Wide Open (10 page)

“I have an extra coat in the car.”

She shook her head. It would be her turn in a minute. To make people understand who Dell had been and why she had mattered. And yet she wanted to say to him,
Stand right there, right at my back,
because when someone stood there, just behind her, she couldn’t feel them, the ghosts, the full pressure of the graveyard.

When he stood behind her, she could breathe.

11

Afterwards, she could not have said what words she spoke when it was her turn. She knew what she’d planned to say, how everyone knew Dell and no one knew her. How they were all standing there remembering her, and every one of them remembered someone different. And that was all right. Because Dell was all those things—good and bad—what everyone remembered about her was what made her real.

But afterwards, she didn’t know whether she’d actually said the words she planned to say, whether she’d talked about the good things, whether she’d cried. All she’d been able to think about was keeping the cold from showing, her teeth from chattering, her shoulders from shaking.

She went back to the truck right after, letting the others trail behind. They were going back to Cass’s—ostensibly because it was closer. Going to eat a dozen different kinds of casserole, drink cheap red wine, and talk about things Dell had done or would have done or never did.

Unknown ghosts lingered at the edge of the cemetery, like they wanted to come with her, but didn’t want to leave their graves behind. It was too much to hope that Dell’s ghost had seen her grave and her in it and decided that maybe she belonged there instead of following Hallie around. No, she’d turn up later. Hallie was becoming at least certain of that.

The day had been low and overcast, and now Hallie could hear the distant rumble of thunder. There was a brief splatter of rain, large hard drops; then it stopped, not even enough to wet the ground.

Lorie came up and grabbed her arm, tight. “I’ll be there. Okay? I’ll be there,” she said fiercely, as if Hallie might have spent hours wondering what Lorie was doing after the funeral. “I have to run a quick errand. Drop off— I’ll be there. You don’t have to face this alone.”

Hallie nodded, paying only partial attention. Sure, they’d been in school together, but Lorie had been Dell’s friend most recently. So, yeah, Hallie expected her to be here, to come to Cass’s afterwards. But she didn’t worry about it.

Her father stood twenty feet away, at the edge of the parking area, talking to several other men, all of them with their suit coats shoved up and their hands stuck in their pockets.

Jennie Vagts, whom Lorie had pointed out last night at the Bob, approached her. Her medium-length brown hair was pulled back with a clip, and she was wearing a navy blue dress with a silver concho belt.

“Hey,” she said. She was gripping the strap on her purse hard, twisting it so that Hallie wondered how it stood the strain. “I’m sorry about Dell. We worked together.”

“Lorie said you left.” No sense beating around the bush.

“I mean—” Jennie scanned the crowd. “—I did work there. And I left.” She twisted the purse strap harder. “I might be going back, though. Not because Dell died.” She looked horrified for a minute that Hallie might think she was moving into the empty space Dell had left behind. “Because I thought—I saw something there one day and—well, I was wrong, that’s all. I was wrong.”

“What are you talking about?” Hallie asked.

Jennie continued to scan the crowd. “I haven’t seen Mr. Weber,” she said. “I thought he’d be here.”

Hallie frowned. “He had something else going on.”

“Oh no, he—” She looked in a startled way at something over Hallie’s left shoulder, then said in an oddly formal tone, “I’m sorry, I have to be going now,” turned abruptly, and walked away.

“It was a good service.”

Hallie turned to find Boyd just behind her. “It was—” She stopped. She didn’t want to say it was a good service, because what was good about burying Dell? And yet it was the sort of thing people said, a way to make conversation in an awkward, painful time.

“I thought—” Boyd looked stiff and uncomfortable. Dell’s ghost hung over his right shoulder like she was listening. “—I’ve been thinking about what you said about…” He hesitated as if he couldn’t figure out what he wanted to say next, or maybe how to say it. “What you said about Dell, about how she wouldn’t have killed herself.”

Hallie was struck again by how
exact
everything about him was, even the way he spoke. “I don’t want to engage in a conversation about an ongoing investigation, but Dell came into the sheriff’s office last Monday. Wanted to talk to the sheriff, and when he wasn’t there, she left. Do you have any idea what she might have wanted?” He leaned forward as he said it, intense, like he knew more than he was telling her or thought she knew more than she was telling him.

“Why does everyone think I know anything?” she said sharply. “I was in fucking Afghanistan. I didn’t have a cell phone. I didn’t have e-mail. Nobody talked to me. Nobody told me anything.”

Boyd blinked.

“Are we ready to go here?” Hallie’s father approached with a quick ground-eating stride. Hallie realized that the parking area was already mostly empty. Everyone else had gone home, back to work, or on to Cass’s.

“Oh, I think so,” Hallie said brightly.

She was opening the truck door when Boyd laid a hand on her arm. She was reminded—like she could forget things like that—that people were warm and ghosts were cold like the north pole. Maybe she should spend more time with people.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I’d tell you if I did.”

He removed his hand and took a step back, allowing Hallie to climb into the pickup.

“You should watch that guy,” her father said as Hallie turned the truck and headed away from the cemetery.

Hallie laughed. “Seriously?”

“He’s an operator,” her father said.

Hallie looked at him.

“I’ve seen him with a girl or two,” her father said.

“I’m not dating him,” Hallie told him.

“Huh,” her father said. Then, “We going home?” he asked hopefully.

“No,” Hallie said. “We’re going to Cass’s. Suck it up.”

*   *   *

Brett was in Cass’s kitchen when Hallie arrived, reheating casseroles and making pots of coffee. Her motions were smooth and serene as she pulled dishes out of the microwave and the oven, tracked down hot pads, poured water and dumped grounds and stacked coffee mugs on trays. Not like she belonged in a kitchen, more like she belonged in the middle of things, smooth, unhurried, calm. Hallie realized how much she’d missed this Brett, the one who never got ruffled.

“Was that Jennie Vagts at the funeral?” she asked Hallie.

“I don’t even know her,” Hallie said.

“We were in school,” Brett reminded her.

“She wasn’t in our class.” Like Hallie knew no one outside her old high school class and the army, which was actually pretty much true.

“What did she want?” Brett handed Hallie two oven mitts and a casserole. Hallie looked around—was she supposed to know what to do with this? “Take it in the dining room,” Brett said with a hint of exasperation.

When she came back, which took about five minutes because at least seven people stopped and shook her hand and told her “Welcome back” and “Isn’t this a hell of a thing,” she said to Brett, “Was she friends with Dell or something?”

Brett looked blank, then realized Hallie was talking about Jennie Vagts. She frowned. “I don’t think so. Well, Dell never talked about her. But…” She hesitated. Lorie came into the kitchen, returned from whatever errand she’d been running, demanded napkins and clean glasses, and left again. “Nobody gets together like we used to,” Brett said. “I’m in Rapid City all week. In grad school,” she added helpfully, in case Hallie had forgotten. “I help Daddy with the horses most weekends. We just…” She trailed off.

Dell’s ghost drifted over, staring at a particular dirty glass on the counter—an old jelly jar with a cartoon character that had been old before Hallie’d been born—like it was the most interesting thing in the kitchen.

“What do you know about Martin Weber?” Hallie asked.

Brett looked startled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what do you know about him?”

“What do you want me to say? He came back about a year ago.”

“With Dell?”

Brett shrugged. “I didn’t pay much attention. Dell was here first, maybe a month before, making arrangements for the land. But she was always a part of it. Uku-Weber, you know. It’s why she came back.”

“Didn’t you think that was strange? That she was hooked up with him?”

Brett frowned. “They were business partners.”

It was Hallie’s turn to frown. “I dated him the summer we graduated from high school, Brett. Don’t you remember?”

“I was gone that summer.”

Which Hallie had forgotten, that Brett had been gone most of that June and all of July, down in New Mexico, taking care of her grandmother after hip surgery. “Dell never said anything?”

“About how she hooked up with Uku-Weber?” Brett shook her head. “But really, Hallie, we didn’t talk.”

“Did Pete work there?”

“At Uku-Weber?”

“Yes.”

“Pete Bolluyt?” Lorie said, coming into the kitchen with a quartet of empty glasses pinched between her fingers. “You know, I’m surprised he’s not here,” she said.

“Really?” Hallie had to admit, despite his behavior last night at the Bob, she was a little surprised herself, although given the way things were and—no kidding—a meth lab, maybe she shouldn’t be.

“He’s the one who called everyone—all the Uku-Weber folks—after.”

“So Pete does work there,” Hallie said. “I thought he was running cattle.”

“Oh, he doesn’t work there,” Lorie said. She took a tray of cold cuts out of the refrigerator and started unwrapping them. “He’s, like, an investor or something. Plus the company’s putting up a demonstration site in that field of his out by the road. Something about cold fronts or wind power or, you know…” Lorie shrugged like it was all beyond her. “He and Martin—Mr. Weber—are like this.” Lorie crossed her fingers.

Hallie shook her head. It didn’t make sense.

“What does Uku-Weber do, exactly?” she asked Lorie.

“Well, the new wind turbines, of course, and that …
thing
out at the demo plot.” Lorie waved her hand in a broad gesture. “There’s this big lab in the back, although it’s not finished yet. Really, things are just getting started.” She looked at Hallie hopefully, as if aware that she hadn’t explained anything, but confident that an earnest expression and a general perky cuteness would carry the day.

“What do you do there, Lorie?” Brett asked as she finished putting a dozen glasses into a side cupboard.

“Everything,” Lorie said. “I answer phones and do invoices and take inventory on new shipments. I—”

She was interrupted by a loud crash of thunder followed by a rumble so low, Hallie could feel it in her chest. It went on for what seemed like forever. A brief rattle of hail on the roof, then rain, slashing down like they were suddenly in the middle of a rain forest in monsoon season. Hallie went to the kitchen door and opened it. People who’d been in the yard talking or getting ready to leave ran for the barn or the porch or their cars. Lightning struck in the field not more than two hundred yards away.

Then it was done. Water dripping off trees and the porch roof, droplets glistening in the sun, which had already reemerged.

“Jesus,” Hallie said.

“That’s the way it’s been,” Lorie said. “Weather all the time.”

*   *   *

After the rain stopped, Hallie went outside to look for her father—she was ready to be gone, had had enough of people and shaking hands and hugging. None of it brought her any closer to understanding how Dell had died or what she’d been doing out on the Seven Mile. And another day was nearly gone.

Down by the barn, she found Tel Sigurdson and Tom Hauser looking at an old Farmall tractor that probably hadn’t been moved in thirty years, grass tall around it and the dried vines of morning glories winding through the steering wheel.

“Those turbines are twice as efficient for their size,” Tel was saying. “I’ve seen the data. And the demo, with that machine he’s got? It’s way beyond cloud seeding. He can bring the rain. He can—” He stopped at Hallie’s approach.

“Are you talking about Uku-Weber?” Hallie asked.

There was a moment of guilty silence. Then Tel said, “It’s a hell of a thing. They’re planning another demonstration next week, split a storm front. If you’re around, you should—” He broke off as if he’d remembered exactly why Hallie was around. “I mean—”

“Yeah,” she said.

“What do you think about Martin Weber?” she asked. “Have you met him?”

Tel shrugged. “He seems sincere. Not like a lot of these guys you see coming here because they think we’re dumber than shit and we’ll work cheap. You see him around, too. He comes to town meetings and he’ll come into the Dove, you know, for breakfast. He listens to what people say, doesn’t just try to tell us what we ought to think. He seems all right.”

Hallie looked at Tom, but he didn’t add anything to what Tel had already said, just looked across the field like the answer was out there somewhere.

“Have you seen my dad?” Hallie asked, letting him off the hook a bit.

Tom looked at her then, waved a hand toward the road. “Headed up that way, last I saw,” he said.

“Thanks.” Hallie walked back toward the vehicles parked along the lane; it was completely possible that her father was sitting in the pickup truck, waiting for her to show.

She was thinking about what Tel had said, about weather and Uku-Weber, when Jennie Vagts fell into step beside her. Neither of them said anything right away. Dell drifted backwards in front of Hallie as she walked.

Hallie stopped. “Did you want something?” she said.

Jennie looked startled. “I was heading out.” She gestured up the lane, presumably toward her car.

“Oh.”

“It was—” Jennie shifted from one foot to the other.