enough for everybody.”
Chapter 8
“YOU THINK of Ranger Guthrie as a killer?” Goose asked carefully.
“Of course.” Veronica drew back her chin until it disappeared into her ample neck. “He killed about anything that moved when he was in the army, you know.”
“Navy,” Goose said. She was startled to find herself talking through gritted teeth.
“Excuse me?” Veronica blinked big, bovine eyes.
“Ranger Guthrie spent twelve years in the navy, not the army,” Goose said. “He was a SEAL.”
“A seal?”
“Special Operations.” She had an idea her face might be a little scary, so she forced it into a smile that would’ve had Rush in spasms. The Samuelssons seemed to appreciate the effort because they relaxed into their flowery couch again.
“Think of enlisting in the military as going to college,” Goose told them. “Getting onto a Special Operations team is like going to Harvard or Yale.”
“Oh.” Bernie frowned as he puzzled that one over.
“And being a SEAL is like graduating from Harvard or Yale. With a Ph.D.” Or two. Possib
ly three.
“I see.” Veronica gave her a dubious look. “Be that as it may, the boy’s not sentimental.”
“He is, however, useful?” Goose treated her to an icepick smile.
“We’ve certainly found him so,” Veronica said calmly.
“Mishkwa can’t afford year-round police,” Bernie told her. “We have Chief May and a couple part-time deputies for the tourist season, but Rush is the nearest thing to law enforcement we have November through April.”
Veronica fixed Goose with those huge eyes again. “Taking care of us is his job,” she said simply.
Goose sincerely doubted Rush’s official duties included de-pesting local gardens but refrained from saying so. “And you’re satisfied with his work?”
Veronica opened her mouth but Bernie laid a hand on her arm. He leaned forward, belly drooping between spread knees, his face open and sincere. “We may be a small town, Agent di Guzman, but we’re not slow. We know Rush isn’t obliged to trot down here with his .22 every time we call him. But he does it. He knows we can’t, and he knows he can. It’s a favor and we’re grateful.”
The burning anger inside Goose fizzled into an indignant puff. “I see.” She cleared her throat. “Are you aware of his affiliation with the Radical Agrarians?”
Bernie frowned. “Is that a rock band?”
“No, a political party.”
“Oh. No.”
“Do you have any reason to believe Ranger Guthrie intends to harm Minnesota’s sitting governor?”
Husband and wife shared a baffled look. “No.”
“Have you noticed anything different about him in the last twelve months? Change in daily habits? An increase in standard of living?”
They gazed at her, nonplussed.
“Has he come into money, bought anything extravagant, taken any vacations? Spent time gambling at any of the local casinos?”
Bernie scratched the back of his neck. “Seen him with a nice Husqvarna last week.”
“Husqvarna?”
“Chain saw,” Veronica supplied.
Bernie rolled his jaw side to side. “Think it belonged to the Park Service, though.”
“Right. Okay.” Goose flipped to a fresh sheet of paper, tapped it with her pen. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
The Samuelssons exchanged another look, one of troubled concern this time. “Um, yes,” Bernie said slowly. “Maybe.”
Goose looked up in polite expectation.
“You’ll pass this on to Rush?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.” Goose had offered confidentiality to a handful of people over the past few days and had received for her trouble some bitter complaints about Rush’s strict enforcement of the no-motorized-vehicle law. He was not a popular man with the snowmobile crowd.
“No, we’d like you to speak to him about this. If you would.”
“Of course.” Goose put her pen to her paper. “Go ahead.”
“Ronnie and I hiked down to the old copper mines last weekend,” Bernie said. “There’s this tincture-of-pyeweed recipe we’ve been working on that we think might benefit from an infusion of copper—”
“The girl doesn’t need our recipe, Bernie,” Ronnie said. “Tell her about the—”
Bernie shot his wife a look that closed her mouth. Goose quietly revised her initial assumption regarding who did the pants wearing in the Samuelssons’ house. “Let’s just say that we saw evidence of activity while we were there.”
“What sort of activity?”
“Been a warm fall. Ferry’s running late this year, which means it’s likely just mainlanders. High school kids doing what high school kids have always done.” Veronica shrugged. “But somebody official needs to check it out. Post some signs or something.”
“We’d just hate for somebody to get hurt,” Bernie said. “Kids are so impulsive, and they get into stuff they have no idea how to control. If you could just, I don’t know.” He spread his hands. “Have Rush look into it?”
“I’ll tell him.”
THE NEXT morning, before the sun was even a wish on the eastern horizon, Rush knocked on Goose’s door.
“Rise and shine, di Guzman. Time to get hiking.”
A noise emanated from behind the closed door, the creak of rusty metal mingled with the groans of a person jerked rudely from a sound sleep. Rush buried his grin in a cup of coffee and knocked again. Louder this time.
“Come on, sunshine. Time to make hay.”
The door under his knuckles opened a bare inch, and Goose squinted through the crack with one eye. “What time is it?”
“Early.”
“Too early for hiking, for sure.”
“Never too early for hiking.”
“Says who?”
“Me. And I’m the authority on such things in these parts.”
“Fine. Have a nice one.”
The door clicked shut and Rush heard rusty metal shriek as she presumably crawled back into her cot.
He knocked again. “Do I need to come in there?”
Say yes. She didn’t.
There was another chorus of cot springs and the door cracked open again. The eye returned, less squinty this time, more irritated. “Forgive me,” she said, her voice overly calm. “I had the impression you preferred to work alone.”
“Normally I do.” He took a leisurely sip of his coffee. “But I find myself strangely desirous of company this morning.”
That one dark eye narrowed sharply, sending a stab of warm interest through his gut. It utterly charmed him, the way her native crankiness defeated that sleek exterior sometimes.
“Is that so?”
“It is.” He stared her down. “I also prefer not to waste my time taking reports on, then chasing down, frivolous if not completely fabricated incidents that people dream up in lieu of anything better to do.” He gave her a pointed look. “It appears that we may not always get what we want.”
“Tell me about it,” she muttered.
Rush wondered abruptly what had really brought her all the way to Mishkwa. Because if an agent with Goose’s polished smile and fierce intelligence was really chasing down flaming pitchforks near the Canadian border, Rush would eat his proverbial hat.
“Come on,” he said. “Mishkwa at dawn isn’t something you want to miss.”
“Oh, but I do.” She fixed him with that baleful eye. “I really, really do.”
He sighed. “Are you going to make me pull rank?”
“What, it’s against the law to refuse a predawn hike on this island?”
“It is when you’re the reason I have to take the hike in the first place.”
She treated him to an icy silence. He had to hide another smile in his coffee cup.
“You have to admit, you collected quite a list of random chores for me while chatting up my friends and neighbors.”
“I don’t know, Rush. I think the moose with the Dumpster fixation is pretty obviously a public safety concern.”
“Yeah? And what about Lila’s compost? Is outlining the correct manner in which to rot your food scraps compelling police work? And the Whitfords’ dreadful habit of keeping their trash barrel out front instead of around back? Mary Beth Swinton’s refusal to invest in shades? Or, good Lord, Hal Donavan’s tardy sidewalk shoveling? Heaven protect us from the peril of these lawbreakers.”
She sighed. “Don’t forget the Samuelssons’ high school partiers.”
“That, Agent Make Work, is where we’re starting.”
The tiny slice of mouth he could see curled into what he suspected was a terrible scowl. The urge to kiss it was almost unbearable. His first taste of her lips the other day had been brief but viciously potent. Addiction, he realized, wasn’t out of the question.
“Get dressed,” he said. “We leave in five minutes.”
Her eye drifted south to his coffee cup. “Is there more of that in the kitchen?”
He smiled and treated himself to a sip. “Nope.”
“Aw.”
SAY WHAT you would about rustic accommodations, Goose thought ten deliciously steamy minutes later. Rush’s hot-water heater was a champ. A thing of beauty. A joy forever. A stern rebuke to the pansy-assed appliance posing as a water heater back in her Minneapolis condo.
She pulled the towel from her head, wiped a clear space into the foggy bathroom mirror and gave her reflection a critical once-over. Same face as always. Long and angular. Strong cheekbones. Pointed chin. Quizzical, slanting eyebrows.
Decent raw materials, she supposed. Decent enough to produce—with the application of time, effort and a lot of good cosmetics—the illusion of beauty.
Her mouth, though. She allowed herself a frown in the privacy of the bathroom. Her mouth was an off-note in an otherwise mannerly symphony. Full rather than fine, inclined to bray out great barks of laughter rather than silver bell chuckles, it was a Botticelli mouth in a Picasso face. Slicking it the deep red of ripe cherries helped, though. Civilized it a little while owning—maybe even playing up—the basic sexuality of it. Not ideal but she made it work.
Her hair was a different story. It sprang directly—stubbornly—from that same dangerous wellspring of unruly desire that ran through her character. That wild propensity to want that Rush spoke to so unexpectedly and mercilessly.
It tumbled dark and tangled to her collarbones, where, if left to its own devices, it would dry into a riot of fat, touch-me curls that didn’t suggest innocent exuberance so much as recent hot sex. The rest of her features could be interpreted through a civilized lens, but her hair was her scarlet letter. Keeping it under control required daily, intensive intervention. Especially with temptation so near at hand and Rush’s stubborn unwillingness to help her defuse it.
She picked up a thermal flat brush, plugged in a professional-grade blow-dryer and prayed that Rush’s wiring was as accommodating as his hot-water heater.
RUSH PUT his cooling coffee into the microwave, clicked the door shut and punched the quick-minute button. The cottage plunged into darkness, and all the friendly morning sounds—the burble of the coffeemaker, the hum of the microwave, the blast of Goose’s blow-dryer behind the bathroom door—dwindled into a sudden, electricity-free silence.