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—
When she leftVirgil and Lucas, Cooper drove to St. Paul, to the University Club, where the Heart/Twin Cities board met in the library. Heath, who didn’t yet know what was about to happen, met her with a smile, but the smile faded when she avoided his hug, turned her back, and plunked her shoulder bag on the long table and nodded at George Whitman, the vice-chairman. Four other members were already there, and eight others showed up in the next few minutes.
The board, Cooper thought, was a group so mixed that it had to be done with a fine sense of the twenty-first century appropriate: nine women, ten men, four blacks, two Hmong, an Ethiopian, and eleven standard-issue St. Paul white people. They even had a homeless board member, but he hadn’t shown up, and his phone number no longer rang.
When everybody was seated, and the secretary had turned on his tape recorder, Heath called the meeting to order and after the usual routine of approving the minutes of the last meeting, turned to Cooper and said, “I’ve spoken to several members about electing you to replace Alex, and I think we’ve agreed, but I’ll have to ask you to step outside while we take a formal vote.”
Cooper nodded, unsmiling—she’d been on other boards—and stepped outside. As she was closing the door, she heard Heath say, “Do we have a motion...”
Two minutes later, Whitman came out and said, “You’re on the board. Unanimously. Noah has no idea of what’s about to happen, but he really wanted you on the board. Wants that hundred thousand.”
“Still planning to ask him to step out while we discuss whether to get rid of him?”
“Alang is so unhappy about what he’s heard... I think he’s just going to pull the trigger. Get ready for it.”
—
Back inside theroom, Heath congratulated her on her election to the board, paused, then said, “We have a good deal of tumult in Heart/Twin Cities, as I’m sure you all know. First came the murder of our beloved Alex Sand, with his two young sons. Now we’re dealing with the apparent murder of Doreen Pollard. And the disappearance of Bob Dahl, our director. I think the two events are connected. I believe Bob somehow... went off the rails. He had a previous relationship with Doreen...”
He went on for a while, concluding with, “We carry on. That’s what we’ve always done. I personally have been the victim of a scandalous charge by two police officials implying that I may have some involvement with this disaster. They even obtained a search warrant for my house, which turned up nothing, of course. The warrant was later found to have been illegally, fraudulently obtained, and has been quashed.”
He looked around, said, “That is my report. Now, what to do?”
After a moment of silence, Alang Thao, who had been sitting with his hands linked on the tabletop, listening to Heath’s summary, raised a hand, and when Heath gestured to him, said, “I move that we dismiss Noah Heath from the board of directors, effective immediately.”
Heath half stood and shouted, “What!” and Cooper said, “I second the motion.”
Heath turned to her and opened his mouth again, sputtering, but before he could say anything, Cooper looked at the rest of the board and said, “Noah apparently hasn’t been watching television, or what’s about to be on television. Bob Dahl’s body was found buried near a rural boat ramp down by Prairie Island. He appears to have been struck in the head with an edged object of some kind, and, to make sure he died, a plastic sack was then tied around his head. The police have been quite explicit in suggesting the murders were committed by Noah.”
She looked up at him now and he screamed, “No! No! I did not do this, I had nothing to do with this, you can’t push me out—this is my charity! My charity! I own this charity!”
Whitman said, calmly, “No, you don’t, Noah.”
Cooper said, “I’ve been talking rather extensively to law enforcement officers investigating the murders of my husband and two sons. One of them made a recording of Bob Dahl confessing to a series of embezzlements of Heart/Twin Cities funds, by Noah Heath. He said that it has been going on for years...”
Whitman said, “I don’t think Noah can actually function as chair given the circumstances, so I will call the question on Alang’s motion that we dismiss Noah as a member of this board...”
“That’s illegal,” Heath shouted, saliva flying down the table. “You don’t have the gavel, I’ve got the gavel...”
Whitman said, “All those in favor of dismissing Noah, raise your hands?”
All the hands went up.
Noah shouted, “No! This is illegal! I’ll have my lawyers on you, you can’t do this!”
Cooper was closest to him, and the accumulating anger in hergut pushed her to her feet and she shouted, “You’re a goddamned murderer, Noah. The police know it, and I know it. Bob Dahl was cooperating with Davenport and Flowers and he was going to send you to prison...”
Heath snapped.
He launched himself across the table at Cooper, reaching for her throat with his hands. The edge of the table caught him at the thighs, and he went sprawling across it as she lurched away, but then he slid sideways around the corner of the table and knocked water glasses off the table as the male board members tried to get to him.
Cooper backed into one of the men as she tried to get away from Heath, and bounced off him back toward Heath and he again reached for her neck and she went down backwards with Heath on top of her, a tumbling water glass between them, and the back of her head hit the floor, hard, the glass shattered on her face as Heath’s body landed on top of her, and then the men had Heath and pulled him away and one of the women board members screamed, “I’m calling 9-1-1...”
The men wrestled the still swinging Heath out of the library room as one of the women knelt next to Cooper and said, “Your face is cut, you’re bleeding...” and in the other room a man had his arm around Heath’s neck and was chanting, “Calm down, calm down, Noah, stop this...”
The woman looking at Cooper’s face said, “Stay down, you’re hurt, we need to call an ambulance...”
“Is my face...” She touched her face with a hand, and pulled it away to look at it; her hand was covered with blood.
