Mad Season (9 page)

“Most Realtors, you know,” she hollered out the window, “don’t deal exclusively in farms. My daddy, my daddy,” she shouted, her voice vibrating, “he was a farmer. My daddy, he was killed in a threshing machine. It ground him up. Like hamburg. I know farms, all right.”

She struck a large wooden match on the car door and lit up. “I just happened to be driving by,” she yelled, the cigarette in her mouth now, “saw your barn door open. Farmers don’t have any privacy, do they? Time for themselves? Your husband says you always wanted to finish college. Maybe you could—”

Turning her back, Ruth went over to greet the vet. She’d take him to the heifers and then call Colm, Pete had contacted all the Realtors, had he? If so, Colm would have told her. No, there was some other liaison here.

She’d call Colm, ask him anyway. She just needed to hear his voice. Calm her nerves.

Chapter Six

Catamount Furniture was the town’s third largest employer after Agway and the Branbury Cheese plant; the place was built on an acre of town land given over to “industry.” The town didn’t mind, just so it was out of sight. Colm smiled as he walked up to the white colonial door—he and his father could use some new furniture, replace a couple of coffins maybe.

A secretary at the general manager’s office informed him that the manager was out, but if he wanted to wait, someone would talk to him. Minutes later the manager himself came in: a tanned young man with a receding hairline and a busy look on his face, he shook Colm’s hand weakly, sat on the desk slightly above Colm’s eye level, crossed his khaki-clad legs at the ankles, and frowned at the note Colm had extracted from Police Chief Roy Fallon.

“I read about this,” he said and shrugged. What did he have to do with it?

There was something about people in a hurry that made one want to talk faster, rise to the level of their anxiety. Colm refused that. He let the man wait.

He said, “You had a furniture raffle. Someone went to the Larocques’ farm, a ticket was found in Mrs. Larocque’s pocket. It was dated April sixth, the afternoon of the assault. She paid a dollar for a chance to win an armchair. Can I see the person who sold her that ticket?”

The manager rocked back, folded his arms. “I’m sure we can find out for you. The raffle’s still going on, I believe the cut-off date’s on that ticket. A way of bringing folks into the store, you know?” He shrugged again, kicked out a foot, apologized as it hit Colm’s ankle.

Colm’s head ached.

The manager said, “You can’t think the salesman had anything to do with a robbery?”

“A murder,” corrected Colm. “Mrs. Larocque died day before yesterday.” (The smile dried up on the manager’s face.) “We want to follow up on everyone who went to the house, that’s all. Tell your salesman not to panic. Oh, and one more thing.”

“Oh?” More foot kicking.

“You have a young guy working here named Dufours. He worked off and on for the Larocques. I’d like to talk to him.”

“Yeah, he works here. He’ll be on lunch break in about”—he consulted a huge watch that had date, year, and probably, Colm thought, century—”Forty-five minutes?”

“I’d like to see one of them now,” said Colm. “Either the raffle salesman or Dufours.” He didn’t think he had to explain. He hadn’t read Chief Fallon’s note, but it must have been a door opener. Fallon used to ask if he wanted to be a policeman one day, like his granddad. And remembering his granddad when they brought him home that day, the blood, the smell, he’d shake his head.

And here he was.

The manager looked put upon. “All right, I’ll get Dufours. It’ll take some to find the salesman. We had more than one selling tickets. In fact, maybe two assigned to that area?”

“I’ll wait?” Colm put a question mark in his own voice and adjusted his glasses. He was used to waiting, wasn’t he? He’d learned patience from the bodies brought into the mortuary. It was one of the prerequisites for undertaking.

Brian Dufours was a short-coupled young man with a pockmarked complexion and hands like hay rakes. There was something dwarflike about him, though he wasn’t abnormally short. He wore gray workpants covered with thick lacquer, a mask around his neck, and the green furniture company T-shirt with a catamount on the front. Colm was reminded of the story about the stuffed catamount that snarled toward New York on the Fay Tavern in old Bennington—back in the days of the Republic of Vermont, that was. Colm always loved the idea of Vermont declaring itself a republic.

Except that Brian Dufours wasn’t snarling; he was looking anxious. He stood like a child in a bearskin, wringing a red kerchief in his hands. His cheeks worked in and out, his black eyes looked startled, like he’d met up with a bear.

“I’m not a policeman, not really,” Colm said, trying to put him at his ease, though Dufours was literally sinking into his seat. The manager had introduced him as “Detective Hanna,” and Colm let it go—why not? He explained the situation in as easy a voice as he could. He only wanted to know the extent of Dufours’s work there, who and what he’d seen. What did he know about Lucien Larocque? His habits, and Belle’s?

When Dufours finally spoke, it was in a voice that might have come straight out of the spray can. “I worked, uh, weekends for a year there. Uh, last year, till I, uh, dropped out, got a job here. I been workin’ here six months now. I do most of the, uh, sprayin’.”

“You didn’t want to work on the farm?”

“Uh-uh. No money there, old man takes ‘vantage ‘cause I’m his kid. Here I bring home a check each week.”

“Home is . . .”

“I got a room. In town.”

Colm questioned him about the Larocques.

“Funny old guy. Never talked much, not like my old man— orders ten to the minute. I done haying, he taught me the round bales. They got, uh, machines now, but he done ‘em by hand. You tie ‘em with string and then put ‘em in plastic. They look like little mushrooms. Five-hundred-pound little mushrooms.”

He seemed amazed at his comparison, and amused at the same time. The red kerchief was wrung into a rag.

“Five-hundred-pound little mushrooms,” Dufours repeated. “Try an’ lift ‘at.”

“He was a good boss, then,” Colm said.

“Oh yeah. Bettern’ pa. Pa—”

“About Larocque. Were you aware of his habits? He was frugal, they say, never spent his money.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about that.” Was there the barest color rising in his neck? “He pay me every Sunday out of his pocket. Money stunk. Who cared? A fair wage. Miz L’rocque, she always run after me with cookies or somepin. They say she part Indian, but I don’t care. Ma say she don’t mix much, don’t come to Home Dem, but she always give me cookies.”

“There was no one who might have disliked her, anyone you might have seen hanging around the place? Arguing with Lucien or Belle?”

“No. No. ‘Cept—”

“Uh-huh?”

“Maybe that, uh, Willy next door. He’d give an argument. Too dumb to know better. He was in my class awhile that Willy, couldn’t read, do moren’ write his name. He got a temper, though, when he’s crossed. One time Mr. L’rocque, he say, Willy, you not diggin’ that hole right. You want to get up that rock you dig around it, get a pick under it. And Willy say, I’m doin’ it my way, it’s only way I can, or I quit.”

“And did he quit?”

“No, but he do it his way. Mister L’rocque, he give up. Besides, that guy Tim’s always there, takin’ Willy’s part. Spoilin’ him rotten. A retard.”

Colm dug his fingernails into his palms. It was everywhere, the old pecking order. The ants hated the worms, the worms hated the birds. What could you do?

He asked a few more questions but gained no more insight.

One thing, though, Dufours was a talker. Like talking was the only way to get rid of the nerves. Dufours told about Lucien’s habit of taking a beer every hour while he worked. It kept Lucien going, he said, and he “don’t mind having one with him.” And Belle, she let him. “My ma, she’d have a stroke, Pa’s bad enough nights when he gits going. Ma keeps him off the booze daytimes. ‘Nother reason I want out. I could work a place like L’rocque’s, but that’s only part-time.”

“He may need more help when he gets out of the hospital. Without Belle.”

Dufours spread his rakelike fingers. He earned more money here, he explained. Though he hated the lacquer. “Gits in my nose, mask don’t keep it out. Sometimes I think, them round bales, they smell good, bettern that lacquer. But I couldn’t keep my place then. I need my own place.”

“Other than lacquer, it’s okay here? The bosses are fair?”

“Okay. I do my work, punch in on time, and they let me alone. That it?” He glanced at the clock. He seemed nervous again, he had to get back to work. He didn’t want to get in bad with his boss.

“I hear there’s a raffle going on,” Colm said as he rose to let Dufours go. He didn’t know why the raffle was relevant, but it nagged at him. “You involved in that? They went to Larocque’s, I understand, day of the assault.”

“That was, uh, Smith, he’s one of the salesmen. I know ‘cause he ask how to get there. He’s always foolin’ around the rest of us guys, only salesman who does. Fat guy. Makin’ jokes and all. Rest of ‘em think they’re somethin’. College guys. They don’t ask me to do stuff like raffles. I just spray.”

“So you talk to Smith. Might have told him about working there, at Larocque’s?”

“I might. He likes a laugh. He thought that beer every hour pretty funny.”

“He’s here today? Smith?”

“Oh no, he quit. Quit couple days ago. He don’t like being bossed around, he said. Wants to be his own man.”

“I see. Thanks then, Brian. Thanks for your help.”

Colm’s hand was still sticky with lacquer when Brian withdrew his. He rubbed it on his pants, but the stuff wouldn’t come off. Voices sounded in the hall, and Brian looked panicked, almost ripped his kerchief in two.

“Oh, one more thing,” Colm said, and Brian wheeled about, a bicycle in a grease spill. “Did you see much of the daughter, Marie, when you were working there? Marie and her husband, Harold?”

Brian thought a minute. “Know Harold from, uh, fire department. But never met her. Not once. You can ask Smith, though. He’s a cousin or somepin’, I dunno.”

“Cousin to who, Marie or Harold?”

But Brian was gone.

“It was Jules Smith,” the manager said.

Colm said, “But he quit, Brian told me. He worked alone, then?”

“Naw, there would’ve been somebody else with him, but we don’t know who. Nobody claims the privilege, right?”

“Then where can I find this Smith?” asked Colm.

“He left no address, okay? He was a good salesman though, smooth. But nobody knew much about him. He came from somewhere across the lake. Drove a red Alfa Romeo, Spent a lot of time with the spray crew. He told jokes and they laughed. Comical guy. We wrote him out a good reference, okay?”

* * * *

Ruth stood on the doorstep a long minute before she knocked. She hated herself for being in awe like this, it was against her principles, all money was tainted in her scheme of things. But the big white house, the well-kept lawn, the bronze sculpture in the front garden—a peregrine falcon it looked like, grasping a sparrow. If she had to wait another minute she might pass out.

And then the door opened. A woman stood there, in jeans like herself, a blue-striped sweatshirt, Reeboks on her small feet. Her blond hair looked freshly set, there was something frail about her, determined.

“Ruth Willmarth. Victor’s mother. Is this a bad time? You said one-thirty was okay. I had errands this way. I brought you this.”

She held out a pint of syrup. A peace offering. They’d discuss this amicably: no tears, no anger. One reasonable mother to another.

“Come in.” Mrs. Unsworth’s fingers trembled as she took the syrup. She looked fit for little more than sitting behind a porcelain tea set.

The living room was filled with teak furniture. It looked uncomfortable, all angles and peaks and pastels. Not like a room for three active boys, except for the TV that squatted in the middle like a giant snap turtle. Ruth lowered herself into a lemon upholstered chair. The hostess offered coffee.

“Let me help,” Ruth said, not used to being waited on, but the woman was already gone, her footsteps went click-clack on the hardwood floor.

Her hand shook slightly as she offered the coffee, a plate of cookies. “They’re store-bought,” she apologized. “I thought, when we got up here, I’d have time for baking. At home there was all the volunteering. Junior League, the hospital.”

Ruth imagined the charity scene: heads freshly coiffed, the chatter about clubs and children and recipes—she’d take Home Dem over that. Of course, they were doing a service, they were good women. But you couldn’t help thinking of them driving away in their expensive cars.

“It’s my sheep,” Mrs. Unsworth explained. “I thought I wanted to raise sheep. And I love it, I do. I didn’t know it was so time-consuming, that’s all. The boys complain they don’t have any clean laundry. George complains—he’s my husband. He’s with IBM, if he survives the cuts.”

“Do you have help? I wasn’t brought up on a farm either. I learned. And now. . .” Ruth hesitated. She didn’t know how much to say about her own life. Though this woman seemed unassuming, holding her cup in two hands like it might fly away.

“Emily told me,” Mrs. Unsworth said. “About your husband. I’m sorry.”

Ruth was piqued. Emily. Her daughter’s name coming out like that, in one familiar breath. How much had Emily told? She felt the red creeping up, tingling her ears.

“I came, Mrs. Unsworth, about my son. And yours. They’re in the fifth grade together. There’s been . . . some trouble.”

“Carol,” the woman said. “My son is named Garth.”

That made it more difficult. The first names personalized things. Ruth steeled herself, rushed on, a caught fly, she’d blundered right in. “Your son, and some of the others, are victimizing my son. They call him names, do things.”

Mrs. Unsworth—Carol—sat mute as a sheep while Ruth talked. She drew her fingers through her thin curled hair. “I know about the telescope,” she said. “Wilder told me. I didn’t like it.”

Ruth said, “The telescope?”