“Mudjimushkeeki,” Cork said. “An Ojibwe word. It means ‘bad medicine.’”
“It’s certainly been bad medicine for my family.”
“So if you hate this place, why are you here?”
“You asked me for information about my parents during the time my mother was alive. I thought maybe Lauren might have something. She always had a fascination where our mother was concerned.”
“She was pretty young when your mother died.”
“Too young to remember her at all. Maybe the reason for the wonderment.”
“Have you found anything?”
“No.”
Cork nodded toward the folder opened on the desk. “Those look like financial documents. Anything to do with your mother?”
Cavanaugh closed the folder. Cork saw that on the outside someone had doodled a figure that looked like a dog or a wolf. “They deal with the center. As long as I was here, I thought I’d check on the financial mess Lauren left behind.”
“They’re holding Hattie Stillday for her murder. You’ve heard?”
“Yeah. I got a call. I was always afraid that Lauren’s shenanigans would get her into real trouble someday. I just never figured they would get her killed.”
“You think Hattie’s guilty?”
“I don’t know Ms. Stillday well enough to say one way or the other. But the sheriff told me there’s a lot of evidence pointing her way. And, hell, she confessed.”
“Yeah,” Cork admitted. “There’s that.”
Cavanaugh stood up, took the folder to one of the file cabinets, and slipped it into a drawer. When he turned back, he looked drained. “I’ve got to get out of here. This place is killing me.”
“I understand.”
Cork walked him to the front door, where Cavanaugh said, “You coming?”
“No, I’m here for the art show. Think I’ll stroll around some more. Take care of yourself, Max.”
Cavanaugh looked at him with eyes still sunk deeply in sadness. “You told me the other day, Cork, that time would heal. How much time does it take?”
Cork put his hand on Cavanaugh’s shoulder. “More,” he said.
After Cavanaugh had gone, Cork returned to Ophelia’s office and pulled open the file drawer in which Max had put the folder. He thumbed through until he found the one with the canine doodle on the front. The folder was marked “Stillday, H.”
Cork opened it and found several invoices for artwork. A yellow Post-it was affixed to the first invoice. On it was a handwritten note: Pay this, you stinking whore!
Hattie’s writing? Cork wondered.
He put the folder back in the drawer, left the office, and headed down the hallway toward the north wing, which had been Lauren Cavanaugh’s private residence. The door to the wing was unlocked. He retraced the steps he’d taken only a few days earlier, when he’d first been hired to find Max Cavanaugh’s sister: through the study, the parlor, the dining room, the bedroom. As he went, he noted again the artworks that hung on every wall. Some were paintings, oil and watercolor and other media he couldn’t even guess at. Many were photographs, a lot of them by Hattie Stillday but a few by Ophelia as well. The approaches of both women were similar, though Hattie clearly had the more seasoned eye. Her nature photographs didn’t just frame a scene, they evoked atmosphere and mood and texture. They suggested story. He wondered which of the photographs were those Lauren Cavanaugh had purchased but never paid for, photographs important enough that Hattie claimed she had killed for them.
He sat on Lauren Cavanaugh’s bed, wondering if this was where she’d had her romps with Derek Huff, or had she used the bed in the boathouse for that? He opened the drawers of her dresser again and went through her vanity. He checked her closets. He returned to the study and rifled the drawers of the desk. He came up empty-handed, even though he hadn’t really known what he was looking for. He sat in an easy chair in the parlor and stared at the east wall, which was hung with an arranged display of photographs of the North Country. Three of the photos together formed a long panoramic view of a dramatic shoreline. They’d been shot in black and white, an odd choice, Cork thought, when the subject in reality was so vivid in its color-Iron Lake, which would have been hard blue against the powder blue of the sky, the face of a rock cliff, probably the gray of wolf fur, topped with aspens whose trunks were ivory and whose leaves would have been pale jade. He’d never understand art or artists, he decided, and got up and started away.
He’d reached the French doors and was about to step outside when it hit him. He turned and hurried back to the parlor and stood in front of the three photographs. The reason he’d been able to visualize the colors of the scene so well, he realized, was because he knew the place. A place of bimaadiziwin. It was where Cork’s revolver had been hidden but was no more.
Although he could already tell who’d taken the photos, he leaned close and read the artist’s tag to be absolutely certain.
Ophelia Stillday.
THIRTY-FIVE
He asked at the refreshment table if anyone knew where Ophelia Stillday was. They pointed him toward the dock behind the boathouse, and he found her there, sitting by herself on a bench with her cane at her side. She stared out at Iron Lake, where a few sailboats clipped across the water, the triangles of their canvases like white knives cutting the air. She didn’t hear him coming.
“Ophelia?”
Though he spoke gently, she looked at him with surprise and, he sensed, a little bit of fear.
“Okay if I join you?”
She didn’t invite him immediately. She had to think it over.
“I guess,” she finally said.
He sat next to her on the bench.
“You look worried,” he said.
“About Grandma Hattie,” she replied and returned to watching the sailboats.
“You know what I think about Hattie, Ophelia? I think she didn’t do what she says she did.”
Ophelia stared hard at the sailboats.
“I think she’s covering for someone else. It must be someone she loves a lot, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said without heart.
“I think you would. Ophelia, tell me about shooting Lauren Cavanaugh.”
When she finally looked at him, it was with something like relief. “How did you know?”
“Because I know where you got the gun. It’s a place on the rez, a place of bimaadiziwin, of healing. How did you learn about it?”
“Grandma Hattie,” Ophelia said. “She’s shown me a lot of places sacred to our people. She never photographs them herself, but she said if I thought I could do them justice and be respectful that it would be all right.”
“You went into the cave?”
“Yes. That wasn’t part of what Grandma Hattie had in mind, I know, but I wanted to understand the full importance of the place, of bimaadiziwin.”
“You took the gun?”
“Not then, but I knew it was there. When I finally understood Lauren, the real evil in her, I went back. But I only wanted to threaten her with the gun, not kill her.”
“When you took it, the gun wasn’t loaded, Ophelia.”
“I bought cartridges. I went to a store in Eveleth so no one would recognize me.”
“Most people when threatened with a firearm wouldn’t know whether it’s loaded. The firearm itself is usually enough to scare them. Putting bullets in, Ophelia, that makes me wonder.”
She looked back at the sailboats, then up where an egret flew above them, white and elegant. “I don’t know. Maybe I did want her dead. She was an awful person.”
“Tell me about her.”
She sighed deeply. “She wasn’t anything like she made people believe. I mean she was smart and charming and all that, but it was all surface. Below that everything about her was dark. She lied. She connived. She manipulated. She had no sense of decency. But unless you were around her all the time, like I was, you wouldn’t know because she was so good at keeping it hidden.”