In Sheep's Clothing (21 page)

Just as I was thinking that, Aunt Sissy came out onto the porch, dressed in sweats cut off at the knees and an oversized Minnesota Gophers shirt. “You can't leave just yet,” she said.

I laughed. “How did you know I was thinking that?”

“I would be if I were you,” she said. “But you can't.”

“Why not?”

“I haven't gotten to show you a good time,” she said.

“Oh, Aunt Sissy,” I said. “I don't know.”

“Just one more day,” she said. “Today we'll go into town and partake of the May festival. Then you can leave tomorrow.”

I smiled. How could I refuse her? If she were indeed dying of heart disease, I might never get the chance to have fun with her again. When I thought of my childhood and the time spent with my father's family, Aunt Sissy was the bright shining light of those memories. One time we had gone crawdad fishing down at the local creek. She had worn her cut-off pants, as always, and a big fishing cap. Before that day, I could not catch a crawdad. After that day, not only was I the champion crawdad catcher, but I could even catch small catfish with my bare hands. To this day when I hear the rush of creek water over rocks, I think of her.

“All right,” I said and smiled at her. “We'll stay one more day.”

Three hours later, Aunt Sissy, Colin, Rudy, and I were in downtown Olin preparing to watch the boat races. The sun was actually hot today, the familiar tightening of my skin indicating that I would be pink by sundown. Aunt Sissy introduced us to numerous people, all of whom were gracious enough not to ask about Colin the Convict or the woman with the black eye. We were seated comfortably on the portable bleachers, waiting for the races to begin—well, as comfortably as one can sit on a piece of metal—when Colin got a whiff of something.

“Are those funnel cakes I smell?” he asked.

“You know they are,” I said. “Your nose is never wrong.”

“Anybody besides me want one?”

“Yeah, I'll go with you,” Rudy said. He looked at me. “You want something?”

“A bottle of water.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Oh, will you look at that,” Aunt Sissy said. She held her hand up to her eyebrow to shield herself from the sun. Brilliant flecks of sunlight rippled across the lake. But it wasn't the lake she was looking at. She was looking at somebody in the audience.

“What? Is it Roberta? Should I hide or get on my boxing gloves?”

“No, it's Kimberly Canton,” she said.

“Where?”

She pointed. “Right there in that navy dotted swiss dress and the big white hat.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”

“Oh what?”

“I've seen her before,” I said.

“You have?” Aunt Sissy asked. “Where?”

“She was in the historical society office with Roberta when I went there the last time. Before she decked me,” I said.

Aunt Sissy gave me a peculiar expression. I had no idea what she was thinking, but somehow I felt that we were both on the same plane of confusion. Before I had much more time to think about it, the horn sounded for the races. I leaned in to Aunt Sissy. “Who do I want to win?”

“These guys here,” she said and pointed to the canoe-looking boat on the end. “Their parents belong to our church.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. The rowers stretched and jogged in place and then all got in their boat and picked up their oars. The gun went off and away they went. Rudy and Colin showed up just in time and I pointed out to them who we were rooting for. It was amazing how excited you could get for people you didn't even know. By the end of the race I was jumping up and down and high-fiving the people sitting behind us.

“That was fun,” I said, rather out of breath.

“Yes, it was,” Rudy agreed.

A few minutes went by while we waited for the next race, filled with small talk and weather talk. Then a woman appeared at the end of the bleachers and sat next to Aunt Sissy. The two of them talked a moment together and then Aunt Sissy introduced her. “This is Dicey. She works at the historical society,”

“Oh, nice to meet you,” I said.

“It's turning green now,” Dicey said to me.

“Huh?”

“Your eye. I heard about it. It's in the green stage,” she said.

“Well, I guess that's a good thing,” I said.

Dicey was about sixty, severely pear-shaped, more salt than pepper in her hair, but barely a wrinkle on her face. She smiled and waved a hand at me. “Don't worry,” she said. “Roberta is weird. In fact, all of them are weird.”

“All of who?”

“Her whole family is just a little on the strange side,” she said. “Her dad eats fish every morning for breakfast. He's done that for, like, fifty years.”

“Well, isn't that omega fatty whatever it's called in fish? It's supposed to be vital for a healthy heart, so maybe he's onto something,” I said.

“Whatever,” she said. “He stinks and so does his house.”

“Oh,” I said.

She and Aunt Sissy talked some more about local things, and then my ears perked up when I heard her say Kimberly Canton's name. “I can't believe she has the gall to show up at these races,” Dicey said.

“Why's that?” I asked.

“Because she's a grade A b—”

“Other than that,” Aunt Sissy said.

“She's just showing off. Over half of the lake is hers now,” she said. “It's just an advertisement to all of us that she's going to own the whole damn thing soon. And the town with it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“There's only a few people holding out,” Dicey said. “And they are probably going to sell to her sooner or later. Hopefully they won't.”

“What about Brian Bloomquist?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“What happens to his lakefront land now?” I said.

“That's the sad part,” she said. “His widow will probably sell, which Brian never would, because she's going to need the money. Brian left behind four kids. They're going to need an awful lot of shoes and clothes and food for the next ten or so years. The marina may even go up on the auction block.”

“Surely the authorities know this,” I said to my aunt. “Surely she is a suspect in Brian's murder.”

“Airtight alibi, last I heard,” Dicey said. “She would have been my first choice, too, but she was in the cities in a meeting with, like, ten people.”

I worked my lower lip between my teeth. “What's her deal? Is it personal or is it strictly buisness?”

“Who knows? She's a vulture.”

“Hmph,” I said.

“What?” Aunt Sissy asked.

“I dunno. Sheriff Aberg said that she somehow felt entitled to the land. Like it was supposed to be hers,” I said.

“So?” Dicey asked.

“So,” Aunt Sissy said, “I think I know where you're going with this. At one time, one person owned all of the lakefront property.”

“Isabelle Lansdowne,” I said. “You think Kimberly Canton might be a descendant of Isabelle Lansdowne?”

“Maybe,” Aunt Sissy said.

“Yeah, but … Kimberly would have to know she was a descendant of her, and she would have to know that Isabelle had once owned all the lakefront property. What are the chances of that?” I asked.

“What are you guys talking about?” Dicey asked.

Aunt Sissy ignored Dicey. She shrugged and then brightened. “Hey, we don't know how the lakefront property ended up being divided,” she said. “Maybe there was a deal that Kimberly feels was dishonest.”

“I need to look at those land records again,” I said. “But I'm not real thrilled about going over there when Roberta's on duty.”

“Oh, I'm covering her lunch in half an hour,” said Dicey. “Why don't you all come over then?”

“We'll be there,” Aunt Sissy said.

“Good,” I said. “We've got time for another race first, though. Right?”

Twenty-two

Just call me Special Agent Torie. That's what I felt like as I sat in Aunt Sissy's big rattletrap truck waiting for Roberta to leave on lunch break. Our vehicle was well hidden behind a big fir tree across the street and on the corner of the historical society. Dicey was going to flip the blinds on the windows twice if Roberta decided to dine in. That was highly unlikely, she thought, because it was so beautiful and the May Festival was in full swing.

So we sat and we waited. Anticipation swirled around in my gut and I couldn't imagine what it must be like to really have to wait for a person to leave a building so you could go and snoop around. If it weren't for the fact that Dicey had the foreknowledge that Roberta would be leaving for lunch, we could be here all day. Sort of took the excitement out of being a spy.

“If she doesn't leave pretty soon, I'm going to go over and throw her out,” Aunt Sissy said.

“Maybe she's not going to go out for lunch.”

“Then why hasn't Dicey signaled? She said she would signal, for crying out loud. If a person says they're going to signal, then they should signal.”

“Aunt Sissy,” I said and touched her lightly on the arm. Then I pointed to the historical society. Roberta had just stepped out of the front doors and taken off down the sidewalk, toward the lake. “Let's go.”

We crossed the street as stealthily as we could, watching to make sure Roberta didn't turn around and see us or head back to the historical society. It would be my luck that she would have forgotten something. We made it to the door, knocked quietly, and entered.

“I never thought I would have to sneak into a historical society,” I said. “What is this world coming to?”

“God, I thought she'd never leave,” Dicey said. “She just kept talking and talking.”

“How long is she going to be gone?” I asked.

“Probably an hour.”

“Great,” I said. I pretended to push up sleeves that I wasn't wearing. “Hand me over the records.”

Dicey pulled a bunch of books off of the bookshelf and stacked them in front of me. I sat down in the only chair at the only desk in the room.

“Good Lord, don't let Roberta see you in her chair,” Dicey said.

“I'll try not to. Is there a back door to this place?”

“No.”

“Then you watch the front door and tell me the minute you see her.”

“Right,” Dicey said. She went to the window to keep watch. Aunt Sissy knelt beside me and tried to assist me in any way she could.

“Okay, we're looking for what happened to the land surrounding Olin Lake. I guess I need to see if Isabelle Lansdowne, or her husband, sold off parcels of land surrounding the lake.”

Aunt Sissy riffled through some books and such, while I started scanning the land records. It didn't take me long to find what I was looking for, and when I did the hair stood up on my arms. Aunt Sissy must have noticed that I grew very still.

“What?” she asked.

“Right here, it's right here. The Lansdownes had to give half … yes, I said half, of their land to Emelie Bloomquist, by order of the court.”

“What?” Aunt Sissy exclaimed. She almost lost her balance and fell over. “Well, what else does it say?”

“It doesn't say why, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's because Emelie or Sven, one or the other, took her to court and proved to a judge that Emelie was the grandaughter of Konrad Nagel. This was … 1882. Emelie wasn't married yet, because it's still her maiden name, but she was obviously an adult.”

“You think this means something?”

“I think that if you were a descendant of Isabelle Lansdowne you'd be pretty ticked off to find out that half of what would have been your family legacy was appointed to an illegitimate girl who could have only proved her genealogy by hearsay. Her parents were dead, and so were her grandparents by that point. They didn't have a wonderful thing called DNA testing, and they didn't have official documents like birth certificates that could carry weight in a court,” I said.

“So then how did she prove it?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Sven's testimony probably played a huge part. But there had to be more than just his testimony.”

“Anna's diary?” Aunt Sissy asked.

“Maybe, but … the diary was found in your house. By 1882 the Hendricksons were living here and the Bloomquists were in Cedar Rapids. How could Sven have used Anna's diary for Emelie's proof of paternity? What did he do, go over and get the diary long enough for court and then return it to the cellar? Seems totally unlikely,” I said.

“Maybe it was something as simple as a written document from the father,” Dicey said from across the room.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Like maybe the father made a sworn affadavit with witnesses and a family seal, claiming Emelie as his child,” she said.

“Oh, my gosh, that's brilliant. I never thought of that. Clearly it would have had to have been something that obvious or no judge would have granted her half of Olin Lake,” I said.

“Why didn't you find this when we went through the court records the other day?” Aunt Sissy said.

“I was looking for a court record of the killing of Konrad Nagel. Never occurred to me to look up anything on Isabelle and the land. That's the thing about court records. Unless you know the event actually occurred, it's difficult to know to look for it. If that made any sense,” I said.

“So what does this mean?” Aunt Sissy said.

“I don't know. Do you think Kimberly Canton would know enough about her ancestors to know that half of her legacy had been given away?”

Aunt Sissy shook her head.

“Maybe she didn't,” Dicey said. “Maybe she was just researching the lake in general and came across all of the information. She's had her heart set on that piece of property for so long that maybe she went looking for a loophole or some way to try and obtain the land without having to get everybody to sell it.”