Funeral Hotdish (18 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Wednesday, January 5—Monday, January 9, 2000

Johnny Roth was a mess.

He now knew he could survive a coma and heal a broken leg without surviving or healing.

He had a limp—the doctor said there always would be—but he hardly cared. If he’d had his way, he never would have woken up a second time. But he did. At least he could complete the mission he’d been planning since he regained consciousness.

Johnny Roth was going to kill Darryl “Crabapple” Harding. He would shoot him with a shotgun so his guts sprayed out. Then he’d leave him where the foxes and wild dogs would have a feast.

He told his best friend, Kenny Franken. But if he expected encouragement, Kenny disappointed him. “Man, don’t make things worse—you’ll go to prison! Everyone will know it’s you. They won’t care why. They’ll just lock you up for the rest of your life.”

“No, they won’t.” Johnny left it at that.

His dad pulled him aside one day, when Lois was busy cooking dinner. “I’m hearing you’re going to kill Crabapple.” Paul Roth used his low voice.

“Yes, sir.”

His dad looked him in the eye—the first time Johnny had seen anything but hatred in the Old Man’s eyes since this nightmare began—and patted him on the back.

Uncle LeRoy came by to welcome him home and mentioned more than once that he had weapons, if anyone needed any.

“No thanks, I’m fine,” Johnny told the wild-eyed man who’d become such a loon. Johnny would never use a weapon from Uncle LeRoy to kill Crabapple because Amber had been afraid of LeRoy.

Lois drove Johnny to Fargo on January 5 to get the cast off, but they had to stay over because the pickup overheated and couldn’t be fixed till the next morning. Thankfully, Lois’ sister lived in Moorehead, and she drove over to get them for the night.

They had just gotten home Thursday morning when Johnny snagged his car keys off the hook in the mudroom and drove himself into town.

“Crabapple here?” he yelled to Huntsie as he entered the mechanic’s garage. “No, I’ve been callin’ him, and he’s not answering,” Huntsie said, before he put two and two together and realized Johnny was a threat.

“Now, son, I think everybody should calm down. It’s a real shame what happened to that nice Amber. But you can’t think it was your fault. And I don’t know just what Darryl has to do with this, but people talk and they think he owns some fault, too. It’s not going to do any good for anybody to turn on anybody.”

Johnny didn’t wait for the lecture to end. He jumped in his car and took a left at the Sunoco Station.

Crabapple’s pickup was in the front yard, and Johnny ran from his car into the house. But it was empty. Damn. His truck was here but where was he?

“The son of a bitch is lucky he’s not home,” Johnny spat out as he walked around the house, looking at how his enemy lived. It wasn’t that bad, actually—far neater than Johnny would have kept a place—but it got messier as Johnny explored. He swept some dirty dishes off the counter into the sink, breaking some. He turned out the trash can and threw pizza boxes around like Frisbees. He grabbed the pillows off the couch and tore a hole in one before throwing them on the floor. He went into the bedroom and tossed around clothes and boots. When that didn’t give him any relief, he grabbed a glass vase sitting on the TV and threw it against the wall, breaking it to smithereens. But his rage seemed childish.

“When I hurt you, Crabapple, it’s really going to hurt.” He shut the door on the empty house.

He drove into town and found Kenny. He knew nothing of Crabapple’s whereabouts, and therefore was worthless to Johnny.

Kenny could see it. He was scared, thinking, “I’ve got to get him off this track, get him back to reality.” But his small talk of high school was no longer relevant to Johnny.

“Hey, we’ve got a basketball game Friday night. You should come. We’re playing Rutland. Everybody would like to see you.”

Johnny looked at Kenny like he had two heads. “Yeah, sure. Hey, I gotta go. See you later.”

Kenny Franken would always remember that moment because it was the last one he ever spent with his best friend.

On Friday Johnny was back in town and hounding Huntsie. Crabapple wasn’t to be found. What Johnny did find was the always reliable Kook Miller, who took Johnny’s fifty dollars to cover two big bottles of eighty-proof Windsor, with a ten-dollar tip. He would have preferred Crown Royal, but it was too rich for his pocketbook.

He took his Canadian whiskey and went home, shutting the door to his room and telling his mom he needed to sleep, so please leave him alone. He drank half the first bottle that night. It wasn’t so much sleep as it was stupor that put him in bed.

He woke up Saturday morning to a world painted white. The snow had been piling up all night, and if Johnny hadn’t been so drunk, he would have heard the howling North Dakota wind that always sounded so angry. He was surprised to see the farm shut down by the continuing storm that left drifts climbing up the side of the barn and a driveway that stopped any driving.

He pulled on a pair of jeans to eat a breakfast of pancakes and bacon. Lois Roth tried to make small talk with her husband and son, but neither was talkative. As soon as he’d finished, Johnny begged off, complaining he was so tired he wanted to rest all day. Lois didn’t push her son these days, and with nothing to do but hunker down until the snow passed, Paul didn’t care what his son did.

Johnny went upstairs to his room and finished off the first bottle.

When his mother called up that Kenny was on the phone, Johnny was already passed out.

He awoke Sunday morning with his head doing the drum solo from
Wipeout
.

“Johnny, it’s Kenny again. He says it’s urgent.”

Johnny didn’t know what “again” meant, but he lumbered down the stairs and picked up the phone to hear his best friend raging.

“What did you do?” Kenny screamed into the phone. “Did you do something to Crabapple?”

“What you talkin’ about?” Johnny mumbled into the phone, still not completely awake.

“Did you snatch Crabapple and hide him away somewhere?”

Now the words started getting through the fog of hangover. “Crabapple? What about Crabapple?”

“My mom and dad are frantic. Somebody kidnapped Crabapple and hid him out somewhere and now they’re all worried because of the storm. Was that you?”

Johnny made him repeat the words to be sure he heard right.

“How do you know that?”

“My mom got a call and she told dad and they came to me and asked if you’d done something to Crabapple. Everybody’s worried you’re going to get in real trouble and end up in prison. Johnny, everybody knows you want to kill him. Please, talk to me.”

“So just how in the hell does everyone know?” Johnny spat into the phone.

“Well, I didn’t tell anyone,” Kenny snarked back to defend himself from the obvious accusation. “But your crazy uncle sure has. He’s even threatened Crabapple himself. Everybody in town knows. You know how rumors spread around here. So when LeRoy’s running around saying how Amber’s death will be avenged, what do you expect them to think? If something happens to him, the sheriff will be at your door in ten minutes. So please, my friend, tell me what’s going on.”

“So everyone thinks it’s me? What if it wasn’t? Who else would they suspect?” Johnny was fishing, but Kenny didn’t see it. He took it as a cover-your-ass question.

“Well, the mighty three, I suppose. Those guys have been stewing ever since…they’ve been mad as hell. You know how they tried to stop Crabapple last year. They’re taking this real personal. And, pal, I know they’re worried about you. They don’t want you to get into any trouble, either.”

Kenny didn’t have to spell out who the mighty three were. Johnny was well aware of the three town leaders who had gone to the school board to force a school-wide lecture against drugs last year.

“Don’t worry about it, Ken. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Johnny hung up and swore a string that made his mother cringe and his father demand he “clean up your mouth.” He ran back upstairs and slammed the door to his room.

“Don’t you want any breakfast?” his mother yelled, praying to get things under control.

“NO,” he screamed back, as he broke the cap seal on the second bottle. The whiskey loosed up his mind and his mood. He rolled around in his head everything he knew about the three men who must have snatched Crabapple. All three lived in town, but where could they secretly hide somebody? He couldn’t think of a place. Okay, did any of them have a fish house out at Lake Elsie? That would work. Or maybe they put him in the cemetery’s storage house—nobody would look for him there. Bernard used to run the grocery store. Is there a warehouse somewhere? He didn’t think so. Earl used to farm, but his son was there now and certainly he’d know if his dad had a hostage. Johnny mulled possibilities around in his mind until he passed out.

He had a dream. He saw himself in his dad’s barn, pitchforking hay into the milk cow’s stall—but they’d gotten rid of the herd a couple years ago to concentrate on the wheat and oats. Johnny always considered that the happiest day of his life, because if you’ve got dairy cows, you’re chained to your farm. They needed milking twice a day, and there was no way around that. He always thought the most thankless, dumbest job in the world was being a dairy farmer.

But in his dream they still had dairy cows and he didn’t mind. He was laughing as he did a job he had always hated. He was happy. He was talking to the cows and singing under his breath. He felt a hundred pounds lighter. He wasn’t limping. “This is nice,” he said in his dream, and then the image of Amber jumped back into his head.

He found the rope hanging off a nail and threw it over the rafter. Climbing on the bails, and using the top of the stall wall for the final step, he could get himself up high enough to slip it over his head….

Johnny woke up and it wasn’t a second before the dream and Amber were front and center in his mind. As he’d often done the last couple months, he hid his head in his pillow and wept like a baby.

When he pulled himself back together, he went to the kitchen and wolfed down leftover waffles and ham. His dad sat in front of the TV, watching a fishing show.

“Hey, you know that Earl Krump?”

His dad raised his eyebrows like it was a strange question. “Yeah, so what?”

“His son has the farm now, doesn’t he?”

“Sure.”

“So if he wanted to hide something, where would he hide it?”

Paul Roth eyed his son. Clearly something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Like what?”

“Oh, anything. Something he didn’t want anyone to find.”

“Well, he wouldn’t put it on the farm. That’s the first place anyone would look.”

Johnny already knew that and saw he’d been stymied again. He was halfway back to the stairs when his father added, “The other place, I suppose.”

Johnny sucked in his breath. “What other place?”

“He used to rent land down the way from his farm.”

“Nobody’s living there now?”

“No place to live. No house.”

“A barn?

“No.”

Johnny thought, “Oh, shit.”

His foot was on the first step when Paul Roth remembered, “But it does have a silo.”

Johnny’s heart stopped. Perfect, he thought. Perfect. He went back to his room, put the cap on the whiskey bottle, and hid it under his bed.

It stopped snowing late Sunday and Johnny hurried to the barn, a flashlight showing the way. He fired up the tractor, already fitted with a bucket loader. He had to get out of this yard…down that snow-packed road. He had to clear the way so he could get to Crabapple.

About the time Johnny had pushed and bladed and shoved the snow aside to open the driveway, Lois Roth got a call from her second cousin, twice-removed.

“Lois, there’s something you have to know,” the woman began, her voice soft but urgent. “If it was my son, I’d want to know.” A long pause, as Lois held her breath. “Somebody kidnapped Crabapple and everyone thinks it was Johnny.”

Lois started to cry and when Paul finally came into the kitchen to see what was wrong, she blurted it all out. Paul Roth moved faster than Lois could ever remember, grabbing his jacket and running out of the house.

The tractor was parked near the barn. Johnny’s pickup was gone.

“Goddammit,” Paul swore as he ran to his truck, not needing to search for keys because, of course, they were in the ignition.

Chapter Seventeen

Wednesday, January 12, 2000

Wednesday morning after Mass was a safe time to meet in the church basement.

Father would be next door in his parsonage, the daily celebrants would have gone on to their routine, and this quiet, holy place would work for a “come to Jesus” meeting.

Maggie, Angie, and Norma desperately needed to talk.

The three women sat around a small wooden table, wishing they had made coffee, and faced one another, like sizing up a firing squad.

“We can never tell anyone.” Maggie was insistent.

“Of course not.”

“Absolutely.”

Nobody spelled out what they could never tell and not one of these women knew what the others knew. But when you’re a wife and your husband has done something that turned out as bad as it could, your pledge of silence covers everything.

“Has Ralph said anything?” Angie fished.

“Not much. How about Earl?”

“You know how Earl is. He never tells me anything.”

“And Bernard?”

The two women turned to face Norma, who wanted to vomit.

“Bernard told me everything.” Norma covered her face with her hands and started wailing.

Maggie stood to put her arms around her old friend, her own tears dripping down her cheek. Angie laid her head on her arms on the table and looked like she’d never rise up again.

“But Bernard didn’t kill him!” Norma declared through her sobs.

Maggie took a step back in shock. “Well, Ralph sure as hell didn’t kill him.”

Now Angie’s tiger-mama instincts kicked in. “If you think they’re going to hang this on my Earl, you’re all crazy. Of course Earl didn’t kill him.”

“Calm down, calm down.” Maggie tried to calm down. She went back to her seat and pretended she was the adult in the room. “Let’s go through this logically, girls. Remember, everything we say here goes no farther. We’ll never speak these words to anyone else. You can never tell anyone. Agreed?

Nods around the table reaffirmed the pledge.

“Now, Norma, tell us what Bernard told you.” That would be the best place to start.

Norma looked suspicious, as though Bernard’s version could come back to bite him.

“I’d rather hear what Ralph told you,” she answered in a shaky voice.

“Me, too,” Angie threw in, signaling they thought Ralph was the ringleader.

With all her heart, Maggie Bonner wanted to trust these women she’d known since they were girls. With all her heart, she wanted to share what she knew so they could sort it out together and decide what to do next. With all her heart she wanted to be anywhere but here, talking about anything but this. But this was her private sorority now. This was the coven that must hold this secret to their graves to protect the men they loved.

“It was never supposed to end up like this,” she began, choking back her fears. “They wanted justice and they couldn’t get it and they thought if they forced him to confess or leave town…that was all. That was ALL.”

“Earl said they gave him food and water and they were trying to scare him. Oh yeah, and one of my quilts.”

“Bernard said he stayed belligerent and they thought just one more night in the cold and he’d come clean but then the storm hit.”

“Something else, too.” Maggie’s voice was thick with phlegm.

“They were trying to protect Johnny. He said he was going to kill that boy. Everybody knew. They thought if they could stop that, Johnny would have a chance.”

Angie for one didn’t buy that part of the story—it was the men’s egos that drove them, not some do-good instinct to help a boy they all blamed for Amber’s death. But it was a good excuse—an added point in their favor—so she kept her doubts to herself.

Norma jumped on the Johnny angle like it was a life raft. “Yes, Bernard said that, too. They didn’t want Johnny to kill that kid and go to prison. But they couldn’t just order that boy out of town. They had to scare him out of town. Or get him to confess so he’d go to prison. That’s where he belonged—prison or out of this town. But not here. Not in Northville.”

“It was probably Johnny, anyway.” Angie sighed, defeated.

The other women nodded, more in sorrow than agreement.

“I know my Ralph didn’t do it.”

“My Earl, either.”

“Not Bernard. I know that in my soul,” Norma said. “Ladies, we have known these men our whole lives. We’ve raised families with them. We’ve helped them bury their parents. We’ve been through tough times together. We’ve been happy, too.…” Her voice trailed off.

“Never in a million years did I ever think…” Maggie started. “No way. This is unbelievable. This is a nightmare.”

“It was a stupid plan from the start,” Angie pronounced, like she was a Supreme Court judge.

The other two looked at her like she was a traitor. “Now Angie…”

“You can excuse them all you want, but my God, kidnapping a human being and leaving him in a silo? What kind of idiot comes up with a plan like that? That’s what got him killed. Whoever did this had an easy kill.
Oh, don’t look at me like that. You know it’s the truth.
The killer could do this because our husbands kidnapped that poor kid and chained him up. You don’t have to pull the trigger to be a killer, you know. We have to live with the fact that our husbands are accessories to murder. That is a terrible, terrible thing. Whatever that boy did, he didn’t deserve this. When did our men get so goddamned arrogant they thought they could be judge, jury, and executioner?”

Angie’s diatribe ended in pathetic sobs. Norma was already so distraught she could hardly speak. Maggie’s eyes were closed in pain as tears trailed down her cheeks. Nobody said a word for a long time.

“And it’s my Earl’s silo! If they tie this to anybody, it’s him!” Angie spit out the words in a rage.

“You know the men have pledged to stand together,” Norma jumped in. “Nobody’s going to let Earl take all the blame.”

“Well, they’re all to blame for hiding the body.” Angie made the point like she’d just won a debate.

That horrible fact circled the table.

Kidnapping the kid was one thing.

His death was another.

But hiding the body—trying to cover up that he ever was in that silo? You didn’t have to spend the winter on a diet of television cop shows to know that had “guilty” written all over it.

“How could they ever explain that?” Norma wondered. Nobody had a clue.

“If they’d have left the body where it was, and gone right to the sheriff, and told him what happened…”

But nobody thought the outcome would be any better.

“Nobody knows for certain it was them who kidnapped the boy. They might suspect, but nobody knows.” Maggie hung on to that thread of hope.

“Somebody better tell Alice to keep her mouth shut, too.”

“Don’t worry about Alice. My niece knows when to stay quiet,” Maggie offered.

“But we must never tell. Never.” Norma pleaded.

“Never,” Angie agreed.

“To my grave, I will never tell,” Maggie vowed.

Finally, Maggie said the words that didn’t need to be spoken. Words that each knew in her heart. Words that came from years of loving a man and relying on a man and trusting a man and now, protecting a man.

“We have to stand by them. That’s all we can do.”

Each one felt older as she walked out of that meeting.

Each one felt sadder.

Each one was more scared than she’d ever been in her entire life.