The Last Kind Word (Mac McKenzie #10)

The Last Kind Word (Mac McKenzie #10) Page 98

I recognized him when he came closer to the fire.

“Fenelon?” I asked. I had completely forgotten about him. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve come to surrender.”

“Surrender?” Bullert asked.

“Surrender for what?” I asked.

“For what I’ve done.”

“What have you done, Brian? What have you done that falls under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives?”

“I betrayed you.”

“From how your face looks, I can hardly blame you.”

“I tried, I tried—they kept hitting me…”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“Whatever you’ve done, it had nothing to do with us,” Bullert said. “That’s between you and McKenzie.”

“I have no complaints,” I told him.

Fenelon’s mouth fell open and his eyes widened like a poor student trying to comprehend the A on his term paper.

“C’mon, Brian,” I said. “We’ll take you home.”

Jill squeezed my hand and leaned in until her head was resting against my shoulder.

“I was right, what I said before,” she told me. “You are a big softy.”

JUST SO YOU KNOW

Sunday morning I drove up to Ely. Nina had wanted to tag along, but I figured it was one of those trips I’d best take alone. I was surprised by how understanding she had become after I got past the explanation of why I called Shelby instead of her. I also explained that Shelby had been wrong when she suggested that I wanted to marry my best friend’s wife and since I couldn’t, I vowed not to marry anyone.

“That might have been so once, but it hasn’t been true for four years, nine months, and seventeen days,” I said.

“And what happened four years, nine months, and seventeen days ago?” Nina asked.

“I met you.”

That seemed to make her happy; Bobby, not so much. He was furious that I had made Shelby my moll—those were his words, not mine—although his attitude mellowed somewhat when Nina said that Shelby could keep the dress.

Even though it was out of the way, I stopped at the Chocolate Moose to buy a couple of strawberry-rhubarb pies before swinging back down toward Krueger. I was driving my Audi S5 partly because it was such a sweet ride and partly because the county sheriff’s department still hadn’t released my Jeep Cherokee. Apparently the sheriff wanted to arrest someone —anyone—for the armed robbery of the Mesabi Security Company’s remote vault, the fact it was a front for an ATF sting be damned. Phone calls were being made, however, and I knew nothing would come of it.

I also knew I would find the Iron Range Bandits at the cabin on Lake Carl, although I wasn’t sure I should call them that anymore. They were sitting on the redwood deck looking both pleased and forlorn, an odd combination, yet fitting, all things considered. They heard me climbing the stairs. Skarda made it clear that I wasn’t welcome.

“You sure?” I asked. “I brought pie.”

Jill hopped up from the picnic table and crossed the deck. Her arms circled my shoulders and she kissed my cheek. It was difficult to return the hug because I was carrying the pies in one hand and an envelope and newspaper in the other. From his expression, that was just fine with Roy.

“I never thanked you for saving my life,” Jill said.

“You thanked me so many times I lost track,” I said.

She hugged me some more as Roy crossed the deck.

“I’m grateful for what you did, Dyson,” Roy said. “On the other hand, you’re the one who put her in danger, so I don’t know what to think about it.”

“He didn’t put me in danger, John Brand did,” Jill told him. “And his name is McKenzie. Rushmore McKenzie.”

I didn’t know how pretty my name was until she spoke it.

Jill led me by the arm to the table. I set the boxes containing the pies on top of it. “I’ll get plates and forks,” she said, and disappeared into the cabin.

The old man was sitting in his customary spot at the head of the table. Josie, Skarda, Liz, Jimmy, and Claire were gathered around it. Roy remained by the door to the cabin as if he were guarding it. No one else seemed to have anything to say, so I asked, “Have you seen the newspaper?”

I dropped a copy of the Sunday Duluth News Tribune in front of them. They leaned in to take a look. There was a story beneath the fold. The headline read: DEPUTIES ACCUSED OF ARMED ROBBERY, SUSPECTED OF BEING IRON RANGE BANDITS

Liz took up the paper and read aloud.

Two county deputies implicated in a scheme to smuggle illegal weapons across the Canadian border are now also suspects in a series of unsolved armed robberies that occurred throughout the Iron Range in the past year.

According to a government spokesman, a search of a storage unit owned by Deputy Eugene James and Deputy Allen Williams produced sacks of receipts and checks that were taken during a daring daylight robbery of a grocery store in Silver Bay, MN.