Stormcatcher (5 page)

W
ynne glanced at Simon from the corner of her eye as he grappled with the anchor. The wind had freshened today, rocking the boat. It was going to be hard to keep it in the same area. The lake was deep here, deeper than their anchor could reach. They’d have to troll back and forth in the area to stay put.

Joe tapped the sonar screen. “Something looks interesting down there,” he said, jabbing his finger at a mass on the screen. “What do you think?”

“It might be something,” Simon conceded. He glanced at Wynne. “Want to go down and have a look?”

“I’m in the mood to dive.” Wynne pulled her dry suit up and thrust her arms into the fabric. The unknown beckoned, and she was eager to get below the waves and explore.

“I got our rebreathers ready. The floor is about a hundred and fifty feet down. You game to go that deep?” His voice was low and he didn’t look at her.

“Absolutely.” Deep diving was her favorite, as there were fish and marine life that people rarely saw otherwise. He helped her into her rebreather, and she held his out for him to slip his arms into.

Bjorn tossed the anchor overboard. Wynne looked at Simon. “You look a little pale. You okay?”

“The boss man does look a little green around the gills,” Joe said.

“I’m fine,” Simon barked.

Wynne raised her brows at his tone. “What’s eating you?”

He pressed his lips together. “Ready to go down?”

He wasn’t going to tell her anything. She wondered if the sheriff had been harassing him again. She shrugged and adjusted her mask. Simon stepped aside for her to reach the rail. She perched on the side of the boat then fell backward into the water.

Wynne breathed steadily through her mouthpiece. The silence of the rebreather, as opposed to a regulator and tank, always enthralled her. She could focus on what her eyes saw instead of being distracted by the sound of the bubbles.

She glanced around, but still didn’t see Simon. Peering up through the water, she saw him staring down at her from the boat. What was his problem?

She kicked her fins and shot to the top. “Are you coming in?”

Perspiration beaded his forehead. “I’m coming. Give me a minute.”

His knuckles were white where he gripped the side
of the boat. She glanced at Bjorn and saw sympathy on his normally stoic face.

He saw her gaze and shrugged. “He will not tell you, but he almost drowned the last time he went down at the end of last summer. He has not been down since.”

Wynne went to the ladder. “You don’t have to come down with me. Bjorn, can you join me instead?”

The blond man shook his head. “Neither of us are trained in deep dives.”

“Hey.” Simon waved his hand. “I’m still here, guys. I’m not some ghost.” He managed a feeble grin. “I’ll be fine. Just give me a minute.”

Wynne had never experienced fear of the water, but with her fear of snakes she could identify with the fear and tension that took hold of Simon’s body. “I’ll hold your hand while we go down.”

Simon’s sickly grin widened. “I might take you up on it.”

“I sure would, boss,” Joe said, leering at Wynne.

She laughed and held out her gloved hand. “You can do it, Simon.”

“I have a feeling you were a cheerleader in school.” He adjusted his mouthpiece and went over the side with a splash.

She gave Simon the thumbs-up and held out her hand. He gripped it, and they began the descent. Simon swam slowly beside her. She glanced into his eyes and saw interest and intent begin to push aside fear. He was going to be okay.

A school of lake herring, a shimmer of pink and
purple iridescence, darted past, and she paused to enjoy the sight. They’d once been in decline, but were now coming back in the western part of the lake.

Simon pointed, and she paused to gawk at the largest muskie she’d ever seen. The silvery-green fish was over five feet long. They let it swim by, then continued to head down to the lake bottom. They paused often to let their ears equalize to the pressure. As they neared the bottom, Wynne reached out and clutched Simon’s arm. She pointed to a ship resting on the bottom.

It wasn’t a yacht, but it was a perfectly preserved steamer from the 1800s. From its condition, she was sure no one else had found it. Looking for a name on its hull, she swam around it and startled a school of whitefish. They flashed past her in a blur of movement. She flailed back out of their way and bumped into Simon.

She could see his grin through his mask. He pointed at the hull, and she made out the ship’s name—
Windigo Wind
. Running her hand along the letters, Wynne wondered how long it had been since human eyes looked at the boat. How many had gone down with this ship and what had caused it to sink? In her mind’s eyes, she saw storms lash the side and heard men shouting out orders.

She gave herself a mental shake. This wasn’t the boat she’d come down here to find. The powerful beam of her halogen light touched the hull. She itched to be able to investigate this ship. Their first dive, and they’d hit the jackpot.

Reluctantly, she left it behind and swept the beam of her light beyond the sunken ship. Rock formations loomed out of the shadows, but nothing was the right size or shape to be the
Superior Lady
.

A boat passed by overhead, and she glanced at her watch, realizing more time had passed than she’d realized. They’d been investigating for nearly an hour. Simon pointed upward, and she nodded. This wasn’t the site they sought. They ascended slowly, pausing at the proper levels to allow their bodies to decompress.

Wynne was still exhilarated by the time she climbed aboard the boat. “What a find,” she exclaimed as she tugged off her flippers. “When we’ve found the
Superior Lady
, I’d like to go back down there and investigate it some more.”

Simon seemed to be paying no attention. He muttered something under his breath and moved quickly toward two figures on the deck.

Wynne gasped. Joe and Bjorn were lying unconscious on the deck. Blood pooled under Bjorn’s head, and an ugly bruise marred Joe’s forehead and cheek. She rushed to help Simon tend to them.

Joe groaned as she touched him. Wynne helped him sit up. “What happened?” she asked.

He put his head in his hands. “Someone dressed in a black dry suit clobbered me. I’d noticed a boat anchored about two hundred yards away, but hadn’t paid any attention. The diver must have swum from the boat. I heard a noise and turned to see Bjorn already down and some yahoo coming at me with a tire iron.”

Simon had Bjorn sitting up as well. “We need to get you both to the hospital.”

“I’ll be okay.” Joe staggered to his feet, and Wynne pulled a chair forward for him.

Bjorn just leaned against the bridge. “I think I will sit here for now,” he muttered.

“Call the Coast Guard,” Wynne told Simon.

“Look at the equipment.” He pointed to the controls. She inhaled at the sight of the smashed dials.

“Someone doesn’t want us to find the boat,” he said.

“Maybe. We’d better let the sheriff decide what went on here.” She didn’t want to jump to conclusions. “Maybe it has to do with the boat we found. The
Windigo Wind
.”

His cheeks turned a dull red. “I tend to jump to conclusions. I forgot about the steamer. So much for being James Bond.” He grinned.

“You’ve got the looks for it,” she quipped as he started the engine. She put her hand over her mouth and wished she could call back the words.

“Ah, you’ve noticed,” he said, his smile widening. “Here I thought you were immune to the Lassiter charm.”

“So you’re a good-looking guy,” she said nonchalantly. “I see handsome men all the time. It’s what’s inside that counts.”

“And I’m failing in that regard?”

“I’m reserving judgment,” she said.

Water gleamed on his tanned face. She could see he was trying to squelch his grin. For the first time, she wondered if she’d bitten off more than she could chew by agreeing to help him. She wasn’t in the market for
a broken heart, but she could hear the lyrics of “Heartbreak Hotel” in her head. She was going to have to be on her guard after all.

Wynne’s gaze caught on something on the floor. “What’s this?” She knelt and picked up the shiny piece of metal gleaming in the sunshine.

“Let me see.” Simon took it from her hand and flipped it over. “Looks like a charm. It’s not yours?”

“I never wear jewelry. It gets in the way.” The charm was in the shape of a bird. “Is it supposed to be a thunderbird?”

“Looks like it, yeah.” He held it out to show the other two men. “You guys ever see this?”

“Nope,” Joe said. His color was returning.

“Me neither,” Bjorn said. “It’s not mine.”

Wynne glanced at the smashed equipment and the blood on the deck. “Could it be a warning?”

Simon frowned. “A warning? How?” He followed her gaze then grinned. “You mean you think the thunderbird doesn’t like us being out here?”

“Maybe. It sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?” She laughed. “Next thing you know I’ll be hiring a medicine woman to protect us. But a fisherman on the dock warned me to let the dead lie. He said the
Thunderbird
wouldn’t like it if I disturbed the shipwrecks.”

“As long as you don’t go bringing chicken bones onboard, we’re okay.”

Though he’d joked with her, Simon wondered if he should make her stay home. It could have been Wynne
lying on the deck. If someone hit a tiny thing like her with a tire iron, she wouldn’t walk away from it like Joe and Bjorn.

His crew had been treated and released at the hospital. The sheriff had been called, but it was clear he thought they were trying to pull something to get him off the scent.

The charm was in his pocket, and he fingered it as he drove toward the boatyard. He should track down the fisherman and talk to him, though it seemed a stretch to think anyone would believe the old legends enough to try to scare them into abandoning their search. But maybe the murderer had put the man up to it.

He stopped at his own thoughts. The murderer. Did he really believe someone had killed Jerry and Amanda? No, he decided. The most likely scenario was still a malfunction in the boat. He had to find the yacht just to set his own mind at ease.

He went in search of Brian as soon as he reached the boatyard. He found his cousin working on his chess set. He’d been carving it for three years now, and with each piece, Simon marveled at the patience Brian showed for the intricate detail. It was the same care he took with his yacht creations.

“Hey,” Brian said, glancing up from his work. He set aside a king chess piece. “How’d it go today?”

“We found an old steamer but no sign of our boat.” Simon propped his boot on a log. “Have you seen an old Ojibwa fisherman around?” He described the man Wynne had seen.

“Sounds like it might be Old Robert.”

“Old Robert?”

“He’s an old Ojibwa medicine man. His mission is to make sure the old ways aren’t forgotten.”

“Any idea where I can find him?”

“Check Bob’s Eats. He hangs out there when he’s not fishing.”

Simon thanked his cousin and jogged back to his truck. It was probably nothing, but he wanted to set his mind at rest.

W
ynne held her breath as the yellow American goldfinch edged closer to the morsel of bread she held in her hand. She hadn’t moved in five minutes, and her muscles screamed from the effort of keeping so still. The bird finally grabbed a crumb and flew up to the limb above her head. She stood and released her muscles from their torment.

All around her, the forest was alive with sound: the gurgle of the brook that ran merrily to Lake Superior, the warble of the birds, wind soughing through the evergreens and the stand of white birch.

“Looking for the thunderbird?”

She turned at the sound of her brother’s voice. “Jake, you about scared me to death. I thought no one else was out here. How did you know where to find me?”

“Becca told me you’d be out birding. I thought you would have outgrown that hobby by now.”

“Never.” She tossed the last of the crumbs to the ground and watched as a flock of sparrows fluttered down to plunder the remains. She dusted her hands on her jeans. “Is anything wrong?”

“Becca called me about the attack.”

Wynne rolled her eyes. “You’d think she was the oldest instead of the youngest. Motherhood has changed her.”

“I don’t want you in any danger, Wynne. Maybe you’d be better off to let Simon fight his own battles.”

“I’ll be fine. The men will be on their guard from now on.” She tried to inject confidence into her voice, but it fell flat.

“Yeah, and I love onions,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“You worry too much.”

“And you never look at reality.” He guided her toward the path out of the woods. “It’s almost dinnertime. You’re probably starved.”

“I always am after a dive. But I filched a peanut butter sandwich before I came out here.”

“Looks like you fed most of it to the birds.”

Wynne stopped. “Do you think Simon did it?”

“I thought he was underwater with you.”

“Not the attack. I mean, do you think he sank that boat?”

“I don’t know him all that well.” Her brother eyed her. “If you think there’s even a remote possibility he could be guilty, you need to back away from this.”

“Why would he be so determined to find the boat if he did it?” No matter how hard she tried to imagine
Simon as a murderer, she kept coming back to that fact. “Unless he’s not really looking. Maybe he knows where it went down and is deliberately keeping us from going in that direction. It would keep the sheriff off his back if Simon makes what seems to be a sincere effort to find the boat.”

Jake had stopped on the path, and his frown deepened as she spoke. “I don’t like this, Wynne. Do you have any reason to suspect he’s leading you on a wild-goose chase?”

She didn’t know why she was talking this way. The last thing she wanted to believe was that Simon was a cold-hearted murderer. To spend her days with him she had to trust him. And she couldn’t just walk away from the opportunity to plunge into the cold water and see what she might discover in the lake’s depths, not without some kind of evidence.

“You’ve got that look on your face,” Jake observed.

“What look?”

“The one that says you’re trying to convince yourself of something. You get a little vertical line between your eyes, and you scrunch your nose up like this.”

Wynne laughed at her brother’s imitation of her. “I do not.”

“You do. I think you want to keep the handsome Simon at arm’s length, and thinking he could do something sinister is a way to do just that.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. She turned and stalked toward the house. “Just because you’re playing house
now doesn’t mean you have to foist your version of happiness on every single person.”

“You’re not every single person. You’re my sister. I want you to be happy.”

Jake sounded amused and she wanted to hurt him. “I am perfectly happy with my life.” She strode along the pine-strewn path ahead of him. Her words sounded hollow, even to herself.

Jake fell into step beside her. “What kind of life is it to be traipsing all over the world with no real place to call home?”

“It’s the same life you had for years,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but I had no idea how much better hearth and home were.”

“You sound positively evangelistic about it.” The corners of her mouth twitched and she clamped her lips together. She would not laugh. It would just encourage him.

He caught her by the arm and stopped her headlong plunge toward the house. “If I am it’s because I sense you’re a little lost right now, Wynne. I want you to be happy, but I don’t want to see you grab the first available man who happens by. And you haven’t been worshiping much lately, have you? I can always tell.”

She decided to ignore his comment about worship. She would fix that soon.” If I were stupid enough to grab the first available man, I would already be married.”

“True.” Jake sounded resigned. “Gram is home now. She’s wondering where you are.”

Wynne began again toward the house. “I’m eager to see her!”

Bob’s Eats bustled with residents of Turtle Town. Though as the only place to eat in town, it could have gotten away with poor food, the choices were surprisingly tasty and the coffee hot and fresh. Simon pushed past a group of men who stank of fish and scanned the room. He didn’t really know who he was looking for. Many of the men in the dining room were Ojibwa.

He stopped the waitress, Rhonda. “Hi, Rhonda, do you—”

She interrupted before he could ask her. “I heard about Jerry.” Her eyes were red.

He’d forgotten she’d dated his cousins—first Brian, then Jerry. “Yeah, it’s a shock.” He pressed her arm. “Hey, do you know Old Robert? Is he here?”

She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes that had escaped the band at her neck and pointed to a man sitting alone at a table in the corner. “There.”

“Thanks.” Simon wove through the tables and stopped in front of the table. “Robert?”

Dressed in a red plaid shirt and jeans with suspenders, Old Robert’s eyes had dark bags, and he sported a two-day’s growth of beard. He took a sip of his coffee then pushed the other chair out with a booted foot. “Sit.”

Simon pulled the chair out farther then sat down. “Did you talk to Wynne Baxter this morning?”

The old Native American man took his time about answering. “I talk to everyone at the dock. She the pretty gal with dark curly hair?”

“That’s her. You told her to leave the boat where it lies. You indicated she might be in danger if she disturbed it. Do you have any information about where it is, or who sank it?” He’d finally said it—admitted someone had to have sunk the boat. Was that easier to believe than that the design was flawed?

Old Robert shook his head. “I’ve seen the signs. The thunderbird is angry and wants the water graves to be undisturbed. Poking around old wrecks is wrong. Let the dead rest.”

Simon leaned forward. “You are on the water all the time. Have you seen anything that might indicate the boat was sunk on purpose?”

“I see many things. Some things are better left alone.” The old man stood and dropped several bills onto the table.

Old Robert knew something. Simon stood, too. “Please. Tell me what you know. I have to know the truth.”

“No good can come from stirring up a hornet’s nest. Go home. Forget about the yacht. Your cousin and your friend are dead. Nothing can bring them back. Revenge isn’t worth the price.”

“I don’t want revenge, I just want to know what happened. Besides, the sheriff thinks I did it.”

“There will be no proof of anything if the boat is never found. Leave it alone.” Old Robert turned and walked toward the door.

Simon didn’t try to stop him. The old man wasn’t giving up any information. If he even knew anything.
Maybe he just liked to act like a wise man and issue portents and ominous warnings.

“Want to order something?” Rhonda stood at the table with her pen and pad in her hand. Simon’s stomach rumbled. “I take that as a yes,” she said with a laugh.

“I guess I am hungry.” Simon smiled and grabbed the menu. “Bring me a beef pasty and some fries. Coffee, too.”

“You got it. Old Robert have any information?”

“Not really.”

“I figured as much. He likes to act important. I wouldn’t take anything he said as gospel.” She tucked the pen into the pocket of her apron and went to the kitchen.

Simon’s head had begun to ache. He was never going to figure this out. Lake Superior was vast. It was a long shot to even look for the yacht. Maybe Old Robert was right and he should leave it to the sheriff. The lawman had no proof Simon had done anything, and he wasn’t likely to find any. A deep voice interrupted Simon’s thoughts.

“Mind if I join you?” The sheriff didn’t wait for an answer to sit in the seat Old Robert had vacated.

“It’s a free country.” He wasn’t in the mood to be grilled anymore today.

“Finding anything?” the sheriff asked.

All the doubts about continuing to look vanished at the other man’s skepticism. “It’s early days yet. I’ll find
Superior Lady
.”

“I did a little poking around today, Lassiter. Your cousin was the kind of guy who stepped on a lot of toes. Quite the womanizer. Did you just get tired of it finally? Why not get it off your chest and tell me all about it?”

“Any results back on the autopsies?” Simon asked.

“Not yet. What do you think I’ll find?”

Simon rose and threw his napkin on the table. “You can have my dinner, Sheriff. I find my appetite is gone.” He rushed past the waitress and hurried out the door. The sheriff might not have any real evidence yet, but if he figured out the fight, would that be enough to bring changes against him?