The Winter Widow (6 page)

Sophie picked up her coffee. “You lost him before you got to know him.”

Sharp old witch.

Sophie shook her head slowly. “Can't tell if you're worth keeping. Were you wanting a baby?”

Susan sucked in a breath with a little hiss.

“I been a widow for more years than I can remember,” Sophie said. “Had three babies. All boys, all three of them. They all died. I always wonder if I'd had a girl, would she'da been stronger. The first one I kept almost a week. That was the longest. The second one lived a day. The third one just a few hours.” Sophie crossed her arms as though cradling a baby and rocked them back and forth.

Susan's throat tightened; the threat of tears stung her eyes.

“After the last one, my Ed didn't seem to be there any more. Oh, he worked, even made something, but it was like he had no reason and worked just to get through the day. He never could grieve. He was the kindest, gentlest soul with young ones. Why, he hand-raised old Buttermilk out there. Killed her mother, that one did, comin' out. And Ed, hours he spent taking care of the little orphan. But the heart just seemed to go out of him.”

Sophie's blue eyes pinned Susan in a steady gaze. “You got to grieve, child.”

A brassy taste flooded Susan's mouth. I'll grieve in my own time, damn you. She swallowed. This interview hadn't started out under her control and the situation was rapidly deteriorating. Now she was letting little old ladies intimidate her. You better pull up your socks, Amazing Grace. “Daniel came out last Thursday to talk with you.” Her voice was tight, but level.

“I don't hold much with talking. Waste of time and I got no time, myself, for wasting.” Sophie wrapped both hands around the mug and lifted it to her mouth. “Nephew's coming. I haven't seen him for ten years or more. Got to air blankets. Tidy up a room.”

“Daniel got a complaint you had stolen a cat.”

“Bah. What would I want with another cat? Got three of my own. Worthless creatures. Drink your coffee. Not good if it's cold.”

Susan took a sip and scalded her tongue. “Harve Green was quite sure you had stolen it.”

“Don't you worry none about Harve's cat.” Sophie pushed the plate of cinnamon rolls closer. “Have one. You don't look like you've been eating much.”

Susan picked up a roll. “Is that what you told Daniel?”

“Didn't talk to him. I wasn't to home.”

“Where were you?”

“Can't remember. Memory's not what it was.”

Memory probably as sharp as the knives hanging over the drain board. “Maybe I can nudge it a little. You phoned Daniel shortly before four o'clock.”

“Who says I did?”

“I do.”

Clamping her mouth in a grim line, Sophie waited for Susan to continue.

“Why did you call him?”

Sophie grinned. “Tell him Harve's cat came home all on his own.”

One question answered. Sophie had made that second call. “He was not pleased, Sophie. He warned you, no more stealing cats.” Was that the troubling thing he mentioned? Wanting to put a stop to the whole silly nonsense, he decided to talk with Parkhurst about arresting her?

Something sly flickered through Sophie's sharp eyes. Was she nutty enough to kill Daniel if she felt he would prevent her from carrying out her mission in life?

Susan decided to try another tack. “What can you tell me about Lucille Guthman?”

“Oh now, Lucille. You've met her, have you? Goes about things the wrong way lots of times, brings sorrow on herself.”

“Sorrow?”

“Lucille's not quite grown-up. Part of her's stuck back there in childhood. Happens to a lot of young girls, growing up trying to get attention and a good word from a busy father.”

She squinted at Susan over the rim of her mug. “Might be a little of that in you.”

There it was again, that look of Frannyvan's that saw through any camouflage. Susan had counted on Frannyvan for support when she decided to be a cop. Frannyvan, exasperated, had said, “Susan Grace, when are you going to learn to examine your motives?” It wasn't until recently that Susan understood. She became a cop instead of practicing law because she was afraid she couldn't live up to her father's standards.

“She tries hard, Lucille. Had a mind to have Dan—” Sophie set her mug down with a clunk. “Here, you aren't thinking she killed your man.”

The possibility had crossed Susan's mind.

“Oh my dear Lord,” Sophie said slowly.

Susan couldn't tell if that meant Sophie flatly rejected the possibility or if it hadn't occurred to her before and she was thinking it over.

“Well, there now.” Sophie shook her head. “I can't make sense of this killing. I'll just have to find out.” She shook her head again. “I just wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

Another shake of Sophie's head.

Susan had had enough of Sophie. If she knew something, she wasn't going to spill it; if she'd killed Daniel, she wasn't going to admit it. Susan needed to know more before she tackled Sophie again. “Do you own a rifle?”

“Oh, yes. It belonged to Ed.”

“Where is it?”

“Hump.” Sophie put her hands flat on the table and pushed herself up.

Susan followed her to a hallway off the kitchen.

“In here.” Sophie yanked open a closet door and stood peering in. “Should be, anyway.” She rummaged through clothing and boxes and old boots. “Ah.” She emerged carrying the rifle and held it out.

Susan thought of fingerprints. “Set it down, please.”

Sophie's blue eyes held a gleam of malice as she placed it butt down with the barrel resting against the door frame.

Susan crouched on her heels and clamped down hard on her back teeth. Blood pounded in her ears. Images flashed through her mind: of hands raising the rifle, stock pressed against a shoulder, sighting down the barrel, zeroing in on Daniel's spine. Finger curling around the trigger, tightening—

“Hasn't been used in a dozen years or more,” Sophie said. The telephone rang and she clomped off to the kitchen.

Susan sucked in a breath and clenched her hands, concentrating on pushing down the roar of sound in her head. She stared objectively at the rifle. It might not have been fired recently, but it had certainly been cleaned. It smelled strongly of oil, the stock was polished, and the inside of the barrel was free of dust or spiderwebs.

“For you,” Sophie said.

Susan looked up.

“Phone.”

She went to the kitchen and picked up the receiver lying on the counter.

“Ben Parkhurst.”

She lowered her voice. “Sophie has a rifle.”

Silence. “Everybody has a rifle.”

“Well, have you fired any and made comparison tests?”

Another pause. “Can you show cause? Even here people have rights. When you can tear yourself away from Sophie, you might want to come out to Guthman's.”

CHAPTER SIX

AFTER getting directions from Sophie, Susan headed the pickup north under a vast blue sky. Summoned, by God. And with a great deal of that damn patronizing arrogance. She took a breath. Watch yourself. The point here is not one-upmanship but getting cooperation toward a common goal. Guthman's had been her next scheduled stop, anyway. Maybe, maybe Parkhurst had something.

The sky seemed huge and endless, stretching forever above the small hills. An eerie feeling of unreality stole over her, a frightening sense of having slipped through some doorway into another world.

God damn you, Daniel Wren, why did you do this to me?

Her life with him seemed long ago, a dream she groped to recapture, managing only niggling irritation because she couldn't quite remember. Angrily, she tried to grasp a moment, any moment, when they were together, but her mind found only shadowy images and she saw two strangers. Even the female figure didn't have any connection to herself. In a panic, she realized she couldn't remember what Daniel looked like.

She lit a cigarette and became aware of abdominal pains and the furry tickle of nausea. Lack of food, too much coffee, too many cigarettes. And all these wide-open spaces. If I'm not careful, I might fall off the end of the world.

Eleven miles from Sophie's, she rattled the pickup over the cattle guard onto Guthman's land. Five days ago, Daniel had driven out in response to a phone call. Last Thursday had been bitterly cold with wind and sleet; today the sun shone, but she was here in response to a phone call. From Parkhurst. Who had made the call to Daniel?

It was over a mile of curving road with open land and sparse trees on both sides before she reached the sprawling complex of main house, barns, bunkhouses and outbuildings. Otto's fiefdom, as Daniel had called it, spread out before her, the tangible evidence of Guthman's power and influence. One building looked like an Old West—type jail, a squat gray rectangle with bars on the windows. Uh-huh. A law unto himself, Mr. Guthman?

The place had a working flavor of purpose and movement with men going to and from the outbuildings, shouldering large sacks or trundling wheelbarrows. Dogs trotted around intent on their own business. Two riders on horseback clattered toward her and one touched his hat as they went by. She waved and drove up to the front of the main house, a large red brick two-story building, imposing and ugly, with a porch across the entire front.

As she got out of the pickup, Parkhurst came down the wide steps to meet her. If he said anything about pigs, she was going to kick him in the shins.

“What's going on?” she asked.

“Lucille's missing.”

“Missing seems rather vague. Care to expand a little?”

“Probably nothing to it. She hasn't been seen since last night, bed not slept in, car gone. Mrs. Guthman's worried.”

“Mrs.?”

“See what you can get from her.”

“You don't have time to see what you can get from her?”

“I lack your finesse.”

“While I'm exercising finesse, what will you be doing?”

“Otto found a fence cut. I came out with the sheriff to check into it.”

Ah, Parkhurst was throwing her a bone, giving her something to do, showing how cooperative he was. He probably thought she couldn't do any harm talking with Mrs. Guthman. “Have cattle actually been stolen?”

“I intend to find out.”

I see, she thought, and wondered if he knew Lucille hadn't showed up for the sign ceremony. She didn't feel inclined to tell him.

Inside the house, she followed him along a hallway and into a room obviously belonging to the master of the house. A large wooden desk sat at one end; at the other was a stone fireplace with two burgundy leather chairs in front of it. Pictures of cows covered the walls.

A man with close-cut gray hair and a lined face stood unobtrusively in a corner beside a file cabinet. Sheriff Holmes, she assumed, since the arm patch on his dark jacket said
FREDERICK COUNTY SHERIFF
. He looked at her with polite interest.

Ella Guthman, a plump woman with round cheeks and fading blond hair, wearing a pink flowered dress, was perched on one of the chairs by the fireplace, eyes fixed on her husband.

Otto Guthman stood with his back to the fireplace, glaring at his wife. About sixty, big-shouldered, broad-chested and bow-legged, he wore finely crafted boots, denim pants and a denim shirt open at the throat.

“You've got to do something,” Ella was saying agitatedly. Her feet in sturdy brown shoes were pressed flat against the floor, as though to keep her from leaping up, and she twisted a handkerchief through short thick fingers.

“I told you, Lucille is fine. No need for all this fuss. She's gone off someplace to cause worry.”

His voice was odd. The words came out equally spaced with equal emphasis on each, as though it hurt his throat to speak. An easy voice to imitate, Susan thought.

“You've got to find her,” Ella said.

“She'll call. Stop fussing.” His thick black hair was mottled with gray, his nose bulbous over a wide, narrow-lipped mouth; his powerful arms were long and anthropoid. He was the male beast and this was his turf. He should have been the head of a large dynasty with successive wives and scores of children. Instead he had only one wife and two children. Susan wondered if that was why he'd gone into breeding cattle.

Parkhurst introduced her. Guthman lowered his chin to his chest and examined her from under shaggy eyebrows. His look wasn't deliberately intimidating, but rather some sort of exhaustive inventory he went through and then filed under Wren, Susan. Little girl too young to know anything. From San Francisco—perverts and drug addicts. Wheedled her way into a man's job. Have a word with the mayor. Let her talk with Ella. Give the womenfolk something to do.

Susan gazed back unflinchingly, but couldn't stop her heart from beating faster. That's power all right. It seemed to emanate from him in invisible waves.

“Let's go,” he said, and strode toward the door.

Parkhurst fell in behind and Sheriff Holmes nodded to Susan before he went after them. She didn't read any disapproval in his demeanor and wondered if he'd bowed to the times and hired a female deputy or two, then discovered, to his surprise, that they were quite competent.

Walking the length of the room, she sat in the chair next to Ella and felt herself sinking deep into burgundy leather. Ella sat rigid, staring at the door through which her husband had gone, her blue-green eyes sharp with anger.

“Tell me about Lucille,” Susan said.

“She's been gone for hours.” Ella turned her gaze on Susan, then looked down at her hands and plucked at a mangled handkerchief.

“When did she leave?”

“She didn't sleep here last night. I didn't know, not till Martha told me. This afternoon! So much time.”

“Martha?”

“She thought I knew. That Lucille had planned a trip or—” Ella's voice caught and she bit her lip.