The Murder in Skoghall (Illustrated) (The Skoghall Mystery Series Book 1) (2 page)

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.

Shakti struggled against the harness. She’d gotten a piece of webbing in her mouth and was gnawing away. “Shit,” Jess muttered. She hoped that was the dog harness and not the seatbelt. The realtor’s sold sign was at the side of the road. Without it she would have blown by her own driveway.

The driveway was rougher than she’d remembered, deeply rutted from years of neglect. She slowed to a crawl and navigated around holes large enough to sink a tire. She scowled, keeping her eyes on the gravel, hoping she’d get to the house before Shakti destroyed her seatbelt.

The barn sat to the side of the drive, a large wooden structure, red paint peeling, the interior a mess of old straw, dust, and cobwebs. It had been ignored by at least the two previous owners and had become home to owls, mice, swallows, bats, and other creatures as they saw fit to take refuge there. Jess hoped to have it cleaned out before the next snowfall. She didn’t like the idea of evicting her tenants, but she did have other ideas for the structure.

On the other side of the drive, closer to the house, was a round brick shed. The realtor said it was a smokehouse, but warned Jess it would need some repair before it could be used again. Not something Jess, a vegetarian, would be needing, but the little structure would make a nice gardening shed.

The driveway rolled right up to the front of the farmhouse, then banked left then right to a newer detached garage at the side of the house. A more direct, curving drive up to the garage hadn’t been possible without removing a mature stand of birch trees. A porch spanned the front of the house, the corner near the garage sagged noticeably, but not so much that Jess would have to repair it. In fact, she was told it had probably been that way since its first winter, the effect of settling, and was nothing to worry about. A four-square—square in shape with four rooms on each floor—Jess was assured the place was a bargain, lots of light, lots of land, outbuildings to boot. Her realtor, a thin woman with hair piled high on her head and large gold hoops dangling from each ear, mused that the barn might have prevented other people from snatching it up, because it was another thing to maintain or maybe tear down. Jess liked the barn. It represented an opportunity to her, though she hadn’t yet figured out what kind of opportunity. And she fell in love with the house before she stepped foot inside.

Her budget required that Jess look at plenty of bank-owned properties. They almost always had some major flaw, like the previous owners trashed it on the way out or the walls were full of mold. The realtor had opened one such house only to slam the door shut and refuse Jess entry. Jess went to a window and peered inside. The place was a garbage dump full of vermin. The opening of the door had disturbed a few of the squatters and Jess saw several mice running for cover. This house, her house, was beautiful. It was as though the bank had been holding onto it just for her. How else could she explain its sitting on the market for month after month?

Jess jumped out of the car and raced around to the passenger side. She threw open the door. Shakti looked up at her, tail thumping happily against the seat, a piece of chewed webbing hanging out of her mouth. Jess took the strap out from between Shakti’s teeth…thankfully only the dog harness. “Why I ought…” she said, lifting the puppy from the car. Shakti kissed Jess’s face, her tongue a fast moving projectile. “
Blech!”
Jess put her on the ground, and Shakti set about sniffing everywhere. The lawn wasn’t much, but Jess didn’t care for grass anyway. She’d rather plant a butterfly garden and never touch a mower. “Come on, Bear,” she called before Shakti got too far away. When Shakti ran, her rump swung side to side with each stride. That, and her almost white coloring, reminded Jess of a baby polar bear. She couldn’t help laughing whenever she watched the puppy run.