Seven graves two harbors, p.1
Seven Graves Two Harbors, page 1
Seven Graves,
Two Harbors
Dennis Herschbach
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
Saint Cloud, Minnesota
Copyright © 2013 Dennis Herschbach
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Print ISBN 978-0-87839-702-0
eBook ISBN: 978-0-87839-916-1
First Edition: June 2013
Published by
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
P.O. Box 451
St. Cloud, Minnesota 56302
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my wife, Vicky Schaefer, who supports all of my writing endeavors and encourages me when I begin to doubt myself.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to several people who have been key to the publication of Seven Graves, Two Harbors:
To Elizabeth Brunsvold, Patricia Sohler, and my wife Vicky, who read my manuscript and made valuable contributions with their advice.
To my many friends in the writing community who offer their encouragement.
To the staff of North Star Press for accepting my manuscript and for all the work they did in publishing the book. They are a great group of people with whom to work.
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter One
The bar stool George “Skinny” Tomlinson sat on was old. Its red vinyl cover was torn in two places, and the yellowed foam stuffing of the cushion hung out in ragged pieces. He gulped the last swallow of the beer he had been nursing, slid off the stool, and jostled his way through the crowd of drunks to the men’s room.
The place smelled of stale urine and rancid beer. He finished his job at the yellow-crusted, cracked porcelain urinal and pushed his way back to his stool where he sat alone. He wasn’t a stranger in the dive, but as usual everyone ignored him.
That was the way Skinny’s evening went: drink a couple of beers, hit the men’s room, come back to the bar, drink a couple more beers. He became more disheveled as the evening progressed until half of his red-plaid flannel shirt hung out over his pants, and his cap sat crooked on his head.
By ten thirty he was ready to call it a day, gave up his stool, and wobbled to the door. He almost toppled off the top step, caught himself on the rusty railing and made it to his pickup. Through his alcohol fog, he glanced at his front license plate. It wasn’t the customary Minnesota plate but was a glaring black on white. The first two letters read WP, a whiskey plate. He had been arrested twice for DWI in the last five years. The last time, his blood alcohol registered .25 percent, and the courts had mandated he place the lettered stigma on his truck’s license plates.
Skinny rankled at the idea. Because of those two letters, law enforcement could pull him over for no cause other than to check his state of sobriety. Right now there was no way he would pass a breathalyzer test. That would mean the loss of his driver’s license, or worse, jail time.
Just as he was about to open the driver’s-side door, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he spun around.
“Hi, Skinny.”
It took Skinny a moment to focus on the man’s face, but then he grinned.
“What the heck are you doing up here in Isabella? You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?” the man asked.
Skinny was glad to see a face he recognized. “I was dealing with business and stopped for a cold one on the way home. I guess time got away from me. I’m heading back to Two Harbors now,” he said with slurred speech. Then he added, “What’re you doing here?”
“I was fishing on Silver Island Lake this evening and stopped for the same reason you did. Problem is, now my truck’s battery is dead. Can’t even get the engine to grunt. I was kinda hoping I could catch a ride into town with you.”
Skinny wobbled, steadying himself by grabbing the man’s arm. “Hey, it’d be nice to have company on the way home. Jump in.”
The two men crawled up into the pickup cab, Skinny having the harder time of it. He turned the ignition key and the rattletrap coughed twice and started. They pulled out of the dirt parking lot, and he turned right.
“Hey, Skinny, you okay to drive? Two Harbors is the other way.”
Skinny snorted. “Did you see my plates? Whiskey plates. I get caught driving in this condition again, I’m hung. I’m going up to where the Whyte Road takes off from the main highway. Hardly anybody uses that trail anymore, especially the deputies. I figure by the time we get back onto Highway 2, I’ll be sobered up enough.”
“Tell you what, Skinny. Why don’t you let me drive? That way we don’t have to take that dirt trail they call a road. I’ve only had a beer. I’m sober.”
Skinny looked at the man through eyes that drooped to mere slits. “What’ya think? I’m too drunk to drive? Hell, I’ve gotten home in worse shape than this before,” Skinny slurred at him.
“Come on, Skinny,” the man said. “I don’t want to end up wrapped around some tree. Why don’t you let me drive? I’ll be gentle with your truck.” He laughed, trying to disarm Skinny.
“Nobody drives for me,” Skinny said belligerently. “You think I can’t drive my own truck? You’re like all the rest of them, always putting me down like I’m nothing. Well I’m going to show you. Not too long and I’ll have enough money to buy you and the rest of Lake County. Then people will change their tunes. They’ll have to if they want any favors from me.”
The man tried to talk Skinny down from his rant. “Ah, come on, Skinny. You know you’re three sheets to the wind. I can have us back in Two Harbors in forty minutes. By that time, you’d be good to go. I’d get off at my place, and you could take the wheel. Don’t you think?”
Just then they saw a neon sign ahead. It flashed on and off, “T RRY’S.” Skinny pulled into the parking lot and slammed on his brakes.
“Get the hell out of my pickup. Get out, now! Find a ride back with somebody else.”
Reluctantly, the man opened the truck door and stepped out onto the gravel surface.
“Come on, Skinny. Be reasonable and give me the keys. You know darn well you’re in no shape to be driving. Otherwise you wouldn’t be taking the back way home.”
Skinny peeled out of the parking lot, letting the forward motion of his truck slam the passenger door shut and leaving the man standing alone.
Two miles down the highway Skinny turned off the pavement onto the Whyte Road and tried, not too successfully, to avoid the potholes on the neglected logging trail. After twenty miles of fighting the deteriorated condition of the road and the blackness of the night, he was becoming so tired he could hardly hold his head up. The sky lit up with a flash of lightning, rain started to pelt down, and Skinny’s windshield wipers had a difficult time keeping up with the deluge.
Good thing I’m getting close to the highway. Should be only about five or six miles from the intersection. He glanced in his rearview mirror.
“Damn,” he said to himself. “Where’d that car come from? It would be just my luck to have a county deputy out here on a night like this.”
Another streak of lightning slashed through the sky, and the rain continued to pour down.
Chapter Two
The red-faded-to-orange pickup sat nose down in the ditch. Its driver’s-side door had be en left open, and as Lake County Deputy Sheriff Jeff DeAngelo looked in, he could see water pooled in a couple of places on the floor. He reached in and felt the seat—wet. The old-timer he had spoken with a few miles back said they had a real soaker three days ago, but since then the weather had been sunny. Evidently, the pickup had been sitting there for a while. Jeff looked around for any human sign—nothing.
He had been on a routine patrol when he decided to cut through to Highway 2 via the Whyte Road, which was some thirty miles north of Two Harbors, a small town on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The Whyte was one of several single-lane roads built on abandoned railroad beds that crisscrossed the wilderness. It connected four or five houses called Whyte with another cluster of buildings twenty miles away, Jordan Landing. These two sites—they couldn’t really be called villages—were isolated by swamps, bogs, and wooded ridges. Every week Jeff swung through the area to check for any emergency needing to be reported.
As he looked at the stricken vehicle partially buried in the swampy ditch, he thought that someone must have had a long walk out to the highway. Jeff moved to the back of the pickup and jotted down its license plate number, WP 2A30. Whiskey plate, he thought. He walked back to his squad car, a white Ford Explorer with “Lake County Sheriff’s Department” stenciled on its side.
“Hi, Jaredine,” he said into the two-way. “I need a check on a Minnesota license plate, number WP 2A30.”
He listened, then answered the dispatcher, “No, this isn’t a traffic stop, just a pickup truck in the ditch. Looks like it probably belongs to Skinny Tomlinson, but I want to be sure.”
After a pause, he answered again, “Thanks, Jaredine. I thought it was his. Well, he’s probably with a buddy somewhere and maybe is still in the bag. You know him.”
Jeff hung up and jotted down a few notes to report the next morning to Sheriff Johnson. Before leaving, he shut the door of Skinny’s battered truck.
It had been over a year since Deidre Johnson, sheriff of Lake County, was gunned down at Gooseberry State Park. Her wounds had pretty much healed, but the scars, both physical and psychological, remained. She paced around her office, trying to organize her thoughts before the morning shift. Through her office window, she could see that most of the deputies had arrived. They were helping themselves to the coffee and sweet rolls always on hand for the short time they were together each morning.
With an effort to get on with the day’s work, she picked up a notepad and headed for the conference table in the other room.
“Okay, guys, let’s get this over with so we can start the day and the nightshift can go home and catch some sleep,” she announced.
The deputies all settled into their accustomed chairs, and the meeting started.
“Does anybody have anything significant to report?” she wanted to know.
Before anyone else could speak up, Jeff pulled out his notepad. “Yesterday, I was taking the Whyte Road between Isabella and Highway 2, and I came across something. At first I thought it not so strange, knowing the person involved, but the more I mull it over, I feel like things don’t add up.
“Skinny Tomlinson’s truck is buried in a ditch about five miles from the highway. It’s just before the old logging road off to the left. I didn’t think much of it, knowing his drinking history, but the driver’s-side door had been left wide open, and the front seat was soaked from a rainstorm that hit three days ago. All signs of footprints were washed away, so I couldn’t tell in which direction he might have walked.
“He had to have plowed into the ditch at least three days ago, and being that his truck had been abandoned the way it was, I thought we better look into the matter.”
“Ah, you know Skinny,” chimed in Pete. “He’s driven that old pickup into more ditches than we can count. I’ll bet he turns up in a day or two after he’s sobered up. I think that guy has more lives than a cat.”
Jeff argued back. “I’d tend to agree with you, and yes, he does have quite a reputation around here. But something just didn’t seem right when I was at the scene. Nothing particular that I can tell you, just not right.”
“We can’t go on assumptions about people, but then we can’t do much if things just don’t seem right,” Deidre interjected into the conversation. “Nevertheless, I think we should take this situation seriously. Skinny deserves as much concern as the next person, and if he’s in some kind of trouble, we have to be there for him.
“Jeff, would you stay after our meeting? I’m going to have you do some checking around to see if anyone has seen him in the last day or two.
“Does anyone else have anything significant to report?” Some shook their heads. Others sat in silence. “Good. Let’s get to our assignments, or in the case of those who worked the nightshift, to bed.
“Jeff, let’s go to my office.”
Jeff entered first and Deidre pulled the door shut behind them.
“What do you think, Jeff?” she wanted to know. “My guess is that Skinny’s off on a real bender this time and will show up in a day or two. But we have to do some checking in the meantime.
“I have to go to the northern end of the county today, up to Isabella. I’ll stop in at a few places while I’m there. Is it worth the effort to check out the bars in town?”
Jeff thought a minute before answering. “I know we have to go on facts, but I tell you, something just didn’t seem right when I was checking out his pickup. I think we should begin looking, if only because of my gut feeling. I know it’s Skinny, but we’d feel pretty terrible if we could have helped him and didn’t.
“Give me today to nose around. If I don’t come up with anything, we can drop it until something more concrete does.”
“I’ll drive up the Whyte Road to see if his pickup is still there. Chances are he’s already had somebody pull him out. Knowing Skinny, he doesn’t want this reported,” Deidre offered.
Jeff turned to leave, and over his shoulder he said, “Thanks, Deidre. Maybe you’re right and this will end up being a waste of our time, but I don’t think so.”
Chapter Three
Last December, in the middle of a nor’easter, Ed Beirmont had moved into a house near Lake Superior about two miles up the shore from Two Harbors. It was as though he had appeared from nowhere. Because all his neighbors chose to avoid the winds and the snow by holing up indoors, they didn’t notice any activity at the place next door. When the storm subsided after two days, there was Ed, plowing out his driveway.
To call the building he bought a “house” was stretching it. Most people would say it was more of a shack, with one room serving as a living room, dining room, and kitchen. There was one bedroom and a bath off to the side, and a large screened-in porch on the lakeside.
When he erected a pole building that seemed to be half the size of a football field, his neighbors thought he was a little crazy, but no one questioned him. Ed was six-foot-four and about two-hundred-fifty pounds, none of it fat. Everyone thought of him as a gentle giant, although no one really knew him. He was a loner.
Above the double door of his building, he put up a sign, “Ed’s Plumbing Contracting.” His neighbors noticed several delivery trucks arrive, but they always drove into the warehouse where their cargo could be unloaded behind closed doors.
After about three months, people began to talk. They seldom saw Ed working, but he always seemed to have plenty of money and drove a shiny new F-250 Ford pickup. He spent a great deal of time in the bars and taverns in the area, especially a notoriously rough place ten miles up Highway 2, the Big Noise Tavern. He was out drinking almost every night of the week, and word was that he could drink all night and not pass out.
People who frequented the bars and dives had a different impression of Ed than did his neighbors. They said he was the life of the party after he had a few drinks in him, striking up conversations with everybody, buying drinks for the house, and hanging with some of the toughest and dirtiest characters in the county.
