Harvest of Bones (17 page)

Then she remembered Emily, watching her read the letter. “A letter from Dad?” she’d said with an insinuating little smile.

How much do we sacrifice for our children?

Tim was smiling at her, waving as he revved up the John Deere. “Better keep old Zelda in the barn till we get the fence fixed.” Joey waved, too, important beside him in the bucket seat.
Feeling
important, she could tell. Nice. Nice for Joey. A person needed to feel important, to be needed. But she was, wasn’t she—by her children?

She ran back to the barn to check on Zelda. A moment later, Kevin Crowningshield appeared; he’d been waiting for her in his car. He seated himself on an upside-down pail, the toes of his shiny shoes pointed up to avoid a pile of dung. “I need to talk, Ruth. I need your ear. I.…” He didn’t finish; apparently, he was too distraught. He buried his face in his hands.

She waited. Zelda was lunging in her stall, battering her head against the stanchion bar. “Serves you right,” she said. “Oh, not you, Kevin,” she added when he looked up. “I was talking to my cow. She’s broken through the fence again.”

He had seen her, he said listlessly. “In the Flint barn. She made a shambles of that, too.”

She waited, leaned against a splintery beam; she felt Zelda’s warm breath on her back, now and then a thump where the old girl was butting at her. Mad as she was at the cow, she felt a certain affinity—that lust for open spaces.

“The police have been back,” he said, looking hard at her, spacing his words, halting between them as though searching for the right ones to explain his troubles. “Asking questions, going over and over the same ground. Not accusing exactly—they’ve no direct evidence. But it’s clear what they think. They’re at that healing center now. My God, all I did was send a box of chocolate-covered cherries—Angie’s favorite. And they think I poisoned her? My own wife!”

She could hear his quick breathing. “I’m sorry …I’m sorry. I don’t mean to break down. It’s all this—everything.” He waved his arms in a wide arc. “Everything that’s been going on. Her not wanting to see me. Her pain, her death. When I’ve .…”

He was out of words. He looked pathetic, without defenses. It was almost as if it was her problem, too: as if it was Pete who had died—and someone blaming her. She was suddenly outraged. Zelda gave a bellow and lunged at the bar, banging and banging her head as though in penance. “Sorry, old girl, sorry,” Ruth said.

She took Kevin’s arm. Led him, unprotesting, out of the barn, up to the house.

“All right,” she said, settling down in a kitchen chair, “let’s talk. Don’t think I haven’t worried—since we found out about the poison. But they’re just grasping at straws—anything. Look, Kevin,” she began, then got up to pour coffee. She couldn’t sit still anymore, it seemed; the coffee might help to get his story out. “You’ve got to tell me everything. Angie was there at that place for a reason. Or what she thought was a good reason. Maybe I can help you. I mean, I’ll try. If you’re completely honest with me.”

He looked affronted. His voice rose a decible. “What else can I be? Why else am I here?”

“Then tell me about Angie. You and Angie. Your life together.”

He cupped the mug she offered in both his hands, rotated his neck inside the confining collar. He was wearing a blue-striped shirt with a stain on the sleeve. His eyes were a muddy brown; there was a grayish stubble on his chin, as though he hadn’t given a thought to shaving, to appearance. His shoulders slumped, making him look wholly vulnerable. She had an impulse to put her hands on his shoulders, to steady him. But, hearing the grind of the John Deere returning to the barn, she held back.

“We got along, so that’s what I don’t understand about all this. She was such a giving woman. If I said, ‘Let’s go to a movie tonight,’ she was ready, even if she was in the middle of a new design. That was the one thing she insisted on, in spite of my misgivings: her jewelry. And I let her do it. I did. I couldn’t give up my room for it, my study, because that was my work. I’m an investor, you see, and I work mostly out of my house. I wanted to be near Angie, knowing her health problem. I didn’t want her alone in the house. I... well, I have a lot of equipment: PC—I’m on-line; fax, files, endless files. You know. I was with a Chicago firm at one point, but I gave that up for Angie—I’d be away too often. I wanted us together.”

“Where did she do her jewelry, her designs?”

“In the basement. I gave her the full run of it; I gave up my workshop, or most of it. She didn’t mind I kept a few tools about. We shared some of them.”

She waited while he thought what to say next; sat down across from him. Her brain was muddled today, with the Healing House crisis, problems with Zelda, and now this suspicion of murder. Poor Kevin! It was hard to concentrate fully, ask the right questions. She was more farmer than sleuth. Definitely.

When he didn’t speak, she asked about the design on the Healing House sign, wondering if it had come from Angie. She didn’t mention the ring on the skeleton’s finger, a finger that forensics had found matched the “Flint Farm Skeleton,” as the police called it. To Colm, it was simply “dem bones.” Oh, that Colm.

Kevin looked blank. “I don’t know about that. I don’t recall a design like that. A bone crossed with an arrow? Definitely odd. But then, I didn’t always look at her designs.”

“She didn’t show them to you?”

“Well, in the beginning perhaps. After a while, she discovered how obtuse I am.” He gave a short laugh. “I mean, I’m not an artsy type, I’m afraid.” He spooned a second helping of sugar into his coffee, sipped it. “She was so willing, so ready to drop everything for me. I like to go out for dinner, you know; it’s one of my pleasures. The right place, the right meal. And she’d always come, though she was vegetarian. I used to kid her, call her ‘the Tofu Kid.’ She’d always find something to eat, though—an omelette, or pasta.”

“They don’t serve tofu in the best restaurants.”

He smiled at the obvious. “Anyway. She’d come. She’d dress up. I felt... well, good. Sipping wine out of a thin-cut glass—I do appreciate that sort of thing. A beautiful, well-dressed woman at my side. Makes a man feel . . . well, you know.”

Ruth wasn’t sure she did know. She imagined herself that woman. What would she wear? Boots and a jean skirt—her only dress-up clothes? Though Pete must have encountered the problem down in New York. Did that woman pick out his clothes? Pete was never a dresser. It wouldn’t be easy for him down in that city, a seventh-generation Vermonter. There would be problems he wasn’t letting on about.

“So you got along well. You saw no reason for her defection?” She recalled something he’d said earlier. “A child— you said she wanted a child. And couldn’t have one.”

“There was some blockage, although she tried. I tried to make her feel it was all right, though I worried—about hemorrhaging, you know—that bleeding defect. But then, frankly, I was so damn busy, what time did I have for a child? Though I knew it would have given her something to do, besides the jewelry. She tried an outside job once, you know, didn’t even tell me. I wasn’t too pleased, mind you. Her health! She got a position in a women’s clothing store, thought she’d please me, I suppose—it was a quality store; she’d get a discount on things. But after a week of it, she got overtired. She agreed with me that she was better off at home.”

“You said she wanted to adopt.”

“Oh, yes, that was a temporary phase. I soon talked her out of it. She wasn’t strong enough anyway, for a baby? Really! Lifting it in and out of places—I mean, they turn a house upside down, don’t they? I had a maid for her; that was another thing. She didn’t have to lift a finger in my house.”

“In
your
house.”

He nodded, didn’t get the innuendo. Why had she said that? He was being honest. There was a fringe of sweat on his upper lip, a tic in his dimpled cheek. His throat looked wrinkled; the whites of his eyes were pinkish. This man was suspected of poisoning his wife?

“And then .…”

“Then?”

“Then she began to... well, retreat. Into herself. Not that she was hard to please, no—I mean, she still went out with me the odd Saturday night, and we’d have a few friends in off and on—not too many. We didn’t have time for a lot of socializing, you see. But she didn’t talk much, sing around the house like she did when we were first married. I do miss that, the singing. She had a lovely voice. She sang for a time in a church choir, but then—that was too much for her, we felt; it was best to keep the singing in the house.”

“But she stopped singing.”

“Stopped. Yes. Stopped eating—practically. Got thinner and thinner. Almost anorexic. We didn’t go out to eat much anymore. And then the stepmother—”

“The stepmother lives in California, right?”

“Yes, thank God. A real kook. I blame her for a lot of Angie’s problems. I mean, Angie was lucky I got her away. Melanie, the stepmother, is into all that New Age stuff, you know, a kind of priestess or something. I only met her once or twice. She wasn’t at our wedding; she was in Tibet. But she’d call up, you see. At least once a week. The father was dead—she’d killed off two husbands!” He smiled grimly, his dimples showing. “When she’d call, I’d have to say, ‘Angie, I have to have the line free’—for my work, you know.”

“And would Angie hang up then?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, she was always thoughtful that way. She thought her stepmother a little nuts, too.”

“She said that?”

“Well, not in those words, but I know she thought it.” He waved his hands, palms outward, as though to push away the stepmother.

“And then she got involved in this healing center.”

“Well, it was her land, you see. Her dad came from here; he died of a heart attack—heart disease in the family, too, on his side anyway. Early on, that was—she was around twelve. He left the land to Angie—once she was eighteen, that is. The stepmother was in control till then.”

“How much land? Like several acres?”

“Five plus, I think. It goes a ways back behind the house, abuts the property next door. Bagshaw, the man’s name is.” He made a face. “Unpleasant fellow.”

“Yes. He’s squeezed in there between the Healing House and the Wilcoxes on the other side, though his land goes back a long way. Always complaining about it; Colm has heard him.”

“Colm? Oh, yes, the thin fellow who was here the other night. Father’s a mortician.”

“Yes. Colm’s mainly in real estate. Does a little investigative work—his grandfather was on the force. He helps his dad out when he can.”

But Kevin was back on an earlier thought, rubbing a red spot on his forehead. She saw the fatigue in the eyes, the sagging skin underneath. “Yes, yes, I remember now. He called up Angie once, wanting to buy a couple of acres. For privacy, he said, afraid of what Angie would do with it—develop it, he thought.”

“I hadn’t known that.” Ruth sipped her coffee; it was cool, but she hardly cared. Alwyn Bagshaw hated—feared—that healing center; he’d made that clear all over town.

“You don’t... think I did it?” Kevin said, lurching toward her, elbows on the table, his face anguished, looking, well, old. “I loved that woman. I love her still. There’ll never be anyone else. What it was like to come home to her! Even before she turned . . . odd. She was always there, waiting for me. My drink made up. I like a good Manhattan, you know, after a long workday. She knew just how I liked it. Until one day—”

“She wasn’t there.”

His words came out in a whisper. “She wasn’t there. Just a note. She’d taken a flight out. To this healing place, on her land, some friend of the stepmother’s running it—I’m not quite clear on that. They’d never let me in, you see.”

“And you came here after her.”

“Well, not right away. I gave her a few weeks. To get it out of her system. Whatever it was she was . . . well, unhappy about.”

“She seemed unhappy then before she left?”

“I mean, she was . . . well, withdrawn. That’s what I’m talking about. I didn’t understand why! She wouldn’t talk to me. And now. Now they won’t let me leave town. They’re keeping her body. Why? Why? They’ve done an autopsy; that was bad enough. That beautiful woman! Why can’t I take her body home?”

“It takes time, I understand, autopsies. I mean, where there’s poison involved. Homicide. Someone—something was responsible, Kevin.”

His eyes pleaded; his hands were clasped as though in prayer. “Why would anyone want to kill my wife?” He laid his hands on the table, palms up. His chin was lifted as though he’d keep his eyes from brimming over. She felt sorry for him, a little overwhelmed from the long emotional interview, the day’s hectic events. For all his possessiveness, she couldn’t believe this man was a murderer. And yet—there were other things she had to sort out in her mind. She touched each of his open palms with a finger. But he didn’t take advantage. He frowned down at his hands, surprised, as though he couldn’t move them, as though they were a pair of soiled gloves lying on the table and he didn’t know how they’d gotten that way.

Chapter Twelve

When Colm slowed down by the Flint farm, Mac wouldn’t let him stop. “No way,” he said. “I’m not setting a foot on that bloody place. No telling who might be there.” He shrank down into the front seat of the blue Horizon, stuffed the remains of his cigarette into the ashtray. Colm had indulged him, bought the pack of Kents.

“Glenna hates facial hair,” he whispered to Colm. “I grew it once; she tried to shave it off, middle of the night. I caught her standing over my bed—a razor in her hand!”

“A razor?” Colm said thoughtfully.

“Sure.” Mac’s voice sounded eager. “If I hadn’t waked up, no telling what she’d’ve done. Now, drive on, man, drive on. Anyplace but here. A motel maybe. I could use a night’s sleep. How could I nap on that damn train?”

“But Glenna’s not here. I told you that.”

“Even so.” The old man crouched, sullen, immobile in his seat, like a marionette, its strings unattached. Wrappers surrounded his feet; he and Colm had munched on pizza and fries after they got off the Amtrak at Whitehall, New York, just over the state line, where Colm had left the car.