William Krueger - Thunder Bay

Stevie went into the exam room with me when Leslie Hakala, who was in practice with her father, Einer, called us in. She took a look at the wound. Walleye patiently suffered the probing of her fingers around the area.

“Bullet, you say?” She looked up at me. “Careless hunter?”

“A bad guy,” Stevie said. “He tried to kill Henry Meloux, but missed and got Walleye instead.”

The vet’s eyebrows lifted noticeably. “That so?” She glanced at me. “The old Indian who lives up north?”

“Yeah.”

“Why would anyone want to kill him?”

“Long story,” I said. “And the details are still sketchy. What about Walleye here?”

“Well, I think we’ll deaden the area and clean it good, put a few stitches in, and that should be fine. You’ll have to watch him closely for a while though, make sure no infection sets in.”

“We will,” Stevie assured her. He petted the dog earnestly.

She tried to get more information from me as she worked, but I held back on the harsher details. In a town like Aurora, she’d hear them soon enough.

We left the clinic and made a quick stop at Sam’s Place. Just as Jo had said, Jenny and Annie had things well under control. They’d called in their friends and were busy with the lunch rush. They knew, more or less, what had happened and were full of questions, but I didn’t want to talk about it between customers. I told them I’d be back later and we’d discuss it then.

Jenny avoided looking at me directly. That was fine. It wasn’t the right time or place for us to deal with her situation. I thanked them all and returned to the Bronco, where Stevie and Walleye patiently waited.

It was going on two o’clock when I pulled into the drive on Gooseberry Lane. We’d been gone six hours, but it felt like days. A lot had happened since Stevie and I sat at the kitchen table munching our raisin bran. I realized, as we stepped into the cool of the house, that I was hungry. I smelled something cooking and, following my nose, I found Jo and Meloux in the kitchen eating fried bologna sandwiches-the Ojibwe often call bologna “Indian steak”-leftover Jell-O salad, and chips. They both were drinking a diet Pepsi.

“You guys okay?” I asked.

“Good,” Meloux answered. “We are good. And Walleye?”

“He’s with Stevie in the backyard. The vet stitched him up and gave me some antibiotic pills he’ll need to take for a while to fight infection.”

“Hungry?” Jo asked, and began to get up.

I waved her back down. “Relax. I’ll fix it.”

I started a flame under the skillet that still sat on a burner of the stove and took the bologna from the refrigerator.

“Henry and I have been trying to figure out why this Morrissey tried to kill him,” Jo said.

“Marcia, Ed, and I have been doing the same. You guys come up with anything?”

Jo sipped her Pepsi. “I think it was the watch. Henry showed it to me. It’s gold, quite original, and could be valuable.”

“What do you think, Henry?”

“Just an old watch,” Meloux replied with a shrug. “Important to me, but who am I?”

I slapped two slices of bologna in the skillet, one for me, one for Stevie.

“Henry, it may be that Morrissey was sent to get the watch.”

Meloux fixed his dark, unwavering eyes on me. “I do not believe my son would ask that man to kill me.”

“Maybe the killing wasn’t part of his instructions. Morrissey may have come up with that on his own.”

Stevie stepped into the kitchen.

I nodded toward the skillet. “I’ve got a fried bologna sandwich coming up in a minute, buddy. Hungry?”

“Can I eat outside?” he asked.

“Sure. Milk and chips with that?”

“Thanks.”

Jo left the table and hugged Stevie. “That was very important, what you did this morning.”

“What did I do?” Stevie said.

“Getting the Kricks to call the sheriff.”

“That was easy.” Stevie looked down. “I should have been with Dad and Henry and Walleye.”

“Your mom’s right, guy,” I said. “What you did was exactly what you needed to do. We’re very proud of you.”

Stevie didn’t look convinced. He squirmed out of Jo’s arms and said to Meloux, “Walleye’s okay, Henry.”

“I have been told. Stephen, I would like to ask a big favor.”

“Sure.”

“I will be gone for a while. Will you take care of my friend for me?”

“Will I!” he said eagerly.

“Gone?” I turned from the stove.

“Tomorrow we will go to see my son.”

I shook my head. “Things have changed, Henry. A man’s dead. There’s a police investigation in progress. Until they’ve had a chance to interview Henry Wellington, we need to keep out of this. Besides, I’d say it’s doubtful at best that Wellington would agree to see you.”

“I will offer the watch.”

“Henry, I know how important this is to you, but you need to be patient. Let the police do their work first.”

“I know about patience,” the old man said testily. I couldn’t remember Meloux ever getting upset with me, but it was clear he was headed in that direction. “This is something else, and it must be done quickly.”

“Like the vet sewing up Walleye?” Stevie offered.

“Yes, Stephen,” Meloux said. “My son is not well. He needs me to heal him.”

Jo pointed toward the stove. “Cork, your bologna’s burning.” The doorbell rang. Jo brought back Meloux’s nephew, Ernie Champoux, who’d come for the old man. Until this business was concluded, Ernie intended to have his great-uncle stay with him. He’d taken a couple of days off from work for that reason.

“Sunrise tomorrow, I will be ready,” Meloux said as he went out the front door.

“Henry, I won’t be there,” I called after him. I didn’t like being brusque, but I wasn’t going to back down. Seeing his son at this juncture was a bad idea on so many levels.

Meloux stopped, turned, and his eyes hit me like a couple of rocks.

“Give the authorities a little time, Henry,” I tried, “then we’ll see.”

He didn’t reply. I watched, feeling like a lousy son of a bitch, as he walked to Ernie’s truck, which was parked at the curb. Ernie pulled away with Meloux beside him, sitting stiff as iron and staring straight ahead.

Jo took my arm. “Do you really think it would be so bad for Henry to see his son?”

“A man tried to kill him-we have no idea why-and that man’s dead. Rushing ahead is a terrible idea. Hell, Meloux’s waited seventy years to see his son. Will a couple more days make much difference?”

I went back to the kitchen. My burned fried bologna was cold. I looked out the window. Stevie was feeding his burned bologna to Walleye.

Later that afternoon I returned to Sam’s Place. The rush was over, and the girls were listening to the radio. Jenny wasn’t there.

“Sean picked her up a little while ago,” Anne said. “We’re doing fine without her. So how’s Henry?”

Kate Buker and Jodi Bollendorf, the two girls helping out that day, leaned against the serving counter and listened as eagerly as Anne.

“Confused,” I said.

“We heard the dead guy’s from Canada,” Kate said.

“Yes.”

“He, like, followed you back, right?” Anne said.

“That’s how it looks.”

She scrunched her freckled face in bewilderment. “Dad, why would anyone try to kill a nice old guy like Henry?”

The question of the day. I told them the police on both sides of the border were working on that one.

“What about you, Mr. O’Connor?” Jodi asked. “Anne said you’ve got a license to be a private investigator. Like that old Rockford Files show, right? This is your kind of thing.”