“Kermit says that twenty percent of the charges are ultimately good, so we’ll wind up making a profit!” Becky proclaimed.
“That’s great, Becky. It means the Bear is no longer an endangered species?”
“Yes!”
“Okay. But free champagne for the entire town? Isn’t that a little excessive?”
“Oh, Ruddy, it gets even better.” She held up her fist and I looked at it.
“The ring,” Alan suggested. I stared at the diamond on her finger, and then up into her radiantly happy eyes.
“I’m engaged, Ruddy! I’m going to be married!”
I opened my mouth.
“Don’t say it,” Alan warned. “Don’t say anything except ‘congratulations,’ Ruddy. Please.”
“Congratulations, Becky.” I grated.
She threw her arms around me and hugged me fiercely. “Oh, Ruddy, I’ve never been so happy.”
“Okay, good. Good, Becky,” I told her, patting her back. “But enough with the free booze, okay? Go tell everyone that we’re back to being a pay-as-you-drink enterprise.”
She nodded joyously and all but skipped out of the room.
“You see anything coincidental about the fact that we get this money and all of a sudden Kermit wants to marry my sister?” I demanded.
“Easy, Ruddy.”
“Isn’t he supposed to ask my permission so I can say no?”
“Who are you, the Godfather? Why should he ask you—seems to me asking Becky would be sufficient.”
“I’m not going to talk to you if you’re going to be like this.”
“I thought you were going to give Kermit a break because he makes your sister happy.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I want to be related to him!”
Trying to spend time with my date proved to be impossible: even with the free alcohol spigot shut off we were crammed with people, and I worked the bar without pause, darn near pouring myself into carpal tunnel syndrome. Katie ran into some girlfriends who ultimately gave her a ride home, laughing off my apology with a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Call me?” she asked, though we both knew the answer. As long as I had permission, yes, I would call her every day.
After last call I went into bouncer mode, forcing people to leave. Jimmy sat in a chair, his black hair matted with sweat, and my sister and Kermit were cooing to each other in the corner. What looked like a thousand empty beer bottles littered the place, and I knew the floor would have to be scrubbed and waxed.
“Good thing tomorrow is Sunday, give us some time to clean up,” I observed. When football season ended the Bear was closed Sundays until Memorial Day—a policy we might have to rethink now that people were eating our food.
I walked home with Jimmy, the cold air refreshing on my face. “Look, Ruddy,” Jimmy said uncomfortably. “I kinda said that I would see Vicki tomorrow.”
“You mean,” I replied, stopping and staring at him in disbelief, “that you’d rather spend time with your daughter than help clean up the bar?”
He frowned. “Well … yeah.”
I slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.” I was just glad he was alive.
The bar looked even worse when I limped in after noon the next day, especially compared to the sunshine and warmth outside—we were having one of those exceptional days that fooled you into thinking this part of the country was paradise. Jake trotted in on my heels and sniffed disdainfully at all the spilled beer. I rubbed his ears and he groaned a little.
Becky was tiredly picking up trash and empties. “Up late celebrating?” I asked her.
She blew the hair off her face and gave me a lazy, satisfied smile. “A little.”
I was so overwhelmed with unexpected emotion at that moment that I felt my eyes tear. I turned away so she wouldn’t see. My sister Becky was going to be married. She was happy. God, how I’d wanted her to be happy for so long and now here she was, smiling without covering her mouth.
“You should tell her,” Alan murmured. “Life’s too short and precious to keep things like this hidden. Tell her what you’re feeling.”
I cleared my throat and turned back. “Becky.”
She looked up from the collection of glasses she was stacking.
“I love you,” I choked. My mouth trembled a little, and I nodded, overcome.
“I love you, too, Ruddy,” she said simply. She went back to her work.
We labored side by side, cleaning up the Bear on a Sunday morning the way we used to when we were younger. Okay, so maybe we had tablecloths and soup du jour and windows you could actually see through, but it was still the Black Bear, still home.
An hour later I ran to the store for some cleaning supplies and when I returned Becky had a message for me. “Sheriff Strickland called for you,” she said. “He wants you to meet him out where you found the Realtor’s body at one o’clock.”
“Did he say why?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Just that you need to be there.”
I looked at my watch. “Okay then. I’d better leave. You don’t have to do all of this, though; I’ll get to it when I get back.”
“That’s okay.”
“Where’s Kermit?” I asked with forced neutrality.
“He’ll be back. Milt sent him to Traverse City to pick someone up at the airport.”
I took Jake with me as I walked home to get my pickup. The cops had cleaned up and left. My dog seemed disappointed to leave the bar: he wanted to sleep between Jimmy and me. I looked at him sadly regarding the blanket on the floor, and it was as if I could feel the stiffness in his old joints. Life was too short. “Hey, come here a minute, Jake.”
He followed me into my bedroom. I patted the bed. “Up.”
He regarded me in astonishment.
“Up, Jake.”
He launched himself onto the bed, his tail wagging. “Good boy,” I told him as he circled three times and lay down with a contented sigh. The new rules were instantly approved and accepted. When I scratched his ears, his eyes closed and he moaned with pleasure. “You go ahead and sleep here. I’ll be home soon, Jakey.”
I drove north and soon was winding my way through the Jordan Valley. The trees were all feathered with green, the grass looked new and tender: In a few weeks it would be summer, unless it snowed.
I sensed Alan’s uneasiness as we turned down the now-familiar dirt track that led to the scene of his murder. Though we were just crawling out of winter instead of rushing toward it, the day felt much the same as it had when Alan had been killed, with sun streaming through the gaps in the branches and lighting up the ground with dancing sparkles. We cruised past the felled oak tree with the huge hole, the ground next to it still black from everyone tramping around in the mud.
“I expected to see him here,” I said, frowning. It was ten after one; it didn’t seem like Strickland to be late.
“Maybe he’s up where the cabin used to be, next to the river.”
I drove on, pulling right up to the old foundation. When I shut off the truck, the woods were completely silent. There was no sign of the sheriff.
I walked down to the water’s edge. The stream was swollen with meltwater, more than four feet deep here in what was usually a shallow rapid. Where the waters sluiced their way past some fallen trees they laughed out a loud, wet gurgle, a pleasant and welcoming sound that lifted some of the dread away from this place. My eyes found the spot where Alan had picked up my ring. I could remember it vividly now, feel the icy water as he plunged his hand in.
“There’s still something we’re missing,” Alan muttered. “Some connection we’re not getting, some reason I was killed.”
“Alan, what if it wasn’t complicated at all? What if it’s just that Nathan Burby wanted you out of the way so he could marry Marget?”
“But it was Wexler with the shovel. Why would he kill me? You heard Katie, they didn’t even know each other,” Alan argued.
“But they did, rememb
er? The way they were talking, they weren’t strangers.”
I watched the waters flow past. The property was still for sale, and I pictured myself sitting on a dock in this very spot, dropping a fly on the water to seduce a couple of trout to join me for dinner. And that’s when it hit me. They weren’t strangers, but they claimed not to know each other, even to this day. There was only one person who could put the two of them together.
Alan Lottner.
“Alan. Who called you that day? Who said they wanted to see the property?”
“I told you, I don’t remember.”
“But think about it. Could it have been Nathan Burby?”
While Alan pondered this, I heard a noise behind us and turned. Nathan Burby and Franklin Wexler were coming down the hill toward us.
They both had rifles.
28
Fear of Drowning
“Afternoon, fellas,” I called, forcing a casualness I didn’t feel. Inside, Alan’s anxiety was nearly boiling over. I didn’t blame him: Last time he’d encountered these two out in the woods, it had not turned out well.
Wexler and Burby approached silently, looking intent.
“Glad you’re here. Sheriff Strickland will be along in a minute, and I think he’s going to have some questions for you.”
The two of them exchanged a look, and the slight smile on Burby’s face made my heart sink. “Oh, Nathan, did you pretend to be someone else again? Like you did the day you killed Alan Lottner, and you pretended to be interested in real estate so that he’d come out here and see the two of you together?” I turned to Wexler, who was now only ten feet away, his rifle leveled at me. “Did you know about that, Frank? Or did you think that when Alan showed up it was all some sort of accident?”
Wexler’s expression flickered and I nodded at him. “That’s right, Frank.…”
“Ruddy!” Alan shouted.
Burby’s rifle butt slammed me in the back of the head with such force I lost track of where I was. Stars drifted across my vision and my palms hurt from where they’d hit the ground.
Then I was up, driving forward, reaching for Burby. I got under his arms before he could do anything with the rifle and then I was fighting my fight, just as Alan had once told me to do. Burby gasped and crumpled as I punched him in the stomach and the chest and then I went down, felled by Wexler’s gunstock.
He’d hit me at the base of my neck and I wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. My head rang and my limbs felt useless. I lay gasping in the mud, stomach churning, barely able to breathe.
“I’m not dead,” I slurred.
They grabbed me under the arms and I tried to move my worthless legs, get some power underneath me, but all I could do was flail limply. I strained to see what they were doing, but I couldn’t bring my eyes into focus.
And then I hit the water.
“Oh no!” Alan cried. “Not the water!”
The cold shock put some strength back into my body but there were two of them and they were pressing down where Wexler had hit me and the pain was paralyzing. I heaved, everything forgotten but the need for air. I put all my strength into it and burst from the surface and whooped in a single breath before they got a better grip and slammed me back down. My right arm was bent behind me but my left was free and I groped around, trying to find balls, eyes, something, but the angle was wrong.
“Ruddy,” Alan shouted in anguish. “We’re drowning, we’re drowning!”
I wanted to say something to him, but he couldn’t hear my thoughts.
My legs grew heavy and my arms stopped obeying instructions to move. Alan went quiet and a blackness leaked into my vision that was far darker than the swirling, muddy waters. Becky, I thought. Katie. Jimmy. Jake.
Good-bye.
“Hey, Ruddy, it’s okay,” Alan said. The pressure in my chest was building and I knew I was through. I tried one last kick, but had nothing to give.
“Ruddy, this is it, this is my dream,” he soothed. “I know what to do now. You just need to sleep, okay? I’ve been through this before. Let me do it. I promise, it’s okay. Let go now, Ruddy. Give me control of your body. Go to sleep.”
With a frustrated yell I lost my grip on my lungs and sucked the river inside.
“Good-bye, Ruddy,” Alan murmured. “Good-bye.”
29
No Time Left on the Clock
I came awake in darkness and in the middle of a gasping, choking spasm. Water flowed from my mouth and nose and for a panicked moment I couldn’t breathe. Coughing, I flailed my hands, coming into contact with a rough blanket that I shoved off my face, gratefully sucking in air past the sodden feeling in my chest. A cramp seized me and I brought up river water from my stomach.
I was in the back of a truck, the steel bed vibrating as the tires hummed down the pavement. Once I stopped throwing up, the shivers started: I was colder than I’d ever been; it felt as if my very bones were frozen. My head ached and I was so weak that for several minutes I lay there expecting to die.
Alan was gone. There was a different quality to his silence, deeper than the odd absence I’d felt when he was asleep. He had died back there in the river, somehow stepping in and taking my death for me. Drowning, just as he’d always feared. I was truly alone, now. Quaking, I clutched my legs and bit back the pain of loss.
After a time I gained control—Alan’s voice came to me, almost as if he were still inside. “You’ve got to get out of here.” I cautiously looked over the edge of the tarp through the back window into the cab. In the dwindling light I could plainly see Burby and Wexler, two rifles hanging on the rack behind them.
I didn’t know where we were or where we were going, but I’d had enough and just wanted to escape. We were moving too fast for me to do anything, though, but ride helplessly down the highway.
They must have a plan for me. At some point, they would come back to check under the tarp and I would be easy prey, unable to defend myself.
Opportunity presented itself a few minutes later. With a screech of brakes that slammed me forward in the truck bed, Wexler stopped, hitting the horn. “Idiot!” he shouted at the vehicle that had sagged onto the highway in front of him, nearly causing a collision as it pulled out of a driveway.
We were rolling again in a second. I had no time. Gulping, I seized the side of the truck and vaulted over, landing heavily in the muddy ditch next to the highway. I held my breath, watching Wexler’s brake lights, but nothing happened.
I took my bearings and realized Wexler’s truck was headed toward Kalkaska. I was standing only a couple of miles outside of city limits. I ran in that direction, my legs rubbery and useless. Every inhalation seemed to bubble in my chest, and the first mile I coughed more than I breathed, bringing up lungfuls of phlegmy water. Gradually, though, I straightened myself out. My feet were completely numb, hard to keep on track, but after a while a thousand needles stabbed them, and my shivering stopped. My breath sent out billowing clouds of fog.
Thanks to Alan’s midnight exercise program, I was a runner now.
There was no traffic, not particularly unusual for a Sunday night—and I wasn’t sure what I would do if I saw a vehicle anyway. I was drenched from head to foot, my shirt torn, my shoes missing. Who would pick me up looking like this?
My thought was to get to the Bear, get some warm clothes, and call Strickland. I encountered some traffic once I hit the Kalkaska town limits, but by that time I decided I would get there faster on foot than if I had to try to explain to someone what had happened.
The Bear’s front door was locked. Impatiently I dug into my wet pockets and pulled out my keys, my hands trembling as I opened the door. “Becky?” I called.
No one here. I flipped on the lights, noting irrelevantly that the place had been completely cleaned up. A clean towel sat on one of the tables and I picked it up, wiping my face. The cloth came away wet and streaked with mud.
A sound alerted me and I glanced up, startled. Becky stood behind the bar, very still and q
uiet. “Becky!” I gasped. I took two steps toward her and then stopped. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Becky?”
Franklin Wexler stepped out of the back room, his rifle held steadily on my sister’s head. “You sure are tough to kill, boy,” he told me.
“Pull that gun down from my sister’s head or I’ll take it from you and bust you up with it,” I said pleasantly.
“First you come on back here and sit down,” Wexler directed. For emphasis, he leaned forward, nearly touching his gun to Becky’s head.
“Ruddy, I’m so sorry,” Becky murmured.
“You did nothing wrong, Becky.”
“I let them in. They said they were your friends.”
Wexler grunted. “Enough with the chitchat. Come on.”
He kept the rifle on Becky as we walked to the back. Seeing that, the rage left me, left me because the fear doused it like a scream drowning out a whisper. Becky.
“She doesn’t know anything, Frank. I didn’t tell her anything. You can let her go, okay?”
Wexler’s face was devoid of emotion and humanity. He was going to murder my sister because he’d already decided to. He wasn’t going to put any more thought into it than that.
Nathan Burby was waiting for me in the back. He had me sit in a chair while he wrapped duct tape around me, securing me tightly. Next was Becky, whom he sat down across from me. Terror showed on her face and I didn’t know what I could say to fix it.
Once we were both stuck to our seats, Burby went to work on something he’d put on the table. His back was to me and I made note of a pistol shoved into his waistband, though I didn’t know how I could get my hands on it easily. Wexler dipped his rifle, but kept it handy—having failed to drown me, he was probably less confident that he could keep me taped to a chair than he would have been otherwise.
I stared, realizing what Burby was doing. It was just as Strickland had described: a simple device, just dynamite, a plastic gallon jug of gasoline, and a digital timer.