Past Imperfect (17 page)

McIntire halted in the middle of his understanding nod and laughed aloud. “You used to pull that one on me when we were fifteen years old and Miss Van Opelt wanted the snow shoveled off the path to the girl's outhouse. I fell for it every time, too, until I got to wondering how you always managed to come up with plenty of worms when you wanted to go fishing.”

He left Wylie caressing his trees and executed a quick retreat across the yard. He slowed as he passed by the house. Boxlike and unadorned, it crouched stoically in the center of its open field, where once it had been shielded from the elements by a newly planted grove of evergreens. The structure itself had changed little since Ole Bertelsen built it. Its fake brick siding curled slightly at the edges, but the white painted window trim and green shingles looked as crisp as when the entire family of fiercely independent Bertelsens had lived there. Independent, that was, where the rest of the world was concerned. The four of them were as like to one another as the proverbial peas in a pod, with their corn-silk hair and cheeks with the blush of the fruit they cultivated. They were also as one in their single-minded dedication to the task they had set for themselves, a task they attacked with a vigor and tenacity at odds with their jocund appearances. They were gone now, every one of them, and the sadness of it struck McIntire for the first time. Gone, with no one to reap the benefits of the dream for which they had toiled so hard. No one except Lucille Delaney.

The grass in the barren yard had been recently trimmed, but a few dandelions that had dared to rear their heads had been allowed to grow.

McIntire reached his home only minutes ahead of Leonie, whose arrival was accompanied by the spattering of gravel and a flurry of Barred Rock hens stampeding for cover. The slam of the car door was followed by the announcement that David Slocum had been run to earth and was now being held in the Flambeau county jail.

“I've just come from the court house.” Leonie smiled serenely. “For once we'll get the jump on the
Monitor
.”

“So what's happened? Do they know where David was? Has he been charged?”

“Not yet,” Leonie informed him. “The game warden found him in an abandoned camp back in the mountains. He was half starved and his car was a mile away, stuck in the mud and out of petrol. He wasn't there all the time he's been missing though. They checked the place last week. The warden only went back because he smelled smoke. David was trying to cook some kind of wild game. A marsh hare, the deputy called it.”

Marsh hare? What the hell…? “Oh, for the love of Mike! That's a muskrat, Leonie, and muskrats and their like are not usually considered game animals, at least not around here. Gamey, very possibly, but not game.” McIntire recalled Cindy Culver's reference to her family's occasional dinner fare, and hoped that he spoke the truth.

“So where was David the rest of the time? What did he give as his reason for leaving?”

Leonie looked him with wide eyes. “For heaven's sake, John, I didn't question him myself! I only know what I could squeeze out of that deputy. And now,” she said decisively, “I've got to get back straight away and write this up so I can
roll those presses
.” She was off again in a whirl of spinning tires and chicken feathers.

McIntire continued to sit morosely on the front steps while the shadows deepened and the trilling of spring peepers grew from the first tentative notes to a symphony. The chickens began to abandon their industrious scratching and, one by one, wandered in to roost. Kelpie roused herself from her spot on the porch and waddled to him, toenails clicking softly on the floorboards. She turned her rheumy eyes to his face expectantly. He picked up the arthritic animal and carried her down the steps to set her in the yard so that she might amble off to perform her nightly rounds.

“David,” McIntire puzzled. It seemed so obvious, and yet somehow illogical. Yes, he had cause to be angry with Nels, but Nels wasn't killed in a fit of anger. Surely he was just an ornery old geezer to David, no different from a half-dozen others, probably. If David was the kind of kid given to plotting the deaths of those who gave him a hard time, Nels Bertelsen would hardly have been the first to go. Maybe the sheriff only suspected David of
Cindy's
murder, but why? That would rule out the theory that Cindy was killed to keep her from blabbing something she knew about Nels' death, and what other motive could David possibly have? And where could Nina's diary fit in?

Dusk had now settled heavily around the house and outbuildings. McIntire crossed the yard to latch the hen house door against plundering foxes and stood for a time looking out toward the overgrown pastures at the rear of the barn. There the sun still cast rusty slanting rays on the knee high grasses. Flocks of finches flew twittering from thistle to burdock. A jacksnipe executed its warbling dive, while farther away, near the river, the booming voice of a bittern announced the approach of night.

He turned back to the house, which was already cloaked in deep shadow. Maybe Leonie was right. Maybe a few of the trees should go.

XXI

The McIntires shared an early breakfast the following morning, a rare circumstance supposedly precipitated by Leonie's eagerness to see her paper in the hands of its readers with no undue delay. In contrast to her exuberance on the previous evening, however, Leonie appeared subdued and in no particular hurry to be off. She ate slowly and indifferently, totally lacking the zeal with which she ordinarily attacked even the most mundane of tasks. When she picked up knife and fork and began cutting her toast into minuscule triangles, McIntire put down his cup and demanded, “What
is
the matter? You're acting like you have a date with the dentist instead of your big chance to scoop the
Monitor
.”

Leonie poked at the toast with the tip of her knife. “I'm starting to feel just a teensy bit ghoulish,” she said. “I would hardly have believed it of myself. I'd just walked in the door when Dorothy Slocum called from the Lindstroms' to let you know what happened. The words were hardly out of her mouth when I was off that phone and in the car. I almost beat the sheriff back to town.”

“That's what a good reporter does.”

“Is it? Well, maybe it is, but a good neighbor might have had a few words of comfort for a mother whose son has been missing for over a week and finally turns up only to be hauled off to the lockup. My first thought was how fast I could get the details and spread the news.”

McIntire patted her hand. “Don't feel bad. The news is going to spread regardless, embroidered with all sorts of details, no doubt. You might say you're doing the family a service by printing only established facts and,” he emphasized, “reporting them in an
unbiased
manner.”

Leonie looked up sharply. “You don't think he's guilty, do you?”

“Guilty of what?” McIntire asked. “Killing Cindy, or Nels, or both? I don't know, Leonie, both of these murders took a bunch of advanced planning. Someone had to have gotten to Nels' adrenaline and replaced it with the insecticide, someone who knew that bug spray would be lethal. He had to have planted bees in strategic places, who knows how many times before Nels eventually got stung? He had to lure Cindy onto that train and into the woods, and figure out how to spirit away her body without being seen. That doesn't sound like David Slocum to me.”

“You've never met David,” Leonie reminded him.

McIntire felt some surprise when he realized that this was true. “But think of everything we know about him,” he argued. “He was a good worker, but only so long as Wylie told him exactly what to do. He allowed Cindy Culver to use him as a dupe to get her out of the family penal colony and into the lap of luxury. He ended up stranded out in the bush. Eating muskrat! Good Lord! He might have starved to death if he hadn't been pinched first. Little Davy just doesn't seem like someone given to a lot of thinking ahead.” He appropriated Leonie's untouched bacon and went on. “He really didn't have any strong motive for killing Nels that we know of, and if he didn't kill Nels, why would he have killed Cindy? She was about the only friend he had…and I sure as hell can't believe David Slocum figures in Nina Godwin's diaries.”

“Yes,” Leonie agreed, “that does seem improbable.”

“It was Nels' paranoia—his idea that somebody was out to get him—that caused him to get so belligerent toward David in the first place. Nels had no complaints about David until after the medication turned up missing, and he started finding evidence that someone was going into his house and outbuildings. I mean, this business started
before
Nels put David on his shit list, and that list was a pretty long one. Nels Bertelsen was never an easy-going sort of guy. He could have built up quite a stockpile of enemies over the years. But if he did, I wasn't around to hear about it, and when I try to get information out of anybody that
has
been here, I just get the old Nels-would-be-Nels song and dance. I don't believe that everyone was so tolerant of Nels' contrariness as they make out to be.”

“Well, you promised to go visit his stepmother. Maybe she can help you out.”

“Ah, my dear, how would I manage to keep track of my social obligations without you?”

Leonie put down her fork. “You know, John, if you'd put yourself out a bit to take care of those social obligations on your own, you might find the witnesses to be more candid.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“May I speak frankly?”

“You generally do.”

“Well, you can't just horn your way in and expect people to spill everything they know to a…to an interloper.”

“Interloper? I was born here!”

“You're as much a newcomer in this community as I am. Matter of fact—pardon my bluntness—you're worse than a newcomer. You're a snooty outsider who puts yourself above them.”

“Leonie, how can you say that? Snooty? Above them?” More like the prissy buffoon too far beneath them to take seriously.

“Are you denying that you feel superior? No, never mind. Whether it's true or not is irrelevant, but try to see yourself from the point of view of the people here. You left as soon as you could get out the door and didn't keep up any kind of contact. And now you come waltzing back, with a new car and plenty of money, which as far as they can see you do no work to earn. You take over your father's house, although when he was alive you wouldn't give him the time of day. And the first time you condescend to seek out any of your neighbors, it's to snoop.”

“If they didn't want me to snoop they shouldn't have talked me into being constable.” That Leonie, of all people, should turn on him like this…it was, as a
real
Yooper would say, “one hell of a note.” “And you know damn well that election was one big practical joke. If the joke backfired, well….” He gave up. It was something Leonie would never understand, and he wasn't sure he wanted her to.

“I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. It's just…if you socialized a bit more….” She looked into his eyes. “I don't like seeing you so lonely.”

Lonely? Was he lonely? McIntire didn't know. He'd never been the gregarious type. “I simply don't have much in common with most of the men here,” he said. “I can't spit tobacco worth a damn.”

Leonie laughed and popped one of the bits of toast into her mouth. “You could learn.”

“
You
could, Leonie. I'm not so sure about me. But maybe I will go see Laurie Post. We can commiserate. She was an interloper for better than twenty years, and she always was good company.” He swallowed the last of his orange juice. “Here's a real scoop for you, Lucy was seen yesterday morning, by a reliable witness,
driving
in the direction of Chandler.”

Leonie stood up. “Well, goody for her. I guess if I'm going to be seen
pedaling
in the direction of St. Adele, I'd better get moving. I should be home shortly after noon, but there is a Ladies' Aid meeting later this morning to make the final arrangements for the Fourth of July, so who knows? Try to find something constructive to do whilst I'm gone, outside of badgering the neighbors. The grass could use some attention.” She kissed him on his thinning hairline and left by the kitchen door.

Leonie obviously made a distinction between “socializing” and “badgering.” But badgering the neighbors was exactly what McIntire had in mind, and, to that end, he drove off in the car, which Leonie had so generously left for him, and, with some strategic planning and lucky guessing, intercepted Lucy Delaney just at the point where she would have left the road and continued her hike home along the railroad tracks.

His offer of a ride was readily accepted despite the warmth of the sun and the short distance she had left to travel. Lucy must be partial to walking in cold, damp weather. Maybe Wylie's deodorant
was
failing him. It must be tricky to get in under his right arm. Lucy settled her broad bottom comfortably on the seat and smiled at McIntire as Rapunzel might have done at her liberator. Even driving at an undertaker's pace, McIntire barely had time to inquire after her health and receive a scrupulously detailed response before they reached the end of their journey. He accepted the offer of coffee nearly as eagerly as she had the one of transportation. Lucy heaved herself out of the car with a grunt and glanced toward the orchards. “Looks like the boy's back.”

McIntire looked up the hillside and saw a lean figure silhouetted against the morning sun, not far from Wylie's pickup with its load of young trees. Lucy waved vigorously but got no response. She led McIntire to the house but, like Mia had done, stopped him at the door and requested that he earn his keep by fetching her a bucket of fresh water.

Lucy's coffee was strong and was accompanied by an impressive array of cookies, rolls, and cup cakes. McIntire chose a cinnamon roll and slathered it with butter. “Do you think David is behind these deaths?” he asked. There was no point in beating about the bush with Lucy.

“David's always been sweet as pie to me. He especially likes my peanut butter cookies,” she said complacently. “But I reckon murderers can be nice as any other folks when they're not going about their business of killing people. If they weren't we wouldn't have no trouble catching them now, would we? If the sheriff thought David was a murderer, I don't suppose he would have let him go.”

“How did you find out David had been arrested?”

“Well, I didn't hear it rubbernecking on the telephone like some!” Lucy's umbrella of hair bounced with indignation. “What good is the phone if a body can't have a private conversation, I ask you? No, I heard it from Sheriff Pete Koski himself. I went in to town to see Mr. Godwin about Nels' property, and I dropped in at the sheriff's office just to see if he had found anything out yet. He kept me there, pestering me with questions for forty-five minutes, the same questions he asked me on Monday: Did Nels have enemies? How did we get along? Do I know what happened to the medicine Nels lost last winter? Who took the trash to the dump before Nels' funeral? I don't know what all! My head was fairly spinning. Then, after all that, he said they'd made an arrest. I asked if it was David, and he didn't say no. So if he thinks David did it, why was he giving me the third degree? And now David's out already—and right here on Nels' own property!”

She sank back into her chair as if exhausted by her lengthy oration, and McIntire did the same, stretching his legs to their full length. “I hope Mr. Godwin was helpful about your situation and all,” he said companionably.

“He said the will would be held up because Nels died under suspicious circumstances. That's why I went straight to the sheriff. Nels left everything to me, you know. Now the sheriff's acting like I'm another Mrs. Boston,
and
he says the state police will probably be talking to me, too.”

“I can see it must be difficult, having the responsibility of keeping all this up,” McIntire waved his hand in a circular motion, “without any income. Have you thought any about taking up fishing?” His attempt at levity was met with a steely glare that reminded him that “bad manners bring bad luck,” and cut him off in mid-chuckle. He sat up straight. “I mean,” he said, “you might consider hiring someone to run the operation.”

Lucy lowered her hackles and once more became her confiding self. “Fact is, Nels wasn't doing so well this season anyway. He was thinking about letting Jonas go and trying to handle it all himself. Well, that was just plumb crazy! A boat that size should have a crew of four or five. But he was barely taking in enough to keep us alive and make the payments. Warner”—no more “Mr. Godwin,” McIntire noted—“is being just as kind as he can be. He says I don't have to worry none about paying on the loan until the estate is settled. And he told me that Nels and him were working on some other financial plans, and that we can get together,” she smiled meaningfully, “to talk about it when the rest of this mess is straightened out.”

“Did he say what the plans were?”

“Oh, he's not at liberty to discuss things until I'm declared Nels' legal heir, and that could be months—years even, if anybody raises a fuss—as I'm sure many would like to do! I guess he'll get it through the courts as quick as he can. After all, I imagine he wants his money, too.”

“No doubt, but the longer it drags on, the bigger his fee will be in the end.”

“Oh, I didn't mean the attorney's fees. I was talking about the money Nels owed him. He loaned Nels the money for the fishing rig, you know.”

McIntire hadn't known, and he would bet Pete Koski didn't know either. It might not be the world's best kept secret, but he was sure Godwin hadn't mentioned it that day in his office. He had appeared confident in his statements that Lucy would not end up with much of anything when Nels' estate was settled. Was it because he was going to acquire the lion's share himself? It would be interesting to know about those other financial plans he was dangling before her. McIntire forced his attention back on Lucy's stream of conversation.

“…can stay in this house, and I have a little money put by, so I shouldn't have to go to the county. I'd sell myself on the streets of Hurley, Wisconsin before I'd go on relief.”

Was this an allusion to a lurid past? She munched a cookie, her aspect less that of prostitute or poisoner than a placid Holstein.

“Wylie's offered to help out. I suppose he felt it was the least he could do, being Nels' partner. Of course I wouldn't accept it…he has been awfully attentive to me since Nels died, offering to drive me places, doing little chores around the place.” She leaned toward him with her elbows on the table. “You don't suppose he's after this property himself, do you? That he might think he could get it
one way or another
?” she added with a definite smirk.