Hunter’s Dance (4 page)

VI

Had conversation here conjured up this woman? One misfortune always brings another.

Her newspaper hit the floor, and Mia stretched out, head pillowed on one of the worn davenport's arms and feet dangling over the other. She pulled the afghan up over her head and spent the final few seconds before she closed her eyes marveling at the kaleidoscope of overlapping circles produced by light passing through the spaces in the weave.

What should she dream about? Her drowsy contemplations of that blissful question were squelched by the sound of a car on the nearby road. Mia held her breath. The car slowed. She crossed her fingers, but fortune was not on her side. With a splatter of gravel, the vehicle turned in at the driveway. Maybe it was Nick home early…or Harry Truman out to recruit a new Secretary of State. Each was equally likely.

With a groan, she threw back the cover. Mia and Nick weren't on the regular Sunday afternoon visiting circuit. Still, neighbors showed up every now and then. Often enough to ensure that Mia maintain the habit of baking every Friday and keeping a supply of fresh cream on hand for the coffee.

She pulled herself up and tried to peer inconspicuously through the lace of the curtains. Whoever it was, they didn't
have
to know she was home. The car was unfamiliar, a convertible, not something often seen in this land of eternal winter, a deep maroon color. Mia squinted. It could be a Cadillac…classy, anyway. The top was up; she couldn't see inside. Maybe it
was
Truman.

She picked up the newspapers, shoved them into a rough stack on the coffee table, and had just time to fold the afghan before the knock came at the door.

At her first glimpse of the elflike creature standing on the porch, Mia thought Halloween might have sneaked up on her. The woman was tiny, with skin freckled as an overripe banana and a pixie cap of fox-colored curls. Circular spots of rouge decorated her cheeks. Only her eyes, the same emerald green as her dangling earrings, held a note of familiarity.

“Mia?” The woman smiled, turning her crow's feet into ostrich tracks. “I don't suppose you'd remember me.” The husky voice came from somewhere around her silver belt buckle. “It's Siobhan McIntire…Siobhan Henry, now.”

Mia could only gape.

“Colin's half-sister. I was —”

“Siobhan, of course I remember you! It's just…It's been so long…nobody knew where…” Mia took a breath and started over. “Come in. Forgive me, I'm only a little…”

“A little shocked at seeing me still alive?” She gave a throaty un-elflike guffaw and entered.

Mia led her guest into the kitchen, installed her on a chair, and filled the coffeepot. She slid a plate of blackberry-filled cookies onto the table and took a chair opposite. Now that she knew who she was looking at, she realized that the former Siobhan McIntire hadn't really changed all that much since she'd last seen her, which must have been at least twenty years before. More like twenty-five. Despite its wrinkles, the heart-shaped face maintained its childish tilt, and the eyes still seemed to hold some delicious secret.

“Well,” she tried to begin again, “well, Siobhan…and how have you been?”

Siobhan's blood-red talons glittered as she reached for a cookie. “Ooh, let's see…I had pneumonia in 1932.” Her lumberjack laugh burst out once more, so out of keeping with her appearance that Mia felt she was conversing with a ventriloquist's puppet. Siobhan chewed and swallowed before going on. “Sorry to barge in on you like this, but I've been to Colin's, and there doesn't seem to be anybody around. I didn't want to go all the way back to Chandler. And I wouldn't want to be sitting there when they get home and give anybody a heart attack! I thought maybe I could wait here? If it wouldn't be a bother.”

Mia suppressed a smile. Bothering her, and John, had once been Siobhan's favorite pastime. But as to that heart attack…

“Of course it's no trouble. And we have plenty of catching up to do. But…I hate to have to tell you this, Siobhan. Colin is dead. He's been gone about three years. I know Sophie tried to find you and your mother when it happened, but…”

“Oh, God.” The spark left her eyes, and Siobhan McIntire sounded weary. “What happened? How did he die?”

“Came out of Touminen's sauna and dived in the lake. He died instantly, massive coronary.”

“Good lord! How awful! We didn't hear anything about it. A heart attack? When I said that, I…Colin? It seems impossible. He was always so…”

“Indestructible.”

Siobhan took a crushed pack of Winstons from her shoulder bag and shook one into her hand. “I can't believe I won't see him again. If I had thought…” She tapped the end of the cigarette against her palm. “So Sophie's alone?”

“Sophie's moved to Florida. John's living in the house now.”

Siobhan paused with the lighter flickering in front of her nose and snatched the cigarette from her mouth. She stared as if Mia had told her the Widow McIntire had eloped with the pope. “John? He actually came back here? To St. Adele? No. I can't believe it.” She completed the lighting procedure and inhaled deeply. “Good God, he didn't take over the tavern, did he?”

“Hardly! He stayed in Europe, London mostly I guess, all this time, since the first war. Didn't come back, even for a visit, until he retired last year.”

“He stayed in the army?”

“Absolutely.”

“John is the last person on this earth I could see as a soldier.”

Now it was Mia's turn to give a bark of laughter. “He wasn't a soldier exactly. He worked as a translator. Or so he
says
.”

The sooty penciled arches above Siobhan's eyes lifted, and Mia lowered her voice. “He was involved in
intelligence
.”

“You mean like a spy? John? Well, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. He always was kind of snoopy.”

John was snoopy? Now there was a prime case of the pot calling the kettle black, if Mia had ever heard one. She shrugged. “Who knows? But hang on for this one. Last spring he was elected township constable.”

Siobhan's hand trembled slightly as she drained her cup and returned it to the table. “So what does he do? Bore the bad guys into giving up?”

A twinge of the old protectiveness crept in. “He was kind of tricked into it, but people seem to think he's doing a fine job.”

“No kidding? Well, who'd a thunk? And he stayed away all that time? Long disappearances must run in the family. Or,” the eyebrows went up again, “was he possibly nursing a broken heart?”

Mia refilled the cups. “How's your mother?”

Siobhan gave another short laugh. “Okay, be that way.” She dumped a spoonful of sugar into her coffee. “Ma's just hunky-dory, so far as I know. Believe it or not, she's married to a Lutheran minister. They live in Colorado. I don't see a whole lot of them.”

So there was an ecclesiastical union in the mix. How Bridget McIntire might have snagged a Protestant man of the cloth sounded like a story in itself. Well, Bridget's marriage to John's Grandpa McIntire had shown she was resourceful. But Mia couldn't quite see Siobhan as the pastor's daughter.

“Did your husband come back with you?” she asked. “You did say you were married?”

“That's exactly right, I
was
married. Not any more, I'm happy to report.”

“Only once?” Mia didn't want to appear to be prying, but the carnival worker in whose company Siobhan left St. Adele had definitely carried a much more colorful last name than Henry. Her curiosity went unsatisfied.

“Once isn't enough?” Siobhan asked. “Believe me, marrying for money isn't all it's cracked up to be.” She smiled and leaned forward. “But I remember
your
husband very well. Is he still as handsome as ever? If he's got fat and bald I don't want to hear about it.”

“No, he's the same old Nick, fit and hairy as ever. He'll be home soon and you can judge for yourself.”

“I can't wait.” The tiny hand darted out for another cookie. “What a doll he was! I used to wait by the mailbox every day, and he'd give me a ride to the corner on his motorcycle. The mailbag was on the back, so I had to sit in front of him. With his arms around me.” She smiled contemplatively at the cookie, then took a sharp bite. “I also had to walk all the way back, but it was worth it. I cried myself to sleep for a month when you two got married. God, was I jealous!”

“You were ten years old!”

“That was the problem. If I'd been a couple years older, you'd never have gotten him away from me.”

Remembering Siobhan at twelve, Mia didn't argue. “What brings you back, besides the torch you're carrying for Nick?”

She took a long pull off her cigarette. “I guess I just got homesick. I saw an article in the
Saturday Evening Post
. My divorce had become final, and I thought, why not?”

“Oh ya, the uranium story.”

“Has anybody actually found anything yet? Enough to mine?” Siobhan sounded as eager as if she was planning to indulge in a little prospecting herself. Or possibly some secondhand gold-digging.

“Not that I've heard,” Mia told her, “but if they haven't it's not for lack of trying. Like the article said, some guy from Minnesota found uranium over on the river, by the gravel pit. That was last summer. Since the snow melted this spring, we've had a regular gold rush. The woods are crawling with prospectors. There are more Geiger counters than guns out there this fall. But, so far, the only people making their fortune seem to be the bar owners. I imagine John's kicking himself, wishing he
had
taken over that tavern.”

Mia found herself disappointed that there wasn't more of a story to tell. “And,” she remembered, “the county's collected about five thousand dollars in back taxes. Nobody wants to take a chance on losing their land if some lucky prospector finds the mother lode on it.”

“What happens,” Siobhan asked, “if somebody does find uranium, if it's on land that doesn't belong to them?”

Mia wasn't too sure. “On state land you can just snoop around. If you want to dig you have to pay twenty-five bucks for a permit. If it's somebody else's private land, I guess you'd have to work it out with the owner. Most of the land out there is owned by logging companies. I suppose they wouldn't be above branching out into mining.”

The telephone jangled, the two short rings that signified that the Thorsens were wanted. Mia felt an irrational grip of alarm that arrested her movements and must have shown in her face; Siobhan regarded her with a confused frown. Mia put down her cup and forced herself to cross the room to the phone. She listened to the calm and sensible voice on the line, murmured an assent and replaced the earpiece. She turned to Siobhan.

“That was Leonie McIntire, John's wife. There's been a death, and John's with the sheriff. Inge Lindstrom found the body, and she's pretty upset. Leonie's staying at her house until Ben gets home. She asked if I'd go over and take her roast out of the oven. You might as well do the honors.”

When the dusty convertible had turned out onto the road, Mia went back to the phone. She'd better let Leonie know that she had company. For a second she shook off the darkness that had enveloped her on hearing of the death and pushed aside the memory of that imagined wound over a young man's ear. She laughed aloud. What she wouldn't give to see John McIntire's face when he came home to find that spoiled brat, his Auntie Siobhan, all grown up and fixing his Sunday dinner.

VII

She had been proud, rich, happy, and in one minute she was cast into such endless misery.

Despite their grim errand, McIntire would not have wanted to miss this chance to visit the private retreat where Bambi Morlen's family had been spending its summer. Famous, and infamous, since before McIntire was born, the preserve had been established near the end of the last century when the holder of huge tracts of railroad land found himself needing support for a Senate bid. When the ink was dry, thousands of acres of prime forest and a mile and a half of Lake Superior shoreline, along with some twenty inland lakes, had ended up in the hands of a group of vote-producing capitalists. The Shawanok Fishing Club was born.

McIntire had heard stories of adventurous locals who had surreptitiously entered the grounds to bring back reports of the sumptuous lodge and private cabins owned by the Club's members, as well as the questionable activities indulged in by some of the more notorious. But no one he knew personally had ever gotten past its gate, guarded, it was said, by an armed and uniformed attendant twenty-four hours a day. The single exception, it now seemed, was Walleye Wall, who'd come in by the back way and lost a few toes for his trouble.

Over the years, the Club had boasted the membership of some of the country's most prominent robber barons and entrepreneurs. For half a century and more, those Clubbers had been the most universally despised group of people in the three-county area. Pete Koski had never made a secret of the fact that his feelings were no exception.

He swore extravagantly during the three tries it took to start his treasured new vehicle, the Dodge Power Wagon. McIntire didn't figure it was all directed at the recalcitrant engine.

The engine roared and the wagon trembled like a spirited horse eager to charge across field and forest leaping everything in its path. It was a deception. Koski let out the clutch, and they rumbled sedately out onto the road.

Koski proposed to take the shortest course, northeast through swamp and jungle-thick forest on roads hardly more than the ruts left by logging trucks. Since the alternative would have been the hundred mile or more route through Marquette, McIntire didn't argue. Not that the sheriff would have paid any attention if he had.

“This baby will climb a pine tree,” Koski assured him. Not today, McIntire hoped.

The roads were in better shape than McIntire expected. It took only about thirty minutes of plowing through mud, rolling over exposed roots, and unscheduled braking that effected some painful collisions of McIntire's knees with the dash, before they emerged onto the sandy Gray Wolf Plain.

The Plain was only now beginning to recover from its most recent logging and resembled the aftermath of a forest fire. A few deer wandered among the stumps, bounding off to a safe distance at their approach, then turning to stare for a moment before continuing to nibble at emergent seedlings. As they clipped along, McIntire shouted over the jackhammer staccato of sand splattering the wagon's underside to relate the story of Bambi's scuffle with Marvin Wall.

“But,” he concluded, “Marvin disappeared the minute I turned my back. Which was only a few minutes after Bambi left. And we don't have any way of knowing for sure what time he got home.
If
he got home. He didn't go back to Adam's place, and he didn't seem to be anywhere around when I stopped at Charlie's about noon. Unless he was just lying low, or sleeping late.”

The track dropped into forest again and, after a few more hairpin turns and bruise to McIntire's shins, connected with the road that came from the east and led to the Club compound. This route was diabolically planned to be bad enough to discourage regular use by local residents without destroying the Club's supply trucks and the occasional Cadillac of its members.

“What was the kid like?” Koski downshifted to chug through a stretch of loose sand.

“Like he needed a good kick in the pants,” McIntire answered. “Cocky, smug, arrogant.”

“Sounds like a great guy.”

“Probably his mother loved him.” The ill-thought-out remark served as a reminder of the reason they were making this trip. They traveled on for a time in silence but for the low snoring of the German shepherd, Geronimo, stretched out on the back seat. “Odd, though,” McIntire said, “Marvin stuck out his foot and tried to trip Bambi when he left the hall, and it didn't seem to bother the kid at all.”

Koski accelerated around a curve and nearly collided with a five-foot-high cast iron gate. It cut straight across the road and was fastened by a four-inch padlock. To its right, a blocky log building topped off with a slate roof and complete with stone chimney crouched in a nest of cedars. Through an organdy curtained window, a gray head was visible. Koski waited exactly ten seconds before giving a prolonged blast on the horn. The plank door burst open, and the owner of the grizzled pate appeared.

Legend said that the Club's guards were recruited from murderers paroled from the state prison—in early years even a notorious stagecoach robber. The man who confronted them was disillusioning. He appeared as neither a menacing thug nor the fabled armed and uniformed figure. His costume consisted of a workman's green coveralls, and he was equipped with only a stick of gnarled willow. He hobbled toward them, his face clouded with anger or possibly arthritis. Koski gave McIntire a chagrined look and hefted himself out of the car. After a quick conference, bending almost double to shout into the old man's ear, the sheriff opened the gate himself, and they drove through.

The narrow road meandered under birch and maple for another quarter mile before the woods opened into farmlands. Sleek Holsteins wandered to the fence along the road to observe their passing. The road traversed fields of oat stubble, potatoes, and dried corn stalks, before turning to the north and again entering forest. Another ten minutes of driving brought them to the Club proper, a collection of unpainted log buildings that made up a village. But for the Red Crown gas pump, it could have been a scene from a hundred years past. McIntire had to admit it would be a pleasant place to escape from the world, although their mission here furnished proof that the world could find you where and when it chose. A little further on stood what must have been the main lodge. It was disappointingly modest, a rambling two-story structure of weathered wood and slightly sagging porches. Koski drove past.

“It's Mr. and Mrs. Wendell Morlen,” he said. “Their place is the fourth one on the upper side, the old boy says. He called it a
cottage
. Another half mile or so.”

The track wound further along the lakeshore and through the trees, passing a half-dozen private lodges ranging from simple cabins to structures the size of the Lincoln Memorial. This was more what McIntire had expected to see.

The Morlen summer hideaway also lived up to his expectations, and then some. The “cottage” hugged the earth on a stone foundation. Its lower portion was of cedar logs, tightly fitted and varnished to a subtle glow. Perched on this rustic base, like a birthday cake resting on an orange crate, was a second story of pale yellow fish-scale siding, a high peaked roof, and dormers with leaded windows. It could have held McIntire's house twice over.

Koski drove a short distance past the cabin and pulled off the road. He took a few deep breaths before switching off the engine, then rolled down the window, removed a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket, and stuck one between his lips. In spite of the chill air, his forehead and neck were damp with sweat. It was a natural reaction to the task ahead, but one that, nevertheless, surprised McIntire. They waited. A splash sounded as a golden retriever hit the water off the end of a nearby dock.

“Oh, hell. Let's get to it.” The sheriff stuffed the unlit cigarette into the ashtray, wiped his hands on his twill-clad thighs, and wrenched open the door.

The cabin's front door stood open and the sound of an unaccompanied operatic aria issued forth. Rossini maybe, McIntire thought, Italian anyway, and not half badly done. As they approached, the singer abandoned her high-brow theme and launched into a musical lament about how she couldn't help loving that man of hers.

Koski rapped on the door frame. The song trailed off and steps sounded on hardwood floors. A dark, plumpish woman in a kerchief and flour-dusted apron appeared in the entryway and spoke through the screen. “Yes?”

The sheriff introduced himself with more formality than McIntire thought he had in him. “I'm Peter Koski, sheriff of Flambeau County, and this is Constable John McIntire. Are Mr. and Mrs. Morlen at home?”

The woman wiped her hands on her apron and pushed open the screen door. “I'm Bonnie Morlen. How can I help you?” The rich, melodic voice was steady, but her eyes, wary as a mother hen, betrayed the trepidation that an unexpected visit from the law is always likely to inspire.

Some seconds passed before Koski responded. He had no doubt expected the housekeeperish woman to present them to a Grace Kelly lookalike lounging in a brocade-covered chaise munching bonbons and sipping champagne.

McIntire was himself a bit nonplused. The personification of domesticity who stood before them was no more in keeping with the sophisticated image of the Club than was its unimposing lodge. She was equally hard to picture as the mother of the precociously urbane Bambi. But the full cheeks and mahogany curls peering from under the kerchief left him in no doubt.

She led them to a living room that commenced with a baby grand piano and stretched thirty or forty feet to a fireplace of unpolished granite at the far end. “Please, sit down, and excuse me for just a moment.” She directed them to a deep green plush sofa and disappeared through a swinging door.

The furnishings of the cottage showed the same eclecticism as its architecture. The floor was strewn with rugs both Persian and polar bear. Spindly-legged tables vied for space with benches fashioned from split tree trunks. Dim landscapes in ornate gold-leaf frames hung on the lacquered log walls. These bucolic scenes of misty pastures were lackluster compared to that viewed through the four square windows. The sun had not quite sunk into the hills behind the cabin. Its low rays turned the water to a coral slate framed by fire-colored trees.

The moment stretched into real minutes. The distant grumble of an outboard motor grew louder, then died abruptly. The sun completed its plunge, and the room went from dim to dark. Koski rose to his feet and switched on a lamp. He was beginning to make for the swinging door when Mrs. Morlen bustled back into the room. She'd shed the apron and head cover and carried with her a towel-covered crockery bowl the size of a small bathtub. She placed it on a table near the chimney, spent an inordinate amount of time fussing with the towel, and finally turned to the sheriff.

Baking bread. Were these Clubbers far more down-to-earth than was generally believed, or was Mrs. Morlen some sort of modern-day Marie Antoinette, playing at her own version of milkmaid?

“Is your husband at home?” Koski asked.

“I'm expecting him soon. Is there something you wished to talk to him about?” She picked up a basket from the floor, extracted a snarl of yarn and began pulling it apart, winding the free end around her hand, in a patently artificial show of unconcern.

But there was nothing counterfeit about Bonnie Morlen's reaction when she learned that her son was dead. She doubled over, yarn-tangled arms wrapped about her mid-section as if she had received a physical blow. Her breath came in short gasps, then seemed to cease completely. She might have been strangling on her horror. Koski looked helplessly at McIntire over her head. Why hadn't they thought to bring the doctor? McIntire racked his brain for what he knew of treating severe shock. Nothing at all.

The slam of a door came from the back of the house, and steps sounded in the kitchen.

“What the hell is this mess? If you have to indulge in these house-wifey pursuits, you could at least clean up decently.” A short silence followed, then, “Bonnie, I've told you….” The door swung open.

Wendell Morlen was lean and tanned. He was dressed in neatly fitting tan trousers and wore a tweed sport coat over his casual shirt. His expression of annoyance changed to one of confusion, and he covered the length of the room in a half dozen strides.

“Bonnie, what's happened?” His gaze darted from his wife to the sheriff's uniform. “Is it Dan?” He knelt before his wife and gripped her arms. “He was old. He had a great life. You know how he's been since your mother died.” Mrs. Morlen shrank as if she'd been struck and again struggled for air. He shook her slightly. “Bonnie, please! Stop this now! He wouldn't want you to carry on like this.”

She released her breath with a great outrush and a violent twist out of his grasp. “It's not Daddy, you greedy bastard. It's my baby!”

In the vacuum of silence that followed, she rose to her feet and turned to the sheriff. “Please take me to my son now.”