Wednesday, October 21

6 days left

When I called Lucky’s name he yelled from back in his office. I took Cate with me to meet him and told him why she was there. He stood and bent forward over his desk, offering Cate his hand. They shook and she pulled her long skirt around her, then took a chair.

Lucky looked at me. “She’s not staying for our discussion with Officer Winston, is she?” He turned back to Cate. “Sorry, Ma’am, but this is police business.”

“She’ll wait in the lobby. I’m not sure Dolly’s coming …”

Lucky gave me a forlorn look.

“But if she does, Cate would like to speak to her. Her daughter got caught in a cult, over in France. Cate thinks maybe Dolly will listen.”

Lucky nodded. “Hope it works. This Dolly I’m dealing with isn’t anybody I ever knew. The law used to be the most important thing in her life. You ever know Dolly to make a move that wasn’t right up to the oath she took as a law enforcement officer?”

I shook my head.

“You ever know her not to follow through on a case?”

I didn’t bother shaking my head.

“Me either,” he said, then looked beyond me.

There was a throat-clearing from the doorway. Officer Winston stood there, waiting to be acknowledged. Here was my spit-and-polish guy with the buzzed head, hat tucked under his arm, back straight. The little square-bodied officer was the picture of officialdom; the consummate cop.

He walked to the desk, introduced himself to Lucky, and bent, with a military snap of his heels, to shake hands. He nodded at me and glanced toward Cate, his eyes narrowing a little.

“This a good time …?” He looked back at Lucky.

Cate rose, knowing her part in the plan. I walked her to the lobby and saw that she was comfortable. “Might be all for nothing,” I warned. “I don’t think she’ll come.”

“I’ll be here,” was all Cate said as she settled her Gucci-shod feet beneath the old oak chair and thumped her hands in her lap.

First we had to deal with the Dolly thing. Lucky told Winston Dolly had taken some time off, but that he was still on the case.

“Can you handle it, Chief? You’ve got the rest of town business to take care of.”

Lucky shook his head. “Leetsville people don’t break the law. And if somebody does, everybody knows it and the shame’s worse than anything I can do to them. What we mostly have trouble with here, is people passing through. Tourists ripping off the gas station, leaving EATS without paying—that kind of thing. Some teenagers—
always got them acting up. You know: smashing mailboxes, ringing the doorbell and leaving a bag of burning shit on the porch so the homeowner comes out and stomps out the flames, drinking over to Sandy Lake, open liquor in a car, speeding through town.”

Winston nodded. “That’s what I meant. You’ve got your hands full as it is.”

“What’s Lieutenant Brent say? He think Gaylord should take it back?”

Winston sniffed. “Brent’s impressed with the progress you’ve made.”

“That’s all Emily,” the chief said, nodding toward me. “She’s been working on this. First it was with Dolly but since Dolly … eh … got sick, Emily’s been looking into things. She’s a reporter, but she’s reporting everything she finds to me first.”

Winston turned his tight, square body my way. He didn’t seem able to turn his head without turning everything. When he blinked I noticed the tic in his left eye was back. Tic. Tic. Tic. I smiled as if waiting to be congratulated.

He turned to Lucky. “This officer, Dolly Wakowski, she’s done some really good work in the past, I’ve heard.”

Lucky nodded.

“And her reason for taking time off right now is … ?”

“Personal reasons. Maybe not feeling up to par.”

Winston nodded and was about to say something when we heard voices from the lobby. The chief listened, thinking he had to get out there and take care of whoever had come in. I listened too, recognizing Cate’s voice, and then Dolly’s mumble as she made her way past Cate.

Seeing Dolly there, in her old surroundings where she’d been so much in charge of herself and so much an upholder of the law, was like a kick in the stomach. She had her hood back and her hands up the sleeves of her robe. She looked like a gay monk—womanly but stripped down to nothing.

Winston jumped to his feet, turned, and snapped off a head-bow in her direction.

Dolly kind of bowed back but seemed confused. She looked Winston up and down—from the perfectly polished black shoes to the buzz-cut head. I could hear her draw in a sharp breath and hold it, then open her mouth to speak. She stopped. A look came over Dolly’s face I’d never seen before. Maybe I would call it consternation. Maybe—since I liked words and relished what I was watching—I’d call it chagrin. Whatever it was, Dolly reached up and ran a hand over her shaved head, then pulled the hood of her robe forward. Red crept across Dolly’s cheeks—chin to forehead. She nodded again at Officer Winston and took a chair next to Lucky’s desk. Winston’s eyes were on her, his flat face maybe astonished or—let’s see: confused? I enjoyed the heck out of this encounter, thinking maybe I was in on the one thing that would bring Dolly back to her senses.

I nodded at Dolly who nodded back at me, face blank. Her hood slipped and she grabbed it before it slid off and showed her bald head again. I got the idea that at some time or other Dolly had passed a mirror and knew what a cue ball she looked like.

I launched into what I’d discovered so far—touching on the two brothers: Arnold and Paul. I pulled the note from Marjory’s Tarot cards and passed it around.

“Came to see her brother?” Officer Winston said, and passed the note to Dolly.

Lucky broke in to say Arnold Otis would be there the next day, after the meeting in Traverse City. “He’s coming to talk to us. From the looks of this note, he might clear up a lot of things. Said he wants to see his sister’s friends, too. Something about the funeral, I think. Seems a nice enough fellow. Willing to talk about the family history, he said. Just as long as it’s relevant to his sister’s murder. I guess, being in the public eye and up for election, he’s got to be careful.”

I went on about Marjory’s friends and why they were in town. I got to the tractor salesman—how that theory was blown out of the water, unless whoever had spread the rumor got the job wrong and it was a fertilizer salesman or a pots-and-pans salesman.

I told them about the photos I’d taken, getting a stern frown from Winston, who opened his mouth but snapped it shut without talking.

Next came my gathering dead roses out at Deward, while there to check something I’d seen in my photos. Then, though I didn’t like to admit leaving my car unlocked, I told them about the theft of my camera, the photos, and the roses while I was inside the Bellaire nursing home.

“Who’d know you had them with you? Think somebody from that cult’s keeping an eye on you?”

I shuddered at the thought. “I’ve got no idea.”

I ticked off other things I’d learned, like Paul Otis still being alive despite a bad accident a few years back. I told them what Marjory had told her friends; about her coming here having something to do with the End Timers in town, and helping someone.

“What was in the photograph?” Dolly asked, leaning forward.

“It looked like something there, close to where I found Marjory.”

“Like what?”

“Yes, what?” Winston echoed Dolly’s question and tone. He drew his faint eyebrows together. “I looked at our photos. I didn’t see anything. You mean something we overlooked? Didn’t collect? I find it hard to believe that we …”

I shook my head at Dolly and at Winston. “The shadows were different in my pictures. Shadows outlined something. It’s a sunken rectangle. All filled in with gnarled dirt—like … I don’t know. Just gnarled-up clumps of earth. And leaves. And bits of underbrush. The shape is a rectangle. Maybe I’m nuts, but it looks like a grave to me. You know, the kind you see in old cemeteries.”

Dolly moved uncomfortably back and forth, as if she was having trouble sitting still. Two halves of Dolly were at war right in front of us. For just a second, I got a glimpse of the old Dolly, wanting to fire off questions and cut through the crap, straight into the heart of what we were talking about. She snapped her lips shut. I could see she was in pain, wanting more information, maybe even to take on Winston. She squirmed in her hard chair while we watched, then eventually hung her head, shook it, and stood to leave.

This was beyond me. I got up and grabbed her arm, getting her to face me. I made her look me in the eye and tell me why she was turning her back on the law and her whole life.

“What’s this about, Dolly?” I gave up and yelled directly into her face, so close I could see the tiny veins in her pale blue eyes, the one eye wandering slowly off to look at something else. “What in hell’s going on? Is this some split personality thing? Are there a couple of other Dollies in there?”

Lucky was up and around the desk, pulling me away from her. She looked at him sadly, then hurried from the room. All I could hope, watching her flee, was that Cate would grab her on the way out and wrestle her to the floor.

Winston sat up straight and tight, eyes away from me, and on Lucky.

“So that’s what your officer’s doing,” he said.

Lucky nodded.

“It has something to do with this end of the world business I’ve heard about?”

Lucky nodded again.

“Hmm.” Winston leaned back, tented his fingers at his squared-off chest, and considered. “From what I’ve heard, Dolly Wakowski is a fine officer. Someone to admire. Has it occurred to you this might be part of her investigation?”

“You mean Dolly undercover?” I asked, grabbing on to the hope.

He nodded, then shrugged. “No doubt Lucky, here, would be in on it. Now, about that thing you saw in your photos …”

Winston got us directly back to the rectangle at Deward and off the spectacle that was Dolly. I mentioned the dead roses again, and how they’d been stolen, too. I brought up the fisherman.

“You get his name?” Winston asked.

I had to shake my head. No name.

“Lots of people fish out there. Manistee’s good fly fishing,” Lucky said, seconded by Winston. Then they were off, the way northern men could take right off when hunting or fishing came up.

“Fish the Au Sable?” Lucky wanted to know.

Winston’s eyes lit up. “Yeah. You try the pheasant tail? Good strikes on that one.”

Lucky, smiling and nodding now, “Used the peacock. How ’bout the hare’s ear … ?”

“Should we meet out at Deward?” I spoke up, figuring I’d be up to my eyeballs in fly fishing soon. “So you can take a look at what I found? I could pull more photos off my computer …”

The men looked at me as if I’d hit them in the head. Lucky, the first to recover from their trip into the fantasy land of fly fishing, blinked. “Not necessary. We’ll go see. Right, Officer Winston? Let’s meet out there—tomorrow morning, before Arnold Otis comes to town. Sound good?”

Winston agreed but was bothered by something. His bland face, with blue eyes set a little too close, his nose a little too squashed, twisted up with a question.

“What do you think’s the deal with the roses?”

“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “But … I’d rather wait until we get out there …”

He nodded. “Roses don’t grow in Deward?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe somebody put them in the place where Marjory Otis died, then an animal got them and …”

I shook my head harder. “Odd animal, that would pick up flowers and carry them a couple of yards away to drop. More like they were put there on purpose—on this place in the ground.”

“How about those friends of hers? The ones you said came to town? Think they might have gone there, maybe didn’t know the exact … ?”

“These were old roses, Officer. Dried. They’d been there a lot longer than a week or two.”

We agreed on a time to meet the next morning and I went out to rescue Cate, who said she’d tried to hold on to Dolly, but that Dolly ran out before she could stop her.

The question of who was in charge of the investigation hadn’t come up. I guessed it would be the three of us. Winston might be officious, he might be unbending, he might be cranky, he might be rude—but I was used to all of that.