My client, Emma Wooding, was in her 30s, a sales manager at pharmaceutical firm. She wore a crisp blue suit, but her eyes were dark and a little raw, as if sadness had lived in them for a long while. We sat in a coffee shop near her office.
“There’s a small town in Wisconsin, near the state line, called Linewood. There’s a small lake, and the lake freezes over every winter. This spring, when the lake thawed, a fisherman hooked something heavy and couldn’t bring it up, so they sent people down, and they found—they found my father.”
“I’m very sorry.” I remember when my father died.
She nodded. “Yeah. They said it was suicide. There was a boat at the edge of the lake, and they said he must have—I don’t know.” She shuddered.
“My father and I—we haven’t been close for a long time.” She stirred her coffee. “I got pregnant when I was 17, and he kicked me out. But there was other stuff. Trump, stuff like that. Anyway, I knew about the house in Linewood, but I’ve never been there. I mean, I went up there once after he—after they contacted me, but I couldn’t really do anything.”
I sipped my coffee. It was stronger than I like, but tolerable. “So what can I do for you?”
She dropped a key on the table between us. “I’d like you to go up there and find out what he was doing there.”
“Doing? You think he was up to something?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. That’s the thing. When he bought the house, he gave me the address and he just said, ‘There’s something I have to do.’ He only bought it last fall. It might be nothing, maybe he just thought he had to go fishing or something. But I feel like . . .” She frowned, looking down at her coffee. “There was no note or anything. I know he was depressed. I just want to know if there’s something else I should know. If that makes sense.”
“It does.” I paused. “What did they tell you?”
“Not much. Nobody seemed to know him very well. He paid his bills on time, kept to himself. They did say—well, it’s not the first time they found somebody frozen in the lake.”
“It’s happened before?”
“About 20 years ago. They don’t know who it was, they just found a guy. And since then, a couple of years ago I guess, they found someone from the town who’d gone missing over the winter. But he was like my father—he lived alone and nobody really noticed he was gone. And I guess there were others even before that.”
I thought it over. “Well, I can’t promise anything. I might not be able to find out how he died, but I can probably get some information on his life there. It may not be much.” I was being purposely pessimistic. I didn’t want her expecting miracles.
She sighed. “I know. Whatever you can find out. Take a couple of days and if you can’t find anything, just let me know and send me your bill.” She pushed the key toward me. “You can stay at his cabin.”
A dead man’s cabin? That should be fun. “Okay.”
“So do you want to go up to Wisconsin for the weekend?” I asked Rachel at dinner
“Is it for a case?” Rachel is my wife. She’s got red hair and hazelnut eyes, and she’s a little psychic. “I have to work tomorrow.” She’s a therapist at a mental health clinic.
“It is a case.” I told her the general details. “I’m not sure I’ll need your phenomenal psychic powers, but you could help ask questions. It might look less suspicious if there were two of us, and one of us is drop-dead gorgeous.” I grinned.
Rachel snorted. “Fine, you smooth-talking devil. I’ll drive up tomorrow after work. Does the cabin have wi-fi?”
“I didn’t ask. Should I text the client?” I raised my phone.
She rolled her eyes. “Well, if not, there’s always sex.”
“I hope this newlywed phase never ends.”
Rachel kicked me under the table. But with a smile.
Gregory Wooding’s Linewood house was a log cabin, rustic and warm, with a big fireplace in the living room, a microwave in the kitchen, and wi-fi throughout. The refrigerator was empty. Fortunately I’d stopped at the small grocery store in town before coming.
Inside I set the grocery bags down and looked around. The first thing I saw was the antlered head of a deer mounted over the fireplace. The second thing sat on the mantle beneath it—a small metal sculpture of a ratlike figure surrounded by sharp black spikes. It sat between two vases, standing on two hind legs, and it had a single red eye in the middle of its forehead. It was heavy to lift; the base would probably dent my skull.
I took a picture with my phone and sent it to Emma. Do you recognize this?
She texted back as I was carrying the groceries into the kitchen. I saw it when I was here before. Don’t know what it is.
After I put the groceries away, I started searching. My client had given me permission to look everywhere. “I cleaned out his clothes,” she told me. “But everything else is still there. Unless someone broke in, but I don’t think so.”
I found no evidence of a break-in. The cabin had two bedrooms, so I started in the main one. The drawers and closets were empty. A table next to the bed held two paperbacks and a lamp, and in the drawer I found a collection of shoelaces, paperclips, rubber bands, birthday cards from Emma and others, and two Lands End catalogs for men. Nothing under the mattress of the bed, nothing taped on the underside of the drawers, nothing in the back of the closet. I could try unscrewing the vent later.
The medicine cabinet in the bathroom had some prescription bottles, but nothing incriminating—blood pressure medication, cholesterol, thyroid, and a few I had to check on my phone to make sure they weren’t antipsychotics or anything hinting at a serious problem. Nothing was hidden in the toilet tank.
The other bedroom had an exercise bike and some boxes of old bills and tax returns. I went through them, finding nothing interesting, and went back to the kitchen.
The kitchen held nothing out of the ordinary, just pots and pans and a few recipe books. So I went back out to the living room and started looking behind pictures on the walls. They were mostly nature scenes, and looked like something a real estate agent might have hung to give the cabin a properly rustic atmosphere. A knock at the door interrupted me.
Neighborhood watch? Villagers with torches? Welcoming committee with pie? “Coming!”
The woman was in her 60s, in a long raincoat, her hair pulled back under a scarf. Her smile was wide but fake, and she was careful to keep her distance on as I opened the door in case I was a serial killer. “Hello! Are you the new owner? I’m Emily Dorner. I live down there.” She pointed to a house a few hundred yards down the road. A small beagle ran in and out between her feet.
“Not exactly.” I stepped outside. The day was overcast and chilly, and I immediately wished I’d put on my jacket. “I’m Tom Jurgen. I’m working for Mr. Wooding’s daughter. Were you friends?” No time like the present to start asking questions.
“Not close, close friends, no.” She kept up her smile. “We had Greg over to dinner once or twice, my husband and me. Just being neighborly. Watched each other’s property. For, you know, trouble.”
Strangers like me, presumably. The beagle didn’t approach me closely. “What did he like to do? Hike? Go fishing? Square dancing?”
Mrs. Dorner laughed. “I really don’t know. I’d see him in town, at the store, going into the lodge sometimes. Never at church, but not everyone’s a churchgoer, you know?” She shrugged.
“He kept to himself? Any friends?”
“I really don’t know.” She grew suspicious again. “You said you work for his daughter? I don’t think I ever saw her here.” She backed away a little more. “What kind of work do you do?”
Before I could answer, a car pulled up behind mine in the gravel driveway. A police car. I should have expected this. Had Mrs. Dorner called them before coming over? Suspicious stranger in the Wooding house? I wasn’t sure I’d blame her.
The cop who came up out of the car was broad and beefy, and he wore a thick jacket, his handgun dangling on his hip. He smiled, like Mrs. Dorner: Welcoming but guarded. “Morning.”
“Good morning, officer.” I smiled too. “I was just chatting with Mrs. Dorner here. I’m Tom Jurgen, from Chicago. Mr. Wooding’s daughter asked me to come up here and check the place out.”
“Daughter, huh?” I could see him start to search his memory for any mention of Emma Wooding.
“They were, uh, estranged,” I said before either of them could ask.
“Oh, yeah.” The cop nodded. “She came up to claim the body. Said she hadn’t been up here before.”
“You can call her and confirm that I’m here with permission,” I said helpfully.
He frowned, as if I was telling him how to do his job. “Yeah. Are you here to clean the place out or what?”
“Emma Wooding wants to know more about what happened to her father. I’m just here to ask a few questions.”
“Uh-huh.” He crossed his arms. “You going to solve the mystery? Because us country cops can’t?”
“I’d never say that, officer. I’m just here to ask questions, like I said.”
“Well . . .” He looked past me into the cabin. “I guess I can’t stop you with that. I’m Clint Morrison. I’m with the sheriff’s office. If you bother anybody, you’ll be seeing me again, or one of my partners.”
“I understand.” I do my best not to piss off the police. It doesn’t always work, but I try.
Morrison got in his car and left. Mrs. Dorner looked unsatisfied, but she gave me a nod before she turned back to her house. “Anything you need, Mr. Jurgen.” It was probably a habit to say that. I didn’t think she’d want me knocking on her door for a cup of sugar. “Come on, Boomer.”
“Nice to meet you,” I told her as the dog followed her home.
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