The Light Keeper's Legacy (A Chloe Ellefson Mystery) (20 page)

“If he couldn’t see the boat, how could he know it was her?”

“I don’t doubt that a fisherman can recognize the local tugs by engine sound alone. It’s good to establish Sylvie’s departure time, and the direction she was heading. It might help the Coast Guard narrow the search for her tug.”

I suppose it helps, Chloe thought dubiously. But Lake Michigan was mighty big. Sylvie could have gone in any direction after passing the point.

She rubbed her hands on her jeans. “Did you learn anything helpful from Garrett?”

“I wish.” His mouth got tight. “Hard to get a straight answer from Smith.”

“What is
up
with you two?” Honestly! Could Stig conduct a fair investigation if he couldn’t even refer to Garrett without a grimace?

After a moment the deputy said, “Thank you for your help.”

_____

When Jack Cornell maneuvered the
Karfi
to another picture-
perfect docking on his 10 AM run, Chloe was surprised to see six or eight passengers on the ferry. But it’s a pretty Saturday, she reminded herself. She hoped that the visitors were coming to enjoy a late-summer hike, and not to gawk. Maybe Stig had been able to keep the details from the press, and all anyone knew was that a second woman had evidently drowned near Rock Island. Maybe these people were vacationers who didn’t even know that a body had been found on the beach.

Her thoughts were interrupted when she saw a familiar face. “Mr. Dix!” she said, as the lighthouse fan from Massachusetts disembarked, burdened with camera slung on one shoulder, a notebook in hand, and a loaded knapsack on his back. “What are you doing here? I thought you were headed for the Upper Peninsula.”

“I was.” He rubbed his forehead. “But I had my film developed in Sturgeon Bay. Sixteen rolls, all streaked red and yellow! I must have purchased a bad batch.” He sighed mournfully. “Now I’m retracing my steps.”

“Bummer,” Chloe said sympathetically. She’d had her share of film heartbreaks over the years. “I’m heading off-island, and there’s a painter at the lighthouse today, so you’ll have to stick to exterior shots.”

“Fine,” Mr. Dix said. “That’s just fine.” Chloe wished him better luck and boarded the
Karfi
as he began trudging toward Pottawatomie.

Chloe decided she was glad that visitors had come to Rock Island that day. Sylvie surely wouldn’t have wanted the park to lock its metaphorical gates on her behalf. Life goes on, Chloe thought, as they headed south over the channel. But life would go on a whole lot better when the truth about Sylvie Torgrimsson’s mysterious death came to light.

Thirty-six:
May, 1886

Emily was kneeling in
her garden when she lifted her face and saw hundreds of migrating hawks high overhead, swirling and climbing until one by one they turned and flew north over the lake. It was a perfect spring day. The woods were carpeted with trillium. Monarch and Tiger Swallowtail butterflies were feasting on the lilacs. Her new baby, Merrit, was asleep on a blanket in the shade. Jane and Amy were trying to teach the younger children how to play croquet on the lawn. The sound of their laughter rang through the clearing.

Tears blurred Emily’s vision. She fished a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes. Stop this, she ordered herself. All you can do is look forward. She picked up her trowel resolutely, determined to reclaim a few of her bulbs.

Then she saw Ragna emerging from the path, and scrambled to meet her. “What’s wrong?” she cried. Ragna hadn’t come to the lighthouse in eleven years. Not since the tragedy.

“I heard you’re leaving,” Ragna said. “I wanted to say good-bye.”

Emily felt a flood of relief. And just what, she asked herself, did you fear Ragna was going to say? “Yes,” she managed. “A new keeper has been assigned to take William’s post. We’re going to farm on Washington Island.” She gestured to the blanket nearby. “Will you sit? I have something for you. I’ll just fetch it from the house.”

When Emily returned moments later she found Ragna settled down, watching the baby sleep. Emily handed her a book, its red cover embossed with gold leaf.

Ragna accepted it with a small smile. “
Around the World in Eighty Days
, by Jules Verne. Thank you.”

“It’s an adventure story,” Emily told her. “A copy came in our library box, and William and I enjoyed it so much that I asked him to order one for you.” She’d hoped it might spark some interest, maybe even prompt Ragna to leave Rock Island.

“I have something for you as well.” Ragna pulled a piece of folded linen from her basket.

“A piece of your
hedebosøm!
” Emily spread the table runner across her lap, admiring the intricate needlework. “I can’t imagine how long you must have worked on this.”

“I have plenty of time. These pieces have been piling up. I’m taking pleasure in giving them away. Berglind Fridleifsdottir came to see me last week, and I gave her one as well.”

“I’m sure she will treasure her piece, as I will mine,” Emily said. “It will grace my new home.” She reached for Ragna’s hand. “Won’t you consider leaving Rock? It’s not safe for you to live alone, with no one but Anton and his sister left on the south end of the island.”

“I can’t leave.”

“I worry for you. I
…
I worry that you’ll do something you shouldn’t.” Emily couldn’t bring herself to be more specific. “Something terrible.”

Ragna turned her head, watching the children. Amy helped DeElbert knock the ball through a wicket, and he squealed triumphantly. Finally Ragna said, “That, perhaps, is the only thing that could make me leave Rock Island. If I did something like
… that
, I would have to go far away. Perhaps even back to Denmark. Did you know that Anders didn’t want to leave the old country? It was my idea to come here. I pushed him to agree.”

Emily felt as if a fisherman’s heavy fist had clamped around her heart.

“I have something else to give you.” Ragna reached into her basket again and withdrew a familiar tin box. Emily flinched.

“Will you take this with you? If something should happen to me—”

“Ragna, no.”

“If something should happen to me,” she repeated, “you must give it to Paul. I want him to have it.”

Emily considered refusing. She considered snatching the box and hurling it off the cliff. But somehow it found its way into her hands.

Thirty-seven

Chloe met that morning
with three more potential donors and examined their offerings. Strong candidates for acceptance included a quilt made in 1910, a blue and white china cup with lighthouse service motif, and a wooden potty chair. That original outhouse might be an historical treasure, but it seemed safe to assume that keepers and their families were less than charmed on sleety December nights.

When she stopped back at Ruth Gunderson’s house to return the borrowed documents, the door swung open before Chloe even knocked. “Please come in,” Ruth said. “I got so excited by your visit yesterday that I went rummaging in the attic. I found a shoebox of old letters that my grandmother had kept. A few are from other lighthouse women. Would you like to see them?”

“Yes!”

The earliest letter was dated 1871; the latest, 1919. There was no way Chloe could read them all in the limited time she had left, much less transcribe them. “These are fantastic,” she said, as she began skimming through the fragile pages now spread across Ruth’s kitchen table. “With your permission, I’ll have one of the RISC committee people contact you about making copies.”

As she gently turned over page after page of brittle notepaper, she searched for a familiar signature. Two-thirds of the way through the box she found it:
Emily
. This letter was dated 1886, two years after the letter she’d found tucked into the library trunk. This one was in better condition, and Chloe was able to read the entire note:

Dear Jeannette,

The sad day has come. William feels only relief, but it is not so easy for me. Despite the hardships—the failed cisterns, the drunken carpenter sent to repair our stairs, the winter storms that destroyed our dock—I have been happy here. However, one must confront the changes life inevitably bestows upon us. I believe we will be happier still on Washington Island.

Chloe paused. William must have retired. The Betts family’s term of employment at Pottawatomie Lighthouse on Rock Island had ended that year.

I am choosing to leave any regrets here, at the station. I have begged Ragna to leave Rock as well, but she will not. Hers is such a familiar tale. Anders went out in his boat, alone, and did not return. But she has never been able to accept the tragedy.

Chloe felt chilled with yet another reminder of how unforgiving Lake Michigan could be. Emily’s friend was named Ragna, and Anders was presumably her husband. By 1886, the fishing village had all but been abandoned. So
…
why did this Ragna want to stay?

When we said our good-byes Ragna gave me that dreadful box! I did not say so, but I have decided to leave it here on Rock. She wants me to save it for her son, but I can see no good purpose in the request. I have hidden it away and don’t expect to set eyes on it again.

Chloe straightened, eyebrows raised. What the heck?

“Isn’t that intriguing?” Ruth asked. “I read it last night.”

“Intriguing is an understatement,” Chloe murmured. “Do you have any idea what Emily was talking about?”

“Not really.” Ruth tipped her head to one side. “I was trying to remember. I seem to recall my grandmother whispering about a woman named Ragna to one of her friends once, but they stopped right away when they realized I was listening.”

“Hmm,” Chloe said. She bent back over the letter.

And so, my friend, I will no longer be tethered to a lighthouse. That being so, I look forward to visiting you at your station as soon as conditions permit.

Yours most sincerely,

Emily

Chloe copied the letter into her notebook. “Is there something particularly helpful in that one, dear?” Ruth asked.

“I’m not sure,” Chloe said honestly. “But overall, I can’t even tell you how valuable these documents are for the lighthouse project.”

Ruth twined her fingers together. “I heard about Sylvie Torgrimsson this morning. I know she was on the lighthouse restoration committee, and I thought that perhaps I’d volunteer to take her place. I grew up seeing that beautiful lighthouse all boarded up and abandoned. I’d like to help bring it back to life.”

“Talk to Lorna Whitby,” Chloe suggested. “I’m sure she’d be delighted with the offer.” And so, she thought, would Sylvie.

_____

When Chloe caught the four o’clock
Karfi
back to Rock Island, she found Stig Fjelstul talking with two couples who were in a small motorboat moored by the boathouse. “Those two big trophy trout are not fit for consumption,” Stig was saying. He gestured toward an open beer-lined cooler where several fish were piled on ice. “Trout that big contain high levels of toxins.”

“That’s bogus,” one of the men scoffed. He had a sunburned nose and a preppy haircut. “We had trout filets last night at a restaurant that were at least this big.”

“Really? What was the name of the restaurant? Where’s it located?”

Everyone got silent.

“Yeah,” Stig said. “Listen, I don’t care what consenting adults choose to do to themselves. But consuming too many trout can lead to cancer. And pregnant women are putting their babies at risk if they eat
any
trout from Lake Michigan, period, end of story.”

When the group’s boat had puttered away from the dock Chloe said, “I thought you weren’t a game warden anymore. Wouldn’t your life be easier if you stayed out of stuff like that?”

Stig hitched his shoulders in a weary shrug. “I probably should have kept my mouth shut. It looked like one woman might be expecting, though.”

“I happened to see two game wardens searching Melvin Jenks’ fishing tug yesterday.”

“They find anything?”

“Nope.”

“Good.” Stig rubbed his jaw. “I never did either. I used to wonder if Jenks used that rowboat he tows to slip into places where he shouldn’t be fishing, but if so, I never saw any sign of it. He told me once he likes to make short side trips without the motor chugging.”

Really? Maintenance Mel? Chloe would not have guessed he’d care about quiet one way or another. Of course, she wouldn’t have guessed that Sylvie would want to be a docent, or fish wearing nineteenth-century garb. Or that a modern kid like Tim Brown might want to trade his kayak for a tug. Commercial fishermen might have a difficult and dangerous job, and they might be immersed in ugly turmoil, but still
…
the life hadn’t lost its allure, either.

“I’m about to head home,” Stig said. “You OK here?”

“Of course,” Chloe said firmly. “I’m heading straight to the lighthouse.”

At Pottawatomie, after a supper of dehydrated veggie soup and a chocolate bar, Chloe took stock. She had a good sense of how the lighthouse rooms were used and the artifacts needed to represent a busy light station. There were only a few RISC files she hadn’t scanned yet. She could read those this evening.

“But I don’t want to read RISC files,” she muttered. She didn’t want to read Sue Grafton, either. What she
wanted
to do was look for the mysterious hidden box. Some instinct told her that she needed to see this box’s contents in order to understand something important.

“So, Emily,” Chloe said, “is the box still hidden? Does it have anything to do with the story you want me to get right? If so, can you maybe point me in the right direction?” She waited, trying to be open, trying to be receptive.

Zip. Chloe really wished that her “gift” had come with an instruction manual. She blew out a long, slow sigh. Well, all she could do was look.

Once her bowl was clean Chloe went outside, walked around to the cellar stairs, and worked the key in the padlock. She’d start the search here, even though Maintenance Mel and Herb Whitby had discouraged her from entering these nether regions.

Her hands stilled as she remembered just how strenuously Herb had objected to her exploring the cellar. Did he have a reason to keep her out? It seemed absurd, and yet
…
he had been emphatic. Well, she thought, I’ll just have another look-see.

Skipping over the trash pile and the tools left by the restoration crew, Chloe used her flashlight to search the cellar carefully, trying to discern any century-old irregularity that might mark a forgotten niche. She found cobwebs and dead flies and mouse droppings, a shard of pottery and several square-head nails, but nothing more tantalizing.

Finally she gave up. If Herb had some secret in the cellar, she’d missed it. “And no snakes today, either,” she muttered, tugging the padlock to make sure it was secure.

OK. She’d have to widen the search zone. Aside from the stone outhouse and the brick oil house where Mel stored toilet paper, the only original lighthouse structures were an old smokehouse and a stable’s foundation stones. Chloe examined them both, crawling and tugging stones in search of long-lost hidey-holes. She found a snakeskin and deer poop and poison ivy, and “L loves P, 1978” carved into a tree, but—again—nothing more tantalizing.

Then she spent an hour or so wandering through the woods in increasing concentric circles, looking for long-dead trees, piles of stones, or anything else that might offer possibilities. She found owl pellets, a stand of raspberry bushes, and half a dozen crushed Miller cans in a trampled area near the precipice. That last was particularly discouraging. “You’ve got enough energy to haul full cans up here,” she scolded the absent partiers, “but not enough to carry the empties back with you?” Jerks.

When Chloe crouched to pick them up she spotted a small
orange plastic vial, the kind used to dispense prescription medication, which lay behind a fallen tree branch. It contained not pills, but three cigarette butts. Brenda Noakes’ sardonic voice echoed in her memory:
Don’t worry, I’m planning to quit.

What had Brenda Noakes been doing here? Brenda’s work and family story were confined to the fishing village site over a mile away. Chloe sat back on her heels and reminded herself—once again—that she was in a state park. Anyone, including Brenda, had a perfect right to wander wherever they wished on the island. Still, it seemed
…
odd.

Chloe dumped the cans and vial in the outhouse trash can. Don’t get distracted, she instructed herself, gnawing at a torn fingernail. Where next?

Might the box Ragna gave Emily have been hidden in the cave? It seemed impossible that anything secreted a century ago might still be hidden in the tiny room, but—but someone
had
been digging in the vicinity recently. She’d assumed the digger was looking for the long-lost gold pieces, but perhaps she’d been wrong.

The shallow cave looked no more hospitable than it had on her first visit. Chloe stepped carefully on the rubble. Her flashlight’s strong beam didn’t reveal anything hidden in any of the limestone walls’ nooks and crevices. Outside, to the left, a man-made stone wall shored up the steps that led from the lighthouse clearing to the beach stairway. This wall had been constructed less carefully than the building foundations. Stones leaned this way and that, with occasional holes between them. Chloe poked into each fissure with a stick, tugged on each stone. Most of them were gray-green with age and lodged firmly in place, but—holy cow! One was lighter than the others, not yet covered with moss or lichen. It slid easily from its spot.

Emily could not have placed this new stone, Chloe reminded herself, squelching excitement. Her flashlight showed something indefinable shoved in the gap. Anticipation turned to disgust when she pulled free a dirty plastic sandwich bag. Chloe fished out a piece of paper tucked inside and read the inked scrawl:
Susan and Jeremy got engaged right here, August 14, 1982.

“Well, jolly good for you,” Chloe muttered sourly. She shoved the baggie in her pocket. Susan and Jeremy might be a great couple, but she wasn’t going to put plastic back into the historic wall.

Then she made her way east through the trees, moving farther from the path. The terrain was steep. A slip here could lead to a tumble down the slope—the slope that ended abruptly at the top of the precipice below the lighthouse.

Since she stepped with extra care, she managed to spot the hole before she fell into it.

“Shit,” she muttered, crouching for a closer look. Someone had shoveled soil from the ground beside a wedge of limestone, creating a depression perhaps a foot deep. And
…
there, and over there
…
as her eyes adjusted to the subtle coloration of the shady ground, she spotted half a dozen similar holes. Chloe looked at each without learning a thing about who’d been digging, or why.

“You better not have been after Emily’s mysterious box,” she muttered, as she made her way back to the trail. Surely that concern was ridiculous, right? Emily’s letters had been tucked away in Ruth Gunderson’s home for years. And the notion of sweet, elderly Ruth Gunderson showing them to Chloe while plotting a clandestine trip to Rock Island in order to dig holes beneath the lighthouse was absurd.
Beyond
absurd.

When Chloe returned to the trail she walked to the wooden staircase and settled on the top step. It was a wonderful spot for contemplation—peaceful and cool, with the beach and the lake spreading in all their cobbled and blue-green glory below. But for once, the scene didn’t work its magic. Even though she’d known that any search for something hidden in 1886 was unlikely at best, she felt frustrated.