Witch Cradle (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

If Rose Falk was alive to sign a land sale contract on August sixteenth, but was too dead to attend her aunt's birthday party the next day—a day her husband was off shipping cement mixers to New York City—that husband could hardly be responsible for her death.

But if not Teddy, who? Especially if the motive was Rose's affair with…whoever the hell he was. Would that affair have provoked a jealous rage in someone other than her husband? Orville Pelto? Even Eban Vogel? A wronged wife? Or could the murderer been acting out of compassion for the wronged husband? Eban Vogel again.

That Rose Falk might have indulged in some dalliance didn't seem to come as a great shock to those who knew her. Any disbelief stemmed from the notion that she'd had a willing partner. Teddy married her because he was sorry for her. Mia was of the opinion that she might have been vulnerable to anyone who paid attention to her. Irene Touminen said she was an embarrassing flirt, but couldn't believe she'd attracted an actual fella, and her brother thought she'd have made a good match for Earl Culver. Erik Pelto referred to Rose's clock-stopping face. On the other hand, she left his father sweaty, Mark Guibard had gone all misty-eyed with recollection, and somebody had wound up in that cistern with her—without his clothes. And without his head.

McIntire looked out the window. The weather had warmed and brought a light fog that veiled the sun and left the fences and electric wires furred with frost.

Leonie stood by the mailbox, studying an unopened envelope. When she started up the driveway, McIntire turned back to
Gösta Berling
, managing, he hoped, to look completely engrossed by the time she scuffed her feet on the mat in the porch.

“Look at this!” She tossed the only mail she carried, the latest edition of the
Monitor
, on the table.
Communist Finn Jailed in
Chandler!
was accompanied by a misty photograph showing a group of youngsters gathered on a lakeshore. At their center, a young man who—according to the caption—was thirteen-year-old Erik Pelto, waved the hammer and sickle flag of the U.S.S.R.

“Where do you suppose Beckman got that?” McIntire wondered.

The article detailed Erik Pelto's childhood traveling the country with his labor activist father, his summers spent at communist youth camps, and finished up with a mention of his adult membership in the U.S. Communist Party.

“How ever did that man manage to find a job teaching school?”

“He had a certificate from the state of Michigan, and he was willing to work for peanuts and act as janitor and general factotum. I expect that put him way ahead of any other candidates. If there were any. He seems to be a perfectly fine teacher,” McIntire said.

“Do you think Mr. Lindstrom is right? There might be more of them around? Perhaps we should be paying more attention to what goes on.”

“You could get in touch with Fratelli. He's still looking for that spy. He might take you on.”

“It's not something to make fun of.”

It wasn't. Erik Pelto had two young children and a wife who were going to have a very bad time of it, something Leonie, surprisingly, seemed not to remember. McIntire closed his book. “The Finns who settled here were involved in the labor unions and socialist movements. Some were communists. It pretty much fizzled in the thirties. They aren't plotting to overthrow the government, and, so far as I know, they never were.”

“You weren't here in the thirties,” Leonie reminded him. “And you weren't here in the twenties or forties either. How could you know? They wouldn't have been writing you to let you know what they planned.” She pulled the paper closer to scrutinize the photograph. “Mr. Radosovich wraps the fish in that Russian newspaper.”

“It's not Russian. It's Serbian or Yugoslavian. He subscribes to it because it's the only language he can read.” The paper did have a left-leaning element. McIntire hoped Chandler's grocer wouldn't end up bunking in with Erik Pelto. Fortunately Fratelli wouldn't be likely to be cooking any fish in his Marquette hotel room.

What was showing signs of turning into the first real quarrel for McIntire and his wife was nipped in the bud by a rap at the door. Uno Touminen stood on the steps. He gave a polite nod. “It's that asshole Thorsen,” he said. “He's really done it this time. You got a crowbar?” While McIntire grabbed his coat, he added, “You got a camera?”

***

What the asshole had done was put his much-abused Dodge into reverse when he intended third gear, sending it into a swandive through the rail on the Slate Creek bridge to ricochet off a fallen beech tree and belly-flop neatly onto a Frigidaire-sized boulder. There it sat rocking slightly, its three remaining wheels rotating gently in the breeze.

Nick waved from the driver's seat. McIntire snapped his photo and grappled with a major moral dilemma. Sell to Clayton Beckman and possibly win the Pulitzer prize, or turn it over to his wife. Well, she'd provided the camera.

They turned to the task of extracting Thorsen from his cockpit. It proved not to be a simple one. Getting leverage sufficient to pry open the crushed door while maintaining footing on a frozen, rock-strewn streambed was a challenge that McIntire was glad to let Uno tackle. Well, he'd provided the crowbar.

By the time Nick made the five-foot drop to the ice, they'd attracted a small but appreciative audience. Small in both number and stature. A pair of girls, rag-dolls in too large trousers and too small coats, stared from the roadside. Shouldn't they be in school? Apparently so. When McIntire turned in their direction they sprinted off as fast as their scarecrow-clothing would allow.

Nick had been luckier than Mia. The escapade appeared to have resulted in nothing more than a stiff neck. His pride was long past being vulnerable to injury. He stood with his hands dangling limp at his sides and looked with sadness at the impaled vehicle.

“How the hell am I gonna get her off?”

“A couple gallons of Phillips 66 and a match.” Uno huffed in disgust and stalked back to his pickup, leaving McIntire to return Thorsen to his wife. It was a delivery he didn't intend to rush. Nick probably had insights into Eban Vogel's character and habits that had escaped his worshipful daughter, and McIntire welcomed the chance to pump him a little without Mia's interference.

“You'd better come back with me and warm up.”

“I ain't cold.”

“Well,” McIntire struggled, “I didn't tell Leonie where I was going. I need to stop and let her know before I take you home.”

Nick gave a condescending
Just how in hell hen-pecked are you?
smile but didn't argue. He was not likely to be in a hurry to face his own wife.

Leonie McIntire gave Nick all the sympathy he could have wished for and a slice of ginger cake with his tea. McIntire would have preferred to ply him with a more potent warmer-upper, but didn't know if Nick's illness precluded alcohol. It would undoubtedly take more than Parkinson's Disease to put Nick Thorsen on the wagon, but best not to offer. He realized that he'd never before spoken to Nick without Mia present. Mia might not be getting in the way now, but Thorsen wasn't going to be all that forthcoming with Leonie hovering over him.

“Dear,” he said, “I think it may be time for your radio program.”

Leonie stared for a moment. “Oh, thanks awfully, Darling. I really believe it is. Won't you both excuse me?”

McIntire decided to abandon subtlety with Nick also. “What do you think your father-in-law was up to, burying that money, not saying a thing?”

“I couldn't say, but I think he had a damn good idea Rosie Falk wasn't going to come looking for it.”

“You think he knew Rose was dead?”

The spoon in Thorsen's hand trembled and he put it on the table. “Mia has always thought the sun rose from one of her father's pockets and set in the other. Papa Thorsen was an okay guy, but he wasn't any more perfect than the rest of us. Less perfect than you, that's for sure.”

What the hell did that mean? “In what way? Are you saying he
could
have been involved in these deaths?”

“Shit no. I'm just saying he wasn't the saint Mia makes him out to be.”

McIntire waited while Nick gripped his cup with both hands, raised it to his lips, and returned it deliberately to the saucer.

“When we got married, I wasn't crazy about the plan to move in with my father-in-law. He scared the hell out of me. But Mia was just a kid, and her mother had died, and it's not like there wasn't plenty of room in the house. It's too damn big now, but then we didn't know there'd never be more than just us two.” He picked up the spoon and looked at it like he'd never seen such an implement. McIntire retrieved a fork from the drawer and handed it to him. He grunted, stabbed at the cake, and went on with his story. “Anyway, it worked out all right. I spent most of my time in the car, and Eban spent his in his workshop, and we got along fine. I miss him.” He sighed. “Especially when I look at the paint peeling off the barn.”

“But he wasn't perfect,” McIntire prompted.

“Who is? He kept a lot to himself. We didn't even know he was sick until a couple weeks before he died.” He swallowed the last of the cake. “I can't fault him for that.”

Nick would die by inches in plain sight of all.

“He wouldn't let Mia clean his room or anything. Liked his privacy.”

Was Thorsen ever going to get to the crux of this imperfection?

“Eban was still a pretty young man when Mia's mother died. He didn't seem to have any interest in getting married again, but that doesn't mean he wasn't interested in women. He used to take off to buy wood regular as clockwork, twice a month. Half the time he came back empty handed, but in an improved state of mind, if you know what I mean. There was a woman in Sidnaw he went to for years. But he might not have traveled so far if he didn't have to.”

If Eban Vogel had been in the habit of visiting ladies of questionable virtue, that was mildly intriguing, but didn't have much to do with Rosie Falk. Unless the enigmatic Mrs. Falk had yet another side to her personality. “You're not saying that Rose Falk was making a little pocket money in the afternoons?”

“Hell, no. Rosie didn't charge.” Nick gave a deprecating humph. “She couldn't have brought in a hell of a lot. But she was the friendly sort, you might say, and not everybody can afford to be choosy.”

Not a problem that plagued Nick, apparently.

“Teddy was gone overnight now and then. He had parents down in the Lower Peninsula and a brother somewhere that he went to see. And like I said, Rosie was the friendly sort. I ain't saying that Eban was one of those friends,” he went on, “but he did go over to help out with the chores now and then when Ted was away.”

“That hardly seems criminal,” McIntire said. “He and Ted were good friends. I'd never have pegged Eban as the kind of man to fool around with a friend's wife.”

“Me either. But who knows? He was a secretive old bugger, and he was one of those people that can convince themselves that whatever they do is fine and dandy. You know what I mean?”

McIntire did know.

Nick massaged his shoulder as he continued, “I can only see it two ways, either Eban deliberately stole money from Rose Falk, or he knew she was dead and didn't need it. I can't believe he'd have stolen it. Shit, if he did, why didn't he spend it? If he knew she was dead, it can only be that he killed her himself, or he knew who did it and was protecting him. Or maybe he just
thought
he knew who did it and was protecting him.”

“How do you figure?”

“Say what Teddy tells us is true, that he came over and told Eban that his wife had run off with another man, and gave him some money. But say Eban found out some way that Rose was dead, and that she had some guy on the side. He might have figured Teddy did it, and if I know Eban, he'd have kept his mouth shut.”

Nick's extra time for thinking was turning him into a regular genius.

“Have you mentioned this to Mia?”

“Sure. That Eban might have been protecting Teddy, that is, not about her old man and his whores. But….”

“What?”

“I don't remember Teddy Falk coming over to give Eban any money. But then I get up and out early. He could have come after I'd already gone on the route. I do remember Teddy coming to see Eban not long before he was going to leave. Eban was dead set against the whole idea and the two of them had one hell of a row over it.”

“You think it had something to do with Rose leaving?”

“It had to do with them both leaving. Eban thought they were idiots to do it. He was right. Far as I knew, that was the last time Eban and Teddy Falk saw each other. Ted's story about trotting over with a fistful of money a few days later is pretty damn hard to swallow.”

“But his plans had supposedly changed by that time. He wasn't going to go after all. At least not to Karelia.”

“Well…ya. I guess that's right.”

“Back to Rose. From what you're saying, the man in the well, who was definitely not Eban Vogel, could be almost anybody.”

“Had to be somebody who could die without people noticing.”

“But Rose was the kind that fooled around?”

“I don't know if she did, but she gave a damn good impression that she
would
if she had half a chance.” Nick massaged the fingers of his left hand. “You can see why she might…I guess she just wanted to prove she was as good as anybody else.”

“Why wouldn't she be?”

Nick looked up. “Didn't you know her?”

“No, I don't think so.”