From the Grounds Up (3 page)

The old man swiped at tears. 'My Tommy, gone. His brother was supposed to be taking care of him.'

'
Not
Ronny's fault,' Sarah said in a tone that indicated they'd had this conversation before. 'You just want to blame him because you were the one who should have been watching both boys.'

Ouch. Eisvogel looked like he'd been punched. 'Ronny knew damn well not to go out,' he said, lashing back. 'They was supposed to be taking naps.'

I could understand why Eisvogel would want to hold someone else responsible for the tragedy. Knowing that it was your fault a child died had to be devastating. But to blame another, slightly older son? Inconceivable.

'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' Sarah was saying, holding up her hands. 'I've heard it all before, Kornell. Now don't you think it's time to leave?'

'I'll leave when I damn well please. Besides,' Eisvogel gestured toward the clocks, 'it ain't sundown yet. The sun sets at seven minutes past eight tonight. I keep that middle one there set just right.'

So it had been Sarah's uncle who cleaned her clock.

Sarah didn't seem to appreciate the gesture. 'If you get caught driving at night, you'll lose your license. For good this time.'

I turned. Three minutes to eight o'clock on the Brookhills clock. The hands on the other two hadn't budged. Judging by the old man and the ancient Buick I could see parked on the street, he'd best get rolling.

'The sun is getting pretty low out there.' I pointed out the windows. 'Do you need a ride home?'

'Hey, now, who are you?' Eisvogel said, like he'd just noticed me. 'You ain't looking to buy this place, are you?' As he spoke he moved menacingly toward me.

I reflexively took a step back and then held my ground. He was eighty, mostly blind and deaf. I should be able to take him.

But he confronted Sarah instead. 'You know you can't sell this place. Your aunt left everything to me before the accident.'

'The "accident"?' Sarah asked. 'You mean the one you caused?'

She turned to me. 'Vi was getting out of the car. She still had hold of the door handle when this idiot pulled away. The fall broke her hip.'

'Tweren't my fault,' Eisvogel protested. 'Vi was too slow.'

'Vi was ninety-two.'

'What I get for marrying an older woman,' he said, some pride creeping back into his voice. 'Can't help it if I've always had a thing for bobcats.' One rheumy eye winked at me.

‘I think you mean “cougars”’.

'Don't encourage him.' Sarah turned on Eisvogel. 'I told you yesterday. The station was Vi's and my father's. His half came to me when he died. Her half reverted to me when
she
died.'

'Right,' the old man said, 'because you're common.'

Sarah rolled her eyes. 'My father and Vi were "tenants in common". That means that each of them owned a half-interest that they could will to their survivors. My father gave his half to me.'

Eisvogel poked himself in the chest with his thumb. 'And I'm Vi's survivor.'

Sarah looked like she'd love the chance to abandon him on a desert island. 'Kornell, just before you and Vi were married, she and I changed our title to "joint tenancy".'

Eisvogel started to interrupt, but Sarah held up her hand. 'Meaning that if either Vi or I died, that half would go to the other of us.'

Trying to help, I said, 'To keep the property in the family.'

'
I'm
family,' Eisvogel protested. 'And don't forget about Ronny.'

'Ronny is your son, not Vi's.'

'Your aunt loved Ronny.' Now the old man placed a hand over his heart. 'The woman was a saint to that boy. I haven't had the brass to break this to him.'

'You haven't told Ronny that Vi's dead?' I asked.

'Don't be stupid. What he don't know is about this place and the miscarriage of justice.'

'I like Ronny,' Sarah said, 'and I know Vi and he were close. But Ronny isn't a Kingston.'

'Kingston, Schmingston.' Eisvogel snuck me a leering look, but it was Sarah he advanced toward. 'This isn't going to stand up in court, you'll see. Your aunt wasn't in her right mind.'

'Who would be, Kornell, married to you?' Sarah had moved, too, close enough to bite him.

'You watch your mouth now.' He raised his hand, as if to slap her.

I wedged myself between the two of them and pointed toward the working clock. 'It's eight, Mr. Eisvogel. If you leave now, you might be home before dark.
If
a train doesn't come and back up traffic.' I added the last to light a figurative fire under him.

He glared first at me, then at the clock and, finally, at Sarah.

Then Eisvogel pulled a worn key case from his pocket. 'If I leave at eight-oh-three, I'll be at Brookhills Manor at eight-oh-six. The sun goes down at eight-oh-seven. Durn train doesn't come through until eight fifteen. By then, I'll be sitting home in my underwear, drinking schnapps.'

Well, that was good. The 'Manor' part, not the image of the old man, in his cups while in his drawers.

Brookhills Senior Manor was just two blocks away--why had he even bothered to drive? Then again, like Sarah had said, this was Brookhills. No one walked.

Since the Buick was already pointed in the right direction, once Eisvogel got up and over the tracks, he could practically coast down Junction Road, across Poplar Creek Drive and roll to a stop in the parking lot of the senior home.

With luck, the shriveled warlock wouldn't encounter anyone on the way or in the parking lot. The seniors who lived at the Manor, including my friend Henry Wested, were hopefully tucked in for the evening.

With maddening meticulousness, Eisvogel folded open his leather key case and tucked in a skeleton key that was a duplicate of the one Sarah had. He went to snap the dog-eared case closed, but remembered to shake out the Buick key first.

Then he turned to look at the clock.

As if on cue, the minute hand on the Brookhills' clock moved one tick to the right. Three minutes after the hour. Seattle and New York stood pat.

When I turned back, Eisvogel was gone, leaving Sarah alone, silhouetted against the big side window.

'Wow. Your uncle is a loony.' I had to use my hand to shield my eyes from the fast-sinking sun. Outside, the Buick started with a hiccupping growl.

'Kornell's
not
my uncle, he's my aunt's husband. And she's dead. That means he's nothing to me.'

If I hadn't seen him raise his hand to Sarah, it would have seemed a cruel way to talk about the old lech. 'Did he ever hit—'

A spitting of gravel by tires signaled Eisvogel's departure, followed by a rumble. I waited for the noise to subside so I could continue, but instead it seemed to grow.

A whistle sounded in the distance, low and steady at first and then more shrill and even frantic as it neared. The fingers-down-the-blackboard screech of air-brakes. Finally, a sickening thud and the prolonged, wrenching scream of metal on metal.

The eight fifteen Seattle to Chicago--by way of Minot, North Dakota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Brookhills, Wisconsin --was ahead of schedule.

Chapter Four

The clocks on the wall shook. Hell, everything shook.

Sarah and I looked at each other and then made for the door.

The train had managed to stop, but not until only its last car was even with the station. We ran alongside to reach the front, even as passengers slid open their windows in an attempt to find out what had happened. Or, maybe, give themselves an emergency escape route.

'What's going on?' one man asked. Drops of blood trickled down his brows and cheeks from a bright red gash on his forehead, presumably from hitting the seat in front of him when the train braked abruptly.

'Did we hit something?' from a woman, eyeglasses bent at the bridge of her nose.

'A deer, probably,' another man ventured.

'Could be they're rutting,' a fourth voice contributed.

Rutting season, that time of year when sex-crazed bucks run blindly into cars and their doe counterparts temporarily abandon fawns in favor of a roll in the hay, is in autumn. Before I could point that out, a loud command from inside the train drew the passengers back in like so many turtle heads. Probably the conductor, making sure they weren't decapitated.

As we rounded the locomotive, the setting sun nearly blinded us. I shaded my eyes again.

The old Buick stood next to the tracks, its tires shredded and rims bent. The car apparently had been T-boned and carried down the tracks by the engine before some law of physics shrugged it aside onto the gravel right of way. You could still tell the mangled hulk had been an automobile, but barely.

The engineer and conductor were climbing down off the train, followed by a guy in a white chef's outfit. Sirens were already sounding around us. Equipment from probably half a dozen municipalities would show up. But they couldn't be much help to Sarah's step-uncle.

Kornell Eisvogel's upper torso was draped over the sill of the Buick's driver's window, his head turned sideways, cataract-cloudy eyes wide open. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth to the ground below.

I looked at Sarah. I'd seen more than my share of bodies--one or two of with her. Still, none of the corpses had been family, at least according to my friend's narrow definition of same.

Sarah's face was white and her substantial jaw was trembling. I put my hand on one shoulder. 'We should move away.'

She just stared. A tear pooled in her right eye and then escaped down her cheek. Sarah swiped at it furiously with a fist. 'I hated the old shit.'

'I know,' I said softly. 'It's OK.'

And we moved away.

I was right about the six municipalities, give or take a few. The Brookhills police and fire rescue responded first, followed closely by the Brookhills County Sheriff's Department. That wasn't necessarily good news, since I knew the Brookhills County Sheriff. Knew, in the biblical sense--finally, hallelujah and thank the Lord. It had taken us long enough to get to that point, though life, and the more than occasional violent death, often still got in the way.

Jake Pavlik was not in the first county cruiser that responded. Nor even the second. Third, though, was the charm. I guessed it was his car, not because it differed from the other responding units in design, but rather because, while its red and blue lights were flashing, the sirens weren't blaring.

Like the coroner, Pavlik wasn't a first responder under normal circumstances. If this were baseball, he'd be more the clean-up batter. The game wasn't over, but if everyone prior to him had done his or her job, Pavlik could do his more efficiently and effectively.

I watched as the sheriff climbed out of his cruiser and strode over to the knot of officers and EMTs surrounding the Buick. As he reached them, two firefighters with a hydraulic spreader went to work on the driver's door of Eisvogel's car.

'Jaws of Life, huh?' Sarah said over the industrial whine, gesturing vaguely at the equipment.

I guessed what she was thinking. That the description 'life' was wrong in this case. That the line between it and death had been crossed by Kornell Eisvogel, and that no fancy tool, act of heroism or medical marvel was ever, ever going to bring him back.

Or maybe she was just making conversation.

'Can't they simply pull him out the window?' Sarah asked me.

'Maybe he's . . . stuck.'

'So, like I said,
pull
. It's not like he's going to notice.'

We were standing about thirty feet off the railroad bed. The police had moved us away from the Buick when they'd arrived. Sarah hadn't identified herself. Or Kornell, for that matter. When I'd started to, she'd shot me a look that stopped me.

Sarah wasn't exactly a joiner, but she was going to have to get involved, like it or not. Me, too, and I really didn't fancy Pavlik catching me at the scene of yet another emergency. My timing--or lack thereof--had gotten to be a joke between us, but I feared the humor was wearing thin for him. I knew it was for me, and I wasn't surrounded by crime constantly, like he was. The last thing a cop needed was to be dating a death magnet.

I didn't want Pavlik to see me, at least right then. I got some unexpected help in that area from the tenants of the Junction. They joined us now, providing cover for me.

'How in the hell did this happen?' a grizzled man built like a toad asked. 'Did the driver go right through the gates?' As he waved his hand toward what was left of the Buick, I noticed his fingers were as long and tapered as his body was short and squat.

'Look for yourself.' The little redhead next to me gestured toward the splintered railway crossing gates. She still wore an apron and yellow rubber gloves, so I pegged her as the caterer. The toady guy was the piano teacher, of course. The hands were a dead giveaway.

The third of our new neighbors, a pretty brunette, shook her head. 'I wouldn't be surprised if he never saw the gates. The tracks are on a little rise and when you're heading south-west this time of day, the sun is right in your eyes.'

'But what about the engineer's whistle?' the tall, blonde guy next to her asked. 'We certainly heard it. Wouldn't the driver?'

'He was deaf,' Sarah said, not even bothering to look at the speaker.

He cocked his head. 'I'm sorry. Do you know . . .' An awkward pause, 'the deceased?'

Sarah didn't respond, so I tried to answer their questions.

'I'm Maggy Thorsen,' I said, 'and this is Sarah Kingston. Sarah was showing me the depot when her Uncle Kornell stopped by.'

Four heads swiveled toward the Buick, where the snarl of the hydraulic jaws had stopped. As we watched, the car door fell away.

'That's Crazy Kornell?' the brunette said, and then clapped a hand over her mouth.

'I apologize for my partner.' Blonde Guy laid his palm on Sarah's shoulder. 'I'm sure you were very fond of your uncle.'

'Not really,' Sarah said. She looked at his hand, seeming to notice him for the first time. 'Who are you?'

Blonde Guy blushed. It was adorable, and so was he. 'I'm Michael Ink. And this,' he drew the brunette over, 'is Rebecca Penn.'

Penn and Ink, from their sign.