Iron Lake

3

STU GRANTHAM STOOD before a large framed photograph of Split Rock Lighthouse that hung on the wall of the law office of Nancy Jo O’Connor. He clasped his hands behind his back as he stared at the famous landmark on the North Shore of Lake Superior. He’d been that way for nearly a minute—thoughtful, silent, unmoving—and Jo simply let him be. She had him cornered. She knew it, and if he thought about it awhile, he’d know it, too, and they could get on with things.

A tapping at the door and Fran, Jo’s secretary, peeked in. “Jo, I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want to be disturbed, but the state patrol’s just closed Highway 1. I heard it on the radio.”

Jo glanced out her window. The parking lot of the Aurora Professional Building was nearly empty. Her blue Toyota Cressida was covered with snow and hung with icicles and looked like some kind of Arctic beast hunkered down to wait out the storm. Beyond that the world was white and nothing moved in the sea of snow.

“Thanks, Fran,” Jo said. “Why don’t you go on home before you get stuck here.”

“What about you?” Fran asked. She glanced at Grantham, who seemed oblivious to the news she’d brought.

“I’ll finish here with Stuart and be right behind you.”

Fran stepped toward her and handed her several pages from a phone memo pad. “I held your calls as you asked. Here are the messages.”

“Thanks. Drive carefully.”

“You, too.”

Jo scanned the phone messages. One from Frank Monroe at the department of natural resources. Call him about the Rust Creek variance for the casino. Two from Judge Robert Parrant. Simply call him. One from Dorothea Hayes about the easement for the new pulp mill. One from Sandy Parrant. No message.

Stu Grantham walked silently to the small table where Jo kept a stainless steel coffee server and several mugs, poured himself some coffee, and sat down. Grantham was a realtor by profession and head of the county board of commissioners by choice of the electorate. In his late fifties, he was white-haired and still handsome. Talc softened his cheeks. He smelled of musk aftershave. Jo wondered if he’d shaved just before coming. Men sometimes did that for her, believing it might make a difference.

Jo was a rigorously slender woman. She had hair so blonde it was almost white and eyes blue-white like glacial ice. She’d been separated from her husband, Cork, for several months. Some men, Grantham apparently among them, saw that as an opportunity.

“What is it with you, Jo?” Grantham finally asked. “Whenever I try to use your services, you’re always going on how you’re so busy you can’t hardly see straight. But here you are still taking on the cases of these—” He stopped himself abruptly.

“These what, Stu?”

“You know. These pro bono Indian cases. They’ve got the casino now. Let ‘em hire their own damn attorneys.”

“The casino is owned by the Iron Lake band of Ojibwe. Louise Willette is Lakota. She gets nothing from the casino profits. She has to work hard for what the county pays her. What she doesn’t need is the constant harassment of her coworkers.”

“For Christ sake, Jo, she’s the only woman on a road crew of men. What does she expect? These guys can’t watch every word that comes out of their mouths.”

“When it applies to my client, or to women in general, they’d better.” Jo put down the phone messages and folded her hands patiently on her desktop. “Look, Stu, I could easily have started an action against the county. The evidence is overwhelming. But I brought it to you first because I’d like to save you and the rest of the board a lot of embarrassment. My client is willing to settle this quietly. Come election time next November, I’m sure you’ll be glad Louise and I didn’t splash this across the headlines of the Sentinel.”

“Doing me a favor.” Grantham grinned, showing an incisor outlined in silver. He set his coffee mug on the desk and began to twirl a heavy, gold Aurora High class ring on his finger. Class of ’52 or ’53, Jo guessed. Aurora good ol’ boy. “Know what I’m thinking?” Grantham said. “I’m thinking Wanda Manydeeds put her up to this.”

“Nobody put her up to anything. But, yes, it was Wanda who told Louise to see me. And why shouldn’t she? I’m the best attorney in Aurora.”

“Ever since you and that Manydeeds got together, Tamarack County hasn’t been the same,” Grantham lamented.

“And amen to that.”

Jo kept her reply amiable. She’d handled Stu Grantham and others like him since she’d first hung her shingle in Aurora nearly a decade before. But it hadn’t been easy.

They’d moved back to Cork’s hometown to raise their children in a place that was not like Chicago. Cork warned her things would be difficult; she was an outsider and a woman. She hadn’t realized just how hard it would be until she’d gone nearly three months without a single client.

Then one spring day Wanda Manydeeds stepped into her office.

She was a large woman—not heavy, but tall and solid—dressed in faded jeans and a blue flannel shirt rolled up to her elbows. Her long black hair was done in a single braid and ornamented with a feather. She wore brightly beaded earrings and a beaded bracelet and possessed one of the most confrontive gazes Jo had ever encountered in another female. A young woman, probably twenty, though she was hardly larger than a girl, stood behind her, slightly hidden.

“What kind of lawyer are you?” the large woman with the earrings and bracelet asked.

“A good one,” Jo replied.

“Are you a lawyer for money or for justice?”

“Given the choice between those two, I lean toward justice.”

“Good. We don’t have any money.”

“Maybe we should talk about justice, then. Won’t you both have a seat?”

The women accepted the chairs Jo offered. The large woman sat proudly, with her back held very straight. The younger one sat a little slumped and wouldn’t look at Jo directly.

“You know me,” Jo said. “My name’s on the door. You are—?”

“I am Wanda Manydeeds,” the large woman replied. “This is Lizzie Favre.” The young woman glanced up and then lowered her eyes quickly.

“What is it you wanted to see me about?” Jo asked.

“We want to fight some powerful people,” Wanda Manydeeds replied.

“Who exactly?”

“We want to fight the Great North Development Company.”

“Great North.” Jo sat back, a little tug deep in her stomach. “Robert and Sandy Parrant. What’s your complaint against them?”

“They won’t hire Lizzie.”

Jo looked at the young woman. “Because you’re female?”

Lizzie hesitated, then replied quietly, “And because I am Ojibwe.”

“The man who hires for Great North, a man named Chester, I’ve heard he calls us squaws,” Wanda Manydeeds said.

“But not to your face,” Jo said.

The large woman shook her head. “He is a coward.”

“That kind of man always is.” Jo picked up a pencil and idly tapped the sharpened lead on a legal pad as she considered the situation. “Judge Robert Parrant. Sandy Parrant.” She liked the taste in her mouth, the slight dryness in anticipation of a good fight. “Going at the old man would be like taking a swing at barbed wire. But the son—” She leaned toward the other women confidently. “Word is, he’s poised for a run at the state legislature. I think we might have him there.”

“You’ll do it?” Wanda Manydeeds asked. Her face, which was hard and tawny as sandstone, showed no emotion. But there was a flash in her eyes that Jo interpreted as satisfaction.

“We’ll do it,” Jo replied.

And they had.

“How’s Sandy’s transition to Washington going?” Stu Grantham asked.

“What?” Jo brought herself back to the moment, to Stu Grantham stalling on the far side of her desk.

“Our new senator. Is he ready for Washington?”

“He will be.”

“You read the article in the Pioneer Press? Another Jack Kennedy, they’re saying. Harvard-educated, liberal, good-looking. A lady’s man.” Grantham paused a moment, twirling his heavy class ring. “You going with him?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I heard he wanted you to be part of his staff in D.C.”

“My practice and my family are here in Aurora,” Jo replied coolly. “I have no intention of leaving.”

“I just thought, with things the way they are between you and Cork—”

“What about my client?” Jo swung back to the real issue. “Are we going to be here all night or do you agree to the terms I’ve proposed?”

“All night with you?” Grantham leaned across the desk, grinning. “Now, that’s a thought.”

“You know, Stu,” Jo replied calmly, “that’s exactly the kind of statement that landed your road crew in deep shit.”

“Ah, look, Jo—”

“No, you look.” She drove a finger at him, and although she didn’t touch him at all, he sat back abruptly. “I want an answer and I want it now. Will you advise the board to accept our terms? Or do we drag this through the courts and air all the dirty, sexist linen in public? If you want to know the truth, Stu, I’d just as soon do this in court. I’d just as soon make an example of this crew and maybe the whole leadership of this county while we’re at it.”

Jo would have gone on, but the phone rang. She turned from Grantham and answered it with an irate, “Yes!”

It was her sister Rose.

“Have you heard from Anne?” Rose asked, speaking of Jo’s eleven-year-old daughter.

“No. Isn’t she home with you?”

“She checked in right after school let out and said she had an errand to run. I didn’t think anything of it. But that was three hours ago, and I haven’t heard from her since.”

Jo looked out her window at the furious energy of the storm. She worked at keeping her own voice calm. “Does Jenny know anything?”

“No.”

“Friends?”

“I called everyone I could think of.”

“Have you tried Cork?”

“I left messages on his machine.”

“Maybe he took her ice fishing,” Jo suggested, although she was certain Cork wouldn’t have done that without calling first.

“Jo, I’m worried.”

“Are Stevie and Jenny there with you?”

“Yes.”

“Keep them there. I’ll be right home.”

Jo hung up the phone. She glared at Grantham. “Well?”

The telephone call had broken Jo’s momentum. Grantham was straightening his tie. “Trouble at home?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“I don’t think I want to rush a decision here, Jo,” Grantham said. He wandered back toward his chair and seemed prepared to settle in again.

Jo went to the door and held it open, signaling Grantham their meeting was at a definite end. “I’ll be in touch.”

“I’m sure you will.” The man smiled as he left.

Jo threw a few things into her briefcase. She pulled on her coat, locked up the office, and headed out to the empty parking lot. Under the snow, the windshield of her Toyota was coated with a thick layer of ice that broke her plastic scraper. She turned the defroster up full blast, and while the engine warmed and the air grew hot enough to begin melting a clear patch, she labored to brush snow off the rest of the car.

Suddenly, out of the cold of the storm, she felt the touch of a deeper cold on her back, as if an icy hand had reached through her coat and touched her skin. She swung around, a shiver running down her spine, and peered into the swirling white behind her. She strained to look at the line of cedars that walled the corner of the lot a couple of dozen yards away.

“Is anyone there?” She knew it was ridiculous to think a human hand could have reached so far. But what had touched her had not felt human at all.

No voice answered except the bitter howl of the wind. She left off brushing the snow, got into her car, and locked the doors. The defroster had cleared only a small area low on the windshield, but it was enough for Nancy Jo O’Connor. She left the empty lot as quickly as she could.