The Light Keeper's Legacy (A Chloe Ellefson Mystery) (16 page)

Chloe could easily imagine how hard it had been for this man to advise his grandson
against
picking up the family business. At least the elderly fisherman had the museum, she thought as she wandered around the room. Volunteering here would let him tell his stories to guests who loved fish boils but never thought twice about where the whitefish came from.

She stopped in front of a display of nets. One looked distressingly familiar. She touched it, picturing the dead fingers she’d seen poking through a net just like this.

“That’s an old gillnet,” the docent said.

“How old, do you suppose?”

He shrugged. “Hard to say, but most people switched to monofilament twenty years ago. See?” He pointed to an ephemeral net hanging nearby.

I am such an idiot, Chloe thought. When Garrett mentioned that the dead young woman had gotten tangled in an old net, it had never occurred to her that he meant an
old
net. As in, decades old.

Garrett had also told her that nets got left in the lake all the time. The woman who drowned happened to get caught in a very old one, that’s all. It probably didn’t mean anything. Did it?

When Chloe left the museum, the sound of angry voices drove the question from her mind. A car with DNR insignia was parked near the
Seahawk
. Melvin Jenks stood on the dock, arms folded, glowering at a man Chloe didn’t recognize. Game warden, she figured.

“You got no right!” Jenks stood bare-headed in the rain, his thatch of white hair damp against his skull. “Next time, get a warrant.”

“We don’t need a warrant,” the warden barked. He was probably twenty years younger than Jenks, but Chloe wouldn’t have bet on him in a fight.

A second warden poked his head from the tug. “Everything’s clean,” he told his colleague. “No infractions.”

Jenks’ expression held both contempt and satisfaction. “I
told
you that. Now get the hell off my boat!” The wardens got in their car and drove away.

And I am outta here, Chloe thought. She headed to the
Karfi
dock, wishing she hadn’t chanced upon that little encounter. Time to get back to the nineteenth century.

Twenty-eight:
November, 1880

“Paul,” Ragna called. “Help
me unreel this last net.” Rock Island fishermen had not used the big outdoor reels in the early days. Now that the village was almost deserted, space didn’t matter.

Her son emerged from the cottage munching an open-faced sandwich of smoked whitefish on buttered rye bread. Once he’d licked his fingers, they quickly got the net boxed and ready.

“We’ve got potatoes ready to dig,” Ragna said. “Are you sure you want to go out with Uncle Jens and Uncle Carl today?”

“They need my help,” Paul said quickly.

“Remember, your papa was a farmer.”

He scowled. “My papa was a fisherman.”

“He was a farmer first. We were going to buy a farm on Washington Island.”

Paul shrugged.

Ragna sighed. Paul was eight years old now, and big for his age. Since Anders died he’d spent more and more time with her brothers. He made nets from scraps of old nets they gave him, and spent hours trying to catch suckers or perch from the dock. He helped Jens and Carl clean and pack fish. He pestered them for tales of their days on the lake.

And finally, this spring, he’d begged Ragna for permission to go out with them. That first time she’d watched Jens rowing the Mackinaw away with her boy in the bow she’d hardly been able to breathe. Perhaps he will be seasick, she’d thought. Perhaps he’ll be bored. Perhaps he’ll never want to go out again.

She’d known as soon as she saw his tired grin that evening that Paul was indeed his father’s son.

“Do you remember what happened to your papa?” she asked now. It was important that he didn’t forget.

Paul nodded, studying his toes.

“All right. Go find Jens and Carl.” She forced a hug on the squirming boy before he raced off. Then she stood in the sun, facing another long and empty day.

She didn’t make many nets now. One by one the men who’d been loyal even after moving away had come by, shame-faced. “Now that store-bought nets are available
…
” they’d say, not meeting her eye. “It doesn’t matter,” she told them, over and over. “It truly doesn’t matter.” The sack of coins and bills she’d planned to use to buy a farm still sat beneath her mattress.

Ragna glanced north. Maybe Emily would visit today. No, likely not. They didn’t see each other as often as they did during those early years. Emily had three children now, besides her lighthouse duties. But honestly? Everything changed the night Anders didn’t come home. Carrick Dugan killed Anders
…
and Christine
…
and Ragna’s friendship with Emily Betts, too.

So be it. Dugan didn’t spend much time on Rock anymore but he always came back, fishing from his old Mackinaw or through the ice for a few weeks at a time before disappearing again. Ragna liked to walk the beach, watching him as he’d once watched her. He didn’t taunt her anymore. He never met her eye. But he knew she was waiting.

Ragna went back inside and checked Anders’ pistol and the tin box, both hidden beneath the loose floorboard. Once assured that all was still safe, she settled in for a day of digging potatoes.

She had three bushels in the root cellar and soup bubbling on the stove by the time Paul burst through the door that evening. “Mama!” he cried. “We found this place where a ship must have split wide open!”

Ragna threw a sharp glance at her brothers as they followed Paul into the cottage. “This is true?”

Carl shrugged. “So it seemed. There was a lot of lumber afloat about eight miles out.”

“Sit down, and I’ll dish up supper.” Ragna didn’t like to think about any ship going down.

Paul took his place at the table. “There were lots and lots of logs, Mama. So many we got out of the boat and walked around on them!”

Ragna dropped the ladle and stared at her brothers. “You let him
do this?”

Jens slid into a chair, avoiding her gaze. Carl shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I kept an eye on the boy.”

“You kept an eye on him? You kept an
eye
on him?”

“Now, Ragna—”

“What if he had fallen? What if he had gone under, and couldn’t surface?” Ragna slapped Carl across the cheek.

“Mama!”
Paul stared at her with wide eyes.

“You,” Ragna said fiercely, “will not go out on the boat again. And
you
two—” she pointed from Carl to Jens—“will stay away from my son!”

Twenty-nine

The
Ranger
was moored
by the dock when the
Karfi
reached Rock Island, but the compound appeared deserted. Chloe considered her options. She wanted to run all the way to the lighthouse, lock the door, and settle down to decipher Emily Betts’ letter. But I’d go blind if I tried right now, she concluded reluctantly, watching a cloud of water vapor mist by. She needed a dry day and good light for that project.

Thwarted, she decided to take the long way home so she could stop by the meadow. Perhaps Brenda Noakes was still at her lonesome work, digging test pits, a one-woman seeker of lives long gone. If so, Chloe thought, maybe I can wiggle the second murder into the conversation. She didn’t want to show Brenda Emily’s letter until she had a better sense of what Brenda was all about.

It was lovely to walk the trail in the fog. Chloe imagined Emily Betts striding through just such a cloud on this island a century earlier—perhaps visiting her Danish friend, perhaps going to deliver a child. She would have passed dead snags riddled with pileated woodpecker holes too, and seen Jack-in-the-Pulpit plants’ clustered berries.

When Chloe reached the meadow she wandered slowly toward the shrouded lake, admiring how tiny droplets swirled through the air and clung to each blade of dead grass, each brown stalk of mullein. The fog was thicker here. Chloe zipped her jacket up to her chin, smiling idiotically. The evocative mist only intensified the lingering vibes. She almost heard the fishermen telling tales as they tended their boats and waited for the weather to clear
…
almost smelled Danish apple cake baking in a tiny cookstove
…
almost saw the women mending nets.

Chloe had reached the top of the rise above the beach when she heard a muffled scraping noise off to her right. Spade on earth, maybe. “Brenda?” Chloe called. No answer.

Paralleling the waterline, Chloe walked south toward the sound. When the meadow ended in a shrubby grove of deciduous trees, she kept going. Moisture dampened tree trunks, and mist clung to the seedpods and the burgundy leaves of columbine plants. “Brenda?”

Silence. Chloe felt a sudden need for caution. She took another step. One more.

Something new pricked her inner sensors. Something dark and angry. She froze, wide-eyed. Energy seemed to swirl past her, gaining strength, fading again. “Shit,” she whispered, feeling the trembling malevolence now mingling with the fog. She took a few steps, then retraced them, like someone pacing with a Geiger counter. She didn’t know how to get away.

The quickest route of escape led east. She scrambled through the underbrush, barely feeling branches that clawed at her jacket. She plunged from the trees and down the steep slope to the beach. She didn’t stop moving until she’d stumbled across the stones and reached the lake itself.

The shallow water lapped gently against the shore as if mocking her panic. Chloe put hands on knees and leaned over, willing her heart to return to normal cadence. “Note to self,” she muttered. “Stay out of the south woods bordering the meadow.” Something in that grove wanted
… what
? She had no idea.

Well, maybe you need to find out, she told herself. Maybe you’re the only one who can.

“But I don’t
want
to,” she protested. She folded her arms. Then she sighed, adding, “This totally sucks.”

OK. She wasn’t a quitter. If she needed to face whatever was lingering in the grove, she would. Still, there was no reason she had to do so right this minute, was there? Brenda Noakes obviously wasn’t here, and false twilight would come soon on such a gray day. Besides, Chloe was feeling hollow. A hot meal and a nice cup of chamomile tea at her cozy lighthouse would do her good. She’d tackle the black energy tomorrow.

Relieved with the self-determined postponement Chloe walked north along the water, looking for a decent path that led from the beach up to the meadow. From there, she could cut back to the main trail while staying well away from the spot where she’d felt such bad vibes.

Then she saw the fishnet, and the body.

Because of the mist, she was almost upon the dead woman before seeing her. Chloe’s knees hit stones. No mistaking human for fish this time. Instead of being tangled in the old fishnet the woman was covered from toes to chest with it, tidy and snug as if tucked into bed beneath a blanket. Under the net she wore the long black skirt and white puffed-sleeve blouse of a long-gone era. The soaked clothing clung rudely to every curve of muscle and protrusion of bone. Above the woman’s head, as if standing in for proper gravestone, a thick wooden stake had been pounded into the earth.

For one terrifying moment Chloe thought she’d truly slipped through time and conjured up a dead fishwife. Then she recognized the long gray braids, dark with lake water but still familiar. Sightless eyes stared from a weather-lined face—also familiar. Sylvie Torgrimsson lay in polite repose, hands crossed over her chest as if gently laid out by a grieving friend.

_____

Chloe almost wept with relief when she reached the Viking Hall and saw the
Ranger
still tied at the dock. Thank
God
. As she pounded towards the boathouse Garrett emerged from the contact station and locked the door behind him.

“Garrett!” she squawked, breath coming in heaves.
“Garrett!”

He looked up and frowned, bracing for whatever had catapulted
her shrieking and breathless in his direction. “What’s wrong?”

“I—I found another body,” she gasped.

“Where?”

“On the—beach below—the fishing village meadow.” She struggled to speak calmly. “It—it’s Sylvie. Sylvie Torgrimsson.”

Garrett took a step backward, as if taking a physical punch.

Chloe waited for something more. It didn’t come. “Garrett, we have to call for help.”

“She’s
…
she’s on the beach?” he echoed. “At the village site?”

“Yes.” Chloe nodded. “But—”

He began to run.

“Garret,
wait!
” She forced her legs to chase him. She managed to catch up, grab his arm, drag him to a halt.

The park manager wrenched from her grasp. “I have to get to her.”

Chloe grabbed the radio holstered on his belt. “Fine! Just give me the radio so I can try to raise someone on Washington.”

Garrett didn’t argue. As soon as she’d pulled the radio free, he took off again.

_____

An hour later, Chloe watched a tableau both eerily familiar and rawly new. She and Garrett had jounced across the island in the DNR pickup truck driven much too fast. Once there Garrett had sent Chloe back with the truck to pick up the rescue crew, which had once again sped across the channel from Washington Island in motorboats.

Now the responders waited in a silent clump watching Stig Fjelstul document the scene. He peered, studied, frowned for an eternity before rising to his feet.

“No visible sign of struggle, or injury,” he muttered. “She might have drowned, but it’s too soon to say.”

Chloe had assumed that Sylvie had drowned. But he’s right, she thought. It was impossible to know if lake water or raindrops had soaked Sylvie’s hair and clothing.

“Garrett, you saw the body before I did,” Stig was saying. “Is that your take? Did you touch or move anything?”

Garrett crouched stone-like, staring at Sylvie.

Stig sharpened his voice. “Smith!”

“What?” The park manager blinked, turned his head, seemed to notice the deputy for the first time. “Oh. Fjelstul.”

Chloe cringed from the contempt in his voice. She remembered Maintenance Melvin’s scorn, the fish guts draped over Stig’s truck.

Stig simplified his question. “Did you touch the body?”

“I—yes. Just on the shoulder.” Garrett looked at his hand.

“Did you disturb anything else? Move anything?”

“No.”

Stig turned to Chloe. “Does the scene look as it did when you left the beach after finding the body?”

Chloe swallowed hard. “Yes. She was just—just laid out like that.
As if she was in some funeral home, already in her coffin. Draped
in that fishnet. I didn’t notice anything else except that.” She pointed
to the piece of wood pounded like a gravestone into the beach. “What
is
that?”

Stig was scribbling in his little notebook. One of the other men muttered, “It looks like a pound net marker.”

“A pound net marker
…
?” Chloe had heard of pound nets, but she didn’t know how they worked.

The deputy sighed impatiently. “Pound net sites are close to shore, and they’re registered. Traditionally, men fishing with pound nets filed a claim with the closest justice of the peace, and then carved their names on markers and left them on the beach near their setups to mark their claim.”

“Did Sylvie encroach on some other fisherman’s place, do you think?” she asked.

“No,” Garret said. “Sylvie didn’t have a pound-net rig.”

Chloe took her first good look at the wooden marker. It was about two feet tall, formed from rough wood, and carved with slashes and angles—like a capital A with a stem coming down from the horizontal line. She started to make an observation, realized how ludicrous it would sound, and went instead with a question: “But—but why would someone leave a marker near Sylvie’s body?” She wanted answers, clear and precise, right
now
.

Garrett drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Sylvie did fish commercially, when she was in the mood. After her husband died she sometimes worked his rig.”

“It’s too early to speculate,” Stig said curtly. He looked back at Chloe. “Was there any sign of her tug? Drifting off-shore, maybe?”

Chloe thought back, then shook her head. “I didn’t see it. It was still foggy, though. And once I saw Sylvie
…
” She lifted both hands, palms up. “I just ran for help.”

“OK. I’ll get the Coasties looking for it. You two—” Stig included Garret in the order—“stay right here. There’s no way to get the ME here before dark. I need to document the scene.”

Chloe tipped her face skyward. The fog, perversely, was finally dissipating. The sun seemed determined to atone for its day-long sulk. The sky was pink.

“Surely this was an accident,” she said finally. “I saw Sylvie just this morning! How could something like this happen?”

Garrett clenched and unclenched his fists convulsively. “Sylvie knew her way around a boat, but she could be
…
brash. Foolhardy, even.”

“I thought of her as direct,” Chloe said. “Although of course I didn’t know her well.” I liked her though, she added, silently and sadly. I liked her very much.

“Once, Sylvie found someone pulling up her nets,” Garrett said.
“Instead of calling for help, she confronted the guy. That was
…
I don’t know, a year or so ago. After the quota system was implemented.”

Stig didn’t speak until he’d finished snapping photographs, nodded at the waiting rescue team, and walked back to Garrett and Chloe. “If you know the name of the man she confronted,” he told Garrett, “write it down.”

“I don’t know the name. Someone from Michigan, I think. But we both know that’s not the only problem.” Garret raised his chin. “Sylvie uses—used—gillnets. I don’t imagine that she would feel compelled to follow a law she didn’t agree with. Maybe—”

“The fishing problems are not just political,” Stig snapped. “As
you
well know. We’ve got pollution destroying the plankton, we’ve got lampreys, we’ve got—”

“Stop it!” Chloe cried. “What the hell is the
matter
with you two? How can you stand here and bicker at a moment like this?”

Both men actually looked chagrined. After a moment Stig said,
“You’re right.” He exhaled slowly, and looked at Garrett. “Why don’t
you go along with them.” He jerked his head toward the men now busy with the body. “We can talk again in the morning.”

“Thank you,” Garrett said, with formal courtesy. Then he looked
at Chloe. “What about you? We now have two unexplained deaths on the island. The first looked accidental, but this one
…
”

Chloe looked at Sylvie’s carefully folded hands, the odd marker pounded into the ground nearby. And the damn fishnet.

“There’s no one in the campground tonight,” Garrett added. “Chloe, I am not comfortable with the idea of you staying on the island alone.”

Chloe hugged her arms over her chest. She had so longed to have at least one solitary night on Rock! All pleasure from that notion was gone now. “Well, I guess I’m not comfortable with that idea either,” she admitted. “I’d like to get my things from the lighthouse, though.”

“I’ll go with you,” Stig said. “Then we’ll take my boat back to Washington.”

Chloe blinked back tears. She didn’t want Stig to order her around. She didn’t want to leave the lighthouse. Most of all, she didn’t want Sylvie to be dead.