Death at Gills Rock

by Patricia Skalka

“It was in the box with the rest of the mail. My mother thought it was a sympathy note.”

  Cubiak pulled a sheet of pale blue paper through the slit in the top of the envelope. THEY GOT WHAT THEY DESERVED Typed. All caps.

  “Someone must have put it there!” Walter said, twisting his hair.

  “Do you have any idea who …?”

  “No.” Walter slumped into the door jamb and rubbed a jagged thumbnail against his teeth. “Why would anyone do this? I don’t understand.”

  “How’s Ida?”

  “I don’t know, she’s … she’s acting pretty strange. You’d better come in.” Walter stepped aside and let Cubiak pass. Big Guy’s jackets and boots had been removed from the mudroom, replaced by a petite, yellow plaid coat and a pair of black clogs.

  “In here,” Walter said, leading the way through the kitchen and dining room, past the living room and into the first doorway on the right.

  They entered the master bedroom, with its sprawling king-size bed, flanked by matching nightstands; two flowered reading chairs by windows that faced the water; a fireplace with a built-in alcove that was neatly stacked with wood; His and Her dressers made of a light wood, pecan maybe; a luxurious en suite bathroom; and a walk-in closet, one side hung with dresses, skirts, blouses, the other empty.

  Ida looked up from where she stood on the other side of the room, separated from them by an ocean of mattress. Dwarfed by the bed, she seemed more fragile than when Cubiak had first met her. She held the sleeve of a brown gingham-checked shirt that lay front-side down in front of her.

  “Morning, Sheriff,” Ida said as she draped the sleeve down the length of the shirt, aligning the edge with the side seam.

  “Mrs. Huntsman,” he said, watching her fold her husband’s shirt. In three quick movements, she packaged the piece of clothing into a neat rectangle, the same way his mother had folded his father’s shirts.

  “Ida, please,” she said, as she inspected her handiwork and added it to the pile at the foot of the bed. The bedspread was covered in stacks of clothing: pants, shirts, sweaters, ties.

  “I’ve finished with the socks and such,” she said, pointing to a black garbage bag by the wall. “Catholic Charities is coming this afternoon. I didn’t want to keep them waiting.”

  After his father died, Cubiak thought his mother had acted precipitously, waiting only two months to empty his side of the closet. When Lauren and Alexis were run down, he’d been unable to part with anything of theirs for more than a year.

  Ida’s haste was difficult to comprehend. Was she in shock? Did she realize what she was doing?

  “Walter’s told you?” she said, reaching for another shirt.

  Her son stared at the floor.

  “Yes, he’s told me. But I’d like to talk to you about it. Perhaps in the kitchen?”

  “Of course.” Ida laid the shirt down and dusted off her hands.

  Cubiak waited until Walter had poured the coffee—mugs for the two of them and a cup and saucer for his mother—then he pulled the envelope from his pocket and set it on the table.

  “Tell me in your own words what happened,” he said to Ida.

  The color in her cheeks rose as she stirred her coffee. She took a sip, carefully set the cup down, and looked up at Cubiak.

  “Nothing happened. I came out this morning to see if the deer had returned and noticed what looked like red smears on the boat. It was early, just past dawn, and I thought the light was playing tricks on me. You know the way clouds sometimes catch the sunlight and reflect it back? I thought it was sunlight bouncing off the clouds and then off the water and the stern. Anyway, I came outside for a closer look. It was upsetting at first to see my name defaced but I thought it was just kids, you know, being stupid and mean the way kids sometimes are. I didn’t notice the company shed until later, when I went out for the mail. So there it was again, more ugly red paint saying that hurtful stuff. And in the box, the envelope.”

  “Was it mixed in with the rest of the mail or lying on top?”

  “It was right on top, the first thing I saw.”

  “And you brought it into the house and opened it?” As he talked, Cubiak extracted the letter and laid it flat on the table, turning it toward Ida.

  She blushed again. “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t call me? Why?”

  “I told you, I thought it was kids.”

  “You mean teenagers? Punks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ma!” Walter leaned forward as if reaching for the note. Then he fell back in his chair and grabbed at the corners of his mouth.

  Cubiak wondered if Walter had come to the same conclusion he had: that teenagers pulling a prank wouldn’t bother typing and printing out a note; they’d scrawl their nasty message without thinking.

  “My son disagrees, but I still believe it. Terrence sometimes had to shoo them away, not just boys, girls too. They came down from the park and snuck around the cabin. There was nothing in there worth stealing, but they wouldn’t know that and he thought they might break in.”

  Cubiak glanced at Walter. “But you don’t think it was kids responsible for the vandalism and the note.”

  Walter rubbed his hands together. “At first I didn’t. But now, I don’t know. Maybe my mother’s right.”

  Cubiak reached for the note. “You don’t need to have this around,” he said.

  Ida and Walter watched him fit the letter back into the envelope.

  “Doctor Pardy called this morning. Tests confirm that the deaths were caused by carbon monoxide poisoning.”

  Walter cleared his throat and stared at the table, but Ida met the sheriff ’s glance. “They didn’t suffer, then,” she said.

  “Very little. If at all.”

  “I see.” She sat still for a moment. Then she scooted her chair away from the table. “May I, Sheriff ? I have work to do.”

  Outside, both men glanced at the water as if to confirm that the damage to the pier and the boats hadn’t been something they’d jointly imagined.

  “You got someone to help with the cabin windows?” Cubiak said.

  Walter shook his head. “I don’t want people coming by. You know, gawking. I’m just putting up plastic anyhow, from the inside, and I’ll put a tarp over the back of the boat so my mother doesn’t have to look at it. At least she can’t see the company shed from here. I moved the trucks so no one driving by can see the shit on the wall but I won’t be able to do anything more until after the funeral.” There was bitterness in his voice.

  “You staying up here awhile?”

  “Yeah, at least another couple of days.”

  They walked side by side across the yard, having to talk over the sound of waves crashing onto the shoreline rocks. “Roger come by?” Cubiak said.

  Walter stopped and Cubiak saw the worry about the boy layer over the worry about Ida and the grief about his father. “Roger? How do you know Roger?” He tried to make his voice light.

  This was not the time to bring up the incident in Fish Creek. “I saw the article in the paper last spring.”

  Walter started down the path again. “Yeah, that was nice, wasn’t it? Roger was here last evening. Came to see his grandmother.”

  “He’ll be back for the funeral?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t he?” Walter spun around. “You’ll be there, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “You think it’s okay, having the one funeral for all three of them? It’s the same people coming for each of them. Be too hard to make them come for one and then another and then again. Better this way, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes. I’m sure. It makes sense.”

  Good people, Mabel had said of Terrence Huntsman, his wife, and the others when she served him lunch on Saturday. Clearly, the waitress hadn’t spoken for the entire community or the peninsula. Someone resented the three men enough to try and dirty their reputation. Why? The graffiti on the plumbing office looked like the cheap-shot work of kids who did
n’t like being bossed around. Good riddance to whom? Presumably to Huntsman, the one who got on the wrong side of the marauding teenagers. Same with the vandalism on the cabin and dock. The property belonged to Big Guy and was easily accessible. But the note to Ida was cruel. Not the kind of thing a bunch of kids would write. And, the message didn’t apply just to Huntsman. They got what they deserved meant all three men.

  He needed to learn more about them.

  At Sister Bay, Cubiak turned inland and hopscotched down a network of back roads to the Woodlands Sawmill.

  The mill was a relic from a time when the peninsula was heavily forested. In that not-so-distant past, dozens of mills operated at full capacity, slicing tree trunks into the boards that would help build the cities and towns of the Midwest. All were silent now, except for the circular, jagged-tooth blade at the Woodlands mill. The monster saw sat under the sloped roof of an ancient lean-to in the center of a wide clearing. The structure was open on two sides to disperse the noise and dust and to accommodate the gigantic tree trunks that were once milled there. Even now the ground was covered with fresh sawdust from the trees that locals brought in to be custom cut for home remodeling jobs, a small business but enough to keep the facility going.

  A half-dozen pickups stood at the rear of the clearing, alongside a wooden shack rimmed with racks of antlers. A single stream of gray smoke shimmied from the chimney and the rumble of voices could be heard from within.

  “… not a fucking dime,” a gruff voice barked as Cubiak walked in.

  “Shut the damn door,” another man yelled from the back as the sheriff stepped into a cloud of hot, dry air.

  Cubiak pulled the door closed and a silence fell, thick as the smoke in the room.

  In the dim light he made out a row of hazy silhouettes along the cluttered work counter and back wall. In the middle of the room, a hefty man bent over a woodstove.

  “Sheriff.” The large man at the stove spoke.

  Someone coughed. “Sorry ’bout that, Sheriff.”

  Cubiak shrugged as Henry Fielding, the proprietor, grabbed a Jim Beam bottle between two fingers and poured something red out of it into a tumbler. “Here you go, Dave,” he said, shoving the glass at Cubiak. “We’re just drinking to the three old gents who died,” he added.

  The toast echoed from the corner and all but one of the men raised their glasses. They were a wizened bunch in overalls and flannel shirts, old enough to be nursing home escapees.

  Cubiak tossed down the drink and inhaled sharply as a ribbon of sour cherry wine burned a ditch along the back of his throat. He swallowed a cough. According to Bathard, Fielding produced a fresh crop of wine every year and was as proud of it as he was of the lumber he cut on the monster saw. “It’s sometimes fit to drink and sometimes fit to use for salad dressing and sometimes fit to pour down the drain, but if you want to be included in the club and privy to the gossip the members generate, it’s always fit to be praised,” Bathard had told him.

  Fielding eyed Cubiak expectantly.

  “Your best yet,” the sheriff said.

  The miller brandished the bottle again but Cubiak put up a hand. “Sorry, can’t. On duty.” He set his empty glass on a windowsill and moved down the counter. He knew the men were watching him and so made a show of dropping two fives into the kitty. In keeping with local custom, he coated a saltine with a thin layer of fish spread. He didn’t like fish and would have been happy to forgo the ritual. But that would be rude.

  “Don’t let me interrupt anything,” he said around a mouthful of cracker.

  “Nothing to interrupt. We’re talking about those three men, the vets, y’know. What tough luck,” said a jowly man at his elbow.

  Cubiak glanced down the row at the members of the “Woodlands Social Club.” All but one clutched an empty glass. The man who had boycotted the toast scowled at the floor.

  “Guess you all knew them,” the sheriff said, setting off a chorus of comment.

  “Sure did.”

  “Good men.”

  “Yeah, a damn shame.”

  Then silence again. Was it because they had nothing to say about the dead men or because they were of an age when death loomed large, not as an abstract subject but a real threat. Had they heard about the vandalism? Not a whisper.

  “I was just up there checking on Ida,” Cubiak said finally.

  “Heart of gold, that Ida.”

  “All three of them ladies.”

  Amid the chatter about the widows, Cubiak watched the abstainer weave his way toward the door. He resisted the urge to follow him.

  “I guess you’ll miss the poker nights.”

  There was no response. Another man edged toward the exit.

  “What did you play? Texas Hold ’em, Seven Card Stud, or some kind of local variation with jokers,” he said.

  “Jokers! That some kind of city poker?”

  Two of the men snickered and made as to leave.

  “Truth is we didn’t spend all that much time up there playing cards,” said the stout man in the corner.

  “Stakes too high?”

  “Nah, just not convenient.”

  “Most guys only went once or twice. It was kind of clubby, you know what I mean? Don’t get me wrong, they were good guys, the three of them. Just kind of had their own thing going.”

  The last man drifted out the door, as the sheriff helped himself to a piece of cheddar. “Something I said?”

  “Folks have things to do,” Fielding said. He began cleaning up. “There’s been talk time to time about the poker games, nothing specific, just a word or two people’d mention about not being comfortable. Don’t mean nothing really. And no one wants to think badly of the dead.” The sawmill operator dumped the leftover crackers and fish spread into the trash. “These men were veterans. Heroes. That means something to folks here. How they played cards, who they played cards with don’t matter. Ain’t no one’s business but their own and now they’re gone it ain’t anyone’s business.”

  Cubiak let the comment slide. “Did you know them well?”

  Fielding seemed to shrug inside the heavy jacket he wore despite the heat in the shed. “I knew them. Wouldn’t say well,” he said lowering his gaze. “Milled a couple of black walnut trees for Big Guy when he built the addition to the house. He was very particular about how I treated the wood, and I respected him for that.”

  “I hear he was pretty generous with his money.”

  Fielding gazed at the cobwebbed ceiling. “He was. Could afford to be, as I understand it. Don’t get me wrong. He was a good citizen, but the type who liked to run things, too, kind of a bully peacock, full of himself and all. Course, he had a lot to be proud of, can’t begrudge the man what he accomplished.”

  “You didn’t care for him then?”

  “I didn’t say that. Man was a hero, after all. He just had a different way of doing things. I like to look at people eye to eye, you know, on the same level. Big Guy seemed to prefer people looking up to him.”

  “Like his old friends, Swenson and Wilkins.”

  “Maybe. Yeah, I guess. Few times I saw the three of them together, it was clear Big Guy called the shots. In fact, he pretty much always called the shots.”

  That trait may not have sat well with others. “Who was the man who ignored the toast earlier?” Cubiak said.

  Fielding snorted. “Him! Bruno Loggerstone from down near Peninsula Park. From what I know, he’s still mad about something that happened thirty years ago.”

  “That’s a long time to hold a grudge.”

  “A talent some people have.”

  “I guess. They all seemed to think highly of Ida and the other two, Olive and Stella. Funny, though, no one mentioned Walter Nils or Wilkins’s son.”

  “Walter’s okay. Guess we just take him for granted. Marty Wilkins ain’t been seen around here for years. Don’t even know if he’s still alive!”

  “That leaves just the one grandkid. Roger.”

  “Looks that w
ay. Unless Marty went out and multiplied. Might have a crop of offspring circling the globe for all anybody here knows. Suppose we’ll find out eventually. There’s money involved and people’ll come crawling out of their hidey-holes for that.” Fielding looked at Cubiak. “I just hope Roger uses his share to go back to school. Don’t know what got into that boy.”

  “Any idea why he quit?”

  “Not a one. Damn shame, you ask me. Smart kid. Good athlete, too, and here he’s working at the coast guard station. Don’t make sense.”

  “He’s a civilian. What’s he doing over there?”

  “Last I heard he got a job helping paint the place to get ready for the big celebration. Now look what’s happened.” Fielding tossed a chunk of wood into the stove, sending a spray of orange sparks into the room. “Ain’t life a bitch,” he said and slammed the metal door shut.

  TUESDAY MORNING

  It was still dark when Cubiak stumbled into the kitchen. The cold tile floor pricked his bare feet, and he shifted from one to the other as he poured the usual eight cups of water into the coffee maker, an amount that filled his favorite mug exactly three and a half times. Someday, he’d do the math. In the east, a narrow streak of blazing light sliced through the black sky, heralding the dawn that would evolve into the morning of the funeral. Cubiak hated funerals. He couldn’t look at a coffin without seeing his wife laid out in her teal dress and his daughter in her orange polka dots, a fuzzy pink teddy bear in her arms.

  Walter told him they were anticipating as many as six hundred people. Whoever had vandalized Huntsman’s property and sent the cruel note to his widow would likely be among the mourners. But who could it be? Who would have done anything so ugly and mean so soon after the three men died? Was it just a prank, as Ida insisted? Or an act of vengeance? Judging from what Fielding had said the day before, it seemed Big Guy was the kind of man who could make enemies as easily as friends. Did old grudges diminish or fester with time? Would someone dare try to disrupt the funeral?

  While the coffee brewed, Cubiak fed Butch and weighed the puppies. Kipper had gained one ounce. “Good job,” he said, rubbing his thumb on her lumpy head. He brought her into the kitchen for her bottle and then tucked her back into the basket with the others and covered the squirming heap with an old towel.