Death Without Company (8 page)

I waited as his eyes went back to the floor, then to me. “Walter, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“No.”

“Why are you so interested in this woman’s death?”

That set me back. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

He actually reached out and patted my knee. “Even with the beard, you are a very young man.”

I was flattered, I think, but still didn’t know what to make of his response. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She was an old woman who was tired of living.”

“Are you telling me that this was a suicide?”

His eyes sparked hard for a moment. “No, that is not what I am telling you.” He withdrew his hand; the skin was transparent, and I watched as the blue and red protruded in the fists at his lap. “I think she was tired and gave up.”

“You knew her pretty well?”

“She was my patient for more than half a century.”

I took a sip of the tea out of habit and immediately regretted it. “What can you tell me about the scars?” He looked at me blankly. “The ones on her back?”

He raised his head and nodded. “She was involved in an automobile accident a number of years ago.”

“An automobile accident?”

“Yes.”

“The scars couldn’t have been the result of some form of abuse?”

He turned and looked at me again, the picture of questioning disbelief. “What would lead you to think that?”

“The Yellowstone County Medical Examiner.”

His eyes widened. “You sent her to Billings?”

“No, he’s here. His name is Bill McDermott, and he’s over at Memorial.”

“Walter, it was Mrs. Baroja’s expressed desire that there be nothing done to her remains other than what was legally required.”

“Well, it’s gotten a little complicated.”

“Who did you say was doing the autopsy?”

I sat the tea down on the magazines stacked at the table behind me. “New fellow by the name of Bill McDermott. He’s a licensed ME.” I waited for a moment. “So, you and Mrs. Baroja discussed the possibility of her death?”

He seemed less excitable now. “I discuss the possibility with all my patients. I try to be truthful with them, no matter what the circumstance.”

I leaned in. “Isaac, it sounds like you had a lot more responsibilities than that of family practitioner. Is there something you want to say to me?”

I waited as he took a deep breath and noticed, not for the first time, how small the man was. “I lied to you just now.”

“Yep, I know.” He looked at me again. “It’s something I’m pretty good at spotting.”

“You realize, of course, that due to the physician/patient privilege I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Yes.” We listened as the little pumps bubbled fresh oxygen into the fish tank; Handel joined the minuet. “You want to tell me about the scars first?”

He sighed. “Charlie Nurburn, her husband.”

I nodded and then stopped. “I don’t know him.”

“He was from the southern part of the county, near Four Brothers.”

“Middle fork of the Powder; not much out there.”

“Used to be a few little homesteads and an old coal mine.” I looked at the thick yellow nails as his fingers tightened at his kneecaps. “I used to run a clinic down in Powder once a week, Saturday mornings, back in the late forties, early fifties.”

I leaned back in the overstuffed chair and unbuttoned my sheepskin coat. “She was one of your patients then?”

“Yes. I delivered her two children and . . .”

“Three children?”

He paused for a moment. “Yes, I always forget about David, but I didn’t deliver him. I wasn’t practicing yet.” I waited. “She didn’t come in about the beatings.”

“What then?”

“Latent syphilis.”

I rubbed my hands across my face. “This guy sounds like a real charmer. How long were they married?”

“Long enough.”

“Jesus.” I looked at Isaac again. “Where is he?”

“Gone.”

It seemed like there was more. “Dead?”

“I’m not sure. Just gone.”

“When?”

“Years ago.” He waited for a moment, and his eyes stayed steady with mine. “It’s probably better that way, don’t you think?” I didn’t say anything. “You can understand my being circumspect concerning her situation.”

“Yes.” I wondered about all the individuals wandering around out there who were in serious need of the administration of a dreadful ass-kicking and weren’t likely to get it. “Why the response to the autopsy?”

“I thought she’d been through enough, and it was her expressed wish that her body not be disturbed any more than it already had. She was very religious.” It was a sad smile this time. “What does Mr. McDermott have to say about cause of death?”

I waited a moment and looked at Isaac, allowing myself the blurred vision of the living hell that he had endured. Lucian said that he had been one of three survivors of Nordhausen, a subcamp of Dora-Mittelbau for inmates too sick or weak to work in the tunnels of Dora. Nordhausen was a
Vernichtungslager
or extermination camp where starvation was the simple but effective measure. To make matters worse, on April 3, 1945, it was bombed by our air force. Since it was installed in concrete hangers, we thought it was a German munitions depot. A great number of the prisoners were burned alive; a week and a half later, when the 104
^th
Infantry Division liberated Nordhausen, they found three thousand rotting corpses and three survivors. One of them was Isaac Bloomfield, and he weighed fifty-seven pounds.

I always thought that there was a reason why the old man was able to keep going; maybe it was because, as long as he was alive, he was a reminder. “Cardiac arrest. Any history of heart problems in the family?”

He chuckled to himself with a wistful quality. “Oh, Walter, there are nothing but problems of the heart in families such as this.” He continued to smile. “I suppose cardiac complications due to prolonged exposure to syphilitic infection; that, and I believe that Mrs. Baroja took solace in a number of lifelong vices that did nothing to prolong her existence.”

“So there isn’t anything suspicious about her death that you can think of?”

“I don’t think so.” He studied me a little longer than I was comfortable with. “Is this disappointing to you?”

I wondered how much he knew about Mari Baroja and Lucian and suspected that it was more than he was willing to admit. “No, that’s the one odd thing about this job. You’re always willing to turn work away.” I looked down at my uniform, the badge, and the .45 at my hip. It didn’t take much imagination to see the distance that they put between myself and most people, let alone Isaac. Nice people with uniforms, badges, and guns had once told him they were doing things for his own good, his own safety, and his own welfare. Next thing he knew he was being carried out of a reinforced hanger with three thousand dead people. If I were Isaac, I wouldn’t let me in the same room as me. “What do you know about the children?”

“Everything. Carol, Kay, and David.”

“I’m assuming David is dead?” I thought back to the sad-eyed lieutenant in the photograph in her room. “Vietnam?”

“Yes.” His eyes softened a little. “That was your war, wasn’t it, Walter?”

“Don’t blame me, I didn’t start it.” I allowed my mind to play over the photograph again. “I’m trying to think if I knew him.”

“He was quiet.” He said it like I wasn’t. “Mari had a cousin, a priest, I believe.”

“Here in town?”

“He was not a priest here, but I think he retired here . . . If he’s still alive.”

The priest in the family photograph; this would take a little following up. I thought of the picture of the little dark-haired girls on the stoop. “Both of the twins are lawyers?”

“Yes.”

I changed the subject to the only other Baroja I knew who wasn’t a lawyer in an attempt to pick up my spirits. “I understand that one of the grandchildren has a bakery here in town?”

“Yes. Lana was David’s daughter. She is the only grandchild. The twins both have had miscarriages, probably as a result of the hereditary syphilitic condition.” It took a while, but his face brightened. “The bakery is a wonderful place. Have you been there?”

“No, but I’m going there next.” I patted my stomach. “I’ll take a baker over a lawyer any day of the week.”

“You must try the ruggelach, it is the best I have ever tasted.”

As we were leaving, I asked him if he would go by and formally identify Mari Baroja to save the family the grief. He said that he would, and I asked him if he wanted to turn the music off. All he did was lock the door behind us and ask, “Why?”

I watched as the silver Mercedes without snow tires made its way up Fetterman taking a right on Aspen and thought about a man who had escaped the concentration camps and now drove a German car. The Hun be damned.

 
 
I thought the snow had stopped, but it had just satisfied itself with a finer version of delivery. If I squinted my eyes and looked away from the breeze, I could still see the clandestine little flakes ganging up on me. “Okay, so where is this damned bakery?”

Static. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Base, this is Unit One, where is this damned bakery?’ Over.”

It had taken forever to get her to use proper radio procedure, and now I wasn’t sure I was happy with the results. “It’s still snowing, and I haven’t bought my soon-to-arrive daughter anything for Christmas. Have you listened to the weather?”

Static. “More snow. Over.”

“Wonderful. Any ideas about Cady?”

Static. “I’ll work on it, and the bakery is next to the small motor repair place next to the creek. Over.”

“Unit One to Base, thank you. Over.”

Static. “That’s much better.”

The bakery was on the back street, as Ruby had described, next to Evans’s Chainsaw Service, something I was going to need if I ever got my wood-burning stove into operation. The building had been a gift store that had been boarded up for a couple of years. She had pulled off all the old plywood and replaced it with new wood that sported a jaunty red with gold trim. A handpainted sign hung over the entrance between the two bay windows extolling, in a florid script, BAROJA’S BAKED GOODS, as simple as that. Baskets of baguettes and fresh loaves spilled out of carefully arranged displays along with bottles of wine and full pound wedges of exotic cheese. I stood there on the sidewalk and looked up the street to the
Durant Courant
’s sign just to convince myself that I was still in the county seat. How could I have missed something like this?

I climbed up the steps and pushed the beveled glass door open to the soft tinkling of the attached bell and was immediately assaulted by the smell of vanilla. I pulled my pocket watch out and consulted it as to lunchtime; we concurred that it was early but acceptable.

I looked around, but there wasn’t anyone to be found. I had seen places like this in Denver, Santa Fe, and Salt Lake City, old buildings that had been partially restored but left with a rustic appeal. The red brick walls were exposed on the inside, and the pressed tin ceiling glowed a fiery copper. The floors had been sanded to the original planks, and their distressed quality was preserved in industrial grade polyurethane. There were shelves along the left side of the narrow building that were loaded with all sorts of gourmet goods in assorted bottles and boxes. The counter level had small wicker baskets filled with recognizable Basque baked goods that ran the gamut from black olive bread to Norman loaves. There was a large white porcelain display cooler that held all kinds of cheeses and complicated charcuterie. There were French posters on the walls, lithographs of what I assumed were advertisements for nineteenth-century liqueurs, and an old wooden display case that held a surprising number of antique corkscrews and wine accoutrements.

In the back were two country French tables surrounded by time-worn mismatched chairs, and an upright cooler that held rows of wines and beers that I had never seen before. My attention was drawn to a collection of dark gallon jugs at the bottom. I kneeled down and inspected one of the labels; it read, UNPASTEURIZED BEER FROM THE SPARKLING GEM OF THE HIGH PLAINS, WHEATLAND MERCANTILE, WHEATLAND, WYOMING. There was a jackalope wearing a tuxedo and a monocle on the label. “You have got to be kidding.”

I listened as footsteps approached from the stairwell that I assumed led to the basement. I stood and turned toward the doorway as Lana Baroja appeared, covered in a fine patina of sweat and flour. She still wore her snow boots, but the purple quilted long coat had been replaced with an apron full of doughy handprints, and her hair was now in a French twist. I was getting the feeling that Lana, with her flushed face and darting eyes, was a character in search of a French author. The eyes lost their spark when she recognized me. “I find it very hard to believe that you have a microbrew from Wheatland.”

She placed a fist on her hip and cocked her head. “You’d be surprised at what all I’ve got in here.” She walked past me and behind the counter. “I’m the best kept secret in Durant, not that it’s doing my bank account any good.” She straightened her arms and leaned against the counter. “I assume you’re here because you have some news for me?”

I looked at the cases and tried to spy the item that Isaac had recommended. “Arugula?”

“Excuse me?”

My courage was fleeting. “Something like arugula?” She continued to stare at me as if I were an idiot. “Dr. Bloomfield’s favorite?”

She looked at me through a finely arched black eyebrow and very long lashes. “Ruggelach, a traditional Hanukkah pastry, crescent-shaped, filled, and made with a cream-cheese dough?”

“That would be it.”

“As opposed to arugula or rocket, an aromatic salad green with a peppery mustard flavor?”

“I’ll take both.”

“I only have the pastry.”

“I’ll take that then.”

She smiled and wagged her head; she was enjoying herself. Most people did when it was at the sheriff’s expense. “You’re sure?”