Murder on the Lake, page 13
"Zoom in," Jesús said. Andrew turned the computer back around to do so, then turned it to face us again.
"Is that every ship out on the lake right now?" I asked.
"Not every ship," he conceded.
"It looks like every cargo ship," Jesús said, indicating the various points that pretty much defined the line of the transport lane that led out of Duluth.
"And fishing vessels, here," I said, pointing closer to the north shore.
"Just commercial boats, then?" Tlalli asked.
"No, there are others as well," Andrew said. "See this one here, just south of Isle Royale?"
"It says personal craft," I said. "Is someone identifying that from orbital satellite data, then?"
"For that vessel, yes," Andrew said. "But any vessel can send their information if they want their ship name and port of origin or whatever to appear."
"If Adam is out on the water in his family's yacht, then he's fleeing a crime," Tlalli said.
"We don't know that for a fact," Andrew said.
"We kind of do," she shot back.
"If he's hiding, then he's not sending the extra information, right?" I guessed. "We'd have to go through every icon on this map and look at everything that might be a yacht and find one with no name listed."
"How?" Jesús asked. "It's not like we can zoom in and get live satellite footage or anything. Wait, can we?" he asked Andrew. Andrew shook his head.
"So how does this help us?" Roarr asked.
"We know Adam isn't here," I said. "We know he took his yacht out and hasn't come back. But is he hiding or fleeing?"
"Fleeing?" Roarr asked with a frown.
"To Canada," Tlalli said. "Can he do that?"
"Right now? When he's not even a suspect? Why would anyone stop him?" I said.
"Do any of those boats look like they're going to Canada?" Jesús asked.
"It's hard to say," Andrew said. "We have to figure out which icons represent ships that could be his. Then we'd have to watch what they do over time."
"We're going to be standing here how long?" Loke asked, hands buried deep in his pockets. As usual, he had no hat or gloves.
"Not here," Andrew said. "I'll keep the phone set up as a hot spot and someone can ride in the backseat to keep an eye on the computer. But I think in the meantime we should drive back to Runde."
"To Runde?" Tlalli repeated.
"We need to get a boat," he said. "We need to be out on the water to find this guy. I don't know if any of us can afford to rent a boat from here, or if that's even an option in November. I'm pretty sure none of us have boating experience." We all shook our heads, even Roarr. "Well, I know people in Runde who have the skills and will be eager to help. So we should head that way now."
"Especially if he's trying to flee," Tlalli said. "It's a long drive and we're losing time even while we're standing here."
I took a step away from the others to look out over the lake. The clouds were the same. The water was the same, not calm but nothing like dangerous. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was coming.
"Ingrid?" Tlalli called.
"I agree," I said, turning away from the lake. "Time is short. We should get you two back to your apartment and then head north with all speed."
"You know what's even faster? Just taking us with you," she said. Jesús nodded firmly.
"It's a long drive," I said. "And despite what Andrew's phone app says, I'm worried about the weather. If there's a storm, you could get stuck up north with us for who knows how long."
"We'll be fine," she said. "We're with you until the end on this."
"At this point, not meeting this guy at least once isn't really an option," Jesús said.
"But work and school?" I said.
"Can wait," he said. "Hey, do you know what would be more efficient? Continuing this argument in the car. On the way north to Runde."
"Fine, no argument," I said, raising my hands in surrender. "Let's get on the road."
"I'll man the computer," Tlalli said, taking the laptop from Andrew so he could move to the driver's seat of his car.
"See you when we get there," I said. He caught my hand and gave it a squeeze. Then he got into his car and I got into mine.
"So, Jesús," Loke said as I started pulling out of the parking spot to get back onto the highway. "Tell me the story of your life."
Chapter 17
It quickly became embarrassing, how little I knew about Jesús.
I mean, I knew he was funny. He could do things with his face that didn't seem humanly possible and was a spot-on mimic.
I knew he was a hard worker, but an easy-going coworker. He could be the only cook working a shift that really needed three cooks and never fall behind or even seem stressed. And that calmness was contagious. Like he could just make everyone's stress evaporate the same as his own.
I knew he liked to read comic books, whether superhero or horror or graphic tellings of literary classics. He always had a stack in his backpack, in English and Spanish both, ready for any opportunity to dive in for even just a few minutes.
But, as it turned out, there was so much I didn't know.
"So wait," I said, interrupting for what felt like the hundredth time. "When you took a month off every summer to visit your grandmother, you were going to Mexico City? And it wasn't just your grandma, it was your mother too? Because she lived there, not with you?"
"Where did you think I went?" Jesús asked, more amused than offended by the gaps in my knowledge.
"I don't know, Texas?" I said. "You don't have an accent."
"I did before I met you," he said. "Kids are mean. Anybody with an accent in elementary school learns how to sound local as quick as they can, trust me. And sounding like a Texan up here would've been just as bad as sounding Mexican."
"Ingrid is learning a lot about being the new kid these days," Loke said.
"Me too, again. Duluth isn't the same as St. Paul. But how's it going with you?" Jesús asked.
"I'm still working on the accent," I said, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Loke covering a smile with his hand. Technically, it was an accent in a whole other language, but it was still true. "But wait, are your parents still married then? Because you only ever talked about your dad, so I assumed they were divorced."
"Ah," Jesús said, as if collecting his thoughts. "My mother passed about seven years ago. So before I met you. But it was still raw, so I didn't talk about her."
"So you really were visiting your grandma," I said.
"Ah," he drawled again, rubbing at his chin as if checking the closeness of his shave.
"You don't have to tell me things if they make you uncomfortable," I said. My own mother had died months before, after a nearly lifelong illness, but still. I missed her daily.
After seven years his grief might not be as raw, but it would still be there. Or so I told myself, because the real impression I had was that he was trying to very carefully word his answers around a secret without revealing there even was a secret. Like I did when I talked around the matter of Villmark. And yet, why would he do that?
"No, it's okay," he said. "My father brought Tlalli and I here when I was in the third grade and she was still a preschooler, because he got his engineering job at one of the big agricultural firms here. But my mother stayed behind in Mexico City."
"Why?" Loke asked.
"She had reasons," Jesús said vaguely.
"Are those reasons anything to do with why your sister's name is Tlalli now and not María?" Loke asked.
I shot him a questioning look, and he gave me a little shake of his head, warning me not to interrupt. But before Jesús could answer, my cellphone rang.
"Ingrid's phone," Loke said after picking it up out of the cupholder and turning on the speakerphone. "We're all here, though. What's up?"
"Hello, Loke," Roarr said with careful politeness. "There has been a change in the map on the computer."
"What kind of change?" I asked, leaning slightly towards the middle of the car to be sure my voice was picked up on the mic. We could hear the murmur of Tlalli's voice explaining something in the other car, but she was too far away to make out the words.
"Do you remember the ship we saw that appeared to be anchored south of Isle Royale?" he asked.
"Sure. The unnamed one?" I asked.
"Exactly," Roarr said. "It is no longer stationary. It is going north, towards..." He broke off and Tlalli spoke again. Then he repeated her words, "Thunder Bay." Then added under his breath, "good name."
"Thunder Bay," I said. "Canada."
"Yes, that's correct," Roarr said. Now it was Andrew's voice we could hear speaking unclearly in the background. It seemed that Roarr did not have us on speakerphone. "Andrew says he believes this may be due to the weather. If so, if this ship is trying to reach a safer harbor, they may start pinging their information to the... map people," he trailed off uncertainly. The word "pinging" had been a touch too foreign for him as well.
"The weather?" Jesús said, moving to the right-hand side of the backseat to look out at the gray sky over the lake. "I guess that might be rain out there."
"Rain and waves," Loke said, also pressing his forehead to the glass of his window. Then he turned to me. "Is this what you were feeling, do you think?"
"I don't know," I said. I could still feel the pressure against my ears. It waxed and waned without ever quite going away.
Or getting intensely worse, as it had before. I didn't want to think what would happen if I had another attack like that while driving.
"Roarr, there's nothing we can do until we get back home," I said towards the phone. "I don't think it's even safe to try to get there faster."
"Andrew says absolutely not," Roarr said.
"Of course he does," I said under my breath. Then, more loudly, "we're going to let you go, but call again if anything changes. Especially if that name pops up. Be sure Tlalli is watching the whole map. It's always possible that isn't the boat we're looking for."
There was the muffled sound of people speaking away from the microphone, and then Roarr was back. "She is doing so already. Andrew wants to know if you have any other instructions?"
"No," I said. "But I'm going to have Luke make some calls from here."
"Okay," Roarr said. "Andrew says to drive safely."
"Always do," I said, then Loke hung up the phone.
"That guy is a riot," Jesús said with fondness. "Is he for real?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"He sounds so formal when he says certain things," he said. Then, in an eerily accurate mimic of Roarr's voice, he said, "Thunder Bay, Canada. Good name."
Loke laughed out loud.
"That's just an accent thing," I said. "Small northern town, you know?"
"If you say so. But it's like I could picture him holding a cellphone like he's never seen one before in his life," Jesús said. "And the way he was looking at Andrew's laptop in the parking lot. Like it was an inexplicable marvel of some alien technology."
"It's a small town," I said. "A very, very small town."
"I've been to some small towns in my day," Jesús said amiably. "They all had Mexican restaurants."
"Well, you'll see what I mean in about half an hour," I said. Although with the darkening skies, I was starting to worry we'd be delayed.
"I'm making calls?" Loke said to me.
"Yes, please," I said. "Call Jessica and Michelle. They are in my contacts. Tell them we need anyone with a boat who can take us out on the lake as soon as we get there. And then have them go to the meeting hall."
"To meet us, presumably?" Loke said as he scrolled through the few contacts on my phone.
"Hopefully with a boat person, yes," I said. There was a sudden burst of wind blowing in from the lake, strong enough to start to nudge the car over into the lane of oncoming traffic, but I didn't let it. The next blast of wind brought the rain with it, and I switched on my headlights and turned the wipers on at their highest setting. "And have them tell my grandmother everything they know. Save me some time when I get there."
"I'll have to fill them in first," Loke said as he pressed the call button then brought the phone up to his ear.
"I know," I said. "I just hope they can find someone who will take us out in this."
"If he gets to Canada, does it really matter?" Jesús asked. "If he's charged here, he'll be extradited. I don't care who his daddy is."
"Unless he opts to keep moving, to some country where he can disappear. Some country without extradition treaties with us," I said.
"Those aren't great places, for the most part," Jesús said.
"Jessica didn't answer," Loke told me as he scrolled through my contacts again. "I'm going to try Michelle."
"Okay," I said. "Failing that, do you have anyone else you can call?"
"In Runde?" he asked me.
I bit my lip, fighting the urge to lean forward over the steering wheel as if that would make the car go any faster. Or make the road ahead clearer.
Which was more obscured to me, the road in front of the car being lashed with sheets of rain? Or the metaphorical road ahead of me? The one that I couldn't even tell if I was meant to walk alone or with my friends?
And how many friends? Loke always felt like he belonged by my side, because he also belonged to both worlds. But what about Andrew? Roarr? Jessica and Michelle? Jesús and Tlalli?
They were all eager to help, but accepting that help meant putting them at risk. Worse, they were taking risks I couldn't possibly define for them. They wouldn't know until it was too late just what they had signed up for.
"Ingrid?" Loke said, calling my mind back to the inside of the car.
"In Runde," I said, settling back into my car seat, although my body refused to loosen any of the tension.
"Because if you need more help-" Loke started to say.
"We both know I can call for it," I cut him off. "Anytime. I've done it before. I can do it again."
"But you don't want to be a bother," he said with that sly grin back on his face.
"He is hard to explain, isn't he?" I hissed at Loke.
Loke looked confused for a moment, but then gave a little nod. "That he is," he agreed, then whispered, "for a minute there I thought you were dropping all the veils. So to speak."
"I will if I have to," I said.
"Do you feel like you have to?" he asked.
"I don't know," I admitted.
Then he leaned across the center console to whisper even more softly, close to my ear. "Do you feel like that's your call?"
"If I feel like I have to do it, in that moment, it's going to be my call," I said.
Loke sat back and turned his attention back to my phone in his hand. "Interesting to know," he said, then pushed the button to call Michelle.
"I'm guessing you're not going to tell me what you're talking about," Jesús said.
"It's complicated," I said.
"I'm starting to get that impression," he said. "That's okay. I get complicated. I can go with that flow." I was about to thank him when he added, "Tlalli on the other hand?"
"She's going to demand answers?" I guessed, glancing at his reflection in my rearview mirror.
"Probably not," he said with a little shrug. "No, Tlalli has a way of just digging answers up on her own."
"Great," I said drily.
Clearly job one when we reached Runde was to pull my grandmother aside. I so needed a little guidance.
Chapter 18
As I feared, it took nearly twice as long as it should have to reach Runde. The wind grew stronger with each gust, always trying to push my little car over into the next lane, and the rain was so dense the visibility was down to mere feet. I had to slow to a crawl, following a safe distance behind what I recognized as the bumper of Andrew's car. Luckily, almost no one else was out driving in this weather. We pretty much had the road to ourselves.
Finally, we reached the turnoff for Runde. The hairpin turn on the dirt road overlooking the lake shore was scarier than usual, and I took it a lot slower than Andrew did. By the time I reached the bottom of the hill, his tail lights were nowhere to be seen.
I pulled into a spot at the back of the meeting hall parking lot and shut off the car. I hadn't realized how tightly I had been gripping the steering wheel until I tried to let it go.
"So this is Runde," Jesús said, his forehead pressed against the glass. There was absolutely nothing to be seen through the rain. Even the meeting hall on the other end of the parking lot was lost in darkness.
"Yeah, this is home," I said. "Ready to make a run for it?"
"You bet," he said, snugging his cap a little lower on his head before pulling up the hood of his windbreaker.
We all three jumped out of the car at once, slamming the doors and racing over the loose gravel and around the already deep puddles towards the light from the open door of the meeting hall.
"Hello!" my grandmother said as we raced past her. "Shake off the water here on the mat, please. Hang your coats by the space heater there. Then you can join the others for a mug of something hot."
I stomped my feet and shook the rain off my coat before taking it off and hanging it from the back of a chair near the space heater. Jesús carefully did the same.
Loke, for whatever reason, didn't even appear to be wet. I decided against calling any attention to that, and instead crossed the room to where Andrew, Roarr and Tlalli were gathered around another space heater, accepting mugs off a tray that Michelle held out to them. It would be a lot warmer inside the meeting hall once it was the mead hall with its massive fireplace.
"Hot chocolate," Michelle said as she turned the tray until the three mugs that remained on it were facing us. "We've been expecting you for a while now."
"Yeah, the rain," I said, taking one of the mugs. There was a hefty dollop of fresh whipped cream on top, and I could smell cinnamon and nutmeg with just a hint of ginger. But at the moment it just felt good to have something warm in my hands and to feel the steam on my face when I breathed in the aroma. I sat down on one of the chairs and took a sip that was more cream than chocolate.
