Copper River co-6 Read online

She looked the cabin over carefully, stepped inside. “I parked in town and walked through the woods. Didn’t want anyone to see me coming here. Also, I wanted to be able to reconnoiter a little first.” She crossed to his bunk, looked down at him, shook her head. “Can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I? How’s the leg?”

  “Healing. Or so my cousin, the vet, says.”

  “Were you a good patient, and did you get a doggie biscuit?” Her eyes flicked toward the door. “I saw a woman drive away. Her?”

  “Jewell, yeah.”

  “Who else is here?”

  “Her son.”

  “Guests?”

  “They don’t rent out the cabins anymore.”

  “Shame. Nice place.” She went to the table, grabbed a chair, and placed it next to Cork’s bunk. “So, what’s the story?”

  “I screwed up.”

  “I figured. How?”

  “After you left me in Evanston, I hitched a ride north, went up to Kenosha, Wisconsin. I wanted to make sure I was clear of any kind of net that Jacoby’s goons had thrown around the North Shore of Chicago. I checked into a fleabag motel there, place called the Lake Inn. First thing I did was use some of the money you gave me to get a set of wheels.”

  “The shot-up, piss-colored Dart behind the shed?”

  “That would be the one.”

  “How’d it get shot up?”

  “I’m coming to that.” He shifted and grimaced from the pain it caused his leg. “I called Jo at her sister’s place.”

  “Big mistake.”

  “I know. The phone must’ve been tapped.”

  “I could have told you that.”

  “Next time I’ll be sure to ask.”

  “How long before the goons showed up?”

  “They waited until dark. I’d gone out to get some dinner. They tried the hit as soon as I came back and got out of the car.”

  “The motel lot?”

  “Yeah, pretty public. The car got the worst of it, but I took a bullet in my leg.”

  She shook her head. “Amateurs. But with half a million on your head, even my grandmother would be tempted.” She gave an admiring look. “You drove all the way here with a bullet hole through your leg? That’s a good eight hours.”

  “I used my sweatshirt as a compress to stop the bleeding. After that it was a matter of gritting my teeth and hoping shock didn’t set in. Amazing what you can do when you’re motivated. Like running for your life.”

  “Why didn’t you head back to Minnesota?”

  “I figured they’d be watching for me there.”

  “You’re probably right. Lucky you had family to fall back on up here.”

  “My cousin doesn’t think so.”

  “How soon before you can move?”

  “I can move now, just not very far or very fast.”

  “On my way into town, I saw a sign: Home of the Bobcats. 1980 Class C State Football Champions. A place like this is dead center in the middle of nowhere. You’re four hundred miles from Chicago. Who would think to look for you here? You might as well stay put.”

  Cork wasn’t a hundred percent convinced. “With his money, Jacoby can throw a big net,” he said. “Tell me about Lou.”

  “The Winnetka police are keeping a lid on everything about Ben’s murder, so I don’t know.”

  The door opened. Cork had never seen anybody move as fast as Dina. She was out of her chair and had spun around before he could blink.

  Ren was obviously startled by her presence, but he looked even more surprised by the gun that had materialized in her hand from nowhere.

  “Easy, Dina,” Cork said. “It’s Ren. He’s family.”

  She was a woman like the cougar Ren had imagined. Her hair was that color, her movement that swift, her eyes that focused, knowing, and hungry. She was probably the size of the cougar, too, should the animal stand on its hind legs. She looked every bit as dangerous.

  “Close the door,” she said.

  Cork saw the boy’s wariness and wanted to put him at ease as quickly as possible. “Come over here, Ren. I want to introduce you.”

  Ren had a tray in his hand that held a covered plate of eggs and bacon, a small glass of orange juice, and a cup of coffee. He went to the table, put the tray down, then walked to the bunk. His heart beat against his chest like a boxer working a bag. His eyes never left the gun and the woman who held it.

  “You’re making a horrible first impression, Dina,” Cork said. “Put your gun away.”

  She looked Ren over a moment longer, then as quickly as she’d produced the gun she flashed a smile. The Glock slid into a holster under her sweatshirt, and the same hand that had threatened Ren was held toward him, open and empty.

  “How do you do? I’m Dina Willner.”

  He shook her hand warily. It felt strong as a man’s, but different, too.

  “Ren DuBois,” Cork said, because Ren, who was still trying to put everything together, hadn’t replied. “Dina’s the friend I called last night.”

  “Oh.” Ren nodded slowly.

  “Are you always this talkative?” Dina asked.

  “Huh?” Then he got it. A joke. He smiled.

  “Sorry about the gun.” She patted the place where it was holstered. “You surprised me.”

  Ren wondered if he’d surprised her any more, would he be dead?

  “Mom asked me to bring Cork’s breakfast.” It sounded apologetic, a little pathetic, and he didn’t like that. He stood straight and as tall as he could. Even so, his eyes were not quite level with the woman’s. “I didn’t see your car. I didn’t even hear you drive up.”

  She took the chair she’d been sitting in, flipped it around, and sat down again with her arms folded over the back. She continued to study him with her green, catlike eyes.

  “I came through the woods,” she said.

  “You should be careful. There’s a cougar out there.”

  “What I carry would stop a bear.”

  “You wouldn’t shoot him,” Ren objected.

  “I’ve never harmed a thing that wasn’t trying to harm me. If I run into this cougar, what do you suggest I do?”

  Ren glanced at Cork, who was enjoying the conversation immensely.

  “First, you never turn your back on a wild animal,” Ren said seriously. “You should stand as tall as you can, get up on a tree stump or something to make yourself look even bigger. It sometimes helps to wave your arms and shout. Usually, unless you’re threatening its young, it will leave you alone.”

  “You’ve had that experience?”

  “It’s what I’ve read.”

  He stood awkwardly, aware that he’d interrupted something and should probably go, but he wasn’t sure. Adults weren’t easy to figure.

  Dina’s stomach let out a long growl. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I haven’t eaten this morning.”

  “I could fix you something,” Ren offered.

  She laughed. “The last time I had a man fix me breakfast, it turned out to be beer and corn dogs. What I’d really like is a latte.”

  “Do you like kolaches?”

  “Do you make kolaches?”

  “No, but the Taylors do. In town. Really good ones. And they have espresso and stuff.”

  “Long walk for coffee,” Dina said.

  “I’ll take the ATV. I was thinking of going anyway. I have a friend and I was going to take her some breakfast.”

  “Charlie?” Cork said.

  “Yeah. Sometimes there’s not a lot of food in her house. I could drop a kolache off at her place and be back here in half an hour.”

  “Or I could just share whatever’s on that tray you brought,” Dina said.

  “I don’t mind going.”

  “Ren,” Cork said, sounding as gravely serious as he possibly could, “if you go into town, you have to promise not to say anything about me or Dina.”

  “I won’t, I promise.”

  “And make sure, absolutely sure, that Charlie doesn’t, either.”
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  “I can do that.”

  “All right. Why don’t you head into Bodine, then,” Cork said, thinking it would give him a chance to talk to Dina alone. “I’m starved and I’ll be damned if I’m giving up my breakfast.”

  “Here.” Dina pulled a wallet from her back pocket and took out a twenty-dollar bill. “A vanilla latte and a kolache for me. And get whatever you want for yourself and for your friend. How about you, Cork?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Thank you, Ren,” Dina said. “This is quite nice.”

  “’S okay.” He gave a nonchalant shrug, but the glow on his face was obvious. He went to the door and just before leaving glanced back at Dina. His eyes lingered a hair too long for mere curiosity. Dina smiled at him. The boy blushed and hurried out.

  “Nice kid,” she said to Cork. “But can we trust him to keep his mouth shut?”

  “Unless you want to shoot him, we don’t have much choice.”

  10

  Ren loved Bodine. And he hated it. The town circumscribed his life, defined him in many ways. It gave him a place to belong, offered him a stable center from which to view the world in order to make some sense of it. On the other hand, it was small, suffocating, and sometimes cruel. There were days when he felt like a prisoner. He knew every street, every shop, every shop owner, and they knew him. They called hello when he passed. They made him feel part of a large family. Like any family, however, they always had their noses in his business, and in his mother’s. When his father died a little over a year ago, there’d been an outpouring of sympathy, but there’d also been a vein of censure that ran through the sentiments, the feeling-occasionally voiced-that Ren’s father had somehow got what he deserved, that his business should have been minding the resort cabins and taking care of his family, not stirring up trouble in other places. This bothered Ren. What bothered him more was that he knew there was a dark voice inside his mother that sometimes spoke to her in the same way.

  Harbor Avenue, Bodine’s main street, ran due north off the county road straight to the lake. Shops lined the street in the block before the harbor. The commercial buildings were mostly brick, built simple and sturdy to withstand the gale winds that often blew off Lake Superior.

  In the sixth grade, Ren had done a long project about the history of the town. He learned that over the years, Bodine had seen good times and bad, though for a long time they’d been mostly bad. It had begun as a lumber town, taking the fine hardwoods of the southern Hurons and turning them into planks prized for their solid grain and durability. Henry Ford had been so struck by the quality of the wood that he’d purchased vast tracts of forestland and used the timber for paneling in his early automobiles. But the lumber didn’t last.

  In 1881, the Cyril Mine opened fifteen miles southwest of Bodine, tapping into a solitary vein of native copper, a long splash of ore as rich as any on the Keweenaw. That had brought prosperity in many forms until the copper finally petered out in the late 1950’s. When the mine closed, jobs vanished and people with them.

  Both the lumber and copper industries had resulted in the development of Bodine’s harbor, which was small but deep enough to accommodate the heavy freighters of the day. Early on, Bodine had become a modest terminal for lake traffic. In 1890, an entrepreneur named Edward Farber, who’d made decent money in shipping and who’d fallen in love with the beautiful Huron Mountains, built a fine hotel overlooking the picturesque little harbor. In its day, the Farber House was reputed to serve the best food between New York City and the Mississippi River, and for a while it attracted a rich clientele who considered the Upper Peninsula an exotic destination.

  For most of the wealthy, however, the U.P. turned out to be a passing fancy, and eventually they found other places to play. By the early 1920’s, the writing was on the wall, and Farber, an old man by then, let things slide. The advent of the Great Depression seemed to nail the coffin shut on his beautiful hotel.

  In the years since, the Farber House had gone through a number of incarnations. It had served as temporary housing for the Civilian Conservation Corps, which carried out numerous public works projects in the area, like the picnic shelter on the Copper River. During World War Two, it housed a group of Canadians and Americans who worked on breaking codes. For three decades after that, it had been a nursing home. Finally, it had simply been abandoned.

  In 1998, it was purchased by a couple, Ken and Sue Taylor, who invested their life savings into making it once again a fine inn. They’d captured much of the old charm, and they called it by its proper name: the Farber House.

  The parking lot was full that Sunday morning, and Ren left his ATV on the street in front. As soon as he entered the lobby, he smelled coffee and pastries. Both were freshly made and available in a small bistro area opposite the front desk. On the far side of the hotel was a large dining room with windows that opened toward the deep, placid blue of the lake. Most of the tables were occupied. Leaf peepers, Ren figured.

  Ren went to the bistro, where Barb Klish was wiping crumbs from the top of the glass case that held the pastries. A tall blonde with a broad smile, she taught home economics at the high school, worked at the Farber House on weekends, and had recently begun trading over the Internet on eBay. She liked to call herself a broker.

  “Hey, there, Rennie,” Barb said. She was the only person who ever called him Rennie, but he liked it. “I know what you want. A kolache, right? What kind?”

  “Ham and cheese. Two, please.”

  “Really hungry, eh?”

  “One’s for Charlie,” he said.

  “What a good friend you are.” She slid open the case.

  “And I’d like a vanilla latte, too.”

  She eyed him through the glass as she bent for the kolaches. “Since when do you drink coffee?”

  “It’s not for me.”

  “Charlie?”

  “No. A friend who’s staying at the resort.”

  This was one of the problems with Bodine. No question was a simple one. They led one to another until you found yourself caught in a web from which it was impossible to escape.

  “Oh? Friend of your mom’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’s she doing? Your mom, I mean. I can’t remember the last time we talked.”

  “She’s fine.”

  “I’ll just put these kolaches in a bag and then whip up that latte for you.”

  He heard the elevator doors slide open at his back.

  “Well, look what the north wind blew in. Renoir!”

  He turned as the Taylors swept into the lobby. They were in their early sixties, but always seemed full of more energy than people half their age. With his towering stature and brilliant red hair, Mr. Taylor reminded Ren of a maple tree in fall. Mrs. Taylor was half his size. That morning she wore a dark blue dress and heels. Her husband wore a suit and tie.

  Church, Ren thought.

  “Don’t move,” Mr. Taylor said. “I’ve got something for you. Wait right there.” He vanished into the office behind the front desk.

  “We haven’t seen you in a while, Ren,” said Mrs. Taylor. She snared his shoulders and gave him a squeeze.

  “I’ve been around,” Ren said.

  “Not around here. How’s your mother?”

  “Fine. She’s just fine.”

  “We’re on our way to church, and I do so miss her voice in the choir. Will you tell her that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mr. Taylor returned carrying a white cardboard box, which he handed over to Ren. “Go ahead and open it.”

  Ren found it packed with dozens of comic books, all Marvel and DC, that seemed to cover many of the classic superheroes he knew and appreciated: Green Lantern, Batman, Superman, Blackhawk, the Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, Thor.

  “Wow,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “We knew you had a birthday coming up-when is it?”

  “Next week.”

  “Right, so we had Barb do a little horse-trading for u
s on eBay.”

  “Some of those issues are rare, Ren,” Barb said behind him. “Real collector’s items. I struck some good bargains.”

  “This is great,” Ren told them. “Let me take these outside. And I’ll bring back something I want you to see.”

  He carried the box to his ATV and took from the storage compartment his own small box. He brought it inside and handed it to Mr. Taylor, who opened it and removed the contents.

  “What have we here? Looks like a big-cat track.” He studied the plaster cast further. His hands quivered, a slight tremor that had affected him his whole life. He’d told Ren that people made all kinds of harsh erroneous judgments about him based on that insignificant detail. Ren, who was part Ojibwe, and small for his age, understood. “A bobcat?” Mr. Taylor asked.

  Ren shook his head. In his estimation, Mr. Taylor was the smartest man in Bodine and seemed to know something about everything. Ren knew he’d appreciate the significance of the cast.

  “Not a bobcat, eh? Well, it couldn’t be a cougar, could it?”

  “It is,” Ren said.

  “You made this cast? Where’d you find the track?”

  “Near one of our cabins.”

  “A cougar that close to human habitation? Interesting. Ren, do you mind if I keep this for a while? I have a friend who’s a zoologist at Northern Michigan down in Marquette. I’d like him to have a look at it.”

  “Sure.”

  “Wonderful. I’ll have it back to you in a few days.” He disappeared into the office again, came out with his hands empty, and took his wife’s arm. “If we don’t want to be late for church, Sue, we’d best be moving. Good to see you, Ren. Say hello to your mother for us.”

  When they’d gone, Ren paid for the kolaches and the coffee, then he headed off on his ATV, making for Charlie’s place. He followed Lake Street, where the finest houses in town had been built, old Victorian places. The people who lived there now were professionals-doctors, lawyers, executives-most of whom worked in Marquette but had been lured to Bodine by the beauty of the place and the stunning old houses they could buy for a song. A lot of the homes had been refurbished over the last few years. Stash’s family lived there. So did Amber Kennedy’s.