The Winter Widow (22 page)

“Yes, Miz Wren, I can. I'm afraid this has been a mistake and now I have to rectify it.”

Helen, moving past in her firm stride, stopped and gave the mayor a disdainful look. “Taking candy from babies, Martin?” she murmured and went on.

The mayor's jowls quivered and his face flushed darker.

Helen coming to her defense? Or was that an insult? “Who's going to replace me?”

“George will have to do it.” Bakover nodded at someone over her shoulder.

She turned to see George Halpern and Parkhurst, dark overcoats buttoned and collars turned up, standing just behind her, George with the attitude of a kindly mediator, Parkhurst with his look of icy arrogance.

“She's doing a good job, Martin,” George said. “Let her get on with it. A murder investigation isn't like buying new shoes. It takes time.”

“She's already had time. Now this is enough. First thing tomorrow morning you start as acting chief.”

George shook his head. Dear George, she thought, he has more faith in me than I deserve.

“Are you refusing?”

“Calm down, Martin.”

“If you won't take over, somebody else will have to.” Bakover was furious at having his big dismissal scene blown by the bit player. He turned to Parkhurst. “Ben—”

Goddammit, just what Parkhurst was waiting for.

Parkhurst grinned evilly. “You want me to take over?”

Bakover sputtered and veins popped out in his temples. That was certainly
not
what he wanted.

“A few more days,” she said quickly. “Just let me have a few more days.”

Bakover, seeing a way to back down, took it.

“Five days,” he said. “Until the end of the week.” Making an attempt to gather his self-importance, he added, “But you'd better show me some results.”

Before she could rearrange her face into some semblance of intelligence, she heard a low, angry voice and turned to see Guthman glowering at Brenner Niemen.

“… never speak to me.” Guthman jabbed a blunt finger into Brenner's chest, and Brenner stumbled back a pace. “Out of my sight. Don't come near—”

Parkhurst, moving at a trot, got between them, took a grip on Guthman's arm, spoke softly and drew him away. Ella directed a look of hatred at her husband's back for a moment, before Jack, arm around her, gently urged her toward the path that led to the cars. Everyone else then began to drift along behind them.

Susan stopped Brenner as he started to follow. “What happened?”

Wind blew through his blond hair and he smoothed it back. “I have to admit I'm not sure. I've never been Otto's favorite person, but that was unexpected. I went up to offer my condolences.” Brenner shook his head. “He had to do something with his grief and I guess I was handy.”

“A number of people were handy,” she said flatly.

He stared past her, then turned to look around behind. “Did you see where Sophie went? I better find her. Will you excuse me?”

She watched him set off for the gravel path and catch up to the few stragglers, leaving her alone in the cemetery. Sleet pattered hard and fast against the gravestones. Daniel's grave was on the other side of the path and she was suddenly very lonely and very cold, so cold she wondered whether she'd ever get warm.

When she got home, she filled the bathtub, pulled off her clothes and slipped into the painfully hot water. Five days. Could she come up with answers in five days? She'd better, that's all the time she had.

Wind rattled pellets of sleet against the bathroom window and she remembered the scrap of paper she'd found in Lucille's hotel room.
Like sleet.
With a guilty start, she realized she hadn't mentioned it to the Kansas City police, or to Parkhurst. She'd forgotten it.

What could be like sleet? Awful stuff, nasty, treacherous and cold; it coated everything with ice, made the roads dangerous, collected on utility wires and caused them to break. Nothing was like sleet.

Closing her eyes as the warmth seeped into her, she tried to focus on what she knew, follow suspicions to a certain conclusion, but names and details snarled infuriatingly with little bits of logic counteracted by conflicting evidence.

Her mind drifted and thoughts floated more and more lightly, bobbing her along toward sleep. She heard Daniel's voice saying, “Now, Susan, it's not that complicated. The giant guards the treasure when the saints come marching in and the sun shines up yonder where all that's gold doesn't glitter.”

Of course. That's it. That's—

The phone rang, bringing her up with a jerk that sloshed water over the edge of the tub. Muttering, she climbed out and grabbed a towel.

“Dammit, I'm coming.” Wrapping the towel around herself, she dripped on the blue carpet as she padded into the bedroom.

“Hello, love, you sound mad. Did I call at a bad time?”

“Hi, Dad.” Sitting on the bed, she patted her legs and feet dry. “I was taking a bath and dozed off.”

“How are you, baby?”

“Freezing. We're having an ice storm.”

He chuckled softly. “It's sixty-eight degrees here. When are you coming home?”

“Well, Dad, maybe sooner than I wanted.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“THIS is a house of mourning.” Martha, the Guthmans' housekeeper, in a black dress, iron-gray hair severely trapped in a bun at the nape of her thin neck, folded her arms and stared at Susan with unyielding disapproval.

“Mrs. Guthman is grieving,” she said, plainly shocked that Susan could be so lacking in decency she would even think of intruding.

“Please ask her,” Susan said firmly, “if she could see me for a few minutes.”

Martha looked down her nose, said, “I'll ask,” and moved away stiff-backed, leaving Susan standing in the entryway.

In a few minutes she returned and nodded curtly. “This way,” she said, thin-lipped in protest.

Susan followed her rigid back along the gloomy corridor to a room at the end. The curtains were drawn against the sunshine and Ella sat in dimness in a rocking chair with a partially finished pink sweater on her lap.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” Susan said.

“It doesn't matter.” Ella spoke in a low, strained voice. “Nothing matters anymore.”

Susan was gripped by sympathy, so unexpected and so intense her throat tightened, and with it came resentment at Lucille. How could the twit be so stupid? Didn't she realize prancing around after a killer was dangerous? Was she so young and foolish she thought she was invincible?

“I was making this for her birthday.” Ella stroked the pale pink sweater. “She would be twenty-six on March twelfth.”

Ella wasn't dressed in black; she wore a gray-and-ivory skirt and a white blouse with an old-fashioned cameo pinned at her throat and, for now at least, she wasn't crying, but she had been, that dreadful wrenching anguish that tears the soul apart. Susan had seen the effects often enough to recognize them; the slack face, reddened puffy eyelids, dull splotched skin. Strands of gray-blond hair lay damply against her forehead.

She had an impulse to put her arm around Ella's shoulder, but she sat down on the linen-covered couch and waited like a bird of prey to swoop down on Ella's grief. The room was large, with a television set and a sewing machine, a grand piano in the far corner, a carpet with red and pink roses, a row of shiny-leaved plants on a shelf under the window, and on the walls, framed photos of Jack and Lucille at various stages of childhood.

“Why was Mr. Guthman so angry with Brenner Niemen yesterday?” Susan asked softly.

“He's—Otto—is angry that Lucille is—is— And he can't even say how sad he is. And so he just— When he saw Brenner at the funeral, he lashed out. It was wrong of him. He shouldn't have behaved that way.” Ella's voice faded. “He shouldn't have. Not at the funeral.”

She rocked gently. “I knew something terrible would happen. When Lucille just vanished, I told him. I told him he had to do something. If he'd found her, she might not—” Ella crushed the sweater under her fingers. In her pain, she was blaming Otto for Lucille's death.

“Why was he upset that Brenner was at the funeral?”

“Something that happened a long time ago. A long time ago.”

“What happened a long time ago?”

“It was because … because…” Ella smoothed out the sweater; pale-pink cashmere threads caught in her fingers. “Otto found him with Lucille. Kissing her and they … her clothes were all mussed—unbuttoned. They were in the barn. In the barn,” she repeated with bewilderment. “Of course, Lucille shouldn't have … it wasn't right, anyone could have found them. And Otto just went in and there they were.”

Otto finding them was probably the point, Susan thought. “When was this?”

“Lucille was fifteen.”

“Ten years ago?”

“When it happened he was angry … angry … told Brenner to leave, never to come near Lucille again. He made it hard for Brenner, very hard.”

“Did she see Brenner after that?”

“She didn't.”

That was said so firmly, Susan assumed Ella doubted it. “Was she in love with him?”

“She was too young.” Ella turned over the sweater and plucked at the inside. “What does it matter? Gossip, disgrace—they can't hurt her. Nothing can hurt her. Not now.”

“Was she hurt?”

“Of course, she was hurt. She was a young girl. Young girls get hurt.”

“Was she angry with Brenner?” Susan asked gently. Was that why Lucille had wanted to prove Brenner guilty, because of an old wound that never healed?

“Why are you asking about all this? What's the point? It won't bring her back.”

“It won't bring her back”: that brick wall the grieving mind ran up against. Susan remembered her first investigation into the death of a child, the mother's eyes staring hard ahead with the blank glaze of denial. There were some things too awful for the human mind to accept; and revenge, finding the culprit, were not enough to get over that brick wall. “It won't bring her back”—the cry of every despairing, anguished, grieving mother.

“Do you play the piano?”

For a moment, Ella looked blank, then looked at the piano. “Oh. No. At least not well. I studied opera as a girl. I had it in mind to be a singer. I always hoped Lucille would learn to play, but she never wanted to.”

“Where can I find Mr. Guthman?”

“I expect in the breeding pen. Always so busy. That bull, that bull, always so important.”

Susan left her swaying slowly, the rocker creaking softly and rhythmically.

*   *   *

THE breeding pen wasn't a pen at all but a white frame building; inside, it was one large open area with straw on the floor, hitching posts along the walls and the strong odor of cattle mixed with the dusty smell of hay. Sunshine streamed through the doorway and sparkled on the dust in the air. Guthman, wearing blue denim pants and jacket, stood spraddle-legged giving orders to five men who wore the glazed, attentive expressions that said they'd heard it all before. Each man held what looked like a section of oversized rubber hose with a glass tube on one end.

“I don't want anything to go wrong,” Guthman said. “You know what to do. Everybody be careful. I don't want any accidents, I don't want any spillage. Remember, you're holding thousands of dollars in your hands. Don't drop it.”

The five men all nodded dutifully.

“Let's go.” Guthman turned, noticed her in the doorway and with intense irritation strode toward her. “This is no place for you. You'll have to leave. We're just about to take collections. This isn't a picnic. You could get hurt, or likely cause somebody else to get hurt.”

“I'll wait till you're free.”

“I'm a busy man.”

“Too busy to help me find out who killed your daughter?”

He gave her a steady, penetrating look and she thought he wanted to pick her up by the scruff of the neck and toss her out on her rear. No doubt, he would lodge more complaints with the mayor. She kept her demeanor unruffled. That high-handed attitude won't get rid of me; if Bakover's taking away the job anyway, I have nothing to lose. “I'm staying until you have the time,” she said calmly.

Apparently, he believed her; he scowled, looked at his watch and seemed to conclude talking with her was the quickest way to get rid of her.

“When I can leave here.” He took her elbow, jerked her aside and well back from the doorway. “Barney, get those steers in here.”

One at a time, six steers were led in and tied to posts, where they stood docilely, switching their tails. Steers in a breeding pen? Steers were males, castrated males. Obviously, there was a whole lot about cattle she didn't understand. “Why not cows?”

“Steers are easier to keep clean and less possibility of losing a collection.”

The bulls didn't mind?

Guthman's gaze passed over the steers, checking that all was satisfactory; then he gave a quick nod. As though the whole thing had been choreographed, the men with rubber hoses moved to position themselves near the front of the steers. Again Guthman's gaze scanned the entire assembly and again he gave a quick nod.

Stomping and snorting, Fafner swept through the door, his handler trying to control him with a rope on the nose ring. The huge bull bellowed and swung his head from side to side. The handler trotted alongside as Fafner curved and lunged his massive bulk in a menacing caper.

Four more bulls were led in and paraded in a circle past the steers. Rumbling bellows rose to a deafening level; stomping hooves kicked up dust. Grunts and muttered curses came from the handlers as they tried to restrain their charges. The steers seemed unaffected by the ruckus, but the bulls appeared to be fiercely aware of each other, and the threat of competition had them raging with eagerness to reach the steers. The handlers, with increasing difficulty, maintained control and kept them moving in a circle.