Brian Freeman - The Bone House

Someone in Door County knew what that key was and what it meant.

'You're that cop from Florida, right?' Larch said.

'That's right.'

'Yeah, I already talked to the sheriff. Mark Bradley was here a couple hours ago. He borrowed my phone.'

'So I hear. You want to get out of the rain for a minute, Mr Larch? I have a couple questions for you.'

'I'll get the seat wet.'

'It's a rental.'

'Well, sure.'

Larch walked around to the other side of the Corvette and climbed inside. He brought a damp, mildewed smell with him like a wet dog. He ran his hand admiringly over the dash and the buttery leather of the seats. 'What does one of these things cost?'

'A lot.'

'I'll bet.'

'So Mark Bradley used your phone this afternoon?' Cab asked. 'Yeah, sounds like I'll have to give it to the cops. Evidence, huh? Just like CSI. Guess they'll buy me a new one. That's pretty sweet.'

'Bradley left the ferry line and then came back?'

'Yup. After he used my phone, he sped off like he was in a big hurry.'

'How long was he gone?'

Larch scratched his chin. 'Ten minutes maybe? Could have been shorter, could have been longer. But hey, Pete lived just down the road.' 'So you heard about Peter Hoffman's murder.'

'Oh, sure. Word travels fast around here.'

'Did you know him well?' Cab asked.

'Who, Pete? Well enough. He's lived here forever. Tough old guy. Sucks what happened to his family.'

'Did you ever see him with Mark Bradley?'

'Pete and Mark? Don't think so.'

'I just wonder why Bradley would have killed him,' Cab said.

'Word is that they had a fight.'

'About what?'

Larch shrugged. 'You're the cop.'

'Do you have any guesses?'

'Beats me. I mean, you think you know people, but you don't. I thought Mark was cool. My daughter liked him as a teacher. Then all this shit with Tresa happened last year. Like I say, people surprise you.'

'Peter Hoffman must have been pretty upset about the accusations involving Bradley and Tresa. He was close to Delia Fischer, wasn't he?'

'Oh, yeah,' Larch agreed, bobbing his head. 'Pete was like a guardian angel to Delia and the girls. It's going to be hard on her with him gone. I hope he left her a little something in his will, you know?'

'What about Glory?' Cab asked. 'What was the buzz about her?'

Larch's brow furrowed into large wrinkles under his cap. 'I'm not sure what you're getting at.'

'I heard she liked to walk on the wild side.'

'Sure, Glory could be a handful. Hard to believe her and Tresa were sisters, you know? Tresa's a bookworm, and Glory was a party girl. That doesn't mean she was asking for trouble.'

'Of course not.' Cab added, 'Were there any rumors about Glory and Mark Bradley?'

'What, you think he was doing them both? That's news to me. Anything's possible, but I never heard about it.'

'What about Peter Hoffman? Could he have known whether something was going on between those two?'

Larch shook his head, if Pete knew that, he would have taken Bradley's head off. He would have told Delia and the sheriff, too. It would have been all over the county.'

Cab nodded. Larch was right. 'I appreciate your talking with me.'

'No problem.' Larch opened the door of the Corvette, and the rain was loud outside. He climbed out and then bent down to shove his head in the car again. 'Hey, you really need to get over to the island tonight?'

'Why, can you take me?'

'Sure, I do private fishing charters all the time. It'll cost you, though.'

'How much?'

'Two hundred bucks. I'll take you round trip, or I can drop you and you can spend the night.' He added, 'Or you could let me take the Vette out for a spin, and then it's no charge.'

Cab grinned. 'I don't really need to go over there tonight. It can wait.'

Larch pulled a ferry brochure from his pocket and slid a pen from the top of his clipboard. He scribbled something on the brochure and handed it to Cab. 'That's my phone number. If you change your mind, give me a call. I live over in Gills Rock. I can have you there in less than an hour.'

Cab glanced at the sky. 'It'll be dark soon.'

'Night doesn't bother me. That's when you get the biggest walleyes.' Larch winked. 'Mark Bradley would be pretty surprised to see you at his house tonight.'

'What's that mean?'

'Hey, she's over eighteen now, so it's not like there's anything you guys can do about it. Even so, it tells you what a piece of shit he is.'

Cab's eyes narrowed. 'I'm still not following you.'

'Let's just say Mark probably has some company in his bed tonight,' Larch told him. 'His wife came over on the four o'clock. She's gone for the night. So who races up to the dock like she's a NASCAR driver to get on the last ferry? Tresa Fischer.'

'You're telling me that Tresa went over to the island tonight?'

Larch nodded. 'That's right. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?'

Water pummeled Troy. Water was everywhere.

The twenty-footer clawed into the waves, but beyond the top of the peninsula, the boat rocked like a toy in the ocean. The headwind bit at his exposed skin, and the sky gushed rain down as heavy as a waterfall. He stayed west beyond the worst currents of the passage, but even in the calm of Green Bay, swells rose up and slammed the boat down so hard that his jaw hurt as the bow landed. His progress was excruciatingly slow. After ten minutes, he thought he'd spent an hour on the bay.

He was cold to his bones. He wore long underwear under his jeans and a heavy wool sweater over his jersey, and he was covered head to toe in oilskin camouflage gear he'd borrowed from his father's closet. None of it kept him warm. His toes were numb inside his boots, and he clutched the wheel so hard he couldn't feel his fingers. Beads of rain squeezed inside through the gaps at his collar and trailed down his back like icy fingers.

The black sky felt as opaque as night. He had to keep wiping his eyes to see the land looming on the horizon ahead of him, seemingly as far away as when he'd started. To his northeast, the Plum Island lighthouse blinked out of the gloom. With every minute, he thought about turning back, but if he did that, he would prove what his father had always said about him. He was a failure. A coward. If Glory was looking down at him in the middle of the water, he didn't want her thinking he'd abandoned her.

Troy churned through the passage. He fought to keep the nose pointed toward the bulk of the island as the current swept him nearly in circles. The up-and-down hammering made a relentless thump, vibrating through his body. Even his breathing felt strained as rain flooded his nose and mouth. He had to cover his face and swallow air open-mouthed to keep from choking. As bad as it was, he barely noticed when the water finally grew steadier around him. The boat picked up speed. When he glanced eastward, he realized that Plum Island was behind him now. The land mass of Detroit Island, which stretched like a finger below Washington Island, acted like a reef to cut the chop from the lake.

His adrenaline soared. He'd survived the worst of the crossing. The island grew large less than two miles ahead of him.

As he neared land, Troy stayed west of the main harbor where the ferries came and went. He didn't want to be spotted there. He hugged the shore and turned north along the island's jutting index finger, where he could make out individual trees, the white paint of houses built on the water, and deserted beaches. Ahead of him, near the rounded end of the finger, the green trees stopped at the water's edge, and the vast bay took over, reaching twenty-five miles to Michigan's upper peninsula coast.

He followed the land as it turned back south into the deep inlet in the island's coast known as Washington Harbor. A long white beach tracked the water. The base of the inlet was known as Schoolhouse Beach, made not of sand but of millions of ivory rocks polished smooth by the currents. He'd gone there with Glory many times in the summers. If he looked hard enough, he could picture her there, in her bikini on a red beach towel, or skinny-dipping in the cool water on a late weekday afternoon. None of that mattered now. What mattered was that Mark Bradley lived on the east side of the beach, in a house hidden inside the trees.