The Bone House

storefronts and long stretches of forest and dormant farmlands. It was beautiful and ominous, like a transplanted corner of New England where someone had posted No Trespassing signs to keep out the rest of the world.

He'd never spent much time in the Midwest. In his head, he'd always thought of it as a place where winter lasted nine months, the cows outnumbered the people, and the land was flat and endless. Nothing he'd seen so far had changed his mind.

On the way back to the ferry port, he found a Western-style saloon in need of paint, immediately adjacent to the road. The sign said Bitters Pub. When he parked in the gravel in front of the bar, his Corvette stood out like a Hot Wheels play car next to the row of dusty pickups and hulking SUVs. He got out and smelled a waft of pine blowing in with the cold lake air. Inside, the odor of stale cigarette smoke choked the bar. He stripped off his sunglasses. He saw a long oak counter with stools on his left, square card tables scattered across a hardwood floor, and two pool tables at the rear. The walls were crowded with knick-knacks like logging saws and skis.

Three men with huge bellies drank beer, played pool, and blew smoke rings. A bored bartender, young and cute, eyed him in his expensive suit with a curious smile. A grizzled fireplug of a man sat at the bar with a mug of coffee in front of him. Cab approached the bar, and the bartender sauntered his way. She had her black hair loose, and she wore a rust wool sweater and frayed jeans.

'Help you?'

'I'm looking for Sheriff Felix Reich,' Cab told her. 'One of his deputies told me I could probably find him here.'

The girl nodded her head at the fireplug seated at the end of the bar. 'Sheriff,' she called, 'somebody's looking for you.'

Sheriff Reich's head swiveled slowly, and he took the measure of Cab from head to toe with the pinched expression of a man biting into a lemon. His eyes started at Cab's spiky blond hair and moved down his long body, taking in his pinstripes, tie, and polished loafers, and then traveled back up again, focusing on Cab's manicured fingernails and gold earring. When he was done, Reich turned away to study the steam rising out of his coffee cup, as if that was more interesting than anything Cab was likely to say.

'What can I do for you?' Reich said. His voice was as gravelly as the back roads on the island.

Cab took a seat two stools from the sheriff, with his back to the bar and his stilt-like legs stretched out into the middle of the hardwood floor. He balanced his elbows on the bar behind him. The white cuffs of his shirt, which were closed with onyx cufflinks, jutted out from the sleeves of his suit coat. He was accustomed to looking like an outsider and immune to the stares and silence when he went somewhere he didn't belong. This place was no different from a hundred others.

'Sheriff, my name is Cab Bolton,' he said. 'I'm a detective with the Naples Police in Florida.'

Reich, who wore a heavy flannel shirt tucked into corduroys, sighed and slid sideways on his stool. He wasn't a big man, but he was packed tightly into his clothes. His face was weathered, as if he had a permanent case of frostbite, and his blue eyes were hard and impassive.

'A detective?' he asked.

'That's right.'

'Well, Detective, if one of my cops came into work wearing an earring, he'd have a choice. He could either yank it out and go home until the hole closed up, or he could quit.'

Cab grinned, but Reich didn't smile back. He could see the old sheriff studying his smile and thinking: Look at how white those teeth are.

'I guess it's a good thing I don't work for you,' Cab told him.

'What did you say your name was?'

'Cab Bolton.'

'Cab? What kind of name is that?'

'I was named after my grandfather;' Cab replied, selecting a new explanation and a new name to go with it. 'Cornelius Abernathy Bolton.'

'Abernathy?'

Cab just smiled.

Reich grunted and reached for his coffee. 'You here because of Glory Fischer?'

'That's right.'

'You planning to arrest Mark Bradley?'

'For now I just want to find out more about him. About Glory, too.'

The bartender wandered closer and gave Cab an interested smile. She was about twenty-five, with no ring on her finger. She had big brown eyes and round cheeks. 'Can I get you a drink?' she asked Cab.

Reich gestured at the line-up of alcohol bottles behind the bar. 'Yeah, what is it you people drink down in Florida? Mojitos?' He pronounced it moh-jee-toes.

'No thanks,' Cab said.

The bartender winked. 'Maybe you want to join the club instead.'

'What club?'

Reich snuck a smile at the fat men playing pool. They drifted closer and the smoke in the bar thickened. 'Detective, you're not just in a pub,' the sheriff explained. 'This is the worldwide headquarters for the Bitters Club.'

'Oh?'

'That's right. It was started on the island by Tom Nelsen back in eighteen ninety-nine. Nelsen was convinced that Angostura bitters were an elixir of health. Sort of like you Florida folks and orange juice. He drank a pint or so a day.'

'A pint of bitters?' Cab asked.

'It's not exactly Guinness, but you get used to the taste. It's right up there with motor oil. You don't have to down a whole pint, though. If you can put back a shot glass of the stuff, you're in the club.'

Cab wasn't going to let this man win his macho game. 'Sure, set me up.'

The bartender smirked and reached under the bar. She placed a shot glass in front of Cab and filled it with a black liquid that did look suspiciously like motor oil. Cab brought the glass under his nose and smelled it. Reich eyed him carefully, and so did the others, watching for his face to screw up with distaste. He didn't react, despite the noxious aroma that would have awakened a coma patient. He figured it was all or nothing. This wasn't brandy you sipped and savored. He swirled the liquid in the glass, tipped it to his lips, and gulped down the bitters in a single swallow. His lips pinched together involuntarily. His throat contracted. The taste reminded him of chewing cigarette butts picked out of the gutter.

'Like it?' Reich asked.

'Great,' Cab croaked.

'Welcome to the club.'

'I'll call my mom,' Cab replied.

Reich relaxed and smiled, as if Cab had passed a Door County test of endurance. 'So give me the dirt, Detective. What exactly do you have on Mark Bradley?'

Cab played with the empty shot glass. His mouth still tasted like weedkiller. 'Honestly? Not much.'

'I'm sorry to hear it,' the sheriff replied. 'I couldn't nail Bradley for sexual assault last year, because Tresa Fischer was so moon-eyed in love with the bastard that she wouldn't say a word against him. You ask me, a teacher poles one of his kids, he ought to be hauled off to a pig farm for castration. We wouldn't have to worry about repeat offenders.'

'You're sure they were having sex?'

'I read the girl's diary. Her imagination's not that good.'

'Can you think of a reason why Bradley would kill Glory Fischer?' Cab asked.

'I can think of lots of reasons. Maybe he tried to rape her, and she fought back. Maybe he just popped his cork and went off on the girl. Take your pick.'

'You may be right,' Cab told Reich, 'but right now, I can't even prove Bradley was on the beach with the girl. We're still running the forensics, and I hope we'll get lucky. Otherwise, we need to find somebody who saw something.'

'So what do you want to get done on my turf, Detective?' Reich asked pointedly. 'You're going to stir up a lot of people who are already hurting because of what happened.'