Dead Floating Lovers (13 page)

I spent the next morning in the woods hunting for morels and hunting for a center in me. There was the money thing. I did my best to resolve that, coming up with ideas as I walked over spring windfalls and past alluring red and black toadstools of all shapes, toadstools that could have killed me with one bite. Odd, how things could be lovely and deadly at the same time.

Each time I worked with Deputy Dolly Wakowski, it seemed I was set at further odds with the people and things around me. Maybe I had no business staying where I obviously didn’t belong. I could go back to Ann Arbor, get another job on a newspaper, find a condo, and pick up with old friends. I’d be safe there, one among many.

It took a certain sensibility I didn’t have to accept faults the way northern people accepted fault in others. It took a lack of my kind of outrage. Maybe they could take in anybody who needed help—the way Eugenia did. Maybe they could gossip and pass judgment on each other’s lives and then go on to the next bit of scandal, the next bit of juicy information, without ever demanding justice. I couldn’t. Even Dolly circumventing the law still left me with a load of guilt that really wasn’t mine.

Everything I’d learned up here seemed to be drifting away. Where was the magic and healing power in the forest and in the water? What had happened to my deep and true belief in the simplicity of a slow-paced life? I’d even begun to dislike my own dog, my Sorrow, for what I took as his cowardice in the face of an intruder. How the hell did I know what went on between dog and man? How did I know anything?

I stepped carefully from dead elm to dead elm, stopping to squat and examine the terrain ahead of me. The wind warmed enough for me to take off my sweater and tie it around my waist. The sun emerged from a sky piled with gold-lit clouds.

I would find a job, I told myself again as I walked. I had to believe in possibility, and in serendipity. If I stayed still long enough and didn’t worry; if I gave into a day-by-day life and stopped trying to manage things—something would appear. I’d get a job. I’d sell a book. I’d find a way to make money and stay in my little golden home on my little bluest lake.

I walked, forgetting for the moment that I could be surprised out here. When I came on a group of three lady’s slippers, I laid down on my stomach to give them a good once over. Silly-looking things. An ant crawled out of one blossom and gave me a puzzled look then went back to his business. Ugly flowers. Bloated and spotted, like badly designed purses. Such overblown press about the beauty of these spongy-looking things. And to think, I’d be on the program at the library with a woman who had taken fifteen years to write a book about them. Maybe she’d convert me. I hoped so.

Ahead, I could see, from my prone position, a group of ten of the late morels. Gnarled heads peeked through the leaves. A few hadn’t even broken through, but pushed up into small hillocks—giving away their hiding places. I scrambled to my feet, picked the mushrooms carefully, and laid them at the bottom of my bag. I would dry them for a winter stew, or a soup, or to fry in butter, as Harry recommended.

“Emily!” It was Harry’s voice, coming through the trees off to my right. He sauntered slowly toward me, head down, the huge mesh bag dragging, filled, on the ground behind him.

“Thought that was you,” he said, stepping carefully into the clearing.

“See you got a few morels.” I enjoyed the sarcasm. “No wonder I can’t find any.”

“It’s not me,” he said. “You just ain’t good at it.”

He pointed to a group of about twenty morels I’d walked right through.

“Don’t you worry. I’ll share. Got plenty to sell and save, both.”

I smiled, grateful for kindness.

“You get those vegetables in yet?” he asked as we picked.

“You said not to put the rest of the seeds in until danger of frost passed.”

“Think you can go ahead. Frost’s all gone for this year. Get ’em in before Memorial Day so they’ll have time to ripen. Corn and beans in the same hill. That’s the way to do it. Indian style.”

“Guess I’ve got another job ahead of me then.”

“I could come help.”

“Can’t afford to pay you anything right now.”

He shrugged. “Don’t always have to pay for neighborliness. When you got it, pay me something. When you don’t, pay me nothing but a nice smile.”

“Got plenty of those,” I said, and gave him one.

“That Indian fella come back, eh?”

I nodded. “At least once. He wants those bones we found.”

“How does he know they’re theirs?”

Hmm, I thought: the obvious question I didn’t even think to ask.

“I have no idea, but he scared the crap out of me. He came right into the studio even though I had the door locked. He opened it and Sorrow didn’t bark.”

“I’ll have a look at that lock. Probably sticks. Doesn’t close exactly right. And as to Sorrow, well, there are people who know animals so well they’re welcomed anywhere in the woods. Some people just give off the kind of trust animals sniff out. Nothing bad about your dog, Emily. He’s a creature of his nature and his kind’s history. Guess you don’t understand how much you learn, living where other things want to kill you.”

“Maybe I am learning,” I said. “That was how I felt when he zeroed in on me. Sure makes me feel less secure now. I keep thinking I see him out my windows. Or up my drive. I sense eyes on me. Sleep hasn’t been easy since he came to see me.”

Harry nodded. “Everybody makes haunts of stuff we’re afraid of. Me too. I fear Deputy Dolly and that ticket book ’a hers. I’m afraid of those tax people who come sniffing around and send me bigger bills. And those DNR guys—looking for my traps. Lived my way all my life, now I got one after another coming to tell me I can’t do this, I can’t do that. I see plenty of eyes in the woods, just like you. Once in a while I take a shot at ’em.”

Harry always made me feel better. I went back to my house without even checking to see if anyone stood on the porch, or hung around the drive. I let Sorrow out after planting a big kiss on top of his spotted head. He had been punished for being a traitor by not being allowed out on walks with me. That was over. Every mean and vindictive bone in my body melted away. I had plenty to keep my mind busy. It didn’t have to center on a poor dog’s confusion.

I strung my meager number of mushrooms on a doubled thread and hung them from nails out on the porch. When they were completely dry I would store them and enjoy them next winter, when the snow was five feet deep and the tall trees nothing but black brush strokes etched with white.

Out in my studio, I worked on the bones story for
Northern Pines
most of the afternoon. I made a few phone calls to a forensics expert I knew back in Ann Arbor, getting information on bones in water: how long it took the flesh to be eaten off by fish and water action; what happens to the hair; how bones are identified; how marrow and teeth can still provide DNA for identification. All very nice tea-time talk. I’d planned the story around identification of both victims so I still needed to find out who the woman was. But I had a structure, a kind of outline, and a list of what I needed to know before the story could be e-mailed in.

When I’d pushed “Bones: Up From a Watery Grave” as far as I could take it, I pulled out my notes on the missing girls. We would have to visit all of them. We had to be sure of our suspicion that Mary Naquma was the one we were looking for.

I put the names and numbers and my story aside. I had other things to see to. First an hour with my novel:
A Hard Case of Murder
. I wanted to get the elderly attorney immersed in the facts in a hurry, get him mired down, believing this scamp of a client didn’t really kill his wife. And he’d be wrong, of course. A witness would come forward. A woman giving him an air-tight alibi. She might be a married woman who didn’t want her husband to find out about her affair with this great-looking creep. But that had been done so many times. Still, everything old is new again—if you know how to put a creative spin on it. So, a married woman having an affair with him … or so she says. But something else … hmm … it would take a great deal of thought and a lot of walking beside the lake to get the plot laid out right.

Later, the fact that Dolly hadn’t phoned finally sank in. Either she was in big trouble and didn’t want to call, or she was mad at me. If she was mad, that was too bad. The one place I couldn’t let her into my life concerned Jackson. She didn’t trust him and didn’t like him. All I got from her on the subject was that he was a moocher and a user. Since I wanted to get along with him, and since I needed him—in my own way—I didn’t want her sticking her nose in my business.

By four o’clock, when I still hadn’t heard, I called the station. A new woman on the board was taking calls. One I hadn’t met before. The chief’s wife, Frances, used to man the board from nine to five, until their boy got so sick. Now this new one, Mandy, covered most days, she said. Mandy, in a high, friendly voice, said she didn’t know where Dolly was but would pass along the message.

I had an hour before heading to Kalkaska and Cherry Street Market. Then on to Traverse City and the Blue Goat for wine, Bay Bakery for bread, Grand Traverse Pie Company for a cherry pie. If I got lucky I’d have fifteen minutes to stop for a cannoli at Eurostop in the old train station. That woman knew how to make soups and sandwiches like I hadn’t tasted since Italy.

I called Detective Brent only to find out what I already knew: the second set of bones belonged to Chester Allen Wakowski, Dolly Wakowski’s husband—as suspected. The first set of bones, the female, American Indian, hadn’t been identified as yet. They were working on it, tracing missing girls over the last fifteen years, and hoped to have the case solved as soon as both skeletons were identified. Brent’s tone softened when he got around to asking how Dolly and I were coming at our end. I went into my laconic, know-nothing voice, and told him we were checking out the same missing people he was, probably. Just hadn’t gotten around to making personal calls as yet.

“Anything else? Dolly know anyone who wanted to kill Chester? I’m going to have to ask her to come on in and talk with me.”

“She doesn’t remember any trouble he had, just that he ran off with that woman. Probably the skeleton we found.”

“She been asking questions? Like at the place he worked? Maybe places he hung out?”

I didn’t want to tell him she was having other troubles. My dance around the truth was a sad one. He couldn’t have believed my evasions, but he didn’t press on any of it.

“You will share whatever you find with me?” He was insistent.

“Of course. Oh, and by the way, the Odawa are getting a little nervous about that skeleton that belongs to their tribe.”

“We don’t know that for sure, that she’s one of them. Just that she’s Native American.”

“I think they’re assuming.”

“They shouldn’t assume anything. When we know who she was and where she lived and what happened—maybe then we’ll have something to go on. You can tell whoever it is over there that we’re holding on to the bones until we know for sure. Last thing we want is to give them to one tribe only to find she came from somewhere else and wasn’t Odawa at all.”

Detective Brent, like Harry, had come up with what hadn’t passed through my mind. Why the heck didn’t I challenge that man over the dead woman’s tribal connection? What made him so certain she was one of theirs? Had to be he knew more than he was telling anyone. I hated the thought of bearding a lion as tough as he was in his own den, but something didn’t smell right here. I would toss it to Dolly. Let her face those fierce eyes and that almost magical power over animals—and that power over me.

After I changed into a blue silk shirt, black pants, and black heels—my regulation dress-up clothes—Dolly finally called. She reminded me that she’d been giving a program on Stranger Danger at the elementary school. She’d been invited to have lunch with the kids, seated on one of those tiny chairs drawn up to a tiny table. After that she’d had mailbox vandalism to deal with.

“I sat there at lunch like a munchkin,” she growled. “No place for my gun.”

“You shouldn’t have had it with you. Not at an elementary school,” I said, and moved right on. “So, what happened? You and the chief find that man?”

“Yup. Sure did. One of the chiefs of the tribe. I guess he’s in charge of personnel or something like that at the casino.”

“You tell him why you picked up Chet’s dog tags?”