The Heirloom Murders (23 page)

After all, the note wasn’t proof-positive that Dellyn had actually
gone
to New Glarus. She’d missed her meeting with the volunteers that afternoon.

And what would happen if Dellyn spotted the rose-carved cultivator in the Frietags’ barn? Chloe hadn’t mentioned it because she didn’t want to add any tinder to Dellyn’s firestorm of worries. Too late now.

Chloe picked up the phone, called information, and managed to track down the number for Martine’s parents. She dialed. No answer.

Shit. Chloe sank back down at the kitchen table, trying to decide what to do. Perhaps pushed by her breath, two tiny hollyhock seeds dropped from their pods onto the paper towel tucked underneath. She remembered Dellyn saying that Puritan women sometimes brewed tea from dried hollyhock flowers to prevent miscarriages. And that Aztec people used zinnias to treat eye ailments. What had Markus said? Kids learn in school that the rainforest is full of medicinal plants, but no one thinks to wonder if the cure for a disease might be growing in some old woman’s garden down the road.

Thank heavens people like Dellyn were working to preserve such things, Chloe thought. And credit went to gardeners like Mrs. Burke as well, for keeping such detailed journals.

And then there was the other end of the spectrum—what Roelke had been asking about when he’d called earlier. Agro-chemical companies muscling small seed companies aside, practically enslaving peasant farmers and quite possibly destroying crops and processes that might be essential in addressing the next global catastrophe, all in the name of progress. And profits.

A new and troubling idea wormed into the mix, feeding her growing unease. Was it possible … ? No. Or was it?

Chloe glanced around the sunny kitchen. “Mrs. Burke?” she whispered. “Bonnie? I could use some help here. I’m worried about Dellyn.” She tried to listen, to be open for any advice.

Nothing.

Well, sitting here wasn’t going to accomplish anything. Chloe headed for the front door. She paused to scoop up the mail she’d almost tripped over. As she was setting it aside, a white envelope caught her eye. Her skin began to prickle. It bore a foreign stamp, and had no return address, but the writing was familiar. It was Bonnie Sabatola’s.

“That’s all the sign I need,” Chloe muttered. She grabbed the envelope, locked the house behind her, and trotted to her car. She was going to New Glarus.

_____

Roelke had an evening duty shift, and he left Roxie’s with just enough time to get to work. The office was empty, which was good, because he wasn’t in the mood to talk to anybody.

Did you really hope to get a full confession out of Simon Sabatola? he chided himself. Drunk or sober, Simon Sabatola was not a man to lose control easily. Roxie was scared enough to testify
about Sabatola’s involvement in the accident that had totaled Roel
ke’s truck. But I can’t pursue that, he growled silently, because I was drinking.

Roelke slammed his locker door, put on his duty belt, and dropped into a chair. Guest was in the middle of all this, too. I couldn’t crack Sabatola, Roelke thought, so maybe I need to look again at Guest.

He pulled a now-creased and soft-edged index card from the stack in his pocket and stared at his list of known facts about the secretary:

—G
rows African violets, likes dogs; no other known personal interests

—V
ery poor as a child; homeless; wore pajama top because no $ for a shirt; nothing but a neighbor’s herbal tea when no $ for dr.

—Science geek in school. Smart, but no $ for college

—Sabatola got a professional break because of his step-dad; Guest took secretarial role, subservient—source of more anger?

—But protects Sabatola, seems loyal

—Handled plan to run me off the road

Guest was a science geek. Guest grew African violets. Roelke thought about what Chloe had told him about genetic engineering and global argibusiness corporations. Was Guest trespassing into Alan Sabatola’s arena? If so, that would create even more animosity between the Sabatola brothers.

Roelke turned that possibility around in his mind. It was an interesting theory, but he couldn’t find a way to make it useful.

Well, he needed to head out on patrol, anyway. He was almost to the door when he noticed a missed-call slip in his mailbox.

Roelke—Chloe Ellefsen called 5:45 PM. Said she’s going to New Glarus to look for Dellyn Burke who is visiting an elderly couple. Wants to talk to you about the Eagle Diamond (!). Please call her at home later.—Marie

Roelke frowned at the note, trying to sniff out Chloe’s motivation for leaving the message. New Glarus, of all places. He really wished the stupid Swiss people who’d settled Green County in the last century had gone elsewhere. Ontario, maybe. Or Wyoming would have been good.

He also wished he’d never heard of the Eagle Diamond. Chloe was way off base on this one. Roelke still didn’t know why Guest and Sabatola had felt compelled to run him off the road, but he was willing to bet his career that finding the Eagle Diamond was not part of their business plan.

Well, he’d call Chloe later if he got the chance. He crumpled the note and tossed it into the trash. Outside, the radio squawked before he’d even settled in the car. “George 220. We have a report of a drunk driver heading east from Palmyra on Highway 59. He’s driving an AMC Pacer, two-tone cream over brown.”

Great, Roelke thought. Just what he needed tonight. Another drunk.

Chloe got lost twice
while trying to find her way back to the Frietags’ farm, but eventually she spotted the red mailbox that marked their drive, and turned in. A wind had kicked up, and the trees along the lane waved their branches in a frenzied greeting that did nothing to calm her nerves.

When she finally emerged into the clearing, she blew out a long breath. A car she didn’t recognize was parked near the house—Martine’s, probably—and Dellyn’s car was beside it. So she
was
here! Chloe hadn’t been willing to admit how scared she’d been of
not
finding her friend here.

The farmyard looked deserted, but a faint tang of wood smoke hung in the air and the occasional chime of a cowbell drifted down from the hill behind the barn. No one answered the front door when Chloe knocked, so she walked around the house. The kitchen garden and farmyard were empty. A thin plume of smoke was just visible rising from the
Käsehütte
chimney before being whipped away by the wind. Martine must be making another batch of cheese.

Frieda and Dellyn were probably in the granary, talking about heirloom veggies. Chloe headed in that direction, but she paused to poke her head into the cheese house’s open door. “Hello? Martine, it’s—”

Chloe’s stomach clenched like a fist. The hut was littered with tools: a curd scoop, calipers, a trier, wooden hoops. The huge copper kettle of milk steamed over its fire, but the big whey bucket had overturned. The liquid had flowed over the floor.

And Dellyn lay on her side in the middle of it, curled in a ball. Her clothes were torn. They were bloody. Very bloody. The metallic smell mixed sickly with the odor of milk.

Oh God oh God oh God. Chloe crouched beside her friend. “
Dellyn!
”

“Chloe?” Dellyn whispered. Her eyelids fluttered.

Chloe clutched that whisper of recognition to her heart like a prayer. “You’re going to be OK, you hear me? You’re going to be OK.” Dellyn didn’t respond.

Chloe fought down panic. She had to stop the blood loss. Both of Dellyn’s forearms were bleeding, and she had a horrid tear in one calf. Smaller wounds seeped red from her neck, one shoulder … It was too much. Chloe had no idea where to start, and nothing to use anyway. “Hang on,” she said. “I’m going to get help.”

She scrambled for the door. A growling blur of fur flew at her.

Chloe stumbled backward and hit the kettle of hot milk. She snatched a curd-cutting harp and swung it like a baseball bat. She connected, breaking the German shepherd’s trajectory. “Get away from me!” she screamed. “Get
away!
”

With sickening clarity Chloe understood that she was staring at the creature that had left Dellyn torn and bleeding on the floor. The dog snapped and snarled and lunged as Chloe jabbed ineffectually with the eight-foot-long tool. The hot kettle rim burned against her back. The fire beneath the kettle scorched her ankles. Steam basted her shirt, her hair. Her arms already ached.

Don’t show fear
, she told herself. But it was way, way too late for that.

_____

“I’m gonna kick your fucking ass,” Lester Odell promised from the back seat, as Roelke drove him to the Waukesha hospital. “I’ll shoot you while you’re sleeping.”

Roelke gritted his teeth. Was this a little joke from the cosmos? The drunk he’d
wanted
to talk, hadn’t. Now this one wouldn’t shut up.

Worse, Odell had to compete with an equally persistent voice whispering in Roelke’s head:
Chloe wouldn’t have left a message like that if it wasn’t important.
Roelke still couldn’t imagine what might have prompted the call, but it nagged at him.

A moment of blissful silence was cut short by a loud thump. Although cuffed, Odell had managed to undo his seat belt. He lay now on the seat, his feet raised to make another try at kicking out the side window.

Roelke made sure the road was clear. Then he hit the brakes.

Lester Odell bounced onto the floor. “You’re trying to kill me!” he howled, as he flopped fish-like back onto the seat.

“Sir, your safety is my top priority,” Roelke assured him. “If you’d kicked that window out, you might have gotten cut on the glass. I couldn’t let that happen.”

Roelke had radioed ahead that Odell was combative and refusing the state-mandated blood draw. When he reached the ER lot, the goon squad was waiting—five of the biggest, burliest deputies in the county. “He’s all yours,” Roelke told them. Once inside, they disappeared behind a curtain to wait for a nurse.

Roelke paced the hall. Simon Sabatola was drinking himself into oblivion at Roxie’s Roost. There was no reason to be concerned about Chloe. She and Dellyn were visiting some old people—hardly
a reason to call out the New Glarus police.

Even if he wanted to, he didn’t know where to send them.

But Chloe’s phone message bothered him. He needed to do
something
. And he’d be busy with Mr. Lester Odell and paperwork for hours.

One solution presented itself. No
way
, Roelke growled silently. He paced again. Tried to come up with Plan B. Couldn’t.

Damn it all to hell. “Hey,” he called to the nearest deputy. “I need to make a phone call.”

Roelke fished several dimes from his pocket and fed the waiting room’s pay phone. He felt ready to whack the receiver against his forehead a few times. He’d been acting like a nutjob for a while now, but this was beyond reason.

Then he thought about Chloe and Dellyn. He started dialing.

It took several calls, actually, but he finally got through to the person he was trying to reach. “This is Officer Roelke McKenna of the Eagle Police Department,” he said, jaw muscles clenched so tightly he had to force out the words. “I need your help.”

_____

The German shepherd trotted back and forth in front of Chloe, ears back, ready to spring the moment she lowered the harp. Was he rabid? Or had somebody trained the dog to attack, and then let him slip away from home? More important, was Dellyn still alive? She hadn’t moved, even when the dog growled inches away from her. And—oh God, had the dog attacked Frieda and Martine too? Maybe they lay somewhere outside, bleeding to death like Dellyn.

“I can’t do this,” Chloe whimpered. Tears stung her eyes. Her throat was raw. Her muscles trembled. Soon her arms would stop obeying commands. It occurred to her that the dog knew that. He could get past the curd harp right now if he wanted to. He seemed to be toying with her, waiting for her to tire.

Chloe scanned the tiny building. The shepherd was between her and the main door. The side door was closed … but even if it wasn’t, running wasn’t an option. No
way
would she reach her car in one piece.

That left one direction: up.

The enormous copper kettle was supported by three heavy wooden beams. One stood upright. One branched out horizontally from the top of the vertical post. One angled between the two, a brace that supported the horizontal piece. The sum total looked distressingly like a gallows. But from that high beam she’d be able to scramble to the rafters. Those would be out of the dog’s reach. At least Chloe hoped so.

If she tried to crawl onto the kettle rim to start the climb she’d likely fall into a thousand pounds of hot, coagulating milk. But behind her, and a little to one side, was the more solid square of bricked masonry that encased Frieda’s old laundry kettle. Chloe felt a tiny flicker of hope.

A split-second assessment extinguished it. She couldn’t clamber onto the masonry without the dog reaching her. Even if she miraculously managed to get that far, gaining the upper horizontal beam was beyond her. On a good day. If only—

The German shepherd lunged.

Chloe dropped the harp and launched, scrabbling and scraping and pushing. As she got her butt on the brickwork she felt a sharp tug on one leg. She braced for pain, but the dog had only snagged her jeans. He jerked her leg back and forth like a chew toy. She kicked. Denim gave way with a harsh ripping sound.

Chloe got her feet beneath her on the brickwork, and kept going. Her arms grabbed for the upper beam, wrapped around it convulsively.

Upper body strength had never been part of Chloe’s physiology. In college, on whitewater canoe trips, she had more than once gotten wet because while she had the skill to read rapids, she didn’t have the brute force sometimes needed to run them. In junior high gym class, confronted with climbing ropes, she’d never made it more than a foot or two off the floor. On the elementary school playground, she’d never made it across the monkey bars.

Evidently primal fear affected physiology more than children’s taunts because somehow, grunting and flailing, Chloe managed to get one leg hooked over the horizontal beam. Then the other. For a moment she hung there koala-like, hugging the beam, panting. So far so good. But true safety would come only by reaching the
top
of the horizontal beam.

Her arms trembled violently. How hot was that milk below her, anyway? She really didn’t want to know.

You have to try, she told herself. Right now. There was no point in pissing around, wasting what little strength she had left.

Chloe clenched her teeth, scrunched her eyes closed, and scraped her right leg against the beam until the wood was under one knee. Then she gathered herself up tight and made one violent wrenching twist upwards. She heard herself gasping with pain as she wriggled against the beam. She couldn’t manage another true heave but instead almost willed herself those last inches, up … and over. Finally she was on top of the beam. From there it was an easier heave onto one of the rafters. Chloe lay motionless for a moment, making sure she was balanced, thanking the universe for all favors.

Then she opened her eyes. Dellyn still lay bleeding on the floor. The German shepherd was nowhere in sight.

Chloe didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The damn dog had probably disappeared before she even fought her way to her current perch.

But … what now? She may have clawed her way to a safe spot, but she couldn’t stay there. Not with Dellyn lying on the floor in a pool of whey and blood. Not with Martine and Frieda unaccounted for.

Chloe knew with complete certainty that if she went back down, she would be unable to make the climb again. Not if all of hell’s hounds were coming at her. The dog would probably be back the instant she descended. But what else could she do? She had to try to get help.

Gravity did most of the work. Chloe slipped, slithered, and banged her way back to the floor. Her knees buckled, but with a staggered step or two she managed to stay on her feet. “I’m going for help,” she panted, in case Dellyn might hear.

Chloe picked up the curd harp she’d wielded earlier, and peeked warily out the door. No sign of the German shepherd. OK, time to make a run for it.

Stumbling across the farmyard, Chloe expected the dog to fly at her again any second. She kept her head down, hoping that if she didn’t look for the German shepherd, he wouldn’t reappear. Chloe didn’t see the man until she almost ran into him. His shoes came into her circle of vision first—expensive-looking leather, well polished.

“Thank God!” She lurched to a halt. “I need help—my friend has been hurt—”

“Give me your car keys.”

“What?” Chloe stared at him. He was a small man with a receding hairline. A huge cobweb was mashed on one shoulder of his gray three-piece suit. She recognized him from Bonnie’s funeral. Edwin Guest.

The German shepherd trotted from behind the parked cars. Chloe froze, skin prickling. The man snapped his fingers, pointed at Chloe, and muttered, “Ajax,
hold
.” The dog crouched, growling with menace.

“Your keys!” Guest snapped. “Or I’ll have Ajax rip you apart.”

Chloe felt tears burn her eyes. Dellyn was going to bleed to death. And so, evidently, was she.

“
Unten!
” a woman’s voice bellowed from behind her. “Chloe,
unten!
”

Chloe dropped to the ground. She pulled her knees toward her chest and her arms up to protect her head. The air quivered with a thwanging sound. Guest screamed. He hit the earth with a thump. The dog howled. Chloe rolled away from man and dog and scrambled to her feet. She gaped at the shaft of an arrow extending from Guest’s thigh. Her mind didn’t want to process the unexpected image.

“You bitch!” Guest gasped. He tried to sit up, couldn’t manage it.

Martine stood by the old smokehouse with the stock of a wooden crossbow pressed against one shoulder. A second arrow was already in place. “Don’t make me shoot again!” she yelled. “I don’t want to hurt the dog, but I will if I have to. And I won’t think twice about killing you.”

“Ajax, stay,” Guest grunted. His face was white. One hand was clenched in pain. The other clutched at the place where the arrow had entered his thigh. Blood seeped between his fingers, scarlet on white. Ajax whined anxiously, nosing at his master’s shoulder.

Chloe felt every second ticking past. “Martine, Dellyn’s hurt! I’ve got to go call 9-1-1. Where’s Frieda?”