Death Stalks Door County Page 3

  “Good point,” the coroner said.

  Halverson grimaced. “Doubt it. Tourists pretty much keep to themselves.” The sheriff stifled a yawn. He’d been up half the night playing poker with his deputies, he said as he pulled a slim pen and small, worn notebook from his breast pocket.

  “May as well get right to it,” he went on, simultaneously popping the cap on the pen and flipping open the pad. “Suicide?” he ventured.

  “Broken neck,” the coroner said.

  “Yeah, but suicide, right?” Halverson’s pen was poised above the blank page.

  Bathard straightened his shoulders and scrutinized his visitor. “That’s for the inquest to decide.” The coroner tried to keep the annoyance from his voice. “At this point, I can tell you the young man is dead and give you a fairly accurate estimate of the time of his demise. I can tell you the cause of death, but I cannot presume to guess at what precipitated the unhappy event.”

  “What are ya going to put on the death certificate?”

  “Intercerebral hemorrhage. Large subgaleal hemorrhage. Multiple comminuted fractures of the skull. Multiple contusions of the brain and lungs. Fractures of the left humerus, left iliac bone, left kidney, and ribs. Bilateral hemothorax. Hemoperitoneum.”

  Halverson blinked hard. “Right.” His hand floated uncertainly above the notebook, and then he abruptly shoved paper and pen into his pocket and pushed up, snagging his cuff on the arm of the chair. Tipped off balance, the sheriff grabbed the edge of the desk and righted himself. Red-faced, Halverson glanced from Bathard to Cubiak and then back to the coroner.

  “How’s Cornelia?” he said as he maneuvered toward the door.

  “Doing well, thank you. And Frank?”

  Halverson gripped the knob. “He’s fine. Good. Under the circumstances.” The answer was automatic, well practiced.

  After the sheriff ’s footsteps faded and the outside door banged, Bathard spoke quietly. “Cornelia, my wife, is currently undergoing treatment for uterine cancer. Frank, Halverson’s father, has been paralyzed for nearly thirty years. For the past decade, he has resided in a convalescent home on the other side of Fish Creek.” The coroner waited a discreet interval. “Neither of them is fine.”

  Retracing his path over the bridge, Cubiak felt calm for the first time that day. He’d made sure the sheriff knew Wisby’s history of visits to Door County, as far as park records went. Now it was up to Halverson. What the sheriff did with the information was none of the ranger’s business.

  The road north was flat and straight. Taking advantage of the light traffic, Cubiak accelerated along the high Niagara bluff toward Fish Creek. Inside the village limits, the highway hooked left and plunged precipitously off the edge of the plateau, curving down into the bayside community. If pushed, Cubiak would have to admit that there were a couple of things about Door County that he enjoyed and driving into Fish Creek from the south was one. Barreling into town between the sheer rock wall on one side and the sea of treetops on the other, there was no room for error and barely time to catch a breath before the pavement leveled off and cut a ninety-degree angle to the right onto the main drag. Miss the turn, and it was a short hop into the water. Every time Cubiak flew down the incline, he imagined a winter storm and what it would be like to be the first kid sledding down the slope, the one carving fresh tracks in the snow.

  Fish Creek stretched along the bottom of a wide, boxy bay in such a way that little in the pencil-thin town was more than two blocks from the water. At the southern end, the cluster of picturesque historic buildings at Founders Square formed a bulbous tip, like an eraser, but the bulk of the businesses lined up in tidy symmetry along the main thoroughfare. A few of the shops weren’t open yet for the season, and several motels and lodges posted vacancy signs out front. The street was void of people except for a woman loading a large bundle of wooden dowels into the trunk of a car outside Caruthers Hardware. At breakfast, Ruta had asked Cubiak to buy stamps and a loaf of limpa bread on his way back. There were no lines at the post office or the bakery, and Cubiak wrapped up the errands in minutes. The jeep was pointed in the direction of the park, but when he climbed back in he remembered the sheriff telling him to stay where he could be found. Fuck that, Cubiak thought, as he swung around and drove back to the old part of town.

  At one time, the antique frame structures had housed Fish Creek’s city hall, school, and early businesses, including one of the peninsula’s oldest resorts. Now, gathered together under the overarching branches of ancient maples, they served the tourist trade, historical cover for restaurants, a T-shirt emporium, confectionary shop, ice-cream parlor, and stores that specialized in stained glass, wheat weaving, pottery, and watercolors. Dominating the historic center was Sarah Humble’s, a grand three-story, white clapboard hotel that had originally been located on the other side of Green Bay in Marinette, some forty-eight miles away. In 1906 the owner of a fledgling Fish Creek health spa and resort bought the building and had it dismantled. The following winter, the pieces were loaded on massive wooden sleds that were pulled over the ice by three teams of specially shod horses.

  Past the Sarah, Cubiak turned toward the water and the Little Snug Harbor Diner. He’d been to the restaurant half a dozen times and was accustomed to finding it empty save for the proprietor, Evangeline Davis, and the occasional customer. That morning two old men bent over a chessboard in the middle booth. Startled by the blast of bracing air that came in with Cubiak, they looked up in alarm and then settled back to their game.

  Cubiak dropped onto the end stool. He was suddenly exhausted.

  “Coffee?” Evangeline filled a white porcelain mug and set it before him. She was a grandmotherly type with coarse gray hair pulled into a neat bun. “I heard about that kid, in the park. So sad.”

  “Yes.”

  “Jumping, I mean. At least that’s what I heard.”

  Evangeline sighed and moved cream and sugar within his reach. Then she crossed to the booth and poured refills for the other two customers.

  Cradling the mug, Cubiak swiveled toward the plate glass window. The cloud cover had thickened and sunk toward the horizon, creating a strange claustrophobic atmosphere in the great outdoors. In the squeezed light, the distant trees looked black, as if sketched in charcoal. A solitary fishing boat, scuffed and in need of paint, bobbled near the end of the pier. The only spot of color was Johnson’s pale red pickup nestled in a small clearing at the southern edge of Peninsula State Park. The park superintendent was out there working alone, probably chilled to the bone. Cubiak felt a stab of conscience. Maybe he should go help. Or at least call. The ranger felt for his phone. He’d forgotten it. The hell with him, he thought. Every time Cubiak offered to do outdoor work, Johnson turned him down. Anything, it seemed, to establish distance between them. So here they were, one out in the cold, the other warm and comfortable. Not my problem, Cubiak thought and spun back toward the counter.

  “I got pie. Cherry and blueberry.” Evangeline made the announcement in a no-nonsense voice. “Which do you want?”

  “I’m really not hungry,” Cubiak said.

  “Cherry or blueberry?” The proprietress waited.

  “Cherry.”

  A piece of pie the size of Rhode Island appeared in front of the park ranger. He ate down to the crust. Still thinking about Johnson, he pivoted toward the bay again just as a wrinkled bulldog of a man tottered around the corner and planted himself in front of the restaurant window. A nubby wool watch cap was pulled down tight over his ears. Coal black eyes scowled from his leathery face. A stub of cigar was stuck between teeth that were startlingly white. The man grinned. Evangeline stepped up to the counter behind Cubiak and tittered softly.

  “Ben Macklin,” she said gaily and waved.

  Macklin saluted sharply before continuing his unsteady march toward the dock. The old codger was clearly drunk.

  Evangeline set a platter of cake doughnuts near Cubiak. “There’s a tough old bird for you,” she said as she sift
ed powdered sugar over the breakfast treats. “Good ol’ Benny. Love him or hate him.”

  Across the room, the chess players mumbled their assent.

  “Know him?” she said to Cubiak.

  “No.”

  Benny was born during the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940, Evangeline explained, her voice thick with memory. The day he plopped into the world, three cargo ships went down in Lake Michigan and all the men on them drowned. “Benny was a strong baby, a wild young man, and ornery as a goat when he grew up. Did what he pleased, what he thought was right. Anyone else could go to the devil for all he cared.”

  A fisherman, he lived on Chambers Island. Never married. No family. Once when no airplane or helicopter could fly and no other boat would attempt the crossing because of a storm, Benny transported a desperately ill child to the mainland. Got her to the hospital in time to save her life and became a hero. To some, that is. Folks who took exception to his drinking or had been publicly lambasted by his quick, merciless tongue dismissed Benny’s bravery as a fluke. It was all just as well with Macklin. He never cared much for a fuss. Then, as now, Evangeline said, he wanted to be left alone.

  Reaching back to set down the still-hot mug, Cubiak watched Macklin. Is that how he was going to end up? A lonely drunk?

  At the end of the dock, the fisherman scrambled onto his boat.

  Cubiak squinted but the name was too faint to decipher. “What is it?” he said.

  Evangeline cackled. “His true love, the Betsy Ross.”

  Cubiak was about to comment but something in Evangeline’s tone stopped him. They continued to watch as Macklin bent down and picked up something off the floorboards. Whatever it was, he looked at it and tossed it to the deck.

  Then he lit a match.

  The explosion blew a crater into the water and rocked the diner. Under a cascade of splintering glass, Cubiak dove to the floor. He counted to ten out of military habit and then scrambled to his feet. “You okay?” he called to Evangeline, who was plastered ghostlike against the back wall. The chess players were drained of all color but still seated upright and unhurt.

  Cubiak bolted out the door and raced toward the ugly orange ball of fire dancing on the water. Thick black smoke barreled upward from the flames, releasing the sharp smell of creosote into the air.

  Evangeline stumbled behind the ranger. She ran awkwardly on thick legs and stiff ankles, her apron whipping hard around her solid hips. When she finally caught up with him, the boat was gone. Evangeline sobbed and swayed. Cubiak gripped her shoulder, and the two braced against each other as charred slivers of wood and scorched flesh rained down into the shallow harbor. Tsst . . . tsst . . . tsst. The hot scraps sizzled as they hit the cold water.

  A small crowd quickly assembled on the dock. Les Caruthers looking shell shocked. The woman with the dowels in her trunk, somber and unreadable. The clerk from the front lobby of Sarah Humble’s, her black mascara mixed with tears against paper-white skin. The men from the diner, shivering inside matching red-and-black checked mackinaws.

  Amid the stunned onlookers, Cubiak remained a man apart. Though he recognized and understood their pain, he felt unable to share in it, not because he was insensitive by nature—far from it—but because unrelenting grief had drained him of empathy and rendered him numb to any sorrow but his own.

  Seagulls wheeled overhead, gliding through the spreading plume of smoke like greedy water vultures drawn to the carnage.

  Cubiak squeezed Evangeline’s shoulder and then let go and hurried back to the café. The most he could do to help was step inside and call the sheriff.

  Nightfall brought a hard rain. The downpour pummeled the tall pines and stately maples and oaks that filled Peninsula State Park and the vast tracts of pastureland and forest that gave the peninsula its richness of color and sweet-scented air. In the carefully tended gardens of the year-round residents, the deluge destroyed roses, late-blooming lilacs, and the tulips that had stubbornly refused to die, strewing the ground with their dislodged petals. On the county’s western rim, angry rivulets swelled the creeks that fed Green Bay, while on the east side, the runoff cut miniature canyons into the soft sand along the Lake Michigan shore.

  At Pechta’s Tap in Fish Creek, Cubiak slumped on a stool and nursed a beer, waiting for a break in the storm.

  The rain drummed the metal canopy over the entrance, but the only noise Cubiak heard was the loud boom of Ben Macklin’s boat exploding. Two days. Two deaths. It almost seemed as if there was a jinx on the peninsula. Was it him, dragging bad karma?

  Cubiak drained his glass and studied the drawing of Door County tacked to the facing wall. Were the deaths linked? Larry Wisby had died on the north edge of Peninsula Park, Macklin little more than a day later and some three miles away near the park’s southern boundary. To get from Ephraim to Chambers Island where he had lived, Macklin would have to travel through the harbor beneath the ridge where the tower stood. What if the old fisherman had been on the water the morning Wisby died, motoring from home to town or vice versa? Would he have seen anything other than trees if he’d looked up toward the tower?

  From the service side of the bar, Amelia Pechta ran a tattered rag around Cubiak’s empty glass and followed his gaze to the map. “Lots of water out there and Benny knew it all. He could get around these parts with his eyelids taped shut,” she said.

  “You know where he usually went?”

  “Benny? Benny went wherever there was fish, women, or whiskey!” Amelia poured two shots and slid one across the bar, the wood worn smooth from use, toward her solitary customer, indicating that while Cubiak might still be considered a newcomer on most of the peninsula, at the bar he qualified as a regular. “Or maybe it was fish, whiskey, or women.” She raised her glass. “Skoal,” she said, and they tossed the drinks down together.

  “He deserved better.” Amelia slipped her glass under the bar and took up the rag again. Shuffling away, she continued talking over her shoulder. “The place’ll fill soon. People’ll come for Benny.” She made a sound like a whimper. “They used to come for fun. On Sundays, there was fried chicken and potato salad, sometimes a game of bingo. We had dancing, too, once a month. My cousin played waltzes and polkas on an accordion. Ancient history.”

  Amelia floated back toward Cubiak. She was bent and wrinkled, her skin sallow in the pale yellow-green light from the fluorescent ceiling fixtures. Whether from habit or the need for more conversation, she drew his attention to the massive gray-black fish that hung on the wall behind her. “A muskie,” she said by way of explanation. “My father caught it. Ugly son of a bitch.”

  “Your father? Or the fish?”

  Amelia chortled and then she turned and pointed to a torn, black-and-white snapshot stuck along the bottom edge of the cracked mirror. “There’s Benny’s boat, the Betsy Ross.” Cubiak guessed that the picture was another bit of ancient history. A young Benny wasn’t in the photo, but the Ross was as sleek and lovely as a fishing trawler could be. Taped alongside the picture were bedraggled snapshots of other boats and of fishermen brandishing strings of bass and perch, their happy faces out of context in the dreary pub.

  As the proprietress limped away again, the front door banged open. Evelyn Bathard walked in, followed closely by a tall, elegant woman whom Cubiak recognized as the lone person he’d seen that morning by the hardware store and again at the bay following the explosion.

  “Dave Cubiak, new assistant park superintendent. Ruby Schumacher, a longtime friend,” Bathard said, introducing them. Shaking hands, Cubiak sensed an air of that intangible otherness that comes from money and breeding.

  In short order, Pechta’s was packed, just as Amelia had predicted. Otto Johnson joined Bathard and Ruby at a back table, and Cubiak recognized a few of the others as well. Les Caruthers. Martha Smithson, owner of the Ephraim Bakery. Floyd Touhy. Evangeline Davis. One of the chess players from the diner. As if by some unseen accord, the more genteel folks occupied the tables or stood in awkward clusters alo
ng the windows and billiard area. Around the bar, a different sort had gathered, somber men with leathery faces and thick, rough hands, all of them in heavy work clothes. Fishermen, Cubiak assumed.

  “I don’t see Beck,” he said.

  “And you won’t neither. Bastard’s too good for the likes of Benny.”

  “I didn’t know Macklin,” Cubiak said and started to stand.

  “Don’t matter. Here, help me with these.”

  She handed him a fresh bottle of cognac and two of cold cherry wine. While he opened the bottles, she loaded a tray with shot glasses. Then the bottles and tray were circulated around the room. Cubiak watched the ritual unfold. One by one, every person in the room poured a drink and passed the rest on. While this was happening, Amelia pulled an old wooden stool from behind the bar.

  Like Moses parting the Red Sea, she pushed through the crowd, dragging the stool behind. At her approach, people fell back on either side. Someone turned off the jukebox and the crowd slowly quieted. When Amelia reached the far wall, she tipped the stool forward against a large patch of chipped paint and then stepped away.

  A man at the end of the bar slid off his perch. “To Benny,” he called out gruffly and raised his drink toward the forlorn chair. The others lifted their glasses. “To Benny,” they chimed in tribute to the dead man.

  In the ensuing silence, Les Caruthers cleared his throat. “I hear there’ll be no official investigation,” he announced to no one in particular. “Benny was drunk at the time. It was an accident.”

  Nearby, Martha Smithson gestured carelessly with her right hand. “These things come in threes,” she shrilled ominously, splashing wine on the floor.

  At their table, Evelyn Bathard, Ruby Schumacher, and Otto Johnson refilled their glasses from their own bottle of cognac, Macklin’s favorite brand. Ruby looked from one man to the other. “To Benny,” she said firmly.

  They nodded and drank.

  “To life,” Bathard whispered. Then, white faced, he turned to Ruby. “There wasn’t enough left for a post mortem.”