Dead Wood Part 23

Ellen didn't respond when I finished.

"So what's your best guess?" she said.

"Honestly," I said. "I have no clue."

"You don't know what she was trying to get to you?"

I shook my head. Ellen turned and looked out at the lake.

"Her neck was broken," she said. "Apparently."

"Ah, Jesus."

"They're saying she fell down the stairs."

That brought me off the car. "You've gotta be f.u.c.king kidding me. Fell down the stairs? I don't think so."

"No other signs of injury. Two witnesses say they saw it happen."

"The pork queens? Erma and Freda?"

"They heard a loud crash," Ellen said. "Rushed in and found the victim at the foot of the steps." I could tell Ellen wasn't buying it either, she was just laying out the official story so far.

"Oh my G.o.d," I said. "What total bulls.h.i.+t."

"It isn't bulls.h.i.+t until it's proven to be bulls.h.i.+t." I heard what she was saying.

"If it's the last G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing I do," I said.

I kept thinking of Molly. Of her crisp way of speaking, her little daily planner clutched to her chest. So in control. And then the vision of her sprawled out at the base of the stairs.

"We did a quick search on the vic," Ellen said. "She looks clean as a whistle. No record, not even a speeding ticket."

I thought about my interaction with Molly. Precise. Efficient. Maybe a tad on the cold side. But that was her job. To protect her boss.

It looked now like she should have been a little more worried about protecting herself. Whatever it was she'd found, she was trying to get to me. But why me? If it had something to do with the murder of Jesse Barre, why not go to the cops? I knew the answer as soon as I asked the question.

She was worried about what might happen to her.

So she was going to let me get the evidence.

In short, she wanted me to take the fall.

I winced at the irony.

Ellen went back into the crime scene where I still wasn't allowed, so I turned my attention once again to the lake. When you lived in Grosse Pointe, you couldn't help but a.s.sociate the lake with events in your life. Lake St. Clair sat there, a silent witness of the community next to it. I had my own personal history with the lake. Culminating in the death of Benjamin Collins. His life ended in the lake. Along with what used to be mine.

And now, here I was back at the lake, working a case that was spiraling out of control. Every one of my instincts told me that my meeting with Shannon later tonight was a setup. Shannon luring me to the park after dark. The death of her a.s.sistant only a few hours old. Someone was trying to tie up loose ends.

But I didn't believe Shannon was in on it. She was kooky. She played the star thing to the hilt. But for some reason, I didn't think she was a killer. Maybe I'd been taken in a bit by her beauty. No, not her beauty. The warmth of her beauty. Some women are beautiful like crystal. Cold, cool lines. Others have the beauty of a glowing fire. I felt Shannon was the latter.

But I'd been wrong plenty of times before.

Something was nagging at me. Like a hair-trigger on the verge of being pulled. My mind kept going back to Laurence Gra.s.so. He was a trigger, too.

Rufus Coltraine had been the second to die. There was something about his role in this thing, too. Something about him that kept coming back to my mind but I just couldn't put my finger on it. Something about- Family.

And then something sparked in my mind. Family. Joe Puhy, the prison guard at Jackson had said he thought Coltrane would head South to see his family. So why hadn't he? And Puhy had said that Coltraine didn't get any letters so how did he know he had family in - where was it?

G.o.dd.a.m.nit. I pulled out my cell phone. I almost had it, and then it would slip away. If Puhy worked at Jackson, he probably lived in the area. There were only a few small towns nearby. Plymouth. Ann Arbor.

I punched in the number for information and asked for Joe Puhy's number. There were three of them. I jotted them down and called the first. I got a machine but when the voice of the answering machine clicked on, I knew I didn't have the right one. The Puhy I'd spoken to was older and gruff.

Exactly the voice I got on the second try.

"I'm very sorry to bother you at home, Mr. Puhy," I said. "This is John Rockne, the private investigator. We spoke earlier about Rufus Coltrane and Laurence Gra.s.so."

"Oh, yeah," he said, not happy at all. "I remember. Look, we're about to sit down to dinner." I could hear voices in the background.

"I'm terribly sorry, sir. This won't take more than a minute."

He sighed. "You're a friend of the House, right?"

The House was my buddy who worked on Cell Block A who'd initially put me in touch with Puhy. Thank G.o.d for the House. I owed him one.

"Yeah," I said.

"All right, go ahead."

"I was just looking back through my notes and I saw that you said you thought Rufus Coltrane would go down South to see his family. Or that you thought he had family there."

"Uh-huh." More dishes clattering in the background. I had to make this fast.

"But you also said that you didn't recall him getting any letters or anything from family members," I said.

There was a pause as Puhy thought about the contradiction.

"Uh...right."

"So how did you know he had family down there?"

This time the pause was longer. I heard more voices in the background, including a woman calling out, "Joe!" She had that kind of voice that you ignored at your own peril. Kind of like my wife's.

"Uh...," he said.

s.h.i.+t, I didn't want to lose him.

"You know, this is really a bad time," Puhy said.

"I know it is, but another person has died, Mr. Puhy." I was starting to get mad. People were dying and this guy's Beef f.u.c.king Stroganoff was more important.

He must have heard the tone in my voice.

"Hold on!" he shouted to the people in the background.

"All right," he said. "Let me think." We both waited. A freighter nosed its way out of the Detroit River, heading north. The clatter of silverware from the Puhy kitchen sounded in my ear.

"Okay, I think I remember," he said.

"Shoot."

"It wasn't a letter or anything," he said. "I think I overheard him talking about it."

"Was he talking about it with Laurence Gra.s.so?"

"Yeah. How'd you know that?"

"Just a hunch."

"Yeah, I think I overheard Coltrane saying something about getting out and going there."

"Where, Mr. Puhy?"

"Home," he said.

"Home where?"

"I'm pretty sure it was, um, Tennessee."

A s.h.i.+ver ran down my spine. The little thing that had been dancing around in my brain finally let itself be known.

"Where in Tennessee?" I asked, even though I already knew.

A giant block had slammed into place.

"Memphis," he said.

Forty-one.

Something about a house. f.u.c.k. I was losing my mind short term, medium term and long-term memory loss. All at the same time. I pounded the steering wheel with my hands. Think, think, think. I pulled onto Vernier from Lakesh.o.r.e, heading toward I-94.

I needed to start making more connections. That feeling of being close wasn't good enough.

Where had I been when I felt things starting to come together? At the party. The first time. Talking to Shannon's entourage for the first time.

A car pulled in front of me and I reefed the wheel to the right, sped up and floored it past him.

Something about a farmhouse?

What the f.u.c.k was it? We were all sitting around, talking about escapes or something. And Memphis mentioned something about looking at a house. Was she buying?

Finally, it clicked.

A lighthouse. That's right, a lighthouse. Because she said she was on Ha.r.s.en's. The island at the other end of Lake St. Clair.

I pounded the wheel again and roared onto I-94. Ha.r.s.en's Island. A lighthouse. And someone had said something about Memphis milking cows. A joke that I a.s.sumed meant she had a little farm or something. Farms on Ha.r.s.en's weren't unheard of.

I glanced at the clock on the dashboard.

It'd been nearly three hours since Molly had been killed. If the same person was headed for Memphis', he or she had a big jump on me.

I pushed the pedal all the way to the floor.

Ha.r.s.en's island is the biggest of a small group of islands at the north end of Lake St. Clair. The lake narrows and eventually turns into the St. Clair River for a brief thirty miles or so before opening back up, this time into Lake Huron.

I exited I-94, sped across Harper and pulled into the parking lot at the ferry harbor. Fifteen minutes later, the ferry dumped us on the island and I hit the road running. Even though Ha.r.s.en's has its own yacht club and for years was a miniature summer playground for Grosse Pointers, it still feels like you travel back twenty years or so. Mostly summer cottages and the occasional bait shop/convenience store.

The entire island is only a couple square miles with one main road that runs along the outside border. The road is aptly named Ha.r.s.en's boulevard and I steered onto it from the ferry dock. It had been over fifteen years since I'd been on the island, and then I was a high schooler driving out to my buddy's cottage to get drunk.

I'd never seen a lighthouse on the island, or if I had I certainly didn't remember, and didn't know that one even existed out here.

I also figured there weren't many cops out here, either. So I hammered the pedal down and turned Ha.r.s.en's into my own private Indianapolis 500.

After about five minutes, I sped around a steep curve and saw the lighthouse, although, technically, it was more like a lightpost you see in the suburbs. A tiny harbor had a few boats tied off and I looked at the surrounding land.

No sign of a farmhouse.

I did, however, see an older woman walking a Ba.s.sett Hound. I pulled the car up next to her.

"Do you know of a farmhouse around here with a view of the lighthouse? It belongs to a songwriter named Memphis Bornais?" I said.

She looked at me with bloodshot blue eyes. They looked just like the dogs'. I thought she was going to tell me that Ha.r.s.en's residents were a private people and that if this Memphis woman wanted me to find her she would've given me directions.

Instead, she jerked an unusually large thumb in the direction behind her.

"Third mailbox down," she said. The Ba.s.sett Hound gave a soft bark and they went on their way.