See Also Murder (22 page)

The distance from the church came with regrets in certain times, especially when the triumph of good over evil, light over dark, or an invisible savior's gentle touch was in serious demand for the hope of some kind of comfort. Unfortunately, my faith had suffered through a deep drought even before Hank's accident, and the roots of it had never recovered, mostly since the loss of my parents. I had a hard time believing that they were dancing on streets paved of gold, out of sight, up in the clouds joyfully while I was still down here on earth all alone, missing their voices, their direction, their constant presence, especially when a killer was lurking about and slashing peoples' throats.

I'd read far too many books to be able to tell one story apart from the other, which put me on par with most of the academics in town if the truth was to be told. I wasn't quite an atheist, but I was as close to a godless heathen as one could be—and the events of late were doing nothing to change my mind.

I started the truck, checked myself one last time in the rearview mirror, then put the truck in gear. I wanted to be presentable. That hadn't been lost.

There was no avoiding what I had to do, and no avoiding leaving the farm, but that didn't mean that I was looking forward to walking in Hilo Jenkins' front door. I had no choice. I
had
to go to Hilo and Ardith's home on this grim evening. It was the right thing to do.

It didn't take long to arrive at Hilo's house—about ten minutes as the crow flew, fifteen by the road without regard to a speed limit. I slowed about half a mile away to gather myself.

I had to resist the urge to keep on driving, to be just one more truck in the long parade of gawkers on the tour of death. But I couldn't do that. I had to stop, I had to pay my respects to Ardith, to Hilo. I just hoped I could leave my guilt in the truck.

I would forever think it was my fault that Ardith Jenkins had been murdered behind our barn—that it should have been me there, instead of her.

Me there, instead of her.

I trembled at the thought, geared down the Studebaker, and pulled onto the drive that led up to Hilo's house.

A deputy stood beside a brown and tan police car, a familiar Ford, and he waved me through without asking me to stop. It was Guy Reinhardt.

I had to wonder if he'd had any sleep since I'd seen him last, but that wasn't my concern. I didn't stop, just kept on driving with a weak return of a wave of my own, but I watched him disappear in the rearview mirror. He stood stiff and watched after me, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

Guy made me uncomfortable in a way I hadn't felt in a while— not a threatened way but a female way, a distant tingle that suggested betrayal and need. I ignored it the best I could.

The drive was a half-mile stretch that curved up a slight rise, announcing a change in elevation. It was not unusual for the land to roll into a hill, especially when there was a river close, but the incline was unexpected for the most part. At least for me. Our land was as flat as the bottom of a skillet, and there was no need to worry about what was around the next bend of the road, or over the top of a rise. Everything was open, easily seen—with the exception of the shadows behind the barns. Recently, the land had betrayed me more than I ever thought possible, and I dropped the transmission into first gear to climb the hill, nervous that I'd come grill-to-grill with another truck. Or something worse.

I didn't know the drive to Hilo's house as well as I knew the Knudsens' drive or my own. Visits to the sheriff 's house were rare. Hilo came to see us, even when Hank was at his best, standing on two feet, itching to get out into the field to hunt or work. I could hardly remember the last time I was at Hilo's house. I thought it had been to drop something off for Ardith, and then we'd stood on the porch. An invitation inside had never come.

I crested the rise and thankfully found myself on flat land again. A football field's worth of cars and trucks met my vision. I was glad I was in first gear. It looked like everyone who had driven by my house had ended up at Hilo's.

I parked next to a green Ford pickup, straightened my hair one last time, and made my way to the house carrying holiday treats on the saddest day of the year.

CHAPTER 25

Most of the women who populated my life had flour behind their ears, not Chanel No. 5, but Hilo's house smelled of sweet perfume, musty stale bread, and cigarette smoke.

Upon entering the front door, it was immediately apparent why Ardith hadn't invited me inside on that long-ago visit: She was embarrassed, or didn't want me to see how she and Hilo really lived.

Beyond all of the hovering mourners, the house was a wreck: a lifetime collection of newspapers, magazines, skeins of embroidery floss, and knickknacks of all kinds were stuffed wherever they would fit, or left where they were last touched. There wasn't a clear spot on the surface of any shelf or table or anywhere in the room that I could see. Ardith Jenkins was no housekeeper, and the idea of maintenance or upkeep seemed as foreign as a rag devoted to wiping away dust to her.

Honestly, I was taken aback by the deteriorated state of the house. As my eyes scanned the front room, my mind tried to categorize everything that I was seeing, but it was impossible to think, even more difficult than it was to breathe.

It had never occurred to me that Hilo and Ardith lived in such a way, that she wasn't tidy and organized. I was foolish to think that everyone was like me, but the two of them always presented themselves as clean and pressed, though Hilo could look a little rumpled in his uniform—the same uniform he wore day after day. I couldn't remember seeing him dressed in anything else now that I thought about it. But I hadn't expected to see him dressed any other way. He was the sheriff, after all, and his daily wear of the uniform fulfilled my expectations. So did Ardith. She always wore a simple dress, usually flowered in one way or another, but subtle, beautiful in its simplicity. I guess the truth was you didn't know people as well as you thought you did, no matter how many years you'd spent in each other's company.

I had to wonder what else I didn't know, but pushed away that curiosity as soon as it crossed my mind. Maybe I didn't want to know. Just like I could have lived the rest of my life without knowing that Hilo and Ardith had lived like pack rats.

The house was small, most likely four rooms: the front room, two bedrooms, and a kitchen in the back—the standard floor plan for an early twentieth-century North Dakota farmhouse. Along with the lifetime collection of stuff and lack of organization, there were people everywhere: people I recognized from town, from church, and people I couldn't recall ever seeing before.

I stood in the doorway dumbfounded, lost, akin to what Alice must've felt like when she first tumbled down that rabbit hole. I worried that I would encounter the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts, especially when a voice came to my ear. “The food goes in the kitchen, honey,” a woman to my right said.

She was tall, leggy, with even taller blond hair, of the likes I'd hardly ever seen before. She looked glittery, polished from head to toe in a bright store-bought orange dress, a big city girl suddenly transplanted into the country directing funeral food. She looked like an expensive lawyer's secretary. It was her perfume that had accosted my nose when I had walked in the door. I preferred the smell of pig shit to Chanel No. 5 to be honest.

I didn't budge. “Do you know where Hilo is?” I asked.

The woman stared down her nose at me with a look that needed slapped off her face. Fortunately, my hands were full.

I was not an idiot for asking the question—which was what her haughty expression voiced silently. I'd come to deliver food and to see Hilo, and that's what I was going to do. I had left Hank once again, and I was worried beyond description about what I would find when I returned home. But here I stood. “I have business to discuss with Hilo,” I said with a harsher tone than I'd intended.

“Today's a bad day for that, honey.”

“Do tell.”

My response flustered the woman even more. She shook her head and looked to the ceiling, exasperated. “Hamish told me to direct food to the kitchen, and that's all I know.”

That explained it. She was Hamish Martin's latest go-to girl. The insurance salesman traded in secretaries as often as he traded in convertibles. Once he put a little mileage on them, dinged up their fenders, and eyed a newer, shinier model, they were history. I'd never seen this one before. But we'd stopped buying insurance from Hamish Martin eons ago, after a policy he sold us refused to pay out for some hail damage we'd suffered, so I'd lost track of his conquests a long time ago.

“Thanks,” I said, eyeing a path to the kitchen. It was going to be a bump-and-shove journey through all of the people, but the decaying smell of the room, and the realization of where I was and why, was starting to overwhelm me more than I suspected being inside Hilo and Ardith's house ever would.

I said nothing more to the secretary, didn't like her anyway, and pushed my way through the front room, excusing myself as I went.

A soft apology went a long way—if it was heard. The room was as loud as a tavern on a Saturday night. Not that I had much experience with that, but Hilo's front room
was
how I imagined it to be.

I had to wonder if Herbert Frakes was there. Everybody else from town was. Though I hadn't seen Calla, either. I really hadn't expected to see the pair from the library, but it would've been nice to have had the comfort of one of my friends, even though she was annoyed with me for upsetting Herbert. Circumstances had a way of washing away anger. It would've been nice to sneak a cigarette with Calla, but that didn't look like it was going to happen, either.

The kitchen was no more organized, cleaner, or emptier of people than the front room was. The counters were cluttered with tuna-and-noodle hot dishes, platters of fried chicken, cakes, and pies—enough food to feed Hilo for the next twenty-five years. It was a smorgasbord of grief.

On a good day, the kitchen could've handled two or three women accustomed to a ballet of handling pots and pans, frying, boiling, and ultimately cleaning, but to be honest, I couldn't count all of the bodies—mostly men—in the kitchen. It was so foggy with cigarette smoke that I could hardly smell anything else. That might've been a gift, but my lungs didn't seem to think so. I felt like a gasping fish trapped in a shrinking mud hole.

I stopped again, elbow-to-elbow and knee-to-knee with strangers. I didn't know what to do with the lefse and potato sausage, so I sat it on top of a closed sheet cake and wiggled away toward the back door to get a breath of fresh air.

“Excuse me. Hello. Excuse me.” A few feigned smiles, and I was outside.

The back porch held two old washing machines, a rusted stove that looked like it was home to a family of raccoons, and another group of men I didn't recognize. After standing and listening for a second, I realized that they were all deputies from other counties. I was surrounded by police officers. That made me feel better and I could breathe again, but they were all smoking, too. Or seemed to be.

I took another deep breath and stared out over Hilo's backyard, glad to be free of the food I'd brought, and even happier to be left alone for a moment. A few of the men doffed their hats, offered a restrained, “Ma'am,” then went back to their muted and private conversations.

The land at the back of the house sloped down into a dense line of trees—a few willows, sycamores, and oaks—which explained the presence of the coon nest in the stove. The river cut through the north side of the property, allowing for a yard free of a gopher town but home to other critters that most people didn't have to deal with.

The wind had kept up steadily without any hint that it was going away any time soon, and the sun had traversed down behind us. Delicate pink fingers stretched out overhead, gentle clouds that offered no threat and only reflected the setting sun—no rain, no storm, just the promise of more calm weather. It was a perfect evening for a picnic, or to work late tuning up the combine if that task was required.

I was about to turn back around and go into the house and try to find Hilo, but I spied him walking the tree line away from the house, alone, about fifty yards off.

I clutched my purse tight, thought about taking off my heels to hurry after him, but decided against running barefoot across the unknown yard in my good dress and headed off the porch in pursuit of the sheriff as quickly and carefully as I could.

Hilo turned when I was halfway to him and stopped. I was glad of that. The grass was moist, slippery against my smooth flat soles that hit the ground with purpose, but with very little purchase, even with the heels. I was afraid I was going to tumble the rest of the way down the slope and find my very own rabbit hole.

“I thought that was you, Marjorie,” Hilo said. He was still dressed in his uniform: dark brown shirt and dark brown pants with an even darker stripe up the side, wrinkled, of course. But it was easy to notice, even in the declining light, that there was something missing. The five-pointed star that was forever pinned over Hilo's heart was gone. The only thing that was there now was a small empty hole, tattered around the edges. I restrained myself from saying anything about the missing badge.