“Mary Mac never mentioned it,” Peggy said. “Men—well, not if you girls are right and she was hounded to death by a man visiting the Laceys for their New Year’s Eve bash.”
H, whoever he had been.
Sarah blew out a breath. “So now that we know her story, now that you’ve put it on canvas, she’ll be satisfied? Because I’m done with the nightmares.”
“I think so. I hope so. This has all been quite the revelation.”
“Mom, why didn’t you tell me Holly lost her job?”
“She asked me not to. Said you had enough on your mind,” Peggy replied. “I think she was embarrassed. Afraid you might think she’s a flake who can’t hold a job.”
“I would never think that,” Sarah protested. “Museum work is cutthroat. You’d think the art world would be genteel, but I’ve been on boards. I’ve watched her over the years. I know better.”
“She worries about what you’ll think of her. Whether she’ll meet your standards.”
Ouch.
“So, what will you do with the paintings?” Sarah asked. “Will you show them? Our theories about Anja’s death aside, they are really striking.”
“I haven’t decided. I’m hoping Anja will tell me.”
Sarah stood to leave. Peggy gripped her shoulders tightly, then kissed her cheek. “It’s good to have you girls home. And with Connor feeling less pressure, now that he’s bought the land below Porcupine Ridge, I hope the three of you can spend some time together.”
“He bought the land? I thought—” She tried to remember the conversation between Connor and Leo, in the office. Connor had said George had sold the land on Lynx Mountain, below the ridge. To whom, he hadn’t said, though he had rushed out with Leo, as if avoiding the subject. As if he wasn’t sure she would trust his judgment. “Is that what’s behind this expansion of the company? Got to be a lot of board feet up there. Anyway, doesn’t matter. See you tomorrow.”
In the car, she sat, hands on the wheel. The news of the land purchase was curious, but her mind was still on the mystery of the Swedish housemaid. Peggy had said—how had she put it? That Anja wanted Peggy to see her. Now that she’d been seen and heard, Peggy thought, the girl could rest in peace.
The rest of them—Sarah, most of all—had interpreted the nightmares as a sign of physical danger, as when Anja appeared to Ellen Lacey before her death, and when she came to warn Caro that Sarah Beth was sicker than they thought.
And when, twenty-five years ago, she’d wanted Sarah to protect Janine from a man with trouble on his mind.
If Anja had been satisfied with being painted, why come to Sarah now? Why had the latest nightmare been so vivid, so demanding?
What were they missing?
Sarah turned the key in the ignition. The only way to find out what Anja wanted was to ask her.
* * *
The wind had picked up by the time Sarah reached Valley View Cemetery on the southeast edge of Deer Park. She didn’t remember when she’d last been here.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Abby. The Paper Place offered me my old job for the summer!!!!!!!
That’s great, honey, she texted back. Just saw your grandmother’s new paintings—stunning!
Cool! Love you, Mom!
The screen went dark. She stared out the window at the branches shivering in the cold wind. The sky had turned a hard gray. It wasn’t going to snow, was it?
The place was deserted. She zipped up her jacket, cinched the belt, and stepped out, bracing herself against the hard wind. The cemetery dated back to homestead and railroad days. In the older section, granite crosses and statuary were common, gradually giving way to a mix of styles and materials—granite, marble, bronze, every grave a story.
She found the McCaskill plot easily, the small stone markers for Tom and Mary Mac, the gray-and-white marble monument for Con and Caro, the stone lamb for Sarah Beth. She crouched, fingertips grazing the smooth white marble. What had it been like, losing the much-loved little girl? Caro had responded by making the lodge and her family her refuge.
“Is that what all this is about, Caro?” she said. “The dreams, the discovery of the old trunk. Are you telling me, as your daughter’s namesake, that I’m the one to continue the legacy of Whitetail Lodge?”
But the stones kept their tongues.
She stood, aware that she wasn’t quite as steady as she ought to be. Breathe in, breathe out. Where to begin? Swedish housemaids got no grand markers, no stone angels. She wandered past familiar names—Holtz, Hoyt, Smalley.
Holtz. Hoyt. H.
Then, as if a hand beckoned, she wound her way toward a section where simple graves marked by small flat stones lay beneath the outstretched arms of a weeping birch.
There it was. Anja Sundstrom, 1900–1922. God has called His Angel home.
The tears surprised her, and she blinked them back. “What happened, Anja? What happened to you? And what do you need from me?” She brushed away a few of last year’s dried birch leaves. “If you want us to tell your story, we can do that.”
She could persuade her mother to display the paintings at a local gallery. At the wine bar, or whatever shape the restaurant took, if she and Holly convinced Janine to let them help her pursue her dream. As investors, or advisors. Who knew what else they’d find in the old trunks? Holly could track down the Lacey family and see what details the descendants could provide. They could tell the story of the girl with the crown of yellow braids, and of the Lakeside Ladies’ Aid Society, dedicated to making a woman’s lot a little less rough, a little less lonely.
Was that it? Was that all Anja wanted?
Sarah wasn’t sure. She had more questions to ask, questions that might make the story a little more complicated.
A lot more complicated.
She bowed her head and made a promise to the girl, the young woman, in the simple grave.
28
“He’s on the phone, Mrs. Carter,” Steph, the lumber company desk clerk, told Sarah, and she could see her brother through the window between the front desk and the office. Connor held up two fingers, an inch apart, signaling that he’d just be a minute.
Not telling her the daily details of the business she understood, but they’d been talking about expansion and land and George Hoyt and he hadn’t said a thing.
The front end of McCaskill Land and Lumber was as far from the hip showrooms of designer Seattle as you could get. Scuffed linoleum floor. A patchwork wall, lengths of rough-cut lumber tacked up next to samples in various finishes, and another displaying varieties of molding. A Mr. Coffee as old as the one at the lodge perched on a 1950s step table in the corner. The acrid odor of sawdust drifting in from the shop floor, accompanied by the whine and whirr of saws and sanders and planers.
Refreshing, to know your stuff was so good that you didn’t need to prove how cool you were.
Connor was standing now, his broad back to her. That minute was stretching itself out.
The final waiting room wall was hung with photos that had been there for decades. Her great-grandfather Con, looking the part of the prosperous early twentieth-century businessman in his dark suit and starched collar. Two lumberjacks wielding a crosscut saw standing next to the largest old-growth Ponderosa she’d ever seen. And in a thin black frame, a yellowed newspaper article with a photo she’d never paid attention to, three men posing before a giant machine, men in work shirts in a half circle behind them.
She leaned in to read the caption. “Deer Park Lumber Company founder Cornelius McCaskill, Frank Lacey, and G. T. Hoyt show off the new electric circular sawmill installed recently at their Deer Park lumberyard, the largest of its kind in the Inland Northwest.”
Their dark business suits were quite different from the tuxes they’d worn in the photo of the Laceys’ New Year’s Eve party, but she recognized them in an instant. Con, Frank, and the man who’d stood on the steps looking down at the young housemaid, the man whose name on the back of the photo had been smudged into ob
scurity.
A date had been handwritten on the side of the clipping and she tilted her head to read it. June 21, 1921. Six months before Anja’s death.
“We gave that old sawmill to the historical society ages ago,” Connor said, coming up behind her. “Getting it there was a bugger.”
“G. T. Hoyt,” she said, turning to him. “George’s grandfather?”
He reddened and held out his hands. “Mom told you. I know, I should have sat you down, explained, but you’ve had so much on your mind, and we needed that land to continue expanding our production—”
“Connor, stop. I don’t care that you bought land from George Hoyt and didn’t tell me. Well, I do care.” But that could wait. She needed to know who G.T. Hoyt was, his role in the company a century ago, and whether he was H.
Get a grip. He’s not gonna know all that.
“Come into my office,” Connor said, away from Steph’s curiosity. He closed the door and gestured to an oak chair, his own chair new and sturdy, the only modern touch in the room other than his phone and computer. A wall-mounted shelf held books and memorabilia, and the autographed baseball on its heavy metal stand. So that’s where it had gone. Good.
Where should she start?
“Sit. You’re making me nervous.”
She was too nervous to sit. She kept her words slow and deliberate as she tried to separate the lines of connection swimming before her eyes. “The photograph in the showroom. The caption says the men with our great-grandfather were Frank Lacey and G.T. Hoyt, and refers to ‘their lumberyard.’ Were they business partners? What do you know about that?”
“Not much. Lacey managed the sawmill the Great Northern built to supply ties to the railroad. You know, the one downriver that became the Superfund site. They bought timber from McCaskill, and I think Lacey invested in the company for a while.”
“What about Hoyt?” she asked. “What did he have to do with McCaskill Land and Lumber?”
“Not sure I ever knew.” He opened a desk drawer. “A volunteer with the historical society put together a history of the company when we donated the old mill and other equipment, and a bunch of photographs and papers. I’ve got it here somewhere.”
As he flipped through the hanging files, a metallic glint in the bottom of the drawer caught her eye. A revolver. Their dad’s old .38? Connor slammed the drawer shut. Crossed the room to a green three-drawer metal cabinet. Opened and closed the first two drawers, then crouched to flip through the lower drawer.
“Con bought Lacey out at some point,” he said. “Obviously. And if Hoyt was an investor, that was short-lived, too. Why does it matter now?”
“It matters,” she said. “When matters.” She alternately clenched her fists and flexed her fingers. Finally, Connor plucked out a file. Sarah stood next to him as he laid the file on his desk and opened it to the typed summary of the company’s history. So much she didn’t know.
She needed to know.
She also needed reading glasses. The print was too old, too indistinct, the onion skin paper brittle.
Connor dragged a finger down the page. “Here. ‘In the 1920s, Cornelius McCaskill consolidated his ownership, renaming the company McCaskill Land and Lumber.’ That’s all it says. Nothing about Hoyt or Lacey.”
“Do you have the sale documents? I need to know when he bought them out.” She already knew, from Caro’s journal, that Lacey cashed out and the family left the area because of Ellen’s distress over Anja’s death. If Hoyt sold his interest to Con near the time Caro wrote about their debate over how to deal with H, then she could safely conclude that H stood for G.T. Hoyt.
Then what? Would that knowledge alone satisfy the ghost of Anja Sundstrom? What good would come of telling George that his ancestor had been a predator who drove a young immigrant girl to her death a century ago?
She’d figure out what to do about that later. She’d lay it out for the family and they’d decide together. No more secrets.
“Yes. They’re all here.” Connor closed the file and laid his big hand on the cover. “Sarah, I am so sorry. It was the only way to save the company. If we didn’t get that land, we wouldn’t be able to compete. We’d be forced to sell out to one of the international conglomerates and let control of the company leave not just the family but the valley. I know, the way Deer Park’s grown, not everyone thinks the lumber company matters anymore. But I do. Tourism is great, and I love a good microbrew as much as the next guy, but jobs making burgers and beer will never pay what working in the woods or the mill does. We want this valley to keep growing, we need this company to keep growing so families can afford to stay here. It’s my responsibility. Jeremy understood that. I don’t know why you think the date we gave the Hoyts Porcupine Ridge has any relevance to buying it back, but—”
“What are you talking about? What does Jeremy have to do with any of this?”
“I had to do it.” Connor swiveled his chair toward her and leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, pleading with his hands. “I hated the subterfuge, but Hoyt wouldn’t do business with us directly, and we needed that land. If Lucas hadn’t set things up the way he did—”
“Lucas?”
“Oh, God.” Connor raised his hands. “I told him he should tell you, but he said you’d never agree.”
Somehow, Sarah got to the old oak chair. Somehow, she managed to listen without screaming as her brother told her what he and her husband—her dead, sainted husband—had done. How George Hoyt had asked Lucas to find him a buyer for Porcupine Ridge. How Lucas suggested that the obvious buyer was McCaskill, but Hoyt said no; the McCaskill family cheated his a hundred years ago, leaving them land-rich and cash-poor and refusing to buy Hoyt timber, then forced them out of the business altogether a few decades back, and he’d be damned before he did business with the McCaskills.
“That is prime timber land,” she interjected. “Yes, it’s in poor shape, but that’s on George. He could never be bothered to manage the timber. He let blowdown rot. When fire blackened Lynx Mountain, he could have harvested, then restored the land and planted seedlings, but he did nothing. Dad and Grandpa bought that mill to save George, not to punish him.”
“I know.” Connor stood. “I know. Lucas came to me and said Hoyt wanted to sell, but not to me. I was terrified that one of the internationals would snap it up. Not only would we lose out on the land, we’d be giving a major competitor a foothold in our back yard. Literally, right next to the family’s main holdings.”
“Connor, no. You didn’t put the lodge up as collateral on a loan to buy the Hoyt land.” One of the questions she had come here to ask.
“No, I—”
“And what about Jeremy?”
They stopped, interrupted by a knock on the door. Connor gestured and young Matt Kolsrud, in Carhartts and heavy work boots, opened it, glancing at Sarah before speaking. “Boss, I need to talk to you about that extra time off. You said we’d work it out this afternoon.”
“Right, right. Tell Steph what you need”—he gestured toward the woman watching them from the other side of the window—“and that I said it’s okay.”
“Um, sure. Great. Thanks.” Matt backed out and shut the door.
Connor sank heavily into his chair and it squeaked in protest.
“Lucas knew how badly I wanted that land.” he said. “And that George Hoyt would sell it to the girl making ice cream cones at the Dairy Queen before he’d sell it to me. So, being Lucas, he figured a way around that.”
What would her brother say next? She wanted him to hurry up and explain, explain what Lucas had to do with George Hoyt and Porcupine Ridge and the H of their great-grandmother’s journal. And Jeremy.
And Jeremy.
But at the same time, she wanted him to shut up. To not say another word. To pretend her husband had not kept something so big, so terrible, from her.
“I meant to tell you all this yesterday, when we were in Grandpa’s office at the lodge, but then Holly came in, and I wanted you to kno
w first.” Connor rested his forearms on the desk, on top of the file that documented the company history. “Lucas proposed setting up a shell company to buy the land. Every acre, from the ridge down to the lake, including the Hoyt home place. It was a solid plan. The buyer would have no visible ties to McCaskill Land and Lumber, and George would never know we were behind it.”
“Until you started working on the property.”
“The deal would be long closed by then, and our involvement could be easily explained. The mysterious out-of-state buyer would contract with us to clean up the property, blah blah blah. Happens all the time. Usually it’s eighty acres or a couple hundred, not several thousand, but—same difference. But for a purchase that size, we needed financing.”
A sour heat began to grow in her stomach.
“You borrow money all the time. Businesses finance growth every day.”
He eyed her seriously. “We needed a lot of money. And I was afraid that if we requested a loan that size anywhere in the area, word would get out and one of the big boys would swoop in. So we went to Jeremy.”
“My husband loaned you—this shell company—the money to buy Porcupine Ridge?”
“And funds to upgrade the mill. He understood what we needed to do and why. Gave us good terms, a competitive rate. The land itself was the collateral. If we defaulted, he would take title. And he was my brother-in-law. He wasn’t going to screw me and unload it in a fire sale to Georgia-Pacific.”
“When was this?”
“Last summer. Before he got sick.”
When she couldn’t pretend he was under the influence of stress, or chemo. And not telling her after the deal was done, leaving that gnarly task to her brother? She couldn’t decide if that was kind or cruel. One more win for cancer.
“Did he tell you why he didn’t want me to know? Did he tell you what Lucas did?”
Connor made a noise meaning yes. Not everything she and Holly had told him yesterday about the assault had been a surprise.
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