Murder at Spirit Falls

by Barbara Deese

  Robin laughed. “Okay, you’ve made your point.”

  When Grace didn’t respond, Robin let her eyes rest on the wall hanging, the quilting group’s contribution to the church decades ago. At first glance, it was a simple tree, its wide-spreading branches reaching to the quilt’s borders. Closer examination of the tiny fabric squares revealed a menagerie of animals, cleverly incorporated into the leaves and trunk, the ground and sky. As a child, she’d been told it meant that there was life in all things. But couldn’t it also illustrate how we can be deceived by appearances? Or had there simply been a sale on animal-print cotton?

  “Isn’t it terrible about that missing girl from Bradford College?” Grace said, breaking an uncomfortable pause.

  Robin sighed. “Those poor parents, not knowing what’s become of her.”

  Grace wadded up her napkin and shoved it into her empty cup. “I don’t understand it. Minneapolis used to be so squeaky clean.”

  Robin blinked. “Bad things happened in the good old days, too.”

  Grimacing at her faux pas, Grace said, “Of course they did.”

  “Makes you worry about your kids, doesn’t it?” Robin asked. “I thought by the time they left home, we could stop worrying about them.”

  “Stop worrying? Yeah, fat chance.” Grace gave a dry laugh. “How are Cass and Maya?”

  Robin lifted her shoulders and eyebrows to indicate she didn’t know.

  “Aren’t they done with classes?”

  “Cass is, but she got a summer internship in the lab that includes room and board on campus, even a small stipend. Maya’s done with her finals, but, being Maya, she got an extension on her Brit. Lit. paper and decided to room with a friend in the city while she finishes it. I’ll see her later this summer. She hasn’t bought a ticket to come home yet, so God knows when that’ll be, and it looks like we’ll have to make a trip to Portland if we’re going to see Cass.”

  It was clear to Grace that Robin struggled with the separation. “These are weird years, aren’t they? I don’t know which is harder, having them too far away to check up on, or having them at home but without rules. Either way, they make sure you know only what they want you to know.”

  Robin laughed appreciatively. “I promised myself I wouldn’t bug them, but after reading about that missing woman, I couldn’t stop myself. I tried calling them both this morning but wound up leaving voice mail at both places.”

  “Maybe they were at church.”

  That made Robin giggle. “Yeah, like that’s how we spent our Sunday mornings in college.”

  “Well, I did.”

  Pausing only a second, Robin said, “Okay, I guess Cass sometimes goes to church, but it was only six o’clock her time when I left the house. And what about Maya?”

  “Either one could’ve turned off the ringer. Or slept at a friend’s,” Grace offered.

  Robin smiled weakly and tilted her head in assent.

  One of the Luther Leaguers came by with a fresh tray.

  “Ooh, nut bars,” Grace said. “You want one too?”

  Robin declined, but Grace dropped a bar in front of her anyway.

  “By the way,” Robin said, picking a peanut from the goo and sticking it in her mouth. “Did you see them interview the Bradford College president the other night?”

  “Martin Krause? Yeah, Fred was shaking his head at the obvious PR blather reassuring the public that his pristine campus is the safest place on earth.” Grace understood the politics of academia better than most. As school superintendent, her husband, Fred, had employed those techniques on several occasions.

  Robin nodded. “He looked familiar to me, but I can’t figure out where I’ve seen him.”

  Grace said, “Fred and I met him and his wife at a literacy fundraiser a couple years ago. I can’t remember her name, but we recognized each other from the Lakeside Health Club, back when I had a membership there.” She patted her belly. “Maybe I should start going again.” She looked at Robin. “And why are you wearing that scheming look?”

  “I was just thinking that maybe you could, you know, accidentally run into what’s-her-name, the president’s wife. I bet she has some inside skinny on the police investigation.” Robin wiggled her eyebrows.

  Grace smiled wryly. “Yeah, and I’m sure she’s going to volunteer all this classified information to a relative stranger.”

  “Of course she will. People always tell you things, Gracie. There’s just something about you that inspires trust.” She patted her friend’s hand.

  “Really?”

  Robin saw something in Grace’s eyes that hadn’t been there for a while. Excitement, maybe. “Really,” she said. “If a stranger walked in that door and sat next to you, he’d wind up telling you more about his life than he ever intended. I’ve always found it remarkable. It’s your calling, Grace.”

  As Grace contemplated this, she began to grin. “So you’re sending me on a mission?”

  “If you choose to accept it.”

  9

  The receptionist smiled and handed a membership folder to Grace. “Welcome back to the Lakeside Health Club.” Grace took the papers from the woman’s tanned hand and tucked them into the side pocket of her gym bag.

  “Have a fun workout,” the health club worker chirruped.

  “Fun workout,” Grace grumbled as she headed down the hall. “Not everyone would put those two words in the same sentence.”

  Seeing the industrial-strength scale in the women’s locker room made her shudder even before she stepped on it. The LED glowed her weight redly. At five-foot-seven she carried her 174 pounds well, but somehow it had settled more around her middle in the last half decade. Self-consciously she turned to see a petite woman nearby. “Who’d think a pair of earrings could weigh that much?” Grace quipped, but the woman’s frosty smile told her that middle-age spread was no laughing matter here.

  Casting her eyes about the communal dressing area, Grace hoped to see the college president’s wife among the hard bodies in miniscule underwear. She hung her tailored navy suit and jade silk blouse in a locker and wiggled into her new black leotard. “They should put a warning on these,” she muttered to a plump young woman who was attempting to put on her bra without removing her towel. “Spandex may be injurious to your sense of humor,” she said, and the woman grinned without making eye contact.

  Her black stretch pants hugged curves and exposed winter-white flesh from mid-thigh to ankle socks. Grace rolled her eyes, slammed the locker door and strode purposefully toward the exercise area. She did the two stretches she could remember, then tried merging into traffic on the oval running track. She jogged about halfway around, then slowed to a walk to complete the lap before moving on to the Nautilus equipment where she took her time and kept the weights light. No point injuring herself right off the bat. Although she kept scanning the room for President Krause’s wife—what was her name, anyway?—it was almost an hour into her workout before she saw a tiny woman mounting an elliptical machine. Brenda—the name came to Grace as soon as she saw her. In skimpy yellow shorts and yellow-and-black striped tank top, Brenda Krause looked like an anorexic bumblebee.

  Grace rolled her eyes again and sighed. Taking a huge swig from her water bottle, she stepped onto the adjacent machine.

  Brenda looked up, smiled her recognition. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said, skewing her headphones to expose one ear.

  “Oh, hi,” Grace said, faking a double take. “Yeah, it feels good to be back.” She slid her eyes sideways, and, seeing the little wattle under Brenda’s chin, relaxed a little. “You’ve obviously kept up your regimen.”

  Brenda gave a little laugh. “Yes, but it gets harder and harder to see any results.” She inclined her head in the direction of a curvy jogger who was attracting the notice of several males and a few females as she effortlessly circled the track, the whale tail of a thong showing above her workout pants. “No amount of exercise can compete with that.”

  Contemp
lating all that youthful exuberance made Grace weary. “I don’t think I could survive being young again.”

  Brenda looked at her as if she’d committed blasphemy.

  “Besides,” Grace said, “would you really want to wear a thong? I mean, I’ve had underpants that aspired to being thongs. I never found the sensation pleasurable.”

  Brenda blinked and smiled crookedly. “Nor I.”

  They sweated together in the companionable silence of fellow sufferers until Brenda’s machine blinked the end of her thirty minutes. “Have you done the Nautilus yet?” she asked as she wiped down her machine. Her cheeks were red and her breathing audible.

  “Not yet. I’m not sure I remember how.” Grace’s hair clung wetly to her temples and forehead.

  “Just follow me on the machines. It’ll come back to you.”

  Grace inwardly groaned and massaged her aching glutes. If she was going to make it as a sleuth, she’d need to be a better liar, she thought. “Practice makes perfect,” she said aloud.

  “Perfect is no longer a realistic goal.” Brenda swung a leg over the bench of the lateral pull machine and produced a thin smile. “We’ll have to be happy with Good Enough.”

  Grace watched her pull the bar down to chest level, slowly letting it return to the top. She knew better than to make comparisons, but if she had Brenda’s toned and taut body, she was pretty sure she’d consider herself good enough.

  Or would she? Hadn’t she always found fault, even thirty years younger and forty pounds lighter? It seemed the only way she’d ever liked her body was in retrospect. How often had she looked at an old photo of herself and thought she’d love to have that body back. Of course, at the time, she’d loathed the way she’d looked in a bathing suit, inspected the silvery stretch marks on her hips and pinched her flesh around her middle. She was pleasant-looking, comfortably married, her life predictable, but she longed to hear the word beautiful. Sometimes she thought herself a fraud being the only ordinary woman in a book club dubbed No Ordinary Women.

  “Do you suppose you could take your nap someplace else?” a voice said behind her. “Some of us came here to work out.”

  Startled, Grace looked up to see a twenty-something man, his hairy shoulders glistening with sweat, lips turned down in derision. She hopped off the machine, seething at his condescension.

  “What gives him the right?” she hissed at Brenda as she settled into the ab machine next to her.

  “It’s what I was saying. He’s young. That’s what gives him the right, whereas we are of an age to be disregarded.” She took a swig from her water bottle. “Look.”

  Grace followed her gaze and saw the man suck in his gut when a scantily clad beauty stepped into the exercise pit.

  “One consolation about our age,” Grace said to Brenda, “is that we’ll never be asked out by that arrogant prick.”

  Brenda covered her mouth to keep from spitting water all over the rowing machine.

  In the dressing room, Grace, feeling like her junior high self facing gang showers for the first time, changed in a private stall. As she applied makeup at the overlit, wall-length mirror, Brenda joined her, spreading out an array of cosmetics on the ledge. The bottles and compacts and tubes were an advertiser’s triumph, the kind of overpriced snake oil women bought because on a subliminal level the packaging made them feel pampered, feminine … works of art, even. Despite her cynicism, Grace eyed the pretty packages, resisting the urge to say something like Why don’t you come over and we’ll fix each other’s hair and do makeup and nails. She flushed hotly when Brenda seemingly read her mind.

  “I got these when I had a makeover,” Brenda said. “You should try it some time, but if you’re going to do hair too, you should ask for my stylist. She’s the only one I’d let touch my hair.”

  Grace wondered if she’d been insulted, but watched as Brenda pulled a salon’s business card and pen from her planner and carefully wrote the name “Sonya” in fuchsia ink on the back.

  “It couldn’t hurt,” Grace said to herself in the mirror. She tweaked a stray tress.

  “That’s not how I meant it.” Brenda’s mouth twisted in embarrassment. She took a gold chain and earrings from a drawstring pouch and put them on. “I thought I’d treat myself to lunch next door. Want to join me?”

  Grace watched her lunch companion tear unbuttered sourdough bread into delicate nibbles. Grace buttered and salted hers. They talked about the beautiful weather and laughed about the average Minnesotan’s obsession with humidity readings in the summer and wind chill readings in the winter.

  Brenda said, “We usually go someplace warm during semester break. It kind of breaks up the long winter, following the college calendar like that.”

  Grace didn’t waste the opportunity. “Speaking of the college, I saw your husband on television talking about that missing girl. It must be so awful.”

  Brenda picked at her bread and frowned.

  “For the girl’s family, of course,” Grace prompted, “but it’s got to be a nightmare for the college too. I know how it is for my husband when there’s bad press about any of his schools.”

  “Uh hum,” Brenda said as she chewed.

  “I suppose everyone’s got a theory.”

  Brenda sighed. “Martin really can’t say much. I know you understand.”

  “I’m going to order an iced tea. How about you?” Grace signaled the waiter and they placed their order. “They say it’s usually a husband or a family member,” she persisted.

  “She’s single.”

  “Then it’s got to be a boyfriend. I’m sure they’re checking that angle.”

  “You’re a regular Nancy Drew, aren’t you?”

  Grace stopped, grinned. “I own the entire set. When I was a kid, I wanted to be Nancy Drew more than anything. She was so brave, and even when she was scared, she just went right ahead with the investigation and went into the dark basement with nothing but a flashlight.”

  “And she had that boyfriend. What was his name?”

  “Ned. I used to picture kissing Ned.” Grace stopped, embarrassed at the schoolgirl tone to her voice. “Do you know if Melissa Dunn has a boyfriend?”

  Brenda took a gulp of water. “Rumor has it there were several. Not that I’d give much credence to campus rumor, but I do know she was a college employee dating students, which strikes me as inappropriate even if they weren’t a decade younger. And I do think it will come out that she liked them younger.”

  “More power to her,” Grace said.

  The waiter set steaming bowls in front of them, and Grace dug into the tomato basil soup.

  “Well, I talked to her,” Grace reported to Robin by phone that night. “Her name’s Brenda, and she’s intelligent and poised and actually quite nice. She filled Robin in on the conversation, as much as she could remember, and said, “I’m putting my money on one of the students. Some young guy, a college student who’s attracted to older women.”

  Robin considered that. “If he’s dating an older woman, would he be more likely to brag about it, or would it put him outside of the mainstream and force him to be secretive?”

  “Hmm.”

  “It’s possible she made it clear to him that it’s against school policy and if they were going to continue dating, he’d have to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Right. He couldn’t take her out in public.”

  “There’s been nothing in the news about her dating students.”

  “Which is a good thing.”

  “Absolutely. I hate the way they always blame the victim’s lifestyle, dredging up every boy they ever dated, every petty fight with a roommate, journal entries when they were angry or depressed. And college is such a time for experimentation,” Robin said.

  “Did you ever get hold of the girls?” Grace asked, mentally kicking herself for the lousy segue.

  “Yeah, Cass pretty much shut me down. She said something like, ‘Do you think one more story about a missing, kidnapped, murdered girl i
s going to keep me any safer? All you’re doing is giving me enough nightmares to last five lifetimes.’”

  “She never did mince words.”

  “And Maya got all sarcastic and said not to worry, that she’s decided to avoid boys altogether.”

  Grace laughed. “I would never have talked to my mother the way kids talk today. But you know I’ve thought about my boys too. What if one of them was dating a girl who went missing. He’d be the number one suspect.”

  Robin shuddered. “So, what’s next?”

  “I guess if we’re going to get the inside story, I’ll have to keep close to Brenda. Maybe you want to meet her. You could go to the club with us Tuesday.”

  “Thanks, but I’m headed back to Spirit Falls. I know this was partly my idea, pumping Brenda for information, but do you mind?”

  “Are you kidding? This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”

  10

  When her car, seemingly of its own accord, turned onto the dirt road, Robin was surprised to find herself at the cabin already. Had Brad been with her, he would be chastising her for inattentive driving. Cass would be laughing about her “out of body” experience, ignoring the danger of driving on autopilot.

  From the time she’d gotten onto I-94, her mind had been probing dark places. That damn missing person report had pushed her maternal button. She’d worked so hard to separate her experience from theirs, but she’d called them anyway, warned them, knowing as she did so that every time she tightened her grip on them, they pulled away a little bit more.

  Her musings accompanied her to the cabin. Parking next to George’s truck, she saw a ladder leaning against the southwest wall.

  “Morning, Mrs. B.,” George called from the roof. “Hey, I just finished checking your chimney—dug out an old squirrel nest and put a new screen in there too. It should work just fine now.”