See Also Murder (3 page)

I'd never been one to keep an eye out for a pervasive dark cloud of tragedy on the horizon, even when it lived and breathed in my own bed, but for the life of me, I couldn't believe that Erik and Lida Knudsen had left the world. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't find the recipe for tears. Not now, anyway. I was still embarrassed that I had let Hilo see tears roll down my cheeks.

The pile of manuscript pages on my desk called to me as I rolled out the pie dough, banging the table with excessive force each time I made a pass to smooth the glob of flour and water. Indexing would have to wait. There was no way I could concentrate on headhunters. No way I could face death of any kind, no matter how far away, with the news that Hilo had brought me.

I couldn't escape the present crisis in my own world at the moment, and I thought even Sir Nigel would have understood that—though I wasn't sure my editor, Richard Rothstein, would.

Deadlines for writing indexes for books were rigid, mostly unchangeable. The publishing date and manuscript due date to the printer were appointed months in advance. Writing the index was one of the last tasks in the book-publishing process, since the pagination had to be set in stone. I'd never missed a deadline—most times I was early—and that effort had provided me with a steady stream of indexing work since I had started with H.P. Howard and Sons.

I was three-quarters of the way through Sir Nigel's four-hundred-page book, and the index had to be in the mail to New York in two weeks.

Normally, that would have been enough time—barely, with everything else I had to do—for me to compile the index, combine all of the letters from my index cards into a typed first draft, then do a final red-letter edit and create a publishable index. But I had agreed to help Hilo, and I didn't know how much time that was going to take.

All I knew was that I was going to do everything I could to help find out what had happened to Erik and Lida. Deadlines be damned—even if it meant never writing an index again.

I spilled some flour on the floor at the thought of losing money and a publisher that I had worked hard to create a reputation with. I got the impression from my editor that once you missed a deadline, you'd never work for them again. I understood that, but I just couldn't face the pressure at that moment.

I needed every penny I could get to keep the farm going. Luckily, the weather over the last couple of years had been nearly perfect for growing wheat and silage, our two main crops, but Hank's doctor bills had started to stack up, offering a new threat to any security or buffer I could hope to create.

Shep was out doing whatever job he could find to do. The inside of the house was no place for a dog as far as Hank was concerned—with the exception of the depth of winter when Shep was welcome to warm himself in front of the fireplace. The services Shep provided to the farm were far too valuable to just leave him to fend for himself in a freezing, subzero wind.

Hank and I differed on that point, and on occasion I would let the dog in the house, out of Hank's line of sight, in the depth of summer or whenever I needed the company of another living, walking creature.

Ever the border collie, Shep was industrious, always working, always figuring something out. My guess was he was out trying to herd the spring chickens. At the very least, he'd keep the hawks away and be out from under my feet. I was in no mood to be herded.

To make matters—and my mood—worse, I'd boiled the cherries too long as I stared out the window, contemplating what to do next. I had to start over again, using my last good bunch of fresh fruit. Finally, after an hour, I managed to get two pies in the oven.

It was getting near dinner time, and it had been a while since I had checked on Hank. Sometimes he was so quiet that I nearly forget he was in the bed, lost in darkness, unable to do anything for himself but wish for his old life back. I imagined him out in the front barn, tearing apart an alternator and putting in a new set of bushings, but he was never there. I only went into that barn when I had to now.

Hank was staring at the ceiling with blank eyes when I entered the bedroom.

“Erik and Lida,” he whispered.

“You heard?” I walked over to the window and started to close it.

“Don't.”

I ignored Hank and closed the window anyway. “Hilo said somebody came in through Erik and Lida's window.”

“I heard every word Hilo said. Leave it open.” His voice was raspy and weak, but there was an authority to it that wouldn't ever disappear—not as long as Hank Trumaine was able to take a breath.

I froze and realized why Hank wanted the window left open. I knew if he were able he'd take his own life. He'd told me so more than once, begged me to do it for him—and hated and loved me just the same because I wouldn't. I couldn't kill a fly without feeling a week's worth of remorse.

I slid the window back up, then gently climbed onto the bed and hugged Hank as tears came to my eyes. His muscles had wasted away, and he was a shell of the man he once was. I longed for him to hold me, to make love to me, to protect me from the violence beyond our tiny bedroom. But he couldn't lift a finger, and at that moment neither could I.

A rush of tears flooded out. I had not cried so heavily since my mother died.

“I'm sorry,” I said when I could.

“Erik and Lida were like family to you,” Hank whispered. “Better than family. That lout of a cousin of yours has only shown his face on this farm once since we've been married, and then . . .” He trailed off, refusing to mention the incident that had happened on that visit.

I nodded, glad that he didn't continue on, then resisted the urge to tell Hank that I was happy Raymond had never visited us. The company of my cousin had always been contentious. Relieved, I rested my head gently on Hank's fragile chest, too tired to push away the tears that were determined to fall.

Hank's steady breathing was a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. His words echoed inside my head, and I remembered, even though I rarely needed reminding, why I fell in love with him in the first place.

He didn't say another word until I stopped crying. “I don't want you to leave,” he whispered.

“Hilo asked. Ardith will be here. She knows how to care for you.” Ardith Jenkins, along with Lida Knudsen, would come over when necessary if I had errands in town to run; doctors' appointments of my own, that kind of thing.

Hank was silent for a moment. “I've never thought about losing you. I couldn't bear it if something happened to you. You are . . . always, just here. What would I do without you?”

I understood. I had never thought about losing Hank either. We were both still relatively young, in our midthirties, with most of our lives still ahead of us when the accident had happened.

Tragedy, in any form, had always happened to other people, and neither of us had ever had to seriously consider our own mortality. How could we have? The farm wasn't exactly thriving, but we were making a living and were mostly healthy before Hank went hunting. Our only problem was conceiving a child—and we took great pleasure in trying. I loved feeling Hank's hot, hungry skin on top of mine, but our efforts had been a lost cause. I was barren. The one thing I had looked forward to my entire life—raising a child, boy or girl, it didn't matter—was not to be.

I married Hank Trumaine, my high school sweetheart, without a question in my heart. There were only twenty-two of us in the entire school, so the choices I had were few. I swear, though, even if I had lived in a big city instead of North Dakota, amongst a mass of people instead of a smattering, I still would've fallen in love with Hank Trumaine. I knew I was going to marry him in the sixth grade, but I didn't tell him that until our wedding night.

Hank was a gentle boy who loved the land more than anyone I had ever met. He grew up to be a thoughtful, hardworking man whose passion for farming could barely be contained inside his lanky body. The demand of the land and the hard work invigorated him. He saw hope instead of dread in storm clouds. He watched the ground come alive in the spring as if he were reading a good book, and he could tell you how the growing season was going to go just by the size of the wings on the mayflies.

The North Dakotan lilt to his voice was like the trill of a meadowlark. Lord, how I longed to hear him excited about something—a bluebell blooming in the back forty, a new litter of piglets—instead of the whispers and gasps that were so hard to understand now.

I'd been enrolled in my second year of college in Dickinson when Hank had asked me to marry him. My father had been none too happy. He'd had dreams for me and wanted me to be something other than a farmer's wife. He would have been over the moon if I had gone on to be a teacher, which is what I'd planned on becoming.

My father and I shared an insatiable love of knowledge and books, and as much as my father loved the land, his dream had been to break free of tradition. Instead of following in his own father's footsteps he had wanted to be an English teacher, more specifically a professor at the local college in Dickinson like his sister's husband. But he'd been bound to the family legacy as his father's only son. He was tied to the earth, to the simplicity of working the fields, and expressed deep disappointment when I made the choice to leave college and marry Hank to do the same thing.

I had never regretted my decision not to become a teacher, never been angry about my life, like my father was. I loved the plains, the beauty of wide open spaces, the constancy of the wind. I could never have left the farm—or North Dakota for that matter.

I understood the rhythms of the seasons: the ferocity of winter, the nervousness and hope of spring and the growing season, and the relief of the harvest. Books were my transport to the larger world, even though I'd castrated more hogs than I would like to admit, pulled weeds until my hands ached well into winter, and withstood the fickleness of North Dakota weather like every other farmer's wife I knew. Farm work was in my blood, but books had always been my first true love. They were my magic carpet ride to a normal life; my sanity.

As long as Hank Trumaine was standing at my side at the end of the day, I was perfectly content.

“Nothing is going to happen to me,” I finally said to Hank. “I promise. Hilo just wants me to find out as much as I can about an amulet he found at Erik and Lida's. He thinks it's important, and I'm the only one that he trusts to make sense of it for him.”

“I wouldn't expect you to say no to Hilo Jenkins.” Hank's voice was barely audible, his strength failing, but there was no animosity toward Hilo. Hank loved Hilo; he respected him near as much as he had his own father.

I kissed Hank's forehead, then wiped away my tears with my apron. “I need to get you some dinner.”

“Hopefully, you'll have better luck with that than you did with the pies.”

I almost smiled, happy to see a flicker of his impish wit. Instead, I pulled myself out of the bed and stood there as Hank drifted off and returned to his dream world, where I'm sure he lived, farmed, walked, and hunted to his heart's content.

CHAPTER 4

Luckily, I didn't burn the pies. They came out perfect. I just hoped they tasted as good as they looked. Still in a daze, I puttered about the kitchen looking for a way to make a quick supper. I decided on salt pork sandwiches, beans, and a bit of wilted lettuce from the garden.

I grabbed a jar of beans from out of the cupboard, then stopped cold as the memory of my mother rushed at me with a force that almost knocked me off my feet. Unexpected tragedies do that to you, I think. Bring the past boiling to the top of the heap, a reminder of how to deal with loss and pain.

I had learned the alphabet, and then to read, under my mother's watchful eye as I arranged the spices in the cabinet next to the stove as a child: allspice, basil, cinnamon, followed by dill, and so on. I was four, maybe five, and my mother was the rightful queen of our kitchen, the kitchen I stood in now. They had left me the house after their deaths, and Hank and I had made it
our
home.

My mother was always glad to have me at her side, joyfully and subtly instilling her sense of order and love for good food in me with every move she made. She made lists, too, and would have scoffed at the idea of making side-money from such a skill.

Momma was a tall, stout woman, forever in a pure white apron with daisy appliques lined perfectly across the waist—the same one I wore every time I cooked. She'd been more than a capable cook, no matter the ingredients that were on hand.

In the lengthening days of March, when the wind still howled across the rolling plains, and the duck ponds were still frozen, she could conjure sugar cream pies and produce suppers that looked like feasts when there was just a dab of flour, cream, corn, and brisket stored in the larder.

“Now, Marjorie,” my mother had said over and over again, “you have to plan for days when things are slim. You can't eat everything up at once. The larder might look endless in November, but when March comes along you're going to be mighty hungry if you've shown no amount of restraint.” There was always a dose of Norwegian on the tip of her tongue. She had gone through Ellis Island with her sister and parents when she was four.

“Yes, ma'am, I'll remember that.”

Farming in North Dakota had never been an easy way of life, and restraint was a necessary quality no matter the season. The winters were hard. The wind was so fierce at times you felt like it was going to tear your eyes out. A relentless scream of air raced forever across the flatlands, entered your head like a tapeworm, burrowing deep into your mind, allowing no silence, no peace, unless you knew how to make it for yourself.

To my father's pleasure, I'd found my peace in books, in worn library copies of Cather, Chekov, Dreiser, and whoever else I could grab from the mostly bare shelves. But I had wanted to be just like Momma, too, from the moment I could remember. I hadn't known then that dreams, no matter how simple, could vanish in the flick of an eye, or at the barrel-end of an old shotgun.