Lost in the Wild Read online

  “Lost in the Wild”

  A Cozy Mystery

  Lost in Alaska Series

  Volume Six

  Leigh Mayberry

  © 2021

  Leigh Mayberry

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Products or brand names mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders or companies. The cover uses licensed images & are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are simply models.

  Edition v1.00 (2021.05.10)

  Special thanks to the following volunteer readers who helped with proofreading: Kari Wellborn, Dick B, RB, Big Kidd and those who assisted but wished to be anonymous. Thank you so much for your support.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter One

  Memorial Day in Alaska was a big deal. In Kinguyakkii, a bustling rural community thirty-three miles above the Arctic Circle, it was the kind of celebration time that many villagers appreciated. It was a national holiday, which meant the post office, schools, and government closed. It was a time for many Alaskans to honor not only their fallen heroes from military service but to honor their fallen community members. In all matters culturally significant, they celebrated the anniversary of a person’s death for years following their lost friends and family. No one put a label on the holiday or branded it for a single purpose. For people in the City of Northern Lights, it was a reason to get together, and party like it was the end times.

  The local grocery and goods store, Alaska Merchandise Store, had pallets of plastic floral arrangements shipped into the village. People bought the plastic graveside flower wreaths to fill the Kinguyakkii Memorial Cemetery. For a brief, beautiful moment on the weekend for the last Monday in May, the disorganized and poorly arranged gravesites for the local people have pretty flowers and wreaths that pepper the wintery ground like the first flowers of spring determined to break through the snow and reach for the light.

  The plastic memorial wreaths didn’t need sunlight. The overseas suppliers that sold the merchandise to the Alaskan rural grocery chain didn’t care what happened to the product. Alaska Merchandise Store management anticipated a spike in projected sales and counted on selling out all their drop-shipped pallets of wire, plastic, and cardboard containers. But like most things shipped to Alaska, the memorial arrangements never left.

  If the Arctic winds caught the floral arrangements at the gravesites, the memorial wreaths usually swept out of the cemetery. They eventually made their way to Kinguyakkii Bay, where they floated in open water fissures between the drifting slabs of ice. No one considered their honoring the dead also congested the living. Merchandise sellers in Alaska never worried about environmental concerns or about how they polluted the tundra; they only cared about the bottom line.

  Meghan Sheppard started a new community service program that got a lot of attention from the local media. It wasn’t popular with a lot of the residents who frequently came in contact with the Kinguyakkii Police Department. They quickly pointed out that Meghan and her Village Public Safety Officers used their undo authority to make people work as a form of punishment. They often suggested, usually at the moment of contact with the police, that Meghan and her officers harassed and profiled their suspects. Meghan quickly pointed out that knowing people by name upon the point of contact meant the police knew who they were because they committed crimes. If they stopped committing crimes, Meghan pointed out; she’d happily forget their names.

  “What about the memorial wreaths?” Dana Wyatt asked as she stared at the rugged white landscape with the tired and broken fence that surrounded the overused graveyard.

  She looked from the passenger seat of the cumbersome beat-up midnight blue Chevrolet Suburban. It had more rust and duct tape than pieces and parts. It was the official Kinguyakkii police vehicle. Meghan drove it most of the time, but willingly traded for snowmachines and four-wheelers when her officers needed something to transport suspects.

  “They’ll stay up for the weekend.” Meghan looked through the passenger window, past her visiting friend. “If they survive the winds, sometimes people go back to pick up the leftovers. The rest blow away, and all of them end up in the trash or water, or somewhere on the tundra.

  The wind picked up overnight before Dana’s flight. After she landed, gusts averaged around 15 mph while the temperature hovered around 34°F.

  The ground had an unreal pale gray quality with the springtime artificial colors over the harsh Alaskan dirty reality. Winter clung to the ground, but fresh falling snow was already weeks old. People had homemade grave markers on their deceased family members. Shipping granite and marble headstones to the village was costly. It made the village cemetery—a place older than the established community—more like a burial ground.

  “You picked me up from the airport, and this is the first sight I see of your city,” Dana said. She turned from the passenger window to face Meghan. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  Meghan shook her head. She pulled away from the broken property fence. “I didn’t take you by here to show you a cemetery. I wanted you to see a little of how we live around here. Memorial Day is a big deal here. It’s a celebration. You don’t just get a day off. They have a whole festival planned. You’re in for a treat.”

  “Great, nothing like getting immersed in the culture,” Dana said.

  Dana Wyatt was a long-time friend and part-time work partner of Meghan when she worked in the FBI resident office in Syracuse, New York. They stayed friends throughout Meghan’s tenure with the federal government. They kept in contact since Meghan said ‘goodbye’ to the real world and took the position as police chief for the rural Alaskan community. Dana was the closest thing Meghan had to a sibling. She was a forever friend, in fair weather or stormy nights.

  It was on the off
chance that Meghan used Dana in an official capacity to help solve the murder of her friend from Kinguyakkii Urgent Care, physician assistant, Jackie Qataliña. While Meghan didn’t agree with the outcome of the case, she reconnected with Dana. It allowed her to strengthen the bond with a current special agent with the FBI while Meghan currently tried to hide the added weight she’d packed on since leaving the bustle of the agency, and the congestion of Syracuse, New York.

  Dana was a clear reminder of what Meghan left behind when she moved west and north. At forty-five, Dana chose her career over a husband or children. Never married, engaged twice, she liked the freedom of staying single without the burden of children or a spouse. Meghan didn’t like Dana’s choice when it came to describing her lack of marital commitments. Meghan never saw her daughter, Brittany, as a burden. Then again, Meghan hadn’t physically seen her daughter in almost a year.

  “You’ll taste the local cuisine. You’ll mingle with the locals. They’ll sort you out. You’ll get a lot of offers for dating, and you might end up with a few more friends when you fly out on Wednesday.”

  “You like it here, don’t you?” Dana asked. There was an allusion to disbelief in her tone.

  “What’s not to like?” Meghan asked. She drove down Cemetery Access Road on her way to the house on Bison Street. A one-bedroom, pale blue pillbox house Meghan rented.

  “It’s chilly,” Dana said. Meghan didn’t want to point out to her friend that it was the twelfth time she commented about the weather.

  “It’s beautiful right now. We still see a lot of ice floe on the bay. A lot of the rivers are clearing.”

  Chapter Two

  Unlike New York, where April showers brought May Flowers, springtime in Alaska was fleeting and sparse. Above the Arctic Circle, it sometimes happened in late June. A day before a bright summer day, when temperatures reached the sultry zenith of 69°F before the tundra claimed the heat and pulled it deep into the earth for another year.

  “Is that a problem?” Dana asked.

  Meghan knew her friend assessed the village in comparisons instead of quality. It was quantity for Dana, who lived in an upscale and progressive city in Central New York. Where Kinguyakkii was a place of sporadic low-level buildings, and no common threads of straight roads, Syracuse was older with straight lines and right angles, plus tall architecture that lasted centuries.

  Kinguyakkii had some new development. There was a lot of potential growth as the city expanded, gained civilians. The progress stalled when Alaskalytical Construction shut down due to a case of death and greed between owners and friends. Meghan took a little criticism for causing the lack of future for the city. Mostly, it came from people who ran businesses. They were the same people who wanted her officers to act as private security guards instead of police when patrolling their commercial properties. Meghan got more criticism when she single-handedly closed down the traveling hairdresser who killed a boyfriend because she liked the boat he owned. It was a different world, but Meghan grew to love it. When people she knew came up from the lower-forty-eight, Meghan took offense when they didn’t give Kinguyakkii a chance to grow on them. Many of the people who passed through the northern town thought something growing on them was half the problem.

  Meghan pulled up to the house. The truck bounced in the divots left in the muck that made up the area where Meghan parked the vehicle. It wasn’t a driveway as much as the designated space, within a few meters, where the Suburban sat. Lawn care or driveways weren’t the kind of thing people worried about. Meghan didn’t care as long as the property owner didn’t mind the deep mud holes from heavy tires that sank deeper into the mud as the weather got warmer.

  Dana packed light and carried her duffle bag from the back seat. Meghan wandered upstairs and opened the door.

  “It’s not locked?” Dana’s razor-thin black eyebrows rose high on her smooth forehead.

  Meghan shrugged. “I lock the door at night. Everyone knows where I live. Everyone knows who I am and what I do for a living. I lock the door when I’m home, which works.”

  “Okay, that’s not weird at all.” Dana moved inside. She dropped her luggage without any concern.

  Meghan shed her fair-weather jacket. It was a City Police black all-weather coat with a liner. The winter parka took a trip to Anchorage for the dry cleaners. It went out at the first signs of better days. It needed a full deep cleansing.

  “So, I’m sorry they overbooked the hotel. I didn’t anticipate the holiday crowds.” Meghan moved through the living room after kicking off her boots. She wore thermal socks. “But, I admit, the couch is very comfortable.”

  “I wasn’t planning to get a hotel room. I’ll take the couch,” Dana said. “I wanted to see you, spend time with my friend. I can’t do that if I’m at a hotel the whole time I’m here. The couch is fine for me.”

  “Dana, dork, you’re almost a foot taller than me. You’re sleeping in the bedroom.” Meghan never let height get in her way. Sometimes, people looked down on her instead of looking at her. She knew enough psychology to use it against them.

  Dana took a shower. Meghan fixed them some dinner. When her friend slipped from the small bathroom wearing t-shirt and sweatpants, Meghan felt like they were younger, spirited cadets ready to take on every bad guy on the planet.

  Meghan saw Dana hadn’t lost her shape over the last twenty-three years. The last time Meghan saw her friend other than conversations through social media video calls, Dana took Meghan to the airport for her job in Alaska.

  “You look great,” she said.

  They sat at the small wobbly table off the corner of the kitchen, away from the counters and stove. The pseudo dining room opened into the living room, and the front of the house.

  “I’ve been on a new diet,” Dana said. She eyed the meal. A simple rice and broccoli mix with frozen pea and carrots. It was a staple meal for Meghan.

  Meghan sipped at her water. Dana had bottled water in front of her plate. Meghan drank out of the glass.

  “Are you trying to say something about me being a foreigner?” Dana uncapped the water and took a sip.

  “We’re coming out of break-out right now. That means the water treatment plant in town is working overtime, trying to eliminate all the critters that get into the town water supply.” Meghan tapped her glass with the fork. “You might end up with what the locals affectionately call Kinguyakkii crud.”

  “Sounds divine,” Dana said, making a face. “I want to wait and see what I catch from my flights before I add some parasite infection from the water.”

  Meghan nodded and pointed the tines at the bottled water. “There are a few cases around. As long as you didn’t drink any shower water, you’ll be okay.”

  Meghan offered to take her friend to dinner at the Midnight Sun Café. It was Friday night, and after the whole day hopping commercial jets, Dana wanted to unwind, catch up and relax.

  They sat in the quiet at the small round table. Outside darkness fell across town. The occasional rev of a snowmobile or four-wheeler made Dana flinch. The ATVs raced by the house on Bison Street.

  “That takes some getting used to, I bet.”

  Meghan shrugged. She stopped noticing the random passersby.

  Dana ate most of what she had on her plate. She helped Meghan clear the table and clean the dishes. They went to the living room and sat on the couch together. Meghan read a few texts from her officers. She replied to one and put down the phone.

  Dana drew up her knees pressed in the corner of the sofa and watched Meghan. Dana had a thin pear-shaped face, azure eyes and small mouth with thin lips. She wore her auburn hair shoulder-length, the governing style at the bureau. It lay limp and damp on her shoulders.

  “You really like it here?” she asked. It came out a whisper as Alaska listened through the stilts that held the house a half-meter from the tundra base.

  “It took some getting used to,” Meghan admitted. “It wasn’t like moving across the country. I had a little culture shock
in the beginning. But there is a frontier quality that grows on you.”

  “That’s what worries me,” Dana said.

  “You can give it a few days. Tonight starts a three-day celebration. We’ll get people from the outlining villages coming into town. If they get through,” Meghan said. “I got a text from Oliver. They fished some people out of the lagoon. Their boat got shredded on the ice floe.”

  “Is everyone okay?”

  “Sure. They’re on their way to the clinic. The new doctor sometimes makes house calls. He’s been good about emergency help.”

  “So, no ER? No ambulance,” Dana said.

  Meghan pursed her lips and shook her head.

  “It seems third-world around here.”

  “We make do with what we got. It’s different, but it works. People come here sometimes and feel the call of the tundra. They settle here. Or they stay in Alaska if not the city.”

  “And you felt the call, did you?”

  “I don’t know. I know I finished my tour with the bureau. I didn’t want to go into law enforcement where I’d get overlooked because I have a vagina, and I’m a little older than they want to see as a trophy officer.”

  “You look great,” Dana said. “I thought maybe you’d fall apart up here.”

  “I feel like I weigh a ton. I try to exercise. We don’t have a local gym around here. Running outside isn’t exactly a balanced environment. Summer is good, but I don’t have time to stop my day to just go work out.”

  Dana nodded. She assessed the small house. “This feels like a cabin in the woods kind of place.”

  “I got a good deal on rent. The city subsidizes the place. I’m out of the way and still close enough to everything. You’re never too far away from anyone around here. It’s a lot better than the community housing at Mountain Manor near the grocery store. When I’m off duty, people tend to leave me alone.” Meghan read another text after her phone buzzed on the coffee table. She put it down again.”