The Murder in Skoghall (Illustrated) (The Skoghall Mystery Series Book 1)

by Alida Winternheimer

  After each of the family members tossed a handful of dirt onto the coffin, Jess and Beckett took their turns. John was being buried beside his wife. Her headstone read, “Bonnie Ecklund. Beloved daughter and mother.”

  A waitress delivered plates of pancakes and hash browns, topped off their coffee cups, and then left them alone, correctly gauging the black formal clothing and somber mood as immune to cheerful, tip-garnering banter. Beckett sat beside Jess, kneading a sugar packet until the paper wore thin and ruptured, spilling a pile of white crystals onto the tabletop. Johnny and Melanie sat on the other side of the red vinyl booth. Pam had gone to work after the funeral and wasn’t with them.

  “I’m getting a new headstone,” Johnny said. “One for both of them. It’ll say, ‘Beloved wife, mother, and daughter’ on my mom’s side.”

  “That’s good,” Jess responded. “I know she’ll like that.”

  “She’ll?” Melanie said, sitting forward and leaning her elbows against the tabletop. Her dark lipstick matched the silk poppy in her hair. “You said she’ll. Don’t you mean would have?”

  “Mellie.” Johnny said.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” she demanded.

  “Mellie,” he repeated more forcefully.

  “I know when you’re hiding something. I’ve developed a good bullshit radar, you know, what with you and Mom hacking out the divorce. I’m not a baby. I…”

  “Your grandmother’s a ghost.” Beckett blurted it across the table.

  Jess stared at him, her mouth open.

  “Dad?” Melanie drew out the aa sound, emphasizing the disbelief contained in the question mark that followed.

  Johnny sighed and pulled off his glasses to rub at the space between his eyebrows. “Anyone got some aspirin or something?” Jess dug in her purse and handed a tin pill box across the table. Johnny thanked her and nodded in his daughter’s direction. “Go ahead.”

  Jess glanced at Beckett. He was breaking a pancake apart with his fork, creating puzzle pieces of the plate-sized flapjack. She faced Melanie to find the teenager staring at her, leaning over her plate, penciled eyebrows arched in impatience. Jess told her story, leaving out a great deal, but providing enough detail to excite Melanie. Something of the girl came through when she bounced on the bench before asking if Jess could talk to Bonnie and if Bonnie knew about her. Jess hesitated before saying, “Of course she knows about you. She’s kept an eye on her family.”

  “What about your face? Did my grandmother do that to you?” Melanie pointed at Jess’s cheek.

  “Melanie,” Johnny growled.

  Jess fingered the pink ridge of scar under her right eye. She forgot it was there if she wasn’t looking in a mirror. And already there were times when she barely saw the scar, as though it had been there her whole life. Is it that obvious? she thought and suddenly wanted a mirror.

  “I’m sorry,” Johnny said. “She’s tactless. Like her mother.”

  Melanie clicked her tongue and glowered into her coffee cup.

  “Do you know who killed my mother?” Johnny asked Jess, his eyes serious and pained. Maybe it was only the headache making him squint, maybe it was more than that. His gaze shifted to Beckett, then back to Jess. “I hired a lawyer. She’s getting in touch with the sheriff’s department to track this evidence you turned in. She’s going to help me posthumously exonerate my father.”

  “Posthumously exonerate?” Melanie repeated.

  “After his death. Clear his name,” Johnny said.

  “Oh.”

  “I’d rather hear it from you than my attorney, if you don’t mind,” Johnny continued.

  Beckett shifted on the bench beside Jess. She wondered if he was going to leave, but he only pulled the band off his ponytail and let his hair swing forward. Her food, still untouched, lost all of its appeal. She took a sip of water to wet her mouth. “Johnny, I don’t…”

  “Just spit it out.”

  “Carl Copeland.” There. Like a Band-Aid. Jess chewed on her lower lip, watching Johnny’s face turn red, waiting for him to explode.

  “Holy shit!” Melanie exclaimed. “Dad. The guy you thought was your father actually killed your mother.”

  “That…um…that’s not what I expected to hear.” Johnny picked up his coffee cup and took a drink. He made a face like it was also not what he expected and set his cup down, then pushed it away from himself.

  Melanie took up her own cup, which was full after being topped off, and tipped some of its contents into Johnny’s mug. She grabbed for the bowl of creamers and began dumping one capsule of white liquid after another into her coffee. She did the same with the sugar packets. Jess watched her, a little horrified at the way she was destroying the coffee. But then, she thought, this is diner coffee, and reached for a sugar packet herself. Melanie resumed talking while she stirred her concoction. “So, like, Dad, what does this mean? How did he do it? Do we know that for sure? Is he still around? Can we send him to jail now? Do I have to call your father grandpa when we talk about him?”

  “Melanie!”

  She shut up, and her hands dropped to her lap before muttering a quiet, “Geesh.”

  “I’ve heard all I need to for now. Let’s just eat.”

  They each picked up their forks and began their meals. Jess’s pancake was already cold and flavorless. She switched to the potatoes; they at least had ample salt to dress an otherwise bland starchiness. She considered how normally after a funeral, the bereaved would share memories of the departed, but they had barely known John Sykes. The four of them ate, not even trying at conversation. Jess watched Beckett’s jaw move while he chewed a bite of pancake, noting the way his skin had already tanned since she met him. Somehow he was finding time to get on his bike and get outdoors. She hoped, with John and Bonnie Sykes at peace, she’d be able to join Beckett on some of his rides.

  They stepped out into the bright sun, and Jess pulled her sunglasses off the top of her head and put them over her eyes. Johnny took her elbow and pulled her aside. They stood near some over-pruned shrubbery under the diner’s red neon sign in the big plate window: Best Pan_akes Sausage Cof_ee. Jess slipped her wrap off and folded it into a square.

  “I know it’s all too soon,” he said. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful to my parents’ memory or anything.”

  “I get it,” Jess said. “Go ahead.”

  “I feel like I need to write a book. A memoir, I guess. About what it was like being raised with this belief and this mystery. I mean, I believed what I was told, but not deep down. I think I always knew someday it would fall apart. And all this…it’s remarkable.” He pulled his glasses off his face and looked over at his daughter. She was animatedly talking to Beckett about something. “I’m not trying to profit off my misfortune. I just feel like I need to tell my story.”

  Jess nodded, encouraging him.

  “I’d like you to co-author it with me. I think I could tell my story, and you could tell yours. About the haunting stuff. And you could maybe make sure my part’s not dry and academic sounding.” He smiled at her, an exhausted gesture of acceptance and maybe hope.

  Jess nodded again. “I would love to.”

  “Good.” He looked out at the cars waiting at the traffic light in front of the diner. “It’s all so mundane. This diner. This road out here. I just buried my father, then ate pancakes.”

  “I know.” Jess put her hand on Johnny’s arm, touching him for the first time. He placed his free hand over hers and met her gaze.

  “Thank you, Jess.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Jess drove and Beckett stared out the window, his head held in his hand, elbow on the door frame. She streamed a Coldplay album, figuring if they weren’t going to talk, she would at least have some driving music. After an hour of not talking, however, she’d had enough.

  “Beckett, why is all of this so hard for you?” She kept her eyes on the road, but felt him studying her.

  “I was adopted,” he said at last.
/>   Jess looked at him then back at the road, deciding not to say anything about her surprise, about her wonder that she didn’t know that already.

  “My parents didn’t tell me I was adopted. Then when I was a teenager and started acting out—you know, stupid boy stuff, nothing extreme—they freaked. They started treating me like a budding criminal and put me in therapy and all kinds of weird shit. Instead of helping me, they escalated the problem.” Beckett sighed and met Jess’s gaze before she had to turn it back to the road. “Look, I see now how I was messing up my life by choosing to fulfill their prophesy, but back then, I was just raging.”

  Jess remained quiet, afraid to accidentally divert the conversation.

  Beckett pushed his hair back on his head, then let it fall toward his face. “I wound up in a rehab, then a halfway house. We had arts therapy. One of the things we got to do was pottery. Pottery saved my life. Well, the potter saved my life. When he put clay in my hands… First, he let me wedge the crap out of ball after ball of clay. Then he let me build things with my hands. When I saw that I could actually create something, I was fascinated. I’d never experienced that before. And he was proud of me. When I was ready, he put me on the wheel. The wheel takes patience. You can’t be aggressive on the wheel. You’ll just crash your pots. He totally saved my life.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Huh?” Beckett pulled out of his reverie to look at Jess. “Wesley Shannon. Wes.”

  Jess nodded, glad she now knew the name of the most important person in Beckett’s past.

  “A while ago, my dad got ALS. Lou Gehrig’s Disease. There was panic in the family. Then my mom announces at dinner one night, like it’s no big deal, that I won’t have to worry about it. My sister, the baby they weren’t supposed to be able to have, their cherished darling, is another story, but I won’t have to worry about ALS—as far as they know.” Beckett returned to staring out the window.

  After some time had passed, Jess ventured a question. “Why all the prophesy stuff when you were a teen?”

  “I found out who my biological parents are. They were teenagers with drug problems, in and out of juvee. My mother was in a halfway house for most of her pregnancy, so I was born clean, but after she gave me up, she got fucked up and wound up stabbed to death in a squatter’s dump.”

  “Beckett, I am so sorry.”

  “Yeah, well. I’m sorry I’ve been so rough on you about this whole thing. The stuff with Johnny, having his whole identity ripped out from under him, was just too close to home.”

  “Thanks for finally telling me.”

  “Now you know about my messed up youth.” He shrugged. “Guess I’m damaged goods.”

  Jess turned off the River Road onto Skoghall’s Main Street, then climbed the hill to park in front of the hardware store. They had left Shakti and a case of beer with Dave before heading south to the funeral. She shut off the car and settled her full attention on Beckett. “From what I’ve seen,” she said, “you’re no more messed up than anyone else.”

  They faced each other and embraced over the car’s middle console. Their lips found each other. Beckett’s hand cradled the back of Jess’s neck and hers stroked the flat of his shoulder blade. By the time they separated, the car was stuffy with heat. They smiled at each other, their eyes confirming something good, before they climbed out of the car.

  Beckett waited for Jess to come around to the passenger side and took her hand, turning her to him for another kiss. “I’m glad this ghost thing is over,” he said.

  “Me, too.” Before completely turning away, Jess glanced across the street. In the second-story window of the antique store, Isabella watched through a parted curtain. She waved to Jess. Jess brought a hand up next to her cheek and wagged her fingers before pushing her hand into her hair. She turned quickly and bounded up the steps to the hardware store.

  “Get a room,” Dave growled when they came in. He relaxed his faux scowl and his face widened into a massive grin. He thrust a hand over the counter to grab Beckett’s hand in a congratulatory shake. “It’s about time you two act like a couple. Really. I saw this coming the day we moved that stove.”

  “That far back, huh?” Jess was blushing, and there was no point trying to hide it this time. Even if she could un-color her cheeks, the broad grin across her face was unmistakably pleased by Dave’s support of their…relationship.

  Shakti had been sniffing around the paint section until she heard her mama’s voice. Jess heard her claws scrabbling on the old vinyl floor before she saw her tearing down one of the aisles at a full run. Shakti skidded on the smooth floor and toppled onto her face, the spill barely slowing her down. Jess knelt and held her arms open, bracing herself for impact. Shakti leapt at her, all wagging tail and lapping tongue. Jess laughed and laughed. The day had suddenly turned around.

  As they stepped out of the hardware store, Jess talked over her shoulder to Beckett, saying how she couldn’t wait to change out of the dress she was wearing and he was agreeing, though he’d removed his tie, loosened his shirt collar, and rolled up his sleeves as soon as they got in the car back in La Crosse. Shakti tugged at the end of her leash, forging ahead as always. “You have no idea what it’s like to wear heels…”

  Parked across the street sat a large, shiny, black pick-up. Jess and Beckett stopped and stared at it from the top of the porch steps. A man bent at the door, his back to them, his head inside the truck’s cab. Jess’s heart raced, hoping against the odds that it wasn’t who she thought it was.

  Tyler straightened up, stepped aside, and a large golden retriever hopped out of the cab. It wore a blue backpack with logo patches on it.

  Shakti pulled frantically at the end of her leash, dragging Jess behind her. Jess’s ankle buckled under her at the bottom, thanks to her heels. She hobbled awkwardly with the shoe half-off, until Beckett caught up to her and picked up Shakti. While Jess repositioned her shoe, Tyler came across the street to meet them. His dog walked calmly beside and a little in front of him, tail wagging furiously, grin apparent, despite the obvious good manners.

  “Jess,” he said.

  “Hello, Tyler.”

  “Beckett.” He nodded his head, but no hands were offered to bridge the gap between them.

  Shakti scrambled and leapt out of Beckett’s hold, leaving a long red scratch on his forearm. She began sniffing the bigger dog, bowing and whining, moving from the head to the belly. The older dog watched her, sniffed her back, sat on its haunches and raised a paw to bat her on the head. At the thump, Shakti whined in surprise and rolled onto her back, offering the superior hound her pink belly. The patches on the dog’s pack read “Service Dog,” “Do Not Pet,” and “PTSD.”

  Jess looked up from the pack to Tyler, too many questions forming in her head.

  He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. It was the kiss of a close friend—maybe it was hopeful of something more. Jess couldn’t fathom what she was seeing, then she felt Beckett’s hand on her waist.

  Tyler took a step back, then another. He pushed his hand through his hair—perhaps thinking better of the kiss—and Jess saw the pink line of his scar. “Across,” he said, and the dog left Shakti to put himself between Tyler and Beckett. Tyler reached down to touch the dog’s head and the tension of a moment ago seemed to evaporate. “This is Bruno,” he said.

  Shakti pursued Bruno and rose to put her paws on his haunches. He turned his head to snap at her, a friendly warning to a junior dog. Beckett lifted Shakti and held her wrapped in his arms until she stopped wriggling.

  “A PTSD dog?” Jess said.

  “I want to thank you.” Tyler stooped over his dog, his hand thumping Bruno’s shoulder.

  “Thank me?” Her voice filled with disbelief, “For what?”

  “If it wasn’t for what happened…between us.” His eyes shifted to take in Beckett’s glowering face. “I wouldn’t have gotten Bruno. I was planning to cancel my application, to tell the organization that they should give the
dog to someone who really needed him. Then I…” Tyler squatted to wrap his arms around Bruno’s neck. He took a deep breath and freed one hand to push his dark hair away from his brow, again exposing the scar. “After I hurt you, I got the call a dog was available and I could go in for matching. I went. Jess, this dog is…um…he’s saving me.” Tyler kissed the top of Bruno’s auburn head before standing again to face her and Beckett.

  Shakti started whining, a high-pitched squeak, desperate to connect with the other dog. Beckett let her down and she rose up to wrap her front paws around Bruno’s neck. Tyler smiled at them, the crooked half-smile of someone with a newly acknowledged vulnerability. “Release,” he said to the dog. Bruno lifted his chin to look at Tyler, his eyebrows raising one side then the other. His tongue fell out of his mouth as he cracked that goofy Retriever grin before turning to pin Shakti under a paw and bite at her ruff of neck fur. Shakti panted with excitement. “Maybe we can get them together soon. Let them play,” Tyler said.

  Jess smiled, baffled by the number of surprises one day could hold. “I’d like that.”

  Beckett’s fingers danced against her ribs.

  Tyler held his hand out to Beckett across the wrestling dogs. “Congratulations, man.” Beckett accepted his hand. “I have to check on my café. Good to see you both.”

  Jess was so stunned she barely remembered to speak. “You too,” she said as Tyler turned away.

  “Bruno. Let’s go.”

  Bruno immediately disentangled from Shakti. Shakti leapt at his shoulder and he responded with a sharp nip before walking away, taking his place slightly in front of Tyler.

  Jess watched them cross the street and enter the garden, only shifting her gaze away from Tyler’s broad shoulders when they disappeared behind the line of the building.