Vermilion Drift (29 page)

“Yes.”

“Straight down, or did she fall back?”

She thought a moment. “She kind of stumbled back, like she was surprised or something, and then fell down.”

“On her back?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“When you returned with Hattie, how was Lauren lying?”

Her brow furrowed, and she worked at remembering. “Facedown. I know because, when we lifted her up, there was blood all over the front of her dress and on the side of her face that had been on the floor.”

“What time was this?”

“After midnight, maybe twelve-thirty.”

“How long were you gone to Hattie’s?”

“Maybe an hour and a half.”

“So you shot Lauren at what time?”

“It was a couple of minutes before eleven when Derek left. I went
to the boathouse a few minutes later, and I wasn’t inside more than a minute when it all happened.”

“When you left to go to Hattie’s, did anybody see you?”

“I don’t think so. Except for my office, the lights in the center were off. All the volunteers who’d had cocktails with us had gone home. The house staff were off for the weekend.” She reached out for her cane. “I need to go now. I need to get Grandma Hattie out of jail.”

Cork reached out and put a gentle restraining hand on her arm. “I’d like you to wait on that, Ophelia.”

“Why?”

“Your grandmother can’t be arraigned until Monday, but I suspect that our county attorney might be reluctant to charge her with anything. There are too many discrepancies in her story. I understand why now. Before you say anything to anyone, I’d like to do a little more investigating. I think I’m close to some answers, and I need a little more time.”

“Answers? I gave you the answers.”

“This is more complicated than you imagine, Ophelia. And Hattie’s a tough old girl. She can take a day or two behind bars, especially because she’s doing it for someone she loves. All right?”

She didn’t seem entirely convinced, but she said, “Okay, Mr. O.C. If that’s what you want. But will you do me a favor?”

“Sure, what is it?”

“When I finally do go in to talk to the sheriff, will you go with me?”

“Kiddo, I’ll be right there holding your hand.”

W
hen Cork returned to the sheriff’s department, Ed Larson was back from the site of Indigo Broom’s burned cabin. He looked up as Cork walked into Marsha Dross’s office, and he shook his head.

“Nothing?” Cork said.

“My guys are still out there sifting dirt, but it’s not looking fruitful. Those manacles you mentioned to Rutledge? Not there. No bone fragments either. We didn’t find anything but scraps of metal and broken glass and broken crockery, all of it showing char. Oh, Azevedo got excited about finding a nineteen twenty-five Peace silver dollar, whatever the hell that is.”

“Did you see the rake marks?”

Larson nodded. “Somebody went over that area pretty carefully. After you got clobbered, how long were you out?”

“A couple of hours.”

“That might have been enough time to clean that small area. Bottom line is that, at the moment, we don’t have a thing to support any allegation against this Indigo Broom.”

“It appears that somebody’s protecting him. Which is odd,” Dross said to Cork, “if what you’ve told us about him is true.”

“I’m only repeating what I heard.”

“Heard where?” Dross said.

“I can’t divulge that at the moment.”

“If you did, we might be able to twist some arms legally.”

“They’d be Ojibwe arms and you’d get nothing. Ed, did you talk to Max Cavanaugh about his mother?”

“Yes. He claims he doesn’t remember much about his mother, but what he does remember is all good, warm, motherly stuff.”

“He said that?”

Larson pulled out a small notepad from his shirt pocket, flipped a couple of pages, read a moment, and said, “Yep.”

The sheriff and Larson both looked at Cork with blank faces.

“I can’t give you any more than I already have,” he told them.

Dross sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Because there’s no more to give or because you’re just not willing to give any more? Or am I being too pushy here?”

“I told you about the Ojibwe, Marsha. You can’t twist arms. What they give me, they give in their own time and in their own way.”

“Which is exactly how you give it to us,” she said.

Cork said, “Any chance I could get my hands on the M.E.’s final autopsy report for Lauren Cavanaugh?”

“What do you want to know?” Larson asked.

“Tom Conklin said he found two wounds. One of them appeared to be superficial, right?”

“That’s right,” Larson said. “A graze on her left side below her rib cage.”

“Fired at close range or from a distance?”

“No tattooing, no singeing, so probably from a distance. Why are you asking?”

“Just collecting pieces of the puzzle, Ed. You checked out Derek Huff’s alibi, that he was drinking with Sonny Gilroy, right?”

“Gilroy confirmed it.”

“How long did they drink together?”

“Until about midnight.”

“Then Huff went back to the center?”

“That’s what he said.”

“To bed?”

“I didn’t ask him that.” Larson studied him a moment. “You like Huff for the shooting?” Larson shook his head. “He was at the Black Bear with Gilroy when Cavanaugh was killed.”

“That’s true only if Cavanaugh was killed when Hattie said she was. But we all know there are holes in Hattie’s story.”

“Maybe, but she sure as hell hauled the body away and dumped it.
Look, Cork, I know how you feel about Hattie Stillday, but you’re wasting your time with Huff, I can guarantee it.”

At the moment, there was no reason for Cork to argue.

Dross said, “The pieces of this puzzle that you’re collecting, Cork, if you put them together, you’ll let us know, right?”

“I’ll do that, Marsha.”

“And not on Ojibwe time,” she added.

“One more thing,” Cork said. “Any chance you’d let me talk to Hattie again?”

Dross looked at Larson, who voiced no objection. “I’ll have her brought to the interview room,” the sheriff promised.

“Mind if I take her a cigarette?”

“Be my guest.”

Hattie Stillday listened impassively while she smoked the Marlboro that Cork had brought her. When he finished talking, she said, “You think you’ve been a pretty good father, Corkie?”

It was a question that caught him off guard, but he answered honestly, “I think I’ve done my best, Hattie.”

“You probably have.” She sat back, tired. “I was a shitty mother. My girls were less important to me than my photographs. I was tramping all over hell and gone, making a name for myself when I should’ve been home. Couldn’t keep a husband. Let my mother raise my girls. They were little hellions, of course. Into all kinds of trouble. When Abbie disappeared, I figured she’d just run off, which, in its way, was what I’d done. Janie, that was Ophelia’s mother, she couldn’t wait to get away. Ended up dying in a rat’s nest of a place in Los Angeles, heroin overdose. Which was how I ended up with Ophelia. You shoulda seen that little girl when I went out to L.A. to get her. Broke my heart. I swore I’d take care of her better than I did her mother. And I have, Corkie. Hell, life’s not been kind to that girl, but she never gives up.”

Hattie Stillday let out a trickle of smoke that climbed her cheek, where it met a little stream of tears.

“I lost two daughters because of my selfishness. I’ve always looked on my granddaughter as a way to make amends. I swear I’ve done my best by Ophelia. I’ll die, yes, I will, before I see that girl lost to me.” She gave him a look that was iron hard and at the same time full of soft pleading. “You can’t tell them. Promise me you won’t say a thing about Ophelia. Promise me, Corkie.”

“I’ll make a deal with you, Hattie. Tell me how you knew about the bodies in the Vermilion Drift and I promise I won’t say a thing about Ophelia.”

She drew back, drew herself up. “You got no idea what you’re asking.”

“That’s the deal I’m offering.”

She stared at him, the cigarette idle in her fingers, a snake of smoke coiling between her and Cork. “Would you really break my heart? I’m asking you—begging you. If someone has to pay for what happened to Lauren Cavanaugh, Corkie, let it be me.”

He could have played her longer, played her harder, but he didn’t have it in him. He said, “I don’t think Ophelia killed Lauren Cavanaugh, Hattie.”

She looked startled, then disbelieving. “Is this some kind of trap?”

“I think the bullet your granddaughter fired only grazed the woman. After Ophelia left for the rez, someone else came to the boathouse.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Did you say anything to the sheriff?”

“No. It would have required explaining about Ophelia.”

“When are you going to tell them?”

“Not until I have a few more answers.”

“Answers that will keep my granddaughter’s name out of all this?”

“It’s like how I raised my children, Hattie.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Cork left the sheriff’s department and drove back to the Northern Lights Center for the Arts.

It was just after noon, and the day was growing hot and humid. The gathering had thinned as people began to think about lunch. Each of the artists displaying work had been given a deli box, and they were all relaxing at the moment, eating sandwiches. Derek Huff sat apart from the others, alone on the grass that edged the shoreline of the lake.

Cork stood between Huff and the sun, in a way that made the young artist squint as he looked up. “Remember me, Derek?”

Huff smiled, a genuinely friendly gesture, and Cork could see why women would fall for the kid. He was good looking, with blond hair that tickled his shoulders, a deep tan, the build of a swimmer.

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Huff said.

“My name’s O’Connor. I’m working with the sheriff’s department on the Lauren Cavanaugh murder investigation.”

Recognition lit Huff’s eyes. “You’re the guy who found Lauren’s body in that mine tunnel.”

“I’d like to talk to you about your relationship with her.”

“I already talked with somebody from the sheriff’s office.”

“Captain Ed Larson,” Cork said. “I’d like to ask a few questions he didn’t.”

Huff shrugged easily. “Sure.”

Cork glanced around, saw an empty folding chair, grabbed it, and set it next to Huff. “Derek—you mind if I call you Derek?”

“Go ahead.”

“Derek, we know you had a sexual relationship with Lauren Cavanaugh. From what I understand, it wasn’t exactly a healthy kind of thing.”

Huff looked uncomfortable. “What do you understand?”

“She did a lot of threatening.”

“That’s true.”

“Pissed you off, I understand.”

“So?”

“Maybe enough for you to kill her?”

“Hey, I was drinking with an artist friend when Lauren was shot. Ask that other guy, Larson. He knows.”

“You left the bar around midnight. What did you do then?”

“Came back here, went to bed.”

“You didn’t stop by the boathouse?”

“Are you kidding? Lauren was in a mood. I didn’t want to have anything to do with her.”

“What happened in your relationship?”

Huff put his half-finished croissant sandwich back in his deli box and set the box on the grass. “Look, I know my way around women, okay? Lauren was like no woman I’d ever come across.”

“How so?”

“She was one thing at first, then she turned into something else. You know
The Wizard of Oz
? She started out all Good Witch of the North, but ended up Queen of the Flying Monkeys.”

“Tell me about it.”

Huff actually looked pained as he recalled. “At first, it was pretty normal, then things began to get too weird. She’d, like, want to tie me up, which I would have been okay with except I got really uncool vibes from her. Get this, man. A week ago she pulls out a gun, puts the barrel inside her, and tells me to pull the trigger.”

“By ‘inside her’ you mean… ?”

“I’m not talking about her mouth, dude. But, look, it wasn’t just the strange sex stuff. She was always making promises she had no intention of keeping. She was going to make my name huge in the art world. She was going to introduce me to important gallery owners. She didn’t do any of that. And when I got pissed because of it, she threatened me. And not only that, man, she was really cruel to Ophelia sometimes.”

“Did she behave bizarrely to anyone else?”

“Naw, with everybody else she was all sugar and spice.”

“Did you tell any of this to Captain Larson when he interviewed you?”

Huff shook his head. “I didn’t think he’d believe me.”

“I believe you. But I also think you might have killed her.”

“No way. I told you, I was drinking with Gilroy. Besides, Ophelia’s grandmother confessed.”

“I don’t think Hattie’s confession is going to stand up, and I don’t
think Lauren died when Hattie said she did. I think there was time for you to have come back and visited the boathouse and shot her.”

The kid looked scared now. “Jesus, I told you. I went straight to bed. Look, I can prove it. I keep a video diary. It’s up in my room. Every night when I go to bed, I record something. I’ll show you.”

Huff got up and led the way back to the big house and upstairs to his room, which was at the end of the south wing. He went to the desk, where a laptop sat open. He sat down at the desk and worked the touch pad.

“It’s got a built-in webcam,” he said.

In a moment he brought up a piece of video that carried a time-date stamp in the lower right-hand corner. The date was the Sunday that Lauren Cavanaugh died, and the time was 12:17
A.M.

Derek Huff stared out from the screen of the laptop. For a long time he said nothing, just sat looking hollow-eyed and drunk. When he finally spoke, it was three sentences full of despair.

“Tomorrow I tell Lauren to go to hell. I miss the ocean. And I hate the fucking smell of pine trees.”

A
lthough Derek Huff’s video diary proved absolutely nothing, the feel Cork got from the kid—that he didn’t kill Lauren Cavanaugh—was genuine. He was also thinking about the squealing tires Brian Kretsch had reported on North Point Road well before Huff returned to the center. He didn’t write the kid off completely, but when he left Huff’s room, he turned his thinking to other possibilities.