Past Imperfect (8 page)

“What time of the morning did David usually go to work at the orchards?”

“Different times,” Dorothy answered. “He didn't exactly keep regular hours. That was okay with Wylie, long as he did the work. When he was up and ready to go, he'd go. He didn't leave until about nine-thirty on Sunday. Usually he waited until he was sure he wouldn't run into Nels.” She looked up. “No chance of that on Sunday, though…well, at least Nels didn't leave any children.”

McIntire wondered if any blood was getting to his legs at all. When he tried to rise would he find himself sprawled at Dorothy's feet? He asked, “Had your son quarreled with Nels, then?”

“I wouldn't say quarreled. Well, you know how Nels was. A couple months ago he accused Davy of going into his house when he wasn't there, and leaving the doors open on his garden shed or something. Davy said that Nels just started yelling at him and that he wasn't making any sense. But he told Davy that he'd better not catch him near his house again, and that everybody in town was going to hear that he was a thief. Course he said it like ‘teef.' That made Davy laugh.”

“What did Nels say was stolen?”

“That's just it, he didn't say. At least if he did, Davy didn't tell me, but he still swore up and down that Davy had broke in.” She lifted eyes of a pleading basset hound to McIntire's face. “Davy wouldn't of done that. He may have his faults, but he's a good boy. He wouldn't steal.” She sighed. “I don't think he would steal.”

“Did your son have trouble with Nels, or anybody else, more recently? Did anything happen to upset him in the past few days?”

“Not so far as I know,” Dorothy replied. “But he probably wouldn't of told me.…No, I think things were fine. He seemed like his normal self—maybe even happier. He was excited on Sunday morning because Wylie was going to let him take his big Buick into Chandler to pick up that old couple from the train, you know, Nels' old army buddy. He kept after me to be sure to remind him when it was time to go.”

So David had gone into Chandler that day, and Chandler was where the girl who'd been “sent away” from him now lived.

McIntire took a deep breath and let it out slowly before asking, “What about the Culver girl, might he have told her where he was going?”

A flash of anger appeared in Dorothy's eyes. “People around here always have to have something to talk about! If anything happened between Dave and Cindy Culver why put all the blame on him? I mean, if that's the kind of girl Cindy is you can't blame a young man for…” She slumped back to sink into her own seat. “I don't know if he went to see Cindy. I didn't want to call with Inge Lindstrom listening, along with everybody else on her line! Like I said, people around here talk too much anyway.”

“I'll check on it,” McIntire assured her, “and I'll let the sheriff know to keep a lookout for his car. Maybe you could describe it for me. Do you know the license number?”

Dorothy twisted the ring again. “The sheriff knows Davy's car.”

McIntire gripped the arms of the chair and flung himself to his feet. “Before I go, maybe I could have a look around his room?”

Dorothy led him to the stairwell and left him to go up alone.

David's was one of two upstairs rooms that opened off either side of a short hallway. It was lit by a bare light bulb at the end of a cord which was draped, with a possible attempt at whimsy, over an over-sized ornate frame containing within its borders the motto,
The Lord is My Light
, written in elaborate white and gold lettering on a green background liberally ornamented with lilies. Furnishings consisted only of a small chest of drawers with white circles embellishing its rippled oak veneer surface and a bed, three quarter size with head and footboards of iron scrollwork. The brown lacquer of the headboard was missing from a number of dime-sized areas, the result, undoubtedly, of chewing gum being placed there and later removed, either for the sake of hygiene or for further chewing pleasure.

A threadbare quilt made of irregularly shaped scraps of fabric covered the bed, which was strategically placed near that feature that would give the room the status of being the most desirable in the house: the opening in the floor fitted with an iron grate, which was situated directly over the wood-burning heater in the living room below. As McIntire remembered from his own youth, such a floor register not only provided some measure of warmth on freezing nights, but afforded excellent year-round possibilities for keeping up on the late-night conversations of one's elders.

A radio sat on the floor at the side of the bed. Its aerial ascended the wall and dangled over rods holding the yellowed lace panels that dressed three tall windows. McIntire looked out over the unkempt orchard and beyond to the road where it wound up the hill. A spume of dust appeared over the rise, followed shortly by a battered Dodge meandering languidly from one side of the road to the other like an immense black beetle in no particular hurry to accomplish much beyond admiring the wild flowers that grew in the ditches—Nick Thorsen on his daily rounds.

The large windows did not help to dispel the aura of chill that permeated the room even at midday. Except for the radio, it was bare of personal possessions. Odd, considering Dorothy's report that her son spent a great deal of time here. The large drawers of the chest held little more than a moth-eaten sweater and some dingy long johns. In the smaller top drawer was a heavy leather belt, the length of which indicated that it had probably belonged to the robust Cliff Slocum. A cigar box lay under it, empty but for a rusty skeleton key. The only other article in the chest was a small carved wooden boat, painted with red and white enamel.

McIntire turned to the closet and was surprised to find it locked. It opened readily with the skeleton key to reveal a few articles of winter clothing on hooks, rubber buckle overshoes, and a couple of pairs of worn out oxfords. A narrow shelf above the hooks yielded only a heavy layer of dust and the desiccated bodies of some unfortunate insects. McIntire methodically inverted each shoe with a vigorous shake and peered beneath each grime-encrusted insole. He then turned his attention to exploring the pockets of the shirts and jackets. He repressed a whoop when, secreted in the lining of a green plaid Mackinaw—very large, probably also Cliff's—he found a bundle of letters.

The envelopes were addressed in small, square printing and included the name and return address of David Slocum's older brother. In part this proved to be a ruse. Closer inspection revealed that, while two of the letters had come from Al Slocum, half a dozen others were signed “Cindy.” The postmark showed that the most recent had been mailed about six weeks earlier.

McIntire sat down on the bed and hastily scanned all six. Far from being tortured messages of thwarted love, they were simple friendly letters, describing the advantages of the “city,” and informing David that he really should get out of “that one-horse town” and go where life had more to offer.

Nonetheless, following a hasty examination of conscience, McIntire pocketed the letters before relocking the closet door. After taking one last look around the room—nothing under the bed save a once-white metal chamber pot and dust bunnies of dimensions that would have sent Leonie back to London if she'd had to swim for it—he removed the toy boat from its hiding place and positioned it in the center of the chest. Then he left, closing the door behind him.

IX

Mia Thorsen pulled off her coverall apron, hung it on the wall, and pushed open the studio door. Although the calendar said that summer was at last upon them, the nights were cool, and the rays of the sun did not penetrate the studio's concrete walls. A fire was necessary to take off the early chill, but as the day wore on the shop became uncomfortably warm, and every inch of her felt coated with sawdust. She lifted her hair to let the breeze fan some of the dampness from her neck and drank in several deep breaths. Then she slid a rock against the door to brace it open and, after placing a discarded window screen across the lower half of the opening to keep out the marauding geese, passed under the shadow of the evergreens into the welcoming light of the open yard.

She had been working since Nick left at six o'clock, and it was now past eleven. Her hunger pangs were becoming increasingly insistent, but still she shrank from going into the house and facing the inevitable rumpled bed, dirty dishes, and unironed laundry. Cool mornings notwithstanding, Nature seemed to be making amends for a spring that had been late and wet even by Upper Peninsula standards. For the past few days the weather had been as close to perfect as could ever be expected in this part of the world. Even Nick, after weeks of cursing muddy roads, snowplow-destroyed mailboxes, and the incessant peeping of the season's orders of day-old chicks, had little to protest except the sun in his eyes. He'd left the snow shovel, rubber boots, and the wool cap with earflaps in the front porch. And he had replaced the thermos of blackberry brandy under the front seat of his car with one of dandelion wine, irrefutable evidence that summer was indeed on its way.

Mia reveled in being out of doors without the bothersome preparations and encumbrances that were necessary for just stepping off the front porch during eight months of the year. She brushed a wisp of hair from her eyes and told herself that life was short and the Benign Season a whole lot shorter. Following that rationale, she entered the kitchen and put together a lunch of a sandwich, an apple, and a copy of
Tales of the South Pacific
. She then went back outside, closing the door on the clutter of living.

She dragged the old wooden lawn chair from the gloom of the pines into the sun, careful to face it away from the errant vegetable garden. Leaning back gingerly to avoid splinters, she unbuttoned her shirt, took a bite of the homemade bread and peanut butter, and brushed the small shower of crumbs off her chest. She had sliced the crust from each end of the loaf of bread to make her sandwich, a slovenly practice which was always accompanied by a mental apology to her long-dead mother, but one that she had never been able to resist, especially when peanut butter was involved.

Peanut butter, John McIntire had told her, was one of the main things he had missed about home. During all those years in England, he said—a country where the most creative aspect of cooking is lighting the fire, where on Monday morning they make enough toast to last all week—the food he really craved was not fried lake trout, his mother's pot roast, or blueberry pie. It was peanut butter. A fact especially amazing when you consider the gritty stuff that passed for peanut butter in those pre-Peter Pan days.

Mia smiled to herself when she thought about John McIntire and admitted grudgingly that she was, after all, glad that he had been resurrected. And glad that there was so little awkwardness between them considering his long absence… and considering what they had formerly been to each other.

When he returned to St. Adele with his new wife, Mia had at first put off the welcoming visit—put it off so long, in fact, that the situation was threatening to become an embarrassment. She was eventually saved from fulfilling her social obligation by thoughtful neighbors who threw a going away party for Sophie McIntire when she relinquished her home to her son and left to spend her remaining days on earth in Florida, claiming the sunshine she felt was owed her after sixty odd years in a Northern Purgatory.

The festivities had been well under way when Mia arrived, sticking uncharacteristically close to her husband and as nervous as the seventeen-year-old girl she had been when she and Johnny McIntire had last met.

She was in no way reassured at her first sight of the slim, aristocratic looking gentleman the bosom companion of her childhood had become. He had—she could hardly believe her eyes—grown. The man was at least three inches taller than the boy had been, and that boy was by no means short. The dark hair of his youth was barely tinged with gray but had receded considerably from his forehead, no longer necessitating constant vigilance to keep it from falling into his eyes, eyes which were the same clear sea green that she had always secretly envied. He was dressed like a matinee idol, right down to the silk handkerchief in the pocket of his gray pinstriped suit.

He was bending over to give rapt attention to some yarn being related by Arnie Johnson, standing somewhat apart from the others. There were few present who hadn't heard Arnie's entire repertoire of stories as often as they cared to.

Mia glanced down at her own plaid Sears-Roebuck dress and pressed even closer to Nick. She was within a hair of making for the nearest exit when he raised his head and looked directly into her eyes. Recognition was followed by a slow smile, lighting up his still lean and boyish features, and he was across the room to her in a half dozen strides, leaving her no choice but to put out her hand and utter that gracious welcome, “You got different glasses.”

“Yeah, the wire rims were starting to make me look too much like Woodrow Wilson.”

Such were the first words of two who had begun as brother and sister and become closer still, now reunited after half a lifetime.

After that they had slipped into a casual friendship, or at least an unspoken truce. They saw each other fairly infrequently, and she, for her part, was cautious in avoiding references to the past. On those rare occasions that she did slip, her remarks generally received no response.

It was not especially difficult to distance the new John McIntire from the old. She needed to look long and deep at the charmingly urbane, self-assured, and humorous man to find anything of the lanky youth she had mourned and buried alongside her own girl-self so long ago. And looking long and deep was something she was not prepared to do. Just as it had been easier all those years ago to imagine that he lay dead on a muddy field in France, it was less complicated now to regard him as some distant relative of that long deceased friend, just a neighbor like all the others. And, thank God, she had not seen that three-piece suit again until yesterday's funeral where half those present had mistaken him for the undertaker.

She could hardly believe the way he had let himself be suckered into that constable job. He had seemed almost touchingly honored by the townspeople's proclaimed confidence in him. Well, she wasn't falling for it. There was just no way a man with his intelligence and background—an
intelligence background
for Pete's sake—could be so naive. He had to realize that nobody else in the township would have taken that office on a bet. Anybody who did show an interest would have been immediately suspected of some diabolical ulterior motive and soundly voted down. John
was
the perfect choice. He'd needed to be wheedled into it, and he hadn't been around long enough to have any axes to grind, although the miniature crime wave that curiously swept the township shortly after he pinned on his badge could have resulted in a few grudges in a less temperate man.

For all that his “ever so proper” ways made him the butt of countless jokes, she couldn't conceive that he would be the target of any real malice. He was, after all, the son of the revered Colin McIntire. And he became a bona fide darling of the older generation the minute he greeted one of them with
hyvaa paivaa
or
hur star det till
.

Still, he held himself back from what passed for the social life of St. Adele, preferring to spend his time wandering along the lakeshore or standing in some cold stream in hopes of hooking a fish. Mia was among those who expected that once he'd had his fill of woods and water he would move on to some more cosmopolitan setting, perhaps returning now and again for the occasional backwoods vacation.

John's wife had, on the other hand, fit easily into the community. Leonie's enthusiasm and extreme sense of duty to her fellow humans made her a favorite victim for every group that ever wanted a raffle ticket sold or a pie baked. Several months after their arrival she had driven off to an auction in Marquette and returned with some sort of ancient printing equipment. It was now set up in an upstairs room at the town hall, and, earlier in the year, Leonie had begun putting out a small bi-weekly newspaper.

The St. Adele Record
, a lofty title for the four tabloid-sized pages, was an unqualified success. Filling those four pages necessitated that even the most mundane occurrence in the life of each of St. Adele Township's three-hundred-twenty residents be viewed as newsworthy, and Leonie faithfully reported each report card “A” and afternoon trip to Chandler with the same fervor she would have shown for the really big event, out-of-town visitors or a new car. The subjects of her stories were not always completely flattered by her interest, but so far she had not offended anyone to the point that they wouldn't be standing in line to purchase her next issue. It was Leonie's habit of topping off her long Wednesdays at the presses with an unescorted visit to the Waterfront Tavern for a restoring “pint,” where she actually sat right up at the bar with the men, that really got people talking. For the most part it was a good-humored ribbing. The community would forgive, in an exotic foreigner, behavior they would never stand for in one of their own.

Mia was looking forward to reading Leonie's account of Nels Bertelsen's life and death. Maybe it would be a help in putting an end to his life in her own mind.

When John had told her that Nels was dead, before shock and sadness took over, Mia had experienced a moment of the most exquisite fear—the distinct feeling that this was only the first snapped thread in a raveling seam, the beginning of some downward slide into perils that she couldn't name. The vision had passed in an instant, but still, even yesterday's funeral had given her no sense of finality. She was beset with a feeling, almost a foreboding, that they had not heard the last of Nels Bertelsen, or of grief.

Even now, she shivered a little in her pool of warm sun and thought of her great-grandmother, Meogokwe, the ancient brown woman who'd given her her name—and possibly her life. That first Meogokwe, Mia's mother had said, had Powers, and Mia, by taking her name, might also be so blessed. She had never told Mia what those powers might be. Mia fervently hoped they involved arm wrestling. She'd as soon leave the sorcery to Lucy.

She gnawed her apple down to the seeds and stem, tossed them into the bushes, and opened her book. She had begun reading it several times, and had never gotten past “Mutiny.” She was not fated to do so today. After a few paragraphs she let her head fall back and closed her eyes. Within minutes the warmth of the sun and the lazy drone of insects drove all presentiments of evil from her mind and lulled her into a sound sleep.

She awakened with a start at the slam of a car door and the sound of footsteps crossing from the driveway. Nick already! Was it really possible that she had slept almost three hours?

After a close inspection of the grass for indications that the geese might have preceded him, Nick sat down with his back against the side of Mia's chair.

“So how was your day? Read any good postcards?” It was Mia's ritual greeting, and Nick gave his ritual response, “Anything you can get on a postcard ain't worth reading.” He let his head sink back into her lap and closed his eyes. “Just another ordinary day—except that I hardly know what to do with myself after almost a week with no complaints from Old Man Bertelsen. That's going to take some getting used to.”

Mia didn't respond, but ran her hand through his hair, twining the dark curls around her fingers and gazing over his head. The sight of a pine green late model sedan where Nick's unpretentious Dodge should be brought a clutch at her heart, but she kept her voice level. “Car in the shop?”

“Just getting the old bus spruced up a little.”

It was another rite of spring, having the winter's collection of dents banged out, and one that it was necessary to conduct farther and farther afield in recent years. Nick had returned more than one loaner in a state requiring its owner's professional services.

“But speaking of the dear departed,” he continued, “I did pick up the odd bit of information today. It seems that our esteemed constable has been galloping around the neighborhood asking no end of questions about Nels, and snooping into things generally. To top it off, David Slocum is missing.”

“What do you mean, missing?”

“I mean
missing
, as in left home for God knows where, taken a powder, flown the coop.”

“But he's taken off plenty of times before. Nobody seemed to think it was a big deal.”

Nick sat up straighter, and Mia began mechanically kneading the back of his neck.

“Dorothy never called in the law before,” he replied. “She must think it's a big deal.”

Mia ceased her massage and let her hands rest on his shoulders. “By ‘law' do you mean John McIntire?”

“That's what I heard from a reliable source whose phone Dorothy used…John McIntire, walking dictionary
and
Law West of the Huron. Quite the well-rounded guy.”

Nick had been among those who had conspired to put the new constable through some pretty stiff paces, mostly, Mia suspected, to assess her own reaction. That reaction had been one of unfeigned indifference. John McIntire had proven long ago that he didn't need her to fight his battles for him.

“But what,” she asked, running her hands back up into his hair, “do David Slocum's escapades have to do with Nels?”