Hunter’s Dance (25 page)

XXXVI

I have nothing new to tell you, only what is old and nearly forgotten.

McIntire left Leonie to lead Bonnie home and continued on down the beach the quarter mile or so to Adam Wall's trailer. It wouldn't hurt to let Adam know that his nearest neighbor was out taking target practice, and that her aim wasn't all that good. Mrs. Morlen's level of marksmanship might be good news or bad depending on how Wall chose to look at it.

Adam Wall was nowhere outdoors, and he didn't answer McIntire's knock. McIntire had not realized before how much Wall himself was a part of his surroundings. Without his presence, his simple and inviting home was only the shabby and dismal lodging of a poor man.

McIntire wondered if Adam might be around but still holding a grudge over the fiasco with his brother. More likely off hobnobbing with the sheriff again. When it came to Adam Wall, Koski's investigative methods were taking an odd sort of turn. Especially considering that the sheriff's relationship with the Indian population of Flambeau County was far from what anyone would call cordial.

The wind had died off, and the mist began to take on a suspiciously substantial aspect. Feathery white flakes that hit water and sand with a splat, dissipating on impact. McIntire turned to take refuge on the wooded path that would take him to Adam Wall's childhood home.

He found Charlie, and Adam as well, seated in the kitchen eating a midday meal of frybread, fried potatoes, and ham, also fried.

The kitchen was small and crowded and heavy with the odors of fat and smoke. Its welcome warmth would soon become unbearably hot. Eleanor Wall stood at the wood-fired range. She nodded to McIntire, but didn't smile, and it fell to her husband to offer the constable a chair. She dipped a spoon into a bulky jar of lard, adding an egg-sized lump to the cast-iron skillet. As it melted, she twisted off a lump from the pillow of dough in a white enamel basin, patted it flat, and slapped it into the pan. It sizzled, and small hills began to grow on its surface.

“Marvin ain't home,” she said.

A third syrup-smeared plate on the table told McIntire that Marvin very likely
was
home. He would probably be staying there awhile, at least until his hair grew out.

None of the Walls seemed particularly concerned about Bonnie Morlen's gunplay.

“She's waving that pistol around like a flag,” McIntire told them. “I'd be careful about wandering too near her house. She's on the edge,” he emphasized.

“Well, naturally she is!” Ellie yanked off another wad of dough. “If it was one of my boys that was murdered, I'd be shooting more than bottles!” She lowered her voice. “I'm seriously considering plugging that Maki kid. And look at the poor woman, all alone in that great big barn, no family, her husband gone most of the time. Only that,” she raised her eyebrows, “uranium guy showing up now and then. I should think she'd have gone off her rocker before this.” She gave the dough an extra whack.

Ellie Wall seemed extraordinarily well informed about the comings and goings at the mansion, and about what Ross Maki had been up to. How had that news gotten about so quickly?

“Well,” McIntire said. “I just thought you should be aware of the situation.”

Charlie and Adam Wall harumphed in chorus.

McIntire felt a movement in the adjoining living room. An amorphously shaped shadow lay on the linoleum floor, extending from behind the squat wood-burning heater. Twyla Wall. McIntire wondered what would happen if he suddenly stood and walked around the stove. Would she be at all distinguishable from her shadow?

Charlie cut his bread into pieces as small as his potatoes and stabbed a chunk of each on his fork. “Hear you been out prospecting with Sherlock Fratelli.”

“I wouldn't exactly call it that, and I doubt that Fratelli will be doing any more prospecting for a while.” McIntire told the story of Esko Thomson and the uranium guy's abandoned Geiger counter. He turned to Charlie. “I saw a picture at Esko's that had your father in it.”

“Buncha miners?”

“I guess so. They had picks and shovels.”

“Yeah, Pa guided for that crew, way back. I might of been there myself when that picture was taken. Ma went along, did the cooking. Hell, did most of the work, most likely. So I was probably there, too. They wouldn't of bothered taking a picture of Ma and me.”

“Esko couldn't have been very old himself, at the time.”

“No, Esko Thomson ain't a hell of a lot older than I am. Maybe six-eight years. Lived a rough life though. He came down from Canada, you know. Sneaked over, they say, on his own when he was only a kid, around thirteen or fourteen. Worked in the cook's shack at a lumber camp for one winter before he took up with that bunch prospecting for gold. When that didn't amount to anything, he just stayed on. He's been out there better than forty years. Building those outlandish contraptions and managing to stay alive.” He turned to his son, “Maybe he'd take you on as an apprentice. I'd bet he knows stuff about living off the land that the Indians never even thought of.” He chuckled at Adam's glare. “Is there more syrup, Ellie?”

Eleanor opened the door to the pantry. Cool cellar-smelling air invaded the room. She brought out a quart jar capped with waxed paper held in place with a rubber band. Charlie snapped it off and poured the maple syrup over bread and potatoes alike.

His wife scooped three of the crusty breads onto a plate and handed it to McIntire. McIntire drizzled on the syrup and cut off a piece. The syrup was better than his mother's had been, thicker and sweeter. He took a second bite. The frybread was better than Sophie's, too.

Eleanor began shaping the remaining bread dough into loaves. “What a sad story, to leave everything behind at that age and take off for a strange country. Makes you wonder how awful things must have been.”

McIntire chewed and swallowed. “Well, this isn't such a bad place to be. But he must have left some family. He's got other photographs, a wedding picture, maybe of his parents. I remember Pa saying he had a sister that died. There was one of a pretty little girl.”

Charlie laughed. “Can't be Esko's sister, then. He's about the homeliest guy I ever seen.” He went on, “He always was a loner. I remember once, the men musta gone into town, and he stayed behind at the camp with Ma and me. He showed me how to make a whistle from a willow stick. But mostly he just kept to himself. Course I was too young then to realize that he was really only a kid, too. He was a grown man to me. He must have been a tough little nut. Still is! But when you think about a kid that age, especially one his size, coming without a penny in his pocket…managing to survive out there in the woods, like an animal, almost. Well. Not everybody coulda done it.”

A hollow cackle from the adjoining living room put them all in suspended motion.

“
Weiejingeshkid!”
Twyla Wall's voice was soft and nasal. “
Weiejingeshkid,”
she said again and chuckled once more.

McIntire turned a questioning gaze to Charlie, who shrugged. “Don't look at me. I had that language beat out of me years ago.”

Adam's expression was one of puzzled surprise, quickly replaced with a face as blank as his father's. It was hard to say with Adam, but McIntire would bet he had some inkling of what his grandmother was getting at.

They all knew better than to ask Twyla to explain. And any further discussion was arrested by the ring of the phone, two short jangles followed by a single long ring, a call for the McIntire household.

McIntire stood up. “Leonie's still with Bonnie Morlen.”

“John?” Mia Thorsen responded to his hello.

“Hello.” A second female voice eclipsed McIntire's reply.

“Siobhan, I wanted to talk to John.”

“Oh, I'm sorry he's not here right now. I could—”

“I'm here, Siobhan.”

“Where?”

“Never mind. Just hang up!”

“Okay.” The line gave a click.

“What is it, Mia?”

“No need to get cranky.”

“Sorry,” McIntire said. “It's just the way that woman affects me.”

“Could you come here? Please? It's important.”

“I'm at Walls' right now. I don't have a car.” He looked at Charlie and received a nod.

“All right. I'll be right over. Are you okay?”

“No. Not really.” McIntire waited through a long pause. “I can tell you who poisoned Bambi Morlen.”

“What? Who?”

Her answer was a muffled blur.

“I'm sorry Mia, I didn't get that.”

The intake of breath was audible. “I said, John, that it was me.”

XXXVII

He never left a ball until he had danced with everybody, from the oldest woman to the youngest girl.

“Selma Maki came over this afternoon. She told me about Ross. She also said Ross wanted to apologize for taking a bottle of brandy from me. He got it from the cupboard on the porch where Nick keeps his hoard. That's where the poison came from.” Mia stood with her back to the sink, furiously twisting the end of her braided hair. “Did I kill that boy?”

“Guibard says no,” McIntire said. “Bambi died before the poison could have any effect. Who is it you were trying to kill?”

“Oh, John, don't be an idiot! I wasn't trying to kill anybody. I was only hoping to….” She twisted harder. “Lately, Nick's been drinking way too much.”

“Lately? Mia, was there a time when Nick didn't drink way too much?”

“He's getting bad, John. He's getting older. He's got to quit. It's going to kill him.”

In that case, why was she bothering with the poison? “Sit down, Mia.” He pulled out a chair and held its back until she sat, then took one opposite her. “Maybe you'd better tell me about this from the beginning.”

“In the beginning, I had a cavity.”

“Mia!”

“I had to go to the dentist. Doctor Browning in Ishpeming. He kept me waiting for ages. He had a magazine in his waiting room. Well he had lots of magazines, but the one I picked up was about scientific stuff.
Science Digest.
It had an article about some kind of drug that's made from…well, it has something to do with rubber…or something like that. Anyway, it's a cure for alcoholism. When people take it, drinking makes them really sick, so they don't want to do it anymore.” She looked at the ceiling. “It sounded worth a try.”

“So you put Indian tobacco in Nick's booze?'

“Mama used to call it pukeweed. I crushed the leaves, tied them in a bag, and let them soak in the brandy for a few hours. I didn't know how much to use, so I started with only a tiny bit.”

“Guibard says Bambi got enough to kill a horse.”

“Well, it didn't seem to be bothering Nick. So I kept adding more. And letting it soak longer.”

“And Nick never got sick?”

“Not that he mentioned. And my husband isn't one to suffer in silence. Do you think it was because I increased the amount gradually? That he might have built up a tolerance to it?”

“I suppose that's possible. I don't know.”

“But if he had reacted to it…. Was I really giving Nick enough to
kill
him?”

“You might have been. But according to Guibard it would generally be vomited up before it could do much harm. Mia, what made you decide to do this? Nick's been a juicer for a long time.” And he'd also been plenty of other things that might cause a wife to break out the poison.

Her voice had a pleading quality he hadn't heard in many years. “It didn't used to bother him so much. Except for banging up the car now and then. But he's been getting weak and shaky. You must have noticed. I'm afraid for him. I'm afraid for
me.
Lately he even walks different, kind of careful and stiff.” She dropped the braid. “Oh lord, you don't suppose I've made it worse?”

McIntire stood up. “Get him to a doctor.”

“He won't go. He's afraid of losing his job.”

“What? Does Nick actually think that the U.S. Postal Service hasn't yet figured out that he's a drunk?”

A spark of anger leapt into the pale blue eyes. “You're talking about my husband, you know.”

“I'm not likely,” McIntire said as he went to the door, “to ever forget that.”

Mia coughed, and McIntire turned. She hesitated, then said, “I see Siobhan is still here.”

“Shows no sign of leaving. Not with Melvin Fratelli and Rudy Jantzen vying for her affections.”

“Rudy who?”

“If you don't know Rudy, you're about the only woman in the county who doesn't. The silver-haired Adonis.”

“Oh! Sure. I hadn't heard his name. Leonie mentioned Siobhan had been out with him. She'd better watch her back. He made quite a splash at the dance, especially with Evelyn Turner. And, I hear, with Lucy Delaney. No point in getting on
her
bad side.”

“He was at the dance? You sure of that?”

“Oh, you betcha. Stayed 'til the last dog was hung. Had the ladies eating out of his hand.” She laughed, “He'll be taking over Nick's….”

Tears welled up in her eyes. She swung around to busy herself at the sink, and McIntire reached for the door.

“Nick will be all right,” he said. It sounded lame.

She turned with an expression similar to Kelpie's when she wanted to be lifted over some obstacle.

McIntire twisted the doorknob. “You'll be all right.”

XXXVIII

But where had he been, the pale watcher of the source of deeds, that night when she had learned to know the fulness of life?

So it was
Go Back to Start
. Unless Ross was lying about finding Bambi already dead—and McIntire didn't think that he was—they were right back at the beginning again. The scalping and the trepanation meant nothing. The poisoning meant nothing. What did they have left? Even Bambi's trip back to the camp was probably meaningless, if he had only returned to get his jacket from Greg Carlson's car, and hadn't been attacked until his return. Every inconsistency had been explained.

McIntire shut down the circuit and opened the fuse box. He unscrewed the burned-out fuse and dropped it onto the shelf next to a can of rusty screws and bolts. The pump must have some fundamental flaw, but McIntire knew no more about electricity than he did about cars. He popped in a fresh fuse and flipped up the switch. The pump hummed. Good enough for now.

Leonie had been a good sport about it. Pumping water by hand was no fun, nor was lugging it into the house and heating it on the stove. Especially when one was entertaining a guest to whom hot water was the elixir of life. McIntire was frequently awed by his wife's fortitude, and not a little proud that she'd demonstrated that mettle by choosing him.

He latched the pump house door and walked back to the house and the work that lay in wait on the dining room table.

Yes, all the inconsistencies had been explained, except Bonnie and Wendell Morlen. Where was Wendell? Why wasn't he there, making a pest of himself, prodding the state police, harassing the sheriff? Wendell was a mystery, but McIntire felt that somehow the key lay with his wife. Bonnie Morlen sat alone in her opulent lodge, grief, guilt, and vengeance in equal parts. The vengeance McIntire could understand, but why guilt? For allowing Bambi so much freedom? He was eighteen years old. He could do as he pleased. Was it remorse over the circumstances of his birth, her marriage of convenience? Could she suspect Wendell? Wendell Morlen might be a horse's ass and the greedy bastard she'd accused him of being, but from all appearances he'd treated Bambi as his own, much better than some natural fathers. The few times McIntire had seen him, he'd seemed genuinely grief-stricken.

Or was Bonnie's regret brought on by her extended shopping trip the night of her son's death? Where
had
she been the night of that dance? It seemed pretty sure she was not panting in the stolen embrace of Mr. Popularity, Rudy Jantzen, if he was kicking up his heels right here in St. Adele.

That asinine affair! McIntire fervently wished he'd never heard of the Hunters' Dance. If the township hadn't needed a constable to stand guard at their annual bash, he could be off fishing right now. Or getting on with some real work. He picked up Gösta to find him whirling across the dance floor. He slammed the book shut.

Was there no end to it? Everything seemed to lead right back to that dance. Even Adam Wall was there and had been on the receiving end of that teepee building remark. Something he might not have been willing to overlook. When he took on the Shawanok Club, Adam Wall was going to an awful lot of trouble for what he freely admitted was a lost cause. Why? Only to demand that he be taken seriously. McIntire could understand that. But how far was Wall willing to go in his quest for respect?

Respect, uranium, relics of the past, freedom, murderers. They were all hunting for something. Which brought him back to Hunter in Chief, Bonnie Morlen. She was leading her own dance now. A butterfly, with Bonnie Morlen in the middle, munching pastries while she swung them all around her at ever more dizzying speeds.

McIntire left his spot at the dining room table to retrieve the envelope with Bambi's photos from the breast pocket of his jacket. He extracted the pictures he'd temporarily forgotten in the wake of Bonnie's target practice and Mia's revelations.

There he was, God's gift to the middle-aged woman, the suave Rudy Jantzen, gazing across that crowded room, or porch, appraising Bonnie Morlen with the same expression Leonie had on her face when she sized up a horse.

Koski had followed up Bonnie's story. The movie part was true as far as it went. She still had the ticket stub, and the girl selling the tickets had noticed her come in. Well, women wearing diamonds the size of marbles weren't all that common in Marquette. But the showing she attended was over before eight o'clock, and, in any event, no one reported noticing her leave. She could have gone any time. Getting lost would have been easy
if
she had taken the wrong road out of Marquette. If she'd gotten on the Thunder Bay Road, it couldn't have taken her anywhere except to Thunder Bay and on to the Club. If she'd accidentally headed east out of Marquette, she'd have to be a complete moron not to notice that Lake Superior wasn't on her right where it belonged. That left Number Thirteen heading south. Number Thirteen didn't go anywhere near the lake at all, a major tip-off that one might be straying a bit.

Who in hell was this Rudy Jantzen, and why had he been at the Club? More to the point, why was he now hanging around Chandler? Only for the pleasure of Siobhan's company? Siobhan had lied like a trooper when she said she'd spent most of the night of the murder with Jantzen. The Siobhan that McIntire knew had never needed much of a reason to be economical with the truth, but for Rudy Jantzen? From what? Was she so taken with the guy that she'd lie to protect him from suspicion of murder?

Bonnie had met someone the night her son died, McIntire was sure of that, even if it hadn't been Jantzen. The assignation might have nothing to do with Bambi's death, but his death did make her an extremely wealthy woman and one who might no longer have reason to stay with the husband she'd married only to give her son a father.

But where had Bonnie been? She and her companion most likely hadn't engaged in an evening of making out in the back seat of a car. They'd have been visible at some time or other. Koski and his cohorts at the State Police had probably checked every restaurant, bar, gas station, and motel between Marquette and Ishpeming, but how far off that route had they gone? Bonnie would have had plenty of time to walk out on
Mystery Street
and drive well off the beaten track on her trip home. If she wanted to be invisible, where would she go? To some isolated tavern? She'd stick out like a sore thumb. Better to look for a place where she could get lost in a crowd—a crowd where unfamiliar faces were commonplace, and affluent women in fancy cars could pass without much notice. Like the resort area around Lake Michigamee? McIntire slipped the pictures back into his pocket, donned the jacket, and went out the door.

Pete Koski had been looking for a slightly chubby, slightly snooty, expensively dressed brunette. But that had been her description at five in the afternoon. What if the ten o'clock Bonnie had been wearing a coat? And maybe a scarf over those chestnut curls? What if she'd lost that confident, upper-crust air? Would she be only another non-descript middle-aged woman?

Two filling stations brought nothing, but the third time was the charm, in the form of the Timberlake Lodge. Its supper club was crowded with lacquered pine tables, a fair number of them filled even at four-thirty.

McIntire eased himself onto a vacant stool at the bar and ordered a Hamms. The husky bartender was engaged in refereeing a heated discussion concerning the workings of the minds of the Red Chinese as it applied to their recent invasion of Tibet. McIntire began tentatively, “I'm from the Flambeau County Sheriff's Department. Could I have a word?”

His question was lost in a barrage of groans and laughter from the two opposing factions.

“Hey, shut yer traps, will ya, so I can hear what this man has to say?”

A half dozen mouths closed and a dozen eyes turned expectantly to McIntire. With a disgusted look at the gallery, the bartender beckoned McIntire to the far end of the bar. “Now what can I do for you?” He leaned his beefy elbows on the bar with an eager air not often seen in a publican receiving a visit from the law.

McIntire hoped he didn't disappoint. “I'm looking for a woman who might have been in here in the past few weeks, specifically Saturday night two weeks ago, probably in the restaurant. Is there anyone here who might have been waiting tables then?”

“Might be. My wife would have been working then, but unless the lady you want has two heads, I doubt she's going to remember. It gets pretty busy here Saturday nights.”

“Could I talk to her?”

The man shrugged, stretched his torso across the bar, and bellowed within inches of McIntire's ear, “Bernadette, can you help this man a minute?”

A woman wearing an apron over a navy-colored dress looked up from her pad, nodded, and turned her attention back to an elderly foursome. Her husband waved McIntire to a table near the kitchen and turned back to the bar with the opinion that “The Chinks can't do shit without the Russians to back 'em up.”

McIntire was seeing the bottom of his second beer when Bernadette slid into the seat opposite him. She carried with her a carton of salt and an armful of empty shakers.

McIntire got straight to business. “I'm wondering if you saw a woman. On the fourteenth of last month. It was a Saturday. She might have been here, maybe with a man. Probably late in the evening, ten or eleven. I know you get very busy, and it was over two weeks ago, but try to think. Did you notice a couple that might have stood out a little, but kept to themselves. Maybe looked slightly out of place?”

She smiled. “Guilty? Furtive?”

“Well, maybe.”

She laughed outright. “That would describe about half the couples in here. The legitimate ones stay home.” She screwed the top off a shaker and tipped up the carton. Its illustration of a small girl carrying a container with her own image carrying that container never ceased to fascinate McIntire. The child with her umbrella and spilling salt spiraled inward to infinity….

Bernadette said, “It might help to know what these people look like.” McIntire wrenched his gaze from the blue carton.

“I'm not sure about the man, the woman is short, brown hair, somewhat…plump….”

The waitress looked blank, and McIntire gave it up. “The person I'm looking for is the mother of the young man who was found dead in St. Adele, Bambi Morlen. I have her picture.”

He reached into his pocket, but Bernadette put out a hand to stop him. “Oh ya, she was here.”

“What?”

“She was here that very night. The night he died. But she wasn't with a man. She was by herself, and it was nowhere near ten o'clock. More like seven-thirty. We were still jammed with dinner. She wanted a table by the window and waited until one was clean. Then she only ordered pie and coffee. She left without finishing that. And a good thing. We needed that table.”

A
Miss!
sent the waitress scurrying for the coffee pot to fill the cup of a plaid-jacketed diner. When she returned, McIntire asked, “How did you know who she was? Did she come here regularly?”

“I didn't know who she was, not then. Her picture was in last Sunday's
Mining Journal
.”

“But why didn't you tell somebody?”

“I told everybody I know! It kind of creeped me out, me giving her pie maybe at the same time her son was being murdered. That boy was the same age as my own son.” She removed her glasses, breathed onto the lenses, and began wiping them on the hem of the tablecloth. “He's in Korea right now.”

“I'm sorry,” McIntire said, and meant it. “It looks about over now. Maybe he'll be home soon.”

Bernadette shrugged, and McIntire continued, “I meant why didn't you tell somebody in authority, the police or the sheriff?”

“Why would I? She wasn't committing any crime, poor woman.” Bernadette dropped the tablecloth. “Or was she? Are you saying she's a suspect? Oh, I can't believe that!”

“We don't really have a suspect, I'm afraid, which is why we need all the information we can get, about anyone and everyone involved.”

“Oh, that's right, you mentioned a man she was supposed to be with. Not her husband, I take it?”

McIntire nodded and asked, “I don't suppose you noticed when she drove away, which direction she took?”

“Oddly enough, I did. She took the Petosky Grade road, heading north. I noticed because I was clearing her table, and when I looked out she was walking to her car. There was a guy sitting out there in another car, like he was waiting for her to pull out so he could take her spot. But when she left he whipped around and went right behind. The Grade road is pretty desolate, and she looked like she had a little money….”

“Did you get a look at the driver of the car?”

“Not really. It was after dark and I could only see them because of the light by the back door. He had fair coloring, light hair. That's about all I can say.”

McIntire reached again for the photograph and pointed to Bonnie Morlen, seated at her husband's side. “Is this the woman?” Bernadette replaced her glasses, glanced briefly, and nodded. McIntire went on. “Do you see the man here?”

She studied the picture for a long minute. “Could be. Like I said, all I know is that he had light hair. There are two men here with blondish hair.” She pointed to Wendell Morlen, and then to Rudy Jantzen. “It could have been either of them. Or neither.” She pulled the snapshot closer. “On second thought, maybe not. The guy in the car, his hair looked almost white. More like…” she indicated Jantzen again, “but that could have been only the light shining on it.”

Rudy Jantzen had stayed at the town hall until—what was it Mia had said?—the last dog was hung. She didn't mention when he'd arrived. If he met Bonnie at seven-thirty….

“What about the car?” McIntire asked. “What did it look like?”

“Oh, nothing special, kind of beat up. I don't know the make. A panel truck, black.”