Rachel’s mood had improved by the next morning, so we ate breakfast late. “So what’s the agenda today?” she asked, pouring coffee. “Are we working?”
“I should. You can hang out here if you want. Or wander through the town. For a small town, it’s got a few interesting shops and boutiques. There’s a bookstore.”
“Tempting.” She nudged my knee with her foot under the table. “I think I’ll watch you work. It’s fun sometimes.”
“I like watching you,” I told her. “I mean, you’re always a help.”
Rachel snorted. “Come on, shamus, there’s work to do.”
First I drove her out to the lake. “I’m not dipping my foot in that water,” Rachel said getting out of the car. “It looks like the ice only melted yesterday.”
“Do you get anything from looking at it?” I gazed out across the water. “Ghosts?”
She frowned. “They found how many people?”
“Three, over the last 30 years. Including my client’s father.”
Rachel shook her head. “There’s more. Lots more.”
I looked out across the icy water. “How many?”
“They’re angry. And scared. But mostly angry.” She cocked her head. “Twenty or so. Maybe more. It’s hard to count when they’re all shouting.”
I shivered, and not from the cold.
We went back to the car. “What now?” Rachel asked.
“The Lodge. Maybe we’ll see our friend from last night.”
The blinds in the Lodge’s front windows were open today, and we could see people walking around inside. “The other lake victim was a member here too. It was in his obituary.”
“Okay.” She flung her door open and looked up. “Elwood. Linewood. Cute.”
I didn’t mention that I’d taken five minutes to figure the name out.
The big room inside had a rustic, hunting-lodge atmosphere, with long sofas on legs made of logs, big hard-backed chairs, and a rug the size of Lake Michigan over a hardwood floor. A huge fireplace dominated one side of the room, glowing with a gas fire.
The fireplace was warm. On the mantle over it, I saw something familiar: A wooden sculpture, just like the one in Wooding’s cabin. A ratlike figure with one red eye, surrounded by sharp spikes. This one was bigger, almost three feet tall, and the red eye seemed to reflect the light from the fire below.
Paintings of deer and other wildlife hung on the walnut paneled walls around a couple of doors, one marked “Rec,” the other with a men’s room image, and another without any marking at all. Two men sat at a table playing backgammon. White, in their 70s, they didn’t look up as we entered until they spotted Rachel. One muttered something to his partner, who turned for a second, nodded, and then went back to rolling the dice.
“Help you folks?” That came from a man emerging from the unmarked door. He wore a vest and a blue shirt, and nodded at the backgammon players while keeping his eyes on me.
“My wife and I are just visiting for the weekend,” I said, “and this lodge looked interesting. Can I ask what’s the story around this statue?”
He glanced at Rachel. “It’s a private organization,” he told us. “For residents only.”
“Was Greg Wooding a member?” I asked. “I’m here on his daughter’s behalf.”
The two players were listening, but the man ignored them. “And you are?”
“Tom Jurgen. This is my wife, Rachel.” I handed him a card.
“Private detective?” The man looked at both sides of the card. “What’s this about?”
“Just that his daughter wants to know more about her father’s life here. Especially after what happened. Can I ask your name?”
He straightened up. “Pablo Jackson. I’m the secretary of the Lodge. I have to—”
“That means you must know Dwight, right? Dwight Harrison? He stopped by last night.”
“Dwight?” It was one of the backgammon players. “That was you he was—”
“Enough, Harold.” Jackson waved a hand. “Dwight’s the, uh, the president here, yeah. I’m the membership coordinator.”
“Was Greg Wooding a member?” I asked again. “What about Ed Haynes? He was a member. It was in his obit.”
Jackson shook his head, more sternly now. “I can’t discuss our members. Past or present. Again, it’s time for you to—”
“What about the statue?” This was Rachel. Jackson looked at her, and his annoyance slipped away. She has that effect on people. I try not to let it get to me.
“That’s King Ventikken.” He pointed. “It’s supposed to be a native spirit, but really someone just made it up about 100 years ago to scare little kids into obeying their parents. Over time, it kind of evolved into a protector of the town. We adopted it as our mascot when Nathaniel Bailey founded the lodge in back in the 1950s.” Then he remembered he wasn’t supposed to talk to us, and he folded his arms. “All right?”
Rachel smiled. “Thanks.”
I felt Jackson and the two backgammon players watching us as we left.
“He was lying about the rat,” Rachel said as she opened her door. “About making it up. He’s sort of scared to talk about it.”
“Nice work.” I slid behind the wheel.
“It helps to be a hot babe.” She grimaced as she got in. “You could smell the testosterone from their pores.”
“I don’t smell of male hormones, do I?”
She smiled. “Every guy in there is wondering how you got so lucky.”
I wonder that myself most days. “Or is it, every guy in there is wondering what you’re doing with a loser like me?”
She punched my arm. Lightly. “Anyone who thinks you’re a loser has to deal with me. Where to next?”
“Library.” I started the engine.
The same woman sat at the library’s front desk today. She remembered me, not with much fondness, but she was friendly enough when I introduced Rachel. “Yes, Mr. Wooding liked the town history section.” She pointed toward the back. “Especially the genealogy.”
“The people in the town?” Rachel asked.
“Up to 1985.” The librarian nodded. “The genealogical society burned down that year, but they’d already donated their archives before that to the library. They’re bound, on the top two shelves.”
Rachel and I headed back quietly. The library had a handful of people—a mother with two children in the kids’ section, a man reading War and Peace at a table, another man scanning the True Crime area.
We looked through the titles, wondering what would have intrigued Gregory Wooding about the history of a town he’d never visited before moving here, according to his daughter. Rachel reached up and pulled out one of the genealogy volumes. “Let me try a hunch. Find out her grandparents’ names.”
I texted my client, then skimmed a book about plants and animals native to the area, looking for anything that might be mistaken for a monster. By the time I’d finished and started on a book about all of Linewood’s mayors, Emma Wooding texted back with two names: Amanda Iris Kinsley Wooding and Reginald Parker Wooding. I gave the names to Rachel, who was deep into family trees. “Mm-hmm,” she murmured, and went back to the charts.
I skimmed someone’s autobiography about growing up on a farm near Linewood, then found something closer to what I wanted: Spooky State—Wisconsin, a compilation of ghost stories, monster myths, and unsolved mysteries around the state. I spent a little too much time on a Bigfoot story, then turned the page and leaned down to make sure I was reading the next page correctly.
Before I could say anything, Rachel punched my arm. “I got something.”
“Ow. I rubbed my arm. “What?”
“Here.” She swung a book around. “Sandra and Josh Kinsley had a girl named Amanda in 1969.”
I had to think for a moment. “Wooding’s mother?”
“Probably. So we go back . . .” She turned some pages. “There’s Sandra, born in 1941. I had to go back through both sets of parents, it got complicated, but anyway, if we go to here—” She pulled another book over. “He goes back to 1905. That’s where this starts, a little earlier, but basically the turn of the century. How old is this town?”
“It was founded in 1903. Wait a minute.” I looked at the name of Wooding’s great-great-whatever grandparents: Thomas and Rebecca Wheeler. Wheeler was familiar, I looked around at the pile of books on my side of the table and found the one on Linewood’s mayors. “Thomas Wheeler was the first mayor of Linewood.”
“So your guy is a direct descendant of the town’s first citizens. Does your client know about it?”
“I don’t think so. It doesn’t explain why he came here after all these years. But look at this.”
I showed her a page from Spooky State. “There’s been at least four other times bodies have been found in frozen lakes. The furthest one is about 50 miles away. But there was one in the next town in 2013. No explanation. A mix of locals and strangers.”
“Huh.” We looked at each other. “So what does this all tell us?” Rachel asked.
“Hell if I know.” I started gathering up my books. “What made you start shaking the family trees? Your spidey-sense tingled?”
“Older men frequently start getting interested in their family history when they retire. They’re bored, and they start thinking about mortality.” She shrugged. “We covered it in a class about mental health and seniors.”
“Glad you were paying attention that day.” I hesitated, and stood up to look at the shelves again. “Hang on a minute.”
She was taking some pictures with her phone of the family trees. “What?”
“I just want to see if there’s anything about the Lodge here.” I found two books on the history of Linewood, and one about the history of several towns in the area. Two books had indexes, but neither of them had an entry for the Elwood Lodge. The other one was more a family memoir than a history, and I had to skim its pages looking for any mention of the place until I reached page 183 of 211.
Then, in October, Simon was inducted into the Lodge—the Elwood Lodge, a major institution around town. All the men try to join, but only a few are ever accepted. It’s a big honor, but no one talks about what they do there. (I think they bring in strippers.) But Simon died the next year, and my aunt finally had to move into assisted living . . .
That was the only mention I could find. The bio for the author, Elise Danfield, said she still lived in Linewood, but the book was published by a small press in 1999. When I looked up the name online, I found Elise Danfield’s obituary in 2019. So I couldn’t talk to her. Simon, her husband, had died five years earlier.
We replaced all the books and thanked the librarian on our way out. I lingered. “Are there any histories of that lodge in town? The Elwood. Lodge?”
She seemed to freeze. “It’s a private organization.”
“What they do? Does anyone know?”
She looked away. “They keep to themselves.”
Rachel nudged me. We left.
“She was scared,” Rachel said in the car.
“I could tell.” I started the motor, but couldn’t decide where to go next. Finally my stomach rumbled. “Lunch? There’s a place with a good cheeseburger.”
Rachel swatted my arm. She’s a vegetarian. “Jerk. Just go. I’ll eat a napkin if that’s all they have,”
At Edna’s I ordered another cheeseburger. Rachel kicked me under the table and had grilled cheese. We didn’t ask anyone about Wooding or the Lodge. I wasn’t sure where to go next, and it seemed likely that I’d found out everything I was likely to uncover. But I didn’t want to give up too easily.
I ordered some apple pie and shared it with Rachel. We were finishing our coffee when the diner’s door opened and a woman walked in. She was tall, in her 50s, with an angular face, and she wore a down vest and jeans. She ignored the waitress bearing menus and strode to our table.
“You’re Jurgen?” She glanced at Rachel, but kept her attention on me. “The guy at Greg Wooding’s cabin?”
I tensed. “That’s me. And you are—?”
“Tessa MacAuley. My aunt would like to invite you for tea.” She nodded to Rachel. “Both of you.”
“Your aunt?”
“Sara Cartwright. She lives in the house on the far side of the lake. Is four o’clock okay?”
This was unexpected. But it might be informative. “Uh, sure. Four o’clock. We’ll be there.”
“Thank you,” Rachel said.
Tessa MacAuley nodded, as if grateful to be finished with an unwanted chore, and left.
Rachel raised her eyebrows. “What do you figure that means?”
I shrugged. “You ask enough questions, people start to notice. I was just wondering what to do next, so this is lucky. Maybe.”
She finished her coffee. “This is fun.”
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