In Sheep's Clothing (20 page)

“Yes?”

“Nothing.”

I smiled. “You going to thank me?”

He made some positively primeval grunting sound and took another bite of chili. I sat back and folded my arms, cocked my head, and stared at him.

“Good Lord, Colin,” Rudy said. “Thank her and get it over with or you will never be able to ride home with her.”

“I'm going to fly home, thank you very much.”

“Colin, for crying out loud. She got you out of jail,” Rudy said.

“I'd rather die a slow death,” Colin said.

“I'm sure that can be arranged,” I said.

Colin just kept chewing and staring at his bowl. Finally, when it was obvious that I wasn't going to move or stop staring at him until he said what I wanted to hear, he put his spoon down and looked at me. “Okay, the whole 911 thing was brilliant. There. Happy?”

“Jeez, I liked you better when you thought you were going to jail,” I said. “Is that all you have to say to me? You asked me to think of a way to get you out of jail, and I did.”

“Thanks,” he said, and looked up at Rudy. “You tell anybody in New Kassel what just transpired here and I'll throw
your
butt in jail.”

Rudy held his hands up and tried to stifle a laugh. “My lips are sealed,” he said.

“Hey, don't mention it, Pops,” I said. “I'd do it for anybody who groveled enough.”

With that I stood up and got a bowl down out of the cabinet and waited for the macaroni to become al dente. Aunt Sissy smiled at me, but otherwise the room was quiet, with only the sounds of spoons clanking on bowls to break the silence.

The chili-mac was delicious, like everything to come out of Sissy Morgan's kitchen. Rudy did exactly as he said he was going to and went off to bed. Colin retired to the living room to watch ESPN or Fox Sports, I'm not sure which.

“So, who do you think killed Brian Bloomquist?” Aunt Sissy said.

“Lord, I wouldn't have a clue,” I said. “I don't know anything about him nor do I begin to know who his enemies are. Or were. Maybe his wife was having an affair and her lover killed him. I honestly don't know.”

She stretched and stifled a yawn. “Think I'm going to go take a nice hot bath,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “I think I'm going to go and look over the diary again and all the papers I made copies of. Just in case I missed something.”

“All right.”

“Is there someplace I can read so I won't bother Rudy?”

“Yeah, you can either go to the study and read or you can always come down and share the family room with your stepfather.”

I rolled my eyes. “Gee, tough decision.”

I scooted my chair in to the table and took the back stairs up to my room. Rudy was so zonked, he never even flinched when I turned on the light to gather up the papers. I pulled the covers up over his shoulders and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

The study was just in the next room. I opened the window a few inches and sat down at the big cherry desk. A photograph of Aunt Sissy and Uncle Joe in an old silver frame sat on one side. Looked like an engagement picture. And then a family portrait, taken just a few years ago, sat next to that. I knew the picture was fairly recent because I remembered receiving a wallet-size in my Christmas card.

I scattered the papers out and started scanning them. I read the article on Sven Bloomquist that I had copied that day in the grocery–post office when Roberta Flagg blacked my eye. The article was all about how Sven had made himself a gentleman out of very humble beginnings, and, of course, it talked about the mill that he owned and operated. Then the article touched briefly on his wife's family. The humble beginnings that the article alluded to were indeed, if true, quite humble. It said that Sven's parents were both born in Sweden and immigrated here in the 1840s, right after they were married. They arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs, a bag of seeds, and a few personal items. The family moved to Olin, where Sven's father sold a silver pitcher to purchase the land and build a house, only to suffer tragedy a few years later when his wife and daughter died in a fire that consumed the entire house.

The article went on to say that, after the fire, Karl was never the same and that his relationship with Sven became strained. Sven went out on his own with nothing. He was taken in by a family in Darby City, where he lived for a few years and worked as a laborer.

I skipped over the next few paragraphs because I have no interest in business ventures and such. Suffice it to say he bought a little land at a time and just kept adding on. Then he started his mill on land next to his father's property; the article claimed Sven had chosen that piece of property so that he could be near his ailing father and try to make amends. It also speculated that it was possible that Sven knew he would inherit his father's land, even though their relationship was rocky, and so he knew that eventually he would own a large portion of land on the river. Sure enough, when Karl died, he left the property to Sven.

I was a little disappointed. What had I thought? That the article was going to come out and say that Sven had eventually taken in his niece because her grandfather either didn't know she was alive or knew and refused to? Is that what I had expected? I guess it was, because my disappointment was almost palpable.

A cool breeze floated in through the window, carrying with it the smell of pine and dew and oxygen. It ruffled my papers and made me want to lie on the damp grass beneath the stars and pretend that I knew all the answers to all the questions of the universe. Of course, in my carefully planned fantasy, I would be lying on damp grass that housed no ticks.

I took a deep breath and picked up the pages that constituted Anna Bloomquist's diary. I scanned through the last quarter of the manuscript. Nothing really jumped out at me. It was obvious she was worried about her well-being. Statements like:
A chill washed through me this morning as I milked the cows. As if somebody was watching me. As if something dreadful was about to happen.

Was she just paranoid? Was the fire an accident? And if it wasn't an accident, then she really wasn't all that paranoid, was she? But what would give it away? Was it merely a feeling, or was her subconcious actually picking up little innuendos and changes of behavior in people that she knew? Judging by the things that she had written, her mother became more withdrawn and quiet. She refused to be seen in public, which could have had something to do with the fact that her daughter had conceived and delivered a baby out of wedlock. But still, the diary read almost as if Brigitta was afraid of her own shadow. Not just ashamed.

Were they both paranoid? Or were they both feeling an evil that hadn't yet taken shape?

I couldn't tell.

I rubbed my eyes and sighed heavily.

Flipping the pages back and forth, I found the entry where her mother cried all day and fretted about the house in search of something she had misplaced but couldn't seem to remember what it was that she had misplaced, just that she had lost something. I checked the pages before and the pages after. The entry fell between the death of Konrad Nagel and the death of Isaac Nagel. Sven left for several days after Isaac was found hanging in the barn. I didn't think any of this was necessarily significant, I just wanted to be doing something. Three days before Konrad was murdered, Anna had gone to church with her father. She talked of how “the parson” kept looking right at her every time he said the word “sin.”

I just held my head high and patted my stomach, for I had only done what all of God's creatures do … given love to the one I love.

Her father, Karl, had gone into Cedar Springs on business two days later, and Anna mentioned how she hoped he would bring back a nice new cotton cloth for making dresses. She had requested a plaid. She never said what type of cloth he brought back or that he had brought any at all.

Nothing. There were no real outbursts or anything obvious, other than her mother's odd behavior, but Brigitta had behaved oddly throughout most of the diary, so that was hardly anything.

It was not lost on me that Anna Bloomquist never mentioned Isabelle Lansdowne. Not once. Not by name, not by relationship to Isaac. Nothing.

I leaned back and closed my eyes, swaying myself back and forth in the office chair. Something floated in on the wind, through the window. Faint at first.

I stopped moving.

Then the sound lifted with the wind, growing louder and louder, until the howl of the wolf was just outside the window, maybe three or four hundred yards away. Just on the edge of the trees. The hair raised on the back of my neck and arms. I opened my eyes and strained to see out the window. Of course, it was dark outside and light inside, so all I could see was the blackness of the screen and the reflection of light in the upper part of the window.

At first I just listened. Then I realized that if I could hear it, so could Uncle Joe and any number of armed citizens within a mile. I all but ran out of the room and down the steps. Colin stopped me at the door.

“What do you think you're doing?” he asked, a remote control in one hand and a root beer in the other.

“I'm going outside,” I said. “You may be married to my mother, but you're not my father. You can't stop me from going outside.”

“No,” he said.

“What do you mean, no?” I asked, incensed. “Move it or lose it, buddy.”

“What do you think you're going to accomplish by going out there? You think you're going to go out there and tell the nice puppy to please shut up? Huh?”

“Colin, I have to go out there.”

“Why, so you can get yourself shot?” he asked. “Think about what you're doing, Torie. You're going out into the dark, knowing that the entire farming community is going to shoot that wolf when they find her.”

Well, it hadn't seemed like such a stupid idea until he put it that way. I looked away, frustrated. “I can't let her die.”

“What are your alternatives?”

“I don't know, but there should be one.”

“The wolf won't listen to you. It's not going to stop making noise because you want it to. Its nature is to howl at the moon. Its nature is to be the hunter. If that brings it into harm's way, there's not a whole helluva lot you can do about it.”

“But that's not fair,” I said. “There should be something I can do. I can go out there and scare it off.”

“Maybe. But you might scare it off to some place even worse. You might be scaring it right into the hands of the people who want it dead.”

“Yes, but it's against the law to kill a wolf. It is a protected species.”

“It's against the law to kill humans, too, but people still do it.”

“Whatever” I said and stormed off.

I couldn't sleep all night, because I kept waiting to hear the sound of a rifle firing. It never happened, at least not within a close enough range that I could hear it. I tossed and turned all night, smelling the fragrance of lilacs waft in through the window on the constant, steady breeze of the night. I couldn't help but think about what Colin had said. About how it was against the law to kill humans and wolves, but people still did it. The sun rose, bright and crisp, and I was overcome with the feeling that all I wanted to do was go home.

Twenty-one

I was outside before the rest of the house was even awake. I just could not lie in bed any longer. Rudy was snoring away as I slipped out of the room. For the longest time I sat on the steps of the front porch and listened. I rarely do that. Just sit and listen. The birds were all chirping and flitting about the front yard. Somewhere in the distance I heard a hawk of some sort. I wasn't sure what kind of hawks Minnesota had, but I could tell a raptor's call when I heard it. The horses neighed and moved about in their stable, and every now and then the trees would rustle from a gust of wind. The smell of cedar would whoosh down out of the trees and wrap around the front porch, enveloping me in a coniferous hug.

Something was bothering me.

But I hadn't a clue what it was.

I could feel that little tugging at the back of my mind that pulls me in a different direction than I ever intended to go. Or that pushes at the back of my mind and makes me keep going, even though I don't have a clue as to why.

Anna Bloomquist could have sat here and done the very same thing at one time. Maybe she did it the morning of the fire. She had been seventeen. I thought about my family and my children. I thought about how I get so lost in carrying out the everyday events that sometimes I don't stop to
think
about the everyday events. Rachel had a choir concert last month, but did I really stop to listen to the songs she sang? Mary had a soccer game the day before we left for Minnesota. Did I pay attention to the game? And through the mass of chores of laundry and housecleaning and working at the historical society, did I really stop to understand the intricate workings of my two-year-old son's imagination? And did I ever give Rudy enough attention, or did we just function?

Anna Bloomquist paid attention. Now, maybe that was because she was seventeen and things always seem more intense when you're seventeen. But maybe not. Maybe that was the person she was. And at the time she wrote her diary, she really paid attention to the world around her. The color of the sun as it rose and the kaleidescope that it caused along the surface of the snow. I suddenly felt that I could learn a lot from a girl who had lived a hundred and fifty years ago and never even made it to the age of eighteen. And I was suddenly humbled by that.

In light of everything that had happened, I thought Rudy and I should head back home to Missouri and our nice, safe, boring river town of New Kassel. Okay, well, maybe it wasn't boring, but it was home. And home was comforting right now. Colin could always take a plane when Sheriff Aberg gave him permission for him to leave.