TWENTY FIVE
The kids were out early the next morning, taking advantage of the slightly warmer weather to try their hand at building their own bobsled track in the backyard. The daytime temperatures were finally in the twenties which meant death by frostbite wasn’t imminent. They had shovels and boxes and an assortment of other tools they’d pulled out of the garage, and after nearly two hours, they were screaming and laughing as they took the sleds down their own hilly, curvy course that ended with each of them plowing feet first into a snowbank.
I watched from the kitchen window, coffee in my hands. I was sure a lot of people wouldn’t be able to fathom how this was in any way comparable to school. In fact, some of my biggest opponents to keeping the kids home had been members of my own extended family. But I looked out that window and I saw kids learning how to communicate and work together as they explored concepts of physics and engineering in a real-life situation. They were driven to make that bobsled track work and, by the process of trial and error—and scientific principles they probably couldn’t identify but were still using—they were making it work.
By lunchtime, they were cold, wet and exhausted. They stripped out of their wet clothes and boots and huddled under blankets while I I made a plate of peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. After devouring these and a bowl full of grapes, they settled on the couch and love seat and started watching Frozen. It was a fitting choice.
I cleaned up the lunch dishes and poked my head back into the living room. Each of them had a blanket pulled up to their chin, their eyes glued to the screen. An idea blossomed.
“I have errands to run,” I told them. “Anyone want to come with?”
They barely lifted their eyes from the screen, shaking their heads no. I smiled. Just what I’d hoped.
I grabbed my own winter gear, bundled up and, blowing kisses to all three, headed out the door. I didn’t really have errands I needed to run. But I had decided a visit to Stuff It was in order
The shop was on the western edge of town, in a nearly abandoned stretch of buildings on a snow covered lot. Three shops had For Lease signs in the window. The fourth building was a small log cabin with a giant moose head on the roof and a sign in the front that read:
Stuff It – For All Your Taxidermy Needs
Were there taxidermy needs other than getting an animal stuffed?
I wasn’t sure, but I parked the car and headed inside to find out.
I pushed open the cabin door and a bell jingled, signaling my arrival. It looked remarkably like a lobby at one of the up north resorts, with its knotted pine interior and warm, ambient lighting. The honey-colored pine was everywhere: the walls, the long wooden counter, the rocking chairs strategically placed around a small, black wood stove. Just to the right of the counter, a small table housed a thermos of coffee and a domed plate filled with large, bakery-style cookies.
It would have been easy to grab a cup of coffee and a cookie and relax by the warmth of the wood stove if it hadn’t been for the dozens of dead animals staring down at me from shelves throughout the room. Moose. Deer. Racoons. Squirrels. Wolves. If it lived in Minnesota, I was pretty sure their dead counterpart was mounted on one of the walls inside Stuff It.
There was a small metal bell on the counter and I tapped it once, the ring echoing in the room. Footsteps shuffled on the floor from the wall behind the counter and a man in his fifties wearing a long sleeved red wool shirt over a black T-shirt stepped into the room. He had on a baseball cap and an eyepatch over his left eye. He towered over both me and the counter.
He lifted the brim of his cap. “Help you, ma’am?” His voice was low and gruff.
“Um, yes,” I said, still unsure of how I was approaching this. “Hello.”
He nodded. “Hello. What can I do for you?”
I looked around the room. “You have a lot of animals in here.”
“Yes.”
I squirmed a little. His stoicism was unnerving.
“You do a good job,” I told him, hoping I sounded sincere. I wouldn’t know a well-stuffed animal from a bad one, but from the looks of the animals surrounding me, these appeared to be lifelike and realistic.
His visible eye lit up. “I can take care of nearly any animal you bring me.”
“Is that so?” I glanced around the room, studying the animals. “I don’t see any domestic animals. Do you focus on wildlife?”
“Primarily,” he said. “But I do house pets, too. A lady brought in her cat last week.”
I didn’t know if it was the heat from the stove or the fact that we were talking about stuffing house pets, but I suddenly felt warm. I unzipped my jacket.
“A cat, huh?” I said.
He nodded. “She wanted him curled up like he was sleeping. So she could move him from room to room.”
His tone was matter-of-fact but I thought I saw something flash in his eye that signaled he didn’t think it was a good idea. I had no experience with stuffed, dead animals but I couldn’t image why anyone would want to carry their dead cat around.
“Anyway,” he said, bracing his hands on the counter. He stared at me with his one good eye. “What can I do for you?”
I swallowed. Standing in an empty taxidermy shop to ask questions about a deceased employee suddenly didn’t feel like such a good idea.
“Did you bring an animal in?” the man asked, leaning over the counter to inspect the floor.
“No, no,” I said shaking my head. “Nothing like that. I just came in because…because I have some questions.”
“About taxidermy?” he asked, raising the eyebrow over the eyepatch.
“Not really,” I admitted. “I actually have some questions about one of your employees.”
His mouth tightened. “Who are you?”
“Daisy,” I said. “Daisy Savage. I live here in town.”
“Daisy Savage.” He lifted a hand and rubbed his chin, thinking. “Alright.”
I didn’t know if he was just stating a fact or if he was accusing me of lying.
“I moved here several years ago,” I told him. “From Atlanta. My husband works at the recycling plant. Jake Gardner.”
His expression changed. “Jake?”
I nodded, puzzled. How on earth did Jake know the taxidermy man? He hadn’t said anything when the web site was opened on the laptop the previous evening. “You know Jake?”
“I know of Jake,” he corrected. “Mutual friends.”
“And you are…?” I asked.
A small smile appeared, the first one I’d seen since he’d walked out from the back room. “Elliott. Elliott Cornelius.”
He extended his hand and we shook. His hand was rough and calloused, and it absolutely felt like he’d spent his entire life pulling animals apart and putting them back together.
“Actually, I’m here because of Olaf Stunderson,” I told him.”
His smile flickered and died. “Ah. Olaf. Alright.” He rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “I heard he passed away. Was sorry to hear that.”
“Yes.” I was glad I’d chosen honesty as my approach as opposed to something else that probably would’ve gone awry. “I understand he worked here?”
Elliott nodded slowly and set his large hands back on the counter. “Yes. Yes, he did.”
“For a long time?”
He kept his head lowered. “Couple years,” he answered.
I nodded, staring at his hands. What else was I supposed to ask him? He’d just confirmed Olaf had worked there and he wasn’t exactly forthcoming with details. I don’t know what I’d expected from my visit to the taxidermy shop but, whatever it was, this wasn’t it.
Elliott lifted his head and stared at me with his good eye. “Are you a friend of his?”
I hesitated. “I was, yes.”
Which was, technically, the truth. We’d gone out on a date, hadn’t we?
“Then why did they find his body in your house?” Elliot’s voice suddenly had an edge to it.
I felt my cheeks color and my heart jump. Maybe he was more familiar with me than he was letting on. “I don’t know. That’s sort of why I’m here.”
He lifted his eyebrows and waited. I drew in a shaky breath and explained to him what happened. He tapped his fingers on the counter while I talked, his face devoid of expression.
“So, you didn’t do it?” he asked.
I shook my head vigorously. “No. Of course not!”
He chewed on his lower lip, his good eyes assessing me. “I believe you.”
I breathed in deeply, as much to catch my breath from all the talking I’d just done as to heave a sigh of relief. I was pretty sure I’d convinced him not to turn me into the authorities…or to preserve me as Moose River’s notorious murderer.
“I assume you know about his wife, then?” Elliot asked.
I nodded. “Helen. Yes. The divorce.”
Something flashed through his eye. “How much do you know about that?”
I shrugged. “We didn’t talk much about it on our date. But since the incident…well, I’ve talked to his sister. And to Helen.”
“And what did you find out?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Olga told me one thing and Helen sort of sang a different tune, if you know what I mean.” I adjusted my purse strap on my shoulder. “I just…I’d like to know what happened. Seeing as how Olaf was found in my coal chute.”
Elliot motioned toward the rockers positioned near the wood stove. “Sit,” he ordered. He moved away from the counter and stopped at the table with the coffee carafe. “You want a cup?”
“Sure,” I said. I sank into one of the rockers and stripped off my jacket. A cup of hot coffee was the last thing I wanted but I didn’t want to jeopardize whatever conversation Elliott was planning to have with me. My face was already flushed from conversation and I was about ten seconds away from roasting to death, now that I was sitting next to the fire.
He handed me a styrofoam cup and dropped his burly frame into the chair next to me. “Don’t believe a word Helen says.”
Straight and to the point. I was figuring out already that this was the way Elliott Cornelius was used to communicating.
“Okay,” I said. I blew on the coffee before taking a sip and it still burned my tongue. “Why is that?”
He swallowed a mouthful of coffee, seemingly oblivious to the searing temperature. “Because she lies.”
“You know her well?”
Elliott nodded. “I know her well enough.”
“Can you…elaborate?”
He crossed one leg over the other, his booted foot resting on his knee. “What exactly do you want to know?”
“Everything,” I admitted. “Anything that will help me figure out why Olaf was found in my coal chute. I honestly don’t know a thing about him—well, other than what I knew from our one date a couple of years ago. We didn’t run into each other in town. I’d actually forgotten he lived here.”
“It’s not that big of a town,” he remarked, his one eye assessing me in that unnerving way he had.
“I know,” I said. I tried another sip of coffee. “But I just keep to my own people, you know?” I didn’t want to say that my kids didn’t do school and I didn’t do church.
“I know,” he said, nodding. “I’m a bit of a loner, myself.”
I smiled, hoping he believed I was a kindred spirit.
“Alright. Everything.” Elliott sighed and rubbed at his chin. “I guess I’ll just tell you what I know. You can figure out what to do with it.”
I leaned forward and offered an encouraging smile.
“Olaf was upfront about what was going on in his personal life. Assured me that he wouldn’t let anything get in the way of his work here.” He paused. “I appreciated his honesty, told him I was sorry about it. Divorce isn’t fun.”
I nodded in agreement. It sounded as if Elliott was speaking from experience but I didn’t want to pepper him with more questions.
“Things were alright for a few months. But it eventually got in the way of his work.”
“What got in the way?”
“He started showing up late. Getting phone calls while he was here in the shop.” He grimaced. “Once the divorce was finalized, I thought things might settle down, get back to normal. Olaf was a good employee and he did work that a lot of folks couldn’t handle.”
I nodded again. I wasn’t sure I knew anyone who would willingly scrape roadkill off the highway, even if it paid well. And, from what Olga had said about Helen riding Olaf’s gravy train, I had to believe that Elliott did compensate him well.
“But, it didn’t,” he said. With his free hand, he played with the laces on his boot. “There were some quiet months when things were back to normal. But then the phone calls started again. And then the visits.”
“The visits?”
“Helen,” he told me. “She started popping in while he was here.”
“Here in the shop? Why?”
“At first, it was to bring by papers,” Elliott said, closing his eye in concentration. “Some addendum or something to the divorce. There were a bunch of those. And then she’d swing by with questions about the house; she’d gotten that as part of the divorce settlement. Olaf was polite but distant.” He opened his eye and looked at me. “He was a good man.”
“It sounds like it,” I said. “So, did she finally get the hint?”