Meadowlark

by Sheila Simonson

  "Feel free." I wasn't going into the ice house again.

  Keith McDonald started to follow Dale, but Dale waved him off. Keith looked at me. "You're sure it's Hugo?"

  "How many of your people are missing?"

  He chewed his lip.

  I relented. "Yes, I'm sure. I recognized his sneaker. It was unmistakable."

  Keith closed his eyes, opened them. "He always wore his clothes until they fell apart. It was a matter of principle."

  "There are worse principles."

  "Hey, I admired that. Hugo's a good guy. I mean, was." Mr. Profundity.

  I was being unfair, probably because I was upset. By way of a peace token, I said, "I guess you've known him for a long time." I was watching Dale. He had taken a couple of snaps of the ice house and a close up of the lintel. He entered the building with exaggerated care, though Marianne and I had probably obliterated any clear sign of other pedestrians.

  "I've known Hugo twenty years. Almost half my life," Keith added, sounding surprised. He ran a hand over his beard. "Christ. Old Hugo."

  At that point Bianca pulled herself together. She gave Marianne a last pat, wiped her own eyes on the sleeve of her anorak, and came over to me. "He's under the ice?"

  I nodded.

  "You're sure he's dead?"

  For a panicked moment I wondered. Maybe I should have dragged him from the bin and tried CPR. Sanity flooded back. "He's been missing a week, Bianca."

  She gave a small, hiccupping sigh. "It's all my fault."

  "What?"

  "I knew something was wrong when he disappeared. I should have called in the cops then." She shot me a sad, reproachful look.

  I almost bit. I almost said that was what I had told her to do, which was true. She was not making sense. People react to shock in strange ways. Bianca was like a black body, absorbing and radiating guilt.

  I said, carefully, "You did what you could."

  "If I'd only known..."

  I waited. She was running through a list of standard responses, almost as if she had a script. That didn't necessarily mean her reaction was insincere.

  Keith said, "You'll have to cancel the workshop."

  "No!" She turned on him. "No, it's too late. I can't."

  I said, "Those folks are journalists."

  "They're science writers."

  "They're would-be science writers." I had read the participants' bios. "Right now they're practicing newshawks and this is news."

  Bianca pouted, avoiding my eyes. Keith shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket and stared off in the direction of Shoalwater Bay. He had a noble profile.

  "That boy, Jason," Marianne said.

  Her entrance into the conversation startled me. She blew her nose and tucked the tissue into her sleeve. "Jason said he was going to check out the ice house yesterday."

  I stared at her. Keith had turned to stare, too.

  "Jason!" Bianca sounded numb. "No, they wouldn't kill Hugo--not the interns."

  I was trying to visualize what Jason and Bill could have seen if they had just switched on the light and looked around without entering the ice house. "The body isn't visible from the door."

  Marianne's jaw set. "Jason must have noticed there was ice in the bin. He should have said something about that."

  I wondered why she was focusing on Jason. Bill had gone with him, after all. Of course, Jason was Del's protegé--or so I had gathered the evening of the dinner. Perhaps Marianne was jealous of him--or jealous for Mike, more likely.

  Dale emerged from the ice house looking green around the gills. "Okay, let's get started. Marianne, I want..."

  "For God's sake, Nelson, tell us what happened to him!" Keith McDonald grabbed Dale by one arm. Bianca tugged at the other, gabbling questions.

  Dale shook them off. When they fell silent, he said, "I need to call in again. The evidence van, an ambulance, and the M.E. are on their way. Ms. Fiedler, Dr. McDonald, you can go to the house and wait for me there, or you can stay where you are. I need to talk to both of you eventually."

  "What happened to Hugo?" Bianca demanded. Dale stared at her. His left hand clenched on the camera strap.

  I said, "He can't give you that information now, Bianca. For one thing, he won't know for sure until the medical examiner has a look at the body. For another--"

  "For another," Dale interrupted, unsmiling, "you're all suspects."

  Bianca made an indignant protest.

  Dale raised his hands chest high, as if he were fending her off. "I'm calling in. Then I want to talk to Marianne and Lark. I'll take their statements while I'm waiting for the technical crew."

  Bianca yanked off her tweed cap and ran a hand through the mahogany hair. "I have a right to know what happened. I signed your damned permission to search forms. This is my property, and Hugo is...was my employee."

  If she'd said "my friend" I would have felt more sympathy for her. Any moment now she was going to announce that she was a taxpayer. It was in the script.

  "I pay a lot of property taxes," she said on cue. "I pay your salary, Dale. I'm entitled."

  Dale looked at her. He forebore to mention that he and I and Marianne and Keith were taxpayers, too, and that his salary wasn't all that wonderful.

  Bianca burst into tears. Keith put his arm around her. "C'mon, old girl. The man's just doing his job." She made a muffled noise of protest.

  "I'm calling in," Dale said flatly and turned on his heel. We watched him until he was sitting in the brown and white sheriff's car. Bianca cried. Keith patted her, his face blank and his eyes thoughtful.

  The mist had intensified to rain. I began to feel very cold. I gritted my teeth to keep them from chattering.

  Marianne rubbed her arms. "Dale said I have to make a statement. What does that mean exactly?"

  "He'll ask you what you saw, why you decided to look in the ice house..." My voice trailed.

  "I heard the ice machine turn on!"

  "Then tell him that." I hugged my jacket to me. The hood covered my hair, but rainwater was running down my face. I peered into the middle distance. "What happened to the Search and Rescue volunteers?"

  Keith said, "Nelson called them off."

  "Where are the interns?"

  Bianca gave a large sniff. "They were with Del and Angie, searching the machine sheds. I called Del. He'll take them to the house."

  "I think we'd better go to the house, too, Bee." Keith's arm still circled Bianca's shoulders. When she made to pull away from him, his grip on her arm tightened.

  "Ow. Let me go, Keith. I want to look in the ice house--"

  "No," Keith said. "No way. Stop acting like a spoiled brat, Bianca."

  She swore at him, but she sounded less out of control.

  The door of the cop car slammed. Dale strode back to us. "I want you to keep your staff and students from leaving, Ms. Fiedler, and I'd appreciate it if you'd ask them not to talk over what happened among themselves. I need to interview all of them. The sheriff's coming out to talk to you. I told him you'd be at the house."

  I was impressed that the sheriff, an amiable political hack, would bestir himself that early on a Sunday morning. Dale had probably asked him to get Bianca out of his hair.

  Bianca's jaw stuck out and the intense brown eyes were dark with suspicion. Dale met her gaze. As far as I could tell neither of them blinked.

  Keith said, "Let's go in, Bee. You heard the man."

  Abruptly Bianca gave up. She shrugged out of Keith's grasp and stalked down the road in the direction of the house.

  Keith jogged after her. "We'll be waiting for you, Nelson."

  "I ought to isolate them from each other," Dale muttered. "But hell, I can't be in two places at once." He watched them until they were out of earshot. "If you don't mind, Lark, I'll take Marianne's statement first."

  "Okay, but I'm going to walk around. I'm cold."

  I thought he might offer to let me sit in the back seat while he interrogated Marianne, but he just nodded in th
e direction of the retreating figures. "Walk that way."

  I started off, flapping my arms. I wanted to run but I didn't want to catch up with Keith and Bianca. So I walked. Twenty paces down the road, twenty paces back. When I tired of that, I did standing stretches, jogged in place, flapped my wings. My shivering eased.

  The door of the cop car opened and Dale stuck his head out. "Want a cup of coffee?"

  I walked over. "Yes, please."

  He ducked back and a moment later handed me a mungy thermos cup. "It's decaf."

  "If it's hot I don't care." It was, blessedly. "Thanks."

  "S'okay." He went back to his interrogation.

  I warmed my hands on the cup and sipped. Dale might be a country cop but he had urban taste. The decaf was cappuccino.

  I stood for a while looking in the direction of the house. I could see the roof, the kitchen window, the metal roofs of the machine sheds, and a corner of the car barn. There was a lot of activity by the car barn, from the sound of doors closing and engines starting up. I couldn't see anyone, but I gathered the Search and Rescue people were leaving. They must have walked back to the staging area along the far perimeter of the farm to avoid using the lane that ran past the ice house.

  I had just finished Dale's cappuccino when the door of the cop car slammed shut. I wheeled around.

  Marianne said, "I'm through. Your turn." She had been crying again, but she looked composed.

  "Okay. Will you be all right?"

  She nodded. "I'm going to go make a coffee cake."

  To each her own. Baking was the last activity I would take up under stress. I watched her head for the house then went to the passenger side of the car and got in. Dale grunted a greeting and went on scribbling in his notebook. He also had a tape recorder and a laptop computer. Probably, like Jay, he made longhand notes while the recorder absorbed what a witness said. Jay entered the crucial bits into the computer afterwards, two-fingered.

  Dale flipped a page over and set the note pad on the dashboard. "This is one hell of a mess, Lark. How much did you see?"

  I swallowed. How much is too much? "I saw his sneaker and enough of the leg to know the body was there."

  He digested that. "Then how do you know it's Groth?"

  I explained.

  He sighed. "Okay. Let's begin at the beginning." He removed one tape cartridge, scrawled M. W. on it, and inserted another tape. When it began to whir, he picked up his notebook and asked me to give my name and address.

  Dale was still asking me questions when the ambulance and the evidence van pulled up by his car. He got out and conferred. I hunkered down and waited.

  The technicians went into the ice house first. They wouldn't be able to remove the body until the M.E. examined it. They cordoned off a fat ellipse around the building. Daffodil yellow tape gleamed in the mist. The ambulance crew stayed by their vehicle, chewing the fat. One of them was smoking. Camera lights flashed in the ice house. I heard a roar as one of those little hand vacuums started. Jay had trained them well.

  "...then you knew the victim?"

  I had been explaining my role as Hugo's landlady and book supplier. "Well enough to talk to."

  "Can you make the formal identification?"

  My stomach knotted.

  He twisted sideways and looked at me with earnest blue eyes. "I can ask Ms. Fiedler..." He let his voice trail.

  He didn't want to ask Bianca, because she was at the top of his suspect list, and he didn't need to owe her favors. Ditto for Keith McDonald.

  "I'll do it." My voice sounded calm, considering I was repressing a strong urge to scream no.

  "I appreciate it, Lark. It won't be pleasant."

  "Was he shot?"

  "Stabbed. Hacked, actually. I'm guessing the weapon was a machete, like the ones hanging above the plank table." His mouth crimped. He hesitated then went on, "I'd rather you didn't say anything about the weapon or the condition of the body to the others. I ought to interrogate the lot of them before we make anything public."

  "Even Jay?"

  He shook his head. "I want Jay to see the body before we move it, budget or no budget. There's some things don't make sense." He frowned. "I guess Jay could do the identification."

  "I don't think he ever met Hugo," I said, with honest regret. Surprising but true. Hugo had paid me his rent at the bookstore.

  "Does Jay know McDonald?"

  I explained the college connection and Bianca's dinner party. The workshop puzzled Dale.

  I babbled for a while about the need to educate journalists. The tape recorder clicked to a stop. Dale flipped the cartridge over. I talked some more. He wanted to know about the Meadowlark staff, the Vietnamese farm workers, and the interns. I saw no reason--certainly not an ephemeral loyalty to Bianca--to conceal anything from him. I told him what little I knew.

  The rain eased. The medical examiner drove up. Dale jumped out and had the doctor back his Bronco in behind the cop car. Protecting the crime scene. The M.E. was a local internist with an interest in pathology. According to Jay, he was young and bright, but given to odd enthusiasms.

  I stayed where I was. I felt queasy--in retrospect and in anticipation. Hacked to death with a machete. The convenient scapegoats would be the refugees. I disliked that idea a lot, but my mind also shied away from the possibility of anyone I knew murdering Hugo. I thought about Hugo, about the art book he had been reading, about the three wilted daffodils in his apartment.

  When Dale stuck his head in the driver's side, I was so absorbed in melancholy he made me jump.

  "Dr. Riley says the backup car's in place. I told 'em to block the entrance to the farm." He slid in and activated his radio. "I need to warn them to let Jay through." He did that amid much crackling police code, then went back to supervise his evidence crew. They were bringing out plastic garbage bags full of something. It took me a moment to realize they were removing the ice cubes from the bin.

  I hoped Jay would hurry. He was going to have to pick up my pieces.

  He showed up on foot about ten minutes later. I recognized the set of his shoulders from a considerable distance, jumped out of the car, and ran down to him.

  He gave me a hug. "All right?"

  "So far. I'm going to identify the body."

  He winced. "That won't be good for your health."

  "Neither is Hugo's death. I'll be okay, Jay, and Dale needs all the help he can get." I explained Dale's reaction to Bianca.

  Jay sighed. "I know the feeling."

  "Where's the car?" I asked by way of changing the subject.

  "I left it out on the highway shoulder. Hi, Dale."

  Dale had materialized at Jay's elbow. He looked harassed. "I didn't see you drive up."

  Jay explained, adding, "You don't need another set of tread marks."

  Dale groaned. "They've driven everything through here but a bulldozer."

  "Does it matter?"

  "You mean was he killed here. I don't think so. Not enough blood."

  My stomach clenched. How much did he need? "You sure?"

  "No. It's weird. I think the weapon's hanging right there in the building, but I won't know for sure until the technicians test for bloodstains. I think he was killed somewhere else and brought here, either in a vehicle--or on foot. He wasn't a heavy man. Then he was stuffed into the ice bin."

  "I'd better view the body," Jay said. He didn't sound eager. He looked at me. "Not yet, Lark." Meaning I didn't have to enter the ghastly shed yet.

  In the end, I didn't reenter the ice house at all. After a cold forty-five minutes, the paramedics carried a stretcher in. I hunched down and watched through the windshield of the patrol car. Eventually they reemerged, and the stretcher bore a lumpy form in a body bag. Dale, Jay, and the medical examiner conferred. The doctor shook hands and left. The stretcher moved slowly toward me. I knew what was coming and shut my eyes like a five year old.

  "Are you ready, Lark?" Jay, at the door.

  I pried my eyes open and got o
ut, every joint stiff with reluctance.

  Dale was standing at one end of the body bag, the open end. He cleared his throat. "His face is pretty much intact."

  I nodded. He jerked the fabric down.

  "Yes," I said, "that's' Hugo." Then I whipped around and barfed Dale's cappuccino onto the broccoli.

  Hugo's face was as pale as a bucket of skimmed milk, and a gash, black with dried blood, sliced down from the left eye to the hinge of the jaw. A flap of skin exposed the jawbone. Cysts showed purple against the pallor. His expression was fixed in a snarl of fear or anger, tongue protruding a little.

  When I stopped heaving and turned around, the paramedics had covered the hideous mask. They carried the stretcher to the ambulance in silence. Jay put his arm around my shoulders.

  "Sorry," Dale said awkwardly. "We had to be sure."

  I nodded. In spite of my revulsion, I hadn't resisted making the identification, because I had had to be sure, too.

  Chapter 6

  We made our getaway by the simple expedient of abandoning my car. Jay's was outside on the highway. We cut across the back yard of the house and around the conference wing. Jay had a word with the deputy blocking the entrance to the drive. Then we lit out.

  When we got home, I took a hot, hot shower, and Jay fixed sandwiches for lunch. By tacit agreement we didn't talk about the murder, though Jay did say he thought Bianca should cancel the workshop. I was in complete agreement with that.

  I drank a glass of wine with lunch and took a nap. Neither the wine nor the nap was typical of me. Naturally, I had a nightmare. I dreamed of Hugo's dead face, and woke with my pulse hammering in my throat and my tongue feeling as if it were too large for my mouth. Like Hugo's.

  Sluggish and sick, I got up, showered again, crawled into fresh clothes, and went downstairs to see what was happening. Jay was on the phone in the breakfast nook.

  I made a pot of coffee and had drunk half a cup before he finally hung up. "Was that Dale?"

  "You're kidding. He won't have time to turn around, let along call bystanders." He tugged his moustache. "It was the Dean."

  The Dean was the dean of instruction, Jay's immediate supervisor, since Jay was department head. He had supported Jay through the difficult process of gaining faculty approval of the police science program. He was also, less directly, Keith McDonald's boss. The Dean was a little inclined to suffer from anxiety attacks.