Past Imperfect (22 page)

McIntire recovered enough to informed him that, happily, his daughters had been bestowed upon him fully grown, complete with husbands to do the worrying.

“But you can understand,” Godwin went on, “that my wife didn't feel comfortable about getting on too friendly terms with Mrs. Thorsen.”

The phone on the desk gave a short jangle. Godwin answered it with a terse “Yes?” and an, “Okay, put him on.” The conversation with his caller was equally abbreviated, consisting of only, “Yes, that will be fine.” He replaced the receiver on the hook with a thoughtful look. “That was Pete Koski. He's coming over now. Maybe he'll have some answers.”

He stood up, an indication that he had fed his guest enough information, but McIntire had not quite supped his fill. He pushed Nina Godwin and Nick Thorsen to the back corners of his mind. “Miss Delaney seems to be under the impression that Nels intended to embark on some new financial venture,” he said. “Would you happen to know anything about that?”

Godwin seemed to be weighing the wisdom of making any further disclosures. Then he replied breezily, “It was nothing definite.” He'd had an offer from a firm in Chicago. He was thinking of either selling out or collaborating with them on a resort development.

“Well,” he said as he ushered McIntire out the door, “I probably shouldn't have said anything about my late wife and your notorious mailman…but, like I say, it's always stuck in my craw. Anyway, it's all water under the bridge now.”

XXVII

McIntire was beginning to doubt that the past ever flowed away under a bridge or any other structure. It just lay like a stagnant pool waiting for the chance to suck the present back into it. Little by little, the past was certainly lapping at the shores of his own complacent present.

Had Mia known about Nick and Nina Godwin? Not Godwin at that time—Everett, wasn't it? Could Mia have joked about Nina's Nordic god, knowing all the while that it could once have been her own husband? McIntire had to admit that she could have; Mia was good at joking, especially to conceal an unpleasant truth. But he found himself deeply saddened by the idea that she would put on such an act for
him
—saddened that she might have chosen to protect her husband of thirty-two years rather than spilling the beans to the jerk who jilted her. Sure. At least she hadn't accidentally thrown the diary into her workshop stove. But she had made that remark about his leaving this investigation to the “professionals.” Was she afraid of what he might uncover? Well, Pete Koski could read, too, and would likely be every bit as “curious” about Nina Godwin's paramour as McIntire himself was.

No, the more he thought about it, the more certain he was that she couldn't possibly have known about Nick and Nina. She wouldn't have been chatting up Nina in the library and carving jewelry boxes, risking her nine remaining digits, for a woman who had borne her husband's child. Or would she? Mia was every bit as good at mockery as she was at deception. She might have gone out of her way to be kind to Nina just to grate on her conscience, rub a little salt in the wound. If what Godwin said about the chest making Nina feel guilty was true, it seemed to have worked. And there
had
been a definite note of self satisfaction in her voice when Mia mentioned attending Nina Godwin's funeral.

It struck him for the first time that this information might possibly be considered evidence—Evidence with a capital E, now that he thought of it. Was he going to have to go to the sheriff with this? Thankfully, that might not be necessary. Koski had the diaries—Cecil Newman had come for them on Thursday—and he was on his way to Godwin's office now. The subject was sure to come up. He would have no qualms about asking if Godwin knew of any man that his wife might have gotten involved with, and that would put Nick Thorsen next on the sheriff's list of candidates for “little chats.” Sooner or later it was bound to all come out…and when it did Mia would realize that McIntire had known about it all along and had kept it from her.

Should he tell her now? Go to her like a meddling old biddy? No, of course not. Maybe she would never have to know. Maybe Godwin would be able to supply the sheriff with the name of the “Nordic god” himself. Nina's past involvement with Nick might not even be mentioned, it'd be just small potatoes. Godwin hadn't seemed to attach a great deal of importance to it. If he had, he probably would have kept it to himself. Why
had
he mentioned it, anyway? Maybe attorney confidence doesn't extend to dead wives. Well, it was long over and done with. Nina could pose no threat to Mia's marriage now. For Mia to learn about her husband's infidelities—and his child—at this late date would serve no purpose except to hurt her.

On the other hand, Mia had just been an “ear witness” to a vicious murder. She was in a dangerous position. That short in her lathe—Guibard had said she might have been killed. And, as Mia herself admitted, the murderer must be someone close to them all, someone they would never suspect. Could he in good conscience withhold any information from her?

The sound of a Mule Train clippity-clopping through his living room and out the open window told him that, for once, Leonie was spending the afternoon at home. Thank God for Leonie, who said exactly what she meant and let the chips fall where they may. If everybody was as forthright as his wife the world would be a much saner place. McIntire pushed aside the image of an emaciated young soldier cradling his infant sons, Graham and William—a dying man, secure in the belief that he was leaving robust twin sons to carry on his lineage. He stepped over Kelpie, and opened the door.

In addition to Frankie Laine, Leonie was accompanied by several bushels of red, white, and blue crepe paper, which she was fashioning into what looked like miniature patriotic cabbages. Apparently she had been at it for some time; her fingers looked as if she had slammed them in a car door. She was wearing the pensive, preoccupied expression that he had learned to dread. It started before he even had time to sit down. “Do you remember, John,” she said, “before I agreed to move here, you made a promise to me?”

He had been expecting it, had even thought he might welcome it, but now that the time had actually come, he took a deep breath and launched into pleading as if for his very life.

“Oh, Leonie, please, you promised, too. You said two years. It's hardly even been one.” Was it really possible that all that had transpired since his return had taken place in such a short time? He could hardly credit it. “It'll get better. When this murder stuff is over, we'll take another trip, west this time…to California, Texas. We can go to Washington and drive down the coast, or even go up into Canada if you want.”

She looked at him as if she feared for his wits. “John, what the devil are you talking about?”

“Why?” he hedged. “What were you talking about?”

“A horse. You said we could have horses.”

He was swamped in a flood of relief.

“I know you don't like horses,” she hurried on, “but you wouldn't have to be bothered with them yourself.”

McIntire didn't dislike horses. He loathed the evil beasts—loathed them, and they knew it, and returned the feeling in full measure. The proximity of John McIntire seemed to charge even the most docile plug with an irresistible desire to audition for a starring role in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. He had gone riding once with Leonie in Hyde Park. He was outfitted with the only horse in the stable tall enough to fit his lanky frame, an equally rangy mare seemingly old enough to have begun her professional career pulling an ice wagon through the streets of London.

The instant he mounted the sluggish creature, it had been transformed into a fire-breathing fiend whose only intent was to leave a healthy portion of its rider's skin on every tree in the park. Even Leonie had not laughed. Her face had remained uncharacteristically grave, and she actually seemed to have tears of sympathy in her eyes. Three days later she had finally broken down and dissolved in a fit of hilarity that was all the more violent for having been so strenuously restrained. He still felt the sting.

But if sharing his home with one of the diabolical brutes would keep Leonie in it, he was ready to make the sacrifice.

“I have nothing against horses, I just don't enjoy riding very much.” Now he was doing it, too—lying through his teeth. It must be something in the water. “But you know,” he added sympathetically, “it might not be that easy to find the kind of horse that you're used to around here—hunters, or thoroughbreds, or whatever…”
killers, widowmakers.
.

“Oh, that's not a problem. Sally Ferguson's got a sister that raises quarterhorses in Wisconsin. She's going to take me to have a look at them. I'll be learning to ride western.”

Of course, what else?

Leonie began packing her crepe paper creations into a large cardboard box. “You know, John,” she said, “unlike some people, some even in this very room, I have never been under the impression that St. Adele, Michigan is the western hemisphere's answer to Shangri-la. If I should make up my mind not to stay here, it won't be because of the death of some girl I never met. People die in England too, in case you hadn't noticed.” After a pause, she smiled. “But that holiday out west sounds like the best idea you've had in a long time.”

She appeared to notice his own box and its contents for the first time. “What's all that?”

“Well, Leonie, you'll be happy to know that I've found gainful employment.”

“As an accountant? That doesn't look like the usual assignment from your Uncle Sam.”

“As a matter of fact, these
are
business records. They're written in Norwegian. I'm translating for Warner Godwin.”

She looked at him with a hint of suspicion in her eyes. “And just whose business might they be records of?”

His admission of their source was greeted with a sigh. “Well, I hope you learn something that will help instead of just rattling more skeletons. The more you find out, the more upset you get.…Incidentally, I've talked to Mark Guibard about it.”

What? Were they planning to have him put away, too?

“About Mrs. Bertelsen; he's going to check up on her. Did he have a hand in getting her committed, do you know? I didn't like to ask, but he was here then, wasn't he?”

“I think he originally came from Duluth, but he's been around for a long time. In Chandler, that is. He didn't move to St. Adele until he retired from his full time practice. There were stories that he ended up here in the middle of nowhere because of some trouble he'd gotten into in Minnesota.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“From what I recall, it had something to do with botching up a delivery. A birth, I mean. He'd been at a party and had been drinking, or so the story went. Ma would probably remember more. Maybe it's true; from what I know of it, he's been a strict teetotaler since he's been here. But, I don't know if he was the doctor that declared Tina Bertelsen insane…somebody had to have done it.”

McIntire wondered if he should tell Leonie about Nick and his romance with Nina Godwin. Maybe she could advise him on what he should do. Somehow he wasn't quite able to bring himself to mention it. She was right. The more he probed, the more information he uncovered that he really would rather not have known.

But he would let Pete Koski know about Mia's close call with her lathe.

XXVIII

Although it was Sunday afternoon, McIntire left the seductive fly rod in the closet, parked himself at the dining room table with a pot of coffee near his right hand, and prepared to tuck into a large helping of the Bertelsen business accounts.

Instead of accompanying her to church that morning, he had abandoned Leonie to the inevitable onslaught of questions and spent the time driving slowly along the roads, stopping now and then to explore a swaybacked, derelict building or investigate a suspicious area of exposed earth.

After four days spent grilling David Slocum, Warner Godwin, Earl Culver, Lucy Delaney, Mark Guibard, and a few of Cindy Culver's high school friends, the state detectives had left town, taking with them a half-dozen confiscated bottles of Black Leaf 40, and vowing to return after the Fourth of July holiday. Mr. Mowsers had followed suit, voicing his belief that the body had either been taken out of the county or was in the lake, in which case it would probably turn up in the late fall or the next spring, when the change in water temperature would cause the lake to turn over.

McIntire still clung stubbornly to his belief that Cindy's body had not been taken far.

It was obvious that it had also not been left in the open—even if the dogs hadn't found it, a gathering of hungry crows and turkey vultures would have betrayed its presence. That left burial, burning, or simply concealing it somewhere. But where? A forgotten well or unused root cellar? The trunk of an abandoned car? Koski had given him a tepid warning about snooping into private property without a warrant, but the junked cars, half hidden by weeds and brush, that ornamented the majority of homesteads were a tempting target. He would have loved to pop the hubcaps off Nick Thorsen's Dodge to check for evidence of a recent tire change, but neither Nick nor Mia were among those who could be expected to be safely tucked out of the way in church.

The phrase “root cellar” popped into his mind again, and he aimed the Studebaker down the narrow road that led to the old Makinen place. The Makinens had left St. Adele in 1932, part of a large contingent of Socialist Finns from the United States to emigrate to the Soviet province of Karelia. Whether they found the workers' paradise that they expected was unknown. The Makinens, like many of their fellow emigrés, had not been heard from again.

McIntire turned into the end of the driveway, two dim parallel tracks separated by a growth of timothy and foxtails. He stopped the car, took his flashlight from the glove compartment, and stepped out into knee high grass. The house was gone—it now served as the south wing of the Culver home—but overgrown lilacs still showed where its dooryard had been. He walked under a trio of twisted apple trees and across to the barn. The double doors stood slightly open. McIntire widened the gap only enough to allow him to slip inside the single unpartitioned space. For the last few years it had been used by Sulo Touminen to store the hay he cut off the Makinen's abandoned fields. It was empty now, but McIntire methodically crisscrossed its earthen floor, scuffling his feet and raising a cloud of dust as he walked. He found no evidence of digging, and stepped outside regretting that he'd permeated his socks with hayseeds to no good purpose.

At the far end of a weedy clearing—potato patch, probably—the earthen berm that marked the root cellar swelled out of a low hillside.

The thick slab door still hung solid on its hinges. McIntire swung it open to expose the short tunnel leading to the storage space deep inside. McIntire knew what awaited him. A door at the far end of the tunnel, and a third one bisecting it through the middle would divide its length into a pair of two-foot-by-three-foot chambers. The accepted protocol was to close one door before passing through the next, in order to keep warm air from entering the root cellar proper.

Protecting carrots and cabbages was not a priority now, and McIntire had no intention of sealing himself inside the manmade cavern or its iron-maiden antechambers. He kicked a pile of soil against the open door to keep it that way. He switched on his flashlight, ducked inside, and passed through the next two portals, securing their doors in similar fashion, and giving each a hefty thump to warn any possible inhabitants of his approach.

The interior was not only cool, it was cold, and smelled, as was to be expected, of earth. Shelves lined the back wall. A small wooden keg lay on its side near his feet. The beam of his light reflected a silvery coating of frost where the walls met the dirt floor. The shelves sat empty but for a lumpy burlap bag. Livid white tentacles erupted through its rotted fibers, groping and intertwining like a nest of light-deprived vipers. A sack of forgotten potatoes, making one last bid for life. Sulo had apparently also made use of the cellar in the past year or two.

As he bent his head to back out through the narrow passage, the sunlight coming through the open door was suddenly eclipsed. He whirled, losing his grip on the flashlight and striking his head on the low lintel. Sandra Culver stood at the entrance to the tunnel.

“I saw your car,” she said. “I thought maybe…you haven't heard something?”

McIntire fumbled for the light and waited for the ringing in his ears to fade before responding. “No, I was just looking around.”

In the week since her daughter's disappearance Sandra Culver had grown thin to the point of gauntness. Grim desperation had etched every vestige of grace from her features. The burnished cap of hair was now an oily helmet clinging to her skull. She was soaked to the knees, and her neck and the backs of her hands were raw with insect bites.

“There's nothing here,” he added.

She turned her amber eyes to his with a long look that was half searching, half pleading. “I thought I was doing what was best for her, letting her go where she'd have things nicer, where she'd find out that there could be more to life than grubbing in the dirt and having babies.”

McIntire put his hand on her shoulder. “You
did
do what was best. Your daughter had a good life, and she was doing a wonderful job of caring for Annie Godwin. You're not responsible for the act of some psychotic maniac any more than you could be blamed if she'd been struck by lightning.”

She bit her lower lip and blinked rapidly. Then with a grave “Thank you” she put her hands in the pockets of her too-large barn jacket and stalked off across the fields.

He probably should go after her, try to get her into the car and take her home or to his own house. Leonie would take care of her. She couldn't be doing those seven other kids much good, the shape she was in. He watched until she disappeared into the trees. Better to let her go on with her search. Who was to say that guzzling tea with Leonie would better help to assuage her grief—or her guilt. Maybe tramping around in the woods was all that was holding her together.

McIntire closed up the root cellar and left the Makinen place to its ghosts.

He had stopped at the store, informed Elsie that there was nothing new to report, and received her information that Lucy had come in at least an hour and a half later than usual on the morning of Cindy's death. After purchasing a copy of the
Marquette Miner
and two packs of Walnettos, he drove home.

Immediately after her own return, Leonie had collected shovel and broom, hammer and crowbar, and gone off to render the old barn fit for its prospective tenant. The sound of her enthusiastic singing—wondering why someone “didn't love her like they used to do,” and were, in fact, “treating her like a worn out shoe”—waxed and waned as she wheeled load after load of ancient straw and manure out the door and into the barnyard. Leonie might fancy herself the expert on horses, but McIntire could have told her a thing or two about cows. Most particularly that she could get down on her hands and knees with a toothbrush and Lysol, but she was never going to rid that barn of the odor of cow manure, a redolence that would soak into every pore of her being within minutes of entering its vicinity. Well, she'd find out for herself soon enough.

He opened the first of the ledgers. The ruled columns with their red and blue lines had been ignored in favor of scratching down whatever seemed to be uppermost in the writer's mind at the time—the writer most usually being Ole Bertelsen, although an entry in his wife's handwriting appeared now and again.

An hour and a half later McIntire had worked his way through 1909. Warner Godwin had not been far wrong; daily details of weather and not a few recipes did make up the bulk of the entries. Most of the financial recordings pertained to expenses. It would be years before the Bertelsens realized any profit from their enterprise. They received a few dollars each year from the sale of potatoes to a logging company, and Ole had spent the winter of 1908 cutting timber for that same company. For the most part they had lived frugally on Tina's small inheritance.

McIntire carefully recorded what little he felt was of importance: the letters from Norway awarding the estate of Sigrid Guttormsdatter to her only surviving child, Christina Bertelsen, née Bjornsdatter; the price paid for the farmland; the purchase of a team of oxen. On a separate piece of paper he jotted down instructions for a mosquito repellant, an unlikely concoction of vanilla and turpentine.

The occasional protesting screech of a nail being ruthlessly yanked from its longtime bed told him that his wife's efforts had passed the mucking out stage and moved into active remodeling. He carried the coffee pot to the kitchen range and stood staring out the window while he waited for the brew to reheat. Then he poured another cup and returned to wade into 1910.

In September of that year Ole and Christina had acquired another forty acres of land, the property on the lakeshore where the fish house and dock now stood. Late 1912 saw the loss of their only daughter, Julie. The following spring the first of their trees bore fruit.

Inserted between the pages of the subsequent ledger was a certificate, written in more or less plain English, stating that the Honorable Ira Sandhurst, Judge of the Probate Court of the County of Flambeau, in the State of Michigan, after a full investigation of the matter, including filing the certificates of two legally qualified physicians, was granting the petition of Olaf Bertelsen praying that Christina Bertelsen be ordered admitted to the State Asylum for the Insane as a public patient.

The Honorable Ira further ordered that Olaf Bertelsen be appointed to transport said Christina Bertelsen to the above mentioned institution and receive as pay for such services the sum of three dollars per day, together with his necessary expenses—another small amount to enter in the short column representing income not derived from his wife's inheritance, if Ole had kept track of such things.

Leonie had left off her mournful serenade and was talking with someone. McIntire stopped reading and listened. The visitor was female and was speaking in low urgent tones that told him that some crisis had no doubt arisen to throw a monkey wrench into the July Fourth plans. A minute later the kitchen door opened, and Leonie appeared with Mia Thorsen. Mia was in a state of rare animation. Her eyes glittered, and her face was uncharacteristically flushed.

“Mia would like to speak with you, John,” Leonie announced. She turned to Mia. “I'm afraid I'm not in any fit state to be serving refreshments, but perhaps John might make you some tea?” Mia shook her head. Leonie, from her position behind their guest, gave a brief lift of her eyebrows and her shoulders and excused herself to return to her box stall.

Mia waved away his gesture toward the coffee pot and gripped the back of a chair. “The state police were out yesterday. They looked around the studio, and they took my fingerprints so they could tell if there were anybody else's on my power tools. Was it you that told them?”

“I told Pete Koski. I was worried about you, Mia. Wires don't just spontaneously pop loose, and anybody could get into your workshop, goose patrol notwithstanding.”

He stood up and pulled out a chair. She ignored it.

“The sheriff came. He's taken Nick in.”

McIntire had expected that Nick would be questioned again, but was that what Mia was getting at? “What do you mean, taken in?”

“He called this morning and told Nick to get into his office, that he—let's see, how did he put it?— ‘needed some information from him.' Nick told him that he drives over five hundred miles a week and he's not about to do it on his day off, so if Koski wanted to talk, he could come to him. Pete sent that scrawny little deputy out, and he took Nick back to the sheriff's office. But first he spent a long time looking over Nick's car.”

“Do you mean he's
arrested
Nick?”

“Arrested him? What are you talking about? Of course he hasn't arrested him. Why do you ask that? Arrested him for what?”

“Mia, settle down a minute. What did the sheriff actually say?”

“He said he wanted to ask him some questions, and Nick could come in on his own or he'd have to take him in. He didn't say Nick was under arrest…maybe it amounts to the same thing. What does he want? Has he told you?”

“Pete hasn't said anything to me about it. Nick will probably be back pretty soon. He'll be the one to tell you what it's all about.”

“John, Nick won't be able to tell me anything. He can't handle something like this by himself.” Her stained fingernails dug into the chair. “If it's something about Nick's
car
…when he's drinking he doesn't always…sometimes he forgets what happens. I have to know what's going on. What does the sheriff think Nick can tell him?”

McIntire opened his mouth to deny any knowledge of what Koski had in mind, but stopped himself. Mia would soon find out he was lying. She was right, she would have to be the one to take charge, and she deserved to have information, no matter how upsetting it might be. Good old Nick, he surely must be enough of a child for any woman. He felt a surge of the most intense dislike for the petty, strutting banty rooster. Afterward he wondered how much that revulsion influenced his decision.