Harvest of Bones (18 page)

“Even so,” Mac said again.

Giving in, Colm drove on to Ruth Willmarth’s. This time, he was the nervous one, didn’t know what he’d find there. That Crowningshield fellow, buttering Ruth’s ear? Pulling on her sympathies? He’d still be around of course. “It was poison,” Roy Fallon had said on the phone last night. But he’d said they had no solid evidence against anyone.

Colm smiled. How he’d loved telling Fallon about Mac, that he was still alive, that it wasn’t Mac whom Glenna had killed. And what motive had the woman for killing someone else—whoever that skeleton was? He could picture Fallon’s face, the slow red creeping up the neck; the man had been so cocksure, so positive in his analysis.

There was no one in sight when he pulled up in front of the farmhouse. It was early for milking; Ruth would be in the fields, he supposed, though only Tim was visible in the distance, raking wood chips around the new young trees; Joey was cavorting about behind him, swinging a pail. Colm smiled when he saw some of the chips fly out. He moved on into the kitchen, motioning Mac to follow, though the old man lagged, then refused a hand to get up on the porch. It was early; Emily and Vic wouldn’t be home from school for at least another hour. He and Mac would establish a beachhead, wait for Ruth. Talk. Bone up on the skeleton business (ha). He’d tried to get Mac talking on the Amtrak, but the man was closemouthed. Colm wanted to know more about Glenna; he suspected that she knew who was buried in that plot. He was immensely curious now, for some reason. For one thing, Glenna had known his mother. His mother had liked Glenna. And since the body wasn’t Mac, then it might have been Mac who put it there. Another reason for leaving town?

And there was Ruth, of course. Glenna was Ruth’s neighbor. In Vermont, neighbors helped out neighbors. Even when skeletons fell out of their closets, rose up out of their holes.

“You knew Ruth Willmarth?” he asked Mac when he got him settled in a chair. “No smoking in here,” he ordered, and the old man shrugged, stuck the pack back in his pocket.

“To speak to, that’s all. Good-looking broad. She’d just come on this place when I left. I knew the father best.”

“Ruth’s father?” No, he thought, Ruth’s dad died when she was in high school, her mother not so long after—breast cancer. Ruth had wondered about the pesticides some of the area farms used. She’d taken her mother’s death hard; her grades went down. Colm had cornered her in the corridor once, told her about his mother. That was after they’d stopped dating, when Pete horned in. Colm said that he’d be her brother if she couldn’t return his love—what a nerd he was in those days! She was dating Pete full time then, of course. She accepted the “brother” thing. Had the relationship ever changed, in spite of a period of going out together in college? Could it now?

“Old Willmarth,” Mac said. “His father alive, too, then, but bent over like a warped rake. Some spinal disease, I don’t know. Crusty old bastard. Guess Pete was glad when the old man kicked the bucket.”

“Pete’s gone now. Down in New York. Some woman grabbed him. Some would-be actress.”

“Hah.” Mac sniggered. He thought it amusing.

“That surprise you?” Colm wanted to hear more, wanted his own opinion corroborated. At least Kevin Crowningshield wasn’t around. Until the thought struck him that they might be out together, Crowningshield and Ruth. He clenched his fists; a vein bulged up in his arm. Jeez.

But Mac only shrugged. “Seemed an okay fella when I knew him. But then I didn’t really know him, did I? Bad enough living on the Flint farm, I wasn’t about to hang around this one.”

Colm saw an opening. “Living on the farm wasn’t all that bad, was it? What about Glenna—she liked it, didn’t she? Other guys hanging about the place maybe? Anyone else could have been in that hole you dug? I mean, whoever dropped him in there?”

Mac shrank back into his chair, munched on a doughnut. His lips were furry white; he looked like an elf, peering out of his hole. A smile played on his lips. “You want me to solve this one for you, hey? Yeah, it was that guy who drove the milk tank, picked up the milk from the skinny Flint cows. He and Glenna were having this wild affair, see? Only he got seduced by somebody up the road and Glenna got mad and bopped him on the head and dropped him in that hole.” He added, “After I left, that is. Look. There was no one, I said, no one in that hole when I left.”

“Okay. We drove all the way up here, you’re going to play games?”

Mac was still smiling, if one could call a smirk a smile. He pulled at his whiskers. One could hardly call it a beard; Colm could almost count the white hairs. But it made the old man feel manly, he supposed, offbeat. He obviously liked being offbeat. Glenna, too. They seemed made for each other. And yet. .. .

“If we can’t find who put the man in that hole, you’re the likely suspect, Mac. So anything you can tell us will help you.”

Mac ran a pale tongue around his sugary lips, considered. Colm waited.

“Well I’m gonna die anyway. I mean, what can they do to an old guy like me?” He sighed, held on the edge of the table as if it were his life. “Let’s see. Needs a little digging, you know—memory’s full of loose ends.”

“Try.”

“I need a smoke first, okay? Out on the porch?”

Colm relented. But just in case, he watched the man out the kitchen window. But Mac wasn’t going anywhere. He sank down on the steps to smoke the cigarette. He’d inhale and then cough. They didn’t allow it in the journalists’ home. He was obviously out of practice. He stubbed it out before it was consumed, stomped back in.

“Glenna, well, she had friends, you know. Everybody knew the Flints, one of the old families. The grandfather was bounced outta the local church for swearing on Sunday—I mean right in church—loud! So they say—disagreed with the sermon.” He chuckled. “Once that crazy Glenna rode right up the church aisle on her bloody mare, you know that? Before I came on the scene, that was, but they still talk about it around here. She was... well, a legend you might say. I suppose that’s one reason I was, um, interested. Might make a story you know, personal-interest piece. I got one or two published in my day, before the
Times
dragged me into ... you know.”

“Uh-huh.” Colm had discovered that an occasional noise, a grunt, an “uh-huh,” helped an interviewee to go on. Real estate was full of trauma: divorce, death, abuse—all the reasons why people changed homes. Sometimes it wasn’t divorce, just some guy looking for a private place to keep the lady friend. You asked questions—but you didn’t move in too close.

“Did they like her?” Colm asked. “Or was she just an item of conversation? The eccentric neighbor?”

“Oh, they liked her all right. I mean, the men did. Glenna liked men. You bet. She was more comfortable with men than women. Women bored her, to tell the truth, most of them. I mean the la-di-da ones who mostly kept house and talked about their female problems. She had a couple women friends who’d gone out and done things; she’d give them the time of day.”

“My mother knew her. Not well, but they were on a planning commission together, Dad says. They evidently saw eye-to-eye.” Colm pictured the scene: Glenna in her overalls and size-eleven boots, nose-to-nose with his ladylike mother in her crisp cotton housedress and tidy flat shoes. But his mother had her own mind. Glenna would have recognized that.

He went on with the questions, while Mac was in the mood. “What kind of, uh, relationship did Glenna have with these men? I mean, any particular man—before your time, of course. You were in your forties, you two, when you married?”

“I was forty; she was forty-one, I think—well, older’n me; she never let me forget that.” He gave a brusque laugh, took a large bite out of a second doughnut. Colm hoped Ruth had no plans for those doughnuts.

“No relationships, then—that would worry you.”

“Nah, she wasn’t much for the pillow play, if you know what I mean.” He winked at Colm. “With me, anyway. She didn’t like ’em hanging around for too long. Although...” He paused.

“Although?”

“There were one or two hot on her. She was a woman, if you get my drift. She wasn’t bad-looking in those days, no jewel, of course, but big boobs, you know, a farm woman’s hips—”

“Farm women are larger-hipped than other women?”

Mac snorted. “Well, they get to look like their cows after a while, you know. Ever look at a cow from the rear? Those bony hips, wide apart? Those big tits hanging down?”

Colm guessed he had. Men’s talk—he couldn’t hide a smile. Ruth would frown, of course; Ruth would be furious. But Ruth wasn’t here. Though any minute she could be, and the old man would button up.

“Who were they? These one or two men who were interested in Glenna?”

But Mac wasn’t ready to say. “Listen, I could use a drink. She got any whiskey around here?”

“A beer in the refrigerator maybe. She’s not a big drinker, Ruth.” Though she did keep a little whiskey around, a quart of Guckenheimer, for him, he knew that. But wasn’t about to give it up to Mac! He popped open a can of Otter Creek Ale. Ruth drank it now and then—to keep her spirits up, she said, when she was down. There were several cans, in fact, in the fridge, so he wasn’t depriving her. He wiggled a can past the orange juice and soy milk. A dairy farmer drinking soy milk? Or maybe it was Sharon who’d left it there.

“It ain’t Seagram’s, but it’ll have to do.” Mac lifted it to his lips, guzzled it down. His Adam’s apple moved up and down with each swallow; the scraggly whiskers were brownish with spill. Colm waited.

“They were mostly guys who came round to sell stuff, repair things—that sign maker, “Don Quixote,” I called him, like Glenna was some Dulcinea. Ha! One of the vets, guy named—hell, I can’t think of it now, but I think she was sweet on him. Leaning over him when he inspected the cows—they only had a couple when I came on the scene. Farm was going downhill fast. I’d hate to see it now. Cripes, that mother of hers! Four-foot something and did the work of three men. But then she got some disease, I don’t know. Stiff as a frozen sheet when Glenna had to take her to potty. But Glenna kept her home, I gotta hand her that.”

“Try to remember that vet’s name if you can. I can get a list from the animal hospital here. Joggle your memory.”

Mac’s eyes were on his beer, as if it held memories under the foam. “Then there was Bagshaw. Not the fertilizer Bagshaw. She hated that guy; he was a pincher. But that other one ...” He shrank deeper into his chair, appeared to cruise his memory. His face twisted with the effort; he looked like he was on the rack. In the background Colm heard a car come up, Ruth’s old Ford pickup; it was unmistakable, that grinding, grunting noise, squealing brakes. He worried about her driving the old clunker—it was twenty years old if it was a day. He’d looked at the mileage once, panicked.

Bad timing. “What other one? What other one, Mac?” Outside, the pickup door slammed, like pieces of rotting metal clanking together.

Mac heard, too. “That her? What’s she gonna think, me drinking her beer? We shouldn’t’ve come here. We should’ve gone right to that motel like I said. If you’re gonna pay for it,” he added softly.

“Me?” said Colm. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, take me to Flint’s then. Glenna’s not there anyway.”

“That’s what I kept telling you. Coming here was your idea.”

“Shit,” said Mac, and Ruth threw open the door. She stopped on the threshold to stare at the old man slumped in her chair, devouring her doughnuts, swilling down her beer. Colm stood up, smiled sheepishly. “I think you two have met. Ruth Willmarth, Mac MacInnis. Glenna’s husband,” he added, although it wasn’t necessary. Ruth’s face was dawning: rainy and cool.

* * * *

Emily wished she had her notebook. For once, the old lady seemed in a talkative mood; she was wearing the black scarf Hartley had brought her, and a black sweater decorated with Puffy’s white fur. She’d answer anything you asked, though Emily wouldn’t take too many chances. Not about the skeleton anyway. Glenna Flint would close up on that one.

“So tell about way back,” she said, wriggling about on the plywood floor. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but if you got into one of the grooves, it wasn’t too bad. “About how your ancestors got up here to Vermont. Where’d they come from?”

“Connecticut, someplace. That was old Homer Flint, your father’s named after him. He buried three wives. Homer did.” Glenna rocked back in the chair, stuck out her skinny legs, and Hartley rushed to put a straight chair under them. “That’s better now. Just a sip of that scotch and my tongue’ll be well oiled.” She grinned.

“This is the last bottle, Aunty,” Hartley warned. “I stole it from the kitchen. I can’t go out and buy it, you know. I’m not eighteen. Though almost.”

“And you’re in college?” Emily said.

“I skipped a grade way back. I’m a freshman—the local college. I’m on parole.” She winked at Emily.

“So what happened to the three wives?” Emily loved true stories. She was beginning to love history. “When was this exactly?” She didn’t have her notebook; she’d have to take it into her head, try to remember it. Tonight, she’d write it down. She couldn’t stay much longer, though, she had to get back home, her mother would worry. Her mother worried all the time now. There wasn’t anything her mother wasn’t worried about.

“Indians. Back in the 1600s. That’s what happened. Well, one of ’em anyhow. Scalped. An arrow stuck in the stomach. Run right through to the back. And pregnant! Yep, she was. Eight months pregnant.”

“God,” said Hartley, one hand on her belly. “But it wasn’t the Indian’s fault, right? They were being run off their land? But how could they do that to a pregnant woman?”

“They could, and they did,” said Glenna, looking triumphant.

“An arrow. Through a half moon,” Emily murmured, and thought of the ring on the skeleton’s finger, the sign on the Healing House. Somehow everything seemed connected. The past repeating itself in the present. She sucked in her lower lip.

“What about the other two?” Hartley asked. “What happened to them?”

“Oh, they died,” said Glenna with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Childbirth, I suppose, overwork. The men chasing around after the Indians while the women scrubbed and cooked.”