Enchantment Lake: A Northwoods Mystery Read online

  Francie moved on to the next item on her mental checklist. What had she seen last night, exactly? Who might have been back in the peat bog, and what had that person been doing? She had heard Buck Jr. say he had found treasure. “In there,” he had said. He must have meant in the woods. He had found something in the woods, was digging it up, and Francie had stumbled on it.

  She’d have to follow up on that.

  Francie charged into the sheriff’s office, clipping an elderly gentleman and causing him to drop a package he was carrying. Francie stooped to pick it up.

  “Francesca!” the man said sharply.

  “Granddad!” Francie choked out when she looked up. “What a surprise.”

  “I’ll bet it is, young lady. Can you please explain what kind of trouble you’re in?”

  “Oh, she’s not in any trouble,” the sheriff said, sauntering up to them belly first. “It’s her aunts who are in trouble.”

  Francie watched one bushy white eyebrow rise in that slow, ominous way it did when her grandfather was about to disapprove of something.

  “I’d like to say that I am surprised, but I can’t say that I am,” he said.

  “Granddad . . .” Francie pleaded.

  “I’m pleased that you’re not in trouble, but I am displeased about many other things. Shall I list them?” Without waiting for her answer, he continued, “One, not consulting me about your plans to travel. Two, traveling on your own without permission. Three, not returning my phone calls. Four, lying about your whereabouts.”

  “I didn’t lie!” Francie protested, then remembered Buck’s explanation about sins of commission and omission. Maybe she had lied by omission. “Okay, maybe I did kind of lie, but that’s because I knew you wouldn’t approve, and—”

  “You’re darn tootin’ I don’t approve. Not one little bit. Here you are, back in the bosom of your aunts who are reliable in only one thing, and that is their nuttiness. Now they are in jail no doubt for some cockamamie scheme they cooked up.”

  “Actually, they’re in for murder,” the sheriff offered.

  Francie would have liked to punch the amused look off his face. “Excuse me?” she said to the sheriff. “What happened to ‘presumed innocent’?”

  “Those are the charges,” the sheriff said. “That’s all I meant. Jeannette is named as an accessory.”

  Her grandfather dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “I’ve got two tickets home,” he said. “Flight leaves tomorrow, so I’ll give you the rest of today to get your things together and say good-bye to your aunts. Meet me in the lobby of the Inn on the Lake at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “I can’t go now,” Francie said. “I’m not going to go when Aunt Astrid and Aunt Jeannette are in jail. I’ve got to prove they didn’t do it.”

  “Pfft!” Her grandfather waved his hand dismissively. “Young lady, you’re not even old enough to be considered a young lady. You’re just a girl. Leave this sort of thing to the professionals. Law enforcement will take care of it.”

  “No, they won’t!” Francie fought the urge to bring her foot down in a petulant little stamp. She refused to look at the sheriff, because she knew he was smirking.

  “Tomorrow we leave for the city,” her grandfather said.

  “Why are you being so unreasonable?” Francie asked. “Anyway, I’m not going.”

  “I don’t think I need to remind you of certain financial realities,” her grandfather said.

  Francie groaned inwardly. The trust fund, which he held over her head at every opportunity.

  “If you continue to demonstrate this kind of immaturity, I may have to move the age at which you can access your fund.”

  “Come on!” Francie cried. “You can’t seriously think I’m going to leave my aunts in this predicament.”

  “They got themselves into it; they can get themselves out of it,” her grandfather said.

  “You know what, Granddad?” Francie said. “You’re heartless. You could be using your influence to help, you know, instead of making things worse. You don’t have to be such a curmudgeon.”

  “That’s quite enough, Francesca,” her grandfather said, and spun around, then turned back and handed her the package he was carrying. “You know where the post office is, I assume. Please mail this for me.” He handed her some cash, which she stuffed in her pocket, then he finished by saying, “I’ll see you in the morning.” He pushed the door open and disappeared down the street.

  As if she had nothing else to do but mail packages all day!

  Francie took a moment to collect herself before turning to face Sheriff Johnson.

  “You must have been out partying last night,” he said from his swivel chair, looking her up and down.

  Francie glowered at him. “You haven’t the slightest idea what I was doing last night or what I saw. While you’re busy arresting helpless old ladies—”

  “I don’t know about helpless.” The sheriff pointed to his black eye.

  Francie winced.

  “So,” the sheriff continued, “your grandfather don’t seem impressed by your—”

  “Just tell me what’s going on,” Francie cut him off.

  Sheriff Johnson waved a piece of paper at her. “We got the report back from the lab.” Francie glanced at the black dog sprawled alongside his desk. “Not that one,” he said. “The lab in Minneapolis. There were traces of cyanide found on the spatula.”

  “Cyanide?” Francie squawked. “That should convince everyone it wasn’t Astrid. Everybody would believe it if she poisoned him with ptomaine or salmonella or something. Everyone’s afraid of Astrid’s casseroles exactly because of that. But cyanide? Where would she even get such a thing? And anyway she may or may not have dished out poisoned food, but that doesn’t mean she’s the one who put the poison in it.”

  “We got the fingerprints. We got the evidence. We got the results.”

  “A motive?” Francie asked. “Do you have that? Why would Astrid want to kill Buck?”

  “Now, don’t be too worried,” the sheriff said, leaning in toward her and lowering his voice. “I’m sure they’ll get off with some kind of insanity plea.”

  “They’re not insane!” Francie cried.

  “Now, don’t be too hasty,” the sheriff said. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you. Like I said: we got the fingerprints, the evidence, the results.” The sheriff waved the sheet of paper again. “What we don’t got is the hotdish. Maybe you should see if you can find that.”

  “Maybe I should see if I can find them their lawyer,” she said, and made a point of using the sheriff’s phone to make the call.

  Mr. Sage was in a meeting, the receptionist said, but he would speak with her aunts this afternoon. Yes, of course, he would give her a call.

  Francie was trembling when she stepped out of the sheriff’s office. She had one day—one day!—to get her aunts out of jail. That meant one day to figure everything out: Who was the killer, or killers? Who was the mysterious shoveler? Where was T.J. going at night?

  Maybe she didn’t have to figure everything out, but there was still a murderer on the loose, somewhere. Though the day was warm and getting warmer, a chill traveled down her spine.

  Or she could defy her grandfather . . . Oh, boy, she shouldn’t even be thinking this way. He held the purse strings in the form of the trust fund she had been counting on to give her the freedom she so desired. Was it worth yet more years of being under Granddad’s thumb to defy him this one time? If he said he’d bump up the age at which she could access the money, he meant it.

  That meant she had to solve everything today. Now.

  No problem!

  First, she would follow up her hunch to check on potential enemies of Buck Thorne. That meant a visit to Paradise Realty.

  Darcee the receptionist was not-so-surreptitiously texting under the desk.

  Francie startled her when she said her name.

  “Oh!” Darcee said. “Didn’t hear you come in.”


  “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” Francie asked.

  “Fire away,” Darcee said, glancing at her phone.

  “Just wondering if you know anybody who might want to see Buck Sr. dead.”

  “Are you a P.I. or something?”

  “No,” Francie said simply. She was planning to ask the questions, not answer them.

  “Well, pretty much everybody had a reason to, I suppose,” Darcee said. “He’s like the perfect murder victim ’cuz everybody hated him. Like those murder mysteries when everybody hates the guy who gets killed, so everybody is a suspect.”

  “You, too?”

  “Well, he was kind of obnoxious,” Darcee said. “But wait! I didn’t hate him that much! I didn’t kill him! I mean, I could be out of a job now, you know?”

  “I’m not accusing you,” Francie said. “What about his ex-wife, Rose?”

  “Yeah, she hated him, too. But why would she kill him? Then the alimony payments would stop, right?” Darcee said.

  “How about Buck Jr.?” Francie asked.

  The receptionist’s face became a mask of thinly disguised disgust. “What about him?”

  “Did he get along with his dad?”

  “His stepdad, you mean?”

  “Oh?” Francie said. Maybe the idea of Buck Jr. as the killer was less remote than she thought. “Well, did they get along, the two of them?”

  “They fought some,” Darcee said. “Mostly over money. Buck Jr. always wanted money.”

  “What did he want it for?”

  “What didn’t he want it for?” Darcee said. “Usually money for one of his toys. Like that big speedboat.”

  “That great big boat is Buck Jr.’s?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Darcee said. “He was always needing gas money for it. Or for his diving obsession.”

  “Diving? Scuba diving?”

  Darcee nodded. “He’s really into it.”

  “He does it around here?”

  “I guess. Don’t know what he finds. There’s not really anything very pretty to look at, like in the Bahamas or something. Just brown fish, brown rocks, brown sand, brown weeds. Ick.”

  “Has he ever said anything to you about finding something?” Francie asked, steering the conversation back to the issue.

  “Like what?”

  “Some kind of treasure, maybe?”

  Darcee snorted. “Well, he does like to brag about stuff, but then you never know if he’s just making it up or what. Like he told me he finally found that treasure out at Enchantment. Ha!”

  Francie caught her breath. “Did he say anything else about it? Anything more specific about where?”

  Darcee looked up at her and gave her a pitying glance before turning her attention back to her phone. “I wouldn’t get jazzed about it. Buck is so full of bull.”

  “Humor me,” Francie said. “It’s not like I’m going to go dig it up myself or anything.”

  “Oh, he’s not digging anything up,” Darcee said. “He says the treasure is under Enchantment.”

  “Under enchantment? Like bewitched?” Francie asked.

  “No,” Darcee answered. “Under Enchantment. Under the lake.”

  22

  DQ

  With her head spinning, Francie stepped out onto the street. She was getting nowhere, and she only had this one day to figure everything out. I’ve already thought about that enough, she scolded herself. Still, she couldn’t help wondering if there was any way she could defy her grandfather and stay. She really didn’t want to estrange him. He was exasperating, but she did love him, and she knew he loved her, too. It was just that he had all these rules. She had to do this or that or the other thing unless this, that, or the other thing. She was under his thumb unless she could get a paid job, a real paid—wait a minute! There was one hope. A glimmer of hope. The audition with the casting agent. Tonight! She knew it wasn’t really an audition, but it sort of was. If she could get a real acting job, a paying job, she wouldn’t have to rely on her grandfather for money, and she’d be free to come and go as she pleased. She’d need to make a good impression at the Fredericksons’ tonight. She’d need something decent to wear. For cry-eye! she thought, am I really wondering about what I’m going to wear at a time like this?

  Apparently yes, she realized, as she pushed open the door to the one plausible clothing store in town. Well, she needed time to think. She might as well think while scraping hangers along a rack. She wondered if she should have prepared a short monologue or a song . . . She was never going to find anything she wanted to wear in this store, was she? While longing for her favorite East Village thrift store, she wondered if there was a piano at the Fredericksons’. Otherwise, she could do that speech from—she stopped in midthought. There it was—in the midst of loon appliqués and sailboat-themed clothes—a little black knit shift shot through with gold thread that made the dress glint as if it were fresh in from the rain. In this dress she could do everything from Shakespeare to musical comedy. She could probably sing opera in this dress—if she could sing opera.

  She gulped at the price. She couldn’t afford that! Then she remembered the cash her grandfather had given her and pulled it out of her pocket. A hundred bucks! The money was plunked down on the counter; the dress bought. Granddad was already mad at her—how much worse could it get?

  At the post office, she ran into Potter, his arms full of packages.

  “That must be tricky,” she said.

  “Tricky?” he said.

  “I mean, to pack your pots so they don’t break.” Then she thought of his lumpy, heavy pots and realized you’d practically have to take a sledgehammer to them to break them.

  He mumbled something about knowing how to pack the pots, then turned and walked out, leaving a little trail of dry clay from his dirty shoes. She had to brush off the crumbled clay he’d left on the counter before setting down her grandfather’s package.

  After that errand was completed, she wondered whether to go to the law office to see if Mr. Sage was available. That would be one reason to go there.

  Her phone buzzed. It was Sage.

  “We’ll get it all straightened out,” he said. His voice was deep and reassuring. She pictured a rotund, Santa Claus–like figure. “Don’t worry. I’ll call you this afternoon.”

  So Francie had no reason, well, no legitimate reason, to go to the law office, and she walked by the door once, then twice, before turning and stepping inside. A receptionist sat behind a desk just inside the door, and she asked if she might speak to Nels, adding, “If he’s busy, it’s no problem. I shouldn’t bother him at work. You know what? Just tell him never mind.”

  “Just tell who never mind?”

  Francie turned to see Nels leaning against the door to an office, looking clean and pressed in a nice, crisp shirt and tie. How did he do that? The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up; the scratches on his arms made him look manly and tough, like he’d been wrestling bobcats. Her scratches made her look insane, like she wore barbed wire bracelets or something.

  He seemed happy to see her, which came as a pleasant surprise.

  “Come on,” he said. “You want a DQ?”

  “DQ?”

  “Dairy Queen.”

  She squinted at him.

  “You don’t have Dairy Queens in New York?”

  “We have Queens in New York,” she said. “Also queens.”

  Nels laughed. “Who’d think New York would be so very far behind on providing its populace with mono- and diglycerides?”

  “What did you say this stuff was made of again?” she asked, hurrying to lick up the drips as the cone melted into a puddle.

  “Never mind,” Nels said. “You look terrible, by the way.”

  “Thank you,” Francie said. “And you’re so charming.”

  “That’s me.” Nels led her across the street to a park where they sat on the playground swings. “Is it true your great-aunts are in jail?” he asked.

  “Things are worse th
an you can imagine.” Francie almost cried into her ice cream. She explained about her aunts and about how her grandfather upbraided her as if she were a child in front of the sheriff, ruining her credibility. And now her granddad wanted her to leave with him first thing in the morning. She didn’t know what she was going to do.

  “So not much time,” Nels said. “Have you come up with any new leads?”

  “Well, I tried to think who would be back in the woods, and I remembered hearing Buck Jr. tell his dad that he had found the treasure at Enchantment. There’s a legend about a treasure.”

  Nels reached over and wiped a spot of ice cream off her nose. “Okay, I don’t want to shoot anything down, but has anybody suggested to you that Buck Jr. is—”

  “Full of BS?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah,” Francie said. “Darcee, at the office. Okay, so you say it, too. Maybe he’s a whack job. Here’s another thing: I saw Potter at the post office. His clothes were dirty, like he might have been shoveling dirt. Maybe it was Potter.”

  “Who’s Potter?”

  “He’s a potter.”

  “And you suspect him because his clothes were dirty?”

  “I mean, really dirty—like T.J.’s.”

  “Frenchy!” Nels said. “He’s a potter. He works with clay. What would you expect?”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Okay, I’m reaching.” She made circles in her swing, twisting the chains around and around, then letting go until the swing spun loose. “I just want this all to make sense. I need it to! I thought I had it all figured out, and then it fell apart when Buck was poisoned. Now nothing makes sense anymore. There are so many unanswered questions.”

  “Like . . . ?”

  “One: Warren. Did he or did he not commit suicide? My aunts are pretty convinced it wasn’t suicide. If that’s true, who killed him? Buck? Then who killed Buck? Was it the same killer both times? And what about all the other “accidental” deaths? Buck basically confessed to some of them, but not all. Was someone else also arranging accidental deaths? Why?”

  “That’s question number one? What’s question number two?”