Nevada Barr - A Superior Death

“Inside the Kamloops .”

Patience twitched. Anna felt it like an electric shock running through her arms and hands. Patience took a breath, a shushing sound. Anna wished she could see her face but the darkness in the shadow of the thimbleberry was absolute. Patience’s hands stopped quivering. She returned Anna’s hold with a firm pressure, then tried to withdraw. There was a sense of gathering, of control; a powerful woman remembering who she was.

“Denny was very kind to Carrie-and me-when we first got here. We were such city slickers. Afraid of wolves and the Windigo; hadn’t sense enough to come in out of the rain. Denny took us under his wing. That’s not going to be forgotten.”

Eulogy was the first step toward recovery. Patience Bittner would be all right. Anna loosed her hands.

“Do you have a place to sleep?” Patience asked.

“I’ll sleep on the Lorelei .”

“Ralph’s a sweetheart, but his housekeeping leaves something to be desired. Stay with Carrie and me.” Anna hesitated. “Please,” Patience urged. “I’d like to have someone to talk to.”

Patience put the lodge to bed at midnight and Anna followed her home. In the last of the four lodge buildings sprinkled along the western shore of Rock Harbor, she shared an apartment with her daughter. There was nothing rustic or romantic about the decor-the furnishings looked to have been borrowed from a doctor’s waiting room-but the sliding glass doors opening out of the living room looked across the harbor to the lush shores of Raspberry Island.

Carrie Bittner wasn’t home, a fact that irritated her mother. Patience put her domestic disappointments aside, however, and turned on her hostess’s charm. Though it was transparent, it was effective. Patience knew how to put people at their ease, and Anna was glad to have been rescued from a mildewed bed aboard Pilcher’s boat. The hot shower, the strains of Rampal on the compact disc player, and the loan of one of Patience’s flannel gowns were welcome luxuries at the end of a trying day.

As Anna curled up on the sofa, Patience uncorked a bottle of Pinot Noir. Words of protest were in Anna’s mouth but Patience forestalled them.

“This is an excellent wine,” she said. “It warms without intoxicating. I promise. Tonight we both need it. Wine is important.”

“You’ve said that before.”

Patience smiled without embarrassment. “I suppose I have. I’ll probably say it again. Wine is history, comfort and strength, food and drink, art and commerce. You can’t say that about much else.” She handed Anna a small glass of dark purple liquid. She raised hers to the light, met Anna’s eye, and said: “Over the lips and through the gums, look out stomach, here it comes.”

Anna enjoyed both the wine and the company. She told Patience all she dared of Denny’s whereabouts. The exact details, the 1900s captain’s uniform, the lack of any scuba gear, the precise location, Anna kept to herself. She knew that whoever handled the case would want as much information as possible to be known only to themselves and the killer.

It was close to one o’clock in the morning when Carrie Bittner came home. She had the flushed, excited look that can only be explained by young love or other covert night actions. As Patience scolded her off to her room, Anna wondered which of the busboys dared to court the boss’s daughter.

Patience apologized unnecessarily and followed her daughter to bed. Though soothed by wine and warmth, Anna still was not sleepy. For the third time that day she dug in her daypack for Ivanhoe . So much had transpired since last she’d turned its pages, it seemed that Rebecca must surely have perished from old age by now.

Anna couldn’t concentrate. Putting the book away, she came across Christina’s letter, brought on the Ranger III , unopened, forgotten amid the Sturm and Drang of the past thirty-six hours. She tucked her blankets around her on the sofa and opened the letter. Alison had drawn her a picture of Piedmont. He looked like a yellow and red armadillo but there was an authentic paw print to prove otherwise. Anna smiled at the struggle that must have ensued before Piedmont had let one of his perfect golden paws be pressed into an ink pad, and laughed aloud when she read Christina’s account of trying to scrub vermilion cat tracks off the kitchen counter. Alison was to play Uncle Sam in the Fourth of July pageant, the lilacs were in full bloom, Anna’s order for Justin boots had finally been forwarded from Texas, Christina was going bike riding with Bertie on Sunday, the plumber said the outside faucets needed frost-proof somethings. Anna couldn’t make out Chris’s scrawl.

She put away the letter, looked again at Piedmont-as-armadillo. Christina, as always, had a talent for reaffirming life. She got to the crux of it: Sunday school and plumbers and “What’s for dinner?” Everything else was mere affectation.

Anna turned off the light. Life would go on. A five-year-old girl was playing Uncle Sam. Universal peace couldn’t be far away.

Lucas had wanted a good long surface interval and he got it. The wheels of justice were grinding slow. Not because they ground exceeding fine, Anna thought, but because they were mired down in red tape.

As Lucas gave Anna a ride back to the north shore he told her of his call to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Assured that the corpse would keep as well at the bottom of the lake as it would in the refrigerator at the morgue, the FBI wanted a man on site when the body was brought up. That man was Frederick Stanton out of Detroit. Frederick (known to his intimates, the FBI secretary told Lucas, as “Frederick”; “Fred” or “Freddy” could undermine any potential for an amicable working relationship) specialized in narcotics violations occurring on the American-Canadian border in the midwest region. Officer Stanton had to give a deposition in New Jersey on Wednesday. Thursday he would fly to Houghton, and Friday take the seaplane to Rock. Only after he arrived could the body be recovered.

The Chief Ranger speculated that the FBI smelled big-time crime. The Feds couldn’t conceive of any bizarre form of death that wasn’t either mob- or drug-connected, and since everyone knew Italians didn’t dive, that left Denny Castle on the drug connections list.

Frederick Stanton’s specialty.

Despite the reports of arrogance, Anna developed a bit of a soft spot for Frederick the Fed: His delays would postpone the dreaded Kamloops dive for five days.

As the Lorelei motored down Amygdaloid Channel, she saw the 3rd Sister moored at the dock in front of the ranger station. She wondered if anyone had called Hawk and Holly to tell them of Denny’s death. Anna didn’t even know where they lived.

Isle Royale was like a place out of time, out of the ordinary run of lives. No one but the wild creatures really lived there. The human population appeared for six months out of each year, a full-blown society with cops and robbers, houses and boats, shovels and Hershey bars, pumping gas and drinking vodka, making love and money. Then, October 19, humanity closed up shop and left the island to heal itself under the winter snows.

A government-issue Brigadoon. And what is known of the people of Brigadoon? The ninety-nine years that they are hidden in the mists, what do they do to pass the time? Somehow Anna couldn’t picture the Bradshaws puttering around the house, watching television, going to a bed that didn’t rock and bob with the moods of the lake.

“Who told the Bradshaws about Denny?” Anna asked the Chief Ranger.

“Nobody. Couldn’t raise the Third Sister by radio. And we didn’t have any luck by phone. The only number we have for the Bradshaws is the number at the Voyageur Marina in Grand Portage. I left a message with the old guy that runs the place but they never called me. They don’t know Denny’s dead-shouldn’t know, anyway.”