Castle Danger--Woman on Ice Read online

  “It’s not fair.”

  “Probably not.”

  Better to just agree with Dad and let him keep going on about it, rather than get up and walk out or tell him about how it was weird, I’d put in a call to the detectives, and I’d get a call right back leaving me out in the cold for another week. He would have been all over that. He was a true-crime junkie. He’d started keeping up with the Duluth newspaper so he could ask me about some local cases, see if I had any inside dirt. Most of the time, I didn’t. But for him, I’d make up shit and we’d try to solve it together. Better than trying to talk with him about my cock.

  I mean, we’d joked about girls when I was a teenager. No one wants to talk about the icky stuff with their Dad, right? But we got there. It might have taken some laughs, some quick explanations during R-rated movies, a family discussion over the island in the kitchen one day, while Mom was watching a reality show and said something about having to blur out so many swimsuit areas on a show where people lived in their swimsuits, and it went downhill from there. I don’t remember a single serious discussion about sex in our household, but that was alright because we’d had plenty of fun ones.

  And then the one Marcia and I were not involved with, the one about our younger sibling who ceased to be before we even knew he or she had existed for nearly fourteen weeks by then. Ceased to be by my mother’s choice, not Dad’s. I think it hit him hard. I think he still feels it.

  And then my accident. The man counts his blessings every night, even the bittersweet ones. I mean, it could’ve been worse.

  He said, “You know, after the accident, the worker’s comp, you’d think—”

  “I know. I get it.”

  He took the hint. A short nod before turning back to his iPad. He wore an oversized wool sweater. He’d lost a lot of weight recently but swore it wasn’t anything other than more exercise and good lifestyle choices. He kept his Amish-looking beard year-round, for publicity, he said. At Jahnke Farm, he was part of the act.

  I loved this man. Goddamn it, he may have made the mistakes most parents make, and then a few more all on his own, but he put in the most effort. And that’s why Marcia and I still came home so often. In fact, she even runs the books for the farm.

  After a few minutes of me staring again, guessing how long it would take for a particular glowing ember to die — so slowly, this one — Dad perked up again and said, “So if you’ve been out three weeks, you must’ve missed out on the Senator’s missing brother. Or maybe you can ask around?”

  “Missing who?”

  “The Senator’s brother. It’s that political family? The Marquettes? Their grandfather was the governor. Their dad was a big Republican fundraiser.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.” Maybe I’d heard of Governor Marquette in high school, but maybe not. I don’t even remember the order of the Presidents after the Civil War. “A Senator?”

  “State Senator. Young guy. I’m pretty sure he’ll run for governor one day. I might have voted for him once, too.” My dad was the kind of small-business owner who pinched his nose and voted Republican for tax reasons, in spite of how he’d taught us to treat others.

  “Jesus, just …” I gave up and sighed. “Let me see.”

  He passed the iPad, a Star-Tribune story, some big time stuff. Yes, the brother of State Senator Andrew Marquette, a certain Hans Marquette. The guy was a few years younger and had last been heard from almost exactly three and a half weeks ago, last seen in the Tofte area, where he was supposed to have gone skiing. It was a dry year for snow, but they were making the fake stuff as fast as they could.

  The photo they ran, the two brothers laughing at something, both in suits, must’ve been taken at some political event. The younger Hans had taken up the fundraising, while Andrew took the family back into state office. Seemed like Hans was a sports guy — skiing in the winter, diving in the summer, biking all through the year. But he didn’t look buffed up next to his less-physically accomplished brother, who worked out only enough to stave off nasty comments on the news. Actually, compared to Andrew, Hans was fine china. Almost sculptured around his thin neck, his cheeks, and his hands were … delicate.

  You all know where this is going. Anyone who tells a story like this and thinks he — or she — is cleverly sustaining the suspense, well, you’re just fucking wrong.

  I don’t know how I knew, and I didn’t really know right then and there, but wheels spin and thoughts bubble and before you know it, I couldn’t imagine it was anyone else I’d seen on that ice right before Gerard and the popsicle slipped away.

  Okay, have I made myself clear? Because even though the search to actually confirm this took longer and still plays a part, there’s no need to treat you all like idiots.

  Hans Marquette was the woman on the ice, no question.

  When I told Dad that I knew the detectives working the case — which I so, so, didn’t, of course — he ran with it, and I was glad to change the topic from something that brought him shame to something that engaged him. We theorized about possible Republican assassination plots — the crazy Republicans, not the ones Dad voted for — or Hans embezzling from his brother’s campaign and going into hiding to avoid being indicted, or a bear snatching him while he was skiing. The last one, okay, that was just for fun. The bear wouldn’t have eaten the skis, at least.

  We shook our heads at the enormous amounts of money the paper listed, the amounts Hans was in charge of raising and managing for not just Andrew’s run, but for some state reps, too. We laughed at the thought of political dynasties, the Bushes, the Clintons, the Kennedys, and wondered what sort of father would push his son to sacrifice his very soul to keep the family name alive in the halls of power?

  I hadn’t met Abe Skovgaard at that point.

  We’d been at it for nearly an hour when footsteps on the basement stairs signaled that Mom was about to join us. And then she was bending over the couch to give me a hug, can of Pepsi in her hand, a kiss on the scalp. Dad was all smiles but didn’t say a word.

  “Come see the kitchen.” Mom said.

  “I already have.”

  “Well, come talk to me, then.” And she turned for the kitchen. I got up and followed.

  The kitchen was full of empty spaces and that dust contractors leave on everything. Plastic tarps on the floor and draped over the island, but Mom had brought the stools back in to sit on because that’s where she did her sitting. More like her leaning, elbows and forearms, while she drank Pepsi and answered texts.

  “Is everything okay? You’re still not back to normal?”

  I shrugged. “I thought I was. It’s the police who need more time away from me, I guess.”

  She smiled. Mom-smiles were rare, not because she was always angry, but because that was just how her lips were shaped. “Another paid week off. The horror.”

  “Mom.”

  “I know. At least it’s one of those snowed-in weeks with more coming. Cabin fever will get you ready to go back.”

  I grinned. She offered me a Pepsi, but I said no. I didn’t tell her I’d stopped drinking shit like that. She always had, always would. She told me about Marcia’s latest attempt at a serious boyfriend. It was amazing how one woman could attract so many mistakes, none of the problems revealing themselves until a good month or two into it. The latest one turned out to be a gun nut. A real gun nut. No, I’m not saying an “enthusiast” or someone like me who used them for work. I mean a basement full of guns. A string of anti-Obama comments under the name TyrantStrangler8 on plenty of militia websites. Jesus.

  And then Mom got a little quiet and said, “I’m thinking of moving to Minneapolis.”

  I’m sure I blinked. “You want to sell the farm?”

  She shook her head. “Oh, no, god, no, I love this place. Your Dad, I mean, wow.”

  It took a few seconds. I kept talking while my brain did the math. “You said you. Does … are you … splitting up?”

  Again, a head shake, another Mom-smile. “Cal
m down, I didn’t say that, either. No one loves your father more than I do. But …” She looked around. “I can’t do this. Not all year. I’d come back for the summer season, some of it. Or the fall, I love the fall here.”

  It was weird to feel twelve again, that time when we didn’t get our younger sibling and knew something was wrong between them, both choosing a side and refusing to compromise, until Dad simply gave in. Except for this farm, he’d always given in to her.

  She said, “I might even open a stall for us at one of the farmers’ markets. See? We’re strengthening the brand.”

  “So, a separation?”

  She squeezed her eyes closed a long moment before saying, “You’re not hearing me. Your dad and I have been together nearly thirty years. That means the world to us. We’re not breaking up. This is … maturing. It’s just a new way to be married. So what I’m asking, since Marcia doesn’t know much about the Cities, and she’s happy to stay here, could you look at some apartments with me later this week? Some condos? If the weather clears?”

  Of course I would. I was the good son. Maybe she suspected I knew a bit more about the nightlife in Minneapolis than I actually did, but I’d spent my teens driving back and forth for concerts at clubs, into all the obscure bands, the local cult-following type of stuff. And then the Academy right after college, and the job opening in Duluth, and the accident, and … full circle.

  Mom smiled again — three in one day — when I told her I’d help, and she showed me a few listings on her phone. Definitely fancy locales around the lakes, in Edina, one in North Loop. The next day I asked Dad if he was okay with spending that sort of money, and he gave me a thoughtful purse of the lips and said, “We’re strengthening the brand.” And I didn’t think he meant Jahnke Family Farm.

  Up in my room, hours after everyone else had gone to bed, I was still awake, barely, switching back and forth between the photo of Hans Marquette and his brother, and the photo of the dead woman on the ice. I was concentrating on their hands. Their wrists. It was ridiculous. I couldn’t see what I wanted to see. There was no “A-ha!” moment. But I couldn’t stop clicking. I’d already looked up the story on my own laptop, and then onward to every scrap of information I could find on Hans Marquette. Anything to indicate a double life. Any sniff of transvestite or transgender or gay in his celebrated kinda-sorta-celebrity life as an A-lister in Minnesota.

  He wasn’t married but had dated some high profile women, most of them in politics or non-profit work. Once he’d taken a one-hit-wonder pop singer to the Winter Olympics and was caught kissing by the paparazzi. Another time, he was found in a hot tub with a college intern, but she was twenty-four, he was thirty, and she wasn’t his intern, so that faded away.

  No real scandals. More like he was the family “rebel”, but that meant taking more chances on the stock market or hanging out with people from the “other” party, hanging out with the wrong crowd. Bottom line, he was still damned good at his job. Just not as good as his dad.

  The speculation: Hans took off on a vacation on a whim and would be back soon. Another one: advising a candidate for national office who probably would not like that info to hit the newsstands, so it was on the down-low. Or: he was flat out dead by murder or accident.

  Which led me back to switching between the hands. Mindlessly after a while, also wondering how long the rift between my parents had grown, and how wide it was, and how they had been able to keep it from me for so long. You spend your life with this picture of your family, right? Say Christmas at the farm when I was eleven. Hold it in your hands, everyone smiling, everyone close. But then, as you grow, pick it up again. Was that really a smile? Was it sincere? Is Dad really that close to Mom? Was there always a child between them? Were they really just happy to be in the photo together?

  How much of this earthquake had Marcia felt and kept from me? Seemed like she was always doing that, standing between my parents at me. Censoring. Evaluating. Choosing what to tell me — and how to tell me — about life on the farm, which was not much. I had to put in all the effort to keep our relationship alive. If it was up to Marcia, I’d only see her once, twice a year at most, and then at our folks’ funerals, eventually. She was quiet that way, not like me at all.

  She “caught” me in here one time, way before it was the Northern Lights Room. I was, what, sixteen? “Experimenting”? She was coming to tell me to turn my stereo down, and wouldn’t you know, there was me being me without any place to hide. She quickly shuffled inside and closed the door. She turned the stereo down herself. She looked me over … and said, “Never with the music on. You need to hear if someone’s coming.”

  “Sorry, I’m sorry, god, don’t you knock? Couldn’t you just knock?”

  I was what all sixteen-year-old boys were. Pissed off and embarrassed. Unable to look her in the eye. Especially because … never mind, I’m not ready to tell you that yet.

  She went back over to the door and opened it, was about to leave without another word.

  I pled, whined, you know, “Don’t tell them, alright? It’s not fair.”

  She looked over her shoulder. “Never tell, you dumbass. Never.”

  I don’t think she ever told anyone at all. Not even her friends at school. I was terrified of her friends, college girls who had probably been nerds in high school and had since become the sort of confident women who terrified sixteen-year-old boys. But they never treated me any differently, never laughed behind my back, not that I could tell. Never.

  Okay, so we don’t talk as much as we used to, but we’ve got each other’s backs. Still, I will always feel like that sixteen-year-old, pissed-off boy caught with his pants down.

  Frozen woman. Wrist. Click. Hans Marquette. Wrist. Click …

  I needed to call the detectives. First thing in the morning. I checked the bedside clock. 3:13 AM.

  Okay. Second thing in the morning.

  Click.

  4

  Another blind date for Joel. His sixth since being back. Only one of those six had resulted in a kinda-sorta second date — just lunch with the girl and Joel’s Aunt Becky, who had set it up — but it felt weird, and the girl kept picking, picking, picking. She wanted to go too deep too fast. Something that would give him the bends. No, wait, that was opposite. But she had talked about how she was sick of games and small-talk and wanted the “real” Joel. He didn’t give it to her, but she was intrigued enough for the second “date”.

  The weird thing about it was how she assumed she knew him, joining in with his aunt on family jokes and picking, picking, picking in spite of what he thought was his “lay off” face. Didn’t call her after that. Avoided calls from Aunt Becky. Jesus, just … what was wrong with wanting to play the game for a bit? This girl, like, he would’ve fucked her if she’d wanted, but she didn’t seem up for it on the first date. So that was that. He didn’t want to talk about the real Joel. The real Joel had spent four tours bored shitless in Iraq before one suicide bomber — and not a very good one — revealed him as a coward.

  So this time, he was on a trial membership with an online dating site that someone had got him for Christmas. It took him over a month to activate it. Three free months. Lots of initial questions, scenarios, limitations, like a grocery store for pussy. Sorry, relationships. Pussy, he could get in bars. He had. It was drunken fun until it was over and he realized he hadn’t been that good, and the girl hadn’t cared or noticed and was already back on her phone before pulling her panties up.

  Hook-up culture. Jesus. But he felt like he didn’t have a choice other than sit in his parents’ house and listen to them — neither one ever in a war — lecture him on how to get back out there, back to normal.

  (Okay, I’ve prattled and prattled. There’s just something fascinating about what was going on in Joel’s head, which I had to piece together like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. Most of this, he didn’t tell me. Remember that.)

  The new girl had cheated a little on her dating profile. The photos show
ed her with longer hair, no glasses. But since those pics were taken — he guessed they had to be several years old — she’d cut it plenty short, a barrette pinning back some bangs, and her glasses were old-fashioned. He had picked her because she’s sounded laid-back, on the milder side, looking for peace and quiet like he was. And she had picked him back.

  He drove her up Highway 61, already pitch-black at six in the evening during the winter. Might as well be midnight. But the snow reflected the moonlight and gave everything a blue glow, and Joel sped along the two lane highway, hugging the woods on the left and exposed to Lake Superior on the right. They saw some deer hanging around the trees, and a dead one on the shoulder, but Joel knew the truck could take them if they trotted in his way. The faster the better.

  The drive gave them time to talk a little, and he found out she was in a couple of bands. She played mandolin and spent most weekends in the Cities for gigs, and for recordings, too. She hadn’t put that on her profile. Good, holding back some, that was good. He told her he was back from Iraq and was starting as a cop next week. She didn’t say much to that.

  The restaurant was on a stretch of road called Castle Danger. Not really a town, more like … a feeling. There was a fancy lodge for millionaires, fake wood-cabin style, alongside tiny lake homes that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. There was a pretty good brewery, too. Another couple of miles up the road was Gooseberry Falls Park, which at that time of year was awe-inspiring, a giant ice sculpture frozen in place, usually thunderous in late spring right through fall. At the Rustic Inn — a tourist spot in the summer for candy, gifts, and pies, but a fantastic little restaurant all-year round — he announced, “This is the place.”

  Not that many cars. The light in the parking lot weak. The gift shop closed and staying that way until at least May. The date, Lissa with two ‘s’es, couldn’t hide her disappointment, but oh, how she tried. “It’s cute! Quaint.”