Death at Gills Rock

by Patricia Skalka

  “Squirrels, huh?” Myers led the sheriff to an exhibit of four stuffed squirrels.

  “We got red, brown, black, and gray. They’re all native to the county and any of them would be capable of such behavior.”

  “But no way of knowing for certain?” Cubiak said.

  “Not unless you saw them in action. Adult squirrels are more likely to be concerned with food storage. The younger ones are mischievous and could have jammed the vent with twigs or whatever for no logical reason.”

  So Walter was probably right, Cubiak thought, although the notion of killer squirrels still sounded to him like a headline from one of the tawdry rags at a supermarket checkout counter. As for Huntsman and his friends, he still wasn’t sure if his concerns were legitimate or echoes of the petty prejudices his long-suffering parents had embraced, that success was birthed by luck or connections and had nothing to do with effort. To them, hard labor was the price exacted for breathing.

  Cubiak liked to believe that work could bring its own rewards. Look at Bathard. Retired and well off, he could sit and read all day if he wanted. But a year after his wife died, he unpacked the woodworking tools he’d inherited from his father and starting making birdhouses and bookcases in the old horse barn behind his house. One day over lunch in town, Bathard told Cubiak that he had decided to take on a bigger project and planned to refurbish a wooden sailboat. “You want to help you can, as long as you’re willing to listen to my music,” Bathard said. “And when the vessel is seaworthy, I’ll show you how to handle it.”

  Thus began Cubiak’s introduction to opera and sailing.

  Eight months later, after futile visits to nearby marinas and harbors, the sheriff knew the names of many famous musical compositions and could identify several singers by voice. But Bathard had yet to find his boat.

  The coroner was lecturing about knots on the Saturday they visited the Olson Orchard outside Juddville. With the owners dead for ten years, their farm had taken on the sad countenance of a failed dream, one becoming increasingly common across the rural landscape: a vacant house holding up a thin coat of chipped paint, a garage leaning sideways off its foundation, a weathered barn with caved-in roof. On land that hadn’t been worked for a decade, rows of wizened fruit trees lined up in strict formation, like silent sentries sprung from the weed-choked soil. A hand-lettered sign announced the date of the upcoming auction that would determine the orchard’s fate. “More condos,” Bathard said as they stepped into the sharp cold air.

  The previous evening he’d gotten a call from a former patient who’d relocated to Arizona and was back in Wisconsin for a funeral. The caller had once been an avid sailor and the coroner told him about his quest for a salvageable wooden boat. They’re hard to come by, the doctor lamented. But there was one, the former patient told Bathard, probably long gone, that had been dry-docked every winter at Olson’s Orchard. It had belonged to the couple’s only son, who’d died. The parents had been unable to part with it and it could be that the boat’s still there, he said.

  Under January clouds that threatened snow, Cubiak and Bathard searched the grounds and trekked down a rutted path to a narrow barracks once used to house migratory cherry pickers. The front wall had imploded around the door; the rest of the structure framed a hodgepodge collection of broken camp beds and splintered crates. Behind the old home away from home, they discovered a battered metal road trailer, and strapped inside was the Olson boy’s prized sailboat. Pulling off the shredded tarp, they got their first full look at the vintage vessel in its incongruous setting. The thirty-two-foot boat towered over the two men and looked as far beyond hope as its surroundings. The lead keel bubbled with rust, and the years out of water had shrunken and separated the hull’s wooden planks. On board, there was more damage to tabulate: a deck soft with rot, a cracked mast, and a cabin infested with mold and mildew.

  “Forget this one,” Cubiak said.

  “Certainly not. It’s a Stout Fella, made right here,” Bathard said, as if that simple fact trumped all. “My neighbor had a boat like this. He’d take me out with his kids. This is the kind of boat I learned to sail on.”

  Bathard called the auction company and five days later, the boat was trucked to his homestead. A crane hired for the day gently lifted the newly christened Parlando into the custom-built wood cradle that would be its new nest until it was made water ready.

  Listening to Bathard rattle through the long list of items that had to be repaired or replaced, Cubiak was sure the doctor had made a mistake. But he never wavered and by the time Cubiak arrived that day, he’d absorbed his friend’s infectious optimism. As the sheriff rolled the door open, music swept over him. Dust motes danced in the beams of sun that flooded through the skylights. The horse stalls and hayloft had been long removed from the barn, but the sweet scent of hay lingered and mixed with the perfume of fresh wood shavings.

  Bathard futzed at the workbench. “You’re late,” he said, reaching up to hang a pliers on a wall filled with tools: hammers, clamps, rasps, and others that the sheriff had yet to learn to identify.

  “I was running errands.”

  The doctor turned down the volume and Cubiak repeated himself.

  “Working more likely,” the coroner said as Cubiak helped himself to coffee from an old-fashioned aluminum percolator.

  “I removed all the fittings.” Bathard pointed to a shelf lined with neatly labeled plastic bags. “If you’re up for a couple of hours of hard work, we can start on the keel. You know how to use one of these?” He held up an electric grinder.

  “I’ve used a sander.”

  “Close enough.”

  They began on the port side, Cubiak at the prow with the grinder and Bathard near the stern with a cold chisel.

  “Don’t spare the elbow grease,” the coroner said.

  It was a nasty task, harder than the sheriff had imagined. Earplugs couldn’t block the screech of metal on metal. Dust thickened the air, sparks popped, and his hand ached from the steady vibration of the grinder.

  “Makes you appreciate people who work with their hands,” he said when they stopped for a break.

  Bathard wiped his brow. “A lesson, I’m afraid, I learned rather late in life,” he said, surrounded by the tools of his father’s trade.

  The coroner was quiet for a moment. Then he grabbed a broom and began sweeping up. While he worked, Cubiak described his encounter with Roger Nils.

  The doctor leaned on the broom. “It’s true that Huntsman didn’t formally adopt Walter but that never affected how he treated the boy. Raised him like his own from what anyone could see.”

  “Roger said it was ‘another of the family myths.’ What do you think he meant?”

  “Probably nothing. He may have been agitated talking to you and simply misspoke. Then again, all families have secrets. Usually they’re private matters that don’t have any significance beyond the family circle.”

  “In other words, keep my nose out of it.”

  “Not exactly, but try not to overthink everything. Three men died. An unfortunate incident that could have been and most likely was an accident. Emma will give you the official test results tomorrow, but I can tell you now that what we initially suspected as the cause of death was verified.”

  “Carbon monoxide poisoning.”

  “Yes, sadly. Something both simple and preventable.” Bathard looked at the sheriff. “I realize this is your job, but you need a life beyond work, give yourself something else to think about.”

  Cubiak pulled the safety glasses on over his lenses. “I’ve got the dogs.”

  “The dogs.”

  “Better than nothing.”

  “Well, that’s true. Natalie helping you out?”

  “You know she is.”

  “Good, given what you don’t know about animals.” Bathard chiseled at a lump of decay along the bottom edge of the keel. “Still thinking about that locked door?”

  Cubiak shrugged and ran the grinder for several minutes. �
�I am. Something else, too.” He laid the grinder down near the bandsaw and explained his concerns about the men’s extensive holdings. “I wonder if they didn’t have another source of income. Gambling, maybe.”

  Bathard looked amused. “You think they were running a north woods poker ring in Gills Rock?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Lots of things are possible but that sounds doubtful to me. Consider, for example, that the men who made up the usual crowd of players don’t enjoy a level of income that would allow for high stakes gambling.”

  “You ever asked to play?”

  “Once or twice, years ago. Anyone elected to office or considered prominent for whatever reason gets invited, more a courtesy than anything. As I understand, the weekly games—the ones that mattered—were limited to a close circle.”

  Bathard brushed bits of rust off the keel and then went on. “Nothing unusual about that, really. The regulars are men who have much in common. I may be a local and a native to the area but I’m not accepted as one of them. Whether it’s because of education, profession, or dayto-day routines, the difference is that some people are automatically part of the group and others are the odd men out. I’d attribute it to the classic town-versus-gown mentality rather than to anything sinister.”

  The doctor’s assessment made sense to Cubiak. He turned his attention back to the boat and cleaned another square foot of the pitted keel before Bathard signaled an end to the day’s work.

  “No way you’re taking a honeymoon voyage on this,” Cubiak said as he stepped back from the vessel.

  Bathard had been seeing Sonja Anderson, a widow from Washington Island, for nearly twelve months and would marry her in another two weeks.

  The physician chuckled. “Even shooting for a first-year anniversary sail might be overly ambitious. But it will be worth the wait, I’m sure.” Bathard paused. “Dave, I invited Cate to the wedding.”

  “I thought you might.” Cubiak stopped to inspect one of the new planks in the hull. “Is she coming?” he said finally.

  “She hasn’t responded. It’s possible she’s traveling and hasn’t had her mail forwarded.”

  “Or she doesn’t want to come back.”

  “Indeed. It can’t be easy for her.”

  A sliver of moon hung over the lake when Cubiak pulled into his driveway. He was full from the pot roast Bathard had prepared and tired in a good way from the work. He fed Butch and fixed another bottle of goat milk for Kipper, and then he cracked a beer, his drink of choice now that he was pretty much done with the hard stuff. A six-month-old copy of National Geographic lay on the counter. Cubiak subscribed to the magazine because Cate freelanced for it, and he’d kept that issue because she was one of the month’s featured photographers. Did she ever think about him? he wondered as he looked at her picture on the contributor’s page.

  Cubiak often puzzled over his continuing interest in Cate. They’d known each other for only a couple of weeks and hadn’t talked or seen each other in nearly two years. They came from startlingly different backgrounds and had little in common. Yet he found himself drawn to her perhaps in no small part because she reminded him of Lauren. Attractive, though in a different way, and sensitive like his late wife.

  He missed Cate. But he missed Lauren, too, and didn’t know what was fair or right. Perhaps he should ask Bathard, but even that seemed like the first small step toward betrayal.

  Cubiak finished the beer and opened another. He was halfway through when one of the puppies yelped, and he remembered that he had meant to call Natalie that evening.

  He felt a stab of guilt about the vet. They’d been going out, off and on, for more than a year. He liked Natalie. She was clever and fun. But he sensed a coolness about her as well, and he missed the warmth he had known with Lauren. When he was dating Lauren, he’d known what to say when her father had asked what his intentions were. He wouldn’t know how to respond if asked the same question about Natalie. Unsettled by this uncharacteristic indecision, Cubiak poured the rest of the beer down the sink, tossed the magazine on the pile by the door, and went to check on the dogs.

  MONDAY

  The wall clock in Cubiak’s office ticked toward eight thirty as he flipped through the stack of weekend incident reports. The familiar litany of offenses was numbing: the usual drunken assault at the Rusty Scupper Tap, domestic violence that varied only by address, a half-dozen fender benders, and a plethora of speeding tickets. Did people never learn?

  The red light on the phone console flashed.

  “Yes?”

  “Morning, sir.” Lisa’s cheerful greeting broke the spell. Despite working for the sheriff ’s department, where the base side of humanity paraded in constant display, his young assistant exuded a never-ending aura of optimism and grace. “How are you today?”

  “Fine, thanks.” Did she believe him?

  “Good to hear. Doctor Pardy’s on line one.”

  “Thank you.” He took the call.

  “Emma.” Cubiak liked the name, the old-fashioned ring of integrity it conveyed. He liked saying it out loud.

  “Dave. Just getting back to you with the official test results on the three gentlemen at Gills Rock. No question, carbon monoxide. Blood levels for each came in around seventy-two hundred ppm. You’ll have the paperwork later this morning.”

  “How long …?”

  “No way of knowing. If the concentration of CO in the room was low, up to half an hour. If the concentration was high, they would have died within two or three minutes.”

  “There was nothing obviously wrong with the space heater.”

  “Well, something caused the buildup of carbon monoxide.”

  Squirrels, thought Cubiak.

  Pardy went on. “I’ve got a call in to the DA as well. Bathard says Blackwell will want an inquest if only to make the cause of death official and rule it an accident.” She hesitated. “Do you want me to call the families or shall you?”

  Cubiak heard chatter in the background. Someone trying to get her attention. “I’ll do it. Thanks.”

  “Any time.”

  Pardy hung up. Cubiak gave a half smile. The coroner was not from Door County and like him lacked the penchant for filling time with niceties. The sheriff held the receiver and fished Ida Huntsman’s contact information from his wallet. He was punching in the number when the intercom button flashed red again.

  “Urgent call for you, sir. Line two.” Lisa was uncharacteristically terse.

  Cubiak jumped to the incoming call.

  “Sheriff, Walter Nils …”

  “I was just phoning your …”

  Walter cut him off. “You gotta get up here, Sheriff.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Gills Rock. At my mother’s place.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Come see for yourself. It’s just hateful. How could anyone do this?” Walter’s voice was thick, as if he’d been crying. “Hurry, please.”

  For the second time in three days, Cubiak made the drive north. Nature had not wasted time extending spring’s verdant hue up the peninsula. Grass and trees were kissed with a rich halo of green. In Ephraim, golden forsythia bloomed alongside the crocuses and daffodils. Even the landscape past Sister Bay had shed its gloomy mantle. Only the farthest tip of the land retained winter’s somber tones.

  The last mile to Huntsman’s home was almost a repeat of Saturday: the statue-like gulls perched on the rocks, the barking dog still tethered to the willow. The only difference was the clothesline behind the Smitz house. Before, empty; now, laden with laundry: yellow checked sheets and pillowcases, two faded pink towels, several blouses, and a pair of men’s long underwear, dingy from overuse and stiff with frost.

  Cubiak started the turn into Huntsman’s driveway when he braked and stopped. Something was different. On the other side of the road, three of the plumbing vans had been moved from the lot and parked bumper-to-bumper along the front of the building, obscuring the company logo. Tha
t’s odd, Cubiak thought. As he walked over for a closer look, a woodpecker started hammering into the trunk of a nearby tree. Although the sheriff couldn’t see the bird through the foliage, he sensed that his every move was being telegraphed through the forest. Leaning around the hood of the first van he discovered what was hidden behind the lineup of vehicles—a white wall defaced with angry strokes of red paint that spelled out a nasty farewell: Good Riddance.

  Cubiak whistled quietly. The bird’s staccato concert paused but began again when he picked up a stick and poked at the crimson streak that underlined the message. The paint was fresh. He looked around but the hard ground yielded no footprints.

  The vandals hadn’t stopped with defacing the shed. At the Rec Room, they’d dislodged the cardboard from the broken window, smashed several other panes of glass, and made deep scratches in the picture window. The woodpecker transmitted a flurry of reports.

  Two for two. Had the house been vandalized, as well? Had Ida been harmed? Cubiak was sure Walter would have said something if his mother had been injured. The sheriff passed the area where the bodies had been laid out the previous Saturday. The gazebo was unscathed but splotches of red paint bloomed like algae on the pier and the side of the power boat. The most spiteful damage was to the cabin cruiser in the sling where large red x’s crossed over the name Ida Mae. Again the paint was still wet. And again there were no tracks in the damp grass. Had the vandals been so bold they’d used the brick walkway rather than cut across the lawn?

  The yard and dock weren’t visible from the village or any of the waterfront homes. This early in the season, there were probably few people out and about anyway. Perhaps the woodpecker had been a witness but the bird had taken its secret language and flown away. Had Ida heard or seen anything?

  Walter waited at the back door. Like Esther Smitz, he blocked the sheriff ’s way.

  “This was in the mail,” he said, jabbing a white envelope at Cubiak.

  The envelope, a standard number ten, was unstamped, the address typed: Ida Nils Huntsman.