Windigo Island by William Kent Krueger Page B

There were enough chairs for the adults. The two boys—Denny and Cal—ate on TV trays in their bedroom and played a video game, this one full of the sounds of car racing, muted just a little because Red Arceneaux had threatened to smash the controllers if they didn’t turn the damn sound down. Tobias wasn’t present. Off somewhere, Louise told them, with his friends. When Cork asked about Puck, Arceneaux said his son had come home from working the fishing boat, cleaned up, and gone to listen to a group playing at the Bad Bluff community center that evening. He didn’t know when Puck would be home.
    Dinner was macaroni and cheese. The real thing, not from a Kraft box. Arceneaux and Louise had worked on it together. There were canned peas to go with it. Bud Light, Diet Pepsi, and water were the drink choices. They all took water, except Arceneaux, who drank a couple of Buds in the course of things. Louise sat at the head of the table in her wheelchair. She listened closely as Cork and Jenny and Daniel English told what they’d all discovered in that long day. There’d been a change in her since the morning. Cork could see it. She took in everything, absorbed it without reacting. It didn’t seem to Cork a showing of courage; it felt more like fatalism. She didn’t seem shocked or offended when he raised the possibility that Carrie Verga had been drawn into the sex traffic and, because of Mariah’s association with the girl, her potential involvement as well.
    Instead she said, “I want to talk to Henry Meloux.”
    Jenny said, “You’ve figured out the thing Mariah loves most?”
    “No,” Louise said. “But if I go to him, he has to see me.”
    Cork said, “When do you want to go?”
    “Tomorrow.”
    “What about your children?” There was a sharpness to Jenny’s words.
    “I’ll watch the kids,“ Arceneaux told her. “They’ll be fine.”
    “Tomorrow?” Cork shook his head. “I still have people here I need to talk to.”
    “Who?” Arceneaux asked.
    “The family of Raven Duvall for one.”
    Arceneaux said, “You want to talk to Lindy Duvall, I’ll take you over tonight.”
    “I’d like to talk to Puck, too.”
    “Him you can find at the community center. The music’ll go on there until late.”
    Cork had mixed his peas and macaroni and cheese, something he always did with this particular meal offering. He hadn’t quite finished, but he put down his fork and asked Louise, “Did Mariah ever say anything to you about Carrie’s father, Demetrius Verga?”
    Louise said, “She talked about how much stuff he had. What a nice house he lived in and what nice cars he had, the big sailboat. You know, everything we don’t have. That was at first. After a while, she didn’t talk about him at all.”
    “Do you know Verga?”
    “He dropped Mariah off sometimes after she spent time with Carrie at his place. I never actually met him. Knew his wife. She was Bad Bluff.”
    “She died in a boating accident.”
    “Drowned. That girl couldn’t swim to save her soul.”
    “Carrie drowned, too.”
    “So?”
    “I’m just thinking that’s quite a coincidence.”
    Arceneaux said, “You think her old man had something to do with both those deaths?”
    “I’m not saying anything except that I don’t put much stock in coincidence.”
    “Maybe he knows something about what’s happened to Mariah?”
    “I don’t know that. But he’s another reason I’d like to stick around awhile.”
    Louise said, “I want to see Henry Meloux. I have to see him.”
    “A day, Dad,” Jenny said quietly. “Mariah’s been gone a year. What difference can another day make?”
    On the surface, the argument was sound. But Cork felt like he was getting somewhere in Bad Bluff, and he didn’t want to leave the investigation hanging, even for a day. On the other hand, he wanted something from Meloux, too. So maybe it would be best to return to Tamarack County. For a day.
    “All right,” he said. “We’ll leave first