by Cate Martin
"You did," he said. "But that changed in a hurry. Perhaps we grew on you."
"I guess I do feel responsible, but only because my grandmother has been alone for so long. I don't know why she does everything she does. I just know I want to help as much as I can. Is that weird?"
"Not at all," Andrew said. He came back around the far side of the boat and walked up to me, hands in the pockets of his jeans. There was sawdust caught in the knot-work of his sweater again. I guess I knew from where this time.
"I want to check on all this so I can tell her that she didn't miss anything," I said, looking down at the whistle in my hand. "I don't want her to think even for a second there was something she should've sensed, something she should've known about. Some way she could've saved Garrett from his fate. But I need to know more about what happened before I can assure her of that."
"Sure," Andrew said, taking the whistle from me again to give it a second examination. "Yep. We definitely need to go back to Grand Marais. We have a few hours before the shop closes. Shall we?"
"You're coming with?" I asked.
"Well, there is nothing to do here but wait until the others get off work," he said, pulling out his phone to check the time. "Plenty of time to get to Grand Marais and back."
"Okay, great," I said. "Do you want me to pull the car around?"
"I can walk to it with you," he said. Then he leaned past me to turn off the work lights over the ship.
Typically, white cedar has a milder scent than the dark red varieties, but in that moment, I found it pretty overwhelming. I felt myself sway towards it, to breathe it in more deeply.
Which totally looked like I was trying to smell Andrew. I pulled myself back upright with the snap of a military recruit.
"You okay?" Andrew asked. His face was light and shadow in stark relief thanks to the strong but indirect light coming up through the hatch from the garage below.
"Fine!" I said, too quickly maybe, and all but lunged through the hatch to climb down the ladder where the smell of engine oil and gasoline could clear my head.
I would be leaving that last bit out of any summary of my investigation that I gave my grandmother.
Not that it would matter, I thought with a sigh. She'd know anyway. And I would know she knew from that little smile that just barely curled the corner of her mouth. Maybe she could read minds.
Chapter 17
Laverne in the art shop was initially happy to see us. Perhaps she thought she'd get a second sale of one of her expensive high-end pieces, a rarity outside of the tourist season.
But her wide smile melted away when I handed her the whistle.
"Do you recognize it?" I asked.
"Yes," she thrust it back at me. "I had hoped I had talked him out of it, but I guess not."
"Talked who out of what?" I asked.
"Garrett Nelsen, the artist whose piece you bought this morning?" she said, giving me a suspicious look that I didn't know what she was referencing already.
"Of course," I said. "But this logo isn't like what's on the other pieces?"
"No," she said with a sigh. "He decided to rebrand everything before he opens his store. That's the what I was trying to talk him out of. His work sells really well, but I won't be able to get any more of it once I sell what I have left in stock. Which is a shame. I loved his work. I hand-sold a lot of pieces for him, especially in the early days. But I guess loyalty is dead, right?"
Andrew and I exchanged a look. Was this a lead?
"Garret Nelsen was opening a store?" I asked.
"Is opening a store," she corrected me. "It's just a block over and half a block up. They plan to be open before the winter tourist season starts."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I thought you knew. Garrett Nelsen died this morning."
"Oh, no!" she gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. As annoyed as she had seemed with him just a moment before, her distress at the news felt genuine. "But how?"
"Murder," Andrew said. "But if the police have any suspects, they haven't told the family yet."
"You know his family?" she asked.
"A little," Andrew said. "We're from the same hometown."
"Oh, yes," she said, nodding. "That little town near here. The name always escapes me. Isn't that funny? There are only so many towns on the North Shore."
"People tend to forget Runde," Andrew said. "It's tucked out of sight from the highway."
"Did Garrett upset a lot of people when he stopped selling his art through their stores?" I asked.
"Oh, I suppose I wasn't the only one to be a bit annoyed, but even as popular as he was, there wasn't enough money involved to lead to murder, surely?"
"Will it go up in value, now that he's gone?" Andrew said.
"Not really," she said. "He hadn't made enough of a name for himself just yet. In a few years, maybe that might've been a thing. But now, I'm afraid by next summer no one will even remember him. Which is a shame. He had a real gift."
"You said he was rebranding his art to sell through his own storefront," I said, holding up the whistle again.
"Yes," she said with a sigh. "I've been waiting for the store to open to see what he's offering. If he's drastically changed his style, having older pieces with a different mark in my shop, I might have to adjust my pricing. Depending on whether it was a big change or a small one, and of course the quality of the work itself."
"And he was doing all this himself? Getting the store up and running on top of creating?" I asked.
"Oh, goodness, no," she said. "He had a partner. A local young man named Kyle Meeks. Kyle's parents run a pretty successful café right off the highway, but I gather he was hoping not to follow them into the restaurant business."
"Kyle Meeks," I repeated. Meeks and Nelsen. That's what the MN meant. "Well, we've taken up enough of your time. Thanks for the help."
"Help with what?" she asked. "You're not cops?"
"No, just helping out the family," Andrew said.
"Well, tell them from me that I'm sorry for their loss," she said. "I think I'll move his work up to the front of the store. Make a nice display, like a memorial."
"That sounds lovely," Andrew said. "I'll pass on your thoughts. Thank you."
We headed back out onto the street and were met by a gust of cold air blowing in off the lake. I looked up at the sky, but it was still only overcast. No storms were brewing.
"Should we find that shop?" Andrew asked.
"Definitely," I said. Her directions had sounded vague to me, but Andrew just set off walking like he knew exactly where he was going, and I hurried my steps to keep up with him.
"It doesn't make a lot of sense, killing Garrett because he was no longer going to be selling art through the stores," I said. "Consider what I paid for that troll, and that was a mid-sized piece. Maybe selling one or two a day of those? I'm just guessing at the math, but it doesn't seem like enough money to murder someone over."
"No. And it felt more personal, didn't it?" Andrew asked.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, like Loke said, that fishing spear wouldn't have done it," he said. "Whoever stabbed him must have held him underwater until he stopped fighting. That's a long time to sustain a murderous impulse."
"If that's what happened," I said. "The stabbing could have been intentional but the drowning accidental."
"They'll probably know more after the autopsy, I suppose," Andrew said. "Look, this is it."
I looked at the shop window he was pointing at. The MN logo was painted on the glass. It looked very new. But there was a closed sign in the corner, and the door was locked when Andrew tried it. He knocked loudly.
I pressed my face to the glass, shading my eyes with my hands to peer inside the unlit space within, as Andrew knocked a second time. After the third time, when the knocking was more like pounding, I saw a man emerging from the back room. Despite being in a shop in the middle of the afternoon, he looked like we had just gotten him out of bed. He was in
stockinged feet, and the elaborate shape of his bedhead was epic.
He opened the door, but only wide enough to spit, "we're closed" out at us.
"Kyle Meeks? We need to talk to you," I said.
"Well, I don't need to talk to you," he snapped back at me. "We're not open for business. We're never going to be open for business. So just go away."
He tried to shut the door, but Andrew thrust his toe into the gap just in time. I saw him wince as his foot was ground between the doorframe and the door. It seemed to take Kyle entirely too long to realize why it wouldn't shut.
"Step back, please," he said.
"It's about Garrett Nelsen," I said, and he promptly stopped trying to force the door to close.
"Why am I not surprised?" he asked. Then he just let go of the door and walked away, toward the backroom where he had apparently been napping.
Andrew and I lunged in through the door and shut it behind us. The shop was all bare shelves, some of them not even entirely assembled yet. A new cash register sat wrapped in plastic on the counter, and the floor was littered with discarded twist-ties and cut packing straps.
"Kyle?" I called as I crossed the empty store to stand in the doorway to the backroom. Kyle was just working his way around a desk whose surface was littered with papers. Bills, I realized when I looked more closely. Past-due stamps abounded.
"As you can see, Garrett Nelsen isn't here," Kyle said, then saw where I was looking and hastily started piling up the bills and jamming them unceremoniously into a drawer.
"No, he wouldn't be," I said.
Kyle threw up his hands in frustration as he collapsed back into his office chair. "You've got that right." But then he looked at me again. "Who did you say you were with? One of the buyers?"
"No, nothing like that," I said. "I'm Ingrid Torfa, and this is Andrew Swanson." Andrew raised a hand to acknowledge his name.
"Okay," Kyle drawled. "Those names mean nothing to me, sorry. Look, I'm sure whatever issue you have with Garrett, that you're totally in the right and something should be done. You're not alone. Oh, no, you're very far from alone." He trailed off with a humorless chuckle.
"Are lots of people looking for Garrett?" Andrew asked.
"He owed a lot of people money," Kyle said, staring down at his hand rubbing at a scuff on the corner of his desk as if it were the most engrossing thing in the world. "A lot of people."
"Angry people?" I asked.
"Some of them," he said, still rubbing at the scuff mark. "They're going to be even angrier now, that's for sure. Did he owe you two money? Because you should know, the way things look now, you're never going to get it. And the business here is a bust before it even started, so there's no point in suing us. Without Garrett, this place is worthless. All of my seed money just went up in smoke. I'll be waiting tables again by the end of the week."
"You know he's dead, then?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "I got called this morning. Then the police came by to ask me some questions. So I'm well aware."
"You had an alibi?" Andrew asked.
"Not that it's any of your business, but yes," Kyle said, finally looking up with red-rimmed eyes to glare at Andrew. "I was filling in for a sick worker at my parents' café. Lots of witnesses. What's it to you?"
"We're friends of the family," Andrew said, lifting his hands to show he meant no offense. "We're just trying to understand all this. It seems like Garrett had a whole life no one ever knew about."
"More than one," Kyle scoffed. "I knew he had a hustle going on, but I figured once we got the shop running it would be legit. But I'm starting to think he had some other, more dangerous side hustles."
"What hustle?" I asked.
Kyle laughed that humorless laugh again. "Okay, I'll tell you. What does it matter now? The business is tanked, and there's nothing I can do to save it now. But maybe you don't want to tell the family. I don't know."
"Tell them what?" I pressed.
"Garrett Nelsen was no artist," Kyle said. "He didn't make any of the things he's been selling."
"Who did?" I asked.
"I don't know," Kyle said. "I wish I did. If I could find that guy and work directly with him, I might have a chance at saving this shop, you know? Now all I have are these whistles. Boxes and boxes of them."
"What are they for?" I asked. "Promotion?"
"I guess," Kyle said. "They were Garrett's idea. But honestly, it makes no sense to me. The art speaks for itself, right?" He barked out another laugh. "The best part is there's probably an unpaid bill in one of these drawers. I owe some manufacturing firm a bunch of money for whistles I'll never be able to sell."
"You should get a lawyer to help you with all this," Andrew said.
"Yeah, because I can afford that," Kyle said.
"You said something about a side hustle?" I prompted.
"Oh," Kyle said, as if he had forgotten his own words. "Well, that's maybe just suspicion on my part. I mean, I thought this was his work we were going to sell here up until just a few days ago. I guess that betrayal still burns. But someone who lies about one thing probably lies about another, right?"
"Maybe," I said. "But do you know anything specific? Anyone else he associated with or maybe you have a paperwork trail?" I looked over the desk, but the remaining papers seemed to largely be doodles, rejected logo designs.
"No, we weren't actually all that close," Kyle said. "We met one day when he was eating at my parents' café and I was waiting on him. We got to talking about business opportunities. I had been saving up my tips since I started working at fifteen, and I had been looking into getting a business loan to start something of my own, not food-related. So I guess I had the business knowledge, but no idea what I really wanted to sell. And Garrett had something to sell, but no business. It felt like a perfect fit. But I guess I never really knew him. He kept to himself, like, a lot. So, no, I never saw him with anyone else or knew of any of his other contacts. But he was always busy, always needed time to get back to me on anything because he had other things cooking. I wished I had asked more questions. I suppose the police will."
"Surely," Andrew said. "But, you know, some people just prefer to be alone most of the time. There might not have been anything there but what it seemed. You might not have been wrong about him."
"I would maybe agree, but he was lying to me about making the art," Kyle said. "I'm sorry, man, all bets are off. All I know is, art doesn't seem like it's worth killing for. I mean, look at me. I just lost everything I've been working for since I was a kid. And I'm angry about it, sure. But I wouldn't kill someone over it. It must've been something else. That's what my gut is telling me, anyway."
I looked over at Andrew, and I could see we were thinking the same thing.
Our guts agreed with Kyle's. Which meant this was another dead end.
Chapter 18
I drove back to Runde and parked the car in the back of the meeting hall parking lot. But after switching off the engine, I just sat there.
I had no idea what to do next.
"Ingrid?" Andrew said, putting a hand on my arm, and I realized I was clutching the steering wheel so tight my knuckles were white. I relaxed my grip.
"I'm okay," I said.
"Are you?" he asked. "You're taking this all so personally, and I really don't understand why. You never met Garrett before. You don't know his family. Heck, I barely know his family, despite what we keep telling people."
"I know," I said. "It's just-" But I didn't know how to finish that thought. Not in a way that Andrew could understand. If I told him I was worried about living up to my grandmother's example, I had no idea what that would even mean to him.
"You were upset about Lisa too," he said. "Which was understandable. You nearly hit her with your car. I can get how that might feel personal."
"It was more than that," I said.
"I'm seeing that now," he said. Then he turned to face me. Not easy to do for a man of his height in my little Volkswagen, but
he managed it. But I could tell he wanted to look me in the eyes before he said the next thing. "Don't feel like you have to answer, okay? But I'm just wondering if there's something in your past, some reason why this sort of thing seems like a trigger to you."
"You mean like, did I know someone who was murdered?" I asked, and he nodded. "No. My dad died in a car accident, and my mother had a terminal illness. Different kinds of tragedies. I don't think I'm triggered."
"I didn't mean that in a bad way," he said. "You're trying to help people. That's a good thing."
"Part of it is I want to feel like I belong here," I said, which was true, although he only knew half of what I meant by "here."
"You belong," he said. "I suppose our Scandinavian reserve seems pretty cold to a city girl."
I laughed. "They have that in St. Paul too, you know. It takes time to make friends in a new place. But that's not what I'm talking about. I mean, I met you and Jessica and Michelle and Luke in the first five minutes I was here, and I consider you all friends."
"Likewise," he said.
"Anyway, I promised my grandmother I'd check in with her, and she's probably setting up the meeting hall for tonight," I said.
"Okay, sure," he said. "I should get back to the garage before the other boat builders turn up. But if you need anything, text me?"
"You bet," I said.
There was no sign of my grandmother inside the meeting hall, which was still in its drab small town rural building in dire need of upgrades look.
But, to my surprise, Loke was there, leaning against the bar as if he had been waiting for me.
"Where's mormor?" I asked.
"Down in the cellar tinkering with the mead," he said.
"And you're waiting here because..." I said leadingly.
"I'll admit it. I was curious," he said. "I'm betting you didn't just drop this investigation when the Villmark connection didn't pan out."
"No, I didn't," I said. I went behind the bar and turned on the electric kettle my grandmother kept there. Then I scrounged around for mugs and tea.
