by Ann Yost
We were on the second verse when Arvo’s cell phone rang. The music stopped as he answered it. And we all froze as the color drained out of his face. When he’d finished, murmuring only, “Thank you,” he stood motionless in the room until his wife gently touched his arm.
“Who was it, dear?” Pauline asked, moving to his side. He took one of her hands in both of his and began to knead it, restlessly.
“Doc,” he said, finally. Harsh lines created parentheses around his mouth. “He’s done the autopsy, twice. He’s convinced Liisa died because her heart stopped.”
“We knew that already, dearest,” Pauline said, gently. “The blow to the head caused a shock to her system. We know she had a weak heart, that she was subject to arrhythmia.”
Arvo gazed at his wife.
“Of course. I’d forgotten.” He sighed. “Our poor, darling, angel.”
“She was a gift from heaven,” Aunt Ianthe said.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,” Miss Irene put in. “The Book of James.”
“So there is no doubt it was murder?” Max’s question brought us back to harsh reality. Everyone in the room stiffened as my thoughts flew to the two young men, Matti Murso and Reid.
“But not,” the Reverend Sorensen said, “necessarily intended murder. The assailant could not know about her heart condition.”
I glanced at his kindly face and wondered if he could find a way to exonerate the perp on the topic of slamming a rock into her skull. It must be wonderful to possess that capacity for forgiveness.
“O death,” Miss Irene said, on a roll, now, “where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
The deep, grave lines on Arvo’s face told me that, for once, he disagreed with First Corinthians. The sting was real, death’s victory, complete. I could see him looking bleakly into the empty future that he had pictured as father and grandfather. His heart was broken. Pauline moved away from him as if his grief were wearing her down.
I turned the information over in my mind in the next few minutes. It seemed to me it was important to find out more about Liisa’s heart condition and the only person left who could tell us was Jalmer Pelonen. It was while I was putting away my mom’s punch bowl that I remembered Einar’s message that Lars had called. Before I could call him back, though, the doorbell rang and I hurried out to the foyer to see Max opening the door. I watched his shoulders tense as Sonya Stillwater, snow twinkling on her lovely, long eyelashes and hair, stepped into the room followed by a darkly handsome man who was smiling at something she’d said, and helping her off with her parka. My husband.
“My goodness,” Mrs. Sorensen said, driving a dagger into my heart. “Don’t they make an enchanting couple?”
Twenty-Three
“Forgive me for being so late,” Sonya said, after a minute. “We were tied up with a new baby.”
“For unto us a child is born,” Miss Irene said, only this time she sang the words to Handel’s Messiah.
Sonya smiled at Miss Irene. “It was almost as much of a miracle as the one in the manger and Jace, here, was a knight in shining armor.” She flashed him a brilliant smile. I could feel the two halves of my heart withering inside me.
“Rusty armor,” he murmured, modestly. “It was all accidental.”
“Don’t be modest,” Sonya said, giving him a playful dig in the ribs with her elbow, as if they’d known one another for decades. “You were a grade A hero.”
She went on to tell the story of Cindy Gray Squirrel, a young, first-time mom on the rez, who, when labor started, had no way to get to the hospital in Hancock.
“Jace happened to be with me when I got the call. He offered to pick Cindy up at her home and drive both of us—through a snowstorm, mind you—down to Hancock. And then,” she said, with emphasis, “he stayed with us all through an emergency C-section. I mean, in the operating room.”
As Sonya talked, Elli made sure that the newcomers got out of their outdoor clothing, were settled in comfortable chairs in the parlor and served with fresh coffee. Food and drink mysteriously appeared in their hands as Sonya continued the story with the other guests who had crowded around them. All except me. I didn’t help or crowd. I just stood in a corner with my fists clenched at my side, wishing I had never met Jace Night Wind, but since I had, wishing he would disappear in a puff of smoke and give me back my life. Bits of the story drifted into my consciousness.
“Cindy trusted Jace because he is Chief Joseph’s grandson,” she said. As usual, her basic goodness glowed from within and seemed to be reflected on all the other faces. All, except mine. And one other. There was no enchantment in Max Guthrie’s expression. I was heartened to see no hero worship there.
“I think she would have known instinctively to trust him, anyway,” Sonya said. “And you’ll never guess. She named her new baby Jason Night Wind Gray Squirrel. Jace gave him an Ojibwe blessing.”
“Full disclosure,” Jace said, “Sonya fed me the lines. I’d never heard of it before.”
“You made a good team,” Arvo said, leaning over to clap my husband on the back. “And here on the Keweenaw, teamwork is everything.”
While the ladies asked questions about the baby and offered to help the family, and Sonya answered them from her position on the Victorian loveseat next to Jace, I fought the green-eyed monster. To tell the truth, I was shocked at the depth and breadth of my feelings. Sonya Stillwater, I reminded myself, was one of my best, most trusted friends. She and Jace had joined forces to take care of a young mother. It was something typical for her and, in his own way, typical for Jace. But, now, with my marriage all but over, I watched the easy companionship between the two and I felt such a surge of anger that it scared me.
It was the first time I really understood the elemental strength of jealousy; the first time I recognized the hateful emotion as a valid motive for murder.
The doorbell rang again and this time, Charlie answered it with a joyful shout.
“Daddy!”
My niece wrapped her beanpole body around Lars’s lean frame. She looked like a tightly wound tetherball, and my eyes flew to Sofi’s face. It had turned to stone.
“Hello, Snork Maiden,” he said, using a nickname based on her favorite character in The Moomins. “Been up to mischief?”
“His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate,” Miss Irene said. “Psalms, of course.”
“Very apt, dear,” Aunt Ianthe said, after a respectful pause. “Lars, dearie, it is so nice to see you.”
“Look at the tree,” Charlie chattered. “Isn’t it awesome? Max and me decorated it.”
“I,” Lars corrected. “Max and I decorated it.”
“And Larry,” Charlie told him, with an impish grin. He grinned back at her and set her on her feet. “Come into the kitchen with me,” she said, pulling on his hand. “You look like you’re starving.”
Lars cast a quick glance at Sofi, but she was deliberately ignoring him and had turned to say something to Sonya, so his eyes moved to me and I thought I read a summons there. I followed father and daughter out to the kitchen figuring he must have found Jalmer Pelonen.
Lars accepted a cup of coffee then told his daughter he wasn’t hungry and that he needed to talk to me alone.
“I’m not a little kid,” she told him. “I’m helping Hatti with the investigation, you know.”
“Investigation?” Lars looked at me.
“Charlie went to school with Liisa Pelonen and she’s been helping me build a profile on her. And you might be interested in this. Doc Laitimaki just called Arvo to tell him she most likely died of syncope which is when the heart slows down so much that the brain doesn’t get enough blood. Apparently Liisa had a heart condition.”
Lars frowned. “Was the heart condition listed in her medical records?”
“I don’t know. I think it was just generally known and it makes sense if you consider that the blow to the head c
aused enough shock to trigger the arrhythmia. At least we’ll have some cause of death to tell her father when he gets home.”
“He won’t be getting home,” Lars said, with a quick glance at his daughter. “I finally tracked him down to the Ontonagon County morgue. They’ve had the body for a week but there was no I.D.”
“Jalmer’s dead?” I could barely wrap my head around it. “Did he fall through the ice?” Ice fishing wasn’t considered dangerous except if a fisherman decided to try his luck in deep waters. With the sub-zero temperatures of our lakes, a person could die of hypothermia before he drowned.
“Car accident. His truck went off the cliff road and incinerated. He was on his way to Lake Gogebic and I found it odd that he carried no I.D. Not even a driver’s license.”
“Maybe his wallet burned in the fire.”
He shook his head. “The wreck is still down in the ravine. I hiked down to check it out and found a couple of interesting things, including his wallet, which had fallen clear and a blown-off fender with a piece of wood wired to it. I think it was the remains of a homemade sticky bomb.”
“You think he was murdered,” I squeaked.
“What’s a sticky bomb?” Charlie asked. I wondered whether she was just curious or whether she’d seized on that question to avoid having to come to grips with the awful loss of sudden death. In any case, Lars had no chance to answer as the door from the butler’s pantry opened and Pauline, Arvo and Jace entered the room.
“I’m afraid we have to leave,” Pauline said to me. “Thank you for having us tonight, Hatti.”
“Wait,” her husband said, looking from me to Lars and back again. “You look like pulla dough, Hatti-girl. Something’s happened, hasn’t it, eh?”
There seemed to be no legitimate reason not to tell him. I nodded at Lars who repeated what he’d discovered.
“A bomb?” Arvo repeated the word in a bewildered tone. “A bomb was planted on Jalmer’s truck?”
“Looks like it,” Lars said.
Arvo looked at his wife whose face was whiter than squeaky cheese.
“This changes everything,” Pauline said. “This means that it was about money.
I stared at Arvo.
“You knew about her trust fund?”
“Of course we knew. We were her legal guardians for the past year. We never met Jalmer Pelonen but he sent us a packet of material that included her financial information and her vaccination records. We knew all about her background, including the heart condition,” Pauline said. “In fact, we were given temporary power of attorney. What is a sticky bomb?”
Arvo’s eyelids flickered but he kept his gaze on Lars.
“Tell me what you know,” he said and Lars went through the story again while Arvo pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. When my brother-in-law finished, Arvo said, “Pauline is right. These terrible deaths must be because of the trust fund. It was quite a lot of money, wasn’t it, Pauly?”
“Two million,” Pauline said, slipping her hand through his arm. “Sometimes wealth can be a curse.”
There was nothing but sympathy for the Pelonens in her voice but I couldn’t help thinking about the fact that the money she and Arvo used so generously in Red Jacket had come from her family.
“A sticky bomb,” Jace explained, “is a homemade explosive used most often by terrorists targeting a single vehicle. You can get the ingredients—bits of glass and metal, compound, and accelerant—at any hardware store, and instructions are available on the Internet. The bombs are usually detonated with a cell phone.”
“A robot bomb,” Charlie said.
“Geez Louise,” I whispered, appalled that someone I knew would assemble and detonate a bomb meant to kill an innocent person like Jalmer Pelonen and equally horrified that the finger of guilt was now aimed directly and solely at Reid Night Wind. The death of Jalmer Pelonen appeared to lock down the case for Sheriff Clump. There was no other relative to inherit Liisa Pelonen’s trust fund. My heart ached, again, and this time it was for Jace.
Sonya Stillwater opened the door from the butler’s pantry, her face composed but grave.
“I hate to interrupt,” she said, “but I just got an emergency call from the rez and I don’t have a car here.”
“I’ll drive you,” Jace said, promptly. He followed her out the door and back through the house without a glance at me. Soon everyone was leaving, which was just as well. The grapevine would pick up the information about Jalmer soon enough. I, for one, had no energy to handle any questions about it tonight.
Lars was the last to leave and I walked him to the door. He asked all the salient questions about Liisa and I told him what I knew.
“I’m sorry, Squirt. This now appears to be a double-homicide, most likely for mercenary reasons, and that means a criminal who will stop at nothing. It’s time for you to hand this thing over to the sheriff’s office.”
“He’ll bury Reid Night Wind,” I said, without thinking.
“He’ll probably try,” Lars agreed. Lars, himself, was no fan of our sheriff. “Certainly he will if Reid did the two murders.”
“He didn’t, Lars. I spoke with him last night. He’s full of piss and bravado, like anyone would be at twenty-one, but he said he didn’t do it and I believed him.”
Lars had never been one to rush to judgment, except, maybe, in his marriage.
“The guy should get the benefit of the doubt,” he agreed, “but that doesn’t mean you need to stay involved. It’s too dangerous and you can’t help him, anyway.”
But I had to help him. I had to help Jace, too. It would be my last official act of my marriage but I vowed to make sure Reid Night Wind was not unfairly convicted.
“I can see by the tilt of your chin that you’re going to ignore me. That’s my Squirt. Loyal to a fault.” He gave me a quick hug and sighed. “I’ll be back later tonight. Get me a blanket and a pillow, will you? I’ll bunk out on the sofa.”
“There’s no need.”
“There’s every need. It’s snowing like the Dickens out there and I don’t want to drive back to the lake.”
It wasn’t until I was tucked under my quilt, with Larry warming my feet, that I thought about how calculated these crimes seemed to be. Jalmer had been killed well before Liisa, so that he could not possibly inherit the trust fund. It also meant there was no chance that Liisa’s marriage to Reid could be annulled. The two deaths, and their sequence, pretty much ensured that Reid Night Wind would be the prime suspect.
My mind trailed back a little further. Did all this mean that Pops’ hit-and-run “accident” had been deliberate? Had someone known that Carl Lehtinen would be scrupulously fair in an investigation? Had that same someone suspected that I, Hatti, would have been named temporary police chief and that, what with my estrangement from Jace, I would be less likely to try to protect his brother? But if all that were true, it meant someone very close to me had wanted two people dead and was willing to risk Pops’ death, too. It didn’t seem possible. Not for a two-million-dollar trust fund. And, anyway, the only known beneficiary was Reid.
There was no comfort in that thought. Reid, if he was not guilty, had been set up and if convicted of two murders, he would be unable to inherit anything. So who did that leave?
Just before I fell asleep, a memory drifted through my mind. It was Pauline Maki’s voice saying that she and Arvo had all of Liisa’s documents and been granted temporary power of attorney. Arvo Maki. All roads seemed to lead back to him. He lived in the house with Liisa, knew her schedule and, just as importantly, knew Jalmer’s schedule. He could have called Pops out on the snowy November night knowing the chief would take a snowmobile to a rescue and deliberately running him down with a car. But that was ridiculous. I’d known Arvo all my life. He was kind and jolly and full of grandiose ambitions for the people of Red Jacket. For us.
And then I recalled a distant memory. Mom, telling me she felt sorry for Pauline and not just because the marriage was child
less. “Arvo is a good and faithful husband, tytar (daughter) but when all is said and done, he married her for her money.”
Marrying for money, I told myself, sleepily, is not the same as killing for it. But I couldn’t seem to get warm enough under the comforter. Not even with Larry’s help.
Twenty-Four
I never did hear Lars return to the house, nor did I hear him leave, but he left his cosmic footprint in the form of the perfectly folded Hudson Bay army blanket on the sofa and the note in Larry’s dish that read: I-8.
I munched on a chunk of Trenary toast and stared out the kitchen window at the snowflakes dancing and twirling in the pale morning light. I hadn’t forgotten my thoughts of the previous night but I tried not to focus on them or anything else but to let the flotsam and jetsam of information drift and swirl in my head in the hope that they would lead me to the bigger picture.
On the surface, it seemed as if these crimes had been committed for money. But, somehow, it felt like more. It felt personal. There was deep emotion involved in all this. Deep, strong emotion. And, the deepest, strongest emotion was that of family. For some reason, I just kept thinking about parenthood and about how the greatest gift of all was so often a mixed blessing.
My parents wanted the best for me but my mother had fought a persistent, lifelong battle to try to keep me from moving away from the Keweenaw.
Jace’s father had abandoned his mother, virtually causing her early death and Jace’s hell-on-earth of a childhood.
Pauline and Arvo Maki had suffered the heartbreak of infertility for a quarter of a century and when, at long last, they became surrogate parents, the event ended in murder.
“You wonder why anybody decides to enter the sweepstakes at all,” I said to Larry. “We should all just have puppies.”
He wagged the white flag on the end of his tail once then nudged his bowl.
“Forget it,” I told him. “I happen to know you’ve already eaten. See that note?”
