“Not always.”
“But she didn’t leave you.”
“She did eventually. Not her choice.”
“Sounds like you were a lucky man.”
“Blessed is what I was.”
She lifted her beer in a toast. “To blessings.”
Schanno tapped her beer can with his own, and they drank.
THIRTY-NINE
Shortly before eight P.M., Pollard declared, “Time to get ready.”
The heavy rain persisted and, along with it, a stiff wind that kept the lake churning. The leading edge of the storm had passed long ago, but what followed proved not much better. We stood up and struggled to steady ourselves.
Schanno fell into Pollard. Though she was much smaller, she caught him.
“I thought you said the wind was going to die down,” he complained.
“Quoting the radio,” she replied. “Obviously they were wrong. You want to cancel the landing party?”
Schanno looked at me.
“We’re going,” I said.
Pollard lifted one of the seats and, from the storage compartment beneath, hauled out a large canvas duffle bag with STEARNS printed on the side.
“What’s that?” Schanno said.
“An inflatable dinghy.”
“I thought you said you were going to take the sailboat in.”
“If the wind and the lake calmed. They haven’t. I don’t want to take a chance on running aground. The dinghy will be safer.”
“In these waves?” Schanno said.
“We’re less than a hundred yards from shore. Once you’re in the shelter of the inlet, it should be easy.”
“Once we’re in the inlet. What happened to you being part of this?”
“The dinghy’s designed for two adults, or six hundred and fifty pounds. I think you three can probably fit. Four would be impossible. Besides, in this weather, I need to stay with the boat.”
She waited, as if anticipating further argument from Schanno.
“You don’t have to come, Wally,” I said. “I’ll take Meloux to the island.”
“I’m coming.”
“Cork, there’s an electric air pump in that compartment over there,” Trinky said. “Would you bring it topside?”
On deck the wind pushed the rain into our faces. I could see the island, charcoal colored in the false twilight of the storm. The shoreline was a rage of foaming waves, but the opening to the inlet was clear and the water beyond looked calm. Pollard unzipped the canvas bag and hauled out the rolled dinghy. She spread it on the deck and attached the hose from the electric air pump to one of the valves. As soon as she started the pump, the flat PVC material began to quiver like an animal coming to life. While Schanno and Pollard inflated the dinghy, I went belowdeck and retrieved the knapsack I’d filled with items from my Bronco before leaving the marina—a small pry bar, glass cutter, screwdriver, hammer, sheathed hunting knife, a couple of flashlights, and binoculars. I’d thought about bringing one of the rifles, but decided against it. I didn’t want things to get out of hand that way. I slipped the hunting knife onto my belt and slung the pack on my back. By the time I got up on deck, the dinghy was ready to go. We eased it over the side, where the waves did their best to snatch it from us. We tossed in the oars, then Pollard and I held to ropes tied to the inflatable’s bow and stern while Schanno climbed in. He grasped the railing and held on to the sailboat as we helped Meloux into the dinghy. Finally, I slid over the side and settled in the bow. Pollard released her rope, and we shoved into a wind that was doing its best to drive us into the open lake. Schanno and I got the oars into the locks and began to row for all we were worth toward Manitou Island.
I played football in high school. I thought I knew what a hundred yards was. That night a hundred yards seemed to stretch into forever. We pulled hard against waves that came at us foaming like mad dogs. In the wind, our bodies acted as sails, and the dinghy resisted fiercely as we fought to go forward. For a long time, we seemed suspended between the sailboat and the shore while the water of Lake Superior broke over the bow, soaking us with its bitter cold. I was tiring, and I figured Schanno, who had a dozen years on me, had to be exhausted. But the big man dug his oars into the lake and put his back into the effort, and together we inched the small boat toward Manitou.
We finally made the inlet. As soon as we rounded the tip of the peninsula, we escaped the waves and the worst of the wind. We found ourselves in a narrow passage twenty yards wide and four times as long. The shoreline was all rock, but as I looked over my shoulder I could see dark pilings and a platform at the far end of the inlet.
“There’s a dock,” I said.
“I see it,” Schanno said.
“How’re you doing, Henry?” I asked.
He looked at me over his shoulder and smiled enormously. “Corcoran O’Connor,” he replied, “I have never been better.”
Unlike the more public landing on the other side of the island, the dock in the inlet had no security kiosk and no lighting. We tied up and climbed out of the dinghy. The lake water had been freezing cold, but the rain and the summer air felt warm against my skin. There was a trail of crushed rock leading into the trees. We could see the lights of the great house glimmering through the sway of branches.
“Lead on, Macduff,” Schanno said.
Deep in the cover of the pine trees, everything was dark enough that a flashlight would have helped, but it would also have given us away. We walked carefully, and as we approached the clearing, we slowed to a creep. We stopped before we broke from the woods. I took the binoculars from my knapsack.
The mansion stood at the center of the clearing. Lights were on inside, on both the first and second floors, but in different wings. Curtains blocked any view of the interior. On the far side of the clearing was what looked like a guesthouse. Lights were on there, too, but the shades were up and the curtains open. Through the windows of the guesthouse, I saw movement, shapes crossing through the light inside. I could see framed pictures on a wall and the polished edge of a baby grand piano. To someone it was home. I studied the big windows of the mansion. They gave away nothing. As I watched, the light went out in one of the second-floor rooms and, a few moments later, the curtain of another flared as the light behind it came on. It didn’t stay on long. A minute later, a light flipped on in another room farther down the hall. Upstairs in the great house, someone was pacing restlessly.
“The police were wrong,” I said. “He’s home.”
“What now?” Schanno asked.
I lowered the binoculars. “You hear any dogs?”
“Just the wind.”
“I want to get around to the other side, see who’s in the guesthouse. You stay here with Henry, okay?”
“What if they spot you?”
“I’ll do what I can to distract and delay them while you see if you can get Henry into Wellington’s house.”
Schanno shook his head. “Better if I do the reconnaissance and you stay with Henry.”
“Why?”
“You’ve been inside Wellington’s place. If you have to move quickly, you have a better idea of the layout. And if I get caught by these guys, what are they going to do? Call the cops? Big deal. You, they could pull that brand-new license of yours.”
What could I say? He made sense.
“I’ll work around the perimeter, keeping to the trees in case they’ve got cameras,” he said. “Be patient. This could take a while.”
I handed him the binoculars. “Morrissey was a killer. I don’t know about these guys, but you be careful, understand?”
“If it’s Benning and Dougherty, Pollard claims they’re a nice couple. They catch me, we’ll talk drapes.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
He hung the binoculars around his neck and turned to start away.
“Thanks, Wally.”
He grinned at me. “You kidding? I’m having the time of my life.”
Henry and I stood in the s
teady rain watching Schanno vanish among the shifting pines. Water dripped from my eyebrows and the end of my nose. My clothes were soaked. The trees blunted the wind, which was helpful. If the night hadn’t been so warm, we’d have been in trouble.
“You okay, Henry?”
“I have been wet before, Corcoran O’Connor.”
His eyes were on the house. Only fifty yards and the stone wall of the mansion separated him from his son. I wondered how he felt watching the lights go on and off, knowing his son was walking those empty corridors alone. I tried to imagine Wellington, the kind of loneliness that went along with the kind of life he’d made for himself. It left me feeling suffocated.
Schanno returned in less than fifteen minutes.
“Two men,” he said. “One tall, thin, blond. The other stocky, dark. Both midthirties.”
“Benning and Dougherty,” I said. “What were they doing?”
“Watching television, eating popcorn. Very domestic.”
“See any surveillance monitors?”
“Nothing.”
I wiped rainwater from my eyes. “For a man fanatical about his privacy, Wellington’s awfully slack with security.”
“He’s been hiding out here for six years,” Schanno said. “Maybe at some point, rigorous security no longer became necessary. He’s established a reputation. Substitutes virtual dogs for real dogs. Pares down his security force to a gay couple who don’t mind the isolation. Saves a lot of money that way.”
“And with a greeting committee like Morrissey, not many people want to take the chance of coming here unannounced. It fits, but...” I shook my head.
“You don’t like the feel of it?”
“Do you?”
“Why don’t we get inside and ask the man himself. Got a plan for how to do that?”
As a matter fact, I did.
FORTY
Several red maples had been planted in the clearing long ago, probably to provide shade for the mansion. They were magnificent things that in the fall would be on fire. Now they were thick with dark green summer leaves, and their wet branches flailed in the wind.
Schanno and Meloux followed me to the nearest tree.
“I need to cut a limb,” I said, pointing up at the wealth of branches above us. “Give me a boost, Wally.”
“Give you a boost?”
“You know.” I intertwined my fingers and made a stirrup.
“How about you do the boosting for me?” he suggested.
Meloux said, “You could both lift me. A sparrow weighs more.”
“You sure you’d be okay climbing this tree, Henry?”
He looked at me as if I was a hopeless idiot. “I am old, not feeble. You treat me like thin ice that will break. I will not break, Corcoran O’Connor.”
“All right, Henry.”
I took the sheathed knife from the knapsack and handed it to him.
“We need a branch strong enough to break a window. And it can’t look as if it’s been cut from the tree. It needs to look like the wind tore it loose.”
“I understand,” the old man said.
We stirruped our hands, Schanno and I, and lifted Meloux so that he could grasp the lower branches and pull himself into the maple. He spent a few minutes lost in the foliage, then a good stout branch, thick as my wrist, dropped to the ground.
“Will that do?” he called.
“Great, Henry. Come on down.”
We helped him from the tree. He handed me the knife. I put it in the knapsack and gave the little pack to Schanno.
“You two get back to the cover of the pines,” I told them. “I’ll join you in a minute.”
They slipped out of the clearing and I turned to the house. I knew the window I wanted: ground floor, above the patio in back, out of sight of the guesthouse. It was odd that the security on the estate was so lax, but I couldn’t believe that there wouldn’t be some sort of security system for the house itself. We’d see.
The patio was large and edged with a knee-high stone wall. There were stone benches and a couple of flower beds of irregular shape. The beds had been long in need of tending. I stepped over the wall and came at the window quickly with the “broken” end of the branch aimed at the center of the frame. The glass shattered and an alarm sounded inside. I left the branch stuck in the window among the shards of glass that jutted out from the frame and I leaped over the wall. As I hightailed it toward the pines, floodlights kicked on, illuminating the outside of the house in a blaze of white. Inside the mansion, all the lights seemed to come on, too, as if the whole household had been roused by the intrusion. From the direction of the guesthouse came the vicious barking of a pack of dogs.
I stood in the trees with Meloux and Schanno. I hoped Schanno’s speculation about the virtual nature of the guard dogs was right, and we weren’t simply waiting for them to attack and tear us apart.
In a couple of minutes, Benning and Dougherty appeared, nosing around the house. Each held a handgun and a flashlight whose feeble beams were consumed by the blaze of the floodlights. They were alone. No dogs. They found the offending branch and stood a few minutes in discussion. Benning looked around. His gaze settled on the nearest maple. He pointed toward it and said something to his partner. They studied the window some more. Finally Dougherty reached up and pulled the branch out of the window frame. Some of the remaining glass must have come with it because they both danced back. Dougherty stayed while Benning went back to the guesthouse.
After his partner had gone, Dougherty began examining the branch. He took a close look at the white wood where the “break” had occurred. He studied the patio under the window, crossed the wall, and walked to the maple tree, which was outside the glare of the lights. He shined his flashlight up among the branches, then dropped the beam and scanned the wet ground. Finally he shot the light toward the woods. Schanno, Meloux, and I each cozied up to the nearest tree trunk.
“Hey!”
I held my breath and wondered if Dougherty would actually use his firearm, and if he did, whether he would be any good.
“Hey, get back here, give me a hand with this window. I’m getting soaked, damn it.”
The light swung away. A few moments later I risked a peek. Dougherty was walking back to the patio where Benning waited with a roll of opaque sheet plastic, a red toolbox, and an aluminum stepladder. The men spent a few minutes cutting a piece of the plastic and fitting it over the window. They used a staple gun to affix it to the frame. When they were finished, they gathered up their tools and materials and hurried back toward the guesthouse.
Schanno, Meloux, and I joined forces and waited a bit before approaching the house again.
“You notice anything strange?” I said.
Schanno kept his eyes on the corner of the mansion where Benning and Dougherty had disappeared. “Like what?”
“Wellington didn’t come down to check the damage.”
“That’s what he has security for. Besides, he’s an odd one. Rabid about germs. Probably doesn’t want all that dirty fresh air and rain getting on him. Could be he’s hiding in a safe room somewhere.”
A safe room. I hadn’t thought about that. Terrific. Just terrific. The floodlights died. The dogs fell silent. The dark and the quiet that followed were a great relief. Inside the house, the lights that had blazed on with the alarm shut off all at the same time, but the rooms upstairs and down that had been lit before stayed lit. On the second floor, the slow progression of lights resumed.
Wellington was out and about again, restless as ever. So much for a safe room.
“Once more, dear friends, into the breach,” Schanno said.
“You do that just to impress us?” I asked.
Schanno smiled sheepishly. “It’s what happens when you live your whole life with a smart schoolteacher.”
“Ready, Henry?” I said.
The old man nodded and we left the woods. On the patio, I took the knife from my knapsack and handed it to Henry.
“W
e’re going to boost you up again and I want you to cut the plastic over the window so we can get inside. When that’s done, if you can, clear the glass that’s still in the frame so we don’t cut ourselves climbing in.”
“What if they have motion sensors inside?” Schanno said.
“With Wellington wandering around like that? I’m betting they don’t. We’ve been lucky so far.”
Luck. There was that word again. My first visit to the island had been plagued by its opposite. I’d been stonewalled by Wellington, sucker-punched by Morrissey, and had come away without accomplishing anything worthwhile. Meloux’s presence made a difference. This expedition had been marked by good fortune. The sympathetic customs official. Trinky Pollard’s offer of help. The storm that had covered our approach. Relaxed security on the island. I’d known Meloux all my life, and one of the things I’d observed about the old Mide was that circumstance seemed to favor him. Luck? When I’d used that word before, he’d laughed at me. Not many candles shy of a hundred years, yet he was still powerful in ways beyond my understanding.
Thunder Bay (Cork O'Connor Mysteries) Page 23
