Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries) (4 page)

“It never got that far,” I said. “They took it before I could deposit it.”

“But it was insured?”

My head began to hurt. “Remember
,
Ethel, you didn't want it in an account, so it would not have been insured anyway. But they took it before the bank could lock it up. I'm afraid it's all gone.”

Ethel had big glasses, and it was hard to read her expressions, but she looked angry. “You were the one who told me it wasn't safe here,” she said. “You said it was dangerous. It might burn up, or someone might rob me. But it got lost in the nice safe bank.”

Sometimes, abject humility is entirely appropriate. “You are absolutely right
,
Ethel,” I said. “I am so sorry.”

“I needed that money,” she said. Her voice had a quaver to it.

“I know,” I said. “I hope the police will recover it soon. But until they do, I want you to know that I will make sure you are taken care of. I won't let you suffer as a result of my mistake.”

She did not seem particularly mollified. I didn't blame her. I let her vent some more anger on me. I may have even encouraged it. I didn't even mention the fact that I got shot. Both the fact that I had been shot, and that I didn't bring it up, made me feel slightly more righteous. Even so, it wouldn't pay Ethel's bills.

We eventually made a list of some of her upcoming needs and expenses. It was going to
be one of those months for me.

Afterwards I drove down to see Alex Chan.
Chan was my lawyer, and maybe my friend too. His office was in a newer building that looked like a fancy house, but was actually designed to hold several upscale office suites.
The other suites were taken by a real estate company
, an architect
,
and some kind of small engineering firm.
The reception area had stone pillars and stone tile and a common area with carafes of coffee and couches and a flat screen TV playing CNN to an empty ro
om. I sampled the coffee, and
finding it old and stale, took a cup with me into the Law Offices of Alex Chan.

Alex had a part-time secretary, a pleasantly plump, attractive blond woman in her late twenties. She smiled at me as I entered the
little reception area at the front of the
suite. “Hello, and how may I help you?”

“Julie,” I said, “it’s me. I’m here to see Alex.”

“Do you have an appointment, sir?”

“Julie, seriously,” I said.

She grimaced. “Alex wants me to bring
a
sense of professionalism to this office,” she said. “I’m supposed to be kind of formal and sort of give people the impression that he is a serious lawyer, or something.”

“He is a good lawyer,” I said. “But this is a bit silly.”

“I know.” She sighed.

“I know I gave him your name
when he was looking for help
, but I also told you I wasn’t sure you’d like it.”

“Do you have any more hours for me at Harbor Lutheran?”

“No. We’re small, with a small budget. You know that.”

“Well then, this is my solution. Beside
s
,” she grinned “I don’t have to remind him about his appointments all the time. He’s very organized.”

“Thanks for the uplifting conversation,” I said, and
limped
into Chan’s office.

Alex Chan was a little under medium size, with the kind of ivory skin that some Asians get when they never go out in the sun. There wasn’t a lot of time to get a good tan, this far north. He had eyes that he liked to think were inscrutable, but to me they always looked mischievous, and maybe a little insecure. He nodded at me as I walked in, and the
n
leaned over to look around me
t
hrough the door to the reception area.

“Julie,” he called. “You’re supposed to buzz me and announce clients before you send them back.”

“I know,” she called back. “But it’s
him
.”

Alex sighed and turned back to me. “It’s hard to find good help these days.”

“I think she’s great help,” I said loudly enough so Julie could hear.

“That’s ‘cause you need me more than he does,”
called
Julie. “But compliments don’t pay the bills.”

“Would you like to join us for our private attorney-client meeting?” said Chan, his voice dripping with acid.

“Oh
,
can I?” said Julie girlishly.

Alex sighed. “Shut the door, will you?” he said to me.

I closed it and said, “I
told you what you were getting
with her.”

“I know.” He lowered his voice and looked at the door as if Julie had her ear on the other side of it. “But she is very good, actually. Plus, she’s kind of cute.”

I just grinned widely.

“Shut up,” said Chan. “What do you want?”

I threw the envelope from my mother onto his desk in front of him. “My mom sent some more papers of my dad’s.”

He pulled the envelope toward him and extracted the contents. “Have you looked at these?”

“No, that’s what I pay you for.”

“How do you know she didn’t send you a letter?”

“She told me on the phone she was sending more of this stuff.”

He started glancing through the thick stack of paper my mother had sent. “Why did he make you executor of his will anyway? Why not her?”

“I don’t know, maybe he figured she would die first. She’s not very good with this kind of thing anyway, so she didn’t mind.”

“You’re not so great with paperwork and details yourself.”

“Yes, but I have you.”

Chan sighed and shook his head. The window behind him looked out onto a well-kept green lawn dotted with trees that were bright with autumn. Two squirrels were playing at the base of a white-
trunked birch
that was gaudy with golden leaves.

After a minute,
Alex shuffled the papers and tapped their edges on the desk. “I don’t see anything here that is relevant to your dad’s estate. These look like old case files from his days as a Washington state police detective.” He slid the papers back into the envelope and handed it to me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Mom is just sending me anything and everyth
ing that looks kind of official or important.”

“That’s OK,” said Chan, grinning at me with startlingly white teeth. “It all works out into billable hours for me.”

Now it was my turn to sigh.
 

Much as I wanted to solve the crime and recover Ethel Ostrand's money, I still had a job as pastor of Harbor Lutheran Church in Grand Lake. So on Sunday, as usual, I preached a heck of a sermon. I could tell that at certain points, some folks would have said “amen” if they hadn't been Scandinavian Lutherans. As it was, they showed their rabid enthusiasm by not overtly falling asleep.

Leyla was there, as she had been every week for several months now. She had joined the ladies Bible
s
tudy group as well, but she never talked to me about it. Despite my complicated ambivalence, I was happy to see her.

After church, I pulled her aside. “Wanna watch the game at my place?” I said. “I'll make lunch.” She gave me a long look that I guess I was supposed to understand.

“I don't think so, Jonah,” she said.

“OK,” I said. I had a vague sense that it had to do with our conversation on Friday night.

I liked Leyla. Her attitude unsettled me slightly. Even so, I was rarely unhappy at the prospect of an afternoon alone. After a nap, I made a simple dough from flour, salt, oil, water and yeast. While it was rising, I fried up some ground beef with garlic, onions, pepper, basil and oregano. I also chopped up some tomatoes, fresh mushrooms and black olives. I opened a can of tomato paste and mixed it with water, black pepper, more basil and garlic, some salt and a lot of black pepper.

When the dough was ready
,
I pressed it onto my pizza stone. I spread the tomato sauce onto it, and then the other ingredients, and topped it with mozzarella cheese, and put it in the oven for twenty minutes. Voila! Pizza.

Belatedly, I remembered the football game. It wasn't the Seahawks or the Forty-niners, but I was doing my best to stay current with the Vikings this year. When in Rome, one ought to cheer for the Roman team. Or something like that.

I watched most of the second half, munching on my pizza and drinking a bottle of Woodchuck's hard apple cider. It was a game the Vikings were expected to lose, so
,
naturally, they won. It was fun to watch a team do that. On the other hand, the Vikings also had a tendency to lose games they were supposed to win. I thought it might have something to do with the Scandinavian temperament of their fans.
Too much success was morally questionable.

The late game came on, still not the Seahawks. I had read somewhere that someone had done a bunch of blood tests on pastors, which seemed like a good idea for so many different reasons. They found that most pastors, over the course of a week, gradually built up to a massive adrenaline spike on Sunday mornings. Once the church services were all done with, there was a corresponding physical low, and most of them crashed, waking up with big headaches on Monday mornings.

I had so far escaped the headaches, b
ut I believed in the adrenaline
and the following crash. The crash began to hit me as I watched the Bears battle the
Packers
, and even the drama of a battle for
first
place in the division failed to keep my eyes from growing heavy. I scooched down on the couch, set my plate on the floor
,
and fell into the blessed embrace of my Sunday afternoon nap.

~

About a year ago, a bunch of thugs had broken into my cabin and trashed it
,
as a warning to me. I was too obtuse for the warning to be effective, but many staunch, worldly
wise friends and church members had insisted afterward that I get an alarm system. I finally caved in when I came home one day to find it was already installed
, and
Julie
was programming it for me.

Generally
,
I only turned it on out of guilt, because I hadn't paid for installation. I left it off when I was personally at home. But I had
never
figured out how to turn off the brief
,
loud
,
series of beeps that happened whenever anyone opened a door or window.

That loud beeping sound is what startled me out of my nap.

I looked up
,
and there was
a
man dressed in black standing in the sliding door
that
opened onto my deck. He
wore
a black ski mask, covering his face except for holes where his eyes and mouth were.

Talk about adrenaline spike. It was like no sermon I'd ever preached before.

I've heard about an instinct that some natural fighters have to attack relentlessly without pausing. My Tae Kwon Do
coach
used to tell me I had it. I do know this: it's usually a good thing if your reactions surprise your opponent and he doesn't have time to think. I leaped from the couch, and stooping at the fireplace
,
I grabbed a ch
unk of wood with my right hand
and the poker in my left. I heaved the wood directly at his face. He ducked, and it hit him on the head because my aim had been too low. He cursed and staggered back while I switched the poker to my right hand and ran at him. Perhaps if I had paused he might have
drawn a
weapon, or
suddenly remembered he
was a champion street fighter or something, but as it is, he did what was natural for almost anyone who is attacked by a crazed, poker-bearing pastor who has just been wakened from his post-adrenaline nap: he ran.

The triple beep of the alarm system went off again, suggesting another intruder. I shouted as loud as could, whirled, ran to the alarm keypad
,
and hit the panic button.

Wild sirens went off while I spun back around looking for the second invader. No one was in sight. Within ten seconds
,
my phone rang. It was the alarm company.

“We show that your alarm is going off,” said a calm female voice at the other end. “Is everything OK?”

I felt like I was on a TV commercial. “No,” I said. “Someone – maybe two people – just tried to break in while I was napping.”

“The police are on their way,” she said.
“
Please stay on the line with me until they get there.”

In the TV commercials I'd seen, the burglars always ran away when the sirens went off. I could understand why – it was so loud, I wanted to run too, but I left the sirens on, and I stayed put by the front door, with the poker in hand, just in case anybody had been wearing earplugs.