Buttons and Bones (18 page)

WELL, yes they could. First of all, the county had tarred several of the roads out off 54, and they spent some time wandering up the wrong ones. They thought Snowball Lane wasn’t marked, but finally Betsy noticed a street sign—curious to find a street sign out in the country—that had been struck by a vehicle and bent so far over that tall weeds obscured it. Then, the von Dusens had repainted their house cream with red trim. Connor caught the name on the big silver mailbox as they drove by it the second time.

Mrs. von Dusen came to the front door accompanied by the fragrance of fruit pies baking and said her husband was in the barn. They found him by following the mild swear words drifting out of a side room. He was standing amid the ruins of a generator, with a big red multidrawer tool chest beside him.

He was a tall, lean man in his early forties with broad shoulders and big, work-thickened hands heavily stained with grease and rust. He wore the farmer’s uniform of blue chambray shirt and overalls, also stained.

A thick head of pale auburn hair topped blond eyebrows and a deep pink complexion. He had a slow, deliberate way of speaking. He was glad to take a break and talk with them.

“I have no memory of her, of course,” he said, referring to Helga. “My grandfather said she was beautiful but not very bright. But Great-Aunt Gretchen heard him say that and said she got that Army officer to marry her, didn’t she?” Larry smiled at the memory. “She made up a rhyme about it, and it became a family joke. How did it go? I used to speak a little German, but I’ve forgotten most of it now.” In a bad German accent, he said, “
Ein schlaues Madchen wahlt ihren Mann, und lasst sich von ihm jagen, bis sie ihnfangen kann.
”

Connor burst into surprised laughter.

“What?” asked Betsy.

“Well, my German’s worse than his, but I think what it means is something I’ve heard Americans say, too: A clever woman lets a man chase her until she catches him.”

Betsy made a face—then she grew thoughtful.

Von Dusen nodded. “Yes, that’s what it means. The old folks all spoke German, even though they were all born here in Minnesota. Opa and Oma came over from the old country and bought this farm, and considered themselves Americans, but they spoke German at home. The people I call the old folks—my grandfather and his brothers and sisters—didn’t speak English till they started school. This is my grandfather’s barn—he raised it on the site of the first barn after it burned down in 1924. He was the oldest son, so he got the land and buildings. My father was his oldest son, and I was his only son.”

Connor asked, “What was that Army major doing up here anyway?”

“They say he was inspecting the old wood pulp factory that was making cardboard boxes for the Army. I heard she was flirting with his driver before she shifted her attention to him. Bigger game, my grandpa said.”

Betsy asked, “Do you know where your Aunt Helga went after she left the cabin over on Thunder Lake?”

“Not an idea in the world.”

“Are any of the old folks still alive?”

“No. Uncle Hans was the last to go, and he died ten or eleven years ago.”

Connor asked, “Couldn’t Helga still be alive?”

Larry bit his under lip while he considered that briefly. “I suppose so,” he conceded. “But if she is, she’s pretty old, and she’s been running awful quiet for a whole lot of years.”

“Is it possible one of your cousins hears from her, or knows where she is?”

“No, I’m sure they don’t. We had a big family reunion right here on the farm after Uncle Hans died, and Cousin Emily did a family tree showing who was married to who and where they’re living and she put a question mark under Great-Aunt Helga’s name. She was asking everyone if they knew where she was, and nobody knew. Which is kind of a shame when you think about it. I mean, it’s not like she’s the black sheep or something. Oma and Opa were mad at her for getting married so young. But you know how it is when you’re young, you think you know goddam everything about everything.” He gave a big sigh, and Betsy wondered if he didn’t have a particular son or daughter of his own with that attitude.

He must have read that in her face because a grin appeared and he nodded. “Yep, I got one like that. Runs in the family, I guess.”

 

 

“LET’S go to Remer for lunch,” said Betsy in the car a few minutes later. “I want to see the place where the POW camp was. I wonder what’s left of it?” She smiled. “I always was a sucker for ruins.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. I always thought the reason you liked me is because I’m so old.”

“You’re not such a relic.”

“You’re a mere child compared to my antiquity.” He burst into song—he had a very pleasant baritone. “ ‘I was born a hundred thousand years ago, there ain’t nuthin’ in this world that I don’t know, no place that I ain’t been, ’round the world and back again, and I’ll whup the man who says it isn’t so!’”

Betsy laughed. “I wouldn’t dream of whupping you. I don’t think a whupping would make a lick of difference.” They drove in silence for a mile. Then, “How about we go back to the cabin and pack up? We can start for home from Remer.”

“Have I offended you again?” He tried for a light tone, but she could hear anxiety in the background of his query.

So it was a pleasure to relieve it. “No, it’s just that I think we’ve gotten nearly everything there is to get from this trip.”

In Remer, they entered a little café called The Woods-man. It had big front windows and an entrance that led to a set of four steps going up. Inside was the heavy fragrance of fried food and coffee. The tables were dark wood with paper placemats, and the walls were ornamented with plain-framed photographs of forests that looked taken from calendars.

The waitress was a nice motherly type who recommended the meatloaf.

Questioned, she said she was new to the area and pointed out the family group toward the back. “That’s the owner,” she said. “He’ll probably know all about the old camp.”

He didn’t, as it turned out—but his wife did. “My grandfather worked out there during the war,” she said. “He used to tell stories to us about it, said the prisoners were young and handsome, not bad people—though there was always that ten percent, organizing rallies and trying to push the others around.”

“Do you know where the camp is?” asked Connor.

She did.

The directions were easy to follow, but the place they led to was just a large grove of mature pine trees. A nearly overgrown logging trail led into the grove. Betsy pulled off the road and the two got out.

“I wonder if this is the place,” said Betsy. “I don’t see anything but trees.”

“We followed the directions, and they were pretty simple—Route 4 past the rock quarry and the cemetery. Look for the tall pines, she said, and here they are. There’s no place like this place anywhere near this place, so this must be the place.”

Betsy smiled at the old jest and strode across the road. Stepping into the grove of pines was like going indoors; the harsh sunlight was dimmed and the air turned several degrees cooler. The faded old trail leading in split right inside the grove, one branch going straight ahead and the other off to the right. Underbrush filled the space under the trees, dappled sparsely with green sunlight. A mosquito hummed its high, tight tone in her ear and she slapped at it. There was no sign of human habitation anywhere in sight, only here and there a tree stump covered with moss.

She walked up the straight-ahead trail a hundred yards or so, looking in vain for a tumble of stone foundation, a collapsed clapboard wall, a fallen chimney.

“It’s as though it never happened,” Connor said at last.

But Betsy remembered the heap of human bones in the root cellar and shivered. That was real. A young German soldier had walked away from this very place and wound up dead in a root cellar less than twenty miles from here. How? And why?

Fifteen

AND there the investigation stalled until Jill phoned Betsy in her shop a couple of weeks later. “She’s dead,” Jill said.

Betsy was in the middle of writing up a sales slip when the phone rang. “Who’s dead?” she said, which startled the woman buying the fistful of Kreinik silks. Betsy made a reassuring gesture at her and continued writing.

Jill said, “Helga Farmer—only she died as Helga Ball. In New Ulm, by the way. Fifteen years ago.”

“Helga Ball—she must have remarried. Divorced her husband, you think?”

“More likely widowed,” said Jill. “Considering the history they shared.”

“I wonder if Molly Fabrae knows about this. No, of course she doesn’t, or she would have told us. Did the letter tell you her husband’s name?”

“No, just that she’s dead, when she died, and where.”

“So what’s the next step?”

“I’ve called up the white pages phone book on my computer and am looking at how many Balls there are in New Ulm.”

“And?”

“There are three, a Jean, a Mark, and a Peter. Certainly worth a closer look.”

“So let’s call them. What story shall we tell? We can’t barge in saying we want to ask how a skeleton came to be found in Helga von Dusen-Farmer Ball’s cellar.”

“No, that wouldn’t do.” Jill sounded amused.

“I know, we’ll say we’re doing some genealogy. Larry von Dusen said a cousin did a family tree for a reunion and was wondering what happened to Aunt Helga. You can be a cousin from another side of the family.”

“No, you be the cousin. You’re a better liar than I am.”

“What me, a liar? I prefer actress. But all right. Give me the phone numbers and I’ll call.”

“No, don’t call, we don’t want to warn them we’re coming.”

“Why not?”

“Because what if Mark or Peter is really Major Matthew Farmer, deserter?”

“Hold on a second.” Betsy put the phone down. “Thank you, Mrs. Cooper,” she said, handing the woman her change. She waited until Mrs. Cooper was out the door before picking up the phone again. “Jill, do you think that’s possible? He’d be a hundred years old!”

“People have been known to live to a hundred.”

“Well . . . all right.”

“So when do we travel down there?”

“Let me ask the help.”

 

 

IT was a two-hour journey to New Ulm, a German-themed little city on the banks of the Minnesota River south and west of the Twin Cities.

It was a little after nine, two days later, when Jill and Betsy started down 169 south to Saint Peter, then took 99 west to New Ulm. The air was cool and sweet, and very occasionally a maple tree or sumac bush would be showing just a hint of color. The town had an odd way of naming its numbered streets: 19 South Street, instead of South 19th Street. The first house they went to was owned by a young couple who didn’t know any Helga or Matthew Farmer. The second address they went looking for was near the corner of Linden and 6 North Street, in a row of modest clapboard and stucco homes. They all displayed small, well-tended lawns set with dusty lilac bushes and younger trees.

“I bet Dutch elm disease has been through here,” noted Jill, theorizing why the trees were all younger than the houses.

“There it is,” said Betsy, pointing to a small white clapboard house whose side porch had been glassed in to make an additional room. The place was tidy on the outside, the lawn freshly mowed, but it was in need of a new coat of paint.

They parked and went up on the tiny front porch. After exchanging a glance with Jill, Betsy took a deep breath and rang the doorbell.

The man who answered the door was elderly but not ancient. “Are you Peter Ball?” asked Betsy.

“Yes?” he replied, looking back and forth between the two of them.

“My name is Betsy Devonshire and I’m doing some research on the von Dusen family. Did you used to be married to Helga von Dusen?”

He looked at her for a long few moments before replying, “She was Helga Farmer when I married her. But she’s dead now, she died in 1997.”

“Yes, I know, but I’m hoping you can tell me something about her. We’ve been trying to find her for a long time.”

“How did you—But here, come on in.” He stepped back and gestured at them to go past him into the living room, then followed them in. The room was small and cozy, with fancy crocheted antimacassars on the back of a well-used couch and brown velveteen recliner, and a beautiful, deeply ruffled doily on an end table.

Mr. Ball was short and slim, very bald, with keen blue eyes nearly hidden in a thicket of wrinkles, a long, knobby nose, and too-perfect teeth in a wide, thin mouth. He looked to be somewhere in his later seventies, and he moved a little stiffly—knee problems, thought Betsy—though his fingers were straight and smooth. He was dressed in a faded blue-plaid, short-sleeved cotton shirt, gray twill trousers a size too big, and leather bedroom slippers.

“Sit down, make yourselves comfortable,” he invited, gesturing at the couch, upholstered in brown to match the recliner. The three antimacassars on its back displayed a snowy white pattern of pineapples.