Page 30 of Water's Edge

“Do you happen to have a name for the woman who rents from Joe Bobbsey?” I ask, thinking I’d better be specific. Yes-or-no questions are best.

“Her name is Leann Truitt.”

“Do you have an address for Leann Truitt?”

Ronnie writes in her notebook.

“Yep. You won’t be able to find it without Joe Bobbsey. There aren’t any roads to his cabins. Just a trail through the woods. Not even a trail to some of them.”

“Where are you?”

Lonigan tells me.

“I’m almost in Port Hadlock now. I’ll meet you in a bit.”

“Go to the Nordland General Store and I’ll find you.”

I disconnect the call.

“We got our first good lead,” Ronnie says. She looks excited. It may pan out. May not. Either way, we have to check.

Then we need to run down Robbie Boyd.

Sixteen

On the way, Ronnie gives me an oral history of Marrowstone Island she’s pulled up on her phone. If that thing weren’t so useful, I’d be tempted to pitch it out the window into Puget Sound.

“Marrowstone is named for Marrowstone Point, discovered in 1792 by George Vancouver, a British explorer. He called it Marrowstone because of the hard clay-like soil.”

I don’t tell her to shut up. She’s excited and this seems to be how she blows off steam.

“The census shows 884 residents. There are no cities. Just a couple of state parks. Four hundred and thirty-two households and only ten percent of them have children under eighteen years old. Can you imagine?”

“Wow!” I say.

I’m totally uninterested.

“No resident is under the poverty line. That’s amazing.”

“Sure is.”

We cross the causeway to Indian Island.

Kilisut Harbor spreads out to our left. I see a sign for beach cottages telling me to turn right onto Robbins Road, but that’s the wrong end of the island. I head north where State Route 116 is Flagler Road and follow Kilisut Harbor for a long while before the island makes a big thumb and creates Mystery Bay. According to Ronnie’s GPS, the Nordland General Store is right there at Mystery Bay.

Much of the area has been turned into farmland and vineyards, with a scattering of small businesses and its very own RV park. A road sign for Mystery Bay is coming up, and another, bigger sign for the Nordland General Store. I follow the directions and end up in the gravel parking lot in front of a one-level flat-roofed building. The wood-paneled structure has been added on to several times. The general store is on one side, Mystery Bay Sails and Canvas in the middle, and, on the end, is a post office. A boat rental place is across the street on the bay. All it needs is a gas pump, a garage, and a church for a complete community. One-stop shopping.

Next to the Taurus are a couple of vans loaded with camping gear and kids and older couples who must be the grandparents. The grandparents look frazzled but happy. I don’t know who my grandparents are. On my mother’s side I know my grandparents were awful people that more or less ran my mother off when she was sixteen, pregnant, and scared. I don’t want to know them. On my biological father’s side, I never went down that path. I never cared as long as they weren’t a threat to me or my brother.

Ronnie twists in the seat and looks around. “Didn’t Trooper Lonigan say there was a restaurant here?”

I see signs in the window advertising only Port Townsend microbrewed beer. Pass. I also don’t see a state patrol car. We get out and go inside to find Lonigan.

Inside is nothing like I imagined from the car. It’s spacious, with white-painted shelves and freezer cases stocked with anything and everything a person would need to grocery shop and stock up on beer or wine to boot. There are also household items: toaster ovens, coffeepots, both electric and the old-type percolators, wire potato mashers, hand blenders, dishes and mugs and silverware. Looking out through the front picture windows, I can see the porch with its rocking chairs and benches and a table where kids are playing checkers. On the inside, in front of the window, are a full coal bucket and scoop beside a cast-iron potbellied stove that must date to the nineteenth century. Grouped around and facing the stove and windows are a half dozen wooden chairs. The chairs are heavy, well-made, and well used.

There is no one in the store. “Hello? Anyone here?”

A woman, maybe forty, maybe fifty, shorter than me and heavier than me by about forty pounds, comes up from behind the shellacked wooden counter. She pats her silver hair into place and pulls the loose strands back and twists them into a ponytail.

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