1 News from Dead Mule Swamp

by Joan H. Young

  “OK, Adele, thanks for the update. Is someone with Sherri? Does she have someone to watch the kids? Maybe I should give her a call.”

  “Oh, you don’t need to; her sister is already over at their place. She lives just down the block from me, and I saw her car race by here about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Let me know if you hear anything;” I concluded with the obvious, and hung up the phone.

  The coffee smelled wonderful, and I filled my largest mug, the big midnight blue one with cream and brown glaze drippings down the sides, and carried it up to the bedroom so that I could look out over the swamp. In the slanting morning light, patches of open water gleamed pink and gold. I thought about my hopes for an upstairs porch—it would have to be screened. I thought about Cliff—he didn’t seem like the kind of man who would cheat on Sherri. I thought about Adele and appreciated her acceptance—but I wondered how many other people she had called this morning. I sipped the coffee and let its goodness seep into my nervous system.

  As the minutes slipped by, the angle of the sun changed. A dazzling spot of light bored into my eyes, reflected from something down there among the trees. I couldn’t imagine what it would be. I’d stood at this window many a morning and watched the light play across the swamp, and I’d never seen this before. Of course, the sun is always changing, but it seemed so out of place—something that shiny.

  The binoculars were handy. I’d been rather unsuccessfully attempting to identify spring warblers, something I’d never had an opportunity to do in the suburbs. I changed locations just a bit to forestall the glare and aimed at the general area. As I see-sawed the rocker bar, suddenly a truck leapt into focus. Not just any truck, it was that blue and gray beater that belonged to Cliff.

  Cursing the fact that I still hadn’t made the decision to buy a cell phone... wondering if it would even work out here in the swamp, I called the police station. I would rather have checked out what I saw before bothering the police. But with no way to contact anyone from the truck I decided I had better call it in first. Tracy Jarvi, our young female Chief, answered the phone herself. This was no big surprise. The entire force consisted of Tracy and Kyle, plus one part-time office person.

  “Cherry Hill Police.” She sounded crisp but slightly distracted.

  “This is Ana Raven, over on South River Road,” I began.

  “Oh yes, Ms. Raven. How can I help you?”

  I was flummoxed. Was I supposed to know that Cliff was missing? How does one admit to being a party to gossip before eight in the morning? “Um, I’d like to report a truck.”

  “Your truck has been stolen?”

  “No, I’ve found a truck. At least, I can see one where it’s not supposed to be... in the swamp...” my voice trailed off. “It looks like Cliff’s,” I added lamely.

  “Really, Ms. Raven? What makes you think that?”

  “I know his truck. It’s an old blue and gray Chevy. He’s been by here several times this spring, and I heard that he didn’t make it home last night.” I waited for her reprimand, but none came.

  “I’ll be right out. Deputy Appledorn is out on the other side of the county, and it will take too long for him to get back here. I’ll notify the Sheriff’s Department as well; it’s really their jurisdiction, but we work together on most cases.”

  “Thanks. I’m going to start walking down the road in the direction of the truck. It’s south of my place, on the two-track. I’ll watch for you.”

  “Be there in ten minutes.”

  I took the time to put on my mud boots and a jacket. Mornings were bright, but still cool. I guessed that the truck was about half a mile away from my house, but I wasn’t sure how it could have gotten into the swamp. The county road ended at my driveway. South, beyond that, was a two-track that was drivable if one was careful, but it was not maintained by the county. Walking south down the lane, I wondered what on earth Cliff was doing out here. Perhaps, most alarming was the question of why he was still here, if he had left home last night.

  A car was squishing through the soft dirt of the road behind me. I turned, and there was Tracy, in one of Cherry Hill’s two police cars, a big white SUV with a gold star and a red cherry on the side. She slowed to a stop, rolling down the window.

  “Hop in, Ms. Raven,” she ordered.

  “Call me Ana,” I countered as I climbed in the passenger side. “I think we have to be close to the truck now, but I can’t see it from here.”

  We continued down the road at a snail’s pace, and suddenly Tracy pointed to her left. At first I didn’t realize what she was seeing, but then I saw it too, the fresh tracks of tires snaking off the road into the woods on some long-forgotten grade that had once been used for vehicular purposes. Tracy carefully eased the SUV into the woods at the right edge of the road. “I think we’ll walk in from here,” she said. I liked that she said, “we.”

  I’d heard about our female Police Chief, but hadn’t yet met her, so I was almost as interested in her as in our goal. Tracy Jarvi’s name was telling, as she was clearly of Scandinavian descent. She was tall and large-boned with straight blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her athletic build fitted the blue uniform nicely. In spandex, I could picture her flying down a ski hill, and her inherent strength made me feel safe. I’m 5’5”, and tip the scale at something between toothpick and pudgy, but Tracy was much more solid than I.

  “Watch out where you put your feet,” she added as we opened the doors. “Don’t step in any of the tire treads.”

  No unusual sounds came from the swampy woods. A woodpecker hammered on a dead tree, and somewhere a white-throated sparrow cried “Oh, Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.” We began to follow the freshly-raw marks into the swamp, quickly rounding a bend and leaving the seasonal road behind. The recent burst of May growth had filled in the understory, making it difficult to see very far ahead. Tracy was scanning the ground continuously, occasionally pointing to fallen branches that the truck had clearly run over and broken, but we saw nothing out of the ordinary except those two tire tracks.

  Despite the fact that I had walked up and down South River Road many times this spring, I’d never realized that there was a very old two-track that entered right into the swamp. Now we were following a bit of a raised berm; small puddles were visible below us on each side. Someone in the past had filled and built this narrow roadway. I was glad that the way back was going to be easy to follow, in case something happened that I would need to walk back home alone. After ten minutes of careful walking and observation we spotted the rear of Cliff’s truck ahead.

  Tracy pulled her sidearm, and I nearly jumped. I hadn’t thought about any scenarios that might require gunplay. “Stay behind me, Ana. I don’t expect any trouble, but you never know.”

  We approached cautiously and quietly, three steps, then four. “Shit!” she said.

  Tracy relaxed visibly and holstered her weapon. I stepped up beside her. Curling from the tailpipe to the driver’s side window was a section of dirty green garden hose.

  Chapter 7

  The truck wasn’t running. There was no way to tell how long ago it had run out of gas, and a person was slumped over the steering wheel. Tracy carefully approached the truck from the passenger side, searching the ground before she placed each of her feet. She opened the door and leaned across, lifting the head of the too-still man and feeling his neck for a pulse.

  With her actions the face of the man was revealed, and sadly, it was Cliff, looking gray and pasty. Tracy backed out of the truck, reached in a pocket and snapped open a cell phone. Although it no longer seemed like a high priority, one of my questions was answered; cell phones do work in Dead Mule Swamp.

  Someone apparently answered Tracy’s call. “Tracy Jarvi here, Sheriff. We’ve got a body on East South River Road. It’s Cliff Sorenson. It’ll be a county case. We’ve been looking for him for a couple of hours, but he’s outside the village limits. Looks like a suicide.”

  While Tracy continued the conversatio
n, mostly with “Yeses,” “Nos,” and “Certainlys,” I tried to come to terms with what I was seeing and what I knew. Cliff hadn’t seemed like the kind of man who was desperate enough to kill himself. Yet, what did I understand of the trials of trying to earn enough money to feed five people? On the other hand, every time Cliff had talked to me about “little Ruthie,” he had sounded like a father who was very much planning on being a part of that girl’s life for a long time to come. I hadn’t known Cliff well, but well enough that I felt physically ill at coming face-to-face with his death. He had been one of the first people to be nice to me in Cherry Hill. He and Sherri had brought me two jars of homemade jelly when I first moved into my house, and we had chatted a few times at the hardware store. My stomach was tight and my heart thumped and bumped out of time. Perhaps it was searching for the rhythm of Sherri’s pulse, or little Ruthie’s.

  Tracy also called Kyle, told him to get a move on, go notify Sherri Sorenson, and not to use the radio.

  “That’s all we need,” she added to me, “for Sherri to hear the news over the scanner.”

  My muscles were beginning to ache, whether from shock or from inactivity, I couldn’t tell. I was still rooted to where I’d been told to stand, off to the left rear of the truck. “Can I move?” I asked.

  “Let’s come away from the truck,” Tracy suggested. “The Sheriff is on his way with a photographer and the Medical Examiner. Nothing looks suspicious, but all unexpected deaths have to be investigated.”

  From the highway, about two miles away, across the river, I could hear the faint shrill of a siren. It rose in pitch and volume, and began to drown out the morning sounds of a sleepy swamp. I only hoped that Kyle had reached Sherri’s house ahead of that piercing wail.

  Chapter 8

  After the Medical Examiner arrived, the Sheriff’s deputy peremptorily told me to go home. Tracy offered me a ride, but I said I would walk. I wanted to think about some things.

  Cliff was dead. There was no arguing with that. But why? Even I could tell that there wasn’t any obvious evidence for anything other than suicide.

  Had something happened at or after the play that we didn’t know about? I had spent a fair amount of time watching Cliff and his family during that event, and he hadn’t seemed stressed. He had laughed in all the right places, juggled the kids in his lap, and whispered to Sherri. They had left together; I had seen them going out the door in a group, and sensed no undercurrent of tension. But something had sent him out, later, on his fateful errand.

  How had the truck gotten past my house? I had been awake until almost 12:30, and I hadn’t heard it go by. Would I have awakened if I’d been asleep? I thought so, but I had to admit that someone driving slowly with the lights off could easily have slipped past, unnoticed.

  My thoughts turned once again to that old newspaper; I was more certain than ever that Cliff had stolen it, and it was somehow important. I had to track it down.

  When I reached my house, I realized the whole day was still ahead of me. Despite the feeling that a week’s worth of events had occurred, it was barely 9:30 in the morning. I decided to go into town to try to find a copy of that paper before Tracy and the Sheriff might claim it was all police business, and shut me out.

  A quick shower made me feel better, and I slipped into a denim jumper over a green turtleneck. My almost-straight brown hair came just to my shoulders, and only needed combing. It would dry into a slight natural pageboy. With sandals instead of mud boots on my feet, I was ready to face the day. I hopped into my navy blue, secondhand Jeep Cherokee. It fits my new country image well, and starts without protest every time I turn the key. And, I bought it against Roger’s wishes. Perfect!

  Soon, I was standing at the front door of the Cherry Hill Herald office fuming over the fact that I had forgotten it was Saturday. The Herald is a weekly paper; it comes out on Wednesdays, and probably no one is in the office at all from Thursday till Monday. Calls are routed to an answering service. I had learned that earlier in the year when I called to place a classified—I had tried to sell an old manure spreader that was decorating my back yard, but it seems that Forest County residents have all the old manure spreaders they need.

  “Are ya’ lookin’ for Jerry?”

  I nearly jumped out of my jumper! A man wearing greasy coveralls was staring at me.

  “He’s generly workin’ to home on Saturday,” the man added—again, too loudly.

  “Uh, hello. I’m Ana Raven and I don’t know if I’m looking for Jerry. Who is he? Who are you?”

  “Name’s Tom Baker,” the man bellowed. “I clean the presses every Saturday morning. Jerry’s th’editor, Jerry Caulfield. Usually, by Saturday he’s gotten two or three calls about somethin’ that was printed in the last Herald, and he’s workin’ hard on his next editorial.”

  “Calls? How does he get calls? The phone number on the masthead just leads to an answering service.”

  Tom guffawed. “Ma’am, I can tell you don’t know Cherry Hill any too well. Ain’t you the lady that bought the place over in Dead Mule Swamp?” He went right on, not needing an answer from me. “You got to call Jerry at home. Everyone knows that.”

  “His number is in the book?” I was feeling a trifle annoyed— with Tom for finding me amusing, and with myself for still being so new in the ways of a small town.

  “It is,” Tom said, sounding oddly apologetic, as if it were a shame that anyone had to look the number up. But then he brightened, and pointed alongside the newspaper building to a house on the next street over. “See that picket fence?”

  “I do.”

  “If you just walk over there and knock on the back door, Jerry’s prob’ly got some coffee perking.”

  I smiled and Tom smiled back. He added, “I work at Teeter Farm Implements, out on Centerline. Place has been in the Teeter family for three generations. I s’pose you won’t be needin’ a tractor or corn picker, but we got hoes and rakes too, Ms. Raven. I’m there after lunch today and every week, Tuesdays through Fridays. Nice to meet you.”

  “It’s nice to meet you too, Tom. I’m still trying to learn my way around here.”

  “Yes’m. But you’ll do all right. Just go on over an’ see Jerry. You can tell him I sent you.”

  Chapter 9

  As I approached the picket fence I could smell the coffee. The aroma was rich and strong, and I realized how badly I could use a cup. I lifted a hand to knock, but the door was suddenly opened by a tall man in his sixties, with wavy white hair combed back from his forehead. Half glasses were perched on his nose, and a crooked smile twisted his full lips. Momentarily, I felt quite awkward, standing there with my knuckles poised to rap on his chest, but he quickly put me at ease. “Come in, Ms. Raven. Our paths cross at last, thanks to Tom, I see!”

  “Mr. Caulfield?” I inquired, feeling stupid.

  “In person. Call me Jerry.” He removed the glasses and slipped them in the pocket of his light blue shirt. I noticed how well the shirt set off the white hair and his blue eyes.

  “Ana Raven,” I replied. “It rhymes with Ghana.”

  “So I’ve heard. Come in.”

  He stepped back and beckoned for me to enter a neat kitchen done in natural wood and gray granite. The trim and hardware were black. Classy, but no-nonsense, a kitchen designed for a careful and precise person. Not an item was out of place. The delightful aroma emanated from a fancy black coffee maker on the center island. It was one of those that ground the beans, added water and made the coffee for you, all at a specified time. I noted that it held twelve cups. It was definitely top of the line, and I doubted it had been purchased in Cherry Hill.

  Mr. Caulfield, Jerry, followed my gaze, and silently offered me a large black mug. I hoped I wasn’t gaping, and mentally checked to see if my mouth was open. It wasn’t, but I decided that I seriously needed to start acting less moronic, and soon.

  “Thank you... Jerry,” I began.

  “Help yourself, Ana,” he added. “Would you like
a bagel?”

  “I would,” I admitted, suddenly hungry, “if it’s not too much bother.”

  Jerry smiled quietly. “Cinnamon-raisin, or blueberry?”

  “Cinnamon-raisin.”

  I filled my mug with coffee as Jerry pulled a stool out at the end of the island and indicated I should use it with a nod of his head. I sat.

  He removed a bagel from a container in a deep drawer, expertly sliced it and laid the halves in a black and stainless toaster oven, then pushed buttons which beeped like an ATM. While the bread toasted, he opened the refrigerator, extracted and precisely set three containers in front of me. The choices were cream cheese, real butter, and a low-cholesterol butter substitute. I’ll admit I was impressed. The man appeared to be single—despite the neatness, the kitchen was stark—lacking a woman’s touch, and yet he was a prepared and excellent host. As I sipped the wonderful coffee, Jerry placed a small white china plate with a black border and silver edge in front of me. The black border wasn’t plain, but was enhanced with a black-on-black intertwining of two Greek meanders. The butter knife he added was sterling silver, bearing the letter C. I was starting to feel inadequate again, just from the weight of the money in the room, but he grinned amiably and tossed a paper napkin on the plate.

  “Don’t let the family china frighten you. I don’t need many things, so I kept the best, and it’s really easy to set a lovely table that way. No choices.”

  The oven beeped again. Jerry brought me the perfectly toasted bagel, and I reached for the butter. Might as well go high-class when I can. My gracious host/editor refilled his own mug and perched on the stool opposite mine.

  “Now, what brings you to my door on a Saturday morning? I assume it has something to do with the sad events unfolding in Dead Mule Swamp. Oh, don’t look so surprised. As editor and chief reporter for the Herald I keep a sharp ear tuned to the police scanner.”