Bitterroot Lake

by Alicia Beckman

  “Looks like you’ve got some merchantable timber down on your place, too. Call my brother to clean it up for you.”

  George grunted. “Wouldn’t want to trouble a busy man like him for a few sticks.”

  “He’s gonna bring a crew out here anyway. He’d be happy to help.”

  The old man pressed his lips together. “I’ll manage.”

  Pride? A reluctance to admit he wasn’t as young, or capable, as he used to be?

  Back at the lodge, George stopped the truck to let her out.

  “Appreciate you coming over to check on us,” she said as she climbed out.

  “Shoulda stopped to see you Sunday when you got here. I thought I saw headlights.”

  “Monday. I took the train and rented a car in Whitefish.”

  “No,” he said. “Sunday. When I came back from town. I been taking my granddaughter to the Blue Spruce for Sunday supper since she was ten years old. Now she brings her own daughter. White SUV, but smaller. Not one of them monsters the summer folk drive.”

  Sarah’s rented SUV was smallish and charcoal gray. Janine’s van was white, a popular color right now. Was George mistaken? Had he seen someone else down here?

  Had her childhood friend lied?

  10

  The cat was sitting on the front porch.

  “Ohhh, fudge. I forgot to ask George about you.” She rubbed the magic spot on the top of the cat’s forehead with her thumb, and heard a satisfied purr in response. “Or have you decided you’re mine now, since I fed you?”

  First, she checked Grandpa Tom’s office, at the southeast corner of the house, off the main room. No broken windows and no visible damage to the log walls or the twelve-foot tongue-and-groove ceiling.

  Upstairs, in the master bedroom, she scanned the walls, then knelt to inspect the chinking on the lower logs. Were those cracks new? Impossible to tell. She dusted off her knees and opened one of the French doors leading to the balcony. A-okay.

  The oak door connecting the bedroom to the sewing room stood open. At some point, probably in the 1950s, a small closet between the rooms had been converted to a bathroom, though the white porcelain fixtures and hex floor tiles were a good match for the other baths. Nothing amiss.

  But in the sewing room, everything was amiss. The exterior door had popped open, though the glass hadn’t broken, and cones and needles lay strewn across the Persian rug. She picked her way through the debris and peered outside. The spruce she’d seen from below lay across the broken railing, the top branches snagged on the eave, the soffit and fascia splintered. A strong woodland must stung her nostrils. Whitetail Lodge was a treasure, and not just to her family. If George was right and there were more pretenders these days than real craftsmen, would they be able to get the damage repaired?

  Every time she pushed the door shut, it resisted. What could she find to hold it? Chair, no. Table, no. What about the oak bookcase, only thirty inches high but heavy? First she had to clear a few things. A ceramic meadowlark, the state bird. A lopsided clay cup, the name “Connor” scratched in the bottom. She set them on the library table her grandmother had used for cutting fabric. Stacked the framed photos she’d dusted yesterday and put them on the table, too.

  She took hold of the end of the bookcase and began wiggling backwards, toward the damaged door. The bookcase barely moved, so she grabbed a few fat, heavy volumes from the bottom shelf. As she tugged, one slipped from her grasp and slid to the floor, flopping open. She groaned, hoping she hadn’t damaged the fragile spine.

  “Oh, my gosh. I haven’t seen this in ages.” A scrapbook from the construction of the lodge, filled with photos and newspaper clippings. It could be useful to her inventory. She set it aside.

  Relieved of the extra weight, the bookcase moved more easily, and a few minutes later she had it in position. Not perfect—daylight leaked in through a narrow gap between door and frame. But it would do for now.

  She picked up the top photo in the stack on the table. An eight-by-ten in a gold-toned frame showed Mary McGinty in front of the altar at Sacred Heart Church, the train of her long white dress draped artfully down the steps. She’d been young, only twenty, in 1946 when she married Tom McCaskill, ten years older and probably ten inches taller—what would have been called a fresh-faced girl, with freckles and reddish-brown hair, though that was Sarah’s memory coloring the black-and-white photo. In her arms lay a bouquet of roses and ferns. Sarah had been married in that same church, and her own wedding album held a similar photo, though she’d had no veil or train. She’d loved her dress, creamy white satin with a wide sweetheart neckline, beaded bodice, and flowing skirt. Still in a box in her closet in Seattle.

  Next, in a matching frame, was a photo of her great-grandparents, Cornelius and Caroline McCaskill, who’d bought Whitetail Lodge not long after it was built. Caro wore a lovely tea-length dress with a draped neckline. She’d been a handsome woman with full lips and an impressive head of hair. Sarah had always been told she had the McCaskill eyes—kind eyes, people said. This was where they had come from. Though she was not looking at the world kindly these days. Con had been a tall, broad-shouldered man in a dark suit. McCaskill men were tall—her father, Leo, and her brother, Con’s namesake. Noah, too, though he had Jeremy’s features.

  “I’ll get it fixed,” she promised. “As soon as I can. But the place needs—”

  “Sarah? Where are you?” Her sister’s voice interrupted her. “Oh, my God. What happened?”

  She explained. “I’ll clean up in here, then go call Mom. She’s going to be sick about this, but—” Holly chimed in and they repeated Peggy’s mantra. “It could have been worse.”

  “Where is the woman, anyway? I thought for sure she’d be here at the crack of dawn, chasing us around with a broom and a vacuum.”

  “No clue,” Holly said. “I came up to tell you we’re headed into town. I’ll swing by the house and let Mom know about the damage.”

  “Ask her to call the insurance agent, would you? I don’t even know who it is.”

  “Sure. After I give Leo the letter from Lucas.”

  “Do you think …” She couldn’t finish the question, the thought too awful, but her sister’s face said she knew what Sarah couldn’t say.

  “That Janine killed him? No. That they might try to pin it on her? Yes. And it’s our job to be there for her if they do.” Holly turned and bounded down the stairs. Sarah followed slowly, her hand on the railing.

  George had seen a white SUV in their driveway, but Sunday, not Monday. Janine drove a white van. George could have mistaken the vehicle, but not the day. If he’d been meeting his granddaughter at the Spruce every Sunday for twenty-five years, then he darned well knew what day it had been.

  But Janine had had no reason to come up to Deer Park until she got the letter, on Monday. And she’d still been wearing her work clothes when Sarah found her.

  No. Both George and Janine could be telling the truth. George had seen someone else in a white SUV, driving down the road to the lodge. Who?

  No matter. It didn’t mean anything.

  * * *

  By the time she’d changed out of her pajamas and went to find the broom to sweep upstairs, Holly and Janine were in the kitchen, ready to leave.

  Nic came in, glancing around for something. “Have you seen my jacket? I’m sure I hung it in the entry last night, but now I can’t find it.”

  “Oh, geez. I wore it when I went out on the property. It’s filthy now—sorry. Take mine and I’ll wash yours while you’re in town.”

  “Good, thanks. It’s an all-purpose errand trip. Buy a signal booster. Pick up Janine’s phone. Convince the sheriff she had nothing to do with the murder.”

  “You could come,” Holly said, the invitation clearly an afterthought. “We could squeeze you into Nic’s car.”

  “No. Thanks. I’ve got work to do here,” she replied. “Hey, would you call Connor, too? We’ve got some trees down—nothing urgent, but I doubt there’s a w
orking chain saw out here, if I did dare to use one. But we’ll need to get some tarps up pretty quick.”

  “Sure. Surprised he didn’t come out as soon as Mom told him you were here. He’s been worried.”

  So they’d been talking about her, the whole family. That was good, she supposed. But the thought of people feeling sorry for her made her twitch.

  “With this storm and thousands of acres to manage, he’ll be crazy-busy. This is nothing. Get the roof and balcony covered and we’ll be fine. You go. Don’t worry about me.”

  A few minutes later, she was alone. Another thing she hadn’t understood about grief was that one minute she was terrified of being alone, and the very next she wanted nothing more. Depended, in part, on how pushy the other person was. Were they continually asking if she was okay, did she need anything? She was not okay, damn it. She needed Jeremy. And if you couldn’t bring him back, and no one could, then just shut the fuck up.

  But she couldn’t say that. Except to Holly, who didn’t hover, but certainly not to her mother. Peggy had suffered her own losses when JP died, but being widowed at seventy was a whole different thing from being widowed at forty-seven. Though seventy was too young, too, wasn’t it?

  And where was her mother, anyway?

  Gad. She’d told Nic teenagers were a handful. Turns out middle-aged adults could be mood-swing wrecks, too.

  Get a grip.

  She gathered up Nic’s fleece and a few other things and headed to the cellar, flashlight in hand. Surveyed the pipes before loading the washer—the last thing they needed was a flood.

  No broken windows. A decade’s worth of cobwebs between the joists and a faint whiff of mouse, but nothing out of the ordinary.

  Back on the first floor, she found a broom, then checked the doors and windows. None had blown open or been cracked by debris. They were mostly original, except for a window or two that had been replaced over the years. They ought to all be replaced, but double-paned, insulated upgrades would cost a small fortune. Add in the sagging roof and the loose gutters, and now the storm damage. Make that a sizable fortune.

  In the sewing room, she swept up the storm litter. Among the rubble lay a long, curved cone from a white pine. When she was a kid, they’d gathered cones in late summer and Peggy and other teachers had used them for school craft projects—pine cone reindeer and hedgehogs, owls and elves. They’d dipped a few in wax to use as fire starters, stashed in giant baskets next to the fireplaces. Whenever she’d found a white pine cone with all its scales intact, a rare thing, she’d saved it and tucked it on a shelf in her bedroom—her treasure shelf.

  They could spend Christmas at the lodge this year. If she managed to get it clean by then. If they kept it.

  Keep moving, girl. She set the cone on the top step and made a quick circuit of the upper floors. Satisfied, she returned to the main floor and headed outside. The wind had not budged the heavy log tables and chairs, but serious sweeping was required. She walked down the stone steps to the lawn.

  An object lay on the grass and she bent to pick it up. A nest woven of pine needles and grasses, a fragment of speckled shell stuck inside. The sight snagged her breath and she let out a strangled sob, her worry, she knew, even more for her own chicks than for the unhatched baby bird.

  11

  Sarah crossed the driveway to the carriage house and slid open the double doors. Specks of dust swam in the beams of sunlight.

  This time of year, it stayed light until well after nine. Her bet: George had spotted a sightseer hoping for a surreptitious peek at the historic lodge. In the off-season, as long as the roads were passable, no one minded.

  So why had he mentioned it?

  Holy crap. In the twilight and her hurry the other night, she had not noticed. Peggy had said the carriage house needed to be cleaned out, but—whoa.

  How had they ever accumulated so much junk? Tires and tools, skis and snowshoes, paddles and life jackets. An old band saw and drill press—her dad’s? He’d taken up woodworking after he retired, working in an unused corner of the lumber company shop. What were his tools doing here?

  And that old wooden canoe. They ought to haul it out. Toss it in the water, see if it was sound.

  She picked her way around a roll of field fence to the workbench, where wrenches and hacksaws and tools she could barely identify hung from hooks on the pegboard mounted to the wall. Another wall held odds and ends of tack—ropes and leads, bits and guards, cinches and straps.

  Back home, her saddle and bridles hung in the storage room Jeremy had insisted they build in the garage, too good to get rid of. Too much a part of who she thought herself to be.

  Maybe she would take up riding again. There were stables in Kenmore and Woodinville, or out at North Bend, where a horse could be rented for a few hours. Once she got the feel for it again—got her seat back, as horse people would say—there were miles of woodland trails to explore.

  “Look what you started,” she said out loud to Con and Caro. “Four generations of pack rats.”

  She wound her way through the piles to the staircase at the rear, glancing in the open crates as she went. Flipped the switch. Nothing happened. She aimed the flashlight beam upward, where thick cobwebs ran from the milk glass light fixture to the ceiling. A burned-out bulb. Finally, something she could fix.

  Thick dust coated the steps. The floor creaked as she stepped onto the landing. This had been the caretaker’s apartment, furnished but unoccupied when she was a kid. Being allowed to play out here had been a treat, and she’d felt so grown up when her grandmother had finally deemed her old enough, and responsible enough.

  The oak door was heavy and paneled, twin to the doors in the lodge. The brass knob—oval, with a domed top—fit neatly in her hand, despite the dampness in her palm. She turned it, but it didn’t budge. Rattled it back and forth and finally heard a slow groan as the bolt moved and the door opened.

  She stepped across the threshold, head cocked. Quiet, the air stale. The living room was crammed with furniture, some upended, much of it draped with sheets. The beds and dressers from the boys’ bunk room, no doubt, and the ballroom couches. The kitchen was compact and efficient, meant for someone who took most of their meals in the lodge. Dust covered every surface. The mullioned window panes were caked with grime. She rubbed at one with the ball of her hand, creating a sticky swirl.

  “Well, I didn’t come up here to clean,” she said out loud. “Just checking out the job.”

  Where was the dollhouse? When she and Holly were children, it had sat on a low oval coffee table in front of the sofa. One summer visit, Jeremy and JP had carried it, oh so tenderly, into the lodge and set it up for Abby in a corner of the living room. She’d begged to take it home, but it never would have fit in their car, so they’d bought her one of her own. Sure enough, she’d outgrown dolls, dollhouses, and princess dresses not long after. Who’d built the replica of the Victorian, Sarah had no idea. A gift for Sarah Beth, Grandpa Tom’s little sister, it had been tucked away when she died, until the next Sarah Elizabeth McCaskill came along. Though she’d been both thrilled and terrified to share a name with a girl who’d died, playing with her namesake’s dollhouse had been pure joy.

  When friends saw Peggy’s paintings of the lodge and the Victorian that hung in Sarah’s entry, they assumed those houses had sparked her love of decorating. But she traced her passion to the dollhouse. To the hours she’d sat on the floor here in the apartment, moving furniture around in the tiny rooms or cutting tiny pictures from magazines to tuck into the tiny frames that fit in slots on the walls. She’d been given a box of tiny plastic dolls, but they’d never appealed to her.

  People. Too much trouble, then and now. Digging up old conflicts, getting themselves killed.

  Moving all this furniture out here had been a major chore. Many pieces were genuine antiques. Should she hire a crew and move them back?

  Don’t be ridiculous. You’re here to help your mother make decisions, not redecorate. Whe
n they finished cleaning the lodge, she’d tackle this place—she couldn’t work in all this dust. Then she’d make a list and start figuring out what it all might be worth—the green Roseville pottery and pink Depression glass visible through the windows of the mahogany breakfront, the calendar art, the tools downstairs.

  Between the bathroom and bedroom stood a bird’s-eye maple armoire, the inset oval mirrors on the doors almost as grimy as the windows. The doors opened at the touch of her hand on the glass knobs, the scent from the cedar shelves mingling with lavender from the tiny sachets her grandmother had tucked in every drawer and closet to keep bugs away. One good whiff and it was as if Mary Mac were standing next to her.

  For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. Could. Not. Breathe.

  Then her grandmother’s words filled her ears, consoling her after some girlhood slight or an argument with her sister. It will be all right, Sally. I know you can’t imagine that now, but I promise, it will be all right.

  A sense of calm overtook her. Maybe it was the lavender. Maybe she was going crazy. She sure as hell wasn’t going to tell anyone about the voices, or the dreams. But they were soothing, reassuring, in a way, even if they were weird-ass crazy.

  Quilts filled the wardrobe shelves. Though she’d given away dozens in her lifetime, Mary Mac had left almost as many behind. Sarah ran her fingers down the stack, naming the patterns. Irish Chain. Double Wedding Ring. Bear Paw and Dresden Plate. A colorful Spider Web like the one Abby had taken to college. Noah’s pick had been a flannel Log Cabin.

  She could stand here and admire these quilts for hours, but that wasn’t getting anything done.

  Did her mother really want to clean out the lodge and all the buildings? To scatter and sell the family history?

  Once again, she felt irritated by her mother’s absence. Peggy had practically insisted Sarah come to the lodge, then all but disappeared.

  She closed the wardrobe doors. In the bedroom, she flicked the switch. The overhead light came on, dimmed by the dust in the etched glass fixture.