by Darci Hannah
Carleton studied my face. “I’ve had my share of challenges, and what I’ve learned is that a wise businessman knows when to cut loose a sinking asset before he’s dragged to the bottom with it. I know you don’t want to hear it, but this is a sinking asset, my dear. There’s no kinder way I can put it. Unfortunately, it also happens to be the lifeblood of your family. Be prepared, Whitney—when the Cherry Orchard Inn goes down, the Blooms will go down with it.”
His words hurt more than a knife to the heart, but there was some truth in it. I looked at my parents, my heart pounding double time. The Rivers family had joined the group, and the anger was compounding. “You may be right,” I told him. “But the Blooms won’t go down without a fight.”
∞
It took a while to defuse the anger of the grieving parties, but with the help of friends, we did it. Fortunately the Blooms had more friends in the room than enemies, including Reverend Dahl and Dr. Engle, both influential men in the village. Between them they managed to bring back order. Dr. Engle even reminded everyone that this was a memorial service. “No one can bring your loved ones back,” he told the crowd, “But what we can do is to help the authorities find the person responsible for these tragedies and bring him to justice. That’s what we should be focusing on, not pointing fingers.”
Yes, I thought. Good. Bring the focus back to the problem at hand. Find the murderer!
“Here,” Giff said, coming up to us and handing me a tiny paper plate weighted down by a lumpy scone. “That’s all that’s left. Just those. Clearly they weren’t up to par with the quality of the other baked goods, but hey, how bad can they be?” He winked, then picked up the scone on his own plate. He was just about to take a bite when Carleton knocked it out of his hand.
“Don’t eat that! That’s one of the nasty things I ate this morning, and I’m still suffering for it.”
“Lori Larson!” I cried, remembering the connection between the scone and the baker. I scanned the room. I hadn’t seen her son, but if Lori’s scones were here, there was a pretty good chance she was too. I was just about to search the crowded room when my phone rang. It was Jack.
“Whit. Are you at the church? Good. Listen. I need you to find Erik Larson. Is he there?” At the sound of the name, I inhaled sharply. It was a little spooky that Jack was asking after the same person I happened to be looking for.
“No,” I said, “but Lori’s here. Why?” I had a sinking feeling that I already knew the answer.
“Christ!” Jack swore under his breath. “I’m sorry to have to break this to you over the phone, but I think you should know. I’m still at the police station in Sturgeon Bay with Tate. During the questioning, he revealed that Erik Larson and Cody Rivers were the ones taking his boats. I’m not sure what else he knows, but the boys definitely knew something. Look, I know these kids too, and they’re not murderers. If someone tried to kill Cody, it stands to reason that Erik is in danger as well. We need to find him, Whit. Quickly! He’s not answering his cell phone.”
In one lurching beat all the blood drained from my heart. “Right,” I said, fighting to remain calm. “Got it. What does Lori Larson look like?” I roamed the room as Jack described the woman I was after. I found a person who fit the description standing in a far corner with a small group of middle-aged ladies. “Excuse me,” I said, breaking in on their conversation. “Mrs. Larson?”
The woman stopped talking and stared at me.
“My name is Whitney Bloom and I’m looking for your son, Erik. Do you know where he is?”
“I know who you are,” Lori said curtly, glaring. “Why ya looking for my son?”
I could have told her, yet under the circumstances I felt it best she hear the news from Jack. I handed her my phone. “Officer MacLaren is on the other end. He’ll explain it to you.”
With visible trepidation Lori took the phone and held it to her ear. The moment she did, the fair skin beneath the heavy sheen of makeup turned the color of ash. “No,” she breathed, “Oh no. Please, God, no … ”
“Lori. What is it? What’s going on?” The women in her circle were stricken with concern.
“It’s Officer MacLaren,” she told them, handing back my phone. “He’s been trying to get ahold of Erik. He believes my son is in grave danger.”
Thirty-Seven
He should be at home,” Lori said, heading for her car. “I don’t understand. Last night, after hearing about the murder attempt on Cody, we were so distraught. It hit us hard. Cody and Erik are like brothers.”
“What time did he get home last night?” I asked.
She cast me a nervous glance. “Ashley, my daughter, came home from the inn around ten. She was pretty upset when she told me about the fire and Cody. She said Erik went to visit Cody in the hospital and would be home late.”
“Do you know around what time he came home?”
“He didn’t,” Lori admitted, biting her lower lip as she strode across the parking lot. “But that’s not unusual. He’s a high school senior, ya know. They usually crash at whoever’s house they’re hanging out at for the night. But he’s always home for breakfast.”
“Hopefully he’s home now,” I said, and prayed it was true. “He probably just turned the ringer off on his phone. Happens all the time. Watch, we’ll find him in bed, sleeping like a baby.”
“Right,” she agreed, looking utterly unnerved. It was eleven o’clock now, so by all accounts Erik should be home. And that’s what was so alarming. Immediately after getting off the phone with Jack, Lori had tried calling her son’s cell phone. She’d tried three times. Each unanswered call was like a private death. She gasped; her chin and lower lip quivered, and her red-rimmed eyes filled with tears. Like a pebble tossed in a glassy millpond, her plight had rippled through the community room on concentric waves of anguish and fear. It had stopped the finger-pointing and threats, working as a cohesive force on the congregation. Everyone present understood. Erik Larson, friend of Cody Rivers and loyal employee of the Cherry Orchard Inn, was missing.
I jumped into the backseat of Lori’s car, along with Ashley. Carleton, undeterred and unwilling to return to his moored yacht when crisis was so thick in the air, rode shotgun. Hannah and Giff ran with Tay to her car. In fact, half the congregation of St. Paul’s Lutheran got in their cars and followed Lori as she shot out of town, pedal to the floor.
The Larsons lived down a dirt road on the fertile interior of the peninsula in a freshly painted old farmhouse. This was prime Wisconsin farm country. The house was surrounded by sprouting green fields with a handful of dairy cows grazing near a copse of trees. As Lori drove up the long winding drive, she moaned. Her son’s car wasn’t there.
Pulling out her keys, she ran up the front steps. Carleton and I followed, but on the wide front porch I turned and instructed him to bar the door. “Let me go with her,” I told him. “We’ll know soon enough if he’s here. She doesn’t need the entire village milling about.”
“Right,” he agreed. Tay, Hannah, and Giff joined him.
Lori, Ashley, and I did a quick search of the first floor, then headed upstairs to Erik’s bedroom. Tension was running high; Erik wasn’t responding to his name, and my heart was pounding in my ears like a hammer on an anvil because of it. Lori reached the bedroom door first and threw it open. I gasped, falling into the room open-jawed, staring at the carnage around me.
“Oh my God!” I cried. “It’s been ransacked! Erik’s been abducted!”
“What?” Lori looked at me and started screaming.
“Jeez! Mom! Get ahold!” It was Ashley. The girl had a death-grip on her mother’s arm. “Erik’s room always looks like this. The kid’s a flippin’ pig,” she told me, rolling her eyes. She then walked over to a cluttered dresser, picked up a can of Old Spice Wolfthorn, and proceeded to crop-dust the pigsty.
“Right,” Lori said. “Right. Enough, Ashley!” She to
ok a deep breath and shrugged. “Teenage boys.”
Teenage boys? The place looked like the subterranean den of a feral child, and smelled like one too under the spicy spray-on deodorant scent. Correction. It looked like the den of a feral child with cash.
As I wandered through the piles of discarded clothing, dirty plates, and open soda cans and energy drinks, I noted the knots of wire connecting game controllers to an Xbox One, a PlayStation 4, and an old Nintendo 64—all sitting beneath a flat-screen TV the size of a small car. There was a pair of expensive looking headphones, and another pair that had a mouthpiece for live gaming. A sizeable pile of video games sprawled along the floor like a lumpy volcano. All of them were rated Mature, I noted, and most were first-person shooters. It was an expensive setup for the kid of a struggling single mother, I thought. When I asked if Erik’s father had bought the gaming equipment, Lori shook her head. Erik, she said, had bought it all himself. The kid did have cash.
A pair of sizable stereo speakers sat beside the TV stand, one holding up a pair of dirty gym shorts and the other a white button-down, complete with sweaty pit stains. There were basketballs, footballs, a lacrosse stick, and a tennis racket. I did a quick search for the bed and found a likely suspect perched along the far wall. Erik could have easily still been asleep in the thing for all I knew, it was so lumpy and messy. Aside from the piles of clothing and wrinkled blankets there was an unseemly number of pillows. Lori, picking up on my thought, walked over to it and began peeling the layers away like it was a giant banana. The bed held a lot of things, but an eighteen-year-old boy, unfortunately, wasn’t one of them. As I fought to make sense of what I was looking at, a buzzing noise grabbed my attention.
“It’s coming from the bed,” I said, “or under it.”
After searching the rumpled bed, I dropped to my knees and lifted the blankets. Among a pile of dirty, mismatched socks and dust-bunnies on the floor was a phone. If it was Erik’s, I knew Jack would want to dust it for fingerprints. With a slight shiver of disgust, I slipped one of the dirty socks over my hand and grabbed it. It was still buzzing.
“It’s Erik’s,” Lori confirmed.
“I don’t suppose he leaves this behind often?”
“Are you kidding me? That thing’s practically attached to him.” As Lori spoke, her red-painted lips twitched nervously.
I peered at the screen. BabyGirl, whoever that was, was calling. There was only one thing for it. I took off the dirty sock and pressed answer.
A frantic female voice cried, “Erik!? Oh my God! Where’ve you been? I’m so worried. I’ve been trying to call you all morning—”
“Who’s this?” I asked, cutting her off.
“What? What d’ya mean, who is this!? Are you smokin’ weed again or somthin’? It’s Kenna, asshole.”
“Kenna who?”
“Jesus, Erik. Have you been huffing helium? You sound like a girl. Stop messing around. I’m worried sick.”
“This isn’t Erik, Kenna. This is Whitney Bloom. I have Erik’s phone.”
“Holy ****,” the girl swore and ended the call.
“Kenna McKinnon,” Ashley supplied. “She’s a waitress at the inn, same as me, and she’s Erik’s girlfriend.”
“Right. Dammit!” I muttered. “I don’t suppose you know the password to Erik’s phone?” Thankfully Ashley did, and she told me the numbers. The moment I unlocked it, I called Kenna’s number back.
“Kenna, don’t hang up. Where are you? Sitting in a car outside Erik’s house?” I went to the window and pulled back a curtain. There were a lot of cars outside the Larson house. “Do me a favor,” I said. “This is very important. Get out of your car and wave.” A moment later, Kenna got out of a white Ford Fiesta and waved her hand. “Gotcha. Okay. Stay right there. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
I ended the call and saw that there were fifteen missed calls since last night, and six unanswered voicemails. Most of the missed calls were from BabyGirl … aka Kenna. I checked the time on the first unanswered message again: four thirty yesterday afternoon, about the time Erik had gone missing from the wine and cheese tasting event. I scrolled further and saw the last text Erik sent: it was to Cody.
Dude, don’t do it, it read. Cody had never replied. The message was sent at 8:28 p.m.
If Erik’s phone was under his bed, it obviously meant he’d been home at some point yesterday. He’d been home and gone, and nobody had seen him, including his girlfriend. Did Erik know that Cody was planning to meet with me? Was his text a warning … or some kind of threat? If he ran home after leaving the inn, he would have had plenty of time to go back to the processing shed and set a fire, but would he really be able to murder his best friend? Or perhaps Erik knew that by talking with me, Cody was taking a terrible risk. This would mean that whatever Cody was involved in, Erik was involved in too. Was he afraid? Or was he a monster? Either way, the fact that he was missing without his phone sent a wave of cold panic running through me.
“Lori, what time did you come home last night?”
She thought a moment. “Nine,” she said. “I was having dinner with a friend.”
“Erik had his phone on him yesterday, and we found it under his bed, so he must have left the house before anyone came home. I believe he knows what’s going on, and we need to find him. Meanwhile, I’m going to need to keep this.” I held up the phone. “Officer MacLaren will want to look at it.”
Lori nodded. I slipped Erik’s phone into my pocket and ran my eye over the room once again. Then I stopped.
“Lori, can you tell me if you see anything missing from this room—anything at all?” She swept the room with her eyes, then shook her head.
“Really Mom?” Ashley, standing aside with arms crossed, uncrossed her arms and stormed over to the desk. “I’ll tell ya what’s missing, Miss Bloom. His backpack, that’s what.” She cast her mother another disparaging look. “He always throws it there,” she told us, indicating a clean little space on the floor beside the desk. “Those are his books, his papers, and his calculator. He dumped them all out.”
“Very good,” I said. “What else?”
“His Doc Martens,” she added, pointing to the closet. “And his Carhartt jacket. It’s usually over there.”
“Whitney.” Lori not only looked frightened but highly annoyed. “What does this mean?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m going make a guess. Since all the doors to the house were locked, and there’s no sign of forced entry or a struggle, and your son went to some effort to shove his cell phone under the bed, I think that for whatever reason, Erik doesn’t want to be contacted—by you or by anybody. Without a cell phone he can’t be traced, either.” As I spoke, some pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place. I looked at Lori and said, “Tell me the truth. You knew that your son was stealing Tate’s boats, didn’t you? That’s why you were bringing a plate of scones to his house at the marina this morning, wasn’t it?”
“How … how did you know about that?”
The way she looked at me made me think that Mrs. Cushman had been right. Lori Larson was a cougar. “Because Tate was with me this morning,” I said, feeling oddly proprietary about the ex-love of my life. “Mrs. Cushman told him that you came by with a plate of scones. They were a form of apology, weren’t they? When Erik didn’t come home last night, you assumed he’d taken one of Tate’s boats.”
“You’re right. Please, please don’t be hard on Tate.” It was kind of sad, but the woman sounded like a child begging to keep a lost kitten. And the look of adoration on her face as she spoke Tate’s name was, quite frankly, disgusting. “Ever since his dad left us,” Lori continued, with a beseeching look in her eyes, “Erik’s been acting up. A couple of months ago I found out he was paying someone to buy him beer, and then he and Cody would steal one of Tate’s boats and drink out on the lake. Tate followed the boys one night and cau
ght them in the act.” She looked squarely at me and added, “He called me instead of Officer MacLaren, thank God, and I was so grateful he did. Erik already has a criminal record for a minor indiscretion last year. Tate knows he’s a good boy and didn’t have the heart to add theft to the list. Tate’s taken Erik and Cody under his wing. He was the one who got the boys their job at the orchard. When I realized that Erik didn’t come home this morning, I assumed he was depressed about Cody and had taken one of Tate’s boats by himself. I was going to … talk with Tate. He’s such a good listener.”
Tate? A good listener? Ha! I’ll bet she wanted to do more than just talk with him. I shook the thought from my head and focused back on the matter at hand. Something had been following me in the woods this morning. Erik stole boats. Was Erik my Sasquatch? I looked at Lori and asked, “Does, um, Erik have a Sasquatch costume by chance?”
I could tell by the cross look she gave me that the answer to this was no. “What the hell kind of question is that? My son is missing and you ask me if he has a Sasquatch costume? Of course he doesn’t have a Sasquatch costume! He spends all of his money on video games! And anyhow, why am I talking to you? You’re not the police. Shouldn’t we be talking to Officer MacLaren about all this?”
“Jack’s on his way. And yes, there was a boat missing at the marina this morning. And it was never returned.”
“Oh God!” Lori cried. “Did he have a boating accident? Do you think my son might have drowned?”
“I doubt it,” I said, recalling the boat speeding away in the fog. I looked at Ashley then, suddenly remembering that she’d said she worked at the inn too.
“Ashley, you know what’s going on here, don’t you?”
For the first time since we’d entered the house Ashley looked scared. She cast a nervous glance at her mother. That was it! Ashley wouldn’t talk in front of her mother.
“Lori,” I said, “would you mind stepping out of the room for a moment?”
“Yes, I would mind! What is it, Ash? If you have something to say, just say it. Say it!” Lori howled in a fear-crazed voice. “Say it!”