Harvest of Bones (24 page)

And what was it like, anyway, beyond that fence? Was it any better—or simply different? She felt a shiver of cold in her spine. Did she want to find out? She was safe—here on her island. God, what
did
she want, anyway?

She climbed off the John Deere; the engine sputtered and quit, and she heard the barn phone ringing. It could be anyone, anything. There were so many unanswered questions. She ran for it. It might be Colm, back from Burlington—he’d had no luck finding Mac, the last she’d heard from him. The police, with Glenna. Gasping for breath, she said, “Oh. Hi, Fay.”

The woman’s voice was equally breathless; she’d been running after Dandelion. Wanted to tell Ruth about the hairs—Chief Fallon had called. The DNA matched up with the hairs from Glenna’s pillow. “They were definitely Glenna’s hairs on those bushes. But the iron gray hairs—they hadn’t a clue.”

“Tire marks in the road?” Ruth asked. “They haven’t checked for those?”

“They’re checking. I asked. But lots of people go by there, so it’s hard, the chief said. But they’ve found some oil spill, too, near where someone might have picked her up. But...” Fay was quiet; her voice sounded tired.

“Get some rest, Fay. You’ve got Hartley and the dog. And that cow to hand-milk. That’s enough work for anyone.”

Fay sighed, then rebounded cheerfully. “Oh, and now I’m on my way to Cabot—to see the grandkid. I wanted to tell you that, too, just in case. I mean, Hartley’s here alone. And Ruth—Kevin’s back. He’s checked out of the hospital; he’s on Valium. Then he had to make a turnaround trip to Chicago. He’s waiting now for the body. They’ve only just finally determined the poison—super something, they call it, um, super-warfarin—that’s it. In humans, they say, it can lead to fatal hemorrhaging. I never heard of it, but what do I know?” Her voice lower now, she said, “Hey, here he is. He wants to talk to you. Sorry, I know you’re busy, but.…”

Ruth heard Hartley’s high-pitched voice in the background, Fay’s in response; then Kevin came on the line.

“Ruth? I’m back.” His voice was intimate, breathy, as though he’d run back from the airport. “From Chicago.” He gave a short laugh, as if he’d said something absurd.

She didn’t know how to respond. “Oh, yes, and did everything, um, go well?”

“Relatively speaking. I mean”—he took a whistly breath— “arranging a memorial service is not my... well, you know.”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“You sound out of breath.”

“Well, I’ve been running after Zelda—the wayward cow? Not to mention Glenna.”

“I heard. I’m sorry. I hope she’s all right. She’s a grand old girl. Eccentric but—”

“Interesting. Her own person. Something most of us never are.”

He was quiet a minute. Then he said, “Yes, yes, you’re right. I wondered about that while I was calling up people to speak at the service. But then, Angie didn’t have many friends—close ones, I mean. Just an old college friend, wives of my friends, colleagues, you know. At least the college friend has agreed to say a few words at the service. The others didn’t really know her, they said.”

“Did you know her, Kevin?” She didn’t know why she’d said that, but it was out. She gritted her teeth, waited.

There was a quick intake of breath. “Well, I’m her husband.”

“I thought I knew my husband. And then he left. Like that.” She snapped her fingers.

He thought it over, sighed. “When she left—I had no idea. No idea why. I guess I’m just finding out. I failed somewhere, Ruth. I’m realizing that now. Her stepmother called, you see. Talked about that Healing House. Why all those women were there. They were abused, or thought they were. Did you know that?”

“I think so, yes.”

His voice rode over hers. “But why was Angie there? I mean, I gave her the silver spoon. My God, I did. She was my life; she was mine. How did things go so wrong?”

“Zelda broke through the fence again this morning,” she told him. “She’s one of those you can’t keep in a stall. Some cows won’t stand for it; you keep them in one place just so long and they... they break.”

“What? The cow?” he said, taking her literally.

“Glenna, too. Someone’s got her in a box. We’ve got to find out who. And where.”

“I thought we could have lunch in town, that Inferno place. We could talk,” he said, his voice pleading.

“Kevin, I’d love to but...I can’t. There’s something I have to do.”

“It can’t wait?” he pleaded. “The police, they want me back for more questions. Just the suspicion—that I might have hurt Angie, my wife. You don’t know how awful...”

It would be awful. She sympathized. She understood. But she had to see Alwyn Bagshaw; the thought of the man nagged at her. There was something odd about his interest in that sign logo, when publicly, he talked down the Healing House. And she was sure he’d been watching her when she came and went—she’d caught a glimpse of him at his window. He’d been rude to Emily, too, Emily’d said so. On that score alone he needed to be talked to. She’d have to do it.

She could hear Kevin breathing. Waiting for her to speak. “I know, I know, Kevin, how awful it is for you. But you’re innocent; they’ll come to realize that. They’ll find out who was involved, what happened. I’m sure they will.” He was talking about lunch again. He needed to talk to her, now. “I’m sorry. But I have chores. And then I have to go to town. Rain check? Maybe tonight for a drink?”

Reluctantly, he agreed.

* * * *

He played in the basement as a child, Alwyn did; it was a large cellar, flooded every big rain. He’d built himself a little boat; he’d float around till his mother discovered the water and made him bail it out. The sump pump she finally put in didn’t work now. But the cellar was dry these days, and there was that narrow room off it—used once to hide a runaway slave in, when Branbury was on the Underground Railroad route. It was filled mostly with extra wood, stacked up in tiers. Alwyn was neat that way; he’d been neat as a child—not like Denby, who’d flung his clothes on the floor when he went to bed, left the wet towel after his shower for Alwyn to skid on while Ma scolded, loved his naughtiness.

He balled his fists, kicked a fallen log. It hit the pile and knocked off two more logs. That was what his life had been like, Denby hitting and hitting at him till the logs fell on top of Alwyn, crushed him. He’d dreamed back then of living alone, the only child, with Ma telling him what a fine drawing he’d brought home from school, Ma taping
his
pictures to the icebox instead of Denby’s.

“But whoever saw a green sun?” Ma would say of Alwyn’s drawing. Alwyn overheard her on the phone once with a friend: “Takes after his father,” she complained. “I don’t know what I ever saw in Clifford Bagshaw. Good riddance to that man, I’d say.”

“Good riddance,” Alwyn said aloud. “Good riddance,” he’d said when Annie left to live with Denby, till Denby got tired of her and came back home, and Annie wanted Alwyn back again. “Sure, if you want to live in the basement,” he’d said. And by God, she would, too!

He’d leave some food, box of cereal—enough for a day, a pitcher of water. He’d show her what she’d done to him, cheating on him like that, killing his dream, unloving him— that’s what she’d done, unloved him!

He lugged down a mattress from the spare room. The dust rushed up in his nostrils; he sneezed, banged it against the wall. There was a hole where the mice crawled in, but he didn’t see any mice now. Though with winter, they’d be back. But not with a woman down there, not with Annie. He thumped the mattress down the cellar steps, threw an old quilt over it, sofa pillow where the cloth had split down the seam. It’ll be a stopgap anyway, hold her for now, till I decide what to do with her more permanent, he told himself. “More permanent,” he repeated aloud, sitting down on the mattress to think.

His back was killing him. His chest felt like it weighed two hundred pounds in and of itself. He rubbed it. But it went on aching. He got up finally, stumbled out. When he shut the door behind, you wouldn’t know there was a room there.

Chapter Sixteen

Mac rolled himself up on the Church Street bench till his nose touched his toes, pulled the HOLY COW cap he’d bartered from a kid on the street down over his forehead, and lay there to plan a strategy. He still had a little money, but not much. Burlington was a bust; Montreal too cold, he figured. He had to get back to New York. He’d hitchhike south to Albany— had enough for a bus to the city. He still had his pension; he’d find a new place to stay. He never liked that old journalists’ home anyway, bunch of stuck-up guys—”I did this; I did that.” One of them from the
Times,
found out he was “just a proofreader.” Spread the word; he was snubbed. He hated that.

He could have been more; didn’t have the education, that was all. Three brothers to educate, himself the youngest; he got the shaft. He was the only one still alive though—ha. Went to night school: He was smart, literate, got the job as proofreader, ready to rise in the ranks. But college guys coming on thick as spring leaves, pushing him back each time. It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair. That was part of Glenna’s appeal: She went to college. The local college, yeah, but she went, got a job in the city—that printers’ union. Glenna got away.

He’d been fond of the old girl; she’d help him move up, he’d thought, though he was in his forties by then. But it was too late. The college-bred journalists took over the paper. He was letting errors through, they said, readers complaining—when it was the fault of the typesetters, yeah, their fault, not his! So he followed Glenna north. For a time, it was okay; he was away from competition. It was killing his spirit, that competition. At first, he liked the mountains, liked the patchwork of fields, liked the quiet. He thought he might write again: articles, essays: He started a memoir—
Growing Up in Brooklyn.
Wrote maybe fifty pages on it. Till things started going wrong.

What went wrong? Hard to know exactly. Glenna’s horse—he tried to ride it one day and it threw him. Maybe that was the beginning. Glenna’s temper, his own short fuse, the old mother taking Glenna’s side, seldom his. All those guys coming around—no privacy on a farm.

And then he killed one of them. Him, Mac MacInnis, who’d give up his seat on the subway for a woman, an old man, anyone on crutches, a cane.

How? Why? One thing leading to the next—no premeditation there.

But now they’d put him in jail; he’d spend his last days in a black hole. His heart drummed to think of it, his knees went buttery, and his bones sagged till he could hardly walk. But he had to—he had to walk away. Get out on Route 7, hook a ride—quick, before some damn cop saw him, that Hanna guy, sticking his nose where it shouldn’t be. Hell, the guy had walked right past the bench, never saw him—Mac, in his new
HOLY
COW
cap.

Hanna. Not too smart. The mouse catching the cat asleep. The cat waiting for the mouse to crawl out of the hole—only the mouse was already out, running for his life.

* * * *

Along with the superwarfarin, a rodent poison, especially dangerous to a person already taking a blood thinner, the forensic pathologist had found evidence of tofu, cheese, rice, and greens in Angie’s intestines. Colm recited this mixture to Ruth over the phone; she could hear the wince in his voice. Why was she so glad to hear from him? “At least the run to Burlington hasn’t been a total loss,” he said. “I even got to examine the skeleton; it’s lying like a puzzle put together on the guy’s gurney. He thinks the victim was already down— dead probably—when the killer got in the final thrust, that arrowhead. A crime of passion, you think?”

Ruth noticed he said “killer,” and not “Glenna” or “Mac.” Colm was at heart a sensitive man. Before she could speak, he said, “Jeez. It was like looking at myself twenty, thirty years from now.”

“Colm, you’re only forty-seven. Your father’s still going strong at seventy- something.”

“Going,” he said.
Going
is the word. He has complaints. But if I stay another year in that business, I’ll be a pile of bones—you can bet on it.”

“Thought you wanted to be cremated.”

“I was speaking metaphorically.” Anyway, he went on, he hadn’t found Mac, “the old buzzard. Disappeared. Cleanly. I met every bus. Hit the shelters. No sign of Mac.” She laughed, and he went on. “Oh, we’ll catch up with him sooner or later, I guess. But at this point, Fallon will just have to take my word for it. That there is a live Mac. That somebody put Mac’s Scots bonnet on some other guy to make it look like Mac in that hole—nobody knows who yet. They haven’t found any other dental records to match. Well, Glenna will have to identify Mac’s picture from my photo. Speaking of Glenna, is there anything...”

“Not a sign. The police are still searching. The townspeople have been wonderful. Scouts, Four-H, environmental groups—all looking. There’ve been twenty calls a day from people who’ve ‘seen’ her. One from Quebec, where she’s been ‘seen’ running a brothel. Can you imagine that?
She’ll
get a good laugh out of that if—when we find her.”

“Brothel? She’s a canny woman. She’d get her nickel’s worth out of the pimps. Keep ’em under reins.”

“Very funny. Anyway, I’m off to visit Alwyn Bagshaw in East Branbury.”

“What do you want to see that old fart for? He’ll just load your ear with complaints about the Healing House.”

“That’s exactly why I’m going. The Healing House. As if I have time! But—”

“That guy, Crowningshield. He’s coming on to you.”

“Quit that. It’s just—oh, I’m not going into it again.” She took a deep breath. She was mad now. At whom? Colm? Herself? Anyway. She explained about the arrow-moon logo, Alwyn Bagshaw’s interest in it, how he’d tried to deface it. “They’re pretty sure it was him. Remember that ring on the skeleton’s finger? I wish I’d photographed it before I gave it to the police. I had to pull it off Emily’s finger.”

“You can go down to headquarters. It’s part of their scanty evidence, along with the shreds of clothing, the Scots bonnet. Maybe the skeleton, whoever he was, stole it from Bagshaw.”

“Which means Bagshaw is mixed up in this whole thing somehow. All these deaths are connected. You’d better get in and search his place. If he’ll let you.”