Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries) (11 page)

She turned back to me. “Okay, now
that
is a serious imperfection.”

“Happy to oblige,” I said.

Monday was my day off, and since the Wisconsin trout season went until the end of September, I went south on
sixty-one
early in the morning. To my left as I drove, the dark sky slowly faded into a soft pearl, which soon became stained with streaks of pink and red and then gold. At last
,
the sun shouldered its way above the blue horizon, blasting the ridges to my right with light and warmth, and tearing open the dark sky above me. Sunrise over Superior. I didn't get up for it every day anymore, like I used to when had first moved here, but it still touched me in a special way. It takes a cold-blooded person indeed to watch a Superior
s
unrise on the North Shore on a fine day, and not have any desire at all to give thanks to a Creator.

Bach accompanied the sunrise
and stayed with me down most of the length of
highway sixty-one
into Duluth. I have found that coffee and donuts do not noticeably decrease the quality of that great composer.

I caught a piece of Duluth early rush-hour, but it wasn't too long before I had slipped over the high bridge to Superior, and was on my way east toward the Tamarack. With twenty minutes to go, I called Chief Jensen.

“Hey
,
Dan, it's Jonah,” I said, when we were connected.

“Hi
,
Jonah,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Don't suppose you had a chance to check up on any of the stuff we talked about last week, have you?”

“Did you know,” he asked, “that some people regard 'what can I do for you' as nothing more than a polite greeting?”

“You never were that polite,” I said.

“We are not your private detective agency. We are the public servants of the citizens of Grand Lake.”

“Exactly. You are my servant. So, what'd you get?”

“You don't even live in Grand Lake, Jonah. You're technically part of the county, not the city.”

“So you got nothing?”

“Zip,” he said. “Actually, it was kind of weird. I got less than you got.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if I didn't know you better, I'd think you'd made it all up. I couldn't find any law-enforcement records to corroborate what you told me from your dad's notes.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. It was like none of what you told me ever happened.”

I sta
r
ted to protest, but he broke in. “I figured I owed you a little slack, since you were right about that thing last year. So I did a quick Google search. I found a few old websites and links to newspaper reports.
There wasn't a lot, but it does look like there was a robbery and firefight in a town called Lynden. Details were pretty sketchy, and there's no way you could get
the same information
out of it
t
hat your dad's notes had, but it's something.”

“What's up with that? You know I'm not making it up.”

“Could your dad have been making it up?”

“Dan, would you make up a case file like that for the fun of it, especially if it involved an actual man you killed?”

“You know, that's the funny thing. The newspaper report I saw gave the name of the guy who was shot, the one you said was from Duluth. Charles
Holland
. I tried our system and got nothing on him – no priors or anything. At least not on any Charles
Holland
who is now dead. I started to feel funny about it, and called down to Duluth public records. There's a few Charles
Holland
s born in Duluth, of course, and a few living there now. I don't have time to turn over all the stones, but so far, there doesn't seem to be any connection between the Charles
Holland
tha
t your dad said was from Duluth
and any actual guy by that name from there.”

“But you saw the newspaper report. So he must have existed.”

“Doesn't mean he was from Duluth. The website didn't say anything about that.”

“Even if he wasn't,” I said, “his history, his contacts – that would be the natural place to start in investigating this group, wouldn't it?”

“That would be the place to start investigating the
Lynden
robbery. But so far Jonah, you are the only one who thinks there's a connection between the robbery at Lynden and the one in Grand Lake.”

“It wasn't just Lynde
n. There were several robberies
in northern Washington, and they were all just like the one in Grand Lake.”

“That's exactly what I was not able to find out.”

“C'mon
,
Dan, I know I can be a pain sometimes, but the bank was robbed in Grand Lake, on your watch. You aren't wasting your time by pursuing this.”

“Never said I was. But I've got to go where the facts take me. You have your intuitive thing that you do, and you're good at it. But intuition doesn't do so well in a courtroom. Good police work is mostly just
footslogging through the facts
and letting them speak for themselves. And right now, they ain't saying anything about a connection between the First National robbery and your dad's old case.”

I hated to admit it, but Dan was actually making pretty good
sense
. It's just that I am so seldom wrong. Maybe Leyla was right, and I needed to be taken down a notch or two.

I thanked him
and hung up, just
as
I pulled into the parking area above the gorge of the Tamarack.

Trout fishing is the universal specific, guaranteed to ease whatever stresses or worries you. I wasn't
extremely worried
, but I was anxious to get Ethel Ostrand's money back, and I figured it wouldn't hurt me to get a little pro-active stress relief.

A while back
,
I had been bribed and threatened in this very parking lot, by people who had followed me there in an old green Honda. Today, a black blazer drove by shortly after I got there, but no one stopped.

I pulled on my old wool army-surplus sweater, and then slipped into my neoprene waders. My fishing vest went over the top, and then I grabbed my rod and took the trail down into the gorge.

Stepping into a clear, remote trout stream on a bright morning with the whole day in front of you is about as good as it gets this side of heaven. There are just a few other things as good or better, but in the moral code which I subscribe to, those involve marriage. Since I wasn't married, I went trout fishing as often as I could.

It was one of those days that remind
s
you that God is real and he is good, although maybe the fish felt differently about that than I did. They were voracious. I wasn't, so I let each one go with a warning, and sometimes a digital photo or two.

In September, night comes fairly early in the far North, so I quit by four, leaving myself a little daylight to spare. When I got back to the car, I stripped off my stuff. The parking area was empty and no cars were going by, but I always worried about strangers driving by and seeing me in my long Johns while I changed back into street clothes.
I know it’s silly, but there it is.

With my wardrobe properly assembled, I dialed my cell phone.

“Lund Investigations,” said the answering voice.

“Hi
,
Tom,” I said. “You may not remember me, but you helped me out on a case up in Grand Lake last year. I'm headed through Duluth in about forty-five minutes, and I wondered if I could meet you for a little bit.”

“Grand Lake? You the pastor guy I followed around with that oily Chicago thug? The guy they arrested for murder and then who blew the whole case wide open?”

“That's me,” I said, trying to sound modest.

“Yeah, OK,” said Tom Lund. “Let's do it
in
my office. See you there in forty-five minutes.”

Tom Lund was a tall, lean, broad-shouldered man with a thick blond mustache and short cropped blond hair. He wore a Duluth Royals ball-cap, which covered up the fact that he was going bald on top. He
looked kind of like a blond version of
Tom Selleck
in his
Magnum PI
days.

Lund's office was in the Canal Park district of Duluth, two blocks south of the main strip, in an old brick building that was being renovated. His decorating style was something I would
call
“masculine minimalist.” Each of the two rooms in his suite had four white walls and an old steel desk. The reception
area held a security came
ra in one corner of the ceiling
and a locked steel file cabinet. The old wood floors were clean, but bare. His inner office, in addition to the desk, had a window, two chairs and some files piled in one corner.

“I see you've been upgrading,” I said, pointing to files in the corner.

“I knew you were coming, so I cleared off the chair,” said Lund.

I sat in the indicated chair.

“I need you to look in to something for me,” I said.

“Any money in it for me this time?” he asked.

“It's a bank robbery,” I said. “There's a reward.”

He shook his head. “I like you. I appreciate your style, and you are a refreshing antidote to the traditional pastor stereotype. But I don't work for free, or on speculation.”

“Refreshing antidote
to the traditional pastor stereotype
?” I asked admiringly.

“I've been taking night classes. Might become a lawyer.”

“An old lady lost her life savings.”

He shrugged. “I'm becoming a lawyer. That means I'm in the process of losing my ability to care.”

“How much?”

He told me
,
and I winced.

“How 'bout this,” he said. “You pay me, and if I get any reward, I pay you back up to half of what you've paid me.”

“Why only half?” I said.

He looked at me for a long time.

“You did threaten to have me knee-capped once,” I said. “Surely you owe me something for that.”

“I would not have knee-capped anyone, and you know it,” he said. “Besides, I paid that debt already.”

There was a moment of silence between us. I have no shame, so eventually Lund spoke.

“OK, I'll take my fee, and if I get any reward money, I'll
donate it up to the amount of my fee to the charity of your choice. If the reward is more than my fee
plus the donation
, I keep the rest.”

“Done,” I said.

The Stones had another appointment. I wasn't keen to see them, but Jasmine seemed very restrained this time. Her thick
,
dark hair was tight in a kind of grown-up pony tail. Tony was mostly the same, solid as a pile of bricks, but he looked a little more concerned than he had before.

After we had exchanged greetings, Jasmine spoke, before I
could
say anything else.

“I'm really sorry about the other night.”

“Are you talking to me, or to Tony?” I asked.

She glanced quickly at her husband. “Both,” she said. “I get so frustrated sometimes, and I guess I was just blowing off steam, or trying to get a reaction or something.”

“Did you?” I asked.

“You tell me,” she said with a little bit of a leer. Stone elbowed her. “Sorry,” she added immediately.

“Look,” I said, “I'll be honest. I can see you two have issues, but I still don't quite get your relationship. Then, with the other night, I'm not sure I can provide you with the best help right now. I have the number of two really good marriage and family therapists in Duluth.”

Tony stirred. I realized he looked like a pile of bricks because he was a very solidly built, muscular man.

“Look
,
Pastor, we are very sorry. We have both agreed that we really want to work on this. Duluth is a long drive, and we both already know you and trust you. What happened last weekend won't happen again.”

I sipped some coffee. I hated to turn people away who really wanted help. “Did you hear me when I told you that I really don't
understand your relationship, or
even the nature of your problems?”

Jasmine laughed. It sounded genuine. She laid a hand on Tony's arm and said, “Pastor, even
we
don't understand those things.” She squeezed his arm. He looked at her and nodded.

“Listen, we heard that you are doing a counseling cruise on a sailboat in a few weeks. We wondered, if it wasn't full, if we could get in on that. I think that might help us all to clarify things.”

I wasn't sure I wanted to be stuck on a boat with them and no way to escape. On the other hand, they sure seemed to be candidates for something to shake them up. I thought that some interaction with Angela and Phil might even be good for them.