by Ann Yost
“Another Britney Spears?”
“More classical, I think. My great Aunt Ianthe said she sang like an angel.”
“The fishing trip seems like kind of a fishy alibi.”
“I know. But Jalmer was her father. He’d never have killed her.”
“Hatti,” he said, in a world-weary tone, “grow up.”
“But why would he kill her? He’d lived with her for years. Why now?”
“Maybe she defied him. Maybe he didn’t want her to leave. Maybe he was afraid people would criticize him for letting his daughter move out when she was only seventeen.”
I shrugged. “It’s not like Jalmer Pelonen cares what people think about him.” I shook my head. “He just doesn’t have a motive.”
“Who does, then? Reid?”
“They could have had a lover’s quarrel.”
“He told grandfather the relationship wasn’t like that.” But there was a lack of conviction in his voice and I heard it.
I gave him a moment to collect himself and then I gave him my gut-level opinion.
“I just don’t think any normal father would kill his daughter. Not for any reason.”
“Define normal. If I remember correctly, your father took off when you were just a baby.”
“That’s true. But he didn’t kill me. And, anyway, I was lucky. I got Pops.”
Jace’s expressive lower lip curled.
“The perfect stepfather. You’ve made that point many times.”
“Then I communicated badly. He has been the perfect father to Sofi and me. I just wish someone like Pops had come along for you and Reid.”
He dismissed my sentimental comment with a shake of his head.
“You have to consider Maki. He lived in the same house with Liisa. He may have been the baby’s father.”
“No. There’s no way. He and Pauline loved her. She was the daughter they’d been waiting for. Arvo would never have abused that trust.”
“If you’re gonna go on your gut you might as well give up now. You want me to keep my mind open about Reid. Shouldn’t you do the same?”
He had a point and, after a moment, I agreed.
The pickup ate up the miles despite the worsening conditions of the roads. Soon I saw the Quincy Mine’s shaft rise up out of the ground, and I knew we were just north of Hancock. The city is built on a rise, and we zigged and zagged as M-26 led us past weatherworn houses built into the hills, then onto Quincy Street past Finlandia University, Humalalampi’s Flowers, Rissanen’s Jewelers, and Ryti’s Market. The ethnic influence is so pervasive in Hancock that each street sign carries both an English and a Finnish name, and every winter the city hosts Heikinpaiva, a festival to celebrate the feast day of Finland’s patron saint, St. Heinrik, for whom I am named.
“You know,” I said, “I really feel that someone should find Jalmer Pelonen. Imagine how horrible it will be to come home and find out your daughter has been dead for days?”
Just then we passed a billboard advertising an investigating agency and I had a stroke of genius. I fumbled in my pack for my cellphone and punched in a number.
Lars Teljo, my ex-brother-in-law, answered on the second ring.
“Oh, great, you’re there!”
“Hello to you, too, Squirt. What can I do you for?”
“I need a favor.”
“You got it.”
That easy acquiescence was one of the many qualities I’d always loved about him. There was no muss, no fuss, no equivocating. Just straight answers, support, and good judgment. Except for that one time, three years earlier when he’d spent the night with a barmaid at the Black Fly. I told him about Liisa Pelonen and about her father purportedly ice fishing on Lake Gogebic.
“I think someone should try to find him. Can you do it?”
“No problem. You want me to tell him about the girl?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“I’ll use my judgment.”
“And let me know when you find him, okay, Lars?”
“You got it,” he repeated.
I hung up and Jace glanced at me.
“Squirt?”
“Lars is my sister’s ex,” I said, marveling at how little we knew about each other’s families. “They married in high school and lived with us for years. He was Clump’s deputy sheriff for a while but they didn’t get along. Now he’s a private investigator.”
“Why the divorce?”
I hesitated. “It sounds worse than it really was.”
“He cheated on her.”
I made a face. “How’d you know?”
“There are only so many reasons.”
I studied his profile and wondered, for the millionth time, which reason had driven Jace to leave me. I tried to explain about Lars and Sofi.
“Things were hard. They’d been married a long time and parents nearly as long. Neither had a chance to go to college. It was all right for Sofi. She stayed home with the baby. But Lars wanted something better for him and the family. He wanted to go the police academy downstate but Sofi wouldn’t let him go. He was working for Clump, and, pretty much at a low ebb and drinking too much when he got involved with the insect.”
“The insect?”
“Cricket. The barmaid at the Black Fly. He said it was just a one-night stand and he promised it would never happen again. She divorced him, anyway.”
“Do you blame her?”
“I do and I don’t. He’s a good guy and a great dad. His kid, Charlie, misses him a heckuva lot. And he loves Sofi. He always has. I think she should give him another chance. The whole family wants to see a reconciliation.”
“Ah,” he said, “but he didn’t cheat on the whole family.”
We stayed on M-26 as we crossed the Portage Lake Bridge that spans the Keweenaw Waterway and connects Copper County with the more prosperous lower half of the peninsula. Houghton, Hancock’s sister city, is the home of Michigan Technological University, and usually there are students thronging the streets. Not today, though. It was Christmas break.
The pickup’s windshield wipers fought to clear the snow that fell more and more heavily as we headed south through the countryside. Our world felt insular and, thanks to the pickup’s heater, toasty warm. I must have started to doze, because his next words seemed like something out of a dream.
“Did you know that the Ojibwe have a creation legend like your Kalevala?”
Fifteen
I stared at him, shocked that he’d mentioned the Kalevala. I didn’t know he’d ever heard of it.
“It’s the story of Waynaboozhoo, the original man, who was both a human and a spirit.”
“Kind of like Jesus.”
“Hmmm.” Jace kept his eyes on the slippery pavement. Visibility was decreasing fast, but he drove with confidence, the same way he did everything else.
“The Creator, Gitchee Manitou, told Waynaboozoo to go all over the earth and name everything he saw, plants and animals and bodies of water, the seasons, the sun, moon, and stars.”
“Big job.”
He glanced at me but continued the story. “In his travels, Waynaboozoo met his mother, the earth, his grandmother, the moon, his father, the sun and his uncle, the wind.”
I didn’t interrupt him again. I was busy trying to figure out why he was telling me this.
“One day Waynaboozoo learned that he had a twin brother. He set out to find him, but didn’t know where to look. A spirit guide, Bugwayjinini, appeared to help him out.”
Jace’s voice shifted from a narrative singsong to a slow, rhythmic monologue. I could imagine him sitting cross-legged in front of a campfire, holding the other members of the tribe spellbound with his story.
"Your shadow brother is your other side, Bugwayjinini told Waynaboozhoo. There are differences between you. You will walk the path of peace, while he would not. You are kind, while he is not. You are humble and generous. He is not. You seek the good in others, but he does not. You are the light, Waynaboozhoo. He is the da
rkness. Know that your brother is with you. Understand him but do not seek him."
I felt tears prick the backs of my eyes as Jace told the story and, in doing so, became once again the man I’d fallen in love with. I thought I understood the message. He wanted me to know that he, like Waynaboozhoo and every other person who has walked the earth, had a dark side. Was this his way of accepting the responsibility for what had happened between us? Would he finally explain? I wouldn’t ask again but I couldn’t help hoping that he would tell me why he ended our marriage. Perhaps it would bring me closure.
We continued the trip in silence, eventually turning onto an unmarked road that, almost immediately, slanted upward at a nearly forty-five-degree angle. I recognized the area, as the route to Silver City and Lake of the Clouds, a pristine body of water located between two ridges of the Porcupine Mountain Range. The lake’s name comes from the placid surface that mirrors the sky.
Another hour brought us to the end of an old logging road, where we found an ancient, rusty pickup truck covered in several inches of snow.
“Reid’s?”
Jace nodded. We parked and slung our arms into our backpacks. Jace carried the larger one, and loaded on top were not one, but two, sleeping bags. I frowned.
“I can carry my own.”
His smile was slow and teasing, and it did unfortunate things to my insides.
“I’d rather carry two sleeping bags now than have to carry you, too, when you finally collapse.”
“I’m not going to collapse,” I snapped.
“Don’t be so prickly. You’re not exactly a Campfire Girl. Remember how I had to bribe you with the promise of a hand-churned ice cream cone before you’d take a walk on the Potomac River’s C and O canal path.”
I remembered that day. It was fall and the trees along the canal were changing colors. I’d pretended to resist the proposed walk but the truth was, I’d have gone anywhere with him.
“Hey,” he said, ripping through my reverie. “What the hell have you got on your feet?”
I glanced down.
“They’re Zamberlan Three-tens, the Jimmy Choo’s of hiking boots,” I said. “I got them from Max at a great discount.”
“Max? That presumptuous cowboy?”
“He stocks outdoor gear for his clients. When he found out Zamberlan was planning a big promotion with cut-rate prices, he got boots for Sofi and me and Elli. Good thing, too, eh? I mean, who knew I’d have to climb a mountain?”
He scowled but said nothing more about the footwear.
“Let’s go. Stay behind me on the narrow parts. There are holes and rocks under the snow and I know where they are.”
“You must have spent a lot of time up here.”
He didn’t answer. He just strode off and left me to trot along in his wake.
It was a long, hard slog. Not only did we have bits of hail the size of baby peas pinging against our faces, but the path was narrow and mostly uphill. Some of the trail was bare, but more often we ran into drifts, and negotiating them was like trying to wade through oatmeal. Fallen branches hidden under the snow presented additional hazards, as did patches of camouflaged ice.
After two hours we reached a treeless plateau where we paused out of deference to my heavy breathing and beet-red face. Jace, of course, looked as fresh as a mountain goat. He extracted two bottles of water from his pack, and, even though I had my own, it was easier to just accept the one he handed me. I chugged, my hand shaking with fatigue.
“Not so fast,” he murmured. “You’ll get cramps.”
I slowed down. After all, he was the one with woods experience. I, however, was the one who called the Keweenaw home so, as I looked around the clearing, I began to talk about the history of the land.
“This is a tailing field.” It was a guess but an educated one. I’d spent some time last winter in Pops’ study reading books about the local terrain.
“What’s that?”
“It refers to a field that was used for dumping poor rock which is the bits of rock left over after the copper was extracted. The rocks on this plateau have been in place for seventy plus years which is why you know where they are.”
“Speaking of that,” he said, finishing his water and grabbing both our bottles to return them to the pack, “if you don’t want to break an ankle, you’d better take my hand.”
I didn’t want to break an ankle nor did I want to hold his hand. Well, maybe I did want to hold his hand but I knew it was dangerous. I could feel his heat through his glove and my mitten. He guided me through the clearing and back onto the path and when he dropped my hand to step in front of me, I felt a deep sense of loss.
By the next break, two hours later, I was no longer thinking about my companion at all. I just wanted to lie down in the snow and drown in my bottle of water. I leaned against a tree and closed my eyes.
“No sleeping, now, Umlaut. Tell me how you got saddled with the job of top cop.”
“What? Oh, you know how it is up here. Everybody has to wear more than one hat. ” I kept my eyes closed. “Pops got injured in a snowmobile hit-and-run accident in November and Arvo asked me to take the job. I figured it was a favor for Arvo but mostly for Pops and there’s hardly ever any crime up here.”
“Famous last words.”
“Yeah.”
“Take heart,” he said, again taking my empty water bottle off my hands. “We’re almost there. The cabin’s just up around that rise. No more than two hundred yards. I have to warn you, though. It’s pretty primitive.”
I gasped. “Is there indoor plumbing?”
He grinned and nodded.
“Then it’s Xanadu.”
A few minutes later I spotted the small, square structure built against a hillside and buffered with pines. It looked as solid and dependable as a good marriage. Then the peace was shattered when a harsh expletive split the air.
“What’s wrong,” I asked.
He cursed again.
“No smoke from the chimney. Reid’s not here.” His eyes were grim as they met mine.
“We’ll be spending the night here alone.”
“But we came all this way just to see your brother.”
Humor flashed, briefly, in those silver eyes.
“You know that and I know that. He didn’t get the memo.”
“Maybe he’s just out for a little fresh air,” I said, trying to look on the bright side.
Jace did not bother to point out that the short day was racing toward nightfall, that the temperatures had already dropped well below freezing and that the snowfall was thickening as if someone had mixed it with starch.
He just smiled.
“Thanks, Umlaut.”
“For what?”
“For not accusing me of planning this. Some people would think I lured you up here to keep you from investigating the murder or my own nefarious reasons.”
The fact was that neither of those possibilities had occurred to me. I had thought that I understood Jace Night Wind’s character almost from the moment I met him and, despite the fact that he’d left me without a word of explanation, I still believed he was as honorable as Pops.
“Maybe he’s left us a note,” he added.
“Or, even better, a written confession.”
Jace grinned at that but shook his head, opened the unlocked door and preceded me into the single, small, dark room. I must have made a sound of distress because he handed me a flashlight, took my arm and led me across the room to another door.
“Xanadu,” he said, with a gesture. “After you.”
Sixteen
Jace set about building a fire and, within a few minutes, the small room was warm and there was enough light to see the rolled-up sleeping bag in one corner, which I assumed was Reid’s, and the kitchenette in the other.
A shallow shelf held cans of fruit and soup, a plastic container of granola and a package of beef jerky. A battery-operated hotplate sat next to a sink and there was a college dorm-sized refrigera
tor on the floor. I opened the door of the latter and found it loaded with Escanaba Black Beer. I hadn’t heard Jace cross the room but the door squeaked when it opened. I wondered suddenly, wildly, if he intended to abandon me in the cabin.
“Where are you going?”
He held up a bucket. “Getting snow to make coffee.”
“But there’s a sink.”
“A sink, yes. But no running water.”
Twenty minutes later, when we’d spread out the food on a blanket and held mugs of instant coffee made with the snow Jace had boiled on a hob in the fireplace, he asked me why I’d been suspicious.
I shrugged. “Paranoia, I guess. I mean, you could save money on our inevitable divorce.”
He didn’t laugh.
“Do you want to talk about that now?”
Suddenly, I didn’t. It felt good to be warm, inside and out, and to be comfortable. The makeshift picnic of ham-and-cheese pasties and clementines hit the spot and, to be honest, it felt good to be with Jace.
“No. Let’s have a truce, the way the soldiers on the Western Front did on Christmas Day during World War I. No personal talk tonight.”
His dark brows knit over the silver eyes but he didn’t answer. He just handed me a piece of chocolate walnut.
“That’s my favorite,” I said, “how did you know?”
“It’s everybody’s favorite. It wasn’t easy to find in the midst of all that eggnog and peppermint stuff your sister sells at this time of year.”
“You met my sister?” He nodded.
“Did you tell her who you were?”
He lifted an eyebrow, a talent that never failed to distract me. I have never understood how a person can move their eyebrows or their toes one at a time. Or how they can roll their tongue.
“Have another piece,” he said, instead of answering. “Mountain climbing builds one hell of an appetite.” He chuckled. “By the way, you surpassed expectations.”
“You mean in my goat-like ability to hike uphill?”
“Well, if you recall the time we decided to hike the Appalachian Trail, we only made it about two hundred yards.”
