At the bottom of my drive, when I got home, the first thing I saw was two people meandering through my garden. Dolly and Crazy Harry. Together, but apart—one up one garden path, the other standing in the new vegetable bed with a hose in his hand, watering seedlings emerging from the hills. I would have beans and corn and pumpkins and squash by fall. Harry was bent almost double, poking with one finger into a hill while water went on the next hill. Dolly, when she heard my car, stood with her hands at her waist, glaring into the sun.

“Where the hell you been?” was her greeting.

“Out,” I said. “You get the casket chosen OK?”

She nodded. “That’s not what’s important here. You disappeared. Never said where you were going. You with Jackson?”

I nodded as I slammed the car door and fumbled with my house key.

“Get Sorrow back?” she demanded.

I shook my head.

“Then what the hell were you doing over there?”

“I went to the casino. Caused a lot of trouble, demanding to see Lewis George and Alfred Naquma. They kicked me out.”

“Dumb. Why didn’t you call?”

“So we could both get kicked out?”

“So we could do things the smart way.”

“You hear from Ray Shankwa?”

She nodded. “He said he got a message from you but couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. Told me the men haven’t been seen around in about a week. He called their homes, visited the casino, and even went to the tribal offices. Alfred works there, at the offices. He might even be in charge or pretty high up. Lewis George is a tribal chief. They call him ‘gimoa.’ Ray said it isn’t like them to be gone, and he’s spread the word for them to come in as soon as they get back.”

“Back from where? They’ve got Sorrow. Jesus …”

“We gave it a good go, Emily, but the word is out that I’ve turned the whole thing over to Gaylord. When they took your dog it just got way beyond what we could do. Brent’s going to work with the state police out of Traverse City.”

I was happy to hear we weren’t on our own anymore. “You tell them the men kidnapped Sorrow?”

“Of course.”

Harry, behind us, hadn’t said a word. I waved halfheartedly as he shut off the hose. The next thing he was gone. I guessed, now that I was home, his job was finished.

Dolly toed the bark path. “So, you stayed with him,” she said.

I shrugged, depressed and not up to being quizzed on my love life. “I had enough of everything and everybody. A weekend away from all of this wasn’t too much to ask.”

“Not if that’s all it was.”

OK. That was the end point. The place beyond which I wouldn’t let her go. Dolly wanted only the best for me, I understood that. It was her methods I couldn’t tolerate.

“If Jackson and I get back together, I’m very sorry, but it has nothing to do with you, Dolly. I will run my life as I want to. Even if I end up leaving here and going back to Ann Arbor—that’s my own business.”

She opened her mouth again, snapped it shut, and averted her eyes.

“I don’t mean to be rude or anything …,” I began, feeling sorry for her.

She nodded, still looking down at the ground. “I just don’t want to see you …”

“I understand that. But what I do isn’t up for discussion.”

She sniffed. “You’re right. None of my damn business. Can I say one thing though?”

“One thing.”

“I never had a friend like you before. I mean, not somebody as smart. You know, it’s like you’re from a different world. Guess, what I’m saying is I’m a very selfish person. Look what we’re doing with these murders we come up against. Maybe not this one, so much. I know it’s cost you your dog and you’re probably mad as hell. Still, I …”

I put a hand on her arm and stopped her.

“OK,” I said. “We needed to clear the air. Now you know where I stand and I know why you were coming on too strong. So, let’s just forget it and see if there’s anything more we can do to get those men and get my dog.”

She nodded.

“Let’s go in my house. I’ll make some tea and we’ll talk about tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow” was the funeral. She wanted to change the topic as much as I did and funerals required a lot of discussion. Over cups of Earl Grey we talked. She seemed overwhelmed.

“Never planned anything like this by myself before,” she said, sipping at her tea as she sat at the kitchen counter and I stood across from her. “The casket was bad enough. Who knows what Chet would have wanted? I mean, we never talked about stuff like that. Too young to even think about it. I got him a nice one. Sullivan said I didn’t even need a whole casket ’cause it was just the bones. He thought I should go for cremation and an urn but that’s not what I want.”

“How much did you spend?”

“Twenty-five hundred.”

I took a deep breath. “You talk to his sister?”

She nodded.

“Did you tell her how much this whole thing is going to cost? I mean, there’s the luncheon at EATS afterward, the funeral home fees, grave site.”

Dolly shook her head. “It’s enough for them to come all the way up here. His mother’s driving from Bloomington, Indiana, you know. We’ll talk about it after. They’ll probably stay with me a few days. Got the house pretty clean and changed the bed in my spare room.”

“When are they arriving? Shouldn’t you be home?”

“No. Won’t see them until tomorrow morning.”

“Before eleven?”

“I told them the time. Said they could make it.”

“So, you’ll talk to them about the cost …”

She gave me a long look. “Maybe you should stay out of this. Just like I’m staying out of whatever happens between you and the jerk. This is my place.”

I sputtered. “I don’t want to see you get stuck …”

“Yeah. Well, that goes two ways. So let me handle my husband’s funeral, OK?”

Nothing more to say. She was right.

At the door of her patrol car, we got back to what Dolly and I shared in common.

“Are we really out of it, Dolly? I don’t feel right … “

Dolly shook her head and made a face. “Naw, Brent’s just our cover.”

Relieved, I leaned in the window. “Then what about that sister of Alfred? Christine. Think we can find anything more on her?”

“Good idea. I’ll call Lena Smith. The chief pulled her number from when she called the station. Let’s see if Lena knows anything about Christine’s whereabouts. Then I guess I’ll start checking driver’s licenses. Find if there’s a Christine Naquma in Michigan or not. Go through the usual channels.”

“Should we get back to the casino? Or to the tribal offices? Or even house to house out there? That’s what got us a response on Lena Smith.”

“Don’t think you’ll be welcomed at the casino for a while. The others I’d better do myself.”

Dolly put the car in gear and held one finger in the air. “See you in the morning. About ten at Sullivan’s?”

I nodded. I’d be there.

___

No Sorrow. No resolution. Dolly had depressed me, and there were other things. When I picked up the mail, driving in from Jackson’s, there were two envelopes with my address in my own handwriting. That meant two more rejections on Dead Dancing Women. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been so sure of that book. Dolly and I had exposed people out to kill gentle women of the woods for their own gain. It had everything: plot, characters, place. Somebody would buy it. But, I told myself, not just yet. Being a writer meant extreme patience and a firm belief in my own work. Time, I told myself. I just needed to give it more time. Which was what I was running out of.

I went to my studio and tried to write for a while. The Indian cemetery story was due and I still had research to do. Nobody would be around on Sunday, and who knew if I could get anyone with the Odawa Education Center to talk to me—now that I was persona non grata with the tribe.

What I did, when I saw the northern sky begin to darken, was to get on my bathing suit and do a cannonball from my dock into Willow Lake. A sound decision.

The water was still winter cold, with eddies of warmth. I found the eddies and floated along them, above the muck of leaves and weeds below. The water was opaque, still fogged with winter density. I lay on my back, doing only enough of a stroke to keep myself afloat so I could watch the sky, admire the speed of the dark, rolling clouds, and feel the thrill of danger. Soon lightning thrashed across the northern sky, sidewise. Then came the roll of thunder. I felt it move through the water as it shivered the air.

Time to get out, before I fried in my own lake. The storm brought in much cooler air. I shivered, wrapped a towel around myself, and hurried up my path between growing stands of thick bracken.

Once at the house, I don’t know what made me look up. Maybe it was a noise. The air felt different, and not from the temperature dropping. It was more a sense of something happening by the big maple beside the door. A disturbance. I stood beneath the tree as it blew back and forth in the wind. I peered up. A dark shape huddled high on a branch. An animal, clinging near the top of the tree. I couldn’t make out what it was in the growing dark. Certainly not a dog. I walked backward up the drive to where I could see better. A small brown bear clung tight to the main trunk of the maple with both front paws, his back paws on a thick branch beneath him.

I took one more look, to make sure what I saw, and ran in the house. I would call the DNR. They would come out and tranquilize him, get him out of my tree, and take him off to a place where he wouldn’t bother home owners. The bear would be safer that way, I assured myself as I hurried to the phone. I couldn’t simply leave him up my tree. It was too dangerous. The storm would make him nervous. Maybe he would attack me or someone coming up my drive. Thank God, I told myself without thinking, that Sorrow wasn’t there to bark and make things worse. I thought again of the animal up the tree, holding on for dear life. Maybe he was like Sorrow, terribly trapped where he didn’t belong.

One call flashed at me from my answering machine. I punched the button hurriedly. At first there was nothing. Then I heard barking. I held tight to the phone and listened until the line went dead. My hand shook when I reached down to call the DNR. I punched one number for Information and then hung up. I didn’t need to get that bear out of my tree. He didn’t need the DNR shooting tranquilizers into him. I wanted no more animals hurt or displaced because of me. The storm would let up soon. The bear would climb down. In the morning he’d be gone and I could feel all right about myself.