Watkins - 01 - Blood Country

by Mary Logue

  “This is she,” Claire said.

  “I’m calling to report a killing.”

  Her skin froze. “Another one?”

  “It’s not that serious, but I wanted you to know.”

  “Not serious?”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have started out that way.”

  “What?” she asked, still wondering at the voice. “Who is this?”

  “Sorry, this is Rich Haggard. Someone has been messing around with my pheasants. One of them got killed. I found it out near the barn.”

  “A pheasant?”

  “Well, a chick really. Barely two weeks old. Sorry sight on the side of the barn. This is the third time this has happened.”

  “How did they do it?”

  “I’m not really sure. Maybe they even picked the chick up in their hand and threw it, although I thought I heard a striking sound.”

  “How awful,” Claire murmured.

  “It is, and I just want it to be on record.”

  “I’ll stop by in the morning to make a report.”

  “Can if you like. But I really called to ask you, what’s the legality of me shooting someone on my property, someone who’s killing my birds?”

  6

  Fred Anderson arrived early in the morning. His car rolled up with the lights off, and he didn’t make any noise slamming the door. Maybe he was just being considerate. Slate clouds covered the sky, but a hint of rose tinged them in the east.

  Claire saw Fred from the window of Meg’s bedroom. Meg lay sleeping, sprawled across the bed as if she were in full flight. Claire hated to wake her up, but it was time for Meg to get ready for school and time for her to stop Fred before he went any further.

  She tousled Meg’s hair, said calmly, “Get up, noodlehead. Go wash the sleepies out of your eyes,” and left the room. Meg would dawdle around upstairs, so Claire headed over to stop Fred. Claire had her uniform on but only one cup of coffee in her when she ran across the street to catch him. His key rattled in his hand, and he was ready to stick it in the front door.

  “Mr. Anderson, stop,” she hollered at him.

  He turned and smiled at her—the Pillsbury Doughboy incarnate. Puffy cheeks soft as pillows, arms that sprang out from his side, and she bet if she poked him in the stomach, he would giggle.

  Claire stood down at the bottom of the steps. She wanted him to come away from the door.

  “I need to get a few things,” Fred said and turned back to the door.

  Claire did not want to have to climb up the steps and physically stop him from going in the house. “You can’t go in there, Mr. Anderson.”

  “I have a key.” He showed her the key.

  “I know you do. But no one is allowed in your brother’s house yet.”

  “I’m his brother. I have a right. There are things inside I need to get.” Fred had started to whine, and he turned the key in the lock.

  Claire felt an odd kind of anger run through her. This dopey old man wasn’t listening to her. She found that she wanted to rap him on the head as if she were his schoolteacher. She ran up the steps and grabbed him under the arm as the door swung open. She threw him off balance but didn’t hurt him. However, for a moment, there was a hunted look in his eyes.

  The two of them stood in front of the door to the living room. The house already smelled musty. How could that happen so fast? Landers’ desk sat in one corner of the living room, and Fred’s eyes flew to it. Claire noted that and then reached out and pulled the door shut. Fred jumped. Claire locked the door, handed him back the key, and then, continuing to hold his arm, firmly escorted him down the steps. The muscle of his arm had the soft consistency of bread. Fred wasn’t smiling anymore.

  Claire didn’t want to talk to him right now. She had to get Meg off to school, and she still felt too angry at him. “Why don’t you go down to the Fort and get a cup of coffee, and I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

  Fred rubbed his arm as if Claire’s grip had hurt him. He looked back at the house. “Darla wanted me to get a few things.”

  “She’ll understand, I’m sure.”

  “We need to talk to a lawyer. My brother just died. We have to take care of things—like the funeral and such.”

  “I’m more than aware of that. We’ll take care of it over coffee. I’ll have time to sit and talk then.”

  Fred’s face had pulled in, lines creasing his cheeks. Worry passed over his face like a cloud, then it cleared. “Cup of coffee sounds good.”

  THE FORT ST. Antoine Café was the town center: a bar, grocery store, video store, pool hall, dance hall, and restaurant rolled into one. Claire nodded at Wally, the owner, and ordered a cup of coffee before joining Fred, sitting by himself at the window. He hadn’t joined the group of older men sitting at the end of the bar. They gathered there every day to talk over the weather and happenings of the world. A nice group of men, including the mayor, Lester Krenz, and board member Sven Hulmer, but Fred didn’t fit in. He had come to Fort St. Antoine many years ago but had never become a part of the social workings of the town.

  Claire was glad he was alone; she didn’t want everyone listening to what she was going to ask him. News spread like fire through this town without her dumping kerosene on it. She sat with her back toward the gathering of men and said hello again to Fred.

  “How did my brother die?” Fred asked.

  “He had a heart attack.”

  “That’s what I figured. That’s what I told Darla. She got all worked up about seeing him in the garden with the shovel lying next to him.”

  “What was she worked up about?” Claire added cream and sugar to the coffee that had been set in front of her. She had skimped on her breakfast and needed the extra calories.

  “You gotta understand Darla. She’s very sensitive to all sorts of things. Always has been. She gets feelings about things, and I’ve come to learn to listen to her feelings. She said when she saw Landers there on the ground, she had a bad feeling. I think she might be a little psychic. I mean if there is such a thing. If there is such a thing as being a psychic, then my Darla is one. But I don’t believe in that stuff much, myself.”

  “Was she more specific about what her bad feeling was?”

  “She thought that Landers had come to a bad end, that someone had killed him. I told her there was no way, but she said his body lying there didn’t look natural.”

  “Well, your wife was right, Mr. Anderson. Landers was, in effect, killed. He did have a heart attack, but it was after someone hit him with the shovel.”

  “I’m his closest of kin, you know.”

  Claire took a quick sip of coffee to cover her reaction to his statement. This is how he responded to hearing the news that his brother had been killed? “I had assumed as much. Landers never had any children, did he?”

  Fred lurched toward his coffee and took a big gulp. “Nope. His wife was always a little sickly. She couldn’t have kids.”

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “So that means that I own his house and land now. When will I be able to go into his house?”

  Claire sat back in her chair. Fred had just learned that his brother had been killed, and he wasn’t asking her any of the right questions. He didn’t seem to be wondering who had done it.

  “Fred, where were you Monday night between seven and eight?”

  “On my way to a pinochle game in Plum City.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “Sure. Darla stayed home. She doesn’t like to play pinochle.”

  “What time did you leave the house?”

  “About six-thirty.”

  “Can you give me the names of the men you play pinochle with?”

  Fred settled his eyes on her. “Why?”

  “That’s when Landers was killed. You didn’t happen to drive by his house, did you?”

  “No, it’s not on the way to Plum City.”

  “You didn’t happen to see anybody parked on the highway on your way out of town? A
strange car? A strange person?”

  “Don’t remember that I did.”

  “Do you know anyone who would want to kill your brother?”

  Fred drank another sip of coffee. He puffed out his cheeks and then slowly let the air out. “You think you know my brother. I know you and him got to be friends. But you don’t really know him that well. My brother could be very selfish. He was like that all his life. He never wanted to share with anyone. I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t quite a few people who wouldn’t have minded giving him a good chop.”

  “I’d like those names too. Along with your pinochle buddies'.”

  “Well, you might have to ask around, because my brother and I didn’t stay in touch for nearly twenty years. If I were you, I’d start with his partner in business, Leo Stromboli.”

  “I’ll check into it” She handed him a pen and a piece of paper to write down all the names. “Also, your brother had had a call from a man, offering to buy his house. Do you know anything about that?”

  Fred fussed. “I told him I’d take care of it”

  “You told who?”

  “Oh, Ted Brown. He’s working with Landowners of America.”

  “On some sort of development?”

  “Yes, and I’m going to be in on the deal this time.”

  “What’s the deal?”

  “Come to the town board meeting if you want to hear more about it.”

  Claire stood up. “I’ll do that.”

  Fred thought of one more thing. “So when can we get his body?”

  As FAR AS Bridget was concerned, everyone was sick.

  She counted out sixty tablets of 10-milligram amitriptyline for Mr. Swanberg. He had had shingles and looked like he was still in a lot of pain.

  “Felt like my skin was burning. Felt like little electric shocks all over my back. Never felt anything like it,” the old man told her, looking up at her from his hunched-over height of under five and a half feet.

  She told him to let her know how he was doing in two weeks. It would take the medication that long to take full effect. He wagged his head, and his sky-blue eyes blinked twice. “You’re a swell-looking gal,” he said.

  She laughed and thanked him. He turned away and walked out of the pharmacy with a bit more bounce than he had come in with. Bridget hoped the medication helped him. It was about the only chance he had of relief from that type of pain.

  She had filled all the prescriptions that had been called in. There was usually a rush right when she got in, and then it slowed down. Now, all day long, people would be stopping by to pick them up. Her sore arm had kept her up last night, but it wasn’t the only reason she had gotten little sleep.

  She looked over all the bottles and boxes of pills she had available and wondered which one she should take. She had never done that, slipped a pill into her own hand and tried it. She knew what all of them could do; at least she had studied and read about them. But she knew of none that could relieve the heartache that she was feeling.

  Chuck hadn’t come home last night. She had called his brother this morning and asked if he was there, and she could tell by the long pause that whatever came out of Ted’s mouth, it would be a lie. “He crashed on the couch. I think he left to get something to eat.”

  She wanted to believe it. Maybe it was true. But Chuck had never stayed out all night long before. He would stay out late, but in the middle of the night, she would feel him slide into bed next to her, slip a hand around her waist, and kiss her on the back of the neck.

  She had met Chuck during her third year of pharmacy school. Her car had broken down on the freeway, smoke pouring off the engine, and she had been forced to pull over. Chuck had pulled right in behind her. He had hair that any woman would die for—strawberry blond and down to his shoulders. Cutoff jeans and a torn sweatshirt. He had opened up the hood of her car and had it fixed, and the promise of a date that night, before she even had a chance to look at the engine.

  He wasn’t her type. He was open and sweet where she tended to like them dark and brooding. He was good with his hands.

  Maybe that had been her downfall. He hadn’t read a book in years; she couldn’t go to sleep if she didn’t read for at least a half an hour. He had barely graduated from high school. She was getting a doctorate of pharmacy. He was five years younger than she—she was thirty, and he was twenty-five. They were married within the year.

  His family was from Wabasha, twenty-two miles south of Fort St. Antoine, and they moved down there when she was done with school. She got a job at the pharmacy in town, and he started working for the garage. They bought a house, nothing special, a sixties rambler, but she liked it. They could see the Mississippi River from their deck. Since they were on the outskirts of town, she could keep a horse. It had been her lifelong dream. So she bought Jester. Sometimes Chuck teased that she loved Jester more than anyone else in her life. It wasn’t true, but it was awfully close. When she rode him, they felt like one body. Chuck was afraid of the horse, wouldn’t go near him unless Bridget was around. He refused to ride.

  In the last year, their life together had pulled apart. Most mornings, she got up early and went riding, then went to work and came home after dark. Chuck went to work at the garage, came home, and went over to his brother’s to work on some old car. Bridget thought what they did to the old cars was rather horrible, but she never told Chuck. He was so proud of them. But they chopped them, they cut them down so that their windows were slits, and the roofs touched your head. They exaggerated the lines of the cars until they were caricatures of their former selves.

  After five years together, their relationship had certainly relaxed into an easy contentment, bordering on boredom. Bridget and Chuck made a point of going out to eat every Friday night, most often a fish fry and a few beers. Once in a while Bridget could persuade Chuck to see a movie. Lately, he had been on this kid kick. He wanted her to get pregnant. She didn’t want to have a child. She liked her life the way it was—the two of them together, her job, her horse, and her sister. If she was pregnant, the doctor would probably make her quit riding for a while.

  A woman came in to pick up a prescription for her birth control pills. She was dragging a two-year-old snot-nosed boy with her. He had long eyelashes outlining his deep brown eyes. He looked up at Bridget and smiled.

  Bridget pulled out a sucker and gave it to the boy. The woman took it away from him. Handing it back to Bridget, she said, “I don’t believe in giving my children sugar. Did it ever occur to you to ask?”

  Bridget handed her the bag containing the birth control pills, glad the woman would be having no more children for a while. “Sugar is a simple carbohydrate that would do him little harm.”

  “Do you have kids?”

  “Yes, I happen to have three healthy children.”

  The woman snorted and left.

  “Three healthy children, huh?”

  Bridget saw Chuck leaning against the shelf that contained the antihistamines. He was laughing at her. He looked tired but happy. She smiled, and as he walked up to the counter, she wondered what story he would tell her. She hoped it was a good one, because she wanted to believe it

  CLAIRE HAD NEVER been to Rich Haggard’s farm before. The one time she had bought pheasant from him had been in town. Two weekends before Christmas all the shops in town were decorated with lights, the owners handed out cookies and cider, and Rich had set up a small stand on Main Street and sold his pheasants.

  His farm was right on the edge of town. If she walked out her front door and crossed a couple acres of Landers properly, she would come to the edge of Rich’s land. However, she drove. It was possible to catch a glimpse of the house from the road. It was not dissimilar to most of the housing stock along the river—a large clapboard farmhouse with a huge porch from which, she guessed, you could see the lake. But Rich had painted it a dark green, not a normal midwestern hue—most of the houses in the area were white, a few were yellow, and every once in a while you’
d see a light blue. In the summer, the color made it disappear into the trees, which was probably Rich’s intent. He seemed a very private man.

  The driveway curved up from the road, and the house sat facing the lake. Claire parked next to Rich’s pickup truck and stepped out of her squad car. The barn, tucked into the woods, was beautiful. She loved old barns, and it did her heart good to see this one—so big and so old—looking in such good shape. It was red, but a soft, almost translucent red that let the wood show through.

  Just as she was staring at it, Rich pushed open the barn door and came out carrying a baby pheasant in his hands. He was wearing jeans, an old T-shirt that read John Deere, and work boots. His hair fell in his face as he held the bird out to her.