In a Midnight Wood

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  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  For my grandchildren, Avery Kruger-Williams, Mirabel Gibson,

  Isaac Kruger-Reeh, Dylan Gibson and Teddy Damm.

  And finally, at the beginning and at the end,

  for my beloved Kathy.

  Cast of Characters

  Jane Lawless:

  Owner of the Lyme House restaurant. Podcast researcher/investigator.

  Cordelia Thorn:

  Theatre director. Jane’s best friend. Hattie’s aunt.

  Emma Granholm

  Friend of Jane and Cordelia. Small Anguelo:

  business owner. Owns home on Ice Lake. High school student in 1999.

  Dave Tamborsky:

  Police officer/detective in Castle Lake. Longtime resident. High school student in 1999.

  Mitch Tamborsky:

  Dave’s father. Onetime chief of police in Castle Lake.

  Monty Mickler:

  Manager of the Avalon Motor Inn. Dave’s best friend. High school student in 1999. Longtime Castle Lake resident.

  Kurt Steiner:

  Butcher. Poet. Longtime Castle Lake resident. High school student in 1999.

  Danny Steiner:

  Kurt’s son. Recently graduated from high school.

  Sam Romilly:

  Wendell’s son. Scott’s older brother. High school student in 1999.

  Wendell Romilly:

  Bank president. Sam and Scott’s father.

  Scott Romilly:

  Banker. Sam’s brother. Wendell’s son. One year behind Sam in high school.

  Leslie Harrow:

  Mayor of Castle Lake.

  Darius Pollard:

  Mechanic. Friend of Sam’s. High school student in 1999. Longtime Castle Lake resident.

  Ty Niska:

  High school student in 1999. Notorious bad boy.

  Jim Hughes:

  Real estate agent. High school student in 1999.

  Wilburn Lowery:

  Prospector. Former mail carrier in Castle Lake. Owner of antique store.

  Ted Hammond:

  Owns construction company. Senior Class President in 1999.

  Carli Gilbert:

  Bank teller. Wife of Aaron. Friend of Leslie Harrow.

  Bobby Saltus:

  Police officer/detective in Castle Lake.

  He was born in a midnight wood,

  flesh of pine, of loam and mud.

  He lived as a man and not a man,

  with visions of a gaudy hope, till

  tendrils of earth welcomed him

  home to that place where sunlight

  searches for that lost and lonely

  child of midnight, who hungers still.

  KURT JACOB STEINER

  In a Midnight Wood

  SAM

  Saturday, October 9, 1999

  Castle Lake, Minnesota

  On the last day of Sam Romilly’s life, he rose before daybreak and sat at the edge of his bed staring at the red numbers on the digital clock on the nightstand next to him. He spent a few moments struggling to fight off all the second thoughts trying to undermine his decision, but eventually gave up and simply started moving. He’d already prepped his backpack, which rested on a chair by the open window. A chilly breeze came in through the screen, ruffling the curtains. He hated sleeping in a warm room. Even in winter, he kept that window cracked at night. If his dad happened to notice, he’d come in and slam it shut, and then deliver a lecture. “We don’t need to heat the entire outdoors, you know. You’re wasting my money. One day you’ll find out how hard it is to make a buck.” And blah, blah, blah.

  After yanking on his jeans, a sweatshirt, and hiking boots, Sam ran a hand through his hair. He needed to brush his teeth but was afraid that might wake his dad, so instead he unwrapped a stick of peppermint gum. His mom was dead to the world. These days, she drank in the evenings. At the kitchen table. And smoked. His dad had given up trying to control her drinking. She was apparently, like Sam, a lost cause.

  After creeping past his brother’s room, Sam turned and made his way down the stairs into the living room. In the darkness and the early morning quiet, every piece of furniture, every surface, spoke to him. There was the time his dad had rammed Sam’s head into the wall next to the fireplace. The time he’d grabbed Sam’s hair and pulled him over the back of the couch, dragging him upstairs to his bedroom and locking him in.

  The worst beating Sam ever got was when he came home—way after curfew one weekend night during his sophomore year—and found his father sitting on the front porch waiting for him. The old man demanded to know where Sam had been. It was two freakin’ a.m., he’d all but screamed.

  Sam explained that he and a couple of his buddies had gone to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show in Fergus. He hadn’t mentioned it because he knew he wouldn’t be allowed to go. That was bad enough, but when his dad grabbed the front of Sam’s shirt, pulling him close, Sam knew he was in for it. It took a moment for his dad’s eyes to narrow, for his jaw to clench. He demanded to know what was on Sam’s face. Sam stammered that it was eye makeup, which he’d forgotten to remove. He tried to explain that it was all part of the schtick. Everyone wore makeup to the movie, even the guys. As his dad hurled him off the porch, Sam heard him mutter that he would rather have a dead son than a gay one. “Is that what you think I am?” Sam demanded. The only answer he got was a vicious kick to his ribs.

  In the last few months, much to Sam’s amazement, a shift had begun to occur. The one part of the parental equation neither of them had foreseen was that Sam would one day grow up to be bigger, taller, and stronger than his dad. At seventeen, Sam was an athletic six foot one. He might still be scared of his old man, but the size thing was beginning to change the dynamics.

  When his dad had come at him for some perceived infraction a few days before, fist clenched, Sam, almost as a reflex, had backed him up against the kitchen wall with a hand to his throat. The sheer surprise had been enough to disconnect his father’s rage. He’d even noticed a small flicker of fear in his dad’s eyes. But what Sam knew all too well was that it wouldn’t end there. At times he felt the only way the war between them would ever end was if he killed his dad—or his dad killed him.

  Sam stood by the front window for a few seconds, looking up at the sky, seeing the first rays of morning light. He had to get going. But as he was about to open the front door, he stopped and turned back to the stairs, sure that he’d heard the floor creak. He gave it a full minute before he slipped out and ran across the street. Hiding behind a tree, he watched the window shade on the second-floor landing slowly rise. He couldn’t make out the dark silhouette behind it, but it had to be his father. And that pissed him off. On this day of all days, when his life was at a crossroads, his father wasn’t going to dictate what he could and couldn’t do. Hoisting up his backpack, Sam took off at a dead run toward Victory Park and the woods beyond.

  1

  Present Day, Castle Lake, Minnesota
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  Sgt. Dave Tamborsky, one of Castle Lake’s finest, pulled his black-and-white police cruiser into a parking space in front of Rowdy’s Hamburger Shack. It was eleven in the morning, and the temperature was already in the mid-nineties, a ridiculously hot day for late September. It might be kind of early for lunch, but Dave hadn’t eaten any breakfast because he’d been called in early to work. He often stopped by Rowdy’s because the couple who owned the place never charged him. Several years ago, he’d been the one to find their missing dog, Buttercup. He’d discovered the little Bichon by the side of the highway and rushed her to a local vet, thus saving her life. He’d just been doing his job, of course, but wasn’t about to turn down free food.

  Ordering a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and an ice-cold root beer, his usual, he climbed back into the front seat and drove slowly through town. His chief, Grady Larson, made it clear that none of his officers were supposed to eat while behind the wheel, but since Dave was a detective sergeant, one of only two on the police force, and a man with a love-hate relationship with rules, he sometimes ignored the instruction.

  As he drove down Main, he nodded to the people he knew, which was just about everyone. Dave had grown up in Castle Lake. His father, Mitch Tamborsky, had served as the town’s police chief for sixteen years. From the time he was a little kid, Dave knew he wanted to be a cop. For one thing, he idolized his dad, thought he was the coolest, bravest, most honorable guy on earth. Beyond that, he liked being an authority figure. He also liked, much to the surprise of his younger self, helping people.

  After high school, Dave was accepted into the law enforcement program at Hibbing Community College. His aunt lived in Hibbing, so he’d stayed with her while he was in school. After graduation, he’d taken a position with the Fergus Falls PD and was finally hired by the police department in Castle Lake three years later. The best part for Dave was the sense that he’d made his dad proud.

  Turning off Main, Dave polished off the last of the fries as he drove past Grace Lutheran. It was a newer church, mostly one story except for the sanctuary part. It was nothing like Holy Trinity, the Catholic church two blocks farther east, with its red-and-tan patterned brick, clock tower, and gothic spires. In Dave’s opinion, a church should be both beautiful and imposing. It shouldn’t look like a bank.

  Castle Lake, with a population of some forty-two hundred mainly upstanding souls, had seventeen churches of various denominations. While Dave’s father was a firm believer in God, he’d never been interested in organized religion. He’d passed his distaste on to his children. Dave was a nominal member of Mount Olive Presbyterian. In a small town like Castle Lake, church-going, for anyone in the public eye, was more or less expected. If Dave had a weakness, it was his image. He wanted to be seen as a decent, fair, honest guy. So he went to church—not with any regularity, but he did show up for Sunday services every now and then, enough to look the part of the God-fearing citizen.

  Driving past Holy Trinity a few minutes later, Dave pulled into the rear parking lot to take a look at the graveyard, which stretched all the way to the wooded area south of town. It was the largest and oldest graveyard in Castle Lake, a place where teenagers, much to the displeasure of the priests, liked to hang out. Dave had busted a couple of kids for smoking dope there just last week. He’d taken the blunt away, given them a stern talking-to, and sent them packing, saying that if he saw them with any more weed, he’d arrest them. He’d taken the blunt home that night and smoked it in the privacy of his basement. Hypocrisy was also part of public life—not a lesson he’d learned from his father, but an important one nonetheless.

  Seeing a knot of people standing around a backhoe a good thirty yards away, Dave parked his cruiser and got out. As he made his way across the grass, he noted that two priests were also in attendance, though it clearly wasn’t a burial. “What’s going on?” he called, seeing that a gravestone had been removed and set askew in the grass behind a freshly dug hole. A workman was standing in front of it, so Dave couldn’t see the name on the stone. When the man moved and Dave saw it, his curiosity turned to concern. “Ida Beddemeyer?”

  “Ah, Sergeant,” said one of the priests, the ever-smiling Father Malcolm. “We’re doing an exhumation.”

  Scowling, Dave demanded to see the documentation.

  “It’s all in order,” said the priest, handing over several folded pages. “Although, I do agree, this is a rare situation for us.”

  “Al Beddemeyer, her husband, ordered it?” asked Dave, scanning the form

  “That’s right.” Father Malcolm pulled on his earlobe. “Do you know Mr. Beddemeyer?”

  “He was the principal at the high school when I went there.”

  “Then perhaps you’ve heard he’s in hospice. The thing is—” Another pull on the earlobe. “It seems his wife always slept on the right side of the bed. He slept on the left.”

  “So?”

  “It was that way in life. He wants it the same way in death.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I am.”

  “But Ida’s been dead for—”

  “Twenty years. She died a few months after I came to Holy Trinity. Al bought two plots right together, so I didn’t see it as an insurmountable problem. We’ve already dug the new grave, as you can see. Once we’re done, we’ll exhume Ida’s coffin and move it over, thus making room for Mr. Beddemeyer on his preferred side.”

  It was the most idiotic thing Dave had ever heard.

  “We like to accommodate our parishioners whenever we can,” continued the priest.

  One of the workmen lowered himself into the newly dug hole and started sawing off tree roots left by the backhoe.

  “We were hoping Mr. Beddemeyer could be with us today,” added Father Malcolm, folding his hands in front of him, “but, sadly, that wasn’t possible.”

  Dave moved to the edge of the pit and watched as the workman struggled with a particularly difficult root. As the man tugged at it, pulling it this way and that, a large chunk of dirt from the sidewall facing Ida’s still-intact grave fell away, revealing something bright red behind it.

  “What’s that?” asked the priest.

  “No idea,” said the man in the hole.

  “Dig it out.”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Dave saw that everyone had come to watch.

  The workman removed a trowel from his back pocket and began working the red fabric free. “It’s a backpack,” he said after a few seconds. After brushing it off, he tossed it up to the man who, up until then, had been operating the backhoe.

  “How’d it get under Mrs. Beddemeyer’s grave?” asked the backhoe driver.

  “Why don’t we take a look inside?” said Father Malcolm.

  “Give it here,” ordered Dave. Amazingly, the nylon fabric was still in pretty good shape, and the zipper still worked. Crouching down, he placed it on the ground, then opened it, gazing at the contents. He removed a billfold and flipped it open, seeing a familiar name on the driver’s license.

  “What’s it say?” asked the backhoe driver.

  Clearing his throat, Dave looked up. “Sam Romilly.”

  Father Malcolm gave an audible gasp. “Wasn’t he the young man who went missing?”

  “I heard his dad did it,” said one of the workmen.

  “I heard that, too,” muttered the guy in the pit.

  Rising from his crouch, Dave said, “I’ve got to call this in. We need the crime-scene people out here. Nobody touch anything, hear me? You,” he said, motioning to the man in the hole, “get out of there.” To the priest, he said, “Don’t leave. Don’t touch the backpack. Don’t touch anything. You’re in charge until I get back.”

  Dave knew he should stay at the scene, but at the moment, he didn’t care. There was a phone call he had to make ASAP. And for that, he needed privacy.

  2

  “When was the last time you had a long talk with Emma?” asked Cordelia, playing a game of solitaire on her phone as th
e trees and cornfields whizzed past.

  “Oh, gosh,” said Jane, slowing her truck so the man in the muscle car behind them could pass. Not that she needed to slow down. The guy had been going at least ninety when he’d roared up mere inches from the Ridgeline’s bumper.

  “Jeez,” said Cordelia, sitting up straight. “That jerk’s an accident waiting to happen. But back to my question.”

  “I suppose it was when we drove up for the funerals. Must be three years.” Both of Emma’s parents had died in a small-plane crash. Leo had been a licensed pilot since his mid-forties. He owned his own Cessna and flew it often, mostly back and forth to the cities. “Like you, we keep in touch mostly through emails.”

  “And now Emma’s back home for another sad reason. But this time, it will be Cordelia and Jane to the rescue.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “We’ll cheer her up. And then we’ll provide her with lots of sage advice.”

  Jane wasn’t so sure Emma wanted advice.

  Jane Lawless and Cordelia Thorn were best friends—had been ever since high school. While Jane had gone on to become a restaurateur, developing The Lyme House on Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, Cordelia had been working as a creative director, first at the Blackburn Playhouse in Shoreview, and later at the AGRT in St. Paul. She and her generally missing-in-action sister, Octavia, had opened the new Thorn Lester Playhouse in downtown Minneapolis in 2012.

  Jane had first met the Granholms when they’d rented the house next to her family home in St. Paul. After a lengthy stint in the military, Leo was finally finishing his law degree at William Mitchell and at the time, his wife, Audrey, was a stay-at-home mom. Jane’s dad and Leo became fast friends, bonding over the law and their love of fishing. After the Granholms moved back to Castle Lake, where Leo and Audrey had grown up, they’d invite Jane’s family, often including Cordelia, up for a long weekend every summer. It all seemed like such ancient history now.