with this woman. “Did you consider her mental health a risk in any way? Did you ever think she might kill herself?”
“I’m afraid I can say no more.”
Claire could hear the woman was shutting down on her. “I need this information. If you won’t give it to me, I’ll have to go to a judge.”
“That is your prerogative.”
Claire calculated how long that might take. “If I get a court order, might I come and speak with you tomorrow afternoon?”
Rustling of papers. “I would be free after five. If you bring a court order, I might consent to a conversation.”
“Thank you, Dr. Singh. I hope to see you tomorrow.” Claire looked at the peace sign again. Give the woman something. “I’m sorry about the loss of your patient.” She couldn’t help adding, “She was a friend of mine.”
“Yes, this is a very sad day.”
* * *
Even though they had parked in the shade, the back of the car was getting steamy. Meg sat sprawled over Curt, her legs in his lap, his arms around her waist. They had been kissing so long that her lips buzzed.
Curt strapped his big watch to Meg’s small wrist. They both laughed at how ridiculous it looked.
He said, “I should go in about five minutes. The cows don’t like to wait. You’re in charge. You keep track of the time.”
Meg slipped the watch off her wrist and handed it back to
him. “I have to get home too. My mom is having kind of a hard time with her broken arm and all.”
“Listen,” Curt said as he slid his hands back around her waist. “My folks are going away this weekend. They’re going to some farm auction. I have to stay home and milk the cows.”
“You and those cows.” Meg looked down at his hands. “That’s why you’re so good at all this making out and such.”
For a second Curt looked like he had swallowed his tongue.
Meg laughed. He loved to mess around, but he didn’t like to talk about it. Curt was a good talker, thinking of being a philosopher, but he got embarrassed whenever she brought up the subject of sex.
“So what’re you saying?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d like to come over for a picnic. I could make some hamburgers or something.”
“Just the two of us?”
“Yeah, my sister’s going with them.”
“We’ll be all alone?”
“Yeah. That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“The point of what?”
He pulled his hands away and sat up. Squished into the back of his Ford Escort made it difficult for either of them to move. “Do I have to spell it out?”
“Yes,” she said.
“S-E-X.”
“It’s all sex, Curt. Everything. Kissing, touching. Not any one act is considered sex.”
“This is driving me crazy, Meg.”
“That’s because we don’t talk about it and decide what we both want to do and what would be best for us to do right now when we’re only sixteen and living with our parents.”
“Okay, do you want to sleep with me? Go all the way? Run to home base? Pop the cherry? Is that clear enough?”
“Yes, but not very romantic.”
“I don’t think being squished in the back of this car is very romantic.”
Since Curt was a good half a foot taller than her, Meg guessed he was a lot more uncomfortable at this moment than she was.
“Do you?” he asked again.
“I don’t know. It just seems so big.”
* * *
Night was falling over his meadow. Standing at the edge of the field, Chet Baldwin could see that his horses had been put away. He didn’t see Rich’s truck in the driveway so he assumed he wasn’t still around.
It was a time of day in summer that Chet felt he could never get enough of. The brilliant heat of the afternoon had dropped out of the air and left an embracing warmth along with the muted colors of the inside of a flower hanging in the sky.
Seeing the sky that way reminded him of Anne. He could hear her voice in his head. She had taught him how to see the world. Not just see it but enjoy it. Life with her had been such a pleasure. Not that they hadn’t had their troubles, especially
lately, but more and more the richness of their life together was coming back to him. What would she want him to do now? He kept asking himself that. If Anne were here, what would she tell him to do?
Staying in the deep shadows of the treeline, Chet walked through the tall grass at the edge of the field. One thing he knew for sure—he wanted to be home. He would run no more. Whatever would happen would happen on the farm.
The other thing he was sure of was he needed a drink. Big boulders of memory crashed around in his head that he could not bear. He was hoping if he drank enough liquor they would stop. He couldn’t stand to think of what had happened in the last couple weeks. It ripped him in two. It made him want to hurt something. Hurt himself again.
As he got close to the house, he had a new worry. Wouldn’t the sheriff and Claire know he’d come back here? Wouldn’t they be waiting for him? There was no car in the driveway, but they could have parked far away and walked in.
He crouched under a tree at the edge of the yard, just past the garden, and waited. If anyone was in the house they would turn some lights on soon.
He stayed in a squat, quite sure he couldn’t be seen from the house. Darkness was creeping over the land, its soft black hand scooping up all the stray light remaining in the sky.
If he could only turn back time to three weeks ago.
He and Anne would be sitting out on the back patio, swatting the occasional mosquito, laughing, talking about the weather, the crops, what the fall would bring—if it would ever come. Touching hands as they handed each other a drink, some
chips, just to know the other was there in the gathering dark.
He wondered where she was now. If he would see her again. If it would be very soon.
Just then he felt a touch on his shoulder. A slobbery tongue reached out and licked his face.
A
s Amy stood on the doorstep of a rambler in Hastings, she hoped Mrs. Swaggum would let her look through Dean’s files. She pushed back her shoulder-length blond hair. She wished she had a band to put it into a ponytail and get it off her neck.
Amy didn’t think she’d need a search warrant—after all, she was investigating the murder of the woman’s husband—and she was praying Mrs. Swaggum wouldn’t send her packing. The hour drive back to Durand would mean she would have to come back another day.
It was still beastly hot out, but the weatherman promised a break in the weather, maybe even a thunderstorm by tonight.
When Mrs. Swaggum opened the door, Amy was surprised to see how changed she looked. The older woman was wearing no make-up and her hair was in a tangle, which aged her a good ten years.
“Mrs. Swaggum, we had talked about me going through your husband’s office. I tried to call earlier but the line kept being busy.”
“I put the phone off the hook.” A hand drifted up to her ratted and uncombed hair.
“May I come in?” Amy asked.
Mrs. Swaggum stepped back and Amy entered a clean living room. “Come this way. The office is off the garage. Stay as long as you like.”
Swaggum’s place of business overflowed with paper, empty Mountain Dew cans and newspapers. There was no glimpse of the desk that must have been holding all that clutter up. Duct tape bandaged the seat of the desk chair, which was the only place to sit. The shades hung off the window like the carcasses of some old birds. Dust covered every surface with a felt finish.
A huge impulse to turn and run flooded Amy, but then she saw a small air-conditioning unit, turned it on, and got comfortable in the duct-taped seat, which was surprisingly comfortable. The hum of the unit filled the room with white noise. A cool breeze settled on her shoulders. No people talking at her, the room became a little womb of cool. She wouldn’t mind staying for an hour or two. She might even find something.
While she wasn’t particularly neat herself, Amy liked order. Her desk at work was arranged so she knew where everything was. She cleared off a section of Swaggum’s desk, temporarily piling those papers on the floor.
She was stunned to see bills from seven years ago still floating in the paper sea. Anything over two years old, she stuffed in a cardboard box she found in the garage. Using her own judgment she just figured it would be hard to hold a grudge for that long.
Hours later she had sorted all the papers by year and had read through everything from two years ago. As she started into
the current year, she felt her stomach rumble. She was starving. She stuffed all the current bills and papers in the box to take back to the office.
Mrs. Swaggum came to the door. She looked at the desk and then around the cleared room. “We should have hired you.”
Amy showed her what she had done with the various boxes. “Is it all right if I take these with me? I’ll return them.”
“Hey, I’d just have to go through them myself. If you find any outstanding client bills, let me know. I didn’t pay attention to Dean’s work. Even though it was a mess in here, he seemed to manage. I think he kept it all in his head.” Mrs. Swaggum’s face crumpled. “I miss him so much already. He was my buddy.”
The word “buddy” jolted Amy in the heart. That described how she felt about Bill. Amy stood with the box of paper in her arms and watched Mrs. Swaggum try to pull her face back into shape. She knew she needed to say something.
“We’ll find out who did this to him,” Amy said.
Mrs. Swaggum patted her face, blinking her eyes to clear the tears. “I don’t really care. I mean, I know it’s your job. But it won’t bring him back. It’ll never bring him back.”
Amy carted the box of bills and papers out to the squad car and slid it into the back seat. As she shoved the box to secure it, some of the papers came spilling over the top. She reached down and gathered them up. An invoice caught her eye, so she unfolded it:
June 28
Please pay Timber Tree Service $800.00 for services rendered.
The name of the customer was Chet Baldwin.
* * *
“You’re going to work today?” Rich asked as he got out of the pickup truck and saw Claire sitting on the deck, dressed in her uniform.
Claire could hear by his tone of voice that he didn’t think it was a good idea. “I’ll take it easy. Amy is picking me up. With these two murder cases, I just don’t feel I can take much time off.”
“You could.”
Claire decided not to argue with Rich. Even though he had stayed at the house last night, he had slept down on the couch, supposedly so she could get some sleep and not worry about hitting him with her cast, but there was definitely some mending that needed to happen between them. She wanted him back in their bed.
“Everything look okay over at Baldwin’s?” Claire asked. “No sign of Chet?” She had told the sheriff that she and Rich would keep an eye out for the missing man. They didn’t have the manpower to keep a deputy stationed over there.
“Nope. Didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. You think Chet would really go back there?”
“What do you think?” Claire asked. “You know him better than almost anyone.”
“That’s what I thought, but now I don’t feel like I know him at all.” Rich pulled his t-shirt out from his body and blew down the front of it. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he showed up.”
“The sheriff said he’ll have the deputies do drive-bys. You be careful if you go over there,” Claire said.
“I’m not worried. Chet wouldn’t do anything to me.”
“How do you know?”
Rich walked into the house without answering.
Amy drove up in the squad car and Claire headed to the passenger side, which felt odd to her. She was usually the driver.
It surprised Claire how awkward every action was because of her broken arm. It was even difficult getting into the squad car. She ungracefully landed on the passenger seat holding her cast against her body and said hi.
Amy started talking so fast about papers that had slid out of a box and what she had found in Hastings that Claire had to hold up her good hand and stop her.
“Start over. Pretend I’ve had a serious brain injury and you have to be very slow and clear with me.”
“Are you still on meds?” Amy asked.
“No. But I feel like there’s residuals in my system, and my arm …”
“It still hurts, doesn’t it? I broke my baby toe once. Rocked it in a rocking chair. Man, I couldn’t believe how much that hurt, and for weeks.”
“Since they put the cast on it has really calmed down, but it still aches.” Claire adjusted the sling. “So what did you have to tell me? Let’s get going.”
Amy pulled out onto Highway 35 and told her story more slowly, describing the Swaggum’s house and digging through the office, speeding up as she got deeper into her story, but this time Claire followed her and finally she got to the important piece of information: The Baldwins had hired Dean Swaggum to cut down a tree toward the end of June, less than two months ago.
“What do you think?” Amy asked.
“Seems like a pretty big coincidence. Two deaths, two murders possibly, happening within a week or two of each other and they had met less than two months previous. I think some pretty serious sniffing around needs to be done. Swaggum came down to this area to cut down a tree for the Baldwins. How do we find out what happened after that?” Claire asked out loud, then immediately thought of Colette, Anne’s sister. Maybe she knew something. “I think you need to go back to Swaggum’s wife and ask her if she remembers anything in particular about that job. I’m going to check in with Anne’s sister. Oh, and why don’t you pull the phone records for both the Swaggums and the Baldwins. See if anything shows up.”
When they got to the department, Claire heard from one of the secretaries, Gwen, who had learned from Patsy, who worked at the mortuary, that Colette was trying to arrange for a small private memorial service at the funeral home. Not even in a church. To have a private ceremony of any kind was very unusual in Pepin County where often both weddings and funerals were announced to the general public in the paper, everyone welcome at either event.
But the bigger problem was that it wasn’t clear if the sister had the legal authority to bury Anne Baldwin.