“I’ve been told that you weren’t the only woman he—that Montgomery was involved with,” I said.
“No, I wouldn’t think so.”
“You don’t seem upset by the news.”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Perhaps his other partners weren’t as open-minded.”
“When David discovered that his wife was sleeping with his best friend, he beat up on Wayne, yet he never touched her.”
“Meaning?”
“If someone was angry that I was sleeping with David, they would have come after me, not him.”
“I was a police officer for a long time. That’s not necessarily how it works.”
Greyson gave it a few beats before she responded. “I have no idea who he might have been sleeping with besides me. He never spoke about anyone else while we were together.”
“Gillian Davis?”
“It’s possible.”
“Leah Huddleston?”
She shrugged.
“Ardina Curtis?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Peg Younghans?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Louise Wykoff?”
Greyson snorted at the suggestion.
“Now that would shock me,” she said. “That would shock me to my core.”
“When was the last time you saw Montgomery?”
“Tuesday evening.”
After the paintings were stolen, my inner voice reminded me.
“We were together for only about an hour,” Greyson added. “I had an early morning.”
“How did he seem?”
“Happy.”
“Happy? Did he tell you why?” Greyson’s eyes snapped toward me like I had just insulted her. “I mean for a reason besides that.”
“All he said was that it was a beautiful day.”
“Was it a beautiful day?”
“No, now that you mention it. It was cold and raining.”
* * *
I thanked Ms. Greyson for her time and left the library. I moved cautiously back to the highway while searching for Jennica. I didn’t see her, but I saw a black-and-white SUV with a light bar on the roof and SHERIFF COOK COUNTY painted on the door. It was two blocks up and coming toward me. I turned around and walked quickly enough in the opposite direction to put plenty of distance between my back and the street, yet not so rapidly as to draw attention to myself. At the same time I threw a glance over my shoulder. Deputy Wurzer was behind the wheel. He didn’t notice me, though, and kept driving until he hit Broadway and hung a right. I felt a little silly, hiding from the police, only I didn’t trust him. When he was out of sight, I spun back around and went to my car.
* * *
Northern Lights Art Gallery was located near the Dairy Queen, as I had been told. I could see its sign over the roof of the Mustang as I unlocked the door. I glanced around for both Jennica and Wurzer and not seeing either of them, I relocked the car door, walked the hundred and fifty yards to the entrance, and stepped inside. The gallery was filled with customers. They moved slowly, examining each painting, print, sculpture, carving, ceramic bowl or vase, photograph, and article of jewelry as if they were curating for, well, the City of Lakes Art Museum. Yet except for a few coffee mugs, a couple of hand-painted greeting cards, and a trout knife with a handle made from a deer antler, I didn’t see anyone buy anything.
There were a few paintings by Louise Wykoff hanging on the walls and I spent most of my time studying them until the crowd thinned out. I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like—the line was attributed to Mark Twain, although I doubt he actually said it. I have used it myself, though, often substituting the word “art” for food, music, theater, ballet, or whatever other subject I was woefully ignorant in. I can say, however, that I really liked Louise’s paintings, especially the one of a French voyager working at a blacksmith’s forge. I was wondering what Nina might say about the $3,500 price tag when a woman moved to my side.
“That’s my uncle,” she said.
“Your uncle?”
“My uncle Frank. He’s a reenactor.”
The expression on my face must have revealed my confusion because she continued.
“The National Park Service restored the North West Company’s trading post up in Grand Portage I don’t know how many years ago. Turned it into a national monument. This is the fort where the voyageurs would take the furs they collected in Canada, load them onto boats, and send them across the great lakes to the St. Lawrence River and eventually to Europe. Every August, reenactors from across the country dress in period attire and gather at the post for what is called the Grand Rendezvous and pretend for three days to be living in the late eighteenth century. It’s actually quite extraordinary. My uncle is one of the reenactors. He conducts blacksmithing classes. Louise painted him from photographs she took.”
“She makes me believe she was actually there in the 1790s.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her; the woman’s been around forever.”
The woman slapped a hand over her mouth and for a moment she was thirty years old going on ten.
“Do you know Louise?” she asked.
“I do.”
“Don’t tell her I said that.”
“I promise.”
“We should all look that fabulous when we’re her age.”
“How old do you think she is?”
“I’m just digging this hole deeper and deeper, aren’t I?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
She offered her hand.
“I’m Leah Huddleston,” she said.
No kidding? my inner voice said. I thought Leah would be another woman fast approaching retirement age.
“I’m McKenzie,” I said.
“Oh. You’re not what I expected at all.”
“You were expecting me?”
“Peg Younghans said you might be stopping by.”
“Did she?”
“When she spelled me for my lunch break. Minnesota state law requires that small businesses give employees sufficient mealtime if they work more than eight consecutive hours, and I always take an hour at exactly eleven thirty whether the boss likes it or not.”
“Who’s the boss?”
“I am. Peg said you were working for That Wykoff Woman. Should I say what she called you?”
“Please do.”
“She said you were Louise’s boy-toy.”
“I don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted.”
“Knowing Peg, I’d say flattered.”
“Knowing Peg, if she was male they’d call her a dirty old man.”
“She does seem fixated by all things sexual.”
“How long have you known her?”
“I inherited her when I bought the gallery four years ago. She works part-time in the summer. Terrifically punctual. You could set your watch to her. During the winter, though, we’re open eleven to five, three days a week and I have that covered.”
“You’re not a native.”
“I am, actually. I grew up here, went to Cook County High School. Go Vikings. Fear no one. My family moved to Chicago, though, halfway through my junior year. I enrolled at the Chicago Academy for the Arts and caught the bug. Later I graduated from Columbia College. Worked in a couple of galleries. When Northern Lights went up for sale, I jumped at it. I love Grand Marais. The hustle and bustle of the summer. The quiet and solitude of the winter.”
“Good for you.”
“What can I do for you, sir? Peg says that you’re looking for some of Louise’s paintings that were stolen?”
“It’s possible that they were stolen by David Montgomery.”
Leah closed her eyes and shook her head as if she did not want to believe my accusation, yet didn’t necessarily disbelieve it. She moved slowly to the counter she kept at the far end of the gallery. I followed her.
“Poor David,” she said. “Peg said that even though it looks like he com
mitted suicide, the sheriff thinks he was murdered. She said that Louise might have done it.”
I was upset by the suggestion and probably my voice revealed it.
“Absolutely not,” I said. “Louise was surrounded by a dozen witnesses when Montgomery died.”
“Thank God.”
“In any case, the authorities haven’t yet officially determined if it was suicide or murder.”
“Peg is the worst gossip.”
“I got that impression.”
“I hope—what do I hope? If David committed suicide you wonder what you could have done to prevent it, what you could have done to help him. If he was murdered, you wonder which one of your neighbors, your friends, is a killer. Oh, God.”
“I was told you dated him.”
“I did. A couple of times last February. ’Course, everyone in town knew about it. There are only a few places in Grand Marais that are open in the winter so it’s kind of hard to keep a secret. The problem—he was—David thought all he had to do was play his flute and women would shimmy and shake for him. When I say flute, I’m speaking metaphorically.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“I came of age in Chicago, though, and I know charmers and I know snakes and he was more the latter than the former. I wanted nothing to do with his flute. That seemed to surprise him.”
“Apparently, others weren’t as discriminating.”
“There’s something like fifty-one hundred people living in all of Cook County, mostly along the lake. There aren’t many opportunities to meet people unless you travel.”
“Do you travel?”
“As often as possible. When you say ‘others,’ who do you mean?”
“You tell me.”
“No. I’ll leave that to Peg.”
“You say you haven’t seen Montgomery since February.”
“Of course I saw him. It’s Grand Marais. I haven’t spent any time with him, though, if that’s what you mean.”
“He wouldn’t have come to you with the paintings then.”
“If he had, I would have contacted the sheriff in a heartbeat. I like Louise and I want her to like me. I want her to let me keep selling her work.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t tell her I said she was old.”
“I won’t.”
“Besides, what would I have done with the paintings? Hang them on a wall in a store located less than six blocks from Louise’s front door? Exhibit them next to the paintings she actually commissioned me to sell? David couldn’t have been that dumb.”
“I have a hypothetical question for you, and please don’t be insulted. If you did have the paintings and you wanted to sell them, where would you take them?”
Leah answered as if it was a question she had been asked a thousand times. “Canada.”
“Why Canada?”
“Because it’s not here.”
“That makes sense. How would you get them across the border?”
“There are a thousand places you can cross the Pigeon River in a small boat. In the winter, you can walk across it. Or just drive across at the, what’s it called—Grand Portage Port of Entry. I’ve gone to Canada and back a thousand times and between the CBP and the Canadian Border Service the trunk of my car was searched maybe twice.”
“Do you think Montgomery might have had the same thought?”
“I have no idea what was in his head. I am sorry he’s dead, though. I really am.”
EIGHT
I found Jennica resting against the Mustang. She glanced at her watch as I approached like she was annoyed that I had kept her waiting, yet didn’t want to say so out loud.
“I’ve been wandering all over town trying to find you,” she said.
“I hope you’re a better filmmaker than you are a stalker.”
“Time will tell.”
I glanced at my own watch.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“I could eat.”
“C’mon, sweetie. I’ll buy you some fish and chips.”
“Are you deliberately trying to be sexist when you call me sweetie?”
“No offense. As I grow older I find that more and more I call the women I like sweetie.”
“You like me?”
“I gave you my licorice, didn’t I?”
I led Jennica to the Gitchi-Gami State Trail, which was a fancy name for the sidewalk that meandered alongside the lakeshore, and we started following it to the Dockside Fish Market. The sun was setting fast and for a few minutes Superior held a warm orange glow that forced us to stop and look until it was slowly absorbed by the dark water.
“Pretty,” I said.
“Reminds me of home, the way the sun sets on the ocean.”
“Home is California?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why aren’t you in school?”
“I’m supposed to be. I was all set to start my junior year at the School of Theater, Film and Television at UCLA and then this project came along. It was unexpected and a lot of my father’s usual crew was committed to other projects so I asked him, begged him, actually, to let me step in. ‘There are a lot of baristas with film degrees,’ I told him, which is something he told me a thousand times growing up. That and how he learned everything he needed to know working for Roger Corman on low-budget indies. Finally, he gave in, which made my mom even more angry than she was when I got my tattoo.”
“This is your first time working on a documentary?”
“Dad let me work with him in the past but I was mostly a gofer, you know, go-for this, go-for that, help out here, help out there. This is the first time I’ve been allowed to make decisions. I can always go back to school starting in the winter term, no big deal.”
“Roger Corman, huh?”
“I met him, talked to him. He is the nicest man.”
We got lucky at the Dockside. There was one small unoccupied table remaining on its veranda and Jennica took charge of it while I ordered our dinners off the blackboard behind the counter. Dusk became hard night while we ate and talked. I liked that she so obviously loved her family. I got the impression that she would set a fire for her father, but she’d walk through it for her mom. I called her sweetie again and then apologized, but she said not to. Sweetie was fine.
We were the last to leave; the Dockside staff had locked the doors and was in the process of cleaning up when we finally returned to the sidewalk and started following it back toward downtown.
“You said before that this project was unexpected,” I said.
“Mr. Flonta called my father like two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks?”
“He said he wanted to do something for the thirty-fifth anniversary of Scenes from an Inland Sea. He said there was no time to lose. Let me tell you, McKenzie, to put all this together in that short of time is almost a miracle, if I do say so myself.”
The way she was smiling made me think that Jennica considered herself one of the miracle workers.
“Why the thirty-fifth anniversary?” I asked. “Why not the thirtieth? Why not the twenty-fifth? Why is there no time to lose?”
“Something I learned a long time ago living in Hollywood, people with money want what they want when they want it and people like my father and me, too, if you want to know, are happy to give it to them—if they pay us enough.”
“How much is enough?”
“A realistic budget for a feature-length documentary, if you go by the industry’s standard rates, you’re talking a low of $300,000 to more than a million. You can do it for much less. Heck, you could make a doc for $20,000, a two-person filmmaking team, few interviews, fewer locations, no third-party material like music or film footage. Technology has made it possible to do more with less. Only then we’re talking about a labor of love and not business. What I was taught, $3,000 to $4,000 per finished minute of film is the minimum starting point.”
“What is the budget for this film?”
“I doubt Dad would want me to
tell you. Let’s just say it’s at the high end and let it go with that.”
“So, two weeks ago Flonta called your old man and offered to give him a budget of a million bucks or more to make an art film about the Scenes from an Inland Sea with the understanding that he starts the project immediately. After traveling all the way from California, you arrive in Grand Marais just in time to be told, on film mind you, that not only had Randolph McInnis painted three additional canvases that no one has ever seen, but they’ve gone missing, which could very well transform your simple commercial documentary into a rip-roaring action-adventure mystery destined for a national release. Some people have all the luck.”
We covered a lot of sidewalk before Jennica said, “Stranger things have happened.”
“You’re going to stop following me now,” I said. “For one thing, I’m going into a lot of bars that I’ll have you thrown out of, which will be embarrassing for both of us. For another, I’ll become annoyed enough to call you something besides sweetie.”
“What exactly are you doing, anyway?”
“I’m trying to find out about David Montgomery.”
“Find out what?”
“I’ll know it when I hear it.”
“I’ll promise to stop following you if you make me a promise in return.”
“What he asked reluctantly.”
“That you let me interview you on film.”
“You interview me, not your old man?”
“Exactly.”
“I’m sure he’ll like that.”
“He won’t, but Mom will. She’s always saying I should assert myself more.”
“Does that include tattoos?”
“Maybe not that much.”
“If I find the paintings, I’ll ask my client for permission. If she says yes, then I’ll give you the interview.” Although I’m pretty sure she’ll say no, my inner voice added. In fact, I guarantee it. “That’s the only promise I’ll make.”
“Louise Wykoff is your client, am I right?”
I shrugged. Jennica grinned and held out her hand. I shook it.
“Done,” she said.
“You drive a hard bargain, sweetie.”
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