All the storm did was clear the sticky air. The morning was hot. I picked Harry up at six-thirty sharp. He stood outside his crooked house waiting with two fly-fishing rods, a cooler, a slouch hat with flies hooked to the brim, and a pair of waders for me, folded and sitting on the cooler. I took one look at him, in his fishing hat and dark green waders, and knew I’d made the right choice. If it cost me that editing job—so be it. The day ahead, fishing with Harry, would be priceless.
_____
Quiet fishing rivers running through close trees and steep banks have a smell all their own, and a presence. It was very much as though Harry and I intruded, being where the water rushed on, leaving behind the feel and odor of coolness. There was a sense of something—a watching thing, or a sentient breath-holding—as we stepped into the current, waders up to our armpits, lines flicking out and back through the thick air, the tiny splash of contact, and then out again and behind us. Over and over.
I sensed mustiness beneath the clean scent of early morning dew and the feel of heavy damp on my skin. I’d had a few fly-fishing lessons so could pull in my line and send it arcing out beside me, but not the way Harry did. He was good—the rod and line a part of his arms and hands, his body knowing how to swivel gracefully as he cast.
I wasn’t into the spirit of the rod and line and fly. For some guys it was a kind of religion. For me it was a matter of not twisting my line so it fell with a thud a few feet from where I stood. Or not catching it in the trees behind me. Or not catching a fly in my own backside. I worried that the slippery rocks beneath my feet would upend me, or that I’d step into a deep hole. Then, as I teetered on the rocks, I worried about catching a fish that required quick movement landing me face down in the fast water.
I moved carefully out into the river and found a flat rock to stand on. I planted my feet and felt secure. Harry kept walking from shore to shore, doing a zigzag through the water, casting and recasting. There was a lot to be said for a fly-fisherman who knew what he was doing and a lot to be said for a woman who knew her limitations. Harry was precise, even stylish, in the slow arc of his arm, the dark suit coat he wore under his waders taking nothing from belonging to the river. With ballet-like movement his line snapped beside him to curve overhead and land exactly where he wanted it to land. I couldn’t help but admire a guy who knew what he was doing. But then Harry, as rough as he was, had this side of him in the wilds that was pure artistry. That was one thing I’d learned since coming up to the woods: art comes in all forms, sometimes without an easy manner or nice clothes but still with a deep knowing.
Harry moved further downstream. I stayed where I was, figuring the fish would come to me as fast as Harry would stumble on one.
I flicked my line sideways, getting the hang of it in my wrists and shoulders and feeling pretty good about how professional I looked out there, up to my hips in cheap green waders. I was beginning to smile a smug smile as something took my hook and ran with it. The pole slid out of my hands and sailed off down river, smacking the water and bobbing under and up until it got to where Harry stood. He reached down in one easy movement and grabbed the pole, holding it in one hand as he held his in the other. He pushed a gloved finger hard on the line and hung on.
I left my flat rock without a thought to my own safety—now that I was embarrassed—and made my way through treacherous water until I stood beside him. I grabbed his fishing pole so he could concentrate on mine, pulling back hard again and again until a shimmering sucker broke the surface and leaped about in the air. It was gray and big, with the look of a carp to it. Harry grinned at me, then waded in to shore to release the hook and string the fish. I wobbled along behind him, watching how he pulled the fish carefully from the hook and strung it through the gills.
When he’d finished and I was pretty sure I could do that much—if not really catch them—he turned his faded eyes, lost in a network of wrinkles, to me. “Why don’t you sit on the bank awhile and rest yourself. I’ll catch a few more of these boys and we’ll get on home.”
I happily sat on the high bank, hugging my arms across my chest. I was dressed for heat in only a worn muscle shirt and shorts under my damp and mushy waders. I hadn’t remembered about river water. Always a sliver of ice buried in a river. That sliver of ice made me think of the dead dog Dolly and I had found. So still and empty. Not dog-like any more. What kind of person shot a dog in the head? What kind of icy human being felt nothing for an animal in his or her care? Or was so removed from feeling as to look down into a pair of hopeful brown eyes, then put the gun to the back of the creature’s head and pull the trigger. All I could see was Sorrow looking up at me, tongue out, eyebrows going up and down as he waited to see what I wanted to do next, how he could please me, how we could discover an old bear’s den together. Sorrow was all about the present. All about laughing without laughter. Even more than one man killing another, the thought of a man deliberately hurting a child or an animal drove me insane.
By the time Harry had what he called “a decent catch,” I was shivering and beyond caring if I had jars of fish standing on my pantry shelves on not. Thank God, I told myself as I helped pack the fish into a cooler, for the IGA. I’d get through the winter and up the hill of April; maybe with a book contract under my belt. Maybe there was a nice, fat advance in my future. Why worry about a few dead fish when, happily, I had a future of possibility?
_____
I dropped Harry and the fish off at his driveway and drove down to my house to let Sorrow out and call Madeleine Clark. Thoughts bounced through my head—what I needed to say, how I needed to sound, how cool and blasé I needed to be.
There were two calls waiting on my answering machine. I hoped one of them was from Dolly. She’d been on my mind. I was worried about her. There were questions I wanted to ask: had she been to a doctor? Did she have a due date? Was she feeling okay? I remembered that green face when we found the dead dog. Her telling me her secret was like being sand-bagged. I was left with a load of my own feelings, that I wasn’t allowed to talk to her about and I couldn’t tell anybody else. No advice—if I had any. No helping. How did you befriend a woman like that?
And how was I going to work with her? Would she still want me in on this new investigation? Would she leave law enforcement altogether and drop me? My selfishness came galloping right over the edge of my concern. After all, I had stories for the paper to think about. I couldn’t get close to the investigations without her. I pushed the button to hear the calls. The first was Jackson.
“Well,” he began. “Despite the fact you made a very stupid decision—I mean, fishing instead of getting the good position I offered—I’ve arranged a meeting with Cecil Hawke and his wife, Lila Montrose-Hawke, tomorrow afternoon. Lila suggested we make it threeish, teatime. Cecil will have work ready for you. A test of your ability—to see if you’re up to his standards. This isn’t an insult, Emily—I know how touchy you can get. It’s only good business. The man is a consummate professional, just as Noel Coward was. One of those cool, but droll, Englishmen. I know you two will get along beautifully.
“I’ll pick you up at two-thirty. That should give us plenty of time to get there. We wouldn’t want to be exactly on time, would we? Puts people off. So, ta-ta. See you tomorrow.”
The next call came on with a male voice, hesitant. No one I knew.
“Eh, Emily Kincaid. I read the news about the woman being murdered and might know something, or have an idea anyways. My name’s George Sandini. Got a farm out west of Petoskey. There’s a worker here who’s been with me for years. He’s a citizen even though he’s a Mexican. I don’t know for sure but it seems to me something’s going on. This guy’s really nervous. I asked him about … well … why don’t you give me a call? If you come on out maybe he’ll talk to you … eh …”
George Sandini left a number so I called him back. He picked up after a couple of rings and agreed to meet me at his place later. What I had to do then was call Dolly. It would be my way of getting around this big elephant in our friendship. I wouldn’t say a thing, nor ask a question, unless she brought it up herself. She was right about one thing—none of my business. Her life was her life.
“Dolly’s not available,” Chief Barnard’s wife, manning the switchboard at the police station, said. I asked Frances to send Dolly out to my house or over to Harry’s by about three o’clock. “Tell her it’s about the murder. Got another farmer who thinks he’s got something for us.”
Then it was finally time to call Madeleine Clark. I pulled her number off my computer and sat for just a minute with the phone in my hand. I made a list of questions I needed to ask, and then decided to forget the questions and be grateful she was willing to take me on, hopefully sell my book, and get me out of my financial mess so I could live a long and happy life back in my woods, on my little lake, with the crows in residence in the front oak trees, the fox under my deck, skunk under my shed, and Bob, the bear, visiting now and then to savage my garbage cans.
I already knew her voice when she picked up on her end, in New York.
“Emily Kincaid. Yes, I’m so excited. I’m having lunch with Bernard Long, an editor at Simon and Schuster, next week and plan to pitch your book to him. Do you have anything against Simon and Schuster? I mean, I want to sell your book, certainly, but I don’t want to tread on any of your feelings about where you’d like to be placed.”
I assured her that Simon and Schuster would be great but didn’t get much more in.
“I love your work. What a quaint place you live in. I’m assuming you do live there …”
“Yes, I live here,” I said, swallowing hard at the thought of how she might be changing my life.
“Then I’ll be in touch by the end of next week.” She stopped, put her hand over the phone, and said something muffled to a person in her office. She came back on. “And keep in mind that whomever we sell your book to might want a series. That would be the way to go with this. Like Sue Grafton, you know, get people to meet your characters and like them.”
“Paperback or hard cover?” I managed to get in.
“Oh, paperback, I imagine. The business is truly tough—what with the economic climate. You’ll probably be on Kindle and whatever else they come up with. Such a volatile business, Emily. But paperback makes your work more accessible. Until you get known—maybe then. Let’s take it one step at a time. I’ll make the most advantageous sale I can—though, to be honest, the advance won’t be large. We’ll hope to make money on sales. That’s what I want to get into your contract. Perhaps advertising dollars or something new and creative. Book tours have fizzled, even for the big writers, so I intend to be reasonable with any editor I deal with. Don’t worry, Emily. You’re in good hands.”
She was gone and I had a week to wait. I knew better than to imagine things would happen that fast, still, as I got Sorrow corralled back on the screened porch and drove up my drive to get over to Harry’s for my canning lesson, I hoped.
_____
“Here’s what ya do,” Harry said, standing at his white enameled kitchen table with a large knife in his hands. The apron he wore over his funeral suit was bloody, but his hands were immaculate. “I skinned, boned, and filleted the fish. When you do it at home, ya skin it with a sharp knife. But don’t scale it first. What ya do next is cut it into two-inch chunks. Then ya wash it good. See here?” He tipped a large bowl of fish chunks toward me. “That’s what ya want. You go ahead get those jars cleaned and set here on this dish towel.” He nodded to where the jars stood on the drain board. “I’ll teach you the rest after that.”
I washed the jars in hot soapy water, then rinsed them at his single, deep sink and set them upside down to dry as he instructed. When they were dry, Harry taught me how to pack in the fish, within two inches of the top. There wasn’t much talk as we made a brine of water, salt, apple cider vinegar, and catsup.
“That’s the secret ingredient,” Harry told me, his voice lowered to a secret-sharing level. “Catsup makes it taste like salmon when you open the jar. Best thing you ever ate. Well, next to salmon itself.”
I had my doubts but followed his instructions: packing jars, pouring in the boiling brine to within two inches of the top, then setting the jars into a low simmering canning pot and, finally, out of the hot water to sit on more dish cloths until the lids snapped down tight.
He was telling me to store the jars upside down in my pantry and how the fish could be eaten in about ten days or kept for the whole year, when his dogs, out in his makeshift kennel, began to bark their long, howling barks. We looked at each other. Harry didn’t get much company—partially because of those fierce dogs—but something, or someone, was out there.
“What the heck’s goin’ on?” He untied his apron and grabbed up his shotgun from beside the door.
Dolly Wakowski was reaching for the door handle just as we burst out, bumping into her.
“Whatcha want, Deputy?” Harry pulled back, blocking her way in. All I could see of Dolly, behind Harry, was her hat. “No deer killed out of season around here, ya know. Got nothin’ that would interest you …”
“Yeah?” She pulled the door from his hand and walked in, eyeing me, backing toward the table filled with jars of our illicit fish. “Want to talk to Emily, there. Got a message …”
Dolly lifted her nose and took a sniff, then checked out the table behind me. “You and Emily been out fishing, Harry? Got yourself a license? Want to show it to me?”
Harry reared back uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “You see me or Emily standing in a river? You see us takin’ any fish? Got some from a friend, is all. Invited Emily, here, over to learn how to can it, should she ever have a friend that drops some off to her house.”
Dolly made a skeptical noise and glared at me.
“You picked the wrong way to learn how to live off the land, Emily. Harry hasn’t had a hunting or fishing license his whole life long.”
I shrugged and pulled off my dirty apron. “We better get out to talk to this George Sandini. I’ve got his address.”
“Yeah. West of Petoskey?”
I nodded. “He said to come any time we wanted to this afternoon.”
She nodded. “I got news too. Nothin’ good. You know that Miguel we went to see? Over to Josh Sutter’s farm? Mr. Sutter called me. Hasn’t seen Miguel all day. Not usual since the man’s a hard worker. Sutter said he’s not the kinda’ farmer you have to go out and round up. Went to his house and it’s empty. Gone. The whole family. Said he’s hearing it’s happening to other farmers.”
“I’m through here. Right, Harry?” I handed the apron to Harry and thanked him for the fishing and the canning.
“I’ll bring over your jars when they cool, Emily,” Harry said, frowned hard at me, and asked, “This about that dead dog you found over to Old Farm Road?”
“Hey! This is police …” Dolly started but I jumped in over her.
“It is. You hear anything? I know how you love your dogs …”
“Two found a month ago out at Tar Lake in Mancelona,” he said. “What usually happens is that the dogs get old, owners get tired of taking care of ’em, and kill ’em off. Most of the time they bury them in their own yard, not dump the bodies like they done.” He stopped to think a minute. “Or, could be one of those puppy mill things. Kill off old breeding stock. But I never heard of them killing people too.” He shook his head. “Some awful folks in this world, but nobody I ever heard of killing people and dogs at the same time. Something going on. That’s for sure.”
“Did you hear about the gold cross the dead woman wore?” I asked, on the chance gossip had gotten around to Harry.
“Heard. Don’t mean nothin’ to me.”
“You want to get moving?” Dolly was impatient. “We got an hour trip ahead of us.”
On the way out to her car, I filled her in on what George Sandini had said.
“So, he thinks something’s going on too. Good thing his worker’s a citizen. Won’t be runnin’ back to Mexico. That’s a break,” she said, then leaved a deep sigh.
I looked sideways at her. She had the gray look of someone who was suddenly very tired. “You doing all right?”
She said nothing. Okay, I was back out of her twisted loop. Fine with me. I didn’t need Dolly’s kind of trouble. I’d help find a murderer. Break the story to cement my place at the Northern Statesman. That’s what I had to think about.
But more than anything, Dolly or no Dolly, I wanted to find the guy who could so savagely kill a dog.