The Murder in Skoghall (Illustrated) (The Skoghall Mystery Series Book 1) Read online

  The MURDER in SKOGHALL

  by

  ALIDA WINTERNHEIMER

  The Skoghall Mystery Series,

  Book One

  This is a 28.5press book.

  Copyright © 2014 Alida Winternheimer

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by 28.5press

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  1. Ghost—Fiction. 2. Mystery—Fiction. 3. Midwestern Gothic—Fiction.

  4. Haunted House—Fiction. 5. Writer—Fiction. 6. Illustrated Novel—Fiction. I. Title.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Illustrations by Mad Scientist.

  Cover design by Daria Brennan.

  HTML conversion by Eloivene Blake.

  Typewriter graphic by Catherine Bychkova.

  Title fonts by Gluk.

  Please support independent authors and artists.

  Don’t be a pirate.

  Aaargh!

  for Gramma

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  DARK CORNERS in SKOGHALL

  The MURDER in SKOGHALL

  Prologue

  A man lurked outside under the birch trees. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and ground a lead cowboy into the earth. Because he was wearing military combat boots, he did not notice the pressure under the ball of his foot, or if he did he assumed it was only a stone. From where he stood, he had a good view over the hood of the station wagon and porch railing, right into the living room, which was well lit. The dark and concealing sky made the window all the brighter and more inviting. He had watched the woman inside dancing her way merrily out of the room, and later come back carrying a mug and sucking on the knuckle of her other hand. He was entranced by her red curls.

  Red like Bonnie, Bonnie whom he had lost. Bonnie who had made a going away present of herself and then married someone else—a college boy. He could have stayed home. He could have gone to college. He could have married Bonnie. Did she have any idea how much that letter had hurt him? How after he got the news, he had gone crazy for a while? He thought about shooting himself in the foot so that he could go home and win her back. But nothing happened fast in Nam. Nothing except death and dying. By the time he got home, she’d already be married and he’d have a rotten foot. He got drunk one night and put his M14 rifle to his mouth. He was bawling like a baby because he couldn’t do it. Even after everything he’d seen, he wanted to go home. Even after he learned that Bonnie wasn’t waiting any more. Since he couldn’t pull the trigger, he decided to go in first and come out last. He decided he’d be a hero or be dead. He decided heroes weren’t the bravest guys, they were guys who didn’t give a shit anymore. It was easy to be a hero. But he hadn’t counted on his luck. He kept thinking, This is it. He kept thinking, I’m a goner. And he kept coming out alive while his buddies were blown to pieces. He’d seen so much horror and gore that he knew he’d never be same. He felt the tipping point at the very edge of his humanity. On one side was sanity and a way home. On the other side was red and black. He couldn’t talk about it, not even over there with the other guys. Not even then. So he joked about the red and black. And then he lost it. He lost it so bad the way home was behind him now and everything was red and black. It got easy then, knowing he couldn’t go home. Knowing he’d already lost everything. He let himself act like a crazy fool. He no longer cared what he wrecked or what wrecked him. His buddies gave him the nickname Kamikaze. They warned him he was turning into one sick mother-fucker, but they were glad whenever he pulled someone out of the fire—it had its benefits, letting go. He went after a gook bitch who’d been moving weapons out of one of their tunnels, sneaking them to the enemy. She liked to tie her baby on her back and slip a Mauser pistol between her and the kid, so the gun was swaddled up with the little yellow bastard. That shit used to make him sick. Then he stepped into the red and black and it stopped mattering. He was on the side of John Wayne. She wasn’t. Hey man, back off. We don’t do that shit to people. Rodriguez didn’t know what he knew. Rodriguez still thought there was a way home. Fuck off. She ain’t people. She’s a pack mule for Charlie. She’s gonna tell me where the weapons are. It was all red. And black. Charlie must have been watching her, must have decided she was expendable. There was a flash and a boom. Rodriguez went to pieces, while he caught on fire, ran from the hut, leaving the gook bitch to burn up with what was left of Rodriguez. He dove into a swampy puddle, rolled around while his shirt disintegrated and took his skin with it. He was glad he was dying. Send my dog tags home. Let them think I’m a hero. Then he woke up in Saigon. They told him he was lucky. His face had been spared and he would live. There were other guys without skin, their bodies leaking all over the place, sometimes for days before they finally had enough. He would live long enough to grow a new suit. He lay on his stomach in Saigon, his face in a hole in the table, his only view of the dirty floor, his back exposed to the air, the flies walking through the salve that kept his raw flesh moist and kept away infection. He got infections all the same and with them raging fevers and screaming hallucinations. One day a nurse with a soft voice wrapped him up. Her pant legs were rolled up to the tops of her freshly polished boots. She talked to him while she laid bandages over his flesh, told him he was going home. Home. What about the red and black? He carried enough red and black inside him now to destroy home. He was shipped stateside to convalesce in the stinking VA hospital. The flies were worse than in Saigon. The rats, too. But the Dilaudid kept him calm. He spent months on his stomach, his body turning to Jell-O while his skin did its thing. When he was finally allowed to move—in a wheelchair first because his legs were toothpicks now—the first thing he did is find a mirror. His back had been flayed. The new skin forming there was shiny, pink, and stretched taut, like his body was knitting this new suit, cell by cell, one size too small.

  Where the fuck is my rifle? He got down low and ran toward the light, using the porch as cover.

  Chapter One

  Jessica Vernon ran away from her life when she was thirty-two years old. Ran away sounded childish to her, so she revised the thought. Jessica Vernon abandoned her life. That vilified her. Escaped? Victimized her. Jessica Vernon began her life anew when she was thirty-two years old. Much better. Began anew implied choice and agency. If anything, Jess was determined to be her own free agent. “Never
again” had become her mantra during the divorce. Never again would she marry a liar. Marry? Try date. Never again would she date a liar or a cheater. Never again would she compromise herself to keep a leaky tub of a relationship afloat. Never again would she sacrifice years of her life to some ridiculous ideal of marital sanctity. There was no sanctity when one of you had an addiction…

  Jess took a deep breath, filling her lungs from the bottom up, the way her yoga teacher had taught her. That yoga class did more for her over the last nine months than her counselor had, and at a fraction of the cost. Jess relaxed the grip on her steering wheel and glanced over her shoulder into the back seat. A Golden Retriever, harnessed to the seatbelt, slept in a tight ball with her nose under a paw. She was only twelve-weeks-old and Jess had named her Shakti, a Sanskrit word for peace. As soon as Jess filed for divorce, she sent a deposit to a breeder and requested a girl. Jess got word her divorce was final the same day she drove to St. Cloud to pick up her new best friend. Naming the little ball of fluff Shakti had been like making a wish for the future.

  “Oh, sure, you’re cute now,” she said to the puppy.

  Shakti snorted and twitched her little tail in response to Jess’s voice. Had Jess been smarter, or less eager, she would have put the move before the puppy. The last month had been difficult with house hunting, giving notice at work, organizing the move, and saying her good-byes to Minneapolis. Shakti had made the difficult worse with house training in a second-floor apartment, needing to get up every two to three hours throughout the night, and she was a chewer. The corners and flaps of several moving boxes had been gnawed to pulp and Shakti had consumed as much newspaper as she shredded. Shakti had thus earned the nickname Dingo. The Dingo would have room to run at their new home, and that, Jess reminded herself, would make everything better—she hoped.

  Jess and her ex-husband, Mitch, sold their house and split the proceeds, and that was the boon that allowed Jess to start over. She spent evenings scouring the internet for semi-rural properties. She spent weekends taking long drives, visiting one old homestead after another. She found herself weighing size and setting against remodels and proximity to amenities. She ultimately chose an old farmhouse, two stories, big front porch. The kitchen was out-of-date, but there were plenty of rooms and an old red barn in a state just shy of disrepair. Plus the price was right.

  Shakti yawned and stretched, her long tongue unfurling before she snapped it back into her mouth and smacked her lips together. She squirmed around and sat up on the backseat.

  “Hi, Shakti.”

  Shakti shook her head and pressed her wet nose against the window, leaving a nice smear on the glass. Jess had not realized how much maintenance and cleaning came with a puppy when she called the breeder. She had told herself many times over the last month that now she wasn’t picking up after a husband, she had time to pick up after a puppy. Jess promised herself that once she arrived at her new home she would stop thinking about Mitch—he had consumed enough of her energy—and would only look forward.

  Jess took her foot off the gas pedal and coasted downhill into Red Wing. The area along the Mississippi River was full of bluffs and hills. One of the most renowned, Barn Bluff, stood watch over the river as Red Wing’s own lookout point. After forty-years of defacing the bluff with its dynamite and lime kilns, the citizens of Red Wing stopped the limestone industry from collapsing the bluff. In 1910 it was donated to the city for use as a park. It was here, at the base of Barn Bluff, that Jess crossed the Mississippi from Minnesota to Wisconsin. As her tires hit the bridge, she rolled down her window and yelled out over the river, a victory yell. She shook her head and the wind whipped her brown hair into her eyes. Shakti popped up on the backseat, her ears lifted, brows raised in the classic expression of alert and eager puppy. Shakti tried to leap at the front seat, but her harness restrained her and she toppled onto her face.

  “Sorry, girl,” Jess called over her shoulder as the puppy righted herself, twisting through the seatbelt a few times for good measure. She looked comfortable enough with the seatbelt somehow crossing below and above and through her harness, so Jess kept driving. Once she cleared the waterways of the Mississippi, she took a right on the Wisconsin River Road and headed south toward Skoghall. She’d be home in half an hour.

  Home.

  The word made Jess want to stick her head out the window and scream some more. She didn’t think Shakti could take the excitement, however, so she settled for driving with a big smile on her face and occasionally bounced on her seat.

  The River Road curved with each bend of the Mississippi. A set of train tracks ran between the road and water. Forest and farmland skirted the other side between the towns. Skoghall was one of the more picturesque spots, located on the river at the top of Lake Pepin, a stretch where the Mississippi widened with marinas on both sides, where freshwater clams were once harvested to make mother of pearl buttons, and where waterskiing was invented.

  Jess slowed as she entered Skoghall. An old cemetery nestled in the trees across from the river, its headstones tilted and lopsided with age. The first few houses of Skoghall Village faced the river between the cemetery and Main Street. The bright afternoon sun lit peeling paint and glared in dirty windows. These old buildings had been set in the hillside with an upward climb out the back door and a stoop that landed in the road on the front. Rectangular in shape, the long side faced the road with no yard, no room to breathe, even. Jess had looked at one of these when she was house-hunting, more out of curiosity than any real chance she would buy it. She supposed when these houses were built, they had an excellent view of the river and the road in front was not so wide or so widely traveled. Jess had felt claustrophobic in the narrow rooms, like at any minute a rock from the hill behind the house could come crashing through the roof. It had been known to happen in houses perched against a rocky bluff. When she looked out a second story window at a wall of rock, Jess had almost had a panic attack. The realtor had caught up to her outside where Jess was facing the sun, breathing in the open air, waiting for her heartbeat to slow down.

  Skoghall’s one and only stop sign slowed the River Road traffic and encouraged a visit to Main Street. A few old buildings clustered around the intersection, the most prominent of which was the old livery. Once a stage coach stop, its wide barn doors slid open across the building’s face, exposing the interior to the town on one side and to the river on the other. A man in a dirty canvas apron stood just outside the doors, a brown bottle held casually near his hip. Though it was early April, he wore only shorts and a tank top behind his apron. Jess would be shivering in the cool spring air, but plenty of Midwesterners took to shorts as soon as the snow melted. A reactionary effect of the terrible winters. She waved to him, and he lifted his beer bottle toward the car.

  As the car swung away from the livery, turning up the rise of Main Street, Shakti popped up, her head in the window to stare at the man in the apron. Her tail thumped against the car seat. “Excited, Bear?” Shakti strained to reach Jess, but the harness and twisted seatbelt pinned her in place. “Me too.” Old houses and storefronts lined Main Street on both sides. On the southeast side was a large flat-front building typical of western towns with a wood porch elevated above the street, spanning several storefronts with old screen doors framed in wrought iron scroll work. Each shop had a neat, hand-lettered sign above its door. Beyond that was a small park and the old town hall, now a historical center run by a few volunteers who unlocked the door on the weekends and occasionally dusted the old picture frames, rocking chair, horse tack, parlor stove, and other remnants of early life in Skoghall.

  On the northwest side of the street, midway up the hill, an underground creek fed a spring. The village had grown around it, the burbling pool a shared resource. Between the street and spring, a community garden full of native plants attracted pollinating insects and birds. Bordering the garden were several shops, including a café in a two-story building with the foundation at the water’s edge. A water
wheel attached to it turned slowly, the bleached silver boards propelled by the underground creek that fed the spring. A small foot bridge curved charmingly over the spring, connecting the café’s entrance to a footpath that led across the garden to an ice cream parlor, bakery, and gift shop.

  The River Road attracted tourists, spring through fall, who loved the natural beauty of the bluffs, settler history, arts and crafts, and artisan foods. The charm of these old buildings and the beauty of this hillside garden kept Skoghall on the map after World War II. Jess had visited Skoghall many times over the years, being herself a fan of the scenic bluffs.

  At the end of the business district, all two blocks of it, the road curved sharply to the east and entered a forested area. Once outside the village, the road’s name changed to Haug Drive. Excitement knotted Jess’s stomach as she neared her new home. Around another curve, the forest opened into fields, the dark earth turned and furrowed, already green topped each row. Jess didn’t know enough about the area or farming to guess at what those sprouts would become—soy beans or corn, perhaps. Tucked snuggly back from the county roads, interspersed with the fields and old hardwood forests, were the homes of Jess’s neighbors. She chuckled. In the city a neighbor’s house threw its shadow against yours. Here a neighbor might be a mile down the road.

  One of her neighbors had previously owned her house, though that had been a couple of generations ago. The realtor said her house was the original family farmhouse, built in the 1920s. In the late 1960s, the family decided to upgrade and built a new home on their property. They kept the farmland, but parceled off the old house and barn. The property had had several owners since then. It seemed no one wanted to settle in and raise their kids in the house. Jess figured that had worked out well for her, whatever the reasons people had for moving on.