Enchantment Lake: A Northwoods Mystery

by Margi Preus

  “Uh-huh,” Francie said. She shivered involuntarily.

  “Cold?” Buck said. “I have a jacket you can wear.”

  “Uh, okay,” Francie said. She wasn’t cold; she was scared of where this conversation was going. Good thing it was dark so that he couldn’t see her face, she thought. Even though she was frightened of what she was about to say, she heard it coming out of her mouth anyway. “It sure seems odd,” Francie said, trying to sound casual, “how many accidental deaths there’ve been out here.”

  “It’s a very dangerous place, out here, without a road,” Buck said. “No way to get to a hospital quick, not even anywhere a helicopter could land.”

  The Fredericksons’ expanse of lawn flickered through Francie’s mind, and she wondered if important, busy, influential Hollywood people came and went that way. “You’ve been buying cabins along this shore,” she went on, as firmly and calmly as she could, “and agreeing to allow the inhabitants to live in them as long as they’d like to—”

  “Life estate, it’s called,” Buck said. “It’s perfectly legal, if that’s what you’re wondering. Now, I know it’s hard for you to accept,” he went on, “but these people are getting old, Francie; naturally they’re going to start dying.”

  “But they’re not dying from old age, Buck. They’re dying from weird accidents. There are so many of these accidents that they start seeming suspicious to the casual outsider.” Casual outsider? Had she just said that? What was that supposed to mean?

  “That’s just the police lady in you thinking that.” He said that rather derisively, she thought, as he stumbled on. “And if a person did off a few of these old people, who would blame him, really? There’s such a thing as progress, you know. But these people don’t seem to know it, with their cobwebby little places, full of carpenter ants and mildew. There could be brand-new million-dollar places along here, you know.”

  “And that would be good?”

  “That’d be good for all the people who’d like a nice place to live that doesn’t take a day and a half to get to by boat—what a hassle!”

  “You know a lot of these people?”

  “Those people!” He nodded at the party house. “They all want a place here, on this side of the lake.”

  “They do?” Francie looked longingly back at the party house. “What do they like about it?”

  “It’s unspoiled!”

  “Well, wouldn’t putting condos up and a road in, uh, spoil it?”

  “Spoil it? It would make it ac-ces-si-ble!” he said, as if she might not understand the word. “Accessibility doesn’t spoil anything. It just makes the unspoiled places accessible.”

  “What does spoil a place?”

  “Sour old people,” he said grumpily.

  “So have you been getting rid of some of those sour old people? It seems like some of them are people whose cabins you’ve purchased.” She couldn’t believe that came out of her mouth, but there it was, plopped out in the boat as if it were a fish on the end of the line.

  He seemed to stare at it for a while, there at the bottom of the boat, then said, “Now, wait a minute. I never said I killed anybody. Some people have basically killed themselves through their own carelessness or stupidity. I don’t see that it’s my fault.”

  A burst of fireworks went off on the other side of the lake, twinkling brilliantly against the now dark sky, followed a few moments later by a series of pops and bangs. Francie remembered that Mrs. Frederickson had said they were going to shoot off fireworks on the dock later. She hoped she lived to see it.

  “I’m not in the habit of poisoning wells, you know,” Buck was saying, when she tuned back in. “A guy could do it, though, just enough to make someone sick, if he knew the right amounts.”

  Wait. What? What had Buck just said? “A guy could poison a well?” Francie repeated. “Could a guy make a tree branch fall down and kill someone?”

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” Buck cried. “What kind of person would go to sleep in a room with a big tree branch dangling by a shred over the roof? Wouldn’t you think they’d check? Who’d think a branch like that would crash through the roof? You’d think it would just put a dent in it.”

  Francie shook her head as if she couldn’t believe the stupidity of some people. “And the water moccasin? Speaking hypothetically, of course. How would a guy come up with an idea like that?” God, she prayed, what am I doing?

  “Again proving the stupidity of people. You’d think a herpiologist—”

  “Herpetologist?” Francie asked. “A person who studies snakes?”

  “Yeah, that’s what that Simonsen fellow was. He had crates full of them things. Frankly, the whole area is safer without them snakes around.”

  I’m a pretty good swimmer, she thought. If he just throws me in, I can make it—as long as I can get out of this ridiculous jacket. She knew she should say something and found herself talking like her detective character. “You were out in the boat with Wally Hansen the night he drowned, too, weren’t you?” she asked.

  He gave her a sidelong glance. She hoped he couldn’t tell that under his warm jacket, she was shaking. What would my TV detective character ask right now, she wondered. Then she knew, but thought, oh God, this is the one that’ll get me thrown overboard. “I’ve got one more question,” she said, “about Warren.”

  Buck busied himself with his tackle box. “Now you’re just crazy,” he muttered, but he seemed noticeably more nervous, all darting eyes and licking lips. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said finally. “You’re barking up the wrong tree.” He snapped the box shut, sat up, and said, “Here’s something I do know about. Something that happened a long time ago—”

  Francie’s insides turned to water—a lake filled with schools of swarming minnows, swarming and swimming, jostling and bumping into each other. Somehow, she knew what he was going to say before he said it.

  “—having to do with your parents,” he finished.

  The minnows jolted to a halt. Then sloshed back and forth, back and forth, waiting.

  “I can tell you something about your mother,” he said.

  Their eyes met. In the dark, his eyes glistened like something amphibious. Francie glanced away, her gaze resting on Buck’s tackle box.

  Maybe her heart was not kept inside a pretty silver box somewhere, she thought, but instead inside a battered plastic box, tangled in monofilament and pierced with spinner and daredevil hooks.

  No! she thought. She didn’t want to hear anything from him. This was not the way it was supposed to happen! This was not the way she had envisioned hearing about her mother. Somehow it didn’t seem like it would be anything good, coming from him.

  Still, nobody else had ever offered any information. Shouldn’t she at least find out what it was?

  “What do you—” she started to say, but there was a sharp yank on her line, and her fishing rod bent over, twitching. She gripped the rod with both hands.

  “Reel it in!” Buck barked.

  “Definitely a fish,” she said. “It’s not the bottom.” She could feel the fish struggling on the other end, then diving. The reel made a groaning click with each turn.

  “Must be a lunker,” Buck said, scrambling around in the dark for the landing net. “You got it okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “It’ll hold.” he said, “That’s 30-pound test line.”

  She reeled and reeled, it felt like forever, then suddenly saw the thing, a big walleye, rise just below the surface, its dusky side gleaming like pewter.

  “Bring it closer to me,” Buck said. “Bring it over here.”

  “No!” she said. “You bring the net over here!”

  Buck leaned over to snag the fish, but his boots went out from under him and the net dropped into the lake. Momentarily startled, Francie let up on the tension and the fish swam free, giving a flip of its tail and then diving back to the black depths.

  “Dang!” Buck sa
id.

  “Get your net at least,” Francie said, reeling in her line.

  Buck reached out for the landing net, but boat and net were quickly separated as the boat drifted away. He scrambled back to start the motor, grunting as he pulled at the starter.

  Voices drifted out over the water from the party. The voices had grown louder, and there were peals of brassy laughter, then a series of splashes accompanied by squeals and shrieks. It sounded like the young people’s party had moved outside and off the end of the dock.

  She reeled in her line, secured it with its now-empty hook, and was just setting the rod down when a movement by the side of the boat made her jump. A dark shape lunged from the water, as if the fish were coming for her. She yelped, then saw it was the head of a person. It was that guy—the same guy she’d glimpsed in Fredericksons’ family room. He raised his glistening and—she couldn’t help but notice—nicely muscled arm, holding the net in his hand like a trident, like one of those gorgeous Greek gods. Neptune, maybe. Or was Neptune a Roman god?

  “Lose something?” he said, dropping the net into the boat.

  Francie, having lost her breath, was unable to respond audibly.

  The motor kicked in, and Buck yelled, “Hey, kid! Watch out!”

  Buck steered for the dock while the young god swam backward out of the way and disappeared into the darkness.

  13

  Go Dark

  After her encounter with Buck, Francie was too frazzled to even think of making a good impression on anybody, so she stumbled along the path toward home. In the dark. She had a flashlight, but she felt weirdly safer with it off, as if the light would make her a target.

  Lines from one of the poems in the book on her nightstand came to her: To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark.

  She marveled at how her eyes could adjust to the nighttime darkness. There were still occasional fireworks twinkling across the lake, and the party house behind her was lit up like Times Square, but here, in front of her, the forest was draped in black velvet, and moonlight sparkled on the ground like lost jewelry—a gold necklace, a spangly bracelet, an expensive watch, its face glinting among the needles.

  She let her feet feel their way and imagined the evening’s experiences as a kind of white mist rolling off her back. What a strange night! She’d been so full of excitement and hope going in—maybe a big break waiting for her or at least a possible connection. That had been a bust.

  Then out of the blue Buck had brought up her mother, had said he knew something about her. Why hadn’t Francie pressed him on that question? Wasn’t that what she wanted above all else, information about her mother? But it wasn’t supposed to happen that way, like it was some kind of shady drug deal.

  She supposed her father would have told her something eventually, but he died too soon, before she was old enough. Old enough for what? she wondered. Why did she have to be “old enough”? What was it about her mother that was so bad that no one would tell her? That had to be it, didn’t it? Her mother must have been bad, and that’s why her father had never been willing to tell her anything. Maybe that was why she didn’t press Buck for more information. Maybe she was just too afraid to find out.

  She felt herself sinking into a gloomy hole, full of murky thoughts and nameless fear. Then, eerily, the feeling within her seemed to take on an actual shape, a shape that moved ahead of her, appearing then disappearing between the trees.

  The shape, she quickly realized, was not her imaginary fear or the “big question” moving about in the trees; it was an actual creature. Her stomach lurched. She tried to remember what you were supposed to do to protect yourself in these situations: Don’t run! (That makes you look like prey.) Make yourself look really big. (That’s what you’re supposed to do in the case of mountain lions.)

  She bent down and picked up a big stick and raised her arm.

  The creature rushed out of the trees and lunged toward her, snatched the branch out of her hand, and sat down in front of her, panting.

  “Rusty,” she sighed.

  Rusty wagged his tail, balancing the long stick in his mouth like a tightrope walker’s pole.

  “Sorry. No fetch,” Francie said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  The dog jogged along in front of her. The stick in his mouth was just a little too long to fit crosswise in the path, so he kept getting hung up when the two ends of it jammed behind trees on either side, stopping him cold.

  This made her laugh, and by the time they came out of the woods into Ginger’s yard, her breathing had fallen back into a more normal pattern.

  The cabin was dark, and Francie wondered if she should knock or just open the door and let the dog in. Was Rusty supposed to be inside at night? And why would you name a black dog “Rusty”?

  She reached for the latch, then stopped, feeling the back of her neck prickle. She sensed someone behind her.

  Francie whirled around to face Ginger. They both yelped.

  “Ginger!” Francie gasped. “What—?”

  Ginger held up her hand and said, “Sorry I startled you.”

  “You and your dog! Oh, is that why you’re out at this hour? Looking for your dog?”

  “Oh . . . yeah,” Ginger said. “He’s why I was out. I was looking for him. Rusty, come here,” she scolded.

  Rusty trotted over to her, staying just out of her reach.

  “Want to come in for a nightcap?” Ginger asked, somewhat unenthusiastically.

  “No, thanks,” Francie said. She suddenly felt chilled and inexplicably afraid. She said good-bye and continued down the path.

  She was almost home when it occurred to her to wonder why Ginger hadn’t been calling for the dog if she’d been looking for him. Francie hadn’t heard anything. She had the distinct feeling that Ginger was lying. Why? What had she been doing out there in the woods?

  Tomorrow she would ask her. If she dared.

  14

  The Puzzle

  The next morning, Francie found Jeannette sitting at the table by the picture window, working on a jigsaw puzzle.

  Francie sat down next to her and fiddled with a puzzle piece. “Where’s the picture?” she asked.

  “The picture of what, Frenchy?” her aunt said.

  “The picture on the box of what the puzzle is supposed to look like.”

  “Oh, we don’t use that,” Jeannette said. “We’ve done these same puzzles so many times, we had to find a way to make it more challenging. So we don’t use the picture.”

  “But all these puzzle pieces are the same color! They’re all blue! How can you possibly do this puzzle without the picture?” Francie thumbed a piece while trying to discern what the image could possibly be. “It’s impossible,” she grumbled.

  “You seem out of sorts today, sweetheart,” Jeannette said. “Was the party a disappointment?”

  “It was strange,” Francie admitted, “that’s for sure.” She thought about her conversation with Buck, his possible confession, and all the strange deaths they’d talked about the previous night.

  She’d had a morbid fascination with accidental deaths ever since she was ten years old. It had to do with her father’s own accident, also unsolved—in her mind, anyway. It’s why she’d felt a jolt when Sandy said his dad’s death was suspicious. She’d always thought that, too, about her own father, although the report said it was a “vehicular accident.” She had read the report so thoroughly the paper was worn thin, some of the words rubbed out. It had simply said he had “lost control” of the car on a wet, curving road along the Pacific Coast near Big Sur and plunged over a cliff.

  The part she wanted filled in was why? Her father had not been the type to lose control of a car. He’d driven in countries with sketchy traffic laws all over the world: Ghana, Italy, Bolivia, Tibet. And he loses control on a quiet evening in California?

  Her grandfather had said, when she had endlessly pestered him with this question, that perhaps an animal jumped out and he s
werved to avoid it. Never swerve to avoid an animal, have I told you that? Yes, Grandad, you have, and you also always told Dad that, which is why I don’t think he would’ve swerved to avoid an animal.

  Perhaps a pedestrian then, he’d said.

  There’s no mention of a pedestrian in the report.

  Maybe he hit a slippery spot in the road.

  The whole road was slippery!

  That’s the way the conversation went, and perhaps that kind of questioning was why her aunts thought she should be a detective.

  But she had never solved that mystery, nor had she solved the huge, looming mystery of her life, the one she was never able to get answers to, the one she had stopped even asking about: her mother, about whom she knew nothing. How was it possible not to know anything about one’s mother?

  She had a friend who didn’t know who her father was—that was plausible. She also had a friend who was adopted and didn’t know who her biological mother was—but they still had mothers! How could you not know anything about your own mother? All Francie knew was that her mother was dead and had been for a long time.

  Francie had learned to stop asking. Her grandfather would say nothing; her aunts murmured little placating nothingisms; her own father had put her off. “I’m sure he meant to tell you all about her when you’d gotten a little older,” her aunts had told her when she peppered them with questions. But then he died and that put an end to everything.

  But how could you know who you were—or who you were supposed to be—if you didn’t know your own mother? Maybe that was why she was drawn to acting: she could try on different skins, different characters and personae. Maybe one of them would feel right, and then she’d have a better idea of who she was.

  “Frenchy?” Jeannette said. “Is that all you have to say about the party? That it was strange?”

  “Oh!” Francie flinched, then refocused. Glancing at the puzzle, she noticed that while she’d been ruminating her aunt had managed to fill in a large section.

  “The whole thing was a bit surreal,” she said. “There was an odd assortment of people there, but the strangest one of all was Buck. He seemed nervous, edgy. Well, you would be, wouldn’t you, if you were confessing to more or less killing people?”