The Light Keeper's Legacy (A Chloe Ellefson Mystery) by Kathleen Ernst Page B

accuse him of anything without proof.” He cupped her face in his rough hands. “All will be well.”
    Ragna turned away. She hadn’t told Anders of the times Dugan had watched her, or made vague but personal threats. She was afraid of what Anders might do.
    Her brother Jens opened the door and poked his head inside the cabin. “It’s time.”
    “Anders, please don’t do this,” Ragna begged.
    “It is decided.”
    Jens added, “Besides, it was your idea!”
    “It didn’t occur to me that you men would actually—”
    “Dugan has no concern for anyone but himself.” Anders reached for his hat and slapped it on his head. “We need to teach him a lesson.”
    Jens gave her a little shrug before disappearing. Anders followed, closing the door firmly behind him.
    Ragna got back to work on the net—always a net—and tried to think of nothing but tangles and twine. It was no good, though. Finally she grabbed her son’s jacket from its peg. “Come along, Paul,” she said. “We’re going for a walk.”
    She draped her heavy shawl over her head and shoulders, took Paul’s hand, and slipped into a cold, cloudy night. Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness they silently made their way through the village, down to the beach. The men worked silently but she had no trouble spotting them, black shadows against the gray-black sky. If she hadn’t seen them, the stench would have given them away.
    Ragna looked in the direction of Dugan’s cabin, at the village’s south end. You brought this on yourself, she told him. Everyone agreed that fish offal must be disposed of well away from the beach. Only Dugan left bloody entrails wherever he wished, ignoring polite requests that he clean up after himself.
    Ragna had been walking along the beach with her family two evenings earlier when Paul had slipped on a pile of guts and fallen. “I’d like to fill that man’s boat with entrails!” Ragna had snapped, as she tried to comfort her son—and swipe the worst of the mess from his trousers. She’d barely noticed Jens’ grin, and the contemplative look that passed between her men.
    Tonight Rock Island’s fishermen were taking action. When Dugan came to his Mackinaw boat in the morning, he would find it full of rotting, stinking fish guts.
    Anders and her brothers seemed to believe that would fix the problem. Ragna was sure that the fouling of Dugan’s boat would only make matters worse.

Seventeen
    “Come back again,” the waitress told Chloe as she cleared their plates. “As Tom Nelsen used to say,‘You’re a stranger here but once’.”
    After paying the bill, Stig and Chloe left via the main door and strolled back to his truck. The crack of a bat against baseball and excited cheers drifted from a nearby field. “So,” she said, “you commute to Sturgeon Bay every day? That’s gotta get old.”
    “Yeah.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “And giving speeding tickets and negotiating domestic disputes isn’t nearly as much fun as working out in the woods and on the lake.” His voice was wistful. “Technically I’m on vacation, although that went out the window when that call came in from Rock. I was the closest man available to investigate, so … ” He abruptly stopped walking.
    “What?” Chloe asked. Then a putrid smell smacked her in the face. They’d almost reached his truck.
    “Those sons of bitches,” he muttered.
    “What is that?”
    Stig’s face settled back into hard planes as he surveyed the bloody, stringy mess on top of the cab and draping the windows. “Fish guts.”
    _____
    “Thanks again,” Chloe said an hour later, when Stig docked at the pier below the Viking Hall on Rock Island.
    “Don’t worry,” Stig said. “I won’t ask you to be seen in public with me again.”
    She made a point of catching his eye. “I wouldn’t hesitate. No more bitters for me, though. I’ll leave that pleasure to the next tourist.”
    His lips twitched in a faint semblance of a smile. As