Door County, Before You Die Read online

  Contents

  Characters

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 – The Creepy Neighbor

  Chapter 2 – Road Trip!

  Chapter 3 – Aunt Nettie’s Complicated Love Life

  Chapter 4 - Trollhaven

  Chapter 5 – Logan vs. Matthew

  Chapter 6 – The Crackpot Cometh

  Chapter 7 – The Forgotten Child

  Chapter 8 – Knitting with Gerda

  Chapter 9 – Knitting Alone, But Not For Long

  Chapter 10 – The Tale of the Troll

  Chapter 11 – The Thief of Legends

  Chapter 12 – Dinner

  Chapter 13 - Death

  Chapter 14 – A Gumshoe and His Sidekick

  Chapter 15 – Logan vs. Matthew, Again

  Chapter 16 – Love Blooms All Over the Place

  Chapter 17 – Terror in the Night

  Chapter 18 – The Detectives Dig In

  Chapter 19 – The Mystery of the Saddlebags

  Chapter 20 – The Changeling

  Chapter 21 – Empty Bags

  Chapter 22 – The Calm Before the Storm

  Chapter 23 – Love Hurts

  Chapter 24 – Henry Springs the Trap

  Chapter 25 – Home to Sleepy Hollow, and Duke

  * * * * *

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Door County, Before You Die

  Copyright © 2018 by Moebooks

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any way without the express written permission of the author.

  Cover art by Custom Covers, www.coverkicks.com

  * * * * *

  Characters

  Paige Dowd – adrift after breaking off a long-term relationship and moving across country to stay with her aunt, Paige is excited about a last-minute road trip.

  Nettie Dowd Tucker – Paige’s aunt. Though in her 60s, Nettie’s love life is more complicated than her niece’s. In Cabin 2, with Paige.

  Lester “Duke” Leeper – Nettie’s next-door neighbor. He thinks that since Nettie’s available, she should step right over and be his wifely drudge.

  Henry Dawson – a quiet man who’s very interested in Nettie. In Cabin 1.

  Arnie Klausen – a tough old man who owns the Trollhaven Guest Cabins.

  Evaline Klausen – Arnie’s daughter, who works alongside him at Trollhaven.

  Karl Klausen – Arnie’s son, estranged from his father because he doesn’t want to be involved with Trollhaven.

  Logan Wagner – fellow guest at Trollhaven. Professor of arcane folklore, and very interested in Paige. In Cabin 7.

  Faye O’Neil – a little girl, also staying at Trollhaven. Named for her grandmother, from whom she inherited “the sight.” In Cabin 5, with her parents.

  Gillian O’Neil – Faye’s mother, she’d rather go shopping than spend time with her daughter.

  Mark O’Neil – Faye’s father, he’s more interested in finding really good wi-fi than spending time with his daughter.

  Matthew Grant – a really hot guy, but elusive. A fellow guest at Trollhaven, he’s more focused on his bicycle than on Paige. In Cabin 3.

  Gerda Howell – another professor of arcane folklore, at odds with Logan over arcane theories. In Cabin 6.

  Gail Havilland – an attractive older woman. Agreeable to spending time with either Henry or Arnie, whoever happens to be around. In Cabin 4.

  Justin Jesky – Arnie’s grandson, young handyman at Trollhaven. He takes a brotherly liking to Faye.

  Paula – an elderly housekeeper at Trollhaven. She talks too much.

  Loki – the Trollhaven dog, old, friendly and inquisitive.

  Irene – proprietress of a local knit shop.

  Billie – manager of the Weatherwood Inn, which has the best fish boil on the peninsula.

  The Troll Family, Essie and her parents.

  Prologue

  It was dark. It was cold. It felt as if it were going to rain.

  At the edge of the bay, mist rose from the surface of the water and enveloped the figure of a woman. She was absolutely motionless and silent, standing with her back to the bay, looking towards the shore and the woods beyond.

  Professor Gerda Howell could already feel icy condensation on her clothing and exposed skin. She had to make an effort to suppress her shivering. The night was a dark one, and she was only human, with a human’s eyes. If she moved about too much, or even shivered, they might see her before she could see them, and then it would all have been for nothing.

  She should have eaten something earlier, when she’d had the chance, but she’d been too excited to eat. Now she was hungry, but of course she didn’t have any food with her. They would have smelled it.

  She stood on the very doorstep of discovery. Now that she knew they really existed, now that they had actually been seen, she knew her life’s work had not been in vain.

  She heard footsteps and turned sharply, squinting hard, but the moon had failed her. It wasn’t them; she was sure of that. She doubted she would have been able to hear them. She really couldn’t see who it was until the shape loomed up and stopped within touching distance.

  “So you came,” the Professor said. “I must admit, I’m surprised. Still, I am glad. A witness is essential. Keep your voice down.”

  The other, who had started to say something, decided to say nothing.

  “Don’t be childish,” Gerda growled. “If you came to laugh at me, you can go away again. If you came to be my witness, you have to do exactly as I say. And be quiet.”

  Obeying orders, the other spoke in an almost inaudible whisper. “What are we going to do?”

  “Do? We wait. They will come. Their daughter is here. They cannot help themselves.”

  “We just . . . wait?”

  “If you can’t stand the physical discomfort, you can leave. But I do wish you would stay,” she added, softening. “Come with me. We’ll make ourselves as comfortable as we can on those boulders. You’re dressed warmly? Gloves and a knit cap? Good.”

  They went right to the edge of the bay’s waters and sat together on a flat-topped boulder.

  Minutes passed, seeming like hours, but Professor Howell refused to light the dial of her field watch. It could spoil everything at a crucial moment. These creatures were sensitive to even slight changes in their environment. Of course, her witness’s arrival had been detected. Now they would have to remain absolutely still until their quarry decided they must have gone away again.

  She knew she would eventually grow sleepy. The night would be long. How long had it been already? She had to force herself to stay awake, no matter what, to remember her determination that this time would be the time. This time she would have actual contact, no matter how tenuous, and even better, tonight she had a witness. All the years, all the ridicule, it all came down to this one night. But the time for her triumph was finally here. She could feel it.

  “What are you doing?” the Professor asked, irritated with the sudden restlessness of her companion. “You’re making too much noise. What do you want with a rock in your hand anyway?”

  She took the first blow full in the face. It broke her nose and she gasped in astonishment, aspirating her own warm blood. There wasn’t even time for her to start choking before there was a second blow, knocking her flat on her back. Now, she was helpless. The third blow crushed her face completely and smashed the back of her head against the flat top of the boulder upon which she lay. She became completely still.

  The rest of the blows
were unnecessary, really. But it was only merciful to be sure that Professor Howell was completely out of her misery.

  Then, with an arcing swing, the Professor’s witness slung the murder weapon far out into the bay. Slapping gloved hands together to rid them of grit from the stone, the witness no longer tried to be quiet. In fact, a loud voice that would have driven away any shy creature said, “You can come out now, if you want to. I’m leaving, and the Professor isn’t going to bother you anymore.”

  Dead leaves rustled and pebbles crunched as the murderer walked away, leaving Professor Gerda Howell to grow stone cold on a boulder at the edge of the bay.

  Friday, October 19 – two days earlier.

  Chapter 1 – The Creepy Neighbor

  No matter where my life has taken me in 32 years, I’ve always tried to get back to the Midwest in October. There’s no better place on earth, at least among the places I’ve been, and I’ve been to a few. Wherever I was, whatever I was doing, I’d made it clear to people, (bosses, besties, significant others), that I would be traveling to northern Illinois for at least a week or two in October so I could barge in on my Aunt Nettie and enjoy the changing of the leaves with her. If possible, I’d manage to stay for Halloween. She lived in a fun neighborhood, and the neighbors were great. Well, all except for one guy. Every neighborhood has at least one.

  This time, my visit was open-ended, and not entirely for fun. Not far from Sleepy Hollow was the business and commercial collar around Chicago, and I was job-hunting again. Rapid City hadn’t worked out (too cold), Robert hadn’t worked out (even colder), the direction of my life was beginning to look alarmingly random, and whenever I began to feel like I was drifting, I ran to Aunt Nettie, my father’s sister. Oh, don’t get me wrong; I love my dad, but after my mom passed away, the warm, cozy corner of the world where I got cookies and hugs was Aunt Nettie’s house. Dad is sympathetic, but I think I bewilder him.

  So I woke up on that crisp day in October, all burrowed in under smooth sheets and a puffy white comforter, thinking how good it was to have aunts. They’re like moms, only without the lectures.

  The principal guest bedroom at Aunt Nettie’s house is in the front, overlooking the right side of the wide porch. When I heard the front door being quietly opened and closed, I got up and went to peek out the window. There she was in her pull-on jeans and pumpkin sweatshirt from Blair, going down the driveway for the paper. Her soft moccasins (Blair again), were exactly the same shade of orange as her sweatshirt. No doubt the socks were too.

  She walked quickly, almost furtively, sneaking sharp glances about herself, but she wasn’t quick enough. The man next door was onto her like a hungry dog. He must have been lurking in the bushes. He caught her at the end of the driveway, and while she stood there with the newspaper in her hand throwing wistful glances back at the house, he launched into his usual harangue.

  I already knew about the amorous neighbor. His nickname was Duke, but his real name was Lester Leeper. Whatever comes to mind when you think, “Lester Leeper,” you’re probably right, only you didn’t go far enough. Add some wrinkles and random whiskers, exaggerate the earlobes and give him a suspicious leer. Then pull him out of Charles Dickens’ world, give him an American accent and put him down in a quiet Midwestern neighborhood. That’s Duke.

  Nettie had told me about him lots of times, and one time I’d actually been introduced to him. I doubted he remembered me; the whole time Nettie was presenting me as her darling niece, Paige Dowd, he’d been trying to zero in on her instead.

  There are some men in this world who consider themselves grand prizes and remain confused to the ends of their days about why women reject them. The best example would have been Robert the Rat, of course, but Duke was another one, only he was way older than Robert and had never been that gorgeous. And I’m sure he had never made as much money doing whatever it was he did, but we are not here to discuss Robert.

  So back to Duke. His thatch of listless hair was flying around in your basic psycho ‘do, and he’d thrown on his flannel shirt and jeans from the day before. The jeans were hanging precariously low around his hips, and he had carefully accessorized them with brown bedroom slippers.

  He stood over Aunt Nettie in an aggressive-possessive stance, while she just stood there nodding peacefully, looking acquiescent. She also smiled. I shook my head behind my curtain; she was doing it all wrong. “Don’t smile at him,” I muttered. Aunt Nettie has a very sweet smile. It’s easily misconstrued.

  I don’t know just exactly when it was that my aunt began to perfect her “sweet little me” persona, but it had to have been after her husband started using her for occasional fact-gathering missions. He had been a private detective, rest his soul, and he recognized her talent to pleasantly deceive sometime in the 1980s, when he was still in his prime. He’d actually molded her into a sort of undercover agent, because she was so sweet and sympathetic looking, people would talk to her. They just would. About anything. All the wrong things, in fact. Heck, she was just some nice old lady (she had tricks to make herself look older than she really was), and they’d never see her again anyway, right? Why not blow off a little angst at this nice lady who was such a good listener and so sympathetic?

  She could still use her little scam to good effect, and I always knew when she was slipping into universal aunt mode. It was cute, and most of the time it did no harm. But using it on Duke was a complete misallocation of battle assets. I began to wish she had been able to observe my sidewinder assault on Robert the Rat when I found out about him and Tessa the Trampette (she would have been a tramp if she’d been old enough). Anyway, he never knew what hit him. I had gleeful visions of him still shaking and checking his body parts more than a week later. I had been masterful. A quick, shattering burst of rage and I was gone, poof, along with all my stuff and the car (MY car) that he had been treating like his own except when it needed gas. The rat.

  I don’t mean to keep bringing up Robert, but it illustrates my point about Nettie and Duke. I would never have allowed a guy to treat me the way he did her, but I came from a different generation. In Aunt Nettie’s primetime, proper ladies had been more into stealth when it came to mashers. You smiled, you nodded, you inched away, and all the while you hoped you’d never see him again.

  Well, this guy lived right next door. Like it or not, she was going to see him again, probably every day for the rest of her life. She needed to toughen up.

  Duke had seemingly decided that when my Uncle Randy died, it was his turn, like he got next. He couldn’t believe it when she declined the honor of cooking, cleaning and generally being wifely for him. It had been about ten years now since she’d been a widow, and Duke was getting impatient. He had started making demands.

  But she still wasn’t swooning over him like the meek little woman she was supposed to be. He was flummoxed. He thought it over, wondering where he’d gone wrong. Then suddenly he began to propose, in a grudging, “Okay, you win,” manner. The shock of not having this ticket to paradise punched was bringing out something I thought was disturbing. Soon, there would be thunderbolts.

  As he kept up his monologue in the driveway, Aunt Nettie threw another glance at the house and saw me in the window, watching them. She finally started nodding bigger and moving back toward her own front door, talking over him. He followed her up the driveway a few paces and was still talking when she paused inside the threshold, called out, “Okay, I’ll see you later, Duke,” and shut the door. She didn’t even slam it.

  I could only shake my head and mutter, “Wow.”

  I continued to watch him as he glared at the door for maybe twenty seconds. He seemed to be gathering himself together to break down the door, but at that moment I pushed the curtain aside so I was fully visible in my blue flannel pajamas. I gave him a calm, challenging look and he hesitated, then gave up and went stomping across Aunt Nettie’s grass toward his own house, probably growling.

  I left the guest room. It was time to confront Aunt Nett
ie and have a frank discussion about methods and tactics. I have a lot of experience with dumping guys, and what I’ve learned is you need to keep it short and sweet. No, scratch sweet. She was already being too sweet. She needed to tell Duke to drop dead, and if she didn’t do it, I would.

  After all, I was only staying with her until I could pull myself together and find another job. She happened to live in an area that was both job-rich and about 1,000 miles away from Robert the Rat. I might be planning to live near her, but nothing was set in concrete yet, so I might not be there to get in between them for long. I couldn’t live with Aunt Nettie forever. Lester Leeper was hoping he could.

  Chapter 2 – Road Trip!

  By the time I made it to the breakfast table, just inside the kitchen, Aunt Nettie was pouring the coffee. She looked up, smiled, and said, “Good morning, dear. I have good news.”

  “Bags of kale are BOGO at Woodman’s?” I said idly, taking a quick glance at The Sleepy Hollow Night Rider. It’s pretty much nothing but ads, coupons and classifieds. If she’d wanted real news, she would have subscribed to the Chicago Tribune instead.

  She had the Rider laid out beside my place at the table, open at the fold, and I took one look at it, one look at her, then refolded the newspaper and set it aside. We had more important things to talk about than the price of kale.

  “Are they, really?” she said in that innocent way of hers, flicking a glance at the paper. “And kale is so good for you. It’s a superfood, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said, winding up for the lecture.

  She cut me off. “No, actually I was thinking that you and I should take a little trip together, as long as you don’t have any interviews scheduled for the coming week. Nothing big. Just a little road trip.”

  I lost concentration immediately. She had zeroed in on my weakness: I love little trips around the Midwest, especially by car, and before I could even begin to regroup, she said the magic words: “Door County.”