Thunder Bay (Cork O'Connor Mysteries) Read online

  “You actually talked with Wellington?”

  “We conversed a bit.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “A man who wants his privacy. I think he’s entitled to it.”

  “I saw them frisk you before you left. Careful people.”

  “I didn’t catch your name,” I said.

  “Trinky Pollard. Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Retired.”

  “Cork O’Connor. Former sheriff of Tamarack County, Minnesota.”

  “You told me earlier that you’re a PI now.”

  “Part-time. Mostly I’m up here as a guy trying to do a friend a favor.”

  We shook hands. Hers was impressively strong.

  “You look too young to be a retired cop,” she said.

  “Not retired. I quit.”

  “What do you do when you’re not investigating privately?”

  “Mostly I make hamburgers.”

  She smiled at that, then glanced toward the island. “So you delivered a cheeseburger and fries to Wellington, eh.” She laughed. “Accomplish whatever it was you were after?”

  “I guess you could say I got my man.”

  I lifted my bottle, and we toasted.

  I looked at my watch. “Thanks for the beer, Trinky. If I’m going to make it home tonight, I’d best be on my way.”

  She saw me off her boat, still sipping her beer. When I looked back, she was staring toward Sleeping Giant.

  Before I left the marina, I used my cell to call Jo.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “Still in Thunder Bay. How are things there?”

  She hesitated a moment, which worried me.

  “How’s Meloux?” I asked, expecting the worst.

  “Ernie Champoux called. Meloux’s left the hospital,” she said.

  “Left?”

  “Walked out. Against all advice. According to Ernie, he just sat up, told the doctor he was well and ready to leave. Ernie convinced him to let them run a few tests. It was amazing, Cork. They couldn’t find anything wrong. All the signs, everything, perfectly normal. The doctor can’t explain it.”

  “Did Meloux say anything?”

  “He told them the weight was off his heart, that he was at peace.”

  “He believes he’s going to see his son. Damn.”

  “Damn? What does that mean?”

  I told her about Meloux’s son, a man I wasn’t certain any father would want to claim as the fruit of his loins.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “What can I do? I’ve got to tell him the truth.”

  “When will you be home?”

  “Well after dark. How’re the kids?”

  Once again, she was quiet. And I realized that what I’d picked up in her voice earlier had nothing to do with Meloux.

  “What is it, Jo? Is it Jenny? Did Sean finally pop the question?”

  “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “Oh. How so?”

  I heard her take a deep breath. “Cork, you were right to be worried. She’s pregnant.”

  THIRTEEN

  Long before I turned inland on the drive home to Aurora, the moon rose out of Lake Superior, full and yellow as a lemon. A long finger of light pushed across the surface of the dark water, pointing at me in what seemed an accusing way.

  Jenny was pregnant. God, my little girl. If you’d tried to tell me at that moment that she was, in fact, a grown woman, I’d have grabbed you by the neck and wrung you like a mop. To me she wasn’t much more than a child. And now she had a child of her own on the way. How screwed was that? There went the University of Iowa and that writer’s workshop she was hot to get into. There went her future, everything she’d worked hard for over so many years down the drain, lost in a thoughtless moment, wiped away in a stupid spill of passion.

  Though probably it wasn’t a moment. Probably they’d been having sex for a while. They’d gone together since Jenny was a sophomore. That was a long time to remain celibate against an onslaught of hormones. I understood that. But Jo had been so certain of Jenny’s sense of responsibility about sex. Why hadn’t my daughter been responsible enough to be safe?

  And Sean. He sure as hell wasn’t innocent in all this. Him I wanted to use as a soccer ball.

  With that finger of moonlight pointing at me, I wondered what I’d done or hadn’t done that had helped bring this situation about. What kind of father was I? What kind had I been?

  Then there was Meloux. His health had apparently taken a remarkable turn after I told him I would go to Thunder Bay. The old Mide believed he would finally see his son. As nearly as I could tell, that belief alone had been enough to work a miracle.

  Now what was I going to tell him? What kind of son was I offering him? I was afraid of what the truth might do to the old man. But if I hedged in any way, Meloux would know.

  It was nearly midnight when I pulled onto Gooseberry Lane and turned into my driveway. Jo was waiting up. The kids had gone to bed. She kissed me and settled on the sofa beside me.

  “You look tired,” she said.

  “And sore.” I told her about Morrissey, the kidney punch and the kick.

  “Let me see.”

  I lifted my shirt, and she checked my back.

  “Oh, Cork, there’s an ugly bruise forming. Do you think you should have it checked?”

  “A handful of ibuprofen before I go to bed and I’ll be fine.”

  “These men, they sound perfectly awful.”

  “How do I tell Henry?”

  “Be straight with him. Anything else and he’ll know you’re not being truthful.”

  “It might kill him.”

  “I don’t think so. I think it was the not knowing that hurt him. But how a good man like Henry could have fathered a son like this Wellington, I don’t know.”

  I looked around the living room. “Where’s Walleye?”

  “In the backyard, sleeping in the tent with Stevie.”

  “Stevie knows Walleye will be going home tomorrow?”

  She nodded. “He took it pretty hard, poor little guy.” Everywhere I looked, nothing but disappointment.

  “So,” I said. “Jenny.”

  “She’s confused, Cork.”

  “How long has she known?”

  “A few days. Her period is usually regular as clockwork. When it was overdue, she did one of those home pregnancy tests.”

  “No chance the test was wrong?”

  “She repeated it. Different brand, same result.”

  “Does Sean know?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does Jenny want to do?”

  “Go back in time and make different decisions would be my first guess.”

  “Don’t we all. Really, what’s she thinking?”

  Jo hesitated. I knew I wasn’t going to like what I heard.

  “When she and Sean went for that drive to Lake Superior yesterday, it wasn’t a pleasure trip. They went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Duluth.”

  “An abortion?”

  “She didn’t do anything, Cork. She just wanted information.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Jo. This has got to be so hard for her.”

  “I’m glad you understand that.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” I looked at her, didn’t hide that I was hurt. “She poured all this out to you because she’s afraid of me, is that it?”

  “She’s not afraid of you, Cork. But she is afraid of what you’ll think of her. You have no idea how much your respect means to her.”

  I felt exhausted and empty. I laid my head against Jo’s shoulder. “I have to talk to her.”

  “She knows that.”

  “And we have to talk to Sean. His folks, too. Do they know?”

  “He was going to tell them tonight. We’ll probably be calling them tomorrow about the same time they call us.”

  “Guess this is the end of Paris.”

  “It doesn’t mean their dreams will end, Cork.”
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  “No, but it’s one hell of a detour off the yellow brick road. What do we do?”

  “What can we do? We tell her how we feel, we listen, we pray, we hope, and whatever she decides, we’re there for her.”

  “Couldn’t I just spank her and send her to her room?”

  “You never spanked her.”

  “Maybe it’s not too late.”

  She kissed the top of my head. “Ready for bed?”

  “Let me check on Stevie and Walleye, then I’ll be up.”

  I wandered out to the tent in the backyard. My son was in his sleeping bag, snoring softly. Walleye lay beside him. The old dog lifted his head when I peeked through the flap, and his tail brushed the tent floor.

  A boy and his dog. Only, the dog belonged to someone else and would be going back when the sun came up.

  I wasn’t looking forward to morning. To wresting from my son his very good friend. To telling Meloux the truth about his own son. To listening while my daughter and the father of her baby tried to sort out what the hell their future might be.

  I stood there in the dark of my backyard thinking that sometimes life sucks and that’s all there is to it.

  FOURTEEN

  I was up early. Stevie walked into the kitchen from the backyard while I was making coffee. He rubbed his sleepy eyes.

  “Hungry, guy?” I asked.

  He nodded. “But I should feed Walleye first.”

  From the pantry, he took the bag of dried dog food we’d bought and went back outside. Through the kitchen window, I watched him fill the bowl—he’d insisted we buy a special dish for Walleye—then he sat in the grass and petted the dog while it ate. I saw his lips move, talking to his friend. When Walleye was finished, Stevie returned to the kitchen and put the dog food back in the pantry.

  “After breakfast, you want to go with me when I take him to Henry?” I asked.

  He looked dismal. “Okay.”

  We had raisin bran and orange juice I’d made in a pitcher from a can of frozen Minute Maid. I drank coffee. We were rinsing our dishes in the sink when Jo came in, wearing her white robe.

  “We’re off to see Meloux,” I told her.

  “We have to take Walleye back,” Stevie explained, sounding brave. Jo sat down and motioned Stevie to her. She hugged him. “I’m sure Henry misses him. He’s all alone out there.”

  “Yeah.”

  You could tell he understood, but it didn’t make him want to do cartwheels.

  “How about you get Walleye into the Bronco,” I said to him. “I’ll be right there.”

  When he was gone, Jo looked up at me and said, “I didn’t realize this would be so hard on him.”

  I poured her a cup of coffee. “He’ll be fine.”

  “You know, a turtle’s not much of a pet.”

  “Don’t start, Jo.” I handed her the coffee. “I thought I heard Jenny upstairs.”

  She took a sip. “She’s throwing up in the bathroom. I think she’ll go back to bed for a while after that. As soon as you get home, we should all talk.”

  I leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I’ll come back in a gentle mood, promise.”

  Stevie was quiet in the Bronco. He kept his arm around Walleye, who sat between us, tongue hanging out, watching through the windshield. Walleye had always seemed to possess much of the same reasonable sensibility and patience as Meloux, but I’d never had much experience with dogs and didn’t know whether it was common for pets to resemble the personalities of the people who kept them.

  We drove north along Iron Lake past cabins and small resorts nestled among pines and spruce and stands of paper birch. At the north end of the lake, we turned off the paved highway onto the gravel county road that serviced the last of the resorts before the reservation began. It had been a dry summer, and the Bronco kicked up a thick tail of dust that hung a long time in the still morning air. A quarter mile along, I glanced into my rearview mirror and saw an SUV swing off the highway and plow into the cloud I’d raised. I felt a little bad throwing up all that dust, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  Another mile and I pulled to the side of the road and parked near the double-trunk birch that marked the trail to Meloux’s cabin. Stevie opened his door and Walleye leaped across him eagerly. The dog’s tail was going crazy, and it was clear he was happy to be in his own territory again. Stevie saw it, too, and he sighed.

  I opened my door just as the SUV behind us shot past. It was silver-gray, but coated everywhere with the red-brown dust of the county road, except for a couple of streaky arcs on the windshield where the wipers had tried to clean. I yanked the door shut, glad I’d pulled far off to the side. Whoever was driving the SUV couldn’t have seen the Bronco in time to avoid hitting it. As it was, I almost lost the driver’s door. The SUV sped past and kept heading northeast.

  Stevie and Walleye trotted ahead. I trailed behind, noting my son’s slumped little shoulders. I found myself agreeing with Jo. A turtle was no kind of pet for a boy.

  We broke from the trees amid the buzz of the grasshoppers still infesting the woods. On Crow Point, smoke drifted up from the stovepipe on Meloux’s cabin. Walleye loped ahead, barking. Meloux opened the door and stepped into view. He smiled at the sight of his old friend, bent down, and his ancient hands caressed the dog.

  Looking up at us as we approached, he said in formal greeting, “Anin, Corcoran O’Connor. Anin, Stephen.” He stood up. “Migwech,” he finished, thanking us.

  He had on a pair of worn khakis held up with new blue suspenders. The sleeves of his denim shirt were rolled above his elbows. He wore hiking boots, much scuffed about the toes. His long white hair fell over his shoulders. His eyes were clear and sharp. He looked healthy. He looked very much like the Meloux I’d known all my life.

  “I have made coffee,” he said, inviting us in.

  We stepped out of the sunshine into the cool shade of his cabin. He closed the door, but not before a couple of grasshoppers slipped into the cabin with us.

  There were three chairs around his table. Stevie and I sat down. Meloux went to his black potbelly stove where coffee sat perking in a dented aluminum pot. He poured dark brew into three cups already placed around the table, as if we’d been expected. Stevie looked at the coffee then at me. I nodded okay.

  Walleye had padded quietly back and forth with Meloux. When the old man finally sat down, Walleye settled at his feet. Stevie watched the dog dolefully.

  I sipped the coffee, which was hot and strong. “Henry, I was more than a little surprised to hear that you’d left the hospital.”

  The old man shook his head. “The surprise for me was finding myself there. I did not realize the weight I carried on my heart, it had been there so long. Tell me about my son.”

  Wisps of steam rose from our speckled blue cups. Stevie blew across the surface of his coffee and lifted his cup. He jerked back from the touch of the hot brew against his lips.

  “He’s a sick man, Henry.”

  I explained as simply as I could what I had observed. The old man listened without showing any emotion. As I talked, the two grasshoppers explored the cabin. When they took to the air, their wings made a sound like the rattle of tiny dry bones. They hit the wall a couple of times, small, dull thuds. Meloux didn’t seem to notice.

  When I finished, the old man said, “He would not come?”

  “No, Henry.”

  Meloux nodded and stared for a little while out the small window at the sunlit meadow beside his cabin.

  “It may be that the weight I felt on my heart was not mine alone. It may be that I felt his, too.” He touched his chest. “Miziweyaa”—which meant wholeness—“is here. The way is always here. But sometimes a man needs help in understanding the way.”

  The coffee had cooled. Stevie took a polite sip and squeezed his eyes against the bitter taste.

  “We will return to the island called Manitou,” Meloux declared. “We will see my son together, and I will show him the way toward miziweyaa.�
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  I started to object, but Meloux cut me off.

  “If my son is ill in the way you say, we need to leave today, this afternoon.”