See Also Murder (19 page)

“It might take me some time,” Calla said. “Are you going to be around home?”

“I'm not going anywhere,” I answered.

“All right, I'll call you when I find something.”

“Thank you, Calla. I really appreciate it.”

“I have to do my job, regardless of how I feel about things.”

“Please tell Herbert I'm sorry.”

“Tell him yourself. You can just tell him that yourself. If he's not here, I'm sure you'll be able to find him at the Wild Pony,” Calla Eltmore barked, then the line went dead, dead as it had been when I picked it up. All I could do was shake my head and hang up.

I made my way back to my desk. It was my safe place when the world turned dark. Or it had been. All I had to do was look past my bookshelves, out the window, to the first barn, and the image of Ardith Jenkins' dead, bloody body appeared in my mind.

It had been one thing to hold the amulet in my hand and imagine it settled in Erik Knudsen's stiff dead hand, but to see Ardith murdered in cold blood on my own property—well, that was unimaginable, something I knew I would never be able to forget or recover from.

I looked away from the window, stood up from my desk, and took in the work that awaited me.

The page proofs were stacked and rubber-banded together so they wouldn't fly off. They waited to be replaced, to be used as a foundation for the pagination change. The shoe box was closed up, bound with a well-used piece of twine. My dictionary was closed, and the typewriter sat empty, void of paper. All that remained on my desk was a single document held down by a rock from the yard; my own personal index. The one I had started to create to clear my mind. It wasn't complete either and waited as a repository of my thoughts. I knew there was a clue there somewhere—somewhere in the knowledge I'd collected and the events that had occurred. I just couldn't see it, couldn't see the why and the who. Motive and killer.

It was a job that I was less than qualified for, but Hilo Jenkins had set me on that path, and now he was indisposed, more grief stricken than I could imagine.

I felt like finding the killer was up to me now.

I just had no idea how on earth I was going to be able to do that.

CHAPTER 21

I glanced out the window just to make sure that Duke Parsons was still parked out front. I was relieved to see that the deputy was sitting in the car, his arm anchored out the window, a fresh cigarette dangling from his stubby hand. The wind pushed away the steady stream of smoke as soon as it touched it.

A magpie sat on the fencepost, looking out over the barren road. The tragedy-seeking traffic had died down to a trickle, much to my relief.

I had no idea how long we'd have protection from the county sheriff's department. I hoped a police car would be parked in the drive until the killer was caught, but I wouldn't express that to Hilo and inflict my worry on him. He had enough to deal with.

But I had no desire to stay on the farm with just Hank and me there. If the sheriff's wife couldn't fend off a killer, how would I be able to? Just the thought gave me a January shiver.
Could you kill a man if you had to? If you had no other choice, Marjorie? What would you do?
I didn't know how to answer those questions. I hoped I would never have to find out.

Regardless of what came, the fact was that Duke was still out there—watching, waiting, directing traffic, and protecting us the best he could—and that gave me a small dose of comfort. Of course, it was still daylight. Any false sense of security I felt would disappear once the sun fell from the sky, even if it was Guy Reinhardt who came to relieve Duke.

I settled back down in front of my desk and grabbed the index I'd started earlier. I needed my notes, too, since I really didn't expect the quest I'd sent Calla off on to pay off, to provide a real motive for the murders. I was deluding myself if I really expected an answer to be found in some obscure book. Still, I thought the idea of headhunting was worth checking out. It might help me to assign motive.

But at that moment, my mind turned back to mistletoe.

I had only made one entry in the murder index under the main entry, concerning the plant.

Ardith Jenkins: mistletoe found in hand.

The winter-inspired shiver I'd experienced earlier returned and didn't leave as quickly as the last one. I could hardly comprehend the reality that Ardith was really dead.

The mistletoe was far more viable as a clue than my curiosity about headhunting. I figured that hunch was a dead end, or at the very least, it would tell me whether the Norse people participated in the practice of decapitation for religious reasons or just as an act of war. Maybe that would help. The mistletoe, however, was real, left by the killer—I supposed—on purpose, as a message, as a link to the Knudsen murders. That was clear. It was also clear that the message, the mistletoe, was left for me, or for someone who understood the symbols and origin of the amulet left behind at the previous murder.

Did the killer know I had the amulet? If so, how?
Only Hilo knew, and he'd sworn me to secrecy. A swear that I'd easily kept—with one exception: Raymond. It was all something to consider.

But I also had to consider the opposite, that the killer didn't know that I had possession of the deadly jewelry. It would mean the message wasn't for me. Then, I had to wonder, who was it for?

There was no way that the mistletoe could have floated through the air and landed in Ardith's hand by accident. It's a plant that, to my knowledge, that didn't grow in North Dakota. I was certain that it was placed there with intention, and that someone had to go to some trouble to get a live sprig, since it couldn't be found growing along the side of the road.

The origin of the plant was something to consider, but more important was the origin of the amulet. If the amulet was stolen from Professor Strand, then he would most certainly know the story of Loki and Balder. He would know all of the characters associated in the mythological murder plot, and he would understand the meaning. Surely, the professor knew more about the thing than I had discovered in my small amount of research. If that were the case, then Strand would understand the significance of the mistletoe, too. But he had not been home when I'd left Raymond's cottage to go see him, and I had failed to try and contact him since. A lot had happened to keep me occupied. I had also been unable to speak with Hilo and tell him of my findings, as muddled and inconclusive as they were.

Maybe
, I thought, staring at the short, incomplete, index,
maybe, I need to talk to Duke or Guy
. I nodded. It was a good idea, especially if I didn't get a chance to speak with Hilo if the appropriate opportunity presented itself. I was sure that Hilo Jenkins was grief stricken. He and Ardith had been married since the dawn of time. But I was more comfortable with talking to Guy than I was with Duke. Duke seemed like a decent guardian, but Guy seemed more inclined to go after someone. Maybe it was his ambition, that innate desire to keep moving. Truth was, I trusted Guy more than I did Duke. Probably because I knew more about Guy. Duke was just a man in a uniform doing his job. Guy Reinhardt had a sad story attached to him. One that made him likeable to me.

I sighed out loud again.

Shep had followed me back into the room after my conversation with Calla and had situated himself between the desk and the door. It was quickly becoming his normal spot.

The dog took no notice of my sigh. Maybe he was getting accustomed to hearing my release of frustration. Or maybe he was listening to Hank and not paying any attention to me. It was a possibility.

Mistletoe. My mind went back to mistletoe. Why did someone leave mistletoe in Ardith's hand? I dug into my notes to reorient myself with the myth that was imprinted on the amulet. Balder was killed by mistletoe. I made an index entry:

B

Balder

god of light

killed by mistletoe

second son of Odin.
See also
Loki; Odin

It was the mistletoe that I was stuck on, so I perused the story, my notes, a little closer.

Balder had started to dream of his death, so his mother, Frigg, traveled the earth to obtain an oath from every object, living and dead, not to do harm to her son—but she overlooked mistletoe. So Frigg failed to protect Balder and left a door open for harm to come to him.

Did that mean something? Did the protective quality of the amulet fail to keep Erik and Lida alive? If it was stolen and placed in their hands, that didn't make sense. But if it was Erik's—or Lida's—then the amulet's placement might have meant something significant. But what?

Was the mistletoe an afterthought? Or something more? Loki tricked Frigg by wearing a disguise and asked Frigg directly what could harm Balder—and she told him.
She told him, but she didn't know it was Loki that she was speaking to
.

So, I had to wonder, was there somebody here in Dickinson, somebody that knew Erik, Lida, and Ardith, and who was presenting themselves to be someone other than who they really were? Maybe wearing a disguise, looking for a weakness?

I made another entry, only this one under V:

Vulnerabilities.
See
mistletoe

But what was at stake here? Why did Erik and Lida need pro­tection? From who, or what? None of it made any sense to me. All I knew was that the mistletoe was a weapon, fashioned into a dart during a game and given to Hoder, Balder's blind twin brother, by Loki and used to kill the God of Light innocently. Loki didn't kill Balder. Not physically. But he knew what he was doing. Hoder was innocent—but he was a killer.

I had completely allowed myself to become consumed again by the stories in Norse mythology. But I had to wonder . . . had Ardith's killer been tricked, too? Tricked into killing her without knowing what he—or she, for that matter—was really doing?

It was something to consider. It was a logical explanation for the mistletoe. But if the killer didn't put it in Ardith's hand, who did? I wasn't sure that I would ever know.

And I had to wonder one last thing: What if the green sprig had nothing to do with the myth? What if it meant something else, something else that I was missing?

I pushed myself back from the desk and stared down at the index. I was no closer to finding an answer than I had been after leaving Dickinson. If anything, I was more confused.

In the past, when I was stumped on something, when I couldn't move forward, I'd talk it through with Hank, but that was getting difficult, especially now, after Ardith's death. He'd retreated into silence. He lay prone, unmoving, not by fate but by choice, his blind eyes fixed on the ceiling for hours on end. There was a lost look in his eyes. They were almost cloudy, like a far off storm bank was building up inside of him. His jaw was set hard, and I hardly recognized him, much less had the ability to talk to him.

But it was him or the dog, and so far, Shep hadn't been much help.

I made my way to the bedroom and stopped at the door. It was all I could do not to break into another round of tears as I watched Hank breath. It was a struggle for him on good days, and the doctor had told us both that pneumonia would be our biggest enemy—pneumonia and bed sores.

Before the accident, Hank had been as hale and hearty as any North Dakota farmer. After the accident, Hank was left with nothing but his mind to occupy him. I had never settled myself to the fact that Hank would never recover, never get better. But he wouldn't. That was the truth of it. Hank would never stand up and walk out of the bedroom on his own, and I could distract myself with more indexing work, farm chores, and amateur detective tasks for Hilo, but I was going to have to face the facts of my situation, Hank's situation, whether I wanted to or not. Sooner rather than later, we were both going to have to leave the farm behind and find our glory somewhere else.

“You're fidgeting, Marjorie,” Hank said.

His voice was strong, almost normal. The wind seemed to bounce it off the wall behind me, and I turned, just for a second, hopeful that a healthy, seeing Hank had just walked in the door from the back forty after a hard day's work, and all of this—all of the killing and his accident—had been nothing more than a terrible nightmare. But it was just an echo and a wish. Nothing more.

“Just confused is all,” I said, turning my attention back to the real Hank lying on the bed, saddened at the loss of the imaginary one that did not exist. “Where do you suppose someone would get a sprig of mistletoe this time of year?”

“Most likely down at the Ben Franklin among the Christmas decorations, I suppose.”

“It's July, Hank,” I said. “Besides, I mean a real plant, not the plastic kind you chase me all over the house with trying for a kiss.”

“Chased,” Hank corrected me.

“Chased. Right.”

“Maybe they hung onto it.” Hank turned his head and stared at me, unblinking, with his blind eyes. “Kept it alive since the holidays. Probably easier to come by then since it doesn't grow around here.”

“That'd take some work,” I said, “just to hang onto something for such a purpose. They'd had to have planned it out ages ago, knew what they were going to do with it back in the winter.”

“Just a thought, Marjorie. Whoever did this horrible deed went to a lot of trouble both times,” Hank said. “Don't seem like no animal to me. But a plotting, thinking kind of creature. Somebody's gonna have to outthink 'im to catch him. You need to keep that in mind, Marjorie. You hear?”

Just as I was about to agree with him, tell him that I would, I heard a sound from outside that caused me to jump. Hank heard it, too, and he turned his head to the window.

Someone had started the engine to Hank's combine. There was no mistaking that sound—or the rotation of the thrashers as the gear engaged to move forward.

CHAPTER 22

It didn't occur to me that the rational thing to do was jump into bed next to Hank, pull the covers up over our heads, and hide until the trouble was over. It was Duke Parsons's job to protect us, to see to any shenanigans the curiosity seekers might cause, and track down a killer bold enough to show up in the light of day and announce himself directly with the start of the combine's engine.