Bear Bones

by Charles Cutter

  “Where do you work?” Burr said.

  “OB-GYN. At Munson.”

  “In Traverse City?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s a long way from here.”

  “Curt has an insurance agency here, so we can’t move. There’s an apartment for us near the hospital if the weather’s bad or if the babies don’t come when they are supposed to.” She smiled at him. “Which is most of the time.”

  She turned and started back where she came from. “I’ve really got to go.”

  “I’ll only be a minute. Do you think Tommy could have killed Helen?”

  Lauren sat down. “No, not really.”

  Maybe she isn’t in such a big hurry after all.

  Burr sat down next to her. “How was their marriage?”

  Lauren wiggled in her chair. Burr couldn’t tell if it was the chair or Helen and Tommy’s marriage. Burr wiggled in his chair. The wicker made him feel like he was sitting on sticks.

  If this was my furniture, I’d burn it.

  “You’ve been at this lawsuit a long time. What do you think?” Lauren said.

  Burr wiggled again, and it wasn’t because of the chair. “I thought they got along well enough. I never saw them argue, but then I rarely saw them other than professionally.”

  Lauren looked straight at him but didn’t say anything.

  Burr was starting to wonder who was interviewing who. “As I look back on it, I think all Tommy wanted was to grow cherries and all Helen wanted was to keep the farm.”

  “My sister was a strong-willed woman. And probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”

  Where did that come from?

  He thought so, too, but he wasn’t going to be the one to say it. He made a point not to wiggle.

  Lauren stood up. “I have to go to work.”

  Burr stood. “Do you think Tommy could have killed Helen?”

  “Could and did are different. I suppose he could have. But I don’t think he did.”

  “Why not?”

  “He loved her.” Lauren looked away from Burr, then back to him. “He wanted to make her happy. And he wanted to grow cherries. And all that was just fine with Helen.”

  “This would have been so much easier if Tommy hadn’t changed his mind about selling the farm,” Burr said.

  “Without Helen, I don’t think he cares that much about it.”

  “If not Tommy, then who?”

  Lauren shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s plenty of people who are mad at us for holding things up.”

  “How would killing Helen help get the farm sold?” Burr said.

  “You know as well as I do that Tommy gets Helen’s vote if she dies.”

  “How would anyone but the family know that?” Burr said.

  “This is a small place. Everyone knows everything.”

  “Tommy loves the orchards.”

  “I really have to go to work.” Lauren ran into the house and came back out with a purse and an overnight bag. “I hope the babies are on time.” She started down the steps. “It doesn’t seem like he loves the orchards as much as I thought he did.”

  * * *

  “Good God, man. What are you doing?” Jacob said.

  Burr looked up from his clams with red sauce and angel hair pasta. “I’m having my lunch.” Burr unwound a noodle from his plate and held it over the table. Zeke lifted his head from Burr’s lap and sucked it in. “Will you join me?”

  “I don’t eat with dogs.”

  Burr poured himself another glass of Chianti.

  “If you keep drinking that wine, you’ll never stay awake this afternoon.”

  “I don’t intend to,” Burr said.

  Jacob had tracked Burr down at Michelangelo’s. Jacob straightened his tie, another foulard, this one with royal blue diamonds on a mandarin orange background. “What have you done this time?”

  “If it’s not lunch, I’m sure I don’t know.”

  Jacob took out a piece of paper from the breast pocket inside his navy blazer. He unfolded it and set it next to Burr’s clams with red sauce.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “From Eve.”

  “Everyone is a spy.”

  “You simply can’t waive the preliminary exam.”

  Burr swirled his glass and drank some of the wine. “Why not?”

  “We’ve got to see what else Brooks has.”

  “We know what he has. We have the names of the witnesses. I got them from the judge.”

  “We need to know what they’re going to say.”

  “My dear Jacob, they’re going to say exactly what Brooks said they were going to say at the arraignment.”

  “But you can question them.”

  “I don’t need to have them as witnesses to question them. I’m going to go and see them.”

  Jacob ran a finger through one of the curls of his steel wool hair. Burr wondered if Jacob’s hair was naturally curly or it was curly because of Jacob’s incessant twirling tic.

  “It’s too risky to waive the preliminary exam. What if you could get the charges dismissed?”

  Burr twirled his fork around some of the unsuspecting angel hair. “With a murder weapon, witnesses who saw Tommy on the ferry and a motive, I think not.” Burr nudged a clam onto his fork. “And as you know, the standard is low. The judge only has to decide that it was more likely than not that Tommy murdered Helen. We’re not at the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt stage yet.”

  Jacob started on another curl. “Eve and I think this is foolish.”

  Burr chewed on his pasta.

  Scooter appeared at their table. “Mr. Lafayette, there are no dogs allowed.”

  “He’s a seeing-eye dog.”

  Scooter made a show of a big sigh. “We’ve been through this. You’re not blind, and he’s not a seeing-eye dog.” Scooter put on his best restaurateur’s face. “Anything for you, Jacob?” Jacob shook his head. “You never order anything.” Scooter walked away.

  “You are outrageous,” Jacob said.

  “Scooter owes me four months’ rent. We play out this little drama every time I come in with Zeke. He feels much better after he says there’s no dogs allowed.” Burr reached into his khakis. Now it was his turn to unfold a piece of paper. He set it in front of Jacob. “Look at this.”

  Jacob studied the paper. Burr fed Zeke another noodle.

  “It’s just the names of the people Brooks used at the arraignment.”

  “And addresses. Eve found the addresses.”

  “So?”

  “Jacob, look at their addresses. The ferry captain has a winter address in Key West. The deckhands go to school in Alabama. The woman who found Helen’s body has an Atlanta address.”

  “I don’t see your point.” Jacob twirled a third curl.

  “Jacob, the preliminary exam is in two weeks. It’s still summer. These people are likely still here or close by. They’ll testify, and their testimony will be in a transcript.”

  Jacob reached for a fourth curl. Burr grabbed his hand.

  “If we waive the preliminary exam, there will obviously be no testimony on the record from any of them. When it comes time for the trial, these witnesses will be far away. Some or all of them may not show up.”

  “Brooks will subpoena them.”

  Burr swirled the wine in his glass. “Of course he will. But they’ll be far away and it will be difficult for Brooks to compel them to attend.”

  “And?”

  “And, if any or all don’t show up for the trial, there will be big holes in Brooks’ case.”

  Jacob started for a curl but thought better of it. “Genius. It’s genius. But it’s risky.”

  “Not if I interview them now. While they’re still here.” Burr finished his Chiant
i and poured himself a third glass.

  * * *

  “Did it ever occur to you that your client might actually be guilty?” Aunt Kitty said.

  Burr smelled the beach, wet sand and dead fish. He imagined he smelled suntan lotion. He squirmed in his chair. Zeke, who was curled up at his feet, looked up at Burr, then put his head back down.

  “If you keep taking clients accused of murder, at some point one of them will actually have done it.”

  Burr squirmed again.

  “What you’re doing is quite different from squaring off with another silk-stockinged lawyer representing another rich company. That’s just about money. This is about right and wrong.” Aunt Kitty took another swallow of her martini. “Would you please stop squirming.”

  Burr felt like a schoolboy. He wished he hadn’t stopped for cocktails on the porch of Cottage 59 on Harbor Point, a hundred-year-old, gated cottage association in Harbor Springs.

  Aunt Kitty, though, was his only living relative except for Zeke-the-Boy. She lived alone in the family cottage, if you could call a three-story Victorian with wraparound porches a cottage. It was the white house with the forest green shutters, the last house on the tip of Harbor Point. It fronted the harbor on Little Traverse Bay, with Lake Michigan on the back. A million-dollar view on each side. Cottage 59 was all that was left of the Lafayettes’ once considerable fortune. It was destined to pass to Burr should he outlive his eighty-year-old maiden aunt, which didn’t seem as probable as the laws of actuarial science would predict.

  Aunt Kitty handed him her glass. “A dividend please.” Burr took the glass and started for the kitchen. “What am I going to do with you?” She shook her head and her white ponytail swung back and forth.

  In the kitchen, Burr filled their glasses with ice, then poured two shots of Bombay into each.

  “Not too much vermouth,” Aunt Kitty said from the porch.

  Half a capful of vermouth for Aunt Kitty, and a full capful for himself. I may have been pouring from this bottle of vermouth since she taught me to make her martinis. He finished off his martini with four olives and a generous splash of olive juice.

  Back on the porch, Burr handed Aunt Kitty her glass and sat back down in one of the forest green Adirondack chairs that matched the shutters.

  “Why must you insist on ruining perfectly good gin with olive juice?”

  Burr knew better than to say anything. He quite liked his martinis dirty.

  “As I was saying, it’s one thing to fight over a rich company’s money, but it’s quite another to fight crimes, especially a capital crime.”

  “Yes, Aunt Kitty.”

  She pointed at him with a long, bony forefinger. “Don’t ‘yes, Aunt Kitty’ me. Peter Brooks is a smart Michigan lawyer from a good family. He must believe he has something.”

  Burr started another “Yes, Aunt Kitty” but she raised her hand and shushed him. “From what you’ve said, there is a body, a murder weapon, means and motive.”

  Burr’s Aunt Kitty had gone to the University of Michigan Law School when it had been barely possible for women to be admitted. She had worked at saving woods, water and marshes in Northern Michigan her entire life and knew everyone worth knowing. Burr knew it was pointless to argue with her, but he couldn’t quite help himself.

  “Every person accused of a crime deserves representation.”

  Aunt Kitty sat straight up, no easy task in an Adirondack chair, and leaned toward Burr, which was even more difficult. “Where is your moral compass?”

  “It is pointed squarely at my client.”

  “And if Tommy Lockwood is guilty?”

  “All the more reason to have a good lawyer.”

  Aunt Kitty sat back in her chair. “I suppose he does deserve representation.” She took a big swallow of her drink. “Which brings me to my next point.”

  Burr started to groan but thought better of it. Instead, he buried his head in his martini.

  “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

  There’s a good reason I feel like a teenager when I come here.

  “As much as I appreciate your visit, I suspect the real reason you’re here is to pick up that leaky sailboat of yours and sail it to Leland.”

  “The docks at Leland are full,” Burr said.

  Aunt Kitty glared at him.

  Burr looked at the lighthouse on the tip of Harbor Point, out at the bay, then at the cottage to his left. Finally, he said, “There’s room in Northport.”

  Aunt Kitty dismissed him with her hand. “Where you dock your wretched boat is not my point. My point is your cavalier attitude. You’re defending a man accused of murder and all the while you’re cavorting on a sailboat. A leaky old sailboat at that.”

  “I need a place to stay. Spindrift is the cheapest place to stay.” Burr squirmed again.

  “Stop that squirming. My point is you’re having too much fun while Tommy Lockwood’s life is in the balance. It doesn’t look right.”

  My beloved aunt is talking out of both sides of her mouth.

  Burr swirled the ice in his glass. Then he fished out an olive and chewed it slowly.

  Aunt Kitty looked out on the harbor. “At least it’s still floating.”

  Burr looked at Spindrift, a 1940 wooden, thirty-four-foot cutter-rigged sloop, as she swung on her mooring. She was no Kismet, his last boat, but then Kismet was about five miles due west, on the bottom of Lake Michigan in two hundred feet of water, more or less.

  “How are you possibly going to run your office from a sailboat?”

  “I have a car phone.”

  “A what?”

  “A car phone.”

  “Do those things work?”

  “Aunt Kitty, on the one hand, you really don’t want me representing Tommy Lockwood. On the other hand, you don’t like the way I’m going about it. Which is it?”

  She ignored him. “And I suppose that girlfriend of yours is going with you.”

  “Zeke and I are taking the boat over.” The aging lab looked up at Burr, then put his head back down.

  I wish Maggie were going with us.

  * * *

  Burr and Zeke spent a quiet night on Spindrift. At seven the next morning, after watering Zeke, Burr fired up the three-cylinder diesel. He cast off the mooring and off they went. They motored across Little Traverse Bay in a flat calm, leaving Petoskey to port. By ten, they were abeam of the channel at Charlevoix. The wind came up from the northwest. Burr hoisted the main and staysail and turned off the engine. Zeke, his reluctant first mate, wasn’t much help. By four, they were tied up in the harbor at Northport.

  All is right with the world. At least for today.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Burr woke with a stiff back, one of the few drawbacks of sleeping aboard Spindrift. He bent down and tried to touch his toes, the only stretch he ever did. Ten seconds later and slightly more limber, he took Zeke ashore and found his Jeep in the marina parking lot, driven down from Harbor Springs at an outrageous price. He walked up the block to the Little Finger, the only diner in Northport. After poached eggs on toast and a side order of bacon for Zeke, the two of them took M-22 south past the Happy Hour Tavern. “Someday soon, Zeke.”

  Fifteen minutes later, he parked at the Leland marina. They walked over to the weather-worn dock that ran along the bank of the Leland River, deep green and in no hurry to reach the blue of Lake Michigan. Burr leaned against one of the pilings and looked downstream at the charter boats and past them, to the Manitou ferry. Creosote came off on his shirt. He tried to wipe it off, but it smeared and smelled like tar. “Damn it all, Zeke.” Upstream, unpainted single-story buildings looked more like shacks than shops.

  He was standing in the middle of Fishtown, a once thriving commercial fishing village in what would become Leland. Fishing shanties had lined both sides of the river when
the lake gave up staggering numbers of whitefish, lake trout, walleye and perch. When the lake had been fished out, the shanties were abandoned. They rotted for years, until enterprising souls turned them into cheese, ice cream and T-shirt shops. Larson’s was the only working shanty left.

  Burr walked in and the smell of fish almost knocked him over. The smell was so strong that he was sure there must be tubs, or more likely, barrels of fish everywhere. Instead, refrigerated glass display cases lined with ice and filled with fish ran along the walls. A woman in a yellow sleeveless top and a floral Lily Pulitzer, lime-green skirt was searching her bamboo purse. Behind the counter, a 70-ish woman punched the keys on a cash register. The cash drawer opened. She slammed it shut. It dinged twice. “You got forty dollars and seventeen cents worth of smoked whitefish, but this damn machine don’t work right so let’s call it good at forty even.”

  “I can pay with a credit card or a check,” the woman said.

  “Cash is better.”

  “I’m sure I don’t have that much.”

  The older woman punched the keys, opened the cash drawer and slammed it shut again. It dinged twice. “Don’t that beat all?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We don’t take credit cards.”

  The woman with the flowered skirt looked like she had never heard anything so ridiculous.

  “All right then, a check will do.”

  The woman in the flowered skirt scribbled out a check and handed it to the annoyed cashier. She opened the register again, stuffed the check in the drawer and slammed it shut. Another two dings and she handed the woman in the flowered skirt a package wrapped in brown oiled paper. She looked at Burr on her way out. “It’s supposed to be the best whitefish in the state. The rest of the place, I don’t know.”

  Burr toured the store. There was fresh whitefish, smoked whitefish, frozen whitefish, whitefish dip (with or without horseradish), whitefish pate’, whitefish chowder. It looked to Burr like he could buy anything he wanted as long as it was whitefish. Although he did see about a half-dozen boxes of water crackers on the counter next to the cash register.