Frozen Assets

by Lee Schultz

  My mind started wandering, and I let it go. I find that concentrating on something clogs u the process. I get more answers by posting the question on the chat room of my mind, then going shopping or skiing or something that doesn’t require a lot of brain work. More often than not, the answer is there next time I log on to my brain.

  I sipped my coffee, watched the woods for wildlife, and let the gray matter percolate. A regular female Hercule Poirot, I am. I was half asleep when three white-tailed deer cautiously came out of the trees toward where I had left some corn for them. I stayed perfectly still so as not to spook them, and watched them eagerly snarf up their treat. They were looking a little ratty, but I couldn’t see their ribs, which meant they weren’t starving.

  Surviving the winter is difficult enough for us two-leggers with roofs over our head and warm clothes. White-tails are so abundant in the Upper Peninsula and lower Michigan - over ten thousand car-deer encounters are reported every year in the state - that when the snow gets so deep they can’t forage, they start eating whatever is handy - pine tree branches, landscaping plants in peoples’ yards, anything to reduce what must be gnawing hunger. By spring the trees look as if someone had used a yardstick to trim them all the same distance from the ground. There is a huge winter kill of deer most winters, which keeps the predators well-fed. A morning road-kill will disappear by noon, dragged off into the woods by wolves or bears, and sometimes even by coyotes.

  I love the graceful, skittish creatures, with their huge brown eyes and long, almost spindly legs. This morning’s visitors did a good job of cleaning up the corn before they turned away, flicked their large tails with the white undersides, and picked their way through the snow into the woods.

  My mental equivalent of "you’ve got mail" brought me back to the problem I had been pondering. I remembered an incident from a couple of weeks ago. I was just loafing, sitting in the sun on my deck sipping a cup of tea. (I spend a lot of time on my deck sipping something hot out of a mug.) The phone rang. I ignored it. It rang again. I sighed, got up from the chair and went inside.

  "Hello." Some people say it like a question. I say it like a statement.

  "Ms Meagher? (He pronounced it "Meeger") This is Kenny Wilson from State Wide Realty in Ironwood? Do you have a minute?"

  "Depends on what you want it for. And it’s MaHAR, not Meeger.""

  He sniffed. "I’d much rather discuss it with you in person."

  I rolled my eyes and sighed. "Look, I don’t want to buy whatever you’re selling, so either tell me what you want, or I’ll hang up now and go back to what I was doing when you interrupted me."

  That did it. He wanted to come out and see me at the property to discuss an offer a client wanted to make. I told him I wasn’t interested in selling, but I just don’t have it in me to be really nasty to people. Yes, even when I was a card-carrying lawyer, I couldn’t be outright rude. That’s why, if I don’t know who’s calling, I usually don’t answer. That way I don’t get sucked into a telemarketer’s spiel. Don’t ask me why I answered this time. The upshot was, he would be at my door at two that afternoon.

  I don’t know what I expected from somebody who ends every sentence with a question like a California Valley girl, but it certainly was not the bespectacled young man dressed in typical Yooper gear who appeared at my door. Red plaid shirt, suspendered slacks, swampers, red plaid chook with the earflaps down, choppers sticking out of his side pocket. He was very polite and respectful, and took his rubber swampers off before entering my cabin, despite my telling him it was unnecessary.

  He was here, he said, to present me with an offer from a client who wished to remain anonymous. This mystery person was offering me two hundred and eighty thousand dollars cash for my eighty acres, and would pay all closing costs and commissions.

  I gaped at him, stunned into silence. Five years ago I had paid a hundred and eighty thou for my little chunk of paradise, and that much only because of the large pond fed by a small creek and the fact that the land hadn’t been timbered in recent years. I knew property prices had risen, but not that much! I wanted to know more about this guy, but Mr. Wilson would not budge.

  "Client confidentiality, you know."

  "Bullshit!" I said, "Client confidentiality only counts with lawyers, priests and shrinks, not real estate agents."

  He pursed his lips and said disapprovingly, "I realize that, but anonymity is the client’s unconditional requirement, and I’m not going to risk losing the client by divulging the name." I noted how he didn’t even use "him" or "her" but instead used gender-neutral terms.

  I tried another tack. "Okay, so what does this mystery person want with my land? There’s thousands of acres available for that kind of money, on lakes and rivers. My eighty isn’t worth that much even on a good day."

  Mr. Wilson primly pursed his lips. "I have no idea, frankly, and I don’t care. My commission is the same whether he uses it to grow timber, mine copper or dump his garbage."

  I shook off the fleeting mental image of someone tossing a body out of a car door.

  I told Mr. Wilson I wasn’t interested in selling and that he would best serve his client by finding him another chunk of woods to buy. He finally left, but not until I had edged him toward the door and then finally got in his personal space and bade him good day.

  I actually said that. "Good day, Mr. Wilson!" Very firmly.

  In a huff, he strode to his car, cast a final baleful glance back at me, then drove away in his little red Miata.

  I didn’t think much about it. I figure somebody with the kind of money his client was willing to pay would find a choice piece of acreage with river frontage or lake property, if not in Iron County, then in a neighboring county. The one thing this area has plenty of is undeveloped acreage, and water. Okay, that’s two things.

  6

  There are as many Yooper jokes as there are Yoopers, but this is my all-time favorite: A guy dies and goes to Hell. He’s standing in a long line of people waiting to be interviewed by Satan. As Satan sorts the people, he throws them into the fiery pit, and every once in awhile he tosses one in a pile in the corner.

  When the guy’s turn comes, he says "Satan, I’m curious. You’re throwing most of us in the pit, but why are those people in that pile over there?

  Satan shrugs and says "Those guys are from the U. P. They’re too cold and wet to burn."

  7

  I’m shoveling snow off my deck. I keep running the shovel into something big, hard and heavy. I work at it and work at it and finally get the shovel blade underneath it. Using the shovel as a lever I pop the thing loose and push it forward a few inches. That’s strange, there seems to be cloth or something stuck to the decking. I bend down to look closer, and the thing rises up in front of me, snow falling away to reveal a dead man with no face. I am paralyzed, unable to move, as the corpse lurches toward me. Blood bubbles from a hole where its mouth used to be, and I realize it is trying to say something to me. It reaches out and grasps my shoulder, pulling me close to its face - I try to resist, to no avail. I want to scream No! No! but no sound comes out. I hear a siren in the distance and....

  I wake up to the sound of Jeezo Petes wailing at the door, wanting to go out. I am wrapped up in the bedclothes like a mummy and by the time I’ve freed myself from my shroud I’m awake enough to wonder what the hell THAT was all about. They say dreams are the mind’s way of taking out the trash. I wonder what that says about what’s in my head.

  I didn’t hear anything more about Mr. Popsicle for the next few days, and settled back into my usual boring routine. Plow the road. Bring in the firewood. Go to town for critter food and gossip. Start the truck and run it awhile to make sure it would start when I needed it to. I broke up the routine occasionally by strapping on my snowshoes and taking Holy Wah for a romp in the deep snow. Or maybe the cross country skis.

  The Upper Peninsula is winter sport Heaven. There are hundreds of miles of groomed snowmobile and ski
trails. If you were of a mind, you could completely circumnavigate the Upper Peninsula on these trails. All along the trails are the various pubs, bars, and little restaurants which cater to the winter crowd. Each one sponsors grooming for a chunk of trail, in the hopes that the snowmobilers and skiers will stop at their particular establishment for a rest - and a bathroom break. Since they’re inevitably dressed in about six layers, topped with insulated coveralls, the simple act of taking a whizz can be really complicated. Most of the small motels, bars and restaurants make the bulk of their annual income during the winter. Which is a good thing, since there can be snow on the ground for as many as seven months in a year.

  I own a snowmobile, a venerable Arctic Cat I bought at a yard sale. I use it strictly for practical purposes. Like getting to town when the roads haven’t been plowed, which happens on occasions of extreme snowfall, which, in some years can be most of the winter. Or to haul in firewood if my autumn calculations of how much I’d need for the winter had been off. I hate the noisy, stinking machines but I have to admit their practicality.

  But if I’m going to indulge myself in pure recreation, it will be on skis or snowshoes so I can savor the hush of snowbound woods and hear any noise made by a foraging animal. Sometimes I can be so quiet I can get close to a critter without disturbing it. Then I stay completely still, and just watch as whatever animal it is goes about the business of finding food to help it survive the winter.

  Though Holy Wah is getting on in years - her breed typically has a life span of six to eight years, and she is seven - she loves to go out into the woods. She’s slowed down some, but then so have I, so we make a perfect pair. She likes to root around in the snow, probably smelling the remains of a wolf’s meal, or finding a dead somethingorother, and then she will prance proudly alongside me with a snootful of snow.

  On Thursday H.W. and I had been out on the snow for about an hour, when the quiet and solitude of the woods was ruptured by what sounded like a gunshot. It’s hard to tell the direction a sound is coming from in the winter woods, and I had no idea which way to flee. Which was what I intended to do, since I prefer to leave the confrontational stuff to the manly types. I’m not a coward, just prudent. And smart enough to realize that against someone with a gun, I have no chance. Especially unarmed. Just in case it wasn’t a poacher. I can still sway a jury with a closing statement, but somehow I don’t think that talent would help if someone wanted to shoot me.

  Both H.W. and I stood dead still, listening, barely breathing. HW is a sight hound, and doesn’t locate things via her nose like Labs do, so she was no help. Another shot ricocheted off the trees, then silence. Not a sound, no crunching footsteps, no snapping of twigs. We stayed motionless for what seemed forever but was actually about five minutes, until in the distance I heard a snowmobile start up and fade away to a faint buzz. I figured it was time to head for home.

  A sheriff’s deputy arrived about an hour after I called it in. Tall, blond and babyfaced, Deputy Doug Blazier - known, of course, as Deputy Dawg - looked more like he should be herding kids at a day care center rather than packing around a beltful of hardware. Ever notice how you can tell a cop, even in street clothes, by the way they hold their elbows out away from their waists? What with the weapon, the mace, the baton, the cell-phone holder, the radio holder and what ever else they routinely carry on their belts, it’s a wonder they don’t all sport black and blue elbows. Maybe that’s why they always wear long-sleeved shirts.

  I heard the "Bleedeep!" the deputy’s radio made as he called in his location. I went out to meet him as he exited his vehicle. That’s what cops do. They don’t "get out of the car," they "exit the vehicle."

  "Hey, deputy, thanks for coming out. It’s probably nothing, but gunshots is gunshots, eh?"

  He nodded gravely. "Yah. Better at least check it out. Any idea where?"

  I pointed him in the direction of the trail through the pines where I had been snowshoeing. "I was about a quarter mile out when I heard it. I’m not sure, but I think they headed south toward US 2 where the snowmobile trail crosses. That’s the general direction the gunshot came from."

  He didn’t look happy at the prospect of trying to go that far in only his uniform boots. He bleeped his radio and called in the information. He turned back to me. "Someone will go check out the snowmobile trail to see if they can find anything. I’m just going to wander around here a little and see if I can pick up anything."

  I offered to accompany him, which he politely declined, then offered the loan of my snowshoes, which he happily accepted. I helped him lace them up, then pointed him in the direction I had gone earlier. He clumped off, and I went back into the house.

  8

  Once again my cabin was awash in flashing lights which strobed across the windows and painted the walls with red streaks, even in the daylight. I counted three police cars - one state police, one deputy car, one deputy’s 4x4 pulling a trailer upon which sat a snowmobile and smaller trailer, used for hauling injured people - and bodies - out of the woods. It had wheels for non-winter, which could be raised, and skis for winter use. The trooper who had investigated the US2 end of the snowmobile trail had followed a trail of blood droplets about a quarter mile into the woods, where the crumpled body of a light-haired, thin woman lay off to the side of a deer trail, like a discarded doll. The blood droplets continued past her body into the woods, thus the search group.

  Search and Rescue arrived - five more vehicles, all with red or amber flashers on the top, since most of the S&R guys are also firemen and some are Emergency Medical Technicians with the ambulance service. Yoopers wear lots of hats. A pickup pulled up and a search dog and his handler hopped out. The "Bleedeep!" of the 800 megaHerz radios now used by all law enforcement agencies in Michigan punched holes in the crisp winter air, and I could hear bits of several conversations around me.

  It was cold, the sky was darkening and closing in, and all I wanted to do was take a nap. Why were bodies popping up like spring daffodils, and on my property? It wasn’t easy to get through those woods, even where there were narrow trails which I used for skiing in winter, walking in summer, and hauling in firewood from where I had felled trees the prior year. Furthermore, the woman, according to the trooper, wasn’t wearing any winter gear. If she hadn’t been shot she probably would have died of exposure and hypothermia. So she probably wasn’t in the woods voluntarily.

  I kept thinking of the murder mysteries I enjoyed on a cold winter night, and wondering how long it would take the law to decide that, since the bodies were on my land, I must somehow be involved. I kept thinking of stories of people unjustly accused and railroaded by ambitious prosecutors, spurious evidence, and juries who believed that "where there’s smoke there’s fire" and that if you were accused, you must have done it.

  By the time I had myself sitting on death row, searchers had come out of the woods, pulling the trailer behind a snow sled. It wasn’t hard to recognize the tarp-covered lump on the trailer as the outline of a former human being.

  9

  Life in the UP: One day it's warm, the rest of the year it's cold.

  By Saturday, it was known all over town that the dead woman was part of a Milwaukee drug pipeline, and lived in Hurley, Wisconsin. She regularly brought shipments of various happy pills and powder up to northern Wisconsin, the UP, and west into upper Minnesota, probably working for a supplier out of Chicago or Milwaukee. She had been shot execution style. The law was still trying to make a connection between the two victims, but so far the only thing they had in common was drugs.

  On Sunday afternoon I had a visit from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the form of two agents. I couldn’t help but think of "X Files." The woman was my height, about 5 feet 3 inches, but where I’m definitely pudgy (but, I keep telling myself, under that padding is solid muscle), she was lean and fit-looking, like I used to be. She had shoulder-length brown hair which turned up at the ends in the barest of flips. She wore a navy blue pants
suit with a surplice-style white blouse, and wore sensible shoes appropriate for winter. She introduced herself as Agent Anna Heikkinen, and her partner as Agent Nate Walker.

  Her partner, I swear to the snow gods, could have body-doubled for George Clooney. .He had the beginnings of a squint at the corners of his Paul Newman. Dark silver hair with an upside-down question-mark curl over one eyebrow. Tall, maybe six three, solid build just beginning to soften. Dressed in what is apparently FBI standard-issue navy suit, white shirt, navy tie. Sensible shoes. Maybe around 50.Be still, my heart.

  I figured I could unleash my fantasies without any consequences - he was too young and too yummy to be a threat to my self-imposed aloneness. Nobody looking like this guy could possibly be available, and even if he were, there are a lot of women younger and better looking - and probably better tempered - than I am. Or maybe he was gay..... I dismissed him as a possibility for anything other than libidinous fantasies.

  However, even though I have chosen self-imposed isolation, I never lock a door once I close it. You never know - my soul mate might still be out there, somewhere, looking for me. Yeah, right. But still....

  I invited the two agents into my cabin and put the kettle on. I offered them a Guinness, but both predictably declined, and accepted coffee. I quickly ground some beans and threw the result into a paper filter which went into the coffee maker, by which time the water was boiling. I slowly poured .the water over the grounds, savoring the rich aroma. After we were all settled in with our steaming mugs, and Jeezo Petes and Holy Wah had sniffed them both and pronounced them acceptable, we got down to business.

  The dog made a heavy THUNK! as she collapsed onto the rug in front of the fireplace.

  "Do you have any idea why these bodies were left on your property?" Nothing like getting right to the point.