“Oh, yes, that was a temporary phase. I soon talked her out of it. She wasn’t strong enough anyway, for a baby? Really! Lifting it in and out of places—I mean, they turn a house upside down, don’t they? I had a maid for her; that was another thing. She didn’t have to lift a finger in my house.”
“In your house.”
He nodded, didn’t get the innuendo. Why had she said that? He was being honest. There was a fringe of sweat on his upper lip, a tic in his dimpled cheek. His throat looked wrinkled; the whites of his eyes were pinkish. This man was suspected of poisoning his wife?
“And then .…”
“Then?”
“Then she began to... well, retreat. Into herself. Not that she was hard to please, no—I mean, she still went out with me the odd Saturday night, and we’d have a few friends in off and on—not too many. We didn’t have time for a lot of socializing, you see. But she didn’t talk much, sing around the house like she did when we were first married. I do miss that, the singing. She had a lovely voice. She sang for a time in a church choir, but then—that was too much for her, we felt; it was best to keep the singing in the house.”
“But she stopped singing.”
“Stopped. Yes. Stopped eating—practically. Got thinner and thinner. Almost anorexic. We didn’t go out to eat much anymore. And then the stepmother—”
“The stepmother lives in California, right?”
“Yes, thank God. A real kook. I blame her for a lot of Angie’s problems. I mean, Angie was lucky I got her away. Melanie, the stepmother, is into all that New Age stuff, you know, a kind of priestess or something. I only met her once or twice. She wasn’t at our wedding; she was in Tibet. But she’d call up, you see. At least once a week. The father was dead—she’d killed off two husbands!” He smiled grimly, his dimples showing. “When she’d call, I’d have to say, ‘Angie, I have to have the line free’—for my work, you know.”
“And would Angie hang up then?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, she was always thoughtful that way. She thought her stepmother a little nuts, too.”
“She said that?”
“Well, not in those words, but I know she thought it.” He waved his hands, palms outward, as though to push away the stepmother.
“And then she got involved in this healing center.”
“Well, it was her land, you see. Her dad came from here; he died of a heart attack—heart disease in the family, too, on his side anyway. Early on, that was—she was around twelve. He left the land to Angie—once she was eighteen, that is. The stepmother was in control till then.”
“How much land? Like several acres?”
“Five plus, I think. It goes a ways back behind the house, abuts the property next door. Bagshaw, the man’s name is.” He made a face. “Unpleasant fellow.”
“Yes. He’s squeezed in there between the Healing House and the Wilcoxes on the other side, though his land goes back a long way. Always complaining about it; Colm has heard him.”
“Colm? Oh, yes, the thin fellow who was here the other night. Father’s a mortician.”
“Yes. Colm’s mainly in real estate. Does a little investigative work—his grandfather was on the force. He helps his dad out when he can.”
But Kevin was back on an earlier thought, rubbing a red spot on his forehead. She saw the fatigue in the eyes, the sagging skin underneath. “Yes, yes, I remember now. He called up Angie once, wanting to buy a couple of acres. For privacy, he said, afraid of what Angie would do with it—develop it, he thought.”
“I hadn’t known that.” Ruth sipped her coffee; it was cool, but she hardly cared. Alwyn Bagshaw hated—feared—that healing center; he’d made that clear all over town.
“You don’t... think I did it?” Kevin said, lurching toward her, elbows on the table, his face anguished, looking, well, old. “I loved that woman. I love her still. There’ll never be anyone else. What it was like to come home to her! Even before she turned . . . odd. She was always there, waiting for me. My drink made up. I like a good Manhattan, you know, after a long workday. She knew just how I liked it. Until one day—”
“She wasn’t there.”
His words came out in a whisper. “She wasn’t there. Just a note. She’d taken a flight out. To this healing place, on her land, some friend of the stepmother’s running it—I’m not quite clear on that. They’d never let me in, you see.”
“And you came here after her.”
“Well, not right away. I gave her a few weeks. To get it out of her system. Whatever it was she was . . . well, unhappy about.”
“She seemed unhappy then before she left?”
“I mean, she was . . . well, withdrawn. That’s what I’m talking about. I didn’t understand why! She wouldn’t talk to me. And now. Now they won’t let me leave town. They’re keeping her body. Why? Why? They’ve done an autopsy; that was bad enough. That beautiful woman! Why can’t I take her body home?”
“It takes time, I understand, autopsies. I mean, where there’s poison involved. Homicide. Someone—something was responsible, Kevin.”
His eyes pleaded; his hands were clasped as though in prayer. “Why would anyone want to kill my wife?” He laid his hands on the table, palms up. His chin was lifted as though he’d keep his eyes from brimming over. She felt sorry for him, a little overwhelmed from the long emotional interview, the day’s hectic events. For all his possessiveness, she couldn’t believe this man was a murderer. And yet—there were other things she had to sort out in her mind. She touched each of his open palms with a finger. But he didn’t take advantage. He frowned down at his hands, surprised, as though he couldn’t move them, as though they were a pair of soiled gloves lying on the table and he didn’t know how they’d gotten that way.
Chapter Twelve
When Colm slowed down by the Flint farm, Mac wouldn’t let him stop. “No way,” he said. “I’m not setting a foot on that bloody place. No telling who might be there.” He shrank down into the front seat of the blue Horizon, stuffed the remains of his cigarette into the ashtray. Colm had indulged him, bought the pack of Kents.
“Glenna hates facial hair,” he whispered to Colm. “I grew it once; she tried to shave it off, middle of the night. I caught her standing over my bed—a razor in her hand!”
“A razor?” Colm said thoughtfully.
“Sure.” Mac’s voice sounded eager. “If I hadn’t waked up, no telling what she’d’ve done. Now, drive on, man, drive on. Anyplace but here. A motel maybe. I could use a night’s sleep. How could I nap on that damn train?”
“But Glenna’s not here. I told you that.”
“Even so.” The old man crouched, sullen, immobile in his seat, like a marionette, its strings unattached. Wrappers surrounded his feet; he and Colm had munched on pizza and fries after they got off the Amtrak at Whitehall, New York, just over the state line, where Colm had left the car.
“Even so,” Mac said again.
Giving in, Colm drove on to Ruth Willmarth’s. This time, he was the nervous one, didn’t know what he’d find there. That Crowningshield fellow, buttering Ruth’s ear? Pulling on her sympathies? He’d still be around of course. “It was poison,” Roy Fallon had said on the phone last night. But he’d said they had no solid evidence against anyone.
Colm smiled. How he’d loved telling Fallon about Mac, that he was still alive, that it wasn’t Mac whom Glenna had killed. And what motive had the woman for killing someone else—whoever that skeleton was? He could picture Fallon’s face, the slow red creeping up the neck; the man had been so cocksure, so positive in his analysis.
There was no one in sight when he pulled up in front of the farmhouse. It was early for milking; Ruth would be in the fields, he supposed, though only Tim was visible in the distance, raking wood chips around the new young trees; Joey was cavorting about behind him, swinging a pail. Colm smiled when he saw some of the chips fly out. He moved on into the kitchen, motioning Mac to follow, though the old man lagged, then refused a hand to get
up on the porch. It was early; Emily and Vic wouldn’t be home from school for at least another hour. He and Mac would establish a beachhead, wait for Ruth. Talk. Bone up on the skeleton business (ha). He’d tried to get Mac talking on the Amtrak, but the man was closemouthed. Colm wanted to know more about Glenna; he suspected that she knew who was buried in that plot. He was immensely curious now, for some reason. For one thing, Glenna had known his mother. His mother had liked Glenna. And since the body wasn’t Mac, then it might have been Mac who put it there. Another reason for leaving town?
And there was Ruth, of course. Glenna was Ruth’s neighbor. In Vermont, neighbors helped out neighbors. Even when skeletons fell out of their closets, rose up out of their holes.
“You knew Ruth Willmarth?” he asked Mac when he got him settled in a chair. “No smoking in here,” he ordered, and the old man shrugged, stuck the pack back in his pocket.
“To speak to, that’s all. Good-looking broad. She’d just come on this place when I left. I knew the father best.”
“Ruth’s father?” No, he thought, Ruth’s dad died when she was in high school, her mother not so long after—breast cancer. Ruth had wondered about the pesticides some of the area farms used. She’d taken her mother’s death hard; her grades went down. Colm had cornered her in the corridor once, told her about his mother. That was after they’d stopped dating, when Pete horned in. Colm said that he’d be her brother if she couldn’t return his love—what a nerd he was in those days! She was dating Pete full time then, of course. She accepted the “brother” thing. Had the relationship ever changed, in spite of a period of going out together in college? Could it now?
“Old Willmarth,” Mac said. “His father alive, too, then, but bent over like a warped rake. Some spinal disease, I don’t know. Crusty old bastard. Guess Pete was glad when the old man kicked the bucket.”
“Pete’s gone now. Down in New York. Some woman grabbed him. Some would-be actress.”
“Hah.” Mac sniggered. He thought it amusing.
“That surprise you?” Colm wanted to hear more, wanted his own opinion corroborated. At least Kevin Crowningshield wasn’t around. Until the thought struck him that they might be out together, Crowningshield and Ruth. He clenched his fists; a vein bulged up in his arm. Jeez.
But Mac only shrugged. “Seemed an okay fella when I knew him. But then I didn’t really know him, did I? Bad enough living on the Flint farm, I wasn’t about to hang around this one.”
Colm saw an opening. “Living on the farm wasn’t all that bad, was it? What about Glenna—she liked it, didn’t she? Other guys hanging about the place maybe? Anyone else could have been in that hole you dug? I mean, whoever dropped him in there?”
Mac shrank back into his chair, munched on a doughnut. His lips were furry white; he looked like an elf, peering out of his hole. A smile played on his lips. “You want me to solve this one for you, hey? Yeah, it was that guy who drove the milk tank, picked up the milk from the skinny Flint cows. He and Glenna were having this wild affair, see? Only he got seduced by somebody up the road and Glenna got mad and bopped him on the head and dropped him in that hole.” He added, “After I left, that is. Look. There was no one, I said, no one in that hole when I left.”
“Okay. We drove all the way up here, you’re going to play games?”
Mac was still smiling, if one could call a smirk a smile. He pulled at his whiskers. One could hardly call it a beard; Colm could almost count the white hairs. But it made the old man feel manly, he supposed, offbeat. He obviously liked being offbeat. Glenna, too. They seemed made for each other. And yet. .. .
“If we can’t find who put the man in that hole, you’re the likely suspect, Mac. So anything you can tell us will help you.”
Mac ran a pale tongue around his sugary lips, considered. Colm waited.
“Well I’m gonna die anyway. I mean, what can they do to an old guy like me?” He sighed, held on the edge of the table as if it were his life. “Let’s see. Needs a little digging, you know—memory’s full of loose ends.”
“Try.”
“I need a smoke first, okay? Out on the porch?”
Colm relented. But just in case, he watched the man out the kitchen window. But Mac wasn’t going anywhere. He sank down on the steps to smoke the cigarette. He’d inhale and then cough. They didn’t allow it in the journalists’ home. He was obviously out of practice. He stubbed it out before it was consumed, stomped back in.
“Glenna, well, she had friends, you know. Everybody knew the Flints, one of the old families. The grandfather was bounced outta the local church for swearing on Sunday—I mean right in church—loud! So they say—disagreed with the sermon.” He chuckled. “Once that crazy Glenna rode right up the church aisle on her bloody mare, you know that? Before I came on the scene, that was, but they still talk about it around here. She was... well, a legend you might say. I suppose that’s one reason I was, um, interested. Might make a story you know, personal-interest piece. I got one or two published in my day, before the Times dragged me into ... you know.”
“Uh-huh.” Colm had discovered that an occasional noise, a grunt, an “uh-huh,” helped an interviewee to go on. Real estate was full of trauma: divorce, death, abuse—all the reasons why people changed homes. Sometimes it wasn’t divorce, just some guy looking for a private place to keep the lady friend. You asked questions—but you didn’t move in too close.
“Did they like her?” Colm asked. “Or was she just an item of conversation? The eccentric neighbor?”
“Oh, they liked her all right. I mean, the men did. Glenna liked men. You bet. She was more comfortable with men than women. Women bored her, to tell the truth, most of them. I mean the la-di-da ones who mostly kept house and talked about their female problems. She had a couple women friends who’d gone out and done things; she’d give them the time of day.”
“My mother knew her. Not well, but they were on a planning commission together, Dad says. They evidently saw eye-to-eye.” Colm pictured the scene: Glenna in her overalls and size-eleven boots, nose-to-nose with his ladylike mother in her crisp cotton housedress and tidy flat shoes. But his mother had her own mind. Glenna would have recognized that.
He went on with the questions, while Mac was in the mood. “What kind of, uh, relationship did Glenna have with these men? I mean, any particular man—before your time, of course. You were in your forties, you two, when you married?”
“I was forty; she was forty-one, I think—well, older’n me; she never let me forget that.” He gave a brusque laugh, took a large bite out of a second doughnut. Colm hoped Ruth had no plans for those doughnuts.
“No relationships, then—that would worry you.”
“Nah, she wasn’t much for the pillow play, if you know what I mean.” He winked at Colm. “With me, anyway. She didn’t like ’em hanging around for too long. Although...” He paused.
“Although?”
“There were one or two hot on her. She was a woman, if you get my drift. She wasn’t bad-looking in those days, no jewel, of course, but big boobs, you know, a farm woman’s hips—”
“Farm women are larger-hipped than other women?”
Mac snorted. “Well, they get to look like their cows after a while, you know. Ever look at a cow from the rear? Those bony hips, wide apart? Those big tits hanging down?”
Colm guessed he had. Men’s talk—he couldn’t hide a smile. Ruth would frown, of course; Ruth would be furious. But Ruth wasn’t here. Though any minute she could be, and the old man would button up.
“Who were they? These one or two men who were interested in Glenna?”
But Mac wasn’t ready to say. “Listen, I could use a drink. She got any whiskey around here?”
“A beer in the refrigerator maybe. She’s not a big drinker, Ruth.” Though she did keep a little whiskey around, a quart of Guckenheimer, for him, he knew that. But wasn’t about to give it up to Mac! He popped open a can of Otter Creek Ale. Ruth drank it now and then—to keep he
r spirits up, she said, when she was down. There were several cans, in fact, in the fridge, so he wasn’t depriving her. He wiggled a can past the orange juice and soy milk. A dairy farmer drinking soy milk? Or maybe it was Sharon who’d left it there.
“It ain’t Seagram’s, but it’ll have to do.” Mac lifted it to his lips, guzzled it down. His Adam’s apple moved up and down with each swallow; the scraggly whiskers were brownish with spill. Colm waited.
“They were mostly guys who came round to sell stuff, repair things—that sign maker, “Don Quixote,” I called him, like Glenna was some Dulcinea. Ha! One of the vets, guy named—hell, I can’t think of it now, but I think she was sweet on him. Leaning over him when he inspected the cows—they only had a couple when I came on the scene. Farm was going downhill fast. I’d hate to see it now. Cripes, that mother of hers! Four-foot something and did the work of three men. But then she got some disease, I don’t know. Stiff as a frozen sheet when Glenna had to take her to potty. But Glenna kept her home, I gotta hand her that.”
“Try to remember that vet’s name if you can. I can get a list from the animal hospital here. Joggle your memory.”
Mac’s eyes were on his beer, as if it held memories under the foam. “Then there was Bagshaw. Not the fertilizer Bagshaw. She hated that guy; he was a pincher. But that other one ...” He shrank deeper into his chair, appeared to cruise his memory. His face twisted with the effort; he looked like he was on the rack. In the background Colm heard a car come up, Ruth’s old Ford pickup; it was unmistakable, that grinding, grunting noise, squealing brakes. He worried about her driving the old clunker—it was twenty years old if it was a day. He’d looked at the mileage once, panicked.
Bad timing. “What other one? What other one, Mac?” Outside, the pickup door slammed, like pieces of rotting metal clanking together.
Mac heard, too. “That her? What’s she gonna think, me drinking her beer? We shouldn’t’ve come here. We should’ve gone right to that motel like I said. If you’re gonna pay for it,” he added softly.
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