Mousse and Murder

by Elizabeth Logan

  I prepped Benny for Mom’s visit in case he hadn’t intuited it. I was pretty sure Mom would have some elaborate toy for him. She thought of him every time she made a trip to Anchorage, where there was a shop, Purrfect, that catered to felines. But she’d also do things I seldom thought of doing, like wadding up tissue paper and leaving it around for Benny to play with or sleep on. I couldn’t wait for the reunion.

  As much as I enjoyed Benny, I was having difficulty filling the time this afternoon. Eager for my mom. Maybe it was Benny who gave me the idea by climbing onto a large shipping box in my hallway that Oliver had helped me carry in. Or maybe it was seeing Oliver’s paycheck on my desk. He’d never warmed up to automatic deposit. In fact, Victor would tease him about not having a bank account, and Oliver never denied the allegation.

  I called Chris. “Are you busy?”

  “Nothing I can’t walk away from. What do you have in mind?” He paused. “Am I always asking you that?”

  “What would you think of visiting Oliver’s house?”

  “Whoa. Is that legal?” Another pause. “Wait. I’m a journalist. I can’t believe I’m asking that.”

  “Funny.”

  “It’s probably unlocked.”

  “Unless Troop locked it up. I assume he’s been there.”

  “Did Trooper tell us not to go there?” Chris asked.

  “No. He said to stay safe. Not to do anything alone.”

  “What could be safer than Oliver’s house? The killer’s probably not going back there,” he said.

  “Good point. And we wouldn’t be going alone.”

  “Nope. We’d be together.”

  Yes, we’d be together.

  * * *

  * * *

  Chris rang my doorbell at five o’clock. I’d been sitting on my mom’s glider rocker in the guest room, my coat on my lap, Benny on my coat.

  “Wish us luck,” I told Benny, taking his face in my hands, nuzzling the top of his head, patting between his ears. “We’re going to be taking a bit of a risk.”

  Benny wiggled out of my hands and scooted under the bed. I tried not to take it as a bad omen as I brushed his fur from my dark coat.

  Chris had parked his truck off to one side so we’d have a clear path getting my Outback onto the street. I noticed that he’d changed into better pants than the old jeans he was wearing earlier. I’d dressed better for the airport also, with wool pants and a new turtleneck. One might think we were flying out instead of destined for the arrivals lot.

  We had two hours before we’d have to head for the airport. Two hours in which to change our minds about stopping at Oliver’s house. We could stop instead for a leisurely dinner at one of Anchorage’s many fine restaurants. We could drive straight to the fifth Avenue Mall, which housed both national chain stores and boutiques, plus a post office and live jazz at certain times of the day. It would be a good opportunity to replace the worn, dated aprons in the Bear Claw with something new and fun from their housewares stores.

  “Are we doing this?” Chris asked as I buckled in. He looked over at me and smiled as he positioned his hands at three and nine for optimum warmth from the steering wheel.

  I couldn’t quite acknowledge that, yes, we were doing this. I nodded, the most I was able to commit. Chris whispered an “okay,” apparently his best confirmation.

  “What if the house is locked up?” Chris asked.

  “No one locks their door in a remote place like this.”

  Chris seemed to accept that and backed out of my garage. I punched in the address I had for Oliver’s home: American Eagle Avenue.

  “We won’t need a number,” I said. “It’s the only house on the street.”

  “You’ve been there before?”

  “Twice. Once to drop off his check when he wasn’t feeling well, and a second time to deliver a container of soup for the same reason. Now that I think of it, I wasn’t invited in either time. He said he didn’t want me to catch his cold.”

  As we drove the rough road off Parks Highway, I was surprised to see the familiar dull red single-engine air taxi flying north, toward Talkeetna. If the passengers were climbers expecting to scale Denali today, they might be unhappy, grounded at the base camp, unless weather conditions had changed significantly. If they were tourists looking for a luxurious lodge and browsing the many shops along the main drag, they’d be satisfied. It was a little-known fact that air taxi pilots were the most flexible people in the transportation business. Whether it was a single person or a group looking for a trip to an odd location at an odd time, as long as there was a landing strip nearby, it could be arranged. Fares negotiable. Trade-offs welcome.

  It was a short commute between Oliver’s home and the Bear Claw, under a half hour, but that was enough time to place his home in a remote location, even by Elkview standards. The GPS directed us down a road with a sign that read AMERICAN EAGLE AVE., as if a one-home gravel pathway needed a wooden arrow on a post.

  We reached the end of the path and stopped in front of the steps leading to the first-floor porch. I removed my sunglasses for a better view, and to be sure of what I was seeing ahead of me.

  Uh-oh.

  ELEVEN

  We’re not going to let a little yellow and black tape stop us, are we?”

  “We’ve come too far,” I said, thinking I might be quoting from a movie or a top-selling album, but not sure what it might be.

  “I’ll bet Trooper or Deputy Josh What’s-His-Name came out here, stuck the tape up, and didn’t even go in,” Chris said.

  “Josh Peters. Why don’t we move the car around to the back?” I said. “Just in case.”

  “Right.”

  In case what? I wondered if Chris knew any more than I did.

  “Home” might have been too lofty a word for Oliver’s abode, which was more like a two-story log cabin. We walked around to the front and up six steps to a massively cluttered porch. Smashed gasoline cans, car and bicycle parts, light bulbs, broken folding chairs, soda cans and bottles, buckets and jars, unidentifiable pieces of metal and glass.

  “I remember all this junk from when I was here. It didn’t seem at all like Oliver, considering what a spotless kitchen he runs.” I closed my eyes and took a breath. “He ran.”

  Chris put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I’m sorry. I know this is hard for you.”

  I nodded my thanks.

  “This is the sign of a military man,” Chris said. “It’s so no one can sneak up on him. This place is like a fortress.” He swept his arms to include the whole building. “Did you notice how few windows there are, and all small? A security camera every few feet. No trees or bushes for cover. Clear line of sight to the lake.”

  “Fascinating.” I hadn’t noticed. Clearly Chris was better suited for detective work than I was.

  “And look at the tiny deck above us,” he continued. “It’s a gun post. I’ll bet there’s a gun rack up there and an arsenal in the room that it’s attached to.”

  “Oliver wasn’t in the military. I’m pretty sure of that. Was he paranoid?”

  Chris shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe someone was out to get him.”

  We drew in a collective breath and fell silent.

  * * *

  * * *

  The crime scene tape had been tacked across the front doorway, loosely, in the shape of an X. We approached it gingerly, trying to see under and over it, assessing whether the door behind it was locked.

  “If he went to all that trouble with cameras and barriers, creating the perfect lookout, surely he locked his door,” I said.

  “Trooper might have left it open.”

  “If he went in,” from me.

  “If he went in,” from Chris.

  One of us was going to have to make a move. My chef, my responsibility, I decided. Besides, it was way too cold to stan
d around debating. The thermometer hanging by the door read two degrees Fahrenheit. I slid my hand under the crossover of the X and pushed my palm against a wooden side panel.

  The door creaked open. We both took a step back and to the side. Expecting someone to rush at us from inside? Or worse, a gunshot? I tripped backward, falling into an old snow-filled wheelbarrow. As if I weren’t cold enough.

  Silence. No sound from inside. On the outside, only the weird guttural call of the winter-white willow ptarmigan, our stately state bird.

  This time Chris took the lead, bent down, and crab-walked under the tape. He opened the door wider, and I followed, shaking off as much of the icy wheelbarrow snow as I could. We were hit with a musty smell, but in a kitchen with the level of neatness we’d expect of Oliver. Inside the house wasn’t much warmer than the outside, but at least there was no wind. I removed my knitted cap and stuffed it in my tote.

  “Look at that,” I said. A shiny black espresso machine sat on a kitchen counter. “No wonder Oliver never drank Bear Claw coffee. Which is pretty good, I might add.”

  The rest of the first floor was more like Oliver than the messy porch. A row of coat hooks on the wall of the entryway held winter coats, jackets, and scarves piled on one another. Nestled among the down and fleece clothing was a rifle, leaning upright against the wall. A sentinel. Or a last-minute accessory when Oliver headed out?

  In the kitchen, a large rack of pots and pans hung from the ceiling. Another rack, circular this time, hung above the stove, laden with skillets of various sizes.

  “Why would he have all this cooking equipment? He lived alone. You’d think he’d want to do anything but cook after all the hours cooking at the Bear Claw,” Chris said.

  “Busman’s holiday, I guess.”

  “Did he come home and cook himself a six-course meal? Me, I have three saucepans. Small, medium, and large. And one skillet. Takes care of everything.”

  I chose not to remind Chris of the many meals he ate at the diner.

  “I’m sure he tested recipes here,” I said. “Or cooked something for himself that wouldn’t translate well into mass production for the diner.”

  “Do you do that?”

  “Now, that’s getting really personal. Are you interviewing me?”

  “Shall I?” He gave me one of those broad smiles I’d come to appreciate.

  “I can see the Bugle headline now.” I waved my hand, marquee style. “DINER OWNER DINES ON TAKEOUT.”

  Chris laughed. “What a good idea. I’ll do a feature on the Bear Claw Diner. How climbers love the atmosphere. Truckers, too. The bear claws, of course. The cherry mousse. The great photos on the walls. What do you think?”

  “Let’s do this first,” I said, not intending to follow through on an interview, ever. I cast my eyes around the sitting room that adjoined the kitchen. Using my own place as a reference, I estimated the total area of the first floor was not more than five or six hundred square feet.

  We started up the stairs, each one creaking so loudly I thought it would break and we’d be plunged onto the kitchen stove. It made for a creepy feeling in the otherwise silent, empty house.

  “Is this a military thing, too?” I asked the ex-army guy, who confirmed my thought.

  The top landing led directly to an exercise room. Among smaller items was a contraption with ropes and levers and gears that resembled an entire gym-in-one.

  “Again, I have to wonder,” Chris said. “Why spend money on expensive equipment like this when you can run around the lake right outside your door?”

  I was embarrassed to admit that I did neither, though I had resolved on New Year’s Day to join a gym. I renewed that resolve now, almost three months later.

  “If Oliver had a computer, it’s not in here,” Chris said. “That’s what we’d need to see. But I doubt that he had one. He was pretty low-tech. No smartphone. No texting.”

  “And he never mentioned buying things online, the way Nina talks about getting her toothpaste online,” I said.

  In what was probably billed as bedroom number two of a two-bedroom house, we had to take back our judgment.

  “Here it was,” Chris said.

  In a corner of the room was an old-fashioned rolltop desk with multiple slots above the writing surface. Its surface was dusty, but with a clear, undusty patch that was coincidentally the size of a laptop. The slots of the desk were empty, as were the side drawers.

  “So Trooper was here,” I said.

  “Or someone was.”

  I snapped my fingers to a sudden memory. “I remember now that Oliver brought the computer into the diner when he first got it, months ago. He wanted Victor to help him set up software so he could write down recipes. I recall Victor wanted to show him a database program to go with it, but Oliver said something like, “Maybe later. Let me learn this first.”

  “So whoever took this”—Chris pointed to the telltale outline—“will be disappointed in what he finds.”

  “Or doesn’t find.”

  We looked around the sparsely furnished room, Chris heading for a stack of sturdy storage trunks by the glass door to the small porch, I to a beautiful antique chest of drawers with a marble top that also had a dust pattern, though not as clear as that of the rolltop.

  I expected the drawers of the chest to be as empty as those in the rolltop, and they were. Ditto for the closet. No clothes. No luggage either. Was it Oliver who’d stripped his bedroom, or the cops? Something to ask Trooper, as soon as we were ready to admit we’d not-broken-into Oliver’s home.

  Chris opened the storage lockers and had the same lack of success. “Whoever was here carried off a large collection of guns,” he said. He pointed to empty weapon-shaped gray molds of different sizes and shapes.

  I was not sorry to hear that they were empty. My dad was never into hunting, preferring spectator sports and the occasional game of indoor tennis with his business partners. For a brief period, my parents decided the Bear Claw should have a gun on the premises. But it took only one news story of a child who’d accidentally shot himself at home with an allegedly secure pistol and the diner gun was history.

  Now whenever hunters entered the Bear Claw we’d respectfully ask them to leave all weapons in their vehicles.

  Surrounded by empty drawers and containers, we threw up our hands, if only figuratively. We’d started toward the stairs when I had another thought.

  “That chest of drawers,” I said, pointing back into the room. “It’s a lot like one in old Lucas’s shop.”

  “Beautiful carving. And the locks and keys on each drawer are pretty special. It looks like a pirate’s chest.”

  “Funny you should say that. The one in Lucas’s shop is supposed to have belonged to a pirate. Or maybe that’s his way of justifying the four-figure price.”

  “But this one’s empty, right?”

  “Maybe not.” I walked over to the long, elaborate piece of furniture. I bent low and felt around the edges of the bottom panel, below the last of the three drawers that had brass rings for opening them.

  “You think that’s another drawer?”

  “On the one in Lucas’s shop it is. It holds a sword with a fancy metal scabbard, supposedly from the War of 1812.”

  Chris chuckled. “I might have to check that out.”

  I continued running my fingers around the edges of the panel and managed to get the right leverage to pull it open from an overhang at the bottom. It was not a smooth ride for the drawer, with no spring loading to help. Chris squatted, and together we pulled out a long drawer.

  The hidden drawer held paper, in the form of envelopes of different sizes, some bound together with rubber bands, some loose in the drawer.

  “Pay dirt,” Chris said. “It’s Oliver’s version of a safe-deposit box. No financial institution involved.”

  “Maybe it all belong
s to a pirate.”

  We got comfortable in cross-legged positions on the floor and each reached for an envelope.

  Thud.

  The sound of a door slamming. We stopped short, our hands in midair.

  I recovered quickly and hurried to clear the secret drawer of its contents and stuffed everything into my tote.

  Chris tiptoed to the window that overlooked the front of the house. I looked at him, waiting for information. He shook his head and mouthed I don’t know. He came back close to me and whispered, “Not a cop car. Regular sedan. Blue Toyota.”

  I gestured that I didn’t know anyone who owned such a vehicle. I didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry that it wasn’t law enforcement, back for a forensics run. I did know that the shiver I felt was from fear, not cold.

  The intruder, a different intruder from us, made a considerable amount of noise on the first floor. Someone ripping off the espresso machine?

  Chris, probably sensing my fear, seeing the restlessness in my arms and feet, put his arm around my shoulder. The gesture had the calming effect it was meant to, but I wasn’t sure for how long.

  “Who’s up there?” A voice from below. Deep, but most likely a woman’s. “You dripped in enough snow for an army, but I’m guessing there’s only one or two of you, or you would have stormed down here. I’m warning you, I am armed.” I heard a loud click. Or it might have come from my brain, picturing the rifle I’d seen leaning against the wall in the entryway. “Come down the steps, slowly, with your arms in the air.”

  Not a wild and crazy voice, at least. It didn’t take long for us to obey. Chris cut in front of me and started down the stairs. He unzipped his jacket and held his arms high and wide. I sensed that his intention was to provide a shield for me. How nice, I thought. And then I hoped we’d both be alive long enough for me to introduce him to Benny.

  I risked a glance over Chris’s shoulder to the bottom of the steps.

  Kendra? Yes, Kendra, though she was so bundled up with thick jacket, hat, and scarf that I didn’t recognize her immediately. She looked not wild and crazy, but not welcoming, either.