Meadowlark (10 page)

"I'll do it." My voice sounded calm, considering I was
repressing a strong urge to scream no.

"I appreciate it, Lark. It won't be pleasant."

"Was he shot?"

"Stabbed. Hacked, actually. I'm guessing the weapon was a
machete, like the ones hanging above the plank table." His mouth
crimped. He hesitated then went on, "I'd rather you didn't say
anything about the weapon or the condition of the body to the
others. I ought to interrogate the lot of them before we make
anything public."

"Even Jay?"

He shook his head. "I want Jay to see the body before we
move it, budget or no budget. There's some things don't make
sense." He frowned. "I guess Jay could do the identification."

"I don't think he ever met Hugo," I said, with honest regret.
Surprising but true. Hugo had paid me his rent at the bookstore.

"Does Jay know McDonald?"

I explained the college connection and Bianca's dinner party.
The workshop puzzled Dale.

I babbled for a while about the need to educate journalists.
The tape recorder clicked to a stop. Dale flipped the cartridge over. I
talked some more. He wanted to know about the Meadowlark staff,
the Vietnamese farm workers, and the interns. I saw no
reason--certainly not an ephemeral loyalty to Bianca--to conceal anything
from him. I told him what little I knew.

The rain eased. The medical examiner drove up. Dale
jumped out and had the doctor back his Bronco in behind the cop
car. Protecting the crime scene. The M.E. was a local internist with an
interest in pathology. According to Jay, he was young and bright, but
given to odd enthusiasms.

I stayed where I was. I felt queasy--in retrospect and in
anticipation. Hacked to death with a machete. The convenient
scapegoats would be the refugees. I disliked that idea a lot, but my
mind also shied away from the possibility of anyone I knew
murdering Hugo. I thought about Hugo, about the art book he had
been reading, about the three wilted daffodils in his apartment.

When Dale stuck his head in the driver's side, I was so
absorbed in melancholy he made me jump.

"Dr. Riley says the backup car's in place. I told 'em to block
the entrance to the farm." He slid in and activated his radio. "I need
to warn them to let Jay through." He did that amid much crackling
police code, then went back to supervise his evidence crew. They
were bringing out plastic garbage bags full of something. It took me a
moment to realize they were removing the ice cubes from the
bin.

I hoped Jay would hurry. He was going to have to pick up my
pieces.

He showed up on foot about ten minutes later. I recognized
the set of his shoulders from a considerable distance, jumped out of
the car, and ran down to him.

He gave me a hug. "All right?"

"So far. I'm going to identify the body."

He winced. "That won't be good for your health."

"Neither is Hugo's death. I'll be okay, Jay, and Dale needs all
the help he can get." I explained Dale's reaction to Bianca.

Jay sighed. "I know the feeling."

"Where's the car?" I asked by way of changing the
subject.

"I left it out on the highway shoulder. Hi, Dale."

Dale had materialized at Jay's elbow. He looked harassed. "I
didn't see you drive up."

Jay explained, adding, "You don't need another set of tread
marks."

Dale groaned. "They've driven everything through here but
a bulldozer."

"Does it matter?"

"You mean was he killed here. I don't think so. Not enough
blood."

My stomach clenched. How much did he need? "You
sure?"

"No. It's weird. I think the weapon's hanging right there in
the building, but I won't know for sure until the technicians test for
bloodstains. I think he was killed somewhere else and brought here,
either in a vehicle--or on foot. He wasn't a heavy man. Then he was
stuffed into the ice bin."

"I'd better view the body," Jay said. He didn't sound eager.
He looked at me. "Not yet, Lark." Meaning I didn't have to enter the
ghastly shed yet.

In the end, I didn't reenter the ice house at all. After a cold
forty-five minutes, the paramedics carried a stretcher in. I hunched
down and watched through the windshield of the patrol car.
Eventually they reemerged, and the stretcher bore a lumpy form in a
body bag. Dale, Jay, and the medical examiner conferred. The doctor
shook hands and left. The stretcher moved slowly toward me. I knew
what was coming and shut my eyes like a five year old.

"Are you ready, Lark?" Jay, at the door.

I pried my eyes open and got out, every joint stiff with
reluctance.

Dale was standing at one end of the body bag, the open end.
He cleared his throat. "His face is pretty much intact."

I nodded. He jerked the fabric down.

"Yes," I said, "that's' Hugo." Then I whipped around and
barfed Dale's cappuccino onto the broccoli.

Hugo's face was as pale as a bucket of skimmed milk, and a
gash, black with dried blood, sliced down from the left eye to the
hinge of the jaw. A flap of skin exposed the jawbone. Cysts showed
purple against the pallor. His expression was fixed in a snarl of fear
or anger, tongue protruding a little.

When I stopped heaving and turned around, the paramedics
had covered the hideous mask. They carried the stretcher to the
ambulance in silence. Jay put his arm around my shoulders.

"Sorry," Dale said awkwardly. "We had to be sure."

I nodded. In spite of my revulsion, I hadn't resisted making
the identification, because I had had to be sure, too.

We made our getaway by the simple expedient of
abandoning my car. Jay's was outside on the highway. We cut across
the back yard of the house and around the conference wing. Jay had a
word with the deputy blocking the entrance to the drive. Then we lit
out.

When we got home, I took a hot, hot shower, and Jay fixed
sandwiches for lunch. By tacit agreement we didn't talk about the
murder, though Jay did say he thought Bianca should cancel the
workshop. I was in complete agreement with that.

I drank a glass of wine with lunch and took a nap. Neither
the wine nor the nap was typical of me. Naturally, I had a nightmare.
I dreamed of Hugo's dead face, and woke with my pulse hammering
in my throat and my tongue feeling as if it were too large for my
mouth. Like Hugo's.

Sluggish and sick, I got up, showered again, crawled into
fresh clothes, and went downstairs to see what was happening. Jay
was on the phone in the breakfast nook.

I made a pot of coffee and had drunk half a cup before he
finally hung up. "Was that Dale?"

"You're kidding. He won't have time to turn around, let
along call bystanders." He tugged his moustache. "It was the
Dean."

The Dean was the dean of instruction, Jay's immediate
supervisor, since Jay was department head. He had supported Jay
through the difficult process of gaining faculty approval of the police
science program. He was also, less directly, Keith McDonald's boss.
The Dean was a little inclined to suffer from anxiety attacks.

Light dawned. "The interns?"

Jay nodded. "McDonald called him. Dale is interrogating the
interns. The Dean was just wondering if maybe I couldn't stop that. I
pointed out that we have a murder, and the kids are material
witnesses."

"Suspects." I explained about Jason and Bill and the ice
house.

"So that's what he was talking about. Interesting."

"It probably doesn't mean anything. All the interns were
impatient to go home Saturday. I doubt that Jason and Bill did more
than stick their heads in the door of the ice house. They couldn't
have seen the body from the doorway."

"No."

"Marianne said they should have reported that the ice
machine was switched on."

"That's unusual?"

I explained Marianne's reaction.

"Does Dale know?"

"I expect so. He interrogated her at some length before you
got there."

Jay sighed. "So there are suspicious circumstances. Okay, I'd
better see if it's all right to go out to the farm again."

"We have to retrieve my car anyway, and I need to talk to
Bianca about the workshop."

He picked up the phone. Bianca answered. He told her she
could talk to me later and asked if Dale was still at the farm. There
was a long pause. Finally I heard a squawk at the other end.

Jay said, "Yeah, I know, buddy. The interns are students at
the college, though." More squawks. "I couldn't agree more. All the
same, if I come out I can probably get the Dean off your back." A less
agitated squawk. "Okay. Lark's coming, too. Her car's still there."
Resigned squawk. Jay handed me the phone. "He's putting Bianca
back on."

I set my cup on the counter. Bianca was saying something
intense about Gestapo tactics. "Dale has to interrogate the witnesses,
Bianca." I cleared my throat. "Listen, about the workshop--"

"I won't cancel it. Those Vietnamese women killed Hugo. It's
nothing to do with my staff."

A good liberal viewpoint.
Cherchez l'etranger
. I said,
"Well, we can talk it over. There are bound to be changes."

"You're coming out?" She sounded less hostile.

"To get my car."

"Come in the mudroom door when you get here."

"Okay."

"I have to go. Mary Sadat's having hysterics." She hung
up.

Jay said, "Dale wants you to bring the shoes you were
wearing in the ice house."

That made sense. The evidence crew would need to
eliminate my footprints and Marianne's from the general
scuffle.

Jay drove slightly over the speed limit. He must have been
tense. It had stopped raining, but the overcast looked sullen, and it
was beginning to get dark. Four-thirty. Dale had had a lot of time to
interview the people at the farm.

As we came into sight of Coho Island and the narrow
southern end of Shoalwater Bay, Jay said, "You're going to have
nightmares."

I said I already had.

He glanced at me. "Role reversal?"

Jay's nightmares were a recurrent feature of our marriage. I
gave him a constrained smile. "I'll lean on you."

"Do that." He was going at least sixty-five. The sheriff's car
no longer blocked the entrance to Meadowlark Farm. We jounced
over the cattle guard and drove around behind the house. The extra
cop car was there, parked between Dale's and an upscale civilian
sedan. Next to the sedan, my old Toyota looked like a junker, but
there were two other rattletraps and the high-wheel pickup I knew
belonged to Jason. The interns hadn't gone yet. I left my boots, the
ones I had worn for the search, in Jay's car.

I led Jay straight through the mudroom into the kitchen. No
way was I going to remove my shoes. Mike Wallace was sitting at the
butcher block table eating something. As we entered, he looked up,
eyes wide.

Jay greeted him, and Mike told us the others were in the
living room. This was not, strictly speaking, accurate. The interns
weren't there. Neither was Dale.

Bianca and Del and Marianne were sitting by the fireplace
with a strange man who wore jeans with an expensive pullover. The
sheriff had apparently come and gone. Bianca introduced her lawyer,
Paul Mayer.

As we were shaking hands, Keith McDonald came in from
the direction of the master suite looking frazzled.

He nodded at us and turned to Bianca. "Angie says Mary's
asleep. I'm sending Carol and the Carlsens home." I heard slamming
car doors and revving engines from the direction of the car barn.
Corroboration.

Jay said, "Did Nelson okay that?"

McDonald's mouth set. "Yeah, if it's your business."

"They're students, right?"

McDonald gave a curt nod.

"Then they're my business. According to the Dean." Jay kept
his tone cool and conciliating.

McDonald didn't like that. He bit his lip.

"You did call him," Jay said with elaborate patience.

"Yes. I told him they needed a lawyer."

"He called the attorney general. They decided I'm cheaper
than a lawyer."

"All right," McDonald said with bad grace.

Mayer licked his chops. Reflexively, I suspect. There was a
definite potential for parental lawsuits, but he would have had a
large conflict of interest if he took one on.

The college carried no liability insurance as a matter of state
policy. Whenever it got itself into legal muck, it leaned on the
attorney general's office. According to Jay, the advice was sometimes
good and sometimes not.

Mayer said, "Then you have a watching brief, Mr.
Dodge?"

"I don't have a brief at all," Jay replied. "I'm not a
lawyer."

"I don't understand--"

Bianca made an impatient noise. "The Dean's covering his
ass. Jay will make sure the students aren't railroaded."

I saw Jay's moustache twitch in appreciation.

She added, "It's okay, Paul. You can go home now. I'll call
you when I need more advice."

The lawyer took ceremonial leave. Bianca escorted him from
the room. We all looked at each other. Del raised his whiskey glass
and sipped. Keith offered Jay and me drinks, which we declined. Jay
took up a station near the fireplace. I sat.

When Bianca returned, I said brightly, "So, what do we do
about this workshop?"

"Cancel it," McDonald said. He didn't hesitate but he avoided
Bianca's eyes.

Del took a belt of his favorite anesthetic. "Aw, Keith, no
reason to throw all of Bianca's work out the window. Nelson will pull
in that gook woman, whassername?"

"Mei Phuoc," Marianne said.

Del gave a small drunken giggle. "May Fuck. Thas the one.
Old Hugo was chopped with a machete. S'obvious." He hiccupped.
"Whodunnit, I mean."

"How do you know Hugo was killed with a machete?" I
asked.

Bianca made an impatient gesture. "The sheriff told us." She
turned to Del and said through her teeth, "Thank you so much."