Death's Door Read online

  Peters nodded with her cutting smile. “Didn’t you say last time that you were having trouble and came here because someone recommended us because we produce results?”

  “Yes, that’s true. But we’re still upset about what happened the last time with that other couple.”

  The smile disappeared and Peters looked confused. “What couple was that?”

  “As we came in a couple was leaving, and the woman was crying.”

  “Oh yes, I remember. It was a personal disagreement between the two of them. I can see how that would upset you, but as I said, I can’t discuss our clients. I will show you the same courtesy.”

  Rosie raised her hand. “I totally understand. I’m just letting you know that was a bit disturbing. Adopting should be a happy occasion.”

  The smile was back. “Well, I’m sure it will be for you. You seem to have a supportive husband.”

  “Oh, I do. But we’re looking at another agency. This is such a big decision.”

  She was still smiling, but it wasn’t all that friendly. “I understand completely, but we’re known for solving problems, not creating them. After all, someone did recommend you. By the way, who was that?”

  “Oh, no one you’d know,” Rosie said. “A friend of a friend of a friend type of thing.”

  “I see. But still, a recommendation is valuable.”

  We sat in an uncomfortable silence for half a minute.

  “So if you aren’t yet ready to decide, what was your purpose for coming here today?”

  “Just for some reassurance.”

  “I hope I’ve been able to do that. Do you have any questions?”

  Rosie shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Peters turned to me. “And you, Mr. Blaine? You’ve been awfully quiet today.”

  I gave her my best fake smile. I was sure it was better than hers. “No, we just need some more time.”

  “Well that’s no problem. But we do have a few possibilities we’re working on. I should know more within the week. Do you think you’ll be able to decide by then?”

  “I believe we should be able to,” I said.

  “Wonderful. We’ll be in touch. Thanks for coming in again.” She stood, walked out from behind the desk, and offered her hand.

  Miss Leek gave us a smile and wished us well as we passed her desk. She hadn’t been taught well by Peters… hers was genuine.

  ***

  As we pulled away, I asked Rosie what she thought of Peters.

  “She’s about as fake as you can be. But I guess she’s a good salesman. Tells you what you want to hear and solves all your problems. What do you think?”

  I laughed. “That pretty well sums it up. I wouldn’t buy Girl Scout cookies from her. Why would anyone trust her with adopting a child?”

  “You have to remember, Spencer… there’s one big difference here.” She paused as I turned a corner. “We’re not actually looking for a baby. We have no emotions in the game. Someone who has hopes and dreams is going to be much more susceptible to Peters’ sales pitch. They want to hear that someone is going to solve their problems. And they’ll overlook the fake smile and the sleezy pitch.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I guess. That’s kinda sad.”

  “It is. It’s sad that Peters takes advantage of that.”

  We drove for another block before I asked, “And what do you think of Sarah Leek?”

  “I like her. She doesn’t fit in that office, but a job’s a job, and she probably does her job well and doesn’t have to spend much time with Peters. You?”

  “I agree. But she’s got something stuck in her throat.”

  “It does appear that way. How do you want to go about unsticking it?”

  “Let’s think about it over lunch. You good with Titletown?”

  “Sure. The walk will be nice too.”

  Twenty minutes later we were trying a couple of different beers and waiting for ribs. They were well worth the wait. I was ahead of Rosie six to three.

  “If you don’t eat faster you’re not going to get your share,” I said.

  She put down her stein and said, “I’m not worried about it. Some of us have figures to watch. And I have this quirk about eating… I like to actually taste my food, especially when it’s this good.”

  That wasn’t going to slow me down. “Okay, I warned you.”

  When we finished, we ordered two more beers and took them out to the patio. It was a good day to be outside… temperature in the seventies and fluffy, white cumulus clouds drifting slowly southeast.

  “So what do we do about Sarah?”

  “I think one of us needs to run into her outside of work.”

  She let me think as she lifted her beer. “Which one?”

  “I’m open for suggestions. The which may depend on how we’re going to run into her.”

  The bridge bells started to ring. I looked downriver and saw a large sailboat heading toward the bay. Gates went down, lights flashed, and ten seconds later the bridge leafs started to rise.

  Rosie drummed her fingers on the table. “How about one of us picks her up after work and follows her home, or wherever she happens to go.”

  I nodded. “Our only chance is if she goes somewhere besides home. A shopping center would work, or a restaurant. We can hardly claim coincidence by ringing her doorbell.”

  “Right.” She finished the beer. I had beat her by ten minutes. “So who goes?”

  “It seems to be more up my alley, but I’m okay with you going. She might relate better to you as the poor woman who can’t have a baby. She seems the sympathetic type.”

  “Okay, I’m game.”

  We watched the boat motor through the bridge opening.

  “How about this, Spencer. We both go. You drive and I follow her on foot if she stops somewhere.”

  “Sounds good to me. They close at five. So the next question is today or tomorrow?”

  “Hmm. I’m torn. No time like the present, but I’d really like to spend some time at the cottage. And we have no idea how long this might take.”

  I had been drawing patterns in the moisture on the outside of my stein. “Right. You talked me into tomorrow. There’s no hurry.”

  “That we know of.”

  “Yeah, well, at the moment I’m voting for the cottage. If something happens between now and tomorrow night, we’ll figure it out tomorrow. You ready?”

  She nodded. We stood, and I left money on the table. By the time we got to the street the bridge had lowered.

  Chapter 13

  We packed a day’s worth of clothes and headed east out of town to 57. We hit Sturgeon Bay at ten after three, crossed the canal between Green Bay and Lake Michigan, and continued north on 42 into the upper part of the Door County peninsula, which technically was an island as it was separated from the mainland by the canal.

  I asked Rosie if she wanted to make a slight detour to the eastern end of the canal and see the Coast Guard station. She said she’d like to at some point, but right now she wanted to be in a lounge chair on my deck.

  I turned right onto 57 and headed north. We stopped at the market in Baileys Harbor and stocked up on some food. I got steaks for dinner. Rosie picked out the trimmings.

  As we turned out of the parking lot my phone rang, and Rosie answered.

  “Hi, Captain.”

  I tried to figure out the conversation from Rosie’s side and thought I had a pretty good idea. After a few minutes, she told him she’d tell me and hung up.

  “They have another lead on Stosh. They found someone who hinted that there may have been an initiation that involved shooting a cop.”

  “Any names?”

  “No, but there are a lot of people looking.”

  “That would solve the gang’s problem. Shoot a cop and here’s the one we want you to shoot.”

  Rosie shook her head. “That that’s okay to someone is still amazing to me… even after all these years.”

 
“Well—”

  She cut me off. “I know the reasons. No mother or father, or useless mother or father, a system that has let them down, and someone finds a way to be important with the Prophets. We run after-school programs and clubs and sports events and still some choose the gangs.”

  “Not an easy problem, Rosie. He’s still okay with you being up here?”

  “Seems to be. Says they have it covered.”

  Just north of Baileys Harbor, I turned onto county Q and immediately felt at home in the forest. Five minutes later, we looked out over Moonlight Bay onto Lake Michigan, and five minutes after that turned onto Moonlight Bay Drive where the homes were partially hidden in the dense pine trees. I turned into the gravel drive I shared with the cottage next door and felt like I always did when I pulled into that drive—the rest of the world didn’t exist.

  “Spencer, your neighbor’s cottage is sold!”

  It had been vacant and for sale for most of the last year.

  “I wonder who bought it. Hope it’s not someone who likes loud parties.”

  I pulled up to the side of the cottage and turned off the Mustang. “Shouldn’t be a problem, Rosie. That kind of person doesn’t like this kind of living.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I’m pretty confident.”

  “You can be confident all you want. This you have no control over. I hope it’s someone you can get along with.”

  I told her I wasn’t worried. I picked up two bags of groceries and led the way to the front door. After stowing the food and our bags, I said, “Let’s open the windows and air this place out. Then I think there are a couple of chairs on the deck with our names on them.”

  When the temperature started to drop as the sun dipped behind the trees, I suggested we start dinner. Rosie was as hungry as I was.

  While we were eating, we talked about Sarah. Rosie added a twist to the plan. If she got the chance to talk to Sarah, depending on how that went, she’d tell Sarah I was waiting out in the car, and I’d like to talk to her too. I agreed.

  As I took my last bite of steak, I said, “At some point we need to switch from concerned adoptees to detectives.”

  While she was cutting her meat, Rosie said, “We’ll have to play that by ear.”

  “Yup. I wonder if she knows two of their clients have been murdered.” I watched Rosie finish eating. “But for starters I want to know about the trouble with a mother. That’d be a good ice breaker for you.”

  “It would. Let’s clean up and take a walk.”

  “How long a walk do you want to take?”

  “I need to work off this steak. What do you have in mind?”

  “It’s about a forty-minute walk to the lighthouse out on Cana Island.”

  “And it’s a nice night for a walk.”

  ***

  We grabbed flashlights and jackets and headed out a little after eight. The little bit of yellow and light blue twilight turned to dark blue and then to black. Night came quickly up here. As there were no lights on the road to interfere with the dark, the only light came from far-spread homes tucked back in the forest.

  “Do we need to worry about animals?” asked Rosie.

  “If we stay on the road and keep our flashlights on they’ll stay away from us.”

  “It’s so quiet,” she said.

  “Yeah, the rest of the world doesn’t exist here.”

  After a half hour we came out of the woods into an opening with the island in front of us. To our right was Moonlight Bay, and Lake Michigan was to our left. And a sky full of stars was above.

  “I’ve never seen so many stars,” said Rosie.

  “Yes, it’s beautiful. Civilization tends to cover up things like that.”

  We started across the gravel and stone causeway between the mainland and the island. The only sounds were the crunch of our footsteps on the gravel and the gentle wash of waves on the shore. Halfway across we heard the plaintive cry of a loon.

  “The lake is low this year,” I said. “There were times when I was a kid we waded through water almost to our knees to get across here.”

  “Is this the only way?”

  “It is.”

  “Where’s the lighthouse?”

  “You’ll see… and you’re in for a surprise.”

  I took Rosie’s hand as the narrow path wound into dense trees. And then after a short walk the Cana Island lighthouse came into view as we walked into a clearing. As the light swept over the tops of the trees, I told her the white, steel-clad tower was eighty-nine feet tall and the light had been in operation since 1869.

  “It’s beautiful. This is a wonderful surprise, Spencer.”

  I laughed. “It is, but it’s not the surprise I had in mind.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “You’ll see.”

  We walked around the grounds, and she read the informational plaques. Looking up, she said, “I bet the view is spectacular from that walkway.” There was a watch deck around the tower just below the lantern.

  I took her hand and led her out to the beach where four multi-colored, wooden chairs rested on a little rise above the sand. We sat on the two in the middle.

  “This is so peaceful,” she said as she looked out over the lake. “I can hardly tell where the water ends and the sky starts.”

  “Yup, pretty dark. But you’ll be able to tell soon enough.”

  “What do you mean by that? Sounds pretty mysterious.”

  I just smiled and told her to keep watching. I was dozing a bit when, ten minutes later, Rosie shouted, “Spencer! The water’s on fire!”

  I laughed. “That’s a bit of an oxymoron. But you might think so.” Almost directly ahead of us, a red line had appeared at the water’s edge. As we watched, the line quickly turned into an enormous red ball rising out of the lake. The full moon was one night away, but this one was still sensational.

  Rosie couldn’t take her eyes off the water. “That was spectacular, Spencer. Did you know that was going to happen?”

  “Yes. I looked at moonrise in the paper. But we got lucky with Ma Nature. A clear night and no wind set the scene.”

  “Why does the wind matter?”

  “Waves would have ruined the effect on the horizon.”

  We watched for a few more minutes before I reminded her we had to walk back. She reluctantly got up and took a last look up at the rotating light. As we reached the causeway we again heard the loon.

  “That’s such a sad sound,” Rosie said. “But it’s mesmerizing.”

  “That it is. There are Indian legends about the loon that are just as sad as the cry.” I told her about the boy whose sight was taken away by his selfish, evil mother and then restored by a loon. “The cry is partly a warning during mating season of a pair protecting their territory.”

  Halfway across, Rosie stopped and turned to me with tears in her eyes.

  I held her shoulders and asked what was wrong.

  “They may be protecting their territory, but I think the cry is for Stosh.”

  I pulled her close to me, and we stood listening for a few minutes before heading home.

  The walk back was uneventful. As we were getting for ready for bed, Rosie put her arms around me and said, “I’m glad we decided to come here tonight, Spencer. That was a wonderful evening.”

  “Me too. Tomorrow back to work.”

  Chapter 14

  Thursday started with the sound of rain on the roof at four a.m. I had planned on getting up early to watch the sunrise. Now I was just getting up early. I picked up the book I had brought with me, stretched out on the couch, and listened to the music of the rain. I was on the third chapter of The Stories Insects Tell, by Garf. A friend in Hawaii had sent it to me. It was a book about the new field of forensic entomology, the importance of insects as evidence at a crime scene. I found it fascinating.

  The rhythm of the rain put me back to sleep around five, and Rosie woke me up at ten after seven by sitting crosswise on th
e couch and draping her legs on my lap.

  “Good morning, Mr. Blaine. Was Mrs. Blaine snoring?”

  “No,” I said with a smile. “The rain woke me up.”

  “And then put you back to sleep, it looked like.”

  “Evidently.”

  “Watcha reading?”

  I handed her the book.

  “I’ve read a couple articles about this,” she said. “Sounds interesting.”

  “It is.”

  “But the official take is even if it makes sense, it would be impossible to use as evidence in court.”

  I stretched. “I imagine. But fingerprints were a novelty too a while back.”

  She shrugged. “Breakfast?”

  We made scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese and crumbled bacon and ate on the deck under the overhang. It was still drizzling. As we were cleaning up, I said, “I have some phone calls to make, then we have the morning to relax.”

  “What time do you want to leave?”

  “Well, let’s make it one thirty. That’ll give us enough time to get settled back at the hotel and get to the agency by five.”

  “Okay. I’ll finish up here. Make your calls.”

  ***

  The first was to Carol. There was nothing important on her end.

  “I have a chore for you,” I said.

  “Good. I need a distraction from the stress of trying to find something to do.”

  I ignored her. “Get ahold of Paul. I need him up here by Sunday afternoon. I have a day job that may last a week. Get him our usual rental car and a camera and one of the cell phones. Let me know what the number is. Give him the address of the hotel… tell him I’ll reserve a room.”

  “Will do. Watson misses you.”

  “Sure he does. Does Billy play with him every day?”

  “Of course.”

  “Does he get fed twice a day?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then he doesn’t miss me.”

  “You just wait and see the greeting you get when you get back.”

  “Okay. Good luck with that. Oh, one more thing.” I explained that I wanted her to be the clearing house for information and to keep her usual notes. She would receive information and get it out to the rest of those involved.