The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-five

The two little imps were filthy, and Mia was none too clean herself. She had never claimed to be a world champion house-keeper, but the state of the Hofers' home, even discounting the previous night's destruction, was utterly wretched. It was easy to see that Mary Frances wouldn't have been crawling around scrubbing out corners, but they'd only been there a couple of months. The grime in that place had to have been building up since at least the Hoover administration.

She was overjoyed to see a trickle of smoke wafting up through the trees. “Nick's got the sauna going,” she said. “We can get cleaned up.”

The children looked at her, then at each other, but didn't say a word.

“Have you had a sauna?”

Claire's eyebrows drew together. “Probably. I can't exactly remember right now.”

“A small room, with a stove. It makes you sweat to get clean.”

“Oh, sure. I forgot.”

Organizing the sauna proved to be an unexpectedly complicated undertaking. Joey was a boy, he pointed out, and was too big to go with Mia and Claire. That meant he had to either wait for Nick, which would be hours, or go by himself. Mia decided to table that decision until she and Claire were finished. They left Joey picking clover for the rabbits and set off down the path.

Halfway along, Claire slowed and, without a word, circled the great fan of tangled roots, all that remained of the giant white pine that had stood for so many years.

“It fell down last winter,” Mia told her, “in an ice storm.” She waved to the jagged stump of its twin. “We had two of them. This one hit that one, and, kaboom! It sounded like an atom bomb.”

“Did it scare you?”

“It was in the middle of the night, in a terrible lightning storm, and it scared the liver out of me! But it makes a fantastic sculpture, don't you think?”

Claire nodded.

“My mother called roots like that a witches cradle.” A term that was even more apt, considering that those roots had cradled two generations of stillborn infants. Claire looked up quickly, but she didn't respond, and Mia directed her back down the path.

The girl stalled again when the reached the sauna. “It's a cute little cabin.”

“It's been here since before I was born,” Mia told her. “I think it's older than the house, even. It was built by a man named Mr. Touminen. I don't remember his first name. He was a Finlander. Finlanders do like their saunas. They build a sauna first and live in it while they build their house.”

“It must have been a little crowded.” Did the child have a sense of humor after all?

“Finlanders are a close-knit bunch,” Mia told her, and was relieved to hear a laugh.

They stepped around the ladder leaning against the faded log wall.

“Nick's at war with the starlings,” Mia explained. “They're given to building nests in the chimney. After they plugged it up and smoked Nick out a few times, he got smart and decided to leave the ladder up, so he can check it every couple of days.”

“We got smoked out once. The stovepipe fell right out of the wall. Sam had to fix it, and the smoke made him throw up.”

“Smoke can make you sick in a hurry.” It could kill you in a hurry, too. Only the past winter, an old couple from Marquette had died of smoke inhalation. But maybe death wasn't a good topic of conversation right now.

It didn't take long to figure out that the child was not about to take her clothes off in front of anyone, and would die of shame if Mia did. Claire solved the problem by wrapping a towel snugly under her arms and clutching it to her thin chest, an option not open to Mia; the towel wide enough to cover her with any degree of modesty did not exist, and she didn't have a bedsheet handy. She finally opted for leaving on her underwear, provoking a beet red flush of the child's face, but prompting her to abandon her towel and enter the steam room in grayed and saggy underpants that made Mia want to cry. An amulet of some sort dangled from a frayed shoestring tied around her neck .

“You'll need to take off your necklace,” Mia told her. “It'll get hot enough to burn your skin.”

Claire pulled it over her hair and laid it on the bench beside her. “It's my good luck charm.” She hesitated, then added, “My father gave it to me.” The center of her chest was scraped raw. Obviously she'd only recently begun to wear it. A tribute to her dead father.

Mia touched her own momento mori, hung in a soft pouch between her breasts. “I'll make you a bag, like this. Then it won't scratch, or get hot in the sauna.”

“I know how to sew.” She gasped at the blast of steam when Mia threw a dipper of water onto the rocks. “I just haven't had time.”

Did the kid ever admit to being only eleven? “Do you have a machine?” Mia asked.

“Ya.” She wiped at the rivulets of dirt running down her arms. “But mostly I sew by hand.”

Mia didn't know what to make of this girl. Hardly a child at all in some ways, but barely more than an infant in others. Capable—she had no doubt Claire was proficient at sewing—but desperately in need of the most basic care. Incredibly shy on the one hand, and a bossy little know-it-all on the other.

How had she felt about her father? Was her curious behavior because of her recent bereavement, or had she always been that way? She didn't act as if she was sad, exactly.

“Do you know who killed your father?” It slipped out before Mia knew what she was saying.

Claire didn't even look surprised, apparently accepting that such wisdom was expected of her. “At first I thought it might be that skinny man, the one that came over today. He was in the field. But now I think, probably not.”

“John McIntire?” Mia stopped herself from laughing.

“I don't know his name. I saw him walking around the field when I went to bring Pa his dinner that day.”

Where do kids get their ideas? “He was there because Father Doucet went to get him after he found your father. Mr. McIntire is the constable. Sort of like a sheriff.”

“Oh.”

“Do you think he's scary?”

“I'm not scared of him. I just don't like him very much.” She rubbed at her knee. “Do you like him?”

It was an interesting question. Mia didn't ordinarily think of her feelings for John in quite those terms. “Most of the time,” she said. “Most of the time I like him just fine. We lived together when we were small. He was like my twin brother. There was three of us kids, all the same age, so maybe it was more like triplets.”

“I thought you lived here when you were a kid, because you walked through the woods to go to school.”

“I did. We all did. The three of us slept in the room where you were supposed to be sleeping last night. There were five families living in my house then. This was a big farm, and everybody worked together.”

“Like Prairie Oak?”

“What's that?”

“Where my Aunt Jane lives. Where my father lived when he was a kid.”

“Oh. Yes, if Prairie Oak is what I think it is, then this farm was sort of like that, but not exactly the same. I think where your father's family lives, everybody is… alike, the same nationality and the same religion. All the people in the Association—it was called the Gitchee Gummee Association—were from different countries. They didn't even speak the same language, and it wasn't a group based on religion like I think Prairie Oak must be.”

“It is. Sister is forever going on about God, way more than Father Doucet does.”

“Well, the Gitche Gummee Association didn't have that to hold people together. So it didn't work out for very long. When I was about four, I guess it was, everybody moved out except me and my mother and father. But John McIntire's parents only moved a short distance away, so we stayed friends.”

“Was he your childhood sweetheart?” She must be loosening up.

“I suppose you could say that,” Mia admitted. “We were close friends until he until he went into the army. I was very sad to see him go, and he stayed away for a long time. I never saw him again until a couple of years ago.” Why was she telling all this to a child? It was years since she'd thought about the old Association, and certainly she'd never before spoken aloud of her past with John McIntire.

“What about the other triplet? Was she always your friend, too?”

“He. It was another boy. His name was Wylie. We all three stayed friends for along time, but when we got older, in high school, Wylie more or less went his own way. He was good looking and popular, and John and I weren't.” She amazed herself again by going on, “He got hurt last year. He…fell, and he's paralyzed. He can't walk.” She'd said enough and was relieved that Claire asked no more questions.

Chapter Twenty-six

Maybe if McIntire quit now, Koski would get the lead out and do his job himself, or send out one of those intrepid deputies Wanda had alluded to. But McIntire had come all this way, and even knocking on doors, he could probably cover the entire town before dark. He could certainly cover the one place he'd potentially get the most information, the single watering-hole, and still be home for supper.

The man behind the bar of Ole's Timber Inn looked up with a crooked-toothed grin that hadn't changed in thirty-five years. “Johnny Mac, what the hell!”

“Fergie, what the hell.”

The last time McIntire had seen Fergus Olson he'd been wearing a cap and gown. He'd also had a bottle in his hand, as he did now. The man plunked two glasses on the bar and dumped a splash into each. “Have one on me. Long time no see. Where the hell you been all this time?”

“Here and there. I've been back in St. Adele for the past year and a half.”

“No shit? Well, here's to ya.”

McIntire was glad he'd come on business. Making small talk with Fergus Olson once the guy had run through his, admittedly comprehensive, stock of ready-made phrases, had been hard enough back when they'd shared a table in the high school science lab. He couldn't imagine what they'd find to chat about now. Of course murder was a great little ice-breaker.

“I guess you heard about Reuben Hofer?”

“Who hasn't? Poor bugger. If it had happened seven or eight years ago, it wouldn't have been much of a shock, but now? What do you suppose made him move here, to the scene of his crimes?”

“You knew him back then, I take it?”

“Oh, sure. He was in most every week, along with the rest of that chicken-shit bunch.”

“Big bunch, was it?”

“Not by the time I was through with them. Somebody that made trouble, I booted their ass out the door before they knew what hit ‘em, and they didn't get back. Reuben Hofer wasn't so rowdy as some.”

“Can you remember anybody special he used to hang around with? Anybody who's still around?”

“Somebody that might have killed him, you mean?” He smiled conspiratorially and tossed back his drink. “Why're you asking about Reuben? I ain't saying it's none of your business, but, is it?”

“Oh, you bet it is,” McIntire sipped at his own whisky. “I'm sent direct from Sheriff Peter Koski, himself.”

“Well, it ain't like he'd ever bother to drag his own butt out here, unless it's getting close to election time. Maybe we need our own murder.” He indulged in a spell of finger-drumming concentration before shaking his head. “I can't think of anybody Hofer was particularly chummy with. Although,” he raised a finger, “there were a few rumors about him and a certain beauty operator whose name I won't mention.”

“Any truth to the rumors, you think?”

“I definitely think. She lived over her shop then. Right on the street. You could hardly keep anything like that a secret.”

Weren't bartenders supposed to maintain confidentiality, like priests and attorneys? Maybe that only applied to what they were told by inebriated customers. “What about Bruno Nickerson? You ever see him, then or now?”

“Oh, sure. Then
and
now. He stops in damn near every night. He used to be a guard at the camp, so I guess he'd have known Reuben back in those good old days, too. What about him?”

“Was he here last night?”

“Last night? Why last night?”

“Koski was asking. He wants to talk to him, since he knew Reuben, I guess. He must be trying to track him down.”

It was the only pretense McIntire could come up with on such short notice. He couldn't have done much worse. Olson looked mystified. “If the sheriff wants to talk to Bruno Nickerson, he knows where to find him.”

“He does?”

“Bruno works for Sid, at the hardware store. Strange that the sheriff would have trouble getting hold of him.”

Sid, Sheriff Peter Koski's father. “Hmph,” McIntire agreed. “That is strange. I'll have to ask Pete about it, he must be getting senile.
Was
Bruno here last night?”

McIntire must be a better liar than he thought. Olson shook his head at Koski's incompetence, and said, “No he wasn't, now you mention it. His wife called looking for him. Said if he came in, to let him know his brother had showed up unexpected.”

“What time was that?”

“Hold on.” Fergus handed bottled beer to a pair of youthful pool players. “Time? I can't say for sure, because I only heard later from
my
wife. She takes over Thursday nights when I bowl. I didn't get back here until about eleven, and Diane said that Belinda called and said, if Bruno turned up, to let him know that his brother was in town. I guess that would have probably been around eight-thirty or nine. People don't hang around late on a week night, especially in summer. Why you asking about Bruno?”

“We're asking about everybody that knew Reuben Hofer.” And, despite McIntire's assurances to Pete Koski, that list wasn't getting much longer. Fergus made four. Should McIntire check with his bowling buddies? “Do you know if anybody had it in for Reuben? The COs couldn't have been too popular around town.”

“They couldn't have been a hell of a lot less popular. Like I said, I wouldn't have been surprised to see one of them end up on the wrong end of a gun in 1943. Now? I can't think there'd be much point, but some people don't forgive
or
forget.”

“Anybody in particular?”

“Naaa.” He flashed the contorted teeth again. “Unless Wa—that beauty operator I won't mention—is one of those women that hell ain't got no fury like.”