Dearly Departed Read online

  “Lied about your age?”

  “I had to get into the war.”

  “For three generations the men in my family have been either too young or too old to fight in our nation’s wars,” I told him.

  “How lucky for you.”

  “I’ve always thought so,” I admitted. “The Johnston, she lost her skipper.”

  “Commander Ernest E. Evans. He was a Cherokee. Finest man I ever knew. He shook my hand the day I came aboard the Johnston. He told me, us Indians—we were Indians back then, not Native-Americans—us Indians he said, we had to be twice as good as everyone else. He was ten times as good. History doesn’t even remember him.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you ever worry about your place in history, Mr. Taylor?”

  “How do you know my name?” I asked, trying hard not to sound surprised.

  “Must have been from your credit card,” he teased. “Why else?”

  “Do you take a personal interest in everyone who orders the prime rib?”

  “How was it?”

  “Average,” I told him.

  He sniffed like he didn’t believe me.

  “I figured I owe you for defusing what could have been an ugly situation upstairs,” he informed me and held up my credit card slip. He crumpled it into a ball with one hand and tossed it into the wastebasket ten feet away. “Dinner’s on us.”

  “Thanks,” I said, waiting.

  “Have a drink with me,” Stonetree said. He pulled open a desk drawer and removed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

  “I’ve always heard Indians can’t hold their firewater,” I told Stonetree as he filled two double-shot glasses.

  “You believe all those movie myths?”

  “No more than I believe Indians are afraid to fight at night.”

  “Actually, that one is true.”

  “Really?”

  “I know I never liked it,” he said and raised his glass. “L’chayim.”

  “H’gun,” I answered, reciting what I thought was the Dakota courage word.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind,” I said. I took a sip of the liquid; it burned all the way down. I hadn’t used the hard stuff in quite awhile. “So, tell me, sir. What do you want of me?”

  The chief smiled.

  “You like to get right to it, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Not necessarily,” I told him. “I’d be happy to just sit here and drink your booze and listen to a few more war stories if it’ll make you comfortable. We can pretend this isn’t a business meeting for quite a while, yet.”

  The chief grimaced at the phrase business meeting.“I’m that obvious, huh?”

  “You don’t strike me as a guy who spends a lot of time hobnobbing with the customers.”

  “You got me there,” the chief said, sighing. ‘All right. I know who you are, and I know why you’re in Kreel County. I also know that Bobby Orman has given you a free hand in investigating the shooting of Michael Bettich—a development I find utterly amazing by the way.”

  “His deputies agree with you,” I said.

  “I know all these things because we operate a fairly elaborate security system here,” the chief added. “We run checks on everyone who touches our business. It’s a necessary precaution, I’m afraid. A lot of vultures would love to get their talons into the reservation casinos, rip us off, launder their money—you’d be amazed.…”

  “I doubt it,” I told him.

  Chief Stonetree used my interruption to drain the liquid in his glass and to pour himself a second healthy drink.

  “If we don’t protect ourselves, the Bureau of Indian Affairs will do it for us,” he continued. “We’d be back to bad meat and trinkets within six months.”

  He took another pull of his whiskey.

  “Michael Bettich touched our business, so I had her checked out. But my security people came back with a most amazing discovery.”

  “Oh?” I said.

  “According to them, Michael Bettich didn’t even exist nine months ago. How is that possible, do you think?”

  I shrugged.

  “Please, Mr. Taylor,” Stonetree said. “Don’t obfuscate with me.”

  Wow, there’s a word you don’t often hear in conversation. I took a long pull of the Jack to give me time to think about it. As the dark liquid warmed my stomach I decided obfuscation wasn’t a bad way to go.

  “Perhaps Michael is not who she claims to be,” I told the chief.

  Stonetree laughed at my answer. “No kidding.” He shook his head and added, all serious now, “Look, I don’t really care who Michael Bettich is or isn’t. That doesn’t bother me nearly as much as something else I don’t know. I don’t know where her money came from. My sources tell me she only had a few hundred bucks when she arrived in Deer Lake. But a few months later she suddenly has enough to buy The Harbor for one hundred and seventy thousand dollars and give it an eighty-grand renovation. Where did it come from?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered quickly, cursing my own incompetence. Alison had left the Twin Cities with nothing, yet six months later she has enough money for a major investment and I hadn’t even asked where she got it. Dammit! The answer could help determine who’d shot her.…

  Chief Stonetree must have seen the frustration on my face because he said, “You don’t know, do you?”

  I shook my head. “Do you have any theories?” I asked.

  “King Koehn,” Stonetree answered as if saying the name caused him pain.

  “You think King and Michael are partners?”

  Stonetree nodded.

  “Could be,” I agreed. “But if they are, they’re doing a helluva job hiding it. Why does it matter?”

  Stonetree sipped his drink.

  “You don’t want them profiting off your casino,” I ventured.

  “It’s not that,” he told me. “Obviously the more local residents that profit off our business, the better; the more tightly we are tied financially to the community, the stronger our situation becomes.”

  “So what’s the problem?” I asked.

  The chief studied me over the rim of his glass. I had nothing else to look at, so I watched him. After we got tired of each other’s faces, Stonetree said, “We don’t believe the tribe can afford to gamble its future on gaming, if you’ll excuse the pun. The competition from the larger casinos—Hinckley, Mille Lacs, Turtle Lake—will cut deeper and deeper into our market share and our profits. So instead of expanding our gaming operation, we’ve been investing our proceeds in other businesses, diversifying our interests.

  “We have a salmon farm now,” the chief continued. “We raise them, can them, the whole show. We recently purchased a construction-equipment manufacturing plant in North Dakota. Just the other day we initiated exploratory talks with a company that builds snowmobiles. And we’re also pursuing several other opportunities.”

  I asked, “What has this to do with King and Michael?”

  Stonetree smiled cryptically. “I just told you.”

  I frowned at his answer. It seemed Chief Stonetree didn’t mind obfuscating, either.

  “In five years time, we hope gaming will represent less than forty percent of our income,” the chief finally added, his voice growing in volume as if I had just challenged his logic. Perhaps others had.

  “The tribe must be prepared for the day the gaming boom goes bust. My God, man, we have enrolled members; every month they cash their checks at the bank and walk out with the money in their pockets. They don’t even have checking accounts! They’re not saving, they’re not investing. Instead, they’re spending. They’re buying new homes and expensive furniture and stereo equipment and cars and Gold Wing Honda motorcycles. I can’t really blame them. After generations of poverty, it’s hard to get used to possessing large sums of money. Only what’s going to happen to them when the bubble bursts? Who says all this is going to last?”

  “No one,” I answered just to be polite.

  “Some tri
bal members don’t agree. They want what they want when they want it—like children.” Stonetree shook his head violently. “They’re wrong. That’s why we’re taking twenty percent out of each member’s check and putting it in retirement accounts for them. That’s why we’re investing in infrastructure—building a school, a water and sewer system, roads, a day-care center, a recreation center, new houses. We have chemical dependency programs and an alcohol treatment center. We’re encouraging the kids to go to college or at least a trade school, paying them to attend—”

  Stonetree stopped abruptly.

  “But I digress,” he said, embarrassed at his own oratory.

  I don’t know why. It all sounded quite sensible to me, and I told him so.

  “Sensible,” Stonetree repeated with disdain. “For a hundred years we’ve been a defeated people living off what the white government deigned to give us. Congress passes the 1988 Indian Gaming Act, and overnight we’ve become wealthy and arrogant. What’s sensible about that?”

  I shrugged. “It’s like the saying goes: I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better.”

  Stonetree smiled. “It is preferable to a poke in the eye from a sharp stick, I must agree.”

  “Which brings us back to King and Michael,” I said.

  “I will pay you quite well if you can determine for me with all accuracy that King Koehn is a silent partner in The Harbor,” Stonetree said.

  “I already have a client,” I reminded him.

  “I am not asking you to compromise your client,” he assured me. “I just want to acquire that one little piece of information. Before next Thursday.”

  “What happens Thursday?” I asked.

  “On Thursday we go before the Kreel County Board of Commissioners and make a formal offer to purchase the civic center.”

  “I understand,” I told him.

  “No, Mr. Taylor, you don’t.”

  And by the way he rose to his feet and lifted his glass, it was obvious he wasn’t about to enlighten me. “Thank you for your time,” Stonetree said. “Please keep in touch.”

  “Thank you for the drink and the interesting conversation,” I told him.

  “I hope your woman recovers soon,” he said.

  My woman? He thought Michael—I mean Alison—was my woman?

  “Thank you,” I said again. I mimed a toast to the photograph of the USS Johnston.

  Stonetree raised his glass to me. “H’gun.”

  twenty-three

  The wind up alarm clock that The Wheel Inn provided read 5:45. I didn’t like the clock. I didn’t like the way it rang until I lurched out of bed and beat it into submission. I didn’t like the sun, either. It was shining. And the birds were singing. Didn’t they know it was 5:45 in the fucking morning?!

  The lights in the bathroom were too bright, the towels were too rough, the soap bar was too small, the floor was too cold, and so was the water that flowed from the faucet labeled H. I forgot about my bruises and stretched, then remembered every one. They were now turning an ugly yellow-rust color. I looked diseased.

  I cut myself shaving three times. After years of using an electric razor I had lost the knack—at least that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it. My new sports coat and shirt were stained from the champagne, so I wore my other jacket and dirty shirt, instead. I packed the rest of my belongings in a paper bag with King’s One-Stop printed on both sides and escaped to my car.

  There was a lot of traffic on the county roads, and it infuriated me. Where were all these people going so early in the morning? Turned out many of them were going to the same place I was: Annie’s Parlor, the café in Saginau where I had promised to meet Deputy Gary Loushine. The café was located on the town’s main drag between two bars. Across the street was an everything-for-everyone hardware store flanked by a bank and a gift shop. I parked farther down the street in the parking lot of the Kreel County Court Building, where the sheriff’s department was located, and walked back.

  Annie’s Parlor was doing good business. A small crowd had gathered at the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign, including two older women who smiled benignly at me and said in unison, “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” The women were actually wearing skirts. Everyone else was dressed like they were going to cut the lawn right after breakfast—the dressing-down of America. When was the last time you were confronted with a dress code that exceeded “No shoes, no shirt, no service”?

  At 7:05 Annie—who also wore a skirt—welcomed me to her parlor and led me to a window booth with a good view of the hardware store. She offered coffee while I waited for my companion, and I accepted. It was good coffee. I sipped it and wondered vaguely if Deputy Loushine had as much trouble with early mornings as I did. I passed the time by watching the traffic move up and down Saginau’s main drag and listed all the reasons why I could never reside in such a small town. The list was short and featured mostly social items: no jazz clubs, no movie theaters, no professional baseball.

  Deputy Loushine abruptly slid into the booth across from me; somehow he had entered the café without my seeing him. Before I could even say “Good morning,” Annie was by his side.

  “Coffee, Gary?”

  “Thanks, Annie,” Loushine said. Apparently he and the woman were old friends.

  But as Annie was pouring a steaming mug, the radio Loushine wore on his belt suddenly crackled and squawked. He responded with his personal code, and a woman’s voice told him to proceed to an old logging road off County Road T, three-quarters of a mile south of Road 34.

  “What do we have?” Loushine asked the voice.

  “It’s Chip Thilgen. We found him.”

  Sheriff Bobby Orman was not happy. Not one damn bit. His face was bloodless, his mouth stretched downward into a long, hard frown, and his eyes fairly glistened with fury as he carefully picked his way along the logging trail toward the white Buick. Orman arrived a full forty minutes after Loushine and I did, although he had been summoned at the same time. What took him so long I couldn’t say—he certainly hadn’t stopped to shave. On the other hand, he had returned from Duluth at three that morning, which meant that he was operating on less than four hours’ sleep.

  Orman joined the knot of deputies waiting for him at the open driver’s door. The deputies muttered an unenthusiastic “Good morning” but didn’t look at him—or at each other, for that matter. Instead they gazed at the thick growth that surrounded them, their boots, the sky—anywhere but inside the car, where the body of Chip Thilgen was folded neatly across the steering wheel. Orman probably didn’t want to look either, but he did as the deputies drifted away from the Buick and down the logging trail to their own vehicles to silently await orders.

  In contrast, Loushine was excited and spoke rapidly. Only TV cops get a steady dose of dead bodies and high-speed heroics, and he was not a TV cop. How many shootings, how many murders, will a cop in a rural community like Kreel County catch in a career? Counting Alison’s shooting, this was Loushine’s fourth. I figured he had already exceeded his quota, and the stress was telling.

  Still, he was well trained; someone had beaten discipline into him early on. Disregard the speed in which he gave it, and Loushine’s report was concise and thorough. He faltered only once. That was while informing the sheriff that Thilgen had been shot in the head at close range, as was evident by the contact burns on his temple. I was relieved when I’d noted the burned flesh earlier. It meant I hadn’t killed him when I shot out the back window of the car. It meant I didn’t have to burden my conscience with still another dead man.

  “Suicide?” Orman asked hopefully. If this was Loushine’s fourth homicide, it was Orman’s first.

  “We found a .38 on the seat next to him,” Loushine answered.

  “Then it could have been.”

  Loushine clearly didn’t think so, only he didn’t say it. Instead he told the sheriff, “The .38 still had a full load; it hadn’t been fired. But we have a bunch of these.” He held up a plastic bag fill
ed with copper shells. “.41 AEs.”

  The sheriff took the bag of shell casings and stepped away to collect himself. Loushine watched him intently. After a moment the sheriff said in a quiet voice, “He looks like he’s been dead for a long time.”

  “Three days,” I told him. “I’m betting he was popped right after the shooting.”

  Orman didn’t respond to me. Instead he told Loushine, “Dust the car inside and out; process the latents fast. Send copies to the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation. Also, see if you can get a quick grouping on the blood.…” We all glanced impulsively at the dark stains on the seat and floor around Thilgen’s body. “Some of it might not be his. And I want casts made of the three boot impressions outside the passenger door.”

  Good eye, I thought.

  “Of course,” Loushine replied, obviously miffed. I guess he didn’t like Orman telling him how to do his job.

  “Something else, if I may,” I said.

  Orman nodded at me.

  Looking directly at Loushine, I told him, “A murder victim has no assumption of privacy; you don’t need a warrant to search his house.” Loushine’s eyes grew brighter at my words, and a smile of unexpected happiness crept over his face. You’d have thought I was sending him on a blind date with Cindy Crawford.

  “I recommend that you conduct a search immediately,” I added with a wink. “Pay particular attention to Thilgen’s financial records.”

  “Good idea,” Orman said. “I want to know the name of everybody associated with Thilgen—his friends, his environmentalist buddies, whoever. I want a list of everyone he spoke to in the forty-eight hours preceding his death. I want his phone records. I want a time-coded list of associate events.…” He spoke like he was reading from a manual.

  “I’m on it,” Loushine told him.

  “Where the hell’s the medical examiner?” the sheriff asked impatiently.

  “He’s coming,” Loushine assured him and then turned back to Thilgen. “It would be convenient, wouldn’t it?” he asked no one in particular.