Death Stalks Door County (21 page)

Cubiak scoffed. “Sounds apocryphal.”

“Maybe. Those kinds of clouds usually form only at high altitudes. I've seen them a couple of times in different places, but there it is. You can see for yourself, and it happens here only during the summer. Has something to do with the wind currents, I believe.”

As she spoke a draft of cool air blew across the deck. Cate laughed and held up a second key. It was brass and half the size of the one that operated the gate. “Now the house,” she said.

They entered through a rear door.

“Hello,” Cate shouted twice into the heavy silence. “See, I told you. Nobody home,” she said.

The vacant house had an eerie, lived-in feel. The back porch smelled of fresh paint. Rain jackets and boots were set out in the mud room. A set of earthenware dishes was displayed on open shelves in the kitchen. Fresh daisies filled a vase on the rough-hewn table by the windows. The pantry was stocked with canned goods and bottled water. The refrigerator held perishables and a bottle of Riesling chilling on its side. Cate picked it up and showed Cubiak. “German, 1918.”

Cubiak looked around. He couldn't imagine such extravagance. “Why all this?”

“Paranoia? Grandfather always expected the worst and wanted his family to be prepared. He even added a special codicil to his will establishing a fund to pay for the upkeep of the house, in case any of us ever needed to get away,” Cate said.

“Away from what?”

Cate raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Who knows? Pretty crazy, huh?”

She kept talking as he followed her up the rear stairwell. “You'd think ‘The Wood' refers to the trees outside, but it doesn't. It's for the floors. Each room has a different kind of wood floor made from lumber that was locally grown and milled. The hall is birch from Washington Island. The kitchen, maple from a grove near Ephraim. There's oak in the living room.”

On the second floor landing, Cate stripped off her jacket. She wore a black tank top and smelled of sweat and suntan oil. “One more,” she said and started up the next flight. Close behind her, Cubiak was suddenly aware of her long bare limbs and the fact they were alone in this strange, isolated place.

“Grandmother's painting studio,” Cate announced, stepping into a large room that faced the water. The salon was airy and full of light, with stretched canvases and folded easels stacked in a corner.

“Here's my favorite, the nursery,” she said, crossing the hall. The nursery was a storehouse of childhood treasures. Antique toys and games. Delicate porcelain dolls. A three-story Victorian dollhouse. Intricately carved wooden cars. On a table under a high window, an elaborate electric train that circled a village of wooden cottages and shops.

Cate turned over a miniature pink house. “Look at the inside, how tiny and perfect everything is.” As she set it down, the front of her shirt fell away, revealing the soft mounds of her breasts. Cubiak felt a stirring.

“I loved hanging out here when I was a kid. Even school was fun,” Cate said as she set the house down.

“School?” Cubiak snapped from his reverie. “You went to school at The Wood?”

“I played school. Mother and Aunt Ruby
went
to school here.” Cate swept aside a beige curtain, revealing a miniclassroom with two old-fashioned desks bolted to the floor. “Two hours every day, all summer. Grandfather was their teacher. He considered schools in general too lax and developed his own instructional methods.” Cate pulled down a large wall map, its world view hopelessly outdated. “Odd as he was I liked Grandfather. He was always nice to me.”

“And to your mother and Aunt Ruby?”

“To them, he was the law. Mother sometimes forgot her lessons and got her knuckles rapped with a ruler. But not Ruby. Aunt Ruby never forgot anything.”

It wasn't all drudge, she explained, as they returned to the first floor. They had fun, too. Parties and friends. “From what I heard, Beck was a regular guest when the girls were teenagers. He had Grandfather's imprimatur. Grandfather felt the two families came from the same mold. His had made a fortune in breweries; the Becks got rich with their stone quarry. Beer and bricks, Grandfather liked to say. He probably envisioned one of his girls marrying Beck.”

They were in a room with burgundy walls, dark leather furniture, and an iron fireplace. The fireplace was flanked by heraldic sconces and the mounted heads of deer and moose. In the corner, a Kodiak bear reared upright on its hind legs, its teeth and claws glistening. A small brass plaque put the animal at nine hundred pounds, taken in Alaska a half century earlier.

“Grandfather's study. He was a hunter.” Cate patted the bear. “Grandma was furious when he taught Ruby and Mother to shoot. The guns are all still here, locked up, of course.”

A black-and-white photo on a side table showed the proud father holding a Weatherby Mark V and standing between his daughters. Cubiak read the inscription: “Ruby and Rosalinde.” They were beautiful young women, relaxed and smiling, cradling their own rifles in their arms, preserved forever in a portrait of patriarchy and privilege. “They look like twins.”

“A lot of people made that mistake,” Cate said. As she moved alongside him, Cubiak caught a whiff of her perfume. “But they were totally different. Ruby was stubborn and strong like Grandfather. My mother was fragile, always doctoring with one thing or another. Nerves, mostly. That's why I came up here for the summers. I liked to run around, do things, and Ruby and Dutch didn't seem to mind the racket.

“My mother always said that Grandfather loved Ruby best, but after she married Dutch against his wishes, he cut her off completely, wouldn't even allow her to see Grandmama when she was dying. My mother sneaked her into the hospital late one night. Mother said Ruby never understood how her father could be so faithful to a wife he didn't love and so easily discard a daughter he adored.”

They had moved from the study to the living room. “I promised you lunch, didn't I? Make yourself comfortable, and I'll pull together something to eat,” Cate said.

Cubiak sank into a soft overstuffed chair and looked out at an unblemished expanse of trees, water, and sky, a view reflected in the soft watercolors and oils on the walls. Mirror images. Double images.

He wished he'd asked for a beer. That should be okay, he thought, as he held out his hand, amazed at how steady it was.

He was nearly asleep when Cate padded in and set a plate of sandwiches on the coffee table. “Here,” she said as she nudged his knee and handed him a glass and a chilled bottle of Pilsner. Then she poured one for herself and sat on the sofa facing him, her bare feet tucked up under her.

They talked easily, and, later, each would remember that it was the other who had reached out first across the table. There was longing and familiarity in the touch, an acknowledgment of unspoken attraction and need as they came together. Pressing into Cate, Cubiak escaped the sexual limbo to which he'd been confined since Lauren's death. He had forgotten the sweet sorrow and joy of complete surrender, and when it was over, he lurched away a happy man. Intimacy affirmed not just his masculinity but his humanity. It confirmed a belief in life and hope and the future. He felt whole again, but his exhilaration was short lived. Guilt waited patiently in the corner, and as he relaxed against the soft cushions, it stole forward and claimed him once again.

When Cate finished in the kitchen, she found Cubiak on the deck, a lit cigarette in his hand and two butts crushed at his feet.

“Dave?”

A twitch in his shoulders signaled that he'd heard her, but he didn't turn around. Keeping her eyes down and stepping lightly, Cate approached him.

“Dave?”

Cubiak remained with his back toward her. He'd been unerringly faithful to Lauren, had withstood frequent sometimes mean badgering from other men on the force because of it. After she died, he never imagined wanting anyone else. How could he even look at another woman after that last spiteful remark he'd made to his wife?

“We have to go,” Cate said. She reached out and touched his arm.

Cubiak jerked away. Had he anticipated this happening? Was that why he'd come with Cate? He knew he was being unfair to her, but he couldn't help it.

“Ruby's unveiling is tonight. I have to drive you back and get ready.”

T
heir easy companionability had disappeared, and they rode back in an awkward silence. “You can't go on like this,” Cate said at one point, but he didn't respond and she kept her thoughts to herself for the rest of the drive.

“This is fine,” he said at the park entrance. Cate hit the brakes.

“I'm sorry,” he said as he got out.

“For what happened? Or the way you reacted?” The questions were quick and arrow sharp.

He reddened. “I don't know. It's complicated.”

A wave of something like sympathy passed over her face. “I know.”

He wanted to say more but someone behind tooted a horn. He closed the door and Cate drove away, just as he had the night they met.

Cubiak had been gone longer than expected and it was nearly half past five when he reached Jensen Station. The table wasn't set but Ruta had prepared a cold supper. “No time to cook,” she said apologetically.

Cubiak wasn't hungry but took a ham sandwich to please her. “Entwhistle?” he said.

“I find no one.”

“That's okay. There's time.” He wished he believed that.

Cubiak ate without thinking and then went up to shower and change.

By the time he arrived at Birchwood Lodge, the lobby and two front parlors were full. He saw Bathard talking with a couple across the room and recognized more than a dozen locals with prominent names. The other guests were artsy types, outsiders. Women draped in silver jewelry. Several men wore cashmere blazers and silk ascots.

A beaming Martha Smithson grabbed Cubiak's wrist. “Like old times,” she said, her face shining despite a fresh layer of powder.

“Where's Ruby?”

“Probably throwing up somewhere. She gets horribly nervous before these things.” Martha nudged him conspiratorially. “Artistic temperament.”

Cubiak couldn't tell if she approved or not. He murmured something noncommittal and then slipped off. At the bar, a waiter offered white wine. He asked for tonic with lime, and as he waited, Ruby materialized in the main lobby. She appeared without fanfare and so simply dressed in a long fawn tunic, she made the others look garish by comparison. Nonplussed, she welcomed her admirers with handshakes and air kisses as a cadre of greeters ushered the audience into the grand ballroom. On the far wall, a silky cream tarp hung from the ceiling to the floor.

Cubiak hardly noticed the display. He was remembering the afternoon and looking for Cate. Whom did he think he was kidding? He'd wanted her. At least that much he could admit.

Martha reappeared at Cubiak's side. “That's funny,” she whispered.

“What?” he said. It's complicated, he'd told Cate. But wasn't that true of life? Wasn't everything complicated?

“I'd heard it was a two-sided weaving. So why's it hanging against the wall like that so you can't see the other side?”

“I don't know,” he said as Ruby stepped onto the dais. Beck and several others were waiting and Ruby was smiling broadly. “She doesn't seem to mind.”

Martha snapped a bra strap. “Go figure.”

Beck waited for the room to quiet and then introduced the director of the state cultural association, who gave a short but flattering speech about the guest of honor. Asked to say a few words, Ruby simply thanked everyone for coming.

When she finished, Little Miss Cherry Blossom was escorted to the front of the stage. Beck handed the eight-year-old a cord that extended to the top of the sheeting. With Ruby on the far side, the child tugged and the tarpaulin slipped to the floor.

“Ladies and gentlemen, ‘Trees of Our Lives,'” the curator intoned. Ruby did not correct him. The audience's appreciative murmurs swelled into polite applause.

Beck said a few words in closing, the principals stepped down, and the stage was quickly moved aside, giving the audience a chance to approach the featured piece.

The weaving was abstract, irregularly shaped, and large, at least eight feet high and five feet across at its widest point. To Cubiak, it looked like something Picasso would create if he were a weaver. Great blobs of dirty sheep's wool were superimposed on chains and loops and braids of yarn in rich shades of dark green and red that flowed in random streams from top to bottom with ribbons of blue and gold interspersed. In the entire piece, there was only one recognizable image: a large bird woven into the upper right-hand corner of the tapestry. It had the hooked beak of an eagle or thunderbird; turquoise beads dripped like tears down its face.

At his side, Martha provided her own running commentary. “The warp, the part you don't see, has hundreds of yards of thread, and has to be set up just right to achieve the desired effect, the pattern, that's in the weft, the part we see. Ruby's outdone herself this time for sure. I've counted at least twenty-five colors and a dozen different textures. Then she had to add the beading. Backbreaking work. She'd done a little with that before. This is the most. But it's really effective. Dramatic impact.”