He motioned to the passage. “After you.”
“Daddy? Hey Dad!”
John Nielson stepped down from his truck, listening as he looked from his father’s house to the barn. It was possible dad’s own pickup had broken down. If so, he would go by boat to meet the wrecker. But when he turned to the lake, both runabouts were hanging motionless in the boathouse.
He started for the front door. The walkway was made of broken cement, from a construction site. His father was well known for making use of others’ cast-offs. The house itself had been finished with reclaimed brick, and John remembered helping unload the truck. The yard on this side was decorated with his mother’s lawn ornaments. Disney characters and life-size deer she’d given names to.
On his right as he neared the house, slightly tilted, stood the shrine they’d set up for her. That had been in the last year of her illness. It gave his mother comfort, standing at the window with her rosary, looking out at it. The Virgin’s head was bowed over praying hands, cowled beneath the half-buried, pale blue bathtub they had salvaged after the Nolands’ cottage burned.
He reached the front door, and pushed in. “Daddy?”
Wiping his feet, listening, he moved quickly through the tidy, never-used front room to the back. The TV room lay open, littered with bachelor neglect. He looked in his father’s bedroom, then snapped on the light in the bathroom. The heart medicine bottle stood on the toilet tank. Turning away, he went quickly back through the house. He slammed the door and trotted for the barn.
“Hey Dad!”
Lars Nielson took his pills when he thought to. He also carried nitroglycerin tablets, but ignored anything the doctors said about diet. Eggs in the morning, meat at every meal.
John reached the barn, and saw the padlock was open. The last thing daddy did before bed was lock it. John shoved aside the corrugated panel, stepped in and snapped on the lights. Spread out over the dirt floor were a dozen or more lawn mowers waiting for tune-ups. Racks of outboards rested beside the workbench. He walked between them, checked behind the riding mower, the pontoon raft, the portable dock.
Still worried, he turned and faced the barn’s open panel. Beyond his truck, the lake lay gray and motionless. He stood a moment, retracing his morning search. The front door opened at Charlie Schmidt’s, the stranger with the beard smiling. Your father? No. If he came last night we were out, Charlie’s not here—
The thing wrong with it was Charlie Schmidt spending the night with friends. On a houseboat. Only one houseboat was out on the lake, the big one used for company meetings. Four women, Gus had said Friday, at the landing. They had won some raffle, and were coming up tomorrow. Also, since Lillie Schmidt’s death, Charlie complained he slept poorly. He said loons now woke him, or wind rattling his windows. He liked his own place and routines, it didn’t figure. Plus, he had people with him at his own place. Guests.
Again John saw the man standing in the half-open doorway, his pink face and white beard. Like you did to get rid of someone. A neighbor coming, saying who he was—what you did, you stepped out, or invited him in. Except there wouldn’t be any need. Because Charlie Schmidt would be there, looking after his guests.
The front door scraped, followed by the crunch of gravel. Just one person was crossing the turn-around.
The lock rattled. Whatever Rohmer and Rizzo were doing, they had changed their minds. They would do something different with him now. Whatever it was, it had to do with Marion Ross. With both of them winding the duct tape, passing it front-to-back between them, each time Rizzo mentioned her, Rohmer shut him up. But Rizzo’s hands had smelled of last night’s dinner, teriyaki and garlic. So Rizzo had gone on the houseboat, after they left for Johnson Bay.
His eyelids fluttered, lashes stuck to adhesive. The metal panel rolled aside.
“I’m really sorry, Charlie. This is wrong.”
Rohmer. The panel rolled shut. Shoes moved and stopped. “It won’t mean much, but this would not be happening if I had my way. Bringing Lomak was a mistake, he’s probably certifiable. By the way, that’s his name, Jerry Lomak, not Rizzo. I told him to use Rizzo, to make him think it mattered, which it doesn’t. Friday night he murdered his girlfriend, I just found out. It was on the Detroit Free Press website. Now that he’s gone, at least I can check on you.”
Schmidt felt more humiliated than scared. After trussing him up from head to foot, they had raised the chair and balanced the legs between a pair of jet skis. His neck was in a noose, tied to a cross beam. It was from some film Rizzo— Lomak—remembered.
Alone, he had been scared, at first. But what had served best to keep Schmidt motionless on the chair was knowing that if he coughed, or forgot about the noose, the only thing people would ever remember was how they found him. Nothing else would ever figure. That’s why he’d stayed motionless. Otherwise, for years in every tavern—in The Red Fern, the Dew Drop Inn and Lindner’s at the Landing—that’s what would be said of him. How Charlie Schmidt had bought it, taped up and ready for UPS, hanging like a piñata.
Rohmer was dragging something metallic—the aluminum stepladder. Lomak murdered his girlfriend—that now registered.
He broke open the ladder and snapped the safety hinge in place. Louis Rohmer was cautious, safety-minded. Schmidt remembered them walking up to Rohmer’s place in Cabo San Lucas. Louis had kept his wallet in his front pants pocket, his hand on it, wary of thieves. Now, as he mounted the ladder, Schmidt could hear his breathing. Smelled aftershave. He felt hands on the noose, felt it loosen. Now the hands stopped working. Rohmer let out a breath and the metal ladder creaked.
“I don’t know, Charlie. No, I don’t think I can do it.”
Rohmer moved carefully down the ladder. “Sorry, but you’re in good shape, and not stupid. You might figure something out. I thought to take the noose off, but who knows what you might dream up? You’ll be all right like this. One of the Nielsons will be along later today. You’ll miss lunch, that’s all. I brought along a really nice ‘95 Pommard. It’s on the counter, next to the sink.”
Rohmer carried the ladder several steps and set it down. “I’ll leave this open for whoever comes. Lomak should be in custody in a couple hours. He doesn’t know the area. He can take off in your boat, but where to? Unless the fool leaves the channel, your Stratos should be all right. Anyway, you’re insured. But if he’s dumb enough to come back here, I don’t know. You see what I’m dealing with. He doesn’t know how to think, Charlie, it’s that simple. It makes him hard to read. I’ll take your rifles, he might decide to play cowboy. Marion will explain.”
Something was scratched, Schmidt smelled sulphur. “I saw this piece…last winter…in the Times—”
Now came the pungent odor of cigar smoke. “—on lady lawyers. It described one of Marion’s cases. The one with friend Lomak. This was when my drug stock went down the tubes. I guess that was just the gambler in me. Like setting up a magic trick. But after, I saw I’d have to leave New York. Parting words, Charlie—”
He rolled open the door panel. “Do not screw around with the market in bio-medical research. Wireless technology? Broadband? By all means. What I’m doing here would be impossible without it. There’ll be some consolidation, but once that shakes out, definitely consider taking a position in wireless.”
The panel rumbled again.
“It’s even possible you and I might meet down the road. Who knows, maybe in Cuba. The fishing must be incredible there, they’ll open it up in a few years. The Cubans would refuse extradition, I’m sure. If you deck me in Havana, who could blame you? There should be time before I leave, I’ll come back and check on you. You’re a decent guy, Charlie. I wish you well.”
The door slid shut. They had wound the tape in double layers, starting with the head, sealing his eyes. But the ears had caused a flap, a partial opening. It was true. Blind, you heard everything better. He angled his head as Rohmer’s footsteps receded.
But he was not going back to the house. The footstep
s continued up the gravel drive, alongside the house. Rohmer would now be moving down the lawn, going to the lake, the plane.
Hot under the tape, but also chilly in the unheated barn, he saw Brenda Contay at Kettle Falls. She was on the dock—not with him but with Rizzo, shouting at him until he struck her in the mouth. Don’t do it, he killed someone. She went down, blood coming from her small, sharp nose, eyes wary. Why did he see that?
But Schmidt believed she would not go to pieces. She would keep her head, pick her moment.
She almost fell, but again caught herself. Brenda straightened, and continued up the slope. Sonny ran ahead, tracking a scent. It was hard work. Each time she thought the crest was just ahead, she faced another gully full of fallen trees. They looked to her like pick-up-sticks.
The Stratos. She stopped and straightened.
The big motor had come to life in the cove. He was leaving. Coming to look for her. She stood listening, liking the idea of Charlie Schmidt on reconnaissance, cruising along the shoreline in search of the canoe. He would spot it, shut down the outboard, call her name. The engine sound continued pushing out into the lake.
As she started again up the incline, once more Sonny appeared. He was thirty or more feet in front, looking down at her and panting.
“Yeah yeah. You’re better at this, good for you.”
She kept trudging, at last getting the hang of it. The best part had been stopping to rest, pleasantly fatigued, smelling leaf mold and pine. She had a sense in those moments that something was calling on her to meet a challenge. To realize some potential.
The outboard engine revved higher, still heading out. And this being called on to meet a challenge, she thought. Does it have to do with Charlie Schmidt?
Ridiculous. It was just a moment of being alone.
She labored on, pushing down on her knee with each step. Would it still be there after you died, this moment of challenge? Like a ghost or spirit that had come into the world when you did, still waiting to be born after you were gone?
Still hearing the motor receding, pushing her way up, she continued to hold the thought. The idea intrigued her. That a moment might have a life all its own. A chance, a possibility. On constant alert for you to intersect with it. Waiting for you to journey here or somewhere, then stop. And if you did stop, if you brought the dormant thought to life, it might change you. Even at thirty-three.
Shoving on weary knees, she wondered what the moment was, and what it wanted from her. Brenda breathed through her mouth. It wouldn’t be anything stagey or big. She thought it would be something like salt. Something necessary out of all proportion to its size and weight. Like Charlie Schmidt’s graceful casts. What, then?
Trudging, thinking, Brenda wanted to get it right, this moment that was waiting for her. She stopped again, and this time closed her eyes. Immediately came peonies. They were hanging limp after rain, in her mother’s garden. In pink and white clusters, they were interspersed among leafy hosta plants, irises, day lilies. It was a favorite memory, but long forgotten. Just after a rain, she thought. In late May or early June. She could smell them in the moisture-laden air, the heavy blooms bowed on the lawn, needing to be cut and brought in for their fifteen minutes of fame, on mantel or dining table. Mary Oliver had spoken of peonies, of their eagerness to be perfect for a moment, before they were nothing. If you could feel perfected, if you were now and then able to meet the world with a sense of rightness and perfection, then knowing you would one day be nothing forever would not matter so much.
She opened her eyes and resumed walking. The ground flattened at last. Feeling relief in her weary legs, she sighed and moved more quickly. Soon, the slope tipped down. Ahead, a natural path had been formed by runoff. She followed it, bracing on shagged bark, lurching as the boat’s engine ran steady on her right. Kettle Falls, maybe Charlie was taking the others to show it to them. A quick trip there and back—it would give her time to shower. She felt no jealousy, still warm in the pleasure of her mother’s garden, knowing she would soon see Charlie Schmidt.
Sonny drew her attention. He was pawing at something, in a small clearing. He lay down now, waiting for her. She reached him, seeing how granite table rock had formed a stretch of bare slope, a natural campsite. Below, the houseboat roof stood white and blinkered through tree trunks. Looking out beyond birch trees, she saw the wake of the Stratos moving away. She raised the binoculars and steadied them. Heather and Marion were crouching in the bow, holding on as the boat neared the islands. Back to her in the bright lens, Charlie stood at the wheel.
She lowered the glasses, and now saw empty bottles. They lay on a point where someone had sat looking out. Beck’s. That was the brand Charlie had brought last night, to Johnson Bay. She stepped to the bottles and picked one up. The label was new, not faded.
Dropping the bottle, she moved to the end of the point and looked down. Her field of vision was filled by the houseboat. The empties were someone else’s, because Charlie Schmidt wouldn’t leave his trash like this. Still, it intrigued her, the thought of him coming up here, watching. Being curious. She smiled at the idea, how it changed him. Made him different. Made him mildly suspect, not so completely a petting-the-dog good guy.
“Come on, time for breakfast.”
As she started down, the dog loped past. Just below was the plank board, the drooping tie-up ropes. In the water on her right, something was bobbing. She stopped, and slid. Sat down hard. When she stopped sliding, she looked again, seeing the padded captain’s chair floating in the space between houseboat and shore.
Movement—she watched Sonny trot along the plank, onto the bow. He passed between deck chairs and stood before the door wall, tail working.
She began scuttling down, crab-like, feet first, risking falling. The chair in the water, the Stratos leaving at high speed—
In another minute it would make sense, something where it didn’t belong would gain its place. Fire, maybe. A cigarette, a match. Better a ruined chair than a boat fire.
Jeans wet and slippery, Brenda scrambled to her feet. She ducked under the port tie-up rope and quickly bounced along the plank. She pulled open the door wall, Sonny slipped in and she followed.
But it didn’t make sense. The dining table had been moved, with coffee mugs, the Sarah Lee. She looked to the broken window. Glass littered the couch. “Heather? Tina?”
She faced the hall, and heard a voice outside, at the back. She dropped the binoculars on the littered couch, then ran down the hall. As she pushed out, Sonny banged past her. Tina was in the Lund, looking up. The dog whined.
“Did you bring a phone?”
“I have Marion’s, in my—”
“No good, he broke it.”
“What happened?” Tina was still in her flannel nightgown. It was wet, the sleeves clinging to her arms.
“The man from yesterday, with the fish. He followed Marion here from Michigan. He’s someone she sent to jail. He took her and Heather to Kettle Falls.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure, but Louis Rohmer is part of it, whatever it is. They have a plan to steal from Marion, I don’t know how. He cut the ship-to-shore, the horn. He said the falls aren’t far away, he’d be able to see or hear anything I did. He said if that happened he’d kill them.”
“God, Tina, what are you doing? How the hell did you get out there?”
“It took some planning.” Tina squeezed water out of her sleeve. “Bert had a boat, he kept an extra set of keys in the bait tank. In a baggie. I thought Heather’s husband might do the same, but so far no luck. I knew you’d be back at some point.”
Brenda stepped to the catwalk, and down into the Lund. She reached with both hands and circled Tina’s forearm. “You’re freezing.”
“Cold, not freezing. Come on, help me look—” She pointed. “Go check up front, I couldn’t get there.” Whining, wanting Tina, the dog now jumped and landed in front of the outboard.
Brenda let go. She folded open the hinged windsh
ield and moved to the bow. A cowling covered it.
“Where’s the canoe? No, Sonny, sit—”
“I left it to walk.” She dropped to her knees and bent to feel under the cowling. “What happened?”
“I thought maybe you could paddle out and spot someone. Fishermen or campers. There must be game wardens.”
Feeling where she couldn’t see, Brenda looked back.
Tina was feeling under the windshield. “He came in Charlie’s boat. Someone from a court case. He threw Heather off the stern, to shake us up. It worked.”
“Casual? Too familiar?”
“Yes.”
“Funny hair.”
“The same guy. “He came here for her, he was spooky. Chatty.”
“In Charlie’s boat.”
Tina stopped feeling for keys and straightened. Her face was gray, hair matted. Sonny nuzzled her elbow and she stroked him. “No, Brenda. Whatever this is, Charlie’s not part of it. Absolutely not.”
The beer bottles. “Someone stops and fixes a tire…” Brenda felt now along the underside on the left. “The next day, there he is, showing us the sights.”
“Don’t, Brenda. How could he know we’d have a flat?”
“It doesn’t matter. He followed, he waited for something. Anything would do. A flat, teaching us to fish, helping you with the wheelchair—”
Deep North (A Brenda Contay Novel Of Suspense Book 2) Page 18