A Superior Death

slightly elevated, she was ready to hang on his every word. She half expected him to stare right back if for no other reason than to let her know she couldn’t get away with pulling that trick on him.

“I was a little under the weather. Holed up a few days,” he told her.

“Flu?” Anna asked solicitously.

“One hell of a bug. I was flat on my back.”

Anna thought of the three Jack Daniel’s bottles and the beer. “My mom always said there’s nothing for the flu but to drink plenty of liquids,” she said.

That scared up Scotty’s Wile E. Coyote look, half embarrassed, half proud. Anna wondered what it meant, but he was done volunteering information. “I’m trying to track down Donna,” she said suddenly. “She’s not with her sister. Do you know where I can get in touch with her?”

“I’m getting tired of this,” Scotty snapped. “Those little shits better not fuck with me.”

“Pardon?”

“You heard me. Tell them to stay the hell away from me and Donna.”

“What little shits?”

“Look, you can pull that innocent act all you want but it’s not going to work on me. I’ve been in this business one hell of a lot longer than you have. I can smell a rat a mile away and that little poof and his wife stink to high heaven. They got a hair up their ass about Donna. I can’t prove it, but I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts they’ve been through my garbage, peeking in my windows. If I catch them at it, I’ll wring their necks for them. They’re not harmless little woo-woos. I’ve seen that Tinker before. I don’t remember where, but she wasn’t calling herself Tinker then. Satanism-devil worship-is my guess. They had Donna putting together all kinds of muck from leaves and moss. I was about half scared they’d poison her. That’s one of the reasons I sent her to stay with her sister.”

Anna waited but the outburst was at an end. “Donna’s not at her sister’s,” she reminded him.

“You got something to say to Donna, you say it to me,” he growled. When Anna said nothing, he stomped off down the dock. A couple of tourists watched with delight: better than an evening program on wildflowers any day. Anna smiled crookedly and followed Scotty off the quay.

She had a few calls to make. Checking the egress from Isle Royale wasn’t difficult. The Voyageur, Queen, Ranger III, and the seaplane from Houghton were the only ways out of Rock Harbor.

Donna Butkus hadn’t booked passage on any of them.

Anna wished she’d asked Scotty about the case of pickle relish.

NINE

Anna had done her duty: She had reported Donna’s absence to the District Ranger. Her report had omitted Tinker and Damien’s cannibalism-and-reincarnation theory. Pilcher had been given the bare bones: Donna had not been seen on the island for nearly two weeks; Scotty had lied about where she was; there was no record of her leaving ISRO by commercial carrier.

Ralph Pilcher seemed singularly unmoved by the information. His mind was occupied with the imminent arrival of Frederick the Fed on the next morning’s seaplane, plans for recovering Denny’s body, and investigating a submerged crime scene.

The body recovery and investigation created an interesting problem. It all had to be done in twenty-five minutes of bottom time. More than that and the ascent time began to creep upwards of an hour and a half to decompress. Even in a dry suit, a diver was faced with hypothermia if exposed too long in frigid waters.

Ralph pointed out that Donna had not officially been reported as missing by any of her friends or her family, and he hinted that Tinker and Damien were not among the most highly reliable of sources. After the Castle corpse was recovered and the investigation firmly in the hands of the FBI, he promised, he would nose around, talk with Scotty and Trixy. Trixy was Donna’s best friend on the island.

Anna had to satisfy herself with that. It wasn’t hard. She didn’t enjoy conversations with Scotty. Whether it was knee-jerk hatred of someone twenty years younger, female and in competition with him for the next pay raise, or whether she just had an irritating quayside manner, she wasn’t sure, but every time she tried to talk with him, she set him off. Pilcher, with his man’s man charm and roguish reputation, would probably fare better.

As Anna fired up the Belle Isle and headed up Rock Harbor from Mott, she speculated as to whether or not Scotty possessed the courage or the control it would take to murder a wife and her lover.

Scotty and Denny mano a mano? It seemed out of character. Scotty had a vindictive streak but it was usually expressed in unsigned letters and backbiting phone calls just before positions were filled or promotions handed out.

But Scotty drank and alcohol changes character. Had there been a drunken fight, as Jim had said? Not impossible. There was no denying Butkus had retained his upper-body strength. It was evidenced in the line of muscle under his lightweight summer uniform shirts.

If Scotty had killed Denny, why put the body on the Kamloops? Why the sailor suit? That was a touch of macabre whimsy more in keeping with the Coggins-Clarkes’ mysticism than Butkus’s good-old- boy approach to life. Unless the sailor suit had special meaning for Scotty-or Donna. Perhaps Scotty wanted her to know her lover was found in the costume on the Kamloops. Some sort of personal revenge. What sort of meaning? A lover’s in-joke? Even for Denny Castle, an engine room nearly two hundred feet below the surface of Lake Superior was an unlikely trysting place. And if Tinker and Damien were right, Donna had vanished before Castle was killed. That would destroy any theory that Denny’s bizarre entombment was meant as a message to, or vengeance upon, Donna.

Anna wondered if Scotty could even make a dive as demanding as the Kamloops. Physical problems were not the only reason he’d not kept his diving certification. In a rare moment of indiscretion, Lucas Vega had told Anna that Butkus had lost his nerve. From the mix of bravado about the good old days and contempt for the new that Scotty evinced whenever the talk turned to deep diving, Anna suspected Lucas was right.

“Did Denny kill Donna because she rejected him and then Scotty kill Denny to avenge her?” Anna asked aloud as she used to ask her horse, Gideon, in Texas. The Belle Isle didn’t have skin to twitch or ears to rotate to signify interest, but hummed on with mechanical indifference.

Speculation was giving Anna a headache. Briefly, she considered reviewing the facts, but they were few in number and absurd in nature. All that was known for certain was that Denny Castle, dressed in an antique captain’s uniform, was floating in the engine room of a long-dead ship with sixty-four-year-old ghosts for company. And that Scotty Butkus had ordered a case of Heinz sweet pickle relish.

Denny and Donna’s affair, Scotty and Denny’s fistfight, even Donna’s disappearance, were all just hearsay. Donna could have gotten a ride to the mainland on a private vessel. Denny could have given her a lift himself on the 3rd Sister.

Davidson Island swam up on Anna’s right. Impulsively, she turned from the channel and piloted up to the dock. The Blackduck was moored there as well as a sixteen-foot skiff used by Maintenance. Anna tied the Belle Isle in behind the skiff and walked up the wooded path toward the cabin Jo had shared with her husband for so short a time.

The door stood open, the screen closed to keep out the blackflies that had come into bloom with the spiky pink fire-weed in late June. A luna moth, nearly big enough to transport Dr. Dolittle to the moon, clung to the wire above the door handle. Not wanting to disturb it by knocking, Anna cupped her hands around her eyes and peered into the gloom.

“Anybody home?”

“Just us chickens,” came the reply. Anna’s eyes adjusted and she saw who had spoken. Sandra Fox, wearing yellow Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian print shirt, sat at the wooden table in Jo’s kitchen. Salt and pepper and napkins mixed in with samples of pond slime were shoved to one side. A leather-bound portfolio lay open over most of the table. Delphi was circled neatly between the table legs. “Pizza Dave brought us. He’s doing water quality today.” Sandra explained her and the dog’s presence.

Anna let herself in. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes. Half-consumed edibles littered the countertop. A