“A Colt Python.”
“Jesus, you brought that over the border? We could have been arrested.”
“You’re forgetting Henry’s luck.”
“If you think he’s so lucky, what do you need that for?”
“My dad always told me to hedge my bets.” He began feeding cartridges into the Colt. “You think Rupert Wellington is involved in any of this?”
“I don’t think a man in charge of a corporation like Northern Mining is as ignorant of what’s going on as he’d like us to believe. What exactly his part is, I can’t say.”
The vehicle trailing us—a dark green SUV—kept its distance.
“If Benning slows down and that SUV behind us speeds up, I’ll probably be glad you have that Colt,” I said.
In the back, Meloux snorted in his deep slumber.
“I don’t understand Henry,” Schanno said. He snapped the cylinder closed. “Why worry about his son after seventy years? What good could it do him?”
“This isn’t about his own good. Henry’s worried about his son.”
“He oughta be. We all know Morrissey wasn’t after any pocket watch. Just between you and me, I think Henry’s setting himself up for a big fall. What kind of son would behave like this Wellington?”
“A sick one. That’s what Henry believes anyway. He also believes he can help.”
“There are some people—and you understand I’m not one of them—who are going to say Henry’s just out to get something, maybe a piece of Wellington’s fortune.”
“Anybody says that, they don’t know Henry. Hell, he’s never taken a cent of the distribution he’s due from the rez’s casino profits. He had Jo set up a fund. The money goes directly into it. After he’s gone, it’ll be used for college scholarships for Shinnobs.”
“A guy like Henry, you’ve got to admit, Cork, seems too good to be true.”
A horrible smell invaded the Bronco. I looked at Schanno and he looked at me. We both looked back at Meloux, who smiled in his sleep.
“I should have warned you about Henry and beans,” I said. “Jesus, roll your window down.”
Schanno took a deep breath of the fresh air that rushed in. “What I just said about Henry? You can forget it.”
* * *
After five hours on the road and nearly three hundred additional miles on my old Bronco’s odometer, we came to the outskirts of a small town called Flame Lake. It was the first sign of civilization we’d seen in a long time. Mostly, there’d been the gray pavement down the middle of an endless green corridor, with the occasional blue relief of a lake to break the monotony. Benning pulled off into a roadside park along a little river, and we followed him. He stopped, got out, and came to my side of the Bronco.
I was watching for the SUV in the mirror. So was Schanno. He had his loaded Colt in the glove box.
“Wait here,” Benning said.
“What for?”
“I have to make a call. I’ve got to use a phone in town. Cells don’t work up here. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
“No choice, I guess.”
“That’s right.”
Benning headed off in his Explorer. I got out, walked to the road, and looked back the way we’d come. I hadn’t seen the SUV pass by us, and I wondered where it was. I had to look hard, but I could see it, pulled way off to the side. If we tried to head back to Thunder Bay at this point, it could easily cut us off. I thought about swinging the Bronco around and going back, just to see who it was. My guess was Dougherty. But Wellington was a man with unlimited resources, so, hell, it could have been anybody or, more likely, a platoon of anybodies.
Schanno came up beside me. “What do you think?”
“If they’ve got something up their sleeves, I doubt it’ll happen here. We’ll just have to be careful.”
Schanno grunted, and I took that for agreement.
Meloux had climbed out, too. We were in an area of rugged hills covered with boreal growth, mostly jack pine and black spruce. Meloux stood near a picnic table and studied the hills. There was a little map posted near the parking area. It showed a lake—Flame Lake— curling in a long, lazy, ten-mile arc to the west of the town. It also showed the Flame Lake Mine, a few miles west of where we stood.
I walked to Meloux, who’d climbed onto the picnic table. Like an extra couple of feet would improve his view.
“What do you think, Henry? Familiar?” I asked.
“Seventy years, Corcoran O’Connor. A long time to remember anything. And these old eyes . . .” He shook his head and slowly climbed down.
The Explorer came back. Benning poked his head out the window. He still had on his shades. “Through town,” he instructed. “At the intersection, keep straight on. Stay well back from me, though. Understand?”
“Not exactly, but I get your drift,” I replied.
The town, what there was to it, was laid out at the eastern end of the lake. It reminded me of a lot of small towns on the Iron Range of Minnesota, places that had exploded with a burly energy when the iron mines were operating, but had had the wind knocked out of them once the operations shut down. Along the one-block business district, several storefronts were vacant. Among those still open were a grocery store, a couple of bars, and a little Mexican restaurant with a sign in the window hyping the blue margaritas. The variety store, a place called the Outpost that sold clothing, sporting goods, hardware, hunting and fishing licenses, and Minnetonka moccasins, seemed to be doing okay. We passed it all quickly and followed Benning north, out of town.
A couple of miles farther on we came to a turnoff onto another road that curved along the shoreline of Flame Lake. A large sign was posted at the intersection: PRIVATE ROAD, NO TRESPASSING. We took the turnoff and headed west on the private road. I tried to stay far enough back from the Explorer that we weren’t eating the dust it kicked up. The cloud my Bronco left behind us kept me from seeing if the green SUV was still following.
After eight miles of this, the road ended. Benning pulled up before an expansive, two-story log house built on the lakeshore. It wasn’t a new structure, but it had been well cared for. The logs were pine the color of dark honey. There were green shutters on the windows. A small apron of grass separated the house from the surrounding trees. Beds of flowers lined the foundation. We parked behind Benning, who got out and walked to the Bronco.
“Wait here. I’ll let Mr. Wellington know you’ve arrived.” He left us, jogged up the steps to the front porch, and went in the door.
Meloux slid from the Bronco and headed around the side of the house, toward the lake.
“Henry?” I called.
He didn’t pay any attention. Schanno and I followed him. Meloux crossed the backyard, which was maybe a hundred feet of coarse grass, and stood at the edge of the lake, staring across the water toward the ridges on the far side.
We stayed back, giving him the space and time he seemed to need.
With his back to us, he said, “I stood here and watched Maria swim.”
“Here? You’re sure?”
“She was like an otter, sleek and beautiful.”
For the first time since I’d brought him north across the border, he sounded deeply satisfied. I felt happy for him.
“Hey!”
We turned toward the house. Benning had come out onto the large rear deck.
“Inside,” he called. He jammed his thumb toward the sliding glass door that stood open at his back. “Mr. Wellington is waiting.”
FORTY-FIVE
We mounted the steps of the back deck and trailed Benning into the house. It was furnished sparely, but what was there was beautifully made. The whole place was strongly scented with the good smell of wood smoke, a scent comforting and welcoming, the essence, it had always seemed to me, of where the human experience and the wilderness met.
Benning led us to a room at the southwest end of the house. It was full of books and sunlight and Henry Wellington.
He was less imposing than the legen
ds about him suggested. He stood six feet at most, taut, slender. His hair was white and thick. For a man of seventy, he had skin that was remarkably smooth and unblemished. His dark eyes regarded us calmly. He was dressed in white drawstring pants and a loose shirt of white cotton. He wore sandals. He didn’t offer to shake hands, but he did invite us to sit, and he offered us something to drink. We declined.
He said simply, “You’ve come a long way to talk to me. I’m listening.”
“When I was a young man,” Meloux told him, “I loved your mother, and she loved me.”
“My mother has been dead for sixty-five years.”
“You are wrong,” Meloux said. “In you, I can see that she lives still.”
Wellington studied the old Mide carefully but not with a cold eye. “Tell me how you knew my mother.”
Meloux told his story, much as he’d told it to me. As he talked, the box of sunlight on the polished floorboards changed. At one point, the wind rose slightly outside, and the sound of it through the pines was a steady, distant sigh. I heard heavy thuds from a far part of the house, hut Wellington gave no sign that they were important. I wondered if there was someone else in the house besides Benning.
Wellington listened patiently and with an intensity that made me believe every word Meloux spoke was being processed and filed away and could be accessed a decade later, verbatim.
When Meloux finished, Wellington said, “I’m to believe that Leonard Wellington was not only not my father but was a killer as well?”
“No,” Meloux replied. “The killing is on my shoulders.”
“But he was a man with murder in his heart, yes?”
“That was one thing in his heart.”
“Do you have the watch?”
Meloux brought it out from his shirt pocket. Wellington crossed the room, and took it from him. He walked to a window that looked south across the lake. The late-afternoon sun struck him and seemed to ignite the white he wore. He looked at the photograph in the pocket watch for a long time.
“This is the only proof you have?” he asked.
“She gave me her love and I stole the watch,” Meloux said. “In their ways, they were gifts I did not ask for, but I took them gratefully.”
Wellington turned. I couldn’t read his face.
“I require more,” he said.
He and Meloux locked eyes. For the next half minute, it was as if Schanno and I didn’t exist.
“I will take you to Maurice’s cabin,” Meloux said.
“Now?”
“Now.”
Wellington studied the sky outside the window. “In four hours, it will be too dark to see.”
Meloux stood up. “Then you had better keep up with me.”
Wellington smiled. “Very well.”
He took a few minutes to change his clothes. Under Benning’s watchful eye, Meloux, Schanno, and I went out to my Bronco, where I put a few things into my day pack: a flashlight, three bottled waters, bug repellent, and my Swiss Army knife. For good measure, I took Schanno’s loaded Colt from the glove box and slipped it in the pack. I didn’t know Wellington, and I hadn’t been able to read him. I didn’t know what his true agenda might be. It was possible he was simply as intrigued as he appeared to be. It was also possible that he planned to have us all whacked in the isolation of the woods. Whoever it was that had trailed us in the green SUV was probably lurking somewhere near. The weight of the Colt in the day pack gave me a measure of comfort.
“What do you think?” Schanno asked, coming around the Bronco as I shut the door.
“About Wellington?”
“Him, yeah, but I also meant about Meloux hiking to the ruins of this burned-down cabin.”
“Meloux hikes from Crow Point into Allouette all the time. A good ten miles round-trip.”
Meloux was standing not far away, but his attention was focused on the lake and the distant ridges. He didn’t seem to hear our conversation.
“Three days ago he was in the hospital, and word was that he wasn’t coming out,” Schanno said.
“Tell him your concern, if you want to.”
“My concern? You think I’m not talking sense?”
“Try talking sense to Meloux. After everything he’s been through to get here, if he told me he was going to fly to this cabin, I’d say happy landing.”
“All right, how about this? It’s been seventy years since he was here, Cork. Hell, I can’t even remember what clothes I wore yesterday. You really think Meloux’s going to be able to find his way?”
“I guess we’ll see. By the way, your Colt Python is in the pack.”
“Good. I’ve been thinking about the guys in that SUV. Should we take the rifles?”
“How good are you with the Colt?”
“Pretty good,” Schanno said.
“Unless Wellington comes out with a bazooka, let’s stick with that.” I walked over to Meloux and risked intruding on his thoughts. “You doing okay, Henry?”
“I’m near the end of the journey, Corcoran O’Connor.”
“Can you tell he’s your son?” I thought about the faint copper color of Wellington’s skin and his dark eyes. They could have been from Shinnob blood, or just as easily from the Cuban blood of his mother.
Meloux didn’t answer immediately. The wrinkles around his eyes, already deep, went deeper as he stared at the log house. “My heart is out there waiting for his to come and meet it. We will see.”
That didn’t strike me as a resounding yes. Meloux had risked much to be here: his health, his life, and, because he’d admitted to murder, his freedom. I wanted the answer he gave me to be absolute and affirmative. I wanted him to say that the moment he set eyes on the man, he’d known Wellington was his son. All the evidence was there, yet I felt the old man holding back. To be a son, to be a father, these things were more than just a blood tie. Maybe that’s what the hesitation was about. Did the relationship matter if, in the end, Wellington didn’t give a damn?
Wellington came from the house and spoke to Benning on the front porch, a conversation too quiet to be overheard, then he joined us. He’d dressed rugged: L.L. Bean boots, Levi’s, a brown, long-sleeved Henley, and a camouflage jungle hat. He also carried a small pack. I wondered how much our loads might resemble each other.
“After you, sir,” he said to Meloux with what seemed to be genuine respect.
Meloux crossed the yard, heading west, parallel to the lake. Where the grass met the pines, he spent a few minutes studying the ground, then he was off, leading the way.
He didn’t burn up the woods with his speed, but he did keep a remarkably steady pace for a man who’d seemed ancient to me my whole life, and who, as Schanno noted, was lying in a hospital bed only days before. It helped that he was following a trail. It wasn’t well worn, but to an eye familiar with hunting or tracking, it was clear we were walking where others had walked before. This was August. The bugs swarmed: biting deerflies, blackflies, gnats, and mosquitoes. Schanno was slapping himself silly behind me, so we stopped and put on the DEET I’d brought. Wellington declined my offer to share the ointment, as did Henry. We crossed slender threads of creek water running silver between white rocks. In the middle of a small meadow, Meloux stopped, not from weariness, I realized, but to take in the beauty of the lavender wild bergamot that grew in profusion and whose leaves filled the air with a refreshing mint scent. Smells are the time machines of human perception. A scent can take you instantly back to a particular place and time. Watching Meloux stand, transfixed, with his eyes gently shut, I wondered if, in that moment, he was a young man again, in love, walking through the meadow with Maria.
“Are you tired?” Wellington asked. “We can rest.”
Meloux opened his eyes. The moment was gone. He shook his head and we moved on.
We came to the gray, rocky slope of a long ridge, where the trail disappeared. Meloux studied the incline. We’d been hiking for nearly an hour without a significant rest. Despite the DEET, bugs kept land
ing on my neck, trying to lap at the sweat there. I was aware that Schanno had been keeping a wary eye on the woods at our backs, and he was doing that now. Wellington watched the old Mide with intense interest.
Meloux put his hand on the stone of the slope. “Over seventy winters, things change. Trees die, others grow, and the way becomes clouded. But rocks do not change so easy. The rocks, I remember. There,” he said and pointed upward toward a small, dark gray spire around which nothing grew. “I used to think of it as a manidoo, a spirit showing the way.”
With that, he began to climb.
Thunder Bay (Cork O'Connor Mysteries) Page 27
