Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries)

by Tom Hilpert

  Alex had a part-time secretary, a pleasantly plump, attractive blond woman in her late twenties. She smiled at me as I entered the little reception area at the front of the suite. “Hello, and how may I help you?”

  “Julie,” I said, “it’s me. I’m here to see Alex.”

  “Do you have an appointment, sir?”

  “Julie, seriously,” I said.

  She grimaced. “Alex wants me to bring a sense of professionalism to this office,” she said. “I’m supposed to be kind of formal and sort of give people the impression that he is a serious lawyer, or something.”

  “He is a good lawyer,” I said. “But this is a bit silly.”

  “I know.” She sighed.

  “I know I gave him your name when he was looking for help, but I also told you I wasn’t sure you’d like it.”

  “Do you have any more hours for me at Harbor Lutheran?”

  “No. We’re small, with a small budget. You know that.”

  “Well then, this is my solution. Besides,” she grinned “I don’t have to remind him about his appointments all the time. He’s very organized.”

  “Thanks for the uplifting conversation,” I said, and limped into Chan’s office.

  Alex Chan was a little under medium size, with the kind of ivory skin that some Asians get when they never go out in the sun. There wasn’t a lot of time to get a good tan, this far north. He had eyes that he liked to think were inscrutable, but to me they always looked mischievous, and maybe a little insecure. He nodded at me as I walked in, and then leaned over to look around me through the door to the reception area.

  “Julie,” he called. “You’re supposed to buzz me and announce clients before you send them back.”

  “I know,” she called back. “But it’s him.”

  Alex sighed and turned back to me. “It’s hard to find good help these days.”

  “I think she’s great help,” I said loudly enough so Julie could hear.

  “That’s ‘cause you need me more than he does,” called Julie. “But compliments don’t pay the bills.”

  “Would you like to join us for our private attorney-client meeting?” said Chan, his voice dripping with acid.

  “Oh, can I?” said Julie girlishly.

  Alex sighed. “Shut the door, will you?” he said to me.

  I closed it and said, “I told you what you were getting with her.”

  “I know.” He lowered his voice and looked at the door as if Julie had her ear on the other side of it. “But she is very good, actually. Plus, she’s kind of cute.”

  I just grinned widely.

  “Shut up,” said Chan. “What do you want?”

  I threw the envelope from my mother onto his desk in front of him. “My mom sent some more papers of my dad’s.”

  He pulled the envelope toward him and extracted the contents. “Have you looked at these?”

  “No, that’s what I pay you for.”

  “How do you know she didn’t send you a letter?”

  “She told me on the phone she was sending more of this stuff.”

  He started glancing through the thick stack of paper my mother had sent. “Why did he make you executor of his will anyway? Why not her?”

  “I don’t know, maybe he figured she would die first. She’s not very good with this kind of thing anyway, so she didn’t mind.”

  “You’re not so great with paperwork and details yourself.”

  “Yes, but I have you.”

  Chan sighed and shook his head. The window behind him looked out onto a well-kept green lawn dotted with trees that were bright with autumn. Two squirrels were playing at the base of a white-trunked birch that was gaudy with golden leaves.

  After a minute, Alex shuffled the papers and tapped their edges on the desk. “I don’t see anything here that is relevant to your dad’s estate. These look like old case files from his days as a Washington state police detective.” He slid the papers back into the envelope and handed it to me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Mom is just sending me anything and everything that looks kind of official or important.”

  “That’s OK,” said Chan, grinning at me with startlingly white teeth. “It all works out into billable hours for me.”

  Now it was my turn to sigh.

  CHAPTER 6

  Much as I wanted to solve the crime and recover Ethel Ostrand's money, I still had a job as pastor of Harbor Lutheran Church in Grand Lake. So on Sunday, as usual, I preached a heck of a sermon. I could tell that at certain points, some folks would have said “amen” if they hadn't been Scandinavian Lutherans. As it was, they showed their rabid enthusiasm by not overtly falling asleep.

  Leyla was there, as she had been every week for several months now. She had joined the ladies Bible study group as well, but she never talked to me about it. Despite my complicated ambivalence, I was happy to see her.

  After church, I pulled her aside. “Wanna watch the game at my place?” I said. “I'll make lunch.” She gave me a long look that I guess I was supposed to understand.

  “I don't think so, Jonah,” she said.

  “OK,” I said. I had a vague sense that it had to do with our conversation on Friday night.

  I liked Leyla. Her attitude unsettled me slightly. Even so, I was rarely unhappy at the prospect of an afternoon alone. After a nap, I made a simple dough from flour, salt, oil, water and yeast. While it was rising, I fried up some ground beef with garlic, onions, pepper, basil and oregano. I also chopped up some tomatoes, fresh mushrooms and black olives. I opened a can of tomato paste and mixed it with water, black pepper, more basil and garlic, some salt and a lot of black pepper.

  When the dough was ready, I pressed it onto my pizza stone. I spread the tomato sauce onto it, and then the other ingredients, and topped it with mozzarella cheese, and put it in the oven for twenty minutes. Voila! Pizza.

  Belatedly, I remembered the football game. It wasn't the Seahawks or the Forty-niners, but I was doing my best to stay current with the Vikings this year. When in Rome, one ought to cheer for the Roman team. Or something like that.

  I watched most of the second half, munching on my pizza and drinking a bottle of Woodchuck's hard apple cider. It was a game the Vikings were expected to lose, so, naturally, they won. It was fun to watch a team do that. On the other hand, the Vikings also had a tendency to lose games they were supposed to win. I thought it might have something to do with the Scandinavian temperament of their fans. Too much success was morally questionable.

  The late game came on, still not the Seahawks. I had read somewhere that someone had done a bunch of blood tests on pastors, which seemed like a good idea for so many different reasons. They found that most pastors, over the course of a week, gradually built up to a massive adrenaline spike on Sunday mornings. Once the church services were all done with, there was a corresponding physical low, and most of them crashed, waking up with big headaches on Monday mornings.

  I had so far escaped the headaches, but I believed in the adrenaline and the following crash. The crash began to hit me as I watched the Bears battle the Packers, and even the drama of a battle for first place in the division failed to keep my eyes from growing heavy. I scooched down on the couch, set my plate on the floor, and fell into the blessed embrace of my Sunday afternoon nap.

  ~

  About a year ago, a bunch of thugs had broken into my cabin and trashed it, as a warning to me. I was too obtuse for the warning to be effective, but many staunch, worldly wise friends and church members had insisted afterward that I get an alarm system. I finally caved in when I came home one day to find it was already installed, and Julie was programming it for me.

  Generally, I only turned it on out of guilt, because I hadn't paid for installation. I left it off when I was personally at home. But I had never figured out how to turn off the brief, loud, series of beeps that happened whenever anyone opened a door or window.

  That loud beeping sound is what startled me out of my nap.

>   I looked up, and there was a man dressed in black standing in the sliding door that opened onto my deck. He wore a black ski mask, covering his face except for holes where his eyes and mouth were.

  Talk about adrenaline spike. It was like no sermon I'd ever preached before.

  I've heard about an instinct that some natural fighters have to attack relentlessly without pausing. My Tae Kwon Do coach used to tell me I had it. I do know this: it's usually a good thing if your reactions surprise your opponent and he doesn't have time to think. I leaped from the couch, and stooping at the fireplace, I grabbed a chunk of wood with my right hand and the poker in my left. I heaved the wood directly at his face. He ducked, and it hit him on the head because my aim had been too low. He cursed and staggered back while I switched the poker to my right hand and ran at him. Perhaps if I had paused he might have drawn a weapon, or suddenly remembered he was a champion street fighter or something, but as it is, he did what was natural for almost anyone who is attacked by a crazed, poker-bearing pastor who has just been wakened from his post-adrenaline nap: he ran.

  The triple beep of the alarm system went off again, suggesting another intruder. I shouted as loud as could, whirled, ran to the alarm keypad, and hit the panic button.

  Wild sirens went off while I spun back around looking for the second invader. No one was in sight. Within ten seconds, my phone rang. It was the alarm company.

  “We show that your alarm is going off,” said a calm female voice at the other end. “Is everything OK?”

  I felt like I was on a TV commercial. “No,” I said. “Someone – maybe two people – just tried to break in while I was napping.”

  “The police are on their way,” she said. “Please stay on the line with me until they get there.”

  In the TV commercials I'd seen, the burglars always ran away when the sirens went off. I could understand why – it was so loud, I wanted to run too, but I left the sirens on, and I stayed put by the front door, with the poker in hand, just in case anybody had been wearing earplugs.

  While I waited, I noticed that my leg had begun to hurt again. Looking down, I could see that the bandage was soaked with fresh blood.

  When the police arrived, I shut off the alarm. They were from the county, since I lived well outside the town limits. One was a young, short, blond woman named Sam. Her partner was a tall, lean, middle-aged guy with a shaved head. His name plate said Nelson.

  Officer Sam noticed my leg immediately. “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I got this a few days ago at the bank. Probably just busted it open chasing that guy out of here.”

  “I heard about that,” said Nelson.

  “I know you,” said Sam. “You were involved in that courthouse business last year. Didn't you get shot in the same place then?”

  “Other leg,” I said. “But thanks for remembering. I'm Jonah Borden.”

  “Sam,” she said. “And this is Officer Nelson.”

  “Rick,” he said, sticking out his hand.

  “Are you kidding me?” I said. “Ricky Nelson? What happened to the hair?”

  “Careful,” he said. “I'm a lot bigger than you.” But then he grinned.

  “So what's up here?” asked Sam.

  I told them about the intruders. They poked around a little bit and found the window to my office was open. We couldn't see that anything was missing or disturbed.

  “Not much more we can do,” said Nelson. “No description of the suspect. According to you, nothing taken or damaged.”

  Sam finished writing in her notebook. “Call us if you realize later that something is missing,” she said. “In the meantime, keep your doors locked and your alarm on.”

  I'm not normally nervous or jumpy when I'm alone in my cabin in the woods overlooking Superior, a mile from my nearest neighbor. But for some reason that evening, every time I glanced up at the night outside the glass of my patio door, I could swear a man in black clothes and a ski mask had just stepped away from the light into the darkness beyond.

  At around eight, I heard a subtle noise coming from my office. It sounded like someone was moving around, but trying to be very quiet about it. I remembered that the window had been opened there this afternoon. My heart began to pound. I stepped over to my stereo, plugged in my iPod, and turned on some tunes. I glanced over my shoulder but no one was coming out of my office door yet. Covered, I hoped, by the sound of the music, I walked over to the fireplace and picked up the poker again. Then I stepped softly in my stocking-feet toward my office. I could have hit the panic button on the alarm, but I would have felt pretty stupid if it was nothing.

  I waited outside the office door for a long time. Now I regretted putting on the music, because I couldn’t hear as well. At last I heard it again, a soft rubbing, maybe someone’s pant-leg against a chair. Then there was a quiet thump, and then a louder sound of papers being pushed off my desk.

  I leaped through the door, poker raised, yelling, and then I stopped.

  Flattened in fear on my desk was a scrawny orange kitten, its fur puffed up to twice its size. I lowered the poker weakly. Then I collapsed in the chair, laughing.

  The kitten watched me with wide eyes, like I was a Martian just descended from my space-ship.

  “Well,” I said to it, “I’m glad I didn’t hit the panic button. You must have come in when the window was open before.”

  Slowly, the animal relaxed, its fur settling back down into place. Its orange coat was long and fluffy, like a Persian cat. The kitten looked small and helpless and very hungry. It continued to stare at me out of large round eyes.

  “I had a vet friend who told me once that orange cats are almost always male,” I said to it. “That true?”

  The kitten slowly sat up, and then yawned and started to clean itself.

  “Well, I’m going to take that a yes. You new in the neighborhood?” He had to be a stray. He looked ill-kept and hungry, and there were no houses for a mile around my place.

  The cat stopped licking himself and stared at me again.

  “What?” I said. “You got something to say, say it.”

  “Mew,” he said, and then started purring.

  “I guess I can see that,” I said. I leaned forward slowly. “You OK if I pick you up?” As I reached out my hand, the kitten arched his back and rubbed against my computer monitor. I stroked him and the purring got louder. I gently reached under him and picked him up, pulling him back to my chest. He immediately thrust his head decisively under my chin, the purring going like a chainsaw.

  After a minute I carried him out into the living room, where I replaced the poker and stepped into my kitchen. I put him on the floor and got him a little bowl of milk. He sniffed at it curiously, and then tasted it. After a second or two he began lapping furiously. When he was finished, he came to me where I sat on the couch. He climbed up my leg, and then wormed his way up my chest to shove his face under my chin again. I petted him and blew fur away from my face. Eventually he fell asleep and I moved him up against some pillows on the couch.

  Before bed I checked the doors and windows. I leaned the poker next to my bed. Even so, I laid there for a long time staring into the dark. I heard a little sound and then the kitten padded softly into my room. “Mew?” he said, and the scrambled up my comforter. He wormed his way under the covers until he was tucked under my chin, purring loudly.

  “Goodnight,” I said, and slept peacefully the rest of the night.

  CHAPTER 7

  It was fall, and the counseling appointments were starting to line up. Minnesotans didn't waste time with relational or psychological problems during the short, beautiful summers. They tried to eke every last second of enjoyment out of each precious degree above sixty. So every fall, after school started up, I had a rash of appointments. This year, the favored topic seemed to be marriage problems.

  On the Tuesday after the bank robbery, I had an appointment with someone new, a woman named Angela. She had called the church o
ut of the blue, and Julie had set up the meeting. At eleven, she came into the church office.

  She was probably five foot seven, with a mass of frizzy, dark-blond hair. I thought it was a natural frizz. I couldn't imagine anyone paying to get that done to her hair. All the same, she had it pinned and barretted so that it cascaded attractively down one shoulder.

  I stood up and walked around my desk. “Come on in,” I said. “Do you want some coffee?” To my approval, she accepted. I decided to have a cup with her. Just to be sociable.

  I ushered her to the sitting area and went to get the elixir of the gods. When I came back, she was sitting on the love seat, both legs crossed under her, her sandals lying on the floor. She looked comfortable. On both wrists, she wore a bunch of thin metal bracelets, the kind I used to call bangles. I never did know if I had that right, but that's what I called them. They clinked in a sort of enticing way when she moved her hands. She wore loose fitting, thin trousers that looked vaguely Indian. Her top was long and orange-ish and definitely East Indian. The overall style of her look, I figured, was classy hippie. I thought she might be in her mid-thirties, and well kept.

  After we exchanged the normal banalities, I said, “What I can do for you, Angie?”

  “Angela, please.” She said. “I never go by Angie. That is what my father used to call me.”

  “OK, Angela,” I said. “How can I help you?”

  She turned her hand palm up and twisted her wrist around aimlessly. The bangles made little clinking sounds.

  “I have had an affair,” she said.

  I waited. Sometimes I think one of my biggest jobs in counseling is simply not to appear shocked. That was easy this time, because I had heard this sort of thing before.

  She twisted her hand in the air and clinked some more. “The problem is,” she said, “I feel guilty.”

  I waited some more, mostly because this time I didn't really know what to say. Finally, I said, “It's pretty normal to feel guilty after you have an affair.”