“Maybe an hour. Maybe less. As soon as possible but with Allen still out at the Johanssons’ we’re a little short-handed. They may have to call in a couple of off-duties to help out.”
“Fine,” Victoria said. “In the meantime, Lynn dear, why don’t you go over and check with Mr. Rafferty and see if he has any sandwiches or anything for lunch.”
“Sure.” Sometimes I think Victoria is a mind-reader. It didn’t bother me this time, though.
I got up and crossed to the bar.
No, Rafferty told me, he didn’t usually stock anything for lunches since Land’s End didn’t officially open until later in the afternoon, but yes, he could “rustle up something” like he did for some of the old guys who wandered in during the day. He’d check.
He disappeared through a door that presumably led from behind the bar into a store-room.
I waited at the bar for a couple of minutes, munching on a handful of peanuts from a none-too-clean glass bowl.
“This is all I could find,” Rafferty said when he returned bearing a small tray. On it were four or five sandwiches and three bottles of orange soda. “They’re ham and cheese. And I found the pop in the back of the fridge. Don’t know how long it’s been there but I figured you’d prefer it to beer, Deputy Wroten being on duty and all.”
“What do we owe you?” I started to check in my handbag for my change purse.
“On the house, ma’am. You being part of the official investigation and all.”
Yes, and the fact that Wroten had said nothing more to him about his responsibilities—legal, ethical, or moral—for what had happened to Eric Johansson no doubt made him feel so relieved that he would have served up a seven-course dinner if he’d had the materials and the equipment.
I thanked him and returned to the booth with the food.
Victoria and Wroten were in the middle of an exchange but I had no difficulty figuring out what they were talking about.
“So, Eric Johansson was killed.” It sounded as if he was satisfied that at least that datum had been established as fact.
“Yes.” Victoria said firmly.
“But he didn’t die from the beating?”
“No. I’m sure that what Garton and the others did certainly was contributory, but I’m equally sure that when he examines the body the coroner will find that it wasn’t the actual cause of death.”
“But he was killed.”
“Oh yes, this was not—what’s the phrase—a ‘death by natural causes.’” Victoria was adamant on that point.
“He just wasn’t killed by Garton and the others?”
“No. Not directly.”
“There you go again, Miz Sears.” Wroten half-laughed. “If I didn’t know you better, I would say that you were trying to weasel out of what you just said a minute ago.”
Victoria smiled back. “No weaseling, Richard. Just being careful and precise.”
“And Ellis had nothing to do with it at all.”
“Heavens, no. The boy was just trying to be a good neighbor. I doubt if he had any idea that young Johansson was connected with drugs or with anything else Garton and his gang might have pressured that poor boy into.”
“But others were involved? It wasn’t anything like a suicide?”
“Yes, several others had to have been involved.”
Wroten slapped his hand on the table, more a gesture of half-hearted frustration than the outright explosion of anger he’d shown before.
“You know, Miz Sears, if it were anyone but you trying to play Twenty Questions with me in the middle of a murder investigation, I’d probably hit them with an obstruction charge and get my spare cuffs from the car and slap them on.”
“I’m sure you would. But you wouldn’t do such a thing to a sweet little old thing like me, now would you?” She cocked her head and batted her eyes so outrageously that both Wroten and I burst out laughing.
“No,” Wroten said. “I guess I wouldn’t. But you still won’t identify them, won’t let me go talk to them, question them, arrest them if there’s enough evidence?”
“None of that would do you any good. They won’t be able to tell you anything. And there certainly won’t be any evidence of murder.”
“But they—these mysterious great unknowns—were involved?”
“Absolutely.”
“How sure are you of all of this, Miz Sears?” The laughter of a moment before had dissipated. Things were serious again. A young man was dead, and the woman in front of him claimed to know how.
“Very sure, Deputy Wroten.”
Wroten leaned back.
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait for the van and get this crew taken care of, won’t we.”
“That seems appropriate. There is really no rush. I don’t think any of the others will try to ‘make a break for it’ as they say on television. And I’m quite sure the evidence you will need will still be there.
“Lynn dear, we must be sure to thank Mr. Rafferty for these sandwiches. They are really quite lovely.” She reached for another.
It didn’t take a full hour. Probably forty minutes later, the van pulled up. Victoria and I remained where we were in the booth as Wroten unlocked the cuffs from the pipe and refitted them to Garton’s other arm—the one with the rattlesnake—and escorted him out the door.
There must have been a patrol car waiting because a few minutes later we heard a car leave the parking lot and Wroten and another deputy entered Land’s End. They went directly into the back room and emerged with four sullen-looking young men. The suspects must have talked themselves out. They certainly weren’t talking now.
Carver followed, just behind the two deputies. He accompanied them outside, and another few minutes passed before Wroten and Carver re-entered the bar and walked over to where we were waiting.
“Well, ladies, are you ready?”
“I believe so, Deputy Wroten. Do you need anything before we leave, Lynn dear?”
I shook my head. At this point I was too interested in what was about to happen to want any more delays. Victoria had steadfastly refused to answer any of my questions about Johansson’s death while we waited. Instead, she kept turning our conversation back to more mundane issues—the state of the weather, the ongoing harvest, the latest news from among her friends in Fox Creek.
Yes, I was ready.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Victoria spoke to Deputy Wroten for a few minutes, out of earshot of either Carver or myself. We waited for them in the cool shade of the plane trees—we called them ‘sycamores’ down-mountain, back where I had left my old life, but up here in Fox Creek everyone used the simpler name.
I leaned against the massive trunk, allowing my fingers to wander up and down the mottled bark. The bits felt like puzzle pieces, each slightly different from the next but all about the same general size and shape. Some were green, some brown or grey.
Kind of like my life.
I’d not had much time to myself today, what with Victoria’s unexpected call, and then finding the boy’s body and being shuttled from house to house, then driving to Neilson’s farm, then out here to Land’s End, so these few moments were the first time I was alone with my thoughts.
Carver was staring off toward the mountains, so I decided that perhaps he was doing some soul-searching as well.
I had thought of Terry and Shawn today, once in direct conjunction with a sudden and terrible death, and it hadn’t devastated me. They had left my life nearly fifteen months before, and for most of that time I had believed that my own life was essentially, fundamentally over. I felt like a remnant from some horrible fairy-tale-turned-tragedy, another body to litter the blood-choked stage once it realized that it had nothing left to live for.
Then I had met Victoria Sears, and as luck, Fortune, or God would have it, on the same day another body had been found. She knew about my personal grief but had not spoken of it, had instead treated me as someone whole and uninjured and healthy...and by the end of that day, I realized that I ha
d become at least in part what she thought of me. I had faced death in the present and in the past, and had lived through both.
Now the same thing had happened again—or near enough the same thing—and what had I done?
I had remembered, not Terry’s battered body or Shawn’s untouched toys still haunting the shelves and drawers of his bedroom in my house down-mountain, but both of them—my man and my little man—laughing and alive and full of love.
And the memory had not hurt.
It had felt good.
I almost wanted to rush back to Estelle and Edgar’s place and dig my jewelry box out of the big drawer at the bottom of the old-fashioned dresser, remove the small twist of paper that contained the three unset blue calcite stones, and keep one of them in my pocket to touch whenever or wherever I wanted.
Or more, to put on the necklace and earrings, not even changing out of my jeans and work-a-day blouse, and wear them proudly and lovingly and...most crucially...happily.
All of this, on the day that Eric Johansson died and I was following Victoria around again, on the trail of a killer.
I still missed my men.
I still loved them.
But I could—I would—go on with my life without them by my side.
Because they were both still alive in my heart and in my memory.
“Miz Hanson?” Wroten’s deep voice broke into my reverie.
He was standing at the door of his patrol car, one foot balanced on the frame. The man of action. Ready to head out and catch the bad guys.
“Coming,” I called. Carver turned toward the patrol car at the same time and we crossed the parking lot together.
I don’t know what he had been thinking about—or perhaps I do—but we smiled, almost shyly, at each other as we walked.
No words were needed.
We each had our memories.
“I’d like you two to ride with Miz Sears in your car, if you don’t mind, Miz Hanson.”
“It’s Lynn, and of course I’ll drive. I’ll follow you, okay.”
He nodded and got in. No silliness about Carver having to be in the same car with him. Carver had nothing to do with the death of his friend.
Wroten pulled out onto the State Highway and I followed.
“We’re going to Mr. Neilson’s place,” Victoria said, “but not the same way we came. We’re going to take the back roads. It’s a little longer but I think it will be instructive for us...and for Deputy Wroten. If he keeps his eyes open.”
“For what?” Carver asked from the seat behind me.
“For evidence. For this and that....” And she said no more.
We followed the State Highway for a mile or so, then I saw Wroten’s blinker winking away to let us know that he was turning onto a narrow dirt road that led arrow-straight between the barbed wire fences that formed the boundaries of two fields.
This close to the highway, the slight gullies on both sides of the road had been mowed close, short enough that I could see that the ground was dark and moist. Lingering runoff from the last rains, perhaps, or seepage from the irrigation ditches that surrounded the two fields.
The further from the highway we went, the thicker and taller the growth in the ditches became, until at last the milkweeds and sunflowers and occasional stands of wild roses—complete with small, five-petaled pink blossoms—nearly blocked the fields from our vision.
After a mile or so, we turned onto another dirt road, this one slightly wider and more hard-packed, but otherwise just the same as the first. Then, after another mile, another turn.
Apparently the fields in this part of the valley were laid out in a grid of squares, each a half- or a quarter-mile on a side, with access roads running between many of the properties. Made sense. Easier that way to get tractors and other needed equipment to all of the fields.
“There’s another one,” Victoria said abruptly, gesturing with her hand.
“Another what?” My attention was pretty much focused on the road and out of the corner of my eye I could see nothing untoward.
“That one was a frog, I believe.” She said. The comment did little to resolve my confusion.
“You’re counting frogs?”
“Yes. And not just frogs. So far I’ve seen several field mice, a garter snake, and a something that might have been a weasel.”
“Running across the road, you mean? I haven’t seen anything.”
“No, ma’am,” Carver said from the back seat. “I think Miz Sears is counting roadkill. Bodies. Crushed by the tractors and pickups that come this way.”
I couldn’t help but stare for a moment at Victoria.
“But why in the world...?”
“Yeah, why would you...?” Carver began his question at the same time I did.
“We used to tally roadkill when I was a little girl walking to school. At least the boys did. Ah, another field mouse.” She pointed, and this time I glanced quickly enough to note something dusty brown and flat and matted just as it passed beneath the front hood. If I hadn’t been looking I would not have seen it. It matched the color and texture of the dirt road almost perfectly.
“Yeah,” Carver said. He laughed. “We did that, too, when I was a kid. Back when I was in, oh I don’t know, fourth or fifth grade, something like that, we had a really wet spring. All the ditches were full of water and the ground was marshy almost everywhere.
“I had to walk about two miles to school....”
“By the time you’re my age, that will have become at least five miles, and uphill both ways,” Victoria said, smiling.
“Yeah, well, it seemed like a long ways back then. Anyway, there were frogs everywhere, and this one day we started to count them. They were mostly flat and dried up, kind of like moldy jerky, but now and then we’d spot a squishy one.”
“Ugh.” I couldn’t help it. The picture he was drawing was not particularly pleasant.
“Yeah. We counted them, though, and by the time we got to school, we had seen over a hundred. Flat-frogs, we called them.”
I thought that was the end of the story because he fell silent for a while.
“On the way home, one of the guys, Skip Waite, he decided that the flat-frogs looked kind of like weird-shaped Frisbees, so he scooped one up and gave it a fling. It didn’t fly quite as well as a store-bought Frisbee but it actually did pretty well.
“One of the girls, Katy Whittaker, was a year or two younger than the rest of us and she squealed like she had just been stuck with a pin. So, of course, that set Skip off, and for the rest of the walk home, he was whizzing flat-frogs at all of the girls that passed.”
“I suspect that didn’t set well with quite a few parents,” I said.
“Well, as I recall, Skip didn’t look too comfortable when he sat down the next day at school and he didn’t toss any more flat-frogs, so I guess you’re right.”
“I know Katy Whittaker,” Victoria said. “Sweet thing. Grew up into a real beauty. And I think that she just got engaged to a fine, handsome young man of my acquaintance. Name of Mr. Skip Waite. So I expect there was no lasting harm done. And both of them will probably have some interesting stories to tell their children when they ask ‘Dad, how did you meet Mom?’”
By then I had noticed a few other odd-shaped bits of flotsam on the road that might have been partially flattened dirt clods...or other things.
“Okay, Victoria, why are you counting those things?”
“I think that one might have been a shrew. It’s so hard to tell once they’ve been...flattened.”
“Victoria!”
“Well, the number of poor creatures lying dead on the road is, in a way, important to the farmers. Right now, we are having one of the best summers for some time. Spring was wet, so there’s plenty of water for the crops, like that year Carver was talking about.
“Plenty of water means that the crops will do well. And that, in turn, means that there will probably be an excess of vermin to scavenge for food as harvest time draws near.
Field mice, of course, and frogs and lizards in the damper parts, like the run-off ditches along these back roads. Badgers and even some birds will raid the fields when they think it’s safe.”
I was pleased for the horticulture lesson, I suppose, but I really wanted to know what Victoria was up to. Certainly she had a reason for this rather strange conversation. After all, how many near-octogenarians pass the time in the car by counting ‘flat-frogs’.
“Victoria....” I tried again.
But to no avail.
“Of course, cows don’t generally break through the fences to eat wheat once it is ripening. Farmers try to keep that from happening anyway. They can eat the young plants—the cows, I mean, of course, not the farmers—but once the wheat ripens it becomes a danger to them. If they gorge on too much, it can cause bloating, and if the bloating is serious enough, the cattle will die.
“I remember once one of my uncles had a cow that had bloated on wheat and he had to take a pocket knife and cut....”
“Victoria, please. Flat-frogs are enough. I don’t need a picture of a bleeding bloated cow in my mind right now.
“And besides, I think we can be fairly certain that our victim did not die of over-indulgence in ripe wheat, can’t we.”
“Ah...yes, to be sure. Sorry, Lynn dear. I’m afraid I got a bit carried away with my story. Anyway, if there are a great many vermin in the fields, that also means that those creatures that depend on them for their own sustenance will also flourish: shrews, foxes, a variety of snakes, hawks, owls. Even other, larger species of mice and rats. At night you can hear....
“Oh, wait. Deputy Wroten is pulling in at the Neilson place. Right here, Lynn dear. Be careful, though, this old bridge is rather narrow for your car.”
I managed to maneuver the car over the six-foot long plank bridge that led from the last of our back-country roads—this one at least graveled—to a break in the fence. Not far from where we entered the field, I saw the cluster of machinery that had been there that morning, as well as a handful of men, apparently waiting for Deputy Wroten to return.
Okay, here we were.
Now what?
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