Buttons and Bones (27 page)

“Six years later,” said Betsy, “the major was declared dead by a judge. Helga had meanwhile moved to New Ulm, where she put a substantial down payment on a modest house and got a job as a secretary. She took her secondhand car on a jaunt to Chicago, where it allegedly suffered a breakdown. It was a cold winter night when she walked into a restaurant seeking a phone to call a tow company. A waiter didn’t want her to wait in the place because she didn’t plan to purchase a meal. The manager of the place, a Peter Ball, not only let her stay, he fed her. By the time the tow company arrived, he had her name and address. They began a correspondence. It warmed into a relationship and then a courtship. In the end, Peter moved to New Ulm to live with his bride in her modest house. They were very happy, raising a boy and three girls, and ending up with eight grandchildren. He wound up managing the Kaiserhof restaurant, and she became secretary to one of the deans at the New Ulm Christian College. They were very happy until, after forty-five years of marriage, she suffered a stroke at work and died.”

The two women fell silent. Mix looked at them, one then the other. “So Dieter gets away and Helga is dead,” he said. “The case ends there?”

“Oh,” said Betsy, “didn’t we tell you? Dieter
is
Peter. He had learned English from an Englishman, so he could pass as someone who came to America from England as a teen. It must have been difficult those first years, working menial jobs while he built an identity, scrubbing the last of his German accent away. Then, very carefully, and only after it was safe, they arranged to meet in Chicago. Living in New Ulm, with a wife who spoke fluent German, he could let the remnants of his German attitude and even the occasional German phrase show and explain that under the circumstances it was hard not to become a little bit German himself.”

Jill whistled a phrase from an English music hall song, and Betsy nodded. “But he forgot to make himself more of an Englishman. When we first spoke with him, I pointed to a Bavarian hat he owned and asked, in the phrase of probably the best-known English music hall song, ‘Where did you get that hat?’ and he took it as a legitimate question. Didn’t crack a smile. It didn’t really bother me—I suppose there are living Englishmen who are unfamiliar with the song—until I started putting the pieces of the puzzle together and it became another small piece.”

Jill said, raising her voice, “It was Peter who sent those threatening notes, Mike. He went over to Nadel Kunst after we talked with him, and the owner, Cindy Hillesheim, told him Betsy was an amateur sleuth who didn’t work with the police on a case. About scared the bejesus out of him, probably. He thought we came to see him because we were researching Helga von Dusen—and we were, of course. So he went to the drugstore and bought a box of new envelopes and a packet of three by five cards, took them home, and wearing gloves, prepared that brief warning. Then he drove all the way to Minneapolis and dropped it off at a post office in time for the last pickup.”

“Mail can be delivered in a day in the Twin Cities area, it’s a terrific service,” said Betsy. “I’d forgotten that until I got a phone call from a customer who got a package with a mistake in its contents that I’d mailed to her the day before. Poor old fellow must have worn himself out getting that done and up to the Cities in just a few hours.”

Jill said, “I think, Betsy, we’ve already had a conversation about feeling sorry for that murderer.”

“Yes, you’re right. You know, it was clever of him to have done that, so it makes me wonder if it wasn’t his idea to use the major’s train ticket and uniform to get away. But no, Helga had her own reputation as a
schlauenkopf
, so maybe not.”

“The question now is,” said Jill, “how do we smoke Herr Dieter out?”

Twenty-two

JILL and Betsy sat in Betsy’s Buick across the street from Peter Ball’s house. In front of the house were two New Ulm squad cars and an unmarked police car that Investigator Mix had driven down from Walker, stopping in Excelsior to pick up Mike Malloy on the way.

The two women were there on sufferance, having no official role to play and under strict orders to stay in the car.

A New Ulm police officer knocked on the door. There was no answer. Peter Ball’s car was in the driveway; he should have been at home. The officer knocked again, harder, and this time announced himself: “Police Department, open the door!” Jill and Betsy could hear him all the way across the street.

“What’s wrong, why doesn’t he answer?” asked Betsy.

“He’s scared, probably,” replied Jill. “I wonder if he hasn’t been expecting them to come knocking? I mean, did he think we’d come in person?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look, they’re going in.”

The door wasn’t locked. The little group of men were cautiously entering the house. The New Ulm police officers had their hands on their guns, but hadn’t drawn them. They left the door open.

After a wait, Betsy realized she was holding her breath. She deliberately let it out and drew another deep one.

Then she heard a siren.

“Calling for backup?” asked Betsy.

“No, that’s an ambulance.”

“Oh, no, do you think they’ve hurt him?”

“I don’t know,” Jill replied. She sounded very calm—but then Jill usually did.

A police officer came out onto the porch and waved at them. When he saw he had their attention, he gestured at them to come over.

Up on the porch he said, “Try not to touch anything, all right?”

“What’s the matter?” asked Betsy.

“We want you to identify Mr. Ball,” he said, and led the way through the living room into the kitchen.

It was a small room, done in shades of tan and green, its style dating to the sixties but with a center island. On the island’s far side lay Peter Ball. He was surrounded by pots and pans and also by what, after a moment, Betsy identified as a ceiling rack designed to hold the utensils suspended. Ball was not moving, and the back and side of his head was a mess of dried blood. A cast-iron frying pan on the floor nearby had dark red smears along its edge.

One of Ball’s legs was caught up in a three-step stool that had fallen over.

Investigator Mix said, “Is this man Peter Ball?”

“Yes,” said Betsy.

“Yes,” said Jill.

 

 

IN the shop the next morning, it was very quiet. Though the phrase “not your fault” echoed in Betsy’s mind—and in truth, what happened to Peter Ball was not anyone’s fault, except, perhaps, the person who’d installed the pot rack—she felt that somehow she had brought Nemesis into the little old man’s life.

She and Jill.

And maybe Molly Fabrae.

And maybe Peter himself, for climbing up on that wobbly old stool to reach for a pot or a pan?
whispered a voice from the back of her mind.

Maybe.

But Mike had called Betsy at home this morning to say that Peter had fractured his skull in two places and broken his arm in the accident that killed him, probably the evening before he was found. “Old men’s bones break easy,” Mike had noted. “And their balance isn’t always very good. A pure accident, but a heck of a coincidence that the injuries that killed him are the same as what killed Matthew Farmer.”

Yes
, thought Betsy.
A heck of a coincidence.

And she thought again of Molly Fabrae.

Shortly after lunch, Jill came in, and Betsy told her what she’d been thinking. “It’s making me a little sick,” she said.

“I thought about it, too,” said Jill, “and I checked it out. I called Molly to tell her about finding Peter Ball in his kitchen. I thought, How would Betsy ask for an alibi in a way that wouldn’t warn her subject? So I said, ‘It makes you think, doesn’t it? I was home making supper for Lars and the children when it happened.’ And it worked—Molly said she’d spent the whole afternoon with her three grandchildren, buying them back-to-school clothes, then had the family over for pizza. The party didn’t break up until nearly nine.”

Betsy sighed in relief. “I’m so glad. I feel terribly sorry for her, but at least that one sad part of her life has an ending. How’s Bjorn doing?”

“He didn’t have an accident last night, but actually waited until I let him out this morning. He’ll do.”

After Jill left, Godwin came over and said, “How are you feeling?”

“I felt so sorry for Mr. Ball, and now he’s dead.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“I’m afraid not. I’ll get over it. Jill thinks it’s poetic justice, and for all we know, it is.”

“Is that what’s bothering you? That you don’t know for sure that he killed Major Farmer?”

“Well, I’m sure that either he or Helga did it. But yes, I guess I’m thinking that it’s possible he was just a horrified spectator at the major’s death.”

“No, no, no,” said Godwin. “Think about it. Dieter and Helga are heavily—culpably—involved with each other late one evening when in walks the husband. Whether Matthew goes for his wife first or Dieter, it was the other who came to his or her defense. There was probably a big three-way battle going on before one or the other grabbed the frying pan and started swinging. Can’t you just see it? Matthew threw his arm up to defend himself and smash! It’s broken, he turns away yelling, and gets smacked a good one on the back of his head.”

Betsy, grimacing furiously, shouted, “Stop it, stop it!”

“But that’s probably how it happened,” said Godwin in a reasonable voice. “Except I can’t explain that second fracture.”

Betsy put both hands on her face. “I can,” she said in a muffled voice. “The major didn’t die at once, but was so horribly injured they decided to finish the job.”

“Ugh!” said Godwin. “You’re worse—or do I mean better?—than I am at thinking up awful scenes.”

“That’s why I hate to think about them. They’re horrible and so vivid in my mind that I hate starting them.”

“Well, then, let’s think about something else. My golf game, for example. Or the fall window display.”

“Yes, let’s.”

But before they could pull out the file folder with the window design in it, the door sounded its two notes and in walked two women. One, Ann Mobius, Betsy knew. “I’m going to be a grandmother at last!” she announced. “I want a birth announcement! Oh, this is Sandy Sechrest, who doesn’t stitch.”

Sandy said, “But I do collect needlework. Have you got any finished pieces for sale?” She was a short woman, a trifle plump, with white hair and interested blue eyes—they were looking through the opening between the box shelves at the walls in back covered with framed needlework.

“I’m afraid not,” said Betsy. “These are models, to show my customers what a finished piece of counted cross-stitch looks like.”

“Beautiful, they’re just beautiful.”

“She’s just retired from her job as a librarian at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse,” said Ann, who was a tall woman, deeply tanned, with dark hair and eyes. “So now she has the time, maybe we could interest her in a beginner pattern.”

“No, thank you,” said Sandy with a laugh and a dismissive gesture. “I’ve got enough projects already lined up. You go ahead and look for your baby pattern, I’ll just sit out here and wait.” Sandy went to the library table, took a seat, and got out her Kindle. “Finally,” she said to Betsy, “time enough to read all the books I want to read.”

Betsy smiled and nodded and went to help Ann select a pattern and the fabric for a birth announcement.

Ann said, “What’s this I hear about the police making an arrest in that strange case of the skeleton in the root cellar?” She chuckled. “That sounds like a Nancy Drew mystery title, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does,” said Betsy. “Here, these are the birth announcements. Will you need fabric?”

 

 

 

THAT evening Betsy went to Connor’s apartment for supper with him and his daughter. Peg was still cock-a-hoop over having broken the case by putting an identifiable face on the skull, but also a little nervous at having her desire to be psychic proven true. “Me heart is still all kerfuffled,” is how she put it, fluttering her long fingers on her chest.

Connor was beaming at her from the couch, Betsy sitting beside him, his arm flung carelessly around her shoulders. “Ah,
machree
,” he said to her, “I know you were all anyhow while working on this case, but it’s a long road without a turning in it, and I’m glad for all our sakes that there was a solution at the end.”

“Yes, but it’s too bad about Mr. Ball—Mr. Keitel, I suppose I should say.”

“No, Mr. Ball suits him better; after all, he spent most of his life as Peter Ball. I suppose after a while he must have come close to forgetting he was ever Dieter Keitel.”

But Betsy shuddered just a little, remembering the scenario Godwin had evoked of the murder scene in the cabin. Who could forget that? Surely there must have been bad dreams on some nights. Perhaps in late autumn, when the first snow fell . . .