See Also Murder (14 page)

I hesitated at the door, questioned whether it was wise to go outside in the middle of the night, then forced myself to suck in a deep breath and rely on Guy Reinhardt and the .22. If that wasn't enough, then I was in big trouble.

The cool night air greeted me as I stepped out on the stoop. I glanced to the county police car, saw Guy's silhouette, then padded to the Studebaker in my bare feet.

I opened the door easily, as quietly as I could, and sighed with relief as I saw my purse sitting on the seat where I'd left it. I grabbed the purse like it was a piece of stolen gold, and hustled through the contents. Even in the dark of night, I could see the white linen that I'd wrapped the amulet in. “Thank goodness,” I whispered out loud.

“That you, Marjorie?”

I started at the voice, dropped the purse, and spun around, the rifle firmly in my left hand but pointed at the ground.

“Lord, Guy Reinhardt, you scared the bejesus out of me.”

“Didn't mean too, Marjorie, just heard footsteps.”

“You've got good ears.”

“Been told that.” He flashed a smile that lit up underneath the black, star-filled sky, then faded away just as quickly, settling into a straight jaw that looked more official than proud.

I could smell cigarette smoke on him, and my desire for a Salem amplified. “I forgot something in my purse,” I said. I realized then that I was standing before Guy in my nightclothes, a thin cotton shift cut just above my knees with a raggedy housecoat thrown over the top. I was embarrassed, but not as uncomfortable as I would have been without the housecoat.

“I best get inside,” I said.

“Probably a little late to be out and about, all things considered, Marjorie.”

“You don't think they're still around do you?”

“Who?” Guy asked.

“The killer,” I said. “Ardith's killer. The person that did this horrible thing.”

“Hope not. But if they are. If they come back, you don't have nothin' to worry about, Marjorie. I'm as good a shot in the county as there is.”

“That makes me feel better. I best go in.” I grabbed up my purse, turned to go back to the house, but stopped about ten feet away from Guy. “Would you like some coffee? It wouldn't take much to put a pot on, seeing that you've been sitting here all night. It's the least I can do. I don't think I'll be sleeping much any time soon.”

“Sure, Marjorie, that'd be mighty kind of you. Mighty kind of you.”

CHAPTER 15

I waited for the cast iron percolator to come to a rest. The smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the kitchen, and for a brief, fleeting moment, everything felt normal. Coffee was a staple, the first pot to be on the stove no matter the season. It warmed the house and put everything on an even keel, at least most of the time.

I was too unsettled to work, too unfocused. I knew that kind of mental weakness couldn't last, that my deadline ticked away with cold disregard to my emotional or physical state, but I just couldn't clear my mind enough to concentrate on the dense text concerning headhunters. Maybe when things settled down, if that were possible.

I'd considered asking Richard Rothstein for an extension on my deadline, explaining my situation to him when we spoke. I had never done that before, and just the consideration of missing a deadline seemed fraught with peril. The truth was, I was going to need my indexing income more than ever if Peter and Jaeger couldn't help with the farm any longer. I'd have to hire out the chores and pay far more than the Knudsen boys had ever charged us. Any potential profit from the upcoming crop would be lost, and that would just be another crack in a foundation teetering on collapse. We still carried debt on the mortgage and from the bad stretch we'd suffered before Hank's accident. Sometimes, all I could pay was the interest on the loans we carried.

I poured two cups of coffee, fought off the peckish feeling in my stomach, and headed to the back door. Shep followed after me. “You stay, boy. Bark if you need me.”

I was convinced that the border collie was the most intelligent dog in the world, but I knew in my heart of hearts that he didn't understand the English language any more than I understood any of the Igboid languages. But I hoped he would bark if Hank needed me, if something bad showed itself out of my sight.

Shep did what I asked of him and sat, wagged his tail, and watched me navigate out the door holding two cups of steaming coffee. At least the kitchen floor was going to get swept.

The air had remained cool since I was out before, but it wasn't cold. It was too early in the year for that, though it wouldn't be long before the first snowflake fell. September would push in on us in a blink, and we'd be left wondering where the summer went. Only this one, as it was going, would not be soon forgotten. Most folks would be ready for winter if all the sadness would go away that the summer had brought. At least in winter, you could track a cat—or a killer.

I'd made sure my housecoat was buttoned all of the way to the top, and I'd slipped on a pair of closed-toe house slippers that Hank had bought for me from the Woolworth's in Bismarck ages ago. The last thing I needed to do was come down with a cold.

I had only thought for a second that I was being forward, presuming Guy Reinhardt would want coffee, that he didn't have a Thermos of his own in the police car, but we were both in the middle of unusual circumstances, and I was glad he'd accepted my offer. Truth was, I think I needed someone to talk to as much as anything, and waking Hank hadn't seemed like a good idea. I was surprised that sleep had come to him at all.

I hadn't forgotten how Guy had made me feel at the Knudsens', but that seemed even more foolish now; unimportant, like an eighth grade girl would feel—which was a long, long time ago, when life was much, much simpler. My emotions were out of control, that's all there was to it. I could never be attracted to a man like Guy Reinhardt.

The sky looked like the inside of an oven turned off to cool. Aluminum foil stars poked in and out all over the roof of it, dotting the blackness with little bits of silver light, of life pulsing somewhere distant. There was no sign of the Northern Lights, and I was glad of that. The early people—the settlers, pioneers, my parents' people—were convinced that the wavering ribbons of colors in the night sky foretold the end of the world, and I wasn't so sure that they were wrong. It felt like the end of the world for all of us, even without a flicker of the weird and unsettling lights.

The county police car was pointed grill out toward the road. Guy sat on the hood, smoking a cigarette, watching for anything that moved. From a distance, it would have been easy to mistake the glowing tip of his cigarette for a meteor falling from the sky as he casually tapped his ash to the ground.

I wasn't trying to be quiet this time. It would have been almost impossible anyway on the dry drive with hard-soled slippers on my feet. I was having a hard time keeping my balance, trying not to spill any of the coffee.

Guy turned back to me as I approached from the rear of the car, a newer model Ford, painted in two tones of brown, one light, one dark. Starlight reflected off the bubble on the roof. He coughed and tried to cup the cigarette in the palm of his hand to hide it.

“It's all right,” I said, coming to a stop next to him. “Smoking doesn't bother me.” I offered him one of the steaming coffee mugs.

Guy took the mug with his other hand and kept the cigarette partially hidden the best he could. “We're not supposed to smoke in front of folks while we're in uniform. Hilo's not too fond of smoking, anyway, you know?”

“Him and Hank both, but I doubt Hilo would mind.” I sipped the black coffee. I'd made it a little stronger than normal. I wasn't blind to the fact that I had a long day ahead of me, and I knew it had already been an even longer day for Guy Reinhardt. He had already been on shift before I called the police, holding down the fort at the Knudsens'. He'd been the first to arrive after the call had gone out about Ardith.

“I suppose you're right, Marjorie.” Guy's shoulders relaxed, and he slid off the hood of the Ford, easily balancing the coffee in one hand and the cigarette in the other. “Hank sleeping?”

I nodded and looked up at him—Guy still had a basketball player build, and probably always would—then I looked over my shoulder to the house, wind-beaten white, but enough to stand out in the darkness. I had left the lamp burning on my desk. It was the only light on in the house. “He's sleeping, thanks. Hard to tell sometimes.”

“I suppose so, Marjorie. It's a hard row to hoe you've got here. Even without all of the troubles of late.”

I didn't know quite what to say to that. Guy was right, of course, but allowing our troubles to stop us, to become a burden to someone else, well, it just wasn't our way. Never had been, even when I was a little girl. I was a Hoagler before I was a Trumaine. Mother and Father were stiff-upper-lip kind of people. Don't complain. Forge ahead. Clean up your own mess so other folks didn't have to walk through it. Hank was the same way. Quiet, accommodating, always demanding that we keep our problems to ourselves. Maybe it was just how prairie people were, I couldn't say for sure since I'd known no other way of life.

Instead of agreeing, I reached into the front pocket of my housedress and pulled out the pack of Salems I'd bought at the Rexall. “You don't mind, do you?”

“I didn't know you smoked, Marjorie.”

Guy seemed to enjoy saying my name. There was a lilt to it, that familiar Nor' Dakota accent. Perhaps Sir Nigel's book should have been about us. I might have learned something useful, something that could inform me every day. Prairie tribes instead of myths about headhunters.

I shrugged. “Hank doesn't like it that I smoke—his mother died of cancer—and I understand, but it calms my nerves. Helps me to think straight when things are all jumbled.”

“Like now?”

“Like now,” I said. I sat the cup of coffee on the wide front bumper of the Ford and pulled a cigarette from the pack. Before I could reach for the matchbook Betty Walsh had given me with my change at the Rexall, Guy flipped opened a Zippo and produced a steady flame.

I wasn't surprised. It was the gentlemanly thing to do—light a woman's cigarette. But it was an act of chivalry, and I was grateful for it. Hank had been like that, the kind man who always opened the truck door for me, made sure I walked into a restaurant first on the special occasion when we didn't eat at home. Simple things. I missed those simple things the most.

I drew in on the cigarette, bringing it easily to life. I leaned back, exhaled, and watched as the glow of the Zippo's flame vanished as quickly as it had appeared. This felt different—but similar—from the smoke I'd shared with Calla behind the library. We both needed an escape.

Guy's stoic face lost its glow, but I didn't look away from him. He had weathered his own difficulties, and cigarettes seemed to offer him the same salvation that they did me. I couldn't imagine any other reason that he would smoke, especially considering that he had once been the most talented athlete in the county. I guess even athletes succumbed to the pressures of time and age.

Guy settled back on the hood, the cigarette in one hand, the cup in the other. “That's a fine cup of coffee, there, Marjorie.”

I relaxed, too, against the corner of the front fender, standing directly in front of the dark double-headlights of the police car. I followed Guy's gaze, toward the horizon, to a thin ribbon of gray hope that had broken into sight, unannounced by birds or any other voices in the sky, like wind or thunder.

The unsettling silence had remained throughout the night. The cool summer air was still, almost like it was too heavy to move.

“Thanks.” I took another sip of coffee and stared at the first sign of the coming day. I was more than ready to walk on the earth in the daylight, to be able to see for as far as the eye could see without worry about what was coming, or what was hiding in the shadows. “What do you think this is all about, Guy? These murders.” I remembered not to mention the amulet, since Hilo had told me not to. But I wondered what Guy knew of it, what the rest of the men in the department knew. Was the amulet just a secret between Hilo and me? I had to think that it was, but I would have been relieved if he had mentioned it.

I couldn't help myself from asking the question. The only reason Guy was at the farm was because someone had murdered Ardith. The last time he had been around was the day everyone else had shown up for Hank.

“Can't rightly say, Marjorie. I can tell you this, though, I never expected to see such meanness and violence in all of my life, not even with this badge on my chest. People around these parts just aren't like this. Nothing could hurt so bad as to lash out like I've seen in the last couple of days. I mean, I've been angry, said things I sure wish't I could take back, but I can't conceive of a matter when a knife to the throat is the only solution.” Guy glanced at me quickly, then looked down to the ground. “My apologies, Marjorie. I shouldn't speak of such things. This has to be difficult for you.”

“Harder for Hilo, I would imagine.”

“There is that. Not sure that I'd be able to come back from such a thing, if it was me.” Guy drew on his own cigarette then. It was the last puff. He pinched the burning orange tip of tobacco off the butt, and let it fall to the ground; Lilliputian fireworks, distant falling stars snuffed out with a heavy grind with the toe of his recently polished black boot. He field-stripped the butt, and dropped the filter and what was left of the cigarette into his pants pocket.

Guy stared hard at the horizon, and his words hung in the air. I heard something that I wasn't quite sure of. Maybe it was ambition, a desire to step into Hilo's place if the opportunity arose, or something else, a sadness or regret that I could never know.