“Tell me how you found her.” Annie Everson stood at her kitchen window with her back to the room, washing dishes and staring out at the green that was her backyard. As she picked up a glass, it slipped from her hands and fell against the counter, shattering. “I’m so clumsy. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Ben Everson stood up. “Let me get that, honey, before you cut yourself.” He was a big man, broad-shouldered and muscular, with jet-black hair, thick and straight like a horse’s mane. He was wearing a plaid shirt, dark blue jeans and work boots. He had the look of a man who worked outdoors.
She turned from the window. “Why don’t you get going? It must be time to pick up Teddy.” Water was dripping from her hands. She wiped them on the front of her sweater. In the bright kitchen light, her gray eyes appeared overly large for her small gaunt face. Underneath them were puffy bluish circles. The imprint of grief was on her face.
This was what I had been avoiding since I found Stephanie Everson’s body in the woods—this moment in the tiny kitchen, telling Annie Everson about finding her murdered daughter.
“Sure,” Ben said, walking toward the wooden coat rack by the back door. “I guess I could leave now.”
He slipped his coat from the rack. “I should be back in a few hours.” He hesitated, looking at his wife expectantly. He wanted something, some sign that they would get through this together. When it didn’t come, he closed the door behind him.
I doubt if Annie had noticed. She was looking at me, waiting for me to relate the awful moment I had found her daughter.
“It was in a clearing. Up an embankment near the Mink River,” I started, not sure how much I should tell her.
“Was she… did it look like she’d been…?” She rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand. The unspeakable question hung in the air. “Ben identified her. He didn’t say much, except it was Stephanie. No one will tell me any details. They think I can’t handle it. They still have her. I want her home. But they still have her. They need to do tests. That’s what they call it. Tests. Like I don’t know they’re cutting up my little girl.” She seemed to drift away. I wished she’d sit down. Her fragility was frightening. She was wearing the same bulky sweater and skirt from yesterday.
“Annie, why don’t you sit down,” I suggested, gesturing toward one of the ladder back chairs.
She stared over my head as if she hadn’t heard me. To sit down was to give in to the grief.
“Tell me what you saw. I need to know. My imagination is going wild. I have to know the truth. Don’t spare my feelings.” Clearly she was in shock. In my experience I’d seen two reactions to death. Either the person fell apart or the person went stone quiet as if a steel door had suddenly shut, separating them from the rest of the world. I could deal with the spent emotion. The quiet was a barrier I found impossible to breach.
I thought back to the scene, the horrible images rising up. “She looked like she was sleeping.” I swallowed hard. It was a half-truth.
“Were her clothes on?” She crossed her arms tightly against her chest.
“Yes.” There was no reason to tell her about the torn T-shirt.
“The police said they thought she was strangled. Is that what you think? Is that how it seemed to you?” She was squeezing her upper arms.
I nodded my head yes, seeing Stephanie’s face, bluish-red and swollen, the open mouth, and the bruised neck. “That’d be my guess.”
She took a long, hard breath as if surfacing from under water. “Who would do such a thing? For what reason?” For a moment I thought she would cry. Then she recovered herself.
She needed to talk. I was there to listen. “You know when the kids were little I used to be afraid of flying. Because I thought, if I died, who would take care of my babies? Sure, they’d still have their father. But kids need a mother. Once they got older I lost my fear. All those years I was afraid of the wrong thing.”
For a moment she gazed up at the veined, white ceiling. When she spoke her voice was hard. “I want him caught. I want him to suffer for what he did to my sweet girl.”
I gazed around the kitchen, trying to distance myself from this unbearable grief. A green and white viney wallpaper wove its way from floor to ceiling. Under the wooden clothes rack was a pair of muddy boots. There were two unwashed plates, a baking dish and a pot beside the sink. One glass, one bowl and silverware were drying on a rack. The rich smell of cooked meat lingered.
I reached in my purse for my notebook, flipped it open. Maybe I could do something to give her grief an outlet. “Tell me about yesterday. After I left. What did Stephanie do?”
I watched her eyes fill with tears. She swiped at them so hard she left two red marks on her cheekbones. “I’m not going to cry,” she said. “Stephanie wouldn’t like that. It would embarrass her.”
She pulled out a chair and finally sat down. “That’s what’s eating me up inside. I worked all day on that damned rug. It was a commission, and the woman wanted it by Monday. Ben was in Green Bay for a DNR district meeting most of the day. By the time I finished, it was after seven. When I came in, I asked Ben where Stephanie was and he didn’t know. He assumed she was at a friend’s house, because her bike was missing. Then Chet showed up. They found her bike and the canoe at Rogers Lake.”
“Canoe?” I hadn’t heard anything about a canoe. That might explain how Stephanie ended up on the other side of the river.
“We keep it on Conservancy land, near Rogers Lake.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her as if in prayer.
“Do you have any idea what Stephanie was doing in the woods?”
“Probably looking for Janell. Around two, she stuck her head in the door. Said something about helping the police. All I said was, ‘Did you call your father?’ Nothing else. I didn’t even look up. That was the last time I would ever see my daughter. And I didn’t even look up.”
She put her head down.
I resisted the urge to touch her arm in comfort. I sensed how that might cause her to fall apart. “Did Stephanie have a red backpack purse?”
“Why?” She raised her head.
“We found one in the woods.” Chet didn’t want me telling any details. But I figured Annie had a right to know. “It’s what led to us… to my finding her.”
“What do you mean?”
I explained to her about finding the purse, omitting the slashes and our search.
“Yes, she had one.”
“Do you have any idea what she usually carried in it? Because it was empty, when we found it.”
“The usual girl stuff. Brush, comb, a compact, wallet.”
“What about her cell phone?” I asked. “Would she have had that with her?”
“Cell phone? Stephanie doesn’t have a cell phone.”
“Your cell phone. The one you called her home on. When she was down at the marina with Janell. Before she disappeared.”
“We don’t have a cell phone. Where did you get that idea?”
“Stephanie,” I said. “She told Russell Margaris and me that you called her home on the cell phone. Didn’t Russell mention it?”
“No. I don’t know why she would say that.”
I didn’t know either. But it was curious.
“I think Stephanie might have been covering for Janell again.” I wondered how much of her story had been a lie.
“What do you mean, ‘again’? ”
“Stephanie told me that she had covered a few times for Janell last summer so she could meet up with this guy. Then her conscience got the better of her. That’s what caused the strain in their friendship.”
She shook her head from side to side. “Isn’t that the way, huh? Janell Margaris is running around with some guy behind her parents back and she turns up okay. And my daughter ends up dead.”
A strong wind must have come up, because I could see the dense green moving across the window behind her. I listened to the slow, patient tick of the kitchen clock.
“You think there’s a connection. Don’t you? Between Janell’s disappearance and what happened to Stephanie?”
I fidgeted with a ring on my finger. I wanted to say no. I wanted to walk out of her kitchen with my story and be done with it. “I don’t know. There could be.”
“You’ll find out for me. Please.” It wasn’t a question.
“Annie,” I began to protest. I had stuck my neck out once before and nearly been killed. But in the end, I had been right. “Sure. I can do that.”
She put her hand over mine. “She must have liked you to have told you those things. I’m glad you’re the one who found her.”
* * *
I crossed County Route ZZ and drove down the long, winding road to the Margaris house. Annie Everson was right; I did think there was a connection between Janell’s disappearance and Stephanie’s murder. I had to talk to Janell. Maybe I could get her to tell me what had really happened to her. Andy Weathers’s assessment of Janell only confirmed what Dr. Risner had said. They were both skeptical about her memory loss.
I hadn’t called because I didn’t want to give Margaris a chance to hang up on me. As I pulled into the clearing, the house seemed too still.
I stood beside the wooden Indian and rang the bell. No one answered. Even as I rang again, I knew they were gone. I trudged around the house, destroying my suede boots for good. When I reached the tall windows, I cupped my hands and looked in. All the furniture was draped in white sheets. It looked like the house had been closed up for the season.
I pulled my cell phone from my purse and called the Bay Hospital.
“I’m a family friend,” I began when the ICU nurse answered. “I want to bring Janell some flowers.”
“Janell Margaris was discharged this morning,” the nurse told me in a measured tone.
“Did her parents say if they were taking her back to Chicago?”
“Why don’t you give them a call and find out. Since you’re such good friends.”
I hung up and walked down to the pier. The water was moving toward the bay, the chill wind ruffling it as if it were brushing the water. I looked upstream as if I could see Stephanie from here, as if she were still there, lying so still in the woods, waiting to be found by me—so carefully arranged, her hair across her face as if it had been brushed that way. Had I told the police about that? About how Margaris had moved it. I couldn’t remember.
I walked back to my car. I had until Friday to move into Sarah’s place. I’d be back before then. But before I left, I needed to talk to Chet. I called the station and was told he had the day off. I didn’t want to delay my trip. And what I wanted to tell him couldn’t wait until I got back from Chicago.
* * *
Chet Jorgensen’s truck was parked on Highway 42 in front of Bailey’s Roadhouse, a battered claustrophobic bar and restaurant in Egg Harbor just south of County E. Its white paint was grayed, chipped and peeling away. The back of the bar overlooked the bay, but the tangle of weeds and trees obscured most of the view. It was the last authentic holdout to pseudo-rural renewal and boasted the only all-smoking dining room. No one came here for the view.
Chet was sitting at the dark, gleaming bar that dominated the room, staring at the collection of beer bottles from around the world that lined one wall. I wasn’t surprised to see him here, just surprised to see him here on a Sunday with an empty shot glass and half-filled beer mug in front of him. He usually spent Sundays at his mother’s in Jacksonport. Why wasn’t he with her?
“Irish coffee,” I said to the bartender.
Chet had merely glanced in my direction when I sat down on the bar stool next to him. An unfocused look made me wonder how many boilermakers he’d had.
“So, Chet, what are you doing here?” I took a slow sip of my drink.
“Come to keep me company while Jake’s away?” He kept staring straight ahead.
How he knew Jake was gone, I had no idea.
“There’s something I need to tell you. About Margaris disturbing the body.”
“You told me that,” Chet said.
“Yeah, well. It’s not just that he moved the hair from Stephanie’s face. It’s that when I found her, her hair covered her face. Like it had been brushed that way. Considering how she died, there’s no way her hair could have been like that.”
“So?” Chet answered.
Was he purposely being dense? “That means the killer took the time to arrange it that way.”
Chet downed the rest of his beer. “Go play those detective games of yours with someone else, okay then.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Hey, Paulie, how about another round?” he shouted at the bartender.
Paulie nodded his head.
“What’s going on, Chet?”
“What goin’ on? I’m on leave, that’s what’s goin’ on. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll go home there and curl up with that dog of yours and forget about Margaris and his daughter.”
“What about Stephanie Everson? Should I forget about her too?”
He turned his head toward me. “You’re not a cop, okay Leigh? You’re a reporter. You got lucky once. You won’t get lucky again.”
“Who’s handling the investigation?” I asked, anger burning my skin.
“Chief Burnson and that task force. So you can tell him about that hair business. When you make that there formal statement you’re supposed to make tomorrow.”
“Do you know of any other killings in the area where the body’s been arranged like that?”
“Why don’t you lighten up there, Sherlock Holmes?”
I didn’t think Chet was capable of sarcasm.
“I know my little gray cells aren’t as good as yours, okay then.”
“That’s Hercule Poirot, not Sherlock Holmes.”
“Maybe Martin’s right about you.” Chet was sweating. “You are kinda a bitch, Leigh.”
Rob Martin, a columnist for the Door County Gazette, and I had issues. His issue was me and my issue was him.
“Chet, look, I’m sorry Burnson put you on leave. But it had nothing to do with me.”
Chet shook his head from side to side and smirked. “It never does, and yet somehow, some way, you got your nose stuck in it. Isn’t it about time you headed back to where you come from?”
I chalked that remark up to a bad day followed by too much to drink. This wasn’t the Chet I knew.
“The Margarises are gone. Did you get anything out of Janell?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
Chet flapped his arms up and down like he was doing the chicken dance. “Squawk, squawk,” he shouted. “Flew the coop, just like you should. Back to Chi-ca-go.”
On my way down the peninsula I stopped by the police station. Burnson wasn’t in, but Officer Ferry was. I made my formal statement and told him how Russell Margaris moving Stephanie’s hair from her face had changed its arrangement. How perfectly it had been arranged. He said he’d tell the chief. But something about the way he kept nodding his head and looking away made me wonder if he would. I had a suspect reputation with the police. They saw me as a meddling reporter who hadn’t learned the laid-back rules of rural existence. What had been their response last fall when I tried to convince Chet and his fellow officers that a murder had been committed? Something about Door County not being Chicago. That maybe murders were as common as ticks on a deer in Chicago but not here. And now Door County was faced with another murder. Ferry looked a little too happy when I told I was heading for Chicago.