Dead Dogs and Englishmen (6 page)

The farm was one
of those going concerns that dot the rolling Michigan landscape: silos and many barns, and a yard filled with big green and yellow equipment. The man's potato fields stretched over one hill and up another as far as I could see. Rolling slowly through his endless fields were huge watering machines, tracking back and forth among the rows.

“He won't be in the house,” Dolly said when we pulled up a circular drive beneath dying Lombardy poplars and parked in front of a red barn with wide double doors. “Unless he's having lunch …”

One of the barn doors slid open and a tall, thin man in blue overalls, plaid short-sleeved shirt, and straw hat came out, waving us over to him. He had that farmer look: lined face; narrow eyes lost in folds of wrinkles; shoulders, in stained overalls, drawn halfway up to his ears. He could have been in his late thirties or his early sixties. Or no age. Farmers—after a few years—took on the eternal sense of the soil. They plant food crops and harvest food crops. They talk food crops and weather. Endless dialogue of an ancient brotherhood.

“Deputy.” He nodded to Dolly then turned to me, dark eyebrows shooting up.

I introduced myself and told him I was with the newspaper, covering the story.

“Joshua Sutter,” he said, dipping his head and fixing me with a pair of very sharp blue eyes. We shook hands.

“Terrible thing you got goin' on there.” He turned back to Dolly. “Like to help, if I can. Might as well go over to where my workers live. One of 'em been with me years now. He knows all the yearly pickers up here. If anybody can help you, I'd say Miguel's the one. He's probably back at the house where he lives, having his dinner. Get in the truck.” He motioned toward a red extended-cab pickup. “No sense taking two vehicles.”

In the truck, I rolled down my window; the air inside thick with the smell of oil. The man revved the motor, ground the truck into gear, and we were off—out behind the barn, around a couple more huge gray outbuildings, and on to a barely visible track leading through the fields back to a far tree line. We bumped along through the fields, a rough ride made endurable by the fresh air blowing through the cab.

Mr. Sutter made no small talk, only kept his eyes focused on the road, swearing under his breath when he swerved to avoid a covey of partridge he stirred up.

A row of identical, small white houses, more rustic cabins than houses, stood in a line beneath a stand of tall oaks. Wet clothes hung on sagging lines from the houses to poles in the grassless yards.

“Talked to him earlier,” Joshua said as he pulled in, parked, and turned off the motor. “Miguel Hernandez, one of my best workers—comes every year. Said he doesn't think he knows this dead woman of yours. Said he hasn't heard about any trouble among the migrant workers, like maybe a husband and wife fighting. Not that many of 'em come yet—not 'til harvest time. But, like Miguel, who helps me with the equipment and just about everything else, there are some who get here early, ahead of their families. If Miguel can't help he can sure give you names of other men to talk to.”

He got out of the pickup, as Dolly and I slid out on our side. Dolly hit the ground kind of hard and stumbled, catching herself. She didn't straighten right away, only put an arm across her middle, and took a couple of deep breaths.

“Dolly,” I put my arm across her bent back and leaned down. Her face was red. She bit at her bottom lip. “What's going on?”

“Nothin',” she growled and straightened, settling her shoulders. “Tripped. Thought I was going to fall.”

“Look …” I started to say but was interrupted by a short, dark man who came from one of the houses, letting the screened door snap shut behind him. Two tiny children stood on the inside of the screen, watching the man make his way over to shake Joshua's hand and be introduced to me and Dolly.

We took seats on logs ringing a dead fire pit.

“Rain tomorrow,” Joshua said after a while.

Miguel nodded. “I got plenty to do on that engine in the barn.”

Joshua agreed, then, after a minute, asked, “You know why these women are here?”

Miguel turned to first Dolly and then toward me. “Somebody found dead. That's what Mr. Sutter told me.”

Dolly cleared her throat and moved to get comfortable on her log. “Found a woman with a gunshot to the back of her head. Over near Leetsville.”

Miguel nodded, glanced over his shoulder at the house, called out to someone in Spanish, and the children were pulled away from the screen. The door closed.

“What did this woman look like?” he asked.

Dolly gave him a brief description, ending with the gold cross. Each part of the description brought a deeper frown, until Miguel was rubbing his hands between his knees, biting at his lip, then glancing back at the house, to us, then to Mr. Sutter.

“I don't think I know her.” Miguel made a face as he shook his head.

“There's something else, Miguel,” Joshua said. “They found a dog killed with her—well, nearby. Shot, the way the woman was shot.”

A look passed between the two men. Miguel drew in a deep breath. He blinked again and again, looking from me to Dolly. If I've ever seen a man with pain trapped behind his eyes, this was that man.

Joshua saw it too. His voice went lower, softer.

“We had that incident … remember …” he said. “I don't mean to put you on the spot but …”

Miguel looked away and shook his head. “I don't know … anything …”

He got up. “Mr. Sutter, I got work to do …”

“Not right now, Miguel.” Joshua cleared his throat then stood, stretching his shoulders back. “It's about that dog someone dumped here. That dog was shot in the head. Are we looking at some kind of war going on? I really need to know if there's something …”

Miguel's eyes burned. “There's nothing for you to worry about
. If I knew even one thing, I would tell these two women. You've been good to me and my family for almost ten years now. You know I wouldn't let anything come close to hurting you.”

Joshua Sutter shrugged and wiped his hands down the sides of his coveralls. “It's not me I'm worried about.”

Miguel shook his head. “I don't know anything. I would give my life before …”

Dolly stood, hands resting at her gun belt. “Miguel, I'm sorry but I'm going to be puttin' pressure on you. You're not tellin' everything you know, are you? Somethin's going on. That's plain. You should be tellin' us right now, before this gets worse. If there's some kind of vendetta, or somebody's threatenin' people …”

Miguel shook his head and backed away, tripping over a tree root. He turned and hurried into the house. He closed the door carefully, and quietly, behind him. A white sheet was immediately draped across the front window.

“Hope I didn't just lose my best worker,” Joshua Sutter said, digging the toe of one heavy shoe into the dirt beside the fire pit. “Never seen Miguel like that before. He's a good man. I'd say a
brave man, but he's scared. I can't figure out what's doin' it to him.”

“Scared shitless.” Dolly turned
her squad car back toward Leetsville, pulling out onto US-131 and heading south. The car was hot and smelly. This hot spell had been going on for a couple of weeks now. It was the time of year when I began praying for rain, even a couple of cool nights. “That's what the guy is.”

I rolled my window all the way down and leaned back against the hairy seat, grateful for the fresh air, no matter how overheated. Anything was better than the smell of Dolly's car which must have been inhabited recently by a sour old drunk, a sick old drunk, and maybe a couple of teens chewing cinnamon gum.

I sighed. “Sometimes migrant workers are not comfortable around authority figures like you. Could be an illegal. That would make him a little difficult to communicate with.”

“Don't think Josh Sutter would have an illegal on his place. Said the guy had been coming back for ten years or more.”

“Still, you don't know for sure.”

Her radio crackled and Chief Lucky Barnard launched into a message.

“I gotta leave, Dolly. Charley's got a doctor's appointment …”

Lucky's son had been sick for a couple of years. He came first in Lucky's life. Everyone in Leetsville knew and tried to keep their real emergencies to days when Charley was feeling good.

“On my way in,” she answered.

“How'd it go with Sutter?” he asked, voice cracking.

“Okay, I guess. The guy Josh Sutter wanted us to see was awfully nervous. Emily Kincaid thinks it's because I'm a cop.”

“Could be. She still with you?”

“Yeah,” I called out. “I'm here.”

“How ya doin', Emily?” We exchanged a few more pleasantries and he was back to business with Dolly.

“Get your report on my desk by morning, okay? I got to call Brent or that Winston guy and see if there's anything new on their end. I'm getting a strange feeling about this case. It could go a lot deeper than we're thinking.”

He signed off and Dolly hit the steering wheel with the pad of her hand.

“Damn it to hell. More paperwork. Wish he'd just let me write it up my own way and give it to 'im. A form for this. Form for that. Be a lot more productive if I didn't have to fill out forms all the time.”

I broke into the tirade. “Mind stopping at the IGA before you take me home? I need canning lids. I promised Harry. We're going fishing tomorrow.”

“You're actually going to can fish?”

“He said it's good.”

“Yeah, that's from a man who eats roadkill.”

I sighed. “Just stop, will you? I need some groceries, unless you want to go have lunch at EATS.”

“I don't go there much any more. Too nosey for my tastes.
Always gettin' into my business. Decided I'd just stay away for a while. Cate likes cooking anyway.”

“They're worried about you.”

“Why?” She made a face at me.

“Eugenia thinks there's something going on.” My back was itching from the seat cover, hairy bits sticking through my light cotton shirt. I moved around, scratching my skin as best I could. “You and Cate getting along all right? You've been alone a long time. Must be kind of hard. I mean, it's nice to have your grandmother in your life after all these years, but it can't be easy …”

“Cate says she's leaving.”

“Huh? I thought she was happy to find you.”

She shrugged and whipped the car into the IGA lot, pulling between a couple of pickups.

“Wants to go back to France. See if she can get my mother out of that cult thing—the reason she gave me up when I was a baby. Don't see the point of it myself. What's the use tryin' to change her now? Don't mean a thing to me.”

I ran into the store, got a frozen turkey dinner and a box of canning lids, stopped only a minute to talk to one of our fine librarians, and then back to the car. Dolly headed up Maple toward Willow Lake.

Halfway home she looked over at my grocery bag and said, “Too hot for canning. I'd wait 'til fall.”

“We're going tomorrow. Don't think dead fish will wait until fall.”

“You actually going to eat that stuff? Rather starve myself.”

“Well, that's you.”

“Yeah, somebody with common sense.”

I kept quiet and let the warm air rush in and hit my face. Heat in Northern Michigan was the damp kind. Being surrounded by lakes made for hotter hots in the summer, more lake-effect snow in the winter, and great, wide skies filled with either fluffy clouds or thick, enclosing gloom all year round. I didn't have air conditioning at my house and Sorrow, with his warm hairy body, liked to sneak into my bed at night. I'd taken to sleeping out in the living room, on my narrow couch where, as hard as he tried, Sorrow couldn't quite fit himself next to me.

“You know, there's this thing about the women in my family,” Dolly said as we passed Arnold's Swamp.

I knew by her tone of voice that this was one of her bits of hard-won philosophy and she was going to spit it out no matter what.

“We don't hang around when there's trouble. I know that much. Like Cate taking off on me.”

“What do you mean ‘taking off on you'? She's got something she wants to do. Not everything's about you, Dolly.”

“Not me exactly, I guess you could say.” She thought awhile. “Nope, I got that wrong. It's me she's deserting all right. Like none of us hang around when somebody needs us. Like my mother dumping me the way she did when I was born.”

“Since when do you need anybody that badly?”

“Since now, I guess you could say.”

I took a deep breath and waited.

She was quiet a minute, then pulled to the side of the road, took the car out of gear, and turned to face me.

“You'll find out soon enough, I guess.” She thought awhile. “I'm in … well … some people might call it trouble.”

“Ooh,” was all I could bring myself to say, half dreading what was coming.

“Yeah, that was what I said. Then I said a few more things.”

“What is it? If I can help …”

“Nobody can.”

“You're not sick, are you? Nothing like that?”

She shook her head, sniffed, and looked back out the front window.

“Nothing wrong with your job. You couldn't ever do anything that would jeopardize that. I'd never believe …”

“Hell, no. You think I'm crazy?”

“So?”

“Pregnant. That's why Cate's leavin'. She says she's disgusted with me.”

‘Pregnant' wasn't a word I expected to fall from Deputy Dolly Wakowski's mouth. It wasn't just an anomaly, it was an impossibility. Square little women in blue cop suits didn't get pregnant. And if she had—how? No guy in her life. No visits to a fertility clinic that I'd heard of. No immaculate conception—this wasn't a saint I was looking at.

I opened my mouth and closed it a few times. I knew my eyes were wide. “Not you,” was all I could think to say.

She shook her head up and down. “Me.”

“Who's the father?”

“Not sayin'.”

“Ever?”

“That's right. Nobody's business but mine.”

“Maybe the … eh … baby's business.”

“Just mine.”

I watched her face: smug, determined, almost angry at me, as I let her news sink in. “Are you having it?”

“Sure am. Wouldn't do that to a baby, not after all the stuff done to me.”

“Did you set out to do this, Dolly?” I asked, not knowing what else to say. “I know you've got this thing about family … I mean, wanting a family of your own. I thought—with your grandmother showing up the way she did—maybe you were all right.”

“I didn't ask for it. Nothin' I went lookin' for. It happened, that's all.”

I sat quietly awhile, trying to take in news I never expected to hear. When I glanced over at her, seeing only the side of her face, her mouth was set in a grim, hard line. Her small eyes stared over the wheel at the vanishing point where the road disappeared and the woods all came together. “I've never even seen you with a guy who wasn't a drunk or a pervert or a suspect in something or other. This is way beyond anything I can grab hold of.”

“That's too bad, I guess.” She took a deep breath and turned the car back on, then pulled out onto Willow Lake Road.

I couldn't let it go. I didn't even know what she needed from me. I wanted to be a friend but how do you do that with a person who shuts down after dropping a bomb like ‘
I'm pregnant'
?”

“You tell Lucky yet?”

She shook her head, glanced in her rearview mirror, and signaled her turn down my driveway.

“Doesn't he have to know? There are questions of insurance. I mean, you're on his payroll. Are you covered with medical insurance? What if you get hurt on the job now … ?”

“That's all stuff I can't think about. I've got to keep my mind on the baby growing in me. All the rest of it—even Lucky, well, that's not something I'm gonna worry about right away.”

“Some of it's got to be …”

She pulled down my drive and stopped next to the rose arbor, beside a car I didn't want to see in my driveway. She didn't turn off the motor, just looked over as if she couldn't wait to get me out of there. Dolly was done with me. If I had questions, that was my problem. If I had concerns about her, that was my problem, too. Dolly had accomplished what she'd had in mind for that day. Anything more would have to wait.

I got out and stuck my head in the open window to give her a weak, half smile. “Any way I can help … ”

“Don't worry,” she said, returning the weak smile, as if she didn't believe it any more than I did. “It'll all work out.”

I wanted to add something supportive, at least something kind, but I heard voices behind me, coming from out in the garden. I turned to see Harry Mockerman and Jackson Rinaldi standing together—an unlikely duo. Harry was watering my flowerbeds. My ex watched a while, then finally waved.

Dolly peeled back up my drive, shooting stones and dirt behind her. I was afraid it was her way of saying how sorry she was she'd told me about the baby. Maybe her way of telling me to keep my mouth shut. Or maybe it was just Dolly's way of celebrating what was sure to be a major change in her life.