Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries)

by Tom Hilpert

  “Listen,” I said, looking at my watch, “time's about up for today. It isn't productive to do this for much more than an hour at a time. Except in certain circumstances.”

  They looked at me. “What do you mean?” said Angela finally.

  “Well, I am putting together a little sailing cruise in a few weeks. I'll have two couples along, and we'll spend three days or so, out on the water together. We'll use the time together to work on some marriage issues. I wondered if you guys would like to be one of the couples.”

  They looked at each other. A little smile played near Angela's lips. It was good to see. She was normally so serious.

  “Actually, that would be wonderful,” she said. Phil nodded. “My previous therapist offered something like that, but Phil didn't connect very well with him.”

  I'll bet he didn't, I thought. Phil nodded again. “It seemed like a great concept, but the timing and circumstances just weren't right.”

  I wondered if Phil suspected the affair. I gave them the cost and the other details. “Well, you two think about it, and give me call. Let me know by next Wednesday, if you can,” I said.

  They thanked me and then left, hand in hand. Angela looked over her shoulder at me, gave a small smile and waved. It seemed to take ten years off of her, and transformed her from a somber, even gloomy individual into a vivacious woman in the prime of life. It made me feel good about my work, which just goes to show you how stupid I can be sometimes.

  CHAPTER 16

  I preached an outstanding sermon on Sunday. Less than five people fell asleep, and a few others went to the extraordinary lengths of making eye contact and nodding at me as I spoke. After church, the Olsens invited Leyla and me to Sunday lunch at their house.

  Leyla and I seemed to be back on an even keel of friendship. I always enjoyed spending time with her, and she seemed able to enjoy it once again as well. There was a still a spark that slumbered between us, but for now, both of us were able to ignore it. So, we accepted the invitation for lunch.

  John and Kim Olsen were about my age, which is to say middle thirties, with, apparently, two hundred children. Actually, it was only four kids, but what they lacked in size, they made up for in noise and energy. I bought fresh eggs and fresh milk from their farm every week.

  In the middle of the living room of their white, clapboard farmhouse, there was a little exercise trampoline, three feet in diameter. A small girl of about three bounced on it, unceasingly chanting, “Daddy...Daddy...Daddy...”

  “Lindy, Lindy, Lindy” said John, smiling at the little girl, whose name was Belinda. His response had no effect, and she continued bouncing and chanting the entire time that John and I talked about the weather, the Vikings and the Almighty, while we waited for Kim and Leyla to finish dinner preparations.

  When everything was ready, three other miniature humans came rolling in like a freight train, yelling at the top of their lungs that the British were coming. John scooped Belinda off the trampoline to accompanying shrieks of joy.

  “The British are coming?” I asked mildly.

  “We are studying the American Revolution,” said Kim. She home-schooled Mandy and James, their two oldest. The third child, four-year-old John Jr., apparently had apprehended the ride of Paul Revere by osmosis. This was not uncommon with home-schooling, according to Kim.

  “Would you pray for us, Jonah?” asked John. For some reason, wherever I go for dinner, people always feel the need to ask me to say grace, as if it is better done by a professional or something. Or maybe my reputation as a cook had them scared, and they felt the need for divine support.

  In the case of Kim Olsen, God had already blessed the hands of the cook. It was like a kind of minor Thanksgiving, with roast chicken and stuffing, roasted red potatoes and carrots, home-canned green beans and fresh corn on the cob. All delicious. In situations like that, it is a liability to be a pastor, because people naturally don't expect you to eat like a pig. Never one for social niceties, I ate like a pig anyway.

  “Hungry, are we?” asked Leyla.

  “Just want Kim to feel appreciated,” I said.

  After lunch, John and Kim settled the little ones in front of a movie, and the four of us had a pleasant conversation over coffee and apple pie.

  As we were leaving, I remembered the cat. I said, “Say, do you mind if I take some leftovers home?”

  “I’m honored,” said Kim. “You’re such a chef yourself. That means a lot to me.”

  Proving that even old pastors can learn new tricks, I kept my mouth shut about the cat. “It was delicious,” I said truthfully.

  Afterwards, I drove Leyla home. “What is this music?” she asked.

  “I'm kind of on a Steve Miller kick,” I said.

  “Huh.”

  “The Steve Miller Band was big in the '70s,” I said.

  “But you were small in the '70s” she pointed out.

  “Yes, I was. But the Internet evens everything out. Most of what I listen to, I discovered on the Internet.”

  “Jungle Love really sort of ruins your pastoral image.”

  “I listen to Tchaikovsky too. And Bach, Beethoven, all those guys.”

  “Steve Miller, Beethoven and the guys.”

  “You were afraid to say Tchaikovsky, weren't you?”

  She hit me.

  “Hey, I'm driving.”

  “That's right, buddy. You haven't got time to be mocking me.”

  Take the Money and Run started playing.

  “Oh, I love Sweet Home Alabama,” said Leyla.

  I let it play a bit longer.

  “This isn't Sweet Home Alabama, is it?” she asked, after Steve and the boys started telling the story of Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue, and how they robbed and shot a man, and then took the money and run.

  I shook my head, smiling.

  “You could have said something,” said Leyla, pretending to be hurt, “instead of letting me feel stupid.”

  “I was instructed to shut up and drive,” I said. “And specifically not to mock my very entertaining passenger.”

  She hit me again. We were silent for a minute.

  “This is an awful song, isn't it?”

  “Well, the lyrics glorify senseless violence perpetrated by shiftless drug addicts and resulting in immoral, illegal, selfish gain. But musically, the song doesn't get boring for almost thirty seconds.”

  “Why did you download this?”

  “I remembered that it was some sort of classic hit, and I listened to less than thirty seconds before I made the decision.”

  Leyla smiled broadly. “It's good to see that you don't always know exactly what you are doing.”

  I looked over at her sharply. “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “I don't know, Jonah, it's just that you're so – confident. It's part of what makes you attractive, but it can also be irritating sometimes. You're a terrific cook, a trophy fisherman, perceptive, smart, a great preacher.” She paused. “An outstanding kisser.” She looked at her hands for a second. I didn't stare at her, because I had to drive the car.

  “Anyway,” she said, waving her hands in the air now, “sometimes people just want to see that you aren't good at everything. Or that you aren't always right about everything.”

  It was my turn to smile broadly. “You wish I was a bad kisser?”

  She tossed her hair. “You know what I mean. Some people can be just too perfect.”

  “Sure,” I said. I had no idea what she meant.

  She looked at me a moment. “You really don't see it, do you?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe I just don't even try to do stuff I won't be good at. But I think it's more likely that you are just overcompensating for letting me down in my moment of need. But you don't need to, you know.”

  I paused. “I leave the toilet seat up.”

  “Too much information.”

  “There's another one – I give too much information.”

  She sighed dramatically, and looked out the window.<
br />
  “I hate Jane Austen flicks.”

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

  “Happy to oblige,” I said.

  CHAPTER 17

  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 sunrise 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 started 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 that 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 Hollands 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 that 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 Lynden. 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 reminds 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 recepti
on area held a security camera 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.

  CHAPTER 18

  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.