Boundary Waters Read Free

Raye asked Annie. “My throat’s dry as a Skunk Holler hooch jug come Sunday mornin’.”
    “Still entertaining, Mr. Raye?” Cork asked.
    “Might as well call me Willie. Most folks do. Nope, don’t even do charities anymore. I put away my biballs and banjo after Marais died.” The hurt was old, but the man’s voice carried a fresh sadness. He put his hands in his pockets and explored the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “I have a recording company now,” he said, brightening. “Ozark Records. Biggest country label in the business. The Blacklock Brothers, Felicity Green, Rhett Taylor. They’re all on Ozark.”
    “Here you are, Mr. Raye.” Annie passed a big Sweetheart cup full of water and ice through the window.
    “I thank you kindly, honeybunch.”
    “Up here for the color?” Annie asked.
    “No, actually I’m up here to see your daddy.” He turned to Cork. “Is there a place we can talk for a few minutes? In private.”
    “Mr. Raye and I are going to walk a bit, Annie. Hold down the fort?”
    “Sure, Dad.”
    They strolled to the end of the dock, where sunnies swam in the shallows. The water was rust colored from the heavy concentration of iron ore in the earth. Raye looked out over the lake, smiling appreciatively.
    “I only made it up here once. When Grandview was being built. It’s every bit as beautiful as I remember it. Easy to see why Marais loved it like she did.” He set his water cup down on the bleached planking of the old dock and pulled a compact disc from the pocket of his leather jacket. He handed the disc to Cork. “Know who that is?”
    “Shiloh,” Cork said, remarking on the woman whose picture filled the cover. She was a slight woman, young, very pretty, with smooth black hair like a waterfall down her back all the way to her butt. “One of Annie’s favorites.”
    “My daughter,” Raye said. “And Marais’s.”
    “I know.”
    Raye regarded him earnestly out of that long, hounddog face. “Do you know where she is?”
    Cork was caught off guard. “I beg your pardon.”
    “If you do,” Raye rushed on, “I only need to know she’s all right. That’s all.”
    “Willie, I’m afraid I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
    Raye’s big shoulders dropped. His face glistened with sweat. He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on one of the posts that anchored the dock. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’ve got to sit down.”
    Cork hooked his foot around the leg of a small stool he sometimes used when fishing from the dock and nudged it toward Raye, who sat down heavily. The man picked up a golden leaf that had blown onto the dock and idly tore it into little bits as he spoke.
    “Marais sometimes talked about the people back here, the people she grew up with. When she talked about you she called you Nishiime.”
    “Means ‘little brother,’” Cork said.
    “I guess she thought a lot of you.”
    “I’m flattered, but I don’t understand what that has to do with Shiloh.”
    “The deal is this: My daughter’s been missing for a while. Several weeks ago, she canceled all her engagements and dropped from sight. The tabloids are having a field day.”
    “I know. I’ve seen them.”
    “She’s been writing me. A letter every week. All the letters have been postmarked from Aurora. Two weeks ago, the letters stopped.”
    “Maybe she just got tired of writing.”
    “If I thought that, I wouldn’t be here.”
    “She didn’t say in her letters where she is?”
    “Nothing specific. She didn’t want anyone to know. She was here for something she called . . . I don’t remember exactly. It sounded like misery .”
    “Misery.” Cork pondered that a moment. “Miziweyaa, maybe? It means ‘all of something. The whole shebang.’ Does that make sense to you?”
    “Not to me.” Raye shrugged. “Anyway, she talked about a cabin way out in the Boundary Waters. And she said she’d been guided there by an old friend