Murder at Spirit Falls

by Barbara Deese

  Brenda tilted her head. “Nope, wrong color.”

  Grace pursed her lips. “It’s more than that. You hardly have a wrinkle on your face.”

  “Oh, trust me, I have wrinkles. But if I refrain from frowning or letting my eyes crinkle when I smile, they’re less noticeable. That, and I’ve found a wonderful cosmetician at the Southdale Dayton’s, I mean Marshall Field’s, Macy’s, whatever they’re calling it these days—it will always be Dayton’s to me. Tell you what. Let’s grab a health drink upstairs and then make a little pilgrimage to Dayton’s.”

  Grace ordered something with pineapple and blueberries. Brenda’s drink had peaches, ginseng, and aloe vera in it.

  They drove separately to Southdale and met on the second floor of the department store, where they sat on metal stools while Gina, a porcelain-faced youngster in a smock designed to give her the illusion of being a physician, applied various products to Grace’s face. Grace, who usually bought her cosmetics at a drugstore, was astonished by the variety of specialized potions, and taken aback by the prices.

  Brenda watched with a critical eye. “Doesn’t she do wonders?” she asked.

  Grace agreed with an enthusiasm she didn’t feel. In fact, she was feeling defensive. Had she truly looked dowdy enough to require a complete overhaul?

  Perhaps Brenda picked up on her sensitivity, because she abruptly changed the subject. “Do you know of a sewing shop around here?” she asked. She watched Gina apply a liquid eyeliner to Grace’s upper lids. “I bought a wonderful sweater in Norway almost ten years ago, and I need to replace a button.”

  Gina didn’t know of any sewing shops.

  Grace thought for a moment. “There’s a … oh, what’s the name of that store? It’s in the little shopping mall two blocks, no three … Oh heck, you turn on …” She gestured, unable to come up with the street name. “Oh, great! Now I’ve lost my nouns!” she said with disgust. “Verbs and adjectives can’t be far behind.”

  “Hold still,” Gina said. “I can’t put shadow on a moving lid.”

  “I’ll just take you there,” Grace said, waiting until Gina was done before turning to Brenda in mock confusion. “… whatever your name is.” She stuck out her hand to Brenda. “Hi, I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Brenda laughed then, showing all of her beautiful wrinkles.

  At the fabric store, Grace wandered to the knitting section in back, where she grabbed up an armful of nubbly wool skeins on sale. She had agreed to teach Robin to knit. That had been a couple weeks ago, and she still hadn’t called her to set up a knitting lesson.

  Brenda showed her sweater to the clerk at the cutting counter, who, after a brief examination, said, “We don’t carry anything like this. Have you tried a knit shop or a Scandinavian import shop?”

  Grace came up behind her. “Hmm, that’s going to be hard to match.” She went to the counter with her purchases and paid for them with plastic.

  Brenda followed her. “What are you knitting?”

  “Prayer shawls for the nursing home,” she said, picking up the bag. “The idea is to say prayers for someone as you knit, prayers of health and inner peace, that kind of thing, and all that good intention is supposed to become part of the shawl and give comfort to the recipient.”

  They headed for the exit.

  “What a beautiful idea,” Brenda said. “Do you think you could teach me how to knit?”

  Grace hooked her arm through Brenda’s elbow as they walked to the parking lot. “I’d love to teach you.” She thought again of her promise to Robin. Once again, she realized with a sense of unease, she’d set aside plans with one of her old friends from the book club to pursue this new friendship with Brenda.

  They both got into Grace’s car to drive the five blocks back to Southdale. “Let me look at that again.” Grace reached for the bag with Brenda’s sweater. “Hmm, I’ve seen these somewhere,” she said, frowning at the silver buttons in the bright sunlight. She put the car in drive and swung out into traffic. “Trouble is, there are three different yarn shops I go to, and I can’t remember where I’ve seen buttons like this.” When she pulled up beside Brenda’s car, she glanced at the dashboard clock. “I’d better get back to the office. My God, I can’t believe the time!”

  “I’d better get home, too. I’m planning a special dinner for Martin.” Brenda opened the door and began to step out.

  Grace said, “Say, if I remember where I saw those buttons, I’ll call you.”

  Standing between the two cars, Brenda used her key’s remote control to unlock the door.

  “Wait! It wasn’t a knitting shop at all!” Grace called out suddenly. “I remember now. It was in Wisconsin.”

  “Wisconsin?”

  Grace’s head bobbed excitedly. “On the road right near my friend’s cabin. Our book club goes to Spirit Falls every spring. It’s a little slice of heaven. Her cabin sits right above a waterfall, I mean right above it.” Her excitement began to fizzle as she saw the look of what she interpreted as perplexity on Brenda’s face. “Sorry for the digression. I found a button on the road and remember sticking it in a sweater pocket. It’s probably still there. Maybe I can call Robin and ask her to check next time she goes there.”

  Brenda’s face had become rigid. Only her eyes moved, blinking rapidly as if she were holding back tears.

  Don’t let your eyes crinkle, Grace wanted to tell her. Your wrinkles will show. She mentally kicked herself. Hadn’t Robin cautioned her about the awkwardness of mentioning Spirit Falls to Brenda? Way to go, Gracie, she remonstrated. Bring up the painful memory of her husband’s mistress. Gracie, you are one sorry excuse for a friend.

  From behind the wheel, she watched helplessly as Brenda turned her back without a word, leaving no doubt in Grace’s mind that she’d done something unforgivable.

  Grace’s eyes widened suddenly, an idea forming in her mind. “Oh!” she said aloud.

  Brenda spun to face her. “What?”

  But Grace, whose hand now covered her mouth, sat mute, her mind and her heart racing.

  “What?” Brenda’s eyes were slits.

  Grace found her voice. “I just remembered, I, uh,” she stammered. “I have to be someplace. With trembling hands, she put the car in gear and left Brenda standing there.

  She began racing toward Robin’s house, then remembered that Robin had gone to Spirit Falls to look for her wedding ring. She turned toward Interstate 94. Nearing the downtown exits of Saint Paul, she groped in her purse for the cell phone. Her hands wrapped around it. She glanced at it, but in her agitation, could make no sense of the buttons. She pulled off at the next exit to give her full attention to the task.

  Squinting at the numbered buttons, she found herself staring at what she now recognized to be the television remote control. “What the hell?” she yelled.

  What idiocy, Cate wondered, had led her to wear a white sundress to walk Grover around the perimeter of Robin’s property? At least she’d thought to exchange her sandals for a pair of sneakers. Of course, it had been unplanned. When they were almost to the cabin, she’d had a sudden impulse to go back to the bridge, and suggested that Robin leave her at the end of the driveway to “let the dog stretch his legs” while Robin went into town for groceries.

  “If he stretches his legs any more, he’ll be a giraffe,” Robin had retorted.

  Grover galloped ahead of her now, tugging her, not toward the bridge, but to the stump of the tree they had discovered in May, the one with car paint on it. The dog’s legs seemed to collapse as he sat suddenly. His whine was eerily familiar.

  Cate’s fingers began to tingle with a jolt of adrenaline. Crouching, she closed her eyes, and within seconds, an image came to her. It was not, as she’d so often tried to explain, a pure visual image, nor was it, technically, auditory. Appearing suddenly before disappearing was the mental impression of Melissa Dunn’s upturned face, mouthing the words Catherine understood, even though she couldn’t actually hear them. Help me, she pleade
d. Help me.

  Grover whined again.

  Cate opened her eyes, and stood slowly to avoid a head rush. She placed a clammy hand on her forehead and listened for Robin’s car, but of course, it would be way too early.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said, tugging on Grover’s leash. He didn’t need coaxing.

  In five minutes, they were standing on the bridge. Once more, she closed her eyes, but no image came to her this time. Instead, she felt a sensation she remembered all too well from childhood—that of going down a roller coaster. She gripped the railing until her fingers ached and the queasiness subsided.

  “Are you okay, Miss Wolf?”

  Cate gasped and spun around. Grover strained at his leash, almost toppling her as he lunged at George Wellman.

  George appeared not to mind the huge dog licking his arms and hands with his huge tongue. “How you doin’, boy? Yeah, I love you too.” He crouched to pat the big white head. Looking up at Cate, he said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You scared me half to death.” Standing strong, her feet planted wide as she’d learned in a self-defense class, she let anger replace her fear. “You’ve got no business sneaking up on people.”

  He looked as contrite as a man whose face is being covered with doggy kisses can look. “I’m really sorry. I just saw you standing there, and—”

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  He adjusted the glasses Grover had dislodged. “I live here.” His eyes cut back toward his trailer, visible in the not-too-distant clearing.

  Cate blinked, took a deep breath. She was fascinated, as before, with Grover’s unabashed affection for the odd little man. Maybe Grover and Robin were right. He did seem harmless. She nodded, resigned.

  “Miss Wolf?” He stood his distance.

  “I’m okay now.”

  He dipped his head, and said, almost timidly, “I was just going to check on the foxes down by the creek.”

  Cate had thought she heard foxes the last time she was here. “So they’ve got a den by the creek?” She found herself smiling.

  “Yup. Would you like to go with me?”

  Tempting as it was, it seemed reckless. Then she saw Grover’s tail wagging like a giant metronome. “I’m not really dressed for it.”

  George grinned, looking like a little boy. “See, every day this week I’ve been watching the same fox hunting for mice in my compost pile, and I started following her a little more each day. I can be real quiet in the woods, you know.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, yesterday I found her den. She’s got two little babies in there.”

  Cate’s face lit up. “Kits?”

  “Yup.”

  To hell with the sundress, Cate decided. Then she remembered Grover. “I can’t take him. He’d scare the poor little foxes.”

  Caught up in his enthusiasm, Cate found herself agreeing to leave the dog in George’s trailer.

  She and George crossed the bridge and cut through the woods, following the ridge high above the creek. Cate was sure she heard Grover, protesting his incarceration. With the stifling heat, George had propped the inner door open so Grover had fresh air, at least. But she wasn’t altogether sure the screen door would hold him.

  Grateful for the soft pine-needle cover, Cate carefully picked her way along the narrow path, avoiding any sounds that would spell alarm to the foxes’ discerning ears. She recognized the limestone outcropping ahead as the place where Melissa Dunn had lain, unaware that Robin had captured her on film. Strands of anxiety wove themselves into her thoughts.

  George pressed a finger to his lips and gestured to an even narrower trail that led down a slight embankment. He walked with an easy gait, turning occasionally to smile benignly.

  Her breathing had become fast and shallow as two ideas fought for dominance.

  They stopped upstream of the waterfall and across the creek from Robin’s cabin. George seemed to be appraising her. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips.

  Cate wondered if Robin had returned yet, but the falls, still running at high volume, smothered all other sounds.

  They stood side by side. She caught a sharp smell of sweat, whether it was hers or George’s, she wasn’t sure. She found herself holding her breath as she scanned the path ahead, trying to judge how much farther ahead they would have to walk to be seen from the cabin.

  George smiled. He pointed down below them and slightly downstream from where they stood. “Look,” he whispered.

  Bracing herself against a tree trunk, she leaned forward to follow his finger. She felt his breath on her neck, the warmth of his hand as it rested on her shoulder.

  “No sudden moves, now, “ he whispered very close to her ear.

  28

  By the time Robin nudged her tires against the railroad tie delineating the parking area from the cabin’s front yard, the temperature and humidity had risen way past the comfort point. Flinging open her car door, she took a breath of heavy air and called out for Cate, even though she was certain Grover would have galumphed out to meet her if Cate had already returned with him from their romp in the woods. She opened the trunk. Trudging inside with a pair of grocery bags, she set them on the butcher’s block table centered on the rectangle of kitchen linoleum. Something clinked on the floor, and she watched the shiny object roll several feet and come to rest in front of the cupboard that held the large serving bowls. With delight, she stooped down and retrieved her wedding ring, putting it on quickly before it could get mislaid again. She looked at it on her finger and realized how much this symbol still meant to her.

  Pulling a head of lettuce and a plastic carton of grape tomatoes from the grocery bag, she put them in the refrigerator.

  She mopped her wet forehead with the hem of her tee shirt. “I’m sick of hot flashes!” she yelled to no one. Having shoved the glass jar of orange juice and the carton of milk into the fridge, she continued to hang onto the open door, sticking her head as far into the chilled interior as she could, pulling it out only when she thought she heard sounds in the hallway.

  “Cate?” she called out again. There was no response.

  She shook her head to clear it. “I’m losing it,” she said aloud, and unloaded the rest of one bag and folded it. She lined up the paper products on the table—towels, napkins, plates: all had to be stowed in the large metal-lined cupboard to discourage mice from turning them into nesting material. Brad had cautioned her to store matches there as well, lest some misguided rodent strike sparks while munching on them. For all she knew, with this blasted heat, they (the matches, not the mice, she mentally edited) might just spontaneously combust.

  As she folded the second bag, the phone rang. Frowning, she tucked the bag under her arm and snatched the receiver from where it hung on the wall next to the refrigerator.

  Grace’s breathless voice announced, without preamble, “Robin, I’m on my way. I think I figured it out, but first I had to go home and get my damn cell phone. I thought …” The phone crackled and several words got lost before anything intelligible came through. “… remote control. Anyway, I should be there in half an hour.”

  Remote control? “What’s going on?”

  “I found a button—”

  “A button?” Robin asked incredulously. “Gracie, are you okay?”

  “Yes … No! … presumed innocent …”

  “What are you talking about?” She waited for a reply. “Gracie?”

  “The book, Presu— … Remember? It was the …” The rest of Grace’s answer was incomprehensible.

  “What? You’re cutting out on me.”

  “… when we were … pocket of …” [another long, crackly passage] “… shopping with Brenda …”

  “Brenda!” Books, buttons and Brenda: what the hell was Grace babbling about? Not comprehensible, but alliterative, at least.

  More static, followed by, “Hang up … get there.”

  Robin set the phone back and shook her head again.
How weird! And then, a more disturbing thought: What if Grace was having a stroke or something!

  There was a flutter of motion in her peripheral vision. She swung her head, startled to see the slight figure of a woman at her door. Exiting through her door. “Hey!” she yelled.

  The instant the woman turned her head Robin recognized her. “Brenda?” What had Grace been trying to tell her about Brenda? “What are you—?”

  Brenda Krause, momentarily flustered, composed herself. She stepped back inside and eased the screen door shut. “I’m very sorry. I’m afraid I got turned around. I thought this was the Johnson cabin. Ross Johnson’s,” she explained, since Robin appeared clueless. “I’m Brenda, Dr. Krause’s wife. We met at the, uh …” Her voice faded.

  Robin took the proffered hand. “Yes, I remember.” Neither wanted to mention where they’d met. At the funeral of Martin’s mistress.

  They stood awkwardly until Brenda dropped her hand.

  “The Johnson place is across the road, but it’s off limits—festooned in police tape, in fact. You did hear—” Robin studied the other woman’s face and found it closed to inspection.

  Brenda dropped her gaze and nodded. “Yes, he was found dead in his home.” She tilted her head, a helpless gesture. “I’m trying to come to terms with—with what the police are saying. I—this probably makes no sense to you, but I don’t think I can deal with it until I see the place for myself.” She had edged closer. She now stood in the doorway to the kitchen, arms akimbo.

  To Robin, it seemed an aggressive stance. She felt suddenly vulnerable. Her eyes shifted to the wall phone.

  “Do you suppose I could trouble you for a glass of water before I get on my way?” Brenda had insinuated herself in front of the refrigerator, effectively putting herself between Robin and the phone. “No ice, please.”

  Cate, come back! Robin sent the telepathic message as she got a glass from the cupboard, filled it from a bottle on the counter. For years, she and Cate had tried various experiments with E.S.P., but it didn’t seem to work on demand. Though they could often finish each other’s sentences and even read each other’s thoughts, it was nothing they could will into happening.