“I still feel awfully guilty about all this,” Ingrid said.
“Guilty about what?” I asked.
“The Harbor.”
“What about it?”
Ingrid didn’t answer. Instead, she turned her head and looked at Lonnie. Her eyes weren’t visible behind the sunglasses. Lonnie shrugged.
“You think?” Ingrid asked.
Lonnie shrugged again.
“What?” I asked, intrigued by this silent passing of information.
Ingrid’s chest rose and fell with a sigh that I couldn’t hear over the wind.
“It’s my fault,” she said.
“What?” I leaned in close so I could hear better.
“I’m the one who told Michael about The Harbor,” Ingrid confessed. “I’m the one who told her the Ojibwa were buying the civic center across the highway.”
“You?”
Ingrid nodded.
“How did you find out?”
“I told her,” Lonnie said.
“Are you privy to the tribe’s business dealings?” I asked him.
“Carroll Stonetree is my uncle,” he told me.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“My mother’s brother.”
“He told you that the Ojibwa are building a new casino?”
“Not exactly,” Lonnie answered.
“We kept that part from Michael,” Ingrid added.
“What part?”
Ingrid’s chest rose and fell again. “Michael was talking about how she wanted to become an important part of the community,” Ingrid explained. “But the way she said it, it reminded me of King. She didn’t want to become a part so much as she wanted to own a part, to run a part. And it annoyed me. I realize now that I was just being petty. I see myself as a big fish in a small pond, and I didn’t want any other big fish coming around.
“So one night we were talking and I mentioned that The Harbor would make a good investment, the kind of community investment she was looking for. I told her the Ojibwa were negotiating in secret with the Board of County. Commissioners to buy the civic center across the highway and turn it into a casino. I told her I would buy The Harbor in a heartbeat myself, only I didn’t have the money. So she bought it.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.
“The Ojibwa are not going to build a new casino,” Lonnie told me. “The tribe has no intentions of expanding its gaming operations.”
“Why then—”
“The tribe is starting a company to build recreational boats,” Lonnie explained. “The civic center would make an ideal factory for it.”
“And you knew that?” I asked Ingrid.
“Lonnie told me,” she said.
“But why keep it a secret?” I wanted to know.
“Because the company will be in direct competition to King Boats, Koehn’s bread-and-butter company,” Lonnie said. “The tribe wanted to secure the civic center location before King had a chance to use his political ties to squash the deal. And the county commissioners wanted to keep it a secret because they knew if King did scuttle the deal, they’d be stuck with the civic center for all time.”
In his own obfuscated way, Chief Stonetree had told me all this the night before—but I was being too obfuscated myself to see it.
“The entire county is up in arms thinking you’re building a casino,” I reminded Lonnie.
“Think how happy the people will be when they discover that we’re not,” he said, smiling. “When people discover that we’re actually bringing honest manufacturing jobs to the region, I expect we’ll become quite popular.”
“With everyone except King Koehn,” I suggested.
“I doubt he’ll appreciate the competition,” Lonnie agreed.
“That’s why you’ve been content to allow all this casino nonsense to go on,” I figured out loud. “To keep King in the dark as long as possible.”
Lonnie nodded.
“Shrewd,” I told him.
“That’s what they’d call it if a white company made it happen. I’m real curious to hear what adjective they’ll apply to us.”
So was I.
“Then Charlie Otterness was telling the truth,” I said. “He didn’t pass insider information.”
“No,” Ingrid agreed. She added, “I feel really, really guilty about that. But everyone will know he told the truth when the Board of County Commissioners meets in formal session and the Ojibwa make their bid.”
“And Michael?”
“If she works at it, I bet she could make The Harbor go,” Ingrid predicted. “With a boat factory across the way, she’ll have a good lunch crowd if nothing else. Probably a good happy hour, too.”
“But she won’t have the business a casino would bring in,” I noted.
“I won’t, either,” Ingrid said in her defense.
I leaned back in my seat and watched the back of Ingrid’s head as she guided the Sebring into Saginau. Suddenly I didn’t like her as much as I had before. Or Lonnie. Or the chief. Suddenly I didn’t like anybody because of what they had done to Alison.
They had stolen her dream.
At least that’s how I saw it.
“Drop me at the county court building,” I instructed Ingrid. And she did.
We were all surprised when we pulled into the parking lot. It was filled with deputies donning Kevlar vests and checking weapons.
Ingrid and Lonnie were curious but not enough to ask questions. They drove off, leaving me standing next to my car. I was curious and not shy about it.
“What’s going on?” I asked no one in particular. Gary Loushine heard me and answered as Sheriff Bobby Orman stood behind him and listened to every word.
“We searched Chip Thilgen’s house,” the deputy told me. “We found financial records that indicate that Thilgen wrote five checks to James Johannson for five hundred dollars each and a sixth for twenty-five hundred. Each of the five-hundred-dollar checks were written the same day as a reported farm break-in or animal liberation that Thilgen had been accused of but not charged with. The sixth check—the twenty-five-hundred-dollar check—was written the day before Michael Bettich was shot.”
I nodded, pretending I didn’t already know this.
“Jimmy Johannson is well known to us,” Loushine added. “He has a significant record. So we checked his fingerprints against a set of latents we lifted off the Buick, including an index finger we found on one of the shell casings. We examined them on the optical comparator. There’s no mistake.”
“The perpetrator is James Johannson,” Sheriff Orman announced, reminding me of Jack Lord in Hawaii Five-O.
“James Johannson,” Loushine agreed.
They were both smiling.
“So what do you expect from me?” I asked. “Applause?”
twenty-seven
Sheriff Drman was acting like Joe Professional now—perhaps he thought he had something to prove.
“We have an hour of daylight left,” he estimated, glancing at his watch.
“Yes, sir,” said Loushine.
“I want everybody here. Now.”
“They’re here,” Loushine said.
Sheriff Orman nodded.
“This is going to get ugly,” I muttered to myself.
I was impressed by how grim and unsure the deputies appeared as they awaited their instructions—so unlike my former colleagues in the St. Paul Homicide Unit. This was not something they wanted to do, and not wanting to do it put them at risk. Loushine moved among them, grinning, even cracking a joke or two. He managed to illicit a few chuckles, a few smiles that faded fast. But the overall mood didn’t change, and I could see that he was as concerned as I was.
I didn’t know any of these men, these strangers. I didn’t know if they were properly trained for this kind of action. I didn’t know how they would react. I knew only that they were scared. And that was reason enough for me to adjourn to the beer joint down the street. Besides, it wasn’t my job. I was a civilian. I shouldn’t have even been invited to the party. But then the sheriff asked, “You coming, Taylor?” in a voice loud enough to be heard by all of his deputies.