Thirty-one
By the time the Craig twins came into the store at three o’clock, they, along with the rest of Moraine, already knew about the robbery. With a huge sigh of relief, I turned the front of the store over to them so Holly and I could go straighten up the storage room.
“What was our thief looking for back here?” I wanted to know, after checking the store’s small safe and finding it undisturbed. Thank God!
“More money in a drawer?” Holly suggested. “Lots of store owners keep extra cash in the back that isn’t as secure as ours is.”
That made sense, but my inner voice suspected there was more to it. Too many disturbing things had happened recently to ignore anything.
I called the hospital to get information on Carrie Ann’s condition. My cousin was resting comfortably.
“You’ll have to pay her for time off,” Holly said. “Since she was hurt at work.”
“Carrie Ann’s been nothing but trouble,” I said, sounding like my mother the second the words were out of my mouth.
Holly giggled. “But she’s a ton of fun.”
“That she is.”
“I’ll run up to the hospital and see for myself how she’s doing. GTG (Got To Go).”
“Let me know. And see you first thing tomorrow morning.”
After Holly left, I made a minor dent in a pile of paperwork, hating every minute of it. Bookkeeping was not one of my strong suits, but a few invoices needed immediate attention or the electricity and phone service would be disconnected. The market paid for itself and more, so money wasn’t the issue. Getting myself to sit down and do the work was the biggest problem.
After groaning through that chore, I walked down to Stu’s.
“Can I borrow the canoe again?” I asked him.
“You can take the canoe anytime you want.”
Stu was a great guy. Becky needed to land him for good one of these days before some other woman made a move.
“How come you didn’t tell me Hunter was an alcoholic?” I asked him.
“Didn’t know you didn’t know. Besides, wasn’t any of your business.”
“I guess not. Is he okay?”
“Better off than most of us. His head’s in the right place. Sometimes personal struggles make a person stronger and better.”
“My problems haven’t done a thing for my self-improvement,” I said, thinking of my struggles with my mother and my marriage. “At least, not that I’ve noticed.”
“It might sneak up on you someday when you aren’t looking.”
“How did you get so smart?”
“Born that way.”
I went around to the back of the bar and grill, shoved off in the canoe, and lost myself in the river’s action where life was simple and easy and smelled so sweet and fragrant.
Soon the migration would begin, birds flying south for the winter. They’d stop over at Horicon Marsh, a national wildlife refuge, which wasn’t too far north of Moraine. Then they would fly over our Oconomowoc River, resting in the trees and on the water. I needed my own kayak for that big event.
For now, red-winged blackbirds swayed on cattails along the marshy side and called to each other. I gazed up into white, billowing clouds, the kind I almost think you could float on. Marshmallow clouds. I changed my usual path to avoid encountering the spot where we’d found Faye, instead heading downstream toward my home. I wondered how long it would take before I could paddle in the other direction without thinking of Faye lying dead in my kayak, water streaming over her face, her eyes looking nowhere.
I passed by my house, moving quickly with the current, noting that from the water, my backyard looked like its own wildlife refuge. I could see a rabbit chewing something on the edge of my garden. Darn.
The journey back upstream would be harder, especially in a larger vessel like Stu’s canoe. I didn’t go much farther before turning around, but I had enough personal private time to do a little self-evaluation.
I was more of a loner than I liked to admit. Sure, I needed people and conversation, and the market supplied those two daily requirements. But I craved as much alone time with my bees and nature and waterways as I could get.
Was it good to be that way, or bad, or both? How could I be with someone else when I wanted so much personal space? Between the store and bees and my own needs, did I have anything left to give to Hunter? Did I want to make the effort?
What if I was wasting my time? That was a huge issue.
When I paddled back to the bar, Stu was watching from the river’s edge, taking a break from his work. “It’s peaceful out there, isn’t it?” he said.
I nodded in complete agreement. Stu took one side of the canoe and helped me bring it up on shore. “I need to get another kayak,” I said. “I really miss my daily river trips.”
“That old canoe is a hot commodity lately. I should start charging an hourly rate. It’s seen some real action over the years,” Stu said.
“I can imagine.” I laughed. “Or maybe I shouldn’t try to imagine. This old canoe has been around as long as I can remember.”
“Just about every butt in town has sat in her. Even Manny took her for a ride just before he died.” Stu paused, thinking it over. “I can’t remember which day exactly; they all blend together when you tend bar every night. But it was that same week he died, sometime around dusk.”
“Did I hear you right? Manny actually took this canoe out on the river?”
“He did.”
“That’s really strange. Manny didn’t like water. He wouldn’t even fish from the shore.”
Manny had had a bad experience with water, to match the one I had with the dog that attacked me. He’d almost drowned once when he was a kid when the fishing boat he was on capsized in Lake Michigan.
I typically stayed away from canines; Manny usually kept off bodies of water.
“He did seem nervous, now that you bring it up,” Stu said. “Jittery, not like most people who want to take it out. I offered to find him a canoe partner from the bar patrons—one of them would have gone along—but he refused, insisted he was fine, and took off, heading downstream. I don’t know when he came back. He didn’t come into the bar, just left the canoe where he’d found it.”
“Huh,” I said. Stu went back inside, and I stared at the boat.
“Canoe,” I said to it once we were alone, “if you could talk, what would you tell me?” I must be losing my mind, talking to an inanimate object. I glanced around. Nobody was near. “Manny, what the heck were you doing out on the river? You were afraid of water.”
Manny didn’t answer me. Neither did the canoe.
I walked back to The Wild Clover to say good night to the twins and check on things. I’d left the envelopes containing bill payments on my desk, planning to pick them up after the canoe trip and put them in the mailbox on my way home.
The envelopes were right where I’d left them.
But so was something else. Lying on top of the stack, perfectly centered, was a dragonfly earring. The dead-on match to the one Faye Tilley had been wearing when we found her body.