See Also Murder (10 page)

But I couldn't do that. The pies on the passenger floorboard reminded me that I had one more stop to make. After everything I had experienced in Dickinson, I needed to find it in myself to be a good neighbor, and a better friend, and offer Peter and Jaeger whatever I could to help get them though the horrible tragedy that had befallen them.

I stubbed out the cigarette, closed the ashtray, then straightened up my hair the best I could. My face was a mess, so I touched up my makeup and lipstick as quick as I could.

I didn't want the boys to see me all a muss with straggly hairs and tear-stained cheeks. They needed to see strength and love, the same faces their parents had offered me in my time of need. I had to give the Knudsen boys hope, reassure them that somehow, someway, they would get through this and survive it. The landscape would be different, changed—they would have to learn how to walk all over again and be better for the experience. I had a twenty-minute drive to convince myself of that, because if I didn't believe it they wouldn't either.

There were times when being a good liar would have come in handy.

The Knudsen family had migrated from Minnesota a few years before the stock market crash in twenty-nine and the start of the Great Depression. Erik's father, Reeger, passed his farm on to his eldest son as was the custom, while the other three Knudsen boys were free to explore at their pleasure—which they all had. Two of them died in World War II, and the other was killed in an automobile accident after coming back from service in Japan.

Lida's family had been in North Dakota since the wagon train days, surviving and carving out a living as shopkeepers and sheep farmers. Lida had two brothers, farmers too, in Stark County, who were successful in their own right. By successful I mean they were able to hold onto their farms from year to year, but they were by no means wealthy. They were land rich and bank poor, as the saying went. As far as I knew, neither of Lida's brothers were in financial trouble of any kind, but they would, perhaps, be sources to talk to about the cousin Herbert Frakes spoke of, if the need arose. It was obvious that I wasn't going to be able to completely disconnect from the murders until the truth of it came out.

But, I thought, none of the Knudsens, including Erik and Lida, were the type to burden other people with their problems. I knew I would be the last person to know if they'd had any real problems—money-related or otherwise.

Erik and Lida were a happy and gregarious couple, involved in their church and community. They were good parents and the best neighbors I could have ever hoped to have. And as far as I knew, Peter and Jaeger had no aspirations other than to follow in their father's footsteps. They wanted nothing more than to be farmers, honorable men like Erik, like Hank, who loved the life they were fortunate enough to live.

Truth be told, I was a little scared that Raymond was somehow involved with the amulet. He'd gripped it like he wanted to run off with it. I didn't really want to think that he was involved in the murders. Raymond was a mean boy, but never physical, at least with me. I had no idea beyond that. It would have helped to clear my mind if Professor Strand had been home.

Raymond lived in a world I knew little about. Power and social standing were the farthest things from my mind as I went through my day, but it was obvious that appearances and possessions meant a lot to Raymond—just as they had to his mother.

I slowed as I approached the lane that led down to the Knudsens' house. I was constantly aware of the other vehicles on the road and on the lookout for the green Chevy. I had not seen hide nor hair of it. Truth was, only two cars had passed by me, and neither of them were green. One was black and the other was gray. No surprise there.

I downshifted and drove up the lane that led to the Knudsens' house with an unsettled feeling growing in the pit of my stomach. A voice screamed inside my head: Go home to Hank. He needs you.

But I didn't listen. Peter and Jaeger needed me too.

I expected the yard to be loaded with cars, with people milling about and wandering in and out with food.

Only Erik's five-year-old red International Harvester pickup sat next to the house. Parked next to it was a brown and tan county police car, the bubble on top dark, the windows rolled up. That was it. There were no other cars or trucks about. When Hank had got hurt there was a sea of Detroit steel in our front yard, every make and model of car and truck that you could think of.

The chill of the amulet returned to me, rising up and down my spine.

I knew Hilo wasn't standing guard at the Knudsens'. He refused to drive anything but his old, battered pickup. It was probably one of his deputies given the duty to ward off curiosity seekers.

The thought caught in my throat as I pulled next to the car and stopped . . . I could only hope the deputy wasn't Guy Reinhardt.

Like just about everybody else in Stark County who was similar in age, Guy Reinhardt and I had known each other for most of our lives. I knew some of his joys and tragedies, and he knew some of mine, but we were never friends.

We went to different high schools, but since there were only three in the entire county, our paths crossed often. Guy grew up in South Heart. He was a Cougar. I was a Midget—an odd name for a high school mascot in my mind, even now, but it had been that way since the early 1900s.

Sports weren't really important to me back then. According to most people, Hank included, I couldn't pull my nose out of a book long enough to know whether it was night or day. But everybody in the state knew who Guy Reinhardt was.

Guy had been a golden boy, an athlete who was gifted beyond belief. There seemed to be nothing that he didn't excel at: baseball, track and field, and basketball. Especially basketball. He still held the state record for the highest scoring in a single game as far as I knew. There was talk of him going professional, whispers of scouts visiting games once Guy started playing at the university—a big deal in North Dakota—which, of course, in the end came to naught.

A week before the pro draft, Guy had been out drinking with friends and celebrating. Before the night ended, two of those friends were dead, and Guy, who was the driver when the accident happened, suffered severe damage to his right leg. He was thrown from the car and run over by an oncoming truck.

All these years later, Guy still walked with a limp—a hindrance that hadn't prevented Hilo from giving him a job when nobody else would. Other than the limp, Guy was whole, but those who knew him when he was young, at his best, could see a faraway look forever pinned in his sky-blue eyes.

It was like Guy had been forever cursed with the wondering, the curiosity of the past, the constant questioning of himself—if life would have been different had he made a different decision so long ago. We all had our regrets. I imagined Hank thought the same thing, lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to flick a fly off his nose.

Being a deputy was a far cry from being a pro basketball player, traveling the world, money not a worry, rather than sitting behind the wheel of a police car, spending most days alone—while everyone who knew your story looked at you with a bit of pity, looked at you like you were a loser, an idiot for throwing away all of your God-given promise.

Guy Reinhardt and I shared in that. Shared in the looks of pity. As I sat there, still wondering if Guy Reinhardt was the deputy on duty, I realized again that Peter and Jaeger had joined our club. We were survivors of life's harshest moments, moments that had forced us to get on with our lives even though our hearts were torn to tatters. We were all actors hiding the pain; some of us were just better at it than others. It was no wonder actors were called tragedians.

“I thought I'd heard somebody pull up.”

I stood up out of the Studebaker, a little surprised that my questioning had been on point: It
was
Guy Reinhardt whose task it was to look after Erik and Lida's land.

Guy had come out of Erik and Lida's house. He stood on the front porch and eyed me carefully. The tightness in his face relaxed when he saw the pies. I stopped at the fence post that separated the yard and the drive. The wind circled around my ankles and threatened to ruffle my dress, but I pressed the pies down to keep it from flying up.

“Good to see you, Marjorie,” he said.

“Same to you, Guy.”

“How's Hank?”

“No better, no worse.” On this day, I didn't feel compelled to lie to Guy Reinhardt, but I let my woes stop there.

He nodded and looked at me knowingly. “That's a good thing, I suppose.”

The late-afternoon sun caught Guy's blonde hair, highlighting a tinge of gray in his sideburns. His face was angular, tanned, and he still had the look of a man whose determined face could have perfectly graced a Wheaties box. He was as tall as a cornstalk, and age had been kind to him; his body was still lean and fit. Only his sad blue eyes and limp belied any past history that would have given a stranger any hint that Guy Reinhardt was less than fulfilled, standing in the doorway of a murder victim's home, dressed in a uniform that required a gun, instead of sneakers, gym shorts, and a crowd to cheer him on.

Guy stepped off the porch. “Probably be best if you let me take those pies there, Marjorie. Hilo doesn't want anybody to step inside until he's certain there's nothing else we need to look at. I been runnin' folks off all day.”

“They were just doing what folks do,” I said.

“This is different,” Guy answered. His voice was hard and direct. I suppose I needed that reminder as much as anyone else.

I hadn't noticed the yellow tape that surrounded the front of the house, crisscrossing the front door, until that moment. I didn't think I could confront the idea that Erik and Lida were really dead, not home . . . that their farm was a crime scene.

“I was hoping to speak with Peter and Jaeger, if only for a moment,” I said, balancing the pies in my hands and warding off the threat of the wind at the same time.

“They're supposed to be talking with Hilo down at the station.”

“I just came from there. They weren't there. Neither was Hilo. At least his truck wasn't there.”

“Then he wasn't there, either.”

I nodded and was tempted to tell Guy about the green Chevy, but there was nothing to point to that was malicious or criminal. Just a pattern that I'd noticed that probably didn't mean a thing, that was probably just my imagination playing tricks on me.

“Well, my guess is they had some business to tend to at McClandon's Funeral Home,” Guy said. “They'll be along shortly. It's got to be hard going through something like this. Hard to say where Hilo was. Seems a mite busy today, as you can imagine.”

“I suppose so.”

I realized I had mimicked Guy's earlier response when he flashed a quick smile to break the tension and sadness in the air.

Unconsciously, I glanced to his left hand, and realized it was minus a ring. I hesitated, but only briefly, before I asked how his wife, Ruth, was doing, if only to change the subject.

Guy's face tightened, and he looked away from me, out toward the barn, freshly painted red so it was easy to find in the winter. The profile of Guy's face was hard as stone and my question about Ruth affected his professional expression like a cloud crossing in front of the sun.

“Ruth's back with her family,” he said.

“Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know.”

“No,” he said. “I don't suppose you would.”

Ruth Reinhardt was Guy's second wife. His first divorce caused the normal whispers, his second, if it came to that, would be downright scandalous. North Dakota women stayed true to their husbands through good and bad. I was no exception. But I was also not one to judge another marriage . . . or another man's pain, no matter how hard he was to live with.

Rumor had it that Guy had a hateful relationship with whiskey that had followed him from his university days to the present. But to me, it was just a rumor. I had never seen him drunk, nor had I ever smelled whiskey on his breath. I doubted Hilo would put up with behavior unbecoming an officer of the law no matter who he was, so I'd always put little credence in those rumors.

I knew little of Ruth, a short brunette with two children from a previous marriage, just enough to know that she came from a family with more than a fair share of drinkers, fighters, and secrets. Trouble and angst seem to be a magnet for some people. Maybe it was that that broke them apart. Either way, Guy Reinhardt's misfortune was none of my business.

There was just something about him that I couldn't shake, and finally, I realized what it was once the breeze kicked up again. The air was filled with his odor, with the sweetness of his masculinity. It totally overtook any evidence of the previous rain.

Guy's skin glistened, tanned from the sun, from hanging his arm out of the window of the police car. It was the smell of life, of a walking, healthy man that I was responding to like a giddy schoolgirl. It made no difference that he might be just as disabled on the inside as Hank was on the outside, Guy Reinhardt was an attractive man.