Murder at Spirit Falls

by Barbara Deese

  By the time they reached the bend in the creek, the sheriff’s face was flushed.

  “Over there.” Foxy pointed.

  Brill grunted and moved toward the pale arm, now partially visible in the underbrush. “Here’s the rest of her.”

  Inching closer, they could now see legs, from the knee down, dangling off the slight embankment, bare feet in the water.

  “You better stay back while Deputy Brill and I take a look,” the sheriff instructed.

  Robin, Cate, and Foxy watched from a respectable distance as the deputy bent over the body, which lay as if stretching out in this improbable area to take a nap.

  Kneeling, Deputy Brill moved the weeds aside.

  Looking over her shoulder, the sheriff’s breathing became audible. “She must have been in the water a while. Probably got hung up on these.” He gestured at the gnarled tree roots now exposed on the eroding bank.

  Deputy Brill used her pen to move aside the dark hair that had fallen over the bloated face like a veil. “Nasty head wound.”

  Harley expelled a mouthful of air. “Looks like another canoeist went over the falls.”

  “In a dress?” Brill said, without looking up.

  “Isn’t that one of those things women wear over swimsuits?”

  Deputy Brill shrugged her answer.

  “Where’s the canoe? I haven’t heard of any showing up downstream.”

  “Mighta gotten hung up somewhere, or maybe someone found it and just figured they got lucky.” He shouted up to Robin, “Seen anyone canoeing this spring, Mrs. Bentley?

  “Not with the water this high.”

  “That could expl—”

  “Sheriff, I don’t think it’s a canoeist,” the deputy interrupted.

  “What then?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe a fall from higher up.”

  They all looked at the rocky cliff, their eyes following a possible descent.

  “Mrs. Bentley, I hate to ask you to do this, but could you come here and see if you recognize this woman? I have to warn you she’s in rough shape.”

  Robin looked hesitantly at Foxy and Catherine before slowly making her way to where the sheriff and deputy stood. Her hand flew to her mouth. For an agonizing second, the dark hair and the body’s position made her think of Cass, her firstborn, who in sleep always looked like a rag doll tossed carelessly on the bed. She shook her head. “No,” she said hoarsely. “I don’t think so.”

  “Sorry, I had to ask,” he said as Robin, blinded with tears, stumbled back to Cate and Foxy. He barked at the deputy to call for the coroner.

  “Don’t you think bringing a boat from further down river would be faster?”

  “Fine. Call Steve and tell him to get a boat here. Pronto. Then stay with the body until he gets here. I don’t want any more critters grabbing a free lunch here.” He turned and motioned for Robin, Cate, and Foxy to go back to the cabin, oblivious to the fact that Foxy was getting rid of her lunch in the bushes.

  Robin offered a steaming mug to Foxy. “Ginger tea to settle your stomach,” she said.

  Molly Pat and Grover, eager not to miss any event that might involve food, trotted behind Robin to the living room where they sat expectantly in front of Foxy, watching as she sipped the herbal brew.

  “I don’t understand it,” Cate objected. “A woman is found dead and the sheriff acts like it’s no big deal.”

  “I know. He wants me to stop by his office tomorrow to sign a statement, and I’m just not convinced it’s an accidental drowning.” Robin paused, and added, “Although we do seem to have a drowning every few years.”

  “She didn’t look like any canoeist,” said Foxy.

  “And that business about her dress. Robin, you were closer, did it look like a swimsuit cover-up to you?” Cate asked.

  “I didn’t really look at it.” Robin shuddered involuntarily. “But someone slipping on the rocks, that makes sense. The other side of the creek is awfully steep.”

  “I’d like to know where George was during all of this,” Cate said.

  Robin sagged into the couch. “Why?”

  “The guy seems to see everything. Why hasn’t he come around to see what the sheriff was doing here?”

  Robin squeezed her eyes shut and started to massage her temples, “I’m sure that if the sheriff hasn’t talked to him already, he will. After all, George’s place is the next cabin upstream.”

  “Cabin? You’re calling that trashy little trailer a cabin?” Cate draped an afghan across her legs.

  “What about that creep you were talking about, the party animal up the road,” Foxy asked.

  “Ross? He isn’t up here any more often than I am, and just on weekends.”

  “Got a headache?” Cate asked Robin.

  “Yeah, a real doozy.”

  “Why don’t you go lie down and I’ll wake you up in an hour and then we’ll decide what to do about dinner.”

  Robin stood and headed off down the hall. “I’ll try to get some sleep, but the thought of food—Ugh!”

  “I feel guilty having to get back to the Cities,” Foxy said.

  “It’s okay,” Catherine reassured her.

  “I wish I didn’t have that massage in the morning. I’d cancel, but it’s one of my physical therapy clients.” Foxy looked in her appointment book again. “You and Robin will be back in time for dinner at the Lexington, won’t you?”

  Cate looked blank.

  “Dinner before the lecture,” Foxy reminded her. “Tomorrow night.”

  Cate made a sucking sound through her teeth. “Yeah, we’ll be back. If we don’t make it in time for dinner, we’ll just meet you in the auditorium.”

  “Are you sure you want me to take your car, Cate?”

  Cate glanced toward the bedroom before answering. “There’s no way I’m leaving her here by herself tonight.”

  “I can hear you,” Robin yelled from the sleeping porch. “You don’t need to babysit me.”

  “Like I’m going to leave you here in the middle of the woods after we discover a dead body. I don’t think so,” Cate yelled back. “We’re roomies tonight, just like old times.”

  There was a crash and a clatter and the three women dashed to the kitchen. Robin, barefooted, stepped in something damp before she noticed the overturned garbage can. She grabbed a paper towel and wiped coffee grounds off her foot.

  Kneeling next to Grover, Cate stroked his head and said, “We’re going to have to have better manners than this, my friend. We’re guests of Auntie Robin’s tonight.” Looking up at Robin, Cate gave her a don’t-be-mad-at-him grin. “Go back to bed. I’ll clean this up,” she said.

  Robin sighed. “Cate, you don’t really expect me to keep this doofus.”

  “Hey, you’ll give poor Grover a complex with those derogatory terms.”

  At the sound of his name, Grover wagged his tail, splattering the refrigerator with wet coffee grounds.

  Later, after a dinner of soup and toast, Robin was curled up in the overstuffed chair while Cate stretched out on the couch under an afghan. They stared into the flickering flames in the fireplace.

  “Doesn’t today seem surreal?” Cate asked.

  “To think she may have been lying down there the whole time I’ve been here,” Robin said with a shudder. “It’s just so … ishy

  “You know ishy isn’t a word, don’t you?”

  “It is in Minnesota.” After several minutes, Robin said, “Cate, thanks for not leaving me tonight.”

  “What are friends for?”

  12

  After closing up the cabin the next morning, Robin drove with Cate and Grover to the new brick county courthouse. Parking in the shade, Robin hopped out and entered the building while Cate stayed behind to get Grover settled. The dog finally groaned and lay down on the back seat with head resting on paws. She scratched his muzzle and said, “Don’t worry, boy, I won’t be gone long.”

  Grover tilted his huge head to one side as if he understood.


  She rolled the car windows down several inches and got out, apologizing to Grover about the inconvenience and promising a swift return. She entered the building, ignoring the dog’s pitiful whining, and walked down the hall to where Robin waited, none too comfortably, on a metal chair in Harley’s office, staring out the large window that framed, like a Wisconsin tourism ad, a forest glade surrounded by rolling hills.

  Sheriff Harley sat a few feet away at his cluttered desk, his fingers clicking haphazardly on the computer keyboard. “Just about done,” he said, sensing Catherine’s arrival.

  Robin pointed wordlessly and Catherine looked out the window. About twenty yards away, a doe and her fawn stepped to the wooden box in the clearing and began daintily nibbling at the corn. Another deer, mostly concealed by prairie grasses, drank at the pond’s edge.

  Harley pushed his chair back with a clatter and waited for the printer to spit out its pages so he could snatch them up. He handed the affidavit to Robin. “They don’t scare too easy,” he said, with a nod to the deer. The doe looked through the window at them, twitched her ears, and kept chewing.

  Robin read the statement carefully, handing each page to Catherine as she finished.

  “Well?” Harley rubbed the back of his neck. “Did I get it right this time?”

  Robin saw that he’d nicked himself shaving—twice, right under his nose—“Pretty much,” she answered, “but Catherine is spelled with a C, and Grover is not my dog.”

  He looked at Cate. “Yours?”

  “Not for long,” Catherine answered, shooting her friend a grin. “I brought him here figuring he could keep Robin company when she’s at the cabin.”

  “What about when she’s not?” Robin muttered under her breath.

  Catherine sighed. “Will this take much longer? I left the dog in the car.”

  “Just about done. Any more corrections to the statement?”

  Robin and Cate exchanged a look before Cate said, “You refer to the woman as the ‘drowning victim.’”

  “And you think it should be … ?” He made it a question.

  “I thought this was a ‘Just the facts, ma’am’ kind of statement.”

  The sheriff turned his full attention to Catherine. “Okay?” Again, a question.

  “Well, it sounds like opinion to me. We don’t know she died from drowning, do we?” Despite Cate’s soft voice, Robin could tell she’d dug in for a battle.

  His bemused expression didn’t wane. “We could say ‘her waterlogged body, found in the water below the waterfall.’”

  “That would be more factual.”

  “Anything else?”

  Catherine’s jaw had hardened. “You’re treating this as an accidental death, aren’t you?”

  “For now.”

  “What about the dress?” Robin asked.

  “That’s in there,” he said, poking at the statement.

  Cate read, “‘The body was clad in a red dress, slip, or bathing suit cover-up.’”

  “Yes?”

  “It was a dress.”

  Unperturbed, the sheriff tilted his head and smiled. “That’s your assumption.”

  “Well, what was she wearing underneath, a bathing suit or underwear?”

  Harley scribbled something on a notepad.

  Robin cleared her throat and asked, “How long do you think she was in the water?”

  “The coroner thinks a week or two.”

  Robin blinked and slowly turned her eyes to meet Cate’s.

  “Oh!” Cate exclaimed.

  “That’s—” Robin cut herself off abruptly.

  “That’s what?” he prompted after an uncomfortable silence.

  “That might have been when we were here. There, I mean, at my cabin,” Robin said at last. “Almost two weeks ago. Five of us.”

  Catherine nodded. “The last weekend in May.”

  There was a commotion in the outer office and Harley’s face registered annoyance. Deputy Brill appeared in the doorway. “Oh good, you’re still here,” she said to Harley, completely ignoring Robin and Catherine. “I had a 10-33 on Overlook.”

  He grunted.

  “Is this their statement?” Brill asked. Still not addressing the women in question, she took a copy and began to read.

  “I’ve got it covered, Brillo.” There was a growl in Harley’s voice.

  From the way the deputy’s cheeks flushed, Robin guessed it was not a favorite nickname. “I’ll just take a quick look.”

  “I’m still revising it.” Harley rearranged the chairs by his desk and motioned for Catherine and Robin to sit. “The last weekend in May,” he said. “Is that beginning Friday the twenty-fifth?”

  “The two of us came up Thursday, but the others, three more, came after work on Friday.”

  “They were at the falls at the end of May?” Brill made a point of searching the affidavit. “I didn’t see that here.”

  “I said I wasn’t finished.” Harley tapped on the keyboard, asked questions, tapped some more. “So, there were five of you that weekend—so, besides the three of you, who was there, then?”

  When they explained that it had been an all-women book club, Brill cut in. “You all drove from Minneapolis to discuss books? Nothing else?”

  “We did other things,” Cate answered hotly.

  “Tell me.” Deputy Brill planted her feet wide and folded her arms over her chest.

  Catherine’s eyes narrowed. “We ate, talked, laughed, went for walks. And yes, we did talk about books. And tonight the five of us are getting together again for dinner and to hear a Minnesota author read from his new book.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Harley interjected.

  The deputy continued, asking what kind of books they liked.

  “This month it was a nonfiction, but we talk about all kinds of books,” Robin answered. “Historical fiction, biographies, mysteries, classics, fantasy.”

  Brill sniffed. “I read books, too. I just never knew you had to be in a club to do it. What’s the point of that?” When she shook her head, her Orphan Annie curls didn’t budge.

  Catherine, smiling as she sometimes did to disguise anger, said, “It’s a common bond, that’s all. And it forces us to read a variety, so we don’t just do all murder mysteries, for instance.”

  “Ah! Murder mysteries, for instance,” Brill echoed. “I see the problem there. You sit around reading murder mysteries until every dead person has to be a murder victim.”

  “Deputy, why don’t you go check on their dog while I finish this. Maybe take him some water,” the sheriff suggested.

  When she’d gone, Harley resumed the questioning in a less irritating manner. They told about the storm and about hearing a thud, then finding paint on a tree the following morning. Harley took it all down. “Have you seen anything strange on this visit?”

  Robin began to tell about the eerie sound she’d heard—was it last night or two nights ago? “It was like nothing I’d ever heard, and when I stepped outside to check it out, I saw something moving in the trees.”

  From the doorway came Brill’s voice. “Let me guess. It was a woman—a beautiful young woman walking along the riverbank in a flowing white dress—kind of transparent, like you can see the trees through her.”

  Catherine jumped up. “No!” she shouted before bolting for the door.

  Robin found her friend’s reaction inexplicable until she looked where Cate had been looking.

  On the other side of the window, Grover bounded across the clearing, looking more yakkish than ever, in hot pursuit of the deer. Then came Catherine, rounding the corner at a dead run. Though Robin and Harley and Brill could see she was yelling, no sound came through the reinforced glass, and so they watched it like an old silent movie. All that was missing was a little chase music. And like moviegoers, none of them made a move to help.

  The deer melted into distant trees. Grover came to a halt only after he found himself slogging through a muddy marsh. Dejectedly, he turned back, reaching
solid ground at about the same time Catherine caught up to him. Seeing her chance, she made a grab for him, missed and fell forward with a splash in the mud. Grover, reinvigorated by this new sport, leaped on her, knocking her back down whenever she tried to stand up.

  Catherine showered in the jail intake area and changed into fresh clothes from her suitcase. Brill hosed the dog down, penance for opening the window “just a little bit more so he could get his head out.”

  Harley finished typing the statement and handed it to Robin to read. “It’s a damn shame. Must’ve been a pretty girl before …”

  Robin’s reaction was immediate. “Based on what? And will it be less tragic if it turns out she wasn’t pretty?”

  He rolled his lower lip between thumb and forefinger. “You’re right.”

  She handed him the signed affidavit, saying, “It is a damn shame. But you’ve got to wonder, where is her mother in all this?”

  “What about her father?”

  Robin looked up, surprised. “I guess I always thought a mother would know if something happened to her daughter.”

  “Hmm. Like a test of love? If she doesn’t have a continuous psychic connection with them she must not love them enough?” His eyes passed over her face.

  How could he have known? She felt herself flush. All those years of therapy, she thought, and we’re right back to that same childish assumption that a loving mother should be able to protect her children from all harm. “What are you doing to find the woman’s identity?” she asked.

  “I sent something around to the surrounding counties. Not too effective without the coroner’s report.”

  “What about that missing Minneapolis woman?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one from Bradford College.”

  “She’s not the only missing person,” he said with a weariness. “Going missing isn’t all that unusual in the big city. No, I’m betting she’s a local girl.”

  She started to protest, but he held up his hand. “Now don’t be obsessing over it. Better you leave it to the professionals.”

  Cate returned, toweling her hair with Robin’s beach towel. She shut the door behind her and stood next to the filing cabinet.