Harvest of Bones

by Nancy Means Wright

  “Nobody here—they moved,” he said. “I’m jest feedin’ this old mare. She’s mine now, but Mom say she got to stay here till somebody buys the place. And don’t seem like nobody’s gonna.” He glared suspiciously at the two girls.

  “You haven’t seen a white-haired woman, have you?” Hartley asked. “She’s disappeared, and we’re part of a search party.” But the boy just shook his head. “Seen nobody,” he said. “Nobody wants out in this weather,” and he trotted off down the road.

  The house was unpainted, its windows boarded up; the porch had three slats missing right in front of the door. “Gandalf—come back!” Hartley whistled and clapped her hands. But the dog had pulled its leash out of her hands; he leapt across the hole in the boards, hurled himself against the door. It banged open from the impact.

  “It’s still somebody’s property—in residence or not,” said Emily.

  “Aunty might be in there!” cried Hartley. “Are you with me or not?”

  “I’m with you. But I’m thirsty. And I’d like to rest a minute.”

  “Come on, then. They’ll have a kitchen faucet, anyway.” Gandalf was already in, racing around a small square room decorated mainly with dust and cobwebs. The walls were a bright pink, as if someone had tried to beautify the place. “Someone’s been here,” Emily said. “Look. Footprints on the floor. Big ones. I mean, there were men in here. Couldn’t be Glenna.”

  “Glenna wears size eleven.”

  “No kidding?”

  “She does. But she wasn’t wearing boots when she left the hunting cabin. These are boot prints. Glenna was wearing sneakers. Purple-and-white Adidas. My stepmother bought them for her.”

  “Your stepmother isn’t all bad, then? I mean, she worries about Glenna? About you?” She turned to face Hartley.

  Hartley considered. “Well, she can be all right. Sometimes. She just doesn’t understand me. You know?”

  “I know.”

  “I bet they were here then, the searchers. Those are their tracks. And obviously—”

  “They didn’t find anything.”

  Hartley leaned against the wall, groaned. But Gandalf seemed excited. He stumbled up a set of rickety stairs, and the girls followed. There were two bedrooms, both empty, except for a faded lounge chair that the mice had taken over, and an ancient “Victorian wardrobe. The single bathroom was clean enough, but empty of water. Though there was a yellowy puddle of what looked like urine in the bottom of the empty toilet.

  “Some guy, probably, from the searching party. Could’ve gone outside. Disgusting,” Hartley said.

  “Basement?” said Emily, and they ran back down again. Gandalf knocked into Hartley and sent the girl sprawling. “Cut that out, beast,” she yelled, while Emily giggled.

  But there was no sign of life in the dugout basement— human life, anyway. Only a pair of mice skittering past a dead possum, its long pink nose flattened against the hard cement.

  “No Glenna here,” Emily said, and Hartley dropped down on the broken step.

  “There’s the barn. The silo?”

  “But that boy didn’t see her. Anyhow, why would she be in there when there’s a whole house?” Emily argued. “I mean, why would she stay in a place like this? Why wouldn’t she just go home? Old Bagshaw’s in jail.”

  “Well, she doesn’t know that. She obviously escaped, thinking he was still in the house.”

  “After all that shooting when they came to get him?”

  “She was probably drugged then. There was poison in that cocoa, you know—that super-something. The police found it. And God, Emily, you know yourself she was panicked she’d get put back in that mental place—that Rockbury.”

  Emily held up her hands in surrender. “Okay.”

  “But Gandalf,” Hartley mused. “He was so superexcited.”

  “Mice. Aren’t those greyhounds trained to catch rodents?”

  “I guess.” Hartley looked at her watch. “Hey, it’s eleven already. The Healing House is only half a mile from here. I don’t want to miss that massage. We’ll come back here after, okay? Look in that silo? What do you say?”

  “I say, good idea. My throat’s a desert. At least they’ve got water there.”

  “It might be poisoned.”

  “Don’t say that! I want to live to see my dad.” Emily put a hand to her mouth and pretended to gag.

  “Rest in peace.” Hartley folded her hands, bowed her head. “Back on that leash, Gandalf, baby. We’re heading for the goblins of the Misty Mountains!”

  “Misty is right,” said Emily, throwing up her jacket hood against the sleeting rain. “I wish I was back home in the warm cow barn.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I guess I don’t.”

  * * * *

  JIMMY’S JUNKS the sign read. It was a graveyard for old cars, Colm saw, situated on a slope that led down to the New Haven River. He wondered how many ancient parts floated away each spring after the rains. Fords, Dodges, Corvettes—there was no class division here: All were welcome. You just had to be a derelict. The paths of glory lead but to the junkyard, he misquoted from some long-ago poem. Rust in peace.

  And here was old Jimmy himself, sauntering out to greet him, waving a stick that served as cane, eyeing the ‘87 Horizon where it sagged in the driveway, its door dented in where Colm had skidded into a beech tree one icy day last winter. But Colm had another mission today. It was Jimmy’s place that Denby’s truck had gone to when they hauled it up out of Otter Creek back in ‘75. At least he assumed so: Jimmy’s was the only junkyard in town at that time. Today, there were half a dozen crowding the landscape.

  He was correct on that point, Jimmy acknowledged, grinning out of a gold-glinty mouth, thumbs stuck into a pair of red plaid suspenders. “Sure, they brought it here. But I ain’t got it now.” He guffawed. “I mean, that were over twenny years ago, man; I’d just got in the junk business. I knew Denby Bagshaw, never liked the fellow anyways. He almost done in my own sister, you bet he did. I’d of killed him for that, he’d knocked her up. Well, they never found Denby’s body—just the wallet, washed up on shore. Never really looked, you ask me. Who in hell cared?”

  Of course, the truck had long ago been broken down for parts: “It wan’t worth fixing, all that time in the water,” Jimmy allowed. “You want, I can tell you who bought parts. Got it all down in the book—well, in my head anyways. Don’t pay to keep it all in the books, you know.” He winked, and Colm knew what he meant. He paid his own snowplow man in cash. Some things never got reported.

  Colm thanked him, but he couldn’t see the point of chasing down every carburetor or clutch. He didn’t know why he’d come really, just an impulse. Jimmy hadn’t been at the Flint farm at all, it turned out; it was his son who’d hauled up the truck. “Howie,” he hollered down the hill, where a middle-aged man was hunkering over a rusted Plymouth, “C’mon up here. Fellow wants to know about the Bagshaw truck. You know—back when? Howie, he got a better memory’n me,” he explained to Colm.

  But Howie, a replica of his dad but some twenty years younger, in a misshapen tweed hat, was no more help than his father. Sure, he’d hauled it up—”a back buster,” he remembered. “Nuthin’ in it,” he said when Colm questioned him. “Well, not much—coupla old tools. I recall a wrench, jack, you know, all that kinda stuff. We sold ’em, right. Dad? Police said we could have ’em, right?”

  “We wasn’t doin’ nothin’ wrong,” Jimmy said loudly, sticking a bit of chewing tobacco under his tongue. “Nothin’ worth nothin’, you can bet. Denby didn’t have no money—though it were a new truck. That struck me as odd, a brand-new truck. Least was afore he run it in the creek. ‘Now where’n hell,’ I says to Howie, ‘Denby Bagshaw got the money for a brand-new truck?’“

  Colm was running late; he had land to show a customer. He thanked the pair, admired Howie’s hat—looked like real Irish tweed. Howie doffed it, then remembered something. “Sure, it came outta that truck, but it
weren’t Bagshaw’s. I woulda give it to Alwyn, it had been. Got some other name in it. Someone I never heard of. Figure Denby stole it.” He held it out, looking put-out, as if he’d been accused himself of stealing the hat.

  Colm looked in the band, yellow from years of sweat. The letters were faint, in gray thread, but still legible. It was a single name. Crowningshield.

  He promised to return it. Afterward, that is, after the hearing, after the trial, he thought, his imagination leaping ahead of him as he ran to the Horizon.

  “You could use a new door there,” Jimmy called out after him, but Colm was already headed for the police station.

  Chapter Twenty

  Emily was waiting with Gandalf on the covered front porch of the Healing House. She’d had her fill of water, but the smell of incense inside was too much for her; she preferred the aroma of hay and wildflowers. Hartley was getting her massage; she’d made an appointment for Emily, too, for the following week—Emily wasn’t too sure about that, though. Alwyn Bagshaw was in the county lockup, so he couldn’t poison anyone else now. She wondered if she really should include his story in her history project. And then she decided, Why not? No one else in the class would have such a dramatic story to tell. Murder? Well, the next thing to it, anyway. Secretly, she thought he might have killed his brother, Denby. She liked that grumpy old Mac; she didn’t want him convicted.

  Gandalf seemed uneasy; he jumped at the slightest sound. He whimpered now when a car pulled up in front. A man got out, followed by a woman wearing a red plaid suit. The man, she saw, was Kevin Crowningshield. He recognized her; she gave him a stiff nod in return. She’d seen him with her mother, and she didn’t like that.

  She was hoping her father would stay when he came back; she wanted them all together, wanted her family back. Most of her friends had fathers! Though Wilder’s father was never home. She smiled, thinking of Wilder at the football game. He’d asked her to a movie that weekend, and she’d put him off. So he’d broken up with Diamond Nose? She wasn’t going to be that easy to get.

  “Hello there,” Kevin Crowningshield said, smiling, like he was already intimate with her, with her mother. He was dressed to the nines: regimental necktie, dark blue suit with wide lapels, and those shiny black shoes. He looked like an undertaker. That hair, slicked back—looked darker than usual. But you could pack a pair of shoes in the bags under his eyes, swing on the lines in his face. She said, “Hi,” and, reluctantly, followed him and the woman back inside. She was worried about Hartley, for one thing. The girl was lying on her stomach, naked, except for her hipster underpants, on the low massage table. Isis was seated at her side, passing her hands over the girl’s back—energy work, Emily guessed. It was as though the woman’s shoulders and arms had grown an extra foot. All that smelly incense, and soft music on the tape recorder— Emily wouldn’t want that.

  She didn’t know who the woman with Kevin was. Lawyer? Realtor? Trying to force the women out, close up the place? She’d heard her mother talking to Colm Hanna. The place might not be Emily’s cup of tea, but she liked Isis, and she liked some of the women here. Mostly, she didn’t like people who tried to interfere with other people’s lives. One of her ancestors had fought in the Battle of Bennington, when Vermont called itself a Republic. And Emily was a Vermonter.

  She felt a sudden wave of sympathy for old Bagshaw. And now he was in prison. Everybody trying to control him. Of course, he’d grabbed Glenna, but he was confused. Maybe he had a brain tumor. All that pressure. She’d heard of things like that. She’d make a case for him in her essay.

  Isis had a sheet now over Hartley; she was working on one foot that stuck out of the sheet. Emily could hear Hartley humming to the music. Isis was poking and rubbing and stroking; Emily could see the muscles bulge in her arms. “You know how to relax,” Isis told Hartley, “that’s good. That helps me. Helps you to get the most out of a massage.”

  “Ma’am,” said the plaid-suited woman, poking a snub nose in the doorway. “We called. There was no answer. So we just came. I’m Mr. Crowningshield’s attorney, Karen Close. We have a writ to serve on you. We’re giving you ten days to close up here. Mr. Crowningshield has a party interested in buying. They’ll want to move in.”

  Isis went on rubbing and stroking; Hartley went on humming. “I think she’s busy,” Emily told the intruders, and Mr. Crowningshield gave her a superior smile. “I think we’ll let her answer,” he said.

  “I’ll be with you when I’m done,” Isis shouted. “I’ve a client here.”

  Kevin laughed. “That child?”

  Hartley sat up, clutching the sheet to her breast. “I’m not a child, Mr. Crowningshield. I’m eighteen—almost. I’m a paying customer.”

  “Of course,” said Kevin. “We’ll wait, then.” He nodded at the attorney. So-o condescending, Emily thought.

  He and the woman brushed past Emily, like she wasn’t even there. Planted themselves down on a bench, spoke in hushed, urgent tones. Emily went into the kitchen, where two giant piles of greens sat in sieves, one of the women washing them. A tiger cat squatted on top of the refrigerator, washing its face—she’d seen it at Bagshaw’s. “Oh, are those—I mean, you’re not supposed to eat those greens, are you?”

  “Oh, no,” the woman said, indicating the left-hand pile, “these are fresh, bought at the local co-op.”

  “Could I have a few on a plate?” Emily had an idea. Just a joke, of course.

  “Well, take these, dear. Not those,” she said, pointing to the larger pile. “Those are from the poisoned garden, you know, where he buried the bird remains. We’re digging them all up so no one else—human or animal—will eat them.”

  “Like my brother’s hawk,” Emily said, and explained about the poisoned birds. She dished up a few of the co-op greens, then went out and offered the plate to Kevin Crowningshield and the lawyer. Kevin was concentrating on something the lawyer was saying; he took a small piece and put it in his mouth. The woman, who had followed Emily into the hall to see what she was up to, glanced at him, then shrieked, “Don’t eat that. It could be poisoned!”

  He blanched, while Emily giggled and ran back in the kitchen. A second later, Crowningshield stormed in, dumped the plate in the sink. “Oh, those were from the co-op,” the woman said above Kevin’s noise. “You’re not poisoned, mister.”

  “It was just a joke,” said Emily.

  But he didn’t think so. “You goddamn women,” he hollered, his face churning like a washing machine. “Killing my wife, keeping her locked up here, brainwashing her ...” He was out of control now, his words incoherent.

  He was suddenly caught. Isis was behind him, in her wheelchair, her strong blue-knuckled hands on his elbows. She made him face her. “I have a copy of a will here,” she said, “sent by Angie’s stepmother. You and your lawyer friend might be interested in reading it.” She thrust it at the lawyer, who was standing, hands on her plaid hips, in the kitchen doorway. “Angie owned this place. At her death, it reverted to the stepmother in California. Angie wanted it kept as a healing center. To help other abused women, the way we helped her.”

  And when Crowningshield interrupted, Isis said, “You might want to read her diary, too. It would break your heart—if you still have one.” She rammed the man toward a chair with her wheelchair, tossed a small blue notebook at him. Emily was almost sorry for him. He was holding the notebook close to his crumpled face, trying to read it, his eyes blinking a hundred times a minute. It made her ankles wobble. She’d seen Wilder crying once, when his brother was involved in an assault on an old farmer. She’d felt so badly for Wilder then, she’d let him cry it out in her arms. She’d wanted to smash in his brother’s head for doing that.

  But there was no time for feeling sorry, because there was a sudden commotion outside, a car door slamming, a pair of policemen running up to the door. Hartley came out, pulling down her Ben & Jerry’s T-shirt. “What’s going on here?” she said, her green eyes shining.

  “Wait and se
e,” said Emily, and flattened herself against the wall. Her heart was jumping, her palms sweating. Something important was happening here and she was in the middle of it. The lawyer was standing between Crowningshield and a policeman, shouting, gesticulating; another policeman pulled her away, grabbed the man’s arms, and snapped on a pair of handcuffs. It was like on Murder, She Wrote. Emily watched the reruns—only this was for real. She was breathless with it all.

  “You can’t do this. You can’t arrest this man,” the lawyer was screaming. “What has my client done?” The policeman mumbled something about “new evidence,” said she could come along to headquarters if she wanted, that Mr. Crowningshield would probably need her. And before Emily could catch her breath or blow her runny nose, they were gone, careening up the rainy street, the lawyer’s red car racing after.

  “Boy, will Fay be pissed,” said Hartley, grasping Emily’s arm for balance while she leaned down to tie her purple sneaker laces. “She’s lost her only boarder.”

  * * * *

  Kevin had said he wanted Ruth to hear before anyone else did. He’d had the lawyer call her, rout her out of the barn. So here Ruth was at police headquarters, though she felt uncomfortable, out of place, disoriented even. But she’d be there, for Kevin, who had broken down after the repeated questions, confessed to Denby’s killing—or “half a killing,” as he put it, saying Denby was already “half-gone” when he got there.

  “But alive,” Colm prompted, “in need of a doctor.” Though Ruth wanted it to be a matter of self-defense, didn’t she? She wanted Kevin to be absolved, to leave Branbury with impunity, go back to Chicago in peace, to bury his wife.

  But she didn’t really know what to think; she felt swept away into a limbo, bereft of judgment. She looked at Colm, but his eyes were fixed on Kevin. Colm had gone and ferreted out that letter from Emma, the letter that helped to prove Kevin was being blackmailed; it established motive. She had to admit that Colm had been right to pursue the man— if right was always right and not sometimes wrong.