The Gray Drake

by Charles Cutter

  “Mr. McDonough—”

  “And while I’m giving you some history, T. U. was started just downstream from the lodge.”

  “T.U.?”

  “Trout Unlimited. So here’s my point. You get up on the South Branch during the Hex hatch, and anybody who can throw a fly the size of a paper plate can catch a brown. But down here you got to match the hatch.”

  “Mr. McDonough—”

  “Let me finish. So Quinn goes up there that night, and Lizzie does, too. And she’s had enough.” McDonough started to stand but cracked his head on the boat frame. “Damn it,” he said. “And who could blame her?”

  “Mr. McDonough.”

  “You might as well call me Billy.” McDonough rubbed the back of his head.

  “I don’t see how any of this proves Lizzie killed her husband.”

  “That’s not my point,” McDonough said. “My point is he was the best fisherman I ever met, but he was still strung out on catching those big browns, not the art of it.”

  Burr still had no idea where this was going.

  “Don’t you see? If Quinn don’t get greedy about those browns, he don’t go up there that night. If he don’t go up there, Lizzie don’t kill him.”

  McDonough had Burr thoroughly flummoxed.

  “This is about the river,” McDonough said. “It’s not about the bugs. It’s not about the fish. It’s about the river. It’s always been about the river.”

  “I see,” Burr said, who didn’t see. He chewed on his lip. “Do you know who might have sold Quinn drugs?”

  * * *

  Burr and Zeke had gotten back to East Lansing after dark and gone straight to bed. Burr had no better idea who might have killed Quinn than he did before he’d left. And he had no idea at all who might have sold Quinn drugs.

  Scooter found Burr early the next morning and handed him a shoebox. Burr went downstairs and took the padlock off the door. On their way back upstairs, Burr stopped to catch his breath on the landing on the fourth floor, the shoebox cradled in the crook of his left arm.

  Two floors later he walked into his office. Eve and Jacob were already there. He sat down at his desk and set down the shoebox. He gave them his biggest, friendliest smile, which was not returned.

  Zeke strolled over to Jacob and licked his unsuspecting hand. Jacob jumped up. “Get that cur away from me.”

  “Cur,” Burr said. “I love that word.”

  “Why are we here?” Eve ran her hands across the knees of her jeans.

  “It is a workday.” Burr gave her jeans a disapproving look.

  “It’s not a workday if I don’t get paid,” Eve said.

  “That’s about to change.” Burr threw off the top of the shoebox.

  Eve leaned back in her chair.

  Jacob peered into the shoebox. “My God, it’s full of money.” He started to reach in, but Burr slapped his hand.

  “In due time,” Burr said.

  This was too much for Eve, who popped out of her chair and bent so far over the shoebox her earrings brushed the cardboard. “What did you do this time?”

  Burr reached into the shoebox and pulled out a fistful of cash. He started counting and made three piles. “Today is payday.”

  “‘What about the withholding?” Jacob said.

  “Be quiet, Jacob,” Eve said. “Where did you get this money?”

  Burr started counting. The stacks got higher and higher. Finally, he stopped. He slid one stack to Jacob and one to Eve. Jacob reached for his stack, which tipped over into a go-fish-looking pile of playing cards.

  “Eve, I believe you are now current.”

  “We’re still overdrawn.”

  Burr put the lid back on the shoebox. “There is more money in here.” He slid her the shoebox.

  “Where did you get all this money?” Jacob said.

  “From Scooter.”

  “The padlock,” Jacob said.

  “Exactly.”

  “There’s still not enough to pay the mortgage,” Eve said.

  “We have not yet received a certified letter.”

  Burr and his four-legged friend left the way they had come, a certain jauntiness to their step.

  * * *

  Burr stopped at the bank and deposited the rest of the cash. The check he had written to Carlson would clear after all. He didn’t know what to think about Billy McDonough. If what the guide had told him was true, maybe Lizzie had finally had enough. But if that was true, she was a convincing liar. Maybe she was or maybe Quinn’s drug supplier had murdered him or maybe it was one of the sports he was selling to. Either way, he had to keep going.

  He and Zeke drove north to Traverse City and the Park Place Hotel. It was art deco, built in 1937, and at ten stories, the tallest building in northern Michigan. It was also the priciest hotel in northern Michigan, way beyond Burr’s means, but he had a little room on the Lafayette and Wertheim credit card.

  After bribing the desk clerk with a twenty, Burr and his faithful companion took the stairs to the eighth floor. He called room service and ordered dinner for himself and Zeke. He had the chicken piccata. Zeke had the house dog food, two hamburgers.

  The next morning, Burr and Zeke started up Michigan’s little finger on M-22. About two miles up the road, he pulled into the parking lot of Reef Oil and Gas. It was three stories of glass and steel hanging over Grand Traverse Bay. An eyesore. This was the place of sunsets, blue skies and blue waters.

  Armed with the program from the auction, he announced himself to the receptionist, a twenty-something brunette who showed him to the elevator.

  “I’ll take the stairs.”

  Three floors later, he presented himself to a matronly-looking woman guarding Harley Hawken’s office. She disappeared through an oak door about the size of a barn door. A few minutes later, she reappeared. “Mr. Hawken will see you now.”

  Burr walked in. There sat Harley Hawken bent over an old-fashioned adding machine, the kind with the keys, the levers and the tape. He either didn’t notice Burr or he didn’t care.

  His reading glasses were perched on a broad, not hawk-like nose. He had salt and pepper hair with a matching full beard, neatly trimmed. He punched away at the keys on the adding machine.

  “Mr. Hawken.”

  Hawken raised his non-adding machine hand and shushed him.

  Burr already didn’t like Hawken. He looked out at the cat’s paws on the bay, the wind filling in from the north. He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window. A sixty-foot powerboat was tied up at a slip behind the building. The transom read Pay Zone. Burr liked Hawken even less than he didn’t like him before.

  “Don’t walk behind me,” Harley Hawken said.

  Burr completed the circle of the preoccupied oil man and sat in an oversized, overstuffed chair facing Hawken. He scooted over to the left side of the chair. He thought there was room for at least two more people.

  Hawken rang the lever one last time and ripped off the tape in triumph. He stared at Burr. “What is it that you want?”

  “I represent Lizzie Shepherd.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “I thought you might be able to help,” Burr said.

  Hawken glared at him over his wire-rimmed reading glasses. Then he looked down and studied the tape again.

  “I’ll get right to the point,” Burr said. “Who do you think might have murdered Quinn?”

  “Other than Lizzie?”

  You’re the second one to say this. Burr reached in his pocket and pulled out the auction program. “Mr. Hawken, you were the winning bidder on Quinn’s guided trip.”

  “Which I’ll never collect on.”

  Burr took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Twelve thousand dollars is a little steep for a one-day float.”

  “It was fo
r a good cause. And Quinn was the best fly fisherman I’ve ever met.”

  Burr looked back down at the program. “How about Noah Osterman, Mickey Malone and Joe Gleason? They all bid.”

  “No.”

  Burr looked up at Hawken. “No, what?”

  “Noah Osterman is my lawyer. Mickey Malone is a land man. A damn good one. Joe syndicates my deals.” Hawken’s teeth peeked through his beard. Burr saw the first hint of a smile. He waved his arm in a semicircle around the room. Burr followed his arm. Where he might have expected to see art, or at least a picture of a setter on point or a lab with a duck in its mouth. Instead, Hawken had filled his walls with pictures of oil rigs. In all four seasons.

  “Would any of those men want Quinn dead?”

  “No.”

  “Do any of them use drugs?”

  “What does that have to with anything? Certainly not.”

  “Mr. Hawken, where were you after the auction, when Quinn Shepherd was murdered?”

  Hawken ripped off his glasses. “Get out.”

  Burr didn’t budge. “Does that mean you don’t have an alibi?”

  Hawken pointed to the door. “Now.”

  Burr slid across to the other side of the goliath of a chair.

  “I said out.”

  Burr sat there.

  What little skin showed between Hawken’s hair and his beard turned a violent shade of red.

  Burr made no move to move.

  Hawken put his glasses on and turned his attention back to his adding machine. It clattered to life.

  Burr slid back to the other side of the chair and waited.

  Finally, the clattering stopped, and Hawken looked up at him. “I was with Noah Osterman in the bar at The Gray Drake. Then I went to bed. In Number Seventeen. I have that room from the last Saturday in April through Labor Day.”

  “Did you buy your drugs from Quinn? Cocaine is fashionable,” Burr said.

  Hawken folded and folded the tape from his adding machine until it was as thick as a matchbook. “You may leave now.”

  Burr sat in the chair-big-enough-for-three long enough to make sure Hawken was thoroughly put out. Then he got up and left.

  * * *

  Burr and Zeke headed back down M-22 into Traverse City. He parked at a meter on Front Street and looked over at his dog.

  “Zeke, if a meter reader comes by, put a quarter in.”

  Fifty feet later, he opened the door to Osterman and Krueger, Attorneys and Counselors. The door was two sizes smaller than Hawken’s. He nodded at the receptionist, found Noah Osterman’s office and let himself in.

  The attorney and counselor was looking out the window, his back to Burr.

  “I find it almost unbelievable that all of these buildings back up to the Boardman, like it’s nothing more than an alley. It’s such a fine trout stream,” Osterman said, his back still to Burr.

  Burr didn’t say anything.

  “Unless you own one of these buildings, you can’t even get to the river from here. A shame, I suppose. I don’t really care, though. It’s good not to be the hoi polloi.” Osterman swiveled in his chair. “You are not my eleven o’clock appointment.”

  Burr sat and faced Osterman in a wing chair built for one.

  “I beg your pardon.” Osterman had a mouthful of smoke-stained teeth below a trimmed mustache, wire-rimmed glasses and eyes the color of the barrel of Burr’s shotgun. He had a red face, florid actually. Burr thought Osterman looked like he could drop dead from a heart attack at any moment. He could picture Osterman wearing Bismarck’s helmet, the Prussian’s Prussian.

  Burr stood and stuck his right hand at Osterman. “Burr Lafayette,” Burr Lafayette said. “And you must be Noah Osterman.”

  “Osterman. With a long O.”

  “So it rhymes with toaster,” Burr said. “Like Toaster-man.”

  “Not only am I sure we haven’t met, I have no intention of meeting you now,” Osterman harrumphed.

  Burr sat back down. “I represent Lizzie Shepherd.”

  “Good for you.”

  “She has been indicted for murdering her husband.”

  “Good for her.” He pointed to the door. “You may leave now.”

  Burr had been treated worse by worse people. He saw no reason to leave.

  “Mr. Osterman, you were one of the bidders on Quinn’s float trip. You obviously knew him. I was hoping you might have an idea who might want to kill him.”

  Osterman reached into his desk drawer. He pulled out a pack of Winstons and lit a cigarette without offering one to Burr. “No.”

  “No, what?” Burr said.

  Osterman blew the smoke out through his nose. “I don’t recall being under oath.”

  “Are you always so rude?”

  “Only to the uninvited.”

  “Touché. Who do you think might have wanted to kill Quinn?” Burr said.

  “I have no earthly idea.” Osterman gave him a nasty smile.

  At least he didn’t say other than Lizzie.

  “Mr. Osterman, where were you after the auction?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Actually, I don’t know.” Osterman sucked on the cigarette. “No, that’s not it. I forgot.” He blew out the smoke, this time from his mouth.

  “Mr. Osterman—”

  Osterman cut him off, waving with his right hand, the one with the cigarette, smoke trailing.

  “You’re a litigator, Lafayette. Even if it’s only criminal law. You surely know the three things we tell our witnesses to say.” The Prussian lawyer raised his beefy index finger. “I don’t remember.” His middle finger. “I don’t know.” Now his ring finger. “I forgot. It’s hard to get in trouble with those three little pearls.”

  “Who said you were in trouble?”

  “If I did remember, and I did know, and I hadn’t forgotten, I’d say I was with Harley Hawken in the bar at The Gray Drake. I then retired to my room right next to his.”

  “Mr. Osterman, did you buy your drugs from Quinn?”

  “Get out.”

  Osterman’s receptionist stuck her head through the door. “Mr. Hawken is on the phone again,” she said. “And your eleven o’clock is here.”

  Burr started for the door. Osterman stubbed out his cigarette and picked up his phone. “Harley, is that you?”

  * * *

  Burr reached for the parking ticket stuck under his windshield wiper and dropped it in a trashcan. He shooed Zeke off the driver’s seat. With Zeke back at shotgun and order restored, he climbed in. He hadn’t found out a thing from either Hawken or Osterman other than Hawken liked money and Osterman would be the worst witness he’d ever had.

  He drove north on US-31, past Charlevoix. They turned on the road to Walloon Lake and then into a driveway with a wooden sign nailed to a tree. The sign was cut in the shape of an oil drum and read “Barrels.”

  He parked in front of a two-story, gray-planked cottage with navy trim, circa 1930. Beyond the cottage, the north end of the north arm of Walloon Lake— deep, clear, and spring-fed. Walloon Lake was the ritziest, snootiest inland lake in Michigan, public access virtually non-existent. You could use the lake if you could get to it, but you couldn’t get to it.

  A fortyish man answered the door. His hairline started halfway across the top of his head, and he had a big smile that made him look like a Halloween pumpkin. Wraparound sunglasses completed the look. All in all, Burr thought he looked like a balding jack-o’-lantern posing as a movie star.

  He pumped Burr’s hand. “Mickey Malone. So glad you could come.” Malone started off around the house toward the lake. “Right this way.”

  Burr followed the balding pumpkin to the lake side of the house. The lawn fell away to the beach. A white dock ran to the
edge of the drop-off, a pontoon boat on one side of the dock, a ski boat on the other, patio furniture in between. Malone led him out to the end of the dock.

  They sat and Malone took out two highball glasses from a wicker basket and handed one to Burr. He reached into a cooler and pulled out a pitcher of what Burr assumed was iced tea. He filled Burr’s glass, then his own.

  Burr took a sip. He coughed.

  “Long Island iced tea,” Mickey said.

  A couple of these could get me in serious trouble.

  “And how may I be of service?”

  Once more, Burr reached in his pocket for the bidding list and unfolded it.

  “You bid on Quinn Shepherd’s trip. At the auction.”

  “I didn’t bid on it, but if I’d wanted to, I could have been the highest bidder.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “I always let Harley win.” Malone drained half his glass into his jack-o’-lantern mouth. “Do you know what a land man is?”

  Burr did know, but he shook his head no.

  “I lease drilling rights from landowners. Farmers, government, anybody. I bid at auctions. I work for oil companies. They pay me in cash. But, every once in a while, I take a slice of the working interest.” Malone paused. “That’s what I did with the Crawford-Olsen. It paid for this little slice of heaven.”

  Burr nodded but had no earthly idea how an oil well had the remotest connection with the auction.

  Malone finished his drink and refilled his glass. He drank off the top half again. “The Crawford-Olsen is Harley’s well. And it just wouldn’t do to outbid him.” He finished off his drink. “Now would it?”

  There’s always a pecking order. “I suppose you were in the bar that night with Harley, Osterman and Gleason.” It was Burr’s turn to drink. “And your room was two doors down from Harley’s?”

  Malone took off his glasses. “How did you know?”

  Burr watched Malone’s pupils shrink from teaspoon-sized to pinpricks. Alcohol, drugs, or both, Burr thought. This wasn’t going anywhere, other than Burr was getting an education in the ins and outs of the Michigan oil business.