Harvest of Bones

by Nancy Means Wright

  “Ms. Willmarth,” he said, tilting his head to one side like he’d fall asleep any minute in his chair, “and what is it now, ma’am?”

  * * * *

  “I don’t know how long she’s been gone,” Ruth told Chief Fallon. “But it’s only been a matter of hours since you picked up Alwyn Bagshaw. And my guess is she only recently left. If you had only—” She stopped midsentence; there was no use provoking the man. What was done couldn’t be undone. Where had she read that?

  “Mmm,” said Fallon.

  “Please! get the Scouts, get out the Four-H, the firemen, the schoolchildren. Start the search in East Branbury. And check that cocoa—there might have been a sedative in it. Glenna could have fallen asleep somewhere, after she left— who knows? She’s probably disoriented, at any rate. She could freeze to death. Roy, they’re calling for a frost tonight.”

  “Is that so,” said Fallon.

  “You’ll do it, then!” she shouted.

  “I’m head of police, aren’t I?” was Fallon’s noncommittal response, and finally she hung up the barn phone, breathing hard. What more could she do? She had to have faith in the police. She had to get to the cows. They didn’t care about a missing woman. Self-absorbed creatures! Suddenly, she was angry, angry at Bagshaw for lying about Glenna, angry at Fallon for his laid-back stance. Angry at the cows for just being cows. Angry at the world for being what it was: imperfect. Imperfect! When she needed a world in order, a world to hurl her own imperfections against, a world that would show her how to mend her ways, her life.

  But the world wasn’t perfect. And all her machinations, all her efforts to improve it were small and foolish. She might as well go grain the cows.

  She suddenly felt trapped in this barn with its ribbed tin ceiling, the strung power lines, the windows dirty and hung with cobwebs, the central aisle a pool of dung and urine-soaked sawdust. The cows consumed the grain, poking out their tongues to clean up the last bit, then slop up the liquid from their water cups. That done, she went back to the barn phone to return a call from Colm; he’d left an “urgent” message on her kitchen machine. She apologized for not getting right back; the cows had urgent needs, too, she told him. She told about Glenna, and he said he already knew. Fallon was giving one of his men hell for not finding that second cellar room.

  “Look, Ruthie, she’s a tough old bird; she’ll survive—if she has to this point. Alwyn Bagshaw’s in jail. I doubt he really meant to hurt her in the first place. He was just... well, confused. Not that that exonerates him! It was a devilish thing to do. But Glenna’ll be all right. Probably walk into the Flint farm any minute. Or someone will recognize her, take her there.”

  “We hope,” said Ruth, who couldn’t always share Colm’s optimism.

  But Colm had something else on his mind. It was a rather delicate matter.

  “Say it, friend. I have to get back to work. I want to see how the new bull calf is doing. We need the money for him, and he’s kind of poorly.”

  “Just an hour, that’s all. I need a woman. I mean, it’s better if a woman does this. She’d be more open with you.”

  “Okay. You’ve buttered me up. Now what is it?”

  He explained about the woman from Killian Precision, the one Denby Bagshaw got pregnant. He needed Ruth to talk to her, woman-to-woman, find out what really happened.

  “Not that again. Not Killian Precision. Can’t you let sleeping dogs lie? What has this to do with Denby’s murder?” She had been thrilled, actually, when Colm told her that the rings matched: Alwyn’s and the one on the skeleton’s finger; that the police were doing a DNA analysis now—they had discovered a lock of Denby’s hair his mother had kept in a small frame on a living room shelf. Amazing, she thought— DNA from a lock of baby hair! But what all this had to do with Kevin Crowningshield, she didn’t know. Or want to know. The man had gone through enough.

  Colm was playing possum, of course. She imagined him at his Realtor’s desk, leaning back in his chair, glasses down on his slightly hooked nose, grinning. She could hear the grin in his voice. He was so transparent. (Oh, she was bitter tonight.) “Probably nothing at all, Ruthie. But you have to look at everything. You know, there might be a link. This woman could have been pissed off enough to stick a pitchfork—uh, arrowhead into the guy. Could have seen his truck, whirled in, killed him—and run.”

  “Then how did his truck get in the creek? If she was a pregnant woman, she wouldn’t have that kind of strength.”

  “Who knows? She might give us a clue. Get Mac off the hook. They’re holding Mac, Ruth. I’ve grown fond of the old bastard—that’s why I’m doing this. You want Mac in for life? What’s left of it?”

  She rubbed her neck—something landing on her—a cluster fly. She knew that he knew that she’d do it. He was a devious one, Colm Hanna. “So what’s this woman’s name? Where does she live?” She pulled a pencil out of her jeans pocket to write it down. She couldn’t remember anything these days without writing it down. She was definitely entering menopause. Memory loss was one of the symptoms.

  Two hours later, maybe three, after giving Vic his goodnight hug, after helping Emily with her history project, after a long conversation with Sharon, whose husband, Jack, had postponed his homecoming from Alaska one more week— some research he absolutely couldn’t put off, the phone rang again. This time, it was Fay. She’d just heard about Glenna’s second disappearance. “I mean, it seems a second one, Ruth— Jesus, I’d almost given up. So Hartley and Willard and I are joining the search. I just thought I’d tell you, in case you hear anything. Hartley has a cell phone; she bought it today with her credit card. You can call us, wherever we are—isn’t that incredible?” She gave Ruth a number, hung up.

  Ruth slumped down beside the new bull calf. Next week, a truck was coming for it; it would be turned into someone’s dinner. It looked so vulnerable, its huge brown eyes gazing up at her. Those spindly calf legs.

  But tonight she’d give it a little food, a little affection. At least it didn’t know what was coming—the difference between beast and human. Though there were ways to live each day; Isis had told her that; and Sharon, too, who’d discovered some Zen center up in Shelburne.

  One hour could equal one year, according to Sharon. Everything was relative.

  “Poor baby,” she said, stroking the bull calf. “Poor baby.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ruth got all the way over to the woman’s house the next morning—Emma Stackpole was her name—and realized she had on her smelly boots. She worked so much in manure, she hardly smelled it anymore, but other people would. Especially the woman who lived in this pristine white house with the cute sign: STACKPOLE’S, HOME OF EMMA, WILLIAM, RACHEL, PAUL, HEATHER, WANDA, SUE. FOUNDED A.D. 1978. Which one of these, she wondered, was Denby’s?

  She was greeted at the door by a small dark-skinned girl, who announced that she was Wanda. Her mother was out back in the garden. Would the lady she said—staring at Ruth’s boots—please sit down? She indicated a small side room with a sofa done in sturdy brown corduroy and several black vinyl chairs with end tables piled high with women’s and kids’ magazines. It looked more like a dentist’s waiting room than a living room.

  Ruth picked up a copy of Good Housekeeping—it was a year old—then set it back down again when two more children, older than the first, peered in. One was obviously of African descent, a rich dark brown skin; the other looked Chinese. “Hi,” she said, and they disappeared. A moment later, a plump woman of fifty or so entered, a basket of ripe red tomatoes in her arms. Ruth was surprised. Her own garden had long since frozen, except for the brussels sprouts she hadn’t had time to harvest. She wondered what would happen if she left them till spring. “You haven’t had a frost here?” she asked.

  “Oh yes,” Emma said, squatting on a stool, arranging the tomatoes at her plump feet—for plump was the word to describe her: cheeks, face, body, knees. Pink and plump and pretty, Ruth thought—full of dimples, even in the knees. “B
ut I hang the vines upside down in the greenhouse. The tomatoes keep coming. Here. Take three or four; I’ve plenty. Wanda, get a bag for the lady.”

  “A greenhouse. I’ve always wanted one. Probably never will.” Ruth felt an affinity with this plump tomato woman.

  “Why not? I bought mine prefab. They’re easy to assemble.”

  “If you have a handy husband.”

  “If you have an older son with handy know-how.”

  “The oldest is?” asked Ruth, making an opening, then explained why she was there.

  “Oh,” said Emma, shifting back into the chair above the stool. “I thought you were here for the cancer drive. That’s what Heather said when she took the message. I’m supposed to help. They were sending someone around this morning to show me how and what.”

  “Sorry. But this is important. It has to do with a man we’ve just discovered in a hole. I mean, he’s been long dead. I understand you knew him when you worked at Killian Precision. We’re trying to find his murderer. Any help you can give ...”

  Emma cried out, and three children came running to surround her.

  “Not you—no one’s accusing you,” Ruth cried over the hubbub, fearing she’d blown this mission already. One of the children stood guard at Emma’s side, the Chinese one; the others stared at her accusingly.

  “Someone has already confessed to it. But we think someone else did it—we don’t know who; we’re just looking for a motive. We thought you could help us, tell us what you know about Denby Bagshaw.”

  Emma calmed down, her plump cheeks finally going still. In her upset, she’d squeezed a tomato; it oozed out onto her flowered apron. She hugged the Asian girl fiercely to her breast. “These are all mine,” she said. “Adopted, or foster children. I have six now, though the oldest is away at the university.”

  “The oldest—He isn’t yours? We heard, you see, that you were pregnant by someone, that he refused any responsibility ...”

  Now the blood was up in Emma’s cheeks. Wanda brought in the bag for Ruth’s tomatoes, then climbed into her mother’s lap, and Emma buried her chin in the girl’s frizzy black braids.

  “You could help us so much, Ms. Stackpole,” said Ruth. “I promise anything you say will not go beyond our ears.”

  “Oh, people knew,” the woman burst out; then, aware of the children, she shooed them out of the room. “That’s what was so hard. And I thought we’d marry—that’s what he said. That’s what he said before we—when we ...”

  “When you ...”

  “But then he wanted me to get”—she whispered the word—”an abortion. I’m Catholic, Mrs.—”

  “Willmarth, Ruth Willmarth. Please call me Ruth.”

  “Mrs. Willmarth. Aborting a child, I felt I couldn’t do that. When I found I was pregnant, I was so glad. I mean, we’d planned to marry, I thought—he said so. But when he said he wanted—you know—he’d pay he said, he had the money—I said no money in the whole wide world can make up for a lost child. I wanted that child. I was already thirty, Mrs.—”

  “Willmarth.”

  “Mrs. Willmarth. I’d turned down two other men. Two! Because of Kevin ...”

  “Because of—” Ruth felt her heart flip into her boots. Kevin, the woman had said. Kevin? “You mean Denby,” Ruth said. Of course she did; the woman was just confused, “Denby Bagshaw.”

  “Oh, no, not him. He came around—oh, yes, he did—but I kept him off all right. Oh, you thought. . . No, I’d never have let Denby Bagshaw touch me. Why, he was after every woman in the place; he was just a janitor. He drank! I don’t know what else. All the secretaries, every lunch hour they’d talk about ways to keep him off. He actually got a receptionist pregnant. Oh no. No. It was Kevin I wanted. Kevin Crowningshield. I loved him, Mrs. Willmarth. He was the first man I really, truly loved, you see. You never forget that; you never lose touch with that first love. I still have those letters, even the cruel ones.”

  Ruth felt the tomatoes she held ooze into her lap. She couldn’t seem to unclench her fists, let the tomatoes go. Her fingers were stiff, like pencils. Kevin Crowningshield. Was Colm right, then, in his suspicions? She felt a little dizzy, her breathing raggedy.

  But what would Kevin Crowningshield have to do with a long-ago murder? What did he have to do with Denby? Denby was a janitor at Killian, Kevin a researcher, or fundraiser, or something more white-collar. What would they have had in common to talk about?

  She took a deep-down breath, and then another. Why was this turn of events affecting her like this? She had to keep calm!

  “You had the child, then?” She waited for an answer. Wanda came back in the room and she let the girl put Ruth’s bruised tomatoes into the bag, then sent the child off again. “Go see if the kitty wants food, sweetheart.”

  “I had the abortion. In the fourth month. It was dangerous, but I had my job to think about now, my reputation— though everyone at work knew. He’d left town; he got engaged to another woman, but he kept sending money. He’d support me if I wanted it, he said. But why would I want Kevin’s child without Kevin? I was angry then, you see. Furious! And so guilty. I stopped going to church. I couldn’t face the priest.” She twisted her hands in her lap; her joints looked broken. “It was legal by then,” she reminded Ruth, as if Ruth were the law. “Abortion had been legal for a few years. After that—”

  “You married?”

  “Yes. But he died; he was an older man. He knew about the—you know—he understood. He was a good man. We started adopting. But then nine years ago, he died. I still have the children. Six of them. Starting with Billy, in college now. I mean, the youngest three are foster children. They won’t let me adopt now, at my age... without a man.” A pair of laughing children raced through the room and she looked after them, her palms upturned in her lap, as though she’d lost something but didn’t know exactly what it was.

  “That’s all I can tell you,” she went on. “I don’t know much about Denby Bagshaw. He came around, that’s all, before I was married. Asking questions about Kevin. He said he saw me and Kevin together. I didn’t believe him. I let on that it was someone out of town.” She stared at her empty lap.

  “Thank you,” Ruth said. “Thank you so much, Emma. You have a beautiful family here. You’ve been lucky in many ways, haven’t you?”

  “Oh yes,” Emma said, jumping up, a tomato rolling out of her apron and onto the floor. “I’ve been lucky. My husband was a good man. I have good children—most of the time.” And she smiled as Wanda came in, holding a kitten by its stomach. “Not that way, Wanda; you’ll hurt its little tummy. Hold it under the feet, the whole body. We have to be careful of babies.”

  For some reason, Ruth wanted to weep. There was that disappointment, the feeling of being betrayed somehow. Stop it, she told herself. She was just tired; she was getting her period. Five bills this morning in the mail: from the vet, Agri-Mark dues, the repair shop for the John Deere. Her life was slipping away, her farm! She wanted to sit on her own threadbare sofa and have a good cry. She thanked Emma again and ran to her pickup with the bag of tomatoes.

  When she got home, the bag was leaking; it had fallen off the seat, and she’d dropped her pocketbook on top of it. What she had was tomato juice. She wiped it off her skirt, changed back into her jeans, then dialed Colm’s number. But he wasn’t there, so she left him a message; she listened, in turn, to a message from Fay on the answering machine—no sign yet of Glenna, but they were still searching. And a message from Pete, who’d be up in a couple of days he’d said (a reminder she didn’t need: They had some “down-to-earth talking to do,” he said). Then she mopped the kitchen floor—it was filthy; she’d neglected it too long. She got down on hands and knees to scrub the corners and crevices.

  Then she ran out to the barn, her anger vented.

  * * * *

  Colm found Ruth squatting beside the new bull calf, her hair matted with hay. The other calves, along with Deborah, who had diarrhea, mooed in sympathy from their stalls. �
��You think you have problems,” he said, “think of that bull calf. About to be sold as chopped liver.”

  “I’d keep him,” she said, blowing her nose, “but they grow so fast. I can’t keep a bull on this farm.” Though she might have to, she realized—the artificial insemination was getting too costly. But her homegrown bull wouldn’t produce the good legs, the straight flanks, the volume of milk she needed. “It’s a catch-twenty-two situation,” she said aloud.

  “What is? Let’s take a walk,” he said. “Let’s talk about Kevin and Denby and Mac and Glenna. Let’s sort things out. Let’s have a think-out. I mean, I have work to do, too, Ruthie. I have to show land, houses—even if nobody buys.”

  “A walk—or a think?”

  “Both.”

  She started to follow him out—she could use a break. The bull calf bellowed in protest, and she turned back to pat him. “How can I sell this little guy?”

  “Exactly my feeling, Mama,” Colm said, and made a bellowing sound that was echoed by the other cows. “See? They agree with me.”

  “Right. You going to walk in those shoes?”

  He looked down at his shiny brown Rockports, then laughed and went to his car to change into boots. She was way ahead of him by then, her heavy brown hair a tangle of wind, her denim jacket billowing out behind, revealing the back other pink work shirt. “Hey, wait up—jeez,” Colm said. “We can’t talk with you running a marathon.”

  She looked back, smiled. She is lovely, he thought. The freckles shone on her nose. He wanted to be Gregory Peck— what was that forties film? Running into her arms. Holding her close.

  But already she’d turned, hands in her pockets, as if she knew his thoughts. He could only pick his way along the uneven ground beside her. The meadow was rich with decaying leaves, waves of purple aster. Overhead another vee of geese honked south—he’d seen them every day almost. Each time, they gave him a thrill; he could almost hear the whir of the beating wings. All the honking, he’d heard, was to keep the leader going, the guy with the toughest job. How he did it, Colm didn’t know; he had a terrible sense of direction himself.