Watkins - 01 - Blood Country

by Mary Logue

  Bridget threw her good arm around Meg’s neck. “Didn’t have to work, so I decided I’d come and bug you.” Her doctor had said her arm was sprained and to use it sparingly.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  Of course, that would be the first question. Never far from Meg’s mind. The first few months after her father’s death, she couldn’t leave her mom’s side, wouldn’t go to school. Claire hadn’t forced her. Bridget didn’t know if that had been a good idea, but Claire wouldn’t budge on it. She was clear that Meg would decide when she could handle going back to school. “She’ll get bored, then she’ll go back.” But Bridget wondered if Claire hadn’t wanted her home too. Didn’t trust letting her out of her sight.

  “She’s catching up on some work.”

  “She wasn’t supposed to work today.”

  “Well, that changed.”

  “Because of Mr. Anderson, right?”

  “I think so.”

  “She’s okay?”

  “Just talked to her. She’s fine. She’s on her way home. Said to have supper ready.”

  Meg stepped back and looked at Bridget, crinkling up her nose. “What happened to your arm?”

  “It’s about time you noticed. Slugged someone.”

  “Did not” Meg scampered up the road in front of her.

  “Did tot.” It was their joke, the game they played that made them both laugh.

  “Who?”

  “That cranky pharmacist who works with me.”

  “Mr. Piss-pot.”

  Bridget stopped in the middle of the road and wagged her finger at Meg. “You watch your language, young lady. What would your mom say?”

  Meg tossed her hair and said, “She’d say, ‘You sound like your aunt Bridget.’”

  BRIDGET STARED AT the items on the counter in front of her. She knew you could make macaroni and cheese out of real cheese, but she had never done it. She always made it from a box. Meg had requested the dish, and Bridget thought it sounded as easy as anything. The only cheese was parmesan, but that should be okay. Cheese was cheese.

  Bridget had spent eight years getting through pharmacy school: four years pre-pharm, four years for her Pharm. D. She knew how to mix sodium metholate and xeron to get caldium, but she didn’t know how to cook. At home, Chuck would grill some slab of meat and she would stick potatoes in the oven, and they’d call it a meal. They went out to eat a lot and ordered in pizza. Now that they were settling down, maybe she should learn how to cook.

  She put water on to boil. It didn’t help any that she had only one good hand to work with. Meg was upstairs doing her homework. She was such a good kid. If it were guaranteed that she would get a child just like Meg, she would agree to Chuck’s request and get pregnant. When the water boiled, she dumped in a box of macaroni. The water stopped boiling, so she turned the heat up higher.

  Bridget figured Chuck wanted to try to have a baby for two reasons: one, he didn’t want to have to deal with contraception anymore, and two, he’d have someone to play with. One of the problems with Chuck was, he didn’t want to grow up. Right now, she knew he was over at his brother’s, working on some old car. The two of them would drink beer and listen to country music, and if she was lucky he’d come home by midnight.

  Some kind of chemical reaction seemed to be going on in the pan. White foam poured over the edge and down into the flames. Maybe she had discovered fusion. Bridget dumped the pasta in the sink, and the drainer kept any of it from disappearing. Then, with her hands, she scooped the pasta into a bowl. She put some butter in the bowl, a bit of milk, and poured a bunch of grated parmesan cheese on top. Looked pretty good. She stuck it in the oven at 350 degrees.

  Maybe it could all work out. She would get pregnant easily. She would learn how to cook. Chuck would go to Lamaze classes with her. He would build the baby a crib. He would buy her ice cream. The baby would enter their life gently, slipping into a spot that had always been waiting for it. Labor wouldn’t hurt. She decided as long as she was going to dream, she might as well go all the way. They would be a happy family. She would be able to make macaroni and cheese from scratch.

  SITTING IN HIS office, Stewy Swanson had explained to Claire that there hadn’t been a homicide in Pepin County for over twenty years. In his deep voice, he said it as if her coming to Pepin County had something to do with the fact that there had been a homicide. She had just told him the news of Landers’ death, stopping by after the autopsy.

  Chief Deputy Sheriff Steward Swanson was the second in command. Because sheriff was an elected position, Sheriff Talbert stayed out of all the cases. Didn’t want anything costing him a vote if it didn’t have to. Claire had been surprised to find out that the sheriff’s job was mainly administrative. Sheriff Talbert had appointed the chief deputy eleven years ago, and Swanson saw that things ran smoothly.

  Now, Stewy Swanson was nearing retirement He had been a policeman for forty years. Joined right out of the army, having fought in Korea. Claire didn’t mind working under him, but there was little camaraderie between them. Chief Swanson was about forty pounds overweight, and too much of that fat hung around his neck and face for him to be pleasant to look at Because his face was so broad, his blue eyes looked like small polka dots. But he was a fair man and slow to anger—both excellent qualities in someone who had to command a sheriff’s department of eleven men and, now, one woman.

  Swanson leaned back in his chair and appraised her. He folded his arms behind his head and put his head in the cup of his hands. His raised elbows looked like a set of flabby, fleshy wings. “Can you run with this?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m sure I can.”

  “I am too. Think we’re going to need help from the crime lab in Eau Claire?”

  “I’m going to talk to them. I’ve got the crime scene secured. Makes it easier that it’s right across the street from me. I can keep an eye on it.”

  Swanson flapped his wings. “Clobbered with a shovel, if that don’t beat all.”

  CLAIRE ARRIVED HOME just as the macaroni and cheese was done. It still surprised Bridget to see Claire in her tan uniform; she hadn’t worn one her last few years on the Minneapolis police force, since she was a detective. The outfit didn’t enhance Claire’s beauty, but she didn’t have to worry about that. Even in the ill-fitting suit, her long, slender figure showed through. Bridget scanned her face for wear and tear, but Claire looked almost happy.

  “How’s it going?” she asked as she walked into the kitchen. “Something smells good.”

  “Dinner is just about ready. Meg’s upstairs, doing her homework. How’d your day go?”

  Claire sat down on a chair at the table. She opened the top buttons on her polyester uniform and pulled her hair out of the ponytail. “I can’t believe Landers is dead. Not just that—it’s a homicide.”

  So that was it. Claire was back in the business she loved—solving crimes. There was little of that to do in a small county like Pepin. “Someone killed him?”

  “Appears so.”

  “Any ideas who?”

  “Yesterday I would have said that everyone loved Landers. But I’ve learned a few things today.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know, he always spoke so lovingly of his wife. He mentioned her often, Eva was her name. But I guess in their last years together, they didn’t get along so good. The doctor who told me this today said she also had a stroke, which can change personalities. But he said there was something else going on. She was absolutely dependent on Landers, and yet she would hardly talk to him. He waited on her hand and foot, and she ignored him or yelled at him.”

  Bridget pulled the hot dish out of the oven. The topping looked a bit burned, but that might make it taste better. The mixture bubbled in the casserole. She threw down a hot pad and set it on the table. “That can be fairly typical stroke behavior.”

  “I know, but the doctor said that she was already acting like this before she had the stroke. In fact, he said he thought she was so angry about som
ething that it might actually have brought the stroke on.”

  “Wow. What could have happened? Did he have any idea?”

  “All he said was that one day he was over and Landers left the room. He was alone with Eva. He asked her something about Landers’ garden, and she snapped, ‘He should stick to putting his seed there.’”

  “So he might have been messing around. The racy geriatric set. How do you get away with doing that in a small town?”

  “I don’t know. Plus, I don’t know if the information on his relationship with his wife is of much help. She’s been dead for five years.”

  Meg came barreling down the stairs and grabbed her mother around the waist. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, sweets. How did school go?”

  “Fine. I tried not to think about Mr. Anderson too much. I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Honey, that’s fine. But you can tell people if you want to. It’s not a secret.”

  “I don’t like to talk about that stuff. Nobody understands.”

  Claire gave her a big hug. “I know what you mean. Sometimes it can feel like that.”

  Meg lifted away from her mother and looked at the table. “What’s that?” she asked, disgust deepening her voice.

  Bridget leaned against the sink. The macaroni and cheese did look a little weird. For one thing, the color was wrong. The dish should have been yellowy orange, but it was more white than anything. “Dinner,” Bridget said hopefully.

  “Fancy hot dish,” Claire said encouragingly.

  “Looks like you forgot something. Maybe you should have stirred it a little more,” Meg said.

  They all sat down and looked at it. Bridget dug into it and discovered that the dish had stratified. The top was hard and crusty with the burned parmesan, then there was a layer of dry noodles, then there was a soupy bottom of separated milk. She put some on her plate and stared at it. No one said anything for a moment. Then Bridget sighed. “I don’t think it’s edible.”

  “You might be right,” Claire agreed.

  “There’s always peanut butter,” Meg mentioned.

  Bridget picked up a piece of the pasta and put it in her mouth. Tasteless and tough. “I don’t think I’m ready to be a mom.”

  “CLARK DENFORTH.“ The man getting out of the car held out his hand to her. As they shook hands, Claire introduced herself. She pointed out her house right across the street. Meg waved to her from the window. Bridget was staying on until Claire got back.

  The young blond man snapped with excitement. His hair stood up with some kind of gel in it. His cheeks shone, speckled with freckles. Claire would have guessed his age to be twenty-four, probably just out of college. Maybe had done a tour at Quantico. That could be good. He’d know the latest methods for collecting evidence at a crime scene.

  “What’ve we got here?” he asked, pulling a briefcase out of his car.

  She took him to the gate and motioned him to stop. “Mr. Anderson was standing next to his garden bed. As near as we can figure, he got hit in the head with a shovel and dropped.”

  “Have you kept people out of here?”

  “We’ve tried.”

  He spent the next two hours taking prints off the small universe of Landers: the white gate leading into the garden, the door handle, the kitchen counter, medicine cabinet, the bottles of pills that stood next to the sink—although Claire had told him they had no reason to believe the perp had gone into the house—and, of course, the shovel. The house and garden were dusted with the fine powder that shows prints. It looked as if someone had taken a bath and gone crazy with the talcum powder.

  When Denforth had finished with the shovel, Claire took it from him. The shovel looked its age, dirt crusted on its spade, the handle grimy with the sweat of years. She thought it was Landers’ shovel, but that was hard to tell; she didn’t know his garden tools that well.

  “How do you think the assailant got here?” Denforth asked her.

  “Could have walked up from the highway. Parked by the Fort, it’s the bar in town. Tomorrow I’ll ask around.” Claire planned on talking to everyone in town tomorrow. Find out where everyone was at seven o’clock. It should be possible with a town this size. Someone must know something or have seen something.

  “You gonna take the shovel?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Murder weapon. We’ll run a few more tests on it in the lab. Be sure we don’t miss anything.”

  Claire looked at the shovel she held in her gloved hands. What she really wanted to do with it was hoist it up like a bat and let fly with it, but she knew she shouldn’t. What if some speck of hair or fiber came flying off it with the velocity of her swing? So she only lifted it in her hands and felt its weight. It didn’t weigh much more than her broom. Anyone could have conked Landers over the head with it. A small woman, a big man. Possibly even a child.

  Night settled around them. April in Wisconsin was a tease and therefore cruel, Claire thought, hinting of warm, sunny days and then delivering rain and wet wind. But this day had stayed warm. She wrapped her arms around herself as Clark put the shovel in a bag and climbed into his car. Claire watched him leave and gave him a wave. Landers’ house, empty of any life, they left dark.

  Denforth’s car lights flickered around the corner and disappeared. The shovel was going to Eau Claire with him. He’d call her, he said, if they found anything at all. The shovel, that old implement of so much good, had been used in the end for destruction. Why a shovel? Claire kept asking herself.

  BRIDGET LEFT SHORTLY after Claire came home. She had done the dishes and put Meg to bed. The remains of the hot dish were nowhere to be seen; Claire assumed that Bridget had thrown the leftovers away. She said her arm was hurting and she just wanted to go home. Claire thanked her, and they hugged the swift hug of sisters who love each other but who rarely talk about it.

  Claire went up to check on Meg and found her still awake in bed. “Mom,” her little sleepy voice rose up from the covers.

  “Yes, sweetie.”

  “Do you think that the red-haired man came and killed Landers?”

  Claire froze. What was Meg telling her? “Red-haired man?”

  “The same guy who killed Dad.”

  Claire dropped down on her knees next to the bed. “Meggy, did you see him?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but I was too scared.”

  “I know it’s not him, so don’t you worry.”

  Claire left her to sleep but sat and worried in the gloaming of the falling night. She stared out at the remnant of rose color left in the west, a drift of clouds adding a purple accent. She now had another piece of the murder of her husband. A red-haired man; that might help a lot. What a queer bird she was. She missed her old life, the buzz of the homicide department, the tearing around at the beginning of a case, the intensity of telling the next of kin.

  Claire had left the Minneapolis Police Department willingly. At the time, she thought she never wanted to see another dead body in her life. Her husband’s rose up in front of her eyes at the least provocation. But that was nearly a year ago. She was getting tired of sitting in a jail half her shifts and then driving around the blufflands of Pepin County, catching speeders and drunk drivers, for the other half. The only thing she liked better about her job now was the beauty of the country she cruised through.

  Originally, she had gone into police work for a reason. She needed to be doing something about the injustices she saw in the world. She had a mind that needed to stretch out and puzzle things back together again. She didn’t think that the structure of the social work system helped people. And her uncle, who had been dead for twenty years, had been a cop. A good cop. The best He had died of cirrhosis of the liver and lung cancer at the age of fifty. She called it dying in the line of duty.

  Her heart dropped when she thought of the man who had died. She would miss Landers for a long time. She had known that he wouldn’t live forever, but somehow she thought he would stick around long enough to s
ee her really settled, with a lovely garden of her own. And she was sure he would have, if someone hadn’t slammed him on the head. She would find that someone.

  Organizing the case in her mind, she decided the first person she would talk to tomorrow would be Fred Anderson, Landers’ only surviving kin, younger than Landers by ten years. She felt like going over to Darla and Fred’s right away tonight, but she knew it would not be the thing to do. She needed to calm down, figure out how to approach him. Because, as it stood now, she was looking at Fred to be the prime suspect in this case. She also wanted to check into the man who had offered to buy his land.

  As she walked across the room to turn on the light, the phone rang. She picked it up and heard a male voice, which she vaguely recognized, asking for her. She paused for a moment before she answered, searching for the voice.