And Gil Snarr, now director of the funeral home his father, Bud, had run when they were growing up together. Between them, the Snarrs knew everyone. They’d also know what she needed to tell the newspaper—or would they do that themselves? Joan couldn’t remember how that worked. They’d need information from her, in any case. His current employer would know his Social Security number, if that mattered. Maybe it didn’t, unless he were collecting retirement income from them. But he wasn’t old enough for that. Would Social Security pay a death benefit? What would she have to do about it?
Fred pulled up in front of the house. “What are you thinking?”
“All those details I need to know about Dave.”
“They’ll wait. You’ve had enough for one day.”
* * *
In the end, she didn’t plan to call anyone on Sunday, either, or even to show her face at church. She woke up Sunday morning thinking of the bare bones she did know about her brother. His birth date, for one, and the day he died. Their parents’ names, Samuel and Hannah Zimmerman. Where he was born, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and where he died, Oliver, Indiana.
He’d never married, he’d told her that. She supposed she and maybe her children could be counted as his survivors. The paper’s fudge words were “Survivors include,” which covered it in case anyone was omitted. Sometimes a correction was published to add someone miffed at being left out. These days she’d seen people’s pictures and whole life stories in the local obituary columns—a source of income for the paper, she was sure, but she couldn’t add much to Dave’s life story that was appropriate to publish. She had no idea whether he was a member of any organization that should be mentioned. Sometimes people listed where charitable donations should be directed, but she didn’t know what he’d want about that, either. That left only a funeral to announce, or the lack of one, if she couldn’t face it. Still, Pete from the print shop seemed to want to be there. Maybe he had other old friends who would, too. And maybe some of hers would find that the easiest way to show their support for her.
So many things to consider. In her grief after Ken’s death, she’d been surrounded by supporters, and there hadn’t been any question about whether to have a service for him. In fact, she’d hardly had to do more than stand back and let his parishioners take over. There must have been decisions, but she knew she’d been spared many of them.
This time it would be up to her and the minister to decide. But she wasn’t drowning in grief. For that matter, her children, instead of clinging to her in their own confusion and sorrow, were old enough to give her support.
So what do I feel? she asked herself. Shock? She supposed so. Anger, mostly. As much at Dave as at the person who had done this . . . this thing to him. Was that fair? Maybe not, but it was honest.
The room wasn’t light yet when the phone woke her. She grabbed it, for a wonder, before Fred budged.
“Joan? Nancy Van Allen. I just read about your brother. That’s awful! I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do–”
“How could you read . . . I was just thinking what to send to the paper.”
“Oh, you mean for the obit? No, I mean the front-page story.”
“Front page!”
“Right below the fold. I was a little surprised there wasn’t a picture. Even if the police won’t let them in, those photographers usually manage to get some picture. Oh, wait, I’m wrong. There’s one of Ellen’s sign. Hope it doesn’t hurt her business. Is that where it happened?”
“Nancy, I can’t talk about it.” Her teeth clenched around the words.
“No, I suppose they won’t let you. Well, you have my sympathy. I saw him when he walked into orchestra rehearsal, remember? But I remember him back when you lived here. He was handsome when I saw him the other night, and he was handsome in high school, too. I was way too young then, of course, but I had kind of a crush on him, even so. Let me know when the funeral will be, okay? And how did the wedding go? The paper didn’t say how you managed.”
“Good-bye, Nancy.” Joan hung up on her without a qualm, even though she knew she wanted to pick Nancy’s brain before long.
What time was it, anyway? She pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt to make a quick run down the front walk for the paper. Gary was pretty good about getting it on the sidewalk, anyway.
One look out the door made her swap her sneakers for a pair of boots. Overnight more snow had fallen, and from the look of the paperboy’s fresh tracks, it would top her ankles. She pulled the orange plastic bag out of the snow and was unfolding the front section before she’d closed the door. No point in bothering Fred. Dumping her boots on the rug to drip, she wrapped her cold feet in a blanket and curled up on the sofa.
The story could have been worse, she told herself, but only by including Helga’s name. Maybe the cops would protect Fred’s mother from the press. But Dave’s criminal record was right there for the whole world to read. Joan was named as his sister, and Rebecca and Bruce, whose wedding was given as the reason for Dave to end his long separation from his family. Elizabeth Graham was going to hate that, if she ever knew about it.
Who had spoken to the press? Joan hadn’t had a single phone call from a reporter. And if any had shown up at the wedding, they’d kept their mouths shut then, too. Had that been Fred’s doing? Or was the press in Oliver that civilized? Come to think about it, why hadn’t the story appeared on Saturday? He’d died on Friday.
The phone rang again. She grabbed it, glad Fred, at least was managing to sleep through it.
“Joanie? You okay?” Annie Jordan. Would all her old people call?
“Hi, Annie. As okay as I can be, considering.”
“I was so sorry to read about your brother. I really liked him.”
“Thanks, Annie.” Me, too, sometimes.
“Hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, I was up.”
“I won’t keep you. But I had to give you my love.”
Better than Nancy’s prying, only thinly disguised as sympathy.
When she hung up the phone, Fred was standing in the bedroom doorway. “What’s going on?”
She held out the paper and pointed to the story.
Scarcely looking at it, he nodded. “I should have warned you.”
“You knew?”
“I could guess. Ketcham said they were all over him. He held them off as long as he could. Didn’t identify him on Friday, anyway.”
“Is that why they let me alone?”
He smiled. “For a mild-mannered cop, he can be tough.”
“Is it going to be like this all day?”
“Not if you take the phone off the hook. Anyone you can’t live without talking to?”
“Not today.”
Smiling, he lifted it off. “It won’t beep at you for long.”
Chapter 14
Fred knew he couldn’t protect her from all the fallout, but he could shield her from the worst of it.
She looked him in the eye. “Is it safe to leave the house?”
“You want to go somewhere?” He looked out the window. “In this snow?”
“I want to know what will happen if I do.”
“Probably nothing. They don’t know your face, and I don’t see anyone parked on the doorstep.”
“Can you find out what Ketcham’s learned so far?”
“Who, me?”
“He talks to you—I know he does.”
He considered denying it, but knew it was useless. Ordinarily, she didn’t push him about police investigations, but this was different, he had to admit.
As if in answer to her question, the cell phone in his pocket rang. When he answered, Ketcham apologized for calling so early on a Sunday.
“We were awake.”
“She up to talking this morning?”
“She’d probably welcome it.” He mouthed Ketcham’s name at her, and she nodded. “Come on over.”
In ten minutes, Ketcham was slogging up their still unshoveled walk. Fred had thrown
on jeans and brewed a pot of coffee. “Heat up some of those sweet rolls for him,” he told Joan.
“I’m way ahead of you.” Behind him, she’d already set cups and plates out on the old oak table, and now she pulled the butter out of the refrigerator.
Ketcham shed his outdoor gear in the living room, sniffed, and followed Fred back to the kitchen.
“You read my mind,” he said as Fred pulled the tray of leftover rolls out of the oven.
Licking his fingers, he told Joan some of what they knew and a few new things. Dave had been healthy. The wounds were not self-inflicted. The knife came from Ellen’s kitchen. Helga Lundquist’s prints had smudged those below them, but they’d been able to identify prints of all the various kitchen workers. “With all the smudges, we can’t be sure there weren’t still more. But people do know about gloves.”
“Was Helga holding the murder weapon?” Joan asked.
“Yes. No sign of wounds from anything else. But that doesn’t mean she did anything more than she said she did. There’s no question about the time of death. He was seen alive only a few minutes before he was found the way you saw him.” His eyes met Fred’s.
“After she pulled it out,” Joan said.
He nodded. “I can believe she’d do that.”
“But not attack him,” Joan said.
“The other workers don’t think she would,” Ketcham said. “That’s all we’re going to know, unless we find someone else.”
And evidence to go with him, Fred thought gloomily.
Ketcham reached for another sweet roll. “So the crime scene’s no help. We need to look outside it. Like those phone calls he made.”
“I thought you had those numbers,” Joan said.
“We do, and we tried them. Mostly, we got recorded messages. One didn’t answer at all, and one was the print shop where he worked.”
Joan nodded.
Without saying anything about what Fred had already reported to him, Ketcham continued. “We were able to identify several of those businesses, and it looks as though your brother might have been trying to sell some land. Maybe timber, too. Did he own land in Indiana?”
“I think so,” Joan said. “That’s what I meant to do today, go up and hunt for my parents’ wills. I think they left him land somewhere when they left me this house.”
“Do that, would you?” Ketcham said. “It would help us.”
“All right,” she said. “And I made those calls, too. I got those messages, and I reached Dave’s friend Pete at the print shop. I was hoping to find his friends, for a funeral. Pete sounded really shocked and sorry.”
“So you’ll call him back,” Ketcham said.
“Yes, and he suggested telling the paper in Ann Arbor. Dave was born there and lived there a lot longer than he was here. I can do that and maybe talk to someone at the high school there tomorrow, and I can talk to retired teachers at the senior center about when he was here. I do know one old girlfriend of his—she works at Ellen’s.”
“Yes, we spoke to her. Did you reach anyone else by phone?”
Her eyes looked troubled, and she took Fred’s hand. He patted hers and didn’t let go.
“One man. He—he scared me.”
“Scared you?” Ketcham asked, not leading her.
“He sounded nasty. Almost threatening.”
“What did he say?”
“It wasn’t what he said so much as how he said it. I asked what number I’d reached, and he asked who’d I want. That’s when I hung up.” Her eyes were big now. “It sounds silly when I tell it, but he frightened me.”
“Can you show me which number that was?”
“I’ll go get the phone bill.” She left the room.
“Whaddya think?” Fred asked.
Ketcham shrugged. “Maybe she caught him on a bad day. But she might be right about this creep. She hung up so fast, let’s hope he thought it was a wrong number. Now, if it’s the number I think it is . . .”
Joan ran back into the kitchen, waving the phone bill. “I thought I left it in our room, and there it was.” She held it out to Ketcham, pointing to one number.
He pulled out his notebook. “That’s the one where we got no answer. Man probably has caller ID. Wasn’t about to answer the cops.”
“You mean, you think he did it?”
“Doesn’t mean anything. Maybe he wasn’t there when we called. And ask Fred how many people won’t talk to us.”
“It’s true, honey,” he told her. “Some people are scared, and some people just hate cops.”
“Don’t worry,” Ketcham said. “We’ll track him down.”
“Sorry to be such a wimp.”
“You’re no wimp!” Fred told her.
But Ketcham took another tack. “I want you to think back to other times you were scared in Oliver.” And before she could answer, he added, “Think way back.”
“You mean, to when we lived here before?”
“Yes, when you and Dave were kids in school.”
She smiled. “You’re not interested in the things that scared me in sixth grade.”
“Try me. Anybody ever threaten you in any way?”
Good for Ketcham. Fred hadn’t thought of such an approach.
“Or Dave, you mean?”
“Or Dave, if you know.”
“That’s the problem. He was so much older. But there was this guy, this big kid, older and tougher, maybe a dropout . . .”
Fred didn’t let so much as a finger move. He could feel hers tremble.
“I used to ride my bike to school. I had a new three-speed and thought I was something. Dave had his license by then, but my parents didn’t believe in giving cars to kids, and Dave hadn’t saved the kind of money he’d need even to buy an old, beat-up one. He rode his ten-speed to high school, and he couldn’t give me a ride on that. So I was alone, part of the way, anyhow.”
Ketcham nodded, the sunlight through the kitchen window glinting off his glasses.
“The first time, this big kid knocked me off my bike, and no one came to help. I was scratched up, but it hurt worse that my new bike was scratched up, too. I was afraid to climb back on, but I had to get to school on time, so I did. The kid kept threatening me from behind all the way to school, but he didn’t hit me again, not that day. After school, Dave fussed about my bike and my torn-up knee. I told him what had happened. So the next morning, he followed me to school, and when the same guy came after me again, Dave rescued me. He wasn’t as big, but he was furious, and got him to back off.”
“Was that the end of it?” Ketcham asked.
Fred had been wondering the same thing. It sounded like a good memory of Dave, not something she’d remember as a threat. Still, she had been trembling.
“No,” she said. “The next day, he came back with a bunch just like him. They were all yelling insults at us and threatening what they’d do to us.”
“Insults?” Ketcham asked.
“I didn’t understand them at the time. They were calling us kikes. I guess they thought a name like Zimmerman meant we were Jewish. One of them even waved a little swastika flag on a stick.”
“You get any names?”
“Not me. Dave eventually found out a couple. The first guy was Bud something.”
A big help in southern Indiana, Fred thought.
“Only Bud I know is Bud Snarr,” she said. “He owned the funeral home back then, before Gil grew up and took over. But it’s not that Bud. Closer to Gil’s age, anyway, but older.”
“These guys come back again?” Ketcham asked.
“Sometimes. Mostly just Bud, when I was alone. Dave couldn’t be there all the time. It made him late to high school, and he got into enough trouble at school. But one day Dave got some of his friends together, and they lay in wait. For a change, they were on the attack when Bud and those guys showed up, expecting to make me miserable. Instead, they got chased by a bunch of boys closer to their own size. Scared ’em good. They turned tail and ran.” She smi
led, remembering. “Bud and his gang let me alone after that. Even so, for weeks I didn’t feel safe going to school.”
“You went anyway?” Fred said.
“I had to.” She said it naturally, and he thought, not for the first time, how many people would have curled up and given up after things she’d lived through. Giving up didn’t seem to occur to his wife—hadn’t, even back then.
“You ever report any of this to the school, or to your parents?” Ketcham asked.
“No, and I don’t know why not. Only to Dave. A skinned knee didn’t worry Mom, and she didn’t know the rest of it.”
“I don’t suppose you could recognize any of them again, after all these years.”
“Not most of them. Boys change a lot more when they turn into adults than girls do. But Bud—I might know him.”
“Why?”
“He was tall and blond, though who knows what will have happened to his hair by now. But really tall, maybe six-five—he looked gigantic to me back then. And there was something wrong with his hand.” She paused. “He was missing a piece off the end of his right index finger.”
Ketcham was writing in his notebook. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
“You don’t seriously think a thing like that would make a man come after Dave all this time later and murder him.”
“I don’t think anything. But your brother humiliated him at an age when kids like that don’t take kindly to humiliation.”
“Then Dave showed up in town again, after all this time. But I’ve been here for years.”
“You were his victim. Dave was his enemy.”
“Oh.”
“And he could have found out Dave’s name—probably knew it all along. Yours had changed.”
“But today the paper told the world he was my brother.”
“As I said, Dave was the enemy, not you.”
She didn’t look much comforted.
“Anything else come to mind?” Ketcham asked.
Her Brother's Keeper Page 11