Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries) (39 page)

Phil sat calmly
,
holding his big automatic. A wisp of smoke curled out the end of the barrel.
The
slide was locked in the
open
position,
because he had fired his last round
, the bullet I had inadvertently left in the chamber
.
Angela began to curse him, s
hrieking
out a vicious, p
oisonous flow of invective in some of the most hurtful words I have ever heard.
Iverson picked up her pistol
,
and Jones and captain wrestled her out of the room, still screeching hatred at the top of her lungs.

Phil put his weapon
carefully on the floor
. “I guess I finally did one thing right,” he said to no one in particular. Then he put his
face in
his
arms
and sobbed
like a broken-hearted child.

It was a gorgeous sunny day on the North Shore, though not much above freezing.
We had been back in Grand Lake for about a week. My bruises had healed, but I still felt cold all the time. That could be, however, because I lived on Minnesota’s North Shore, and it was the
end
of October. I tried drinking a lot of coffee to keep my core body temperature up. It seemed to help,
so
I decided to stick with it.

Alex Chan was in his office. As it happened, Julie was not.

“She’s working for you today,” said Chan,
morosely,
ushering me in and taking my coat.

“She doesn’t work for me, she works for the church,” I said.

“I didn’t realize your church was so disorganized and forgetful.”

I sighed. “She’s rubbing off on you.”

“It’s one of the things that draws us together – a mutual love of
keeping you humble.”

There didn’t seem to be much for me there, so I changed the subject. “Thanks for taking care of my cat.”

“Sure thing,” said Chan. “We left you some cat food in your kitchen closet.”

“We?”

“Julie helped me.”

“I didn’t realize it was so much trouble.”

Chan grinned his wide, white-toothed grin. “No trouble at all. A pleasure, in fact.”

“Be careful with Julie,” I said. “I mean it.”

“We’re fine,” he said, waving a hand. “We’re having fun, and taking it slow.”

“She doesn’t even know you like her, does she?”

“I’m Asian. I am inscrutable, difficult to read.”

“You’re Californian, and you’re an open book.”

“You do realize you’re paying me for this time, don’t you?” said Chan, picking up a pencil and looking businesslike.

I sighed and we got down to business.

~

An hour later
I got o
ut of the car in my winter coat
and knocked on Ethel Ostrand’s door.

“Well
,
hello, Pastor,” she said, smiling. “What are you wearing that great big coat for? It can’t be much below freezing.”

She invited me in, and I took my coat off and sat down in her big green wingback chair. The place was unchanged in the
weeks
since we had planned her funeral. She offered me cookies and coffee, and I felt it was only good manners to accept.

She insisted that we discuss her impending death, and so we did, and it seemed to make her happy. When there was a break in the conversation
,
I said, “Ethel, I almost got your money back, but I lost it again.”

She looked at me through her thick glasses, a little old white-haired lady
of Norwegian extraction. “Oh, i
t wasn’t you pastor, I know that,” she said in her kind, grandmotherly voice. “It was those damn criminal sons-of-bitches from Washington.”

“Ethel!” I said, surprised. She started laughing, a rolling chortle that gurgled low in her throat.
After
a
minute
, I couldn’t help smiling. Her mirth grew into a full-throated belly laugh
, and it was impossible not to join her.

“Oh my,” she said finally, wiping her eyes. “Your face was something to see. I’ve wanted to do that to a Lutheran pastor for
fifty
years.”

“I
am
sorry about the money though,” I said.

She waved her hand. “I may be old but I can read. I read all about it in the papers, and heard about it on the radio. There was nothing you could have done.
In fact, you did a great deal more than
most
people would have.
”

I was quiet.

“Besides,” she said. “I’ve still got the rest of the money. I’m not likely to use it all up before I die.”

“The
rest
of the money?” I watched her face carefully, but she didn’t seem to
be
joking this time.

“Oh yes,” she said
leaning forward seriously
.
“
I never did trust banks, so I only gave you about half to put in the vault. The other two-hundred and fifty-thousand is under the mattress in the guest bedroom.”

Some things, you just can’t make up.

They took our depositions on a cold, gray
,
rainy day in Duluth.
Beforehand
,
I went to see Phil
, where they were holding him at Arrowhead
C
orrections
C
enter.

When they called my name
,
I stepped into a little boxed
-
in corridor. A steel security door slid shut behind me, while the one in front stayed firmly closed. A guard watched me from a window. After the first door made a heavy snap, indicating the lock was engaged, the second door opened. Another guard led me down a hall to a bare room with little cubicles along one wall. Each cubicle looked into a Plexiglas window. There was a phone beside the window. I sat down in the end compartment and waited. After a few minutes, behind the
Plexiglas
I saw another guard escort Phil to my little section of window. He sat down and picked up the phone.

“Hey
,
Phil,” I said. They teach you that in seminary.

“Thanks for coming to see me,” he said.

I was quiet.

“I’ve been doing a lot thinking,” he said. “About what you said out there on the lake – Ang
ie
and the slave trader and everything.”

“You get anywhere?”

“Not really,” he said. “Only that I need what the slave-trader guy got.”

“Grace.”

“Yeah. I need that.”

“Basically, you ask God for it.”

He said, “What about Angie?”

“She’s got to make her own choices,” I said.

“Why doesn’t she seem to want this?” He waved his hand. I presumed he meant
grace.

“She was abused as a child, wasn’t she?” I asked.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

“So, I think it is two things. First, she is so caught up in what was done to her, so angry about it, that she can hardly see that she has done so much wrong herself. She feels that the wrong done to her is greater than anything she could ever do to anyone else. In her eyes, the world owes it to her to let her do as she pleases.”

“What’s the second thing?”

“Well, I think she also knows deep down – probably not even consciously – that if she can be forgiven, that means that her abuser can be forgiven too. It even means that if she
receives
forgiveness, someday she would have to work to forgive him herself. She’s just not ready to accept
those things
.”

“Will she ever be?”

“I don’t know, Phil. We can’t solve her issues for her. What about you?”

He nodded as if I’d asked a yes or no question. “I want to believe it is true. I want to believe that the slate can be clean, that I can be a different person.”

“You can,” I said. “But I can’t do the believing for you.”

“I need to think on all this,” he said.

“Call me anytime,” I said.

~

Later on, a
fter we
had repeated our adventures in front of the authorities for
what felt like the seventh time, Leyla and I paused, hand in hand by the door of the justice building, looking at the dismal day outside.

“Hey,” called Jasmine, coming down a flight of stairs. “Hold up.”

Stone came up after her, moving more slowly, his arm in a sling to stabilize his wounded shoulder. We waited for them to catch up.

“We’re taking you out for lunch,” said Stone. His face was as expressionless as ever. “You’re buying.”

“Tony,” said Jasmine, slapping him on his shoulder. He winced and cringed
,
and immediately she cried out, “Oh, I’m so sorry, I keep forgetting.”

“Third time today,” said Stone to me.

“He’s working it too,” said Jasmine. “Acts like he’s dying every time.”

“All right,” I said. “Where was I taking you to lunch?”

“Bellisio’s.”

Bellisio’s was in the Canal Park district, the kind
of
place where you can drop twelve bucks on an artisan cheese plate, or eighteen on an order of Sicilian ravioli
– for lunch,
that is,
dinner
is
more
. It was good, but steeper than my normal
dining out
. With drinks and appetizers
,
I was easily looking at more than I would spend on groceries in about three weeks. On the other hand,
Stone and Jasmine
had recently been deeply involved in trying to save our lives.

“Okay,” I said.

We drove down to the restaurant, which featured a glimpse of the harbor. As it turned out, the ravioli tasted pretty darn good, and so did the cheese plate, which we all shared. Stone ordered a bottle of wine for all of us, which was generous of him, considering I was paying. I smiled and thought of Jesus.
Turn the other cheek. When a man wants your ravioli, give him your wine
as
well
.

Actually, we had an enjoyable time together. We joke
d
and laughed
,
and Stone even almost-smiled twice. Leyla and Jasmine were vivacious and beautiful, and several patrons glanced at our table in what I imagined was envy. Ah, the high life.

“Do you have any more questions about everything?” asked Jasmine after the cheese plate.

“
Well, someone tried to break into my place a few weeks ago. Was that related, or do we have a crime problem in Grand Lake?”

Stone grimaced.
“Those knuckleheads in
H
omeland
S
ecurity were running the show. They were watching Lynden, and they knew your mom sent you something. At that point, we hadn’t eliminated you as a suspect. They were afraid your mom sent files or something that would put you on to what was going on. They figured if they got a warrant, and you were one of the bad guys, it would tip you off. And it would have been tricky to get a warrant anyway. So those idiots decided to just break and enter.”

“Is that legal?” asked Leyla.

“Of course not,” said Jasmine. “Unfortunately, you never heard any of this from us.”

“How could anyone think I was part of all this?
”
I asked.
“
My dad shot one of them. So did I
,
for that matter.”

Stone shook his head in disgust. “I never susp
ected you. But the bright stars
above argued that maybe you hated your dad. They pointed out that we didn’t really know if you shot one of them – all we had was blood leaving the bank.”

Jasmine looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry to say, I did wonder for a while. Until that night.”

“What night?” asked Leyla.

“Never mind,” Jasmine and I said in unison. Leyla looked from one to the other of us speculatively.

“Jasmine had an unorthodox approach to establishing my innocence,” I said to Leyla.

“Just say, Leyla, you don’t need to worry about your man. He’s gold,” said Jasmine.

“Okay,” said Leyla slowly. She looked at me. “But I reserve the right to bring this up again later.”

We ate in silence for a few more moments.

“Oh, by the way,” said Jasmine. “Our boat was not actually called
Tiny Dancer
. Red – Richard – Holland didn’t own it. It was
just
a boat they rented, called the
Zephyr
. Holland had to paint over the name because he
didn’t know the name of the boat when he recruited you, so he told you
Tiny Dancer
.
”