Witch Cradle (28 page)

Chapter Fifty-Three

Rubber overshoes flopping and wool kerchief making a hood around her pointy face, Irene Touminen tramped towards the door, resembling a northwoods Baba Yaga. Her face was flushed with cold and exertion; her eyes were the brilliant jet of the coal that filled her buckets.

“John! Goodness me, why aren't you home warming your toes by the fire?”

“Where's Sulo?”

“I was praying that was what you'd come to tell me. I've been frantic! They haven't found him yet, and he's been gone all night. The sheriff says there's nobody left on the lake. They think it was three separate sheets of ice, and they know where they all ended up.” She dropped the two buckets onto the steps and flexed her fingers. “Sulo's tough. I'm sure he just got off on shore somewhere. He'll turn up safe in somebody's kitchen. Don't you think that's the most likely thing?”

“No.”

The pleading eyes turned bleak. “That's an awful thing to say.”

“Where is he?”

“You know where he is as well as I do. He went fishing yesterday morning, and he didn't come back.” Her voice turned sharp. “You were supposed to be with him.”

“He didn't go fishing. There was only one Touminen out there last night, and that was Uno.”

“I hope that's true. I hope Sulo's not in that lake somewhere, but it's cruel of you to say it, if you don't know it for sure.”

“Where is he?”

“He told me he was going fishing, he took his fishing gear and he left. That's all I know.” Her smile below downcast eyes was barely perciptible. “Am I my brother's keeper?”

McIntire shivered. She turned and picked up the pails. “You'd better come inside.”

He followed but remained in the doorway.

She stood with her back to the kitchen table, removed the scarf, and smoothed her hair. The ceiling reflected blood-red on her face.

“Sulo is my brother,” she said. “I wouldn't want to say anything that might get him in trouble, but I think maybe he might have been…. Sulo was crazy about Rose. You saw how he acted when you said that she was pregnant when she died.” She sighed heavily and bit her lip. “I don't like to think it, but…well, Sulo didn't tell the truth about where we were that night, about being in Escanaba.”

“It was you lied about that.”

“I went along with what Sulo said. I didn't want him to get into—”

“No. It was Sulo that backed you up. It was you who said it first.”

She cocked her head. “It seems to me we were in Escanaba. It was a long time ago. I don't suppose you can remember where you've been every minute in the past twenty years.” The response was calm, conversational.

McIntire moved closer. “When you got the postcard from Rose, didn't you wonder why she'd written to you in Finnish? She was your best friend. She knew you didn't read Finn.”

“Rose wasn't always the most sensible—”

“You knew that card couldn't have been from Rose, knew it the day you got it. You might not have recognized that it wasn't her handwriting, but you damn well knew she'd never have written to you in Finnish. Still, you didn't question it, didn't mention to anyone that it didn't seem quite right. Why?”

“I thought maybe Ted had done it for her. Rose wasn't a good writer. She didn't like writing.”

And, according to her husband, if she was pushed into writing, if she had a choice, she wrote Finn. “And when she was weak, near death, she needed help with her goodbye note to Teddy. She had to turn to someone, someone who could only help her do it in English.” McIntire stepped closer still. Irene continued to meet his gaze without flinching.

“It must have given you a bit of a start at first,” he said, “to get a message from someone you knew was dead.”

“How could I know Rose was dead? None of us knew that.”

“You were her best friend.”

“I was her only friend.”

“It was you who guided her hand to write the note.”

Her eyes grew brighter.

“You knew she was dead, and you knew how she'd died…and you planted the wild roses on her grave.”

Tears collected in the corners of her eyes. “She begged me to do it.”

She leaned back, her hands gripping the table behind her. “Teddy was away, and I'd promised to go over and help with the last-minute packing and cleaning up. I walked over in the middle of the afternoon. It was a strange day, hot and muggy and so very, very quiet. There wasn't a bird singing. No insects buzzing. Nothing. Total silence.

“When I got close to the house I saw a car and thought Teddy must have got back. Then I recognized that it was Cedric Hudson's. At first I couldn't imagine what might have happened, if he'd come to say goodbye, or if Rose was sick. Then the truth dawned on me.

“There wasn't a sound. The door was open. I could see Cedric Hudson in the bedroom. He was half naked. I didn't know why until I saw the blood.” A tear trickled down the ski-jump nose. “He didn't want to get her blood on his clothes.”

McIntire recalled Hudson's disgusted frown as he wiped fastidiously at his soiled shirt. He also recalled mistaking Irene for her brother. “Did Hudson's coat and hat fit you as well as Sulo's? Well enough to fool anyone who might pass by?”

She stared for a second, then left her spot at the table to pull open a wooden bin. “It was so hot. Poor Rose was drenched in sweat. The smell made me sick. I tried to open the window but it was painted shut. I broke it.”

She took out a few potatoes, examining each and placing them in an aluminum colander as she went on. “It didn't seem like there was such an awful lot of blood. She said it didn't hurt any more. I thought she might be all right. I helped her write the note for Ted, because that's what she wanted. Then I sat by her bed. She asked me to sing. It was one of the things she hated most about her hare-lip, that she couldn't sing. Her voice came through her nose. I sang until she fell asleep.”

“And Doctor Hudson stayed all this time?”

“Don't call that butcher a doctor!” She opened a drawer and shuffled through it, removing a knife too large for peeling potatoes. “He said it was too late to take her to a hospital, then he said she was dead. At first I didn't believe him.

“I hardly remember the rest. It was hard to think straight. It was hot. Maybe that's what hell is like. It felt hellish. Like the worst dream you could ever have.”

She placed the knife on the table and faced him. “Rose didn't want anybody to know what she'd done. It would be so much better if everybody just thought she'd gone to Russia. That butcher went out to the pump to wash himself. He didn't get any water. The well was open. It was big like a grave, and it was bone dry. I wrapped her in the quilts. It was so ungodly hot, but she was starting to feel cold.

“The shotgun was behind the door. I made him go down into the hole. Rose wasn't very big, and I was strong. I carried her and lowered her down to him.”

“And then you shot him.”

“He started to come out. He stepped on her. He
stepped right on her.”

“You shot him.”

“I shot him and I didn't even care. I didn't like leaving him there, on top of Rose like that, but what else could I do? I threw everything I could find over them—all the blankets and rugs, the clothes Rose had packed, all of it. I hardly knew what I was doing.”

“But you hung on to Hudson's clothes. You didn't throw his coat and hat in the well.”

“He deserved to die.”

“So why not just admit what you'd done?”

“She begged me! She didn't want anybody to know. The baby wasn't Teddy's. She died. Keeping her secret was the least I could do.”

“The secret came out anyway. Rose was long past being hurt. Why trot out that postcard to implicate her husband? You didn't do it to protect Rose Falk's memory.”

“I was scared, and I didn't know Teddy would be back.”

“Not something you had to worry about when you set out to pin it on Eban Vogel.”

“Eban?” She frowned. “No. I shouldn't have done that. He didn't deserve it. I don't know what I would have done without him.”

Done without him? “Are you trying to tell me Eban was in on this?”

“He came over. Hudson's car was there and Hudson wasn't. Rose wasn't either. There was blood, and he'd heard the shot. I had to tell him. He was mad, furious, but he said it would be all right. We couldn't change what had happened, and letting it get out would only make things worse. He said I should take Hudson's clothes and his bag back to his house, and nobody would ever know he'd been there.”

She returned to her original pose, leaning back against the table. “Rosie had such a sad life. To have it end the way it did was bad enough, but to have everybody know…Teddy only married her to get Jarvi's farm. Orville got her pregnant, and then wanted to ship her off to Russia. Nobody cared. Only me and Eban. I shouldn't have put the watch in with his things. I found it that morning when I was looking for the postcard, and I put it in my pocket planning to get rid of it. When I saw all the boxes in Mia's bedroom, I just opened one and popped it in. I regretted it. I shouldn't have done it. But I thought, he's dead, he can't be hurt.”

“What about Sulo? Can he be hurt, or is Sulo dead, too?”

“Don't say that!”

McIntire gritted his teeth against a wave of pain. “Where is he?”

“He's still on the ice.”

He moved toward her. She snatched the knife from the table and turned its blade to her chest. A squeak, like a frightened mouse, came from her throat, and a tiny circle of blood oozed through her sweater.

“Suit yourself.” McIntire went out the door.

There were not many places to look. The woodshed, pump house, chicken coop. Nothing. McIntire walked through the empty barn and climbed the ladder to the haymow. He grabbed the pitchfork and flung hay about, toppled a small stack of round bales. Nothing.

He pushed open the door in the outside wall and stood looking out over the backs of the Guernseys lounging in the sunny shelter of the barn. What had he expected? A woman clever enough to hide a murder for sixteen years wouldn't be likely to be less crafty with her next victim.

The thud of a car door was followed quickly by another, then by the whine of a recalcitrant starter. McIntire leapt to the ladder and felt a wave of nausea as his knee struck the wall behind it. As he charged into the open, the battery won its battle with the cold, and Sulo Touminen's grey Pontiac sped past him.

After what he knew would be a futile glance into the Studebaker—no key—he limped toward the house.

The telephone line lay in the snow by the path. McIntire picked up its snipped end. She'd taken no chances. It lacked a good eight feet of reaching the house.

A quick search of the house was only a formality. Sulo's familiar plaid mackinaw was not on its hook, and it hadn't been on his sister. Wherever he was, Touminen had left dressed for the outdoors.

McIntire began the torturous trek to the nearest phone. Thorsens'.

The Pontiac's tires left no distinguishable tracks in the icy road. Where was that damn snow when you needed it? McIntire hadn't even noticed which direction she'd turned when she left the driveway.

Another perfect crime. Sulo'd gone fishing and been the victim of Mother Nature. Why had she done it? Why not confess to killing Cedric Hudson in a fit of passion? If she went to prison at all, it probably wouldn't be for long. But if her desperate cover-up extended to harming her brother, it changed everything.

Irene couldn't have known that the ice would go out. She'd gotten lucky with that. But there were other ways to freeze to death, other than being on ice…and other places with ice.

A car horn sounded, and the black Buick, all eight cylinders pumping, grumbled to a stop behind him. McIntire used the last of his strength to slide into the back seat. Teddy Falk sat, hands between his knees, at his side.

“Well, well, what have we here, Tweedledum and Tweedledee.” Melvin Fratelli gloated in the rearview mirror.

“Lindstrom's dock,” McIntire said to his back. “I'll give directions. Just drive.”

“This look like a goddamn taxicab to you?”

“Make him do it, Buster. For old time's sake.”

Hayward shrugged. “Do it.”

The Buick was powerful and sure-footed. If the distance had been another half a mile they'd have caught Irene before she got there.

She stood at the door of the ice house, mesmerized at their approach. For a moment. Then she clasped her hands in front of her. “Thank God you've come! I think my brother might have got himself locked in. I only hope we're in time!”

“And you're planning to get him to a hospital?” McIntire waved toward the Pontiac, backed up to the door with the trunk open.

Irene bolted for the car—and straight into the arms of Agent Buster. His experience in wrestling down fractious patients no doubt served him well.

McIntire walked to the ice house. The jolly red paint couldn't combat the grimness of the structure. Squat, windowless, four solid walls of foot-thick logs. A tomb. He flipped up the iron latch.

Sulo wasn't dead. Quite. His eyes flicked open and shut against the light.

“Nothing tougher than an old Finn.” Teddy Falk pushed his way past McIntire and the blocks of ice.

Sulo mumbled through cracked and bleeding lips. “Somebody locked me in. They must of got Irene.”

“Or dumber,” Falk added.

McIntire reached for Touminen's legs but was shoved aside by Buster, solicitous attendant once again. He cradled Sulo like a baby and placed him tenderly in the front seat of the Buick. The tough, and dumb, old Finn nodded to his handcuffed sister in the back and flopped unconscious.