Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries) (13 page)

“I will. I'm the one who would be letting people down if it doesn't happen, remember?”

“Yeah, OK,” he said. “One more thing. “We’ll be sailing out of Bayfield. I couldn’t get a boat in Silver Bay.”

“You mean a slip?”

“Yeah, sorry. I couldn’t get a slip in Silver Bay.”

“OK, I think that will be fine,” I said.

“All right
,
P
astor. Thanks.”

We hung up.

I hit the close button to my garage, and stepped into my back hallway. The hall ran past my utility room and office on one side, with my bedroom and a spare bathroom on the other. It opened into the great room, with large
double-story windows looking across my deck, and
down the ridge toward the lake.

I felt a sudden twist in my stomach. Someone was sitting in one of the chairs on the deck, watching the afternoon sun die on the
water
.

All violence and fear of the previous year came rushing back, along with the memory of the masked man trying to break in more recently. My heart began to pound.

Quietly, I slipped back into the garage. I fished a key from its place and unlocked my gun cabinet. I picked out my 12 gauge and fed three shells into the
tubular
magazine, but left the chamber empty.

Kicking off my shoes I crept back into the house. My
fireplace
divided the great-room
windows
in half, and I used it as cover between me and the person on the deck. From the hearth, I risked a quick glance outside. The stranger was sitting in an Adirondack chair looking at the lake. He wore a dark-blue nylon windbreaker and dark-blue ball-cap. It was hard to tell with him sitting down, but he looked kind of big.

I side-stepped to the sliding door, jerked it open and, leaping onto the deck, pressed the muzzle of the shotgun against the back of the intruder's neck.
“Don't move,
”
I said.

The man jerked involuntarily and then sat very still. His hands were tucked by his sides, in the pockets of his jacket.

“Very slowly, put your hands where I can see them. Slowly.”

“Pastor Borden?” he said.
Cautiously
,
he turned his neck until I could see that it was Tom Lund, the private investigator from Duluth.

I felt a little odd about being addressed as “pastor” by someone I had been holding at gunpoint. Suddenly
,
I also felt very shaky. I lifted the gun and pointed it into the air while I ejected the shells and put them in my pocket.

“Tom,” I said, collapsing into a matching wooden chair. “What the heck are you doing here? And where is your car?”

Lund blew out a long breath. “That hasn't happened to me for a long time.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It's not a daily thing with me
,
either.”

Lund rubbed his neck and rolled his shoulders. Abruptly
,
he stood up and stretched his back. “Feeling a little paranoid, are we?”

“You remember Risotti, the thug from Chicago? He sent some guys over here after me, during that Doug Norstad business. I've not taken kindly to strangers on my deck since then.” I leaned the shotgun against the railing and then said, “Sorry about that though.”

The private eye shook his head. “As much my fault as yours. Maybe I should have just called you.”

“Why didn't you? I mean it's a beautiful drive from Duluth to here, but it's also kinda long.”

“So's my story,” said Lund. “You got a beer or something?”

“Ah,” I said. “You heard I was gourmet cook, and you came up here to learn some tips for impressing the chicks.”

“The only chick I want to impress doesn't need me to cook, but if you are offering supper, I'll take it.”

“You married?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said. “Best decision I ever made.”

“What about her?”

“Her too,” he said without pretension. This surprised me. Pleasantly.

“You sound happy.”

“Perfect
,
no. Happy
,
yes.”

I led the way back through the sliding doors. Going toward the fridge, I said, “I don't keep beer around. But I've got some hard apple cider.”

“Hot apple cider?”

“Not hot,
hard
. Kind of like Mike's Hard Lemonade.”

“You really ruin the pastor thing for me.”

“Don't worry, I won't offer you weed or anything. Most people just have inaccurate stereotypes about pastors. You want the cider or not?”

“I guess I'll try it.”

I got him a bottle of Woodchuck's Cider from the refrigerator, and one for myself.
The cat came in. I had been trying to think of a good name for him, but so far one had eluded me. I poured a little of my cider into a saucer and he lapped it up.

“You sure that’s good for him?” asked Lund, swallowing some of his own and nodding at the cat.

“
Why not?
John Adams attributed his long life to his daily pint of hard cider.”

“Who's John Adams?” said Lund, burping.

“One of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He signed the Declaration of Independence. Went to France with Benjamin Franklin. He was our second president.”

“Ben Franklin went to France?”

“Never mind,” I said.

Tom Lund sat on a bar stool at the counter that separated the kitchen from the great-room. I went around to the other side to make supper.

I peeled an
avocado
, and put a few slices on a plate. I sprinkled them with lemon juice, salt and garlic powder and then put it on the counter between us, sliding him a fork.

“What's this?” He sounded suspicious.

“Just try it.”

“Did Ben Franklin eat this too?”

“Yep,” I said. “It's what gave him such a good memory.”

He tried a piece. “Hey, that's all right.”

I set a piece out for the cat, but he looked offended.

I started to slice up a large chicken breast I had thawed earlier. “So
,
you gonna tell me why you're here?”

“Yeah, hang on.” He patted himself like he was looking for something in his pockets. “Do you have pen and paper? I want to write down your cell
number, so I can just call you next time.”

I frowned. I thought I had given him my number when I hired him to look into the identity of the dead Washington bank robber. “Why don't I just call your phone, and then you'll have it?”

“I'm kinda old fashioned,” he said. “I like to have things written down.”

I shrugged. “OK.” I slipped the diced chicken into a cast-iron skillet with some olive oil and crushed garlic, and then grabbed some paper and a pen out of a drawer in the kitchen, and slid them over the counter to Lund.

“All right, what's your number?”

I told him, starting on an onion. When I had sliced large pieces of that and some red peppers, I added them to the chicken in the skillet. Lund was quiet while I sliced a zucchini
and a yellow squash into chunks
and added them to the pan. I sprinkled cumin, cayenne and chili powder on it and stirred it. Finally, I looked up at Lund and found he had slid the paper back across the counter, and was pointing to it.

I opened my mouth, and he said, “So what do you think of the Vikings' chances this year?”

“About the same as always,” I said mechanically, reaching for the paper Lund had written my phone number on. “They'll start like Super
B
owl champions. After a mid-season collapse, they'll barely scrape into the playoffs and lose in the first round.”

On the paper, Lund had not written any phone number. Instead
,
it said
:
someone
may be listening to us
.

I stared at him. “What about you?” was all I said. I quickly scribbled,
bugs?
I pushed the paper back to him. Everything about the scene seemed suddenly surreal.

“Oh, same as you. But it'll be fun to watch,” he said. He glanced at the paper and nodded. He started to write something else, while also saying, “We don't have a real receiving corps. Now if we had old Chris Carter in his prime on this team, we might go somewhere.” He pushed the notepaper back to me. It said,
let's eat and then take a walk.

I nodded. While the chicken and vegetables cooked, I fried up a couple of corn tortillas. We ate the chicken fajitas topped with cilantro, sour cream,
avocado
and salsa.
I put some on a plate for the cat too. He picked through the veggies and ate the chicken,
sour cream
and a little bit of the tortilla.
Not much of a refined palate, I guess.
Lund and I
talked some more about the Vikings and then the upcoming hunting season.

When we were done
,
I said
,
“Want to stretch your legs? It's almost dark, but it's not far from here to a pretty nice lookout down the ridge.”

“Sure,” he said casually. “Better bring flashlights just in case.”

I pointed at my shotgun, which I had leaned up by
the
front door when we had come in from the deck. Lund shook his head.

When we were outside and about fifty yards down the trail along the ridge, Lund spoke.

“Sorry about that. Might be nothing. But something pretty big is up, and I don't want to take chances.”

“You seriously think someone put listening devices in my house?”

“I do
n't know. But I do know that it’
s possible.”

“I have an alarm system.”

Lund shook his head. “Doesn't matter. There's ways to do it without even going in the house. But if they wanted to, they coulda gone in anyway.”

“Who are 'they?'”

“Don't know for sure.”

“Why don't you tell me what you do know?”

It was almost full dark under the trees. When we came out onto the rock ledge that overlooked the lake, it was easier to see.

Lund looked at the water, steel-gray, fading into a dark blue twilight at the indistinct joint of the horizon.

“I'm being audited,” he said.

I felt a surge of anger and disgust. I realized that while Lund seemed like a good guy, I didn't know him very well. He could be one
of
those borderline-paranoid conspiracy-theory types, the sort of guy who maintains that the moon landings were faked. “You got me to play cloak and dagger, and sneak off into the woods, just because you screwed up on a tax return? Man, you had me going there for a minute.”

“You asked me to find out about this Charles
Holland
guy, the one your dad supposedly shot in Washington
State
.” Lund's voice was calm and level, but I sensed that he was restraining his own anger.

“So?”

“So, I looked into him.
I had to pull in some old IOUs,
but I also ended up owing favors to half the administrative assistants between here and Seattle.”

“And?”

“What I
didn't
learn was almost more interesting than what I did. Mostly
,
I learned that this guy is buried very deep, and someone very powerful does not want him dug up.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I found out your dad shot a man named Charles
Holland
. I found out
Holland
was originally from Duluth. Just to find out those two things t
ook a lot of conniving, bribing
and cajoling. And then everything dried up. If I were to accept what I learned at face value, I would tell you that according to my investigation, Charles
Holland
was born in Duluth, shot in Lynden Washington thirty years later, and did nothing at all in between.”

“What about employment records, friends, family, stuff like that?”

“Gee
,
maybe you should go into private investigations for a career change.”

“You sound like Dan Jensen.”

“The chief, here in Grand Lake?”

I nodded.

“I knew I liked him, minute I saw him. Point is, I couldn't find out anything at all about any part of
Holland
's life except his birth and death. I'm starting to think I'm incredibly talented to even have found out about those.”

“Don't pull a muscle patting yourself on the back.”

“There's more,” said Lund seriously. “When it dried up, it was kind of sudden. Everyone just quit talking to me. I'd give them the birth and death information, but it was like suddenly the guy never existed. No one knew anything about him.”