The Snowfly (36 page)

Gus Chickerman was seated on his barrel. He stared out at me through thick glasses but did not seem to recognize me. My hair was much longer now and I had grown a beard since my trouble in the woods.

“How ya doin', Mister C.?”

He squinted, then smiled. “Bowie Rhodes?”

“Yes, sir.”

He thundered toward the back. “Ruby, Bowie Rhodes is here.”

Mrs. Chickerman came out behind a walker. She looked frail, her skin jaundiced. But she smiled warmly when she saw me.

“Roger Ranger died,” I told them.

“It was in the paper,” Mrs. C. said. “A terrible thing, all the violence in the world. We couldn't get up there. Are Lilly and her children all right?”

“They're trying to cope.”

“We thought you were off over some ocean,” Mr. C. said. “Pokin' your nose into other people's business. Your ma was like that, too,” he added. “You get that from her.”

“The place looks good,” I said.

“It looks like what it is,” Mr. C. said. “Old.”

“We have tourists now,” Mrs. C. said. “In the summer.”

“We're quaint,” Mr. C. said sarcastically. “A fella told us we were like a time capsule.” He looked at me. “What's that mean, a time capsule?”

“Your hair's long,” Mrs. C. said.

“They all got it long nowadays,” Mr. C. said. “You come out from the back more often, you'd know that.”

She made a face of disapproval. It reminded me of the faces Queen Anna fired at my old man.

“You still a newspaperman?” Mrs. C. asked.

“Between assignments,” I said. “How's Raina?”

“Fine,” Mrs. C. said. “Fine.” Her tone suggested something different.

“It's funny, but a few years ago I though I saw her in the U.P. I called you about it. Remember?”

“She's a city woman now,” Mr. C. said, looking past me.

I saw them exchange glances. “She moves around,” Raina's father said evasively.

“We don't see her much,” Mrs. C. said. “Because she's in the city.” It had the ring of a rehearsed line.

I thought of the woman I saw that day with Buzz. I had no doubt it was Raina. I felt sad for the Chickermans. They seemed to have lost Raina too.

 

•••

 

I had been staying with Lilly for nearly a month since the funeral. She needed a break and was invited by friends to a party. I volunteered to look after the kids. I built a fire outside and we bundled up and had s'mores and later I made popcorn inside and Roger Junior and the girls and I watched television and we all cuddled on the couch and fell asleep. I awakened to a soft tug on the shoulder and a test pattern on the TV. Lilly and I moved the kids to their beds. I was ready to turn in, but Lilly had been drinking and was feeling loquacious. I made coffee and told her about my visit with the Chickermans.

“I heard Raina went to some bluenose college out east,” she said. “The Chickermans are funny people, Bowie. They're generous and friendly, but only so far. The store is their public face. I doubt anybody really knows anything about their private lives. I heard Daddy tell Queen Anna that Gus traveled a lot and would be gone not just for days, but sometimes for weeks, even months. Gus would just go off alone and if people asked where he was, Ruby would say it was just business and that would be the end of that.”

This was news to me. As a kid it seemed that the Chickermans were always there and never even went on vacations, not even to see relatives. Raina never said anything about her father traveling.

“Were you ever in their house?” Lilly asked.

The house was attached to the store by a breezeway. There was also an apartment above the store.

“Sure,” I said.

“Then you're the only one.”

When I thought back, though, I couldn't actually remember being in the house. I had been on the porch and I thought in the kitchen, but the rest was a blank.

“The Chickermans were so friendly that you never noticed,” Lilly said. “Roger told me he'd see Gus come out of Whirling Creek, way above our place, carrying his fishing gear. He was upstream where Daddy told us never to go. Once Roger and Bill Roquette set up for poachers.” Roquette had been the local game warden when we were kids. “It was in the fall and after dark and they saw a light and waited. It was Gus. They scared the hell out of him and he swore at them in a language neither of them recognized. Then he said they should keep this quiet because Ruby didn't like him to be out in the river. Roger thought it was funny.”

“I used to watch you and Roger,” I told Lilly. “In his car.”

She began to laugh. “I was a hot one,” she said. “I miss being hot with Roger.”

12

There was still no word from Yetter by early March and I was still living with Lilly and her kids. She was in pain but trying to hide it. She and the kids went off to see friends or had company in on a regular basis and I was pretty sure she was avoiding being alone.

I saw an AP piece in the
Detroit News
saying that UPI was having another bout of its periodic fiscal problems and that there were rumors and indications from “reliable sources” that we were up for sale. UPI's reputation for satisfying the public hunger for news was equaled by its peripatetic financial history. It irritated me that Yetter hadn't called, and whenever I called him he was “in a meeting.” I called my bank to see if my February check had been deposited and it was there, easing my anxiety slightly.

Lilly came home from the grocery store with unexpected news.

“Raina's parents are dead.” She seemed numb.

“What?”

“It's on the radio. They were killed in a fire at their store this morning.”

I called down to the sheriff's department and asked for details.

“We don't give out that sort of information over the phone,” a woman said brusquely. Bureaucratic indifference was endemic.

I drove down to Pinkville to check it out. A fire truck was still at the scene. A deputy stopped me up the road and I showed him my press card.

He was overweight, his face bluish red from exertion in the cold. “That ain't from here,” he said.

“I'm Bowie Rhodes. My sister was married to Roger Ranger.”

“No shit?” he said. “We were all sorry about Roger.”

“The Chickermans are old friends.”

“More like were,” he said. “Sorry.” He waved me on.

Some of the building still stood. Water was frozen in strange shapes on the ruins. The ground was thickly iced and slippery. Steam hissed. Water from high-pressure hoses hung in the air, an icy mist. It looked like an insane sculptor had been at work.

There was a state police panel truck parked near the ruins. It had
mobile lab
painted in blue on the sides.

“Press,” I told a fireman as I flashed my UPI ID. “What happened?”

“You'll have to talk to the chief,” he said. His face was black with soot and there were icicles on his black helmet. His lips were blue.

The fire chief was Vince Vilardo, the brother of one of my father's friends. “Vince?” He stared at me through bloodshot eyes. “I'm Bowie Rhodes.”

Vilardo nodded wearily.

“What happened?”

“The hell it looks like,” the chief mumbled. “Goddamn fire. It was going like a sonuvabitch when we got here, but my boys did good. We almost strangled her, but the wind popped up and off she went and that was that. Ten, twenty minutes more and we'd-a had her flat on her back.”

The ruins were still warm, the sun sinking. The mist darkened. ­Artificial spotlights were turned on. Only a few firemen remained and they wore black, shadows casting shadows in the eerie light. Cold crept into my legs. The Chickermans had always treated me well. I had seen a lot of ­carnage in my life and had learned how to turn off my emotions, but this was personal. My parents were gone, then Roger Ranger, now the ­Chickermans and their place. Piece by piece my past was being erased. I wondered how Raina would learn of this and knew I should call her, but all I knew was that she was in the “city.” I felt guilty that I had let her slip so far away.

I asked Vilardo and some others about Raina, but nobody knew how to contact her. Vince told me that a Traverse City lawyer had called even before the news of the fire broke, saying he'd contact the survivor.

“What was his name?”

“Eubanks, I think.”

“You know him?”

“Nope, and I never heard of him. You might want to call Maria Idly in T.C. She's my second cousin and works for the county prosecutor. If there's anything to be known about a local mouthpiece, she'd be the one to know it. She's in the book.”

I drove up to Traverse City that evening, checked a phone book, and placed a call to Maria Idly from a pay phone. I apologized for calling outside business hours, told her I had talked to Vince and explained who I was and what I wanted. I asked her about Eubanks. She uttered a few noncommittal uh-huhs and asked me to meet her at ten the next morning at a Big Boy on the south edge of town. I got a room at a sleep-cheap, called Lilly, and arrived at the restaurant the next morning.

Maria Idly was short and a little on the hefty side, dressed in a dark suit and high heels. We both ordered coffee.

“I called my cousin last night,” she said. “Vince described you pretty well.”

“Did you think I was up to something?”

She laughed. “Hell, in my business I think
everybody's
up to something. Besides, I deal with reporters all the time. It never hurts to verify who you're talking to. In my line we trust nothing.”

“You work for the prosecutor?”

She nodded. “His name's Carvelly and I'm his chief deputy, at least in title. If he ever retires, I'll try for his job, but people here may not be ready for a female prosecutor.” She rolled her eyes. “Besides, Carvelly won't give me the nod unless I give him an incentive. We girls are just so soft.”

I laughed. She didn't strike me as soft. “I've heard of Carvelly.”

“You have?”

I said, “Karla Capo.”

Idly looked surprised. “Karla? Hell of a gal. How do you know her?”

“I live in Grand Marais part of the time.”

“I guess she finally got Roman to let go of her kids.”

“Just.”

“Old Quick Shot was really frosted. Damn shame—a man with all those natural attributes and none of it amounting to anything. He's good at making money and that's about it.”

“Karla told me.” This earned me a raised eyebrow and a sly smile.

“I won't bore you with tales of Michigan's Peyton Place. Most of it's meaningless,” she said. “What do you want to know about Eubanks?”

“Who he is, what sort of practice he has. I grew up with the Chickermans' daughter, and Vince told me Eubanks called before the fire was public knowledge and said he'd notify their daughter. I guess that means he's the family's lawyer.”

Maria Idly cocked her head. “If so, they'd be his first clients. Eubanks is a member of the state bar, but he doesn't belong to any local groups and I've never heard of him appearing in court.”

“What're you trying to say?”

She raised her hands. “I'm not really sure. I just find it a tad curious that a lawyer who doesn't practice suddenly has a rural grocer for a client.”

“Do you know Eubanks?”

“Only of him. Carvelly claims he's met him, but Carvelly was pretty closemouthed when I pushed him for details early this morning.”

“Does anybody else around town know him?”

“Could be, but nobody I know. He has an office,” she added. She took out a notepad and read me the number.

Here I go again, I thought.

I used the pay phone at the Big Boy to call Eubanks, but there was no answer. I checked the phone book, but there was no residential listing.

“Nobody there,” I said, when I returned to the table. “And no home phone listing.”

“This guy has a smell to him,” she said.

“Meaning?”

“I don't know. Intuition, I guess, a nagging feeling that he isn't entirely what he seems to be. Carvelly doesn't much want to talk about him, which usually indicates the other person has clout and Carvelly thinks he's cultivating power. Usually he gossips about everyone. What will you do now?”

“Call him later today.”

“If that doesn't work?”

“I'll visit his office.”

“I like determination,” she said. “If you need help, call. And say hi to Karla for me. That woman is a barrel of laughs.”

I promised I would.

I went back to my room at the motel along the lakeshore and tried Eubanks again. No answer. Raina's folks were gone. I was going to make sure she knew what happened and find out what the hell she had been doing in the U.P. I was tired of her now-you-see-me, now-you-don't routine. I napped briefly, but awoke with an idea.

After another fruitless call to Eubanks, I called Father Buzz.

“What can I do you for?” he answered brightly.

“It's Bowie. You remember that woman who was alone in the cabin west of town? I was with you delivering groceries. She wasn't friendly.”

“Bowie? Where are you?”

“BTB,” I said. Yooperese for Below the Bridge. “Do you remember her?”

“Not really.”

“You have to. It was a log house. The woman had a shotgun. Dark hair.”

“
Shotguns.
I remember,” he said.

“I need to know who she is.”

Silence. “Are you on a toot?”

I wished I was. “This is important, Buzz.”

“I never knew her name.”

“You said she was renting.”

“You have a helluva memory.”

“Who owns the place? Who did they rent it to?”

“This will take a while,” the priest said.

“I'll call you back in the morning. Eight?”

“Make it noon,” he said. “I think the people who own the place live downstate. The assessor will have the owner's name.”

“I need this, Buzz. It's important.”

“Why?” he asked.

“I thought then she was somebody I knew. A girl I grew up with. Her parents just passed away and nobody seems to know where she is. It's important that I find her now. I know it's a long shot.”

“Long shots are a priest's specialty,” he said. “Be patient, my son.”

I tried several more calls to Eubanks, had baked walleye at a place called the Cream Log and Five Eatery, and turned in for the night.

Buzz called the next morning at eight.

“Get it?”

“God seems to be smiling on us.”

“Well?”

“The house is owned by an Ovid Merchant of Southfield, but he's never seen it. He bought it as an investment. He owns a lot of properties in the U.P., but he's an absentee landlord. A management company in Marquette handles the rentals, maintenance, the whole shebang. They're the people I talked to.”

“I don't need a history of shipbuilding to recognize a white whale.”

Buzz chuckled. “Melville did tend to run off at the mouth. The company says the place was rented to somebody named M. J. Key.”

I stared at the phone. “What did you say?”

“M. J. Key. K-E-Y.”

“I heard. Male or female?”

“Just M. J. The records don't show.”

“Address?”

“None. Paid ahead, in cash. Are you in trouble?”

A shrink might have an opinion on that, I thought. M. J. Key? I couldn't believe it. Buzz thought God was smiling. It seemed more like a Bronx cheer to me. “I'm fine.” Raina had used the name M. J. Key, or somebody by that name had rented the place for her. And someone named M. J. Key had bought Key's manuscript from Lockwood Bolt. Everything about Key was like a huge whirlpool.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“You sound distinctly perturbed.”

“Supremely confused is more to the point.”

“The eternal human condition,” Buzz said. “God will show you the way.”

To a rubber room, I thought. “Can you have the company in Marquette mail a copy of the rental agreement to me?”

“At your sister's place?”

“Please.” I gave him the address.

“Anything else?”

“That'll take care of it.”

“Count on me,” the priest said. “How's your sister?”

“She's doing as well as can be expected.”

“Mourning and grief take time. Any word from UPI on your job?”

“They've gone mute.”

“Don't worry,” he said.

“I know, God will provide.”

“Not for journalists,” he said with a malicious chuckle. “I don't think he likes what scribes did to the Bible. Journalists are on their own. Frankly,” he admitted, “we all are.”

“I'll remember that.”

“I'll tell everyone you called.”

I called Eubanks after I talked to Buzz and got through. I told him I was a close friend of Raina's and wanted to talk to her.

“She's been informed,” the lawyer said. He had a sandpaper voice and paused between words. He also had a faint accent but I couldn't place the nationality.

“Could I get her number? We're old friends. I'd like to help if I can.”

“Everything has been taken care of,” Eubanks said. “If, as you say, you are a friend, you would already have her number, wouldn't you? Good day, sir.”

“How about you pass along my number and she can call me?”

My answer was a dial tone.

The Chickermans' obituary was in the
Traverse City Record-Eagle.
The obit traced their lives only from the time they arrived in the area. Just Raina was listed as kin. No address was given for her. There would be no services, no flowers or donations, end of write-up. I wasn't about to give up.

The lawyer had an office above a T-shirt shop with a special on shirts that read
cherry festival.
I went up unannounced. It was a small, musty suite with high ceilings and distressed furniture. There was a decrepit receptionist with hair the color of tin. It was stacked in a beehive. A couple of curls had worked themselves loose.

“I need to see Eubanks.”

She wore half glasses and stared over them. “For that, you'll need an appointment.”

I walked past her into his office and stopped, my mouth agape. There was fly-fishing regalia everywhere. One wall held dozens of split-bamboo rods with sumac handpieces that shone. There were several sizes of willow creels in various shapes. Shadow boxes filled with flies. A wall of books. On a table there was a bullet-shaped glass minnow trap with
c. f. orvis maker
etched into the side. Everywhere I looked there were treasures, and the more I looked, the more I saw, until my eyes came to rest on a rectangular frame covered with glass. Inside it were three rows of three huge flies each, all white, each different, all of them pristine. The box looked very much like the one I had found and lost in the Natural Sciences Collection Room many years before. I wanted desperately to look at the back of the frame.