by Ann Yost
It felt oddly like home. I'd always loved the long wooden floorboards, the pressed-tin ceiling and the bay window where Pops and Einar have a couple of rods and reels on display. The shop had so much potential. I caught my breath on a laugh as I remembered Miss Irene's words about Annemarie Lantti. But it was true. The place was quaint, historical and perfectly suited to the display of yarn and other knitting products. And the fact that shoppers would be browsing the selection of brightly hued wool and cotton alongside the coolers of mealworms and minnows would just provide local color.
As I contemplated my fledgling plan, I felt a surge of the old enthusiasm I'd always enjoyed until my marital disaster. I crossed to the backroom and unearthed the huge ceramic ashtray I'd made for Pops ten years earlier at Lutheran camp. Though a lifelong nonsmoker, he'd kept the monstrosity. That's just the kind of stepdad he is. Anyway, I filled the bowl with water for the dogs, considered and rejected making a pot of coffee for myself, and, instead, poured water for myself into a cracked ceramic mug. As I drank, I thought back to my first day as summer manager of the shop, three weeks earlier. I'd wanted to show Pops I was interested and because he'd given me a free hand, I'd immediately ordered an office water cooler and paper cups. Einar had gone ballistic and had, in taking me to task, used up his quota of words for the month.
"You want to pay for water? Are you crazy? Water is free! And paper cups, too? Who do you think you are, then? The Queen of England?"
Sheepishly, I'd canceled the order.
I wandered out to the front room and gazed around. The shop was sparsely furnished. The rods, reels, baskets and nets, bait bags and fishing tackle were displayed on tables or hung on the wall amid pictures of proud fishermen holding their catch. I imagined where I'd put the antique furniture I intended to find at local flea markets or, more likely, in local attics. An old-fashioned tall boy in one corner, a dry sink in the center of the room to display buttons and needles and what crafts people call sundries. A bank of cubbies along the far wall, where the yarns would be displayed according to weight and color. I imagined the ruby red, emerald green and winter white wool traditionally used for Nordic patterns next to bins of baby yarn, including pale blue, peppermint pink, lemon yellow and mint green. We could gather here for a knitting circle. We could hold workshops. The first one would be dedicated to Miss Thyra's Nordic mitten patterns.
I knew that, at least Yooper women, would not be put off by the coolers full of live bait. The room had a friendly presence. A positive aura.
Aura. It was that word and the fact that my right hand slid into my pocket and touched the pentagram that brought my wayward thoughts back into sharp focus. All at once I realized my subconscious had led me to Red Jacket for a very specific purpose.
As I was driving the three blocks to Heart and Hand Wellness Studio, I remembered something else, too. I'd promised to tell Garcia if a body showed up. I paused at the only stoplight in town and wrote her a text. Body at lighthouse. Alex Martin. Investigation underway. It was only the bare bones but I wasn't willing to tell a reporter about Tom Kukka's arrest, even if it was just the Finn Spin. I was still sitting there when my phone buzzed. I checked the caller I.D. and picked up.
"Sonya," I said, truly pleased to hear from one of my best friends.
"Hey, Hatti," she said in her low, pleasant voice. "I've missed you! I wanted to come to the Juhannus festival but I've been tied up on the rez with a very nervous first-time mom. I heard something that might interest you."
My heart jumped. Was this about Chief Joseph Night Wind, the grandfather-in-law I'd never met? Was it about Jace?
"Did you know that your victim, Alex Martin, was married to someone local?"
"What?" Once again my mind jerked back to the present. "I didn't know he was married at all. And how did you know about Alex Martin?"
"Oh." She sounded half embarrassed. "I ran up to the market to get some ice for the family I'm with and I ran into, uh, Max Guthrie. He mentioned the death and the fact that you were investigating it."
"Max?" My antennae perked up. "Max was out on the rez? He told me he had to get back to Namagok."
"Oh, I think he was just gathering supplies," she said, vaguely.
I didn't respond to that. We don't have a huge number of shopping options on the Keweenaw but there are at least two markets closer to Max's fishing camp than the rez, including the Shopko on Lake Linden Road and the Gas & Go in Red Jacket.
"Anyway, here's what I heard from one of the old men who gather at the community center every morning to drink coffee and watch the entertainment shows. It seems that Alex Martin was married to a Hollywood starlet."
"Was or is?"
"Don't know that. They kept the whole thing very secretive. Don't even know whether it's true but it probably is. Anyway, the two weren't together very long. They separated about six months ago."
An old, familiar pain sliced through my heart.
"I know this is hard for you to hear," Sonya said, sympathetically. "The parallels and everything. Here's the important part. The wife was Stella Ransom. She had a leading role in a sit-com called 'Marrying Mr. Wrong.'"
"Prophetic," I said, as lightly as I could.
"Yep. After the separation she left the show and came to the Keweenaw, Hatti, where she opened a yoga studio under the name of Chakra Starshine."
Chapter 21
Heart and Hand, Chakra's yoga studio, was located two blocks farther down Main Street from the bait shop and on the opposite side in a stand-alone shop front. Over the years of my life the space had been home to a bicycle repair shop, the Keweenaw Dairy, a tobacco store, a hockey equipment emporium and (very briefly) a Christian Science Reading Room. It was not an ideal location since it was two blocks away from the real action in town which included the diner, the hardware store and the pharmacy across from the bait and fudge shops and Ronja Laplander's Copper Kettle, but it was quaint with its small balcony on the second floor and the leaded glass windows in the bay of the first floor.
I pulled in behind Chakra's vehicle, a late-model, cream-colored Escalade and felt a little flicker of self-disgust at my puny observational powers. It had never occurred to me to wonder how a yoga instructor in the U.P. could afford a luxury car. Was the money from her acting career or from her marriage?
The studio was closed according to the neat, script sign on the lower pane of the front-door window. The front room, where we spread out our mats to do downward dog and sphinx and humble warrior, was dark but I could see light filtering in from the backroom which was divided between an office and a kitchenette. I asked Larry to keep Lydia from jumping out the open window, then I walked down the narrow driveway that led to a detached garage. Next to the back entrance to the building was an outside staircase to the second floor apartment occupied by Chakra and, I presumed, Sebastian. Had he known about his girlfriend's marriage?
The back door stood open, only a screen separating me from the empty kitchenette where I had, from time to time, shared a post-plank cup of tea with Chakra. We'd talked about self-defense techniques and how they could be incorporated into yoga moves. We'd talked about my emotional distress and ways to use yoga and other wellness techniques to overcome it. Chakra had never spoken about her own relationships and I, to my shame, had never asked. I'd failed her as a friend. Had she come to Red Jacket to exact revenge on a faithless husband? Would it have helped to talk to someone (me)? Had the upshot been that she'd pushed Alex Martin off the gallery of the lighthouse? The voices clamored in my head and I had to breathe purposefully to still them enough so that I could eavesdrop on the conversation inside the studio.
"I'm leaving," Chakra said, in a firm voice. "I didn't want to just disappear. You deserve to know. But the fact is, I'm going back to California."
"Because Martin's dead." Sebastian sounded bitter.
"Because my business here is finished. I told you in the beginning this was temporary, Seb. I needed closure and now I have it."
I winced. The questi
on was, how had she achieved that closure? I put my ear right up against the screen and tried to quiet the loud thudding in my chest.
"I thought we had something together."
"We did. I'm fond of you, Seb. We were together for six months which is longer than my marriage lasted. I'm not about permanency, you know. When something's over, I move on. Everything about the Keweenaw is over for me. Including you."
"I don't think you realize what you owe me," he said, in a statement that was eerily reminiscent of Danny's charge to his father. "I helped you get accepted in town. I helped you start the studio, get it painted and up and running. I helped you find the coven."
"I know. I'm grateful."
"Not grateful enough to stay."
"I can't stay, Seb. You know that. We've done things that, well, you know what we've done."
"Exactly," he said. "So what about me?"
There was a short pause and I felt a flicker of panic. What if they had finished talking and were coming into the kitchenette? Indecision gripped me but I stayed put. Information was more important than potential humiliation, I thought, but my insides quivered.
"You would be smart to move along, too," Chakra said, finally. "Go somewhere new."
"But not with you."
"No. Not with me."
He uttered her name in a hoarse whisper and then he roared into the kitchenette and slammed open the screened door with enough force to have broken my nose if I hadn't jumped clear. He evinced no interest in my presence as he blasted a path to the garage. A moment later, the battered, pablum-colored Oldsmobile that must have been the hand-me-down of a grandparent, backed down the driveway. He caromed off the brick wall of the studio then bounced over to scrape the side of the pawn shop next door.
Apparently, no one had ever taught Sebastian to look over his right shoulder while in reverse.
"He's an atrocious driver even when he isn't mad." I hadn't heard Chakra's footsteps and her voice made me jump. "One of the many reasons I had to bring our association to a close. You really shouldn't leave your pets in the car on a day like this, Hatti. They'll melt in the heat." She opened the screened door and I saw Larry and Lydia drinking from a bowl on the floor.
"How did they get in here?"
"I let them in while you were circling the house. Don't worry, it's only water," she said, correctly interpreting my frown. "I haven't poisoned your dogs."
She was dressed today in a sophisticated outfit, a long, silky sleeveless gray vest over a fitted camisole that emphasized both her slender waist and generous bust and in smoky gray tights that shimmered and drew attention to her long, well-shaped legs. The dramatic dark hair feathered down her shoulders and back and was held off her face with a pair of Jackie-Onassis-type sunglasses and she wore a heavy, gold bracelet on one slender wrist and a diamond as big as the Fresnel lens at the lighthouse on the third finger of her left hand. She looked every inch both the Hollywood starlet and the pampered wife of a very wealthy man. But she was neither one nor the other now.
"You're wearing wedding rings," I said.
"I'm entitled. I'm a widow or haven't you heard?"
I ignored the sarcasm and fought a feeling of intimidation. I needed some answers. I stared at her.
"Did you kill him?"
"Why should I?"
"I understand he was worth a lot of money."
"That's true. Something like a hundred million. I signed a prenuptial agreement when I got married. I get a settlement in the case of divorce or death."
"How much?"
"Ten million."
"Not too shabby."
She looked at me for a long minute.
"Were you thinking about money when you married?"
"No."
"Were you thinking about it when you separated?"
"No."
"I was making good money on my own, Hatti. I didn't need to marry a rich man, nor did I need to inherit money. I'd have paid ten million dollars if it would have made the marriage work out."
"What did you mean when you said you were looking for closure?"
She sighed. "Come sit down and I'll explain it over a cup of herbal tea." It would be my second cup of tea that day and, as I've mentioned, I'm a big-time coffee drinker. I must have sighed because she grinned, suddenly. "Forget the chamomile-slash-dandelion root. I'll make a pot of coffee."
A few minutes later the dogs were stretched out on the cool, linoleum floor and Chakra and I faced one another across the small table. The coffee was excellent and reviving. I explained that I wanted to talk to her, not because I am inherently nosy (which I am) but because I was trying to help Ellwood Lantti investigate Alex's murder.
"I didn't kill him," she said, giving me the most important piece of information first. "I was obsessed with him, but I guess you've realized that. I worked in his office for a bit before I got my acting break and I just fell for him, hook, line and sinker, you know?" I nodded. "Of course, you know. You felt that way about Jace, didn't you? As if you'd been broadsided. I don't know whether it's love," she said, looking over at Lydia, who'd rolled onto her back, her little paws in the air. "It's some kind of alchemy. It makes you willing to give up everything you are just to be with that person. And when it's over, you'd give up everything all over again to get it back.
"Alex liked me. He was comfortable with me. He agreed to marry me because I wanted it so much but he was honest right from the start." She paused. "I tried to be that way with Sebastian and you saw how well that worked out. Anyway, we agreed to try marriage and a family and if it didn't work, to go our separate ways with no hard feelings."
"A family? Do you have children?" She shook her head.
"That didn't happen which was probably just as well. We lived together for one hundred and seventy-one days."
"Wow. That's almost exactly the same length of time Jace and I lived together."
"Yeah." She laughed, but there wasn't any amusement in the sound. "I don't know where they got the idea of the seven-year itch. Seven months is more realistic. Anyway, I accepted his suggestion that we separate but I couldn't seem to stop thinking about him, to stop fantasizing about what our lives should have been. I'd gotten into yoga and I spent all my time at the studio. At least, all the time I wasn't trying to get him on the phone or arrange a meeting in person. He eluded me. I went to a yogi who prescribed a deep trance and, long story short, I saw a vision of meeting Alex, only it wasn't in L.A. It was on the Keweenaw. So I came out here."
"Let me get this straight," I said. "You moved to Red Jacket, opened a studio and waited around just hoping he would come back here someday?"
"It wasn't quite that stupid. I knew his mother had died and that she had property. I figured the odds were that he'd come back. And after I got here, I liked it. It's so different from southern California, Hatti. I mean, a hundred-and-eighty degrees different. Even before he showed up, I started to heal."
"And then he actually came back." She nodded, her hands wrapped around her coffee mug.
"As you know, the coven was out on the lakefront during the festival. I went over to buy a lemonade from one of the vendors and when I turned around I saw Alex heading for the sauna. He looked exactly the same, tanned and golden and he had the same old gleam in his turquoise eyes. He saw me, too."
I could picture it. I leaned across the table in my eagerness to hear what came next.
"He showed no surprise just said he was glad to see me and asked me to come up to the tower if I could get away."
"Yikes. Did you?"
"I slipped away from the others after the Northern Light display and, yes, I went to see Alex."
"Did you use the backstairs?" She nodded.
Well, that was one question answered. Chakra Starshine was definitely Miss Irene's mysterious Madame X.
"What happened in the tower?"
Her lips twisted. "Pretty much what you'd expect. But that was only part of it. When I'd seen him down in the lighthouse yard, I'd felt gobsmacked by the
same old shackles of breathless attraction and obsession. But after we got together, it was like they fell away. I could look at him as a person who was separate from me. I could see that he wasn't perfect and that I could enjoy him and walk away. I was free."
"Sounds like a miracle."
"You sound cynical, Hatti, but it was a miracle. The unhealthy bond was broken."
"And you left him alive?" She nodded.
"You know I did. I left at about eleven-forty. He was alive after that, wasn't he?"
"Yes." It crossed my mind to wonder how she knew that. "Where did you go afterwards?"
Chakra shrugged her elegant shoulders.
"It was thundering and lightning and I'd left my car in the pines near the lighthouse. So, like the rest of the coven and everybody else on the beach, I went home."
I felt broadsided by the lie and my feelings must have shown clearly on my face.
"What's the matter, Hatti?"
"I believed you. Every word. It was a great story. The thing is, it isn't true." I put my hand in the pocket of my shorts and pulled out the earring to show to her. "You spent the night at the oil house. You and Sebastian."
A dull red color flashed on her cheeks. It was, I thought, the first time I'd seen Chakra embarrassed.
"If you didn't go back to the lighthouse and kill your husband, why the lie?"
She looked over at the dogs for a long minute and then she sighed.
"You want the truth? Sebastian knew I was going to see Alex. He was jealous and I prearranged a meeting at the oil house with him for afterwards. I was about to dump him and, unfortunately, I know all too well what that feels like."
"So it was a pity tryst?"
"You could call it that."
"I'm not sure that's what the sheriff will call it."
She winced but didn't argue.
"Chakra, how did you and Sebastian know the oil house would be vacant last night?"
"I arranged that, too. Earlier, when I saw Jack on the beach. I asked him if we could use his place that night, for a fee. He was very gracious. He said he didn't mind. He had somewhere else he could stay."