Dearly Departed (20 page)

“The big picture?”

“The environment.”

“Ahh, yes. The environment.”

“Don’t you care about the environment? Are you stupid, too? Are you one of the stupid people?”

Ginger took a deep breath and did not reply. Thilgen seated himself in the restaurant section. Ingrid smiled at him, gathered her materials, and disappeared behind a door marked
EMPLOYEES ONLY.

Thilgen was obviously well-known and not particularly popular. The waitresses flipped a coin to determine who would serve him; the loser demanded two out of three.

“Nobody cares about the animals,” Thilgen continued. “They’re going to widen the roads and cut down the trees to make room for parking lots and bring their foul-smelling cars in here and their human pollution. Well, what about the animals, is what I want to know. What about the deer and the woodchucks? Nobody asked them if they want a gambling casino. Oh, no! They’re expendable. So what if we destroy the wetlands, the habitats. So what if we turn Lake Peterson into a landfill. Just as long as everyone makes, a buck, screw the animals, forget the environment.”

A waitress handed Thilgen a menu and hurried off, not bothering to list the daily specials, not taking a drink order.

“Damn Indians,” he continued. “Indians, not Native-Americans! Indians and their damn dirty money. They’re supposed to be protecting the environment. Noble savages—yeah, sure! General Sheridan was right. The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

Ingrid, coming back through the door, had obviously heard him. She was visibly upset.

“I won’t have that kind of talk in my place,” she told Thilgen, her eyes flashing. “Do you understand?”

“Kill the Indians, and kill that Bettich bitch who’s ruining Lake Peterson!” he replied even more loudly, as if daring her to do something about it.

“Get out, Chip,” Ingrid said, moving to his table.

“People are so stupid,” he added.

“So I’ve been told,” Ingrid replied, pushing a chair out of her way, nearly knocking it over. “Get out.”

Chip Thilgen refused to leave his chair. He looked at her across the table and smiled like he owned the place and she was the intruder.

“Make me,” he said.

I figured that was my cue. I left the bar with every intention of offering aid and assistance, but before I had taken three steps, Ingrid was leaning over the table, her arms supporting her weight, and speaking to Thilgen in a voice too low for me to hear. But Thilgen heard her—oh, man, did he. The blood ran out of his face, and his eyes became large and still. Ingrid stepped back, and Thilgen rose on shaky legs. His fists were clenched, yet he seemed more frightened than angry.

“You can’t talk to me like that,” he said softly.

“Put a sock in it,” Ingrid told him.

Thilgen headed to the door, moving slowly enough to prove he wasn’t running but quickly enough to get the job done.

“You’ll see,” he called over his shoulder as he left. “I’m not someone to mess with.”

“Neither am I,” Ingrid said softly before she disappeared back behind the
EMPLOYEES ONLY
door.

I returned to my table and looked over at Ginger.

“That’s three people who are upset with Michael,” I said. “Who is he?” I asked.

“Mr. Chips?” Ginger asked. “Thinks of himself as an animal-rights activist. They say he sometimes liberates farm animals— cows and hens and horses. That’s what the activists call it when they sneak onto someone’s farm at night and let the livestock go free. Liberations. Only no one has caught him at it yet. I know some farmers, they say if they do catch him, they’re gonna shoot him.”

“So, who else?” I asked.

“What?”

“Who else doesn’t like Michael?”

“Well, there’s Ingrid.”

At the sound of her name, Ingrid reentered the dining area and hung a left for the bar. “What about Ingrid?” she asked.

“You don’t like Michael,” Ginger said.

Ingrid snorted a very ladylike snort—an Audrey Hepburn-like snort—and said, “I like Michael just fine.”

“You do not,” Ginger insisted.

“I’ve liked her from the moment Gretchen introduced us,” Ingrid argued. “What’s not to like? Very smart woman, very charming.”

“She’ll probably wreck your business when the casino opens.”

Ingrid smiled and shook her head at the theory.

“Not going to happen,” she said defiantly.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Several reasons,” she answered, turning her brilliant smile on me. “Want to hear them?”

“Sure.”

“First, for the Ojibwa to operate a casino out of the Kreel County Civic Center, the land the center is built on must first be put into the name of the U.S. government. Then, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the government must put the land in trust for the tribe, making it part of their reservation—and that’s just not going to happen. The issue has been too divisive. Deer Lake is pretty much fifty-fifty on it, and Saginau is the same; that’s what the protests are all about. What politician is going to take up the Ojibwa’s cause knowing he’s going to alienate half of his constituency?”

“That’s what they said about The Forks down the road, and the Ojibwa built that casino,” Ginger reminded Ingrid. But Ingrid ignored her.

“Also,” she continued, “King Koehn is against it, and he carries a lot of weight. You want to get elected in northwestern Wisconsin, you pretty much need his support.”

“Why is King against it?” I asked.

“If he still owned The Harbor, he wouldn’t be,” Ginger suggested.

“You’re probably right,” Ingrid agreed. “He’s not so much against the casino as he’s against Michael. Michael worked with King for a short time, watching over his investments. After a few months she offers to take The Harbor off his hands. He sells. News leaks out about how the Ojibwa
might
be considering a new casino—”

Ginger rolled her eyes at the word “might.”

“—and King claims he’s been cheated and throws Michael out,” Ingrid continued.

“
Was
he cheated?” I asked.

“Depends on your interpretation,” Ingrid reasoned. “King claims Michael was his employee and therefore obligated to inform him whenever she learned about a good business opportunity. Michael claims that she was
not
King’s employee, that she was operating her own business and merely providing a service to King, and was therefore free to seize any opportunity she wished. Me? I’m on Michael’s side.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ginger insisted. “The casino is a done deal.”

“I promise you it is not,” Ingrid told her.

Knowing her boss considerably longer than I, Ginger must have seen signals in Ingrid’s body language that I had missed because she smiled broadly and said, “You know something, don’t you? What?”

“Me?” Ingrid asked. “I’m just a saloonkeeper. What do I know?” Then, to change the subject, she beat a quick riff on the bar top and said, “So, Mr. Taylor. -What brings you back to Deer Lake? Come to see Gretchen?”

“No,” I replied. “Actually, I came to see Michael Bettich.”

“Hmm?”

“You know where I can find her?”

“She used to stay with Gretchen, but I think she moved out,” Ingrid said.

“A few months ago,” Ginger confirmed.

“Where to?”

Neither of them seemed to know. But Ginger had a suggestion.

“Have you tried The Harbor?”

seventeen

T
he Harbor was all blond wood and glass, surrounded by a gravel parking lot on one side and Lake Peterson on the other; wooden platforms where patrons could dock their boats extended into the water. At the far end of the parking lot were several slots for RVs, each with a bank of water faucets and electrical outlets protruding from the ground. A worn asphalt driveway led past the slots down to the lake, where a sign asked drivers not to block the boat landing with their vehicles. A half dozen pickups and 4X4s were bunched together in the lot.

“Is this it, Alison?” I heard myself ask as I parked my car. “Is this why you faked your death? So you could build a drive-by resort on a mud lake in rural Wisconsin? Is this your dream?”

A moment later I had to duck beneath a plank suspended between two ladders just inside the door. Three men stood on the makeshift scaffold, all of them examining a clump of multicolored wires hanging down from a false ceiling. Another pair was studying a floor duct on the other side of the room. A sixth man was crouched behind the bar, working on a sink, softly humming a country-western tune from the Hank Williams catalog as he fixed a heavy pipe wrench against a fitting.

“Excuse me,” I said.

He turned his head but did not stop working.

“Is Michael Bettich here?”

He shook his head.

“Expect her anytime soon?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“Know where I can find her?”

He shook his head again. “Not my turn to watch her,” he told me, trying to turn the fitting, meeting stubborn resistance.

“It’s important that I find her.”

“Not to me,” he replied, grunting loudly as the fitting slowly turned.

The other workers were equally helpful.

I returned to my car and sat with the door open while listening to the public radio station out of the University of Minnesota-Duluth—the only station I could dial up that played jazz. After two songs I shut the door and fired up the Colt, deciding against waiting for Michael’s return.

“It shouldn’t be this hard, it really shouldn’t,” I muttered.

It wasn’t.

Just as I was about to put my car into gear, a Chevy Blazer cruised into the lot sporting all the paraphernalia of a police vehicle;
KREEL COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT
and a six-pointed star were stenciled on both doors. It was driven by Deputy Gretchen Rovick. Alison Donnerbauer Emerton was her passenger. She had changed the color of her hair from brown to a deep auburn—women have always found it easier to change their appearance than men—but even through the windshield, her blue-green eyes were undisguisable.

I stepped out of my car as the vehicle stopped. Gretchen took a hard look at me. She clearly didn’t like what she saw.

“What?” Alison asked. I couldn’t hear her, but it was easy enough to read her lips through the glass.

“Taylor,” Gretchen answered.

Alison seemed genuinely surprised that I had found her.

I waited until they exited the vehicle.

“Good morning, Deputy,” I said to Gretchen. She didn’t reply. I turned to the other woman. Ginger had been right. She was much prettier in person. “Alison Donnerbauer Emerton, I presume. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

Alison smiled slightly. “I must have screwed up.”

I told her where. She tapped her forehead with the fingers of her right hand as if to punish herself for her carelessness. “I’d forgotten I told Marie about the name Rosalind Colletti,” she confessed.

“We all make mistakes.”

“And this one is going to cost me, isn’t it? How much?”

A bribe? I thought it was beneath her and told her so. “Besides, I’m already being well paid.”

“What then? What will make you go away?”

“Tell me why, that’s all. Tell me why you went to all the trouble.” I was desperate to hear her explanation, and it probably showed.

She smiled at me; it was a superior smile. “It’s a long story, and quite frankly I see no reason to share it with you.”

Gretchen chuckled. She was leaning on the front fender of her Blazer, watching us.

“I could make your life difficult,” I told Alison.

She smiled some more. A threat? She thought it was beneath me and told me so.

I was contemplating a reply—and getting nowhere—when a desperate squeal of tires captured my attention. A white Buick Regal was cutting across the parking lot at high speed, spitting chunks of gravel and an impressive dust cloud behind it. Two men I couldn’t identify sat in the front seat. Suddenly the car skidded to a stop thirty yards in front of us. The passenger was holding something at arm’s length and pointing it out of the window.

“
Down!
” I screamed and tried to pull Alison to the ground.

Alison pushed me away and stood up, watching me and not the car, asking angrily, “What are you doing?!”

Bullets were already flying. Gretchen took a slug in the leg. The force of the blow spun her against the side of the Blazer and knocked her down. I rolled away from the Buick, more or less toward the Blazer; and rolled over a Smith and Wesson .38—Gretchen’s gun. I grabbed it with both hands and continued rolling until I was on my feet in a Weaver stance, a shooting stance with good balance. The Buick was moving now, heading out of the parking lot. I squeezed off four rounds just as it hit the highway. The rear window shattered, littering the asphalt with tiny fragments of safety glass. The car fishtailed but didn’t stop.