The day after Christmas.
Broker could feel morning light press on his eyelids and smell the fresh brewed coffee. But he kept his eyes shut, squirmed deeper to sniff the covers. Happy armpits.
The aroma of coffee came nearer and he opened his eyes.
Nina, hair pleasantly disheveled, lost in the folds of her old voluminous, burgundy terry cloth robe, sat on the edge of the bed. Holding a cup out to him.
“Actually, you’re not half bad for an old fart,” she yawned.
Broker put the coffee on the night table and swatted at her hard ass, hiding somewhere in the baggy garment. She laughed, danced out of reach and wagged her finger.
He grumbled, “Don’t pick on us old farts who tend the home fires while you’re out there being glamorous.”
“Glamorous. You sleep in this warm bed. Sometimes I sleep in the snow.”
Broker stuck his tongue out, wiggled his wolf eyebrows and mugged a satyr’s grin. “Show me where it hurts and I’ll kiss it.”
“Gawd.”
“Ha,” said Broker. “I made the major blush.”
Nina quickly changed the subject. “I told you to stay in the Stillwater house. Hire a nanny. I told you you’d go crazy up here alone with a baby. Especially after your mom and dad went off to Arizona. But no-you were going to give Kit the Old North Woods Launch.” She mimicked his deep voice and pointed her finger toward the ceiling: “Orion. The wind in the trees. The sound of the lake. Frostbite. Wolves…”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Kit stumped in through the doorway, butt naked.
“That’s an accident waiting to happen,” said Broker with authority.
“Bo Bra,” Kit pronounced proudly.
“What’s that?” Broker asked.
“All-purpose Yugoslavian; means good,” explained Nina.
“Great,” said Broker.
“Correct, Do bra. Now get dressed, and let’s try out that sled.”
They were returning to normal. But their unspoken pact continued, not to let the world intrude on them until tomorrow. They dressed, went outside and loafed. A rested, idle, unplanned day. They pulled Kit along the shore and through the snow-laden trees. Broker rolled his first snowman in thirty years, positioned it on a granite outcropping, complete with a carrot nose and a blaze orange hunting cap.
The young skiers in the cabin on the point came snowshoeing down the shore, picking their way among the ledge rock.
Seeing the snowman, they stopped to introduce themselves.
David something and Denise something, from Chicago.
On their honeymoon; fleeing the law firm where they worked.
Crisp wind suits. Fancy cross-country skiing gloves and caps; slim physiques straight from Outside Magazine. They explained that their office represented the doctor who owned the cabin, so they’d arranged for an extended getaway.
David produced a Polaroid camera from his knapsack and offered to record the snowman. Denise had a serious Nikon on a strap around her neck. David was in every way polite, but Broker disliked his carefully tended narcissism, his artfully askew blond hair, the way he watched Nina, to see if she was watching him. Broker and Nina shrugged, positioned Kit between and posed.
The young Chicagoan snapped pictures and handed them to Broker, who held them in front of Kit, to see if she reacted to the images swimming up from the chemical emulsion.
David asked if they could have a few for themselves. Sure.
This time Denise did the shooting because David was out of film. She moved in close and snapped rapid-fire, moving in a half circle. She continued shooting, taking in the shore and the house, the cabin where they were staying. Then they said good-bye, Merry Christmas, and they slogged off on their snowshoes.
“Yuppies,” said Broker.
“That term is ten years old,” said Nina, putting the snapshots into her pocket. For a few beats, she tracked them carefully as they trudged away down the boulder-strewn beach.
When they came in for lunch, Nina inspected all the frozen baby food in the freezer and read the list of ingredients on every package. Broker split some of the dry oak he’d been saving and built the first fire in the tall fieldstone fireplace.
They made hot chocolate. Got out Hershey bars, graham crackers, marshmallows, and toasted smores in the flames.
Broker dragged the mattress off the master bed, positioned it in front of the fire, and they curled up and fell asleep in a pile like newborn puppies.
Nina, wearing only her dog tags and drops of water, vigorously rubbed her hair with a towel as she stepped from the bathroom. One hand still working the towel, she crossed the living room to the kitchen and stooped, retrieved the spoon Kit had just hurled from her high chair, went to the sink and washed it off with antibacterial soap. Tag team. Broker went into the steamy bathroom, twirled the shower nozzle and took a long shower, shave and shampoo.
Time to get the letters out.
When he emerged, he cleaned Kit’s lunch off the floor, and her face, gave her a fresh tippy cup of milk and carried her to her room. When he returned, Nina had traded her towel for a pair of old Levi’s and the black alligator T-shirt.
She sat at the kitchen table and read through a pile of articles he’d torn from the Duluth paper and saved for her. They sketched Caren’s death, Keith’s arrest, James’s role in turning over the incriminating tape and the cases against Chicago crime figures that proceeded from the tape.
Broker went to his study, removed the letter from his desk, and brought it to the table.
“Okay, homework’s done.” She pushed an envelope down the table. “Here’s mine.”
He took hers, handed over the one in his hand and sat across the table. Nina had poured cups of fresh coffee. The afternoon had turned gray and windy. A fine sleety snow pecked the windows. Superior brooded, humpbacked with black swells.
Broker opened the letter. “The type is the same,” he said.
“I make it Courier, ten point,” Nina said without looking up.
Broker read:
Dear Ms. Pryce, or should I say Dear Ms. John, I just thought you should know. While you’re over there freezing your famous butt in the Balkans your husband is augmenting his baby-sitting duties by living a B movie behind your back. He’s seeing his ex-wife, Caren Angland, and I mean seeing.
Now these kinds of things can go two ways; there’s the Bridges of Madison County theory of adultery, where nobody gets hurt unless they drop a heavy metaphor on their foot, or there’s the Presumed Innocent scenario, where they do.
Phil Broker is currently sweating out the latter story line. As the enclosed press clipping will verify, he got caught with Caren by husband, Keith. Keith flipped out and killed her dead.
Merry Christmas and keep up the good work,
An admirer.
Broker looked up. Nina’s smoldering eyes were waiting for him. Fast reader.
She asked, “Are you and Kit in danger?”
“No,” said Broker.
“Who wrote this garbage?”
Broker pointed to the articles. “I’d say Tom James.”
Nina scanned the articles, looked up. “The reporter?”
“The witness,” said Broker.
“Why? What’s he got against Kit?”
Broker explained the fight in the yard, James and Kit in the workshop, Kit choking on the money, James running.
Then finding another hundred in the Subaru.
He pointed to the articles. “What they don’t say in there is the tape shows Keith getting a two-million-dollar payoff, in a suitcase. In hundreds. And the suitcase has disappeared.”
“So let’s go have a talk with James,” said Nina.
“Can’t, he’s in Witness Protection. He used Caren’s tape for trading material. Interesting, huh,” said Broker. “Caren comes to see me with this tape. And gets killed.” Broker held up his left hand and counted off fingers:
“No one has questioned me. She had a reason for wanting me to see the tape.
“Why did Keith crawl down into that pothole. Why not just point down and shoot Caren.
“When they pulled Keith out, he had inch-deep claw marks raked down his left forearm into his palm. Caren’s flesh was rammed under his fingernails. Her wedding ring was clutched in his fist.”
Nina exhaled. “Trying to save her or pound her in?”
Broker nodded. “Rescue is my interpretation. But he wouldn’t say anything. So why’s he keeping quiet?”
Nina screwed up her lips, lowered her eyes, needing to deal with something concrete. She placed the letters and envelopes side by side. “If these were run off on the same printer…”
“I thought of that; James has been in FBI or U.S. Marshals’
custody since he left the Sawtooth Mountain Clinic. If he wrote the letters, he did it on their equipment. But the new laser printers are pretty slick. They don’t leave signatures like typewriters or dot-matrix printers.”
“A specific machine could have an anomaly that we can’t spot. But maybe a forensic documents expert could.”
Broker nodded. “I’ll give them to Jeff. He can pass them on to the feds. Except the feds are real blind where James is concerned.”
“James is a reporter, reporters have editors,” said Nina.
“Ah,” said Broker.
“So-one of his editors might recognize something in the way these are written, some idiosyncrasy.”
“You’re pretty smart.”
“Nah, just smarter than you,” she said. Then more seriously, “You sure this is a spin-off from Caren, not some baby raper you put in jail, coming back on you?”
“I’m sure. Sixteen years I busted people. This is the first time I’ve got a threatening letter. But there’s only one way to be sure.”
“How’s that?”
“Find James.”
Nina got up, came over and patted his cheek. “Poor cave fish. You don’t find people in Witness Protection. That’s the whole idea.”
“Bullshit. This guy lets babies steal his money. He leaves hundred-dollar bills lying around. This is a guy who makes mistakes.”