Murder in the Devil's Cauldron (7 page)

She looked straight down. The lake was quiet
today. Instead of the wild crashing waves of yesterday, this
morning the water lapped lazily against the giant rocks at the base
of the cliff. It was almost as if Lake Superior had become a lake
instead of an ocean. This place
was
full of magic, Starr
mused. So far everything was different than it had been yesterday
and she wondered if it would change again later to something
entirely different.

Then Starr got the idea that maybe this whole
place was just one giant shapeshifter in disguise. She grinned. Now
she
was
being fanciful.

She looked down at the cliffs again and tried
to see if there were any interesting shapes she could photograph.
They were so huge, thought, that it was difficult to isolate just
one spot, so she peered through the lens and scanned the cliffs.
Then the colors and enormous cracks jumped out at her and suddenly
she could see the most interesting pictures filling her frame. She
was just sorry she didn't have more film. She could easily go
through her entire supply right here.

As she snapped her first picture, Starr felt
as if she was in paradise.

Almost as if she had a wand, after all.

By the time Karen crawled out of bed, she was
already running late. She looked at the clock and groaned, then
staggered into the shower. As the hot water beat against her neck
and ran down her body in a hot cleansing flow, she mentally kicked
herself for staying up so late the night before. But it had been a
long day and she had been tired. Hell, it had been a long week that
had followed a long couple of years.

Had anyone asked her how tired she had been,
she could never have described it in a way that would give a real
sense of the deep, abiding weariness that went down to the bone and
took everything with it. On top of that, the couch had been
unexpectedly comfortable. It looked lumpy and old and she had
expected the springs to be shot and the cushions to feel like lumps
of cement.

Instead, she had sunk in deeply and the
cushions, instead of resisting her, had taken her in like welcoming
arms. After that, even
thinking
about getting up had taken
more energy than she could summon. Only when the hands on the clock
began inching their way towards two-thirty had she pried herself
out and into bed. Unfortunately, this morning she was paying the
price for that self-indulgence.

It wasn't until she started looking around
for her purse that Karen realized she hadn't seen her daughter yet.
She closed her eyes and sighed. It was one of those heavy,
dear-god-in-heaven, straight from the gut sighs that said more than
words ever could.

She massaged her forehead against the
threatening headache. Please tell me she isn't still sound asleep
and I have to drag her out of bed, she thought. Not with the night
I had and not when I'm already so frickin' late. She sighed again
as she started down the hall to Stella's room. Although this sigh
wasn't as heavy as the first, it held enough of the feeling in the
first one to be at least a pretty close sibling.

Karen poked her head into Stella's room, but
was greeted only by an unmade bed.

Damn that girl. She was never where she was
supposed to be. Probably wandering about somewhere and now she was
going to be late for work, and all because her daughter was
irresponsible and thoughtless. Karen sighed as she put on her
jacket. She just didn't see how she was going to get through
another six years before that kid was out of the house. If only her
ex had taken her when he had left. Then she sighed again. If wishes
were horses, she thought grimly.

She looked around the cabin first, hoping
that for once it would be easy.

But, of course it wasn't. It never was when
she really wanted it to be.

Then she headed for the lake. It was sort of
on the way and if Stella wasn't there, she'd just go on without her
and the kid could starve all day as far as she was concerned.

Then she remembered that the truck with the
rest of their belongings was coming today. Someone needed to be
there and it sure as hell couldn't be her. Which meant it had to be
her daughter. Which also meant that she had to spend the time
tracking the kid down.

As Karen tramped through the woods, she
thought it might just be her luck that the kid had gone exploring
some place exotic and she'd have to spend half her morning looking
for her. God forbid it should be easy for her even once.

But, surprise surprise, as Karen came out of
the trees, she saw Starr standing at the edge of the cliff taking
more pictures. Karen had never seen anyone so intent on taking
pictures of everything. That might not have been so bad, except
they were seldom pictures of anything that made any sense.

Not for the first time she wondered why, if
she had to have a kid, she couldn't at least have had a normal kind
of girl. One who wore dresses and talked about makeup and boys.

"What are you taking pictures of now?" she
asked as she reached the cliff.

"The rocks," the girl answered, not bothering
to even look away from her camera.

"Rocks." Karen shook her head. "Why don't you
take pictures of people or the Lodge or something interesting."

"These
are
interesting."

Karen sighed. "Take pictures of them later.
We're late for breakfast. I need to get to work and you need to be
back at the cabin to meet the movers when they get here."

"Today?" Now she looked up from the camera in
dismay.

"Yes, today. We're lucky they came right
away. Now pack up and let's go."

"I'll meet you there."

"No, you won't. If I go, you'll start taking
pictures again and then I'll have to come back and pry you away. I
don't have time for that and I don't have time to meet the movers.
So pack up and let's get going. And no dawdling. Do that on your
own time."

It wasn't until she saw the buffet that Starr
realized she was absolutely famished. The serving spoons were huge,
so she started by dropping a big glob of hash browns on her plate.
She was about to take a second helping when her mother grabbed the
spoon.

"Finish that first," she said. "If you're
still hungry, you can come back for more. I don't want you wasting
food. Especially since we're new. And you don't want just the hash
browns. Take some eggs and sausages. And some fruit." She looked
around as she said this, as if to make sure no one was paying
attention to them.

Except they probably were, Starr thought.
They were new here, so she'd be willing to bet everyone was
checking them out right about now. Just the way kids did at
school.

Starr eyed the tub of hash browns regretfully
and moved on to the scrambled eggs. Mostly she didn't like the way
most places made them. They were usually too slimy and made her
want to throw up. She had once passed on the eggs despite her
mother's orders and her mother had plopped a huge mess of them on
her plate and then made her eat all of them, even though they kept
making her gag. So now Starr obediently put a tiny spoonful on her
plate. She could always hide them under her napkin when her mother
wasn't looking.

She also avoided the sausages because they
always reminded her of Babe and she just couldn't bring herself to
eat a cute little pig. Fortunately, her mother had moved on and
didn't notice. However, just to be safe, Starr took a skinny sliver
of melon. She figured that when she was done with this, she could
get more hash browns. The way she felt right now, she could
probably eat the entire tub.

She put her plate on the table her mother
selected and went back for orange juice. After that, Starr only
took a little each time she went back to the buffet until they
finally took the food away. And, even then, she managed to snag a
few biscuits and stuff them into her backpack without her mother
noticing. She wanted to try for the orange marmalade, but it wasn't
in little packages, so she had to pass on that. She eyed the bowl
of jam and wondered if they had little bottles of it in the kitchen
that she could borrow and return later.

"Honestly, Stella," her mother said after she
returned from the buffet for the fifth time. "You're acting like a
pig."

"I'm hungry," Starr said. "Besides, you said
I could go back for more if I cleaned my plate. And I did."

Her mother shook her head and sighed.

Starr hated that sigh. Her mother did it all
the time and it drove Starr nuts. She wished her mother would just
come out with whatever she was thinking instead of just sighing as
if Starr was always screwing up. But Starr had learned to keep her
mouth shut about certain things, and the sigh was definitely one of
those things.

As Starr waited for her mother to finish her
breakfast, she noticed that they had left a bunch of the biscuits
in the basket at the end of the buffet. Maybe she could snag a few
of them after her mother left. But it seemed like her mother was
eating extra slowly this morning and the other employees stopped by
the basket on their way out. Starr watched in agony as the mound of
biscuits gradually got smaller and smaller. If her mother didn't
finish soon, there wouldn't be any left at all.

Finally, though, her mother polished off the
last of her fruit. "Do you remember where to take your dishes when
you're done?"

Starr nodded, her mouth full of hash
browns.

"Stella?"

"Yes, I remember," she said as soon as she
swallowed.

"Lunch is from eleven until one and you're on
your own for that. But I expect you to meet me here at 5:30 for
dinner. Understood?"

"Yes."

"Good." Her mother pulled an envelope out of
her purse and handed it to Starr. "Here's the money for the movers.
Make sure everything's there before you give it to them. The last
thing I need is to have to track something down later." Her mother
looked at her watch, picked up her dishes and walked away.

Starr waited until she was sure her mother
wasn't going to come back, the scurried over to the buffet table
and snagged the last three biscuits for later.

By the time she was finished, Starr was the
only one left in the employee dining area. She carefully carried
her dirty dishes to the little window at the far end of the buffet
table. Behind the dangling strips of plastic a conveyor belt
carried the dirty dishes away. She had never seen anything like it
before. There hadn't really been time last night to pay attention
to what happened to the dishes when she put them on the belt, so
now she watched them slowly roll away until they vanished. She
grinned as she put the empty glass on and watched as it, too,
disappeared.

Returning to the table, she put on her
backpack, now nicely loaded with biscuits, and picked up her camera
bag. She started down the hallway to the front door, pausing as she
reached the double doors to the kitchen. Visions of the orange
marmalade danced temptingly through her mind and she wondered if
she'd get in trouble if she tried to get a jar of it before she
went home.

Her mother hadn't said anything about staying
away from the kitchen. Of course, she knew what her mother would
probably say if she saw Starr in there. But her mother wasn't here
and Starr really wanted some of that jam. If she was super quick,
her mother wouldn't see her. And if she didn't know about it, then
she couldn't get mad at her.

Starr bit her lip as she tried to decide. The
lure of the jam proved to be too much. She pushed one of the doors
open slightly and peered through the opening.

"Well, kid? Coming or going?"

Starr stared up at a man who reminded her of
a really big gingerbread cookie. He was wearing a big white apron
covered with splotches of all kinds of things.

"Do you think I could take some of that
orange marmalade home with me?" she asked.

"Do you work here?" he asked.

"My mom does," Starr said, trying to sound a
lot more confident than she felt. She wondered if he was going to
turn her in or, worse yet, track her mother down. Maybe trying to
score some of the jam hadn't been the best idea, after all.

His lips twitched a little and Starr wondered
if he was trying not to sneeze. "I see," he said finally. "In that
case, why don't we see if there's any orange marmalade left." He
pulled open the door.

Starr looked around quickly, but her mother
was nowhere to be seen, so she followed him into the kitchen.

Once inside, it was hard to figure out where
to look first. Bottles and cans were stacked on metal racks all the
way to the ceiling. There was a lot of polished metal everywhere,
great bit pots hung from the ceiling and all kinds of other things
that looked like something out of a science fiction movie. On top
of that, people wearing aprons were rushing around the room in a
great flurry, giving Starr the feeling she was in the center of a
storm.

Starr watched the activity with wide eyes
while trying to keep close to the giant gingerbread man as they
crossed the room and went into an enormous pantry on the other side
of the kitchen. He reached up and took down a big jar. Her eyes
widened as he handed it to her. It was the orange marmalade.

She looked up at him. "Can I take it
home?"

"Of course," he said. "And now you know where
it's kept, too." He winked at her and then walked past her back
into the kitchen.

Starr hesitated for only a split second,
dazed at her good luck. Then quickly tucked the jar into her
backpack and went back into the kitchen. Her benefactor was deep in
conversation with one of the other people, so she quickly found the
door and soon was hurrying down the hallway and out of the
Lodge.