Buttons and Bones (10 page)

The man with the camera let its nose drop toward the ground, and Ms. Johnson turned to knock on the door.

Lars opened it and came out, and the camera came up again. The reporter said, “Good morning. I’m Marla Johnson—”

Lars interrupted her in a voice that brooked no argument. “We have nothing to say. Please clear off our property. Thank you.” He turned and came back inside.

The reporter blinked at the closed door then turned to face the camera. “That was Lars Larson, new owner of the cabin in which—
under
which the skeleton was found.”

She tried knocking on the door again, but it stayed shut. She looked around and saw Betsy at the window, but Betsy immediately withdrew.

The crew filmed the cabin from various angles and went away.

Lars, Betsy, and Jill spent the rest of the morning working to clear the beautiful white pine floor of its coverings of linoleum and musty carpet. The floor—whose wood looked more yellow than white to Betsy—appeared to be in good shape, no stains or severe scuffing. Twice cars appeared in the clearing bringing members of news agencies. Lars patiently repeated his initial reply to their request for an interview.

Between visits the cabin was emptied of the carpet and linoleum coverings. Then the bathroom walls and floor were diagramed and measured. After a light lunch—spent ignoring the persistent knocking of another television crew—Lars said, “The heck with this. Emma Beth, my little sweetheart, how would you like to go see the turtle races?”

The child’s face flushed pink and her mouth opened with delight, her light blue eyes fairly shooting sparks. “Can we go? Can we go right now? We should go right now so they won’t be over and we’ve missed them.”

“Right now,” said Lars.

Everyone piled into the SUV, and Lars, his foot a trifle heavy on the accelerator, took them out to Highway 6, down the other side of Thunder Lake, and past the shore of Big Rice Lake. He drove right by Laura Lake, between Upper Trelipe and Little Bass Lake, split Inguadona Lake, came within hailing distance of Rice Lake and Cooper Lake and on to the shore of Girl Lake—and Longville. All in less than twenty minutes and without even nearing all the lakes in the area.

Longville was a pleasant little town with very broad streets and lots of shops catering to tourists. Lars found the street with the statue of the turtle, correctly surmising that it marked the site of the races about to begin. There was already a crowd gathering and he had to park in a lot two long blocks away.

The “racetrack” was two circles painted in the middle of the broad street, one about four feet in diameter, the other circling it, about eight yards across. A low stage had been set up alongside it, fronted by five-gallon buckets filled with annoyed or frightened or confused turtles. On the stage, a man with a microphone was encouraging children to come forward and, for an entry fee of three dollars, select a turtle to race. All the turtles, he said, were fresh caught and would be released at the end of the day. “No professional racers allowed,” he asserted, mock seriously.

Airey picked the first turtle he saw and promptly dropped it onto the asphalt when it came out of its shell and scratched his fingers lightly with its claws. Betsy picked it up and tried to interest him in it. He was willing to look, but not anxious to take it back. It was a lively, good-size turtle, so Betsy kept it for him.

Emma Beth, on the other hand, was looking for a soul mate and went peering into bucket after bucket. She was on the last one before a turtle looked back at her with what she interpreted as a friend-for-life eye.

The rules of the races were simple. For each heat, a child placed his or her turtle inside the smaller circle, holding it in place until the command to start was given. The first turtle to cross the border of the outer circle won.

The turtles, new to the game and in any case not particularly interested in racing toward a shouting crowd of humans, mostly retreated to the security of their shells and refused to move. Others went in fits and starts. One or two wandered at random inside the larger perimeter. But occasionally, and inevitably, one would manage to cross the yellow line, to the cheers of its temporary owner—and sometimes the tears of a loser.

Airey’s turtle was the vague sort—it set off with a will, but quickly lost its compass and began to draw a meandering line that never approached the finish.

Emma Beth’s turtle set off in a determined straight path that should have made it the winner. But there was another turtle that apparently had grasped the rudiments of the competition and set off in a fast scramble for the border, crossed it, and nearly vanished into the crowd before its delighted owner could retrieve it. Emma Beth’s soul mate finished second.

Jill made everyone who had handled the turtles wash their hands before taking them to the ice-cream shop for a consolation ice-cream cone.

Nine

ICE-CREAM cones eaten, they all lingered to watch more races. The crowd cheered the turtles on, and a small group of rowdies got busy taking side bets.

“Excuse me,” said a female voice, and Betsy looked around to see a slender woman about her own height, with hair dyed a chocolate brown with blond streaks in it. Her face was lined, but her broad smile revealed good teeth, and her blue eyes were shining. Jill took the childrens’ free hands, prepared to retreat if the woman proved to be a reporter.

“I’m Johanna Albright. Are you the people who found that skeleton in your root cellar?”

“Why do you ask?” said Jill, taking two steps back while looking around for a photographer.

“Because if you are, then I imagine you are also looking for information about the German POW camps in this area, and I know almost everything about them.”

Lars said, “Who told you we wanted to know about the German POW camps?”

The woman waved her hands impatiently. “It’s all over town that the skeleton is probably that German prisoner who ran off from one of the camps back in 1944 and was never found.”

“Where were the camps, do you know?” asked Betsy.

“There was one right in the area. I’m from here; I actually remember seeing German soldiers working in Longville. They painted our city hall. They were very handsome, I remember my mother and older sisters talking about how good-looking they were. They weren’t treated badly, my mother said a neighbor used to bake treats for them, and they had soccer competitions and wood carving contests with other camps. I have a memory of them going by in the back of a great big truck one winter, going to the forest to cut down trees. They waved at us and we waved back. They were only here for about a year, two winters and a summer. Then the war was over and they were shipped back home. They were all afraid of the ruin their country was left in. Some of them got engaged to women here so they could stay in America.”

Johanna was bubbling over with information, which she shared with smiling enthusiasm.

“Here,” said Jill, noticing that people were beginning to eavesdrop, “let’s get out of this crowd. Is there a place we can sit down?”

With the crowd thinning, there were two vacant tables outside in front of the ice-cream shop. Lars led the way to the farther one, taking two chairs from the nearer so everyone could sit. The table and chairs were metal, spray-painted aqua and cream. The chair legs squealed on the concrete patio as they were pulled out and everyone sat down.

“It’s nice of you to volunteer to talk with us,” said Jill. “I’m Jill Larson, this is my husband Lars, this is our friend Betsy Devonshire, and these are our children Emma Beth and Erik.”

“I’m so glad I found you!” gushed Johanna. “I was afraid you’d get away before I had a chance to talk to you. I’m the local expert on the camps. I’ve written articles about them and everything.”

“How did you find out about the skeleton?” asked Lars.

“Well, it was all over the news last night, so anyone who didn’t already know found out then. But some of us knew before the news came on. It was Mavis Johnson who told me over lunch at the coffee shop about it probably being that lost German POW. I don’t know where she heard it, but when I told Allie Burnside after lunch, she’d heard that, too.”

Betsy smiled; the famous Excelsior grapevine was not the sole member of its species.

“Do you remember some of the German prisoners running away?”

“Oh, yes. Well, I remember the grown-ups talking about it. My father said two of them built a raft to float down the Mississippi on, intending to get to New Orleans and stow away on a ship bound for Europe. They drifted at night and slept in the fields by day and after many days came to this big city and were pleased they’d made it. But it was only to Saint Paul, where they were caught and sent back. They had no idea this was such a big country, you see.” She chuckled, and shook her head at the ignorance of the two unlucky POWs.

“What about the one who was never captured?”

“Yes, isn’t that interesting that they’ve found that skeleton in that cellar? Do you suppose they really are his bones?”

“I think we’re going to have to wait for the police to finish investigating before we know for sure whose bones they are.”

“Mama, can I have some more ice cream?” asked Emma Beth, exceedingly bored by this conversation.

“May I have some more ice cream, and no, you may not.”

Betsy asked, “Do you know where the POW camp around here was located?”

“Down on a lakeshore, Woman Lake, I think. I understand there are ruins of the old barracks, nearly hidden among raspberry bushes. But you shouldn’t go for a look because this time of year there are lots of bears in there eating the ripe berries.”

“Do you know anything about the Army major who disappeared about the same time?” asked Jill.

Johanna frowned over that for a brief while. “I remember hearing about it years later, not at the time—I was just a little girl, and either the talk went sailing over my head, or they didn’t talk about it in front of us children. It was apparently quite a scandal—but that happened in the winter. I remember them saying something about him catching a train in a snowstorm, and the POW who never got found ran away in the summer.”

So much for Betsy’s forming theory that the murder of Dieter Keitel and Major Farmer’s disappearance were related. She sighed.

Johanna continued, “My mother told me the talk at the time was about how much older he was than his wife. I think he realized he’d made a big mistake marrying her. He wasn’t from around here, you know. He came up to inspect the paper factory that was making cardboard for the Army. It was one of those love-at-first-sight things that sometimes happens to older men who meet pretty young blondes. She was a high school dropout, working as a waitress right here in Longville, but really good-looking. She played him for a fool, and when he realized what he’d done, he just walked out on her.”

“I see,” said Lars.

“Yes, it’s a sad story,” said Johanna, catching something in Lars’s tone and changing her own gossipy tone to one of regret.

Jill asked, “What about Mrs. Farmer selling the cabin? Do you know when that happened?” That would be a test question, Betsy thought, because the date of the sale would be something Jill either knew or had access to. Good for Jill, thought Betsy.

But Johanna didn’t know exactly when that happened. “She was the subject of a lot of talk, of course, poor kid. She stuck it out until the following spring or summer, I think. And even after she left, some said she went off to join him wherever he was hiding out. In any case, neither of them was ever heard from again.”

Yet if there was no connection, thought Betsy on their way back to the car, why was the unfortunate Dieter Keitel found in the Farmers’ root cellar?

Did Helga Farmer live with that body in the basement all those months until she could join her runaway husband? Is it possible she didn’t know about it? Then why put down the linoleum to cover over that trapdoor? Is it possible beautiful white pine floors were not seen as beautiful in those days? Betsy recalled how fashionable it once was to cover hardwood floors with wall-to-wall carpeting, just as now it was to uncover them again.

And was it true Major Farmer ran away because he’d come to realize the hideous mistake he’d made marrying the beautiful Helga? Then why did she sell the cabin and move to join him in his hiding place?

She thought of Molly Fabrae, who was sure her father would not run away and who had hoped the skeleton in the root cellar would put to rest an old canard.

She sat back in the car seat to think. Suppose the German soldier came to the Farmer cabin, which was probably even more isolated then than it was now, and held Helga Farmer captive—until her husband came home? Then, say, there was a fight, which the POW lost?

No, because they’d surely report it. No need to hide the body and flee the scene.

She was out of speculations; she couldn’t think what might have happened. To quote Godwin quoting Mark Twain, it was too many for her.