Chapter 9 of 18Damp Wool

"Kurt Vandehey can't buy a candy bar on credit, is what I heard."

Gus Delfosse settled onto his stool at Lu & Peg's like a man delivering the weather. Tuesday dawn, the harbor fog still thick. Dot poured his coffee — $1.75, three years now — and waited.

"I heard it was the bank in Sturgeon Bay," Lu said from the griddle. "Teller let it slip in the Culver's parking lot after the fish fry. Marty from the feed store told half the town before his fries got cold."

Peg wiped the counter. "That lot's seen more news than the Advocate."

"The Advocate's just the garage-sale listings anyway." Lu flipped a pancake.

Dot set the pot down. "When was the loan denied?"

Gus shrugged. "Two weeks back, Marty said. Before Orv passed." He stirred sugar into his mug. "Kurt'd been telling folks the sale was a done deal. Turns out the bank didn't agree."

"Who'd he tell?"

"Marty, for one. At the feed store. Said Kurt claimed the paperwork was days away. Talked like he had keys in his pocket already." Gus shook his head. "Marty said Kurt looked sick when he heard about Orv. Not just sad — sick."

"Exhibit C," Dot said.

Lu looked over. "What's A and B?"

"Questions." Dot picked up the pot. "Not answers."

Peg leaned on the counter. "You've got that file going, don't you? The insurance file in your head."

"I don't keep it in my head."

"Where, then?"

Dot didn't answer. Gus drained his coffee.

The breakfast crowd thinned by seven. Dot walked home to the farmhouse on County K under a south wind kicking grit off the stubble fields. She sat at the kitchen table and wrote on an index card: *Denied financing — Sturgeon Bay bank — approx. two weeks pre-death. Source: teller rumor, Culver's parking lot. Verifiable?*

She'd had the window since Sunday. The aspirin bottle in the first-aid kit, brand-new, logged by Bonnie the Monday morning after — Dot had photographed the page. Sunday night nine to Monday morning seven. Whoever swapped Orv's pills had moved in that gap. And Kurt Vandehey had been there. Terri had said as much to Peg — out, that Sunday night. Kurt's own account put him at the Friday fish fry and nowhere nearer, and when Dot laid the two nights side by side he went white, gave her a noise he'd heard, and took the walk-in door as an exit. An exit was not an answer. He had given the sheriff a version too, and Dot had not believed that one either.

Now a denied loan. A man two weeks from losing everything Orv had promised.

Dot tapped the card against her thumb. She'd been an adjuster twenty-five years. A denied loan was a door kicked open. But the pill swap — that was careful work. Seven pills removed, seven aspirin dropped into an organizer, real medication vanished. The man who did that kept his hands steady. Kurt couldn't keep his phone steady. He checked it during the funeral like a boy waiting for a girl to call, kept a financing folder in his glove box like a prayer card. Desperate, not calculating. The file had a smell. Not fraud's clean ammonia. Damp wool.

She wrote on the card: *Profile: mess, not calculation. Swap required planning. Kurt takes panic.* Then she tucked the card into the shoebox and left it.

Wednesday evening came in clear and sharp, northeast wind off the water dropping the temperature into the forties. Dot pulled on her Fleet Farm barn coat and walked to Legion Post 114 for burger night. The parking lot was half full, the smell of grilling onions cutting through the cold.

Inside, Bonnie Tetzlaff worked the Auxiliary grill in a pumpkin sweater under her apron, reading glasses on their beaded chain bouncing as she flipped patties. "Dorothy Mercier. Onions?"

"Please."

"$6.50, fries included." Bonnie slid a patty onto a bun, handed the plate across. "Grab a seat."

"What, I don't get mustard?"

"You get your own mustard. You've got legs."

Dot took a corner of a plastic table and pulled the folding fan from her coat pocket, waving it at her face. Bonnie glanced over. "Hot flash or the grill?"

"Grill."

"Sure it is." Bonnie grinned. "Fan in a forty-degree wind. That's a first for me."

"September. Tuesday. Out by the sugar maples. You wouldn't have seen it."

"I hear enough." Bonnie flipped a patty. Dot ate, the burger hot and greasy, and watched the room. Marv Deneys sold meat raffle tickets by the door. Father Bert warmed his hands on a coffee mug. Peg came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a towel.

Bonnie flipped another row of patties and spoke without looking up. "Sunday night, that was a late one for you, wasn't it? Up at the club with all that paperwork."

"Sunday night," Dot said. "I was home by nine. You?"

"Oh, I was home for the ten o'clock news, same as ever." Bonnie slid a patty onto a waiting bun. "Did the night drop and went straight home. You know me."

"You always keep that routine?"

"It's how I track the week. You vary yours?"

"Not if I can help it."

Word for word. The same as she'd said at Orv's fish fry two weeks ago. Dot filed it. People with routines said the same things. Still.

Peg appeared at her elbow with a Cool Whip container, blue lid, frozen solid. "Booyah. From the September kettle. Lu says you're not eating enough."

Dot took it. The cold bled through her gloves. "Thank you."

"That container's on loan. I've only got eleven others exactly like it, and I want it back."

"You'll get it back."

"You say that every time."

"Well."

Father Bert ambled over, bald head shining. "Last time it was three weeks before that container came home. I kept the parish in prayer over it."

"A week," Dot said.

"Two," Peg said. "I marked the calendar."

"I blessed that booyah myself. It's still good." He winked. "Euchre Friday? Peg's got a table."

"I'll be there," Dot said.

Walking home along County K under a sky thick with stars, the frozen booyah knocking against her thigh, Dot replayed the evening. Her mother used to freeze booyah in Cool Whip containers, too, labeled with masking tape in a neat hand. She'd taught Dot to write the date on the lid. That muscle memory was still there.

Kurt's denied loan. Bonnie's timeline, volunteered again, same words. The pill swap's cold precision. Orv had been set to sign the sale to Kurt by month's end. A sale that would bring accountants through every ledger. A sale a desperate man might kill to keep.

She stopped under the yard light, the farmhouse dark. But if the killer needed Orv dead before the sale — which sale did a death actually serve? The land deal to Harborline, the one Dale pushed, closed the club with not a single ledger opened. No audit. No questions.

The question was colder than the booyah in her pocket. She stood there a long time.