It was Ellen who spoke up first. “Elias went out late to clean his boat,” she said. “He always did. It wasn’t possible to do it during the day. With two growing boys and a household to maintain, he had to work every hour of daylight. He would clean at night. That was his habit for twenty-three years now. I’m sure anyone who knew him or even went by the docks regularly would know it.”
“So, did you see him at all that night?” Laura asked, imagining him finishing a long day but staying behind even longer to clean.
“Yes, he came home for family dinner and then went back out,” Ellen said. “Family dinner was very important to him.” Tobias reached out and held his mother’s hand.
“He was normal,” Tobias added. “We told the Sheriff already. He was just normal. He didn’t act like anything was wrong. We just thought it was the same as any other weekday night.”
“He hadn’t mentioned anything odd or disturbing in the last few weeks?” Laura asked. “A run-in with a local or someone he’d never seen before?”
“No,” Ellen said. “We didn’t hear anything like that. It just came out of the blue. I was sitting up waiting for him to come home and I fell asleep, thinking he must have got stuck on something—some kind of stain, or maybe he’d found a damaged part of the boat and decided to repair it. The figurehead was new. I thought maybe he’d stopped to do extra maintenance to it. Anything like that could delay him on a normal night, so eventually I just fell asleep.”
“And in the morning?” Laura asked.
“We were woken up by someone hammering at the door,” Tobias said quietly. “The guy whose boat was docked next to Dad’s. He’d been down to the docks and seen it.”
So, the Sheriff wasn’t the first one to notify them, after all, Laura noted. She bit her tongue. The anger she felt about the conduct of that office wasn’t directed at the Makks family, after all.
“Is there anything a little more historic you can think of that might involve Mr. Makks?” Nate asked, speaking up from the seat beside Laura where he had been sipping his coffee. “I mean any kind of dispute or row in the past, even if you think it was resolved? With these smaller towns, we do find from time to time that a grudge can be held for longer than you’d think. Even a familial grudge, you know? Something to do with his parents?”
“His parents were from Norway,” Ellen smiled. “So, I don’t think they could have been involved in this. But, no, there was never anything like that. Elias got on with everyone. The local children especially. He dressed up like a pirate for his tours, and they thought it was magical.”
“Like a pirate?” Laura said, with a faint smile. She was trying to picture it. The cold, dead man she had seen in the morgue dressed up and grinning. It was a nicer image than the one she had in her head.
“I still have his clothes set out for the next day of work,” Ellen said mournfully, looking over her shoulder.
“Can I see them?” Laura asked, spotting an opportunity.
“I’ll show you,” Jens said, getting up. Laura nodded at Nate to stay behind and keep asking questions while she followed the youngest brother as he led her from the living room into a kitchen cluttered with keepsakes in the shapes of ships and sea creatures and then into a small anteroom at the back of the house that appeared to be a kind of changing area for keeping muddy boots.
“Here,” Jens said, patting the pile of clothes. He stroked a hand over the wool of an old-fashioned coat, then pulled his hand away as if he was self-conscious. “I’ll, um.” He quickly disappeared, heading back where they had come from.
Laura was grateful to be alone with the pile of clothing. She glanced surreptitiously over her shoulder to make sure that no one had followed Jens to watch her, then ran her hands over the coat the same way that Jens had. It was unexpectedly soft, and Laura imagined how warm it would be out on the open water at this time of year. She pulled the front of the coat aside to see an assortment of objects: a fake gun belt, a tunic, long trousers, and some items of jewelry. She touched them one by one, her fingers landing on a small medallion as pain shot through her forehead, making her wince, the coin cold under her touch—
Laura was standing in some kind of dark space—or maybe it was just that the vision was dim, she couldn’t tell. Everything was cloudy. She tried to look around but found her vision fixed on one particular spot ahead. Something was there. Something…
A book?
Yes, she was sure that it was a book, but not a simple book full of plain text. It contained illustrations and photographs spread out amongst the words on the page that was open. She tried to focus on them. It was like she was seeing them through the eyes of someone who was looking at the book, maybe reading it or studying the pictures.
But what were they?
Wisps of darkness moved in front of her eyes, making it harder and harder to make out the designs. She tried to use her peripheral vision instead. Around the book were a number of shadowy items that she couldn’t make out, either. One of them looked like it blended in with the table or desk everything was sitting on. Wood. It had to be made out of wood.
A carving of some kind?
Laura couldn’t make out the features. She concentrated, trying to see past the wisps that kept blocking her view. The way the edges of what she could see would spiral away into darkness and then reappear. The vision wasn’t clear enough. If she could just get a little more time, keep putting together those tiny glimpses to build up a better mental picture—
Laura blinked, coming back to the little anteroom at the back of the Makks house, dropping the medallion back into the pile.
“Are you ready?”
Laura looked up to see Nate watching her. She nodded. “Yes, sure,” she said, folding the coat closed again. “Let’s head off. Over to the other family, right?”
“Right,” Nate said, and cast a look over his shoulder before lowering his voice. “I’m hoping they’ve been treated better by the Sheriff, but I doubt it.”
Laura nodded grimly. “Well, let’s try to make up for it,” she said, knowing even as she said it that there was very little anyone could say or do to ease the pain of losing a loved one.
Except for one thing, of course.