Cal said: “To tell the truth, if anything, my concentration’s heightened.” He paused, sipped beer broodingly. “You see, all these injuries I’ve had…I don’t think they were accidental.”
When the motorboat was about 100 yards away, Maggie recognized it as Sigrid Purvis’s. Sigrid waved, cut back on power, and the boat swung toward the dock-a little too fast, bumping its side and making the rotting timbers groan. As Maggie went to help Sigrid secure it, Howie ran down the rutted track from the lodge, barking until he recognized the visitor.
Sigrid stepped out of the boat, grinning up at Maggie from under the bill of her Purvis Outfitters baseball cap. She was a tall, thin woman with a wild mane of blonde curls and a weathered face-one made for laughing.
Howie bounded up to her, and she leaned down to pat him, the cap coming loose and nearly falling in the water. Sigrid snatched it up, then reached into the boat and pulled out a plastic sack.
“Blueberries,” she said. “My crop’s so big I’m getting sick of them.”
“Thanks! We could use some fruit. Our raspberries’re really tiny, and mainly the birds get them.”
“Got a beer?”
“Sure. Come on up.”
When they were seated on folding chairs on the lodge’s sagging porch, Sigrid said: “Things better or worse with Cal?”
“Worse. The coldness and the silences are really getting to me. And I’m getting vibes off him. Bad ones. Almost as if…”
“As if?”
“Forget it.”
“Mags, this is Sig you’re talking to.”
“…As if he wants to kill me.”
“Cal?” Sigrid looked shocked. “That’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
“Of course. Your imagination’s in overdrive, is all. Look, you’re living on a huge property miles from town. You’re both under stress, spending your savings like crazy and trying to get the place in shape before winter sets in. Everything’s overgrown, the ruined cabins are creepy, and most of this lodge, except for the front room, is uninhabitable. Cal was depressed at not making tenure to begin with, and now he probably feels this project is more than he can handle. No wonder he’s acting weird. And no wonder you’re reading all sorts of extreme things into his behavior.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Believe it. It’s better than believing he wants to harm you. Or that the place is cursed.”
“Cursed?”
“Oh, you know, the local legend. Janice Mott and her husband were having a hard time keeping the lodge going. Old customers dying off, newer ones finding the place too primitive. Then her husband died in a freak accident, and she abandoned the property and moved to that tiny house in town.”
“Right. And she never returned here again…or allowed anyone else to set foot on the property. Who would, given that kind of tragedy?”
Sigrid was silent for a moment, squinting through the trees at the sliver of lake. “But why not sell it?” she asked. “Why put up an electrified fence and hire a private guard service to patrol it every day? Why, at fifty-five, retreat to that little house in town and never again have contact with anyone, except for random encounters at the grocery and drugstores?”
“The husband’s death made her a little crazy?”
“A whole lot crazy, to live in near poverty, paying out all that money to a guard service, while holding on to a prime property like this. And to let it deteriorate the way she did…”
“Maybe I’m beginning to understand her brand of craziness.”
Sigrid shook her head. “No, you’re not. You’ve just hit one of those temporary bumps in the road of life. But Janice Mott…It makes you wonder if there’s something on this property she didn’t want anyone to find.”
Abel shook his head. “Professor, if what you say is true, you’re in big trouble. But why on earth would Maggie want to kill you?”
“Well, there’s a substantial life insurance policy. And our marriage has been pretty much dead for a long time.”
“Still, murder…Besides, how would she know to rig those accidents?”
“She worked around contractors in the Twin Cities, knows more than the average person about construction. Easy for her to weaken a floor joist or roof beam, or to cause an electrical fire.”
“I just don’t buy it.”
“I didn’t want to believe it, either. But as I told you, each time I’ve found something that indicated the accident was rigged.”
“Wouldn’t she be able to hide the evidence?”
“Some things you can’t hide.”
“I don’t know, Professor.”
Time to go. Cal stood. “Whether you believe it or not, I want you to remember this conversation. If anything happens to me, repeat it to the police.”
On his way out of town, Cal adhered to the speed limit. The local law was strict on speeding, stricter yet on drinking and driving. He didn’t want to call attention to himself, not that way.
After Sigrid left to motor back across the lake, Maggie decided to begin clearing out one of the bedrooms. Cal had insisted they make outdoor work and the cabins their priority before it grew cold, and reserve interior work on the lodge for the long snowy winter. But under the circumstances, there was no way she could endure even part of those months living in the single front room; the more space she freed up now, the better she’d survive till springtime.
The bedroom she’d chosen was on the first floor, behind the dining room and kitchen-most likely the former own ers’ living space, as it connected to another room with a stone fireplace. Both spaces were crammed with heavy dark-wood furniture, probably dating from the late 1940s. The curtains, the rugs, the upholstery, and the mattress had been ravaged by mice and mildew. In the closet, clothing hung in such tatters that it was unrecognizable. The walls were moldy and water-stained, the floorboards buckled.
She began with the bedroom, heaving the mattress from the bed and dragging it through the kitchen-outdated appliances, restaurant-style crockery on sagging shelves, rusting pots and pans on a rack over the stove-and out a side door. The rag rugs and curtains and what remained of the clothing went next. She’d build a pile and hire a hauler who posted on the bulletin board in the supermarket to take it away.
Inside, she looked over the furniture. The bed frame and springs were good; add a new mattress, and it would be a huge step up from the futon in the front room. The bureau’s attached mirror had lost much of its silvering; Maggie looked into it, saw herself reflected patchily. In an odd way, she liked the image; she looked the way she felt.
Other than the mirror, the bureau was a fine old piece, and she was sure mice hadn’t been able to penetrate its drawers. She began exploring them. The top one on the right was stuck tightly, and it took a few tugs to open it. Inside were a man’s possessions: handkerchiefs, a pocket watch, a scattering of miscellaneous cuff links, a ring with a large blue stone, a wallet in its original box, obviously a gift that hadn’t been used. The drawer on the left was empty.
The second drawer protruded an inch or so from the ones above and below it. Maggie tugged it open, found a man’s clothing: T-shirts, underwear, pajamas. Something
A blue cloth-bound book. Ledger of some sort.
She flipped back the cover. Not a ledger, a diary, in a woman’s back-slanting hand. Blue ink fading but still readable.
