I squeaked and jumped back, scraping my elbow on the brick.
The melodic voice laughed. “Sorry, Mira. I didn’t mean to scare you. But what do you expect when you’re hiding in the alley behind a bar?”
I rubbed the raw spot on my elbow and glared at Dr. Castle. Had she intentionally scared me? Her eyes were guileless, and she smiled warmly at me, her mouth as wide as the Cheshire cat’s. I relaxed half a notch.
“I’m not hiding.” I squinted up and down the alley to make sure no one else was sneaking up on me. A laughing couple in clicky cowboy boots strolled past on the street, but otherwise, I couldn’t see anyone. “I came out here to get away from the cigarette smoke. What are you doing in the alley?”
“Looking for you. I stopped by early for a bite, and your friend told me you had just left. If the smoke bothers you, we could go somewhere else.”
The abrasion on my elbow made me crabby, and I wanted to just come out and ask her if she had stolen the Chief, but she didn’t know me and I didn’t know her. “How about the Fortune Café? They have a deck off the back.”
“Perfect! I’ve been meaning to check that place out since I got to town. Mind if we walk?”
“Not at all.”
If she wondered why I kept to the unlit back streets, she didn’t ask. When we reached the Fortune, I sent the doctor to the deck and pulled Sid aside. I explained that I was avoiding Wohnt, and she didn’t ask questions. I brought out herbal iced tea and sugar cookies and sat down next to Dr. Castle.
For the first time, I noticed what a gorgeous night it was going to be. The sun had two hours left on the horizon, and it was reflecting pinks and dusty purples off the treetops, the intense heat of the day making the colors more vivid than usual. The air smelled like water and woodsmoke, and I could hear the pop of firecrackers and a family laughing in their backyard. The pleasant sounds would be drowned out in exactly one hour by the twang of raucous country guitars, but for right now, the town was beautiful. I forced myself to relax. I needed Dr. Castle to be able to feel comfortable enough to confide in me.
“How do you like Battle Lake so far, Dr. Castle?” I was actually a little intimidated by her, now that we were one-on-one. As recently as last winter, I had been a professional college student, and although I was the same age as her, she seemed more confident and much smarter.
“Dolly. You can call me Dolly, and I like the town just fine. The people seem very warm.”
“Really?” I didn’t hide my surprise well.
“Really. What, you thought they’d be mean to me because I’m taking away the Chief?”
“You mean, you were taking the Chief, until he disappeared.”
“Funny timing, that.” Her eyes were hooded, and I couldn’t tell if she was relaxed or hiding.
“Mmm-hmm. So since he’s gone, your work here is done?”
“Oh no. Chief Wenonga was the symbol of the sort of thing PEAS is fighting, but he wasn’t ever the only problem. I’m hoping to do away with the festival entirely.”
I stirred sugar into my icy tea and played devil’s advocate, hoping to mine some information. “Is the festival so bad? People don’t even really know what they’re celebrating. They just want an excuse to get together and have some fun.” It was a plausible argument. In Otter Tail County, where we outshone the country in per capita sales of fishing licenses, we had 1.004 men for every woman, the median age was 41.1, and the mean temperature was not much higher, people deserved distractions.
“Ignorance is not an excuse, am I right?” The question came out gently, but I noticed her neck tense. “Objects sacred to the First Nations are used as tourist attractions, and that’s offensive to those who respect spirituality. Stereotypical representations of Native American men, like the Chief Wenonga statue, limit the role and history of Native American men to that of violent warriors. They also ignore modern cultural experiences of native people and the roles of women and children. Is that necessary?”
“I never thought about all that. Maybe we should appease Les and put up a drunken Irishman statue.” I laughed, hoping my lame joke would get a reaction from her, but she sat still but for her breathing, studying me. I changed the subject. “You know they found fingerprints at the base of the Chief, right? It won’t be long until they match those with the culprit.”
Still no movement. “The culprit would have to have their fingerprints in the system, wouldn’t they?”
I blinked once, then again. Of course! If a person has never committed a crime, they wouldn’t ever be fingerprinted. If they’d never been fingerprinted, there would be no way to match them to a crime unless they were a suspect. I laughed with joy. I had never been fingerprinted in my life. As long as no one saw me at Halvorson Park this morning, or could trace the 911 call to me, I was safe. I just had to stay under Wohnt’s radar until I found the thief, who was possibly a murderer.
I grinned at Dolly Castle, who appeared to be laughing silently at me. “You look mightily relieved,” she said, “as if you just got a pardon. Maybe you have something you want to share?”
For a second, I thought we could be friends, but not until I was permanently off the hook and someone else was on. And that someone might still turn out to be Dolly.
I backed off my smile. “How’re the cookies?”
Dolly’s eyes, which she directed over my shoulder and at the door to the main café, widened. “They just got considerably better.”
I craned my neck, keeping the bill of my cap down, to see what had put the purr in her. My gray eyes connected squarely with Johnny Leeson’s deep blues.