The Winter Widow (5 page)

Holy shit.

Pigs. Eight large white pigs trotted in a group along the center of the street, making anticipatory little grunts like a group of tourists. They were huge, mean and ugly, and looked able to demolish anything in their path. Hooves clacking, they milled around as though deciding where to go first.

At the corner, an old truck with stake sides and steam rising from the hood sat half on the curb, straddling a bent stop sign. One uniformed cop was talking with the driver; another was scratching his head.

In sloppy formation the pigs headed for the barbershop. The leader put its front feet on the brick facing and peered in the window into the face of the barber, who shook his fist. The pig gave a startled squeal, infecting the rest with panic, and all eight shot off down the street at incredible speed, scattering spectators in their charge.

Several able-bodied men set off in pursuit, shouting instructions at each other. The uniformed officers loped into the fray. The people, regathered along both sides of the street and clustered in shop doorways, hooted and whistled.

“Hadn't you ought to do something?” a man said to her. “They're getting away.”

At a loss for what else to do, she joined the chase.

Cheers and boos came from the sidelines.

They were all—pigs, men and Susan—pelting more or less straight down Main Street when a small brown dog with a shrill yapping bark streaked into the action.

The pigs broke and galloped off in all directions.

The dog harried one, which backed up against the shoe store with murder in its eye. Susan made a grab for the dog and he danced out of reach. She grabbed again and caught one leg. The dog shrieked and sank his teeth into her sleeve. She shook him by the scruff of the neck. He gave her a sheepish look and went limp.

She handed him to a spectator. “Hold onto him.”

“Yes, ma'am. Mighty fierce way you got with little dogs.” He grinned and tucked the dog under one arm. “Why don't you grab that by the leg?” He nodded at the pig, who grunted and rolled toward her like a tank.

She backpedaled slowly.

“Wa-hoo!” A man chased a pig down the middle of the street, whacking it with his hat.

Bunch of cowboys, she thought grimly. Think. Another truck. Herd all the pigs—

“Look out!”

She spun. Two pigs sped toward her from the other direction. She backed, dodged and fell over the pig behind. Squeals and grunts.

She covered her head. Cloven hooves clattered around her.

“Hey, lady,” someone said. “How do you expect to catch a killer, if you can't even catch a Chester White?”

CHAPTER FIVE

IT was past noon when Susan stomped, grimy and tattered, into the police station, stalked past Hazel, ignoring her startled look, and flopped into Daniel's chair.

Hazel warily came to the doorway. “Did you round up all the pigs?”

“Seven of them,” Susan said grimly. “The eighth was last seen heading for Topeka at a good clip.”

“That's most of them,” Hazel said with a motherly kind of encouragement.

Susan stared at her.

“Well, at least nobody got hurt.” Hazel folded her arms across her ample bosom and leaned a shoulder against the door frame. “They can be dangerous sometimes, pigs.”

“Tell me about it.” Susan picked at the small rips in her jacket. “Hazel, Lucille Guthman never showed up. Is that like her?”

“She didn't? Oh my heavens, no. That's not like her at all. She tries to be Lois Lane so everybody won't think she only got the job because her father is Otto Guthman. What could have happened?”

She peered at Susan. “Are you all right? You seem a little upset.”

Upset? That hardly covered it. “Just great. I made a terrific impression this morning with my first official act. Fell on my ass in front of the whole town.” At this very moment the mayor was probably reaching for the telephone.
You see? Not competent. I'm yanking the job and giving it to Parkhurst.

“Don't fret,” Hazel said soothingly. “Things happen.”

“Fret? Ha!” The morning's events would no doubt be rehashed with hilarity for years to come. Defeated by pigs. Now that was humiliating.

“No, really, it'll be all right. You'll be great.”

Susan snorted.

Hazel nodded. “I've started a whisper campaign. Pretty soon everybody will know how great you are and won't any of them even know how they know.”

Susan smiled wryly, thinking it would take more than a good word from Hazel. “Why would you do that, Hazel?”

Hazel shrugged. “This is my town. I grew up here, raised my children here. It's a good town. I love this place, and Ben— Well, Ben puts people's backs up.” Hazel smiled, exposing one slightly crooked front tooth. “Besides, you lend a little class to the place.”

There's nothing like undeserved credit to make you feel shabby. She didn't give a damn about the town, or the job. She wanted Daniel's killer. Then she'd be gone.

The phone rang, saving her from the need for further comment, and Hazel bustled out to answer it. Sailing under false colors was shitty, but so was losing your only supporter. Shrugging off her blue jacket, she tossed it at the coatrack and it caught on a hook. Ha, first thing that went right today.

In the bathroom, she washed her hands and face, dabbed at the mud on her gray skirt and yanked a comb through her hair. Riots she knew how to handle; livestock hadn't been in the training manuals.

She plodded back to her desk and made several phone calls trying to track down Lucille, with no success. Nobody had seen her, nobody knew where she was. Leaning back in the chair, Susan shook out a cigarette and lit it, then inhaled deeply, placed it in the ashtray and, carrying the lighter, headed out for coffee.

Osey, sprawled in his chair with an elbow hooked over the back, was speaking on the phone. His sharp features, all crowded together in the middle of his face, showed perplexity, and he raked a hand through his yellow hair. She walked up behind him.

His head swiveled, ingenuous blue eyes spotted her, and he slammed down the phone and shot to his feet, knocking the lighter from her hand. He jumped back to pick it up and his size thirteen boot crunched down on her toes.

She yelped and limped around in a small circle muttering, “Oh dear God.”

He gulped and stammered apologetic sounds, his Adam's apple jerking convulsively.

He retrieved the lighter, rubbed it against his brown-checked shirt and offered it to her on the palm of his hand. She took it with murmured thanks. He gulped and fled.

“Here.” Hazel handed her a steaming cup of coffee. “That's one way of getting his attention.”

“Are there less hazardous ways?” Osey had an outstanding characteristic that had endeared him to Daniel: a photographic memory. She didn't find him endearing, she found him a disaster.

“Osey's a good kid. He just needs a little sanding on the rough edges.”

Susan refrained from comment and sipped coffee.

“Uh, Susan—”

“Don't tell me there's something else?”

Hazel grinned. “Mrs. Willington called. She said there's a pig in her backyard.”

Susan closed her eyes and took another sip of coffee. “Roberts and White are supposed to be on the trail. Call them and let them know where the
swine
is.” She handed the cup back. “I'm going out to find Sophie.”

On Railroad Street, she headed Daniel's pickup southwest and, at the edge of town, passed the park with the bandshell used for concerts during the summer. On the evening after their arrival in town, she and Daniel had wandered through the park with snowflakes swirling around them, and then sheltered in the bandshell, snuggling close in the dark to watch the snow fall.

Three miles beyond the park, she came to a big rural mailbox and turned left onto a graveled road. On one side was a pasture with a large pond; a dozen white-faced cattle gazed curiously at the pickup and ambled toward the barbed-wire fence. Across the road was an empty field and beyond it an area of woods.

If there were a patron saint of cats, it would be Sophie Niemen. In her dedication to needy cats, she roamed around at all hours and poked her nose into everything. And she knew, according to Daniel, everything about everybody. Sophie's husband had been one of the most prosperous farmers in the area; after his death, she had sold off the stock and most of the land, keeping only the house and two acres surrounding it.

She was vituperative about the practice of destroying unwanted kittens and, with an acid tongue, lashed and bullied people into having their pets neutered. If they refused or ignored her, she simply kidnaped the cats, had them taken care of herself and then returned them. She was forced to go further and further afield because the nearby vets knew her and were leery of getting embroiled with irate cat owners. Any cat she thought was abused simply disappeared and she denied any knowledge of it, but somewhere an unsuspecting farmer or spinsterish crony would be harboring a stolen animal.

The old farmhouse was a large three-story gray shingle, almost Victorian in architecture, with bow windows. Some distance behind it was a barn. Susan parked at the rear of the house and stepped carefully around small puddles collected in shallow spots on the driveway.

A horse neighed. From around the corner of the house, it clopped toward her in an ungainly trot, a sway-backed white mare with the gaunt frame of age and splayed feet the size of dinner plates.

Bloody hell, more livestock.

Ears laid back, the old mare snaked out her neck and clacked long yellow teeth. Susan backed toward the truck. The mare shambled faster. Susan backed faster. The mare stretched out her head and snapped those evil teeth.

Sophie came out the kitchen door. “Buttermilk!” she yelled. “Hold. Hold!”

Susan scrambled into the pickup and slammed the door. The mare waggled her bony head at the window. Susan rolled it down an inch. “Mrs. Niemen? I'd like to talk with you.”

“What for?” Sophie was a tiny woman with spikes of short gray hair sticking up all over her head. She wore faded patched blue jeans, a red plaid work shirt neatly tucked into a wide leather belt with a silver buckle, and hiking boots.

“It won't take long.”

“I'm busy.”

“Just a few minutes.”

“Wasting a body's time,” Sophie grumbled. “Stay right there. I need to tell this fool mare here everything's all right.” Sophie stomped out to the mare and rubbed her fondly behind the ears. “Buttermilk, okay. You hear, you old nag? Okay.”

She pulled a carrot from her back pocket. “Go on now. I don't have time to mess with the likes of you. Get.”

Buttermilk peeled back rubbery lips and daintily took the carrot, then lumbered slowly off, huffing and snorting. Susan got out of the truck.

“All by myself out here,” Sophie said. “It's a comfort to have the old nag let me know when somebody's around.” Her pale-blue eyes squinted in the sunshine and her expression said, No time for the likes of you, either. She had a puckered little face that reminded Susan of an apple doll her grandmother Donovan owned. “What is it you want?”

“To ask a few questions.”

“Come on in if you have to,” she said grudgingly.

All that irritability was pretense, Susan thought. Behind Sophie's eyes was a ferment of avid curiosity.

The kitchen was a large, rectangular room originally designed to handle meals for numerous farmworkers and probably not changed any over the years. The orange-patterned linoleum was faded and spotlessly clean; crisp orange curtains hung at the window, and the winter sun shone through with a warm orange glow. In the corner was a monster of an iron wood-burning stove.

“Sit yourself.” Sophie nodded toward the large wooden table, a soft gold color from years of scrubbing.

The odor of perked coffee and the sweet spicy smell of cinnamon filled the air. An old rocker with orange-flowered cushions sat in one corner, and on the floor near the stove was a wicker basket with three black cats tangled in comfort. One opened green eyes and blinked with the benign satisfaction of having a warm spot to sleep. The place looked like a stage setting for some nitty-gritty play by Tennessee Williams.

Sophie poured coffee into two thick mugs from a blue enamal pot on the stove and plunked them down. Grabbing a towel, she slid a pan of cinnamon rolls from the oven, put them on a plate and joined Susan at the table.

“Mrs. Niemen—”

“Might as well call me Sophie, everybody does.”

Her faded eyes raked over Susan from head to toe, and Susan found her spine automatically stiffening as she thought of her aunt Frances van Dorn. Frannyvan had a look like that. She was the person Susan went to for solace when life treated her ill, for advice when she was confused, for consolation after fights with her father.

When Frannyvan looked at her with a certain look, she knew smoke screens were futile. Frannyvan knew she wasn't telling the whole story, wasn't facing the real issue, had failed to examine her motives. Frannyvan could see through every layer of self-protection, clear to the inner soul, and expose every pathetic unworthiness there.

Sophie was calmly gazing at her with that same look, probing, purposeful and seeing all the doubts and uncertainties and inadequacies. Frannyvan had been a woman of steel, who went her own way regardless of consequences and tried to teach Susan to do the same. Sophie would be another one who went her own way.

“Never seen you close to before,” Sophie said. “Haven't done any grieving yet, have you? You're still just mad.” She broke a steaming roll and popped a piece in her mouth. “Can't tell what you're made of. Maybe you have it, deep down there someplace, but you won't get to it until some grieving's been done.”

Little feathers of irritation stirred around in Susan's mind. “Have what?”

“Grit.”

Grit. Right. I'm losing my grit. Comes of fending off attack horses. “Daniel came out to see you the day he was killed.”