Hunter's Moon Chuck Logan (novels to read TXT) 📖

ticket and placed it on the counter with a shrug. “You heard ’em. You’re the guy.”

Harry blew on a spoon of oatmeal to cool it, then took a taste.

He made a face, put down the spoon, and eased the bowl aside.

The oats and orange juice couldn’t occupy the same space with sour mash. Ginny watched him concentrate on his black coffee.

Then she reached under the counter, pulled up a folded front section of Sunday’s outstate edition of the St. Paul 172 / CHUCK LOGAN

paper, and held it casually against her hip. She tapped his picture.

“It’s a small town, mister.”

Harry pointed to the book she’d been reading. “You believe in that stuff?”

“Must be something to it. It’s been around for a long time,” she said.

“You do charts on people?”

“Sometimes…” She drew her fingers down an errant strand of hair.

An indolent heat swung in his belly. Maston County was a magic place where he had rediscovered women. “How do you do that? I mean, what do you need to start?”

“Exact time of birth and where.” She crinkled her eyes. “You interested in astrology?”

“Could be.”

The orders for the kids at the booth came up and Ginny carried them to their table. When she returned, she sat one stool away, near the cash register, and turned back to her book. Halfway through his coffee, their eyes met. She lowered hers and a slight flush crept above her collar. Her hand floated up and lightly touched her hair.

Harry finished his coffee, stood up, and went to the cash register and handed her a twenty. As she made change, she asked, “You come up for the funeral?”

“Why?”

“The suit.” She dropped her eyes. “Did Becky Deucette do that to your face?”

Harry nodded. Their fingers touched when she handed him his change. He dropped a five next to the register. “You know Jesse Deucette?” he asked.

Her mobile lips turned down. “’Course. She’s better’n the soaps on TV.”

“She been around lately?”

“Hard to tell, the way she switches her ass from bed to bed so fast.”

“I have something for her.”

“She figures every man does.”

HUNTER’S MOON / 173

Harry eased the divorce petition out of his pocket, unfolded it, and held it in front of Ginny long enough for her to read the names.

She glanced toward the church, then back at Harry. She relished a smile. “I’d like to see that.”

“Check you later,” said Harry.

She came around the counter and put herself in plain view for his appraisal. “You staying in town?”

“Out at Maston’s.”

She held out her hand. “Ginny Hakala.”

“Like in big Mike, the prosecutor?”

“He’s my uncle.”

“Harry Griffin,” he shook her hand.

“I know,” she said. “It’s in the paper.”

Harry drove back down the jetty and waited for the service to end.

Finally, the church doors opened and the pallbearers slowly descended the steps and loaded the casket in the back of the hearse.

Snowmobiles started the cortege, outriders, their lights piercing the gloom. The sheriff’s Blazer led the procession, its blue flasher turning slowly, silently. Harry waited until they passed, then made a U-turn and paced them out of town.

The cemetery was up Highway 7, back toward the lodge, off a road past the old mining company housing. It took several minutes for the caravan to reach its destination, creeping along the winding gravel path. The vehicles parked in an L-shape and left their lights on. Fog seeped in beams that crossed over a fresh grave.

Harry parked back on the road and walked in. The front of the cemetery was set aside for a miniature Stonehenge, sixteen stones in a circle around a tall granite boulder. The Stanley Massacre. This was one local attraction the Maston family didn’t bankroll. The United Mine Workers put in the rock. Mike Hakala had the picture of the dedication on his office wall.

The date, 1933, was chiseled in the stone. Pinkertons with 174 / CHUCK LOGAN

machine guns faced unarmed striking miners. Names: Slovak, Croat, Swedish, Finnish, Italian. His eyes focused. Three Hakalas. Two Emerys. One Deucette.

He walked slowly among the burial plots toward the gathering.

Tall arbor vitae lined the path and Harry stepped behind one of them 20 yards from the grave. Black figures arranged themselves.

Six of them assembled behind the hearse.

His breath caught in his throat. Jesse Deucette stood next to the grave, fastened in spokes of light. A mud-spattered backhoe crouched over a pile of earth behind her with the digging arm frozen in apex above her head.

She wore a gray raincoat over a black dress. Harry couldn’t make out her expression, only the pale oval of her face under a black scarf tied babushka-fashion around her hair. She held white roses.

Now we’ll see who’s who. Do it.

Harry on parade. Shoulders squared, chin up, his muscles oiled with 90-proof resolve, he marched down the arcade of light, straight at Jesse. Her color turned as pallid as the roses in her hands as she watched him approach. Don Karson detached from the crowd of mourners, a scurry of black robes, quick toward the grave.

The only sound was the creak of the hearse suspension as the pallbearers wrestled the coffin.

Cox and Sheriff Emery stood sergeant-straight, first in line on either side. Cox’s hair was severely ponytailed, his cheeks blue as sandpaper from a clean shave. The narrow lapels on his shiny suit were twenty years old.

Emery projected massive dignity in a tie and black cloth. Mike Hakala hulked behind Emery. Three other guys manned the back.

One of them could have been Jerry the deputy.

They all saw him at once and everybody froze. Something wrong with the waxworks? He glanced around. Where was Becky? Then he saw her, standing back next to the green Jeep Wrangler. She wore a red high-school jacket with athletic awards pinned to the front.

Her face was pinched and white

HUNTER’S MOON / 175

and dark purple lipstick bruised her lips. Her hair was unkempt and she looked like she’d slept in her soiled gray wind suit and Nikes.

Mitch Hakala, also wearing a high school letter jacket, stood protectively at her side.

Hanging way back there. Why