Dead Floating Lovers (17 page)

I grabbed Dolly’s arm, which wasn’t easy. She was leaping in her chair. Her other arm flailed over her head. With a whoop, Dolly did a dance as the machine celebrated. People looked over, pointed, and came to stand nearby. Everyone congratulated her as if she’d done something wonderful. Dolly basked in it.

I shook the arm I held.

“It’s him,” I had to shout over the noise and the merriment around us.

“Who?” Dolly yelled back at me.

“The guy from the lake. It’s him. Over there,” I pointed to where the man stood.

“God!” Dolly looked from the man to her machine and back again. “I can’t leave it now,” she groaned. “I just can’t.”

I nodded, got up, and headed toward the restaurant. He was gone but had to be at a table inside or somewhere close by.

I stood at the hostess’s station and waited for a bent woman with long, dark braids to make her way back toward me.

“A man was just here,” I said. “Maybe you seated him. Young. Long black hair.”

The elderly woman narrowed her eyes at me and shook her head. “No man here.”

“Sure he was. I saw him.”

She shook her head, harder.

“I know him. It’s all right. His name is Alfred.”

She opened her mouth to give me another “no,” but stopped. “You know Alfred? You sure?”

I smiled a Cheshire Cat smile and told her he used to be a friend of my husband’s.

“He went out in the parking lot. Gone now. If you leave your name and number I’ll pass it on.”

I figured no name and phone number would get me a response from Alfred Naquma. He was a man used to disappearing. I nodded at the woman, turned, and ran out the door to the parking lot.

The sunlight blinded me after the dark of the casino. I blinked a few times and hurried down the steps to look both ways, out over the parked cars. One old couple came slowly from the far lot. There wasn’t another person in sight.

So, it was “Alfred” we were hunting for. I’d taken a shot in the dark, using the brother’s name. He probably worked for the casino the way Billy Kramer said. Maybe it would be as easy as calling and asking for him, I thought. Maybe not.

I went back inside, told the hostess I’d missed him after all, and gave her my name and my number for him to call as soon as he could. I told her it was urgent, though I figured my chances of hearing from him ran the gamut of nil to none.

It wasn’t easy getting Dolly out of the casino. Now that she’d won eighty dollars she figured she could go on playing awhile. I was just as determined to get her to leave with a few extra dollars in her pocket.

“You buy dinner,” I said, tugging at her arm, dragging her to the cashier then out to the Jeep.

In the morning, there were nine calls on my answering machine. An overflow. A bounty of phone calls. A veritable inundation. Nine people wanting me. I was almost afraid to press the play button, hating to have my bubble burst, to find they were all calls from the electric company, all sweet voices enquiring about a payment because they still didn’t believe that I’d lost the envelope in transit from my purse to the mailbox.

OK. The first two were hang-ups. The next was Jackson. He needed to see me, he said in that deep voice he affected when he wanted something from a woman. “Let’s get together for dinner. Tonight? Tomorrow? My place, or yours. And if you’ve got that work ready for me … terrific. You are a gem, Emily. I’m so lucky.” His voice swelled with emotion. I caught my breath. He sounded the way he used to when we first fell in love. Maybe, I told myself, this could work again. The two of us. People change. If I’d learned anything in life, it was that: change happened, for good or ill. Why not Jackson? Why couldn’t he have worn out the coed chase and be ready, at last, to settle down with me? It would be easy to go back to my old life. No money woes. Be with old friends. Possibly get my job back at the paper. I’d be in a familiar world instead of living up here where I didn’t belong, and probably never would.

There are times, I told myself, leaning hard on the phone, when a woman has to get practical, accept her limitations, and run for cover.

Jackson’s would be the first call I returned.

The next message was another hang-up—number three.

There was a call from Jan Romanoff of
Northern Pines Magazine
: “I’d like to schedule that bones story,” she said, her voice distracted by noises behind her there at the office. “Oh, um, Emily, please call me. Oh, oh, yeah, and the other one—about the Indian cemetery—let’s do that as a separate story. OK? Think I’ll do an all Native American issue. Maybe get somebody from the Odawa to write a short story, or a history piece. Well, call me.”

Another hang-up. This one wasn’t immediate. There was someone there, listening, breathing into the phone, and then came the click.

Next: ah, that sweet voice from the electric company. Why the heck didn’t I just pay the bill and get it over with? I asked myself. I had the money. I wasn’t indigent—yet. Something about hanging onto my bank account like a squirrel dreading winter. I vowed to stop playing games and pay all my bills on time.

Next: a call from a charity wanting me to collect money from my neighbors, with a phone number to call them back—which I wouldn’t do.

The last call. For a few seconds no one spoke. Then a man’s voice came on. “Emily Kincaid. You have been warned enough. Stay out of our business or …”

The call ended.

I shivered and listened again. The voice was hesitant, the words slow, almost as if from someone who didn’t speak English well. I hit the button. A threat? I should call Detective Brent, I thought. I would play it for him, let him decide if I’d been threatened. Probably he’d want the tape, maybe for voice recognition sometime in the future when, or if, we caught the man who’d murdered Chet and the Indian woman.

I played the call one more time. I knew the voice. The man who’d come to my studio. The man Dolly and Lucky met in Peshawbestown. Same hesitations. Lewis George.

I called Dolly. Had to go through the office. It was good to keep my mind on the mechanics of action and off the fact I felt vulnerable.

Dolly came right on the phone. She was going home. I played the call for her. It must have shocked her, too. She fell silent for a long time.

“Recognize the voice?” she asked.

“That Lewis George you went over to the casino to meet. The guy who was here.”

“I think you’re right. Don’t understand why he’s after you. I can see them wanting to get the bones back, but that’s not up to us. Geez, there’s so much about this whole business that frustrates me. And what’s that ‘or’ mean? ‘Or’ I’ll report you to the state police for overstepping your bounds? ‘Or’ you’ll never be allowed inside another casino if you keep it up? ‘Or’ I’ll stop my subscription to your newspaper? I don’t get it. Can’t be anything worse—like ‘or’ I’ll kill you. You don’t think he means to hurt you … ?”

“How do I know? Let’s take a look at what we’ve got. The girl murdered out there was Native American. She’s probably Mary Naquma. The guy at the lake was Alfred Naquma, her brother. I’m pretty sure of that though I didn’t put the Naquma part to the Alfred part. If he was the dead woman’s brother, why doesn’t he come forward instead of hiding? Maybe offer himself for DNA testing. They were sure worried about what you found out at the lake. What else could be out there?”

“How about the gun?” Dolly asked.

“But after thirteen years? And they want us to stop looking into the murders. There’s got to be something they’re afraid of.”

“Would they protect a murderer?” Dolly asked. “Could it be Lewis George? Maybe it’s not Alfred and him together, but him alone. He could be the one who murdered Chet and Mary. He’s the one doing the intimidating. Seems a little old to have been a jealous boyfriend.”

“Divers checked the lake bottom and didn’t find anything. What else could be out there?”

“Look, before you break out in hives, call Brent. Ask him what you should do with the tape. He has to know about it, and have a copy made, in case you come up missing, or in case they find your lumpy body in a ditch somewhere.”

“What do you mean, lumpy?” I came right back at her. “Look who’s talking, you sack of … And if anybody’s going to meet an untimely end here, it should be you. I get suckered into going along to protect your sorry …”

“Yeah, yeah. Well, nice talking to you.”

She was gone.

I fumed. When I called Detective Brent in Gaylord, my voice must not have sounded properly afraid. Brent didn’t believe me until I played the tape for him. Then he asked for a copy. “Look,” he said, seeming worried, “maybe you and Dolly better lay low on this. I’ll get an investigator over there. Pull somebody from another case. I gotta have a talk with this Lewis George.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. There was still Dolly’s breach of police ethics. Brent didn’t know about the dog tags and maybe never would. There was also the fact we’d invested a lot of time in this. And the fact I’d been threatened. I felt the way Dolly would feel when she heard we’d been pulled. Not that I was overly brave, or stupid, or out to prove anything. This was my job, what I did for a living. I had a story to finish and I meant to finish it completely.

“I’ll get the tape to you,” I said. “But we’re not backing down. I’m sure I can speak for Dolly, too. This is personal now. You’ll be hearing when we’ve got something for you.”

I hung up on a protesting Detective Brent, who would either call Chief Barnard and get us off the case, or would think it over and let us go. He was in a pinch for investigators and he wasn’t dumb.

Jackson wanted to come for dinner. He would bring the wine, he said. Something in his voice felt good; that old familiar lilt of sexuality and eagerness. I liked hearing him fall from his usual lofty, academic plane and come back to where we’d been human beings in love.

But I was tired. A lot of running around and a lot of stories left to do. I had phone calls to make for that Indian cemetery story and my own novel to work on. I had to have something I was happy about to read at Anna Scovil’s Writers Night at the library, for which I’d seen flyers hanging at EATS and the gas station.

“Maybe tomorrow, Jackson,” I said reluctantly. “I’ve got so much to do.”

“That include getting my pages into the computer? My editor is eager to see more of the book, if you could send them along once you’ve put in the changes.”

“I’ll try. So much going on right now.”

“Emily. I hope it’s not more of this bone stuff I’ve been reading about in the paper.”

“Well, some.”

“Hardly up to your standards.”

“Whoops!” I said. “I’ve got a lot to do.”

“Then tomorrow. What time do you want me there?” His voice slipped back to the personal. “Shall I plan on staying the night?”

Yuck. Sounded oily to me. He had a right to ask, I guessed. We’d slept together.

“Let’s talk tomorrow. I’ve got to get to work. I’ll see how much I get done today …”

“I’ll call in the morning and …” He hesitated. “It was great to be … eh … that we …”

“I know, Jackson,” I said, stopping him in his fumble for words. “Me, too.”

Sorrow had been alone a lot lately and though he still wasn’t perfect—one pile of poop and two large wet spots on the wooden floor of the porch—I decided we’d take a short walk through the woods before heading to the studio for a few hours of writing.

Out in the woods, though I kept my eyes open for morels, I saw nothing. Probably too late in the spring, or too many of those mushroomers up from Ohio. But I did pick a bouquet of wildflowers. No trilliums, since they’re protected. And Sorrow did stir up a skunk from a windfall. Luckily the skunk just eyed Sorrow, who put his scruffy tail between his legs and slunk back to cower by my side. I backed off from the fallen trees and headed to the studio, my clutch of wilting flowers in my hand, sulking dog at my side.

My novel was finally shifting from a halting forward thrust to a place where I could see ahead of me. I knew what my elderly lawyer had to do, who he had to face, and where the book was going. A lot of writing is simply thinking out the plot line. That’s the kind of thing I did while walking in the woods, or eating alone, or on waking. I could put myself in the attorney’s place, walk the streets he walked—in Philadelphia—and go to his club with him, listen in on conversations with old friends, listen to his thoughts, and see the man he was defending in the murder charge and the people who were beginning to gather around him. I was thinking of an old woman who knew the defendant. A motley character—elderly, sexy. I didn’t have her fixed in my head yet—but I would. Soon.

Sorrow, feet flying in a dream—probably running from the skunk again—leapt to his feet when the phone rang. He stood blinking, mouth open, tongue hanging. Did I have a dopey dog? I asked myself and picked up the phone.

Dolly, not bothering with hello. “Hey, I got ahold of that woman in TC. You know, Washington Street. That one. Her daughter came back right after she reported her missing. Lives down near Midland. Husband works for Dow Chemical. She said we could call her daughter if we needed to, but I told her no, it wouldn’t be necessary.”

“Good. Another one down.”

“Any more phone calls?”

“Nothing.”

“Guess who called
me
?” she asked.

“Who?”

“No. Guess.”

“Tom Hanks.”

“Who?”

“Just tell me, Dolly, or I’m hanging up.”

“Lena Smith. You know, the one we went looking for in Peshawbestown. Told you they’d get word to her. Sounded really nervous. I asked her to meet us. Told her about you. She said OK, but nothing about her can go into the paper. I promised. She’ll be at the Shell station in Kalkaska in about an hour. You want to come along?”

I groaned. “I turned down dinner with Jackson in order to get some writing done.”

Dolly made a disgusted sound. “Hope you don’t plan on hopping into bed with him again. You want a boyfriend, how about Bill, at the newspaper? He’s a nice guy.”

“He’s got a girlfriend.”

“Oh. OK, there’s a lot of guys out there …”

“Haven’t seen you with many of them.”

“That’s just me. I’m particular. You shouldn’t have any trouble.”

I hung up. I had forty-five minutes, but writing time was over. I’d been knocked out of that place in my head where dreams—and novels—begin. Time to take a shower. Time to check the vegetable garden, see if anything was up yet. Probably not. Just a week since Harry and I put in the early seeds. But I was anxious, and maybe seeds could sense if you were eager to greet them and they would hurry …

The one thing I really knew about gardening was that nothing hurried along because you wanted them to bloom, or germinate, or live. Gardens, like most other things in life, took their own time and had their own pace. On the way back to the house, I checked our neat rows of hilled dirt. Nothing yet, though I was sure I saw a tiny thread of green in one row; a row Sorrow investigated with me, stomping on my one green shoot and leaving it flat. I hollered at him and he looked over his shoulder at me, hurt that I was angry because he shared my avid interest in gardening.

The phone rang as I entered the house. I figured it had to be Dolly again, or maybe Jackson, offering to bring a salad for our dinner, or a loaf of bread from Stonehouse Bakery in Leland, or a Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio, just because I loved it so much.

I had a warm greeting ready. After all, if I expected him to change I’d better be ready to forget the caustic cynicism I doled out.

“Hi,” I said. Not a loving greeting, but upbeat. Short.

No answer.

Someone was there. That absence of air on a dead line isn’t hard to miss. Then there was breathing.

“Hello.”

I waited. Nothing. The phone went dead. Whatever it was he wanted, this guy was scaring me. Maybe it was the absence of threat that was so alarming. I put the phone down, wrapped my arms across my chest, and shivered. For a millisecond I considered calling Dolly and removing myself from the whole investigation. But what good was that, at this point? How did I know for sure backing off would protect me? Maybe he’d come after me anyway. The only way to get out from under all of the things falling on my head was to get it over with. That meant learning what happened out there at Sandy Lake thirteen years ago.

What I did was shower and dress. I hadn’t done laundry in a while so I dug out an old purple thong and picked the cleanest from among the pile of jeans at the bottom of my closet. I had a washed and neatly folded blue tee shirt. Good enough.

I put Sorrow on the porch with a stack of dog bones as bribe for good behavior. After checking the drive, the garden, the woods, everywhere around me—I jumped into the Jeep and headed to Kalkaska to meet Dolly and the elusive Lena Smith at the Shell station at the corner of M72 and 131.