Blood Is the Sky: An Alex McKnight Mystery by Steve Hamilton Page B

Vinnie, then at me, then back at Vinnie. “Who are you?”
    “My name is Vinnie LeBlanc. I’m a Bay Mills Ojibwa, from Michigan. This is my friend Alex.”
    “Guy lives in his mother’s house,” she said. “Go south, take the first right. It’s the last house on the left.”
    “Thank you,” Vinnie said. “I appreciate it.”
    “Is Guy in trouble?”
    “No,” he said. “But my brother is. I’m hoping he can help me.”
    She nodded her head slowly. “Tell Mrs. Berard that Maureen sent you.”
    “Thank you, Maureen.”
    I added my own thanks, and we left. We went back down the road, past the school, and took the right turn. The road ended abruptly. Beyond the road there was a field of rocks and weeds, with a path leading down to Constance Lake. The water stretched out at least a mile, with low hills in the distance.
    There were no other cars in front of the house. It was a small wooden affair the same size as its neighbors, and it had been bright yellow a few seasons ago. Now it needed paint.
    Vinnie knocked on the door. We waited. A cold wind picked up and hit us like it was trying to blow us off the little porch. Vinnie knocked again. The door opened a
couple of inches and stopped. The top of the door swung back and forth, until finally, with a horrible sound of wood scraping against wood, it flew open the rest of the way. The woman behind the door was practically knocked to the ground.
    “Je regrette,” she said, and then I caught something about “la porte,” which I knew was the door. The rest I didn’t get.
    “We’re sorry to bother you,” Vinnie said. “Is Guy at home?”
    She looked at Vinnie. Her hair was long and dark, like the woman at the tribal center, but it was untied and cascaded over her shoulders. She looked a little too young to be Guy’s mother.
    “He’s not here,” she said. “Who are you?”
    “My name is Vinnie,” he said. “I’m from the Bay Mills Reservation in Michigan. This is my friend Alex.”
    She looked over at me without smiling.
    “Maureen sent us,” I said.
    “Bay Mills?” she said, looking back at Vinnie.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Please come in,” she said. She stepped back to let us into the house. There was a small living room, with barely enough room for a couch and a chair. The carpeting needed replacing even more than the outside needed the paint. The curtains were closed, and a television cast a pale blue glow over the room.
    “Can I get you something?” she said.
    “No, thank you,” Vinnie said.
    “Then please sit down.”
    She turned off the television and sat down on the chair. Vinnie and I sat on the couch.
    “Your son,” Vinnie said. He apparently had no trouble believing this was his mother. “He works at the lodge on Lake Peetwaniquot.”
    “Sometimes,” she said. “When they need a guide.”
    “Do you know when he’s going to be home?”
    “No,” she said.
    “Excuse me for asking,” I said. “How old is Guy?”
    She looked me in the eye for an instant, and then looked down. I remembered something Vinnie had told me, about how some Indians consider looking you right in the eye to be rude.
    “He’s nineteen,” she said.
    “Do you happen to know if he was out at the lodge yesterday?” I said.
    “He was gone yesterday,” she said. “But I really don’t know.”
    That was something else Vinnie had told me—this business of not interfering in other people’s lives, even your own son’s. It always seemed a little contradictory to me, how the Indian culture was so centered on family, and yet they believed that you chose your own path in this life, and that nobody should try to change it.
    Don’t try to understand it, Vinnie had said. That’s just the way it is.
    “Can we leave a message for him?” Vinnie said. “A number he can call when he comes home?”
    “You can do that,” she said.
    I had a pen in my coat pocket. I took it out and gave it to him, along with the receipt from the gas station. He wrote my cell