Murder in the Devil's Cauldron (33 page)

"What do you think they're up to?"

Starr shook her head. "I'm not sure. I got
the part about the woman getting some kind of makeover so she would
look right. But why? And who is she and why is she staying in this
motel?"

"You didn't see her?"

"No. The only reason I heard anything was
'cause she was in the bathroom. So I didn’t dare look inside. She
would've seen me for sure."

"Maybe he's cheating someone and she changes
her appearance all the time to look like different people," Charlie
suggested. Then she made a face. "Or something. Kind of lame, isn't
it?"

"Maybe not," Starr said thoughtfully. "But
then who's he cheating and why did he push his wife in the Devil's
Cauldron?"

"Maybe he wants to sue the park 'cause she
had an accident?"

"That'd work, except he told the ranger she
was shopping in Duluth."

"Oh, yeah." Charlie scrunched up her face,
her eyes nearly disappearing as she tried to come up with another
idea.

"But we know she wasn't shopping in Duluth,
and he didn't fake pushing her into the Cauldron," Starr said. "And
it wasn't an accident. He looked around first to make sure no one
saw him before he shoved her in. And he had to know about the
Devil's Cauldron. That once something goes in, it never comes out.
So he didn't want anyone to find her body."

"Like he wanted her to disappear, but no one
knows she's missing," Charlie said. "This is really weird."

Starr nodded. Then she saw the door to the
motel room open and poked Charlie. "Get down."

They swung their legs off the bench and knelt
on the ground, peeking through the space between the table and the
bench. Starr watched in disbelief as a blonde woman came out and
walked around the corner to the back parking lot. She got in a blue
SUV and drove towards the highway. But when she got there, instead
of heading south towards Duluth, the SUV turned right, heading
north.

The girls looked at each other.

"Didn't you say she was supposed to go to
Duluth?" Charlie asked.

"That's what he told her to do," Starr said
slowly. "What's really strange, though. And you're going to think
I'm crazy." She shot Charlie a look. "But she looked a lot like
Mrs. Fowler."

Charlie stared at her. "The one who got
pushed into the Cauldron?"

"Uh huh." Starr looked at Charlie,
confused.

"It's not that I don't believe you, but
you're
sure
you saw her fall in."

"Positive." Although Starr couldn't blame her
for asking. Even
she
had wondered for a moment if she was
suddenly seeing things. She ran the memory through her mind again.
"He told the ranger his wife was shopping in Duluth. He acted as if
he'd been hiking all by himself."

"Do you think maybe he pushed someone else in
the Cauldron and the woman in the motel is his wife?"

Starr shook her head. "If the woman who was
staying with him at the Lodge was his wife, that's who went into
the Cauldron." She stared back towards the motel briefly, sorting
her thoughts. "Which mean this one is a fake. Which means…" Her
voice faded away as she came to a dead end.

Charlie finished the sentence for her. "Which
means," she said with authority, "that they're going to switch
them."

Starr looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"I read a lot," Charlie reminded her. "My
dad's always bugging me about it 'cause he thinks I should go
outside more. 'Course, when I go outside, I just find a nice quiet
place to read. It's a little trickier in the winter, but I found a
bunch of cool places to hide in the Lodge. I'll show 'em to you
sometime. Anyway, I read lots of mysteries. They've got all kinds
of stuff going on and are really neat. So I'll just bet the lady he
pushed into the Cauldron
was
his wife. What if he married
her for her money and then killed her. But now he can't get his
hands on the money, so he got someone who looks a lot like her to
pretend
to be his wife so he can get the money. And,"
Charlie lowered her voice and looked around as if afraid the killer
was about to jump out of the bushes. "I'll bet he's going to kill
the fake when he's done so nobody knows what he did."

Starr stared at her, amazed.

"You don't think so?" Charlie asked, sounding
disappointed.

"I think it's a
great
idea," Starr
said. "And it would explain a lot. But if that's what's going on,
what do we do now? We can't go to the sheriff. They don't believe
me and they'll just tell us to come back when they have the darned
test results. And I'm pretty sure Mr. Donovan already thinks I'm
just a drama queen. And I
can't
tell my mother. She'd ship
me back to that awful farm with my grandparents if she even
thought
I was involved in anything. Maybe your dad?"

Charlie scrunched up her face in thought,
then shook her head. "No. He's always saying what a great
imagination I have, even when I'm being serious. Plus, he has to be
careful 'cause of his job." Then her face lit up. "Do you remember
that woman I told you about last night?"

Starr nodded.

"We'll talk to her. She'll be able to figure
it out," Charlie said confidently.

"Will she believe us?"

"Of course," Charlie said. "You'll see when
we get there."

"Okay." One of the things Starr liked about
Charlie was that she knew all kinds of interesting things and
interesting people. Not like the kids she knew in Minneapolis who
could only talk about what was on TV and what stupid things the
latest pop star was up to. As if anyone cared about that junk,
anyway.

"We can take the Hiking Trail most of the
way," Charlie said as she wheeled her bike out of the picnic area,
all thoughts of lemon meringue pie forgotten.

Viv fumed as she drove to Grand Marais. She
still couldn't believe David expected her to go all the way to
Duluth. And on a
Friday
, to boot. Was he out of his frickin'
mind?

Well, she didn't give a rat's patoot what
David wanted at this point. She was damned if she was going to deal
with that frickin' highway all the way to Duluth, deal with Friday
traffic there and then battle it all the way back up here. On a
Friday
, for god's sake! What the hell was he thinking? Well,
Mr. Go-to-Duluth could just kiss her frickin' behind as far as she
was concerned. That was not how she wanted to spend
her
day,
thank you very much, mister.

And that was all before getting into the
price of gas. She didn't care how much money they were going to
score from his latest con. Right now she was on slender pickings
and the cost of gas down and back in her frickin' SUV would get her
a little too close to empty in the checkbook department. They
should've called them Gas Hog Vehicles. There was nothing sporty
about paying sixty frickin' bucks to the gas station just to get
groceries.

Besides, she could get what she needed in
Grand Marais just fine and still have time for a nice lunch
and
a couple of drinks at that fabulous bar in the marina
she had discovered last night.

Sometimes she didn't think David gave her
enough credit. She'd been helping him with his cons for ages and
had
some
idea of what to do and how to do it by this time,
thank you very much. She was one of the best in the business and he
damn well knew it. Why the hell else would he use her so much. So
it really fried her bananas when he started on the micro-managing
as if she was a frickin' raw beginner. If there was an important
reason behind it, he needed to say so. Otherwise, she would damn
well do what made sense to her.

Besides, she had discovered a wonderful
makeup place in Grand Marais that had exactly what she needed.
She'd already checked it out just in case. Even better, she'd
managed to have the
best
conversation with the gal behind
the counter.
Tres simpatico
. Which was all the more
gratifying since it was the last thing she'd expected this far from
civilization. What was her name, Viv wondered now. Theresa? Tessa?
Well, something like that. In any event, Viv just knew she'd get
her all fixed up.

Anyway, she thought as she passed a big ore
truck, if David was in such a frickin' hurry, he should have said
something sooner. Maybe then she could have gone to Duluth. But
this last minute crap was for seagulls and barn cats. Not a pro
like her.

On his way back from Ruby Cove, Fowler
considered how he was going to figure out which cabin the brat
lived in. He didn't know who her mother was, so following
her
after work wasn't going to work unless he could come up
with a subtle way of finding out that information. On the other
hand, how hard could it be in a place the size of a donut?

Fowler was mulling his options as he pulled
into main parking lot at the Lodge. He decided to have lunch and
then find a good place to watch the trail that went to the cabins.
Maybe there'd be a chance around dinner time.

His thoughts were quickly derailed. As he got
out of his car, he saw the unmistakable bars of the sheriff's car
parked near the entrance to the Lodge. Damn. He hadn't expected the
sheriff to show up this fast. Especially after his conversation
with the park ranger last night. Must have nothing to do, he
thought sourly.

He craned his neck slightly to get a better
angle. Fortunately the sheriff wasn't sitting in the vehicle. He
patted his pockets as if he had forgotten something and slid
smoothly back into his car. A moment later he was driving back out
of the main parking lot. Then, just before reaching the highway, he
turned right and headed into the rear parking lot.

It was a bit of a risk, but he was going to
have to go back to his room. When he had left for Ruby Cove this
morning, he thought he'd only be gone a short time and had left
important ID, credit cards and the majority of his cash locked in
the room safe. If he had to make himself scarce, he needed to get
everything out. A specially made lock box hidden in the car would
hold everything for now. It was a risk he didn't like to take. But
it was made for situations like this.

No one seemed to be around as he made his way
towards the back entrance to the Lodge. He slipped his key into the
lock and stepped into a small room that acted as an air lock. In
the winter it kept the cold out of the Lodge and in the summer it
kept out the rain and bugs. It had one other feature that Fowler
found handy, a small window on the inside that allowed him to see
the hallway before actually stepping inside.

Fowler stopped just inside the little room,
keeping his back against the outside door. If he squatted lightly,
he could just see down the hallway. Although it was empty, he
decided to give it a few minutes. No telling how long ago the
sheriff had arrived and what he might be up to.

After a few minutes of nothing, Fowler
figured it was safe and was just about to head for his room when he
saw movement at the far end of the corridor by the stairs. A moment
later, the sheriff lumbered into view and Fowler froze in
place.

The air lock was dark and he was pretty sure
the sheriff couldn't see him, but he was also fairly sure that any
movement might be visible and might well persuade the guy to take a
closer look.

The sheriff knocked on the door to Fowler's
room. As he waited, he bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, as
if anxious to get this errand taken care of so he could move on to
other things.

Fowler studied him carefully. Big guy. Not
fat, but big. Filled up the hallway. Looked like he'd been a
line-backer in college. Had one of those broad farm boy faces that
were so popular up here in the Minnesota hinterland. Probably said,
"ya sure" and "you betcha" so many times it sounded like a replay
of
Fargo
.

Fowler relaxed. The sheriff didn't look like
any kind of a threat. He'd be willing to bet that the guy knew a
lot about dealing with speeders and bar fights. Anything more than
that was probably beyond him.

Standing in the hallway, his hat in his hand,
Sheriff Mike Thompson felt more like the town fool than the
sheriff. He had knocked on the door a couple of times, but if
anyone was in there, they weren't answering. He was pretty sure the
room was empty. It had that feel. Not to mention that this
was
the North Shore, after all. People didn't come up here
to hide out in their rooms. The guy was probably out hiking like
everyone else in the place.

Worse, he was torn about being here in the
first place.

One of the thing he'd always liked about this
job was the certainty. There were rules. You were either obeying
the law or you were breaking it. There was no in between. And it
was his job to go after the ones who were breaking it.

And there were rules governing that, as well.
So he always knew what to do and when and how.

But all of that seemed to have vanished like
a loon suddenly diving and vanishing under the surface of the lake.
It'd resurface at some point, but you never knew where or when.
They could swim a long way underwater, and usually did, sometimes
popping up so far away you could barely see them.

Right now he felt like the watcher on the
shore. Looking to see where the loon came up so he'd know which way
to go.

Everything had been fine until he'd gotten
that call from the park yesterday. Until then, he'd known the shape
of his days and the kind of trouble he was likely to see. But once
Donovan had called him, all that had come to a crashing halt.