“I saw him briefly at the Glasgow Inn. He stopped in with his wife. Then later, he stopped in on his own.”
“How did he seem that evening? Did he say anything unusual?”
“I didn’t talk to him,” I said.
“You didn’t talk to him? He says you two are best buddies.”
“I was playing poker.”
“I thought you said you don’t gamble.”
“It’s not gambling,” I said. “It’s nickels and dimes.”
He nodded. “All right,” he said. He closed my folder and put it in a drawer. “That’ll do for now.”
I thought about leaving right then. The hell with this guy, I didn’t feel like telling him about the phone call. But I knew that if I didn’t tell him, it would be just the kind of thing that could come back and haunt me.
“Actually, Chief Maven, I’ve been enjoying our time here so much, I just don’t think I can leave yet.”
For one split second, he lost that little hard-ass smirk.
“I’ll take a cup of coffee with one sugar,” I said. “And then I’ll tell you about a little conversation I had last night with the murderer.”
It was worth telling him the story, just to see him choke on his tough-guy routine, if only for a minute. I told him all about the phone call while he wrote down every word. But I never did get that coffee.
I grabbed a quick lunch at the Glasgow, and finally had a good look at that newspaper. There was a picture of the motel on page one. You could see the police barricades set up around the place, and a few officers carrying out what looked like a big sack of laundry. I’m sure Mr. Bing was quite a load, even with all thirteen or fourteen pints of blood drained from his body.
There were a couple paragraphs about Edwin, “heir to the Fulton fortune,” being the first man on the scene. I was not mentioned.
When I had finished reading about it, I drove up to the Fulton place. It was not far from Paradise, just straight up Sheephead Road, past the Shipwreck Museum, all the way up to the old lighthouse on Whitefish Point. I turned off on the road leading west along the shore, coming onto the Fulton property that took up a full three- hundred-acre corner of Chippewa County.
About a mile from the house, I saw someone walking on the road. When I saw who it was, I considered turning around and leaving. Instead, I pulled up next to her and rolled down my window. “Nice day for a walk,” I said.
Sylvia kept walking without looking at me. “If you like cold and gray,” she said.
“I’m on my way to see your mother-in-law.”
“Good for you.”
“Is Edwin around today?”
“He’s at the office.”
“What does he do at the office?” I asked. “Why does he even need an office?”
“He counts his money,” she said. “He calls it up on the phone and talks to it.”
“Can’t he do that from home?”
She finally looked at me for the first time. Those green eyes went right through me. “He prefers to have his time away from the house,” she said.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“What?” she said. I stopped the truck as she turned to me and put her forearms on my door. “What don’t you get?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just the fact that he doesn’t spend more time with you.”
She shook her head and looked up at the sky. “You gotta hell of a nerve saying something like that.”
“Sylvia, is this the way it’s going to be from now on? Are you always going to act like this?”
“Yes, Alex.” She pushed away from the truck. “So you better get used to it.”
“You know, I think I’ve got you figured out,” I said.
“Oh, do you. Do you really.”
“For the first time in your life, you didn’t get something you wanted. That’s the whole problem right there. You just hate the fact that I was the one who ended it.”
“Alex, there are only two things in this world that I hate. I hate living on this godforsaken frozen cliff on the end of the world. And I hate the fact that I was ever stupid enough to get involved with you. I mean, look at you. Look at this… thing you drive around in.”
“Sylvia, don’t.”
“You look like, what, like a lumberjack or something.”
“I’m warning you.”
“No, not even a lumberjack. He’s the guy who cuts down the trees, right? That takes some guts at least. You look like…You look like the guy who delivers the firewood, stacks it up next to the house. That’s what you look like.”
“Good-bye, Sylvia,” I said. “It’s been nice talking to you, as always.” I watched her grow smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror as I drove away.
It didn’t take long to get to the Fulton place. It had been built by Edwin’s grandfather back in the 1920s, and had been improved on several times by his father. The Fultons were old automotive money, and were fixtures in Grosse Pointe, a ritzy little suburb on the Detroit River. They kept this place way up here in the Upper Peninsula just as a summer cottage. Although to the Fultons, a “cottage” was a five-thousand-square-foot fortress of stone and glass and huge wooden beams cut from the original forest. Now that he was living up here year-round, I couldn’t imagine how much money Edwin must have spent keeping the road plowed during the winter.
Theodora Fulton was alone in the house. She seemed glad to see me after she wrestled open the huge oak front door. “You must be Mr. McKnight,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
I knew she was well into her sixties, but there was a clarity in her eyes and a surprising strength to her as she shook my hand. Although she had her hair pinned up, I could see that she had less gray hair than I did. “Please come in,” she said. “Can I offer you some coffee? I just made some.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’d love some.”
She led me into the main living room. The ceiling was a good twenty feet high, and dominated by the massive round beams that were left unfinished. The windows looked out over Lake Superior in all its glory. “Have you been to this house before?” she asked. “It’s rather charming, isn’t it?”
It was charming, all right. If I saved every penny I ever earned and did most of the work myself for about ten years, I’d have a cabin about a third as charming as this place. “I’ve been here once or twice,” I said.
“Make yourself at home. I’ll get you a cup.”
I sat down on one of the three couches. When she left, the room was silent except for the ticking of a clock and the faint sound of the wind off the lake.
“Here we are,” she said as she rejoined me. I took my cup from the tray and dropped in one sugar with the little silver tongs.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said.
“Please call me Theodora,” she said. “Or Teddy. My friends all call me Teddy.”
“How about Mrs. Fulton?”
“As you wish.” She drew out a pair of glasses and put them on. I couldn’t help noticing that they looked exactly like the pair of reading glasses that Chief Maven had put on in his office. “You do cut an imposing figure, don’t you, Mr. McKnight. But you have a kind face.”
“Thank you.”
“Edwin speaks very highly of you. He tells me that you have a bullet next to your heart.”
“Yes, ma’am, I do.” I wondered if there was anyone left in the state of Michigan who didn’t know this by now.
“Did you know that Andrew Jackson had a bullet next to his heart for the entire time he was president?”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“He was in a duel. The other man shot him in the chest, but Jackson didn’t go down. He had his one shot
