Meadowlark (9 page)

"Jesus. I'm coming out. Warn Dale." He paused. "Are you all
right, Lark?"

"Physically unharmed and perfectly safe." But sick at
heart.

"I'm sorry, darling." Jay almost always hears what I don't
say.

My eyes teared, and I broke the connection.

Marianne was crying hard, her hands covering her face. I
stuffed the phone into her jacket pocket and touched her shoulder.
"Come on, Marianne. We should move out of this area."

I led her a few yards down the road and stood for awhile
patting her and making sympathetic sounds. I felt numb, but little
jolts of awareness warned me of the reaction that was bound to
come. I was fiercely glad I had not got to know Hugo well.

The wait seemed interminable, but no more than ten
minutes passed before I saw the revolving blue light of Dale's car. He
was not using the siren. There was no real reason to use the light
either. He pulled the car over and parked on the grassy shoulder a
good distance from us. He and Bianca got out. So did Keith
McDonald.

Bianca ran to us. She was crying, and she and Marianne
clung to each other. McDonald and Dale moved at a less impetuous
pace. They had the identical look of men trapped in a female
emotional display. The hell with them. The situation demanded
emotion.

I went up to Dale, and we shook hands. "It's in the ice
house?" Dale, improbably fair and pink-cheeked, always looked
guileless. His eyes were worried, however.

I described what I had found, and he thanked me for not
mucking up the crime scene, though we had trampled the area by the
door and done God knew what damage inside. I told him Jay was
coming.

He looked even more worried. He was carrying a battered
35 mm. camera by the strap. The camera swung in a tiny arc. "I
dunno, Lark. The county budget--"

"Think of him as my husband," I snarled. "He won't charge
you." That was unfair. Dale thought of Jay as a mentor, and the
sheriff's budget was in bad shape from the earlier
investigations.

Dale flushed. "I always like to have Jay's opinion of these
things. Speaking of which, I'd better have a look."

"Feel free." I wasn't going into the ice house again.

Keith McDonald started to follow Dale, but Dale waved him
off. Keith looked at me. "You're sure it's Hugo?"

"How many of your people are missing?"

He chewed his lip.

I relented. "Yes, I'm sure. I recognized his sneaker. It was
unmistakable."

Keith closed his eyes, opened them. "He always wore his
clothes until they fell apart. It was a matter of principle."

"There are worse principles."

"Hey, I admired that. Hugo's a good guy. I mean, was." Mr.
Profundity.

I was being unfair, probably because I was upset. By way of
a peace token, I said, "I guess you've known him for a long time." I
was watching Dale. He had taken a couple of snaps of the ice house
and a close up of the lintel. He entered the building with exaggerated
care, though Marianne and I had probably obliterated any clear sign
of other pedestrians.

"I've known Hugo twenty years. Almost half my life," Keith
added, sounding surprised. He ran a hand over his beard. "Christ. Old
Hugo."

At that point Bianca pulled herself together. She gave
Marianne a last pat, wiped her own eyes on the sleeve of her anorak,
and came over to me. "He's under the ice?"

I nodded.

"You're sure he's dead?"

For a panicked moment I wondered. Maybe I should have
dragged him from the bin and tried CPR. Sanity flooded back. "He's
been missing a week, Bianca."

She gave a small, hiccupping sigh. "It's all my fault."

"What?"

"I knew something was wrong when he disappeared. I
should have called in the cops then." She shot me a sad, reproachful
look.

I almost bit. I almost said that was what I had told her to do,
which was true. She was not making sense. People react to shock in
strange ways. Bianca was like a black body, absorbing and radiating
guilt.

I said, carefully, "You did what you could."

"If I'd only known..."

I waited. She was running through a list of standard
responses, almost as if she had a script. That didn't necessarily mean
her reaction was insincere.

Keith said, "You'll have to cancel the workshop."

"No!" She turned on him. "No, it's too late. I can't."

I said, "Those folks are journalists."

"They're science writers."

"They're would-be science writers." I had read the
participants' bios. "Right now they're practicing newshawks and this
is news."

Bianca pouted, avoiding my eyes. Keith shoved his hands in
the pockets of his jacket and stared off in the direction of Shoalwater
Bay. He had a noble profile.

"That boy, Jason," Marianne said.

Her entrance into the conversation startled me. She blew
her nose and tucked the tissue into her sleeve. "Jason said he was
going to check out the ice house yesterday."

I stared at her. Keith had turned to stare, too.

"Jason!" Bianca sounded numb. "No, they wouldn't kill
Hugo--not the interns."

I was trying to visualize what Jason and Bill could have seen
if they had just switched on the light and looked around without
entering the ice house. "The body isn't visible from the door."

Marianne's jaw set. "Jason must have noticed there was ice
in the bin. He should have said something about that."

I wondered why she was focusing on Jason. Bill had gone
with him, after all. Of course, Jason was Del's protegé--or so I
had gathered the evening of the dinner. Perhaps Marianne was
jealous of him--or jealous for Mike, more likely.

Dale emerged from the ice house looking green around the
gills. "Okay, let's get started. Marianne, I want..."

"For God's sake, Nelson, tell us what happened to him!"
Keith McDonald grabbed Dale by one arm. Bianca tugged at the
other, gabbling questions.

Dale shook them off. When they fell silent, he said, "I need to
call in again. The evidence van, an ambulance, and the M.E. are on
their way. Ms. Fiedler, Dr. McDonald, you can go to the house and
wait for me there, or you can stay where you are. I need to talk to
both of you eventually."

"What happened to Hugo?" Bianca demanded. Dale stared at
her. His left hand clenched on the camera strap.

I said, "He can't give you that information now, Bianca. For
one thing, he won't know for sure until the medical examiner has a
look at the body. For another--"

"For another," Dale interrupted, unsmiling, "you're all
suspects."

Bianca made an indignant protest.

Dale raised his hands chest high, as if he were fending her
off. "I'm calling in. Then I want to talk to Marianne and Lark. I'll take
their statements while I'm waiting for the technical crew."

Bianca yanked off her tweed cap and ran a hand through the
mahogany hair. "I have a right to know what happened. I signed your
damned permission to search forms. This is my property, and Hugo
is...was my employee."

If she'd said "my friend" I would have felt more sympathy
for her. Any moment now she was going to announce that she was a
taxpayer. It was in the script.

"I pay a lot of property taxes," she said on cue. "I pay your
salary, Dale. I'm entitled."

Dale looked at her. He forebore to mention that he and I and
Marianne and Keith were taxpayers, too, and that his salary wasn't
all that wonderful.

Bianca burst into tears. Keith put his arm around her.
"C'mon, old girl. The man's just doing his job." She made a muffled
noise of protest.

"I'm calling in," Dale said flatly and turned on his heel. We
watched him until he was sitting in the brown and white sheriff's car.
Bianca cried. Keith patted her, his face blank and his eyes
thoughtful.

The mist had intensified to rain. I began to feel very cold. I
gritted my teeth to keep them from chattering.

Marianne rubbed her arms. "Dale said I have to make a
statement. What does that mean exactly?"

"He'll ask you what you saw, why you decided to look in the
ice house..." My voice trailed.

"I heard the ice machine turn on!"

"Then tell him that." I hugged my jacket to me. The hood
covered my hair, but rainwater was running down my face. I peered
into the middle distance. "What happened to the Search and Rescue
volunteers?"

Keith said, "Nelson called them off."

"Where are the interns?"

Bianca gave a large sniff. "They were with Del and Angie,
searching the machine sheds. I called Del. He'll take them to the
house."

"I think we'd better go to the house, too, Bee." Keith's arm
still circled Bianca's shoulders. When she made to pull away from
him, his grip on her arm tightened.

"Ow. Let me go, Keith. I want to look in the ice house--"

"No," Keith said. "No way. Stop acting like a spoiled brat,
Bianca."

She swore at him, but she sounded less out of control.

The door of the cop car slammed. Dale strode back to us. "I
want you to keep your staff and students from leaving, Ms. Fiedler,
and I'd appreciate it if you'd ask them not to talk over what
happened among themselves. I need to interview all of them. The
sheriff's coming out to talk to you. I told him you'd be at the
house."

I was impressed that the sheriff, an amiable political hack,
would bestir himself that early on a Sunday morning. Dale had
probably asked him to get Bianca out of his hair.

Bianca's jaw stuck out and the intense brown eyes were
dark with suspicion. Dale met her gaze. As far as I could tell neither
of them blinked.

Keith said, "Let's go in, Bee. You heard the man."

Abruptly Bianca gave up. She shrugged out of Keith's grasp
and stalked down the road in the direction of the house.

Keith jogged after her. "We'll be waiting for you,
Nelson."

"I ought to isolate them from each other," Dale muttered.
"But hell, I can't be in two places at once." He watched them until
they were out of earshot. "If you don't mind, Lark, I'll take
Marianne's statement first."

"Okay, but I'm going to walk around. I'm cold."

I thought he might offer to let me sit in the back seat while
he interrogated Marianne, but he just nodded in the direction of the
retreating figures. "Walk that way."

I started off, flapping my arms. I wanted to run but I didn't
want to catch up with Keith and Bianca. So I walked. Twenty paces
down the road, twenty paces back. When I tired of that, I did
standing stretches, jogged in place, flapped my wings. My shivering
eased.

The door of the cop car opened and Dale stuck his head out.
"Want a cup of coffee?"

I walked over. "Yes, please."

He ducked back and a moment later handed me a mungy
thermos cup. "It's decaf."

"If it's hot I don't care." It was, blessedly. "Thanks."

"S'okay." He went back to his interrogation.

I warmed my hands on the cup and sipped. Dale might be a
country cop but he had urban taste. The decaf was cappuccino.

I stood for a while looking in the direction of the house. I
could see the roof, the kitchen window, the metal roofs of the
machine sheds, and a corner of the car barn. There was a lot of
activity by the car barn, from the sound of doors closing and engines
starting up. I couldn't see anyone, but I gathered the Search and
Rescue people were leaving. They must have walked back to the
staging area along the far perimeter of the farm to avoid using the
lane that ran past the ice house.

I had just finished Dale's cappuccino when the door of the
cop car slammed shut. I wheeled around.

Marianne said, "I'm through. Your turn." She had been
crying again, but she looked composed.

"Okay. Will you be all right?"

She nodded. "I'm going to go make a coffee cake."

To each her own. Baking was the last activity I would take
up under stress. I watched her head for the house then went to the
passenger side of the car and got in. Dale grunted a greeting and
went on scribbling in his notebook. He also had a tape recorder and a
laptop computer. Probably, like Jay, he made longhand notes while
the recorder absorbed what a witness said. Jay entered the crucial
bits into the computer afterwards, two-fingered.

Dale flipped a page over and set the note pad on the
dashboard. "This is one hell of a mess, Lark. How much did you
see?"

I swallowed. How much is too much? "I saw his sneaker and
enough of the leg to know the body was there."

He digested that. "Then how do you know it's Groth?"

I explained.

He sighed. "Okay. Let's begin at the beginning." He removed
one tape cartridge, scrawled M. W. on it, and inserted another tape.
When it began to whir, he picked up his notebook and asked me to
give my name and address.

Dale was still asking me questions when the ambulance and
the evidence van pulled up by his car. He got out and conferred. I
hunkered down and waited.

The technicians went into the ice house first. They wouldn't
be able to remove the body until the M.E. examined it. They
cordoned off a fat ellipse around the building. Daffodil yellow tape
gleamed in the mist. The ambulance crew stayed by their vehicle,
chewing the fat. One of them was smoking. Camera lights flashed in
the ice house. I heard a roar as one of those little hand vacuums
started. Jay had trained them well.

"...then you knew the victim?"

I had been explaining my role as Hugo's landlady and book
supplier. "Well enough to talk to."

"Can you make the formal identification?"

My stomach knotted.

He twisted sideways and looked at me with earnest blue
eyes. "I can ask Ms. Fiedler..." He let his voice trail.

He didn't want to ask Bianca, because she was at the top of
his suspect list, and he didn't need to owe her favors. Ditto for Keith
McDonald.