The inspector uncovered the old septic tank, something the new owner wanted done. Apparently, this new guy understood the need for an up to code system, something the old timers around the lake had rarely understood and had often used buried barrels with sewage leading to nowhere, probably directly into the lake.
“Likely no leach field,” muttered the inspector. “Even if there is one, which I highly doubt; knowing these old lake lots, it wouldn’t be a hundred feet from the lake so wouldn’t be usable anyway. You’ll have to convert this thing to a holding tank. But let’s see what’s in it.”
He pried up the lids and was suddenly silent.
“What’s the matter?” said the new owner.
“Uh….take a look yourself, Mr. Kelly.”
What Mr. Kelly saw was the remains of a body. A most unappealing sight.
The inspector dug out his phone to call the police.
“I-I think it’s a woman,” Kelly said. “The shoes.”
***
Some four years earlier, Rich Rizzo, called up his friend Peter Kozak and said, “I’m selling the cottage.”
Shocked after all the work Rich had put into constructing it and knowing how much the man loved his weekends at the lake, Peter said, “What? Why?”
“San Palmians are moving in next door.”
“What’s wrong with San Palmians?” Peter asked. “We went there on vacation a couple of years ago and the people were great.”
“Pete, you know I own apartment buildings in Newark. I know what I’m talking about. For some reason, our area has had an influx of them the past few years. They have constant barbecues going in the parking lots and play loud music all day and night long, bothering the other tenants – sick old people, mothers with babies, they don’t care. Believe me, they’ll do the same thing here. There goes my peaceful cove and fishing!”
When Peter told his wife what Rich had said, Liz replied, “He’s such a bigot! Good riddance if he wants to move, who cares?”
Then “the San Palmians” moved in and started to work on the place.
“What are they doing?” asked Liz.
Peter, who rode around the lake road daily, kept an expert eye on things. Retired now, he had been a commercial plumbing contractor in New Jersey before moving to Pennsylvania. He had built their own home and loved the peace of living on Fisher Lake.
“His name is Fabio Braga,” he said. “Apparently, he’s turning that little cottage into a three-story affair with five bathrooms, a bunch of bedrooms and two full decks.”
“Whoa,” said Liz. “How many people are in his family?”
“I think he has brothers,” Peter said. “Maybe they’re all planning to come up at the same time, who knows?”
It turned out that Fabio Braga was building an Air BnB. And soon extended families and church groups were renting the place for weeks or long weekends.
“Oh my god, that horrible music!” exclaimed Liz. “It’s so loud and clangy and blares from ten in the morning to ten at night! If only they’d play something I like - soul or blues or oldies, whatever. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such annoying stuff!”
“I guess it’s San Palmian.”
“Well, I looked up San Palmian music on Youtube and it’s actually pretty nice. That crap they’re playing must be from the bottom of the San Palmian barrel! So rude of them to assume we all want to listen to that racket! I hate to say it but Rich knew what he was talking about.”
That wasn’t all the San Palmian’s were doing. They broke every rule in the book on how to get along with neighbors around a lake.
“Well,” said Peter to his next-door neighbor, “What happened to a peaceful summer night with the dark starry sky overhead? I like to sit outside and watch it – you see falling stars and what all. But how can we do that now with all their blazing lights on all the time? Looks like a freakin’ cruise ship over there!”
“Not to mention,” said the neighbor, “that they feel they have to set off firecrackers every Saturday night. I have fibromyalgia; I need my sleep. Aren’t there any laws to prevent this?”
An additional problem was that the new Airbnb had an extremely inadequate septic system. The former owners had had no real understanding of its faults and believed that just upgrading the septic tank solved the problem. They did that, but then all they had was a fancier septic tank without a leach field and with a pipe leading into the regular ground facing the lake.
“Two Airbnbs now,” one member said with exasperation at the next lake association meeting. Right next to each other, though I can’t imagine how the Johnsons who bought Rich’s house are doing being right next to that Fabio circus. His site on Airbnb describes it as a peaceful cove for a quiet weekend, but wow.”
“I don’t hear any noise from the Braga place,” said Wendy Miller who lived on the Braga side of the lake several houses down.
“Nothing?” said Liz. “Seriously? It sounds like a full volume band that never rests. Twelve hours at a time!”
“Don’t hear it,” persisted Wendy.
“I don’t either,” said her neighbor, with an insinuating tone, implying that Liz was making the whole thing up.
Peter stepped in. “I think the problem is that the sound travels directly across the lake. You people have trees between you and Braga’s that muffle the sound.” He didn’t like the smug expression on Wendy’s face.
“Well, we don’t have a problem,” insisted her neighbor.
“I think we could mention it to him,” Wendy said. “I am sure if he knew he was bothering people, he’d turn it off!”
“Somehow I don’t think he will,” said Liz, “but if you think so, we’ll talk to him. Then we’ll see if you’re right.”
Like most of the lake association members, Fabio Braga did not attend the monthly Saturday meetings. For one thing, the times he himself as opposed to his renters appeared at the lake were usually during the week, during which he continued to upgrade the property, now having filled up most of the small lot with the building and driveway which could hold six cars closely packed in. The offending septic tank was buried in the small space between his house and what was once Rich’s place. It was only a short distance from the well there, which was against state regulations.
Peter, association secretary, went to talk to Fabio the following week. “Sorry to bother you,” he said to the man who was covering what was left of the ground with fake grass carpeting. “Some, of the residents here were disturbed by that loud music the last renting group played all the time. A lot of us who’ve lived here for years enjoy the quiet of nature. You know, bird sounds, fish slapping in the water, the quiet tick-tick of someone reeling in a fish. Also, some of us are old or get up to go to work early and need our sleep.”
Fabio, who seemed friendly, said, “It won’t happen again. And they weren’t renting; they’re my friends.”
The two shared a few more words and Peter left to report to Liz.
“We’ll see,” she said, being of a skeptical nature. “And I seriously doubt that those weren’t renters. Otherwise, why does he advertise on Airbnb where it shows the calendar with the dates people are there grayed out?”
The skeptic proved to be right. It wasn’t long before another group almost as large were at Fabio’s house for a week and they played the same clamorous music morning till night. Little kids darted about on tiny motor bikes, scaring the hell out of drivers on the lake road. Fire crackers boomed in the night, kids screamed in the water, drunken men yelled at the top of their lungs.
Peter’s friend Manny quickly crossed the lake on his fishing raft and asked one of the people there if they were renters and the person said that they were.
A lake association board meeting that would evolve into a yelling match was quickly held after Liz sent out a sarcastic group email suggesting that if people are going to force their music down everyone else’s throats, could they please make it soul or blues?
“Why don’t we just give Fabio the courtesy of asking him to lower the music instead of going behind his back?” said Wendy, all huffed up and madly typing into her phone. She was tall and blonde, wearing false eyelashes and a crisp white blouse tucked into chino pants, though being probably fifty pounds overweight, she would be better suited to stretch slacks and a slimming tunic.
“He has already been asked and he ignored it,” said Liz.
Manny repeated this.
Tempers rose. Wendy scowled and worked at her phone.
“Peter and I are going to test the lake water near his home for e coli,” announced Manny. “If the lake association doesn’t want to pay for it, we’ll pay ourselves.”
“And,” added Peter, “while I enjoy swimming in the lake very much, I’m not doing it anymore until we get the results back. Not interested in getting ‘monsters inside me’ or skin eating bacteria.”
Wendy worked herself up into a red-faced snit. “You people are horrible! Fabio is a nice person! He doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment!”
“Yeah?” said Manny. “If he’s so nice, why is he renting to crowds of people with a septic system designed for two and probably polluting the lake? How come he lies and says all those people aren’t renters?”
Wendy huffed out of the meeting while yelling something unintelligible and pointing at Peter and Manny.
“Does she never shut up?” Manny asked. “No wonder her husband never says a word.”
Peter, who continued his almost nightly drive around the lake, reported to Liz, “Wendy was at Fabio’s and the two of them deep in conversation. They were standing a foot apart and she had her hand on his arm.”
“Ah ha!” said Liz. “I suspected as much.”
“Why on earth did you suspect whatever you’re suspecting?”
“Just a hunch,” Liz said.
“She’s married.”
“To someone who never opens his mouth.”
Manny stopped by. “What the living crap?” he shouted. “That devil-woman called up the county regulations office and told them this whole thing was taken care of! Nothing more to worry about, she claimed. After all my running around government offices and figuring out where to report septic system abuses! I swear….now I have to do all that over again!”
“Devil Woman is a perfect description,” said Liz. “I’m imagining her right now upside down inside a septic tank. I mean since she thinks she knows more about them than you and Peter.”
“Good idea,” said Manny. “She’d look much better in that position than standing up with her mouth flapping!”
All of this (or most of it) would become known to the police after the unthinkable happened. They would hear it told by the main involved characters around Fisher Lake and those that weren’t directly involved but just enjoyed gossip. Except of course, the dead woman. No one would hear her version of things.
***
The two detectives arrived from Montbleu within the hour of the inspector’s and Mr. Kelly’s discovery.
“You’re lucky we were in the area,” said Lieutenant Char Perez. “The Sergeant here was just getting a root canal and I thought it best to drive him.”
Sergeant Booker, tall, black and resembling a movie star, had a numb mouth and slightly drooping lip.
“Feeling all right, Booker?” Char snapped and he mumbled in reply.
“Okay,” she said, looking down the hole, “the medical examiner is just behind us. She’ll get the vic out and off to her lair to perform an autopsy. I doubt there are identifying material on her but on the way, we found out who’s been missing around here for the past almost four years.”
“Yeah?” said the inspector. Mr. Kelly stood silently by.
She consulted her phone. “Wendy Miller. Or to be precise, Wendy Clattery Jamison Miller. Maiden name, former married name, etc. She lived at 79 Fisher Lake Drive. with her father, now deceased and husband, Kevin Miller. He has since sold the house and moved to Pittston. We have his number.”
Mr. Kelly looked more alarmed than he did a minute ago. “She went missing?”
Booker tried to talk but clearly his mouth wasn’t ready yet. Char shushed him.
“She up and disappeared on a Friday evening. Her husband was in Texas being trained for a position with the gas company here. He’s now living in the attached house next door to his mother. Anyway, there were several witnesses that he was in Texas at the time of his wife’s disappearance.”
“What about calls?” asked the inspector. “Weren’t they in touch by phone? If not, wouldn’t the husband be worried?”
“Apparently, they’d been arguing off and on and weren’t exactly speaking. He’d said things had been rocky lately. All this is public knowledge. It was in the papers back then.”
“I wouldn’t have seen it,” said Kelly. “We live in Trenton, New Jersey right now. We were hoping to retire here but now I’m having serious doubts about this septic system, not to mention rotting human bodies in it.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” said Char. “I’m curious about this system. Is this a holding or septic tank? My dad once explained all that stuff to me. With a septic tank, you gotta have a leach field, right?”
“The seller didn’t say anything about it,” said Kelly.
“So, you bought a place out in the country on a lake and never knew what kind of waste disposal system it has?”
“I just assumed-“
Char thought she heard Booker snort, but was afraid to look at him.
“Okay, who was the owner before?”
Kelly was sheepish now. Dulce Braga. She lives in New Jersey.”
“I’ll need her contact information, Mr. Kelly.”
A white van pulled up and out piled the CSI team, led by Char’s former nemesis, Robin Sloan. Lately though, Char had softened towards her since the medical examiner had lost her politician husband to Covid. The woman, usually meticulously dressed, now looked a bit disheveled. “Septic tank, huh,” she said. “Delightful.”
“Maybe they should pay you more,” Char joked.
Booker said nothing. Char knew he was feeling frustrated. His cheek was swollen a bit.
The crew raised the body out and laid it on plastic, then erected their tent around it.
Char and Booker sat in their car while Char ate a peanut butter sandwich and Booker looked miserable.
“You can drink, right?” said Char. She handed him a water bottle, which he tried to consume but a trickle ran down his chin and onto his immaculate cornflower blue shirt. Char refrained from chuckling.
After a half hour or so, Robin signaled for them. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say she was strangled. Almost breaking her neck. But so much has decomposed, I can’t be certain. She was blonde; there was still some hair. Sixty-eight inches tall. Dental records will enlighten us. Her teeth look good; she took care of them. Guessing in her forties by the looks of them. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can be more definite.”
Char thanked her and looked up Dulce Braga in Jersey City. “Well, whaddya know? She popped right up.” She pressed in the number, identified herself and described what was going on.
“I haven’t been there for almost three years,” the woman said.
“You and your husband owned it together?”
Silence.
“Might as well tell me all you know. All I have to do is visit the courthouse.”
“Yes, Fabio. He is my husband - was, I mean.” The woman had a thick Hispanic accent.
“You’re divorced?”
“Yeah, finally. He left me back then, was in lust or something with that woman.” She said “woman” as if spitting the word across the room. Then for ages we couldn’t sell the damn place since I didn’t know where he was.”
“And now you do?”
“For a while, long enough for him to sign the place over and then he disappeared again. I think he went back to San Palma. I haven’t heard from him and don’t want to.”
“You bought him out?”
Dulce hesitated. “Well…we’d hardly paid off anything. There was a mortgage. There wasn’t much to sign over.”
“He maybe felt it owed it to you? After being in love with someone else?”
“Maybe,” Dulce said, so quietly that Char almost couldn’t hear her.
“Who was the woman?”
Dulce came back to life. “Wendy Miller, that evil bitch who worked on him till he gave in! Big fat American whore!”
“Wendy Miller,” repeated Char. She glanced over at Booker who was gingerly feeling his jaw.
“Yeah, thought she was Queen of the Lake! Always sticking her nose in other people’s business!”
“Thanks for the name, Dulce,” Char said. “I’ll be in touch if I need you again.”
“Wendy Miller?” said Booker, who was beginning to sound more normal.
“Pretty sure she’s the vic,” said Char. “Let’s go visit the husband. You feel alright?”
“Not a hundred percent,” he said, “but good enough.”
Her partner was the best, but she didn’t flood him with praise. She knew she was half in love with him, but better he didn’t know. One good thing, since he and his wife separated, he didn’t mind working overtime. Even though he had a large extended family, she could tell he was lonely.
“Longish ride to Pittston. I’ll call him now.”
Kevin’s mother answered the door. Though she must have been nearing eighty, she seemed vigorous. “Kevin’s on his way home from work,” she said. “Have some iced tea?”
They agreed. She motioned them to the kitchen and waved at the table for them to sit. Booker’s mouth had its feeling back and he looked ravenous. As if reading his mind, Mrs. Miller sat a plate of peanut butter cookies in front of him. “Eat up,” she ordered.
“Mrs. Miller, what can you tell me about your former daughter-in-law?”
The lady looked about ready to burst. She nudged the cookie plate closer to Booker who obliged her by stuffing one into his mouth to chew on one side, and sat down. “Never could stand her,” she said firmly. “She was a trouble maker from the get-go.”
“How so?” asked Char.
She saw Booker go for another cookie. Normally, he was reserved, but since he hadn’t been able to eat since early morning, she understood his behavior.
“A busybody, a know-it-all, batshit crazy. You know they kicked her out of some women’s club up in Montblue. I don’t know what it was but she was getting everyone riled up. I knew about her from when she was in high school. I worked in the office there a few years. If a bunch of girls were ranting and raving about something, you knew right off that Wendy was in the middle of it. When Kevin said he was involved with her, I tried to warn him. He was easy pickings after his divorce. I had already moved down here to be near my sister and couldn’t do much to stop it. They lived together a couple of years and then up and got married, a quickie thing, justice of the peace. Told me after the deed was done. His own mother.”
“Did you know about her affair?”
“You mean the thing with the San Palmian? The one running that giant Airbnb that got people all riled up?”
“That’s the one,” said Booker, now able to talk clearly. Good to hear his rich, deep voice.
“Of course, I know about it. Kevin was on the phone to me about five times a day. At first, he didn’t suspect anything, just thought she was defending the underdog to the bigots around the lake. Some of them were all pissed off about the giant hotel he had going with a septic system designed for a small family, not to mention the loud music and screaming kids. I don’t think they gave two hoots if the offender was San Palmian, Chinese or Martian, they just wanted the noise stopped and no sewage leaking into the lake. But she tried to come off as Miss Holier-Than-Thou and then, I guess she and that Fabio were together too many times supposedly working on the problem and one thing led to another.”
“Did Kevin leave her right away?” asked Char.
“He put up with it for a month or two and then took a job with the natural gas company. They sent him to Texas for training. He was down there for about five months. It was about four months in to that when Wendy up and disappeared, we assumed with Fabio. His wife claimed that wasn’t true. She kept running the Airbnb off and on for a little while and said her husband had had a nervous breakdown and was recuperating with his mother back in San Palma.”
“So,” said Booker, “during all that time, no one saw Fabio at the lake?” The cookies had disappeared but one.
“That’s right.”
“And Kevin can prove he was in Texas up till her disappearance.”
"We proved all that to the police back then when she vanished,” said Mrs. Miller. “I take it you two weren’t on the force then?”
“I worked in Easton then,” said Char, “and Booker was in Scranton. They hired us two and a half years ago when they expanded here. But I’ll check the records from back then.”
Kevin Miller arrived and told them the same story he'd told the police over three years before.
“Thanks so much, Mrs. Miller. And for the cookies,” said Char when they were done.
The old lady got up without a word, opened a drawer and took out a zip bag into which she dropped a pile of the cookies and handed them to Booker. He smiled crookedly and accepted the gift.
***
At the Spring Diner in Montblue, Char chowed down on a blue cheese burger while Booker, a health nut according to Char, ate a green salad with grilled chicken. “Okay,” she said, “Kevin checked out from Officer Wolfe’s notes. We could call Kevin's old bosses down there but I think Wolfe was pretty thorough. I think we can cross Kevin off as a suspect. Other likely choices are Fabio’s wife Dulce, Fabio himself and, if the vic was hated so much, other residents of the lake.”
“I hope the people who lived around the lake then still do now,” said Booker.
Most of them did. Especially the major players, Peter and Liz Kozak and Manny Bell. Peter and Manny were now eighty and eighty-one and Liz edging toward that. Char managed to round them up at the Kozak’s large, two-story house overlooking Fisher Lake. The five of them seated themselves around the Kozak’s large kitchen table
“Are you aware,” said Char, “that the body of Wendy Miller has been removed from the property recently sold by Dulce Braga to Randell Kelly?”
“No shit,” said Manny. “So that’s where the old bitch ended up. Fitting she should be buried there, haha.” His grin was so wide it’s a wonder his face didn’t split in half.
“Manny!” admonished Liz. “You’re talking to the police! They’ll think you did it!”
“Maybe I did,” he continued to joke.
“Maybe you did?” said Booker, fully recovered from his root canal and looking his usual spiffy self.
“Nah,” said Manny, apparently not the least bit afraid of the cops. “The woman was a demon from hell, but I’m not the murdering type. Prison wouldn’t agree with me. I need my easy chair and my dog. I don’t mind that she’s dead though. How did the harpy kick it?”
“Well, according to the coroner’s report, someone strangled her,” said Char.
“And what?” said Manny. “Buried her on Fabio’s property?”
“Not exactly,” said Char. “She was found in the septic tank.”
“Holy shit,” said Manny.
Char and Booker exchanged looks and she started in on Peter. “And how did you feel about Wendy Miller, Mr. Kozak?”
He was perfectly calm. “I didn’t like the woman but would never wish her an early demise and certainly not in that horrible manner.”
“They tell me you were a plumbing contractor?”
“Yep,” said Peter.
“You would know all about getting one of those septic tank lids off.”
“Along with half or more of the county,” Peter retorted.
“My husband is a kind and wonderful person!” his wife snapped. “He would never murder someone, geesh! If there is anyone who knows how to control his temper, it would be Peter. I’m the one who gets all worked up about things, not him!”
“Maybe you didn’t like Wendy much, Mrs. Kozak?”
Liz rolled her eyes. “Seriously? A little woman in her seventies is going to take down a big fat female like Wendy Miller, dig down and open a septic tank and dump her three-ton dead body into it? Get real. And by the way, my husband has arthritis of the lower spine and does not risk injuring his back by lifting things! Surgery is the last thing he wants.”
“Do you know anyone who might want to have done Wendy Miller harm?” asked Booker.
Liz guffawed. “Apparently, a lot of people hated her. Not just here but we heard she'd been asked to leave a couple of other organizations. Kept stirring up trouble, making mountains out of molehills, causing endless meetings that went nowhere. I can’t imagine how her husband stood her.”
“Tell us about her dealings with Fabio Braga,” said Char.
Liz and Peter looked at each other. “We don’t really know,” said Peter.
“Oh, hell, we do,” said Manny. “She was always over there plotting whatever with him.”
“But maybe it was just about the septic situation,” said Peter. “She was all for protecting him from us supposed bigots.”
“I saw them once,” said Liz to Peter. “I told you about it but you said I was imagining things.”
“What do you mean, you saw them once?” said Booker.
“There’s a dirt road that cuts off from Rt. 82. The kind of road kids go out on at night to drink beer and what all. It’s a short cut from 82 to another road closer to our lake. If it’s dry out, sometimes I take it on my way home from town.”
“I told you not to,” said Peter firmly. “You could get stuck out there.”
Liz shrugged. “I know but what would life be without little risks? Anyway, her car was parked on it, off to the side, partly in the weeds and he was in it with her.”
Everyone leaned forward. “What were they doing?” said Char.
“Just sitting there, but then they would have heard and seen me coming and changed position if anything risqué were going on. The question is, what were they doing out there together?”
“What time of day was it?”
“Early afternoon on a weekday.”
“Didn’t Wendy work?”
“Yeah, some kind of administration job concerning placement of foster kids. But she worked a lot from home.”
Booker’s finger danced on his phone and brought up her old job and title. “Relatively good position,” he said.
“So,” said Char, “they had things to talk about in a secluded place. Couldn’t discuss whatever it was at their homes, apparently.”
“Yeah,” said Manny with a sly grin, “spouses might have been there.”
***
“I am so hungry today,” said Char. She and Booker were back at the station making calls and doing “paperwork,” though why they still called it that, she didn’t know. It was convenient to have an old boyfriend in the Edison, NJ police department who still felt guilty for dumping her. Milking this for all its worth, she could get him to find out info on Jersey citizens.
“We just ate a couple of hours ago,” Booker said. “Your metabolism must run a hundred miles an hour.”
“But then why am I not skinny?”
“You’re fine,” he said firmly.
“Let’s go get a bite and decide how we’re going to interview Dulce Braga.”
To do so, they would need to drive to New Jersey. According to LinkedIn, the woman worked at a travel agency in Jersey City. They checked the agency’s hours and Char said, “Road trip tomorrow?”
Meanwhile, Char received a call from the medical examiner with her report. "Definitely strangled," said Robin. "Can't get any DNA from what's left of the finger nails. Teeth show it is definitely Wendy Miller."
"Thanks," said Char, then replayed the info to Booker.
They left at eight AM and were in Jersey City by eleven. Locating the agency was another matter but eventually they found a parking place and walked in the door. Dulce Braga was at her desk with her name plate in front. They flashed their badges and she stood up.
She was no taller than five feet, if that. Probably ninety-five pounds. Not likely to have the strength to strangle a much larger woman, bind up her body and pitch her into a septic tank. Let alone get the lid off and on. Unless she had help.
“We need to know where Fabio is,” Char said.
“I told you, I don’t know. We’re divorced and not in communication.”
“What about the kids? Doesn’t he care about the kids?”
“I-I don’t know. He sort of just left them.”
“Really? Well, it says here on this paper I printed out that he makes child support payments to you from a bank in Florida. He must have employment down there to be so regular with those checks.”
Dulce was silent while several expressions passed over her face.
“Seems he’s living in Miami, driving a truck for the Serrano Brothers Market. They’re having him brought in for questioning as we speak.”
“We-we’re not together anymore, we’re divorced.”
“So why are you covering for him?”
Dulce paused, then said, “If he gets arrested or anything, I won’t get any child support. I need it to take care of the kids.”
“I understand,” said Char, “but hiding a suspect or covering for him is a crime in itself. Maybe you’d better start being honest.”
Dulce called another agent to come back to the office and cover her while she went with Char and Booker to the restaurant next door. After ordering a glass of iced tea, she started to cry.
“It’s been a nightmare. I love my kids but if I'd known how things were going to be, I sure wouldn’t have married Fabio.” She paused, then went on. “He has serious mental issues. He didn’t explain it all until after we were married. I knew he took meds but I thought it was for being bipolar which didn’t scare me but no, it wasn’t. He is paranoid schizophrenic. Hearing voices, hallucinations, the whole thing. He had them under control, but then the meds stopped working and they couldn’t seem to get it straightened out. He started to be hell to live with, started spending more and more time up at the lake working on that damn Airbnb and wouldn’t answer the phone. Then he expected me to handle the reservation stuff and all that on top of taking care of the kids and working at the agency.”
“Did he threaten you in any way when his meds weren’t working?” Booker asked.
“That wasn’t a real long period, only about six months once that started. He was up at the lake most of the time. One time I took the kids and went to my cousin’s house, but then we went back home. He never really hurt us.”
“When did the affair with Wendy Miller start?”
“About a year after we got the Airbnb up and running. People on the lake started complaining about everything. Some of them were mean. We didn’t mean to pollute the lake; we just didn’t know about that stuff. We didn’t know when the people sold us the place that the septic system was bad. We have city water here and just didn’t think about it.”
“And yet,” said Char, “You sold the place to Randall Kelly knowing the problem.”
She looked guilty. “Well…Fabio was going to have the septic tank turned into a holding tank but then everything happened and he…” She trailed off.
“He what?” said Char.
She sighed. “He did something to Wendy and he said was going far away and don’t come after him. He said he would send money and he did, after a while. It was really hard until he did but my cousins helped us”
“Back up,” said Booker. “What did he say he did to Wendy?”
She looked away. “I don’t really know. I didn’t want to know.”
“Come on, Dulce.”
She shook her head. “He didn’t like it when women got aggressive. She was pushy.”
“Did he confess to you?”
“No,” Dulce said. “He just said he had to get far away.”
“Dulce,” said Char.
“Okay, he could get nuts. I was just lucky to get a divorce. He gave me the lake house. It took six months ago to get that all straightened out so I could sell the horrible thing.”
“Did you own a house here in Jersey?”
“No, we lived…I still do…in an apartment.”
Booker said, “If you had to guess, what do you think he did to Wendy?”
She sighed deeply. “Well, since I heard she disappeared, I’m thinking what you’re thinking.”
“And why,” said Char, “didn’t the police during the original investigation think that too?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
After what felt like a never-ending ride home from New Jersey and Char had dropped Booker off at his apartment, she stayed up reading over the former investigation. Why had they dropped it without a more serious pursuit?
According to notes left by Branden Wolfe, the officer in charge at the time, it was due to pressure from a now deceased judge who'd property on the lake and then Officer Wolfe suddenly died. An aneurism or something. She called Booker to tell him.
“Why did the judge want the investigation stopped?” asked Booker hoarsely. She must have woken him up.
“Wolfe mentions that the judge’s own cottage’s septic system was the old kind, in other words a bad one, and that several other people near him had the same thing and he was sick of all the ruckus whipped up by Wendy and the others we interviewed. ‘I come to the lake for some damn peace,” he apparently told Wolfe’s higher ups. Some of them had lake cottages too, though not at Fisher Lake and they didn’t want things stirred up either. ‘We don’t have the manpower for this kind of thing,’ Wolfe’s boss told him. Probably Wolfe had planned to continue on his own time but then he died.”
“Sad story,” said Booker.
“It’s nice that I’m pretty much the boss now,” said Char.
Booker laughed.
The Miami police arrested Fabio a few days later and had him brought to Pennsylvania for arraignment. Apparently, he had confessed.
“I’m taking you out for a good dinner,” Char told Booker. “We’ll go to Cooper’s and get some decent seafood.”
Booker didn't decline.
Margaret Karmazin’s credits include stories published in literary and SF magazines, including Rosebud, Chrysalis Reader, North Atlantic Review, Mobius, Confrontation, Pennsylvania Review, The Speculative Edge, Aphelion and Another Realm. Her stories in The MacGuffin, Eureka Literary Magazine, Licking River Review and Mobius were nominated for Pushcart awards. She has stories included in several anthologies, published a YA novel, REPLACING FIONA, a children’s book, FLICK-FLICK & DREAMER and a collection of short stories, RISK
