Deep North (A Brenda Contay Novel Of Suspense Book 2)

by Barry Knister

  He waited for a reaction.

  “They don’t think is the whole deal,” he said. “Amazing. I tell her, tangible assets, Doreen. Something for later. You think there’s going to be any Social Security when you hit the big six-five? Advanced thinking like that, it wouldn’t enter her head until she was using a walker.”

  “You told me.” Keys clicking, Rohmer still didn’t look up.

  “Yeah, and I’m telling you again. Not until she was asking what day is it every ten minutes. This is what I get for teaching her money. I give a totally ignorant woman knowledge on how to make a better life. This same woman gives me up the first opportunity.”

  “Marion Ross had that idea.” Still Rohmer didn’t look up. It was one of several things about him that irritated Lomak.

  “There you go,” he said. “Exactly. We’re together five years—five fucking years—and some cunt lawyer turns her against me in one hour. ‘It’s not your fault, Doreen. We’ll get a therapist expert witness, Doreen. He was dishonorably discharged for black market scams in the Philippines, and did you know he was charged with destroying a car at Macomb College?’ Like the Philippines wasn’t entrapment, any way you cut it. At Macomb I was working maintenance. Trying to better my education. Their goddamn backhoe had faulty brakes. From this kind of unrelated crap I’m looking at five to seven, while Doreen Taylor sees a self-esteem facilitator twice a week.”

  Rohmer finally logged off. He pulled out the power cable.

  “Just like the stranger,” Lomak said.

  Now Rohmer looked at him. Winding the power cable around his hand, he frowned. “Are you talking about Albert Camus’s novel? The Stranger? You read it?”

  “Yes, Louis. I read it at Macomb College. This guy offs an Arab. On a beach in North Africa. He doesn’t plan it, it just happens. Shit happens, bad karma. The sun’s in his eyes, he sees a knife, he defends himself. This guy—”

  “—Gets the death penalty for not crying at his mother’s funeral,” Rohmer said. “Yes, I read it too.”

  “There you go, same deal. With me, there was men on that jury. Men that had to see what Ross was working.”

  Still looking at him, Rohmer closed the laptop. He slipped it into the canvas case and zipped it closed. He was bald with a white beard, and his rimless glasses were glinting. He had on a green plaid shirt that made his hands look more pink. They were not hands that had ever done real work.

  He carried the computer to the front entry, leaned it next to the door, and straightened. “So, you think Marion Ross was working something?”

  “Right on. She played…whatever you call with women would be the same as the race card.”

  “The gender card.”

  “There you go, queen of fucking hearts.” Lomak liked this, too, and thought Rohmer should at least smile. “With a bull dyke judge, eight brain-dead women and…what is it when they cut off your balls, your voice changes?”

  “Eunuchs.”

  “There you go. Four eunuchs along for the ride.”

  Rohmer checked his watch and looked up. “Anyway, Jerry, we agree she should pay. And she might as well pay us. If you need to pack anything, do it now. We leave in an hour.”

  MINNESOTA,

  EAST OF INTERNATIONAL FALLS

  7:20 P.M.

  Renewed with coffee in the town of Virginia, Brenda had again taken the wheel. She had driven through what the map called the Mesabi Iron Range, and then, just after passing through a hole-in-the-wall called Orr, she felt the steering go funny.

  She glanced in the rearview. Tina’s dog had felt it, too. Sonny was now sitting up on the mound of sleeping bags. Behind him, the boat trailer was swaying. She slowed and eased onto the shoulder.

  “What is it?” Heather asked. “A flat tire?”

  “Feels like it.” She came to a stop.

  “Oh, God.”

  “I’m sorry, but I like it,” Tina Bostwick said. “It’s an adventure. We may have to sleep in the car. I’ve never done that.”

  “Let me have my phone,” Marion said.

  Looking at her in the rearview, Brenda undid her seatbelt. “There’s no need. We’re just outside Orr. I saw a service station.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, Mar, it makes more sense if you and Heather unload. So we can get at the spare. It’ll save time. Please hand me my jacket.”

  Marion reached in back. “Good boy, lie down—” She patted the golden retriever, got Brenda’s windbreaker, and handed it over the seat. “This is a bad omen. We can’t be more than an hour from the turnoff.”

  “Listen to Tina,” Brenda said. “Have more coffee and a donut. Pretend you’re on stakeout, watching for poachers.”

  She opened her door and stepped down. Stiff from sitting, she slipped on her jacket and walked to the back of the Suburban. The left rear tire was flat but looked undamaged. She zipped up the jacket, flipped her hair outside the collar, and started along the shoulder.

  It would be dark soon, but Orr was not more than a fifteen-minute walk. The air felt brisk, not cold. A long day sitting, she picked up the pace. It felt good to move and to be alone.

  They had left Milwaukee just after nine. Traveling north, they reached the state line at two and crossed into Minnesota by way of Route 53. About five they had reached Duluth. The big Suburban passed huge rust-colored conveyor lines that stretched out into the bay. Everyone agreed Duluth’s hard-blue water made you cold just looking at it. To Brenda, the town’s tidy, old-frame houses spoke of tough lives that had not broken the owners’ sense of self-respect.

  She smiled as she walked, thinking about the trip. On stops to walk the dog, for gas and rest rooms in diners, Heather had pushed Tina’s wheelchair. Truckers in caps and quilted vests watched over their coffee mugs. At the second stop, one of the men had come over. “How you doing, Professor Bostwick. Remember me? I still remember the three to’s, affect, effect, the different no’s. Like you said, a spell checker does nothing for you there.”

  “And don’t forget the three there’s,” Tina said. He had grinned at her, a middle-aged kid with his old teacher.

  A pickup truck whipped past, towing a covered boat.

  You could see why students would come up years later to say hello to Tina Bostwick. Rolling to a stop that morning before her small house, Brenda had watched the front door open. A dog bounded out, and seconds later Tina followed in her wheelchair. From the passenger seat, Marion had watched with a pained expression as a stranger in a parka and stocking cap rolled down the ramp. Shaking hands a moment later, Tina had handed Marion a sheet of paper.

  “It’s a waiver,” she said. “I’m grateful to be going, and I don’t want you to worry about me.” Tina had then asked if Sonny could go. “Otherwise, we’ll drop him at the kennel. But to be honest, he needs this more than I do.” Relieved about the waiver, Marion said she was a dog person, and that Sonny was more than welcome.

  Yes, Tina Bostwick was simpatico. She made no mention of her illness and told great stories. The Arab student who claimed to love Shakespeare and skydiving equally; the Desert Storm veteran whose unifying point of reference in all his papers had been the tank. Or the identical twin girls who ran an “escort service.”

  Brenda smiled as she walked. When detectives from the Milwaukee vice squad arrested the two in the middle of a diesel mechanics class, the girls had made their one allowed phone call to Tina. “It was all in their essays,” she said. “S and M freaks, someone stimulated only by Sousa marches. They were taking the diesel course to have more in common with the truckers they serviced. In some loopy way, I thought that demonstrated an admirable commitment to customer service.”

  A horn blared. And blared without stopping. Brenda looked back. She had walked about two hundred yards and could see Heather and Marion on the shoulder, next to the truck. Up the road, she saw no taillights from the pickup that had passed her. That meant the driver had pulled off in front of the Suburban.

  She started jogging bac
k, and now saw someone coming from the front. A man. She heard his voice and Marion’s as they looked down at the flat tire. Gear from the Suburban had already been stacked on the shoulder. Sonny was sitting in the empty cargo space.

  As she approached, Marion looked up. “This nice man is going to help us. If the spare tire has air in it. I never thought to check.”

  “Let’s see what you have.”

  He looked convincingly outdoorsy. About six feet and solid, he was dressed in jeans, a red buffalo plaid shirt, a Milwaukee Brewers cap. He stepped from the side of the truck and straddled the trailer hitch. The dog barked and came to the opening.

  “Hi, there, buddy…”

  He held out his hand to be sniffed, and now scratched Sonny’s head. Petting the dog. It was a scene they used in movies to establish the good guy. Tina was turned in her seat, holding the leash.

  “That’s it,” he said, stepping clear. “Hold him while I check the spare.”

  It was upright, on the left. He unzipped the cover and pushed the tire with his thumb. “Feels solid, but we won’t know until we get it down.”

  “I have no idea where the jack is,” Marion said.

  “On Suburbans, I think they store it over the wheel well.”

  Brenda watched him crawl inside. “Good,” he said, hidden behind the tire. “It’s all here.” He backed out, holding the jack and a kit of tools. “First, we have to unhitch your trailer. Got a wrench?”

  “My husband gave me one,” Heather said.

  Hunched in her parka, she moved to the mound of gear and began searching her bag. Marion was watching the man work off the plug socket for the trailer’s taillights. She folded her arms. “We’re extremely grateful, but I don’t know,” she said. “You could hurt yourself.”

  “The shoulder’s pretty level here,” he said. “We should be all right.”

  Heather came back with a wrench and handed it to him. “Tina’s still in the car. Should she get out?”

  “Not necessary.”

  “You don’t have back problems?” Marion asked. “Heart trouble?”

  He looked up a moment, and back to the trailer hitch. “You must be a lawyer.”

  Looking small in her heavy fisherman’s knit sweater, Marion gave Brenda her resigned look. The one reserved for lawyer jokes.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  Quickly he got the hitch unlocked. Then he had Brenda inch the truck forward and back until he could raise the cup and lower the trailer. This done, he asked her to pull up six feet. He got the heavy spare tire down, then fitted the jack in a receptacle in front of the rear wheel. Soon, he had the tire off. Ignoring the hard gusts of passing trucks, he raised the heavy spare, aligned the wheel posts, and worked the holes into position. He shoved on the new tire and began screwing on the lug nuts. His name was Charlie Schmidt.

  “Michigan plates,” he said. “All you ladies from there?”

  Marion pointed to Brenda. “She and I are from outside Detroit. Heather and Tina are from Milwaukee. We’re headed for the Ash River.”

  He nodded.

  “It’s something called Northern Lights Houseboats.”

  “I know Northern Lights,” he said. “It’s a reliable outfit. They’ll take good care of you.”

  “We’re all tenderfeet,” she said.

  “You’ll be fine. Pete Gustofson’s son owns it now. The same family’s had the concession maybe thirty years.”

  “You’re from the area?”

  “Milwaukee. I have a place up here on Lake Kabetogama.” Seeing he was ready for the lug wrench, Brenda handed it to him. “Thanks. There’s a can of WD-40 under the passenger side in my truck. We should put some on your hitch.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  Marion hurried forward. Heather was now talking to Tina through the open side window. Brenda turned back, watching Schmidt wield the tire iron.

  It was always unexpected, how attraction happened with her. It had nothing to do with his stopping to help. Or with petting-the-dog acceptance by Sonny. It was his deft movements. His hands. The familiarity with which he was doing an ordinary task, a job easy to describe, but impossible for any of them to manage. Not with a tire that heavy.

  And his smile. Seeing his hands were dirty, she remembered a rag in the console. She stepped to the driver’s side, got the door open, and reached over.

  “What a nice guy,” Tina said softly, stroking Sonny. The dog lay sprawled on the back seat, head in her lap.

  “Damsels in distress.” Brenda got the rag and closed the console.

  “Coming through Norse country on his trusty charger.” Tina grinned. “Heading back to the castle but stopping to do his chivalrous duty. It’s mythic.”

  “Sorry, Tina, he’s almost done. You aren’t going to get to sleep out here.”

  “I was lying. All I want now is a stiff drink and some grub.”

  Brenda smiled, already liking this person. She ducked from the cab and stepped back to Schmidt. When he looked up, she handed him the rag.

  “Question.” With her back to the truck, she waited as he wiped his hands. “We have an MS patient with us. Are we in over our heads with this, or not?”

  “I wouldn’t take her out in a fishing boat without help.”

  “She just wants to see the sights. But you see how it is. We’re really out of it.”

  “The houseboats are good-sized. You shouldn’t have a problem. Most people doing houseboats are families. Or city guys with girlfriends. The lake’s got buoy markers to keep you clear of rocks and sandbars. Gus will take you through the river, show you how to operate everything. The boats all have ship-to-shore. You won’t ever be far from land.”

  “Ours is something called The President.”

  “That thing.” He finished with the rag. “Sixty-five feet, I think. I don’t know how they got it through the access road. Potscrubber dishwasher, VCR, full bathrooms on both decks. Hot tub. Your friend will have a ball.”

  Marion came back with the WD-40. He used it, then lowered the jack before hefting the flat tire inside. As he attached it to the side mount, Brenda and Heather began passing gear to Marion. Charlie Schmidt finished, stepped away, and watched. She liked that about him, too. He was letting them do their part, a real mensch. As she passed sleeping bags to Marion, he again used the rag. Fifty or so—no, a little more—he was someone you wanted to like. Someone you hoped would prove that first impressions could be dead-on right.

  After they were done, she backed up the Suburban. He dropped the trailer on the hitch, tightened it, refastened the safety chain, and refitted the light plug. He asked her to pump the brakes, then stepped alongside the truck.

  “You’re good to go.” He handed her the rag. “You have jigs and Rapalas?”

  “I wouldn’t know if I did. What are they?”

  “Lures. Artificial bait. The fishing’s not so hot this early. Rapalas are your best bet. Gus has them, you might pick some up.”

  “Will you be up here this week?” Brenda asked.

  He looked at her, and she felt herself blush.

  “A guy I know is flying in to do some fishing,” he said. “I’ll be here.”

  “You say this boat of ours is some kind of monster. It must be hard to miss.”

  “True.”

  “Come to dinner,” she said. “Bring your friend. We don’t do tires, but we grill a mean steak.”

  “Yes,” Marion called from the back. “Please say yes. With or without your buddy, I want the chance to do something. You’ve been very kind.”

  Charlie Schmidt smiled. “Maybe so. Have fun.”

  He walked forward. In the glare of their headlights, he turned and waved before moving again toward his truck. All at once he staggered and held his back, but kept walking.

  They all laughed, and she glanced in the rearview. Marion was shaking her head.

  Louis Rohmer had told Schmidt he didn’t care if the fishing was poor this time of year. He just needed to get away.

  He c
alled at the beginning of April, upset about some drug-company stock he’d bought on margin. A sure bet, he said. Convinced the Food and Drug Administration would approve the company’s new drug, Louis had taken out second mortgages to buy the stock. When the drug was rejected, the stock tanked. This didn’t exactly raise Louis’s own stock in Schmidt’s estimation, but he sounded strung out, so Charlie said yes, to come in the first week of May. After the call, he went online and looked up Rohmer’s properties. They were pricey row houses in upscale Brooklyn Heights, now in foreclosure.

  Even so, Rohmer was still leasing a plane. He would fly in for a long weekend.

  He’d flown it to Cabo San Lucas the previous spring, when Schmidt and his nephew Kenny were there for Kenny’s spring break from the University of Wisconsin. Schmidt knew his good-looking nephew would hook up there, and sure enough, a girl from Penn State snagged Kenny’s full attention their first night in Cabo, in a bar called Carlos ‘n Charlie’s. The next day, Kenny had taken their Jeep rental and headed for the beach.

  Schmidt went then to the harbor, in search of a crew that spoke English. Rohmer was there, and they agreed to share a charter. They’d done pretty well—three yellow fin tuna, and a black marlin Rohmer almost landed. He invited Schmidt up to his condo overlooking the bay. The Mexican housekeeper did up one of the tuna as sashimi, and steaks, this followed by key lime pie and brandy.

  Rohmer talked about his Brooklyn Heights properties. He’d grown up in Michigan, gone to school there, then gone to New York to make his fortune. After Cabo, Louis had flown up to Minnesota in July, to fish for walleye. That October, Charlie was in New York for a builders’ show, and called. Louis took him to his club, a great old place off Gramercy Park full of guys in huge leather chairs, sleeping with the Wall Street Journal on their stomachs. That had seemed the last of it, until Louis’s call.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  Just after nine, he swung off the county road, onto the trail leading to his property. With the boat trailer bouncing hard in back, Schmidt tunneled through the arc of light formed by his headlights. Pine boughs swept the cab. The headlights glanced off a pair of eyes before a deer vanished in the dark.