How could this be a place where a fisherman could walk away from an expensive boat and fishing equipment, unconcerned about anyone stealing it and yet, two miles south, a sweet old man had been killed in a manner that defied all known rules of small-town life?
The waves were even bigger now and the wind had switched direction. Rain slanted into my eyes and pelted my head. On shore, mothers threw striped towels around shivering shoulders, hurrying the kids to their cars.
I lowered my head and concentrated on churning through the waves, some now two feet high. Thunder boomed. The lake was not a good place to be if lightning struck. A blue and white speedboat appeared on my right. Not wanting to be run over, I stuck up my arm and waved. He waved back. Assured that he saw me, I kept going. The boat throttled down and came up alongside. I treaded water, wondering what he wanted.
The man wore a black rain slicker with the hood tightened to keep it from blowing off. Only his nose and mouth were visible. He hollered over the wind. “Do you need a lift to shore?”
I pointed to the land jutting out ahead. “I’m almost home. Thanks, though.” I put my head down and continued on. He pulled away, his boat quickly disappearing around a point.
My arms and legs were heavy as boulders by the time I reached home—a good workout. I scrambled up the muddy incline to the cabin. Rock greeted me inside the door as the house shuddered with a thunder clap, startling Knute from his sleep. He lifted his head, then let it drop back on his paws.
***
I stopped by Little’s for an early dinner. My brother took a break from the kitchen and joined me at my usual spot at the counter. Lars dropped off a tray full of dirty dishes in the kitchen, came back out and took the stool next to me. “We had to go in to Branson this morning and give Wilcox any information we had about Charley, which wasn’t much.”
“Me, too. He wanted every detail from the day I saw Charley here and then yesterday.”
Little said, “Charley brought flowers to the restaurant every summer since we opened. One of us took meals out to his house but he never talked about his past.” Little’s face was even more pale than usual. “He’d talk your ears off about his garden, though.”
I told them I’d asked Charley about his family the day I took him home. “He said he had no one.”
Lars wiped the counter. “It’s even more tragic we didn’t know that.”
Little hesitated for a minute, then must have made the decision to spit it out. “You aren’t going to get mixed up in this are you, Britt? I feel terrible about Charley, but you need to chill and have some solid meals before Marta sends you back out.”
I had now officially heard from my trio of watchdogs, Little, Ben and Wilcox. “Don’t worry, the sheriff has this covered.” I set my napkin on my empty plate. “Thanks for another delicious meal, guys. I think I’ll head over to Bella’s.”
Little frowned. “You just said you weren’t getting involved.”
“Relax, I’m only saying hello.”
Lars cocked his head and peered close to my face. “You could use a brow wax. Ben’s due home in a few days, isn’t he?”
Little nodded. “And maybe a trim.” He lifted a strand of my hair. “Looking a bit ragged.”
Double-teaming me was their favorite sport. They’d been too busy this summer to tease me regularly, but made a valiant effort whenever they had the chance. I let go of the guilt about covering up my ulterior motives. Bella would have information about Charley.
Main Street faced the lake and another street of businesses lined the highway. Bella’s Beauty Shop was on a side street, three minutes from Little’s. Bella had the only beauty salon in Spirit Lake and ran it like a news-gathering organization to rival the Associated Press. If anything happened in the northern part of Minnesota, she could tell you who, what, why, where and how, often before law enforcement or the media.
The bell tinkled when I entered the lavender and white duplex. One side was the salon, with Bella’s Beauty Shop printed in black with elaborate flourishes across the window. Bella and her forty-year-old daughter, Violet, lived in the other half of the duplex. Violet did most of the salon work these days. Bella’s slight tremor from palsy kept her from cutting hair, giving her even more time to keep abreast of the scuttlebutt.
Bella sat in her rocker by the window. “Violet stepped next door to get something.” She peered at me over her glasses. “You really should wear a swim cap. Lake water isn’t the best for your hair, especially as much as you’re in it.” Bella’s was not in viewing distance of the dock or my cabin, but she’d never needed to actually see me to track my movements.
I sat in one of the two chairs and waited for Violet. “Thanks, Bella.” Not a chlorine-filled pool, seawater, and certainly not lake water would dare penetrate her helmet of permed and sprayed curls.
Violet bustled in, slightly flushed. “Oh, Britt! I hope you haven’t had to wait long.” Where Bella was compact and taciturn, her daughter was pear-shaped and effusive, given to large gestures and warm hugs.
“I just walked in the door.” I smiled, always happy to see her. She’d probably been catching up on her social media habit. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and Pinterest, several email accounts and her own beauty blog kept her busy between customers. She tried to lure me into her network but so far I’d managed to evade it. I like to be unreachable sometimes. Today, Violet wore hot pink lipstick. She wiggled her matching nails at me. “It’s so gloomy, this should perk everyone up.”
“It’s pretty, Violet.”
She snapped out a black cape and fastened it around my neck, pulling my scraggly mane from under it. She stuck her round porcelain face close to mine. “Brow wax for sure. You could use a facial too.”
“Go for it.” I settled in for the duration.
Bella said, “It wouldn’t hurt to take a couple of inches off your hair. You haven’t had it cut since you left, have you?”
Had it been three months? “You got me there, Bella. Okay, trim it.”
Bella said, “Violet, do one of those lemon rinses. See if you can get some natural highlights since Britt won’t join the twenty-first century and let you use your chemicals. What did we send you for that color training for anyway?”
Violet whispered in my ear. “Don’t mind her.”
Now that the niceties were out of the way, Bella didn’t waste any time. “Poor Charley, terrible how you found him.”
“Did you know him very well?”
“He was not one to talk, except out at the nursery where he got his supplies. A lot of women tried to get him interested in them when he first moved to town. The church ladies and widows went after him, but he never showed interest. They finally gave up when Helen Farley failed to snag him.”
“You’ll have to explain that one, Bella.”
“Helen was a catch. Pretty, a natural redhead in her day, and rich. Her husband keeled over from an aneurysm and she set her sights on Charley. Tall, handsome, thick head of hair, honey blonde like yours. But he wasn’t interested. I think it broke her heart and I know for a fact it wounded her pride. She ended up marrying a real estate fellow from Cooper and moved up there.”
Bella kept tabs on everything that happened in the county, particularly Spirit Lake, population five hundred, Cooper, sixteen miles north of Spirit Lake, with a thousand, and Branson, another fifteen miles north, with a whopping fifteen thousand. Those were winter numbers. The county grew exponentially in the summer.
Violet finished my hair and brows, and began painting my face with green mask. I closed my eyes and grunted at key points in the conversation.
Violet whispered. “Some people said Charley was gay.”
Because of the silence I expected Bella and Violet were exchanging looks regarding my sensitivity to the situation of Lars and Little.
Violet hurried to add, “Not that there was anything specific.”
Bella completed Violet’s thought. “He didn’t do what most of the men around here are i
nto. Fishing, hunting, drinking, sports. He grew his flowers, and sold most of the plants to garden stores and the flower shop in Cooper before he got too old to drive. People just left him to himself. That’s what he wanted, although he was always polite.”
Violet asked, “Have Little and Lars figured out who sent that mean letter to them?”
I sat straight up in the chair. “What are you talking about?”
Bella’s lips pursed. “Violet, you were not supposed to say anything.”
Violet’s hands flapped. “It slipped out. I’m sorry.”
Toweling the stuff off my face, I raced down the street and slammed through the restaurant entryway nearly knocking over a customer. Lars looked up from handing menus to a family of four. “Whoa, are you the wicked witch?”
Ripping the cape from around my neck, I charged past him. In the kitchen, Little stirred a bubbling pot.
Hands on my hips, I asked, “What mean letter?”
Little put down his spoon. “Who told you?”
“Violet. I want to know right now what it said and why the hell you didn’t tell me.”
“You have to stop yelling first.” He spoke to the second cook. “Chum, could you handle things for a few minutes?” Chum nodded. His slightly protruding eyes always made him look sleepy. His last name was Chumley. I didn’t even know his first name.
Little motioned me to join him in his apartment at the back. He shut the door. “Calm down, would you? It’s just a dumb letter calling us faggots.”
“You told the sheriff, right?”
“Compared to what’s been going on, I didn’t think it would be a priority, you know?”
I wanted to shake him. “When did you get it?”
“Yesterday.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.” My voice rose again.
“We didn’t want to worry you. You’re supposed to be taking it easy and besides, this sort of thing happens. It’s not the first time.”
I dropped onto the sofa. “Have you and Lars touched the letter?”
His eyes rolled up. “How else could we read it?”
“Please bring it to me, only use a tweezers or something.”
He went into the bedroom and returned with an envelope held with a tweezers. He handed me a pair of disposable gloves. “Since you’re getting all forensic techy on me.”
I snapped on the gloves. “This isn’t a joking matter. Someone wrote a hate message on Charley’s wall. The sheriff doesn’t know if it was because they thought he was gay, but you can’t take this lightly right now, if ever.”
“Those rumors aren’t based on anything, but now that he’s been killed people have been rehashing the gay thing. We hear the talk in the restaurant.”
I used the tweezers to tease the letter out of the envelope. “Did this come in the mail?”
He pointed to the kitchen nook area at the rear of their apartment. “I found it at the back door.”
The writing was scrawled in thick black pen. “I’m watching you—Faggots.”
Little shrugged. “This is nothing. There’s been worse.”
“We have to tell Wilcox.”
“You can take it to him if you want. I have a kitchen to run.”
He hesitated at the door. “Please go to our bathroom and clean up your face. You have green goo hanging from your nose and chin. I don’t want you scaring the customers.”
I called out after him. “How did Bella find out about the letter?”
He raised his hands, palms up. “Lars and I were talking about it in the restaurant and people probably overheard. You know how it is here.”
Ten minutes later, my face washed and wet hair pulled into a ponytail, I dropped off Violet’s cape and headed to the sheriff’s office. The letter changed everything. Now the case was personal.
Chapter 4
The two-story green building two blocks north of First Street in Branson—the county seat—housed the sheriff, jail, boat, water, parks and emergency management departments. Usually bustling with people trying to buy fishing licenses, at five o’clock most of the offices were shutting down for the day.
A deputy said to go straight back to Wilcox’s office. He scowled when I barged in. “You have something to show me?”
I handed him the letter. “Little found this at their back door yesterday.”
He removed it from the plastic bag, examined it, bagged it again and blew out a long breath. “Little told you this kind of thing has happened before?”
He pointed to a chair and I took it, leaning toward him. “He and Lars have had to deal with occasional taunts. Lars is a pretty big guy, though, so nothing physical. I wonder if it had anything to do with what happened to Charley.”
“A handwriting expert can determine if it’s the same as the printing on Charley’s wall.” He stood up from behind his desk. “We’ll find out who’s behind this letter, and who killed Mr. Patterson.” His eyes narrowed. “Your part is done unless Little gets another letter. I’ll want to know about that right away.”
I left dissatisfied, but there was nothing more I could do. Wilcox would be happy if I never set foot in Northern Minnesota again. He didn’t hate me. It just annoyed him when I got in his way, goaded him into losing his cool, made sure I had my photos and the stories were in the paper on my schedule, not his. Come to think of it, maybe he did hate me.
Thor wasn’t in her cubbyhole office at the end of the corridor. I tried the next best bet and found her in her basement space looking at something under a microscope. File cabinets full of past cases and all the equipment and kits she needed for doing her job lined the walls. Her work included taking photos and noting the location of evidence, documenting and bagging it, taking fingerprints and footprints and estimating time of death. A lab in Minneapolis analyzed most of the evidence and autopsies were handled there. They’d already sent Charley’s body.
She typed something in her laptop and looked up. “Hey, Britt.”
Thor’s short spiked hair and multiple piercings didn’t even begin to make her look tough. A petite blue-eyed blond with dimples, she was hopelessly cute. Who could blame her for trying to combat the stereotype? She wasn’t a sworn officer, but it still surprised me that Wilcox put up with her unusual clothing choices.
“Anything new?” I slumped into a chair.
“Nothing from the lab so far and I hate not being able to work a whole case.” She frowned, “Maybe it’s time to do what I planned to do six months ago.”
“I know you want to work in a big lab.” Thor had been ready to complete her degree in forensic anthropology at the University of Minnesota when she and Jason began seeing each other. She’d postponed because it would have meant leaving Branson, and Jason.
“Are you seriously thinking about it this time?”
She nodded and turned back to her notes. “I can tell you the killer tortured Charley before he died. Broken fingers, abrasions and so on.”
The idea of someone torturing Charley caused a burning sensation between my eyes. I wanted revenge for the old man who loved flowers and harmed no one. Had the bad guy hurt him for the fun of it, or was he trying to get information?
I joined her at the worktable and poked my face close to the microscope. “Anything else?”
“Wilcox is investigating any family or history on him before he moved to Spirit Lake, but I don’t think he’s got anything yet.”
Her mouth snapped shut when Wilcox showed up at the doorway.
“What are you still doing here, Johansson?”
I moved away from the table. “Catching up with a friend.”
“Thor’s got a heavy workload right now.”
She scooted over to her desk. “Sending that report now, Sheriff.” Head down, her fingers flew over her laptop keyboard.
Already at the door, I said, “See you later, Thor. Thanks, Sheriff.” I didn’t want to irritate Wilcox too much because I needed him to keep me in the loop.
I headed back to Spirit Lake
thinking about the letter. It could have been a coincidence Little and Lars got it at the same time Charley was murdered, but I doubted it.
A familiar tension settled in my chest. I’d always looked out for Little. As kids, I was the scary amazon who knocked heads together if anyone bullied my brother. He’d always been small and women would kill for his delicate bone structure and golden arched eyebrows. But that also meant too many boys tried to torment him.
Our father was the worst bully and harder to deal with but we’d come through it, though the memory of the night he died still haunted me. I re-lived it nearly every time I drove on this road between Spirit Lake and Branson.
I was sixteen. I’d picked up my drunk father from the tavern. This time he’d gotten in a fight after someone told him he’d seen Little, then twelve, holding hands with a boy. He threatened to hurt Little when we got home. I couldn’t let it happen again. It was snowing hard but I pulled over, reached across the seat and opened the door, put both feet up and shoved him out of the car. As I drove away, my car hit black ice, rammed into a tree and I was knocked out. When they found us, he’d been run over by a truck while wandering drunk down the middle of the highway. He hadn’t survived.
Last year when I finally told Little what really happened that night, he’d insisted I would have gone back for him if I could have, but I don’t know.
In the years since, the tables have turned and I’ve relied on my brother’s strength of character to get me through my own hard times.
***
Dinner hour at the restaurant was going full throttle. Little didn’t even look up to say hello and Lars hurried to seat. Wedged between two people at the packed counter, I ate my grilled walleye and mound of garden vegetables, wishing for a baked potato, but Little said I needed more fiber.
I swallowed my food half-heartedly, missing Ben. We used to be each other’s sounding boards, but spotty cell coverage in the Boundary Waters made for frustrating attempts at conversations. I could contact him for emergencies on his law enforcement-issued satellite phone, but I did that only when necessary. We hadn’t talked for a week at a time when I was in Syria—that time because he couldn’t reach me.
Close Up on Murder Page 3