Read The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies Online
Authors: Kathleen Hills
“Just stand normal, don't suck in your breath.” Sister's hands were like ice, as she measured Claire around the waist and chest. “You haven't grown hardly at all since last summer.” She made it sound like that was Claire's own fault.
When she was done, she moved Ma's magazines off the table and laid out the plaid material. She didn't have a pattern; it would just be a plain dress like her old ones, or maybe a jumper.
Claire left her doing the cutting and went to the living room to wind two bobbins and thread the machine. She took a piece of brown flannel from Ma's box of scraps and made a little bag like Mia Thorsen's. It was kind of puckery when she turned it the right way out, and she couldn't get it under the needle to hem up the top. She'd have to do that part by hand.
Sister came and started setting up the ironing board. “Are you making something?”
“A pillow case,” Claire told her. “A doll pillow case.”
“I didn't know you played with dolls.”
“I don't. It's just practice sewing.”
Sister hung over Claire's shoulder for a while, which made Claire feel like screaming, then she held out her hand. “Let me see.”
Claire wanted to tell her to mind her own business, but she handed it over. Sister turned it inside out again. She took the scissors and snipped at the corners. When she turned it back the right way, the puckers were gone. “There. If you iron it now, it will stay flat.”
Claire smoothed it with her fingers.
“Isn't that better?” Sister didn't mean it like most people did, saying it just to have something to say. She wanted an answer.
“Yes, it's better,” Claire stood up. “I was just waiting for you to get done with the scissors.”
“I see.” She said it with a sigh, like Claire was an idiot. “Do you want to use the machine now? To hem the edge?”
“No, I'm going to do it by hand.” Claire stood up. “Later.” She went out to the kitchen and gave Ma back her magazines and poured her a cup of coffee.
Ma put down the magazine. “Is the bread sponge ready?”
Claire peeked under the dish towel. It looked ready to her. She put the pan on the table and got some flour from the sack in the bin.
Ma dipped flour and sifted it onto the sponge. It wasn't easy for her to reach. “Is that a car?” She started brushing the flour off her arms and the front of her apron.
Claire looked out. It was Mike Maki, the man Pa bought their house from. He had a bad limp.
If they hadn't seen him coming, they'd have never known he was there, his tap sounded like it was a chipmunk at the door. Claire grabbed up the sifter so he wouldn't see the mouse turds left in the bottom, and Ma called to him to come in. He opened the door but just stood leaning against the frame. His hair was stuck to his head in a circle when he took his cap off. He said if the boys finished cutting and raking up the hay, he'd come and bale it for them. Some of what had already been cut might be shot from being on the ground so long, but they'd do what they could. Then he said how awful it was about Pa not being here to do it himself.
Usually Claire hung around to listen when they had company, if she could get away with it, but today she didn't want to hear any more.
She had to go through the living room to get outside, because of Mike Maki blocking the kitchen door. Sister was fiddling around with the iron, holding off on her sewing so she could hear what was going on.
Claire threw the turds out of the sifter and sat on the steps for awhile trying to decide what to do. Spike put his paws and his head on her knee. He was almost too big now to get on her lap, and probably his leg still hurt. She felt around his ears and on his stomach for woodticks. He only had two, and one was still flat and brown. She pulled them off and threw them across the yard. The boys always killed them, by burning them with a match or popping them with their fingernails. Claire didn't mind touching woodticks, but killing them was way too ishy.
She could hear the tractor, far off, like on the day Pa died. Jake was already finishing raking the hay. She wondered if he was scared, looking behind him every so often. What if Jake was murdered, too?
She hopped up. “Come on, Boy. Let's go for a walk.”
When she got down the driveway on onto the road, Joey was right behind her. “Where you going?”
“Berry picking.” It was the first thing that came into her head.
“You don't have anything to put them in.”
“I'm just scouting, for later on.”
“That's stupid.”
Making things up sometimes meant you had to act like what you said was true. “Oh, okay. Go get something.”
“Why should I have to do it?”
“Because if I go back in, Sister's gonna put me to work.”
“I'll be back in two shakes!” Joey went barreling off to the house. He wasn't back in two shakes, not even ten shakes, but when he came, he had an empty coffee can.
“That took long enough.”
“Sister put
me
to work, putting away the dishes. It's your job, but I did it for you.”
“Don't be such a martyr,” Claire told him.
They walked slow. The warm sand felt good on the bottom of Claire's feet. Joey picked up a rock and chucked it at a crow sitting on the electricity wire. If the crow had stayed put, he probably would have hit it. Claire wondered if boys really were just naturally better at things like that than girls, like they always said. Joey was younger than her, but he could already throw better.
A car was coming, and she picked Spike up so he wouldn't get run over. It was Mike Maki going home. They waved, and he waved back, but he didn't smile or anything.
“He looks like a grouch,” Claire said.
“He's grouchy about Korea.”
“How do you know?”
“His boy is there. In the war.”
Joey was a little kid, so people hardly noticed he was around, and they weren't careful about what they said. Even if they realized he was there, they figured he didn't understand anyway.
All of a sudden he stopped, right in the middle of the road.
“What's the matter?”
“Nothing.” He started walking again, but even slower. “I don't think there are any berries around here.”
The tractor sound was getting louder. When they went around the bend, they could see it, bumping along with Jake on top, raking up the hay, not looking behind him. When he spotted them he stopped the tractor and got off. He came close enough so they could hear him holler, “You'd better get back home!”
“Why should we?”
“Because I say so! Beat it!”
Joey took off like a scared rabbit, back the way they came, not running, but walking about as fast as he could. Claire wasn't about to give Jake the satisfaction. She yelled, “I'll go home when I'm darned good and ready!”
Jake got back on the rumbling tractor.
He was headed toward the road, and if she kept walking they'd come right together, so she'd have to decide how brave she was before that happened.
Then she saw the big hole. It must be the place where Pa's tractor went into the ditch because he was dead. It was what she saw from her tree, the tractor hitting the fence before it ended up in the ditch. When she saw it, Pa was dead, but she didn't know it. It was right then that Ma yelled for her to make Pa's dinner and take it out to him. If Father Doucet hadn't come along first, it would have been her that found Pa when he died.
The brush was all knocked down, and even a couple of spindly trees were bent over with the bark scraped off. Two deep ruts showed where the back wheels of the tractor sank in. The rest was black mud and water. This was the place where Pa died, and Jake was out here, all alone, on the very same tractor. He was braver than she was, any day.
Maybe he didn't care. He might be glad Pa wasn't around any more. Pa usually liked Jake better than the rest of them, and was friendlier to him, but not the day he died. Not after the fight they had the night before. Pa told Jake to go get a can of gas for the tractor, and Jake fell asleep driving the car and got stuck in some sand. He got out, but by that time the store was closed, so he couldn't buy any gas. Pa was mad, and he hit Jake and made him cry. It was scary, seeing Pa hit him, and seeing somebody that was as big as Jake crying was even scarier.
She stopped in the road. Jake was turning around, heading back the other way, like he didn't even remember that she was there.
Well, my dear, I'm going to have to leave you for a short while. An eager-looking female is sashaying across the yard, headed straight for my front door.
McIntire laid down his pen, slid his feet back into his shoesâhis bare toes were probably not nearly so fetching as hersâand got up to greet Wanda Greely. He'd wondered how long it would be.
She said hello with a brilliant fuschia smile. “I guess it's my turn now. Could I have a few minutes of your time?”
“Turn about is fairâ¦whatever it is they say. Come in out of the sun and have a seat.” A couple of courtesies she hadn't so graciously extended to him. He added a third, “May I get you something to drink?”
“What are you offering?”
“Gin?” May as well take the opportunity to render her tongue as loose as her hips. “For all I know, my wife may even have left the makings of the pink variety.”
She followed him to the sideboard and then into the kitchen, peering around his elbow while he placed his armload of bottles on the counter.
McIntire studied the labels, “Ice or not is about the extent of my bartending abilities.”
“Don't apologize.”
“Apologize? I'm bragging. Far as I'm concerned, it's a mark of purity.”
She sidled him aside, “You'd better let unpure me do it then.”
When they were seated in the living roomâWanda, indeed, holding a glass of sparkling rose-colored liquidâMcIntire asked, “What can I do for you?”
“You can leave my husband alone.”
Had Koski gotten to Greely already? “I haven't bothered your husband.”
“You will. You or that now-you-see-him-now-you-don't sheriff, once you've told himâ¦. Chet will be a suspect, won't he?”
“He has a motive.”
“Motive, my foot! He hasn't got a motive. It could only, just barely possibly, be a motive if he knew, which he does not.”
McIntire could still see Greely's ship-builder fist, inches from his wife's russet locks. “How can you be so sure of that?”
“Do you think I wouldn't be able to tell? He doesn't have any idea that Kevin is not his natural son. I didn't know it myself, not to be absolutely sure, until I saw Reuben's little boy. If Chet found out, it would kill him. It would absolutely destroy his life and my son's life, too.”
It surely would. Why was it that any time something bad happened it seemed to mushroom, spreading tragedy like a contagious disease? How many innocent bystanders had to be knocked out of the way before you got to the guilty party? “If your husband has an alibi for the time Reuben was shotâsomebody besides you to vouch for himâhe's in the clear. He won't have to know why we asked.”
“He doesn't have any alibi. He's been taking his two week's vacation, and so far he's spent ninety-nine percent of that time fishing.”
“Alone?”
She nodded. “Except when he brings Kevin along.”
“On the ninth, the day Reuben Hofer was killed?”
“All by his lonesome. He was away all day. I drove Kevin to sleep over at Chet's mother's.”
“You're sure of the date?”
“Positive. That's why I was able to go to see Mrs. Hofer the next day without bringing Kevin along. And a darned good thing! Can you imagine if I'd turned up withâ¦?” She took another swallow.
“So you didn't stay there with him? At the grandmother's?”
“No. I mean, that's right, I didn't. I just dropped him off.”
“Presumably you were working, so you have an alibi?”
“For what time, exactly?”
“Exactly, I can't say, but can you account for your time around noon?”
“Nope. After I dropped Kevin, I had the whole day to myself, and I made the most of it. I did my nails and a little sunbathing,”âNow she
was
batting those eyelashesâ“you know, that sort of stuff.”
It would be too bad if the sins of the wife were visited on the husband and son, but McIntire didn't see how it could be otherwise. “So why are you here? Not that I don't appreciate the company, but what do you think I can do about this?”
“You can have some compassion!”
“I feel all the compassion in the world, something that didn't trouble you when your husband was off building boats.”
“What would you know about it?”
Maybe more than she imagined, but McIntire wouldn't get into that.
She glanced down, running a richly enameled fingernail slowly around the rim of the glass. “I could give you some information.”
“I'm sure you could.”
“And I will.”
“For a consideration?”
“For some basic human compassion, I'm sure we could come to an agreement.” The downcast eyes perked up, and the shy maiden disappeared. She put her glass, and her cards, on the table. “Your wife's away, I hear.”
He'd have to rewrite that tongue-in-cheek letter. “Been checking up on me?”
“It must be lonely.”
“I'm used to it.” McIntire said. Was she truly implyingâ?
“Not much fun, though.” She was.
Either the woman was truly desperate, or McIntire was far sexier than he'd given himself credit for. “Mrs. Greely, I can't take advantage of you under false pretenses. It's too late for me to indulge in compassion.”
The vamp, too, evaporated in the blink of a black coated eyelash. “You've already gone running off to the sheriff.” She made him sound like the busy-body he was.
“This is a murder investigation. You couldn't have thought I'd keep it to myself.”
“Koski hasn't come to question Chet so far, or sent his boy-wonder nephew.”
He wasn't likely to do that. Too bad, McIntire would pay money to see Cecil Newman's annihilation at the hands of Mrs. Chester Greely. “He's been busy.”
“The paper said that Reuben was shot with a twenty gauge shotgun.”
“Did it? I don't think I read that.” It was a feeble attempt at a bluff and a failure.
Wanda smiled tolerantly. “Yes, it did.” She uncrossed her legs and put her hands on her knees. “I've got Chet's twenty-gauge in the car. You can have a look at it. He'd have cleaned it last fall, after partridge season. You'll be able to tell that it hasn't been fired since.”
“We won't know when it was cleaned. It might have been last night.”
“Oh.” Her disappointment was the first genuine emotion she'd shown. “Are you sure? There might be dust in the barrel or something.”
“I guess there could be, and sometimes you can tell if a bullet came from a specific gun.”
This time the bluff worked. The remnants ice cubes rattled as she reached for the glass. “Really?”
“The inside of the barrel sometimes leaves distinctive markings.”
“Good! Then you'll see that this is not the gun that killed Reuben Hofer.”
“Mrs. Greely, how can you be that sure? Are you so positive that your husband
didn't
murder your former lover?”
“Don't be an ass.”
If she wasn't sure, bringing the gun was a gamble, if only because Greely would notice it missing. But Wanda had a history of gambling, and her husband might well have a whole fleet of shotguns.
“What good will all this do anyway?” McIntire asked. “The kids only live a few miles apart. Sooner or later somebody's going to notice.”
“Sooner.” She still clutched the glass, which now contained only an inch of straw-colored water. “In about six weeks.”
Six weeks. In about six weeks school would start, and two small boys would walk into the second or third grade classroom and see themselves in a mirror.
“Good lord, it was
you
!”
“I want them out of here.” Pink never sounded so cold.
“You shot a man in the head, the father of your child, just to keep fromâ”
“Oh, for God's sake, you
are
an ass. I don't know who killed Reuben. I went to his home toâ¦pay my respects, and when I looked at his son, I saw
my
son looking back.” She didn't elaborate, only asked, “I suppose they'll be going back to where they came from now?”
“I believe they intend to stay.”
“They can't! They have got to leave!”
“So if anybody had a motive to kill Reuben it was you. “
She sat still for a moment, wheels turning, before responding. “Yes, you're absolutely right. There's no need to go after Chet. It was me with the motive, and I can give you another one, maybe even a better one.”
“Go ahead.”
“Reuben Hofer stole from meâsome things worth a bundle.”
“And what was that?”
She looked for a moment like she regretted her impulsiveness, but finally stated, “Fossils. No, not fossils exactly, relics, ancient Indian relics.”
“Ancient relics that belonged to you?”
“A share in them belonged to me.”
“And another share to Bruno Nickerson?”
“That stool pigeon!”
“Don't worry, your secret is safe with Bruno, so far. But somebody's been dropping hints, and âancient relics.'” McIntire lifted his glass. “Let's hear the whole story.”
“Well,” she hunkered forward, no hesitancy now. “It was like this. When Reuben was at the camp, they got put to work shoveling up sand from a dune to fill in some swamp. The other men just sort of hung around bullshiâpassing the time of day, you know. But Reuben kept working. When he was digging he found some things. Funny shaped rocks, stuff like that. The rest of the guys quit, but Reuben kept going. He found a pile of oldâ¦implements, I guess you'd say, arrowheads, fish hooks, things we didn't know what they were. Bruno Nickerson was working there, which I guess you know. He started wondering what was going on and caught Reuben at it, so they hatched up a plot.”
“A plot that included you?”
“I was supposed to take care of selling it. They didn't want anybody to know where it came from, and we figured nobody would connect me with the camp. It wasn't illegal.”
“Selling it might not be. Digging it up was.”
“I didn't do any digging,” she reminded him, “and neither did Bruno. They'd smuggle the stuff outâIt was small enough to fit in their pockets, so that wasn't hardâand they'd bring it to me. We had a shoe box chock full. A big shoe box. It would have been worth a fortune!” Her cheeks blazed almost to the point that their painted circles disappeared. “Then they closed down the camp and sent the whole bunch of them to California.”
“And Reuben took off with the loot.”
“He sure as hell did. I don't know how. It was a Sunday. They always got Sunday afternoon off. He wasn't supposed to be gone overnight, of course, but the punishment for getting back late was canceling their leave privileges, and, since they were going to be leaving in a few days anyway, it didn't make any difference. So he stayed in town.”
“With you.”
“Yes. The next afternoon, I went to look in the box, and it was empty. I can't for the life of me figure how he did it. Every single solitary bit was gone. Right down to the last fish hook. He couldn't have taken it all out in his pockets. All I can think is that sometime during the night, while I was asleep, he sneaked it out to somebody, and that somebody had to be Bruno Nickerson!”
“Reuben might have had other friends.”
“I guess he might have,” she admitted. “Bruno swears up and down he never saw any of it. I've been keeping tabs on him, and he hasn't been spending like a drunken sailor or anything.”
“And you swore up and down you didn't know Hofer was back here until he died. What does that do to your motive, both of your motives, for that matter?”
“I just give you two good reasons that I could be a murderer, and you say I can't be, because I would also have to be a liar?”
McIntire had to own up to some respect for the woman's willingness to lay her shapely neck on the block for hearth and home.
“Strictly speaking, I didn't lie about that,” she went on. “I told the sheriff that I hadn't seen Reuben, which was true, but I did know he was back. Grace Maki came in for a permanent wave, and she told me about selling the place.” She shook the glass. “Are you ever going to offer me a refill?”
“Help yourself. Don't dawdle.”
She went off to the kitchen and was back, without dawdling, carrying two glasses; one something fizzy, one whisky, with ice. McIntire could have done that himself.
She kicked off her shoes and dropped to the sofa, legs curled under her. “I wrote him a letter. I told him I knew he'd taken the stuff, and I wanted my share. I said it in a cagey sort of way, so if his wife read it, she wouldn't catch on.” The thick lashes fluttered again, “I also put in a picture of Kevin. I didn't say anything in the letter that would, you know, make his wife suspicious if she saw it. I didn't know then that he had a child that was Kevin's double. If she saw that pictureâ¦.” She looked up. “She must have seen it. That's why she wouldn't talk to me when I went to see her.”
That sounded plausible.
“I didn't hear anything back from him, of course. I didn't expect to, but I figured it couldn't hurt to give him a little reminder. I couldn't think why he'd come back here, unless he had it in mind to do a bit more treasure hunting. I wanted him to know that he wasn't going to be fooling anybody this time around.” She smoothed the fabric of her ankle length pants, which had absolutely no room to wrinkle. “And now he's dead.”
The man who'd fathered her son. Was it sorrow and grief that caused her to look away? Perhaps remorse?
If so, it was short-lived. She looked up and rattled her ice at him. “Somebody took that loot,” she said. “And whoever it was damn well still has it!”
“What makes you think so?”
“If they sold it, they would have had to say where they found it, and there'd have been archeologists swarming over Gibb's Bay like ants.”