Died in the Wool (20 page)

That's what bothered me.

“Fine,” she said and shrank down in the seat. I realized then that she hadn't put on her seat belt. Mary will push the limits and try to get by without it, especially in New Kassel, where the speed limit is, like, fifteen miles per hour and she thinks that means she couldn't get hurt in a wreck. Which isn't true at all, of course, but the worst part is that when we're in places like Wisteria that have a higher speed limit she'll forget to put it on.

“Put on your seat belt,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“I'd rather leave it off. That way, if we have a wreck, I'll just die and get away from you!”

“Get it on now. It's the law.”

“Oh, so you don't care if I die? Is that it? You just want me to wear it because of some stupid law?”

“Mary, I swear, you either get that seat belt on now or I'll shove it up your nose.”

“Whatever,” she said. But she did put the seat belt on.

When we got home she ran up to her bedroom and slammed the door shut, causing all the pictures in the hallway to move a quarter of an inch to the right.

Rudy found me sitting on the bottom step with my face in my hands. “So, where was she?”

“She'd left the rink with Megan and her older brother,” I said.

“What?” he said, anger rising in his eyes.

“Yeah,” I said. “I could tell by the look on her face that she thought she'd gotten back to the rink before I arrived. She knew she wasn't supposed to leave.”

“Why'd she do it?”

I shrugged. “Apparently, Megan got something spilled on her clothes, and you know thirteen-year-old-girls can't change their clothes without somebody to hold their hands. But who knows, that could have been an excuse they concocted. That's just it. Now that she's done this, it makes me doubt everything she says.”

“I'll talk to her,” he said.

“If you talk to her now, it won't do any good. Anything you say will justify everything she's feeling. Wait until tomorrow,” I said.

“She's supposed to work the sno-cone stand at the rose show.”

“I know,” I said, “and she will. I grounded her from the computer.”

Rudy smiled because he understood how huge the computer was in Mary's life. Aside from the horses, the computer was everything. “You're good.”

“Not good enough,” I said, “or I wouldn't have had to do this in the first place.”

“Don't blame yourself,” he said. “She's being thirteen.”

“She's being a brat.”

“Brat … thirteen … they're interchangeable.”

*   *   *

The first-ever annual New Kassel Rose Show was a success in my book. It was Saturday, and I was doing what I loved best: walking the streets of New Kassel at midday during a festival with the aroma of kettle corn wafting through the trees and the sounds of laughter and Tobias's accordion flitting all around me.

Tobias had insisted that he play his accordion, even though he was in charge of the rose show and had many other things to do. His accordion playing has become somewhat famous regionally. He's been the star of several magazine and newspaper articles, and I think there was a certain amount of pride at stake. He'd rather juggle the rose show and the accordion than have somebody else take over and play for him.

My sister had taken the morning off to have breakfast with her husband and kids at Fraulein Krista's, and now she was taking the afternoon shift at the Gaheimer House, which freed me up to walk the town. I tried not to think about what Mary had done last night. I kept reliving that split second during which I'd thought she'd been abducted, that split second when I wasn't certain where she was or what had happened to her. I could still feel the little prickles of sweat that had beaded on the back of my neck. My God, what must Sandy Kendall have felt when he found Rupert hanging from that tree?

I didn't want to know. If it was one smidgen worse than what I felt last night—and I knew it had to be—I didn't want to know it.

Elmer Kolbe waved at me from across the road, and I waved back. Rachel and Riley were seated on the top rung of Gerri Harold's fence, sharing an ice cream cone. It really disturbed me that the same daughter who would not eat potato chips out of a bag that somebody else had stuck his hand in would now lick an ice cream cone that Riley had licked. I mean, his spit particles were all over that ice cream! I guess it was living proof that Riley was here to stay.

I made my way to the area we had set up for the roses. They were awarding the blue ribbon for the best fragrance as I walked up. It went to Sam Hill's wife, Janie, for her Golden Celebration. I found the names of roses quite interesting. Walking through the rows of “contestants,” I saw names like Betty Boop, Don Juan, Glamis Castle, and Sunsprite. There was also a slew of roses named after famous people like Cary Grant, Queen Elizabeth, Julia Child, and Anne Boleyn. What about Martha Stewart? Is there a rose named after Martha Stewart? There should be. I wonder what you have to do to get a rose named after you.

I stuck my nose in the blue ribbon winner and could not believe the fragrance, light and fruity and like nothing I'd ever smelled before. In fact, it was so wonderful that I just kept right on smelling it. I think I would have stood there with my nose in the rose for the next hour if Sheriff Mort hadn't walked up and spoken to me.

“Show a success?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think so. Everybody seems pretty happy. Maddie and the gang had an open show where anybody could bring roses in, and they gave away blue ribbons. I didn't know they were going to do that. I thought only the garden club members were going to bring in roses. This turned out to be really neat.”

“So we're doing it again next year?” he asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” I said.

“Where's Rudy?”

“He took Matthew to the ball game,” I said. “Cardinals are playing the Cubs. Can't miss a Cards-Cubs game.”

“Well,” he said, glancing around, “a lot of people did. You've got quite a crowd here.”

“Yes, we do have a great crowd,” I said, looking around at all the people shopping and sniffing roses. “What's up?”

“I got the files on the Kendall suicides,” he said.

“And?”

“I looked through them. Where can we talk?”

“How about my office?”

As we walked back toward the Gaheimer House, I saw Eleanore approaching on the sidewalk. It was the third or fourth time I'd seen her since her “incarceration,” as she had so eloquently put it, although I hadn't had much chance to speak with her. She wore a hot pink dress that touched the ground, a large hat with at least two dozen freshly cut roses stuck haphazardly in the brim, and an orange ribbon pinned over her heart. Charity Burgermeister told Helen Wickland that ever since her time in jail, Eleanore has worn that orange ribbon over her heart to remind her of the injustice done to her at the hands of Granite County law enforcement. I thought she was going to wave and go on by, but instead she stopped me. “Torie, I would just like to say that the rose show has been an overwhelming success.” For the record, she didn't even look at Sheriff Mort.

“Thanks,” I said, “but I think the garden club deserves all the credit.”

She leaned in with one hand on her hip and said, “And don't you forget it.”

“Right,” I said.

“Because I'll never forget just how much you did to get me out of jail,” she said.

“But Eleanore, I didn't do anything to get you out of jail.”

“My point exactly,” she said. Then she threw her shoulders back and walked on down the road.

Mort shook his head and smiled. “Who
is
she, anyway?”

I laughed. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, I know who she is because I had to arrest her, but who is she?”

We walked into the Gaheimer House, and I offered him something to drink, which he declined. Waving to my sister, the sheriff and I ducked into my office quickly, so as not to disturb the tour. He took a moment to look around my office. Pictures of my kids line one end of my desk. Several ceramic items are arranged on the other end. They're mostly things my kids made in art class, and they're ugly as homemade sin, but they were made with heart, which is all that matters. He read some of the titles of books that I had sitting around, mostly histories of the area and compilations of records. Then he came to the antique Rose of Sharon quilt that had hung on my office wall for as long as I could remember. Sylvia had said to me when I first went to work for her, “You get the room with the Rose of Sharon for your office.” Funny, I'd never asked her who made it or where it came from. Suddenly, I wondered if she had made it in her youth.

“Nice office,” he said.

“Thanks. It's small, but I have a great view of the main street in town right outside my window. It's the office I've had for over ten years. I didn't see any point in moving it once Sylvia died.”

“You really care about this town, don't you?”

I smiled. “It's my livelihood—but beyond that, yes, I really do. You know, towns have personalities just like people. I happen to be really compatible with this one.”

“Why the move out of town, then?” he asked.

“I don't know.” I shrugged. “We were ready for a change of pace, and I think Rudy thought we'd get along better if I wasn't quite in the thick of things so much.”

“Has it worked?” he asked. It felt strange having somebody ten years my junior inquire about how my marriage was faring.

“I'm still right in the middle of everything,” I said with a laugh. “I think Rudy really just wanted to move to the country and used my involvement with the town as an excuse. I'm not so sure I could have stayed in town, anyway. Not after that whole mess with Bill.” Bill, the ex-mayor, had hated me with a passion. He's in jail now, thanks to the fact that I caught him at identity theft. At least he was ahead of the curve. He stole his identity long before it had become the “in” thing to do.

“Well, I'm glad things are going well for you,” he said.

“So, what have you got? Are you going to share? The suspense is killing me.”

He smiled and his violet eyes shimmered. I'd only seen one other person in the whole world with violet eyes, a girl I'd gone to school with. You couldn't help but be drawn to them. For some reason, they made me trust him a little more than I otherwise would have.

“Well, Rupert's suicide seems totally on the up and up. The investigators interviewed his sister about it. She said that Rupert had been despondent, and she said that when he first came home from the war, he was confused a lot. Half the time he still thought he was in the trenches. Back in France. On the occasions when he realized he was at home, he'd cry and tell Glory that she needed to hide and not let the big man find her. She also talks about him hiding under the bed and even sleeping on the roof. He seemed to be torn between wanting to be in wide-open spaces with lots of air and wanting to be huddled in dark, close quarters. It was as if he felt safe in the trenches but longed to be in the open.” Mort shook his head. “War really messes with men.”

“I know,” I said. “Anything else?”

“Glory also said that in his more lucid moments he understood he was at home and knew who everybody was, but he couldn't get it through his head that the war was over. He thought it was still going on and that he'd have to go back at any moment. No matter how many times Glory would try to tell him that the war was over, he wouldn't believe her.”

“So you think he killed himself because he thought he was going to have to go back? He'd rather be dead?” I asked.

Mort shook his head. “According to Glory's testimony, one day Rupert woke up and was normal. Normal for the first time since he'd been back, and he told her that he understood that the war was over. Things were fine for about a week—Glory didn't elaborate on what happened during that week—and then he killed himself. Glory was the one who found him.” Mort scratched his head, and I knew there was something he wasn't telling me.

“Does that bother you?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think Glory may have either assisted him or knew he was going to do it and turned a blind eye to it.”

“Why?”

“Because her brother—Whalen—said that he saw her come in from the back porch early in the morning and act as though nothing was wrong, but there was no way she could have been on the back porch and not seen her brother hanging from the tree.”

“What could she possibly have done to assist him?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I'm not sure. I'm really just thinking out loud.”

“Well, Glory was the one who took care of him and really loved him. She was totally devoted to him. I wonder if she just sat with him while it happened. To comfort him.”

“Comfort him?”

“To let him know that she was there and she wouldn't leave him,” I said.

“Could be. Seems kinda sick.”

“Well, clearly things weren't quite right in that house,” I said. “What did Sandy and Whalen have to say?”

“See, this is what makes me suspicious about the whole thing. I mean, I'm sure, based on the physical evidence, that Rupert killed himself. No question about it. But Sandy and Whalen Kendall both say that when Glory came to tell them that Rupert had killed himself, she was totally calm.”

“Calm?”

“Yeah, her father even states that he didn't understand why Glory wasn't hysterical. But she wasn't. She calmly said, ‘Rupert's gone and hung himself.' Simple as that. So if she didn't actually assist him or sit with him, I think she suspected he was about to do something like that, and I think she found him long before she told anybody. That would have given her time to get her hysterics over with.”