“Doesn’t explain why she quit calling me,” Gretchen said. She turned away, and I was afraid she might start to cry. I hate it when women cry. There’s never anything I can think to do about it except watch. Only she didn’t cry. Instead she asked, “Is there anything else?” obviously anxious to end the conversation.

“Stephen Emerton claims Alison was having an affair with someone while she was working for the health-care company, possibly a doctor.”

“Stephen is a jerk,” Gretchen insisted.

“That’s already been firmly established,” I replied. “But is he also a liar?”

Gretchen breathed wearily. “The woman in me says Stephen is full of it. Alison would not have had an affair; she just wasn’t like that.”

“That’s what Marie Audette said,” I offered hopefully.

Gretchen nodded, then added, “The cop in me says it’s a possibility, although Alison certainly never mentioned a doctor to me.”

We had just finished our meal when the commotion started. A woman dressed in a wide flaring skirt and tight cotton sweater that was far too young for her was wobbling along the bar, a martini in her hand. She looked like the kind of woman who only drank with men. And there were plenty about, most of them competing to see who would be first to refill her glass or drag a chair over to her, all of them ogling her with a thirst that was both comical and frightening. One of the men pushed a second, who pushed a third, who pushed the first, and so on, while the woman laughed gleefully.

“Stay here,” Gretchen commanded firmly in case I was contemplating a reprise of my performance at The Last Chance.

The deputy moved to the center of the group. Two men left immediately, leaving three and the woman. I couldn’t hear what Gretchen said, but her words were effective. The woman responded with a high-pitched laugh, but the men all grabbed some bench except for the largest of the three. He grabbed Gretchen by the wrist. She did not pull away. She merely looked at his hand, then at him, and spoke a few, slow words. The man hung in there with as much tenacity as a professional ballplayer in the first year of a guaranteed multimillion dollar contract, which is to say he backed off quickly, sitting with the others, pulling the woman down into a chair next to him. After a few more words, Gretchen returned to our table. The four people watched her, huddled close together, and then left the restaurant.

“Are you married?” Gretchen asked me as she regained her chair.

“No,” I said, without going into details.

“She is.”

“Who is she?”

“Eleanor Koehn. She’s a slush.”

“A slush?”

“A lush who drinks and then becomes a slut.”

“I take it her husband was not among Eleanor’s admirers.”

“Her husband is King Koehn. He owns King Boats.”

“King Koehn?”

“That’s what he calls himself, what he insists his employees call him. About half the people in Deer Lake work for him one way or another.”

“And he doesn’t have time for a wife,” I guessed.

“Sure, he does. Just not his own.”

“Compliments of the management,” Ingrid announced, interrupting us with a bottle of Beringer white zinfandel and two wine glasses.

“This isn’t necessary,” Gretchen told her.

“Are you on duty?” Ingrid asked.

“No.”

“Compliments of the management,” she repeated, pouring a generous amount of the liquid into each glass. We both thanked her.

“You did that well,” I told Gretchen after our hostess left.

“Breaking up the brawl?”

“No. Scamming the freebie,” I said, and Gretchen laughed.

“Don’t tell Bobby Orman,” she said. “He’s the sheriff. He takes a real dim view of deputies accepting gratuities.”

“You did handle yourself well, though,” I told her again. “Both here and at The Last Chance. You’re a good cop.”

“I don’t know. I might be catching on. Finally. When I first started, I was in everyone’s face. Always mouthing off, always threatening people until physical force became a necessity. I was the best baton twirler in Kreel County, you know?”

I nodded.

“I guess I was trying to overcompensate for being a woman, trying to prove I was just as tough as the male deputies. There was a lot of hostility and suspicion when I first started; the guys stood back to see if I could handle myself. Some of them didn’t want to work with me. Others, when I called for backup, they’d take their own sweet time responding, stopping along the way to bag a speeder, stuff like that. So I was always asserting my authority, I was always playing it hard. And I never understood why no one complained. Oh, they’d scream a blue streak about some of the things I said but nothing when I beat them up.

“Then one day I started thinking, This is silly. It’s silly for a deputy—man or woman—to start duking it out with some guy in a bar. What does it prove? That you’re stupid, that’s what it proves. I guess I’ve mellowed. I don’t get in their faces anymore. I don’t try to belittle them. Or challenge their manhood. I talk softly but firmly and directly, and people respond. They call me ma’am. They kiss my hand and they say, ‘Can I tell you my side of the story first, ma’am?’ Most people who give cops BS do it for effect, they do it for the crowd. But look at me: five foot six, one hundred twenty-five pounds. People who give me BS look stupid, and no one wants to look stupid in front of their friends. They’d rather go to jail. Besides, I bust someone, he figures he’ll get treated right. He knows he won’t have an accident on the stairs; you know, trip and bump his head eight or nine times.”

“You’re a peace officer,” I volunteered.

“That’s it exactly. A peace officer. I like the sound of that.”

We finished the wine and listened to Lonnie Cavander’s first set, and when it seemed the right time, I squeezed Gretchen’s soft, warm hand and told her it had been a pleasure meeting her. She told me she had enjoyed herself, too, and I should call her the next time I was in Deer Lake. Neither of us spoke of Alison again.

eleven

The Donnerbauers lived in a house in an old-fashioned St. Paul neighborhood that harkened back to the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald and bootleg booze. But the house itself wasn’t old-fashioned, merely old, with a spotty lawn and crumbling sidewalk. Mrs. Donnerbauer greeted me at the door, waving frantically. “Come in, come in,” she urged, as if she were afraid the neighbors might see me.

I had called the Donnerbauers from a pay phone before leaving Deer Lake and asked if I could visit. They agreed. But it was well after ten when I arrived, and no visible lights burned in the house as I stood on the porch and stared at the front door, deciding whether I should knock or not. I figured they must have gone to bed until Mrs. Donnerbauer opened the door just as I was about to leave.

I stepped across the threshold into virtual darkness. An ancient floor lamp burned in the far corner of the living room, but the dim light it cast was supressed by a burnt-orange lampshade and didn’t reach the door. The only other light in the room came from a seventeen-inch television mounted on a metal TV tray, also in the far corner; its flickering shadows gave the plastic-covered furniture an eerie sense of movement. A man that I assumed was Alison’s father sat under the floor lamp in a chair facing the TV screen, his bifocals balanced on his nose. He was either watching the Entertainment channel or reading the People magazine that was opened across his knee. Mrs. Donnerbauer introduced me, saying, “The detective person is here.” Mr. Donnerbauer didn’t reply. Maybe, in fact, he was sleeping.

Alison’s mother led me to the kitchen in the back of the house, where a single bare lightbulb burned overhead. She offered me a chair after first removing a large cardboard box from the seat. The box was at least fifteen inches square and filled with the small rubber bands that the delivery kids wrap around your newspaper. She set the box on the counter next to an impressive stack of wrinkled aluminum foil. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked. When I said I did, she filled a tall juice glass and handed it to me.