“Geez, really? I’m kinda surprised. Not that he wouldn’t be really upset by what happened, but he’s always weathered difficulties pretty well. Should I stop down to see him?”
“Oh, no. I don’t think that would be good. They’re going to have a psychiatrist talk to him, evaluate him. I think they’ve got him pretty doped up right now. He’s probably too groggy to talk.”
“What have you found out?”
“About what?”
“You know. About what happened at his house last night. I know you were going to run some tests on the guns and all. I’ve
lived with you for enough years that I know what some of the procedure is now.”
Claire felt a laugh push up her throat, but stifled it. “Nothing conclusive. They both have traces of residue on their hands, but then we know that Chet held the gun. You saw it in his hands—so that doesn’t really prove anything”
“Sorry about last night, er, this morning I guess.”
Rich was always better at apologizing than she was, but she could at least echo him. “Me too.”
“What time will I see you?”
“I won’t be too late. I’m wiped out. Not much sleep last night.”
After they hung up, Claire sat and stared at the drawer. She knew the test was finished. In under a minute, in the privacy of your own work bathroom, you could find out if your life was going to change beyond recognition.
She didn’t know what she would do if she was pregnant, but she couldn’t see having a baby at her age. She had a feeling Meg would be fine with it. Her daughter might even think it was funny, exciting and possibly a little ridiculous. That’s what Claire would think about it if it were happening to another woman her own age. She had heard of women in their mid-forties having children, but she couldn’t imagine retiring and still having a kid at home.
Her guess was that Rich would be pleased if she found out she was pregnant. He had been a good father to Meg, even though she was not his own child. He liked all the parts of being a couple better than Claire did: the joint checking account, the deciding what car they needed next, the divvying up of the
chores, even the compromises. Especially the compromises. He did all that stuff better than she did.
She could just see his face looking down on his own progeny with pride. He’d probably be better at changing diapers than she was. At least breast-feeding would be out of his scope.
She pulled the drawer open and yanked the paper towel off the stick.
A negative sign.
It was negative and her heart sunk and then bobbed back up again. No baby blues.
Not pregnant, which meant she was starting to slip and slide into menopause. No babies ever again. Looked like that part of her life was truly over.
W
ant to go swimming?” Amy teased Bill as they drove across the railroad tracks in Maiden Rock and headed down to the park and the beach. She knew how much he hated the water. He didn’t even own a swim suit. She herself needed to lose about twenty pounds before she’d look decent in a suit so maybe it was good he didn’t like to swim.
Bill squinted his eyes in what she liked to call his safari look. “I did my one swim for the summer. Plus, the water is turning that weird shade of green it gets in later summer.”
“Some kind of harmless algae,” Amy reassured him.
“I’m not going in. No way,” Bill said.
“Not even if we see something out in the water, say just ten feet or so off the dock? You wouldn’t jump in and retrieve that?”
“No, but I’d hold your clothes for you so you could do it. I’d be there to pull you back out of the water.”
“What a guy.” He slowly drove the squad car closer to the dock. “Why don’t you stop here? Who knows, there might be tire prints or something. Wouldn’t want to mess them up.”
“I think you’ve been watching too much TV. Doesn’t happen like that in real life. Besides, we don’t even know if this is where they put the body into the water.”
“It’s my very educated guess. As someone famous says in a much fancier way, the simplest solution is most often right. I’m hoping that whoever dumped our John Doe’s body was A, in a hurry, B, drunk, C, careless and D, assuming it would never be found. If any or all of those factors are true, we might find something.”
Bill looked over at her with an impressed expression on his face. “You’re so organized. I bet you were good at school. You should have been a school teacher, not a cop.”
Amy thought back to her two years at a junior college before she went into the police academy. “I thought about it, but cops make more money and get to retire earlier. Plus I figured I’d get to meet more guys.”
“Now the truth comes out.”
She giggled as she stepped out of the squad car.
They both looked out toward the dock and the water. There had been no rain for over a week so Amy didn’t really expect to see any tire prints. Slowly they walked toward the dock, searching the ground. The few tire marks that were clear looked like they had been made by bikes. Amy saw twist-off tops, cigarette butts, and a gum wrapper, but nothing that looked out of place. When they got to the dock, they took a few steps down it, peering into the water on either side.
“I’m guessing he worked with his hands, our bloated floater,” Bill said. “He was a big guy. Construction. Maybe a farmer, but I doubt it. Otherwise he’d be known around here.”
“The medical examiner did say his hands were well callused. So good guess.”
“Hey, not a guess. I can play Sherlock Holmes too, noticing the odd detail, figuring out the occupation of said dead body. Just put a big hat on me and stuff a pipe in my mouth and I’ll tell you what’s what.”
“I’d rather not.” Amy laughed. “I can see construction being a possibility. He did something that caused him to get cut up from time to time. The ME showed me a couple deep cuts on his hands that had healed over. So whatever he did, he’d been at it for a while.”
“Weird that he was naked.” Bill scuffed his shoe on the wooden slats of the dock.
“Maybe he was naked when he was killed.”
“What, like he got caught in the act?”
“Can’t rule anything out yet. But I guess I figure that whoever dumped him just didn’t want us to be able to figure anything out from his clothes.”
“At least they didn’t cut his fingers off.”
“Well, that’s for sure.” Amy walked to the end of the dock. Stretching out into the water about forty feet, it was a removable dock that was taken out of the water in late fall and stored someplace. Boats were not permanently moored there, but visitors to the town often tied up to the dock for the day. Fishermen would tie up and wander up to Ole’s for a brew. She checked the wooden planks carefully although she didn’t expect to find anything. The wind and people’s feet would have knocked any evidence into the water.
When they reached the end of the dock, Bill grabbed her and acted as if he was going to push her in.
“Don’t you dare.” She squirmed in his strong hands.
“I’m your superior officer. If I say jump, you have to jump.” He held her close to the side of the dock.
“Only if there’s a good reason.”
“I’d come up with one mighty quick.” He leaned down and kissed the back of her neck, then let her go.
She had asked Bill to not be intimate with her during work hours so she forced herself to ignore his kiss. “Did you bring the binoculars?”
“In the car. Along with my polarized sunglasses,” he said. “As my sub-ordinate, I think you better run and get them.”
“Okay, but don’t find anything without me.”
“I’ll wait.” He sat down at the end of the dock and took his shoes off.
When Amy came back with the binoculars and glasses, Bill was dangling his very white feet in the water. She stood above him, scanning the shallow bay that formed in the curve of Maiden Rock. While the binoculars cut the glare on the water, they could do nothing about the green algae that was crowding into the area.
She wished she could tell how the water circulated in the harbor. “What if we got a small buoy, put it in the water about twenty or thirty feet out and watched which way it floated? That might give us some idea of the current here and we could extrapolate backwards and find the weight he was tied to.”
Bill laughed. “Great idea, but I doubt it would work. Too many factors. I’d say we look around the shore a little more, then head back to Durand. I think our little field trip is going to be a bust, Amster.”
“Do you think there’s any chance that the sheriff could be persuaded to dredge the bottom of the bay?”
“No and no,” Bill said as they stepped off the dock. “First, he wouldn’t. Secondly, so what if we found the cement block or whatever, what does it prove? We still got nothing.”
Amy pulled away from him. He was right and she knew it. One of her fantasies about being a deputy was that she would find just the right thing at the right moment to put the whole case together. She kicked at the sand and still all she saw was dirt. Which is what you should find on a beach in Wisconsin. Maybe an agate if you’re lucky.
She walked over to the big green dumpster. Just on the odd chance there might be something of interest, she went on tiptoe and looked in. A slight squeal slipped out of her mouth when she caught a flash of red.
“Bill, come here. I think I found something.”
* * *
When Rich got home he was happy to find Meg stretched out on the deck of the house in the shade with a book, wearing a bathing suit and listening to his old transistor radio.
“You’re actually using that antique?” he asked.
“Seems to fit my mood. Some songs sound better on it.” She smiled up at him, then wrinkled her nose. “Hey, what was up with you and Mom last night?”
He realized he hadn’t told Meg what had happened to Chet. Somehow he felt like he could manage it now. He didn’t feel so completely thrown. Maybe it was not coming out of sleep,
maybe it was even half a day’s time, but it might have been his successful confrontation with Bentley. He felt more able to take on what the world dished him.
“Chet’s wife was killed last night.”
Meg sat up, the book falling onto the deck. “You’re kidding. How did that happen?”
“She was shot.”
“Who did it?”
“Not sure yet. She might have done it to herself.”
“You mean like suicide.”
“Yup.”
“Doesn’t seem like her. I mean I didn’t know her very well or anything, but she always was so upbeat.”
Rich didn’t want to go into it with her anymore, so he asked a question that she never got tired of answering. “Where’s your boyfriend today?”
Meg glanced up into the woods. “Oh, I think he’s taking a hike. We might get together later, but he’s got to help his dad with the haying this afternoon.”
“He’s a good kid.”
“Rich, he’s not a kid. He’s going to be eighteen in two months.”
“Old enough to join the army and get married.”
“Neither of which he’ll do, I’m sure.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
* * *
“I want to see her.” The woman’s voice was blunt.
The secretary had told Claire that the gravel-gray haired woman looking over the counter at Claire was Anne Baldwin’s sister. Looking at her more closely, Claire figured her older sister. Claire hoped so, because the woman looked a lot older than Anne had been.
Claire guessed that the woman was in her fifties, which meant she had a good fifteen years on Anne. But then she also looked as if she had lived those years in a hard way, deep lines around her mouth from smoking, drooping eyes from drinking. But she wore a clean white shirt and jeans, and when she put her hands on the counter to plead her case, her long nails sported red polish.
But there was a resemblance. Where Anne’s hair was short and blond, the sister’s hair was peppered gray, but they had the same wide mouth and light blue eyes. This woman was an older, tougher version.
“There’s just me and my sister left around here. Our parents are gone. Brothers moved away. She’s all I had left,” the woman said in explanation of her request. At this point the woman’s voice trembled and she bowed her head and said, “I know you need someone to identify her.”
“That really won’t be necessary, Ms… .”
“Colette Burns. That was Anne’s maiden name too.”
Claire continued, “She’s already been identified by her husband.”
“Good enough, but I need to see her. I want to see my sister.” Colette hesitated for a moment, then added, “Please. I think it’s the only way I’ll really believe that she’s dead.”
It was unusual to get such a request and when it happened, Claire tried to discourage the relatives from this kind of viewing, asking them to wait until after the funeral home had done their work on the body. Usually the families agreed to this. But Colette seemed particularly persistent. And there was something about the woman that touched Claire—probably her situation. Claire could easily see herself asking the same thing if anything happened to Bridget. Plus, it would be a good opportunity to talk to the woman, see what Colette could tell her about Anne’s mental state.
“She’s at the morgue in the hospital. Just a couple blocks away. I’ll take you over there.”
In the squad car, Claire asked Colette how she had found out about her sister.
“Somebody told me. They must have heard it on the news. I tried to call the house and got no one so I called you guys.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t get in touch with you. We didn’t realize she had any family close by.”
Colette said, “I’m not too close. Live over west a ways. You know Waseca? It’s in Minnesota.”
“Yes,” Claire said. “I’m from Minnesota originally. Is that where you two grew up? Waseca?”
“Close to there. Out in the country.”
“Makes sense to me that Anne grew up on a farm. She was always so good with animals, especially that dog of hers.”
There was a stunned silence, then Colette said, “I gave her Bentley. Did you know my sister?”
“Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t mention that. The man I live with, Rich Haggard, is good friends with her husband Chet.”
“Where is Chet? I tried him at the house a bunch of times. Is he okay? And what happened to her? I couldn’t quite take it all in. All I heard was that it was some kind of shooting.”