The Sleuth Sisters

by Pill, Maggie

  The lake was quiet in that way that gets your attention because it’s so deep. An occasional bird-call echoed over the water, but mostly there was only stillness.

  “Pretty,” Barb murmured. It seemed wrong to use normal tones.

  “Yes,” I agreed, waiting for the but that threatened: but there are mice, but it will be cold tonight, but we have no TV, no cell phone reception, etc. She didn’t say it, and I realized she was trying not to be a party pooper.

  I lit a cigarette. The great thing about the great outdoors was it provided guilt-free smoking. While I enjoyed my drug of choice, Barb explored the lakeshore. I contended there wasn’t much to see, but she had to look.

  She went left until swampy ground cut off her progress, then returned and did the same the other way. Same result. Sadly for her improved mood, she stumbled into a hatch of black flies, which are at their best in the springtime U.P. Bugs don’t like the smell of cigarette smoke any more than other non-smokers, so they circled Barb like a moving halo and left me alone. I tried not to look smug.

  We finally retreated to the cabin, bug-free but dark and dampish. Our one gaslight put out heat as well as light, so we lit the others. Following instructions on a hand-lettered sign, I elicited water from the pump, refilling the bucket after we each flushed the toilet. A stove made from an old oil barrel stood in one corner on skinny metal legs. Four uniformly cut logs lay beside it, but there was no kindling, no paper, nothing with which to start a fire. I had my cigarette lighter, but fire-starting doesn’t work without the in-between ingredients. “Maybe the lights will be enough,” I said hopefully. Barb’s silence was eloquent.

  North of the 45th parallel, May doesn’t always mean spring, and the sun had sunk below the treeline, leaving behind a definite chill. As we ate coleslaw with cold beans and chicken, the temperature in the cabin dropped, and we both began to shiver. Neither of us had brought enough clothes, and I pictured a miserable night huddled in our sleeping bags, noses red with cold. There wasn’t even room on the bunks to bundle and share body heat like we had when we were kids.

  Barb got quiet, and I figured she was kicking herself for coming here. “Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s going to kill me,” she said, rubbing her hands together. Either she was trying to make me feel better or convince herself she’d survive.

  “When I said one night, I forgot how long that can be when you’re miserable,” I said.

  Just then there was a knock on the door, a hard three-count that meant business. “Yes?” Barb called, shooting me a wary glance.

  “You want help building a fire?”

  I sprang to the door, muttering, “I wouldn’t need help if I had the materials!” Opening the door brought both relief and shock. A man stood on the pallet porch with an armload of wood that ran the gamut of appropriate sizes, from kindling to all-nighter. From one roomy pocket of his red-and-black plaid jacket a rolled catalog, presumably tinder, protruded. The other pocket bulged in the shape of a thermal bottle, which also boded well for us.

  Despite the anticipation of warmer times, I was hesitant. The bearer of these gifts was so scary I had to make an effort not to stare. Tall and muscular, he had flat-brown hair and an untrimmed beard that lay on his chest like a dead animal. His eyes were hazel, or at least one of them was. The other was clouded with a white haze, probably blind and definitely disconcerting. His teeth were crooked and discolored, and his right arm hung limply at his side. It was hard not to register pity at the sight of so many physical deformities visited on a single human being.

  “I can have you a fire in a few minutes.”

  “That’d be great. Come in,” I invited, trying to look directly at him without flinching.

  “Didn’t expect anybody, so I didn’t fill the wood-boxes yet,” he said, entering and setting down the carefully balanced load. It made quite a clatter, since he had no way to control the landing of the various pieces of wood. He set to work nimbly enough, opening the firebox door and piling the makings of a fire inside. Within minutes, the metal of the old stove began to smell hot, which our host assured us was fine. As he encouraged the fire, leaving the round, grated door open a little, he offered gruffly, “There’s cocoa in the bottle. Warm you up some.” The protruding teeth made it hard for him to enunciate clearly, and he spoke with a halting cadence. At times I had to think about what he said for a few seconds before it registered.

  Barb accepted his offer without mentioning we’d have drunk hemlock at that point if it was warm. Placing the bottle between his thighs, the man removed the cap and stopper with his good hand. I found two cups (who remembers Melmac!) on a shelf, and he poured, drinking his own portion from the bottle’s cup-top. We sipped surprisingly good cocoa silently, Barb and I avoiding each other’s gaze and our host watching the fire. When he was satisfied it would live, he closed the door, secured it with the coiled metal handle, and turned down the draft.

  “Roger Kimball,” he announced, turning to us. “I own the place.”

  Barb offered her left hand. “Barbara Evans, and this is my sister, Faye Burner.” I shook left-handed too, a little self-consciously.

  Kimball regarded us with his good eye narrowed. “What you looking for up here?”

  Barb offered a professional smile, perfected over years of difficult interviews. “You, Mr. Kimball.” When his dark eyebrows rose she explained, “We’re hoping you can help us with a case we’re working on.”

  “Have you owned this place for long?” I asked.

  Kimball’s lips moved slightly before he was able to form a reply. I guessed he didn’t have many conversations with women, maybe with anyone. “Four, almost five years.”

  Disappointment showed on Barb’s face as she wrapped both hands around the warm cup. “I guess you won’t be able to help us.”

  “Before I bought it, I worked here.”

  “You worked for the person who owned the lodge before?”

  “Haike Makala, my uncle. I came over from Munising when he got crippled up with arthritis.” Kimball nodded to himself, pleased to have formed such a long string of words.

  “Your uncle.”

  “He needed help putting boats and the dock in, dressing deer, like that. I’m pretty strong.” Almost defiantly he glanced at the arm, lifeless as an ax handle.

  “So how did you come to own the place?”

  Kimball spoke in the peculiar sing-song quality of Yooper speech, a leftover from the area’s Scandinavian settlers. “Haike went to live in Arizona. Drier climate.” He dragged out the “o” in the state’s name and seemed to think of it as a foreign land. To him it probably was.

  He went on, his voice betraying fondness for the old man. “He sold it to me cheap, wanted somebody that would live here, not some club that leaves it empty most times.” The odd face changed subtly. “I like it, away from people.”

  It was easy to understand the choice to avoid the curious stares and pitying comments he’d probably dealt with daily. Here Kimball could forget his physical problems, adapting to his disabilities until he didn’t have to think about them much. His uncle had done him a real favor.

  “In November six years ago,” Barb prompted, “a man might have come here from the Lower Peninsula who wasn’t equipped very well for hunting. His wife and her brother were murdered, and the police think he did it.”

  Kimball bit a rather grubby fingernail, looked at it, and rubbed it on his flannel shirt. “November’s busy. Lotsa guys come.”

  “This one was new, hadn’t been here before.”

  “Why would he come here?”

  I pulled a copy of the newspaper ad and a picture of Neil Brown from my jacket pocket and passed them to him. “His sister found your ad in a book. The police thought he went south at the time, but we think he might have had this place in mind.”

  Kimball look
ed at the picture for some time. “I don’t know that guy.”

  I stuffed the papers into my jacket again and sighed. “A long trip for nothing, I guess.”

  “Is there anyone else around here we might speak with?” Kimball shot Barb a look and she added hastily, “I’m not saying we don’t believe you, Mr. Kimball, but he would have interacted with as few people as possible. Kept to himself, you know?”

  “Yeah.” Kimball thought about it. I got the sense he thought things over carefully before saying them, a luxury afforded to those who deal mostly with deer and squirrels. “Most people been here all their lives. Ask anyone.”

  Barb seemed disappointed at the generality of the suggestion. “Okay, thanks.”

  Kimball rose to go. “Anything else you need?”

  “No, we’ll be fine, thanks,” I answered, not allowing Barb the chance to suggest a better mattress, a microwave, and water that didn’t require physical effort with a hand pump.

  Kimball emptied the remains of the cocoa equally into our two cups and replaced the stopper and cover. He seemed to sense that leave-taking pleasantries were required but couldn’t quite get the phrasing. “Fire’s good for the night.” With that he left, pulling the slightly warped door closed behind him with a scrape.

  We sat silent until we heard the door of the main house close a few seconds later. Barb raised her cup in salute. “Our gracious host!”

  “He isn’t so bad,” I countered. “Just not used to being in the company of ladies.”

  “Being in company, period. The guy can barely put a sentence together.”

  “Can you blame him? People treat him like he’s a freak, so he avoids them. He was actually quite concerned for our comfort.”

  She glanced around. “This won’t rank with a stay on the Riviera, I can tell you that.”

  “The only Riviera you even got close to is the hotel in Vegas,” I countered.

  “True.” Draining her cup, she set it down. “We’ll stop on the way home tomorrow and show the picture around. Maybe someone at a gas station or a party store will remember Brown.”

  “Okay, but the person most likely to remember him was Kimball. During hunting season, he could have stayed here for weeks without raising suspicion.”

  Barb looked around at the shadowed knotty pine and shivered at the thought. “I suppose you’re right. This was the perfect place to plan his next move.”

  “We can’t be sure he came here.”

  “But I think he did.”

  “His truck was a couple hundred miles south of here, in Port Huron.”

  “Up here, no one questions strangers during hunting season. Who’d know where he came from or where he went when he left?”

  “How’d he get the truck down there?”

  “Drove it there and backtracked, maybe. Or he paid someone else to do it.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m just theorizing,” she said impatiently. “Meredith might have a guess. Let’s see if anyone remembers Brown being up here. That would help.”

  After a not-too-uncomfortable night we left Buck Lake and started for home. On the way we stopped at several businesses, but everywhere we showed the picture we got shrugs and negatives. Barb was clearly disgusted, whether because she’d really thought we’d find Neil or because she’d driven to the U.P. for nothing.

  Something odd happened that had nothing to do with Mr. Brown. We entered a party store/gas station with our photo and our questions, and as we went in, I elbowed Barb and snickered at a sign taped to the counter. Puppy’s free to good home. I’m not the world’s best speller, but I caught that one.

  We showed the photo to the girl behind the counter, got nowhere, and turned to leave. “Go ahead,” Barb said. “I’m going to get a water.”

  “You’ve got one already.”

  “It’s warm.”

  At the car I remembered I was almost out of cigarettes. I went back inside, got a pack, and went to the counter to pay. The sign now read, Puppies free to good home. Heavy black letters had been written over the incorrect ones with a marker.

  “Did you point out the spelling error?” I asked Barb as we left the store.

  “I never correct people.” She uncapped the water bottle. “She must’ve caught it herself.”

  We continued our quest, stopping periodically to show Neil Brown’s picture. Nothing. I stared out the window at Lake Michigan’s beautiful, rocky shore. “It was a faint hope, I guess.”

  Barb concentrated on navigating the always-tricky traffic. Despite plentiful passing lanes, there’s a constant game of Involuntary Chicken on US2, initiated by idiots too impatient to wait for the next one. At the same time, a second game called Pass-Then-Slow-Down is played. Drivers pass via the extra lane then slow to fifty miles per hour when it disappears. Barb made some decidedly un-lawyerly comments about being an unwilling participant in both games.

  “We’ll go home and start again,” she said as she passed an ancient Ford pickup for the second time. “We’ll find something the police missed.”

  “Neil must have had someone he could ask for help.”

  She pulled in just as the passing lane came to an end, and I tried not to cringe. “What if Neil traded cars with someone and had him leave the truck where the police would find it?”

  “But then he’d have the other person’s vehicle.”

  “The guy picks it up later.”

  “Then that person would know where Neil went.”

  “Initially, but Neil severs contact, maybe takes a bus from wherever he leaves the car.”

  “Could it have been Meredith?”

  “I doubt it. It sounds like Brown didn’t want his baby sister involved in his troubles. Besides, she’d have told us. If she wants to find him, she has to be completely honest.”

  “So we find out who his friends were.”

  “Right. Especially his best friend. That’s who he might have turned to.”

  Chapter Five

  Barb

  Back in Allport, a call to Meredith gave us three names. “Neil called them his Musketeers,” she told me. “Amos, Portly, and Hairless.” She chuckled, explaining. “Amos is Amos Carroll, who worked with Neil in construction. Portly is John Mason, who is a little . . .”

  “Portly?”

  “Yes. The last guy, who is of course bald, is Rick Waller, who’s in real estate. They played ball in school and stayed connected like guys do: softball, poker, and golf foursomes.”

  “Who would Neil call if he needed someone he could trust to keep his mouth shut?”

  Meredith considered it for only a second. “John is a guy who’d take your secret to the grave. But the police really put him through the ringer, and they got nothing.”

  “I’ll start with him. Are they all in the book?”

  “Yes, but there are a dozen John Masons. Neil’s friend owns the Party Stop on Main.”

  I called the number listed for the Party Stop and got John. When I explained my purpose, the voice changed from cordial to distant. “I’ve got nothing to say about Neil.”

  “Mr. Mason, Meredith hired us to find her brother and try to prove he’s innocent of killing his wife and brother-in-law.”

  “Shouldn’t be hard, because he is innocent. I told the police that at the time.”

  “They didn’t believe you?”

  “They weren’t looking for the truth. They swallowed everything old man Wozniak said.”

  “What might the truth be?”

  Mason paused. “I don’t know. But Neil wouldn’t kill anyone, especially Carina.”

  “He still loved her?”

  Mason seemed uncomfortable with analyzing emotions. “He’d never hurt her.”

  “Do you mind if I stop by, so we can talk in per
son?” I wanted to see Mason’s face when I mentioned Buck Lake, wanted to watch his expressions as he talked about Neil.

  “There’s nothing I can tell you.”

  “Probably not, but I have to do what I can for my client.” I figured he couldn’t refuse to help Neil’s little sister, and I was right. He gave me directions to his store.

  Fifteen minutes later I pulled up alongside the Party Stop, a cement-block building with products listed on every conceivable surface: the windows, the roof, the side wall, and even a movable posting board out front. It was the usual mix of goods: beer, fishing licenses, hot pretzels, ice, and, of course in a town on a large lake, bait. I noted with approval that everything was spelled correctly. No midnight visit from the Grammar Police needed here.

  The store was claustrophobia inducing, with shelves along every wall and even overhead, like looming eavesdroppers. The aisles were filled with objects, some of them dusty from long occupancy. Coolers lined one whole wall, giving off an eerie, bluish light. The sales counter was at the back, a mistake in my opinion, but I soon saw the reason. In a room behind it, a television flickered. Mason probably spent a lot of time there between customers. At least he’d had the sense to install convex mirrors in the corners and two strategically placed surveillance cameras.

  “I always work Friday nights,” Mason told me. The guy had probably once been athletic, but all the muscle had melted into his middle and he looked soft. His dark hair was already speckled with gray and his mouth turned downward, either from genetic predisposition or life’s accumulating disappointments. “I didn’t hear about the whole mess until the next day.”