TWO
Buck Reinhardt was a son of a bitch and he’d be the first to tell you so. He could be mean, selfish, bullying, insensitive, and offensive, and grin at you the whole while. It was nothing personal; he was that way with everyone. Everyone except his daughter Kristi. Her he’d done his best to spoil rotten.
Kristi was the only child born from Buck’s second marriage. His first wife was dead and the children from that marriage were all adults. Most of them had fled to the four winds to escape their father. With Kristi, it seemed that Buck Reinhardt was determined not to make the same mistakes he’d made before. He went on making mistakes; they were just different ones.
Reinhardt built a place on Skinner Lake five miles west of Aurora, where he had the area pretty much to himself. There was public access on the far side, but it wasn’t often used because the lake was shallow and if you were a fisherman looking for the big ones, you wouldn’t find them in Skinner.
Cork turned onto the narrow gravel road that skirted the lake and wove his way through a fine stand of sugar maples that Reinhardt tapped each year. The man may have been a bona fide bastard, but he boiled down a great maple syrup, which he gave away in small bottles as gifts at Christmas. Cork could see the lights of the house through the trees and again where they reflected off the black water of the lake. It was a big, sprawling place, begun small and added onto over several decades as Reinhardt’s growing fortune allowed. He’d done all the work himself; the house ended up as quirky as the man whose mind had conceived it. There was no eye to a unifying design. Buck Reinhardt built whatever suited his fancy at the moment he picked up saw and hammer. It had started as a one-bedroom cabin, but over the years had grown into a multitude of additions put together side by side or on top of one another. In the end, it resembled nothing quite so much as the random construction a child might create with a handful of building blocks. It wasn’t ugly exactly. It was certainly unusual, and very big, especially now that Buck and Elise, his second wife, lived there alone.
Cork parked in the drive and climbed the steps of the front porch, which overlooked the lake. The porch light was on. It was early May, too soon for moths. Another three or four weeks and they’d be swarming around the light. He knocked. Almost immediately the door opened.
Elise Reinhardt was younger than Cork by several years, early forties somewhere. Reinhardt had met her while she was carting cocktails in the bar of a four-star resort near Grand Rapids. Shortly after that, the first Mrs. Reinhardt moved out and six months later was dead of pancreatic cancer. Within a year, Buck had married again.
Elise Reinhardt was a strong woman. Any woman who’d marry an old piece of tough leather like Buck Reinhardt had to be. She was an attractive, blond, blue-eyed, big-boned Swede whose maiden name was Lindstrom. Although she was no longer a young woman, she kept herself in shape and knew how to look good. Men in Aurora noticed. Reinhardt liked that about his wife, liked that men looked at her. He often said as much. Said, too, that he’d kill her if he ever caught her looking back, but only said that part after he’d had too many boilermakers.
When she opened the door, she wasn’t at all the woman who’d catch a man’s eye. Her own eyes were tired and puffy, her face plain, her skin sallow, her lips set in a snarl. She was a woman in mourning and she wore her grief with an awful fury.
“What?” she said.
“Sorry to bother you, Elise. I’m looking for Buck.”
“Look somewhere else. He’s not here.”
“Any idea where I might find him?”
“Like I could give a good goddamn.” She took a couple of seconds and pulled herself together. “Try the Buzz Saw. He’s probably getting shit faced with the boys. He does that a lot these days.”
The truth was that Buck had always done that a lot. Reinhardt owned a tree-trimming business. He’d secured a number of lucrative contracts with power and telephone companies to keep the lines clear of limbs, and he had a dozen crews operating throughout the North Country. He didn’t pay all that much, but in an area where the iron mines had mostly closed and logging wasn’t what it used to be, Reinhardt was a decent employer. If you worked for Buck, you never missed a paycheck, never got called on the carpet for a sexist or racist slur, and never, when you went drinking with him, paid for your own booze.
“Thanks. If I miss him, mind telling him I want to talk? It’s important.”
“What about?” Elise said.
Cork couldn’t see any reason to hold back. “Alex Kingbird wants to meet with him.”
Elise looked dumbfounded. “What could he possibly have to say to my husband?”
“He claims he has something to offer Buck.”
“Yeah, what? His heart at the end of a sharp stick?”
“I think it would be a good idea for your husband to hear him out.”
“You’d have to hog-tie Buck to get him in the same room with Kingbird.”
“Tell him I’ll drop by again after church tomorrow morning.”
“Buck doesn’t go to church anymore.”
“I do. Round noon okay?”
Her lips went tight and she stared at him. Finally she said, “I’ll tell him.”
“Elise, I’m sorry about Kristi.”
She nailed him with her ice blue eyes. “No, deep inside you’re just so damn happy it wasn’t your daughter.”
He wasn’t going to argue the point. In a way, she was right.
“I’ll see Buck tomorrow.”
“Lucky fucking you,” she said and slammed the door.
THREE
The Buzz Saw stood along Highway 2, a few miles south of Aurora in a little unincorporated municipality called Durham. There was a big neon sign on the roof that appeared to spin like a ripsaw blade. The parking lot was less than half full when Cork pulled in. He didn’t see Reinhardt’s truck, which was hard to miss because of the rack of floodlights mounted on the cab. Buck claimed he needed the lights for whenever the tree trimming went late and things got dark. Most people suspected the real reason was that Reinhardt shined deer. On the door on either side of the cab was a big image of a green tree with REINHARDT TREE TRIMMING printed boldly in black below.
It was Saturday night, but things at the Buzz Saw weren’t buzzing. That was because it was early May, still several weeks away from the onslaught of summer tourists. A few tables were full, but mostly the customers had scattered themselves around the big barroom in singles or pairs. When they weren’t talking, they were listening to Mitch Sokol and the Stoned Rangers belt out an ear-splitting mix of electric bluegrass and country rock. Ropes of blue cigarette smoke coiled up everywhere, and the air was a choking mix of that, the odor of spilled beer, and the aroma of deep fry.
Cork stood just inside the front door for a minute, looking the place over. He saw a lot of folks he knew, but he didn’t see Buck Reinhardt or anyone who worked for the man. He shook a few hands as he made his way to the bar, where Seneca Peterson was tending that night. She was midtwenties, statuesque, sported a silver stud in one nostril and a ring through her lower lip, and had close-cropped hair that was a striking mix of jet black and cotton candy pink. Cork had known her since she was a baby, when the only pink on her was the natural tone of her skin. She’d been baptized at St. Agnes, made her First Communion there, had sung in the choir, and even once played Mary in the yearly Christmas pageant. Now she was tending bar, with a stud in her nose and a tattoo crawling up the back of her neck like a green spider.
“Hey, Sen,” Cork shouted above Sokol and the Rangers.
She stepped up and wiped the bar in front of him. “What’ll you have, hon?”
“Leinenkugel’s Dark.”
“One Leinie’s coming up.”
