Eleven Little Piggies (22 page)

‘The foreman will stick, huh?'

‘He has a vested interest – he earns a share a year in the corporation. The part-time woman, Aggie, lives in the neighborhood and says nobody's going to scare her out of a job with the hours she needs. And Elmer stays because it's the only home he's got – did you know that?'

‘No. Is it important?'

‘Maybe not, but it's a remarkable story. Elmer arrived at the farm with his father, so long ago that nobody remembers the year. Get this – it was Henry's father who hired Elmer's father, and gave them both a place to sleep – some little corner of a shed at first, I gather. He lives in Charlie's house at Dairy Farm now.

‘Elmer's father worked at Home Farm till he died, but that was years and years ago – and Elmer has never had any other home. Doris said he only got a year or two of schooling at a one-room school that used to be kept in the neighborhood – he can barely sign his name. She said he's too old for most farm work now, but he's so good with the animals that she and Owen never regretted keeping him on. She says he's wonderful at calving season, and he can calm an excited horse like nobody she's ever known.'

‘OK, Charlie and Elmer and Doris. Henry still hanging in there?'

‘Barely. Very tired.'

‘But no Matt around, helping?'

‘No, she's adamant: he can't come on the place. He pulled that stunt, hiring Maynard back after she fired him, and then came over to Home Farm and started giving new orders to Charlie Blaise – did you hear about that?'

‘No. Who told you?'

‘Aggie. The talker in the kitchen. I guess he thought he was really going to take over, shove the widow aside.' She shook her head in wonder. ‘You could almost feel sorry for the poor schlub, not knowing where he stood with people better than that. Charlie just laughed at him, Aggie said, and his own father told him to go back to the river and behave himself.'

‘So it looks like Doris won't have to fight to keep her place.'

‘Well, not with Henry, anyway.' She gave a little wiggle of dissatisfaction. ‘Something else is going on, though.'

‘What?'

‘I don't know. The old man, Henry, looks . . . apprehensive. Keeps looking into corners. Like he doesn't think the killing's done. There's a ton more places on that farm to look for weapons and ammo.'

‘Winnie, cut it out,' Ray said. ‘There's really nothing more we can usefully do till we get this holiday behind us and get everybody back to work.'

She looked at me, raised her eyebrows.

‘Ray's right,' I said. ‘That's what we were talking about when you walked in – we need the labs up and running. Working like this, it's like one hand's tied behind you.' I yawned. ‘What time is it? Almost midnight. Let's all get some sleep, play nice about gravy and dressing tomorrow, and go after this again Friday when we can do it right.'

Winnie said, ‘But I've got this whole list—'

‘Me too.' I leaned toward her small, dissatisfied face that loved her job and had no use for cranberries. ‘We'll deal with our lists on Friday, Winnie.'

My house was silent and dark, but smelled like a gourmet restaurant at the peak of rush hour. My stomach growled as I walked across the kitchen, but I resisted the impulse to turn on a light and help myself to some classy snacks. Who knew what perfect arrangement of gherkins I might wreck? I poured a big glass of milk in the light from the refrigerator, and left a note on the island that read,
Wake me early, I got plenty of sleep!

I undressed in my dark bedroom to the gentle snoring of two sound sleepers, and slid into bed. Trudy turned over but didn't wake up. I still have a street cop's ability to go to sleep fast when I get the chance – I heard the hot water pump turn on in the cellar, listened to hot water gurgling through the radiator under the window, and was gone.

Trudy woke me with a tweak on the elbow, and handed me coffee. Bright sunlight streamed in the windows. My watch said seven. ‘If you meant that note,' she said, ‘how about helping me get turkeys in the oven before you shower?'

‘Sure,' I said. ‘Soon as you kiss me.' I held her close a minute after and said, ‘Let's make up our minds to enjoy this party, shall we? It's not life or death, is it?'

I spoke from recent experience, and I guess my conviction showed.

‘You're right,' she said – words that any sensible husband would walk barefoot over broken glass to hear. She led the way to the kitchen where Benny was chewing the hell out of a couple of crackers. ‘Two teeth are all the way through, see?' I praised him extravagantly and he roared and smashed a cracker to celebrate.

Trudy's sturdy clan of Nordic settlers would never stoop to using prepared dressing, so Trudy's mother Ella and her sister Bonnie had come to our house last night and endured the boredom of tearing several loaves of two-day-old bread into small bits. They had also chopped several onions and left them in plastic baggies, so all we had to do now was mix the two in a tub, and add spices and butter and hot water. I mashed it all into a thick gooey sludge that looked like a mistake that should be thrown out at once, and stuffed it into the carcasses of two huge buttered turkeys. We slid them into the ovens by eight o'clock, ‘Right on time,' Trudy said, beaming.

I got cereal and a shower and then the day took on its own momentum. I peeled buckets of potatoes, both white and sweet, since Hansons, on holidays, require both colors. Before I'd finished, Ella swept in with her frosted pompadour and the holiday delicacies that only she can be trusted to make: the filled cookies, the pickle relish, the cranberry mold. Attention had to be paid, items moved to make room in the pantry and refrigerator. Then we took a coffee break with some of Ella's cookies before the big crunch over table settings.

The Hansons had found a couple of Carlson uncles and a new trio of cousins, and Bo and Nelly were coming, so Ella had brought her good silver. It put our stainless in the shade but we segregated by tables and Trudy was pacified when Ella showed her the fan-fold for the napkins that tied the whole room together.

Bonnie came in bringing her specialty, Waldorf salad, and she and Trudy held their usual debate about flour versus cornstarch for the gravy. I managed to tune out most of it but my impression was that Trudy's cornstarch carried the day. Then everybody else began arriving with casseroles of veggies, many breadstuffs, and more pies than I had ever before seen in a home kitchen at one time.

Carving and eating took a long time, enlivened by many toasts. When we could not get outside of one more bite of pie we cleared the tables and, to head off the threat of Uncle Elmer's Sven and Ole jokes, played Screw Your Neighbor. It's a card game that Hansons play for kitchen matches, yelling and slapping down cards as passionately as if matches were five-dollar bills. We had a short table for the kids where Nelly taught small Hansons to play Crazy Eights. Eddy kept score till he got bored and played spy on the floor behind two couches, wrapped in the solitary gravitas he still sometimes retreats into.

Benny had a good time for most of the party, waving and high-fiving the guests when he wasn't too busy drooling and chewing. When he got tired we heated up a bottle and he got passed from lap to lap while he drank it and took a snooze.

Best Thanksgiving ever, everybody agreed as they walked out the door into the chilly dusk, taking their dirty casseroles with them. Most of the cleanup had been done by the guests. When we finished the pans Trudy poured out the last of the chilled white wine. I touched her glass and said, ‘I give thanks for you every day, babe.'

‘And for our life together. Yes.' The wine tasted very good now in our quiet house. ‘It wasn't so bad today, was it? I thought you seemed a little . . . more at ease with my noisy relatives.'

‘I think I'm getting the hang of it,' I said. ‘But how did they ever produce you, I wonder?'

‘Families are very . . . mysterious.'

‘Amen. I believe the Kesters have cured me of wishing I had one.'

‘Well. So long as it wasn't Hansons that did it.'

M
ost of the crew had a look, Friday morning, about halfway between ‘second-helping-mistake' and ‘Friday-work-stupid'. Ray introduced our new recruit, Josh Felder, who formed the one bright spot in the room – pleased to be working homicide, he had that ask-me-for-anything look.

Frowning with concentration, Ray pushed them briskly through the day's assignments. He was hurrying because he knew Pokey would want to do the autopsy as soon as he could get a room, ‘and I'll have to be there, since I was the officer on scene'.

He told them he'd been searching for records on Maynard and coming up empty. ‘Did he ever mention to you,' he asked Clint, ‘where he grew up, went to school?' As Clint kept shaking his head Ray said, ‘Nothing at all about where he's ever worked before?'

‘Maynard was full of tall tales, but they were all malicious little items about the Kesters,' Clint said. ‘Funny, now that you ask me . . . I don't think he ever said where he was from or any of that. Most of our conversations were on about the level of seventh-grade gym class – little dirty digs at the women on the place, always suggesting Doris was “looking to get a little extra”.' He blinked thoughtfully. ‘If I'd known we were going to want to know more about Maynard, I could have been digging a little. But I thought he was the least interesting person on the place, just this malicious little scut dishing lies about the boss's family, so I let him ramble on.'

‘OK. Who's got holdover work today?'

Bo said he supposed he should go back to the jail to try to talk to the Mad Dad, ‘if he's sobered up enough by now'.

‘Yes,' Ray said. ‘And the friend – let's get them charged, today, if we can. Think you can get a high enough bail to keep them inside until trial? You've got a couple of priors on the dad, don't you?'

‘Yes. And it's Judge McGee, so I can probably do that.'

‘I think I got all I'm going to get from that farm Wednesday,' Rosie said. ‘And it wasn't much. Everybody was leaving; I was mostly talking to the backs of people as they packed. How are they going to run that farm with no help, I wonder?'

‘With great difficulty, I suppose,' I said. ‘By working their butts off.' Winnie hadn't told anybody about her visit to the farm Wednesday night, because I'd asked her not to. We'd stretched a rule that I didn't want stretched very often, and I certainly didn't want to argue about it right now.

‘It's the strangest thing,' Rosie said. ‘They all claimed to like and admire Owen Kester, but when he turned up dead they stuck by Doris a hundred per cent, kept asking her how they could help. Now this roustabout they didn't even like, that they were glad to see get fired – somebody finds him dead in a car and they're totally spooked.'

‘Who's “they”?' I said. ‘Who'd you talk to?'

‘Well . . . the women in the kitchen. And one of the field hands who came in for some water.'

‘What did they say about it?'

‘That this was one of them. So somebody's after the staff now.'

‘Ah. That's what Doris was afraid of. She said it's going to spread.'

‘Yeah. They seem to think murder might be catching – like a bad rash, or an alien plague. Maybe they all read paranormal lit. Anyway, they're threatened, so they're quitting.'

‘I know,' I said. ‘The kitchen help first, except Aggie – she seems to be sticking. And then the field hands. By evening, Doris had only her foreman and her father-in-law.'

‘Oh, you checked with her later?'

‘Um, yes.' I didn't look at Winnie. She had her eyes on me this morning. I could tell she was looking for a chance to corner me, so she could campaign for searches she wanted to do with Rosie at the dairy and River Farm. I was determined to stay out of the lineup today and let Ray assign them to whatever plan he'd mapped out.

And he was doing that now. ‘Visit the Lexus dealer on the Beltway,' he told them, ‘and find out when Ethan's wife Nicole brought her car in. And what work if any they did on it.'

‘What's this all about?' Rosie asked. ‘I haven't heard anything – is Ethan's wife in trouble now?'

‘I'll let you know after you bring me this information,' Ray said.

‘Those elite dealers . . . they're not going to want to—'

‘I know. Flash your badge. Use the dread word “homicide”. Insist on precise answers, and make them show you work orders! When you're done there I want you to visit Ethan's office, get him to show you the computer Patti used on Saturday and confirm the log-in and log-out times on the Esterhazy contract. Make copies.'

‘Let's have everybody carry a couple of these pictures from now on.' I grabbed them off the stack of Maynard portraits. ‘Show these to everybody,' I told the room. ‘Ask if they've ever seen this man.'

‘And while you're hanging around that office, get acquainted with the other secretaries there, will you?' Ray said. ‘See what they think of Patti's work.' He shrugged. ‘Or anything else they'd like to say about her.'

‘And try to get back here around two,' he added. ‘Because I should be getting back from the autopsy about then, and maybe we'll have' – he made a wolfish face – ‘some clues!'

‘Clues – wow,' Andy said. He told us Clint had gone after a warrant so they could search all the buildings at Dairy Farm, still looking for a murder weapon and/or anything that would give them any idea how Owen's body ended up at the wrong end of the pasture.

‘That's fine. He can take Josh along. OK, Josh? And while you're searching he can tell you about this case, which will be quicker than the long explanation I don't have time for.'