Bury the Hatchet in Dead Mule Swamp (20 page)

“No, I don’t think
so.”

“That’s why Jerry Caulfield
is fixing up the old school building. You must know about
that.”

“Of course, I had the
building in my listings for a while, but the time ran out, and it
reverted to the city. He waited and bought it directly from them. I
got no fee. What’s that got to do with this Ball?” she asked,
visibly irritated, probably at the lost fee.

“Jerry has this idea to
bring the community together. Everyone is chipping in with food and
décor. There will be live music, dancing, who knows what else. It’s
not completely planned.” My stomach turned as I thought about how
little was actually arranged. Having donated decorations was an
outright fabrication. “Oh. And it’s being held in the old school
auditorium.” I lifted the cup to my lips to cover my discomfort
with the white lies that were piling up.

“That’s pretty short term.
What does he want with the building after that?”

“I’m not sure,” I lied
again. “He has some ideas about a community center, or a conference
center, or something.”

“In this backwater,” she
scoffed. Her attitude didn’t bode well for building trust with the
residents. It didn’t sound to me as if Virginia Holiday was falling
in love with Forest County.

“Some people seem to think
things might be turning around,” I said defensively, recalling
Alex’s optimism.

“I don’t think anyone is
going to travel here for a conference, and neither does Jerry
Caulfield,” she said, picking up her half-smoked cigarette. She
looked at it, sighed, and placed it back in the saucer. “That man
is devious.”

I attempted not to fidget,
and countered. “Well, I don’t know about that. But we certainly
want you to know that you’re invited to the Harvest Ball. It will
be a lot of fun. Watch for ads in the newspaper. Or
posters.”

“I’m not much of a dancer,”
she said. “Too awkward. Big feet.”

“Not a problem,” I
promised. “I suspect a lot of people will simply be chatting and
enjoying the music. And eating. Janice Preston is taking the lead
on the food preparation. Do you know her?”

“Haven’t met her,” Virginia
said, taking another drag on her cigarette.

She seemed to be cutting
responses short, as if she wanted to end our conversation. I knew
it was time to get to the real reason for my visit to the
office.

I changed the subject
abruptly. “My son, Chad, was here earlier this month.”

“Oh?” she said with
interest, as if sensing new blood.

“We drove west on South
River Road, and took a quick look at that large cottage with the
green trim. ‘Chippewa Lodge,’ I think it was called. He liked it a
lot.” I didn’t tell her that Chad was still in college, and
certainly wasn’t going to buy a huge summer home.

“That’s one of my
especially nice places. It’s vintage turn of the century—twentieth
century. Stone fireplace, screen porch, boathouse. All kept up very
well. Quite high-priced though. Unless the owners decide to come
down.” Virginia was all business now.

“Virginia... may I call you
Virginia?”

“Of course.”

I hesitated. Lying wasn’t
one of my best talents, but I’d been fudging almost everything for
the past half hour. “Chad really liked that place. He asked me to
find out more about it. Do you think I’d be able to see the
inside?”

Chapter 29

The realtor stood, her
abundant jewelry clinking against her thin bony wrists and fingers.
She stubbed out the cigarette and picked up a leather slouch purse.
“Are you free right now?”

This was exactly what I’d
been hoping for. I wasn’t sure why, but the hundred-year old
cottage fascinated me, and its location was intriguing too,
conveniently situated downriver, where the water was deep, toward
Jalmari. And empty. River access with no one nearby.

“I am. Do you want to ride
with me?” I offered.

“No thanks. I’ll drive
myself. You can follow me.”

I agreed, and we walked to
our cars. She told me hers was over on Cherry Street since the
office building didn’t have an associated parking lot. This
explained why she’d been walking through between Jerry’s house and
his cousin Karen’s the other day. She'd been walking on Cherry and
also had access to the school, but Mavis might have walked her dog
on that same street, and she could have gotten keys to the school
through Harold. Either of these women could have seen my car parked
there and returned to slip the printed note through the window. But
I knew of no reason for either of them to have that much personal
interest in the old brick building.

Virginia said she’d wait
for me to pull up behind her. By the time I did so, she already had
another cigarette lit and was tapping ash out the slightly opened
window.

The drive to Chippewa Lodge
took only seven minutes when one wasn’t sight-seeing. It was closer
to town than my place. It was probably only five minutes from the
school. A very fast drive for someone who needed to dispose of a
body. Of course, that person would have had to know about the empty
cottage, but any number of people might have seen the “For Sale”
sign and explored the property, just as Chad and I had. And what
about Virginia herself, the previous owners, anyone who had
legitimately considered buying the cottage, guests of the owners,
possibly even renters? And there were certainly other vacant
properties along the river. I decided my bright idea didn’t narrow
the possibilities very much.

We turned off the paved
road, and wound our way toward the river through the forest of
mixed hardwoods and conifers, mostly white pine, I thought. We
reached the end of the road and parked.

Virginia opened her car
door and swung her long legs out. Smoke was escaping her nostrils,
but I was glad to see she left the cigarette in the car.

She reached into her purse
and drew out a large wad of keys, then headed for the wide green
wooden steps that led to the white clapboard cottage. I looked
around. I’d forgotten there were two other homes located down this
same road. One of them was also for sale, but the other one wasn’t.
It might have been occupied into early September, although it
looked closed-up now, with wooden storm shutters tightly fastened
over the windows and tarps tied over amorphous shapes in the
yard.

“Are you coming?” Virginia
asked impatiently.

“Yes, of course,” I
answered, following her up the steps to a narrow porch that
encircled the landward sides of the cottage. The rustic sign,
“Chippewa Lodge,” hung from the green eave, and enhanced the aura
of Romantic Era authenticity. She already had the door unlocked,
and we stepped into a room that seemed smaller than I had imagined
it would be. Virginia plopped her purse on a small table beside the
door. It was the only piece of furniture in the room, but I could
picture a chintz-covered daybed against the far wall.

It was apparently sort of
an entry hall, open two stories, clear to the roof. Once my eyes
adjusted to the dim light, I realized there was a stairway built
against the outside wall with a landing at the corner where it
turned and continued to climb to the second floor. The other end of
the room had built-in bookcases. All the woodwork had the original
dark varnish. The walls had been re-papered recently, but the
patterns selected matched the style of the house. Beneath the upper
portion of the stairs, to our left, a door led to a larger room,
which we entered.

“These rooms seem to defy
standard names,” Virginia said. “This is sort of a summer living
room, and yet the fireplace is in here.”

The fireplace was enormous,
built of large field stones, with a herringbone brick hearth. It
looked as if it were still functional.

“Summer evenings in the
woods can be chilly. This place is really beautiful,” I said, and I
meant it.

We continued through the
house. The largest room on the main floor was in the center, sort
of an all-purpose great room, although it certainly wouldn’t have
been called that in 1900. The kitchen was located on the landward
side of that room, separated only by a counter. The kitchen had
been modernized, but not to the extent that it detracted from the
style of the house. On the river side, a huge screen porch was
supported on piers as the ground fell away sharply beneath
it.

The upstairs was divided
into three bedrooms. An addition to the house had been built which
provided for a bathroom on each floor, all fitted with modern
fixtures, but in Victorian style.

Returning to the great
room, we descended to a large unfinished, but clean, basement that
looked as if it had been added later. This room was largest of all
and except for support posts, was undivided. At the back wall was
another bathroom, directly below the other two.

“What are the owners asking
for this?” I ventured.

“Three-hundred sixty-five
thousand,” Virginia said, without blinking an eye.

I gulped. “That’s pretty
steep, isn’t it?”

“Classic and modern at the
same time, twenty-five hundred square feet, navigable river
frontage, boathouse... it’s worth it,” she said with a
shrug.

I suddenly realized that
the summer people who lived in the area for part of each year
certainly had enough money to raise the standard of living in
Forest County if the local businesses could provide goods and
services these people wanted.

She continued, “I’ll show
you the boathouse. It’s very nice, and a bit unusual to find on the
river.”

We returned to the front
door. As Virginia reached toward the table to retrieve her purse,
one of her many bracelets snagged on the strap hardware. Myriad
typical female objects spilled across the bare pine floorboards.
She immediately bent down to gather a small wallet, comb, a nail
polish bottle, loose change, and miscellaneous office supplies,
which she stuffed back in the bag. I chased a bottle which had
rolled toward the far corner and picked it up.

Virginia gave me an
unpleasant look and snatched the bottle from my hand. “Here, give
me that,” she said roughly, enclosing the label quickly with her
fingers.

But I’d already read the
lettering; “Cenestin.”

I wouldn’t have had another
thought about the bottle if the realtor hadn’t seemed so upset, but
she immediately hustled me out the door and locked it behind
her.

“Take those steps,” she
said, pointing toward a long flight that zig-zagged down the steep
bluff and led to the green and white boathouse. The stairs were
also green, making it obvious they belonged to this
cottage.

Soon I heard Virginia’s
rubber clogs thumping down the steps behind me, and we reached
water level. A cleared area on the bank had been fitted with a fire
ring in the center of a cultured stone patio. This was set back
from the water enough that it hadn’t been visible from above. I
looked back up the bank. I hadn’t counted, but there must be over a
hundred steps in the descent. And the ascent, which we had yet to
do.

“The river floods in the
spring, so I’ve been told,” Virginia stated. “That’s why the fire
pit is so far back from the water.”

“Makes sense,” I
commented.

She pulled out her keys
once more, but she was now holding the purse carefully, as if wary
of spilling the contents again. She unlocked the rear door of the
boathouse, and reached in, flipping a switch. The dark interior was
flooded with light. She stepped back, and I peered in. There was
the usual dock/walkway around the edges, and a sliding door facing
the water, which was closed and secured with a padlock through a
hasp at one side.

Much to my surprise, there
was a small motorboat suspended in a hoist within the gabled
building.

“They didn’t take their
boat with them?” I asked.

“It goes with the property.
I forgot to mention that. The owners bought a bigger one, and this
boat is the largest that will fit entirely within the boathouse. As
you can see, it’s all prepped for winter.”

“Very impressive. So the
river is deep enough here for motor boats?” I asked.

“Absolutely. Lots of good
fishing holes in this section. In the summer, the stream is filled
with boaters. But very few river cottages have an actual boathouse,
which is another nice feature of this one. It’s more common on
lakes.”

“Where do cottagers keep
their motor boats?”

“Most people just store
them on the trailers, up at road level. Then they drive to a public
access to put them in. Of course, small boats like rowboats and
canoes can be gotten down to the water and just left on the bank.
Above high water level, of course.”

“Of course,” I echoed. All
sorts of possibilities for moving a body now coursed through my
brain. Where were the public access points, in addition to Jalmari?
Wouldn’t someone be more likely to take a body to one of them,
instead of dragging or carrying it down all these stairs? Or would
the stairs be an acceptable trade off for a higher guarantee of
privacy? Keeping a body in this locked boathouse for a few days
could explain why it hadn’t been found immediately, but that meant
the murderer would have had keys. I glanced at Virginia and found
her staring directly into my eyes.