Tamarack County Read online

  “How long?”

  “He says he’s coming back once the snow’s gone. Late spring, maybe.”

  “Did he take Walleye?” she asked, speaking of the old dog who’d been Meloux’s companion for as long as Stephen could remember.

  “Walleye died last fall,” he told her gently. “He just lay down one day and didn’t get up. I’ve never seen Henry so sad. I think maybe that’s part of why he agreed to go to Thunder Bay. He wanted to get away from Crow Point for a while.”

  Anne’s expression seemed suddenly far away. “Like I said, things change.”

  “Not so much,” Stephen said. “And not forever. Henry will be back. And when he comes home, we’re going to get him a new dog.”

  “What about Rainy? Is she coming back?”

  “I don’t know. Guess we’ll have to see.”

  “Who’ll help Meloux if she’s not there?”

  “Dad’s talked to a bunch of folks on the rez. They don’t have a plan at the moment, but he says they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it.”

  Stephen’s cell phone gave a little chime, signaling a text message. He took it from his pants pocket. The message read: C U @ 7.

  “Marlee?” Anne asked.

  Stephen nodded.

  “Are you two serious?”

  If his father had asked, Stephen would have interpreted it as an interrogation, but coming from Anne the question felt okay.

  “We’re just talking,” he said. “We’re going to a movie tonight.”

  “Just the two of you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sounds like a date.”

  “I told you we’re—”

  “Just talking, I know,” Anne said with a little laugh.

  Even though it was at his expense, Stephen was happy to hear the sound.

  * * *

  Later, he heard Jenny come in the front door, but everything was quiet for a while before she joined him at the kitchen table, where he was checking his Facebook page on his laptop. Waaboo wasn’t with her.

  “Napping,” she told him, as she began to make a pot of coffee. “He and Joey played their little hearts out. No Dad yet?”

  “Not a word. Should we call him?”

  “If there’s something he wants us to know, he’ll call us. Is that mac and cheese I smell?”

  “Yeah. Annie volunteered to make it.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Jenny finished putting the coffee together, flipped the brew switch, and sat at the table with her brother. In a lot of respects, she reminded him of their mother. She looked like her, for one thing. The same almost white blond hair and glacier blue eyes. Their mother had been an attorney, driven in many ways, and Jenny, though gentler about it, was like that, too. Because their father was often distracted by a case, she’d more or less taken charge of Sam’s Place during its months of operation, and even after they’d shuttered the serving windows of the old Quonset hut at the end of the season, she was still making plans for renovations in the spring and concocting schemes for attracting additional business. But she’d graduated from college with a degree in journalism, and her real dream was to be a writer. Winters were good for her and for feeding that ambition, because there weren’t so many demands on her time. Although raising Waaboo was her greatest joy, every spare moment she could steal for herself was devoted to her scribbling. Her brother believed in her, believed that one day she would realize her ambition. But that was something Stephen hoped for everyone who dreamed.

  “Has she talked to you?” Jenny asked.

  “About why she’s leaving the sisters? Not a word. You?”

  “No.”

  “It must be pretty bad. Maybe she stole the Pope’s rosary or something.”

  Before Jenny could reply, the door opened and their father came in. The sun had set, and the light outside had turned a cold steel blue. The bitter chill of the day poured off him, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. He looked beat, but he smiled at them as he shrugged out of his parka.

  “Smells good in here. Mac and cheese?”

  Stephen closed his laptop and slid it to the side. “Yep.”

  Cork hung the parka beside the door and began to unlace his boots. “Good work, guy.”

  “Annie’s work,” Stephen said.

  His father kicked off his boots. “Probably good to put her back into the rotation. But this doesn’t let you off the hook in the future, buddy.”

  “That’s a big ten-four, Dad.”

  He unsnapped his snowmobile bibs, slipped them off, and folded them and laid them over his boots on the floor. “Where is she?”

  “In her room.”

  Although it wasn’t really her room. Her room had been turned into the nursery for Waaboo. Anne was staying in the attic, which had been converted into a bedroom long ago when their aunt Rose had lived with them and had been like a second mother. Rose was married and living in Evanston, Illinois, and now the attic served as the official guest room.

  Stephen’s father stood with his eyes turned upward. “Has she said anything?”

  “About why?” Stephen asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Nope.”

  His father breathed deeply and gave a nod. “Okay. Everything in its time, I guess.”

  Jenny said, “Did you find Mrs. Carter?”

  Their father shook his head. “Not a sign of her.”

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s certainly not good. Beyond that, I don’t know. Listen, I won’t be joining you for dinner. I’m meeting Marsha at the Four Seasons.”

  “Cop talk?” Jenny asked.

  “She’s under a lot of stress. I’m hoping she’ll relax a little, and maybe together we can figure another way of looking at this situation. Maybe there’s something we haven’t thought of. Anyway, I’m going upstairs to clean up.”

  “Quietly,” Jenny cautioned. “Waaboo’s napping. He played his little heart out this afternoon.”

  Their father left the kitchen. When he was well out of earshot, Stephen said quietly, “Marsha?”

  “Don’t read anything into it,” Jenny said. “Your hormones may be raging, but Dad? He just loves cop talk and a good steak.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Marsha Dross wore jeans and a rust-colored turtleneck. At forty-two, she was more than a decade younger than Cork, and there were already a few noticeable lines on her face—a furrow between her brows when she was deep in thought or frowning, crow’s-feet when she squinted at the sun, two wrinkles that were like parentheses around her mouth when she smiled. Her eyes were dark, a blue that was almost black. She was nearly Cork’s height, and her hair, in its color, was very similar to his, though much thicker. For years, she’d worn it short, so that from a distance, in uniform, she might have been mistaken for Cork. Because of this similarity in appearance, she’d once taken a bullet meant for him, a wound that had nearly killed her and had ended any hope she might have of ever bearing a child. She liked a good steak, single-malt scotch, and once upon a time, line dancing. As far as Cork knew, she didn’t dance anymore.

  When Cork arrived at the Four Seasons, she was already into a scotch. She’d been seated at a table near a window that overlooked the marina behind the hotel. There were no masts to see, only the empty moorings. Far out on the frozen lake stood a little village of ice fishing houses. Although the shanties themselves were lost in the dark, Cork could see tiny squares of light from the lantern glow through the windows of those that were occupied.

  “Better?” he asked as he sat and nodded toward her glass of scotch.

  “I still need a steak in me,” she said.

  As soon as Cork sat down, a waitress approached, a redhead whose once sharp curves had been softened by the years. “Hey, Cork. How are you?”

  “Tired and hungry, Julie. You could start me off with a Leinie’s Dark.”


  “Coming right up. You doing okay, Marsha?”

  “Fine, Julie. Thanks.”

  They spent a few minutes on small talk. She said she’d heard Anne was home. Cork said yes, and it was good to have her. That was all he said, and he knew that because he didn’t elaborate Marsha would let the subject drop. She did. He asked about her father, whom he knew, though not well, a retired cop living in Rochester. She told him he was fine but bored, then she went quiet and her eyes drifted across the dining room, which because it was a Friday evening, was quite full. Cork knew where her head was.

  “Can’t let her go, even for a few minutes,” he said.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Evelyn Carter.”

  She shrugged. “I keep going over things.”

  “What things?”

  She settled into her seat, hands locked around her scotch glass, and leaned toward him. “Yesterday, Father Green told me that he’d talked to her in town earlier that evening and had seen her leave for home. He said she looked very tired. So, I keep turning over the possibility that something went wrong physically, a stroke that affected her thinking, and that she wandered off into the woods.”

  “A reasonable possibility.”

  “Like you said out there today, why didn’t the dogs pick up her trail?”

  “They’re not infallible, especially in the conditions they’ve had to work in.”

  “In which case, we won’t find her until the snow melts in the spring, and then only by luck.”

  “But you’re thinking that’s not it,” Cork said.

  “There are only two possibilities. She’s out there or she isn’t.”

  “And you’re thinking she isn’t.”

  She said, as if it irritated her no end, “I keep coming back to the possibility of an abduction.”

  “Did Azevedo come up with anything on Charles Devine?”

  “Devine’s still in the supermax at Oak Park Heights.”

  “So you think it could be someone else, someone who just stumbled onto Evelyn out on the Old Babbitt Road and for the hell of it picked her up and—what?”

  “Not all people like Devine are behind bars.”

  “Lightning seldom strikes in the same place twice, Marsha.” Which, he could tell, was not what she wanted to hear. So he leaned forward and said quietly, “I’ve been thinking about her gas tank. If she’d filled it, as the Judge said, a couple of days ago and hadn’t done much driving, even with her gas guzzler, it would have taken several hours to empty that tank. How much time passed between Father Green seeing her leave town and Adam Beyer reporting her abandoned car?”

  “Three hours.”

  “And the car had already been there awhile. That’s not enough time. Although I suppose the Judge could simply have been mistaken about her putting gas in the tank.”

  Dross shook her head. “We checked out her recent credit card charges. Evelyn filled up at the Tomahawk Truckstop Wednesday. Forty-four dollars and twenty-nine cents’ worth.” She went suddenly quiet, and although she was still looking at Cork, it was as if she wasn’t seeing him.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I just realized something about her credit card and her car. When we looked at those charges, she’d also filled the tank on Tuesday, the day before her visit to the Tomahawk Truckstop. And she bought that gas in Saint Paul.”

  Cork said, “It’s a long way to the Twin Cities. Takes a lot of fuel.”

  “That’s not the point. When I talked to him, the Judge told me that Evelyn never goes anywhere anymore except into Aurora. He says she won’t even drive to Duluth. She’s not comfortable behind the wheel, doesn’t trust her driving, especially at night. He was surprised that she’d even be out on the Old Babbitt Road.”

  “Did you ask him about that gas charge in Saint Paul?”

  “No, I hadn’t seen her credit card information then.”

  “Interesting. So it appears that she does more driving than her husband is aware of.”

  “I wonder what else there is about Evelyn he doesn’t know,” Dross said.

  “And I wonder what he knows about Evelyn that he’s not telling you. I think you need to talk to him again.”

  Dross stared at the window overlooking the lake, and Cork followed her gaze. The glass showed mostly the reflection of the restaurant dining room and her and Cork together at the table. “I wish Ed hadn’t gone on vacation,” she said.

  She was speaking of Captain Ed Larson, who was in charge of major crime investigations for the department.

  “How long is he out?”

  “Two weeks. San Diego. Christmas with his son’s family.”

  “You could call him, ask him to come back.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll handle it.”

  His beer came, and the waitress asked if Marsha wanted another scotch. Dross slid her glass away and stood up. “No thanks, Julie. I need to run.” She looked across the table at Cork. “A rain check?”

  “On one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “You let me go with you to the Judge’s.”

  She thought a second. The line in the center of her brow furrowed deeply, then she said, “Deal, but I ask the questions.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Stephen borrowed Jenny’s Subaru Forester for the evening. He drove to the reservation of the Iron Lake Ojibwe, where Marlee Daychild lived with her mother in an old prefab home set in a grove of birch trees on the eastern shore of the lake. The gravel lane up to Marlee’s place was marked only by a gap in the snow piled along the shoulder of the plowed road. Stephen turned there and followed wheel ruts that had been left in the new snowfall, ruts made, he knew, by the big all-terrain tires on the Toyota 4Runner that Marlee’s mother drove. She was employed by the Chippewa Grand Casino south of Aurora, working nights tending bar. The 4Runner, though a decade old, provided decent assurance that she could get to the casino even in the bad weather that often characterized winter in the Arrowhead of Minnesota.

  A big yard light illuminated the clearing around the home. Stephen parked Jenny’s Forester near the front porch, an add-on built of cedar. He killed the engine, stepped from the car, and followed a shoveled path to the porch. As he climbed the steps, the boards, stiff from the cold, gave aching cries, which were answered from inside by a deep, raucous woofing—Dexter, the big mutt that belonged to Marlee’s uncle and that Marlee cared for these days. Stephen knocked at the door and waited. Dexter was going crazy on the other side, but no one answered, and he knocked again.

  “Marlee!” he called toward the nearest window. A Christmas garland hung across the inside of the glass. The shades were drawn, but he knew it was a living room window. “Marlee, it’s me, Stephen!”

  The inner door opened suddenly, and Marlee stood behind the storm door, wearing a bathrobe and with a yellow towel wrapped turban-like about her head. She was small, but not delicate, and so very Ojibwe in her genes—high cheeks, dark hair, eyes the color of almonds. Stephen thought she was beautiful, even though at the moment she didn’t look happy to see him. “You’re early.”

  “Like five minutes.”

  “I’m not ready.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “Not out there.” She opened the storm door. “Come in, but quick. We’re letting in the cold.”

  Stephen stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Dexter bounded at him gleefully, tail wagging. Stephen had been to Marlee’s several times in the last few weeks, and Dexter knew him, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. The big chocolaty-spotted mutt, a slobbery mix of Newfoundland and Saint Bernard, was as easygoing and friendly a dog as Stephen had ever encountered.

  “I’m going to finish getting ready,” Marlee said, heading down the hallway toward her room. “Let Dexter out. He needs to do his business before we leave.”

  “Sure.”

  Stephen watched her go and wondered if she was as pissed at him as she sounded and was five minutes really so early? He opened
the door and said, “Go on, buddy. Do your thing.”

  Dexter, whose sheer size and exuberance made the inside of the home feel claustrophobic, bounded out with the eagerness of a child.

  Which left Stephen alone in the place. Marlee’s mother was a smoker, and the house reeked of it. She was also, according to her daughter, a lousy housekeeper. Marlee, on the other hand, prided herself on being fastidious and kept everything spotless. A Christmas tree stood in one corner, decorated brightly. It was a live tree, a balsam, and the strong evergreen scent from it battled the residual odor of the cigarette smoke. Stephen pulled off his gloves and stocking cap and put them in the pockets of his parka, then hung the parka on a coat tree near the door.

  He spent a few minutes looking at the family photos that hung on the walls. Marlee’s grandparents, Daniel and Amanda Lussier, elders on the rez whom Stephen knew, but not well. Marlee’s older brother, Hector, a Marine serving a second tour of duty in Afghanistan. Stephen had barely known him before he’d joined the military, but Marlee and her mother both spoke of Hector proudly. In the photographs, Marlee’s mother, Stella, was a stunning beauty—dark eyes, prominent cheekbones, slender body, the sense that a smile might appear if you said just the right thing. Marlee was that way, too. And like her mother, she had hair so dark brown that in bad light it appeared to be black. In sunlight, however, Stephen had seen flashes of deep auburn there. In a way, it mirrored Marlee herself. She wasn’t just one thing. She was hard to pin down. Unpredictable. Not always in a good way. Like tonight. Her reaction to him being five minutes early. What was that about?

  Still, when he was with her, when she smiled at him, when she turned those deep, almond-colored eyes on him, when she let him kiss her, oh God, she was worth every moment of concern she caused him.

  She came out fifteen minutes later looking nothing short of awesome. She’d dried and brushed her hair, and it hung long and loose over her shoulders. Whatever makeup she’d put on her face was subtle, but it did, in Stephen’s opinion, everything that kind of stuff ought to do, and then some. She wore a caramel-colored turtleneck and skintight jeans, and around her neck hung a small gold cross on a delicate gold chain. When she was near enough, he caught the scintillating fragrance of Beyoncé Pulse, what she called her signature scent. Inside, Stephen was like one of those windup toys with the spring so taut another twist and he would go sproing!