“Did you find anything in the other building?” he said.
“Just some chickens.”
“Were they alive?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because whoever was here, they took it out on these cars, too. It wasn’t just Vinnie’s. Which makes me wonder why he didn’t do anything to the animals.”
As I looked a little closer at the old vehicles, I saw what he was talking about. One was an old white Cadillac from the 1960s, the other an even older car, a mint-green Hudson from the 1950s. The windshields of both cars had been bashed in, spraying the front seats with a thousand pebbles of glass. That’s when I noticed the metal signposts stacked in the corner of the garage. Whoever had been here had obviously grabbed one and gotten busy with it.
“There’s room for four vehicles here,” Lou said. “Counting that red sports car we saw outside.”
“There’s one unaccounted for,” I said, looking down at the faint tire marks on both empty spots. “Wherever the fourth vehicle is, that’s probably where the Kaisers are.”
“And maybe Vinnie and Buck?”
I nodded, looking out the open door. All I could see was the gravel driveway and the woods in the distance.
“So how do we find out where they went?” Lou said.
“Hell if I know.”
I went out the door and looked at the sports car. It was a bright red Chevy Camaro from the 1970s, just one more indication that these weren’t exactly genuine hippies we were looking for. Not unless they were hippies with a lot of money and great taste in home furnishings and classic American automobiles. This one looked brand new, except of course for the missing windshield.
“They got this one, too,” Lou said. “We didn’t even notice it before.”
“Yeah, Vinnie’s truck just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Do you think he was here when all of this was happening?”
I looked over at his truck, then back at the house. It gave me a little shiver, the way those dark empty windows stood out against the brilliant sunny day.
“I don’t know,” I said. “If Vinnie and Buck went somewhere with these people…”
“They were probably long gone, you’re saying.”
“He’s gonna be pissed when he sees this truck, is all I know. I’ve seen him spend half a day buffing out a scratch in the finish.”
“Maybe he’s got bigger things to worry about right now.” There was a sudden edge in his voice. Yet another shift in mood for a man who already seemed as unpredictable as the weather on Lake Superior. “Maybe we do, too.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I didn’t even try. He shook his head and walked away from me. As he stood there looking into Vinnie’s truck, it occurred to me that this was just another secondhand impression of a son he hadn’t seen in almost thirty years. Vinnie’s house, now Vinnie’s truck. Everything but the man himself.
“We’re not doing anybody any good standing here,” I said. “Not that I have any idea where we should go next.”
He didn’t answer me. He kept staring into the truck.
“We should move this,” he finally said.
“What are you talking about?”
“His truck. We shouldn’t leave it here.”
“Are you serious? You want to call a tow truck or something?”
“No,” he said, giving me a sharp look. “I’m saying we should take it back into town, drop it off at an auto-glass place. By the time we find him, it’ll be fixed. Plus, it’s probably not a good idea to have this here, you know, just in case…”
“Just in case what?”
“I don’t know, maybe these Kaiser people are dead somewhere. The police come by here, check out the house… It’ll look bad if his truck’s sitting here, right?”
Maybe these Kaiser people are dead, he says. Not taking that one further step. Who else might be dead. But yeah, come to think of it, the man has a point.
“I watched a man hot-wire a truck once,” he said. “Once he got the ignition cover off, it didn’t take him more than two minutes.”
“Or we could just use the key,” I said, taking out my key ring. “You take the car and I’ll follow behind you.”
“You have the key to Vinnie’s truck?”
“We both have each other’s keys, yeah. It’s a good idea in the winter, in case one of us gets stuck, or a battery dies, or you name it.”
He gave me a little knock on the shoulder as he went to the car. I brushed off some of the glass, got into the truck, started it, and headed down the driveway. It’s amazing how much wind you feel when you drive without a windshield, not to mention the pollen and the bugs and whatever the hell else was hitting me right in the face. But it was a short trip back to Cadillac and we pulled into the first auto-glass shop we found. I went inside, dealt with the paperwork, gave the man my credit card. He said he’d have it done in a couple of hours, but it would take a few more hours after that for the glue to dry. I told him I didn’t know for sure when I’d be back, and he said he didn’t want me to get there too soon and have to wait.
I’d take that problem any day, I thought to myself. Vinnie safe and sound, sitting in the lobby of this little auto-glass store in Cadillac, Michigan, waiting for the glue on his new windshield to dry.
Lou was waiting for me in the parking lot. “So what the hell do we do now?” he said. “We have to figure out where they went.”
“How about where they were?” I said, holding up a crumpled paper bag. “This was probably the one day in Vinnie’s life when he left garbage in his truck.”
“Yeah? So?”
“Five Guys Burgers and Fries. One with lettuce, tomatoes, grilled onions, and mustard. The other with grilled mushrooms, bacon, mustard, and jalapeño peppers. Plus an order of fries.”
“So they had hamburgers for lunch. I don’t see how that helps us.”
“They bought this at exactly 12:08 P.M. yesterday,” I said, pulling off the receipt that was taped to the outside of the brown paper bag. “On East Pickard Street in Mount Pleasant.”
“Mount Pleasant…”
“That’s by the Saginaw Reservation, isn’t it?”
“Right next door,” he said. “Think it’s a coincidence?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
We got into the car and took off.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Their official name is the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, and their reservation is just north of Mount Pleasant. It’s by far the largest reservation in Michigan, more than two hundred square miles. It’s technically called the Isabella Indian Reservation, maybe because it’s in Isabella County. I don’t even know. What I do know is that the Saginaws live there and most people up north just call it the Saginaw rez, and when they say it you can often hear a little bit of animosity. Or maybe animosity mixed with a little bit of envy, especially if the speaker’s a member of either Bay Mills or the Sault Tribe. The reason is simple. Even though the Indian casinos started in the UP, it’s the Saginaws who seem to be making the most of the idea.
They’ve got two casinos now. The Soaring Eagles, right in Mount Pleasant, and the Saganing Eagles Landing over by I-75, on a separate parcel of land overlooking the Saginaw Bay. Between the two properties the tribe makes enough money to pay each member something like seventy thousand dollars every year. It starts to get ugly when they start having to decide who’s an official member and who’s going to be left out in the cold, and it gets just as ugly when other members up north start to wonder why they’re not getting the same kind of deal from their tribes.