“Thank you, Harry,” Cavanaugh said, and the young man left.
Cavanaugh handed Cork a mug, then stirred cream and sugar into his own coffee.
“What do you know about my father, Cork?”
“I’m beginning to think not enough.”
“For starters, he wasn’t exactly the son my grandfather wanted.”
“Why not?”
Cavanaugh sipped his coffee, then said casually, “For one thing, he was homosexual.”
Cork didn’t bother to hide his surprise.
“I’m not telling you any secrets. Most people who knew him in later life were well aware of it. But he hid it well in his early years here. Hell, he probably didn’t even acknowledge it to himself then. The war broke out and he enlisted, and after that he went to college, Yale and then Harvard Law, and by that time his life and what he was willing to accept had changed, I guess. New York City was a reasonable place to be gay in the fifties. But he still needed a good cover for the sake of business and my grandfather. My mother gave him that cover.”
“She knew?”
“Of course.”
“But they had children.”
“To keep the families happy and at bay and to maintain the facade.”
“Did you always know?”
“No. They had separate bedrooms, but I was a kid then, and what did I know? They also had very separate lives, but I don’t suppose that was unusual either. My father was a good man, Cork, and a good father. He loved Lauren and me tremendously.”
“And your mother?”
“Love wasn’t at all what their relationship was about.”
“I meant did she love you.”
“I think we were like expensive vases in the living room, something for people to look at and admire, part of a perfect life. Or the image of a perfect life.”
“But it wasn’t perfect?”
“What I remember wasn’t awful. It was just”-he thought a moment-“a vacancy. Air where a mother should have been. But why all these questions about my parents? That’s ancient history. What about Lauren? Shouldn’t you be asking questions that will solve her murder?”
“Your mother and your sister were killed with the same weapon. That would tend to suggest they were killed by the same person. So, if we could solve the earlier murder we might solve your sister’s murder as well. Theoretically.”
Cork didn’t necessarily believe his own logic, but he hoped it sounded plausible and would keep Cavanaugh answering the questions that concerned him most at the moment.
“Do you have any family memorabilia from that period?” Cork asked. “Photographs, letters, journals?”
“What good would that do?”
“I won’t know until I’ve had a chance to see the things,” Cork replied.
“No,” Cavanaugh said firmly. “Nothing.”
“What about from the time before your folks moved here?”
“Not then either.”
“After?”
Cavanaugh said, “I have some things in storage at home. I suppose I can look and see what’s there.”
“So these would be items your father kept after your mother disappeared?”
“That’s right.”
“He kept nothing from before that, from his time in Aurora and all the earlier places?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Wedding photos?”
“I told you, nothing.”
“Even though it wasn’t a marriage in the usual sense, Max, doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
Cavanaugh considered Cork’s question and appeared to be surprised. “You know, I never thought about it. Or if I did, I suppose I just figured that it was all too painful and he simply wanted to forget.”
“So he never talked about her and you never asked?”
Cavanaugh folded his arms on his desk and leaned toward Cork. “My father was in the war, World War Two. Whenever I asked him if he’d killed any Germans, he would always reply, ‘I shot at a lot of them.’ It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it. Whenever I asked him about my mother, he’d say, ‘Why try to remember what’s best forgotten?’ In its way, it was, I suppose, the same response.” Cavanaugh sat back and said with a sigh, “I’ll look through the things I have and see what I can come up with, all right?”
“I’d appreciate it, thanks.” Cork put his mug down. He realized he hadn’t taken a single sip. “Max, your sister’s death has opened a lot of wounds. I’m sorry that it seems like all I do is pour in salt.”
Cavanaugh turned away, swiveling in his chair, and stared out the window toward the great wound that bled iron. He was quiet a long time, and Cork realized it was because he simply couldn’t speak. The weight of Cavanaugh’s sadness was undeniable, as if every breath the man exhaled filled the room with suffocating grief.
“You want to know the truth, Cork?” His voice broke as he spoke. “I feel as empty as that hole out there. I didn’t know anything could hurt so much.”
“I understand, Max. My own experience has been that, as cliche as it sounds, time will help you heal.”
Cavanaugh swung back to him. “First I need to know who killed her. Then I can start healing.”
Millie Joseph sat in her wheelchair on the porch of the Nokomis Home with a lap blanket spread across her knees. From there, she could see much of Allouette, the town where she’d lived all of her eighty years, and beyond Allouette the wide, cool blue of Iron Lake, sparkling under the noonday sun. The air was full of the scent of late-blooming lilac, and Millie Joseph looked perfectly content and seemed absolutely delighted to see him.
“It’s been a long time, Corkie.” Like Hattie Stillday, she called him by the nickname all his mother’s friends had used.
Only two days, Cork thought, but it was obvious that his last visit wasn’t there at all in the perfectly clear sky of her memory.
“Millie, I’d like to ask you some questions about my mother’s journals and about the people on the reservation many years ago.”
“When I was a child, the government didn’t want us to speak our own language here. Did you know that, Corkie? But your grandmother said hogwash. And she taught Ojibwemowin to the children in her school. Your grandmother was a strong woman.”
“Yes. And a woman much loved.” Cork leaned against the porch rail. “Someone cut out pages from my mother’s journals, Millie. Do you know who?”
“Oh, Corkie, I know I should have looked at everything she gave me, but I never had the time. If something’s missing, well, I suppose it was your mother’s doing. Everybody’s got things in their past they don’t want folks to know, don’t you suppose?”
“I suppose,” Cork agreed. “Millie, was there someone on the reservation when you were a young woman who was not so well loved? Someone you were warned against?”
“Mr. Windigo,” she said darkly and without hesitation. “Oh, I used to be scared of him. We were always warned about Mr. Windigo.”
She was speaking, Cork assumed, of the creature out of Ojibwe myth. In the stories the Ojibwe told, the Windigo was a cannibal giant with a heart of ice. It had once been a man but had become a monster that loved to feast on the flesh of the unwary-children especially. It was often used in much the same way white people employed the bogeyman, to frighten children into obedience.
“Was there a man or a woman that people on the rez stayed away from?”
“We didn’t like everyone, but we were all Shinnobs and neighbors and got along. Some people were afraid of Henry Meloux. They called him a witch. The government doctors tried to tell us that. Henry a witch,” she said with a dismissive laugh.
Meloux. He knew he should be talking with Henry, but his old friend had made it clear that Cork was on his own.
“And Mr. Windigo, of course,” the old woman added. “There were all kind of stories about Mr. Windigo snatching kids.”
“When Fawn disappeared, did my mother or my aunt talk to you?”
“Your mother always talked to me.”
“Did she talk about Fawn?”
“Of course.” Millie Joseph smoothed her lap blanket. “And she talked about Mr. Windigo.”