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  Also By Linda Crowder

  The Deadly Art of Deception | A Caribou King Mystery | Linda Crowder

  Dedication: | To my amazing family. Without your constant encouragement, I would never have been able to come this far. | Thanks! | Linda

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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  Also By Linda Crowder

  The Deadly Art of Deception

  A Caribou King Mystery

  Linda Crowder

  This book is fiction. All characters, events and organizations portrayed in this novel are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2016 by Linda Crowder

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  For information, email Cozy Cat Press, [email protected] or visit our website at: www.cozycatpress.com

  Cover design by Paula Ellenberger

  www.paulaellenberger.com

  Dedication:

  To my amazing family. Without your constant encouragement, I would never have been able to come this far.

  Thanks!

  Linda

  Chapter 1

  Icy-blue sea, rugged mountains, eagle drifting in an endless Alaskan sky, brown bear just emerging, lumbering toward the shore, body hidden by a boulder deposited some long ago day by a retreating glacier. Studying the play of light and shadow, I could almost feel myself standing on the shoreline, as much a part of the landscape as the rocks and the trees.

  “It’s a little plain, don’t you think?” The woman’s nasal tone snapped me back to reality. I was standing a respectful step behind my customers, ready to answer questions but never pressing. I’d shown them four paintings, but one was too big, another too small. A collage of native totems was pronounced too colorful, and this nature scene was too plain. A wild thought danced through my mind about how I’d like to respond to her, but I maintained a practiced, neutral appearance. I’d been running The Broken Antler Gallery for three seasons, and I knew buyers sometimes disparaged a work as a ploy to negotiate a lower price.

  “I like it,” said her husband. I felt a rush of fondness for him but kept my expression reserved. Had he come in alone, he would have bought the first painting he saw and tomorrow morning I’d be crating it up for shipment to their home in Hoboken, New Jersey. Instead, we’d spent the past twenty minutes trudging from painting to painting, looking for the elusive one that might satisfy his wife. I’d begun to despair that they would buy anything at all. I let my eyes wander to the other couples who were milling around the exhibit space, debating whether it was time to extricate myself from New Jersey and seek a more promising state.

  “It’s more than we wanted to spend,” said the wife, drawing my attention back to her. She was more formally dressed than most of the visitors we had in Coho Bay. While her husband was wearing jeans and a brown leather bomber jacket, she was dressed in delicate fawn-colored slacks with a vibrant green and gold silk blouse and matching jacket. She was perhaps a bit older and a tad rounder than the designer had in mind for the outfit, but she wore it well, and I felt a twinge of envy.

  The shift in tone caught me by surprise. Apparently her husband’s opinion carried more sway than I’d supposed. I was happy they were going to buy, but I kicked myself for misjudging them. When you make your living selling big-ticket items, it pays to recognize the signals that separate buyers from bystanders. I had artists who were counting on me for their livelihood, and I took that responsibility seriously.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, my pulse picking up a beat. “What were you hoping to spend?” The price of art is negotiable, and I made it comfortable for buyers to make an offer if they liked an artist’s work but not the price tag. Between what the artists hoped to get and what I knew they would accept for a work was a sweet spot where all parties would feel they got a fair deal.

  “I was thinking five hundred.”

  I hid my irritation. I know that some people feel the need to start with a low-ball offer because it’s the only way they feel they’ve gotten the best price. If they started higher and I accepted, they’d feel like they left money on the table. Still, there’s low and then there’s insultingly low, and her bid was insulting. “This is an original work by a well-known and respected artist. I couldn’t accept less than three thousand.”

  “What about the first one?” asked the husband before his wife could make a counter-offer.

  “The one with the view of Denali? I could accept eight hundred for that one. It’s the first year I’ve exhibited that artist, so she’s just starting to make a name for herself. Her work has been so well received I doubt you’ll find such a low price by next year.”

  “We’ll take it,” he said, pulling out his wallet. “Does your price include shipping?”

  “I’m sorry to say it doesn’t. As you can imagine, shipping anything to and from Alaska is quite expensive, but I only charge you what the shipping company charges me. I’d be happy to e-mail you a copy of their invoice for your records.”

  “That will be fine,” he said.

  I rang up the sale, and they left the gallery happy. I knew the artist would be thrilled when she saw the price we’d settled on for the painting. She’d had a wonderful debut, and I was looking forward to a long and mutually beneficial partnership. After the couple left, I took down the painting and tucked it into my back room. I selected another painting from my shrinking stock and hurried back out to hang it, greeting a pair of women who were carrying telltale shopping bags from several of the shops that lined the harbor.

  “Do you have any jewelry?” asked the younger of the two women.

  “Yes, I have a charming line of jewelry handmade by a certified tribal artist who lives just outside town.” I escorted them to the display case and left them admiring necklaces, rings, and broaches while I hung the painting and welcomed more customers into the gallery. Customers come in waves, flooding the shops as each new tender docks at the pier.

  In Coho Bay, there were only two seasons that mattered—cruise ship and winter. Securing a spot on the cruising calendar had been the town’s equivalent of winning the lottery. Each cruise line pays a fee to anchor offshore and ferry passengers to the town’s refurbished dock. Shops like mine do enough business from May to September to carry us through the winter. I showcase the work of local artists, most of whom are native to southern Alaska. Since the ships started coming, a growing number of artists have been drawn here in search of backwoods inspiration. Many of them abandon Coho Bay when snow flies, but those who stay grow to cherish this coastline almost as much as those of us who were born here.

  Cruise ship season is insanely busy. The first passengers arrive at the dock at eight in the morning and there is a steady flow of cruisers
coming and going until the last tender leaves. We are one of the smallest ports on the Alaska tour, but one ship a day, six days a week, is more than enough business to satisfy us. Whether you own a shop or take cruisers on excursions in and around the bay, you’re running all day long. On Thursdays, instead of relaxing, we all race to do the personal business that accumulates during the week. Nobody sleeps during cruise ship season, but we’re not complaining. We get to meet people from all over the world who are always happy, because how can you not be happy on a cruise, and we all benefit from the economic windfall.

  I was ringing up another sale and keeping an eye on the dozen or so customers who were drifting around the sales floor when I saw Taylor walk through the door. I dropped the credit card in my hand and had to duck under the sales counter to retrieve it. I swiped it three times before the reassuring message popped up on the screen to let me know the charge was processing. Thankfully my customer looked more amused than annoyed. “I’m so sorry. Sometimes the reader has a mind of its own.”

  That’s right, Cara, I thought. Throw the reader under the bus. It won’t mind. Somehow, I managed to complete the sale. I might even have remembered to thank her, but I wouldn’t have bet on it.

  Taylor was standing a few steps in from the entryway, looking at me with a bemused expression. I had only taken a few steps toward her when a customer called me over with a question about a watercolor. I smiled and shrugged at Taylor, who waved her hand at me. Customers came first, and she understood that. As I answered questions with half my brain, the other half buzzed with questions of my own, but there was no time to ask. It was late in the season, and my two assistants had gone back to school in Anchorage, leaving me swimming in a sea of customers. I knew she’d answer my questions eventually, but having to wait was sheer torture.

  I sold the watercolor, then a small bronze casting of the enormous grizzly bear sculpture that graced the town square. The casting was my best-selling piece, with the proceeds going to Out of the Darkness, a charitable foundation which funded mental health services to help residents get through the long, dark Alaskan winters. The artist who created the sculpture had lost his own battle with depression, and his family had established the foundation in his memory.

  By the time the bell on my door finally stopped ringing, Taylor had gone, but I knew where she’d be. I shoved the day’s deposit into a bank bag and rushed out, locking the gallery behind me. I stopped dead when I caught sight of the sun sinking over the bay, deepening the shadows around me. My sister tells me that I should have a bumper sticker that says, I brake for nature. She’s run me over more than a few times because I stopped suddenly to look at a flower or a tree or the way the mist rises from the water in the winter. I don’t know why she gets mad. I’m the one with the bruises.

  I breathed in the intoxicating mixture of sea salt, pine, and fresh-caught fish. Coho Bay was named for the salmon that had provided the majority of the town’s income before the cruise ships. My parents had come here in the 1980s, craving a simple life close to nature. Bored by nature, as only a teenager can be, I had badgered them until they agreed to send me to college “outside,” as Alaskans refer to the unfortunate other states. After one lonely year in Seattle, I had come home and finished my degree in Anchorage.

  My urgency forgotten, I strolled along the wooden sidewalks that cruisers found so quaint. The old-timers had shaken their heads at the downtown merchants when we tore out the old cement sidewalks to install them, but they turned out to be surprisingly practical, standing up well to both the salt spray and wide swings in temperature. I passed the shuttered stores and outfitter shops, and stopped to drop my deposit into the night box at the bank. I crossed the road to Melody’s Place, Coho Bay’s only restaurant, smiling in anticipation of good food and lively conversation.

  I pushed open the door and was engulfed in silence. Where there should have been a confused din of voices all trying to talk at once, each man and woman striving to tell a story funnier than the last, there was a deafening void. The tables were full, but the faces were grim. They stared up at me, some eyes questioning, some accusing. In classic Hollywood fashion, I spun around to see what they were looking at, but there was only me.

  Snapping out of my shock, I walked into the crowded dining room and looked for Mel, who should have been bustling back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room. I found her, but there was no bustle. She was leaning against the back counter, as silent as her customers, surveying the room. Her face was stormy, but it relaxed when she saw me. She nodded toward the barstool that was my customary spot. Tonight it was occupied. Taylor. At least now I understood the silence.

  Crossing the room, I greeted friends at every table I passed, bantering gently, nudging them back to life. My gesture had the desired effect, and by the time I reached the counter, there was a murmur of quiet conversation throughout the room. “Hey, Mel,” I said with a cheer I didn’t quite feel.

  “Bent and I figured you’d want your dinner to go tonight.” She handed me a plate wrapped in aluminum foil. Around that was a clean dish towel to keep the hot plate from burning me on the way home. I heard the room grow quiet again. I pictured a hundred eyes focused on me, a hundred ears attuned to the one conversation they were itching to hear.

  “Yeah, thanks. Tay, you ready?” I took the plate, and as I did, Mel squeezed my hand.

  “Thanks, Cara,” she whispered.

  Taylor slid off the stool, and I led her through the gauntlet. As we passed, fifty heads dropped and forks worked noisily. I knew the room would explode as soon as we were out of earshot, but let them get it out of their system. A little gossip added spice to life in a small town.

  Taylor and I walked in silence until we reached the gallery. We turned to walk around the side of the rustic log building, and in spite of the million questions I was dying to ask her, my mind took a detour. Dad, Johnny, and I, with a little help from assorted friends and relatives, had built the gallery out of wood harvested from our own land and cut into beams and floorboards and cabinets at Lennon Millworks. It took months of backbreaking effort, a lot of laughter and a broken finger—Dad’s, not mine—to turn the trees into a roomy gallery with an apartment upstairs. We weren’t always sure we’d finish, but we’d roughed it in before snow flew, and by the time the first ship anchored offshore the following May, we had been ready. We weren’t the most skillful builders on the bay, but every inch of that building carried pride of workmanship.

  We’d made a great team, the three of us. Then Taylor had flown in from Seattle to help me get the gallery stocked for the first season and... well, that was three years ago. No sense in crying over spilt milk. I opened the door and promptly crashed into two oversized suitcases that were sitting in the entryway. “Cripes, Tay!” I grabbed one foot and hopped around on the other.

  “Sorry. I didn’t want to bother you, so I just popped these in on my way to Mel’s.”

  “You could have taken them upstairs,” I said, still hopping, which was quite a feat considering how small my entryway was and the fact that Taylor’s suitcases were taking up most of it. “I think I broke my toe.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic.” She stepped gracefully over the small mountain of suitcases and started up the steps. “I’ll bring them up later, that is, if you’ll let me stay.”

  “Tay, you know you’re always welcome here.” I stopped hopping and gingerly put weight on my offending foot. It was sore, but it held, and I followed her a little less gracefully over the suitcases and up the steps. Those steps had been unexpectedly hard to build. Dad had put them in, torn them out, and put them in again twice before he declared that the uneven rise gave the place character. “I wish you’d let me know you were coming. I would have moved your renter into one of Dad’s cabins.”

  “Who’s at the house?”

  “Mr. Peterson. You remember him.”

  “The writer?”

  “The banker. He’s the only one who thinks he’s a writer.” Mr. Peterso
n had been coming to Coho Bay for fifteen years, working on the novel he never seemed to finish. Sometimes he stayed in one of Dad’s cabins, but he preferred the houses on the far side of the bay. “I knew you wouldn’t want strangers living there, so when he asked about taking the house for the summer, I jumped. I’m heading out at the end of the season to get him. We can move you in at the same time.”

  Taylor nodded and wandered over to the tiny kitchen. “It’s my own fault. I didn’t know I was coming until I was here.”

  That was typical Taylor. “I don’t have a guest room, but the couch is all yours. Unless you’d rather stay in one of the cabins. I have a couple empty right now.”

  Taylor made a face. “Running water?”

  “When the catchment tank’s full. Dad and I put composting toilets in over the winter though. Renters were complaining about having to use an outhouse, can you imagine?” I laughed at the look of horror on her face. Impulsively, I put my plate on the table and wrapped my arms around her. “I’ve missed you, Tay! I’m so glad you’re back.”

  Taylor pulled away and walked across the room and stood looking out at the bay, where the sun was sending up flares of orange and red and gold. My father and I had put in a full wall of windows to take advantage of that view, and it was breathtaking. I only lived in the apartment during the season, but that view always tempted me to make it my home year-round. “I had no place else to go.”

  Her distress disturbed me, but I knew she’d only tell me what was bothering her when she was ready. The aroma of moose burger and onion rings made my mouth water, so I sat down to eat my dinner. Bent makes the absolute best burgers in town, and that’s saying something in a town where most people make their own burgers from whatever meat they happen to have in the freezer. I’ve had burgers made from moose, deer, bear (don’t try it), and even my namesake, caribou, but moose beats the others hands down. I love to hunt, and I love to eat, but there’s no way even I could eat four or five hundred pounds of meat by myself. I give whatever I get to Bent, who expertly butchers it and keeps it in his home freezer. Hunting regulations prohibit him from serving wild game in the restaurant, but since I’m Mel’s baby sister and he never charges me for my meals, he can feed me without breaking any rules.