Dearly Departed (31 page)

Apparently it was a good guess. Charlie looked as though he had just caught me peeking through his windows. “Who are you?”

“Never mind him,” said Orman. “Is what he said true?”

Charlie straightened his back. “I’m not at liberty to say. You’ll need to come to the meeting and find out.” He may have looked like a liar, but he didn’t sound like one. Chalk it up to a lifetime in politics.

The sheriff studied Charlie for a moment; I stepped back. I didn’t want to distract him. Finally, Orman asked, “How much money did you give Michael?”

Charlie’s mouth unhinged and fell open, his bottom jaw just hanging there until he cradled it with his hand.

“Money?” he asked. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“You know what money.”

Charlie looked at Harry and then at me. Neither of us had an answer for him. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“I want an exact amount,” the sheriff insisted.

Charlie’s mouth worked, but no words came out.

“
How much?
” the sheriff screamed.

I flinched. So did Harry. Charlie Otterness didn’t. Instead his eyes grew wide and he stepped forward, prepared to meet any attack. I realized then that despite my earlier impression, there was nothing at all soft about Charlie. He was a scrapper just like Johnny Johannson.

“No one talks to me that way,” Charlie hissed.

“I’m the sheriff,” Orman reminded him.

“What the fuck do I care?” Charlie pointed a finger at him. “You ain’t your father, Bobby. Don’t pretend that you are.”

Orman leaned forward, clenching and unclenching his fists, but somehow the older man’s words had deflated him; he reminded me of a balloon with a slow leak. I decided it was time to step in.

“You have a nice place here,” I told Charlie.

He turned his angry gaze on me, obviously still wondering who I was. “I like it,” he said.

“Profitable?”

“I make a living,” suspicious now.

“Enough to invest in The Harbor with Michael?”

Charlie laughed at the question. “I get it now.” He laughed some more. “You’re wrong.” He sat back down behind his desk and put his feet up. “You are so wrong. You’ll see.” He continued to laugh.

Suddenly Orman laid his hands on a metal folding chair and flung it across the office, nearly hitting Harry where he stood in the corner. The sheriff’s face was flushed with anger, his teeth were bared, his fists clenched. He had jumped to the final stage of aggression—
assault is imminent
—fuck the first stages. I have no doubt he would have attacked Otterness if I hadn’t stepped in front of him.

“What?” I asked.

“You know Chip Thilgen,” Orman accused Charlie, pointing at the older man over my shoulder.

“Where is all this coming from, Bobby?” Charlie wanted to know. “Why are you so pissed off?” Good question, I thought. But Orman refused to answer it.

“Hey?” I said.

Orman shook his head slightly, his lips a thin line, and took three steps backward. He nodded at Charlie like he wanted me to keep at him.

“Do you know Chip Thilgen?” I asked while still watching Orman.

“Of course.”

“Friends?”

Harry snorted from the corner where he stood watching the goings-on as if he couldn’t possibly imagine Thilgen having a friend.

“No, we weren’t friends,” Charlie said. “We were on the same side on some environmental issues; he actually had some good ideas if you could get past his bullshit. But that was it.”

“Was the spoiling of Lake Peterson one of the issues you agreed on?”

“No,” Charlie answered. “Lake Peterson can support a fishing resort now that it’s been restocked.”

“When was the last time you saw Thilgen?” I asked.

“I don’t remember.”

I turned to face the man, leaned on his desk. “Where were you when Michael was shot, Charlie?”

“I was fishing Storm Lake. Who are you, anyway?”

“Who were you fishing with?” I asked, ignoring his question.

“I fish alone. Everyone knows that.”

“No witnesses, eh?” I said. “That’s too bad.”

“I’ve been keeping a low profile. Since—”

“Since you sold your office?” Orman again, his voice way too loud.

Charlie had nothing to say to that.

“When did you stop seeing Michael?” I asked.

Charlie gestured toward the sheriff with his chin. “When she started seeing him.”

“Hmph,” Orman grunted.

“Did you break up because of the sheriff?” I asked. “Or The Harbor?”

Otterness looked down at his fingers splayed over his desktop, counting each one carefully. “Buying The Harbor the way she did hurt me,” Charlie admitted. “I told her people would get the wrong idea about it, but she said it was her shot, and she was taking it. But that didn’t break us up, and neither did the sheriff.”

Orman grunted again as I asked, “What then?”

“My age,” Charlie confessed. “At first she said it didn’t matter. She said all adults were pretty much the same age, and in the things that counted I was younger than most of the men she knew. But it did matter. I knew it mattered from the beginning.”

“Then why did you get involved with her?” I asked.

He grinned like it was the dumbest question he had ever heard. “Have you seen her?”

“She’s a looker,” Harry confirmed from the corner.

“I guess they’re right when they say there’s no fool like an old fool,” Charlie continued. “I should have known she was only using me.…”

Like Raymond Fleck and Hunter Truman
, I thought.

“But, hey, I couldn’t resist. So sue me.” Charlie smiled again. “I have to admit, it was fun while it lasted.”

“You sonuvabitch!” Orman snarled behind me and again made a violent move toward Charlie, who sprang to his feet, ready to take him on. I made sure I was between them, my arms outstretched like I was parting the Red Sea.

Harry in the corner shook his head sadly. “Women,” he muttered. “No matter how old we get, they can still make us act like idiots.”

Charlie didn’t hear him, but the sheriff did. He moved his shoulders like he was shaking off a heavy cloak, then pointed at Charlie.

“Don’t go anywhere I can’t find you,” he warned.

“You won’t have to look for me,” Charlie replied defiantly. “I’ll be here.”

“N
icely done, Sheriff,” I told him when we were outside again. “Ever think of a career in law enforcement?”

“Fuck you!”

“Yeah, right.”

“Otterness is a piece of shit, and he’s finished in this county,” Orman told me.

“Why’s that? Because he slept with your girl?”

“Get in the fucking car.”

The sheriff was out of control, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. If he had been working for me, I would’ve had him relieved from duty. Only he wasn’t working for me; we were in Kreel County, and he was the law here. I was just along for the ride.

“The mural on Charlie’s wall,” I said—maybe if I could remind him who he was—“did you do that?”

“Yeah.”

We were on the county road now, driving well above the speed limit. Orman gripped the steering wheel too tightly for safe driving and nodded.

“So you and Charlie must have been friends at one time.”

Orman didn’t say.

“Behind your desk,” I added. “The whitetailed buck. That’s yours, too.”

The sheriff’s glance shifted to me and then back to the blacktop.

“It should be in a gallery somewhere,” I said.

“I know,” he said matter-of-factly. Then he sighed audibly and loosened his grip on the steering wheel. The car slowed to the posted speed limit. “There’s a gallery in Duluth that’s been wanting it,” Orman continued. “But it was my first truly good painting, and I’m having trouble parting with it. It won first prize in the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association art contest three years ago.”

“No kidding?” I asked excitedly, although I had never heard of the Minnesota Deer Hunter’s Association or its art contest.

“When I wouldn’t sell it, a couple of backers put out a limited-edition print that made some money,” Orman added, warming to the subject. “Since then I’ve been selling paintings through the gallery in Duluth and another one in Minneapolis. I haven’t done badly with it, either.”

“Did you study art in school?”

“No, no nothing like that. It’s just something I picked up when I was with the Wisconsin HP. The watch commander was into it, and he encouraged me to sketch with charcoals and then he critiqued my work. He said it showed promise. But I didn’t get real serious about it until I moved back home.”

“How many paintings have you sold?”

“Seventeen in the past two years.”

“Is that good?” I asked stupidly.

“Yeah, it’s good. Better than most.”

“How long does it take to paint a canvas?”

“It usually takes me three, three and a half weeks to put something together. When I work, I work real fast and furious. I don’t have the luxury to sit down like an artist who works full time. I can’t paint every day. Sometimes I’ll go weeks without touching a brush. It depends on business. When the county is quiet, I paint. When it isn’t …

“You’d think painting would be a nice outlet, even therapy,” he continued. “You’d think I’d be able to come home, take off the gun and badge, and forget about what happened that day. Only it doesn’t work like that for me. I try to create these quiet worlds filled with loons swimming lazily under a full moon. But when the real world is noisy, it shows in my work; my paintings become loud, and the loons are frightened away. Lately it’s been getting worse. The breakdown of families, drugs, alcohol abuse, growing poverty—Kreel County isn’t Mayberry anymore. I haven’t painted in two months.”

“Ever think of doing it full time?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked sharply, but the sheriff knew what I was saying.

Just to be sure, I added, “Any damn fool can wear a badge and carry a gun, but how many can do what you do?”

“You don’t think I should be sheriff?”

“Do you?”

He didn’t answer.

“Why did you become sheriff?”

“Sense of duty, I suppose. I figure I owed it to my father. And my grandfather. It’s what they would have wanted.”

“My father was a businessman before he retired,” I told him. “One of the high muck-a-mucks. And I think he wanted me to follow in his footsteps. But he never said so. Instead, he encouraged me and my brother to do whatever we wanted. He only had two rules: Do the best that you can. And enjoy yourself.”

I gave Orman a few moments to reply. When he didn’t, I asked, “Are you enjoying yourself?”

“I acted like a fucking idiot back there, I know that. You don’t have to rub it in. You don’t need to give me speeches.” After a few more moments of silence, he added, “I was jealous”—as if that excused everything.

“Well, I’ve heard artists are supposed to be emotional.”

“Shut up, Taylor,” he told me.

I didn’t. “What’s next?” I asked.

“I’m not quitting just because some city boy doesn’t like how I run things.”

“I meant what do we do next about Michael.” “Oh.” Orman hesitated a moment, then announced, “King Koehn.”

“Oh, goody. Are you going to throw his chairs around, too?”

“Shut up, Taylor.”

This time I did.

twenty-five

A
ngel Johannson asked us to wait for a moment. “Fuck that,” Orman said. He pushed past Angel’s desk and strode purposefully to King’s closed office door. He opened it hard; if it had been locked, I have no doubt he would have kicked it open. I was beginning to suspect that the sheriff was wound way too tight for this line of work.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Koehn said evenly from behind his desk.

I was standing behind Orman. Angel was crowding in behind me. If her boss was calm, she decidedly was not.