“We’ll talk when I’m home,” I said, aware that I was putting it off again. “I need to keep this line open.”
“Sure. You take care of yourself. And Meloux.”
“I’m on it.”
I poured myself some coffee. Meloux was at the kitchen sink, drinking water from a plastic tumbler. We headed back outside together.
“What now?” Schanno asked.
“Nothing to do but wait,” I said.
We didn’t have to wait long. In twenty minutes, my cell phone chirped. I answered and recognized the voice, the same one that, on my first visit to Thunder Bay, had given me the instructions that got me to Manitou Island.
“I’ll see you, Mr. O’Connor,” Henry Wellington said.
“When?”
“As soon as you can get here.”
“Where’s here?”
“Go to the marina, the south end of the parking lot. Mr. Benning will be waiting for you. He’ll bring you to me.”
“I’m not coming alone.”
“The old man, the one called Meloux? You’ll bring him?”
“Yes. And a colleague.”
“Walter Schanno?”
Wellington was informed.
“Yes. Schanno.”
“All right. Leave immediately. It’s a long trip.”
He hung up without the cordiality of a good-bye.
The others looked at me.
“The great and powerful Oz will see us,” I said.
FORTY-FOUR
We took Trinky Pollard to the marina and let her off near the dock, where her boat was moored and where, she’d told us, her car was still parked.
She stood in the sunlight, blinking at us, clearly disappointed. “Sure you won’t let me go?” The whole way she’d argued for the wisdom of taking her along to see Wellington.
I leaned out my window. “He only agreed to Henry and Wally. I don’t want to blow this chance.”
“He also tried to have Henry killed. He doesn’t strike me as the most gracious host. You might need all the backup you can get.”
“We’ll be fine, Trinky,” I said.
She came around to Schanno’s side. “You’ll be careful?”
“Always have been,” he said.
She kissed him on the cheek. “When you get back, give me a call, promise?”
“Promise.”
She stepped away. We headed toward the south end of the marina. In the rearview mirror, I watched her watching us. Then she turned toward her boat.
Benning was standing beside a black Ford Explorer, leaning against the driver’s-side front door. The Explorer looked new and reflected sunlight shot from the polished finish in long bright arrows. Benning wore a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up over impressive biceps. He had on a ball cap that shaded his face and sunglasses that hid his eyes. As we drove up, he looked our way. When I stopped, he pushed from his vehicle and walked to my side of the Bronco.
“I have instructions to take you to Mr. Wellington.” He kept his shades on when he spoke to me.
“Lead the way.”
“How’s your gas?” he asked.
“I filled up on the way here.”
He nodded and turned back to the Explorer.
“What if we get separated?” I said.
“We won’t.”
We followed him northwest out of Thunder Bay, keeping to Highway 17, part of the Trans-Canada Highway system. The sun had just passed its zenith when we finally put civilization behind us. For a long time after that, the highway cut through flat country with a lot of timber and not many towns.
A little over two hours later, we came to Ignace and turned north. We stopped at a gas station with a small restaurant. Benning pulled up to a pump and signaled us to do the same.
“Last chance for gas for quite a while,” he said.
Meloux used the men’s room while I filled the tank. Schanno went inside to get us some bottled water. He came back with three microwaved burritos as well. Within ten minutes, we were off again, following a hundred yards behind the Explorer. The burritos were hard beans and tasteless sauce wrapped in tortillas the texture of white leather, but we were all hungry and gobbled them down.
In a while, Meloux was napping in the backseat. Schanno and I talked.
“You and Trinky seemed to hit it off,” I said.
Schanno thought about that and then nodded. “She’s a good, sensible woman. Easy to talk to.” He studied the pine trees that walled the highway. “It’s been lonely.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Know what I miss most, Cork? Arietta used to sing around the house. It didn’t matter what she was doing, she was always singing. I could tell from the nature of the tune just how she was feeling. A snappy song and she was happy. Something blue and she was down. But always her voice there, filling the house. Place seems so damned empty now, I almost hate being there.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“It’s been hard saying good-bye.”
I didn’t think that needed a response, so I studied my side-view mirror.
“Trinky’s thinking of sailing up the Saint Lawrence to the Atlantic in a few weeks, then heading south along the East Coast to the Caribbean. Needs a good deckhand, she says.”
“You told me. You interested in the job?”
“It’d be something to do.”
“And you like the company.”
He swung his gaze my way. “Is it too soon, you think?”
“Wally, I don’t know that there’s any blueprint for the affairs of the human heart. You try to do your best to listen to what it tells you, and do your best, when possible, to follow. That’s how it seems to me.”
He nodded. “Funny, you know, that I’ve got a dog named Trixie. Almost like Trinky. I called her Trixie last night.”
“She hit you?”
“When I explained, she thought it was cute. Say, what’s so interesting in that mirror of yours?”
“We’re being followed.”
He craned his neck to look back. It took a minute before the vehicle behind us came into view as it rounded a curve.
“How do you know it’s following us? This is probably the only good road in a hundred miles.”
“In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it’s safest to assume the worst.”
“The worst being?”
“Benning’s ahead of us. If Wellington wanted to put us in a pinch, he’d have someone behind us as well.”
Schanno unbuckled his seat belt and crawled into the back. Meloux was so deeply asleep he didn’t notice the jostling. Schanno dug in his bag, then came back up front. He was holding a handgun and a box of cartridges.
“What the hell is that?” I said.
“A Colt Python.”
“Jesus, you brought that over the border? We could have been arrested.”
“You’re forgetting Henry’s luck.”
“If you think he’s so lucky, what do you need that for?”
“My dad always told me to hedge my bets.” He began feeding cartridges into the Colt. “You think Rupert Wellington is involved in any of this?”
“I don’t think a man in charge of a corporation like Northern Mining is as ignorant of what’s going on as he’d like us to believe. What exactly his part is, I can’t say.”
The vehicle trailing us-a dark green SUV-kept its distance.
“If Benning slows down and that SUV behind us speeds up, I’ll probably be glad you have that Colt,” I said.
In the back, Meloux snorted in his deep slumber.
“I don’t understand Henry,” Schanno said. He snapped the cylinder closed. “Why worry about his son after seventy years? What good could it do him?”
“This isn’t about his own good. Henry’s worried about his son.”
“He oughta be. We all know Morrissey wasn’t after any pocket watch. Just between you and me, I think Henry’s setting himself up for a big fall. What kind of son would behave like this Wellington?”
“A sick one. That’s what Henry believes anyway. He also believes he can help.”
“There are some people-and you understand I’m not one of them-who are going to say Henry’s just out to get something, maybe a piece of Wellington’s fortune.”
“Anybody says that, they don’t know Henry. Hell, he’s never taken a cent of the distribution he’s due from the rez’s casino profits. He had Jo set up a fund. The money goes directly into it. After he’s gone, it’ll be used for college scholarships for Shinnobs.”
“A guy like Henry, you’ve got to admit, Cork, seems too good to be true.”
A horrible smell invaded the Bronco. I looked at Schanno and he looked at me. We both looked back at Meloux, who smiled in his sleep.
“I should have warned you about Henry and beans,” I said. “Jesus, roll your window down.”
Schanno took a deep breath of the fresh air that rushed in. “What I just said about Henry? You can forget it.”
After five hours on the road and nearly three hundred additional miles on my old Bronco’s odometer, we came to the outskirts of a small town called Flame Lake. It was the first sign of civilization we’d seen in a long time. Mostly, there’d been the gray pavement down the middle of an endless green corridor, with the occasional blue relief of a lake to break the monotony. Benning pulled off into a roadside park along a little river, and we followed him. He stopped, got out, and came to my side of the Bronco.
I was watching for the SUV in the mirror. So was Schanno. He had his loaded Colt in the glove box.
“Wait here,” Benning said.
“What for?”
“I have to make a call. I’ve got to use a phone in town. Cells don’t work up here. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
“No choice, I guess.”
“That’s right.”
Benning headed off in his Explorer. I got out, walked to the road, and looked back the way we’d come. I hadn’t seen the SUV pass by us, and I wondered where it was. I had to look hard, but I could see it, pulled way off to the side. If we tried to head back to Thunder Bay at this point, it could easily cut us off. I thought about swinging the Bronco around and going back, just to see who it was. My guess was Dougherty. But Wellington was a man with unlimited resources, so, hell, it could have been anybody or, more likely, a platoon of anybodies.
Schanno came up beside me. “What do you think?”
“If they’ve got something up their sleeves, I doubt it’ll happen here. We’ll just have to be careful.”
Schanno grunted, and I took that for agreement.
Meloux had climbed out, too. We were in an area of rugged hills covered with boreal growth, mostly jack pine and black spruce. Meloux stood near a picnic table and studied the hills. There was a little map posted near the parking area. It showed a lake-Flame Lake- curling in a long, lazy, ten-mile arc to the west of the town. It also showed the Flame Lake Mine, a few miles west of where we stood.
I walked to Meloux, who’d climbed onto the picnic table. Like an extra couple of feet would improve his view.
“What do you think, Henry? Familiar?” I asked.
“Seventy years, Corcoran O’Connor. A long time to remember anything. And these old eyes…” He shook his head and slowly climbed down.
The Explorer came back. Benning poked his head out the window. He still had on his shades. “Through town,” he instructed. “At the intersection, keep straight on. Stay well back from me, though. Understand?”
“Not exactly, but I get your drift,” I replied.
The town, what there was to it, was laid out at the eastern end of the lake. It reminded me of a lot of small towns on the Iron Range of Minnesota, places that had exploded with a burly energy when the iron mines were operating, but had had the wind knocked out of them once the operations shut down. Along the one-block business district, several storefronts were vacant. Among those still open were a grocery store, a couple of bars, and a little Mexican restaurant with a sign in the window hyping the blue margaritas. The variety store, a place called the Outpost that sold clothing, sporting goods, hardware, hunting and fishing licenses, and Minnetonka moccasins, seemed to be doing okay. We passed it all quickly and followed Benning north, out of town.
A couple of miles farther on we came to a turnoff onto another road that curved along the shoreline of Flame Lake. A large sign was posted at the intersection: PRIVATE ROAD, NO TRESPASSING. We took the turnoff and headed west on the private road. I tried to stay far enough back from the Explorer that we weren’t eating the dust it kicked up. The cloud my Bronco left behind us kept me from seeing if the green SUV was still following.
After eight miles of this, the road ended. Benning pulled up before an expansive, two-story log house built on the lakeshore. It wasn’t a new structure, but it had been well cared for. The logs were pine the color of dark honey. There were green shutters on the windows. A small apron of grass separated the house from the surrounding trees. Beds of flowers lined the foundation. We parked behind Benning, who got out and walked to the Bronco.
“Wait here. I’ll let Mr. Wellington know you’ve arrived.” He left us, jogged up the steps to the front porch, and went in the door.
Meloux slid from the Bronco and headed around the side of the house, toward the lake.
“Henry?” I called.
He didn’t pay any attention. Schanno and I followed him. Meloux crossed the backyard, which was maybe a hundred feet of coarse grass, and stood at the edge of the lake, staring across the water toward the ridges on the far side.
We stayed back, giving him the space and time he seemed to need.
With his back to us, he said, “I stood here and watched Maria swim.”
“Here? You’re sure?”
“She was like an otter, sleek and beautiful.”
For the first time since I’d brought him north across the border, he sounded deeply satisfied. I felt happy for him.
“Hey!”
We turned toward the house. Benning had come out onto the large rear deck.
“Inside,” he called. He jammed his thumb toward the sliding glass door that stood open at his back. “Mr. Wellington is waiting.”
FORTY-FIVE
We mounted the steps of the back deck and trailed Benning into the house. It was furnished sparely, but what was there was beautifully made. The whole place was strongly scented with the good smell of wood smoke, a scent comforting and welcoming, the essence, it had always seemed to me, of where the human experience and the wilderness met.
Benning led us to a room at the southwest end of the house. It was full of books and sunlight and Henry Wellington.
He was less imposing than the legends about him suggested. He stood six feet at most, taut, slender. His hair was white and thick. For a man of seventy, he had skin that was remarkably smooth and unblemished. His dark eyes regarded us calmly. He was dressed in white drawstring pants and a loose shirt of white cotton. He wore sandals. He didn’t offer to shake hands, but he did invite us to sit, and he offered us something to drink. We declined.
He said simply, “You’ve come a long way to talk to me. I’m listening.”
“When I was a young man,” Meloux told him, “I loved your mother, and she loved me.”
“My mother has been dead for sixty-five years.”
“You are wrong,” Meloux said. “In you, I can see that she lives still.”
Wellington studied the old Mide carefully but not with a cold eye. “Tell me how you knew my mother.”
Meloux told his story, much as he’d told it to me. As he talked, the box of sunlight on the polished floorboards changed. At one point, the wind rose slightly outside, and the sound of it through the pines was a steady, distant sigh. I heard heavy thuds from a far part of the house, hut Wellington gave no sign that they were important. I wondered if there was someone else in the house besides Benning.
Wellington listened patiently and with an intensity that made me believe every word Meloux spoke was bein
g processed and filed away and could be accessed a decade later, verbatim.
When Meloux finished, Wellington said, “I’m to believe that Leonard Wellington was not only not my father but was a killer as well?”
“No,” Meloux replied. “The killing is on my shoulders.”
“But he was a man with murder in his heart, yes?”
“That was one thing in his heart.”
“Do you have the watch?”
Meloux brought it out from his shirt pocket. Wellington crossed the room, and took it from him. He walked to a window that looked south across the lake. The late-afternoon sun struck him and seemed to ignite the white he wore. He looked at the photograph in the pocket watch for a long time.
“This is the only proof you have?” he asked.
“She gave me her love and I stole the watch,” Meloux said. “In their ways, they were gifts I did not ask for, but I took them gratefully.”
Wellington turned. I couldn’t read his face.
“I require more,” he said.
He and Meloux locked eyes. For the next half minute, it was as if Schanno and I didn’t exist.
“I will take you to Maurice’s cabin,” Meloux said.
“Now?”
“Now.”
Wellington studied the sky outside the window. “In four hours, it will be too dark to see.”
Meloux stood up. “Then you had better keep up with me.”
Wellington smiled. “Very well.”
He took a few minutes to change his clothes. Under Benning’s watchful eye, Meloux, Schanno, and I went out to my Bronco, where I put a few things into my day pack: a flashlight, three bottled waters, bug repellent, and my Swiss Army knife. For good measure, I took Schanno’s loaded Colt from the glove box and slipped it in the pack. I didn’t know Wellington, and I hadn’t been able to read him. I didn’t know what his true agenda might be. It was possible he was simply as intrigued as he appeared to be. It was also possible that he planned to have us all whacked in the isolation of the woods. Whoever it was that had trailed us in the green SUV was probably lurking somewhere near. The weight of the Colt in the day pack gave me a measure of comfort.
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