Iron Lake

44

AFTER THEY’D DRIVEN SEVERAL MINUTES in cold, bitter silence, Jo said, “I’ll help you. But you have to promise me one thing.”

“I don’t need your help,” Cork told her.

They were nearing Aurora. The long corrugated fence of Johannsen’s Auto Salvage flashed by on their right at the edge of the headlight beam. Ahead on the left, red Christmas bells hung from the yellow marquee of the Iron Lake Inn. Across the road in a halogen glare stood the twelve pumps of the brand-new Food-N-Fuel. It was all bland, familiar territory to Jo, but she felt frighteningly disoriented, as if it were all dangerous, unknown ground, and there was no help no matter where she turned.

“What are you going to do,” she argued. “Go in there with that rifle blazing? What if he does have the bag, but he’s hidden it? If you do something rash, you might never find it.”

Cork drove through town, past the Pinewood Broiler with its neon flame still burning, past the open shops on Oak Street, where the display windows were hung with garland and tinsel and strings of lights, past the turnoff onto Gooseberry Lane. Jo glanced down the street, saw her own house with the lights blinking around the front door and framing the picture window. She wished she were home with Rose and the kids and that she didn’t know what she knew and wasn’t scared for them all the way she was.

Cork finally said, “I’m listening.”

“When we get to Sandy’s, I want you to leave the rifle in the car. It can only lead to trouble.”

“Go on,” he said, not sounding exactly convinced.

“Let me do the questioning. It’s what I’m good at.”

“You?” Cork nearly drove off the road. “You love the son of a bitch.”

“And you hate his guts,” she pressed on. “Look at you. You’re so upset you can hardly talk. If you don’t like what I’m asking or how I’m asking it, you can interject whatever you want. If he’s done these things you claim—and I’m not saying for one minute that I believe he has—I want to know as much as you do.”

“No, you don’t.” Cork gave her a withering look not lost on her in the dark.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. But it’s something I need to know.”

They passed the city limits of Aurora and the road to the casino. Another couple of minutes and Cork turned onto the long drive that led through the trees to Sandy’s big house.

“You haven’t responded to my proposal,” Jo pointed out.

“No, I haven’t,” Cork said.

He parked in front of the double garage that was built below the main section of the house. He turned off the engine and nodded once.

“All right,” he said.

“You agree?”

“I’ll let you do the questioning. But I take the rifle as incentive for him to answer.” He reached over the seat and grabbed the Winchester.

“He won’t,” she insisted. “Because he knows, and I know, that you wouldn’t use it. Cork, you know it, too. In a negotiation, never make a threat you don’t intend to carry out.”

“I’d blow his fucking heart out in a minute.”

“If he gave you cause, maybe. He won’t. Cork, leave it. Just leave it.”

Cork held the rifle in both hands, studying its long, sleek lines. He pumped the cartidges out of the chamber and put them on the seat.

“The rifle still goes,” he said. “I like the way it looks in my hands. Parrant will appreciate that, too.”

Lights were on inside. Jo rang the bell, but no one answered. Cork knocked hard and got no better response. He stepped back, looked the house over, then returned to the garage. There was a digital opener affixed to the frame of the door. He looked at Jo.

“Do you know the code?”

She stepped up, lifted the cover, and punched in four numbers. The door slid upward. Cork saw Sandy Parrant’s two vehicles parked inside, the white BMW and a black Jeep Grand Cherokee. He opened the door of the BMW, reached under the dash, and popped the hood. He laid his hand on the engine.

“What are you doing?” Jo asked.

“Checking to see if the engine’s warm. I want to know if your friend’s been out lately.”

“Well?”

“This one’s cold,” he said.

He did the same with the Cherokee. He looked puzzled. “Cold, too.”

“Satisfied? Can we go now?”

“Does he own a snowmobile?”

“No. He thinks they’re a travesty in the quiet of the woods.” She could tell he was disappointed, but he didn’t look at all ready to quit.

“I want to talk to the son of a bitch.”

“I think I know where he’ll be,” Jo said.

She pushed the button on the garage door mechanism that lowered the door behind them, and she started to the left around the house. A wide roadway had been plowed there, angling off the drive toward the boathouse and the lake.

“He takes the Cherokee down this way when he wants to go ice fishing,” Jo explained.

“You know a hell of a lot about him,” Cork noted bitterly.

Jo didn’t bother to reply. At the back side of the house, she left the plowed area and waded into the snow of the backyard. She made her way to the steps that led up to the decks. Cork heard the sound of water surging in the hot tub on the first level of the deck. When they reached the landing, they found Sandy Parrant lying back in the big redwood hot tub, steaming water swirling around him, his eyes open toward the sky as if hypnotized. A glass of wine sat on the rim of the tub, along with an ashtray that held a lit cigar. He didn’t seem to notice their approach.

“Sandy,” Jo said quietly.

“Jo,” he greeted her in a relaxed way. Then he saw Cork and looked amused. “Cork? I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t rise to greet you. I’m not wearing anything. I wasn’t expecting visitors.” He waved a dripping hand toward the sky. “I was just admiring the northern lights.”

Jo glanced across the lake and saw that Sandy was right. A display had begun, a shifting curtain of red and green with yellow streaks shooting through like searchlights.

“It’s only just starting,” Parrant said. “It will get better.” He sat up, sloshing water over the rim of the tub. The water splashed onto the deck, steaming as it hit ice that had formed on the wood planking from previous spills. The overhang of the roof above him was thick with frost where the water vapor rose up and froze. “You’re welcome to join me, if you’d like.”

“You bastard,” Cork said, “you know why we’re here.”

“Cork!” Jo snapped, stepping between them.

Parrant looked at the rifle gripped in Cork’s hands. “Maybe I should change my position on gun control.” He reached for his wineglass and took a sip. “I assume you’re here so that we can finally sit down and discuss like adults the situation between me and Jo. I’m guessing she told you about the photographs I shared with her.”

“Sandy, where’d you get those photographs?” Jo asked. “You told me Bob gave them to you.”

“He did.”

“You’re a liar,” Cork accused. “You got them from a file cabinet you moved to Harlan Lytton’s shed at the Aurora U-Store.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“GameTech. Your father. The Minnesota Civilian Brigade. Murder, you son of a bitch. I’m talking about murder.”

“That’s enough, Cork.” Jo turned to him and looked at him steadily until he backed away. She faced Parrant again and explained what Cork had found at the office in Duluth.

Sandy Parrant looked stunned. “I don’t believe it.”

“Cork has proof.”

Parrant shook his head slowly. “Dad could be a hard bastard sometimes. But I don’t believe for a minute he’d be party to what you’re accusing him of. Let me see your proof.”

Cork took out the photographs he’d stuffed in his coat pocket. Parrant held them carefully in his wet hands.

“My father was extreme in many ways,” he finally said. “And not perfect by a long shot. Toward the end his judgment wasn’t always good. So this brigade thing I can see. But murder? I don’t think so, Cork. Nothing here makes me accept that.” He put the photos on the edge of the tub and Cork snatched them back.

“There’s more,” Cork said. “Negatives Molly had.”

“Molly?” Parrant looked to Jo.

Jo said, “We’ve just come from Molly Nurmi’s place.”

“Confronting the other woman, Jo? I wouldn’t have thought it mattered much at this point.”

“She’s dead, Sandy,” Jo informed him.

“Dead? How did it happen?”

“It looks like an accident. It appears that she hit her head on the ice.”

“Looks? Appears?” Parrant studied both their faces. “Sounds as if you think otherwise. And do you think that I’m somehow connected?” He nodded toward the Winchester in Cork’s right hand. “I guess that explains the hardware there.”

“Where were you between noon and three o’clock this afternoon?” Jo asked.

“Here. I was here all day, in fact, working at the computer in my office drafting my maiden address to the Senate.”

“Can you prove that?”

“I can show you the speech on my computer.”

“I don’t think that would prove anything, Sandy,” she pointed out. “You could have drafted that speech any time.”

Parrant lifted his wineglass again and thought a moment. “Talk to Ruth Becker, my housekeeper. She’d know if I was gone at all today.”

“Is she here?” Jo asked.

“Ruth goes home at five. You know that, Jo. You’ve spent enough evenings here.”

She felt rather than saw the look Cork threw at her. “Do you mind if we call her?”

“Be my guest. The kitchen phone is probably the most convenient. If you need it, there’s a phone book in the first drawer to the right of the refrigerator.”

“Go ahead, Cork,” Jo said.

“I’d rather stay here with him,” Cork replied.

“I’d rather you called.”

Reluctantly, he gave in and headed up the stairs to the deck level that led onto the main floor of the house. He vanished through the sliding doors.

“Jo, you don’t really think I had anything to do with that young woman’s death, do you?” Sandy asked. “Why would I?”

“Cork believes she had evidence that would have ruined you. He believes you killed her to get it.”

“Do you believe that?”

The northern lights had grown more intense. Jo found it odd that she wasn’t more overwhelmed by the spectacle. At the moment, she was using it simply as a means to divert her gaze from Sandy.

“Jo, do you believe I’d do that?” Sandy pressed her.

Without looking at him she replied, “You’re ambitious, and I’ve seen a ruthlessness in you sometimes when you want something very badly.”

“I’m ambitious, I admit. And as for that ruthlessness, all I can say is that no one ever accomplished great things without being ruthless at times. But I’m not a murderer.” He reached out and took her gloved hand. “Jo, I’ve held you in my arms, made love to you. Haven’t you seen that part of me as well? A man’s many things. To isolate one part of him and judge him on that alone is to do him an injustice, don’t you think?”

The doors slid open on the upper deck and Cork stepped from the house. Jo drew back her hand.

“Well?” Sandy asked coldly as Cork descended the stairs.

“She says that you were here all day, locked in your office. She says that she never saw you leave.”

“There you have it,” Sandy concluded.

“She also says,” Cork went on, “that she never saw you at all after you went into your office. You didn’t respond when she knocked to tell you she was leaving.”

“That’s not unusual. If you’d asked her, she would have told you that.”

“It’s true, Cork,” Jo interjected. “He often locks himself away for hours and no one can reach him.”

“It’s when I do my best work,” Sandy said.

“Ruth said she left lunch for you on a tray outside your door about one o’clock. She said you didn’t touch it. She picked up the tray at three.”

“When I’m concentrating, as I was on this speech, I tune everything out. Jo?” He turned to her for verification.

“True again, Cork.”

“Any more questions?” Sandy asked with a note of impatience.

Cork closed his eyes a moment, thinking. Jo saw how his shoulders had fallen, how the anger was draining out of him. But when he eyed Sandy again, there was still determination in his look.

“Yesterday morning,” he said, “I was attacked at Harlan Lytton’s place. Someone saw you head out that way on County Sixteen shortly before it happened.”

“Someone?”

“A reliable source.”

Parrant glanced at Jo.

“He couldn’t have, Cork,” Jo informed him quietly.

“Why not?”

“He was with me. We were here together.”

“Here?” Cork looked from one to the other. “All morning?”

“Yes.”

“And not working,” he guessed.

“Not exactly,” Parrant said.

Cork’s eyes seemed hollow and desperate, and Jo was glad he’d emptied the rifle of cartidges.

Parrant leaned forward in the tub, speaking reasonably. “Look, Cork, I know this woman’s death must hurt you. I can understand, given the relationship between Jo and me, that I would be an easy target for your anger. But I’m the wrong target, I swear.”

“He’s right, Cork,” Jo said softly.

Cork looked down at the useless rifle in his hand. When he lifted his face, Jo saw how tired he was.

“I’m beat,” he whispered. “I’m absolutely beat.”

He turned away and started down the stairs.

“Cork, I’ll come—” Jo began.

“No,” he said without turning. “I’d rather be alone.”

He waded through the snow and disappeared around the corner of the house.

“I feel so sorry for him,” Jo said. “He’s lost so much in the last couple of years. He’s a good man, Sandy. He really is.”

“You’re not still thinking of trying to work on your marriage.” Irritation rang in his words like the sour note of a cracked bell.

“I don’t love Cork,” Jo assured him. “But I’ll always care. I feel so sad for him, that’s all. Right at this moment, I just feel like crying.”

“Join me in here,” Sandy suggested, sweeping his hand over the surface of the water. “I guarantee you can’t cry in a hot tub. It’s one of those unusual laws of physics.”

“I don’t think so, thanks.”

“Then let me give you your Christmas present.”

“It’s not Christmas yet.”

“I’ve never been good at waiting, especially when I want to cheer up a sad lady. Just let me get dressed.”

He rose, naked and steaming, from the tub.