by Ann Yost
The reactions to my precipitous return were varied. My mom harped on about the folly of ever leaving Red Jacket. My sister wanted to know what the scoundrel had done to me. Elli didn’t talk about my troubles. Neither did Pops, at least for the first few months. About February he suggested that I might like to run Carl’s Bait Shop and I agreed. He approved the addition of yarn and knitting supplies and spoke of selling me the business if that’s what I wanted.
I don’t know. And when I say that, I mean I don’t know whether I want to stay in Red Jacket and run Bait and Stitch. I don’t know what happened to destroy my marriage. And I don’t even know whether I am still married, although I imagine I am since I haven’t signed a divorce paper.
My sister wants me to be more proactive about dissolving the union and maybe I will.
But first, I have to find out why Liisa Pelonen was wearing my dream catcher pendant around her neck.
I could barely lift my feet as I slogged up the front porch steps. I hadn’t locked the door but I hadn’t left on the porch light, either, so I was pretty much operating on instinct. I’m not sure when I realized I wasn’t alone on the front porch. No one had spoken or made a move. I just sensed it. Or maybe I smelled it. There was a definite tang of something woody, fresh and masculine. And then I remembered.
Max.
The prospect did nothing to lift the heaviness I felt and, just for an instant, I regretted asking him to come over tonight. And then the masculine scent turned into a touch on the shoulder. It was a gentle touch. I felt it against my skin even through my quilted parka and sweatshirt and I knew it wasn’t Max.
“Jace.”
Thirteen
“In the flesh.”
His tone didn’t match the cockiness of his response and I knew he wasn’t sure of his reception. With good reason, I thought.
“What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you.” He produced a bottle. “And I’ve got wine.”
I hadn’t expected to see him again until after I’d made my mark in the world, you know, married Brad Pitt or won a Pulitzer Prize…something along that line. I didn’t know what to do and I couldn’t seem to think. He reached past me, opened the front door and flicked on the light in the foyer.
“Before you offer me coffee, I should probably confess to something.”
I looked at him. We were both soaked from the snow but while I knew I looked like a drowned rat, he looked beautiful, with his high, sharp cheekbones and the long, feathery dark lashes framing those silver eyes. There was something different, I thought, but I wasn’t sure what.
“Confess?”
“Yeah. I didn’t bring the wine with me. I got it from some guy who was loitering on your doorstep. He gave it to me when I informed him that you and I were married. Apparently, it was news.”
Max. I made a mental note to apologize to him in the morning.
“What is it you want to talk about,” I asked, “that couldn’t have been handled in a phone call?”
He glanced at my stringy hair and my soaked jacket.
“It can wait.” He turned me toward the stairs inside the door. “Your room up there? Go on. Dry your hair and change clothes before you catch cold. Hell, you might as well put on your p.j.s.”
The whole thing seemed like a dream. I had the feeling that if I did go upstairs and change into my pajamas, I’d fall asleep and when I awoke none of this would have happened. How dare he come back and act as if everything was fine between us? As if we were still married?
I returned a short time later, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt emblazoned with an outline of the Upper Peninsula and the words: Michigan’s Better Half. He’d made his way to the kitchen and had put on a pot of coffee. Two wine glasses, filled with a Chablis, were set out on my mom’s oilcloth-covered table.
“Got anything to eat?” he asked, turning to look at me.
“I know what it is,” I said. “You’ve cut your hair.”
He set two mugs on the table then looked at me.
“It’s more professional. You’ve cut yours, too.”
“Easier to take care of.”
My chest hurt as we lied to one another. At least I lied. I’d hacked off my hair out of rage and frustration and grief. Short hair is a mourning tradition in some Native American cultures and the idea had appealed to me.
I had no idea about Jace and he clearly did not intend to explain.
“What’s the story with the wine guy?”
I blinked at him. “Max? I invited him. He was here to do me a favor.”
“What kind of favor? Change the bulb on the front porch?”
“No. I wanted to pick his brain about something.”
Jace scowled and I noticed that, in addition to the short hair, his face was thinner and more heavily lined. He’d probably been working too hard. My heart twisted inside my chest and when Jace said something, I didn’t hear it. “What?”
“Food.”
“Oh.” I moved toward the shiny, new jade-colored breadbox that was supposed to look like an antique, removed a plate covered with plastic wrap and set it on the table. Jace stared at it.
“Joulutorttu?”
I was surprised he remembered.
“Yeah. Sorry. I wasn’t expecting company tonight.”
“What about mysterious Max?”
“Do you want them or not?
“I absolutely do,” he said, pouring the fresh coffee into the mugs, pulling out a chair for me then seating himself. I’d always wondered how he had learned such good manners during his dysfunctional childhood. “I love prune tarts. I baked the ones you left behind, you know. And then I ate every one of them.”
I stared at him. “I’m glad to hear they didn’t go to waste.”
He ate three tarts in quick succession and, for once, I didn’t interrupt the quiet. This was his idea, his party. I’d asked all my questions a year earlier and the only response had been a year of silence. I realized I had lost that frantic need-to-know somewhere along the line. My heart still sped up in his presence but somehow it was different. I had finally fallen out of love.
I wondered why I didn’t feel happier about that.
A contented sounding snuffle reached my ears and I realized Jace was rubbing the skin behind Larry’s ear. I wanted to shout at him not to be nice to my dog. I wanted to order him to leave my home—well, my parents’ home—and never come back.
“All right,” I said, not bothering to hide my irritation, “what is so important that you had to shlep to the UP?”
He held my gaze and said, “it’s about the girl who died.”
Something lurched in my chest and I could feel warmth in my cheeks. He was here about Liisa Pelonen. At almost the same moment, I remembered the dreamcatcher. Coincidence? I didn’t think so.
“Liisa Pelonen,” I said, trying not to reveal how much it hurt that this trip wasn’t about me.
“Yes. The St. Lucy girl. My grandfather called me last night and I got here as soon as I could.”
“Your grandfather? I don’t understand. What did Chief Joseph have to do with Liisa?”
But I knew. That is, I didn’t know what it was exactly but I knew there was a connection because of the dreamcatcher. Suddenly I realized what he had said about the timing.
“Your grandfather called you last night? She only died last night, sometime between seven and nine. How could he have known?”
“Reid told him.”
“Reid?”
His sensuous lips twisted into a half-smile. “Out of sight out of mind. Reid Night Wind. My half brother.”
Of course. I had forgotten. Or, maybe I’d just pushed everything to do with Jace to the far recesses of my mind.
“How did your brother know about the death?”
He hesitated. “This conversation is strictly off the record, okay, Umlaut?”
“I’m not a journalist.”
“No, but you’re the acting top cop and you’re heading up this investiga
tion, aren’t you?”
A part of me wondered how he knew that. It was supposed to be a secret between Arvo and Pauline and me. Another, bigger part, was busy being hurt. Jace really had come to the Keweenaw to protect his family—his real family, not his temporary wife.
I took refuge in toughness.
“Are you gonna tell me or not?”
He nodded. “I trust you not to hurt Reid. The trouble is, he was there.”
I nearly jumped out of my seat.
“When she died? He was there when she died?”
“Just afterwards. They had planned to meet in the sauna at the funeral home but when he got there, she was already dead. He didn’t kill her, Hatti.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because he told grandfather he didn’t and no one, in their right mind, would lie to grandfather.”
Fear for Jace slammed into my gut. Chief Joseph, who had to be a hundred and ten, and Reid Night Wind, were his only family. If Reid were to be convicted of murder, Jace would spent most of the rest of his life alone. I fought, for a minute, to remind myself that it was not my problem.
“What was the relationship between your brother and Liisa?”
“They were friendly. He was like a big brother. Something was bothering her and she confided in him. The plan, last night, was for them to run away together.”
“You mean elope?”
He looked uncomfortable.
“Not literally. She wanted to leave Red Jacket and he was going to help her get away. They’d met a few times in the sauna because nobody used it except Arvo Maki on Saturday nights. She’d told him everyone would be at the smorgasbord at the inn and the coast would be clear.”
I thought about that.
“If she was running away, wouldn’t she have had a suitcase?”
He nodded.
“There wasn’t one. Not in the sauna. Not in her room. No sign of a suitcase. No sign of clothes missing, either. It must have been stolen, by the person who killed her.”
“Not Reid. Grandfather said the girl was afraid of something or someone. That’s why Reid wanted to help her.”
“You said she was bothered.”
“Well, afraid sounds kinda melodramatic. Like something a teenage girl would say. But that was the term. Afraid. Frightened. Scared.”
“I don’t buy it. Arvo loved her like a daughter. She’d have told him.”
“Unless he was the threat.”
“She couldn’t have been afraid of Arvo.”
“Why not?”
“He would never hurt anyone and, like I said, he loved her like a father.”
He sneered at that. “Nine times out of ten violence against young women comes from the men in their lives and that includes fathers.”
We’d reached an impasse.
“All right, tell me this. If your brother is innocent, why didn’t he contact the police when he found Liisa’s body?”
“Are you nuts? He’s an Ojibwe kid who’s already got a rap sheet. The cops would have slapped him in jail and thrown away the key before I could catch a flight out of Reagan.”
“Not,” I said, with some pride, “if he had contacted me.”
“Come off it, Hatti. I know you’re standing in for your stepfather but you don’t have any real authority over this kind of crime. My guess is you’re investigating it undercover, the way you did the lighthouse business last summer.”
“How do you even know about the lighthouse murders? You haven’t been in my life for a year.”
“Never mind. The point here is that Reid couldn’t take a chance.”
I wondered what he meant. Had he kept tabs on me? But why, when he wanted nothing more than to send me packing with a flea in my ear.
“What are his priors?”
“He got busted five years ago for running a cat lab up in the Porkies.”
Methcathinone, or “cat,” was the poor man’s methamphetamine, and cat labs had proliferated in the UP during the past twenty years, partly because of the remote location and partly because the substance could be made using household items including lithium batteries, aquarium tubing, starter fluid, acetone and Gatorade bottles.
“He was cleared of that charge. He was also cleared in the other complaint,” he added, with a slight grimace.
“The other charge?”
He didn’t want to tell me. I could tell because he paused as if waiting for me to jump in to ease the awkwardness. He knew me so well. For once, though, I waited. I really needed to know. Finally, he spoke.
“It was a paternity suit.”
Hell’s bells! Reid Night Wind was the father of Liisa’s baby. I felt a wave of pure terror for Jace. There was going to be no way out of this. And he didn’t know. I’d have bet my Jeep Explorer on it. I wished, suddenly, fervently, that I could talk to Pops. He would know how to handle this. I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud until Jace’s dark brows met between his eyes.
“Pops? Are you referring to your paragon of a stepfather?”
“I don’t know that he’s a paragon but he’s a great father.” I was only half listening. “He’s wise and fair and he’s kind, Jace. He’s the kind of person you want with you in times of trouble.”
The sneer twisted his mouth again.
“I can see you really believe that.”
It was not the first time we’d argued about fathers. Jace had a lifelong, totally justified grudge against the man who had abandoned his mother and him. Miriam, never very stable, had drifted into prostitution and alcoholism and Jace had been responsible for himself, his mother and, eventually, his half brother.
“I need to talk to Reid.”
“Yeah. I know. That’s why I came to see you. I’ll take you to him.”
I swallowed this last cruel reminder that Jace had not come to discuss our marriage.
“No, thanks. Just give me the address. I’ve got Google maps.”
“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” he drawled, “but your cellphone’s not gonna work up in the Porkies.”
The Porcupine Mountains or Porkies is the name of a small mountain range located just south of us in Gogebic and Ontonagon Counties.
“Reid and I built a cabin up there when we first came to the Copper Eagle when I was eighteen and Reid was eight. It’s where he had his meth lab.”
Geez Louise.
I’ve always been a little ashamed of the fact that I grew up in a rural wilderness and yet I’m happier with a pond than a lake, a rosebush than a white pine and, quite frankly, a sidewalk instead of a dirt path. The lack of outdoorsman skills (and interest) is just one of the reasons I value Einar’s sure hand at the bait shop.
I tried to visualize myself hiking up a steep mountain path, knee-deep in snow. No picture materialized.
“He’ll have to come here.”
Jace’s spontaneous laugh was more of a bark than an expression of pleasure but I was still glad to hear it.
“That’s not going to happen, Hatti. Either you go with me or you don’t get to interview him.”
“I could just turn this information over to the sheriff,” I pointed out. He regarded me with a grave expression.
“You could but you won’t. I know you pretty well and I know that despite your justifiable anger at me, you would never revenge yourself on someone I loved.” I said nothing. I was remembering what it had been like to be loved by Jace Night Wind. “So. I’ll pick you up in the morning?”
“Fine,” I said, getting out of my chair. “Goodnight.”
“Hold on there, Umlaut. If I’m not mistaken, we’ve just forged a partnership.” He waited to hear an objection but I just looked at him. “Right,” he said. “Well, I’d be pleased if you would tell me what you know about this case so far. We’re on the same side, you know.”
“Even if Reid is guilty?”
“I’m a sworn officer of the court. I want to find the truth.”
I took a minute to consider. I’d believed that Jace was lik
e Pops, as ethical as they come and focused on helping others. He was devoting his career to finding justice for Indian tribes and individuals all over the country. On the other hand, he had not honored his commitment to me. But, perhaps, that was different. I’d long ago concluded that our flash-fire romance had been a flash-in-pan for Jace. He was young. Only thirty-one. Why should he tie himself to a woman he no longer wanted?
I understood. Kind of.
I just wish he’d told me how he felt; that he’d spelled it out.
I have to admit I’m not all that good at reading between the lines, especially if I’m not fond of the narrative.
“Okay,” I said and detailed Liisa’s schedule for Friday, December 12, everything from breakfast to the (alleged) impromptu trip to the Frostbite Mall in Houghton, to being late for the parade which prevented her from wearing long underwear.
“She got a chill and a sore throat and the Makis decided she should stay home in bed while they went to the smorgasbord. Pauline left the house around six fifteen but returned twenty minutes or so later to pick up some thimbleberry jam. She didn’t peek in on Liisa because the girl is a light sleeper and she didn’t want to wake her. When Pauline and Arvo got home a little before nine they looked in on her and found her bed empty. It took fifteen or twenty minutes to find her because the sauna was the last place they looked.”
His brows knit. It was an expression of deep concentration and brought back a flood of memories.
“She never called for help?”
“No.” And then I frowned, as I realized I didn’t know. If Liisa had called Arvo or Pauline, the likelihood was that the ring wouldn’t have been heard in the din of the smorgasbord. “They would have told me if she’d called.”
“Hatti.” He looked at me sternly. “The first rule of investigating is never trust a suspect.”
I wanted to protest that the Makis had been heartbroken about Liisa’s death, that they weren’t suspects or even witnesses and then I thought of something else.
