Buttons and Bones (7 page)

COMING upstairs to the table the next morning, Jill was pleased to see that breakfast was ample: pancakes, fruit in sweetened juice, oatmeal, sausage patties, toast, orange juice, milk, coffee. Wilma sat at the table with them, along with an older couple who had come every year for the past dozen years. The fourth room had been taken by a pair of fishermen, who skipped breakfast to get out on the water at first light, which came around five at this time of year.

Talk was of the pleasures of Cass County, fishing and hiking, of the nearness of Lake Itasca, source of the Mississippi River, where it was so narrow it could be crossed on stepping-stones.

Toward the end of the meal, searching for something further to talk about, Wilma asked what brought the quintet to her camp.

“We’re not talking about it in front of the children,” said Jill, speaking in her best neutral voice.

“Oh, you’re getting a D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” spelled the female member of the older couple.

“No, that’s not it at all,” said Lars with a laugh. He finished his third cup of coffee in a single big gulp. “We came up here to work on a cabin we’ve just bought over on Thunder Lake, and found something in the cellar that made us decide to move out for a day while it gets cleaned up.”

Jill thought that too good a hint and would have changed the subject to how good the pancakes were, but Emma Beth spoke up.

“A deputy sheriff came to see us,” announced the child, making Jill’s mouth twitch with exasperation. “He’s nice but he’s not Deputy John, he’s a different deputy.”

“Oh, my God, you’re the people who found a—”

Jill dropped all the silverware that had been at her place at the table on the floor. “Oops!” she said loudly, and bent to pick it up.

Lars reiterated in a firm voice, “We’re not discussing this in front of the children.”

Emma Beth was all eyes, but held her tongue.

The woman said in an abashed voice, “Oh. Oh, I see. All right. But if it was me, I couldn’t go back there. I’d put that cabin on the market from over here, and go home.”

Jill, straightening, put the silverware on her plate with a crash that threatened to break it. She said, still in that calm voice, “We aren’t going to do that, and we aren’t going to talk about it anymore.”

Lars turned to Emma Beth and Airey. “Say, I don’t know about you, but I ate enough to need a walk to shake it down a little. Maybe I’ll go down to the lake and see if there’s a turtle to look at.”

Despite her obvious interest in a conversation not meant for her ears, Emma Beth immediately slid off her chair. “Can I come, please, Daddy?”

“Sure. Airey, want to go for a walk?”

“Walk!” shouted Airey, struggling to escape the old-fashioned high chair that pinned him to the table.

Jill shot him a grateful look as Lars came and lifted his son out. “Let’s go, partner.”

As they went out the door, Emma Beth was heard to say, “Can we go to the turtle race?”

Back at the table, Jill winced. “Oh, I wish Lars hadn’t said that magic word! But I’m sure he was thinking Emma Beth had forgotten all about the turtle races.”

“Why not go?” asked the older woman. “The turtle races are fun. Each child gets a turtle of her very own to race. That little girl would just love it.”

“I’m sure she would. But we have a lot to do at the cabin. I want to finish taking up the carpet and take the measurements of the bathroom so I’ll know how much paint and tile to order.”

The man said, “You’re brave to even consider going ahead with that place. I’m sure it’s bad luck out there.”

“What happened was over a very long time ago and hasn’t got anything to do with us.”

The woman said, “I agree with Henry. Plus, I’d be afraid of ghosts.”

Betsy said pragmatically, “There wasn’t a ghost before we discovered the bones, which is when you’d expect one. You know, trying to get his bones found—isn’t that one reason ghosts walk? But now they are found and have been taken away, so there’s no reason for him to come complaining.”

Jill was amused. “Good thinking. Come on, Betsy, let’s take a look at the morning.”

The storm had cleared off overnight, leaving the air even more invigorating than before, if that were possible. Jill and Betsy went out and found it also very chilly. Jill reveled in the coolness, but Betsy, in a short-sleeved blouse and clam diggers, had apparently never gotten over living in California. She asked for a retreat to the downstairs lounge, where La-Z-Boy chairs waited.

“I can’t wait till the propane heater is installed in our place,” sighed Jill, selecting the leather chair. “That wood-burning stove is awful, almost as bad as washing in a single bucket of water in the morning.”

“Jill, I didn’t think you minded roughing it,” teased Betsy, seating herself in the brocade-upholstered chair and pushing it back so it lifted her feet.

“I don’t. If I’m going camping, all I want is a campfire and a tent; but if I’m staying in a house, I want a real stove and hot showers and electric lights.”

Betsy laughed. “Me, too, except you can skip the part about camping.” Then she sobered and said, “All right, the sound you just heard was the car of Henry and his nosy wife heading out. What did the investigators say about the skeleton? They didn’t tell me anything.”

“It’s a human adult, possibly been there since 1944.”

“Wow, they can tell that just by looking?”

“No, by the canning jars. Whoever canned those green beans wrote the date on strips of white adhesive tape and stuck them on the jars. All the jars down there are dated from 1944. There are no jars earlier or later than that.”

“I see. So what you’re deducing is that whoever was canning things ate 1943’s veggies and didn’t put any down there in 1945. Oh, Jill, could the skeleton be the canner herself? Maybe she fell down those steps and died there and no one knew it.”

“Possibly, though at least one of the investigators thinks the skeleton is male. And the skull is broken in a couple of places, which shouldn’t happen in a short fall onto a dirt floor.”

“Murder?”

“Again, possibly.” Disturbing thought, to have a murder victim in your vacation cabin. She said, “Want some coffee?” Wilma kept a coffeemaker in the lounge, and it was used by customers all day long. Jill rose and went to it, opening the cabinet door above it to find a mug.

“No, it’ll get me all wired up,” Betsy admitted.

Jill felt a stab of pity for her friend. She and Lars could refresh their energy levels with coffee any time of the day or night.

“What else did they find?” asked Betsy. “Besides the skeleton and jars of green beans, I mean.”

“Buttons, mostly.” Jill brought her mug of black coffee back to her recliner. “Different sizes, shirt and trouser buttons, all dark brown plastic. Investigator Mix showed them to Lars.”

Betsy nodded. “I remember those little nubbins under the dust.”

Jill continued, “Oh, and one odd thing. A kind of medallion shaped like an oval—” She curved her left thumb and forefinger into the left side of the shape. “Made of metal and stamped with a name on the top and bottom halves of it, with some numbers, like a serial number.” It had been found under the bones; Mix had shown it to her.

“What was the name on it?”

“Dieter Keitel.”

“Dieter? That’s a very German name. And Keitel is, too, right?”

“Yes.” Jill nodded.

“Are there a lot of Germans up in this part of the state?”

“A few. Up here there are mostly Finns, Norwegians, and Frenchmen.”

“Frenchmen? In the frozen north?”

Jill smiled. “Ever hear of Quebec?”

“Oh. Well, yes.”

“Some of the ones here are the descendants of the Voyageurs, those Frenchmen who engaged in the fur trade with the Indians back before this was a European country.”

“Well, of course! I remember them from history books and romantic movies—funny, you think of them as living back then and forget their descendants might still be around. A lot of them married Indian women, didn’t they?” But McElroy wouldn’t be a descendant, not with that name.

“Yes, they did.” Jill took a deep drink of her coffee and settled her bottom more comfortably in the chair. “I agree with you, they seem to have lived in a time and place all their own, you don’t think of their descendants living in our time and place.”

“I wonder if the skeleton is Dieter Keitel’s?”

Jill said, “I have a list of all the people who owned this cabin, and none of them was named Keitel.”

“Who owned the house in 1944?” asked Betsy.

Jill dug into her purse and came up with a notebook. She’d been required to carry one while a police officer and found it a habit worth keeping. She searched its pages and read aloud. “A couple named Helga and Matthew Farmer—he was a major in the U.S. Army. He bought it in 1940.”

“How long did they own it?”

“Marsha and Arnold Nowicki bought it in 1945. They owned it until 1965 and sold it to Harry ‘Buster’ Martin.”

“Not a Norwegian, Finn, or Frenchman on that list.”

“No, this is a summer retreat, not a homestead.”

“Yes. But not entirely. A root cellar with home-canned veggies would mean a primary residence, don’t you think? Because if they were canning, they’d have planted a garden. Though on second thought, spending a winter in that cabin doesn’t seem an attractive idea.”

“Log cabins can be surprisingly snug, compared to a wooden house that’s equally uninsulated. But you’re right, it would still get awfully cold in there at night in the winter when all you’ve got for heat is a woodstove that needs constant feeding. You either get up every few hours or pile on the quilts.” She remembered the stack of quilts in the chest. Maybe Betsy was right. “I wonder if we can find out if the Farmers used it year round?” She looked at her notes. “Buster Martin sold it to John Tallman in 1987, and it was the Tallman bankruptcy estate that sold the property to your New York Motto, who sold it to us.”

“Who were the original owners?” asked Betsy.

“Well, it was built in 1904 for Mr. George Ferguson, who owned it until 1927, when he sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Harlan Ferguson—probably a son and daughter-in-law—and they’re the ones who sold it to Major Farmer in 1940. He added what was probably his brand-new wife to the title in 1941.”

“Hmmmm, you’re right, no Keitels on the list of owners.”

Jill said thoughtfully, “You know, the tag may have nothing to do with the skeleton. It may be one of those exchange things kids get into—remember friendship bracelets? I know penny arcades used to have machines that could stamp your name on medallions. Maybe two ‘best friends’ made them and gave them to each other—you know, as children. Then a child going down to fetch a jar of green beans for supper dropped it.”

“Whose child?”

“Could be any one of them; the property title doesn’t list children and there’s no date on the tag. It might’ve been down there since Harlan Ferguson was a boy.”

Betsy nodded. “Yes, of course. Was there anything else down there?”

Jill said, “Just the buttons.”

Betsy thought for a minute. “Funny it wasn’t picked up by one of the owners, if it was in the middle of the floor. Did the sheriff take it away with him?”

“Yes.” Jill nodded.

“About those buttons—they were all alike?”

“Yes, but different sizes.”

“Like from a uniform?”

Jill considered this. “No, Army buttons are made of brass.” Except on the shirts, of course. But none of these buttons were brass.

“How sure are they that the man—we’re assuming he was a man—was murdered?”

“They wouldn’t speculate for me, but they were treating it as a crime scene. They’ll do a more thorough examination once they get the bones into a lab setting.”

“Do they have a good lab up here?”

“The sheriff’s department sends questionable bodies to Saint Paul for examination. They have the best facilities in the state.” Her eyes half closed in thought. She wondered how they would send them down. If it were a body, they’d send it by funeral home wagon, but these were just loose bones. She said aloud, “They thought all the bones were there, and they took lots of photographs. It was interesting to see them at work; they took pictures before touching anything, of course, then they brushed the dust away and took more pictures, then recorded themselves picking up the pieces—for that, they brought in a video camera.”

“Assuming the murderer was an adult, he must be at least in his eighties by now—if he’s still around at all,” said Betsy. “Or she.”

“She?”

“Well, yes.” Betsy continued, “Helga’s husband was a major in the Army, right? So he could have been overseas, and she was here alone. If a prowler came by, broke in, it’s possible she killed him in a fight.”

Jill said, “Maybe she knew him. Maybe he was a neighbor.” It was surprising how often that was true.

“How awful to think that! I suppose he came by thinking to find a lonely woman looking for adventure. She had to disabuse him of the notion, and he got angry, and during the fight she whacked him on the head with a . . . a frying pan. You know, one of those big cast-iron ones. I’ve always thought one of those things would make a terrific weapon.”

Betsy and her imagination! Still, “That would explain the skull injuries,” said Jill, nodding.

Betsy smiled. “Of course, it could’ve been a baseball bat or a hammer—but a frying pan is more interesting, if you know what I mean. We’re just letting our imaginations run free, right? I can see it happening at dinnertime, when she was in the kitchen cooking a meal.”

“So why didn’t she call the cops on him after she laid him out?”

Betsy sobered. “Because back in those days rape was a shameful thing, and in court they put the woman on trial as much as the man. Maybe she had seen him in town or while out on a walk and flirted with him.”

“If what you’re thinking is what happened, it would be more likely he was a stranger, don’t you think? You couldn’t just put a neighbor down in the cellar. He’d be missed.”