Anna had recovered her composure. She sat on the floor of Tinker and Damien’s room in the old house half a mile back from the harbor. Since it had become too run-down for any other use, it had been converted into a dorm for seasonal employees. A dozen or more candles burned, but even this glamorous aura couldn’t rid the place of its mildew-and-linoleum seediness. Tinker, her soft hair glittering in the many lights, poured herbal tea into tiny, mismatched Oriental bowls.
“It’s made from all natural ingredients,” she said as she handed Anna a red lacquered bowl. “Damien and I gathered them here and on Raspberry.”
Eye of newt and toe of frog, Anna thought but she took a sip to be polite. The tea tasted of mint and honey with a woody undercurrent reminiscent of the way leaves smell when they’re newly fallen. Anna doubted she’d ask for a second cup, but not because the concoction was unpalatable. The strange brew, the black-cloaked boy, the candlelight, put her in mind of other rooms, heavy with incense and dark with Indian-print bedspreads, where the tea and cakes had been laced with more than wild raspberry leaves. She pushed her bowl aside and cleared the cobwebs of the bad old days from her mind.
“So. Scotty’s wife-Donna-hasn’t been around for a few days?”
“Seven,” Damien said, making the number sound like Donna Butkus’s death knell. Tinker nodded, her gossamer hair floating in the warm currents from the candles.
“Seven,” Anna repeated matter-of-factly.
“We went down to the water on the far side of the dock, down through the tangle of new-growth firs. There’s a little cove there where hardly anybody goes. Donna always fed the ducks there mornings,” Tinker said.
Anna raised an eyebrow. Feeding wildlife was strictly taboo.
“Yes, it was opportunistic,” Tinker agreed. “But sometimes Damien and I would go there later in the day to watch the birds she had attracted.” Again Anna was startled at her understanding. Tinker’s mind seemed strangely accessible. Either that or Anna was more transparent than she liked to think she was.
“We saw a red-necked grebe, and once a black scoter came to feed.” For the first time Damien sounded like a boy. Birds, then, were his passion.
“Last Wednesday, after breakfast, we went birding in the cove. Donna wasn’t there. That’s when we first suspected she was missing,” Damien said.
“Maybe she came earlier, fed them, and had already gone,” Anna suggested.
Damien shook his head portentously. “You don’t understand. The ducks were expecting her.” The boy was gone; the wizard was back.
“Did you ask Scotty where she was?”
“He said she’d had the flu and was home watching the soaps and drinking orange juice,” Tinker replied, as if that course of events was too farfetched to fool even a child. She folded the tips of long tapered fingers delicately around the lacquered bowl and raised it to her lips, not to drink but to inhale the sweet-smelling steam.
It crossed Anna’s mind that perhaps O.J. and The Young and the Restless were beyond the pale for Tinker. “Replace the soaps with old Jimmy Stewart movies and that’s what I’d do if I had the flu,” Anna said. “What’s wrong with that?”
“There is no flu going around,” Damien declared flatly.
Tinker said: “Donna had promised to cut my hair. In return I was going to teach her how to use some of the herbs here. Just for small things-nothing dangerous,” she reassured Anna who, till then, hadn’t needed it. “Just hair rinses and facials, decoctions for colds, that sort of thing. Then nothing. Not a word. Not a note. Then we…” She looked to her husband for assistance, clearly coming now to what she considered shaky ground.
“We conducted the surveillance warranted by the seriousness of the situation,” he said firmly. In his airy voice the statement reminded Anna of the sweet but implacable “Because I said so” that Sister Judette had used to such effect on the class of ‘69.
“You watched the house,” Anna said, careful not to sound judgmental. “And?”
“Nothing,” Damien echoed his wife. “Neither days nor nights. We never saw Donna.”
A moment’s silence was slowly filled with suspense, yet Anna did not doubt their sincerity.
“Then this,” Tinker said gravely. She turned to a brick-and-board bookcase filled with field guides to birds, bats, edible plants, herbs, and mammals of Isle Royale, bits of rock, bones, dried plants, and melted candle stubs. From beneath the bookcase she took a small glass container so clean it looked polished. She set it on her palm and offered it up to Anna.
Anna reached for it, then stopped. “May I?” she said, adopting the ceremony that seemed so natural to these two.
“Yes,” Damien replied formally. “We would not have come to you had we not found proof Scotty devoured his wife. It is a serious charge.”
Anna lifted the jar carefully from Tinker’s hand and turned it in the flickering light. It was several inches high, wider at the bottom than the top, and had ridges at the mouth where a screw cap had once fitted. If there had been a label it had been scrubbed off completely.
“A jar,” Anna said blankly.
“A pickle relish jar…” Damien encouraged her.
Anna began to feel her brain had fogged up somehow. Could there have been something in the tea? Was Tinker a self-styled witch? Damien a warlock hopeful? Or were they merely a couple of eccentrics, the kindhearted flakes she’d thought them to be? One thing was certain: Anna was not making sense of much of what they were saying. If they did have a puzzle, the pieces they offered didn’t seem to fit any picture she could come up with.
“A pickle relish jar,” she repeated.
“Heinz,” Tinker added.
“That”-Damien pointed to the little bottle as if it were something unclean-“is not an isolated incident. The last food order Scotty Butkus sent to Bob’s Foods included an order for an entire case of pickle relish.”
ISRO employees ordered their food for a week at a time, sending lists to several markets in Houghton. Every Tuesday the food was shipped back on the Ranger III.
“That’s a lot of relish,” Anna said, wondering what it was she was agreeing with. “I take it you saw his order form?”
“It was in the trash,” Tinker explained.
From beyond the screened-in window, Anna could hear muted laughter, the dull-edged variety brought on by vodka. Trail crew must have made a late appearance at the party and were now staggering back to their boats for the short ride home to their bunkhouse on Mott.
Suddenly voices were raised in anger: a brawl, quickly hushed. On Mott they were allowed more freedom; here in the lap of the tourist trade the hard-drinking crew were kept in line.
Another burst of noise, invective. “Rock Harlem” seemed terribly apt at the moment. Anna had a dizzying sense of having been transported to a basement apartment in a bad section of New York City.
“You went through his trash.” This time Anna didn’t bother to school her voice. Her nerves were becoming frayed. With an effort, she focused on Tinker. She looked hurt. Even her hair seemed to droop. A flower blasted by the cold. Anna felt a stab of remorse. She ignored it.
“We were seeking recyclable materials,” Damien said stiffly. “The Butkuses’ trash customarily provides seven to ten pounds of recyclable glass and aluminium.” He pronounced the word “al-yew-min-ee-um.”
“I’ll bet,” Anna said. Scotty would be a veritable Philemon’s pitcher of bottles and cans. Pickle relish wasn’t the only thing he ordered by the case. The repetition of thought triggered understanding. “ Twenty-seven Bottles of Relish!” Anna exclaimed. It was a short story about a man who had consumed the evidence of his wife’s murder, with relish as the condiment.
“That’s what we think,” Tinker said. She had brightened again, Anna’s disapproval a cloud that had passed.
With comprehension, the fog began to lift from Anna’s mind and she was mildly ashamed she’d suspected the drugging of her tea. To clear Tinker of an accusation never made, she took a swallow. Cold, it tasted more of earth and root than of mint and honey. She set it aside.
“You’ve got expectant ducks and an empty pickle jar,” Anna summed up the evidence. She knew she sounded abrupt but she was getting tired. Under her collar, her sunburn had begun to chafe and the smoke from the candles was making her eyes water.
“We also have photographs,” Damien said. He rose, swirling his calf-length cape alarmingly near the open flames, and took down a tin box from the jumble of bags and boxes that filled the top of the two bunk beds.
Anna’s interest pricked up. She eased her back, forcing herself to sit a little straighter.
“We’ll need artificial light for this,” Damien apologized. Anna was grateful. She could use the nice healthy glare of the overhead electric. Disappointment soon followed: Damien took a flashlight from the upper bunk. Anna allowed herself a small sigh. It was barely even a change in her breathing pattern, but Tinker caught it. She lay one tapered finger on Anna’s sleeve as if to lend her patience. Or faith.
Damien sat on the floor again, tailor fashion, the black cape billowing around his knees, then settling like a dark mist. He opened the box with the lid toward Anna so she couldn’t see its contents. Some rummaging with the flashlight produced two snapshots. For a long irritating moment he studied them, then handed the first to Anna.
She took it and the flashlight from his hands. The Polaroid was of Scotty Butkus in his NPS uniform standing on the dock in Houghton. Behind him the hull of the Ranger III rose like a blue wall. Suitcases and boxes and canoes littered the pier. Apparently it was loading day; the day most of the staff moved to the island for the season.
“Now look at this one.” Damien handed her the second photograph.
Dutifully, Anna trained the flashlight on it: Scotty Butkus leaning against the wall of the Rec Hall on Mott Island. He was wearing Levi’s and a white vee-necked undershirt. In his right hand was what was probably a Mickey’s Big Mouth. The aspen trees behind him were in full leaf and in the background Anna could just make out Canada dogwood in bloom. The dogwood had only begun to flower in the last week. The picture had been taken recently.
“What am I supposed to be seeing?” she asked.
Tinker, unable to contain herself any longer, leaned over Anna’s arm and pointed at Butkus’s midsection. “Look how much fatter he is in this picture. He’s a blimp. He must’ve put on fifteen pounds.”
Scotty was heavier. His belly hung over his belt and his face was puffy. Anna clicked off the flashlight and handed it and the photographs back to Damien. “Given that Scotty, for whatever reason, decided to murder his wife,” she began, trying a new tack, “doesn’t it seem odd that with access to a boat and hundreds of square miles of deep water, he would choose to dispose of the body by eating it?”
“Not if he was the reincarnation of Charlie Mott,” Damien said triumphantly. He and Tinker looked at her expectantly, twin Perry Masons having delivered the coup de grace.
Anna rubbed her face. “Could we have some light in here, please?”
Damien hopped up obediently and switched on the overhead. The room’s mystery vanished. For a few moments the three of them blinked at one another like surprised owls.
“I’ll look into it,” Anna said and dragged herself up on legs numb from sitting so long. “Right now I’m for bed. Thanks for the tea.”
“You can stay here,” Tinker offered. “Damien and I sleep on the lower bunk.”
Damien reached out and took his wife’s hand. They shared a smile that made Anna lonely.
“Stay,” Damien said. “You can sleep with Oscar if you don’t mind cigar smoke. Oscar likes company sometimes.”
Anna knew housing for seasonals was tight in the National Park Service but this arrangement shocked even her. The bunks were barely wide enough for one adult. “I’ll sleep on the Lorelei,” she said. “Thanks just the same.” She grabbed up her daypack and stepped toward the door.
“Oscar says, ‘Anytime.’ ” Anna followed Tinker’s look to the tumbled goods on the top bunk. From within a cave of boxes, they were being watched by two button eyes. The little stuffed bear had a dilapidated red bow tied around his neck and an amiable expression on his face.
“Thanks,” Anna said, not knowing whether she addressed Tinker or the bear, and made her escape into the cleansing cold of the night.
Like the southwestern deserts, the northern lake country was a land of extremes. Anna bumbled through the thick dark of the forest like a blinded thing, then, moving onto the open shore between the woods and the dock area, was struck with a light so intense she turned expecting to see a spotlight shining from a fishing vessel. Instead, she saw the moon. It was brighter here than anyplace she’d ever been, fulfilling a long-standing exaggeration: a sharp-eyed person actually could read a newspaper by its light.
The Lorelei was moored in the concrete NPS dock, tied at bow and stern. Anna stepped over the gunwale and let herself into the cabin. Pilcher’s boat was the twin of the Belle Isle. At the forward end of the cabin, between the two high seats and down a step, was a small door. Anna ducked through it into the triangular-shaped space in the bow. Padded benches lined the bulkhead. Beneath them she knew she would find, among the flares, line, and emergency medical supplies, the Lorelei’s spare sleeping bags.
She unloosed the bow hatch and propped it open. In a space so familiar, the light of the moon would be adequate. Or would have been had District Ranger Pilcher been more organized. “Pigsty,” she grumbled as she cleared a space for herself and unrolled a sleeping bag that smelled of mildew. Everything smelled of damp and was cold to the touch. Fully clothed, she crawled into the bag and thrashed her feet violently to warm it.
As she pulled the stinking cover under her chin, she stared up through the hatch. Seventeen stars pricked the eight-by-sixteen rectangle. They didn’t shimmer like desert stars but burned steady and cold: lights for sailors to navigate by. Stars seemed close to the earth in the north woods but not friendly, not the eyes of angels watching over children as they slept.
The Quallofil bag was slowly warming, but it was a moist warmth Anna knew would turn clammy in the coldest part of the night. She would wake shivering with her clothes stuck to her. At least with Oscar she would have been warm.
Her thoughts turned to Tinker and Damien. Tinker was in her thirties-probably not more than five or six years younger than Anna-but she seemed so childlike. She and Damien, with cloaks and candles and bears, playing out some game they might even believe. A game where horror held more of excitement than of nightmares, where danger and adventure were synonymous.
And Scotty Butkus the reincarnation of Charlie Mott; Anna laughed aloud in the darkness. The story of Charlie and Angelique Mott was a staple on the island. Tales of cold and cannibalism were common in the Northwest. The other end of the island was named for the legendary flesh-eating spirit, the Windigo. Modern thought would have the Windigo a symbol of the cold and the loneliness and the starvation that faced mere humans who dared the northern winters. But some still believed it flew and moaned and consumed the unwary.
Charlie was the personification of the Windigo. The story was true. He and his wife had been left on Mott Island without supplies. As winter wore on, Charlie had begun to look at Angelique with a new hunger, ever sharpening his butcher knife. Finally she had escaped to live in a cave. Charlie had perished, his body kept fresh in the cabin by the awful cold. Angelique survived by snaring rabbits with nooses made from the hair of her head.
Had Scotty that lean and hungry look? Tinker and Damien thought they saw it; saw the result in the fleshy roll around his belly.
In the morning, Anna decided, she would talk with Butkus-nose around-find Donna before Tinker and Damien got themselves crosswise of Scotty. For all his apparent good-old-boy bonhomie, he had a reputation for stabbing people in the back. Anna would not like to see Tinker or Damien hurt.
She thought of them sharing their narrow bunk. They must sleep curled together like kittens. It would be a good night to curl up with someone.
There’d been a man in Texas. Rogelio was a man to curl up with on hot nights. Not a Zachary, not someone to share a life with-or a narrow bunk bed-but a good man. “A warm body,” she said to those same stars. “I could do with a couple of those right now.”
Maybe Molly was right; maybe it was time to sprinkle Zachary’s ashes, give him to the lake. Anna smiled. Zach would be miserable in this wilderness of water and woods. He would have his ashes sprinkled over Manhattan on New Year’s Day. “At least then you’d be on Broadway,” Anna said to a memory.
The lake, at least in the harbor, chose to be kind, and rocked Anna gently to sleep before she had time to think too hard.