Focused on Murder Read online

  Focused on Murder

  A Spirit Lake Mystery

  Linda Townsdin

  Copyright 2014 Linda Townsdin

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

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without expressed written permission from the author.

  The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Dedication

  To Mom

  Chapter 1

  Perched on my usual stool at Little’s Café, I pushed the half-eaten cinnamon roll toward my brother, and took the bait. “Why the smug look?”

  Little set the plate under the counter, his head cocked like a snowy owl ready to swoop down on its prey. “I’m remembering when a certain person picked on her younger sibling for leaving teaching to move back home to Spirit Lake.”

  More was coming.

  “A year later, here’s the scoffer, a former big fish living in a big pond, now a small fish in a really small pond.” He rubbed at a coffee ring, the barest hint of a smile tugging at his mouth.

  I let him enjoy his moment. There was always payback. Little is thirty, four years younger than me, and his real name is Jan Johansson, Jr. He inherited our mother’s petite frame, delicate features and good sense. I took after our six-foot-two, viperous old drunk of a father, now deceased thanks to me.

  Sitting next to me, Little’s partner Lars rattled the newspaper. “Hey, Britt, sweet picture you took of the Branson U hockey team getting trounced.”

  A fringe of pinkish hair stuck out from Lars’ stocking cap. The former U of Minnesota English prof now favored plaid flannel shirts and suspenders—circus clown meets Paul Bunyan.

  Little raised an eyebrow at Lars. “It’s the first week of January. I doubt she’ll make it through an entire winter up here. Shall we make a wager?”

  Lars’ head bobbed. “Yah, Britt missed the real weather last year.”

  “Stop talking in front of me as if I’m not here.” Baiting me was their favorite winter sport, especially when business was slow. Little’s taunts carried an undertone, though. He knew I was restless. I’d moved back to Spirit Lake last summer, newly divorced from my philandering husband and newly fired from my job as a photojournalist at the LA Times. I’d come home to heal.

  I wound my hair into a band at the back of my neck, and zipped into my ski jacket. “Mock me all you want, boys, I’m here to stay.” Wrestling with stocking cap, wool scarf and insulated gloves, I pushed out the door amid a wave of regulars arriving for their morning gossip break, stamping snow and shedding coats. Lars lined up coffee cups on the counter and began pouring.

  Soon the row of knotty pine booths along the windows facing the lake would fill. In case customers forgot they were in prime fishing country, glass-covered tabletops displayed maps of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes. Framed photos of fishermen with prize-winning bass lined the walls. Fishing never stopped here.

  The aroma of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls, a Little’s Café specialty, followed me out the door. Rock waited outside, tail wagging. I strapped on the sleek new Atlas Elektras I’d left propped against the side of the restaurant. Snowshoeing saved me. I used to be addicted to work, then vodka. These days, without much work to do at the Star Tribune northern bureau and alcohol taboo for me, I took the edge off with exercise.

  “C’mon, Rock, winter in Northern Minnesota is not for the weak of spirit.” I’d inherited the shaggy black and white spattered mutt as well as my cabin on the south side of town from an old friend. Gert took me in when I was a confused and angry teenager, guided me and loved me.

  I ached with her loss, but felt her presence in my loyal companion. Rock and I crossed the street, passed eight-foot-high piles of snow cleared by plows after the last storm, and veered onto the Paul Bunyan Trail.

  Fueled by caffeine and carbs, we left the trail and continued south past my cabin through the dense woods along Spirit Lake. My route skirted a mile of mostly impenetrable lakefront, and this was the first time I’d attempted to snowshoe in the area. Gert bought the land to ensure she wouldn’t have neighbors encroaching, and it belonged to me now as well.

  After an hour, I took a different route back, hoping it would be easier, but thick underbrush turned the trek into hard work. The sky dimmed to a leaden gray heavy with snow. Weak light might filter through, but we wouldn’t see real sunshine for months.

  The guys were right in their assessment of how I was handling winter, but the LA Times wouldn’t take me back and Little wanted me to stay in Spirit Lake.

  Daydreams of beaches and 80-degree temps entertained me until my left snowshoe jammed into a snow-covered log and sent me face first into a drift. My left ankle twinged when I stood, but it held my weight.

  Rock barked at a brush pile next to the log. He scrabbled in the snow, his behind high in the air.

  “What’ve you found, Rock?”

  His bark changed to a high-pitched tone. I leaned in. “Watch it, whatever’s in there might take a chunk out of your nose.”

  Rock backed out with a pink and dark red mitten dangling from his mouth. My radar went up. An odd place to find a mitten.

  I knelt for a better look. “Drop it, boy.”

  It was a white mitten, blood-stained.

  Adrenalin pumping, I grabbed my camera from its usual place in my zip pocket and parted the brush. A body, about five-six, and covered with several inches of snow lay in front of me. I gently blew the white powder away, revealing a young woman’s frozen face. Dark curls tumbled around it and long, black lashes rested against her white skin. Snow White.

  Her dark gray boots tripped me, not a log. Dread seeped into my bones, colder than the sub-zero air. I’d witnessed death in urban back alleys and on a battlefield. A dead girl in the middle of the natural world surrounded by pristine whiteness and Christmas trees was an unexpected violation. The cinnamon roll started to come up. I swallowed, framed the shot and photographed her from every angle. Then I checked my cell phone for a signal.

  Chapter 2

  Sheriff Dave Wilcox rested on one knee next to the body and squinted into the brush. Even though Wilcox had gone soft around his middle, the wiry and wary investigator he’d been in his day lived just under the surface.

  “Ah, shit, it’s Isabel, Arnie Maelstr
om’s daughter.” He tugged his cowboy hat forward.

  “From Maelstrom’s Resort?” I asked.

  He nodded and lifted Isabel’s head. I knew the back side of her skull was crushed. I’d already tampered with the scene by tripping over her, and couldn’t resist checking for the red stain’s origin.

  He got to his feet, brushing snow from his knees. “I don’t see how a fall could have done this.”

  So far Wilcox was treating me with respect. Our relationship took a nosedive after I solved a theft at the casino and Gert’s murder last year. He’d called me reckless. Maybe, but I thought he was too cautious.

  I continued to shoot photos of the scene, careful not to disturb anything else before the crime scene team arrived. It snowed last night, so no footprints to photograph and measure. The only footprints near Isabel’s body were mine and Rock’s, and a small creature’s, now long gone.

  Wilcox mumbled to himself. “Not much blood, so it seeped into the ground or she lost a lot before the killer brought her here.”

  The stained mitten would be bagged and taken with the body. Most likely, the creature whose tracks were near Isabel had nibbled on her fingers. The other mitten might have been carried away or dropped.

  Wilcox frowned at me. “You just happened to have a camera on you?”

  Maybe the lack of evidence frustrated him. “Like you, I’m always on duty.” I almost always carried two cameras—one hanging from my neck, a lightweight backup and extra lenses in the zipped pockets in the lining of my down jacket. I’d left my best Nikon at the cabin. No way I’d take it out in this weather. Today I only carried the camera in my pocket.

  Sheriff Wilcox worked in law enforcement in Denver twenty-five years before moving to Branson so his wife could be near her family, and he could ease into retirement. I expected he was out of the loop after spending the past five years in this quiet county.

  Wilcox scouted the area for vehicle tracks. “I don’t see any sign of her car. Somebody must have dumped her here.”

  I pointed to the frozen lake about twenty yards ahead through the trees. “Easiest way would be to drive across it.” With twenty-six miles of shoreline, Spirit Lake was considered medium-sized for the state.

  He hunched against the cold. “Probably too late on the tracks.”

  We migrated away from Isabel’s still body to gaze across the lake. “I need information for the Star Trib,” I said. Jason was covering a story forty miles away. The bureau staff was down to three, Jason, an intern, me and Cynthia, our reporter-editor. Our bureau covered fifteen counties and several Indian reservations, the entire North Central area of Minnesota. We kept busy, but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t be shut down if the economy and newspaper business continued on its current downward trajectory.

  “Don’t print anything until we notify the family.”

  “I know, Sheriff.” I used my teeth to pull off my glove, located a pen and flipped open a pocket-sized notebook.

  He sighed. “Isabel was twenty-one. She went to college up in Branson. A brother, Nathan, one year older, dropped out. Their older brother was killed in Iraq a couple of years ago. There’s a stepbrother who’s a junior in high school. Her mother died when she was five and Arnie remarried the next year.”

  Maelstrom’s Resort was located on the north shore of Spirit Lake almost directly across from where we were, although you couldn’t see that far. My friend Ben and I worked at the resort to save money for college when the older Maelstroms owned it. The old couple died, and Arnie took over when he retired from the Army in the early ‘80s.

  “Arnie was a war hero, right?”

  “POW. Captured and tortured by the Viet Cong. He escaped and signed up for another tour. He’s a hero around Spirit Lake. Now I’d appreciate it if you’d stay back until Thor comes.”

  On cue, a giant red-haired man followed by a teenager trudged toward us on my snowshoe path, carrying a stretcher and backpack. I could have sworn the guy’s double was a regular on WrestleMania. He crushed the hand I offered.

  “I’m Britt. You must be Thor.”

  “Nah, I’m Erik, here to help Thor with the body.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I get that all the time.”

  A petite young woman, not a teenager after all, stepped from behind him. “I’m Natalie Thorsen. People call me Thor.”

  One pink ear poked out from her wool cap. With flawless skin and symmetrical features, she could be at the top of the cheerleading pyramid, even with the multiple piercings. Four gold hoops followed the curve of her ear and a tiny gold spike stuck out from her eyebrow. A diamond stud glittered at the side of her nose.

  Thor scanned the area.

  I pointed. “Her body’s right there.”

  She reddened and said, “I thought the new reporter might be with you.”

  “You know Jason?”

  “I’ve seen him around, but we haven’t met.”

  “He’s in Cloud Lake on a story. He’ll be checking with you when he gets back.”

  Thor took her backpack from Erik, nodded at Wilcox and proceeded to Isabel. I lifted my chin in Thor’s direction. “How old is she, Erik? She looks like a high-school kid.”

  “Twenty-four. She’s been at the sheriff’s a couple years. Thor’s serious about her work.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “More like she’s serious about seeing Jason.”

  He crossed his massive arms. “Thor won’t miss a detail. She does fingerprints and basics. They’ll send the body to the crime lab in Minneapolis for the autopsy.”

  For the next hour, the baby-faced blond took photos, made notes, zipped the mitten into an evidence bag, and gathered what information she could. She tentatively put Isabel’s time of death between seven and midnight the previous night. As Wilcox predicted, the wind blew away any trace of a vehicle on the lake or in the woods. The only tracks were recent ones from the badger, if that’s what chewed on Isabel’s fingers.

  Thor finished and came back to speak with Wilcox. “I’ve done all I can here. We can head back.”

  “I believe he killed her somewhere else,” said Wilcox.

  Thor hoisted the backpack over her shoulders. “Probably didn’t expect she’d be found. By spring her bones would have been carried off by animals.”

  Erik and Thor loaded Isabel’s rigid body onto the stretcher and tramped back the way they came. Erik lifted a hand to say goodbye.

  Wilcox pushed his cowboy hat back from his forehead, revealing a face creased from too much Colorado high-country air, and witnessing too many crimes against humanity.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what to make of it yet. We get accidental shootings during hunting season, accidental drownings, drunks stab or shoot each other in bars, but few out and out murders. At least not until you arrived in Spirit Lake.”

  I did a double take. “You’re saying I’m a murder magnet?”

  He took another long look at the scene. “Send us your photos. It can’t hurt to have yours and ours.”

  He shouldn’t have insulted me before asking for my help, but I let it go. Equal parts outrage at what happened to the young woman and curiosity played a familiar tune up and down my spine. This was real news, and I felt like a racehorse being let out of the gate.

  Wilcox pulled his cowboy hat low over his eyes. “Make sure you give us your statement. You got that, Johansson?”

  “Got it.” Law enforcement always called the shots at a crime scene, but that didn’t mean I liked it. When he first arrived, Sheriff Wilcox appeared younger than his fifty-five years. He headed back to his car stooped like an old man. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes right now. He had to tell her family.

  .....

  I took a ten-minute steaming hot shower to thaw the ice in my veins. Rock curled up close to the antique wood stove between the kitchen and living room. Not as efficient as the new ones, I’d inherited the Franklin stove with the cabin and here it would stay. The two-bedroom log cab
in was my second home as a kid, and Gert always said it would one day be mine.

  Gert’s nephew Ben inherited his family’s resort on the other side of town and owned another lakefront home in Branson. He’d been happy for me to have Gert’s cabin at first, but now he wished I’d never come back.

  The threadbare sofa and nicked round oak table were the polar opposite of the butter soft black leather and sleek glass table in the L.A. condo I’d left when I moved back here, but I hadn’t changed much of anything. This was my world now, and it was home.

  I picked up my favorite framed picture—Ben and me with a string of fish between us, the lake breeze blowing his dark hair across one eye, my sun-bleached mane parted off-center and hooked behind my ears. We were thirteen, and competed for everything—who could catch the most or biggest fish or swim the farthest. A happy moment before life in Spirit Lake got complicated.

  I stopped at Little’s before going to the bureau office in Branson. Lunch smells mingled with coffee aroma, and the loud buzz of conversation meant everyone knew about Isabel. I found my brother in the kitchen working on an omelet, and asked him to tell me about her.

  “At sixteen, she was crowned Spirit Lake Princess at the Fourth of July parade, and now every year she rides on Maelstrom’s Resort float.” He stopped, spatula mid-air. “I meant that in the past tense. Anyway, don’t you remember her from last summer?”

  I didn’t remember ever having met Isabel. “Cynthia sent me to Pine Lake on a drowning on the Fourth.”

  Chloe brought in several more breakfast orders, so I said goodbye.

  Lars filled my insulated cup with coffee for the drive to Branson, and I asked a few people about Isabel on my way out the door. The consensus was that Isabel was a sweet girl who couldn’t have an enemy in the world, and no one from the area would have done this terrible thing.

  I headed to Branson, thirty miles north of Spirit Lake and home of Branson University. The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s northern bureau was in a brick building one block off the main drag. The bureau leased a few offices upstairs from Shoreline Realty, now consolidated into the bottom floor. We also leased the Realty’s office equipment and inherited its décor.