Pride v. Prejudice

by Joan Hess

  “Why did you put up with him?”

  Her eyes shifted. “Misguided loyalty, no place else to go. Anyway, I went to the book club, drank some wine, and drove home very carefully. Tuck had told me that he was going on a fishing trip with Will Lund, who lives on the next farm, so I didn’t expect him to be here. I went to bed. The next morning I went out to the barn to get a bucket of chicken feed and found his body. I went back inside, called nine-one-one, and was waiting on the porch when the sheriff arrived. I was questioned that afternoon and arrested two days later.”

  I leaned back in the chair while I thought over her story. She’d recited it without any emotion, but for her it was an old, stale story. I hoped she’d shown at least a modicum of distress when questioned by the sheriff at the scene. The jury would not look kindly upon an emotionally detached widow. “What time did your book club break up?” I asked.

  “Ten o’clock. We had a rule so that we wouldn’t get thoroughly plastered. I stayed for another half hour to help Billie Lou clean up and listen to her brag about her grandchildren. The oldest had started classes at Harvard and was doing well. Another one was an exchange student in Croatia or somewhere like that. My memory’s weak after all this time.”

  “You left at ten thirty, which means you should have arrived here before eleven. The neighbors reported hearing the blast at midnight. It must have been loud.”

  “I was asleep by then. The detectives didn’t believe me, and I can see from your expression that you don’t, either.”

  I didn’t. “The barn’s next to the house. Maybe if your bedroom’s on the opposite side of the house…”

  “It’s not,” Sarah said as she picked up my cup and carried it to the sink. She turned around and leaned against the counter, her arms crossed. “What’s more, the windows were open because Tuck refused to have a window-unit air conditioner. All I can say is that I was asleep. If I’d been awakened by a loud noise, I would have gone to investigate. There had been some burglaries in the area, usually during the day when people were at work, but a couple of punks broke into Miss Poppoy’s house in the middle of the night and tied her up a month before … the incident. They got away with her family silver and her precious television set.”

  “Were they caught?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe the same men were in the barn the night Tuck was killed,” I said. “He took the shotgun and went to scare them off.”

  “And then they put the shotgun away in the hall closet and left without looking around for anything of value?”

  “How do the investigators know it was the same shotgun?”

  “They can’t be sure, but they determined that it was the same cartridge and shell gauge. They even traced the type and size of the shot to the manufacturer. There was a box of shells with that brand on the shelf in the closet.” She looked at me, perhaps expecting a brilliant rebuttal. My complete ignorance of the subject precluded any comment, brilliant or otherwise. “Tuck’s wallet was on the kitchen table, with eighty dollars in it.”

  “We need all the potential suspects we can find,” I said, although it was challenging to explain why they’d bothered to return the shotgun—and knew where to put it. It seemed more likely that they would have kept it. “I’ll try to find out if they were ever apprehended. What about these neighbors? Who are they and how close to they live from here?”

  “Will and Juniper Lund. You may have seen their house when you came up the road. They have a much larger organic farm and sell to grocery stores in the surrounding counties. They recently got a contract with some company that markets organic jams and preserves. Not for millions of dollars, but a decent amount of money.”

  “Will is the one Tuck said he was going with on this fishing trip?”

  Sarah grimaced. “That’s what Tuck told me. When the detectives questioned Will, he said he didn’t know anything about it. Junie backed him up, said they were babysitting their grandson and Will had promised the child that the two of them would go fishing the next day at the river on the far side of their property. I have no idea why Tuck lied to me about it.” She hesitated. “Well, I wondered afterwards if maybe he was planning to meet someone and didn’t want me to know.”

  “Another woman, you mean.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean, but don’t bother to ask me who. I’ve thought about it for the last year and I can’t think of anyone. Tuck abhorred parties. He barely survived the co-op meetings twice a year and refused to attend the picnics. We hung out with Will and Junie. Years ago I invited a couple of my book club friends and their husbands out here for barbecue, and Tuck was so damn rude that I wanted to toss him on the grill.”

  I wondered if he’d despised her as much as she’d despised him. It couldn’t have been much fun for either of them. Every marriage has its own dynamics, but theirs was hard to fathom. “When did he tell you that he was going fishing with Will?”

  “That morning before I left for work. They used to go on fishing trips several times a year. Will knew someone who owned a cabin on the Buffalo River. They’d come home with enough trout to stock the freezer. I was surprised when Tuck told me about it. He’d always been kind of a hypochondriac, but over the last ten years he’d gotten way worse. Every bug bite was the onset of Rocky Mountain spotted fever. A headache was a brain tumor, and a slight temperature was malaria. If he cut his finger, he’d go to the emergency room to demand a tetanus shot. Our medical bills were ridiculous. You wouldn’t believe what’s in our medicine cabinet. I could have taken in wounded from a battlefield and patched them up without making a dent in it.” She shook her head and sighed. “Tuck quit going on these trips with Will five years ago because of all the potentially fatal dangers lurking in the wild. He might poke his finger while choosing a lure or stumble on a root and sprain his ankle. He was afraid to feed the chickens because he might catch coccidiosis. We couldn’t have pets because their fleas could carry bubonic plague. Tuck was a real pain in the ass.”

  I could hear the bitterness in her voice. The jury would, too. “Let’s operate on the hypothesis that Tuck was involved with another woman, someone off your radar. Could he have met someone online?”

  “Maybe. The library has free computers, and he went there sometimes to read the newspapers and check out books. Medical books, mostly. I worked forty hours a week at the diner. I don’t know what he did while I was gone. For all I know, he may have had something going with a librarian or one of the nurses from the ER. He wasn’t unattractive until you got to know him.” Sarah went into the next room and returned with a framed photograph. Handing it to me, she said, “This was taken two years ago. The tall, bald guy is Will, with his arm around Junie. Tuck has that frown because he was worried that Junie’s ragweed allergy was actually tuberculosis and she might cough on him.”

  I examined the trio. Will was indeed tall and bald, maybe in his fifties, with broad shoulders and a thick neck. His nose was asymmetrical, suggesting he’d been in a brawl. I suspect his combatant had not emerged unscathed. Junie was sturdy, her dark hair in a pageboy style more often seen in old yearbooks. Her features were small and compact, as if someone had squeezed them into the center of her face. As Sarah had said, Tuck was not unattractive. He was several inches shorter than his purported fishing buddy. Wavy gray hair hung below his ears and brushed the middle of his neck. Despite the frown, he exuded a degree of ingenuous charm.

  “He was carded in bars until he was thirty,” Sarah said over my shoulder. “The dimples, I guess. He used to have a really nice smile. Maybe that’s what attracted me to him in the first place.” She took the photograph from me and put it on the table, facedown. “I was naive when I went off to college. I was going to major in nineteenth-century English lit, with a minor in history. I assumed all conversations would be about philosophy, art, movies with subtitles, the essence of the universe. Turns out I was wrong. I was a freshman in 1971, when the antiwar protesters were stirring up trouble. They were a lot more interest
ed in American aggression than in British imperialism.”

  A fascinating topic, perhaps, but I needed more timely information. I wished I’d brought a pad to take notes. “Will and Juniper Lund live on the north side of the road, right? Are they still your friends?”

  “They say they are, but they’re not knocking on my door with casseroles or invitations to dinner. I don’t blame them. Will was Tuck’s only guy friend. Tuck used to go over there to watch football and drink beer. Junie treated Tuck like he was her baby brother, even though she was younger. She bought into some of his imaginary illnesses and fussed over him until I wanted to scream. She was always bringing over herbal remedies she’d learned about from some hundred-year-old woman living in a shack in the mountains.”

  “Do you think they’d be willing to talk to me?”

  “You’ll have to ask them. They’re on the list of witnesses for the prosecution, so it may be thorny. Billie Lou’s on it, and the other women in the book club. They’ll testify that I said a lot of malicious things about Tuck—and not just at that one meeting—and that I drank a lot of wine that particular evening. Billie Lou insisted that I stay late so she could get me to drink some coffee before I drove home. Instead, I finished off the wine. Evan wasn’t pleased when I told him about it.”

  I sat back and studied her for a long moment. She did her best to meet my gaze, but she was struggling. She was not my ideal choice of falsely accused victims. I was familiar with the fine art of omitting details, and I was certain she wasn’t telling me everything. About what, I did not know. “Who else is on the witness list?” I asked.

  “The deputies who arrived first, detectives, forensics investigators. My old boss, who’ll say that sometimes I came in to work in a foul mood after an argument with Tuck. One of the women at the farmers’ market, who saw me throw a tomato at him.” She wiggled her eyebrows and grinned. “A ripe one, splat in the middle of his face.”

  “Who else knew how unhappily married you were?”

  “Anyone who ever saw us together for more than five minutes.”

  I did my best not to groan. “Okay, I think I’d better talk to Evan. You need to call him and give him permission to be candid with me. He hasn’t gone out of town for the weekend, has he?”

  She laughed. “I imagine he’s up to his ears in law books, trying to find some obscure case with a ruling in my favor. The poor boy swears that he believes me, but I’m not convinced that he does. Do you want me to call him now?”

  “Please,” I said, “and ask him if I can go by his office early this afternoon.”

  I followed her into the living room and glanced around while she made the call. The furniture was shabby and minimal. Two chairs in front of the small TV were separated by a worn trunk that served as a table. The bookcase was made of planks and concrete blocks. The water-stained wallpaper was apt to have been there when Tuck and Sarah had moved in years ago. A macramé hanging on one wall reminded me of a gnarly giant cobweb. Art consisted of a weathered piece of wood that had been decoupaged with a bumper sticker admonishing me to make love, not war. I agreed with the sentiment.

  “Evan says he can see you at two,” Sarah said as she replaced the receiver. She told me the address of his office, which was near the courthouse.

  I looked at the clock on the mantel above a darkened fireplace filled with ashes. “That gives me time to talk to the Lunds before I drive back to town. Do you need to warn them before I knock on their door?”

  “They should be at home. Go ahead and surprise them.” She came over to me and put her hand on my arm. “I really do appreciate your offer to help, even if nothing comes of it. I want you to know that I didn’t kill Tuck, even though I came close plenty of times.”

  I told her that I would call later, and went outside. I hoped I hadn’t made a mistake (which I have been known to do on rare occasions). I wanted to believe that Sarah was innocent and Wessell was railroading her to further his career—and that I was acting out of altruism rather than pique. The jury would have the final word. Although I knew Sarah might be watching, I walked to the barn and pulled open the heavy door. The redolence of moldy hay stopped me in the doorway. My nose twitched and then exploded in a series of sneezes that caused my eyes to water. I rode out the storm, then wiped my eyes and peered into the hazy light. Stalls that had housed horses were filled with rusted junk. Bits of straw were scattered on the warped wood floor. A patch in the middle had been swept clean, giving me a view of a large, dark stain. As I stared, imagining Tuck’s body, something rustled nearby. I retreated to my car.

  When I reached the road, I saw the Lunds’ house and pulled into their driveway. Their house was as large as Sara’s, but in much better shape. Flower beds on either side of the brick sidewalk were well tended. A tire swing hung from the branch of a large tree, and toys had been abandoned in the grass. A grandchild had been mentioned, and as I got out of the car, a small person of an appropriate size came running around the corner of the house, waving what I dearly hoped was a toy gun.

  When he saw me, he stopped so abruptly that he lost his balance and sprawled onto an overturned tricycle. I approached cautiously. “Hi,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “Who are you?” he said as he got to his feet and glowered at me. “Are you a stranger?”

  I nodded. “We have not been introduced. My name is Claire Malloy, and I came by to talk to your grandparents. Would you please tell them that I’m here?”

  Scowling, he pointed the cap gun at me. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”

  “Good point. Do you mind if I knock on the front door?”

  His gun made a series of sharp bangs, loosing a wisp of smoke and an acrid smell. I remained unscathed, to his dismay. “Grandma!” he howled abruptly, sounding as though I’d grabbed a handful of his hair. “Grandma! Help! There’s a stranger out here, and she’s bothering me!”

  “You’re bothering me,” I said in a low voice.

  His voice rose to a screech. “Grandma, come fast! I need you, Grandma! It’s a ’mergency! Help!”

  I stayed by my car, hoping Grandma didn’t appear on the porch with a more lethal weapon. I was relieved when Junie came out the front door and hurried down the steps to the walk. She gave me a quick look as she scooped up the little boy. “Gracious, Billy, you sound like you’ve got a squirrel down your britches. You’re perfectly fine, okay? Calm down and take a few breaths. Nobody’s going to bother you.” She waited until he complied and then put him down. Taking sanctuary behind her, he stuck out his tongue at me. “He’s excitable,” she added. “He just turned four this summer.”

  “I’m Claire Malloy, and I apologize if I upset your grandson. I just came from Sarah Swift’s house. I’ve offered to help with her defense, and I’d like to talk to you and your husband if you’re not too busy.”

  She bit down on her lip for a long moment. “All I can tell you is what I told that prosecutor. I don’t see how that’s going to be of any use to her. Will’s not here right now. He had to go into town to sign some paperwork at our lawyer’s office.”

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?” I tried not to glare at Billy, who’d moved to the other side of his grandmother’s legs and was aiming his cap gun at me. Four can be an adorable age. Caron had written her first ransom note at that age, when she kidnapped a neighbor’s cat and hid it in her closet. Since she’d demanded “choklate chip cokies” rather than money, the FBI had not been called in. I would not have trusted Billy with anyone’s cat.

  “Hard to say,” she answered, idly swatting at Billy as he clutched her leg. “He and I need to talk about it. Why don’t you give me your telephone number?”

  “The trial starts Tuesday. I’m convinced Sarah is innocent, but I’m afraid she’ll be convicted anyway. She said you’re old friends. Don’t you want to help her?”

  “She’ll get a fair trial,” Junie said.

  “In a perfect world, yes. However, the prosecutor is determined to prove that she’s g
uilty, no matter what may have actually happened that night.”

  “I think it’s obvious what happened that night. I can’t count the number of times Sarah threatened to kill Tuck. She might have been joking, but deep down she meant every word of it. She came home drunk, they got into a fight, and she shot him. She may not have meant to do it. For all I know, she doesn’t even remember grabbing the shotgun and going to the barn.”

  “Why would Tuck have been in the barn?”

  “Zombies!” Billy shouted, whacking his grandmother’s leg for emphasis. “He went to the barn to fight the zombies! They’re dead people with rotting skin and gross eyeballs.”

  She bent down and clutched his wrists. “I am sick and tired of all this nonsense. You go inside and wash your hands so we can bake cookies for Grandpa before he comes home for lunch.”

  “Then let go of me,” he protested, squirming. As soon as she loosened her grip, he darted across the porch and into the house. The door slammed.

  Junie shook her head. “I can’t believe my daughter lets him watch all those terrible shows. When he stays with us, he’s allowed to watch Disney cartoons and Sesame Street.”

  I was trying to find a way to convince her to talk to me when my cell bleeped. “Sorry,” I murmured as I pulled it out of my purse. Peter’s name was at the top of the screen. “Hello, dear, can I call you back?”

  His voice lacked its usual warmth. “Can you meet me for lunch in half an hour? I’ll be waiting for you at that silly place on the square that calls itself a bistro.” The screen went dark.