CHAPTER NINETEEN
In spite of her best intentions to forget about Trevor and what he might do next, Daisy found herself in her living room in the corner of the sofa with her laptop. Jonas had suggested she stay inside while he oversaw the assembly of their gazebo. She’d put chili in the slow cooker, did laundry, and baked chocolate-espresso cookies. But she’d known another podcast had been posted, and she told herself she was simply going to listen to it so she knew what was going on in Trevor’s head. However, that was an impossibility. Still inside with the two cats, she’d have quiet to concentrate on the stream.
As soon as she was settled, Pepper and Marjoram came over to see what she was doing. Pepper jumped up onto the back of the sofa and looked down over her shoulder. Marjoram, on the other hand, stayed on the coffee table, her golden eyes on Daisy.
“I feel like you two are guarding me. It’s either that or you want to find out what Trevor has to say as much as I do.”
Pepper’s tail swished along the side of Daisy’s head. Marjoram made herself more comfortable in a bread-loaf position, the better to see what Daisy was doing.
Trevor’s video opening came up. He was dressed in a cranberry collarless shirt, his hair slicked back, his smile wide as he explained about another episode of “Hidden Spaces.” His intro was a little different tonight.
He said, “This podcast has become a true crime one. ‘Hidden Spaces’ is doing a deep dive into the recent death of Henry Kohler and the disappearance of Axel Strow twenty years ago. Secrets can’t stay buried, and it seems as if there are a lot of them in Willow Creek. If you’ve been following along, you know that Daisy Swanson found the clues in the chest she bought at the Small Town Storage auction. A photograph of Axel and his parents started her on her search to find out what happened to Axel. The Willow Creek Police Department understands that there’s a link between Axel Strow’s disappearance and the murder of Henry Kohler because Axel and Henry were friends. They were on the same track team in high school. There were others in their orbit. Twenty years ago, on a spring night when Axel disappeared, someone had to know something. Maybe that person had been Henry Kohler. We’re going to find out more about that today from his wife, Beth Ann Kohler. Here is the interview I taped with her yesterday.”
Trevor was moving fast, putting all his energy and effort into “Hidden Spaces.” Was he doing it to solve the crime, or because it might find him a new career? Was he doing it for the people who remembered Axel . . . or for Beth Ann and anyone who had loved Henry? It was so hard to say. The interview started out with Beth Ann and Trevor talking about her job, her life, and how heartbroken she was now that Henry was gone. Then Trevor pushed with the hard questions.
“Most people are familiar with crime shows,” he said. “I’m sure you are, too. The closest person to the victim is always the best suspect. Do you feel that you are a suspect?”
Beth Ann responded, “I loved Henry with all my heart. The idea that the police think I could have hurt him, well, it just . . . it just devastates me.”
“Have they been hard on you?” Travis asked.
“I’ve had several talks with the detectives,” she admitted. “The truth is . . . at first I couldn’t answer their questions. I was completely lost. Hysterical, I guess, after I found out that Henry had been murdered. The police brought in Daisy Swanson to calm me down and ask me a few questions. She made the transition easier. I could talk to her.”
“Were the detectives in the room when you spoke to her?”
“Not at first,” Beth Ann answered. “She kind of led me into talking about everything. It made it so much easier. She had brought tea, and that bolstered me.”
“What happened next?” Trevor pressed.
“Then I spoke to Detective Morris Rappaport. He was a bit gruff, but he was kind enough and went slowly.”
“What type of questions did Mrs. Swanson ask?” Trevor pushed.
“She wanted to know about my life with Henry . . . about him. She wanted to know if anything unusual had happened.”
“Had it?”
“His laptop had been stolen from his car a few weeks ago,” Beth Ann revealed. “We talked about what he might have kept on his laptop.”
“Anything else that was significant?”
Trevor knew the answers to some of these questions before he asked. But the point was to put emphasis on them.
“I thought about some other things, so I met with Daisy at the tea garden to talk about them,” Beth Ann related. “I told her about Henry’s nightmares, and about the fact that he never seemed to be able to sleep well. He was secretive about his dreams. He wouldn’t talk to me about them.”
Trevor followed with, “And that upset you?”
Daisy could hear Beth Ann’s hesitancy, but she finally went on. “It did. But we all have private things, things maybe we’re scared of or ashamed of or embarrassed about. I wasn’t going to force it. I thought when the time was right, he would tell me. But the time never became right.”
Trevor wasn’t going to let his questions stop there. “Did anything else come up in this talk you had with Mrs. Swanson?”
“Well . . . yes. I told her about a patient that Henry had who was very upset with him.”
“And what did Daisy tell you to do?”
“She told me that when I signed my statement, I should talk to the detectives about all of it. They would figure out whether it was important or not.”
“Did you do that?”
“I did. But to tell you the truth, Mr. Lundquist, I don’t think they’re getting anywhere.”
Trevor pounced. “Why do you say that?”
“I had another interview a few days ago. They’ve spent hours talking to me.”
“Do you have an alibi?”
“No. I was home alone waiting for Henry. I’d made supper, and it got cold and I started to worry. No, I didn’t have an alibi like some others did.”
Again, Trevor was quick to jump on Beth Ann’s comment. “Others?”
“I hear they’re talking to many of Henry’s friends, too. They did let it slip that one of them has a solid alibi, Dylan Meyer. He’s the one who called in to you.”
Even though Trevor had known about Dylan’s alibi, he pushed Beth Ann. “Yes, he did. What was his alibi?”
“He was at a business meeting, and his colleagues could verify it. There was also a video confirming he was there.”
“What about Henry’s other friends? Have the detectives mentioned them?”
“I don’t know about the others,” Beth Ann maintained. “I do know Daisy talked to more of Henry’s friends, though. She grilled Mick Ehrhart quite thoroughly when he was over at my house.”
“You made the meeting possible?”
“I did. I’m willing to do anything that helps. I want to catch whoever did this to Henry. I think Daisy will have more luck with that than the police. She gets people to open up. They talk to her.”
Trevor’s voice was knowing as he responded to Beth Ann’s statement. “That’s exactly how she’s been able to help solve nine other murder cases. I’m not sure the police could have done it without her.”
Daisy really hated this conversation. She didn’t like the way it was going at all. Her name had been mentioned too many times. Not only that, but she suspected Henry’s friends wouldn’t be happy that their names had been brought up. Did Trevor really understand the dangerous pot he was stirring?
Sensing Daisy’s discomfort, Pepper used her shoulder to step down from the top of the sofa and then hop to the sofa cushion. She sank in close to Daisy’s lap and purred. Daisy listened as Trevor asked a few more incidental questions and Beth Ann answered them. Her interview came to a close.
Daisy was about to exit Trevor’s website when he said, “Whether the police department is actually making headway on solving this case or not, we’re going to proceed with another interview. The man’s name is Callum Abernathy. Some of the people in this community heard the quarrel between him and Henry Kohler at the physical therapy center. It was heated, if not physical. We’ll decide whether it had anything to do or not with Henry’s death after you hear Callum Abernathy speak.”
Daisy wondered if it was possible that Trevor could be sued for this podcast. Seriously, the way he put it, he didn’t actually say Abernathy was a suspect, but the subtext sure was there.
“Mr. Abernathy, thank you for talking to me.”
“No problem,” the man said in a strong voice.
“Many people from the physical therapy center have told me about the argument you had with Henry Kohler a few days before he died.”
“So what?” the man asked belligerently. “People argue all the time. Why is it so important that I argued with Henry?”
“It’s important, Mr. Abernathy, because Henry’s dead. You were upset with him. Can you tell our listeners what that was about?”
“It wasn’t no secret. Henry told me when I started physical therapy that if I worked hard, I could get back to a normal life.”
“Did you work hard?”
“I certainly did. Session after session, I was in pain. I iced, I used the medication the doctor gave me, I exercised, but I didn’t get better. Oh sure, the pain let up maybe ten percent, possibly twenty, but my leg will never be what it was. I can’t do my job. I’m a roofer. If I can’t climb on roofs, what am I supposed to do?”
“You almost came to blows with Henry Kohler.”
“He started getting pretty hot, too, saying he never promised that I’d be where I was before my accident. He sort of did. That’s what ‘normal’ meant to me.”
“Have the police questioned you?”
“Yes. I told them I had nothing to do with what happened to Henry, and I didn’t. I just wish everybody would let me alone. I even had a woman and a man come into my office to question me about this. She said she worked with the police. I didn’t care, I told her to leave.”
“Was the woman Mrs. Swanson?”
“Yes, it was. She had no right to question me about anything. It was probably her fault the police called me in.”
“I doubt that that’s so, Mr. Abernathy. The police bring in anyone and everyone who they suspect might have had something to do with Henry Kohler. One person could give one little bit of information that could lead to them finding out if another person has more information. That’s the way it works. Daisy facilitates that process.”
Daisy groaned. She wished to heck Trevor wouldn’t keep mentioning her name. She could imagine her customers at the tea garden questioning what she did and how she did it. They were curious, and she didn’t blame them. She had a streak of curiosity, too. Right now, though, all she wanted to do was concentrate on her wedding next week. The thing was . . . Trevor’s podcast had her totally entranced. She was concentrating on it so hard that she didn’t even hear Jazzi come in the sliding-glass doors.
Suddenly, however, she heard three voices from the kitchen—Jazzi’s, her mom’s, and Aunt Iris’s.
“Come on, Mom, you’ve got to see this,” Jazzi called to her. “Gram, Aunt Iris, and I are going to help you get ready for a wedding.”
Daisy hadn’t expected her aunt Iris and her mother to drive over tonight. Just what were they planning?
The delivery of the gazebo was a momentous occasion. Jonas had spent the last couple months getting it ready for them. It was his wedding present to her. Daisy watched as finishing installations were completed on the white gazebo, absolutely perfect for a wedding as well as a future together. Elijah Beiler, a local craftsman and sometimes store clerk at Woods, had helped move the gazebo from his property to theirs that afternoon.
As soon as the men stepped away from the completed structure, seemingly satisfied, Daisy ran to Jonas and flung her arms around him.
She hugged him hard, tears burning in her eyes. “It’s perfect,” she murmured. “Thank you.”
He kissed her soundly and held her close.
Jazzi joined them. “Okay, there will be enough time for that after the wedding. Iris, Gram, and I have work to do.”
Daisy and Jonas stepped away from each other, laughing.
“What work?” Jonas asked as his friends waved and started for their truck, ready to leave. Jonas waved back with a shouted, “Thank you,” then he turned back to Jazzi to listen to her answer.
“It’s a very pretty gazebo, but it’s going to be even prettier with tons of fairy lights.” She pointed to Iris and her gram on the patio.
Iris gave a wave and lifted the string of fairy lights she was unraveling.
“They’re solar,” Jazzi said.
Daisy studied the twelve-foot octagonal gazebo that had been built by the man who loved her. Fairy lights would easily wrap around the spindles and handrails. As Iris brought a ladder and a string of lights toward Jazzi, Daisy realized Jazzi would be wrapping them around the decorative roof brackets, too.
When Jazzi positioned the ladder, Daisy tapped her shoulder. “You’re making this so special for us.”
“You’re the one who told me once that you didn’t believe in fairy tales anymore. If you believe you and Jonas will be happy, then I can believe in happily-ever-after.”
Daisy gazed at her daughter, so proud of the woman she was becoming.
“Don’t cry, Mom,” Jazzi warned. “We want to trim the gazebo with the lights before the sun sets.”
As Jonas circled Daisy’s waist with his arm to lead her toward the patio, her phone played its tuba sound. She plucked it from her shorts pocket and murmured, “I hope it’s not Trevor.”
Jonas chuckled. “That knock on the head should have taught him something.”
Before she could say anything to Jonas about Trevor’s latest podcast and her thoughts about it, she checked her screen. The caller wasn’t Trevor; it was Vi.
“Hi, honey. What’s up?”
“I’m at the hospital. Can you come?”
Daisy pressed the icon for the speakerphone so Jonas could hear, too. Her heart was beating in triple rhythm, and her breath stuck in her chest. She finally managed, “Is it Sammy?”
“Sammy is with Brielle at our house. It’s Foster. He couldn’t breathe. He scared me out of my mind. They did an EKG and are monitoring him. Can you come?”
Daisy’s gaze met Jonas’s. She could see his worry, too. “Did you call Gavin?” she asked her daughter.
“Foster doesn’t want me to call him, but I did. His phone went to voicemail. I’ll try again.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Daisy and Jonas arrived at the hospital for the second time that week. Vi was waiting. As soon as she saw Daisy, her face crumpled. “I was so scared, Mom. He wouldn’t let me call an ambulance, so I rushed him here. Thank goodness Brielle was home to watch Sammy.”
After a long hug, Vi took a deep breath. “They think it was a panic attack. Only one person can go back with me.”
Jonas said, “I’ll wait here for Gavin.”
Daisy and Vi passed the desk, and Vi nodded to the woman there. Vi led Daisy down the hall. They stopped at the second cubicle.
On the gurney, Foster appeared completely dejected in a hospital gown with his glasses on the side table. He looked like a kid who had lost his way.
“Hi, Daisy,” Foster said, looking embarrassed.
She knew chastising him at this point wasn’t going to make anything better. With a gentle smile and trying to react to all this calmly, Daisy sat beside his bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. When I first got here, they put oxygen on me, and I realized I just had to take deep breaths and relax to feel better.”
“Foster, I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t want to act like a mother-in-law right now.”
He gave her a weak smile. “But that’s what you are.”
Vi said, “I’m going to step out so the two of you can talk.”
After his wife left, Foster said, “Vi read me the riot act.”
“I expected she would. You scared her to death.”
“I scared myself, too. She wants me to go to this yoga group she attends sometimes. Daisy, yoga?”
“It would do you good. You’re going to have to find a way to relax so this doesn’t happen again.”
“I know that, but yoga?”
“You can always do a spa day every couple of weeks and get a massage.”
He crinkled his nose at her. “You can’t be serious.”
“But I am serious, Foster. That’s the point. This is serious. You have to find something to do that lets you shed the weight of your world.”
“What if I take Sammy to the park on weekends? Like, every Saturday morning, he and I do something together?”
“That would be a start. That will work if you don’t have something else to do for your job. Can you carve it out? Can you say, ‘that’s what I’m doing, no matter what’?”
“I’m not supposed to be in the office on Saturdays. I was just trying to prove I was a great employee.”
Daisy just listened.
“It’s more important that I’m a good husband and a good father, isn’t it?”
“You have to answer that question for yourself. But you also have to realize that before you can be a good father and husband, you have to take care of yourself.”
“Lying here and having other people taking care of me, I thought a lot about this.”
“What have you decided?”
“First of all, the doctor wants me to see my family physician and have a stress test.”
“That makes sense.”
“The doctor also suggested I cut caffeine out of my diet.”
“Can you exist without it?” she joked.
“I’m going to have to. It makes my heart speed up, and that doesn’t help with anxiety.”
“And?” Daisy prompted, expecting that there was more.
“And I’m going to tell the town council they’ll have to find someone else to do their PR campaign.”
“That’s sensible,” Daisy agreed.
“If you think she’s able, let me talk to April about taking over your social media commentary and your website. The way I have it set up, she can make changes easily, and I can talk her through the process.”
“All the changes you’re suggesting are good ones. Does Vi agree with them?”
“She does, and she suggested that once your wedding’s over, maybe Jonas could help me build a play set for Sammy. Maybe I could find a way to relax doing that.”
Daisy covered Foster’s hand with hers. “You’re a good man, Foster. You’re a good husband and father.”
He started shaking his head. “Not for the last couple of months.”
“We all get off track sometimes.”
“And just how do I keep on track, Daisy? What if this happens again?”
“You can’t be afraid that it will, or it will. You just have to make the changes that you think will make everything better. I trust your judgment, Foster.”
He grimaced. “I think I need a personal Yoda.”
Daisy laughed. “I don’t know about that. But I do know you have to consider your family as your compass to keep you on the right track. They’re your North Star. If you listen to them, I think you’ll know what’s too much and what’s just enough.”
“A compass,” Foster said thoughtfully. “Maybe Vi can get me one for Christmas. Then I’ll have something tangible to hold in my hand or keep in my pocket so that I remember.”
A compass, Daisy thought. And then a picture came into her mind—a compass on a chain . . . a compass on a chain on a belt . . . Axel’s belt.
Vi returned to the room. “The doctor has your discharge papers. We can get you out of here.” She looked at her mother. “What’s wrong, Mom?”
Daisy felt a little light-headed at what she’d recalled. “Nothing, Vi. Maybe I’m just remembering the last time I was here. I’m going to get some air. I’ll tell Gavin he can come back if he’s out there.”
“He is,” Vi said. She glanced at her husband. “You can expect a lecture from him, too.”
Daisy went out to the waiting room. When she saw Gavin, she said, “You can go back now. He’s ready for you. But don’t be too rough on him. He’s rough enough on himself.”
Gavin shook his head. “He’s a chip off the old block,” he said, then he headed toward Foster’s room.
Daisy pulled Jonas aside. “Let’s go outside. I have some calls I have to make.”
He followed her out the sliding-glass doors. “Who are you calling?”
“Mick Ehrhart. I need him to verify something.”
Jonas didn’t ask what. He waited for her to complete her conversation with Henry and Axel’s friend.
After that call, she turned to Jonas. “It’s time to call Zeke. I think I know who killed Axel, and maybe Henry, too.”
A few minutes later, Daisy was speaking to Zeke with Jonas listening in. Daisy had slipped the photos Mick had given her out of her purse. She showed Jonas exactly what she was talking about as she explained to Zeke, “Mick Ehrhart had pictures of the gang of friends when they were teenagers. In one of the photos of Axel, I could see a compass hanging on a chain from his belt. Mick said he always wore it. His mother had given it to him. I just spoke with Mick again. He told me Susan Strow told Axel his home was his compass. He could always come back there, no matter what. The compass was engraved with YOUR NORTH STAR—MOM.”
“What does that have to do with his disappearance?” Zeke asked.
“I saw that compass. I’m almost sure it was the exact same compass.”
The detective sounded doubtful. “Where did you see it?”
Quickly, she told him about her visits to Brooks Landon’s and Perry Russo’s offices. She couldn’t remember exactly on which shelf she’d seen the compass, but she was sure it had been displayed on one of them.
“Your thoughts about this don’t give me probable cause for a warrant, Daisy. But I’ll nose around. You need to be very careful. Remember what happened to Lundquist.”
“My wedding is next week. Of course, I’m going to be careful.”
After she ended the call with Zeke, Jonas took her into his arms. “Of course, you’re going to be careful,” he repeated.
Famous last words.