An Iron Fist, Two Harbors

by Dennis Herschbach

  He looked up, surprised at the abruptness of her question. He probably thought she was some equal rights advocate who was going to make a stink about only men being hired for the job he had. Rather defensively, he answered, “There are two of us,” then quickly added, “There are four women bartenders.”

  Deidre was quick to apologize. “Hey, I’m sorry if I sounded demanding. I’m just looking for a guy who might have known my daughter, Maren.”

  The bartender’s expression changed from one of distrust to one of sympathy. “Oh, man, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know who you were. Your daughter was one of my friends, always smiling, always considerate to all of us. We really miss her.” Then he asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Deidre was waylaid by the sad look on his face, and she swallowed hard. “I’d like to talk to whichever one of you was working the night Maren disappeared. It must have been you or the other guy.”

  “It was me. Good thing, because Jim quit about a month ago and moved back to Wisconsin. If he’d been behind the bar that night, you’d have a tough time catching up with him. What do you want to talk about?”

  “The customer over there,” and she nodded toward the table in the back corner, “He said that Jaime Storder was giving Maren a tough time that night. Do you remember?”

  The bartender’s face clouded over. “Sure, I remember that night. He was really hassling Maren, and she left the bar area. I kicked him out and told him not to come back. On the way out, he made a pretty sick remark about Maren. You probably don’t want to know what he said, but he said what he’d do to her if he ever had the chance. I had Andra go find Maren. She was in the women’s washroom, and when she and Andra came back, I told her what Storder had said, told her to be careful when she left work that night. It’s bothered me ever since that I didn’t do more to help her.”

  Deidre reached out and touched his arm. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. We haven’t any evidence it was him. Thank you for sticking up for Maren. It means a lot to me that you did.” She turned to leave and another idea hit her.

  “Did Storder come back after that?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “I went on two weeks’ vacation the next day, but when I came back to work, he never came in again.”

  On the way down the stairs, Deidre reflected on the fact that Andra had said Storder came in after Maren’s disappearance and switched his harassment to her, even threatening her in a way. She made a mental note to follow up on why Jamie Storder quit coming to that particular bar.

  Chapter

  Thirty

  DURING SUPPER THE NIGHT after she spoke to Dan and the bartender, everyone was in good spirits. Ben joked with the boys and challenged them to a contest to see who could eat their peas with a knife. He told them about his great-grandfather, who had immigrated from Europe, using his knife as a shovel and his fork to load the knife. He recited a poem his great-grandfather had taught him when he was a child. “I eat my peas with honey. I’ve done it all my life. It makes the peas taste funny, but it keeps them on my knife.”

  Everybody laughed as they tried balancing the green pellets on the flat surface as they lifted their knives to their mouths. Ben waited a few seconds, chiding them when most of the peas rolled off. Then, using his fork, he mashed up the peas on his plate and scooped them up with the blade of his knife.

  Jack hollered, “Cheater!”

  “What?” Ben answered back with a mystified tone like so many teenagers use when caught red-handed.

  “You mashed your peas up. That’s cheating!” Jack declared, a hint of disdain in his voice.

  “Hey, I didn’t say how we were supposed to eat our peas. Only that we would use our knives.” Ben laughed at the way the argument was going.

  “But what about that poem?” Jack persisted.

  “Oh, that. Great-Grandpa taught me that, all right. But he never ate his peas with honey.” Ben continued to enjoy the moment.

  “Would he be our great-great-grandpa?” Steve wanted to know. Ben said he would be.

  Steve asked, “Did he trick you like you tricked us?”

  “Only once,” Ben answered and finished his peas.

  Deidre relished what she was observing. She was sure Ben was making a concerted effort to interact with his sons, and she loved him for that. But she wondered how long he could keep up the façade, and if he did, whether his old, naturally happy self would eventually return. She worried about him, knowing that he was hurting as deeply as any human could hurt. Deidre had a pang of guilt for thinking about the negative when they were having such great fun.

  Suddenly Jack burst into tears and put his face in his hands to cover his eyes. Simultaneously, Ben and Deidre asked, “Jack, what’s wrong?”

  He shrugged and tried to stop sobbing. The realization of what had happened hit Deidre.

  “Is it Maren?” she gently asked. Jack nodded.

  Both parents gathered around their son and put their arms around him. “Oh, Jack, Jack,” Deidre crooned as she ran her fingers over his mussed hair. “I know it hurts . . . hurts so much. But we have each other to hold onto.”

  Finally, Jack could speak. “I know. But here we were laughing and having fun, and we don’t even know where she is. It’s just not right for us to be having fun when she might be suffering. What are we going to do?” he sobbed.

  Ben said they should go into the living room where they could sit together on the couch. He suggested that they take turns talking about how they felt inside, and as they each opened up to the others, the same message was repeated over and over. They missed her. They wondered if she was suffering. They wondered if she was dead. All of them expressed the feeling of having a part of them ripped out, leaving damage they worried could never be repaired.

  “Time will soften that feeling,” Deidre reassured them. “It will always be there, but it will soften.” She looked at the boys. “You remember that before we were married, your dad and I had other people in our lives. Jenny was Maren and Megan’s mother before she died, and I was supposed to marry a man named John Erickson. We miss them, but now we have each other. That’s one of the wonderful things about life. Something good is just waiting around the corner for us, and even when we are the saddest, we can believe that we will someday be happy again.”

  The boys looked a little shocked. “Who was John Erickson?” Steve wanted to know.

  Deidre smiled wistfully. “He was a man who loved me and asked me to marry him.”

  “Did you say ‘Yes?’” Jack asked, his attention now shifted away from Maren.

  “I did,” Deidre confessed.

  “What happened?” Jack pressed.

  “He was an FBI agent. One night some very bad men shot and killed him.”

  “Did Dad know about him?” Steve questioned.

  “They were friends,” was Deidre’s answer. Then she continued, “But look what came of it. Dad and I fell in love and got married and along came you two. That’s what I mean. We will be happy again.”

  She looked at Ben’s face and hoped she spoke the truth.

  *****

  THE NEXT MORNING, after Ben left for work, Deidre took the boys for a walk along the river. It was late enough in the summer that only a trickle of water flowed between the exposed rocks and boulders in its bed, and to her surprise, they spotted a maple whose leaves had turned prematurely red.

  “Not much longer,” she said, “and school will be starting.” Both boys groaned.

  “Did you have to ruin our walk?” Steve complained, and Deidre realized that from a kid’s point of view, he was probably right.

  “Hey guys, let’s forget about what I said and enjoy the day. Heck, we’ve got two weeks before we have to worry about school.” Just then she spotted a grouse in the underbrush, and she hushed the boys. They stood like statues for several seconds, watching as the bird strutted nervously away, its neck feathers and topknot bristling. It suddenly burst into the air with an explosion of sound from its wingb
eats. The three of them began to laugh, because the noise had startled them, even though they knew it was coming. Then another bird broke cover, and another, and another until eight grouse had flushed.

  “Wow, that was quite a covey,” Deidre exclaimed. From that moment on, all thoughts of the impending school year vanished.

  By noon, everyone was getting a little tired and a lot hungry. They made their way back to the house, ate a quick lunch, and were wondering what to do next when Deidre realized she hadn’t checked her cell phone all morning. When she did, she found a message from the sheriff. She quickly listened to her voicemail.

  “Hi, Deidre. This is Jeff. If you get a chance, stop by my office today. I’ve got some news to share with you and Ben, and I’d like to talk to you in person.”

  Deidre’s heart skipped a beat. She surmised that whatever it was that Jeff had to say must be important and confidential or he would have told her over the phone.

  “Hey, kids,” she called to the boys. “I’ve got to go to town and talk to Jeff. Do you mind if I drop you off at Grandpa’s for a while?”

  Steve came running. “Does he have word about Maren?” the boy wanted to know.

  “He didn’t say. Could be anything.” She knew it had to be about Maren, but didn’t want to get into a further explanation with her sons quite yet. To this point they knew nothing about Jamie Storder. Deidre hoped he had confessed or something had been found linking him to Maren.

  *****

  DEIDRE CLIMBED THE STAIRS to the sheriff’s office, forcing herself to move. She really wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his message. She was ushered into Jeff’s office by his assistant.

  “Deidre, I have some bad news,” Jeff began. “Or good, whichever way we want to look at it.” Deidre looked surprised. How could news about Maren be both good and bad? To her it had to be one way or the other. Jeff continued.

  “Jamie Storder has an airtight alibi as to his whereabouts late the night of and for the three days after Maren was reported missing. He couldn’t have been involved, because he was in jail in Cook County. Seems he got kicked out of the bar at The Shoals Tavern, got in his truck and headed up the Shore. He must have had an open bottle with him, because by the time he got to Little Marais, he was hammered, blew a .12 on the breathalyzer. The deputy hauled him in and he spent the next three days in the hoosegow. The good news is, we still have hope that Maren is alive. The bad news is you and Ben still don’t have any kind of closure. I’m sorry.”

  Deidre didn’t know how to react. She didn’t even know what she felt at that moment. All she could wonder was if they would ever reach a conclusion.

  “We do have a new lead, however.” Jeff ’s words snapped her out of her daze. “Yesterday, a tip came in about a vagrant who wandered into town a day before Dave reported Maren missing. He was kind of an enigma. The reason we know about him is that a hotel worker called. Said a rough-looking guy registered at the hotel back in early May. I asked her why she hadn’t reported that until now. We put out enough requests for information back then. She said she didn’t want to get the hotel involved, but the memory of the guy has haunted her all summer. Guess she had a guilty conscience or something.”

  Deidre puffed out her cheeks and exhaled. “What do you know about him?”

  Chapter

  Thirty-One

  JEFF GAVE DEIDRE the name of the hotel where the informant worked, and on the way there, Deidre wondered if the front desk clerk would be of any help. She entered the lobby, which was tiny. The place was a mom-and-pop operation with about ten units and looked like a leftover from the nineteen-fifties. No one was at the counter, but after Deidre rang a small bell placed in an obvious location, the door to a back room opened. A middle-aged woman emerged, peeling off a pair of rubber cleaning gloves as she asked, “Can I help you?”

  Deidre gave her most disarming smile, or at least she hoped so. “Yes, I’d like to speak to Mary Lendo, please.”

  “That would be me,” the cleaning lady answered. A look of apprehension crossed her face. “What do you want?” It was not a belligerent question, more wary than anything.

  “Mary, my name is Deidre Johnson, Maren VanGotten’s mother. Do you recognize that name?”

  Worry lines wrinkled on Mary’s forehead and her face flushed. Deidre thought she saw the woman’s eyes tear up. “Yes, she’s the young lady who disappeared last May. Oh, Lord, I’m so sorry I didn’t say something earlier.” Mary broke down and looked as though she were on the verge of an all-out crying jag. “Please, tell me what I can do to help.”

  Deidre suggested they sit down, and Mary directed her to one of the two threadbare sofa chairs in the corner. A wave of pity for the remorseful woman swept over Deidre.

  “Please, don’t beat up on yourself, Mary. We have no idea if your customer had anything to do with my daughter. In fact, we’re grasping at straws right now, trying to follow any lead that presents itself.” Mary calmed down somewhat.

  “My husband and I had just become owners of this hotel, and we didn’t want any negative publicity when we were only getting started,” she explained. “But inside, I knew I should have called the sheriff. I just didn’t, and now I’m worried sick that I could have helped. I’m so sorry.”

  Again Deidre reassured Mary that it was okay. She was only trying to get an idea of what the lodger had been like.

  “Why does the memory of this man make you believe he might be involved with Maren’s disappearance?” Deidre asked in as understanding a voice as she could.

  “I wouldn’t have thought anything of him under other circumstances. You can see this isn’t exactly a five-star operation, and we get some customers who look to be pretty down on their luck. But after news broke about your daughter, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was different, you know?”

  Deidre asked her how he was different.

  “Well, he was really dirty, muddy, as if he had been walking on a road and had splashed clay all over his pant legs. Then, too, he carried this pack that looked as though it was really heavy, had things hanging from it: a cup, a water bottle, stuff like that. Oh, and he had a large sheath knife attached to his belt. He hung around here for three days. After he cleaned up, he didn’t look too bad. I saw him head to the laundromat with a few clothes, including his muddy pants. He was wearing them the next day with a clean, short-sleeved T-shirt on. I noticed that he had some really deep scratches on his arms, and when I asked him about them, he said they were really nothing. That’s another thing, he hardly said a word to anyone the whole time he was here.”

  Deidre stopped Mary’s monologue. “How would you describe the scratches?”

  Mary thought a moment before answering. “Well, they were deep, I can tell you that. They were scabbed over and looked to be a little infected, all red and puffy. There were two on one arm and three on the other. I don’t know which was which.”

  “Where on his arms were they?” Deidre wanted to know. She was sitting on the edge of her chair by this time. Mary pointed to the outside of her forearms, and Deidre’s heart began to beat faster. Defensive wounds, she thought, the type sustained by someone trying to protect themselves. Or the kind made by a person trying to ward off an attacker.

  “Is there anything else you can remember?” Deidre inquired.

  “Only that after three days he checked out. The last time I saw him, he was walking toward the lake. I didn’t think anything of it until I saw the notice asking for anyone with information that might be pertinent to call the sheriff.” Mary put her hands to her face. “I wish I had called then. Perhaps it would have made a difference.”

  Deidre tried to convince her that it was okay, that she appreciated the information, and that the sheriff would be able to locate the vagabond. She knew he had gotten the name from the hotel’s registry—that is, if the lodger had put down his actual name and address. They’d just have to let Jeff do his job.

  *****

  THAT EVENING AFTER SUPPER, Deidre told the boys
that she had to talk to their dad in private and to go out and toss the football around or something.

  Jack looked at her with pleading eyes. “We know this is about Maren, because you saw Sheriff Jeff today. We want to know what he said about our sister, and it’s not fair that you always chase us outside when you and Dad talk about her case now. You used to tell us what was going on. I think you should let us stay.” He folded his arms across his chest, not in defiance, but looking like he was proud that he had spoken his mind.

  Deidre was a little shocked, but not angry. Before she could respond Ben cleared his throat, which made Jack slightly nervous.

  “I think you’re right,” Ben said in a quiet voice. “It’s not fair that we’ve kept you wondering.” He looked at Deidre. “What do you think?”

  “I think that anyone who has courage to speak up the way Jack did deserves to hear the truth. Let’s sit down at the table, though.”

  When they were seated, everyone looked to Deidre, waiting to hear what she had learned from Jeff. First she explained to the boys about Jamie Storder and what he had done. Ben was exasperated when she got to the part about Storder having an irrefutable alibi for the time period corresponding to Maren’s disappearance.

  “Now Jeff has another lead,” she informed the family. “About the same time as Storder was in jail, an apparent drifter was staying in a hotel in town. I talked to the owner of the place today, and she said the guy was a little different, a real loner. He would leave his room early in the morning and not return until after dark. She couldn’t say where he spent his time. Then one day he packed up and left. The last time she saw him, he had his pack on his back and was walking toward the lake.”

  Ben got up and was pacing around the room. “Have you called Dave to let him know?”

  “No, I wanted to talk to you first. I thought we should wait until we know more. Jeff told me he had gotten the person’s name and address from the hotel registry, but I didn’t ask for it. I knew he couldn’t give it up yet. If you think we should tell Dave, I’ll go along with it, but personally, I think it would be best to wait.” Ben agreed it was best to not phone Dave. All the while the boys had been silent, listening to what was being discussed.