The warming trays in Helmsing Corporation’s board room the next morning told Rep he was wasting his time. Danish, juice, and bagels were the stuff of a working breakfast. Scrambled eggs and sausage were a sin offering: Sorry about the wild goose chase. Eat hearty.
Rep surmised that Helmsing’s vice-president of risk management had agreed to Rep’s presentation only to extract lower rates and a more acute sense of urgency from the local lawyer the company already had. By ten-twenty Rep had finished a professional but brisk run-through and gotten back on the road, determined to drive straight through to Milwaukee and salvage a fraction of the day. By twelve-forty-five this firm resolve was evaporating rapidly. It disappeared altogether at twelve-forty-seven, when he saw the words FOOD NEXT EXIT on a freeway sign.
That promise proved less than candid, for the nearest restaurant lay more than a mile from the freeway and its appearance did nothing for his appetite. Rather than turn back he foraged a bit further. He was on the verge of giving up when he saw a weathered billboard announcing that Sally’s Lake Delton Bar and Grill lay just around the next bend.
Either God has a sense of humor or the lords of coincidence are working overtime, and I’m too hungry to care which it is.
Nothing in Rep’s southern Indiana boyhood prepared him for Lake Delton. Aside from the Great Lakes, which are basically freshwater inland seas, Rep’s idea of a lake was a self-contained body of water that you could see across on a clear day. Lake Delton’s deep blue, sailboat-dotted water started about three hundred feet from Sally’s parking lot and with heart-stopping majesty stretched to the horizon in every direction. The idea that in two months this expanse would be a vast slab of ice thick enough to drive on—or not, as Vance Hayes had found out—took his breath away.
He entered the bar and grill under a sign that promised FISH FRY EVERY FRIDAY. He saw only six other patrons on this weekday afternoon, and none of them looked like they’d worn a tie outside of church in a long time. He heard the first flatlander joke before he had his menu open. Something about cannibals and stabbing yourself repeatedly with a fork. The risible possibilities struck Rep as limited, but the punch line drew guffaws. He assumed that the joke was for his benefit, and that telling the three guys at the table ten feet away that he was not, in fact, a flatlander would just spoil the fun.
Though he wasn’t sure how, Rep could tell that the solidly built blonde in her mid-forties who came to take his order was the owner rather than just a hired waitress. She gave him a good-sport half-smile when she approached him at the bar with her pad. Rep studied the menu for an extra five seconds, wondering what “lutefisk” was.
Well, as long as I’m here anyway, how am I going to get these taciturn locals to open their mouths for me?
“Cheeseburger and a Leinenkugel,” he said. “And some lutefisk.”
Her eyebrows rose at the last word, but then she nodded and walked away, returning promptly with an open bottle of Leine’s.
Twelve-by-eighteen photographs above the bar depicted Lake Delton’s four seasons: fishing and swimming in spring, boating and water skiing in summer, canoeing and fishing again in fall, and ice-skaters and hockey players sharing the ice with scattered wooden huts and—Rep blinked, but there it was—pickup trucks in winter. Instead of being charmed by the bucolic idyll, the lawyer in Rep saw torts waiting to happen. Looking at the photographs, it was easy to imagine lots of ways to die under the water. Or the ice.
The next flatlander joke echoed through the room with considerable volume, but as with the first one Rep caught only the punchline: “So the ref says to the flatlander, ‘On further review, the Bears still suck.’”
Rep swiveled in his chair and raised the Leine’s.
“We feel the same way in Milwaukee,” he said. “Go, Pack.” He figured the Indianapolis Colts could take care of themselves.
Predictable murmurs of approval gave way to expectant silence as the lutefisk arrived. It looked like brownish-white Jell-O. When Rep dug in he found that it tasted like boiled cod that had been air-dried, soaked in lye, and then skinned and boned before cooking. This wasn’t surprising, because that’s what it was. By choking down four bites, Rep had apparently won the grudging tolerance of the other patrons. And of Sally, if that’s who she was, who delivered the cheeseburger.
“I saw some kids ice-skating on the way in,” Rep said to her. “I’m surprised that it’s started already.”
“We had a good, hard freeze last week,” she said, as if a good, hard freeze was just the thing any sensible person would want. “Even so, those kids today are just on skating ponds with water two or three feet deep. I don’t let mine go out on any lake until after December first, and not even then if we’ve had too many days above freezing. They say three inches for skating, four inches for snowmobiling, and six inches for trucks and cars, but I’m not taking any chances.”
Rep worked a bit harder on a healthy bite of his burger while he tried to think of some clever follow-up that would keep Sally talking. No need. She resumed speaking before he could swallow, much less say anything himself.
“The big resorts, they actually drill cores out of the ice to see how thick it is,” she said. “Their insurance companies make them, that’s why they do it. They have to. It’s right in their policies.”
“Seems wise,” Rep managed while Sally caught her breath.
“You can’t go by that, though. No sir.”
She rested both elbows on the bar and leaned toward Rep, reverential seriousness on her face and lutefisk on her breath.
“A lake is a living thing,” she said with insistent intensity. “Especially spring-fed. The real heat isn’t above the ice, it’s below. That water is coming up from underneath the earth’s crust, and it’s not the same all over the lake. No sir. There are currents and eddies and flows that no one can see. There might be places where the ice is a foot thick, and places three hundred yards away where it’s only a couple of inches. You can’t tell. You just can’t.”
“No sir,” Rep agreed. “Er, ma’am.”
“They can have their rules of thumb, but I play it safe.”
“Yeah. Actually, I thought I read a while back that someone at one of the big resorts on Lake Delton had gone through the ice and died.”
“I know exactly what happened there,” Sally said, with an emphatic forward head-snap. “Like I saw it myself. Guy got a snootful. Well, that happens. You know?”
“Yes,” Rep said.
“And he goes out on the snowmobile. Happens all the time.”
“Right.”
“Now, this is in December, and I’ll bet the cores they drilled that morning showed half a foot of ice if they showed an inch. But this guy who’s three sheets to the wind, he zooms his Ski-Doo out there, you see?”
“Sure,” Rep said.
“I know this is the way it happened. Had to. He gets out there four hundred, five hundred yards from shore.” Sally’s voice suddenly grew very quiet. “And guess what happens?”
Rep had no idea and was about to say so, but Sally didn’t wait. She leaned forward and spoke slowly, giving deadly emphasis to each word.
“He hears the ice begin to crack.”
Rep’s belly dropped and he felt himself pale a bit at the sinister image.
“He panics,” Sally said, speaking quickly now. “If he’d just turned the Ski-Doo around and headed back to shore, he’d have been all right. The hole they found wasn’t all that big. But he panics, gets off the snowmobile and starts running in dress shoes across the ice. Slipping and falling down. Getting up. Getting more and more scared. That’s when he went through. I’ll betcha anything. That’s when he went through.”
“I may not be too smart,” Rep said, panting a bit, “but I’m not dumb enough to bet against you.”
Sally smiled at this gallant compliment. The local comedian rose from his table and bellied up to the bar next to Rep.
“You’re smooth, boy,” he said. “You Scandihoovian?”
“I don’t have that honor,” Rep said.
“‘Don’t have that honor.’ You’re all right.”
“Thank you.”
“You ever hear the one about the three flatlanders who wanted to go ice-fishing? You and Sally talking about the ice reminded me.”
“Can’t say I have.” Rep began to wonder if these loquacious locals were ever going to shut up. And he suddenly realized what the huts in the winter scene were all about.
“Okay, there’s these three flatlanders, see, and they decide they wanna come up to Wisconsin and give ice-fishing a try. So they drive up and go to Charlie’s Bait and Tackle to get their kit. Course, Charlie tells ’em they’ll need a saw to cut through the ice, so they buy one.”
“Makes sense,” Rep said.
“An hour later they’re back. They’ve worn the saw down and the hole isn’t big enough. Charlie says he can’t understand that, but he sells them three more saws. Three hours later they’re back again, and this time they’re mad. They say, ‘What’s goin’ on here? We’ve worn out four saws and we still can’t get that boat in the water.”
“That’s good,” Rep said, laughing. “I’ll give you credit when I tell that one back in Milwaukee.”
“Remember Charlie’s Bait and Tackle,” the guy said.
“Will do.”
Rep put a ten on the bar and gestured to Sally to keep the change.
***
“Hello, beloved,” Rep said to Melissa about five hours later, when he finally got back to their apartment. “Anything new?”
“Well, I got the deposition transcript to Detective Washington,” Melissa said. “I hope he finds it more enlightening than I have. I’ve never waded through anything more tedious in my life.”
“Yeah, as a general rule we have to pay people to read them.”
“Well, I doubt that you pay them enough.”
“Anything at all in there?” Rep asked.
“Nothing that I’d break a window for. Roger Leopold worked in Wisconsin for Orlofsky Publications, which had offices in Ohio.”
“What was the lawsuit about?”
“Something boring about computers,” Melissa said. “Specialized file maintenance software wasn’t working properly, so the buyer was cross with the seller. The buyer wasn’t paying, so the seller was cross with the buyer. That seemed to be the gist.”
“Did either the buyer or the seller have anything to do with Cold Coast Productions?”
“Orlofsky and Cold Coast are owned by the same company, and they each used the other’s employees now and then.”
“So, much ado about money, as usual, but no smoking gun?”
“Not that I could see. One part wasn’t just tedious but very odd. Maybe you can make more sense out of it. Fifth Post-It note.”
Melissa tossed a hard copy of the emailed transcript to Rep, who flipped to the indicated page and began reading.
CONTINUED EXAMINATION BY MR. HAYES
Q: Showing you the document the reporter has marked exhibit seven for this deposition, do you recognize it?
A: Looks like a print-out of an email.
Q: Dated August 14, 2003, less than three months ago, is that correct?
A: That’s what it says.
Q: Addressed to rleopold, is that you?
A: Yes.
Q: From someone called cincyfileuser. Who’s that?
A: That was just the staff desktop computer at headquarters. Anyone who was there that day and knew the password could have sent the message.
Q: Do you have any recollection of receiving it?
A: Nope.
Q: Can you read the text of this email?
A: No. What’s on this page is gibberish.
Q: Can you just read what’s there into the record?
MR. SMITH: Objection. That’s going to take all day. It speaks for itself. Just have the reporter type it out.
MR. HAYES: As long as she does it right now.
[TEXT OF EMAIL DEP EX 7]
Okat tge .gaek card uf tiy wabtm byt keave ne iyt if ut, /abd bever asj ne fir abttgubg agaub,
MR. HAYES:
Q: And your testimony under oath, Mr. Leopold, is that you have no idea what this message was intended to communicate?
A: No idea.
Q: And no recollection of getting this very odd message?
A: I assume this was picked up by my spam filter. I got a dozen of these a day, at least, talking about cheap pills and horny housewives and all that stuff. A lot of times they stuck garbage like this in to try to fool the spam filter and get you to click on a link.
Q: That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, huh?
MR. SMITH: Objection. Asked and answered and argumentative. You’re harassing the witness now. Move to another topic or this deposition is over.
“Mean anything?” Melissa asked when Rep glanced up.
“Well, attorney Smith had a point about having a witness read a printed document into a deposition record. You don’t do that unless you’ve got a very specific reason.”
“So Hayes was up to something?”
“Yes, but he was apparently a better lawyer than I am because I can’t tell you what it was.”
“And now that Vance Hayes is dead,” Melissa said reflectively, “Neither can he.”