Chapter Four

Karl Karlson looked up at the Coot Lake Inn sign. It was the kind that had press-on black letters, some of which had fallen, so the sign read:

OOT LA E I

ee cable & a/ !

Probably the lack of “c” wasn’t bothering any potential customers, seeing as it was about seven below at the moment. He slammed the door to his extended-cab pickup and hefted his black suitcase, thumping the back of the truck as he passed. A chorus of cheerful barking answered the thump.

Karl smiled as he opened the door to the tiny Coot Lake Inn lobby.

Norm Blomgren, the Coot Lake Inn proprietor, did not.

“No,” Norm shouted when he looked up and saw Karl. Norm was a hefty guy, and his shout was kind of forceful, so he staggered back a bit behind the laminate check-in counter, his belly jiggling and his face drawn into an expression that, if Karl didn’t know better, he’d mistake for dismay.

Luckily Karl did know better. “Hey, Norm. Long time no see.”

He took off his fogged glasses and wiped them on the front of his shirt.

“Not long enough,” Norm muttered, because he was a joker, that Norm.

“Say,” Karl said, casual-like, as he dropped his suitcase by his feet and leaned on the counter. “You don’t happen—”

“No.”

“—to have a room for—”

“No!”

“—maybe a night or two?”

Norm narrowed his eyes, which, what with his heavy, red cheeks, wasn’t such a good look for him. He kind of resembled a horrified hog catching his first sight of the slaughterhouse. Karl didn’t tell Norm that, of course, because Karl was a kind person and a good friend besides.

He did crinkle his brow a little to let Norm know that he was kinda taken aback by the proceedings thus far. “Hey, how’s the tile in those bathrooms I fixed up for you? They sure looked good when I finished, didn’t they?”

“That was last summer,” Norm said, jutting his chin out. Now he looked like a hostile horrified hog. “And I paid you for that work. And let you stay here on the house while you did it. And you mooched off my kitchen!”

Well, that just hurt. Karl let Norm know this because communication was important in any relationship, even between bros. He’d read that in a Cosmo in the checkout line at Mack’s Speedy, right under the article about “5 Moves Your Man Will Never Expect,” which had been quite illuminating. “Hey, that hurts, Norm. I shared my chili—”

“God-awful farting—”

“—every night while—”

“Stole those tomatoes—”

“—I was working on those baths—”

“—right out of my garden—”

“—and it was tasty, too.” Karl finished triumphantly, because he was on pretty firm ground here. No one made chili as good as his. “Hey, I could cook for you again while I’m here. You still got that half a pig you bought from Al? ’Cause I make an awesome pulled pork. Secret recipe handed down from my great-grandfather.”

Norm looked suspicious. “Your great-grandfather made pulled pork on the reservation?”

Karl drew himself up. “Pulled pork is a proud Ojibwa tradition. We taught it to you white folk, you know.”

“That’s what you said about hacky sack when we played it in junior high.”

“My great-great-grandfather’s hacky sack ball,” Karl began patiently, because sometimes Norm didn’t understand the finer points of Ojibwa history.

The office door blowing open interrupted him.

Sam West strolled in, stomping snow from his Sorels. He had an older guy with him, sort of short and tubby with a nervous, unhealthy face behind crooked glasses. Sam held a black suitcase in one hand. He had the other on the guy’s elbow. It was just resting there, but Karl knew Sam’s grip was strong due to a misunderstanding some years back involving a sweet yellow Corvette, a case of Budweiser, and three live ducks. Doubtful if Tubby Guy could break away.

Not that he was trying. No, he was staring around Norm’s little check-in office like he expected killer ninjas to jump out from behind Norm’s one fake potted plant.

“Norm,” Sam said, putting down the suitcase. He took off his hat, hitting it against his jeans to knock the snow off it, and jerked his chin at Karl. “Hey, Karl.”

“Hey, Sam.” Karl carefully did not look down at his own black suitcase. Nope. He’d learned that kind of tell could send an eagle-eyed lawman like Sam into an investigative frenzy, which might be very awkward given the contents of said suitcase. Instead, Karl settled in more comfortably at the counter. This looked like it might be interesting, and it wasn’t like his conversation with Norm had been headed in a positive direction. “Who’s this?”

Sam smiled slow and amicable, but Karl knew that smile and knew Sam wasn’t completely relaxed in the stranger’s presence. “This is Ilya Kasyanov, who just went into a snow bank up on Highway 52.”

“Oh, man.” Karl shook his head in sympathy. “I’ve done that before.”

“And not even in winter,” Sam drawled.

Karl ignored that. “Ilya? Hey, are you Russian? ’Cause—”

But at that point Sam tripped over his own feet or something and drove his elbow into Karl’s side, knocking over the two suitcases in the process.

“Oof,” said Karl, wondering if he still had intact ribs. “What—?”

Sam gave him a glare so scary that Karl immediately got the point: Ixnay on the Ussianray.

“Sorry,” Sam said, not looking sorry at all. He righted the suitcases, and then turned to Norm. “Do you have a room for Ilya here tonight?”

Norm brightened. Fact was, even though the Coot Lake Inn was the only motel in town, it didn’t do a whole lot of business, despite Karl’s awesome improvements to the bathrooms in numbers 21, 23, 25, and 9.

“Yup,” Norm said, busily setting out the paper registration form and a pen. “Got a nice one out front. Has a bathroom just renovated, too.”

“Purple and black tile,” Karl put in to help. “Custom work.”

“Okay, yeah,” Ilya said, and there was a faint but pretty distinct Russian accent there, if Karl knew his non–Coot Lake, non-Ojibwa reservation accents. And he did. “I’ll take the room.” He pronounced room as “rhoooom,” like he was gargling a bunch of extra consonants and vowels at the back of his throat. “But only for one night, yes? I leave in morning, quick.”

Sam lifted an eyebrow, which was kind of a neat trick that Karl had once spent an entire afternoon trying to do in a mirror, sadly without success. “Blizzard’s only going to get worse. Might think about staying a couple of days.”

Kasyanov looked alarmed, his sad-dog eyes widening. “But… but my car must be fixed. I pay well.”

“Sure, you can pay well and your car might be fixed,” Sam said easily, “but that doesn’t guarantee you’ll be able to drive on two feet of snow.”

“Heard it was going to be three,” Karl put in.

Norm scoffed. “Two and a half max. It never gets to three no matter how much the weather guy on four jumps around.” He turned to the Russian. “We got cable, though, and Marie at the Laughing Loon Café will deliver if you order over twenty bucks of food. You’ll be fine for three or four days.”

Kasyanov had been swinging his head back and forth like a cat following a feather toy. Now he made a dying whale sound. “Days?”

Sam looked at him, squinting a little. “Yeah. You got some place to go?”

See, the way Karl figured it, everyone has a place to go, so he was slightly surprised when the guy rolled over and started backpedaling. “No… ah, no. I am fine here in Loon Lake.” He smiled, showing yellowed teeth. The smile was totally unconvincing and kind of gross to boot.

“Coot Lake,” Norm corrected, but not meanly, because after all the guy, yellow teeth or not, was a paying customer. “Here.” He pushed the registration form at Kasyanov.

Ilya sighed and picked up the pen.

Sam turned to Karl. “What’re you doing here?”

“Well, Norm’s helping me out with a place to stay—”

“Am not,” Norm muttered, but then got distracted by Kasyanov filling out his form.

“Something wrong with your trailer?” Sam asked.

“You could say that.” Karl had a real nice mobile home up on the Red Earth Ojibwa Reservation. Only forty years old with almost real wood paneling in the den/living room/dining room/office. “Water pipes froze.”

Norm looked up just then, and with a heavy sigh reached for a room key and shoved it across the counter with a grunt. Karl nodded and took it.

Sam winced. “Ouch.”

“Yeah,” Karl said. “But what with the meeting of the Crow County Mighty Mushers this weekend, it’s just as well. I can be in town with—”

“Wait. Wait.” Sam held up his hand in a stop sign. Sometimes Sam had trouble coming out of his cop man mode. “Your crazy musher friends are arriving in town?”

“Sure.” Karl had been trying to get Sam into the dogsledding club for years. “You could come by and check it out. We’re going to sled around Moosehead Lake, have a few brewskis, and then maybe do a loop up by County M before coming back into town.”

“How many?”

“Miles?” Karl blew out a breath, estimating. “Oh, at least fifty. But the way the snow’s coming down—”

“No, not miles. Mushers.”

“Uh.” Karl shrugged. “Well, normally we’d have at least twenty, twenty-five people, but with this weather? Maybe fifteen or so all told. Depends on whether Doug Engelstad has recovered from those two broken legs, I guess. And his cousin, Stu Engelstad, was threatening to move to Alaska ’cause he says it’s too warm here—”

The Russian choked a bit for no reason that Karl could see.

“Which I can totally get, but really, there aren’t many girls in Alaska, so I wouldn’t myself. Not”—Karl interrupted himself thoughtfully—“that Stu seems that interested in girls. Or guys. Or, really, humans—”

“Karl.” Sam had a real even voice, usually, but sometimes when he was a might cranky it came out sharplike. “Does Doc Meijers know about your meet?”

Karl’s forehead crinkled, confused. “No. Why would he?”

“So maybe you could get a permit from the police chief to invite fifteen drunken mushers and all their dogs to town and then chase them around Moosehead Lake?” Sam said, his tone kind of getting loud at the end.

“Oh, hey,” Karl said. “Do we need a permit for that?”

“How much?” the Russian yelped at the same time.

Karl was sympathetic. Sometimes Norm had a tendency to gouge. He was the only motel in town.

Sam turned to the counter and Karl bent quickly to grab his suitcase. He picked it up and then hesitated. Both suitcases were black; both looked exactly alike. Was it…?

He glanced up to find Sam staring at him. “Something the matter, Karl?”

“Nope. Nothing at all,” Karl grinned a grin of outstanding blandness and tightened his grip on his suitcase. “Imma just show myself out.”

Sam narrowed his eyes, Karl was already hustling out the lobby door. He didn’t want to stick around to find out about dogsledding permits. And besides, Norm was busy enough without showing him to his room.

Karl knew the way anyway.