Eleven Little Piggies (21 page)

She seized the pot full of cranberries and sauce, bubbling hot, off the burner, and swung it in a dangerous arc toward the sink. A few drops of the boiling sauce flew off the pan as she passed me, and hit my arm. They burned like the fires of hell. I got up from the stool where I was perched, scrabbling at my burning arm with a dishtowel I grabbed off the counter.

She had her back to me now, bent over the sink, turning the water faucet on high. Then she turned on the DisposAll and tipped her boiling panful of berries toward the drain. While they poured in a crimson tide into the growling maw she turned her crazed face toward me and screamed over her shoulder, above the grinding noise, ‘Get out of my house, you fool!'

I had already retreated as far as the pantry door. Clearly there was no use trying to talk any more to the enraged termagant at the sink, so I retraced my steps to her front door. As soon as I got outside I grabbed a handful of snow off her lawn and slapped it on my sticky, suffering arm. I held it there till it melted, and it helped, a little. I did it again, standing at the curb panting with pain, on the way to my pickup. When I could breathe evenly, I crossed the street to my truck and climbed in.

Before I got my lights on, a pale green Lexus slid past my window and paused in the Kester driveway, waiting while the garage door slid up. I watched as Ethan Kester parked his wife's car in the left-hand bay.

The right-hand bay was empty tonight, since we had his Cadillac in impound. So I could see, as I eased past the end of his driveway in my darkened vehicle, how the two little boys sprinted heedlessly away from the Lexus, calling out, ‘Mom!' as they climbed the steps and opened the kitchen door. And how their father, systematic and careful as always, turned off the car's lights, got out and pushed the button that locked all the doors electronically from the driver's side, before he let down the garage door and followed his children into the house.

 

Ethan had sent me the name of his Saturday secretary, just as he'd promised, and included all the necessary numbers. Her name was not Johnson or Carlson, but Peterson, and she lived in student housing. But she had agreed, two hours ago, to meet me in a café on campus whenever I called. ‘It's no trouble,' she said. ‘I'll be right here studying.'

I found a booth near the front, ordered the strongest coffee they offered and called her. The place was about half full of students peering at blinking screens (even the ones holding hands). Otherwise, one tableful of exhausted-looking faculty staff and a couple of building-maintenance guys – I figured I wouldn't be hard to spot.

Patti Peterson picked me out even before she saw my badge, and slid into the booth after a quick handshake. She was soft all over: soft brown hair, pillowy lips, plenty of meat on the thighs. Plump and pretty but not stylish – I pegged her as probably top of her high school class in one of the small towns around Rutherford, hoping to study her way up to a better life than her folks had.

She debated her order, said she really shouldn't but oh, they made the best fruit smoothies here.

‘Better have one,' I said, ‘keep up your strength for all that studying. Let me buy and I'll have one too.'

I thought I was playing Good Cop to put her at ease, but when my smoothie came it tasted so good I promised myself never to work late again without one.

I started with the picture, again, and got the same indifferent response as from Nicole – no idea, never saw him before. When I said, ‘He's the man Ethan found dead in his car,' she said, ‘Oh, my, he told me about that. Must have been an awful scare.'

She'd answered a notice on the bulletin board in the Admin building, she said, to get the Saturday job. ‘Just right for me – I'm a business major. I already type well and I'm good with spreadsheets, now I want to build up my math skills so I'm ready to hit the ground running when I graduate.'

‘You're ambitious.'

‘You bet.' Her eyes were pale blue and clear and her smile was polite, no more. If Patti the Playmate was living behind that smile somewhere she was not beckoning to me.

‘Is one day a week enough? Can you live on that?'

‘No. I got a scholarship that covers registration and books, I saved all the money from my last three summer jobs and my folks are helping a little with the first two years. If I want to go on I'll have to get a government loan.'

‘Worth it, I guess.'

‘We'll see.' She watched me over the top of her glass as she sucked up the last of her smoothie. ‘Something you want to ask about my schedule, Captain Hines?' She had read my card.

‘You have somewhat flexible hours, is that right?'

‘No. I work eight hours, every Saturday.'

‘But not always the same eight hours, is it? Sometimes you start early so you can get away early?'

‘Oh.' For just a few seconds she looked a little ruffled. But then she said in that placid voice, ‘My friends tell me I don't know how lucky I am to get hired by these nice lawyers.' I tried not to look surprised. ‘My hours were eight to five with an hour off for lunch, but when I found out how early Ethan comes to work, I asked if I could sometimes come at seven also and work straight through. That way I'm done by three and have the rest of the day to study or do laundry – it makes Sundays so much easier!'

‘I bet. You call him Ethan?'

‘Yes, because he asked me to. He's the youngest one in that office and – he seems almost middle-aged to me, but I think he likes to emphasize the difference between him and his partners, who are really old.'

‘And he agreed? About the hours?'

She nodded and beamed. ‘He said, “Looks like I found another early bird like me!” And the two older attorneys, bless their hearts, they said, “Whatever's best for Ethan – he's such a hard worker!”'

‘So last Saturday,' I said, getting anxious to wind up this child's garden of verses, ‘you came in at seven?'

‘Yes.'

‘And worked straight through, and left at three?'

‘Yes.'

‘And Ethan was right there in the office with you, until he got the call from the farm?'

‘All the time. Yes.' She didn't have to scrutinize the corner of the room while she said it, I noticed – it seemed to be just information, to her.

‘About what time was that?'

‘I can tell you precisely, as it happens. We were working on the Esterhazy account and I was keeping track of billable hours. So . . . I logged us off at . . .' She flipped open a little notebook. ‘Eleven-ten.'

‘Hey, go to the head of the class.'

She smiled, politely.

‘OK – he went out to the farm then. And came back about when?'

‘I didn't write it down, because I wasn't sure we were going back to work on the contracts, but I remember it was shortly after one. He came back very upset and made a call to . . . I think he called police headquarters first, and got another number, and called – I think he said one of your detectives—'

‘Yes. And left again?'

‘He left to go out there to that hunting field, where they had found the – the bod—' She couldn't quite manage it. After a few seconds she said, ‘His brother.' I finished my coffee while she collected herself. ‘Poor man. He came back just before I left, and he was just . . . blown away. I asked him, “Is there anything I can do for you?” and he just shook his head. He couldn't speak.'

‘Do you know Mrs Kester?'

She looked puzzled.

‘Nicole? Ethan's wife?'

‘No. She came in the office one Saturday with the two boys, but nobody introduced us and she didn't speak to me.'

‘You think they're happily married?' Sometimes if you ask the most offensive question you jar something loose.

Patti Peterson looked at me wide-eyed, shaking her head, and said, ‘Oh, I wouldn't have even the foggiest idea about that, Captain.' Then the implications of what I had asked her grew clear, and her face closed up. She waited five seconds and added: ‘And if you ask me that again a year from now, I don't expect to know any more about it by then.' She put her little notebook back in her purse and said, ‘Is that about it? Are we done?'

We stood. I thanked her for her time, and she left without a backward glance.

 

Ray was in his office under a single light, hunched over his monitor, typing in fast little bursts. When he saw me ease into his visitor's chair he raised one finger and finished a sentence, sat back with a sigh and said, ‘Maynard Phelps doesn't exist.'

‘I know,' I said. ‘He's dead.'

‘Doesn't seem to matter. He left no footprints even when he was alive.'

‘Oh, come on, he had to have payroll records. Unless you think the sanctified Kester Corporation was paying him under the table?'

‘Doubt it. But maybe he's only worked there a couple of quarters and the state's that far behind in filings. I haven't found any entries for this year.'

‘And no arrest records, no detentions?'

‘Not even a speeding stop.'

‘So he wins the Careful Drivers' plaque. But he never went to school in Minnesota? Or voted here?'

‘Or got married or divorced or bought a car or renewed a driver's license anywhere in the US.' He turned a take-no-prisoners Bailey frown on his yellow legal pad, where a whole row of possibilities had been neatly entered and systematically crossed out.

‘You saying he doesn't even show up on Been Verified?'

‘No. There's a Maynard Phelps in Brainerd who's seventy years old. A bright kid who just won a spelling bee in Albert Lea, but he's eleven.'

‘How does a drifter living under the radar get hired on a farm?' Then I answered my own question. ‘Probably about as tough as getting the dishwasher slot in a greasy spoon, huh? For which you need a social security card and a heartbeat.' I worked my way through school at jobs like that. ‘So who's the local forger?'

‘Don't know. Maybe Bo can tell us Friday. Or maybe he's not local.'

‘Did you tell Winnie to ask who hired him and when?'

‘Yeah, I caught her just as she was finishing up out there. She'll be here shortly.' He stretched and groaned. ‘You do any good?'

‘Oh, indeed, I managed to increase the confusion quite a bit. Wish you could have been there, Ray – you'd have been proud.' I told him how cleverly I had escaped from the Mad Housewife on Mercer Street, and how adroitly I'd infuriated Ethan's secretary just a few minutes later.

‘While you were fleeing from those ladies, did you get any impression of their characters?'

‘Nicole Kester is suitable punishment for every sin Ethan has ever committed.'

‘Oh? A real ball-buster, huh? Does he seek the comfort of sex outside the home, then? In the arms of his secretary, maybe?'

‘If he does I'm afraid he's wasting his time.'

‘Tsk. No fun anywhere for Ethan, huh?'

‘If that young woman is a playmate she is also an actress of great skill.'

‘Well, my night's been just about equally valuable,' he said. ‘One thing, though – I've got new respect for those scientists I so often bad mouth. They may be too slow to suit me, but goddamn, it's frustrating trying to prove anything without them. I could search till hell freezes over,' he said, angrily stacking papers into a pile, ‘and it wouldn't prove what one good autopsy report would show you in a couple of hours.'

‘Well, but sometimes an interview can be pretty helpful,' Winnie said, behind me.

‘Easy for you to say,' I said, ‘I bet you weren't dodging any boiling cranberries, were you?'

‘What?'

‘Wait.' I carried in the captain's chair from the meeting room and told her, ‘Sit,' before I described my interviewing prowess.

‘Well, you're right, mine went better than that,' she said. ‘Doris says Maynard turned up at the farm this spring just as calving was starting,' Winnie said. ‘They were short two hands, needed help badly. He said he'd lost his social security card but he remembered the number, so Owen put him to work and told her, “if he does the jobs all right we'll run the records check later”. But calving ran late and haying started early this year, so she thinks maybe they just forgot about it.'

‘His work must have been good enough in the beginning, huh?'

‘Yes. Nothing complicated, she said, mucking stalls, feeding stock and hauling hay. She never paid much attention to him – he was just one of Owen's hands, and she was busy with her own jobs.

‘She was annoyed that the stalls never got cleaned the day Owen got shot. She remembered Owen saying he was leaving Maynard at the barn to do chores while he took supplies to the fence menders, so she knew he had time to get the stalls clean. But then Rosie came and told her Owen was dead, and that just blew everything else out of her mind. In the end, she let it go.

‘But in the days that followed she began to be aware that Maynard simply wasn't following orders – he was sneaking around, leaving other people to do his jobs or just leaving them undone.' She waved a couple of handwritten sheets. ‘I've got her estimates here, of the times when he skipped out. She didn't know where he went – said she didn't care, he wasn't where he belonged and that was all that mattered – but now she knows why it's important, and she'll try to find out.'

Winnie sat cross-legged, curled up in her big chair while she described her visit with Doris. ‘She said, “I can't stop what I'm doing, but we can talk if you'll follow me around”. The four of them, Doris and Henry and that foreman, Charlie, and his little old sidekick Elmer, are doing all the work on those two big farms. Doris still has that one part-time woman in the kitchen, but that's all she does – housework.

‘They've shipped off most of the boarding horses and put the rest out to pasture. But the cows, God, twice a day to milk and feed – she said, “Henry and I are joined at the hip now, I guess that's a plus”. Her mother took all her children up to their place – she even persuaded Alan to go, for a day or two.'