Death at Gills Rock (7 page)

“I want to know what the fuck you're doing here. Your grandfather's dead, your grandmother's up in Gills Rock, her world destroyed. Your father's there, too, beside himself and you're hanging out like some two-bit hoodlum.”

“I heard about Big Guy, so what? He's not related to me.”

Like Walter, Roger seemed eager to distance himself from Huntsman. Was it a defense against the pain of loss? “Maybe not by blood, but by adoption,” Cubiak said.

The boy sneered. “Another of the family myths. Huntsman never adopted anybody, not legally.”

The news momentarily stopped Cubiak. He could check it out easily enough. But should it really make a difference? he wondered. “Still no reason not to come by. It would have meant a lot to Ida. Instead of this shit. What's going on? Throwing away your scholarship and everything. Don't look so surprised. I read the paper. That's the thing about living in a small town. Everyone knows everything.”

Roger cringed. “So now they know I'm a major fuck-up,” he said.

“You're only as fucked up as you want to be.” Cubiak gave him time to consider the idea before he went on, his tone softer. “Why are you messing up your life and ruining this woman's business? You probably know Kathy O'Toole, don't you? She's got two young kids to support, and she's poured her life savings into this store. You don't believe me, read the
Herald
. Then the likes of you come out here with your pals and scare away the clientele.”

“Tourists!” Roger spat in disdain.

“That's right. People spending money where you live. You got a magic wand to revive the shipyards or the fishing industry, I suggest you wave it. Times change, my friend, and you learn to change with them or sink, and right now I'd say you're sinking fast. That's your choice. I really don't care—other than for how it affects other people like the woman who owns the Woolly Sheep. You don't have a right to ruin things for her.”

“Oh, yeah, who's gonna stop me?” For the first time Roger looked straight at Cubiak.

The sheriff held his gaze and waited until the boy blinked. “I am,” he said.

I
n the soft light of dusk, they stood on the warm sand and listened to a barefoot, bearded old man who sat on a bleached log and played a drum. He wore a tattered shirt and pants and held the tall, narrow instrument between his knees, rhythmically slapping the stained drumhead with his palms. A breeze from the water wafted the sound toward a small grove of palm trees that shivered to the beat. Lauren sighed. She wore the same jasmine scent as the night air. When Cubiak stroked her hair she pressed into him. He kissed her neck. She tasted like the sun.

A bonfire blazed up the beach, and they began moving toward it, matching their steps to the drummer's languid beat. Voices erupted in the trees and from a large boat moored in the bay, singing and a different kind of music drifted toward them. Lauren twirled out of arm's reach and swayed to the water-borne samba rhythm. “Come dance.” She moved her hips invitingly. “Come dance with me,” she said again, her midwestern accent tipping into a heavy Irish brogue.

Cubiak stumbled on a piece of driftwood.

Lauren clutched his hand and spun toward him, smiling as her features melted into a stranger's face.

“No!”

He sprang awake, his T-shirt cold with sweat and the covers twisted ropelike around his ankles. His heart thudded as if he'd been running. Had he run from his wife?

The room was dim and strangely quiet, the way it was in the morning when the wind had died during the night. In a cruel mimic of his dream, Cubiak stumbled out of bed. He snatched a flannel shirt off the floor and shrugged into it. Pulling on his jeans, he padded into the kitchen. The
Herald
was still on the table, his green mug still on the counter, silent sentry to the sink full of dishes waiting to be washed.

Lauren would never leave such a mess for the morning. Taking in the sad domestic scene Cubiak wilted. This is my life? he thought.

“Yes,” he said out loud in the empty room.

He glanced at the
Herald
. The paper was dated Saturday, making this Sunday morning. In a long-ago time he'd gone to church every Sunday, Saturday too. He'd been an altar boy. Costumed in a mini cassock and entrusted with the brass thurible, he'd wobbled behind the priest, heady on the smoke from the ornate incense burner. Dominus Vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo. The salutation and blessing echoed from his past, dragging in their wake the familiar words of the Confiteor Deo. That's what he needed. A good confession to wipe away his sins. The first year after he and Lauren were married, they had attended Mass regularly, each of them hoping to grab a last vestige of wonderment from the mystery of their faith. They even had Alexis baptized. They would not condemn their child to hell through ignorance or conceit. Dear god, if there is a god, save her soul if she has a soul. Had they?

He didn't believe in religion or ritual now. If Christ died to save humanity from sin, why did people keep sinning? Were they trying to entice him back?

Butch scratched at the door. She was probably out of food and water. Cubiak ignored the dog and stared out at the flat, dull water. If he concentrated, he could re-create the taste and touch of vodka on his tongue, but since he'd stopped his daily doses of the hard stuff, action was his only defense against melancholy, so he forced himself to move. He ran the faucet and poured water into the coffee maker. He measured out the grounds. On the porch, he filled a yellow bowl with food, set it down near the skeletal dog, and watched Butch shake off the blanket of puppies and shove her snout into the kibble. Inside, Cubiak picked the newspaper off the table, folded it, and carried it into the small back bedroom, his office, into the cascade of sunlight that flooded the bare windows. He tossed the paper on the desk. Somewhere he had a list of things to buy for the house; add
window blinds
, he thought, as he moved toward the living room. The parlor, as his mother called it, was darker than the office but barely better furnished and as impersonal as Huntsman's cabin. He pulled a pair of socks from under the sagging sofa and tugged them over his cold, calloused feet.

The aroma of fresh brewed coffee drew Cubiak back to the kitchen. He poured a cup and returned to the porch seeking the company of other living creatures. The week-old puppies were comatose, eyes and ears still sealed against the world. Butch lay motionless but for the occasional flickering of her tail. Her right front paw had been injured when he took her in and he'd been fooled by her lethargy. Once the paw healed, she'd revealed her true nature. She was a runner, a runner who gave up her freedom to care for her flock. Cubiak set his mug on the floor and rubbed her neck.

“Good girl,” he said.

The dog nuzzled his palm and then sighed and laid her head down, drained by the ordeal of motherhood. Local vet Natalie Klein had been caring for Butch since that night a year and a half ago that the injured stray had wandered to the sheriff 's door. She'd been out once to check the dam and her litter and to instruct him on the pups' care and feeding. In another week, he'd move them into the house. A month later, he'd take them to her office for their first vaccinations, a combo shot that would protect them against hepatitis, distemper, and parvovirus.

“You're not keeping them all,” Natalie had said.

Of course not, he'd replied. But which to give away? And to whom?

“That one, Daddy. That one,” he remembered Alexis saying as she pressed her forehead against the pet store window and pointed to the black and brown lump in the corner. “I'll call her Kippy.”

It was a hot day and Cubiak had to stoop down to wipe the melted chocolate from his daughter's fingers. “You're not ready to take care of a puppy. Not yet,” he said, looking for a trash container.

“But when? I'm almost six,” she wailed.

“Not yet,” he said again. He meant: not ever.

Butch quivered and the puppies rose and fell with the movement.

“Good girl,” he said again.

Easing his hand under the heap of pups, he separated Kipper from the mound. The vet had given him strict instructions to weigh the puppies daily and to record their progress. She'd even loaned him a scale, which he'd put on the metal shelving unit. Boots and shoes lined the lower two tiers and the top two were a clutter of empty cigar boxes left by the previous owner. Cubiak had kept the boxes imagining that someday he'd fill them with nails and screws and other home-repair minutiae. The scale sat amid the mess. He lowered Kipper into the clear plastic bowl on top of the device and waited for her to settle in. Then he checked the digital readout and recorded her progress on the chart Natalie had tacked to the wall.

“They should double their weight the first week,” she had said.

But Kipper's Sunday weight was the same as Friday's. Should he worry? He weighed the other three pups. Scout and Nico were on target, while Buddy had surged ahead an additional two ounces.

Cubiak left a voicemail message for the vet. He ate breakfast and was in the middle of washing up when she called back and advised him to start feeding Kipper goat's milk by hand.

“Get a nursing bottle, something small, the kind used for an infant,” she said.

“I've got an eyedropper.”

“Don't use that! She can't close her throat yet. With a dropper, you could accidentally fill up her stomach and esophagus. If that happens the milk will flow to her lungs and she'll drown.”

“Okay. I'll get a bottle.”

An unexpected errand. For him that morning, a small blessing. Forty minutes later, Cubiak was back. He measured one ounce of goat milk into the tiny bottle and set it in a pan of warm water. While the milk lost its chill, he carried Kipper into the kitchen and nestled her on a towel on his lap. What if she refuses the bottle? he thought. But he needn't have worried. Kipper sucked greedily at the nipple. “That's a good little girl,” he said, stroking the top of her head with his thumb.

B
y noon, Cubiak had fed the pup a follow-up snack and finished cleaning house. By twelve fifteen, he'd emailed Rowe and the traffic deputies about the situation in Fish Creek, requesting they make their presence known as frequently as possible. He wasn't due at Bathard's until three thirty. Time enough for a Sunday afternoon drive. He liked to cruise around the peninsula, taking in sights and learning the back road shortcuts. Today, he would drive with a different purpose. The previous morning, three old friends had been found dead, the result of a tragic accident. Although there were no loose ends to tie up, he needed to satisfy his curiosity about plumbers and squirrels.

The local phone book listed six plumbing businesses in Sturgeon Bay. A quick survey would indicate how they compared with Big Guy's enterprise. The first, Pristine Plumbing Inc., was on the other side of the canal in a blue-collar neighborhood near the city limits. The area looked recently hatched; trees were spindly, houses fresh-scrubbed, pavement smooth and unblemished. Cubiak was looking for 145 Spinnaker, and found the address attached to a corner, pink stucco ranch framed with rows of green hedges. An empty clothesline and a homemade swing set filled the area out back. The only indication that this was the site of a business was the yellow van parked in the short asphalt driveway; the sign on the side read Pristine Plumbing: Service with a Smile.

Wellington's Water Works was six blocks away. The setup was almost identical but instead of a swing set, the backyard held an aboveground pool and the van in the driveway was blue.

Five of the enterprises on Cubiak's list were nearly clones of one another. The only one that was different was Peninsula Plumbers, which provided both plumbing and septic services. In addition to the obligatory van, Peninsula boasted two tank trucks that were parked in a small gravel lot behind the attached garage.

He wondered if the half-dozen companies combined equaled Huntsman's Plumbing in volume of business and income. If they took in more work, he didn't figure it was by much. Why? What made the difference between Koch Industries and the neighborhood hamburger stand? Ambition, luck, timing, hard work? Or something else?

From the plumbers, Cubiak turned to the issue of squirrels. Larry Myers was the local expert on all things natural, and on Sunday afternoons, Myers ran the information desk at The Ridges Sanctuary. The preserve, which was located along Lake Michigan north of Baileys Harbor, was a local treasure that chronicled the natural process by which the shoreline had evolved over some fourteen hundred years. During that time, the ebb and flow of lake water had created a series of swales and ridges, hence the name. Similar patches of ecologically sensitive land with the rare flora they supported had existed in several different regions along the Great Lakes, but over time the plots had been used for parks or residential development or allowed to erode, leaving the parcel in Door County as the only existing example of the phenomenon.