Poison Heart (18 page)

Doc walked in the front door. She held up the bagged candles. “This is it so far.”

“Don’t think they’re a match.”

“You know, if she bought white candles down at the Cenex and we found them here, wouldn’t they be a match for most of the candles in the county?”

“Good point.” He looked around the house. “Moving?”

“I told you about the auction.”

“Oh, yeah. Why don’t you keep at it in here? I’m going to go check out the garage. The usual spot to keep most accelerants.”

Claire decided to scour the upstairs. She went through every bedroom. In the master bedroom side table she found an old tube of K-Y jelly.
Good for them,
she thought. At least the old guy got something out of her. She bagged a pack of matches she found wedged under a chest of drawers as a shim, but wondered if they were too old to even light anymore.

She finished off the living room, then decided it was time to go down in the basement. She had always hated basements—some primordial feeling left over from dungeons, she imagined. This was a particularly damp and creepy basement. After stumbling around in the dank rooms with a dirt floor, flailing at old crystalline spiderwebs, she found calcified bar bait, poison left out for mice.
Nothing that had been down in this damp basement longer than a day or two would ever burn,
she thought as she climbed back up the rickety stairs.

Wegman and she converged on the porch and both sat down to go over their loot.

“Nice porch,” Doc said.

“I wish we had a beer,” she said.

“Sounds good. We’ve got diddly here.”

They both looked at the pile of bagged items: stubs of red and green candles, old matches, a can of kerosene from the garage, and various burned items from the barn. Not much to go on.

“I’ver never liked arson investigations,” Claire confessed. “Too tedious.”

Doc nodded. “That’s what I like about them. You need to be tenacious. What I really love is finding these timers some arsonists use. Guys often create these elaborate timers to start fires. Then, when the fire is done, we can dig through the ashes and find them. They prove that the fire was deliberate and often give us a clue as to who started it. But a candle gives us nothing. They don’t last through a fire. Even if they do, they don’t prove it was deliberate, and they give us no clue as to who started it.”

“I said I didn’t like arson.”

“The problem is that our perp is a lady. Women have more common sense than men. They keep it simple.”

CHAPTER 21

It doesn’t matter how much of a feeling you have about this, Claire. You know that.” The district attorney, Mary Ann Jacobs, was even more rumpled than usual. She was wearing a suit that looked as if it had spent the night on the floor of a damp closet. Claire wanted to reach out and dust it off. A few white threads clung to the shoulders, but she resisted.

“I can’t believe we can pin only one of these fires on her.”

“Let’s hope we can even pin that one on her. Patty Jo Tilde has no record. She’s sixty years old. Who’s going to believe she started these fires? I don’t have a good feeling about this.” She motioned Claire to follow her. They started walking from the sheriff’s department to the county courtroom, which was down the hall and up a floor.

“What judge do we have?” Claire asked.

“Leonards.”

Claire felt her heart sink. “He wouldn’t make a serial killer post bail.”

“He believes in keeping people in the community. He thinks we are still the Pepin County of fifty years ago.”

Claire lowered her voice. The hall was empty, but you never knew who might come out of a door. Wouldn’t do her any good to get in bad with one of the judges. “Which was when he should have retired.”

“Can’t make him.” Jacobs stopped and turned to Claire. “If only we had a witness to place her there. What about your sister?”

“Bridget didn’t see anything. She called us because she saw a car parked down the street, but she stayed with her daughter. I told her not to go investigate. She was scared to death.”

“I bet. And neither you nor Rich really saw anything.”

“When we found Patty Jo, she didn’t have anything in her hands, but we found the matches about fifteen feet from her. The candle had burned down fairly far and we found no fingerprints on it. Maybe she held it with the rags. She wasn’t wearing gloves. How much more evidence do we need?”

“No fingerprints on the matches.”

“Not anything they can distinguish.”

“Patty Jo Tilde is sticking to her story. She was coming home from the casino, drove by your house, not even knowing it was yours, and saw the fire.”

“Then why did she run away?”

“She said she saw you and got scared that you would blame it on her.”

“What a bunch of marlarkey.”

Jacobs laughed. “I haven’t heard that word since my grandfather died.”

They reached the courtroom door. Claire nodded to let the district attorney enter first.

“Do the best you can,” Claire whispered.

Fifteen minutes later, Patty Jo Tilde was out on a signature bond. The judge saw her neither as a threat to the community nor as a flight risk. Claire had her say, but the judge bent his head and examined his robe as she was talking. Patty Jo had been quite personable on the stand and somehow made her unbelievable alibi sound almost plausible. An effective quaver in her voice was the topper.

After the judge’s decision, Patty Jo walked out a relatively free woman. On her way, she paused to shoot a venomous look at Claire.

Claire stayed seated in the courtroom for a few moments after Patty Jo left. She did not want to run into Patty Jo again. She needed to stay calm and focused on finding more evidence against the woman. She also decided she’d better tell Rich to install motion detectors on the house, barn, and driveway. They had been talking for a while about putting them in. No better time than when an arsonist was on the loose. She did not trust Patty Jo Tilde, even if the judge thought she was harmless.

Bridget explained to the older woman why she couldn’t fill the prescription her husband needed. “Your doctor didn’t sign the prescription. It’s against the law for me to fill it for you.”

The older woman looked up over the top of glasses that were sliding down her nose. She was probably in her mid-eighties and totally befuddled. “He’s in the car. I picked him up at the hospital and he needs this medication for tonight.” The woman’s hand shook as she reached for the incomplete prescription. “He had a bad heart attack, you know,” the woman added.

Bridget wanted to walk around the counter and hug the woman, she looked so overwhelmed. She reached out and took the prescription back from the woman. “Why don’t you take your husband home and get him settled? Call me in about an hour. I’ll try to track your doctor down and get a verbal okay on the prescription. It should be fine,” Bridget reassured the woman, trying not to look at the five other customers who were waiting in line. Tracking a doctor down after hours could be rough.

The woman looked up at Bridget. “I don’t know what to do without him. We’ve been married fifty-three years.”

“We’ll get him his medications. Call me.” Bridget handed her a card with the pharmacy’s number on it.

“I’ll call you,” said the woman as she walked off.

Bridget looked down the line of customers and saw that the last one was her husband, Chuck. She was quite sure he didn’t need a prescription filled. What if he was here to create a scene? What if he wanted to buy some condoms from her? She stepped away from the counter long enough to place a page in to the doctor and then took care of the next three customers.

The fourth customer was a teenage girl with a yeast infection. The girl was so embarassed that she was whispering her questions to Bridget. Bridget had to lean close to answer her, had to tell her that it might take a day or two for the itching to stop. The girl nodded.

Bridget added quietly, “Everyone gets yeast infections.”

“Really?” the girl asked.

“Absolutely. Just part of being a woman.”

That appeared to be what the girl needed to hear. She walked out, already looking better. Nice when reassuring someone could be so easy.

“Can I help you?” she asked Chuck. She was glad he was the only customer at the moment.

Chuck smiled at her. He had a way of making her feel that only she could cause him to smile like that. He looked better than when she had last seen him, better rested. “What’re you doing for dinner?”

“Going home.”

The doctor she had paged was on the phone. Bridget asked Chuck to give her a moment. She got the verbal okay on the prescription and went back to Chuck.

“Can we talk?” he asked softly.

Bridget looked back at the pharm tech who was working with her. She hadn’t taken a break yet this afternoon; she could step outside for a few minutes. She’d rather not have a talk with Chuck in the store—who knew what might happen. He had never showed up like this before.

“Give me a minute.” She told the tech that she was going to take a break, took her smock off, and grabbed her purse.

“How about a Coke at the dime store?”

“Sure.” They walked down the street to the old dime store and sat at the fountain. A blond, ponytailed waitress came up with an order pad. Chuck asked for a Coke, and Bridget decided to swing out and have a root beer float. She hadn’t had time for lunch.

“What’s up?” She swiveled on her stool and looked at him.

Chuck leaned on the counter with both elbows and wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I think we should give it another try.”

“Give what another try?”

“You know,” he said.

“No, I don’t.” If he wanted it, he could learn to say it.

“Us.” He turned and looked at her. “All of us. Our family. I think we made a mistake.”

“Which one?”

“What?”

“Which thing was a mistake? Getting married, having a baby, or splitting up?”

“You moving out.”

“Don’t you dare put the blame on me. You left the marriage long before I moved out. You were no father to Rachel.”

The waitress put the Coke and the root beer float down in front of them. Bridget couldn’t believe she had agreed to talk to Chuck. It was going nowhere. She took a sip of her float. Such a nice combination, the snappiness of the pop and the smoothness of the ice cream.

He didn’t flare back at her. Instead he said quite calmly, “I’m not trying to blame anyone.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I’d like to take you out. You and Rachel. Maybe go up to the Mall of America or the zoo or something that families do.”

“I don’t get it. What are you up to?”

Chuck stirred his Coke. “Nothing. I’m not smart enough for that. I just know what I want.”

“That’s the smartest thing in the world—to know what you want. Most people never figure that out.”

He turned to her. “Do you know?”

She had pondered that question every night, alone in bed. “Not anymore.”

Patty Jo had never thought she would be glad to be back at the Tilde farm, but she was. She left her car parked right in front of the house. All she wanted was a bath. Something to eat. Maybe a beer. Then she was going to bed. She hadn’t slept at all last night. The jail cell was cold and the light down the hall never went out.

The house was cold. She hadn’t set the furnace yet. She walked over and turned it on. The noise of it kicking on rose from the basement. It would take a while for the house to warm up. She walked upstairs and started her bath running.

All in all, she felt good about what had happened. When the deputy had caught her by her car, she’d thought it was all over for her. Luckily she had dropped the matches. That made it as if she hadn’t done it. All she needed to do was stick to her guns. Tell her story again and again. Keep it simple. Just happened to be driving by. Stopped on impulse. The fire was already started.

Patty Jo made a peanut butter sandwich after finding an old jar left in the fridge. She fried the sandwich in butter and poured herself a glass of beer to have with it.

Patty Jo knew the court date for the will was coming right up. She didn’t think there was any way they would take away what was rightfully hers. But it had happened to her before.

Patty Jo thought of that deputy going to talk to her sister, Debby. How had that happened? What had Debby told her?

When she had been an only child, her parents had given her everything. And then the new baby came. She was supplanted. After that she was never good enough, always second best to her little sister. She remembered her mother telling her, “You’re special. We chose you to come and live with us.” Then why did Debby get everything that Patty Jo had ever wanted—all their love?

Patty Jo left the sandwich crust on the plate and pushed it away but finished the beer.

When she was done, she went to her special drawer and pulled out her pack of cigarettes. After a meal had always been her favorite time to smoke. But she couldn’t find any matches. She knew she had left some with her cigarettes. The cops must have taken them. Damn! How awful to think they had been all through the house. What else would she find missing?

Patty Jo turned on the gas burner on the stove and rolled the tip of her cigarette around in it until it glowed red. She wasn’t going outside this time. She was sitting right at the table and smoking in the house. She had thought of taking up smoking again but decided that persuading her to quit was one of the good things Walter had done for her. She knew it was better for her, she’d live longer, and she was ready to enjoy her new life.

Margaret, Debby. They could have their stinky little lives. She was going to move on to bigger and better things. But there was one person she needed to take care of before she left.

CHAPTER 22

Clouds were stuffed into a dreary, lumpy sky. Margaret stared out the car window while Mark drove her to Durand. They weren’t talking.

She looked down at her dress, a printed cotton shift. She had put on a sweater over it. That way, if she had a hot flash, she could pull the sweater off. Her purse sat in her lap with her hands folded over it. Her lips, she could tell, were drawn into a tight line. She was nervous and tired. She wanted to be at home milking the goats, anything rather than on her way to Durand.

She didn’t understand why they couldn’t just tell her the verdict over the phone, but her lawyer said she had to come down to the courthouse. He claimed she had to be there to sign some papers. She hadn’t really wanted Mark to go with her, but she hated to go by herself. In the end, she had agreed to him coming along. She was worried that he would get so angry again. Who knew what he might do?

Mark had turned into someone she didn’t know. Maybe menopause was catching. Maybe Mark was so deeply linked to her that he was going through it too. What scared her the most was that she found herself contemplating horrible things to do to Patty Jo if the older woman won the case. And if her mind was going in that direction, she hated to imagine what Mark was thinking of.

They drove into Durand and turned up the hill to go to the county government center. Although she had visited the Farm Bureau there, she had never gone to the courtrooms or sheriff’s department.

Walking into the courtroom, she was reminded of a small chapel. All the seats were wooden benches like pews in a church. The desk the judge sat behind was like an altar and his chair like the throne of a priest. To continue the religious theme then, Patty Jo was the penitent. But, of course, she wasn’t penitent. She looked bored, like she had no reason to be there.

The clerk of the court called their case. Margaret kept having visions of this as a religious ceremony; she saw the clerk as the acolyte announcing the readings. The judge looked up and said he had reviewed everything. With his flowing dark robes, he was like a pastor. She was afraid of his sermon.

He called Patty Jo and Margaret up to stand before him. Margaret had a bad feeling. He was an older judge.

“I’d like to ask you some questions,” he said to Margaret, his eyes on her.

His stare convinced Margaret that things were not going to go her way. In his voice was a reprimand. He was going to teach her a lesson.

“You were told of the changes in your father’s new will?”

“Yes, after he died. I didn’t know he had changed it before then.”

“Your father died of a stroke. Is that right?”

“Yes, your honor.”

“At the time of this will, he was of sound mind?”

“The will is dated before his first stroke, so yes, he was.”

“This will was legally drawn up?”

“I don’t know. I assume it was.”

“So I don’t understand what we’re doing here. Why have you questioned your father’s will?”

Margaret thought of not answering his question. She didn’t think he really wanted to know why. But then she decided to have her say. She had already lost, she knew, but maybe saying it out loud in a court of law would make her feel better.

“My father loved me. I know that for a fact. I am his only child. We were very close. He always told me I would get his farm. He told Mark, my husband, that we would get it. We had planned on it for years. Mark called it our social security, our IRA. My dad never told me he had changed his will. My relationship with my father was always good until Patty Jo came along.”

Margaret tried to think how much she could say. Her suspicions might get her in trouble. “I think Patty Jo had some kind of hold over my father. She kept him away from me, not even letting him come and have dinner with us anymore. I wouldn’t put anything past her. Don’t get me wrong—I expected my father to leave Patty Jo something in his will. But I can’t believe he didn’t leave me the farm.”

Margaret’s voice started to crack. She was on the verge of tears, but she kept talking. “Don’t you see? She doesn’t even want the farm. She’s left the crops to rot in the fields. My father would have hated that. She’s just going to sell it. She’s a horrible woman. She doesn’t deserve to have the farm.”

The judge sat with his head dropped, his chin doubling up underneath. Margaret wondered if he had dozed off. Then he lifted his head. After a moment of consideration, he said, “The law is not about determining who most deserves the farm. It’s about determining who has inherited the farm. And I’m afraid that seems very clear in this case. If you could bring to the court any evidence that your father was coerced into changing his will, I would entertain this petition, but as it stands, I feel you have wasted all of our time.”

He turned to Patty Jo. “I’m sorry that this has held you up. I do find the will valid, and you are assigned as executor and claimant of the estate of Walter Tilde.”

Margaret couldn’t help saying one last thing. “My father loved me.”

Patty Jo turned to Margaret for the first time since entering the courtroom. She said, “He loved me more.”

The dwarf Nigerian baby goat Claire was holding in her arms was about the size of a cat. She had stopped by the Underwoods’ to pick up more of their feta cheese and to see how Margaret was doing after the court decision went against her. Claire ended up holding a three-day-old baby goat, a bundle of legs wrapped in coarse black and white fur.

The baby goat was an accident, Margaret explained. “They’re not supposed to be born in the fall. The stud goat got out of its enclosure and impregnated the nanny out of season.

“This has never happened to us before. The mother goat isn’t being very motherly, and I’m stuck bottle-feeding this little one. With winter coming on, I’ll have to keep it in the house with us. The timing is bad.”

Claire stroked the wiry hair of the small animal and felt herself falling in love. It snuggled into the crook of her arm, nosing its way in until its head was hidden. Then it fell asleep.

“I’m sorry about the will,” Claire said, watching Margaret.

The woman never seemed to sit still. Whenever Claire was at her house, Margaret was working on something: dinner, dishes, darning. At the moment she was canning, putting up a few more quarts of spiced apples. It was one of the many activities Claire had sworn she would learn when she moved to Fort St. Antoine, but she never seemed to have the time.

Margaret leaned against the stove and pushed her hair out of her face with her forearm. “I’m glad it’s over. I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

“We can’t prove Patty Jo started your fire.”

“I know. I’ve accepted that too. She’ll sell the farm and leave. We’ll be done with her. She’s destroyed my family and I hate her for it, but she’ll be gone and I’ll still have my own good life.”

Claire couldn’t believe what she found herself saying next. “I hate her too. She’s the most evil woman I’ve ever met.”

Margaret closed her eyes and then, after a long moment, opened them with relief. “Oh, God, thank you for saying that. It helps to not feel so alone in all this. She
is
evil, isn’t she? There’s no other way to put it.”

Margaret walked over to the table and sank down into a chair. “I think she had this all planned out from the moment she met my parents. She saw my mom was getting sick with Alzheimer’s and figured she wouldn’t be long in the picture, and then she married my dad, who she knew wasn’t in good health either. She knew he was a wealthy farmer. She wanted it all for herself. And she got it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know how you fight evil like that. All I can think is that you live your own life the best you can. Who would want Patty Jo’s life? Who would want to be her? Isn’t that it’s own best punishment?”

“It might be, but since she doesn’t have a conscience, she never feels guilty about what she’s done.”

“No, but she’s mired in her own yuck.”

“Who’s mired?” Mark walked in.

Claire didn’t think Mark looked good: bloodshot eyes, hair overgrown, dark look on his face.

“Patty Jo. We’re talking about how evil she is,” Margaret explained as Mark walked over to the stove and sniffed the bubbling apples.

He spoke so loudly he nearly growled. “Evil? I don’t know about that. She thinks none of the laws we live by apply to her. She should be wiped off the face of the earth.”

The baby goat lifted its head up at the sound of the raised voice. Claire stroked the coarse hair on its nose.

“Mark,” Margaret said, disapproval in her voice.

Mark wiped his face. “I’m sorry. But she’s a menace. Someone needs to do something about her.”

When Claire walked into Lakeview Manor she found Beatrice sitting on a bench by the front door.

“Good to see you up and about,” Claire said.

Beatrice turned her head slowly and looked up at Claire with a bit of disdain. “Don’t do that to me, Claire. Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”

Claire was amazed how much Beatrice’s verbal abilities had improved since she’d come to the nursing home. The sharp tongue she was known for had returned.

She sat on the bench beside Beatrice. Might as well get on her level. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to talk to you like a child. I
am
glad you are up and about.”

“They make me.”

“Don’t you want to get up?”

“Not always. You know, when I lived on my own, sometimes I stayed in bed for part of the morning, just thinking and reading. I enjoyed it.”

Claire had moments when she really liked the old woman. She wished those moments would last longer. “That does sound nice.”

“Why are you here?”

“Well, I wanted to see if you had given the invitation to go to Edwin and Ella’s wedding some thought.”

“I don’t know these people.”

Claire bit her tongue for a moment. Beatrice had lived in Fort St. Antoine for over forty years before moving to Rochester ten years ago. “You do know them. You knew them from when you lived here.”

“But not very well. Just to say hi.”

“Meg would love it if you came. We would all love it.”

Claire watched Beatrice think about it. Finally the older woman raised her head and said, “But I don’t have anything to wear.”

“Before the wedding you and I can drive over to your apartment and get you some more clothes.”

Beatrice nodded. “I’d like that.”

Claire spent half an hour with Beatrice, walking the halls, since it was cold outside, and then going back to her room and trying to fit a few more puzzle pieces together from the thousand-piece puzzle that Meg had brought her. It was a picture of horses, one of Meg’s many favorite animals.

As they were sitting close together, working the puzzle, Patty Jo Tilde walked by. She stopped and said hello to Beatrice.

Beatrice said, “Hello, Patty Jo. Are you feeling lucky today?”

Patty Jo glanced at Claire, then said, “I’m on a roll,” and walked away.

Claire stiffened. “How do you know her?”

“Oh, she plays bingo with us. A good woman. Her husband just died here recently. She took such good care of him. Visited him every day.”

Claire didn’t want to tell Beatrice all she knew of this “good woman,” but she felt she should warn her. “I would watch her, Beatrice.”