Bear Bones

by Charles Cutter

  That explains the belly.

  Dilly sliced off a filet and threw the carcass in the lake. Two seagulls dove after it and fought over it. Zeke couldn’t take his eyes off of them.

  Here we go again.

  Dilly reached into a coffin-size cooler next to the beer cooler and grabbed another fish. “You here to book a charter?”

  “Actually, Steve Larson told me you were down here.”

  Dilly stopped what he was doing and drove the point of his knife into the cutting board.

  “You tell that Swede son-of-a-bitch that I never cut his goddamn nets.” He pulled the knife from the cutting board and pointed it at Burr. “But you tell him, if he keeps setting them damn nets where the salmon get snagged up in ’em, somebody sure as hell is gonna cut them nets in a million pieces.” Dilly waved the knife at Burr’s Jeep. “Now get the hell out.”

  “I have no idea who did what to who’s nets. I’m here because Steve Larson thought you may have seen the Achilles drifting off Sleeping Bear last summer.”

  “The what?”

  “Achilles. She was a forty-foot powerboat drifting near the Manitous last summer.”

  “That’s a long run for me. There’s better fishing right here.”

  “You never go up there?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Dilly turned to his boat, a thirty-two-foot Tiara with a fly bridge. “She’ll run up there all right.”

  “So you did see a boat drifting up there?”

  “Might of. But I didn’t cut no nets.”

  “No one said you did.”

  “That’s what Sven thinks. It’s not Steve, it’s Sven.”

  “Sure, Sven.” Burr started to put his hand in his pocket. He stopped himself. “I should’ve started at the beginning. I represent Tommy Lockwood. He’s accused of murdering his wife.”

  “I heard about that.” The charter captain sliced the fish just behind its head.

  “Did you see the boat drifting?”

  Dilly sliced the fish along its backbone, head to tail. Then he held it by the tail and sliced back the other way. The filet came off the fish. Dilly dropped it in a bucket of water and turned the fish over. “I pulled up alongside. No one on board. Didn’t know what to make of it.”

  “Did you go on board?”

  Dilly looked up at him, then drank from his Stroh’s. “I tied up alongside her.”

  “Did you go aboard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you find?”

  The charter captain told Burr what he found, which was pretty much what Steve had told him.

  “What happened after that?” Burr said.

  “I saw Sven coming my way so I took off.”

  “You left?”

  “Next thing I knew, Sven was towing her.”

  “Did you do anything else?”

  “Nothin’ else to do.” Dilly flipped the fish over and cut along the head.

  “You didn’t call the sheriff. Or the Coast Guard?”

  “There was nothing to call about when Sven showed up.” Dilly sliced off the second filet. He dropped it in the bucket and threw the carcass in the water. The gulls dove again.

  * * *

  “Zeke, there’s something fishy going on around here.” The dog, riding shotgun again, looked over at him. “It’s a play on words.” Zeke looked back out the window. They drove along the shore toward the lake. In about two hundred yards, the road turned up a steep hill. Burr passed a sign for the township park. At the top of the hill – a dune, really – he pulled over, got out of the Jeep and looked out over Lake Michigan. He saw the channel below him and the white lighthouse at the end of the breakwater. At the end of the breakwater, the murky brown river water from the Betsie emptied into the lake. It flowed due west, then to the blue water of Lake Michigan, bending around to the northwest on either side until the river spread out and mixed with the lake. Burr walked back to the Jeep.

  “This is perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

  Burr pulled out his car phone and set it on the hood. Then he turned it on and waited for it to warm up. He dialed his office and Eve answered.

  “Eve, it’s Burr.”

  “Who?”

  “Burr.”

  “Burr who?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Where are you? I hear a freight train in the background.”

  “But you know it’s me.”

  “What?”

  “Eve, I need you to find out if either Sven Larson or Lester Dillworth have any kind of criminal record.”

  “What?”

  “Eve, I’m on top of a giant hill. You must be able to hear me.”

  “I know it’s you because the reception is so terrible.”

  “What?”

  Burr grabbed the Jeep’s antenna. “Damn it all.”

  “There you are. I heard that.”

  “Good. Please find out all you can about Sven Larson and Lester Dillworth.”

  “You’re breaking up again.”

  “Find out all you can about Sven Larson and Lester Dillworth.”

  The line went dead. Burr slammed down the phone.

  * * *

  Burr drove into Leland about 5 p.m. There was no sign of the ferry, so he kept on going up M-22. A quarter mile past the Happy Hour, he made a U-turn. Five minutes later, he had a window booth and a Stroh’s. Sadly, there was no Labatt, but at least the Stroh’s was on draft.

  The only thing I learned today is that car phones have a long way to go.

  He took a long pull from his Stroh’s. “Yet another tribute to my oversized ego.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  He jumped in his seat. Somehow the waitress had snuck up on him. “I didn’t know anyone could hear me.”

  “I hear you perfectly. You’re just not making any sense.”

  Burr ordered another Stroh’s.

  “Would you like to hear about the specials?”

  “Not if it swims.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I’d like your hamburger medium rare with ketchup, mustard, pickles and onion, with fries and coleslaw. And a plain hamburger to go.”

  * * *

  Burr woke to a rapping on Spindrift’s cabin top, followed by Zeke barking.

  “Merciful heavens.”

  Burr stuck his head out of the cabin. The harbormaster stood on the dock. “Call your office,” he said. Burr dressed, watered Zeke, and made a collect call from the pay phone outside the harbormaster’s office.

  After calling his office – which had been a call about not calling on the car phone ever again – Burr and Zeke drove back the way they had come the day before, through Leland and Good Harbor. South of Good Harbor, Burr turned onto Dune Highway into a gravel parking lot. He parked in front of a very large hole, at least thirty feet by fifty feet, and ten feet deep, with an orange fence around it and signs that said “Keep Out” and “Property of the United States Government.”

  “Zeke, old friend, I can’t imagine why there needs to be a sign telling me to keep out of that hole.” Burr cracked the windows and got out of the Jeep. He looked down into the hole, which was about half full of water. A pair of mallards swam in lazy circles. Off to his right, a dented white trailer sat under a single maple tree. “This must be the place.” He walked over, climbed the single concrete-block step and knocked twice. “Anybody home?”

  “We open at nine,” said a voice from inside.

  Burr looked at his watch. It was 8:55. “It’s as good as nine.”

  “Come back when it’s nine.”

  Burr knew who the voice belonged to. He turned the door knob and let himself in.

  “That’s supposed to be locked,” the voice said.

  “Hello, Dale,” Burr said. “How nice to see you agai
n.”

  “Get out, Lafayette. We’re not open until nine and don’t come back when we are open.”

  Burr looked at Dale Sleeper sitting at the far end of the trailer in a beat up, maroon Lazy-Boy with his feet up, near a faded blue couch pushed against the sheet metal wall. Gray filing cabinets on the other wall, then a galley kitchen and, past that, a door to what Burr thought must be the bathroom. There was a bruised desk and a swivel chair at the far end of the trailer.

  Burr thought the trailer smelled like it could use a shower. “Dale, this is quite the place. For a man of your stature.”

  Dale Sleeper, a big man with big hands, pulled on the joystick of the Lazy Boy and sat up straight. He put his hands on the armrests of the chair and pushed himself to his feet. His green Park Service shirt had come untucked, but he made no effort to tuck it in. He had a broad face and eyes that were way too far apart. Burr wanted to push Sleeper’s eyes closer to his nose every time he saw him. Sleeper looked at his watch. “We’re open. Now get out.”

  “Dale, I just want to talk a little.” Burr sat down on the couch.

  “I said out. We’re adversaries in a federal lawsuit, and you are committing a grave offense talking to me without my attorney present.”

  “I’m not here about the condemnation. I’m here about the murder.”

  Sleeper got up and stood over him. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Burr looked up at Sleeper. “You might turn around and tuck your shirt in.”

  Sleeper looked down but didn’t do anything about his shirt. “Out,” he said.

  “All I have to do is send you a subpoena and then we can have a nice long talk in my office.”

  Sleeper turned around, unzipped his pants, and tucked in his shirt. “If it weren’t for you and that damned lawsuit, headquarters building would be done by now and I’d be out of this trailer.”

  “Dale, you know as well as I do that’s not true.”

  “It is true.”

  “The government funds this park every now and then. When it crosses their mind. Maybe the next time they think of you, you’ll get enough money to drain that pond and build your building.” Burr smiled at Sleeper. “Did you know you have ducks?”

  Sleeper pointed to the door. “Out. Before I throw you out.”

  Burr was sure Sleeper could pick him up with one arm and toss him out, but he was sure he wouldn’t. The two of them had been going at this for the better part of seven years. Helen Lockwood was fighting with Sleeper long before that.

  Dale Sleeper, a Cadillac native, was a career Park Service employee. He had been appointed park superintendent, the crowning achievement in his long, undistinguished career, except he couldn’t quite get the park up and running. In his heart of hearts, he believed that the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore was his manifest destiny. Helen Lockwood had been sure it wasn’t and had hired Burr to make it so. Sleeper hated Burr.

  Burr thought he’d been doing pretty well until Helen’s body was found.

  Sleeper glared at Burr, who made a point of smiling back at him. Finally, Sleeper walked back to his Lazy Boy, sat down, then got right back up. He walked to the far end of the trailer and sat in the swivel chair behind his desk. It creaked under his weight.

  “I don’t have to talk to you, Lafayette.”

  “That’s right, but if you help me, you just might get your beloved park put together faster.”

  “How so?” Sleeper furrowed his oversized brow.

  Burr walked the length of the trailer. He found a folding chair leaning against the wall and sat down facing the burly park superintendent. “As long as Tommy is being tried for murder, your condemnation case is on hold. There’s no provision in the partnership agreement for a missing partner, so Judge Cooper ordered a stay.”

  “Helen’s been found and now Tommy gets her vote.”

  Sleeper has read the pleadings. Good for him.

  Burr smiled at Sleeper again. “But now there’s another stay. As long as Tommy is on trial for murder, he can’t have Helen’s vote. If he’s acquitted, he gets her vote.”

  “Tommy doesn’t want to sell. He loves those damned cherries,” Sleeper said.

  “Dale, Dale, Dale,” Burr said. “Tommy did call you, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t have to talk to you about this.”

  “The only way he gets Helen’s vote is if he’s acquitted.”

  “So what if he’s acquitted … and he votes to keep on fighting?”

  “That’s the risk you have to take. If he’s convicted, then Lauren and Karen have a draw, and there’s going to be a long fight to break the tie. It could go on for years. And the rest of the property you want will be tied up until it’s decided.”

  Sleeper leaned toward Burr. “I don’t have to have that damned farm to finish the park.”

  Burr sat back in his chair. It started to fold up on him. Burr grabbed the seat and held on for dear life.

  Sleeper grinned at him. “You got the chair that folds when you least suspect it to.”

  Burr ignored the grand poohbah of the Park Service. “Oh, but you do need the farm, Dale. Your master plan calls for all the land on both sides of Port Oneida Road from M-22 to Pyramid Point and the old dock at the end of Point Oneida Road. And it’s not worth a tinker’s damn without the farm.” Burr paused. “Is it?”

  Sleeper swiveled around in his chair and looked out the window, his back to Burr. “I don’t have to talk to you. I shouldn’t be talking to you and you shouldn’t be here. I’m going to call Powers and have you cited for contempt. Judge Cooper will throw you off the case.” Sleeper stood and looked out the window at the hole where the headquarters building was supposed to be.

  Burr studied the back of Sleeper’s head. The ranger had all his hair. Burr felt around the back of his own head for the thin spot. “Damn it all.”

  “What’s that?” Sleeper said.

  “Nothing,” Burr said. “Dale, I’m here about the murder case. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

  “What about the farm?”

  “We’ll deal with that later. No promises.”

  Sleeper turned back to Burr. “What do you want?”

  “All I want are a few suspects.”

  “Suspects?”

  “Who do you think might have wanted you to get the farm so badly that they might have murdered Helen?”

  “Other than Tommy?”

  Burr walked over and stood beside Sleeper. “Imagine what the new headquarters building will look like. And where your office will be.”

  “All you have to do is look at the other land acquisition files.”

  “Dale, I want to know what you think.”

  Sleeper sat back down. He put his hands behind his head and rocked back and forth. Finally, “You know what, Lafayette? You are one clever son-of-a-bitch.”

  * * *

  Burr poured the last of the Sauvignon Blanc into Maggie’s glass and stuck the dead soldier upside down in the ice bucket. She drank some of the wine and set her glass down. Burr saw a smudge of rose-colored lipstick on her glass. She pushed her chair back and stood.

  “Shall we?”

  “Shall we?” Burr said.

  “The salad bar.”

  Burr shook his head.

  “Come on.”

  Burr shook his head again.

  Maggie sat. “You must.”

  “We’re at a fine restaurant, a lovely place. The Bluebird is known all over this part of the state, and the whitefish is spectacular. But I am not going to a salad bar. I hate salad bars. I didn’t come here to make my own salad.”

  “You are impossible.” She finished her wine, got up and walked to the salad bar by herself.

  Burr looked at the lipstick on her wine glass again, then at Maggie at the salad bar. She looked back at him and stuck her t
ongue out.

  The winsome Maggie Winston, late thirties, tall, willowy, blond and glasses with big black frames and lenses that were a little too thick to suit her. Actually, Margaret Winston, PhD, professor of ornithology at the University of Michigan, fly fisher and grouse hunter. Burr was quite taken with her. She was easy on the eye, but he’d met his match, and he knew it. She knew it, too.

  She came back with two plates and set one in front of him. She sat before he could get up and pull her chair out. She put her napkin on her lap. “Eat your salad. It’s just what you like.”

  “I don’t like salad bars.”

  “This isn’t a salad bar. This is a salad I made you.”

  He started to say something but thought better of it. He ate his salad.

  Their waitress, a college-age woman, brought over a second bottle of Kim Crawford, Burr’s favorite summer white wine, from New Zeeland but not expensive. Crisp and grapefruity. The silhouette on the bottle reminded him of Maggie. She poured them each a glass, then, “Are you ready to order?”

  “We’ll each have the sautéed whitefish,” Burr said.

  The waitress nodded. “I see you’ve helped yourself to the salad bar.”

  Burr didn’t say anything.

  “May I get you anything else?”

  “Could we please have more of your sticky buns,” Maggie said.

  “I’m sorry but we only serve one order per table.”

  Maggie reached into her purse and handed the waitress a twenty.

  “Of course.”

  The Bluebird, on the north side of the Leland River, just upstream from M-22, looked out on the lazy, green river drifting to the dam, then Fishtown and Lake Michigan. Burr had the best table in the house, next to the windows, a garden overflowing with daisies, black-eyed Susans just beyond the windows. Michigan lilies, their orange flowers drooping, grew next to the river.

  The waitress delivered the sticky buns. Maggie smeared hers in butter. “Burr, this is spectacular. Thank you so much.”

  “I wanted to make it special.”

  This was their anniversary, of sorts. The anniversary of a wild night that had begun at Tapawingo, near Charlevoix, Northern Michigan’s finest and most expensive restaurant. They had been an item ever since, and Maggie, who had no earthly business falling in love with Burr or anyone like him, had, and she was ready for the next step, which Burr wasn’t. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her, but he’d already ruined one marriage that he still hadn’t finished paying for.