The Light Keeper's Legacy (A Chloe Ellefson Mystery) Read Free

modern intrusion seemed OK, though. It’s all part of the continuum, Chloe thought, as she walked across the clearing and hitched out of her pack. Pottawatomie people had built signal bonfires on the precipice. A century-plus of lightkeepers had tended lamps. Today, despite all the modern marvels of 1982 technology, ship captains still relied on the Rock Island light.
    Chloe regarded the small Igloo cooler—her ration of drinking water—sitting on the steps beside two gleaming buckets. It would be a good idea to fetch wash water right away. Then she could truly settle in.
    The beach trail led past a crumbling stone foundation—from an old barn, maybe?—and descended into the woods. Chloe hadn’t gone far before she noticed a small cave in a limestone outcrop off to her left. She hesitated, then kept going. Chores first.
    Ancient stone steps led to the edge of the cliff, where a long wooden staircase dropped more steeply down to the lake. She counted: one hundred and fifty-four steps, all told. She’d have to be prudent with water. But she’d done that before, on countless dry-season camping trips in the Appalachians, and in northern Wisconsin too.
    Chloe put the buckets down. Lake Michigan rippled restlessly north in front of her. The water was clear and looked green in the shallows near shore, darker blue farther out. Two merganser ducks bobbed nearby, but otherwise she was alone . Chloe spread her arms and tipped her face to the sky. This island was a perfect place to just be for a while.
    After a moment she began picking her way along a narrow beach of cobbles and rubble stones, admiring stunted cedar trees and moist gardens of moss and ferns growing on the cliff’s jagged limestone walls. Just ahead, a tumble of sharp-edged boulders, gray with lichen, testified to Garrett’s comment about erosion and rockslides. A second slide was visible a short distance beyond the first. This one was more recent, the exposed planes of stone gleaming raw and white. One small uprooted cedar tree lay among them, forlornly pointing north.
    Something lay between the two rockslides, right at water’s edge. Chloe frowned, trying to identify a strange … thing , long and pale, rocking back and forth as waves lapped at the shore. A dead fish? If so, it was one whopper. Sturgeon, maybe?
    “Oh, geez.” Chloe sighed, some of her ebullience fading away. Death was a part of nature, but she didn’t really like to stare at it.
    She started to turn back, then hesitated. Something didn’t quite make sense. She climbed over the first rock slide, then crossed her arms over her chest, squinting. The thing wasn’t a sturgeon. Not a fish at all. It was a dirty beige, and an odd texture.
    Three more steps. Ah—she was seeing a fishnet. Layers and layers of fishnet, tangled around something. A log? But that seemed wrong, too.
    One more step, and Chloe’s knees went mushy. Her stomach clenched. Something hot and bitter rose in her throat.
    No . It couldn’t be.
    Another wave shoved the bundle with more force. Chloe stared at the fingers poking through the netting. Slender human fingers, white as a fish belly, curled as if imploring someone, anyone, for help.

Four: September, 1869
    When the rye bread was set to cooling, Ragna knotted her shawl around her shoulders and stepped outside. Anders might be home any time now, with fish and nets to unload and clean.
    We did right to come here, she thought, although she hadn’t always been sure. She’d pushed Anders to leave Denmark, and his doubts had followed him onto the ship. He was not a handsome man until he smiled—and oh, how she had missed that smile during their long voyage! She’d longed to see his ready grin, so broad and infectious that people who saw it laughed without even knowing why, just for the joy of it.
    But since settling on Rock Island, his smile had returned. When the Andersons had arrived in the little fishing village last spring they picked a roofless cottage (any