Death Under the Bridge

by Cate Martin

  The only other choice was nursing the hurt and betrayal of the universe, of turning more and more bitter by the day. And both of us would do anything to steer Jessica away from that if we could.

  I hoped Michelle's words helped. It was certainly more than I could manage.

  Chapter 15

  Michelle and I left the bookstore café together, although Mjolner elected to stay behind with Jessica. Well, my grandmother had told her that every bookstore needs a resident cat. Perhaps Mjolner would take that position.

  "Going back to work?" I asked Michelle as we waited for the traffic to pass so we could cross the highway.

  "Yeah, for a few more hours," she said. "What about you?"

  I shrugged. "I was hoping to learn more about Garrett Nelsen, but even with that spelling there are just too many of them in Minnesota. I can't chase all those hits."

  "And if you narrow it down to Runde, zero hits," Michelle guessed, which, as a matter fact, was exactly what had happened when I had tried it. "If you want to wait a minute, I can ask my mom."

  "Your mom?"

  "Yeah," Michelle said, then tugged at my sleeve. We both ran across the highway and stopped at the gas station. We were crossing at a crosswalk, and people knew to look for those around the bridges because there were so many scenic overlooks and parks on the north shore, but you never knew for sure that any given driver saw you.

  Michelle turned to me. "I never knew Garrett, but I think my mom knew his mom. She's in the office now doing some paperwork, but if you want to wait, I'll go in and see if she knows where he lived. It'll save you going door to door. The half of that side of Runde that isn't a Sorensen is a Nelsen, you know."

  "Yes, that I did know," I said with a sigh. "Thanks!"

  I watched as Michelle ran inside the restaurant, greeted the man working in the kitchen, then jogged across the dining area to the back room.

  It was a shame my grandmother was too busy to go with me on my little mission, but I knew once she settled in at the meeting hall, she wasn't inclined to leave it again. I think it was easier for her to feed the spells throughout the day rather than try to summon up the power all at once in the evening. At least, that's what I seemed to feel going on when I was there with her. Still, talking to the murder victim's parents felt like something she was better able to do than me. What could I even say?

  "Hey," Michelle said as she came back outside. She had a slip of paper in my hand and thrust it at me. "The streets have names, but you'd never know it to try driving around down there, so she drew you a map. I have to get back to work. You got this?"

  "I got this," I said, glancing over the map. She had drawn in the bridge, and I swear she had drawn it all shiny. Did everyone know it was steel now? "Tell your mom thanks."

  "Sure thing," Michelle said, then disappeared back in the restaurant.

  I crossed the highway then followed the path down to the river valley, initially in the direction I had taken that morning towards the bridge, but then across a fallow field further up the gorge towards the waterfall.

  Well, that location certainly made it easier for Solvi to sneak things into the barn.

  The scattered farmhouses looked alike, but Michelle's mother's map was quite specific on the details, both the house I was looking for and all the houses I was not. I passed by the house with white trim and yellow shutters, then the house with yellow trim and yellow shutters, until I saw the house with yellow trim and white shutters. None of these places had seen a fresh coat of paint in years, and the siding was all the same shade of beige, but I was certain I had found the right place.

  The road it was on ended abruptly just beyond its yard with no turnaround or anything, just a row of concrete blocks designed to stop a car from colliding with the rock bluff just a few inches beyond them. I walked up the driveway, climbed the stairs to the creaky porch and knocked on the door.

  By the fourth time I knocked, I was pretty sure they weren't home. Maybe they were still at the police station, or had gone to be with family. I looked in the windows, but there was definitely no one inside.

  I was about to just leave, when on impulse I walked around the house to the backyard. A clothes line hung limp and empty, running between the kitchen door and the back corner of the garage. Behind the garage was nothing but farm fields, empty this late in the year save for a few broken cornstalks. But at the edge of that field was a barn, and a surprisingly modern one at that. The house and garage were both faded and old and had the look like the winter wind would blow right through them.

  But that barn looked snug and warm.

  I looked behind me at the road, but there was no sign of any traffic, so I crossed the yard to check out that barn.

  I knew I was on to something when I saw the police tape. Solvi had said Garrett told people the barn was his workshop, where he made the pieces he told everyone were his. This had to be the place. Had the police found any evidence? Was I likely to find anything now, after they'd already gone over it?

  I ducked under the tape that barred the bottom of a staircase that ran up the side of the barn to another door on the second level. I would've thought this would be for hay storage. The toy farm I had as a kid came with plastic hail bales to put up there and a pulley system to move them from the open door on the second level to the back of the plastic farm truck (sold separately). But when I turned the handle of the unlocked door and stepped inside, I found myself in a nice little apartment. It looked like the sort of place that people usually built over garages, just big enough for a single person in their early twenties who wanted a little independence from their folks but couldn't quite afford to get a place of their own.

  I guessed that was Garrett. But I had gotten the sense that Solvi's art had been selling well. So what had he done with all that money? I knew he hadn't been giving it to Solvi, who had no use for it. Or had he built the barn with the money?

  The little kitchenette was messy, but didn't seem particularly revealing. Beyond it was a little nook built into the wall with a drop-down desk and a folding chair set in front of it. I could see a rectangle clearly defined in the dust there. The police had taken his computer, then. The drawers of a filing cabinet set next to it were similarly left just a little bit open, enough for me to see they were quite empty. Well, what had I expected?

  And yet, I wasn't really here to find clues to the murder. No, what I had a nagging need to find was some sense of who Garrett had been. I had never met him at the meeting hall or around Runde; I was sure of that. And no one else seemed to have any sense of who he was, not even Solvi.

  But the things the police had left behind told me little. He had books on a shelf under a window, but they looked like he had bought them all at a secondhand shop and just piled them in there. The topics had no relation to each other, and some were exceedingly dry. Was he really kicking back in the evening with farm reports from the 1950s?

  I continued on around the room to his bed. The police had torn it apart, leaving the mattress a little askew on the frame, and on impulse I pushed it back into place with a knee. Then my foot nudged something under the bed. I dropped down on my hands and knees and pulled out a cardboard box. The top flaps had been opened and then folded back down to fit under the bed. The moment I pulled it out, they sprang open again.

  It was full of whistles, neatly stacked to fill the entire space. A slip of paper I guessed was an invoice was tucked down one side.

  They were exactly like the whistle Andrew and I had found at the shore of the creek. I could see that what we'd been looking at that was printed on the side was a logo, an M and an N side by side. Did that mean anything? I had no clue. I took one and stuffed it in my pocket, then kicked the box back where I had found it.

  I couldn't imagine a place that felt less related to magic or Villmark or any of that, and yet, as my grandmother always said, I had to be sure. But how?

  I looked around, then chose one of the stools pulled up to the counter in the kitchenette. I sat down a
nd quieted my thoughts, a process that had gotten easier in the last month. At least I was making progress on something, right?

  Once I was in my calmest state, I tried looking around again. But nothing jumped out at me. Nothing was begging for my attention or showing me a pattern that hid a secret meaning or anything.

  I needed a more active sort of magic, something I could ask questions of, not just wait for answers that always required me to reverse engineer what the question might have been before I could properly understand it. But I hadn't learned any.

  I half-closed my eyes and opened my senses the way my grandmother had been teaching me, but whenever I tried to direct those senses around me, my concentration kept just falling apart. I tried a few times, but I kept breaking down faster each time.

  Back in the diner I had worked at in St. Paul from sixteen until the day I moved to Runde, during slow times my friend Jesús who worked in the kitchen used to show me how he could wiggle his ears, either one alone or both at once, how he could twitch his nose or flare his nostrils, how he could make his eyebrows do practically anything at will. He had tried to teach me, but it was like those muscles just didn't answer signals coming from my brain. I could just barely make my nose move like a rabbit, but nothing more.

  This felt like that. Like I should be able to control these things, but that like my facial muscles, the magic just wasn't answering signals that came from my brain.

  I was a bit of a failure as a witchy investigator.

  I put the stool back where I had found it, then went back outside, pulling the door closed behind me. I went down the steps and ducked under the police tape, then crossed the yard to get back out onto the road.

  The wind picked up, holding a bit of the cold from the lake that I couldn't quite see from this far inland. I wished I had my hat, or at least my gloves. Instead, I shoved my hands into the pockets of my windbreaker.

  And felt the whistle I had taken on a whim from the box under the bed. This whistle wasn't a clue, but the one by the creek might be one. Had the police taken it?

  I turned my steps, heading not towards home but back towards the murder scene.

  Chapter 16

  I stood rather stupidly for far too long on the shore of the creek under the bridge, looking at the little numbered flag that marked the spot where the whistle had been just that morning.

  I don't know what I thought would be different. Clearly it was evidence. Andrew surely would have pointed it out to the police. So why had I been compelled to come here?

  I pressed a hand to my forehead. Perhaps that little bit of magic I had done the day before with the waterfall had drained me more than I had realized. I had gotten up a bit earlier than usual, but I had gone to bed way earlier than usual. I had gotten a full night's sleep and then some. I shouldn't be feeling this tired or this disoriented.

  It must've been the spell or whatever I had done with the waterfall. That was the only thing that made sense. And yet, in that moment, it hadn't felt like I was doing anything besides sketching a thing I wanted to see.

  The problem with my magic was that I couldn't direct it. It preferred to lead me around. Only I never knew if I was being led around by it, or my own whimsy, or by some external force.

  I shivered at the thought. The memory of being completely in Halldis' power was never far from my mind. No matter how I tried to push it away, it always came back.

  I headed back up to the highway, my hand in my pocket rubbing at the stamp on the side of the whistle. It hadn't been carved; I knew that. Like Andrew had said, they were mass produced. It had been stamped by a machine. Still, someone had drawn the logo once, before it became a machine stamp. It must mean something to someone.

  I took it out of my pocket and looked at it again. It was nothing like a rune, and given the angular letters it would've been very easy to make it look runic. But it was also nothing like the swirling pattern on Solvi's woodworking pieces. The letters were drawn quite boxy, as if to suggest skyscrapers, the diagonal lines becoming like shadows. Was this a Garrett original design? Or had he paid someone to create this logo for him? There were tons of websites that hooked any business owner up with a designer to do just that. Maybe this pattern really did mean nothing.

  I put it back in my pocket and trudged on across the bridge. I wanted my sketchpad. Maybe drawing would trigger something in my brain.

  I should probably find Thorbjorn first, though. Every time I had successfully used magic, he had been there. Maybe he was like my lucky charm.

  Yes, home to get my art bag, and then up to Villmark to find Thorbjorn.

  Who was on patrol. Ugh.

  My imagination conjured up the image of the plan I had just formed in my mind like a delicate arrangement of sticks suddenly going up in smoke. But at least it was artful smoke, all delicate tendrils and long, looping lines.

  I must've gone deeper into my imagination than I had thought, because when I looked up I found myself standing inside the garage behind the gas station again. I was standing at the end of the stall where my car had been until that very morning. Why had I walked there?

  "Ingrid?" Jens asked, poking his head around the open hood of a truck.

  "Andrew?" I asked.

  Apparently, I was there to see Andrew.

  "Upstairs," he said, pointing up with one thumb before disappearing behind the truck hood again.

  I looked around and saw no sign of any stairs, but there was a ladder against one wall that ran up to a hatch in the ceiling. I climbed up it, hooking an arm through the top rung so that I could use the other to push open the hatch. It wasn't heavy, and it fell open with a clang.

  "Sorry!" I called. Then Andrew's face appeared over me.

  "Ingrid," he said, sounding surprised to see me. "Do you need help?"

  "No, I can do it," I said, pulling myself up onto the floor of the loft. I wasn't sure if that floor was even nailed down or anything; it appeared to be just wide planks of wood set across the steel girders like rafters. "What is this place?" I asked as I looked around.

  "Normally, it's just storage," Andrew said as he took a few steps backwards to give me more room. "But my dad doesn't really use it much, so I've taken it over."

  Behind him was a boat, or at least the beginnings of a boat. It had to be 25 feet long, resting on six sawhorses that were shaped to hug the curve of the boat's hull.

  "I thought your workshop was down by the lake," I said as I got up from the floor, careful of the variety of tools that hung from the low ceiling. Most of them looked quite sharp.

  "It is," he said. "It's not big enough for this baby, though."

  "What kind of boat is it?" I asked, reaching out to touch the wood of one of its ribs. It felt new: newly cut, newly sanded, almost still a tree.

  "It's a canot du nord," Andrew said with a proper French accent. "North canoe. It's for a charity auction that's going to be in Duluth next month. It's not just my work, though. There's a whole team of us, just some folks that are into the history of the voyageurs and like to work with our hands. This is our fourth canot du nord. They're fun to make, but kind of a pain to keep since they're so big. And this is the smaller type. The canot de ma”tre were even longer."

  "I had no idea you made boats," I said. "I thought you made furniture."

  "That too," he said. "Here, feel the weight of this oar." He handed me a wooden oar with a big grin on his face. I braced myself since it looked sizable, and I didn't know of any way to hollow out wood, but what he handed me was lighter than plastic. "White cedar. See why they used it?"

  "Sure, light for portage," I said, handing the oar back to him. "This is beautiful."

  "It's not even done yet," he said. "I was just going over the frame one last time. When the guys get off work, we're going to start the birch bark part of the boat." Then he gave me a sidelong look. "But I'm guessing that's not why you're here."

  "No, I wanted to show you something," I said, digging in my pocket for the whistle.

  "
This isn't from the creek?" he asked me as he took it.

  "No, this is another one. But it's the same, right? We couldn't see the logo before, but now we can. Do you recognize it?"

  Andrew turned the whistle over and over in his hands, but in the end just shook his head. "No. MN, like for Minnesota, maybe? No idea. Where did you find this?"

  "It belonged to Garrett," I said. "He had a whole box of them. But I don't know why."

  "Well, it does look like swag," he said. "You know, something you give to people so they remember your company. Like at a trade show or something."

  "Maybe I should go back to the shop in Grand Marais, see if the store owner recognizes it," I said. "Maybe Garrett gives them to people when he sells them his art. Although, why doesn't it have the swirling pattern logo on it?"

  "Yeah, this doesn't look like an update of the other design at all," Andrew agreed. "I suppose there's only one way to find out."

  "Drive back up there," I said.

  "You don't sound very enthused," he said, handing me back the whistle.

  "It's probably just going to be another chase after another dead end," I said.

  "Well, I mean, the police are working on it," Andrew said. He was looking over at me from time to time, but his attention was mainly back on the boat and whatever he was checking over. He wanted to be done before his friends came. I got it.

  "I know," I said with a sigh.

  "Your grandmother worries," Andrew said, speaking a little bit louder since there was an entire boat between us now. "Everyone in Runde has been like her adopted family for as long as I can remember. I guess that didn't really change just because you, her actual family, came back into town."

  "She feels responsible," I said.

  "It seems like you feel responsible too," he said. "And to think when you came here, you acted like you didn't even think you'd be staying."

  "I did not," I said, then tried to remember back to our first conversations together. "Did I?"