The Winter Widow

by Charlene Weir

Ah, she thought, he disobeyed the sister. “So you stayed in bed?”

  He nodded and gazed with longing toward Fafner’s stall. “I need to get it ready for him.”

  “You stayed in bed all day?”

  He hesitated, then nodded again.

  “All day you stayed in bed. What about at night?”

  He shot her an uneasy look.

  “Last night,” she said persuasively. “Weren’t you here last night?”

  He tossed his head and restlessly shifted his feet. She smiled encouragingly.

  He moved the handle of the pitchfork to his other hand. “Sometimes I do, just to see he’s all right. Old Fafner, he misses me. Gets edgy.”

  She nodded as though she understood perfectly. “Last night,” she repeated. “You came to see him?”

  Nat hesitated, a sheepish expression on his face.

  “Did you see Lucille?”

  He looked away as though searching for some escape. Susan wondered what sister Betty was like.

  “I only saw her drive away,” he said.

  “What time was that?”

  “Don’t know. Late. After midnight. I think— It looked like she was crying.”

  “You often come to see Fafner at night?”

  “Sometimes,” he admitted. “Sometimes I see her driving away real late.”

  “When does she come back?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Have you ever seen her with anybody?”

  He shook his head. “I need to rake out the stall, get clean bedding down.”

  “You never saw her with anybody?”

  Again he shifted and inched away. “Once.”

  “When was that?”

  “Can’t remember. After Chief Wren was shot. Maybe Friday, maybe Saturday.”

  “Who was she with?” Susan spoke too sharply and he gave her a startled glance.

  “Don’t know. It was dark.”

  She took a deep breath and kept her voice soft. “Yes, I understand, it was dark, but I’d like you to help me.”

  He eyed her warily.

  “Tell me about coming to see Fafner. Sometimes you come here, late, when everybody’s in bed?”

  Nat nodded reluctantly. “Nobody knows. I just— Fafner, he needs me. He gets lonely and there’s nobody. And then he gets mean. And he can’t be free to run. He’s locked in.”

  The lonely kid and the caged beast giving comfort to each other. He obviously loved the massive, powerful brute and poured out tender care and affection. “How do you get here?”

  “Walk,” Nat said as though she’d asked another dumb question.

  “How far is it?”

  He shrugged. “Not even five miles. I got short cuts.”

  “Yes, that’s good. Now tell me about the night you saw Lucille with somebody.”

  Nat looked worried, as though he might be asked for something beyond him. “I don’t remember was it Friday or Saturday,” he said earnestly.

  “Where did you see them?”

  “About three miles over that way.” He gestured with a thumb. “On the road. And Lucille leaning in like, talking to somebody in the car.”

  It had been too dark to see the other person and he didn’t know if it was a man or a woman.

  “I think,” he said, “she was mad like, arguing.”

  He didn’t know the make of the car or even the color. He simply wasn’t interested and he hadn’t wanted to be seen. She thanked him and left him working with his pitchfork.

  For how long had Lucille been in the habit of going out late at night? What was she doing? Last night she went out late, and this time she hadn’t come back yet.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SEATED at Daniel’s desk, she read the note Hazel had left. The injured man, Sam Rivers, had a ruptured spleen, several broken ribs and a punctured lung. His condition was critical.

  Osey stuck his head in the door, Adam’s apple bobbing, and cleared his throat. “Ma’am?”

  “Yes,” she said sharply.

  He came in, enormous feet treading warily as though he were afraid of breaking something. Standing in front of her desk, he cleared his throat again. “Ben was on the phone.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Osey, sit down.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He collapsed into a chair.

  She sighed. “Osey, do you think you could just call me Susan?”

  “Uh—no.” He swallowed and his mouth twitched. “Ma’am, I couldn’t.”

  She eyed him suspiciously, wondering if there was a spark of humor behind his deliberate flatness, but saw nothing in his guileless blue eyes except the stunned sappy expression that always came over him in her presence. He swallowed nervously.

  She made a conscious effort to keep irritation out of her voice. “Osey, what did Parkhurst say?”

  “They caught the bull. The vet’s out there now, but they don’t think he’s hurt any.”

  The bull, she assumed, not the vet. Thank God for that. She felt enough guilt about the beast’s getting loose; she didn’t need the added burden of a multimillion-dollar property getting injured.

  “And he said, Ben said, nobody admitted to being in the barn.”

  She wasn’t surprised. She nodded and looked at her watch: almost six-thirty. Her first day had been a long one and vastly overloaded with livestock. She pushed back the chair and stood up. “Thank you, Osey. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  With uncoordinated jerks, he shot to his feet. “One other thing. Miz Wren called.”

  Susan slipped into what was left of her jacket after it had been savaged by pigs and ripped by bulls.

  “She wants you to come and see her this evening,” Osey said. “If you could.”

  Oh, hell. The last thing she wanted to do tonight was see Daniel’s sister. She wanted only to take her battered ego and bruised muscles home to a hot bath.

  * * *

  HELEN no longer lived on the Wren farm. Several years ago she’d moved to town, into a small white house with dark gray shutters and white picket fence, just the sort of house expected of a middle-aged spinster who had taken care of two aging parents until their deaths.

  There was nothing frilly about the small living room: uninspired furnishings, everything plain and practical with an intimidating neatness. The row of silver trophies across the bottom shelf of the glass-fronted bookcase was the only incongruous note.

  Helen was the librarian for Hampstead’s library. Like Daniel, she was tall and thin; she had short dark hair streaked with gray, a narrow face and glasses, and she wore a brown skirt, a tailored white blouse and a loose brown jacket. Unlike the stereotypical unmarried lady, she didn’t have a cat or even a dog, and in the summer there would be no flowers blossoming around her house. Maybe she didn’t want the responsibility for anything dependent on her or the possibility that something might tap a locked-up source of affection. Everything about her was plain and practical. Susan had the wild desire to buy her red lace underwear.

  Mouth tight, as it always was around Susan, Helen sat in a beige chair in the corner. Lamps burned on small tables, one near Helen and one on each end of the beige couch where Susan perched uncomfortably. She’d been in this house only once before. It didn’t give off an aura of being loved, simply lived in.

  “I was expecting to talk with Dan the day he died,” Helen said.

  Dan. Susan never called him Dan, always Daniel. She liked the nice biblical sound of it, even though she wasn’t religious. Neither of her parents was religious; her Dutch mother came from a long line of Lutherans and her Irish father from a family of Catholics, but both parents were skeptics and hadn’t laid either faith on her. “Did you see him?”

  Helen shook her head. “He was going to drop by the library, but—”

  Susan hadn’t had time to work out what kind of relationship existed between Daniel and his sister. There hadn’t been any demonstrable warmth, no hugging or kissing—she couldn’t imagine anyone hugging or kissing Helen—yet there were close ties. Hel
en had them for dinner—supper—the day they arrived and took special care preparing a roast and the rhubarb pie that was Daniel’s favorite. And he had felt a strong sense of responsibility toward her.

  “What did you want to see him about?”

  “I got another offer for the farm. I want to sell. I’ve wanted to for quite a while and Dan was always holding back.”

  Susan nodded. He’d wanted to keep the family farm for the son he hoped to have, and he’d tried to figure some way to buy Helen’s half.

  “Now I suppose you own his share.”

  Susan was startled. She supposed she did. It never occurred to her. Once she and Daniel had borrowed horses and ridden through the fields and across the pastureland. He’d shown her the apple tree he’d fallen from and broken his arm when he was eight, the pond where he used to swim. They’d had a cold picnic in the winter sun on the edge of the pond.

  Although he hadn’t wanted to work the land, he had loved it, knew every inch of it, and the soil seemed to nourish his soul just as it did the wheat. Strongly and unexpectedly, she did not want to sell Daniel’s farm.

  “It’s a good offer,” Helen said. “I want to accept. I want the money.”

  “I understand, but I haven’t really thought. I’d like—”

  “I don’t think you do understand. I want to travel, go places. The only way I’ll ever be able to afford it is to sell the farm. I’ve never been out of the state of Kansas.”

  The vehemence in Helen’s voice startled her. Did Helen want to sell so badly she’d kill her own brother?

  “Maybe there’s some way I could buy it.” Susan didn’t know how and wondered fleetingly if her father would like to invest in however many acres of Kansas farmland. She could see Helen wasn’t taken with the idea; her mouth was tucked even tighter.

  “I’ll need to know soon,” she said.

  Susan rose. “Let me have a few days to think about it.” She might as well agree. What did it matter? Daniel was never going to have the son he wanted, and what would she want with acres and acres of Kansas farmland? She hated the place: the endless wheat fields, the cows, the pigs, the foreign people. The bulls. A kid whacked on the latest shit was easier to deal with. As soon as she found Daniel’s killer, this place was history.

  Sticking one hand in a glove, she savagely pushed on the fingers and turned to leave, then turned back. Helen had risen to show her out. Susan stared at the older woman. “Why don’t you like me?”

  Helen seemed taken aback, and her gaze wavered for a moment as though she considered denial; then she looked steadily at Susan. “You weren’t the right wife for him.”

  “I loved him.”

  “Oh, love,” Helen said disparagingly. “You were enthralled with something new. Painting walls and playing house. You wouldn’t have stayed. Not for long, not after the shine dulled down.”

  Helen had fanned the little coals of guilt Susan hadn’t understood. “What do you know about love?”

  “Enough to know it doesn’t last and you would have poured it out with the scrub water and waltzed back to where you came from.”

  Know the truth and it shall make you seriously pissed. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Enough, missy.”

  Missy?

  “I know you’re pretty,” Helen said, “and smart and got everything you ever wanted. Parents pampered and spoiled you, bought you pretty things, paid for your schooling. They didn’t say, ‘You can’t go. The money’s for Dan’s education.’”

  Helen’s voice was harsh with old resentments. “All my life I’ve been trying to leave here. As a young girl, I knew better than to get tangled up with any of the young men who looked at me with calf’s eyes. It’s not like that for you. You don’t have to stay.”

  “I’m still here,” Susan said. “I’ve got Daniel’s job.”

  “Oh yes. You wanted that and you got that too. How long are you going to stay with it?”

  Helen’s dark eyes, so much like Daniel’s, gazed at her with knowing malice. “You going to stay here and work at the job? Worry about the town? Care about the people? Or leave soon as you get what you want from it? You shouldn’t have married him. He deserved better.”

  Hot fury flooded over Susan and she concentrated on the silver trophies, read the engraving to keep from shrieking.

  They were all old, the most recent dated twenty years ago. They were all for—

  She looked at Helen, this frustrated, bitter, middle-aged woman in her tailored clothes. This librarian.

  The trophies were all for sharpshooting.

  Helen was a crack shot.

  CHAPTER NINE

  RAISING her stuffed-up head from the pillow, Susan looked at the glowing red digits on the clock: five-thirty on a dark, bleak Wednesday morning. Wednesday’s child is full of woe. And also coming down with a cold. She rolled onto her back with complaints from stiff, protesting muscles and groped for Kleenex. Last night she’d gone to bed thinking about Helen, and thirty minutes ago she’d awakened still thinking about her.

  “You shouldn’t have married him,” Helen had said. “He deserved better.”

  Clutching the extra pillow to her chest, she mentally informed Helen, “He knew.” He knew what kind of odds were stacked against us. Seventy-five percent of all cops’ marriages ended in divorce. The odds were even greater for us because of the wide differences in our backgrounds.

  It was on a Wednesday she’d decided to marry Daniel. She was late getting off work and by the time she got home, she was in a panic and furious at him, because she loved him, because loving him forced her to make a choice.

  She’d slammed into her apartment, thrown her purse with as much force as she could at the couch and was taking off her shoes when the doorbell rang. She yanked open the door to let Daniel in.

  He carried a dozen long-stemmed white roses. With an overly hostessy voice that set even her teeth on edge, she explained she was a little late. “Please make yourself comfortable. It’ll only take me a moment to change.”

  He raised an eyebrow and offered her the flowers.

  “Thank you.” She looked around blankly, then shoved the flowers, paper and all, into a vase on the hearth.

  He disappeared into the kitchen and she heard doors open and ice rattle. When he came back, he handed her a tumbler of Scotch. “Get some alcohol in your bloodstream and then tell me why you’re so pissed at me.”

  “Who gave you permission to weasel your way into my heart?”

  Placing his fingertips under the bottom of the glass, he raised it to her mouth.

  She sipped, turned, took six paces to the fireplace, turned again. “Did you know I was in the hospital for a month?”

  He nodded, leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.

  She paced six strides toward him. “I was shot.”

  “I’ve seen the scar.”

  “One of those stupid things nobody could foresee. We were going to bring in a sixteen-year-old suspect for questioning.” She turned, took six strides.

  “You told me,” he said. “Armed robbery. Grocery clerk killed.”

  “The kid’s eleven-year-old brother shot me. The gun turned out to be the one that killed the clerk.” Six strides back.

  “You told me that, too.”

  “Have I told you what I think about love at first sight?” She shook a finger under his nose. “It’s nonsense. You don’t even know me.”

  “I see.”

  “For all I know there is no such place as Kansas.” She noticed her voice had gotten rather loud. “You asked me to marry you,” she said accusingly.

  “I did that, yes.”

  “Did you mean it?” she demanded.

  “I never ask beautiful women to marry me unless I mean it.”

  “I accept,” she snapped and stared at him, terrified.

  He went very still, then pushed himself from the wall and took back the Scotch. He drank it. “Really warms my heart to see you so thrilled about it,�
�� he said mildly.

  “I’m scared.”

  He nodded profoundly. Silence ticked by.

  “What made you decide?” he asked.

  She smiled a quick, embarrassed smile. “That bullet came close. I’m thirty-four years old. I love you. I’d like to have a husband, a child, a—” She waved her hands, brushing at confusion. “Oh, Daniel. This is crazy. How is it ever going to work out?”

  Catching one hand, he kissed the palm. “We’ll just have to see,” he had said.

  “Just have to see”: his way of saying “One step at a time.”

  She fumbled on the bedside table for the pack of cigarettes, shook one out and struck a match. The bright flare made her squeeze her eyes shut. Daniel was dead, there would be no child, the dreams were all ashes. She blew smoke at the dark ceiling and thought about the row of silver trophies on Helen’s bookshelf, Helen’s dream of travel, her fierce desire to sell the family farm, her anger and resentments. Did she kill him? She had motive and she certainly had the skill.

  * * *

  AT the police department, Susan said good morning to Hazel and went straight to George Halpern’s office. In a dark-brown suit, white shirt and carefully knotted tie, he sat at his desk working on personnel assignments and organizing patrols. He was doing a lot of the work that should have been hers, except she didn’t have the knowledge that should go with the title. It was only because he’d agreed to help that she thought she might pull off this charade of being police chief.

  She liked George, a genuinely good person, kind and compassionate. He was in his early sixties, with a square face and thin gray hair, bald in back. He’d been born in Hampstead, lived here all his life and spent over forty years with the police department.

  He looked up when she walked in, assessing yesterday’s effects on her and probably wondering if she was strong enough to stick it out or if she would fold her tent and slink away.

  He smiled as she plunked down on the chair in front of his desk. Heavy lines bracketed his generous mouth and radiated more lines that hinted at his quick and quirky sense of humor. Even forty years as a police officer hadn’t shaken his faith in the innate goodness of most people, a vast difference from a forty-year veteran of big-city crime.