by Mary Logue
“Ever hold a chick?” he asked.
“No, my parents would never buy us those cute little chickens dyed all different colors at Easter.” She took the baby bird from him.
“Smart parents.”
“Why, it’s just fuzz and bones.”
“Hopefully that’ll change in a few months.”
She wondered at the feeling of it in her hands. Small and full of life. Meg had been bugging her to get another pet. It was hard to think of getting a dog, because she was gone so much of the day. It would be nice to watch something grow up. “Do they make good pets?”
He laughed. “Not particularly. Do you need a pet?”
“Oh, we don’t have one. I don’t know if that means we need one.”
“You want to come in for a cup of coffee while I give you the specifics on the murder scene?”
“Sure.” She watched him as he ran back to the barn and put the chick inside.
“You keep the birds in the barn?”
“Not usually, but that one needed a little looking after.”
She followed him up the stairs and into the house. At the back door, he slid out of his boots and put slippers on. “You don’t need to take your shoes off. I assume you haven’t been walking in bird shit,” he said as she looked at her shoes. “Have a seat. I’ll brew up a fresh pot.”
Claire pulled out an old wooden chair next to a round oak table. She was struck by how simple his house seemed to be. Not a lot of furniture, or not much she could see from where she was sitting. Simple and clean. Spare was the word she was looking for. “I like your house,” she told him.
He looked up from putting the coffee on the stove. “Thanks. I’ve been here for about ten years. Place was a mess when I moved in. But it’s just about to where I want it to be now. I inherited from my uncle. He was an old recluse. When I moved in, that table”—he pointed to the one Claire was sitting at—“was covered about a foot high with old cans and garbage. To eat, he’d simply open up an old cereal box and use that relatively clean surface to eat off of for a while. Weird old coot. My folks would bring him Thanksgiving dinner, but they couldn’t bear to stay and watch him eat it.”
“So tell me what happened to your bird.”
“Near as I can figure, someone picked up one of my pheasant and chucked it at the barn. I’ve found a couple more dead chicks. I’d seen someone else’s footprint in my yard a week or so ago.”
“Any idea why anybody would want to do something like that?”
“Yeah.” He set out two coffee mugs, thick pottery blue, a bowl of sugar, and a pitcher of milk. “Someone wants to buy my land. I don’t want to sell. They’re trying to let me know I should reconsider.”
“Who?”
“Couple of people who are part of that Landowners group.”
“Why do they want your land?”
“It’s right next to a bunch of acreage that they want to develop. Mrs. Langston has offered me a good price for my property. But I have no intention of selling.”
“So you think they’re trying to scare you?”
The coffee burbled up in the pot, and Rich pulled it off the stove. He poured her cup full first, then his. “That’s the only thing that makes sense to me. I’ve heard they’re going to be at our town board meeting. It will be interesting to hear what they have planned to do with their land.”
“How far does your land go back?”
“I’ve got about ten acres.”
“It comes right up to Landers’ land at the far end, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, his chunk runs right along the top of mine.”
Claire tasted the coffee. Dark and rich, as unusual as the color of his house in this land of insipid coffee. “Mmmm. This coffee is great. Maybe I should show up at the town board meeting.”
“Sure. Good way to find out what’s going on in town.”
Claire hesitated. She wasn’t sure quite what she was thinking, and she certainly didn’t know Rich well enough to tell him if she did know. “I’d like to check this group out. Any kind of group like that in the county can mean trouble. Or maybe not. That’s what I’d like to see.”
Rich held silent for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was even but interested. “Rumor is that Landers was killed.”
“Rumor’s right.”
“That’s unusual.”
“Do you know anyone who would want to kill Landers?” she asked him.
“Not a soul.”
AFTER GOING IN to the sheriff’s office to do some paperwork, Claire drove back from Durand through Plum City, the scenic route. Faster to come down 25 to 35, but prettier to drive through the rolling hills of the bluffland. Farms dotted the landscape with big red barns like grazing animals tucked under trees. Green was starting to show through the winter grays: patches of grass, hints of leaves, wheat speckling the fields. She never noticed spring coming on this surely and slowly in the city.
She had stopped off in Plum City and talked to one of the men with whom Fred played pinochle—Thor Larsen. She found him sitting at his kitchen table, watching a small television set. He never turned it off while she was there. It must serve as his constant companion. He had told her that Fred had been late; he hadn’t gotten to the game until a quarter after seven. They always started promptly at seven. He had missed the first hand.
Claire turned on County Road SS and then back on JJ. There was no direct route from Fort St. Antoine to Plum City, but she didn’t mind. It gave her mind room to think.
She had asked Thor how Fred had seemed when he made it to the game.
“He’s not a very good pinochle player,” Thor had told her.
“Did he seem distracted?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she had wanted to pull them back. She had no reason to lead the man on. She wanted to find out the truth.
“Fred always seemed distracted. That was normal for him. No, the other night he appeared cheerful. When I first noticed his cheeriness, I assumed he had a good hand, but he didn’t. He was like that all night. You know the old saying, Like the cat who swallowed the canary?”
“Yes.”
“Fred looked like the cat.”
The road switched back, and she saw the lake. It was always a surprise, hidden down in the trees, only glimpsed for a moment. But whenever she saw the lake, she felt how it was the heart of this area, the reason that all these small towns existed. And land along the lake was getting very valuable. This was an important piece of this case, she was sure.
Fred was late, Fred looked like a cat, Fred didn’t ask who had killed his brother. Maybe he didn’t ask because he knew. Every time Claire tried to imagine Fred as the killer, she saw him flubbing it. It would be convenient if Fred was the one, but she feared the road she would need to travel to find the murderer was as curving and convoluted as the one she was on.
7
He appeared bigger to her than she remembered. Bruce Jacobs sat at the bar, looking, with his big shoulders, as if he played football for a living. Her old partner. God, it was good to see him. She wouldn’t call him handsome, but he had wonderful smiling eyes.
She came up behind him and pulled his ear. A running joke between them, it came from the movies in which Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade and tugged at his ear when he was thinking. When Claire and Bruce worked together, they used it to signify they were onto something.
“I don’t have to guess. I know only one person in the world who would dare do that to me.” He turned and threw an arm around her shoulder. He smelled of Old Spice and cigarettes, with maybe a Scotch thrown in. She liked the smell. It reminded her of work and cases that went on for days, hitting a bar with Bruce on the way home to unwind.
Bruce held her by the shoulders and looked her over. “Hair’s longer. Smile looks good. Boy, even put a dress on. What’s the occasion?”
“Dinner with my best bud.”
“Care for a drink?”
“Sounds good.”
“Johnny Walker, okay?”
“Let’s get a booth.”
Claire hadn’t seen Bruce in a couple months. Over the winter, she hadn’t wanted to travel up to the city as much. He had called and asked if he could come down, but she hadn’t felt ready to see him. He had been such a mainstay when her husband had died. He had taken care of everything. But this winter, she had wanted to get grounded in herself. Seeing Bruce reminded her of too many things she wanted to forget. Actually, forget was too strong a word. She wanted her former life to move into the past.
“How’s Meg?” Bruce asked.
“She’s great. Staying with some friends tonight. She’s got a best friend, and he’s a boy.”
“So she’s got a boyfriend.”
“No, she’s too young for that. She asked me the other night if Derrick—that’s the kid’s name—could stay over. I had to tell her no, and she was a little upset with me. Oh, she said to say hi.”
The waitress brought Claire’s beer. Claire lifted it to Bruce, and he raised his Scotch.
“What are we toasting?”
“To murder cases,” she said, and they clicked glasses.
“Don’t tell me.” He stared.
But she did. She went over all she knew so far about Landers Anderson’s death. She told Bruce who he was, how much she had liked him, what she had found out about his life.
“Fred seems to be your man.”
“I know. He’s a real possibility. But I don’t want to put all my eggs on him, so to speak, and ignore who else might have a reason to do away with that sweet old man. I do think something was going on between him and Landers. If he killed Landers, why wouldn’t he act more like he didn’t? I haven’t confronted him about being late to the pinochle game. I’m going to see him tomorrow.”
“Have you talked to the old business partner?”
“Just on the phone. I’m meeting with him late afternoon tomorrow. He lives in a small town downriver.”
“You live in a small town downriver.”
“Farther down.” Claire reached across the booth and touched Bruce’s hand. “Wish you were working this one with me. Miss talking to you.”
“I could take a few days off. Come down and give you a hand.”
Claire pulled her hand back and reminded herself not to ask Bruce for help. He was all too ready to give it. “Don’t think it would ride with my boss. After all, you are from Minnesota.”
“So are you, originally.”
Changing the subject, Claire asked him how his daughter Janet was doing. When Claire and Bruce had been partnered up, he was just recently divorced, playing wild and loose with the women, but trying very hard to learn how to be a good father.
“She’s doing good. She does have a boyfriend. Her mom is letting her date. Don’t you think she’s too young to date at fifteen?”
“It’s too young for Meg to date.”
“Speaking of a date, Claire—”
Their blond, bouncy waitress waltzed up, order pad at the ready. “What can I get for you two tonight?”
They both ordered burgers; Bruce ordered fries and onion rings, winking at Claire and saying, “I’ll expect you’ll help me eat these two orders.” He knew her too well.
When the waitress left, he began again. “Claire, I’d like to—” His beeper, clipped to his belt, went off. “Damn,” he said, “I’d better check in.”
When he had gone, Claire sighed and sank down into the booth. She couldn’t just put him off this time. She would have to be straight with him.
When Bruce got back to the booth, he said, “I can only stay long enough to eat We’ve been watching these guys for nearly a month. They’re pulling a beauty of a con. We’re going to have to move on them tonight You understand.”
“Absolutely.” Claire picked at the tabletop. “But before you go, you haven’t, by any chance, found out anything more about who killed Steve, have you?”
Bruce looked at her as if he hadn’t understood what she had asked, and then he started to shake his head. Finally he asked, “Do you mean Steve, your husband? What are you expecting me to hear? You know we went over that with a fine-toothed comb when it happened. All leads led nowhere. I didn’t sleep for weeks. What do you think we might hear at this late date? Even though you and I have a suspicion it was that drug gang led by Hawk, we got nothing, babe.”
Claire watched him as he said all this. He had said it all before. But something was wrong. He wasn’t looking at her. He always looked at her when he talked to her. He was staring at his paper place mat She tugged the place mat away from him and crumpled it in her hand. “What’s the matter?” “What?”
“Why aren’t you looking at me?”
Bruce fixed his big brown eyes straight on her. “You want to know what’s the matter? I haven’t had a conversation with you in over a year in which you didn’t bring up Steve and what happened to him. Maybe it was a hit-and-run. As simple as that. You gotta stop thinking about it, Claire. It’s going to make you crazy.”
He was right. He knew what he was talking about. After her husband was killed, she went ballistic. Showed up at the office, used everything she could think of to track the man down who had killed him, called in all her informants, stayed up for days tracking down tire prints. Bruce had found her when she fell asleep in the women officers’ lounge and brought her home. He sedated her and put her to bed. While she slept for two days straight, he managed to get a leave of absence for her. Probably saved her life. Certainly covered her ass at work.
Some people in the department had felt it could be a hit-and-run, plain and simple. But she had never believed that. Steve had been standing by the mailbox. The angle of the wheels showed that the truck had been aimed at him, instead of heading down the road. The truck didn’t hit him on the side; it hit him head-on. And this had all happened right when Bruce and she had been hot on the trail of a new drug gang that had infiltrated North Minneapolis. In three months, there had been seven drive-by shootings, resulting in three deaths. So they didn’t shoot her husband. They probably would have if he hadn’t stepped out into the road.
The idea that the investigation was dead in the water filled her mouth with acid. Her husband. She couldn’t stand the thought of his death never being resolved. She had made her mind up to tell him what Meg had seen. “What if I told you there was a witness?”
Bruce looked at her in surprise. “Don’t try that, Claire.”
“I’m serious.”
“What, did someone just come forward, a neighbor?”
“No.”
“Who?”
Claire closed her eyes. Did she really want to put Meg in the middle of this case? Why had she opened her mouth? “Forget it. Forget I said anything.”
Bruce stared at her. “It’s Meg, isn’t it? I thought it was funny at the time that you wouldn’t let anyone talk to her. What did she see?”
“You can’t tell anyone it’s Meg, Bruce. I don’t want her involved.”
“I don’t blame you. You have to decide how you want to handle this.”
The waitress came and set down their two plates of food. Neither of them reached for their burgers.
“She said the guy who drove the truck had red hair. That’s all she saw. I don’t want her interviewed. I don’t want anyone to know. Just see if you can do anything with that information.”
“A lot to go on. I’ll try. I’ll run it past Joe and some other guys in the squad who have been working the drug busts. Now, eat your fucking burger.”
“Don’t swear at me, goddamn you.” It had been her one rule with him while they were partners. He could swear all he wanted. Just like all the other cops. She didn’t mind the language, used it herself from time to time. But she asked him, told him, not to ever swear at her.
“I wasn’t swearing at you, even though I felt like it, even though you deserved it. I was swearing at your fucking burger.”
She laughed. She shook her head ba
ck and forth and laughed. “You’re right.” She picked up her burger. “I’m eating.” She shoved it into her mouth and took a big bite.
They ate their food. Bruce told her about Janet’s new friend, called him a “nerd” but said it with respect in his voice. She told him about Bridget’s macaroni and cheese. They laughed together.