Husband and Wives

by Susan Rogers Cooper

  Dalton Pettigrew – Tuesday

  Dalton looked at the dead body. He couldn’t help it – every time he looked at one, he thought about his daddy laid up in his casket. Although Dalton’s daddy had died over twenty years before, it had been a traumatic event that had colored Dalton’s life forever. Sometimes he thought maybe being a sheriff’s deputy had not been such a good idea. But then it hadn’t really been his idea at all. His mama and the old sheriff, the one before Milt, Elberry Blankenship, were cousins and when Dalton couldn’t pass the test to get into the Navy, his mama had suggested to Cousin Elberry that maybe Dalton could work at the sheriff’s department. He’d started out as the former clerk Glady’s assistant, but got promoted to deputy after one of the deputies quit, leaving just one working. Although Dalton was only nineteen at the time, he did fairly well. But he still hadn’t gotten used to dead bodies.

  This dead body was that of an old man, like, in his fifties, Dalton decided, not anybody he knew, and he wondered if maybe he should have been a medical examiner because just by looking, Dalton was pretty sure this wasn’t a natural death. The guy’s eyes were open and kinda popped out, like, and his lips were blue and his tongue was sorta swollen-looking. Like he’d been strangled or something. Dalton donned a pair of gloves and was just about to look for ID when he remembered he wasn’t supposed to touch the body until the ME’s people got there. So he stood up from his crouched position and asked Vern Casselton, owner of Vern’s Auto Repair, how he happened to find the DB, or dead body, as Dalton preferred to call it.

  ‘I got these tires here,’ Vern said, pointing at two tires leaning against the front of the dumpster, ‘and I was gonna throw ’em away – now don’t you get started on me about how I’m supposed to recycle the rubber and all that shit – anyways, that’s when I saw his foot sticking out from behind the dumpster. Thought it was one of those homeless people they’s always talkin’ about on the TV, so I pulled on his leg and yelled at him to get the fuck offa my property, but he didn’t move none, so I looked, and sure enough, he was dead as a doornail.’

  ‘You ever seen him before, Vern?’ Dalton asked.

  Vern shook his head. ‘Naw. Don’t know him from shit.’

  ‘So, OK,’ Dalton said as the medical examiner’s van pulled into the back of Vern’s Auto. ‘That’ll be it for now.’

  Vern went back into his garage as Terry Blanchard, the ME’s assistant, got out of the van.

  ‘What’ya got, Dalton?’ Terry asked.

  ‘Dead body,’ Dalton said.

  ‘Hell, I figured that, me being the ME’s assistant and all. Y’all don’t call us out for jaywalking.’

  Dalton thought about that for a minute, then laughed sheepishly. ‘Naw, I guess not.’

  Terry patted Dalton on the shoulder. ‘I was just kidding. That him?’ he asked, pointing at the foot sticking out from behind the dumpster.

  ‘Yeah. I didn’t touch him yet. Vern said he grabbed his foot and pulled ’cause he thought it was a homeless person, but that’s all the touching I know about.’

  Dalton helped Terry pull the body out from behind the dumpster, then Terry squatted down next to the body, gloves on, and began to do his thing, moving the body this way and that.

  ‘Y’all been busy,’ Terry said, his eyes on his work.

  ‘Huh?’ Dalton said.

  Terry looked up. ‘Second body in two days that might be a homicide. I’d call that busy.’

  Dalton slowly nodded his head. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘you’re right. That is busy.’

  Terry kept working and after about twenty minutes, he got up, stretched, and said, ‘He’s all yours, Dalton.’

  ‘Anything interesting?’ Dalton asked.

  ‘It’ll all be in the ME’s report to the sheriff,’ Terry said. ‘You wanna check for ID or whatever so I can take the body?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ Dalton said, squatting down next to it. ‘Cause of death seems pretty obvious?’ he said, looking up at Terry. ‘Like, maybe he’s been strangled or something?’

  ‘I never comment until the ME’s written it down on paper,’ Terry said. ‘She’d skin me alive if I did.’

  Dalton checked all the man’s pockets. There was some change in one side pocket of his polyester pants and a Swiss army knife in the other; the back pockets were empty.

  ‘Got nothing,’ Dalton said, standing.

  ‘Give me a hand getting him on the gurney?’ Terry asked.

  Dalton nodded and Terry went to the van and brought back the gurney, locked it in place, then he and Dalton began the not-so-pleasant task of moving the dead body to the gurney.

  After Terry drove off, Dalton noticed he had dirt and grease all over his uniform shirt.

  ‘Well, dang,’ he said. Did he go home and hope he had another shirt ironed and ready (his mama usually had one or two hanging up in his closet for him) or did he go back to the station, sneak in the back door and try to make it to his locker, where he had a sheriff’s department T-shirt, without being seen by Holly? He didn’t want her to see him dirty.

  Milt Kovak – Tuesday

  I got Nita and we headed back to Bishop. It was getting on to five o’clock and there was some traffic. It was almost five thirty when we got to Mary Hudson’s house. I noticed Jerry’s car in the driveway, along with Mary’s minivan and another car, a Cadillac Escalade, parked slant-wise behind the two of them. I parked on the street and we headed up the slight incline to Mary’s house. When I rang the bell, Carol Anne answered. Her long, reddish-blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her dress, although still loose and baggy, was a solid, dark color: navy or black, I couldn’t tell.

  ‘Sheriff,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I need to talk to Jerry,’ I said.

  ‘He’s with one of the deacons from our church,’ she said.

  ‘That’s fine. I won’t keep him.’

  Noticing Nita behind me, she reached out her hand and touched Nita’s arm. ‘I’m so sorry about my mother – Dennis told me,’ she said. ‘Mud people is an old, old term used for Native and African-Americans. The church is now inclusive and takes all races.’ She shook her head while still holding on to Nita’s arm. ‘My mother is . . . well . . .’

  Nita smiled at her. ‘Is your mother. You can’t help what she says or does. And you can’t correct her. She’s your mother.’

  Carol Anne sighed. ‘I’m so glad you understand!’

  ‘Yeah, well, she’s not my mother and if she calls me a mud person again we’ll see how understanding I’m gonna be,’ Nita said, giving Carol Anne a look.

  Carol Anne sighed but opened the door wider to let us enter. We followed her to the living room, the one with the early American furniture and the Norman Rockwell prints.

  Jerry and the man with him stood when we entered.

  Carol Anne said, ‘Jerry, the sheriff and Deputy . . .’ She looked at Nita to fill in the blank.

  ‘Nita Skitteridge,’ she said, holding out her hand.

  Jerry took it and shook and the older man, although hesitant, took her hand, too, saying his name was Andrew Schmidt. Then all us men did our manly shakes and we finally got to sit down with Carol Anne standing in the doorway.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked us. ‘Jerry and Andrew are having lemonade. Can I get you some?’

  ‘Why thank you, ma’am, that’d be great,’ I said for both me and Nita.

  ‘How goes the investigation, Sheriff?’ Andrew Schmidt asked.

  ‘Slow, Mr Schmidt. Lots of things to do.’ I turned toward Jerry. ‘Mr Hudson, I got a preliminary look at the autopsy report, enough to know that your wife Mary died from blunt force trauma. She was hit with something that broke the skin, which caused all the blood, but death was caused by the force of the blow. Our crime lab didn’t find anything at the scene that showed any signs of being that object. Have you noticed anything missing?’

  Jerry looked at me with wide eyes. ‘I . . . I don’t . . .’ He turned when Carol Anne
came in with the lemonades and some cookies on a small tray.

  ‘These are homemade,’ she said. ‘Macaroons. Mary made them. These are the last of them,’ she said, her eyes welling up.

  ‘Ah, that’s OK, we don’t wanna eat the last of ’em . . .’ I started.

  ‘No, no, that’s OK. The kids won’t eat them because . . . Well, just because. And we don’t waste in this family.’

  I nodded my head and picked up a cookie. So did Nita.

  Standing up, Jerry said, ‘Carol Anne, have you noticed anything missing from the kitchen? Something that could cause . . .’ He looked at me.

  ‘Something that could be used to hit Mary,’ I said. I told her the information I’d gotten from both the ME’s office and the crime lab.

  She sank down into a chair. ‘Oh my Lord,’ she said. ‘You think she was killed with something from her own kitchen?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘Either the person who did this did it on the spur of the moment and just grabbed something, or it was planned and that person brought something with him or her,’ I finished, trying to cover all the bases.

  ‘Oh.’ She turned to look at Jerry. ‘I don’t know,’ she said to him. ‘I haven’t really inventoried the kitchen.’ Turning to me, she said, ‘But Mary kept a very orderly house. If there’s something missing in the kitchen, I should be able to tell you.’

  She jumped up from her chair and rushed out of the room. I nodded at Nita and she stood up, saying to the room, ‘I think I’ll go help,’ and she was out of there, following Carol Anne.

  I turned back to the two men. ‘So, Mr Schmidt, I understand you’re from the Hudsons’ church?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I’m one of the deacons of the New Saints Tabernacle. We’re a relatively small group.’

  ‘And y’all are all into plural marriage?’ I asked.

  Andrew Schmidt stood up, ignoring my inquiry. Turning to Jerry, he said, ‘Again, Jerry, I’m sorry for your loss. Please let me know when you hear from the ME’s office and we’ll make the arrangements.’

  Jerry took the offered hand and said, ‘Thanks, Andrew. Let me see you to the door.’

  I stood as the two men left the room, then sat down and waited for Jerry. When he came back in the room, he was grinning from ear to ear. ‘You got old Andrew on the run. He’s one of the most seriously paranoid polygamists I’ve ever known.’

  I laughed. ‘Probably not a lifestyle he should have chosen.’

  Jerry shook his head. ‘I don’t ever want to speak ill of the true Church, but the LDS believed totally in plural marriage until the late 1800s, when there were threats by the government to take away church land if LDS didn’t give up the practice. So, of course, it was banned. Now you can get excommunicated. That’s why there are so many small sects around. They take the Mormon teachings of John Smith, including polygamy. In a lot of ways, well, in most ways, actually, we’re much closer to the teachings of John Smith than the modern LDS.’

  ‘Well, you know,’ I said, staring hard at Jerry, ‘there’s more than just excommunication from the Church. It is against the law. You could be arrested.’

  He held his hands out to me, wrists together. ‘At your leisure, Sheriff.’

  Nita Skitteridge – Tuesday

  I followed the blonde into the kitchen. I’ve got to say this was one of the cleanest houses I’d ever seen. But then Carol Anne began opening cabinets. If the dead one, Mary, hadn’t been OCD, then something else was wrong with her. On the backside of each door was a sort of floor plan of the interior of that cabinet. I guess in case anyone else put up dishes. The dead woman was obviously a strict believer in ‘a place for everything and everything in its place.’ Even her Tupperware cabinet was neat, with a rack for lids and a special place (as indicated on the floor plan on the back of the door) for every size of container.

  Carol Anne and I discussed what could have been used as a murder weapon. What could slice her skin while bashing her head in? That was the question to be answered.

  ‘Does she have anything heavy with a sharp edge?’ I asked.

  Carol Anne looked at me blankly. ‘Like what?’ she finally asked.

  Pointing at the copper-bottomed pots on the rack above the stove, I asked, ‘Are these just for show? Are there more pots and pans somewhere?’

  ‘She used these all the time, but of course she had more,’ Carol Anne said, going to the cabinets below the stove.

  There were more pots, pans, lids, roasting pans, stew pots, you name it, but nothing with a sharp edge. Then I opened one of the drawers above the cabinets, right below the stove-top.

  ‘Anything in here missing?’ I asked.

  Carol Anne came over and looked. Then frowned and began to open the other drawers. There were four of them, and none of them took the frown off her face. She shut the last drawer and looked at me, tears stinging her eyes.

  ‘The tenderizer,’ she said.

  ‘Excuse me?’ I said.

  ‘The meat tenderizer. She had one of the really big ones because she saved money by buying large pieces of meat that often could be tough.’

  At the look of confusion on my face (I’m not one to cook a lot – or ever. If I don’t get take-out, my husband does), she said, ‘It’s a big metal tool, long handle with a big square head that has divots cut on two sides: one side small divots, the other large. It’s for pounding meat.’

  ‘Could this thing do what was done to Mary?’ I asked.

  Carol Anne nodded her head, both hands over her mouth, tears falling down.

  I couldn’t help it; I reached out and touched her arm. ‘I’m so sorry, Carol Anne.’

  Again, she nodded, then quickly fled the room.

  Milt Kovak – Tuesday

  Alone with Jerry Hudson, I asked him, ‘You done any thinking on who might’ve done this?’

  He was sitting on the couch, his elbows on his knees, arms out, hands clasped, head bowed. ‘I haven’t been doing much of anything else,’ he said. Looking up, he said to me, ‘Sheriff, I can’t imagine in my worst nightmare who could have done this. We knew so few people here. Mary was a homebody. I’m sure she and Carol Anne knew some of the other mothers at the kids’ schools, and some of the women at church.’

  I noticed someone missing, so I said, ‘What about Rene?’

  He looked up again and laughed slightly, a laugh without humor. ‘Oh, her too. I’m so sorry and please don’t tell her I did that! I’ve been with just Mary and Carol Anne for so long that sometimes I leave Rene out when I’m talking about my family. But don’t you think this was probably some vagrant? Maybe a burglar?’ he asked.

  I shrugged. ‘Could be. You notice anything missing?’

  He shook his head. ‘We don’t have the kind of things people would want to steal. No high-end electronics, no jewelry, nothing like that. I mean, we have three TVs, but the newest one is ten years old!’

  ‘Well, with you saying that, and the fact that The Branches seems pretty well sealed—’

  ‘The rock walls are not electrified, Sheriff. Anyone could climb over.’

  I nodded. ‘OK. Good point. I’ll do some more talking with the security chief,’ I said. Then added, ‘You know, one of these days, we’re gonna have to have a long talk about how you manage this lifestyle – both financially and, well, you know, just handle it.’

  Jerry turned red. ‘Maybe one of these days,’ he said, his head down again.

  My deputy Nita came back in the living room. ‘Think we found out what the murder weapon was,’ she said, perking me up and bringing Jerry’s head back up.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘You ever heard of a meat tenderizer?’ she asked.

  ‘I suspect you’re not talking about the powered kind,’ I said.

  She said, ‘Huh?’ and I just shook my head for her to go on. ‘No, it’s a metal object—’

  ‘Sorry, Deputy, I know what it is. So one’s missing?’

  ‘Yes, sir, and Carol–– Mrs Hudson said it was
a large one . . .’

  Jerry spoke up. ‘Yes, I remember it! I’ve seen Mary use it often! The handle was about a foot long and the head was a large square, maybe four by four. I used to laugh about her being able to use it – it was so heavy. Our oldest son had a hard time picking it up.’ The light that had come to his eyes when he spoke of this reminder of a whole and happy family, died. He looked down at his hands again.

  I stood up. ‘That’s great, Nita. Let’s get the Boy Scouts out here tomorrow to search the cul-de-sac and the whole damn neighborhood if need be.’ My eyes landed on the huge cross on top of the mantel. I turned to Jerry. ‘Ah, sorry about the cussing.’

  Milt Kovak – Tuesday

  I got home close to seven, and Jean already had supper on the stove. Me and Jean have different views on food, which is why we switch off nights cooking. Tonight was supposed to be my night and I’d been soaking red beans since yesterday and had some collards and pork chops waiting in the fridge. When I said Jean already had supper on the stove, I meant that figuratively. There was a big salad on the table with arugula greens (you ever tasted them? Bitter and they got stems! I hate stems), hearts of palm (which are tasteless hunks of something, I’m not sure what), a few things not so bad, like tomatoes and radishes and celery, and some chicken that looked like it had been boiled. Which it mighta been. All dressed with totally tasteless oil and vinegar. Jean was taking homemade bread (and by that I mean her bread-machine bread) out of the oven and I thanked God for that. At least I’d have one thing solid to eat.

  I greeted my family and sat down to the big old salad and we all pretended to have a grand old time eating it. Well, maybe just me.

  I was real glad that Jean was officially on this case. I always discussed cases with her, but felt guilty. With her officially on this one, I didn’t have to feel guilty when I discussed it with her.

  ‘So they’re not Mormons, not officially anyway,’ I told her, explaining what Jerry Hudson had told me about his church. ‘So wherever they were raised, in Oregon it was an off-shoot, too, I suppose, since Carol Anne and Rene told me their families were plural. But there is a church here, which means we got more plural families in Prophesy County than I ever thought.’ I stopped for a moment, then added, ‘Course, I never thought about having even one plural family here. I thought all that happened in Utah and Texas.’