Page 14

A pall of heart heaviness still hung over me the next morning and I tried hard to keep my mind occupied with busy work: balancing the books, doing inventory, and shopping online for any new and unusual items I might be able to secure for the store.

Devon didn’t help my mood any when he informed me that he couldn’t find a single thing that Oliver Sykes and Will Stokstad had in common, save their similar ages, their apparent love of Door County, and the fact that they were male.

“I searched all of their social media and even did some dark web searches for their names, but nothing came up,”

he told me.

“Sorry, Morgan.”

“Thanks for trying.”

He must have sensed my sullen mood because after a moment he said, “I’ll take a second look just to be sure.

Maybe something will pop up that I missed the first time around.”

I nodded, though it was more of a reflexive response than a serious one, and since I spent a large part of the morning in my office on my computer doing the books, the inventory, and my searches, Devon was needed in the store proper to help Rita handle customers.

The app that Jon Flanders had installed on my phone to monitor the security cameras kept dinging every time a customer came through the front door.

I found it distracting initially, then annoying, and after an hour or so of dings, I dug into the settings and disabled the notifications.

Somewhere around lunchtime, Rita knocked on my office door and stuck her head in.

“There’s a young man by the name of Keith Olsen out here asking for you,” she said.

“Did he say what he wants?”

Rita shook her head.

“I asked, but all he said was that it was a personal matter.”

I didn’t feel like talking with anyone, but my curiosity was piqued.

I stopped what I was doing and went out front to see what was up, hoping it wasn’t a customer complaint.

Maybe it would be a customer looking for a specific item that I didn’t have in the store but might be able to find using my connections.

I get three or four of those a year and they’re always challenging and interesting, both in terms of what the people want and all the reasons I imagine for why they want it.

Because I never ask.

With one such case, I did myself out of a potentially lucrative commission when a fellow came in and asked me if I could acquire the death mask of L’Inconnue de la Seine, a young woman of around sixteen who was found drowned in the Seine in the late 1880s.

It was customary in those days to make a cast of a dead person’s face for display if identification was unknown in hopes that someone would recognize it.

This particular death mask achieved cultural significance and worldwide renown because of the mystery surrounding her apparent suicide and the girl’s delicate beauty.

When the coroner made a death mask of her face, controversy, gossip, and speculation followed.

There was even a novel written in which the protagonist becomes obsessed with the death mask, leading to tragedy.

Many copies of the mask were made, and perhaps the most well-known one was done by a toy maker who was asked to construct a mannequin for the purposes of teaching CPR. That’s how it came to be that Resusci Anne bears the same countenance as the L’Inconnue de la Seine. My customer didn’t know that, and once I explained it to him, he thanked me and dashed out of the store, no doubt with the intent of buying his own CPR training mannequin.

Today’s visitor was asking for me for a completely different reason, however—one I never would have guessed.

There were a lot of people in the store when I emerged from my office and Rita pointed him out to me with a nod.

He didn’t look familiar, and as I walked up to him, I couldn’t help but be amused by the wide-eyed way he was surveying the items on my shelves.

“I’m Morgan Carter,”

I said when I got to him.

“Can I help you with something?”

He swallowed hard.

“I’m Keith Olsen.

I have something for you.”

He was empty-handed, a fact made obvious by his overwrought wringing of them.

I stared at him, my eyebrows raised in question, waiting for him to elaborate further.

“It’s from Martin Showalter,”

he said quickly as if speaking fast was a type of talisman.

His words instantly buoyed my spirits.

“From Marty? He’s okay, then?”

Keith’s face furrowed in confusion and something else .

.

.

fear, perhaps? He shrugged and said, “He was okay yesterday morning when he called and asked me to make this delivery.

He wanted me to do it yesterday, but I got tied up at work.”

“You saw him yesterday morning? You’re sure of that?”

“No, ma’am, but I spoke to him on the phone,”

Keith said, giving me a wary look.

“He told me he was out on the water and asked if I’d help him out by making a delivery for him.”

“What’s the delivery?”

“It’s in my truck.”

Keith spun around and beelined for the front door.

I followed him, and as soon as I stepped outside, I saw what he had brought me.

There in the back of a pickup was one of Marty’s Adirondack chairs, the stained wood one I’d sat in and admired the other day.

“I had to go into his workshop to get it,”

Keith said.

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out an envelope.

“And this goes with it.

It was taped to the chair, but I pulled it off, fearing it might fly off during the drive.”

The envelope had my first name scrawled across it in a shaky hand.

I opened it and pulled out a handwritten note scribbled out on paper with a brown stain in one corner.

The message was straightforward and simple:

Please accept this gift as my way of thanking your father for my job all those years. M

No signature, just that single capital letter M.

I was touched, and my heart felt as if it were stuck in my throat.

Please be okay, Marty.

“Want me to just set it out front here?”

Keith asked.

I started to nod, but then changed my mind.

“Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have it up there.”

I pointed above me to the balcony off my apartment, one of my favorite places to sit because it afforded me a small view of the bayside waters.

“I’ll get my employee Devon to help you.”

Half an hour later, I settled into the chair and gazed out at the view, running my hands over the smooth finish on the wide arms.

Tears threatened but I fought them back, unwilling to give in to those dark thoughts just yet.

Marty would be okay, I told myself.

He’d turn up with some crazy story about what had happened, and we’d all laugh about it.

My gut said otherwise, however, and after trying unsuccessfully to shut it up, I knew I needed to do something distracting and productive.

I went back downstairs to my office and opened the email with the contact info for Oliver Sykes’s friends and Will Stokstad’s wife.

My timing in requesting the contact information had been fortunate, because I doubted Jon would have passed it on to me after last night.

I didn’t know what his uncle had told him about me and the events surrounding my parents’ deaths, but based on my own dealings with Detective Karl Swenson two years ago, I had a good idea.

Clearly, Jon was having second thoughts about me, though at least he hadn’t canceled my contract. Yet.

After thinking on it for a time, I decided to call Oliver’s friends first, figuring they would be the easiest calls to make.

While they had undoubtedly mourned their friend’s death, their grief was not likely to be as acute as that of Will’s wife.

Three of them answered my calls; the others went to voice mail, and I hung up without leaving any messages, figuring I would try again later.

The three fellows I was able to reach all said essentially the same things: that Oliver was an experienced kayaker and swimmer, that he was the least likely of any of them to drown, and that it was a shocking and horrible thing that had happened.

One of those three, a fellow named Tony, did offer up something interesting just as I was about to hang up.

“There was something off with Ollie during that whole trip.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’ve gone to Door County as a group several times in the past, and we generally all go out kayaking together.

We have a few too many beers and a lot of laughs and all is good.

But on this trip, Oliver kept wanting to go off on his own and making excuses for why he couldn’t join us.

On one of the days, he said he didn’t feel well and wanted to stay at the house while the rest of us went out, but one of our kayaks sprang a leak and we headed back in after only being out for an hour or so, figuring we’d swap that kayak out for Ollie’s.

When we got back to the house, we discovered Ollie was gone.

At first, we were worried that he’d had to go to an urgent care or something, but then we realized his kayak and all his gear was gone, too. We called him on his cell, but service is so dicey there, you know?”

I certainly did.

The peninsula can be a challenge when it comes to cell service and Washington Island is even worse.

“Anyway, when he came back later that afternoon, he was surprised to find us there.

He said he’d felt better and decided to go out after all.

Then he disappeared into his room.”

Tony paused and I stayed quiet, sensing there was more to come.

I was right.

“This whole last trip, Ollie was different.

There was something—I don’t know—serious about him, super focused but not focused at all.

You know what I mean?”

“Not sure I do, actually.”

“Sorry.

It’s hard to explain.

Ollie seemed distracted when we were all together, like he wasn’t tuned in to us as a group.

He always looked like he was trying to figure out some complex math problem in his head.”

“Any idea why he was like that?”

“No, though I thought maybe he and Bess were having problems.”

“Bess?”

“His live-in girlfriend.

They’ve been together for nearly five years now and that’s a long time for Ollie.”

Another pause.

“Was a long time,”

he corrected, and I heard the grief in his voice as it hit him afresh. “Anyway,”

he went on, “Ollie used to be quite the player before he met Bess.

She got him to settle down.

I think he would have married her eventually.”

A live-in girlfriend was as good as a wife when it came to observing changes or interests in someone.

Maybe that girlfriend had picked up on something that Oliver’s friends hadn’t.

“Would you happen to have a phone number for Bess?” I asked.

“I don’t, but her last name is Thornberg.”

“Do you happen to know what she does for a living? Where she works?”

“She’s some kind of medical administrator,”

Tony said.

“Ollie told me she works at a hospital in Green Bay.

Sorry.

I don’t remember the name of it.”

“No problem.

You’ve been very helpful, Tony. Thanks.”

I disconnected the call, but before I tackled the grim task of calling Will’s wife, I took the notes I’d jotted down about Bess Thornberg and carried them out to Devon.

“Could you please try to find me a cell number or an email address for this woman? This is what I know about her.”

Devon looked at my notes and said, “Give me five minutes.”

He found her in three, including a cell number, a physical address, her employer, and an email address.

“You’re a genius,”

I told him.

“I know.”

He grinned broadly as he went back to work, and I found his good mood briefly infectious.

After a few minutes of inner debate, which I recognized for what it really was—a stalling tactic—I called the grieving widow next, figuring it might be the tougher call emotionally, given that Will had left behind kids as well as a wife.

I expected a grief-stricken widow, someone still raw around the edges, but Janelle Stokstad surprised me.

“Mrs.

Stokstad, my name is Morgan Carter and I’m helping the police here in Door County look into Will’s death.”

“What is there to look into?”

she asked irritably.

“He drowned, the damned fool.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

I was momentarily stunned into silence, unsure of what to say.

As I struggled for a reasonable response, she hit me with her next barrage.

“Do you know how many times he ditched me, left me alone with these kids so he could go up to la-di-da Door County and fish? Like there aren’t fish in the lakes closer to home? I never could figure out what was so special about Door County, other than the fact that it was far away.

Maybe that’s why he liked it.

More distance between us.”

“Mrs.

Stokstad, I—”

“Don’t call me that.

Call me Janelle.

Or Ms.

Anderson.

I’m taking back my maiden name.

I was going to do it after the divorce, but now I don’t have to wait.”

I heard a crash and a distant screech from somewhere on her end as I contemplated the revelation that she and Will had planned to get a divorce.

Then Janelle yelled so loud that I yanked the phone away from my head, fearful for my eardrums.

“Damn it! I told you kids not to climb up on the counters.

Now look what you did!”

This was punctuated by a heavy, irritated sigh.

“Look, lady, I gotta go.

Do yourself a favor and forget about Will.

That’s what I’m doing.”

And just like that, the line went dead.

I set my phone down on my desk and stared at it, stunned by the exchange.

Then I went out to the main part of the store, happy to find both Rita and Devon seated on stools behind the counter, Devon on his tablet, Rita reading a book.

I needed clearer heads to help me parse this latest experience and I ran my conversation with Janelle Stokstad past them.

“Maybe she had him killed,”

Rita posed, her eyes growing big.

“Heard about the first guy and decided to make it look like her husband went the same way.”

I shook my head.

“Too complicated.

And critical details of the first death weren’t made public, like the teeth impressions.”

“Clearly there was no love lost between Will and his wife,”

Devon said.

“Did you pick up any hints of this animosity when you were doing your online research on Will?”

I asked him.

He shook his head.

“Though he did post that he prefers to go fishing alone.”

“I would, too, if it got me away from a wife like his,”

Rita said.

“Maybe it was his escape, his only chance for some peace and quiet.”

“And look at how that turned out,” I said.