The Northwoods Chronicles (15 page)

Julia stopped by a week later to see how the
remodel was progressing. Her eyes were puffy and they had dark
circles under them.

Louise, feeling like the epitome of the
counseling neighbor, put the pot of coffee on and they sat in the
screen porch, where the air was a little fresher, and talked while
the contractor installed the kitchen cabinets.

“It’s my son,” Julia said. “He’s a drunk and a
druggie and I’m afraid his wife is going to divorce him. I’d hate
to lose her. She’s the daughter I never had. They live downstate,
where he’s been in and out of treatment facilities. I’m thinking of
having them move closer so I can keep an eye on him. Otherwise, I’m
sure Marcy will leave him, disappear with my grandsons. I don’t
think I could bear that.”

“
Marcy?”
Louise said.

Julia nodded as she dabbed her napkin at
smudging mascara, then wiped at her nose, completely ignoring her
coffee.

Louise felt a surge of affection for Julia, and
wanted to help her grieving friend. The thought flitted through her
mind that it was a well-justified offer.

She felt a flush of pleasure in the freedom of
accepting that which has been preordained.

“I don’t think Howard’s coming back,” Louise
said, trying to sound matter-of-fact without sounding pleased, “so
I’m thinking of moving to a smaller house. Think Marcy’d like a
place with a new kitchen?”

The first indication
Cara Trenton had that all was not right at The Tickled Bear was at
nine a.m. when Isaac Knotts gave the door a brisk knuckling, and
Babs didn’t come to open it. Isaac waited, knocked again, and, by
that time, Cara had come out of her gallery next door to sweep snow
off the sidewalk before it turned to ice.

“Where’s Babs?” Isaac wanted to know, and he
took the heavy box from his shoulder and set it on the step.

“Haven’t seen her yet this morning,” Cara said.
“Was she expecting you?”

“Delivery every Thursday at nine a.m.,” Isaac
said. “Christmas jam and mincemeat today.”

Cara shrugged. Isaac pounded so hard on the
shiny blue door with the closed sign that the miniature sleigh
bells that Babs had hung on the inside of the door jangled. He
waited another minute, then shouldered his heavy box and turned
toward his truck.

“Want me to hold on to that until she gets
here?” Cara asked. “She might just be running late.”

“That’d be great,” Isaac said. “I’ve got a full
morning of deliveries across county.”

Cara held her gallery door open and Isaac put
the box down on her countertop. “What kind of jam?”

“Today? Cranberry banana. My granddad’s special
holiday recipe.”

Mike, Cara’s parrot, squawked and Isaac gave him
a scratch on the back of his neck.

“I’ll have to try some.”

“Buy it from Babs,” Isaac said. “I don’t compete
with my retailers.”

Isaac left, and Cara and Mike had a long talk
about him that would sound like nonsense to the uninitiated. But
Babs’s doorway was busy, and Babs was nowhere to be seen. By ten
o’clock, Cara had taken in a two-box delivery from UPS; three
hand-spun, hand-knit sweaters and a tote from a hippie kind of
woman wearing Birkenstock shoes and smelling faintly of patchouli
oil; and a slim letter package from FedEx. All for Babs. By ten
after ten, a small group of women, surely the wives of ice
fishermen, stood around in their down coats waiting for the lights
to go on, the sign to flip and Babs to open the door, revealing her
bright, cheery and perfectly made-up smile.

But the sign said it would open at ten, and, by
ten-twenty, the women wandered away, muttering to themselves,
adjusting their earmuffs and tossing their scarves. The payoff
money their husbands had allowed them in exchange for guilt-free
fishing time was clearly burning holes in their uptown tiny purses,
and Babs had just the right kind of expensive trinkets, clothes and
accessories they wanted to buy. But they didn’t have too much time
to whine, because Kimberly had opened the dress shop across the
street, so they could go waste a little time over there and then
come back. Babs must have had some kind of emergency. Spilled
coffee on her lap on the way to the shop or something. Who hadn’t
had
that
happen at least once?

Cara Trenton, who owned the photography gallery
next door to The Tickled Bear, knew Babs would have even opened
early, had she seen that group of well-heeled women. Nobody in
White Pines Junction would ignore free-floating tourist dollars.
Especially winter dollars. She tried calling the shop, in case Babs
was counting receipts or restocking and had lost track of time, and
when she still hadn’t opened the door by eleven, Cara called the
house. When there was no answer, she called Gordie at the taxidermy
shop. Gordie answered with his big voice, which always surprised
Cara, because Gordie was not a big man. He was small and
meticulous, good at his art, but perhaps the big he-men who fished
these lakes for gigantic fish needed to deal with a big-voiced man,
so Gordie gave them one. But when you met him personally, in his
studio filled with exquisitely mounted fish and wildlife, he was
soft spoken and soft-handed. A gentle man with a gruff telephone
voice.

Cara told Gordie that Babs hadn’t opened the
shop yet, which seemed to be news to Gordie. He said he’d put the
“Be Right Back” sign up at his shop and then run home to check on
her. He sounded sufficiently worried, or so Cara told Sheriff
Withens later.

By noon, Gordie was at The Tickled Bear. Cara
wandered over, as the group of women was still at Kimberly’s,
trying on hats and things, and Gordie asked Cara to call the
sheriff while he searched the shop. Babs was not at home, Gordie
said. Her empty coffee cup was in the kitchen sink, as usual, her
car was gone, her purse was gone, the bathroom smelled like shampoo
and perfume, just like normal. Her car hadn’t broken down on the
usual route between home and the shop—she always drove the straight
route down County Road K into town—and Gordie was starting to
worry.

Cara called the sheriff while she watched the
women exit Kimberly’s, each with a shopping bag, and look toward
her gallery. They squinted at The Tickled Bear and its “closed”
sign, then started across the street to her. She welcomed them in,
and told them there had been a family emergency next door, and Babs
wasn’t likely to open that day. They grumbled, but Mike the parrot
charmed them, and they spent enough time talking with him and
listening to him crack jokes, that a few bought framed photographs.
Photographs of the local herd of albino deer were always a popular
choice. Those and anything with a bald eagle in it.

About two o’clock, the sheriff drove away.
Gordie came out of The Tickled Bear, locked the door behind him,
came into Cara’s gallery, and collapsed into a hand-hewn pine-log
chair. “I’m a suspect,” he said with a mix of awe, surprise, and
regret. “I’m worried sick, and the first person they look at is a
spouse for a murder—murder, Cara! The second most popular theory is
a lover that she might’ve run off with.”

Cara shook her head. Hard to imagine what Gordie
was feeling.

“Hi, Gordie,” Mike said, and flapped.

“Hi, Mike.”

“I love you, Gordie,” Mike said.

“I love you too, Mike,” Gordie said and gave the
parrot a wan smile. Then he turned back to Cara. “A lover! Do you
think Babs had a lover and has run off with him? Tell me, Cara,
please, god, tell me if you think you’ve seen her carrying on with
somebody. Has she confided anything like that?”

“Of course not,” Cara said. “You’ve got to be
kidding.”

“Well? Then what? Where is she? I got up at
five, ran, showered, and headed for the studio. She was still in
bed.”

“Did she have to run into the city for anything?
Did she have an appointment that you didn’t know about? Was Cindy
or somebody supposed to open the shop for her, forgot, and it’s all
a big misunderstanding?”

“We’ve been over all that. We called Cindy, and
she didn’t know anything. There was nothing in Babs’s appointment
book. I don’t get it.” He shook his head and ran fingers through
his hair. “I’m scared to death.”

“Is the sheriff getting up a search party?” Cara
asked. Mike started to fuss, so Cara picked him up and put him on
her shoulder, where Mike pulled strands of Cara’s curly red hair
through his beak. Mike loved to preen his friends.

Gordie nodded, his head low, his eyes filling
with tears. “Tomorrow. He wants to wait twenty-four hours for her
to show up. I’m scared to death,” he whispered.

Cara fiddled with a pen on her countertop, not
knowing how to comfort her friend, feeling inadequate, and oddly
blessed that she lived alone with her camera gear, darkroom, and
Mike, whom she had inherited and who would outlive her by about
fifty years.

Gordie sat in the pine chair for another ten
minutes, head in his hands, and finally, without a word, got up,
got into his truck and drove away. Cara started sorting and
cataloging negatives, a mindless job she hated.

On their way home, Cara and Mike stopped at
Margie’s for a chicken Caesar salad, and the diner was abuzz with
the latest news. A foot had been found at the edge of the ice at
Minnow Lake by little Katarina Svensen and her dog Chewy. Sheriff
Withens had Lexy identify the toenail polish color as Porn Star
Pink, the last she’d put on Babs at her most recent pedicure, and
while the evidence was being sent out for official DNA testing, the
sheriff had taken Gordie into custody and ordered a dive team to
search the lake.

Cara lost her appetite, pushed the salad away,
and cradled her mug of hot black coffee as Mike greeted the other
diners, and took bits of salad and meat from Cara’s plate. Babs Van
Rank was dead. It was inconceivable. Even more inconceivable was
the idea that Gordie could have done it. But if not Gordie, then
who? Who would kill Babs? Cara’s gallery had been open next door to
The Tickled Bear only since spring, but she’d never seen anything
untoward or suspicious. Ever. Babs sold handmade items from all
over the northwoods, and took deliveries from the craftsmen, the
knitters, the jam makers, pickle canners, the wood carvers, and
from UPS almost every day. There was a constant stream of people in
and out of that shop, and during the off-season, Babs’s shop was
the hub for shipping White Pines Junction goods to stores farther
south. She did well at it, too. There was something special about
the northwoods stuff, and specialty shops all over the Midwest,
maybe all over the country, wanted it.

Babs was bright and cheerful, had a low,
pleasant voice, was perfectly made up at all times, every long
brown shiny hair in its proper place, and she knew how to put
together an attractive package, whether it be herself or The
Tickled Bear. She was a member of the White Pines Junction Chamber
of Commerce, acted as lively auctioneer every year for the grade
school fundraiser, donated to local charities, did her work for the
Heart Association and was an all-around wonderful woman and loyal
wife. Cara didn’t know Babs all that well, but she liked her, and
couldn’t imagine anyone killing her. And cutting off her foot!

There was still a chance that it wasn’t Babs’s
foot, Cara knew, but it was a slim chance.

She put a ten on the table for Margie and went
home with Mike. She was ready to flop on the couch, stroke some
soft feathers and feel Mike’s tiny little heartbeat. She needed
some normalcy in a community never known for it.

The next day, Cara took an alternate route to
work because she didn’t want to see the divers in Minnow Lake. It
was bad enough having the gallery next to The Tickled Bear.

Town was full of tourists because the weather
had turned cool and overcast, and the gallery had a constant stream
of lookers and a few buyers. At three-thirty, the familiar FedEx
guy came with a shipment of mat board and frames.

Cara thanked him, spoke a few words of courtesy
about the weather, then watched as the guy swung back up into his
truck, clipboard in his hand.

“Hey,” Cara called out her door. “Where were you
yesterday? Day off?”

“No,” he said, “I didn’t have a delivery here
yesterday. Why?”

“No reason,” Cara lied. “I was just expecting
this stuff yesterday.”

They waved good-bye at each other and Cara went
inside her gallery to stare at the FedEx envelope she had accepted
for Babs yesterday. It sat on top of the sweaters and the boxes
from UPS. Cara wished she could remember what the FedEx guy
yesterday had looked like, and now that she thought about it, she
wasn’t even sure it had been delivered by a guy in a FedEx uniform,
or even by someone driving a FedEx truck. Cara was starting to have
a bad feeling, and not only that she was a pretty poor observer,
for a photographer.

FedEx always came to White Pines Junction late
in the day unless it was an expensive priority delivery. Cara
checked the label on Babs’s envelope. Nope. Standard overnight.
That meant delivery at three-thirty p.m., as usual.

She hefted the envelope. Light. If she opened
it, she’d be messing with evidence, maybe. Besides, wasn’t it a
felony to open somebody else’s mail? Was FedEx mail? She couldn’t
call Gordie for his permission, and the sheriff was busy at Minnow
Lake. Maybe Cara ought to call Pastor Porter to come over and
witness her opening the envelope. Maybe Babs did have a lover.
Maybe he killed her, then posed as a FedEx delivery guy to give
himself an alibi.

No, Cara, that’s stupid, she told herself. You
and Mike have been watching too much television, but not even a
television studio would buy that script.

She looked outside and saw the FedEx truck down
at Doc’s, so she picked up the envelope again, flipped over her
sign to the “closed” side and trotted across the street.