She had found a Magic Marker and streaked her face with blue scribbles. “Puf,” she shouted. The word they’d worked out for the dragon head on the chimney. “Puf,” she shouted again, doing a stomp dance. The blue markings on her face and her fierce lumbering gait gave her the aspect of a midget Maori warrior.
Watching his baby cavort, Broker considered the mind that would write such a letter. Then, practical; the food was getting cold. He washed Kit’s face and stuffed her in her high chair. Sitting side by side, Broker watched his daughter eat, oblivious to the creepy vibrations squirming in his desk drawer.
“The thing about Tom James is he looks so harmless. He’s the kind of guy they write commercials for.”
“Spa Ga,” said Kit. Her word for spaghetti. She waved her spoon back and forth like a windshield wiper. Most of her microwave spaghetti was down the front of her bib. By curling her wrist back and down, he was able to scoop a spoonful off the bib and guide it toward her mouth. It was not to be. The windshield wiper motion took precedence over hunger and an orange meatball flew into Broker’s lap.
“Looks can fool you. Sometimes the most dangerous guy is a gifted amateur. They don’t react according to pattern.
They make it up as they go along. Do you think James could be like that?”
Kit began banging on the high chair tray with her spoon.
Broker took the spoon away and pushed her tippy cup into her red-orange sticky fingers.
“So it’s like this. Daddy knows there’s something there.
I’m looking right at it, but I can’t see it. There are times the best way to find what’s missing is to not look for it, to kind of look away. Then you might catch it, all of a sudden, from the corner of your eye.” Broker acted out his words, with dramatic hand gestures, pointing to his eyes, turning his head. Kit slurped her milk.
“So we won’t bother Uncle Jeff about the bad letter we got today. We’ll put it away for a while. And when Mommy comes home we’ll talk to her about it, because she’s got a mind like a steel trap.”
For all his attempts to downplay the sick letter, Broker found himself holding Kit constantly for the rest of the night.
Making himself into a bunker of love, muscles and vigilance.
He lingered over a bath, washing her until she was on the verge of wrinkling, apologized profusely when the shampoo nipped her eyes. After drying her off, he rubbed her down with lotion, taking care to massage each finger and toe. Then he dressed her for the night in a fresh green sleeper with a moose on the chest.
Broker read Kit The Cat in the Hat twice, sitting in the rocking chair next to the woodstove. After the book, he played a tape of old standard songs and danced with Kit in his arms. Since establishing this routine, he had become familiar again with the songs of his own childhood and now could sing along without missing words. “Red River Valley,” “Old Smokey,” “East Side, West Side.” Kit settled on his shoulder, and her breathing began to lengthen and deepen. Broker spun around his living room, experimenting with flourishes that he would never attempt on a dance floor.
As he twirled by the wall he switched off the lights. The lakeshore floated in his bank of windows, a moonlight aquarium of stone, surf and pines. He managed a decent accompaniment of “Waltzing Matilda” in the dark, and when the song was over, he turned off the tape player.
He padded along the windows, scanning the subtle shadows moving in the swaying pine boughs. Quiet, vigilant, he walked guard with a sleeping child on his shoulder instead of a rifle.
30
The Hallelujah Chorus swelled out of the speakers on Duluth Public Radio, making the seasonal argument that humans were the musical instruments of God. Right now, the exuber-ant choral voices reminded Broker he hadn’t bought a Christmas tree, and time was getting short.
He’d looked at trees in town but didn’t like the pickings.
So he’d brought a Jeepful of poinsettias back from the flower shop. He arranged them along the fireplace mantel and hearth. His dragon now seemed to be rising out of a sea of fire-a sight some ninth- and tenth-century Christians might have seen before.
Broker was deep in a binge of housecleaning. Nina was due home in two days. Kit sensed something imminent. She took shelter from the fumes of Comet and Spic and Span under the kitchen table. For company, she had a wedge of toast heaped with peanut butter and jelly. In trying to lick off the jelly, she managed to plaster the bread flat against her face. Wads of her curly hair stuck to it. Broker picked her up, carried her to the sink, turned on the tap, grabbed a washcloth, and started scrubbing off the jelly.
Toast in one hand, a mangle of paper in the other, she tried to ward him off.
Hey. Wait. Aw God. Patience. Patience. He took a deep breath and stripped, first the toast and then the mashed sheet of paper, from her determined grip. He toed the trip lever on the trash can, raised the top and threw the toast and paper inside.
The paper caught his eye. Columns of type and numbers.
Jogged his memory. He plucked it up and smoothed it out on the counter with one hand as he tried to steady Kit with the other. It was the US West printout Keith had brought with him-to accuse Broker of having a phone conversation with Caren. Where in the hell did the perfect little female human find that?
Carefully, he wiped most of the jelly from the paper and stuck it with a pushpin, beyond Kit’s grasp, on the corkboard over the phone. He was staring right at the phone when it jangled.
“Hello there,” said Nina Pryce.
“Hey. Where are you?” Broker’s voice surfed between the Hallelujah tsunami and Kit’s wailing.
“I’ll never tell, but it’s a big building with more than four corners. Is that Kit? Making that squealing sound?”
“Yep, with her hair full of strawberry jam.”
“You sound good, considering,” said Nina, with heavy emphasis on the last word.
“What?”
“Caren’s death,” said Nina.
Broker took a deep breath. “How?”
“Someone sent me an anonymous letter. It’s pretty tabloid.
According to it, you were fooling around with Caren behind my back. Her husband found out, killed her and was arrested.
They included a press clipping from the St. Paul paper for verification. The news story describes a more sinister version of events, involving the FBI and organized crime. But there’s enough overlap with the letter to prompt a reasonable person to ask certain questions.”
“It’s true, she was on her way up to see me when she died.”
“Keith Angland really pushed her into that waterfall?”
Broker ignored the question. “Was the letter printed?” he asked. “With a funny address that was also printed, cut out and pasted on?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Do you have it with you?”
“Not right now. It’s in my quarters.”
“Take good care of it. Bring it home.”
“What’s up, Broker?”
“I got a letter, too. Sounds like from the same person.”
“Is this some kind of revenge-taking by someone you rubbed the wrong way when you were a cop?”
“I don’t think so.” Broker weighed his next words. “The person who wrote that letter didn’t know me.”
Nina’s voice brightened. “Well put. You’re a die-hard analog cave fish, but not a cheater. I recall I had to hit you between the eyes with a two-by-four to get your attention.
So what’s it all mean?”
“My analog cave fish deduction is-it’s mixed up with Caren’s death.”
“Hmmm.”
“Come home and we’ll talk about it.”