Murder in the Devil's Cauldron (13 page)

"All right," her mother said finally. "But if
it's going to take longer, you'll just have to pick it up some
other time."

Starr almost left it there, but then had
another thought. "If I could get a bike, I could go there on my
own. Then I wouldn't have to bother you."

"Do I look like I'm made of money?" Her
mother gave Starr one of her patented looks of disgust as she
checked the contents of her purse again.

"No," Starr said slowly. "But I figured that
now that you have a job, there might be enough if I could find a
used one real cheap." She gave her mother a tiny, hopeful little
smile. "If I had one, then you wouldn't have to wait for me or take
me anywhere or anything."

"
That
certainly has some appeal," her
mother said sourly. "I'll think about it."

Starr tried to think of something else she
could add to make getting a bike even more attractive to her
mother, but one look at her mother's face told her she had pushed
it just about as far as was safe, so she left it there. She could
check the community bulletin board for a bike ad while they were in
town and get an idea of how much money it would cost before she
said anything more.

"Well, hurry up," her mother said
impatiently. "If you're not in the car in five minutes, I'm leaving
without you."

Starr ran to her room and got her favorite
Minnesota Twins sweatshirt and her purse. The roll of film was in
the desk drawer and she held it in her hand all the way to Grand
Marais, as if it was a magic talisman. This was the first time she
had deliberately tried to get a specific effect and she couldn't
wait to see how it had worked. Up until now, she had mostly worked
on getting the exposure right or cropping the image so it showed
just the important things. Now she wanted to do more than that and
for the first time she felt she had the perfect subject in the
Devil's Cauldron.

"Sit still for god's sake," her mother
snapped as they reached Lutsen.

"Sorry." Starr had been so caught up in her
thoughts that she hadn't been paying attention.

"It's not like you haven't had pictures
developed before, so settle down. You're distracting me."

Starr stared out the window. She didn't
bother explaining why this roll was special because she knew her
mother wouldn't get it. She also knew her mother wasn't in the
slight bit interested. She wondered if there was a camera club up
here. She'd ask at the photo shop when she got there. It would be
nice to have someone to talk to about her photography.

When they got to Grand Marais, her mother
dropped her off at the photo shop, reminding her for the third time
to meet her at the grocery store no later than eleven. Starr
breathed a sigh of relief as her mother drove away and hurried into
the store.

The photo store was pretty much like the one
she had gone to in Minneapolis. It had all kinds of gadgets, bags,
tripods and filters that covered just about anything she might ever
consider doing with a camera. She found the film counter at the
back, saving the rest of the store for later. She really didn't
want to have to wait for her mother to come back to Grand Marais
just to get her film. It might be a long wait. Sometimes when her
mother got the idea that Starr wanted something really badly, she
would make her wait an extra long time. It was as if she wanted
Starr to know who was boss. Or as if she was deliberately trying to
make Starr feel bad for wanting something. Starr had learned to
make it sound as if she didn't care most of the time just so her
mother wouldn't do that, but sometimes that was really hard.

She filled out the envelope with the
processing instructions and gave the film to the guy behind the
counter. "What time can I pick it up?"

He looked at the clock. It was 8:30 now.
"About 11:30. Three hours."

"Is there any chance at all it might be ready
by eleven?" Starr asked. The last place she had used in Minneapolis
often got it done sooner, so maybe this place could, too.

"In a hurry?" He peered at her over the tops
of his glasses as if she might be a suddenly interesting bug.

Starr grinned. "My mom is. She wants to leave
by eleven and I really want to see how these turned out. If I have
to come back another day, it might be a long time before I can get
them."

He smiled. This time it was genuine. "Tell
you what, why don't you stop by about eleven and see. You might be
in luck."

"Thanks." She waited as he put the film
through an opening off to the side. When he turned back to her, she
asked, "Is there a camera club or something like that around
here?"

He took off his glasses and really looked her
over now. "You live around here, then?"

Starr nodded. "My mom just got a job at the
Storm Point Lodge, so that's where I live now. And I really want to
be a photographer, but there's still a lot I don't know."

"Well, there really isn't an official club,"
he said slowly. "A bunch of us get together once a month to look at
each other's stuff. It gets a bit technical sometimes, but you're
welcome to come." He wrote something down and handed the paper to
Starr. "That's when our next meeting is."

"Thanks! Do you ever do classes, too?"

He shook his head. "Not much call. But come
to the meeting and we'll look at your work and give you tips."

"Thanks. I'll see you about eleven, then."
She made her way back to the front of the store, taking her time
now to see what they had.

Up the street, Starr found the tourist
information center and got a map of Grand Marais and picked up some
brochures for the Voyageurs Park and a few other places that looked
interesting. Then she tracked down the community bulletin board
near the center of the small downtown. She grinned as she read an
old flyer for an icehouse parade. There certainly wasn't anything
like that in Minneapolis. Things were a lot more interesting up
here, she thought as she looked at the other flyers and postcards
that had been pinned haphazardly to the board. A lot of them were
frayed or had faded. She wondered if it was because of the weather
or if they were just really old. Most didn't have dates on them, so
it was hard to tell.

Then, just as she was about to move on, she
saw a small card tacked near the bottom of the board that said
"
Bike for Sale! $50! Works Great!
" Starr's breath caught for
a second. That was a good price. Her mother might just be willing
to pay that. Especially since bikes were a lot more than that. She
wrote down the contact information and tucked it in her purse.
Maybe she had finally gotten lucky, she thought as she walked up a
spit of land that went out to the lighthouse. A bike would solve
all kinds of problems. She could go where she wanted and not have
to bug her mom.

That idea gained strength when Starr got to
the lighthouse. It was a small lighthouse and not very photogenic.
Although, she might get something good if she came really early in
the morning and if it was kind of foggy. What really interested her
was the sign next to the lighthouse parking lot that announced
"Artist's Point". Intrigued, she followed a narrow path past the
sign and onto a small peninsula.

What she saw next made her wish she had
brought her camera. Everywhere she looked there were rock walls of
different colors and shapes and textures. It was a photographer's
dream come true. Wherever she looked, Starr saw something she just
had to photograph. It was the most spectacular place she had ever
seen. The next time she was in Grand Marais, she was going to bring
lots and lots of film.

After Karen dropped her daughter off at the
photo shop, she drove into Grand Marais slowly, checking out the
shops as she went. It was tiny by Minneapolis standards, but she
saw a number of places that at least looked
interesting
.
Whether they'd actually have what she wanted was, of course,
another story. For her, though, even the
idea
that they just
might have the perfect something was enough right now.

Unlike Minneapolis, she found a place to park
as soon as she turned the corner, something that improved her mood
immediately. She checked her watch and then started down the
street. It wasn't until she reached the end of the first block that
Karen realized she had practically raced to the end of the block
and had no idea what she had seen. Had no idea, in fact, if she had
passed a boutique, a hardware store, or even a frickin' pool with a
giant waterslide. The lessons learned living in Minneapolis had
automatically kicked in and she had jumped right into big city
mode, put on the blinders and moved hell bent for leather to get
where she was going.

But she wasn't in Minneapolis any more. She
wasn't in anything approximating a big city and she didn't have to
armor up. She stood on the corner and looked back down the block
she had just blindly walked past. She reminded herself that she
didn't have to get back to the Lodge until later. She could, in
fact, come in as late as she wanted because she was the boss. It
now dawned on her like a slow clear sunrise, that she could be a
tourist and take all the time she wanted.

All at once Karen felt bemused and amazed and
thunderstruck all at the same time. The emotions mixed together
like a kaleidoscope and she made her way over to a bench on the
corner and sat down. For the first time in god knew how long, she
realized she could finally allow herself to relax. Just being on
her own with no demands, no time constraints and nothing she
absolutely had to do made her feel as if she had suddenly woken up
in someone else's life. She looked back down at the row of shops
she had just dashed past and was glad her daughter had wanted to
come this morning. If not for that, she would still be darting
about like a headless chicken. Not that she'd ever let her daughter
know.

Karen's lips tightened as she thought of
Stella. The kid irritated the hell out of her and she had only let
her come this morning because the slightly hopeful look on the
kid's face had stirred up the guilt pot. But now she was glad. It
was the perfect excuse to take time -
real
time - to window
shop and just enjoy the day. Ever since her lovely,
oh-so-responsible husband had just upped and left, Karen had had to
struggle to pay the bills. Finding a decent job made it all the
harder, especially in Minnesota where the pay was shit.

Until now.

She wondered now how she had managed to get
through the past three years. Even more curious was the feeling
that it had gone so quickly. Especially since every day of those
three years had been a hard slog - as if time was made of jello and
she was nothing more than a bit of fruit stuck in the middle. And
yet now all that was in the past. As if it had all just whizzed by
on the super highway of life.

Not that she could relax yet. If anything,
the events of the past three years (hell, the past thirteen years,
if she was going to be totally honest) had taught her that things
could change over night. Everything peachy today and shot to hell
the next. Sort of like suddenly being run over by a train roaring
through your living room when you had no idea there were tracks
within a hundred miles.

But maybe, just maybe, if she was very
careful and extra diligent, luck might possibly be canted in her
direction for the first time since she had married that bastard.
This time she could save up, so that when the tornado on the
horizon finally whomped her house straight into Wisconsin, she
wouldn't be carried along with it and be squashed flat when it
landed, like a modern day version of The Wizard of Oz.

Karen took a deep breath and then exhaled
slowly, letting the tension drain out. If nothing else, she could
relax for the next few hours. And the first order of business was
finding herself something new to wear. While she'd gotten good at
mixing and matching the few good outfits she had, she knew everyone
at the Lodge had noticed that the same few pieces were getting
recycled a little too often. From now on, each time she got a
check, she was going to get something to wear to work until she
finally had a decent wardrobe and actually looked like the general
manager of the Lodge should look, instead of someone who shopped at
Wal-Mart or Goodwill.

As Karen got up and started strolling back
down the block, she decided she was going to pretend she had never
been married. Never had a kid. And had never lived through a
hellish three years. In fact, for the next few hours she was going
to have a real life.

A dress in one of the windows caught her eye
as she reached the middle of the block. It had a gorgeous peach
jacket and Karen stopped in her tracks, entranced. The name of the
store was written in beautiful gilt script and looked expensive.
She hesitated. Frugality had been her middle name for so long that
it wasn't easy to even think about walking into a store that didn't
have the word thrift as part of its name.

Her gaze went back to the jacket. It couldn't
hurt to at least
look
. Who knows, she thought with a small,
almost unrecognizable surge of hope, it might even be on sale. Or,
if not, it might even conceivably
go
on sale in the near
future.

Karen straightened her shoulders and went
in.

Fowler began the drive to their honeymoon on
the North Shore as if he had every intention of taking I-35 the
entire way. The freeway had long since replaced old Highway 61 for
the first part of the trip and he knew Diana wouldn't have any idea
of his plans until they reached Hinckley. He would surprise her
there to get the most impact.