Dearly Departed Page 17

  I was tempted to pollute Phyll’s lake with the empty beer cans, thought better of it, and set them on the dock. A short time later Phyllis herself came down the stairs. The sports jacket was gone. In its place were pink shorts and a white tank top. She was a fetching woman, my mother-in-law. Like her daughter.

  She sat next to me and looked out over the lake. She asked me how I was feeling, and I said I was okay and asked her how the meeting went, and she said the customer bought all five lots. The exchange pretty much exhausted us, and we sat there without speaking for a good half hour. Finally, Phyllis took my hand, gave it a tug, and asked straight out, “Have you found anyone yet?”

  “No.” I answered quickly, without even thinking of Cynthia—and when I did, I didn’t take the answer back. I guess that said something about me, too.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t imagine getting married again,” I said.

  “I wish you would,” Phyllis told me. “Imagine it, I mean.”

  I shrugged, wincing at the pain the gesture caused me.

  “There is a woman,” I said. “Her name is Cynthia. My mom can’t stand her.”

  “Why not?”

  Because she defended the man who killed your daughter and granddaughter, I nearly said. “It’s a long story,” I told her instead. “Anyway, she’s somebody. I just don’t know if she’s someone, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know. It’s just that I see the loneliness in you.…”

  I turned quickly to face her. How could she see that?

  “It’s in your eyes, the way you carry yourself.…”

  Nonsense.

  “Maybe I recognize it and others don’t because I knew you before the loneliness came.”

  “I’m not lonely,” I insisted. “Alone, okay, but not lonely. There’s a difference.”

  A small cloud passed over the sun before Phyllis replied, “It’s time to move on. Laurie would say so, too.”

  A few more clouds came and went.

  “I want you to come visit us again real soon, and I want you to bring a girl with you.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “‘Most people are just as happy as they make their minds up to be.’ Know who said that?”

  “Who?”

  “Abraham Lincoln. Find a girl,” Phyllis told me. “Start over.”

  I thought of Alison. She had tried to start over. Look what had happened to her.

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “It’s not supposed to be easy. Loving someone is the hardest thing there is.”

  She got that right.

  “Find someone. If not this Cynthia, then someone else. A life unshared is a life wasted.”

  “Yeah? Who said that?”

  “Me.”

  I had to smile.

  “Find someone to share your life with,” Phyllis added.

  I gave her hand a squeeze.

  “How ’bout you?” I asked, waving at the sailboat and the lake and the house on the hill. “Let me take you away from all this.”

  Phyllis laughed. “Then who would feed Dean?”

  The next morning I waited in bed as long as my conscience would allow. When I finally shuffled into the bathroom, I was appalled by what I saw in the mirror. I touched each bruise that marked my body from face to upper rib cage to belt line—connect the dots and see a gruesome picture. There was some physical pain, some stiffness, but nothing I couldn’t live with. My mental health was a different matter. My hand shook when I borrowed Dean’s razor to shave, and I caught myself humming the theme songs to movies in which the hero got killed—the part of my brain that decided I was going back there was having a hard time convincing the rest of me that it was a good idea.

  Dean lent me a shirt, and to my great relief, Phyllis had run the rest of my clothes through the washer, so they were lemon fresh—she’d even managed to remove most of the bloodstains; it was a miracle. I put them on and examined myself in the mirror, full face and then profile. I was convinced I looked presentable if not downright handsome; pretended that no one would notice the dark splotch beneath my ear or my bruised lower lip or the blood clotted in my right nostril.

  After a while, I stopped humming.

  Dean was standing by the kitchen sink drinking coffee when I entered. Phyllis, dressed like she intended to skip down to the dock and jump into her sailboat at any moment, was sitting at the kitchen table and reading the newspaper.

  “You’re leaving now,” she told me, looking up from the paper.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you coming back?”

  “When I can.”

  She folded the paper neatly before asking, “Is there anything we can do for you?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “What?” Dean asked.

  “I want to borrow the Walther PPK that I gave you that Christmas.”

  “My gun?”

  “I’ll make sure you get it back.”

  “No problem,” he said and left the room.

  “You didn’t tell us exactly what happened in Kreel County,” Phyllis reminded me.

  “I’m not sure I know myself,” I told her.

  Dean put the gun down on the table in front of me. It was lightly oiled, in the box it came in. The Walther PPK weighed only twentythree ounces but it felt heavy in my hand. My reason told me to leave the gun. But my instincts—and my bruises—told me to load the Walther and slip it into my jacket pocket. So I did.

  “I have to go now. Thank you both for everything.”

  “Holland,” Phyllis called, stopping me at the door, hugging me. “Remember what I told you.” There were tears in her eyes.

  “I’ll remember.”

  Dean smiled at me. “Semper fi,” he said, reciting the Marine Corps motto. Always faithful.

  nineteen

  I announced myself at the reception area of the Kreel County Sheriff’s Department, speaking to the secretary through an intercom on the other side of a bulletproof glass partition. If I was going to have more trouble with the sheriff, I wanted to get to it—I’d be damned if I’d spend the day looking fearfully over my shoulder for irate deputies. A moment later the secretary buzzed me through the door and led me to him.

  Sheriff Orman’s office was small and cluttered and dominated by a large canvas hanging behind his desk. It was an oil painting of a magnificent twelve-point whitetailed buck at sunset, the buck looking real enough to move, his reflection shimmering on the lake he was drinking from. In the bottom right corner of the canvas, the name R. ORMAN was painted with an unobtrusive brush.

  Orman was sitting behind the desk. He took a good look at my battered face but said nothing. His face wasn’t in much better shape: two days’ stubble, bloodshot eyes, sagging cheeks. But I didn’t say anything, either. Instead, I stood staring across the desk at him, trying to act like a pro boxer just before the bell rings. I wasn’t desperate for a rematch but if he wanted one, I’d be happy to oblige; this time my hands would be free.

  “I am a licensed private investigator from the state of Minnesota; I am here looking for a woman named Alison Donnerbauer Emerton who is going under the name Michael Bettich,” I informed him defiantly, explaining my presence and purpose in an out-of-state jurisdiction to the proper authorities just like the handbook suggests, pretending the sheriff and I had never met before.

  “Michael is in a coma,” Orman said sadly, looking down at a framed photograph lying flat on his desk blotter—a photograph of Alison. “They took her by helicopter to Duluth General. They have a better-equipped trauma unit up there, better-trained staff. That’s what they tell me.”

  “I’m sorry about Michael,” I said and I meant it.

  The slight smile that flashed and then disappeared suggested that he believed me. I also think he liked that I used the name Michael and not Alison.

  “If there’s anything I can do …” I added.

  “Loushine!” he shouted so unexpectedly that I flinched.

 
; “I spoke with the doctor,” Orman told me in a softer voice. “She said whoever administered first aid at the scene probably saved Michael’s life. I’m grateful.

  “Loushine!” he shouted again.

  “The other day, you didn’t ask who I was or why I was here,” I reminded him.

  “I know who you are and why you’re here.”

  “Want to tell me?” I asked. “I’m a little confused.”

  “Dammit Loushine!”

  “Yes,” the deputy said, coming through the door. He looked surprised to see me.

  “Gary, this is Holland Taylor,” Sheriff Orman said. “He’s a private investigator from Minnesota. I checked on him. He did ten years for the St. Paul Police Department, four in Homicide. I’ve asked him to consult with us on the Michael Bettich shooting. If he’s willing, you’re to give him full cooperation.”

  Loushine clearly wasn’t thrilled with the order. “Sheriff …?” he began.

  Orman cut him off roughly. “Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Sheriff.” The answer came reluctantly.

  Of me Orman asked, “Are you willing, Mr. Taylor?”

  “Yes,” I told him without reluctance. The last time a private investigator received such an invitation was never.

  “Good.” Orman rose from his chair. “I’m going to Duluth. I’ll check in later.” He brushed past us.

  “Wait,” I called to him. “I have questions.”

  “Ask Gary,” the sheriff said and hung a left in the corridor, disappearing.

  “It makes even less sense as it goes along,” I told Deputy Loushine.

  “What’s the matter, Taylor?” he asked. “Haven’t you ever heard an apology before?”

  We were walking along the well-lit corridor of the Kreel County Sheriff’s Department building, my Nikes making soft squeaking sounds on the tile.

  “What have you got?” I asked him, flexing my new muscle.

  “The Buick was stolen,” Loushine said. “It was owned by the chief of the volunteer fire department down in Wascott. He reported it missing the day before the shooting.”

  “Where’s Wascott?”

  “About forty miles southwest of us,” Loushine said. “We have bulletins out on the car. Also, you were right about the gun. It was an UZI semiautomatic carbine. We dug .41 AEs out of both Michael Bettich and Gretchen Rovick. A MAC fires only .45s or nine millimeters—”

  “Chip Thilgen,” I interrupted, just to prove how smart I was.

  “Yes,” said Loushine. “We know he made threats toward Michael at The Height Restaurant in Deer Lake about an hour before the shooting. We have several witnesses. Including you.”

  “Including me,” I agreed. “What does Thilgen have to say for himself?”

  “Nothing yet,” Loushine answered. “We haven’t found him. We have a man on his house; he hasn’t been home. And we checked with his employer. Thilgen has been absent without leave since the shooting.”

  “Where does he work?”

  “King Boats.”

  “He works for King Koehn?” I asked, surprised.

  Loushine shrugged. “Why not? Everyone else does. Anyway, we’re checking his family, his friends—actually, he doesn’t have any friends—and we have bulletins out on him, too.”

  “What else?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What else have you got?”

  “That’s it.”

  I stopped next to a door marked EXIT.

  “What do you mean, that’s it?” I said, appalled. “You’ve had this case for almost forty-eight hours.”

  Loushine didn’t answer, and I pushed my way through the door.

  “I’m not going to lie to you, Taylor,” Loushine told me as he followed behind. “I’m not an experienced investigator. I’ve worked as deputy sheriff for nine years now, and I’ve handled exactly two homicides, both of them slam-dunk domestics. On this case I’ve been following Bobby Orman’s lead, and quite frankly he’s not up to it, either. Man had exactly two years of law-enforcement experience before he was made sheriff—in the Highway Patrol.”

  That stopped me again. “Two years? How did he get the job?”

  “Appointment. The former sheriff was caught shacking up with a prostitute. The county board wanted someone squeaky-clean and politically palatable. Orman’s father and grandfather had both been sheriff, and people loved them—”

  “So they went with the son.”

  “There you go.”

  “Does he know the job at all?”

  “Bobby knows administration; he was the factory manager over at King Boats for a half dozen years after he left the HP—it’s kind of a complicated story. I went to school with Bobby; we played ball together, so I know he didn’t want to be a cop, didn’t want to follow the family tradition. But he did, anyway; joined the Highway Patrol after junior college. His old man was still sheriff, and Bobby could have gotten a job here in Kreel, but he went away; people figured he just didn’t want to work in the old man’s shadow. Two years later the old man dies of a heart attack while pulling an ice fishing shack off the lake; Bobby quits the HP and goes to work for King.

  “The county goes through three sheriff’s in the next six years, and each is worse than the one before. People are pissed; the County Board of Commissioners is up against it; half of ’em are up for re-election, right? So they tap Bobby; they want his name. He takes the job. Surprised me. But he’s been okay. Works hard. Goes to a lot of law-enforcement seminars. Takes care of his people.”

  “How long has he been sheriff?” I asked.

  “Couple years.”

  “Turn it over to the Department of Criminal Investigation,” I suggested bluntly. The DCI was the Wisconsin equivalent of Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a statewide investigatory unit created to lend aid to local police departments that didn’t have the resources to handle major cases.

  “That’s what I said,” Loushine told me. “But Bobby doesn’t want to give it up, and neither does the county attorney.”

  “Where is the county attorney?” I asked.

  “Vacation in San Francisco.”

  I gave Loushine another stare.

  He shrugged. “What can I say? Man likes his job; he wants to be re-elected next year.”

  My stare intensified. “Unbelievable.”

  “It’s a sorry situation,” Loushine admitted, and I sighed dramatically. But the truth was, I couldn’t have been more delighted. Giving a police department guidance during an active criminal investigation? A free hand to do whatever I want, all with the department’s support? That’s like a PI’s most forbidden fantasy come true.

  “Okay,” I said and continued walking.

  “Okay,” Loushine echoed, falling in step with me. “Where are we going?”

  “What do you know about Alison Donnerbauer Emerton?” I asked in reply as we crossed the street and headed for the Saginau Medical Center.

  “Never heard of her,” he said. “You mentioned the name the day of the shooting. Who is she?”

  “I assume Gretchen Rovick is still in the hospital?”

  “Yes,” Loushine replied, then added, “Who is Alison Donnerbauer Emerton?”

  “Deputy Rovick’s best friend.”

  We cornered the woman doctor at the Saginau Medical Center. I asked her if she had any updated information concerning Michael Bettich’s condition.

  “Still critical, last I heard,” she said.

  “What do you think her chances are?” I asked. I wanted the doctor to promise that Alison would be all right. But she was unwilling to commit herself. I changed the subject.

  “How’s Deputy Rovick?” I asked.

  “She’ll be fine,” the doctor responded. “She should be on crutches in a few days and walking normally in ten more. The wound was superficial.”

  “Where is she?” Loushine asked.

  “Second floor. Two-oh-two.”

  “Can we see her?” the deputy added.

  “Be my gues
t.”

  We started toward the elevators.

  “By the way,” the doctor stopped us. She looked me in the eye and said, “It was you who administered first aid to Michael, right?”

  I confirmed her suspicion.

  “You saved her life,” the doctor said and patted my arm. “For a while, anyway.”

  I was proud of the compliment, but the way the doctor phrased it sent an uncomfortable surge of electricity through my entire body.

  We found Gretchen sitting up in bed, reading the latest mystery by Nevada Barr. Her leg was elevated under the covers, which were rolled to her waist, revealing a teal nightgown trimmed with lace that I found particularly alluring. Apparently Loushine agreed.

  The way his eyes kept finding Gretchen’s ample chest, you just knew this was a side of his colleague that he had never seen before.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Fine,” she answered cautiously before turning to Loushine. “What’s he doing here?”

  Loushine explained.

  “No way!” Gretchen protested.

  Loushine shrugged. “Sheriff’s orders.”

  Gretchen returned her gaze to me. “But he could be responsible.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “There are people who wanted Alison found,” she insisted. “You found her for them.”

  “Alison?” Loushine asked.

  I silenced him with an upraised hand. “Why did they want her found?” I asked Gretchen.

  “Because …” Her voice was high and excited, but something stopped her. After a few moments of reflection, she said, “No, you’re right. They’re probably all angry enough to kill her, but my understanding is that the people she left in the Twin Cities needed her alive; they wanted to prove that she was alive and that they had nothing to do with her disappearance.”

  I had come to the same conclusion the day before and revisited it several times since then. Nevertheless, it was comforting to hear it from someone else. Part of the reason I had returned to Kreel County was to prove that I had nothing to do with the assault on Michael Bettich—mostly to myself.

  “Tell me about Alison,” I told Gretchen.

  “Who the hell is Alison?” Loushine asked again.