Chasing a Blond Moon

by Joseph Heywood

  Service wrote down the serial number, checking two of them to be sure they were the same. “I want to get inside,” he added.

  Bartoletti got a ladder and they climbed up into the boat. The aft deck was small, but below decks was deep and there was plenty of room for a four-by-six cage. There were four holes in the floor. Bartoletti saw him looking at the holes and said, “U-bolt holes. The bolts probably got lost.”

  Service called Pyykkonen as he drove west. “The boat’s not registered, but there are serial numbers. Maybe the owner didn’t know about them. The boat’s a 1995 Miltey Commander.”

  “Blue?”

  “As a pretty girl’s eyes,” Service said.

  “Miltey Boat Company?” she said. “So we’ve circled back to where we started, eh? Joe Miltey’s daughter was the one who found Harry Pung. You want me to visit him?”

  “Let’s both go. I’m going to see my kid tonight. We’ll go over there in the morning. Pick you up at Shark’s at eight.”

  “Works for me,” she said.

  He called Walter’s dorm room and Karylanne Pengelly answered. “Is the hockey player there?” he asked.

  “At the rink,” she said. “He’s always at the rink.”

  “Seems late for practice.”

  “Not hockey. He goes over there every night with that fly rod.”

  Service laughed inwardly. His old man had given him his first rod, just as his old man had gotten his first one from his grandfather. “This is his father,” Service said. “I’m going to be there in seventy minutes. Thought I’d pick him up, see if he wants a late-night snack. Would you like to join us, Karylanne?”

  She laughed. “I never pass up food. My mom always tells me to eat now while I’ve still got my metabolism.”

  “I’ll pick you up in front of the dorm and we’ll go fetch him,” he said.

  The girl had an infectious laugh and a soft voice, gentle but strong. Probably Walter and the girl would not last as a couple, but at least he had picked a good one for now. Or she had picked him. In his own day, his picks had been anything but stellar. “There in sixty-seven minutes,” he said.

  Later he passed the Shrine of the Snowshoe Priest. Father Frederick Baraga had been a Slovenian member of the powerful Hapsburgs, who had sworn off wealth and power for a life of the cloth—and in the bush. Baraga had come to the U.P. in the nineteenth century as a priest for an Austrian missionary society and had founded missions as far south as Grand Rapids and west to the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin. Baraga was known as a priest who would always be where he was needed, and there were plenty of stories of him snowshoeing a hundred miles in snowstorms. What Service liked about the priest, who eventually became the U.P.’s first bishop, was his total dedication to his work. In recent years a movement for his canonization had been organized to find and document two miracles in the priest’s past. News reports said the group was having a hard time—that while the priest’s life had been filled with good works, miracles were still in question. It was a classic case of seeing trees and missing the forest. Baraga had traipsed the entire U.P. and into Wisconsin, almost always on foot and alone, and he was a great model for the horseblankets, the old COs who had blazed the trail for him. As he drove under the monument, he flipped a salute, said “Father Fred,” and smiled.

  The L’Anse-Baraga area south of Chassell had seen a lot of history—Indians battling Indians, priests, fur traders, loggers, Lake Superior fishermen. Much of the area had been settled by Finns who had married Native Americans, their offspring called Finndians—as resolute a cultural blend as he had encountered.

  On the way into Chassell he saw a new house being built. Floodlights from the driveway lit it up to show the Finnish roofing style called walmdach, which featured a distinct and different angle in every quarter, helping to spread the weight of the snow pack and shed snow as it melted.

  Come Christmas he could take Walter up to Pequamming where Norwegians lived, surrounded by Finns, Swedes, and French Canadians, and treat the boy to sweet rye bread and lutefisk. Nantz would have a week off from the academy, and the three of them could use some of the time to see and do—if he could get her out of bed. The thought made him laugh out loud.

  Karylanne was waiting on the sidewalk and waved as he pulled up.

  “He was supposed to be back by now,” she said.

  “Is he late a lot?”

  “He just gets interested in things and loses track.”

  In the bloodline, Service thought.

  McInnes Arena was still open. Intramural teams played all night, while classes, the varsity, and the public used it at more convenient hours.

  They found Walter in a yellow hallway. There was a red rubber donut about forty feet away and he was flicking a tag of fire-pink yarn at the target. Using reach casts, which Service had not taught him. Where the hell had he picked that up? The casts were near the target all the time, the technique designed to throw a mend into the line to help the fly drift parallel to an obstacle with little drag. Many fishermen never learned to do it correctly. Walter looked like he had control of it.

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  Walter tilted his head, showed a flash of surprise, said, “Book, by the wall.”

  Service walked over to the wall, picked up a casting guide by Lee Wulff, one of the old masters and too advanced for most beginners.

  “He’s cleaned out the library,” Karylanne said. “Walter,” she said sharply. “Your father’s gonna feed us.”

  “That’s cool,” he said, making one last cast.

  With few restaurants open late, they ended up at Sundog’s Seiche, a coffeehouse and college hangout run by the wife of an astonomy professor. Service had an avocado and tuna sandwich and listened to Walter and Karylanne talking back and forth. The boy was more at ease with her than he had ever been with a girl at that age, and when the girl talked, Walter paid attention. When he looked at the boy’s face, he imagined he could see Bathsheba’s eyes.

  “Are you staring at me?” Walter asked.

  “Not staring at, just staring.”

  “Right. Who do you see, Sheba or you?”

  “I see somebody who looks pale and needs to beef up.”

  “So I can clog my arteries?”

  Karylanne said, “There’s a training table for jocks. It’s run by a full-time special health nutritionist.”

  When Service played at Northern, hockey players had lived on burgers, beer, and pasta—especially beer.

  “When did you learn to cook?” Walter asked him.

  “My old man was a lush and he’d go days without thinking about food. Somebody had to remind him, and I was always hungry.”

  Walter nodded. “What did you call him?”

  Karylanne said, “My father will always be my daddy.”

  Service smiled. “If I’d called him Daddy he would have backhanded me through a wall. I called him, Old Man. And Sir.”

  “He didn’t mind?”

  “I don’t think he noticed. Mostly he thought about violets.”

  Karylanne said, “He liked flowers?”

  “Violet, violator,” Service said.

  There was silence while they ate.

  They dropped Karylanne at her dorm and headed for Walter’s room.

  “How’s my casting look?”

  “I’ll tell you that after we see your grades. Got a place where I can bunk tonight?”

  “Sure, and my grades are fine. It’s not easy, but I’m keeping up. Are you going to give me some fatherly advice about Karylanne?”

  “She looks like she can take care of herself.”

  “Kinda like Maridly,” Walter said. “You want to grab breakfast in the morning at the training table?”

  “Gotta work.”

  “Whatever, old man.”

  Service saw that the boy was g
rinning. “Stop busting my balls.”

  “That’s Maridly’s job,” Walter said as he clicked off the lights. “Good night, Daddy.”

  “Consider yourself backhanded,” Service said, smiling in the dark.

  Service, Gus Turnage, and Pyykkonen went to the Miltey Boat Company in two vehicles. Gus knew Joe Miltey, said he’d be less belligerent if they came in force.

  The Miltey Boat Company was built on the banks of the Pike River, where it flowed into Pike Bay, the southernmost feature of Portage Lake. Five aluminum hulls were lined up at the garage door of a large pole ­building. Three finished boats were at the other end of the building, one of them not entirely shrink-wrapped, the plastic hanging off like a partially shed skin. There were piles of cans and pallets with boxes everywhere. Service looked at a dock by the building, saw the Technicolor swirls of gasoline in the river.

  Joe Miltey was in his late forties, with a red face, veins showing in his cheeks and nose, and red hair starting to gray. His office was inside the production area. He sat at a desk in the middle of a circle of desks. Windows looked out on the production line and Service counted only three people working. There was one clerk in the office with Miltey, who was scribbling on a clipboard and did not look up. Miltey’s company didn’t look like it was thriving.

  “I get tree of youse?” the man finally said.

  Service put a piece of paper on the marred and distressed desk. All the furniture looked like it dated to the time when the company was still building fishing tugs.

  Miltey looked at it, said, “Is this supposed to be a winning lottery number?”

  Gus said, “That depends on if you can keep your big foot out of your big mouth.”

  “Those are serial numbers off one of your boats,” Service said.

  “You bring a subpoena?”

  Gus winced. “Joe, you’ve got piles of epoxy and paint cans outside, and a fuel storage tank is leaking into the river. You want to play games, we can send over DEQ and let you talk to them. In the end, Joe, we’ll still get what we want.”

  “Maybe he’s got something to hide,” Pyykkonen said. “This is a homicide case and I don’t think you want to be obstructing it, Mr. Miltey.”

  Joe Miltey went to one of the file cabinets and came back with a piece of paper he dropped on the desk. “Irv McCrae bought da boat in nighny-six.”

  “Got an address?”

  Miltey shoved the paper across.

  The address was Freda, a village fifteen miles west of Houghton on the Lake Superior coast.

  “Thanks,” Gus said.

  “Yeah, right,” Joe Miltey said.

  Service called McCrae from his truck. The man had a sandpaper voice and claimed he sold the boat to Margaret Soper in Painesdale last July and asked if Service wanted her number. Service wrote down the name, thanked McCrae, and showed his notebook to Pyykkonen.

  “Round and round we go,” she said, shaking her head.

  Gus followed them to Painesdale. Maggie Soper came out on her porch.

  Pyykkonen said, “You bought a boat in July from Irv McCrae in Freda, a twenty-six-foot Miltey Commander with a blue hull.”

  “I sold a boat to da professor,” she said.

  “You didn’t mention that the last time we were here.”

  “Youse was askin’ aboot real estate, hey. I don’t read minds.”

  “How long after you bought it did Pung buy it?”

  “I never even seen it. The professor called me up and said he found dis boat for a good price and he wanted it for fishing. Said since nine-eleven, foreigners can’t get registrations and stuff. Said he’d give me the money and he’d buy it in my name.”

  “How much?” Pyykkonen said.

  “Four thousand plus a thousand.”

  “Where’s the boat now?”

  “I thought youse had it,” Soper said.

  “Have you got a bill of sale? Did you register the boat?”

  “He said he’d take care of all that, but he never got the paperwork to me.”

  “But you got the cash,” Pyykkonen said.

  The woman smiled smugly. “I don’t care for your tone of voice.”

  “We’ll talk again,” Pyykkonen said, “and next time you’re gonna hate my tone of voice.”

  Service called Station 20 for a title and registration check. The boat had last been registered to McCrae two years before, which meant it was good for another year, unless it was sold. The Certificate of Number had not been surrendered to the secretary of state as the law required when a boat was sold. A search showed no new registration had been filed for.

  Service called McCrae again. “The secretary of state says your registration hasn’t been turned in.”

  “Geez, I give it to da fella picked it up. Said he’d take care of it. Is this a ticket?”

  “Who picked up the boat, Irv?”

  “Asian fella. I tink ’is name was Harry. Teacher up ta Tech, said he was picking it up as a favor to the Soper woman. Am I in trouble?”

  “Was Harry a young guy?”

  “Everybody’s young compared to me. I’d say mebbe he was fifty, ya know.”

  “We’d like for you to look at a photo for us.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “Relax, Irv. Just look at the photo when the detective comes, and we’ll leave you be.”

  Service looked at Pyykkonen. “Looks like Harry picked up the boat himself.”

  “He didn’t want a paper trail,” she said. “Sounds like he didn’t expect to be a boat owner long.”

  “He wasn’t,” Service said. “Have you talked to the ex’s lawyer yet?”

  “Three of them, never the same one twice. They insist there’s no son. We’ve gotten nowhere.”

  Every case had a key, and more and more it looked like Soong was it—but he couldn’t stop wondering why the boat had been scuttled near Laughing Fish Point.

  “I guess I’d better get on out to Freda,” Pyykkonen said, but he wasn’t listening.

  He ended the day with a call to Nantz, explaining the Toogood photo mystery. She said she would have time soon, and would check into it.

  34

  He was hungry but not in the mood for a sandwich, and settled on an old recipe for quick black bean and hominy stew. He heated olive oil in a big pan and added green peppers, onions, and garlic. When the vegetables softened, he poured in chicken broth, added the hominy, ham, cumin, coriander, minced chipotles, and a can of black beans. As the stew was thickening he got a call from Ironhead Southard.

  “Honeypat left Allerdyce last year before Christmas. The word is that she hooked up with Kelo and Limpy didn’t like it, which as far as I know is the first time that old reprobate’s been bothered by anything like that,” the retired officer said.

  Service stirred the stew halfheartedly and thought. Ironhead had basically told him what he already knew—that Honeypat had fled in December—but Ironhead didn’t know that he had stimulated the split by telling her that Limpy had been hitting on his grandson’s girlfriend. Outi Ranta blamed Honeypat for what she had gotten involved in, and made the point that Honeypat would never change. These words felt indelible. Outi needed money and she was looking for some fun. Honeypat had come up with a scheme. Outi had dealt with Charley Fahrenheit while Colliver dealt with Skunk Kelo. What was Honeypat’s angle?

  The more he thought about it, the tougher it was to imagine Limpy going off the wall because Honeypat had hooked up with another man. It had never bothered him before, and Limpy’s alleged reaction didn’t fit. Where was the greed in this, wanting to keep something that was exclusively his? Possible. Honeypat had sex with the ease that most people took a drink of water, and with about as much meaning. The flow of men and women in Limpy’s clan had always been hard to pin down, and by and large, who was with whom never seemed to matt
er to Allerdyce, who had always been about money and the power that came to him through his poaching enterprises. In many ways he was a feudal lord operating on values that dated back centuries to a world he defined as black and white, with little gray. He took care of his clan; they did what he ordered, like some sort of lowlife, plaid-and-Carhart-mafia. Was the break with Honeypat real and permanent, or something else? No matter how hard he tried to think it through, there was no reasonable conclusion. Limpy had actively tried to undermine his grandson’s interest in the DNR. This certainly amounted to some form of greed: keeping what he had. The salient point was probably that Limpy thought he was losing Aldo and had moved to prevent this. Did the same apply to Honeypat? Had Allerdyce tried to find her and bring her back? Had he been involved in Outi Ranta’s death?

  Service scooped the finished stew into a one-gallon plastic container, made sure the lid was tight, and called Les Reynolds. “I’ll fax you a photo first thing in the morning. Show it to Colliver, see what he has to say.”

  “Do we have a suspect?”

  “Maybe.”

  “No problem. I’ll call you back as soon as I’ve had the talk with him.”

  Service took the container and drove to the Marquette office. He went through the files to find a photograph of Skunk Kelo, and faxed it to Reynolds at his office.

  Why would Honeypat go after Kitella? What was the old Arab proverb, the enemy of my enemy is my friend? He wasn’t sure if it was from the Koran, or who for certain used the saying—only that it was some group with a beef, of which there were plenty in the world. By this logic, Kitella was a potential ally for Honeypat, but her actions made no sense, lacked context. Service called the sheriff’s department and learned that Linsenman was off duty.

  He called the deputy at home.

  “How about we take a nice hike in the autumn woods?”

  “It’s night, Service.”

  “The best time to see animals in their native habitats.”