Bear Bones Read online

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “We’re late as it is.”

  Burr couldn’t see how a few minutes to a ferry going to two uninhabited islands could matter to anyone. He turned on his heel and bought a round trip for himself. Zeke rode free.

  A minor miracle.

  Burr handed his ticket to the young man and climbed aboard. Zeke jumped on. The captain backed down the river until he had room to turn around, then motored past the breakwater and into the big lake. He opened up the throttle and the ferry picked up to about fifteen knots. She cruised through a light chop from the southwest. There were six other passengers, four of them college-age and an older couple. They all had backpacks. The afternoon sun ducked in and out of the cumulus clouds, casting shadows on the lake. Zeke sat on the port side of the aft deck. His ears blew in the wind and he bit at the spray. Burr stood next to Zeke out of the wind and the spray. He saw Pyramid Point and Sleeping Bear looming in the distance.

  They came up on the lighthouse at Manitou Shoals, the graveyard of who knew how many boats. Then South Manitou, the ribbon of beach and the dark woods beyond, the abandoned lighthouse on the south end of the island, and just beyond that, the hull of a freighter that foundered on the shore forty years earlier, stripped for salvage and slowly worn away by the wind and the water.

  How long will it be before there’s nothing left of her.

  Northern Lights entered Manitou Passage, then the crescent-shaped harbor on South Manitou. The boat slowed and Burr felt the wake catch up with the ferry to roll under the hull and lift the boat stern first. He saw the ferry dock jutting out into the harbor. A sheriff’s boat, a twenty-five-foot launch with a sharp prow and cuddy cabin was tied up on one side of the dock.

  The ferry docked across from the sheriff’s boat and all of the passengers got off, except Burr. He walked up to the captain, a thin man with short gray hair and a Park Service uniform.

  Burr stuck his hand out. “Burr Lafayette.”

  The captain nodded at him, shook his hand, but didn’t say anything.

  “I’m the lawyer for Thomas Lockwood. Can you tell me where to find the…” Burr paused. “His wife.” Another pause. “His wife’s body.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  The captain nodded.

  “Does yes mean no?”

  Another nod.

  Burr leaned toward him and read the nametag on his shirt. “Mr. Sutherland.”

  “Captain.”

  “Captain Sutherland. I am here at the request of the family.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you tell me where she…the body is?”

  “No.” Captain Sunderland turned away from Burr and made a show of studying the gauges on the instrument panel in the steering station.

  “No, there is no body or no, you can’t tell me.”

  “Just no.”

  “If there’s no body here, why is the Leelanau County Sheriff’s boat tied up on the other side of the dock.?”

  “What boat?”

  Behind them, people heading back to Leland started to board. The captain pushed the throttle in and revved the engine a bit.

  “Look here, we’ve got to get going. If you’re staying, you’d better get off.”

  “Listen up, Captain Queeg, I’m just about to tell everyone on this boat there’s a dead body here.”

  Sutherland pulled back the throttle. “The Park Service don’t want no trouble. No bad publicity.”

  Burr smiled at him. “Tell me where the body is and you won’t get any trouble from me.”

  The captain fiddled with the throttle. Burr felt the engine run up a few hundred RPMs. “The easiest way to get there is through the island.” He pointed ashore. “Up that way, then over there.” He stopped. “You ever been here before?”

  “No.”

  He pointed down the beach, toward the southern end of the island. “Follow the beach. Past the lighthouse. Past the wreck. It’s past there. You can’t miss the yellow tape.” He nodded at the deckhand in the bow, then at the one in the stern. “All aboard.”

  Burr, with Zeke in tow, passed through the twenty or so passengers. He stopped at the gangway and turned back to the passengers. “There’s a dead body on the island.”

  Captain Sunderland glared at him. Zeke trotted up the dock, Burr in tow.

  They walked by a green Park Service shed, then started down the beach. The sand was loose and Burr slogged through it. Burr took off his foul weather jacket and tied it around his waist. “Zeke, it’s cocktail hour and I am without a cocktail.” He slogged through the sand. “That was poor planning on my part.” The clouds had blown off to the northeast, and the sun was still high in the sky. The wind died. Burr smelled the cedars in the woods to his right. The smell reminded him of the cedar closet in his office. It was tough going through the loose sand. He walked down to the water’s edge and traded a tiring walk with the smell of cedars for an easy walk and the smell of dead fish. Zeke ran into the lake up to his chest and drank. Then he started swimming. “Zeke, it’s this way.” Zeke swam farther out then, came back to the beach. He shook off on Burr. “Damn it all.”

  Burr tried walking at the water’s edge. The walking here was much easier, but he was walking on an angle where the sand sloped into the lake, and it made his back hurt. He looked out to the channel and saw the ferry cutting through the waves. A few minutes later, its wake rolled ashore, soaking Burr’s shoes and the cuffs of his khakis. “Damn it all,” he said again.

  They passed the lighthouse, a white brick cylinder at least a hundred-fifty feet tall, then the wreck a quarter mile off the beach, an oceangoing freighter, her superstructure midships.

  They trudged on. Burr’s feet chafed in his wet shoes. “If I’d known my shoes were going to get soaked, I’d have worn socks.” Except for court, Burr didn’t wear socks from May till November. A hundred yards further, he sat down on a log and took off his shoes. Zeke licked him on the lips.

  “Thank you.” Burr wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “I think.”

  They started out again. The beach started to get rocky so Burr moved closer to the tree line. The sand crunched under his feet and pushed up between his toes. “When in God’s name are we going to be there?” He walked on. “I wonder if that damn captain sent me the wrong way.”

  They kept going, the trees here twisted and bent over by the wind. Zeke trotted at the water’s edge.

  Twenty minutes later, Burr saw the yellow tape in dune grass just off the beach. When they got closer, he saw the tape was strung around stakes about fifteen feet on a side.

  “Stop right there,” said a voice.

  Burr looked to his right. A deputy in a dark brown uniform shirt with a gold badge, tan pants and a sidearm. He had on a brown baseball hat that said, ‘Leelanau Sheriff’s Department.’ He raised his arm at Burr, his hand palm out. “Stop right there.”

  Burr started toward the yellow tape.

  “Stop right there. This is a crime scene.”

  “I hardly think so.” Burr dropped his shoes. “Tommy Lockwood asked me to come. I’m the family lawyer.”

  “That don’t matter to me.”

  Burr started toward the deputy. “My name is Burr Lafayette. And you are?”

  “Holcomb. Deputy Glen Holcomb.”

  “Thank you, Deputy Holcomb. I’d like to have a look around.”

  “No can do.” Holcomb put his hands on his hips. “For all I know you’re a rubbernecker.”

  Burr didn’t think Deputy Holcomb could be more than twenty. He was a tall, gangly young man with the remains of acne on his cheeks. He had a mustache that wasn’t coming in, underneath a long nose, above a mouth that was an orthodontist’s dream. He had sunny, brown eyes that made the rest of him look just fine.

  “Deputy, please.” Burr smiled at Holc
omb. “The sheriff called Helen Lockwood’s sisters. They asked me to come over and identify the body. How could I know that if I wasn’t on the up and up.”

  “My orders are no one gets near the tape.”

  Burr wiggled his toes in the sand. Burr looked down at his feet. The sand, warm in the late afternoon sun, was most pleasant. I am surrounded by people who follow the rules. He looked up at Deputy Holcomb. “All right then, where is Mr. Lockwood? He can vouch for me.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “The sheriff?”

  “He’s not here, either.”

  Burr looked down at his toes. Another one who believes in rationing his words. He wiggled his toes again. “Where are they?”

  “They left.”

  “I didn’t see them.”

  “You took the long way.”

  Burr shook his head. “Deputy, is there a body here?”

  Deputy Holcomb kicked at the sand with his standard issue brown sheriff’s shoes, which had no business on a beach on South Manitou Island.

  “Is there a body here?”

  More sand kicking.

  “Deputy.”

  The sand kicking stopped. “Yeah.”

  “Thank you,” Burr said. “Is it Helen Lockwood?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Over there.” Deputy Holcomb pointed a long arm past the yellow tape.

  Burr started over.

  “You can’t go past the tape.”

  Burr stopped at the tape. He saw a hole about ten feet long and about five feet wide. It was about three feet deep. He couldn’t see in it. Burr leaned over the tape, but he still couldn’t see in the hole. He looked back at the deputy, then took a step back toward him. The deputy nodded and looked out at the lake. Burr ducked under the tape and ran to the hole.

  “You can’t do that.”

  Burr looked into the hole. There was a black tarp over the body.

  Deputy Holcomb ran over, grabbed Burr by the shoulder and spun him around. “I said no.”

  “Is Helen Lockwood under that tarp?” Burr said.

  The deputy looked down. He tugged at his would-be mustache. He nodded at Burr.

  “Could she have drowned and washed ashore?” Burr said, hoping.

  “She didn’t get in that hole by herself unless she dug her own grave.”

  Burr jumped. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Somebody buried her here.”

  Burr shut his eyes. “Who found her?”

  “A dog.”

  “A dog.”

  “Some campers, over there.” Holcomb pointed inland. “Their dog brought a bone back. They didn’t think much of it until he brought back another one. They followed him here. Dug a little and found a body. They told the ranger, who called us.”

  “I need to see the body.”

  “No can do.”

  “Deputy Holcomb, I came all this way.”

  “Nope.” The deputy tugged on his would-be mustache again.

  “All I have to do is walk back to the dock and get permission from the sheriff.”

  “It ain’t that easy.”

  “Lift the tarp. Just for a second.”

  “Nope.”

  “Then I’ll do it.”

  “You do and I’ll arrest you.”

  “Then you lift the tarp. It’ll be our secret.”

  “This is not a good idea.”

  Burr started toward the hole.

  “Stop right there.”

  Burr looked back at him. “How exactly do you think you’re going to arrest me way out here.? And if you do, what are you going to do with me?”

  Deputy Holcomb thought this over. He reached for his gun.

  “You’re surely not going to shoot me.”

  Holcomb pulled a hand held radio out of its holster.

  “Deputy, please.”

  Holcomb looked at this radio, then at Burr, then at the radio. “You stand right there. This ain’t a good idea.” He walked over to the tarp. “Take a good look.” The deputy pulled back the tarp.

  Burr looked down in the hole. A body left to rot and decay in a shallow grave was not a pretty picture. It certainly didn’t look like Helen or anything human he had ever seen. Burr threw up in the hole. He cleared his throat and spit. Zeke trotted over to investigate. Burr shooed him away.

  Deputy Holcomb walked over to Burr. “Kind of makes you sick, don’t it?”

  Burr spit again.

  “I told you this was a bad idea.” Deputy Holcomb put his hands on his hips. “That’s what they look like after being in the ground for a year. It ain’t how they look at the funeral home.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  The deputy grinned at him.

  “Are you sure it’s Helen Lockwood?”

  “Sure seems like it. The mister recognized the coat.”

  “Her coat?”

  “He said it was her favorite coat. Belonged to her grandfather.”

  Burr looked at Deputy Holcomb. “Was it an accident?”

  “I don’t hardly think so.”

  “I thought she might have fallen overboard and drowned. Then she washed ashore.”

  “That don’t explain the grave.”

  “Could the sand have blown over her?” Burr said, hoping against hope.

  Holcomb looked back at the hole. “It’s too far from the lake. And the hole’s about three feet deep. And there’s bushes and stuff around that ain’t buried.”

  Holcomb is smarter than he looks.

  “Still, it’s possible.”

  Deputy Holcomb tugged at his mustache again. “That don’t explain the bullet hole.”

  Burr jumped. “The bullet hole?”

  “There’s a bullet hole in her head.”

  “That changes the water on the minnies.”

  “What?”

  “It’s an old saying,” Burr said. “My aunt says it.”

  “I guess so…”

  “Are they done here?”

  “For today.”

  “Deputy Holcomb, I appreciate you helping me out. This can stay between us.”

  The deputy nodded at him.

  “I’ll get going now.” Burr started back to the beach.

  “Let me show you a quicker way.”

  “Thank you, deputy.”

  “How are you getting back to the mainland?”

  “The ferry,” Burr said.

  “Ferry’s done for the day.”

  “I’ll go back with the sheriff.”

  “They left.”

  “I’ll go back with you.”

  “That’ll work.”

  “Good.”

  “I get relieved at eight.”

  “That’s not too long.”

  “In the morning.”

  Burr clenched his teeth. “What am I going to do?”

  “I’m pretty sure me, you, your dog and the body are all going to be here tonight.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Burr could barely move. He tried to sit up but only managed to raise his head. Zeke came over and licked his face. “Thank you, Zeke.” He put his head back down. It was only six in the morning but broad daylight. It wasn’t the sun that woke him up. It was the damn birds, tweeting and tweeting like their lives depended on it. It was probably the sun that woke the birds, so maybe it was the sun’s fault after all.

  Without a boat back to the mainland, there was nothing Burr could have done but spend the night here with Zeke, Deputy Glenn Holcomb and the late Helen Lockwood.

  The deputy had been kind enough to share a baloney sandwich with Burr, who shared his with Zeke.

  Sleeping accommodations were a different matter entirely. Burr had no intention of sharing
the deputy’s sleeping bag with him, not that it was offered. That left Helen’s tarp which Burr thought better of.

  He scraped a bed into the sand and used his jacket for a blanket. Zeke slept next to him, which helped, but by morning, Burr was chilled to the bone.

  And then there was his back. Burr tried to sit up but failed. He grabbed a branch on a bush and managed to turn on his side. From there, he was able to get on his hands and knees and crawl out of his bed in the sand.

  “Whatcha doin’ there, Mr. Lafayette?”

  Burr ignored him and crawled to a cedar that had been bent over and twisted by the wind. I am the human version of this tree. He pulled himself up on the tree. He couldn’t stand up straight, bent at the waist like a half-opened jackknife.

  “Sleep well?”

  Burr straightened up, mostly, the blade still not locked into place.

  “Breakfast?”

  Burr looked over at Deputy Holcomb and nodded.

  “We got Pop Tarts. Apple Cinnamon or Chocolate.”

  “Apple Cinnamon, please.”

  * * *

  Deputy Holcomb’s replacement showed up a little after eight. There was no one from the coroner’s office so Burr saw no reason to stay.

  Holcomb led him back to the ferry dock through the interior of the island. They walked through the scrub brush and into the woods. Cedars gave way to hardwood – maple, beech, ash, oak. Then to a path and finally a two track that Holcomb said would take them to the ferry.

  South Manitou had been uninhabited until the late 1800s, when it was logged for firewood for the steamships. After that, settlers tried to farm it, but the soil was too sandy, the growing season too short, and the crops not valuable enough to ferry to the mainland. The farms were abandoned, and all that was left were a few summer residents and boaters who anchored in the harbor. The island stayed that way until the Park Service condemned all the private property, unpopular with the landowners, but they didn’t put up much of a fight. Unlike the late Helen Lockwood.

  Deputy Holcomb was kind enough to take Burr and Zeke back to Leland in the sheriff’s boat. He said it was strictly against the rules. The wind hadn’t come up yet and they skimmed across the lake, a sheet of glass, a soft blue in the morning light.

  * * *