Windigo Island

  Cork said, “Let’s see what we can find out on the Internet about the Montcalm and Mr. John Boone Turner.”

  “While you do that,” Louise said, “I need my insulin, and then I think I need to lie down.”

  Daniel glanced at his watch. “We ought to make a decision about staying here tonight or not. Checkout’s just about now.”

  “I think we should keep our rooms,” Cork said. “There’s still a lot of work ahead of us here.”

  “I’ll make the arrangements.” Daniel stood up.

  “Louise, why don’t you go ahead and rest?” Jenny suggested. “When we have something, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks,” Louise said.

  “Let me give you a hand getting to your room.” Daniel helped her up and headed with her toward the elevator.

  Meloux said simply, “I think I will sit in the sun.”

  He rose and ambled out the door on the lake side. Jenny watched him make his way slowly toward a bench on the boardwalk. To anyone else he might have seemed just a frail old-timer in need of a resting place, but Jenny knew better. This was the man who’d offered to stand between Raven Duvall and this Windigo. She suspected that what the great lake and the bold sun offered him was not rest but strength. She was afraid that before all this was over he would need a good deal of that. They all would.

  Jenny was left alone with her father. She didn’t want to disappoint him anymore. “My phone or the computer?” she asked.

  “If we use a real computer, we can look at the screen together,” her father said.

  Both computers in the business center were available. Cork stood behind Jenny while she logged on to the Internet.

  “What do you want me to do, Dad?”

  “Whatever you think will get us what we need.”

  Which felt good to her. Like trust.

  First she keyed in “John Boone Turner,” which yielded a mother lode of results related to a company called Solidified Investments. The first listing was, in fact, the company website. She clicked on it and saw right away that it was a brokerage firm headquartered in Chicago and owned by Turner. According to the site, there were several offices for Solidified Investments located in other cities across the upper Midwest. One of those cities was Duluth.

  There was a photograph of Turner, a handsome man, who despite his silver hair, looked to be only in his mid-forties. Even in the still photo, he exuded a sense of power, a man who would fill a great deal of space in a room and suck up a lot of the air. His eyes were hard and dark as espresso beans. He wore a navy blue suit, white shirt, and bold red tie. Jenny took an immediate dislike to him.

  There was also a Wikipedia entry for Turner, which she clicked on. It wasn’t long, but it was informative. Born in Waco, Texas, son of an auto mechanic. Graduated La Vega High School, 1990. Enlisted in the Marines. Served in the first Iraq war. Honorable discharge. Enrolled in the Wharton School in 1994. Graduated cum laude. Began immediately working for Goldman Sachs in Chicago. Opened Solidified Investments in 2002. Named one of Chicago’s top ten young businessmen in 2003. Married socialite Sylvia Burnhurst in 1999. Two children. Well known for his love of sailing.

  “Okay, we know who he is,” Cork said. “Now try his name along with Montcalm.”

  Which was exactly what Jenny had planned to do. Without any prompting. But she held her tongue.

  She keyed in the search terms, with Montcalm as the first. Again, a wheelbarrow full of results. One of them was a very recent posting, a headline: “Racing Against the Wind.” It was a link to a Chicago trade magazine, Investment News, and she clicked on it. The story was about something called the Grand Superior yacht race, which according to the article, was a biennial event that began at Sault Sainte Marie and ended in Duluth. It had been held two weeks earlier. The article focused on Turner, his sleek sailboat Montcalm, and its crew. In this particular race, the crew was composed of several men who worked in various branch offices of Solidified Investments across the Midwest and who were themselves sailors. According to a quote from Turner, “I love the team building that comes from this kind of race. It’s us against the elements and the other competitors. In a way, it’s like going to war.”

  A photograph accompanied the article, a shot of Turner and his crew standing in front of a big, sleek, elegant-looking sailboat. The names of all the crew members were listed below along with the cities in which they lived. They came from Minnetonka, Minnesota; Milwaukee, Wisconsin . . . and Duluth.

  “Duluth,” Cork said, bending over her shoulder and sounding as if they’d struck gold. Jenny couldn’t see his eyes, but she would have bet they were shining. She could feel his body tensed, in the way she imagined a hunting dog’s might be when, with a sudden and fierce rigidity, it struck a pose, nose pointing toward quarry.

  There was another result on the search page, an article from the Duluth News Tribune published the day following the yacht race. She clicked on it and found the results of the race. The Montcalm had come in second in its class. The race had ended on Sunday, two weeks earlier. The following Tuesday, there was to have been a banquet at which trophies would be awarded. Jenny wasn’t sure what this further information added that might be necessary but figured it couldn’t hurt.

  “Hand me your notepad and pen,” she said. Her father always kept a notepad and a pen in his pocket. He’d done this when he was sheriff, and it was still part of his standard daily equipment.

  He handed them over, and Jenny made a note of the dates and particulars.

  “Look up the number for Solidified Investments here in ­Duluth.”

  “I was just going to do that,” Jenny said.

  “Good girl.”

  “Don’t call me ‘girl.’”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

  “I know what I’m doing,” she said.

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?” She turned and faced him. “Or am I just a fuckup?”

  He didn’t answer right away, and she was afraid he was trying to come up with a diplomatic way of agreeing.

  “Two wolves,” he finally said.

  “What?”

  “It’s something Henry once told me. There are always two wolves inside us fighting. One is fear and the other is love. The one you feed is the one that will win that fight. Don’t feed the wrong wolf, Jenny. What you’re doing is good and important, and I trust you. When it seems that I don’t, that’s not about you. That’s when I’m feeding the wrong wolf inside me.”

  His eyes were soft and searching, and she knew the truth of what he said.

  “We okay?” he asked.

  “We’re okay,” she said.

  “All right. We still have work to do.”

  In Solidified’s website section on its branch offices, Jenny found contact information for the Duluth office. Included was a portrait photo of the president of that branch, a man in the photograph of Montcalm’s crew, named Simon Wesley. He looked to be in his late thirties, maybe early forties. He had sandy blond hair and a smile that appeared genuine and human, very different from the smile she’d seen on the face of his boss. Or maybe she was only seeing what she hoped to see, a little crack in all the darkness of this case, a small place for the light to shine through.

  Cork said, “I’m going to call, make an appointment to see this Simon Wesley.”

  “What kind of appointment?”

  He thought a moment. “I’ll tell him I want to talk investments.”

  Her father wasn’t poor. A few years earlier, he’d sold some landholdings for a tidy sum. Cork had invested well, and Sam’s Place still brought in a nice chunk of change in season. Nor did he do badly at all in his business as a private investigator. So he knew something about money and could probably bullshit his way into Wesley’s office. But Jenny thought there might be a better approach, one that could open the
door to questions about Carrie Verga without necessarily raising a lot of red flags too early.

  “It might be a startling jump from a stock portfolio to a dead girl on Windigo Island,” she said. “Enough that he’d clam up.”

  “Clam up?” her father said. “You’ve been reading too much Mickey Spillane.”

  She smiled at that, then suggested, “What if I called, said I wanted to do an article on him for something like Lake Superior Magazine. Him and the yacht race and whatever else might stroke his ego and start him talking. Once he’s opened up, we get down to the real stuff.”

  Her father spent a few long moments thinking it over. Jenny began to muster all the good arguments in favor of the plan. Which proved unnecessary, because he finally said, “That sounds pretty good. Let’s give him a call.”

  Before they did that, however, Jenny searched for more information on Simon Wesley, which wasn’t hard to find. He was a very public figure in Duluth. He ran a charitable organization that taught handicapped kids how to sail. He was on the board of directors for the Great Lakes Symphony Orchestra. He was the face of Save the Lake, an organization aimed at keeping the water of Superior free from pollution. He was also a family man, married eighteen years, with two children.

  She logged off the computer, and she and her father went outside. She pulled her cell phone from her purse and keyed in the number she’d written down. She could see the back of Meloux’s head where he sat on his bench, no doubt communing with the spirits he seemed to see everywhere.

  On the phone, Wesley’s voice sounded even younger than the forty years Jenny had pinned him at from his photograph. She could tell he was pleased with the idea of the article she outlined in glowing detail: Lake Superior at the heart of his life and all the good that had come from that. When she told him she had a strict deadline and asked could they speak that very day, he was more than accommodating.

  “I’m free most of the afternoon,” he offered. “How about two o’clock?”

  “That’s fine,” Jenny said.

  “I’ll tell our receptionist to expect you.”

  She ended the call, looked at her father, and gave him a thumbs-up. “We’re in.”

  “Don’t get cocky. It’s just a foot in the door.”

  “What door?”

  They both swung around, and there was Daniel, face smooth in the sunlight, eyes deep brown and quizzical.

  Jenny told him everything. Gushed actually. She felt as if she finally had both hands around the throat of the situation. She realized that her body was tingling. Although she wasn’t the hunter that her father and probably Daniel were, she wondered if this was what they felt when they were deep into the chase.

  “So you’ll be the magazine writer,” Daniel said to her, then looked at Cork. “And you?”

  “I just need a camera,” Cork said. “Then I’m the official photographer.”

  Meloux rose from his bench and came to them. Jenny thought he would look serene from his communion with the sun and the lake and whatever else he might have perceived that they did not. But he was clearly troubled. She hoped to set his mind at rest and told him what they were up to.

  He listened, but didn’t look at all relieved. He said, “Have you told your father?”

  “Told me what?” Cork looked from Meloux to Jenny.

  She didn’t think this was the time or place, but Meloux had put her on the spot. So Jenny explained to her father about hearing a windigo call her name the night before. She was ready to argue the reality of what she’d heard, and to ask Louise, who’d also heard it, to back her up. And she was ready to tell him she knew that he’d heard a windigo as well.

  But no argument was necessary. Her father said, “That makes two of us. The windigo called my name, too.”

  “I know.”

  Cork glanced at the old Mide. “You told her?”

  “On this hunt, there should be no secrets. A windigo understands the dark and uses it. In all this, as much as we can, we should stand in the light.” Meloux squinted, but not because the sun was in his eyes. “One more thing to understand, Corcoran O’Connor. A windigo is already among us.”

  Chapter 29

  * * *

  The old Mide’s statement caught Jenny off guard. “Here, Henry?” She swung her gaze in a full circle, scrutinizing every person she saw on the boardwalk or lounging on the hotel patio. She thought maybe she’d recognize the man who’d attacked her and Louise the night before. But she saw no one who looked familiar and menacing in that way.

  “What the hell do you mean, Henry?” Jenny’s father said. There was a brittle edge to his voice, one Jenny had never heard him use in addressing Meloux.

  “How do you fight a windigo?” Meloux asked him.

  “We don’t have time for riddles.”

  “This is no riddle, Corcoran O’Connor. And you know the answer.”

  “Okay, Henry. The only way to fight a windigo is to become one.”

  “That is your head talking. Does your heart understand what that means?”

  “Look, Henry, we don’t have the luxury of a lot of spiritual consideration. These people already know that we’re here and that we’re looking for them. I don’t want this man who calls himself Windigo—and he is only a man—to run for cover. So forgive me, Henry, when I say let’s just get on with this.”

  “On this hunt, never stop listening to your heart, Corcoran O’Connor. That is all I have to say.”

  The old man fell silent. Jenny couldn’t tell if it was because he had, as he said, spoken his piece, or if it was her father’s unusually harsh response that had silenced him.

  Daniel checked his watch. “We have better than three hours between now and your appointment with Wesley. What do we do in the meantime?”

  Her father took a moment to gather himself. It seemed to Jenny that his exchange with Meloux had unsettled him in some significant way. “Okay, there’s a question we need to consider. If Carrie Verga came off the Montcalm, and if she boarded it here in Duluth, how did her body get up to the Apostle Islands? The racecourse would have taken the sailboat past the Apostles before arriving in Duluth.”

  Jenny said, “Give me your notepad, Dad.”

  He took it from his shirt pocket and handed it over. She flipped to the page she’d used to write the information from the News Tribune article about the race.

  “The sailboats that participated arrived in port on Sunday,” she said. “The awards were given out at a banquet on Tuesday evening. They were in port for at least two nights, probably three. Maybe one of those nights they sailed back out onto Superior.”

  “A pleasure sail?” Daniel said.

  “Why not? If you race, you must love sailing, right?”

  Cork seemed to be rolling something around in his head. He finally said, “They had to dock somewhere here. Let’s find out where.”

  • • •

  They used Jenny’s smart phone. There were only five marinas in the harbor area. Daniel took two, Jenny and her father the others. Meloux stayed at the hotel with Louise while she rested. He didn’t want her to be alone, and he was, himself, looking tired. Daniel offered to stay, too, concerned about this Windigo, who seemed to know they were on his trail. But the old man was certain his own presence was enough. Meloux had fought and defeated a win­digo once. If necessary, he was up to the task again. Jenny handed Meloux her cell phone, just to be sure, and gave the old man a crash course in how to use it.

  Jenny and her father began at the marina on Barker’s Island across the harbor in Superior, Wisconsin. It was one of the largest and had lots of slips for guest dockage. They hit pay dirt right away.

  Cork talked to the dockmaster, shot the breeze a bit, flew a story past him about friends in the yacht race, narrowed it down to the Montcalm, and the dockmaster spilled what they needed. The sailboat had, indeed, docked there the n
ight after the race. But she’d sailed back out the following day, and didn’t return until the morning of the awards banquet.

  “Any idea where she went?” Cork asked. Jenny was amazed at how casual he was able to keep his voice.

  “The skipper said he was setting sail for the Apostles. That’s a destination for lots of the boats here. An easy day trip, and a number of good leeward anchorages in the islands if you decide to stay the night. Gorgeous place. You know it?” the dockmaster asked.

  “Better and better all the time,” Cork said.

  He called Daniel, and they rendezvoused back at the hotel. Louise was awake and rested, and they filled her and Meloux in on what they’d found.

  There was talk of lunch. Cork said, “You all go ahead. Jenny and I need to buy a camera, and then we need to keep our appointment with Wesley.”

  “What about us?” Daniel asked.

  “Enjoy your lunch. And keep your eyes peeled for anyone who looks like a windigo.” He glanced at Henry Meloux, but the old man’s face showed no sign that he’d noticed.

  They purchased a Nikon digital SLR at the Best Buy on Miller Hill. Cork had the same camera at home, which he often used in his investigations, so he knew his way around it and wouldn’t look stupid or false handling it. Jenny’s father also bought one other small piece of electronic equipment.

  At two o’clock sharp, they were shaking hands with Simon Wesley.

  “Sit down, please.” He held out his hand toward two chairs on the opposite side of the desk from his own. They all sat, and he smiled, a genuine gesture.

  “I’m pleased and flattered that you’re doing another article so soon,” he said.

  “Soon?”

  “It hasn’t even been a year since your magazine did the piece on Save the Lake.”

  “Oh, that,” Jenny said. “The range of this piece will be much broader. You’re a man of many interests, and you contribute in so many ways to the community here.”