The Light Keeper's Legacy (A Chloe Ellefson Mystery) (24 page)

Part way around the first cistern Chloe found a stone that projected several inches farther into the room than the others. She put the light down and grabbed the stone with both hands. It scraped free, sending a tiny shower of mortar dust and grit to the floor. Tossing it aside, Chloe snatched up the light and eagerly peered inside.

A small tin box, perhaps six inches square and blackened with age and moisture, had been shoved behind the loose stone. Chloe pulled it free. “Ragna’s box,” she whispered with awe. She had actually found the box Ragna gave Emily! The box with contents so troubling that Emily had chosen to hide it away when she left Rock Island for good.

Chloe tugged at the lid, but it didn’t move. No surprise there. And this grubby space was not the place to examine the contents anyway. Clutching the box against her chest, she stumbled back up the stairs.

“I found the box!” she exulted as she put the find on the kitchen table beside Emily’s photograph. She scrabbled in her backpack until she found her Swiss army knife. “
So
glad I brought the pack,” she muttered. She was able to wedge the blade between lid and box. Working back and forth in a sawing motion, she cleared away a century’s worth of dirt and rust. She tossed the knife aside and tugged the tin lid again. With a final wrench, it popped free. Holding her breath, Chloe peered inside.

A square of wood sat nestled on a fragment of old gillnet.

Chloe sat back in her chair, staring, trying to make sense of the find. She hadn’t known what to expect, but another damn fishnet—even a scrap—wasn’t it. Finally she picked up the block of wood. It was perhaps a half-inch thick and perfectly square, about four inches per side. In the center someone had carved the letter
R
. “Ragna,” Chloe whispered. That much made sense, but she had no idea why the wood block had been carved in the first place, or why Ragna had chosen to secure it in the tin box, or why it had so upset Emily Betts.

She gently put the block aside and pulled out the cotton netting. It was cream-colored, just a few inches across. One edge was black, and felt slightly crusty. Perhaps this scrap was all that had escaped a fire.

Did something threading through the years connect Emily and Ragna with Sylvie? Chloe felt her jubilation over finding the box leaking away and she rubbed her temples, feeling stupid. OK, think. Why would a fisherman’s widow choose to preserve a scrap of burned fishnet? And what possible connection could this little square of wood have? Someone had taken the time to carve it, and Ragna had chosen to include it in her precious box. Finally, frustrated, Chloe put the net on the table and the square on top of it.

And then she
got
it. The net was a mesh, made of individual squares, each perfectly uniform. The wooden piece was a perfect square as well—a perfect measure for the net maker. The wooden square, though, was slightly larger than the net’s mesh. Maybe Anders Anderson had found out that someone was using an illegal gillnet. Maybe he’d threatened to call the law, and gotten killed for it.

Chloe checked her watch, pushed back her chair, and headed up one flight of stairs. At the second floor landing she leaned against the window frame, looking down at the Rock Island passage sparkling below. People had traveled that channel for centuries—ancient peoples, Pottawatomie families, French explorers, maybe even Vikings. People had fished these waters for centuries as well, and a few still did. People had been shipwrecked and drowned in the channel. Commercial captains continued to steer their crafts through its choppy waters. Zana had died there, and Spencer Brant had grieved there. Somewhere out there a nighttime crew might, or might not, be searching for the long-lost
Griffon
. Perhaps they’d even found it.

And through almost all that time, people had argued about who had the right to fish where, who could harvest what species, whether people should be fishing—for sport, for food, for money—at all. Ragna’s shred of net reflected an old conflict
…
and the pound net marker by Sylvie’s body likely reflected the current and bitter one.
Had the person who left dead fish in the lighthouse carved that
horrid marker? Was he trying to make the point that Sylvie was infringing on claimed ground? Or had Sylvie found somebody using an illegal net?

Chloe was so deep in thought that the faint click almost—
almost—didn’t penetrate her consciousness. But seconds later, a slightly louder metallic
snick
reached her ears. Someone was turning a key in the summer kitchen door’s lock. Slowly. Stealthily.

Chloe tiptoed down several steps, straining her ears. A long, slow
cre-eak
echoed faintly from the summer kitchen as the intruder pushed the door open. “Hello?” she called sharply. “Who’s there?”

For two seconds, maybe three, silence rang from the lighthouse walls. Then Chloe heard more footsteps. Heavy, now. Fast.

Something bitter and metallic pooled on her tongue. The footsteps rang from the kitchen. Into the parlor. Shit, was there more than one intruder? It sure sounded like it. And no way could she make it down the stairs and get out before
whoever
was upon her.

Chloe whirled, raced back up the stairs, swung around the corner on the landing. Then she scrambled up the steeper steps to the tiny watchroom landing.

“Might as well come down, bitch,” a man growled.

Any hope that the intruders meant no harm disappeared. There
was nowhere to go but up.

The final steps were ladder-like. Chloe managed to ascend without whacking her head as she emerged into the lantern room. That tiny victory was hollow, though. As she paused on the narrow walkway that circled the light, panting, she felt tears sting her eyes. She’d climbed three stories. The ground looked very far away. And now—except for the men chasing her, whoever they were—she was truly alone.

Forty-two

Roelke exhaled a long
breath of relief when he saw the northern tip of Door County appear through the cockpit window. Almost there, he thought. So far, so good.

Of course, he
was
crossing Death’s Door. A more superstitious
man might have dwelled on that. Roelke was trying very hard
not to
.

Roelke had earned his private pilot’s license a year earlier. He’d logged eighty-seven hours of total flight time, most of that as pilot in command. He was qualified for VFR—visual flight rules. Still, the plane he’d rented that morning was a four-seater Cessna Skyhawk, bigger than he was used to flying. The little Cessna 152 he’d learned to fly in had also been available, but it was a slower ride. Not acceptable.

After calling Palmyra’s municipal airport that morning, he’d phoned a DNR warden who worked in the Kettle Moraine State Forest nearby. “I’m thinking of flying up to Door County for a little getaway,” Roelke had said. “Anything going on up there?”

The answer had been succinct. Had Roelke heard about the apparent murder on Rock Island?

When Roelke could breathe again he called Skeet. “I need you to take my shifts for the next couple of days,” he’d said without preamble. Skeet launched into enthusiastic assurances. Roelke had slammed the receiver down mid-stream.

Now he began to descend to the traffic pattern altitude he’d need
at the Washington Island Airport strip. Beneath the cloudy sky, the water below had an ominous gray-green cast. Passing beyond Death’s Door did little to ease his nerves. The same thoughts continued to bounce through his brain like rubber balls. Apparent murder
…
Rock Island
…
Chloe
…
murder
…

“Stop it,” he muttered. He set his radio to the common traffic advisory frequency, listened for other aircraft announcing themselves, and keyed his own mic. “Washington Island traffic, this is Cessna November-Three-Four-Seven-Seven-Echo, five miles southwest, inbound for landing on runway Two-Two.”

Roelke pulled back on the throttle to slow the descent, and lowered the wing flaps. He was tempted to come straight in, but he’d never seen the field before, and he was way too wired to risk making a stupid mistake. “Washington Island traffic, Seven-Seven-Echo is left downwind for Two-Two.”

As he entered the pattern, paralleling runway Two-Two so he could assess the approach and eyeball the terrain, he glimpsed Rock Island in the distance—mostly covered with dense forest, more bleak and isolated than he’d even imagined. Roelke’s jaw began to ache. Although Chloe had called from Washington Island that morning, he was very much afraid that for some ridiculous reason she had blithely returned to Rock to spend one last night in the old lighthouse.

“Focus,” he muttered. The strip was clear but the distraction had made him late making the necessary turn, which screwed up his descent. He’d have to speed up a little for a longer approach.

He made two left turns, which brought him in line with the runway. Airspeed and descent looked good. “Washington Island traffic, Seven-Seven-Echo on final for Two-Two.” There were trees near the approach end of the grass strip, so he set the flaps full down.

He was clearing the woods when the deer bounded from the cover. Three of them, all does, running straight toward Two-Two.

Dammit
. Roelke pulled back on the yoke and shoved the throttle forward, trying to get the Cessna to climb. Instead of ramping up the engine hesitated.

What the hell was wrong? A few eternal seconds later, the engine recovered with a roar, but airspeed was still dropping. The stall warning began to wail.

I’m screwed, Roelke thought. He was seconds away from a crash.

_____

Before Chloe could catch her breath from her ascent to the lantern room, she heard her pursuers thundering up the stairs to the watchroom just below. Then footsteps started clomping up the ladder. Could she kick the lead guy as he emerged through the hatch? Maybe shove him back down? Not likely.

Chloe cast wildly about.
There
—two cans of paint. She grabbed one. The first man banged his head against the edge of the hatch with a resounding thud, buying her a few seconds. As she spun around, lifting the can above her head, she caught a glimpse of a man wearing a dark balaclava. She heaved the can down through the hatch with all her strength. Cursing, Balaclava Man crashed down the steps. Chloe hurled the second can after the first.

“Oh,
fuck
,” he groaned. A second male voice muttered something inaudible.

Chloe didn’t waste time on a glance through the hatch. She’d slowed Balaclava Man down. Maybe even disabled him. Guy Two could be after her any moment, though. The instinct to
run-run-run
buzzed through her brain.

She couldn’t go down. She couldn’t go up. Only option: going out.

Chloe dropped to her knees beside a low wooden door, wrenched it open, and scrambled onto the narrow walkway outside the lantern room. “Oh God,” she whimpered, clutching the paint-sticky railing, fighting a wave of vertigo. The trees and picnic table and outhouse below looked dollhouse-sized.

The roof’s peak stretched south from the lantern room. The roof itself fell steeply on either side. Chloe’s stomach twisted again as she imagined trying to creep down to the gutters without falling.

Wait. A heavy cord of braided copper ran from the lightning rod on top of the tower down the west side of the roof before disappearing over the edge of the gutters.

Chloe bit her lip hard. Would the cable support her weight? And even if she did make the gutters without somersaulting into thin air, what then? The gutters were placed along a narrow ledge at the roof’s edge that might, if she were very lucky, support her. Could she crawl along until she came to a downspout? And if so, was she acrobatic enough to go over the ledge and shimmy down two stories? Would a downspout support her weight? Not likely, and oh
shit
, those downspouts were original fixtures, and if she damaged one and broke her neck anyway—

With considerable effort Chloe wrenched her mind from inevitable failure. There were no signs of fresh pursuit—
yet
. The men probably assumed she was trapped. Bottom line, she could stay where she was until someone did come after her. Or she could try to keep putting distance between them.

Chloe crawled under the walkway railing to the roof. After rubbing sweat from her palms she grabbed the copper cable.

The roof was too steep, and her muscles too trembly, for a controlled descent. With one terrified hitch she felt herself skidding. She clung desperately to the cable as she slid, clenching her teeth against pain as slivers of copper dug into her palms. The narrow gutter raced to meet her. Too fast, too fast!

At the last possible moment she managed to twist onto her right hip. Her right foot hit the gutter with shockwave force. Her knee buckled and her hands were on fire and she knew to her marrow that she was about to fly over the gutter.

But somehow,
somehow
, she managed to stop her freefall. She closed her eyes, dizzy with fear and relief. She was one story closer to the ground than she had been.

Keep going
, shrilled the voice in her brain.
Run-run-run
.

Chloe opened her eyes. The only possible route from roof to ground lay along an antique downspout. OK, she told herself. Don’t think. Just get your bearings. Still clinging to the grounding wire, she forced herself to look over the edge of the gutter.

A burst of hysterical laughter bubbled inside. A ladder leaned
against the wall. Herb’s lazy no-good painter had, despite her
specific requests, left a ladder leaning against the wall just a few feet away. She might actually be able to reach the ground without killing herself.

Chloe thought that the hardest part would be letting go of
the cable. It took raw willpower to unclench her death-grip on the
copper cord. Then she realized that the hardest part would be scut
tling along the gutter, leaning against the roof, praying the ledge would continue to hold her weight. But then she discovered that by far the hardest part would be easing herself from gutter ledge to ladder.

It took several attempts. She couldn’t actually see the top of the ladder. It was frightening to leave even the flimsy security of solid roof, narrow gutter. In the end she knelt on the gutter with one hand clutching the ledge and the other pressed against the roof for support, and extended one leg out behind her. Hours seemed to pass as she inched it back and forth through empty air, terrified that she might kick the ladder over by mistake. Finally she felt the side of the ladder, and then the horizontal safety of a rung beneath her sole. Holding her breath, she managed to slide eel-like over the gutter and plant her other shoe on the next rung.

Moments later she was on the ground. She took off, racing for the trail to the park’s main compound. She might have reached terra firma, but she was far from safe.

_____

The stall warning shrieked again. Roelke’s hand quivered on the yoke, wanting desperately to personally muscle the plane up. He didn’t want to kill the deer. He didn’t want to kill himself. He needed lift. Now.

But training took command:
No
. A Cessna needed at least two hundred feet to recover from a stall. He didn’t have that kind of altitude. He had to wait, to let the plane gain enough speed to begin climbing.

A few more heartbeats passed. RPMs were rising, the prop spinning faster, but the plane pulled up so sluggishly that Roelke imagined the wheels grazing the animals. Did he still have full flaps? He did. He should have reduced his flaps from thirty degrees to twenty on the go-around.

When he was finally truly airborne, and risked a glance back, he was astonished to see the deer unharmed, loping gracefully across the grass.

Roelke’s breath escaped in a rush. He climbed and headed away from the airport. He needed a breather. And he needed to figure out why the engine had hesitated in the first place. He ran through a mental list: carburetor icing, sparkplug fouling, low oil pressure. Nope, nope, nope.

Then he walked himself through his landing checklist, and
…
damn
. He’d been so eager to land that he hadn’t adjusted the fuel mixture from the lean cruise setting to full rich. The engine had choked when he’d shoved the throttle. On top of that, he’d let the sight of Rock Island distract him when he should have been studying not just the designated grass runway, but the entire field. The strip had been clear, but he might have been able to see the deer near the trees if he’d actually looked.

Roelke circled back to try the landing again. This time he managed it.

When he’d taxied to a tie-down he cut the plane’s engine and sat, nerves buzzing, flexing aching fingers. Finally he glanced at the small parking lot. Empty, thank God. At least no one had seen him screw up. He hadn’t stalled. And he hadn’t hit the deer. A collision would have damaged the plane. And if Chloe heard that he’d mowed down three whitetails
…

The thought of Chloe got him moving again. He went through his checklist for shutting down the aircraft with scrupulous care. By the time Jim’s Island Taxi turned into the parking lot, Roelke had closed his flight plan, secured the plane, placed the tie-down fee in an envelope, and shoved it through the slot provided on the box. His knees still felt a little wobbly, but he was ready to pull it together.

Roelke strode across the gravel to meet the driver, glad he’d thought to make arrangements for a ride before leaving Palmyra. “I’m Officer Roelke McKenna, Eagle PD,” he said. “I need to see Deputy Fjelstul.”

“Then you’ve got a problem,” the driver said. “Nobody knows where he is.”

_____

Chloe knew that if one of the intruders had climbed to the light tower or looked out a window, he’d have seen her hit the trail. Maybe they’re not coming after me, she thought. Maybe they gave up.

More likely they didn’t.

Who the hell
were
these guys? Chloe had seen through the hatchway a black splash as one of the paint can lids came off. She grieved about that oil-based pigment staining walls and stairs and woodwork—but it surely had splashed on Balaclava Man too. If she could escape the island and get help, that paint might help identify the SOB. Black drops would have hit his hands, and might have splashed through the eye- and mouth-holes in his balaclava too. At the very least, it should be all over his clothes—

His
clothes
.

Chloe’s foot hit a rut. She fell. For a few seconds she was too stunned to move. That damned balaclava wasn’t the only thing sinister about the man’s attire. It hadn’t registered at the time, but she’d seen too much of the Department of Natural Resources’ muted gray-green uniforms lately to mistake them.

A stick snapped somewhere behind her. She scrambled to her feet and began to run again, mind racing too. Melvin Jenks had been surly, gruffly polite, and indifferent by turns. She could imagine him in the role of attacker. Maybe he’d been scamming DNR wardens, hiding illegal fish in the isolated lighthouse so he could cruise into dock for inspections with confidence. It would be easy enough for him to meet someone else—maybe an unscrupulous restaurant owner in a pleasure boat—and sell the fish without anyone being the wiser.