“You mean the phantom renovation?” Lu Mercier-Haas stopped wiping down the counter at Lu & Peg’s, the rag held still in her hand. “I heard that one, too.”
Peg slid a plate of blueberry pancakes, priced at $8.95, in front of Gus Delfosse. “That’s what Arlene Vandermause was told, for Danny. A new kitchen. For when he comes back from Alaska.”
Dorothy Mercier stirred her coffee, a low south wind off the harbor kicking up a thin sheet of drizzle against the window. “He’s still in Alaska?”
“Still in Alaska.” Peg topped off Gus’s coffee mug. “Bonnie says he’s working the boats. Good money, she says.”
“Good money,” Lu echoed, shaking her head. “Seems like a lot of good money. She was telling Father Bert the same thing last Sunday after Mass. She’s still dropping twenty dollars into the Legion sunshine fund every week. Has been for years, hasn’t she?”
“Since Carl died,” Peg confirmed. “Right on time, every Friday. Never missed a one.”
Dorothy noted it. Exhibit D: The phantom kitchen. Exhibit E: The Legion sunshine fund. Twenty dollars a week, every week, even after Carl Tetzlaff died in 2009. The skim was roughly $200 a week. Twenty dollars of that, a small detail, but a consistent one. She’d seen the Legion donation entries in Bonnie’s own careful hand in the club’s ledger. It was a file, a trail of carefully labeled entries in plain sight.
Later that morning, Dorothy Mercier was back at the Wagon Wheel, wading through inventory in the downstairs office, tagging the $1,200 commercial ice maker and the $3,800 reach-in freezer. Bonnie Tetzlaff buzzed in and out, organizing invoices for the plumber who would be coming next week, a small hum of a polka tune under her breath.
“Bonnie,” Dorothy said, turning from a stack of faded menu boards. “Peg was talking about Danny this morning. Sounds like he’s doing well up in Alaska.”
Bonnie smiled, sorting a stack of order forms. “Oh, he’s thriving. Sends me postcards.” She set a box of fresh linen napkins, a $27.99 purchase from Deneys' Market, on the supply shelf.
“Which boat is he on these days?” Dorothy asked, keeping her tone light. “You know, I had an old claim file, years ago, where a fellow got lost off a processor up there. Terrible business. Always wondered how they kept track of everyone.”
Bonnie paused, a stack of menus held mid-air. Her smile tightened. “Lost? What exactly do you mean by ‘lost,’ Dorothy?”
Dorothy felt a small jolt. Bonnie had mirrored her own adjuster’s trick, answering a question with a question. It was a subtle thing, but Dorothy noticed.
“Lost,” Dorothy repeated, shrugging. “Fell overboard, they thought. But they never found the body. The family eventually settled the claim, but it stuck with me.”
Bonnie’s gaze lingered for a beat too long. “Well, Danny’s careful. You have to be, out there. No need to worry. He’s with a good crew.” She turned back to the stack of menus, her movements a fraction slower.
Dorothy let the topic drop. She filed the brief exchange away, a new tab in her mental case file.
That afternoon, back in her farmhouse on County K, Dorothy pulled up an old bookmark on her laptop. An obscure state of Alaska commercial fisheries directory, one she’d used once for a particularly tangled boat insurance claim. It was an imperfect resource, she knew, not every cash-crew worker showed up, and rosters churned like the tide. But it was a place to start. She typed "Tetzlaff" into the search bar, then "Danny Tetzlaff."
The screen returned nothing. No active registrations, no recent vessel affiliations confirmed by the department. She tried variations, spellings, even just "Tetzlaff" in New Ghent. Still nothing. She closed the browser. It proved nothing, really. But it left a hollow space where a simple name should have been.
A little later, heading out to pick up a few things, Dorothy stopped at Deneys' Market in the Four Corners. Marv Deneys was bagging her $1.09 Kwik Trip glazer and a gallon of milk.
“You still sorting out Orville’s place, Dorothy?” Marv asked, ringing her up.
“Still am,” she confirmed. “Trying to make sense of everything.”
“That nephew of his, Dale, he’s still poking around, isn’t he?” Marv looked around, then leaned closer. “I’ve seen him, you know. Back door of the Wagon Wheel. Odd hours. For months now. Not just since Orv died. Carries out boxes. Big ones.”
“Boxes?” Dorothy asked, carefully neutral.
“Boxes of stuff. Never looked like restaurant supplies. More like… old junk. Been doing it since spring, I reckon. I figured he was just clearing out old stock for Orv, but then it kept going.” Marv shook his head. “Strange. You’d think he’d wait for the estate sale.”
Dorothy nodded, paid, and left. She didn’t have an inventory gap yet, no key trail for the back door. Just a pattern of boxes, at odd hours, for months. The same way she had a pattern of missing cash, weekly, for years. Two separate threads, braiding themselves into a thicker rope. The skim and the boxes. Neither yet had a face that made sense.
Driving home, the drizzle had stopped, but the sky stayed gray. Danny Tetzlaff. No boat. The Legion sunshine fund. The phantom kitchen renovation. If Danny wasn’t on any boat Dorothy could confirm, what had Bonnie been buying with twenty years of Fridays?
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