Death Stalks Door County (6 page)

Two tragic deaths in one week weren't going to derail the resort area's summer plans. Would anyone at the party mention Wisby or Macklin? Cubiak doubted it.

The ranger squinted at the jeep's windshield. Under heavy cloud cover, the premature twilight made it hard to distinguish landmarks along the road. Waning night vision, his ophthalmologist had called it. Another sign he was slipping too quickly through midlife. Cubiak supposed he should feel some angst. But there was none, just a vague sense that nothing mattered much except the next drink.

Nearing Sturgeon Bay, he nearly missed the turnoff to Bay Shore Drive, the gently curving road that ran along the well-manicured, waterfront estates of Door County's prominent families.

Cubiak pulled up behind a row of cars, as a sporty red convertible swung out of a nearby yard. The car screeched to a stop on the opposite shoulder.

“Hey!” It was Barry Beck, the teenage son of Door County's leading industrialist. “Do I get the job?”

“Yeah.” The position was part-time and minimum wage, an aide-decamp at the Nature Center during the two busiest summer months. Cubiak suspected there were kids in the area who needed the job, but taking Barry on hadn't been his decision. Politics being what they were, the park's oversight committee had given a thumbs-up to the boy's application.

“Cool. Enjoy the party,” Barry said, waving with youthful enthusiasm as he sped away.

On foot, Cubiak followed a wide driveway to Beck's mansion. The house was three stories of gray granite punctuated with oversize windows and topped with a slate roof. A dark lace ruffle of neatly trimmed hedges hugged the perimeter, a quiet understatement of the language of power and money spoken within these walls. It was the kind of place where Cubiak's mother would have worked had she not cleaned hotel rooms. He'd been in places like this in Chicago, houses where the front hall was larger than most kitchens on the side of the tracks where he'd grown up. In one case, the splendid surroundings hadn't done anything for the owner, who had been found lying next to an in-ground swimming pool with a bullet hole in his chest, as lifeless as the terra cotta tiles beneath him.

Standing outside Beck's front door, Cubiak heard a dim murmur of voices, accented by an occasional burst of laughter. He put on his best blank face and pressed the buzzer.

The door opened to a rush of noise and light and the impressive figure of a young female Viking. Cubiak blinked. The apparition transformed into a tall, blond teenage girl flashing a bright, practiced smile.

“Hi. Good evening.” The salutation was crisp, well rehearsed.

Cubiak pulled a crumpled invitation from his right pocket.

“Oh, that's not really necessary.” A giggle ruffled the girl's routine. Her white jumpsuit shimmered. Around her neck, a string of glass cherries sparkled. When she turned to show him the way, Cubiak noticed the cherry tree branch silk-screened across the back of her outfit. “Like it? They're ordered special for the greeters. We act as the official hospitality staff for all the different summer events on the peninsula. Mr. Beck's prefest party is always the first job we work and the first time we get to wear our new outfits.” Her exuberance bounced the words toward Cubiak.

“You know everyone?” she said, gesturing toward the living room, a sprawling arena decorated with white gardenias and buzzing with local civic and business honchos.

Cubiak didn't recognize a soul. “Sure.”

“Great. Otherwise my instructions are to introduce you around. Mr. Beck likes people to mingle.” The greeter gave him another vacuous grin and then stepped aside to let him pass.

Thirsty, Cubiak approached the nearest bar and asked for a beer.

“No beer.” A muscled young man in white pants and starched, nautical shirt—no cherries—handed him a flute of champagne.

The glass was chilled, the bubbles cold. Cubiak drank it in one gulp. He helped himself to another and slowly wove his way around the periphery of the room. The west wall was plate glass; the others were hung with soft abstract paintings. A pair of low-slung white leather couches faced each other in front of an enormous fieldstone fireplace. Scattered elsewhere were several groupings of comfortable low chairs in rich gray-green. Tables were mahogany. Rugs thick, probably hand-knotted Orientals. Cubiak scanned the crowd for Bathard.

“Glad you made it.” Out of nowhere, Beck appeared at Cubiak's side. The scion of Door County was deeply tanned and nautically dressed. He studied the ranger's appearance critically. “That the best you can do?”

Cubiak shrugged.

Beck gripped the ranger's elbow. “These are the movers and shakers, the people who count,” he said as he turned his guest around the room. “My job is to make Door County prosper and to do that I have to keep them happy. Your job is to help me do mine well.” He released his hold. “Got it?”

“My job's at the park,” Cubiak said and finished off his third glass of champagne.

“Precisely.” Beck beamed. “The park is pivotal.”

“Whatever,” Cubiak said.

Beck looked at him and laughed. “Chitchat's not your forte, is it?”

“Nope.”

From across the room, someone important raised a hand and caught the host's attention. Beck saluted over the crowd. “Buy yourself some new clothes,” he said as he moved away.

Cubiak grunted and downed more champagne. Little more than supercharged soda water as far as he was concerned. A drink for women, effete socialites, and wedding toasts. He checked his watch and felt a familiar stab of anguish. The watch had been a gift from his wife on their first Christmas together. He tugged his cuff down. Only fifteen minutes since he'd arrived. He figured another fifteen and he could leave. Maybe stop on the way back and have a real drink.

“Eloise Beck. We haven't met.”

A petite, dark-haired woman offered her hand to Cubiak. She wore a slim-fitting silver cocktail dress and was extremely well put together, almost artfully enough to hide the slight puffiness in her cheeks and the fine network of lines that radiated from the corners of her mouth.

“Oh,” she said when she heard his name. “Beck's boy.”

He colored slightly, and she giggled and moved closer. “Don't worry. Everyone here is a Beck's boy, and besides I'm a little looped.”

Eloise tittered again and slipped away.

A waiter materialized, offering a tray laden with food. Cubiak sampled the smoked salmon and cherry canapés and looked out at Green Bay and the last shreds of daylight. An impressive expanse of manicured lawn separated the house from the water. On the right, a white stone walkway led to a dock outlined with tiny white lights. A luxury cabin cruiser, a boat large enough to qualify as a yacht, was tied up alongside, bobbling gently with the chop.

Cubiak guzzled several more glasses of champagne. Anesthetized and with a full glass in hand, he zigzagged between the guests and down a rear hall into a contemporary family room, more vaulted space tastefully grafted onto the house. Three people he didn't recognize huddled inside the doorway and laughed at a private joke.

He eased past them. The noise level dropped dramatically, and Cubiak sank into a low small couch, feeling surprisingly calm. Whether it was the effect of the alcohol or simple exhaustion he didn't know. Beyond Beck's twinkling dock, an ore boat similarly ablaze with lights and riding high in the water slid silently toward the harbor at Sturgeon Bay. Cubiak decided he would leave when the boat reached port.

“May I join you?”

Startled, Cubiak looked up. The ore boat had vanished.

A woman perched on the arm of a chair studied him over the rim of her glass. She was startlingly good looking, long and lanky, dressed completely in black, with tangerine hair.

Despite himself, Cubiak sat up straight.

“Cate Wagner,” she said. “Ruby Schumacher's niece. I noticed you this morning at Benny's funeral, figured you must be new. I served coffee after the service, but I don't think you came down.” She looked past him and blinked hard several times before going on. “Poor Benny. He loved that old boat. I can't believe he'd do something stupid like that. Must've been losing it.”

“He was pretty drunk.”

Cate grinned. “His natural state. You know, he used to take me out fishing when I was a kid. Made me bait my own hook. ‘Just 'cause you're a girl, don't mean nothing,'” she said, mimicking a husky voice. “Guess I can't begrudge him the pecan rolls.”

“Pecan rolls?”

“Sunday special at the Ephraim Bakery. You are new, aren't you?” Cate said. “Every Sunday morning, Martha Smithson makes pecan rolls that are very popular with the locals. This past Sunday, Ruby and I stopped in around ten, hoping to snag a dozen, but they were already gone. Martha said Benny had been in bright and early and bought a sack full.”

Cate tilted toward him. She wore perfume and had the same sculpted cheekbones and thick, straight brows as her aunt. “Wouldn't happen to have a cigarette, would you . . . ?”

“Dave Cubiak. I quit.”

“Right.” Cate unwound herself from the chair. “Give me a sec,” she said.

As Cubiak watched, she strode up to a trio of men who were pretending they hadn't noticed her. When she returned, two cigarettes lay across the palm of her hand. She passed one to him, cutting short his protest. “Look at your fingers, for God's sake.”

Silent, he struck a match for them to share.

Cate inhaled deeply. “Mister Cubiak. You are a . . . painter? No, hands too unsullied, save for the nicotine. Woodcarver? Owner of a gift shoppe?” She pronounced the final
e
.

“Park Service,” he said stiffly.

“Oh. You work for Johnson then.” Cate searched the bumpy, thick carpet at the base of the chair until she found a place to put her empty glass. “Strange man. You know he used to date Beck's sister Claire. Hard to imagine, the park super with a sweetheart.”

“Love is strange.”

Cate laughed. She was nonchalant and at ease in the room. It struck Cubiak that she fit in about as well as he did not. “Greeters.” She indicated one of the young girls in white. “It's a fun job when you're sixteen.”

Right, Cubiak thought. The summer he was sixteen, he had worked in a wet-end extrusion factory on South Kedzie. One morning, a fat-faced foreman with a cheap toupee made him stick his right hand through the intake of a plugged dryer. Blood and worse dripped out as Cubiak tugged at a tangled blob of sausage casings. When he finally pulled his arm free, he noticed that the hair had been burned off up to the elbow. He quit on the spot.

“You always this glum?”

“You always this chipper?” Her question had been posed lightly. His, delivered like a sledge hammer.

“Well, touché!” Cate said.

She ignored him for several minutes. Then she snatched two flutes of champagne from a passing tray. “Maybe this will mellow you out,” she said, handing one to Cubiak. “Ruby was supposed to meet me here. Guess she got tied up. You know her?”

“Not really. Met once.”

“Bit of a character. Local treasure. Dedicated environmentalist. Nationally known fabric artist. Like a second mother to me. You don't mind my chatting, do you? It's just, you're going to live here you may as well know some of the folklore.”

When she was eleven, Cate told him, she and Ruby had hiked up the bay side from Ephraim to the tip of the peninsula. Door County was different then. Just a few condos. Mostly cottages and houses and a couple rustic resorts dotting the waterfront.

“Ruby knew all the Indian tricks. How to walk without making a sound or leaving a trail, but I couldn't do it, not as well as she did. I'd step on twigs and muss up the trail.”

After three days of walking, they camped on a high, wooded bluff overlooking Porte des Morts, the deep channel where the waters from the bay and the lake converged.

“Death's Door is a treacherous stretch of water,” she said. Hundreds of ships had gone down there. Nobody knew how many people have drowned. Probably thousands.

“Legend has it that the currents trap the ghosts of the dead, and on moonless nights, you can hear their cries.” She looked past him again. “You believe in ghosts?”

He fidgeted. “No.”

But didn't he? Lying in bed one night a week after the accident, he'd sensed Lauren behind him in the dark and understood that her presence was a gift and that turning around, insisting on seeing her, was blasphemous. He'd willed himself still and waited. After a bit, he'd felt her breath warm his neck. She'd come to say good-bye.

Cate swallowed a yawn. It was late, and she was tired. Could she impose on him for a ride back to her aunt's house? “It's a bit of a haul, I'm afraid.”

Cubiak was glad for an excuse to leave.

They were silent on the way to the jeep and then north through Egg Harbor, Fish Creek, Ephraim, and beyond. As he drove, Cubiak relaxed into the engine's steady hum and the insignificance that the immense darkness conferred upon them. At Gills Rock, a tiny fishing village near the tip of the peninsula, the road narrowed and curved sharply to the right. Thick pines crowded on either side. A crescent moon hung above the tree line, creating a patchwork of shadows on the undulating roadway. Inhaling the cool night air, the ranger felt settled and calm.

“So, you married or what?”

Cubiak started. His passenger had been quiet so long he thought she was asleep. In the dappled dark, the familiar agitation returned and he shook his head.

“No? Divorced? Single?”

“Widowed.” The word caught in his throat.

“Oh. Sorry.” There was an awkward pause. “I'm divorced, myself. Six months,” she said at last. Cate pointed in the dark. “Left at the next driveway.”

Cubiak careened between the trunks of two large trees and coasted into a wide clearing where a sprawling one-story ranch and several outbuildings hunkered in the sparse moonlight. The aroma of magnolias hung over the yard, and in the distance a dog yelped. He rolled to a stop where an old-fashioned fixture threw a tight splotch of light on the rear steps.