Dead Floating Lovers (18 page)

The tall Indian woman waiting at the Shell station was my age, early to mid thirties. She had long black hair and a round, soft face. Her thin, athletic body, in tank top and jeans, was taut and narrow. She leaned against the hood of her blue Caprice, arms crossed, long legs out in front of her. Dolly stood next to her. I parked, got out, and took the hand Lena held out to me. We went through the usual first meeting stuff: how are you, glad to meet you, happy you could give us some time …

“Can’t stay long,” the dark-eyed woman said, glancing around at the empty pumps and a log hauler stopped at the light on M72. “I gotta get on the road.”

“Where you headed?” Dolly smiled. She was at her most affable self.

Lena looked away and bit at her lip. “Just out of town for a while.”

Dolly nodded.

“I wouldn’t have stopped to meet you … I mean, if I didn’t want what happened to Mary to come out …”

“What do you mean ‘what happened to Mary to come out’? You know something about her murder?”

Lena worked one hand over the other nervously and looked away from us. “I don’t know anything. It’s just that Mary was a friend. I mean, we were in beauty school together and I liked her. She really wanted to make something of herself. We even talked about maybe working in the same salon after graduation.”

“You reported her missing.”

Lena nodded. “She didn’t have a phone, so I couldn’t call her. People at the school didn’t know what happened to her but she was paid up to the end of the semester. Mary didn’t have money to throw away. I knew she’d be there if she could.”

I asked, “Do you know where she lived? The school have an address?”

“Didn’t ask. School’s closed now. Don’t know how you’d find out. But it could have been that Sandy Lake they mentioned in the paper.” She shrugged, then pulled her tank top down over a bare belly with a gold circlet pierced into her belly button.

“But she never said?” Dolly asked.

Lena shook her head, a slow, uncertain shake. “We only saw each other at school. I did ask her why she’d moved off the reservation. Long time ago she lived in Peshawbestown. Maybe just when she was little. She said it wasn’t her idea—moving. But that’s all.”

“What about boyfriends?” Dolly asked, glancing, like Lena, around the station as if expecting to find someone watching us.

Lena took a minute. “One guy. That’s all I heard about. I remember we were at Burger King for lunch one day and she whispered that she was seeing a married man.” Lena rolled her eyes and folded her arms, leaning back against the car again. “I gave it to her. I told her how stupid that was, that she would never be happy, and so on and so on. She only said she loved him.”

Dolly winced. I expected her to tell Lena the married man had been her own husband, but she said nothing.

I watched Lena lick her lips. Her eyes moved back and forth, looking hard at every car turning in for gas. I watched a tic at the corner of one of her eyes. She was beyond the kind of nervousness that comes from talking to the police. This fear had nothing to do with me and Dolly.

“You OK?” I asked, keeping my voice low, and kind.

She made a face.

“No, I mean it. You’re not in trouble or anything?”

She hesitated a minute. “I don’t like murder, and Mary was a friend …”

“Who called to tell you we were there yesterday, looking for you?” I asked.

Lena made an impatient noise. “A neighbor. My family lives down the road.”

“Nobody else? Nobody threatened you if you got mixed up in this?” Dolly said.

“Why would anybody threaten me?” Her face tightened. A tiny scar near her mouth bunched up and curled with the lip.

“We’ve had run-ins with members of your tribe. You know anything about that?”

She shrugged and bowed her head. “It’s just … the bones. You know. We’ve got our ways. Our leaders don’t like when white people get in the …”

“We’re trying to find out who killed Mary. That’s not butting in.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” She looked straight at me. “But the tribe can take care of their own business. They don’t like when others get in the middle of things they don’t understand.”

“You mean like murder?” Dolly asked, surprised.

Lena shook her head. “No. No. But like when it is our business, we have our own laws.”

“I don’t get it,” I said, and didn’t.

Lena shrugged. “If you were Odawa you would.”

“I think I’m being threatened over this. Somebody keeps calling my house. You know who would do that? Anybody from the tribe?”

She shook her head. “Nobody would threaten. But we protect our own.”

“You mean Mary? Or somebody else? Would the tribe protect a murderer?”

She shook her head again, very slowly. “We don’t protect people who murder.”

Dolly moved from foot to foot, as if ready to leave. I thought of one more thing.

“Mary ever talk about brothers? Anybody named Alfred?”

Lena scowled at me fast. Too fast. She pushed herself away from the car and reached in the pocket of her jeans, pulling out car keys. She dropped them, then bent fast to pick them up. “She had a sister. She talked about her. Christine, her name was.”

She straightened slowly, avoiding my eyes. “But nobody named Alfred. Hey look, I gotta go. I gotta be someplace before six o’clock.”

She opened her car door. “We never got too close. I just know I liked her. I hope somebody finds out what happened. Honest to God, what I want most is to have Mary sleep peacefully. That’s all I can do for her. I wish …”

Obviously there was something she wanted from us and we weren’t giving it to her. I couldn’t figure out why Lena had agreed to meet us in the first place. We surely hadn’t gotten all the truth out of her. She was afraid of somebody, or maybe it was fear of doing something forbidden.

Dolly and I thanked her for helping. She nodded and slammed the car door shut. In seconds she was pulling out of the station. Beside me, Dolly raised her arm and yelled. “Hey Lena. How about a phone number where we can reach you? Hey … Lena …”

The blue car turned at the corner and was gone.

Dolly pulled the little notebook from her breast pocket, wrote down the license number of the Caprice, closed the notebook, put it back in her pocket, and buttoned the pocket shut.

I followed Dolly’s patrol car up 131 toward Leetsville, thinking about Lena Smith and food. I couldn’t figure out Lena. If she was scared, why did she agree to meet us? Then meet us and not tell us things she obviously knew? Maybe, I thought, it had something to do with the ways of the tribe coming up against her caring for a friend. It wasn’t always easy to understand a different culture. Just coming here from Ann Arbor had been a form of culture shock for me. Some of the values of the people up here seemed better, more human, than I’d known. Some of the things were maybe not as good—like not reading books much and making fun of new people.

Still, people here cared for each other; got involved in each other’s lives; stood by during times of trouble. Even I, living alone back in the woods on my little lake, didn’t feel as isolated up here as I had after Jackson and I split up.

I drove past Sorrow’s vet on my way into town, reminding me he needed a manicure. I passed The Skunk Saloon, the gas station, a church, and a few stores. My mind quickly switched to food. I saw the lighted EATS downward arrow ahead and began to salivate. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, just the thought of food made my stomach rumble. Tuesday night. Meatloaf night. The rumble changed to anticipatory flops. Yuck!

But maybe Eugenia would surprise me. Summer was coming. In peak season Eugenia could really put herself out and offer things like beef stew, or roast chicken. Maybe, just this once, she would have something spectacular on the menu. Maybe—just this once—the service would be slower and the food cooked individually, with thought and careful preparation. Maybe just this once I wouldn’t think of Alpo when the meatloaf arrived.

Dolly was inside by the time I parked between the pickups. She sat in a corner booth, menu propped in front of her. I waved to people I knew as I cut through the tables. Anna stopped me to remind me of the library readings.

“Next Tuesday,” she said, and smiled a wide smile. “I’m getting flyers up all over town. Cate, the librarian from Kalkaska, is coming. Lots of people from Mancelona and Elk Rapids and other places will be there to support us. It will be a very good night for you, Emily. Get your name out. People will be looking for your books after this.”

I gave her a skeptical half smile and pushed on toward Dolly. A few others waved and inquired, “How’s it going, Emily?” I knew they would like it if I stopped and discussed bones with them, but I wanted to get some food and figure out what we were going to do next.

I slid in across from Dolly and looked at the specials, handwritten on typing paper and shoved in the little metal holders on each table. Even my brain wanted to groan when I read: Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Corn, and Jell-O.

“Glad it’s meatloaf,” Dolly murmured at me. “Meatloaf’s my favorite thing.”

Gloria stood with her pad ready, not asking questions though I could tell by her tightened face she was dying to. We ordered and talked a little about Lena Smith. I wasn’t the only one wondering what made her so nervous, and why she met us if she’d been warned away. Dolly didn’t have any better answers than I had.

The meatloaf came in four minutes though the corn looked a little shriveled and cold. Not that it made any difference to the taste. I was hungry. Sometimes life gets that simple: got to eat something; might as well be half-frozen corn.

Over red Jell-O, I told Dolly about calling Brent in Gaylord and getting the feeling he wanted us off the case.

“Yeah, sure, like we’ll be scared away when it’s my own husband who was murdered,” she said, scraping the bottom of her Jell-O dish, then licking the spoon. “I talked to him after you did. He’s worried. That phone call you got. He doesn’t want us getting in over our heads. That’s all. Standard stuff. He’s got his hands full and this is a tough case. Dealing with old bones. I get the feeling Brent would be really grateful if we came up with anything at all.”

“I’m worried, too.”

“Don’t be a baby. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“Why aren’t you getting the phone calls? I have nothing to do with releasing the bones. They should be calling Brent.”

“You think maybe it’s because you’re a reporter?” she asked. “I’ll bet they don’t want anything in the paper. You know, keep it private. Or maybe it’s just that somebody’s afraid of the law. That’s what I represent here and that can be intimidating.”

I looked hard at her open and eager plain face, at the flat striped hair. I looked in her trusting blue eyes, and wondered who the devil would be intimidated by Dolly.

“All the way back here I was thinking about what Lena Smith told us.” She leaned in closer and put a hand up to cover her mouth. Protection from the lip-reading Leetsvillians.

“If this Mary Naquma lived out at the lake, there should be a house somewhere close by. I called Eloise, the county assessor, but she couldn’t find any property under that name. Even going back, nothing around Sandy Lake showed under Naquma. Eloise said the oil company owns all of the property out there, including the lake. Nobody else on the tax roles.”

“Had to’ve been a house, a shack. Something.”

“You want to go look?”

“Wouldn’t hurt. See what we can find. When do you want to go?” I asked.

“Morning, I guess. I’ve got to fill in at the station tonight. The chief and his wife got a retirement party in Traverse City so somebody’s got to hang around.”

I made a face, thinking of Jackson and his manuscript. I’d slacked off, probably out of boredom. The only one of that group on their way to Canterbury that I liked was the Wife of Bath and Jackson had moved on beyond her. The other pilgrims didn’t have the spirit or the personality of the Wife. Most were sanctimonious and dull—as they probably should have been on a pilgrimage. Still, though the work was tedious, I wanted to get it done. And I had to go over what I would read at the library event. “Can it wait until Thursday? I’ve got so much …”

“You want to drag this out? Maybe give whoever’s after you more time to get mad?”

“OK. OK,” I agreed. “Do I need to bring anything with me? I mean, to go hunting for a house on Sandy Lake?”

“What do you mean? Like a Geiger counter or something?” I thought she was sneering.

I sighed. “No. I meant, like a bathing suit. Are we looking for anything in the lake? Or … ?”

She laughed at me. “Just bring yourself, and shoes for walking in sand.”

Gloria brought us separate bills as Dolly counted out quarters for a tip from her small-mouthed change purse.

“You enjoy the meatloaf, Emily?” Eugenia demanded of me, her face screwed up into one of those “don’t you dare” looks.

I smacked my lips.

She turned to Dolly who she didn’t need to ask. It was Eugenia’s home cooking, like the meatloaf, that kept Dolly coming back year after year.

“You know,” Eugenia came around to stand at the side of the counter, “I’m going to keep looking for somebody in your family. I’m doing a search of the Flynns all around Detroit. That’s where you’re from, right?”

“You’re not putting anybody from my family up on that wall, Eugenia.” Dolly cocked her head toward the vestibule. “Everybody knows that family of yours ain’t all your family. Don’t go pulling tricks like that on me.”

“No, no,” Eugenia looked contrite. “I wouldn’t do that. It’s just that, who knows, I might really find something.”

Dolly gave her a disbelieving look, a threatening sniff, and turned on her heel, stomping out of the restaurant.