Poison Heart (6 page)

CHAPTER 6

Claire heard buzzing all around her. There seemed to be a point in the middle of the morning when the sheriff’s department exploded—phones ringing, people coming and going, the fax machine printing, the computer beeping—and then, shortly after that, the quiet of lunch settled in.

She didn’t leave for lunch. She hadn’t heard from Rich yet. It was making her antsy. She hadn’t been able to focus on any of the minor cases she had in front of her. One of the reports on her desk needed to go to the county attorney by tomorrow. Being the investigator for the Pepin County sheriff’s department meant that she didn’t get out on the street as much as she used to. She missed patrolling.

The phone rang, and she snatched it up. “Watkins.”

“It’s me.”

Rich sounded exhausted, his voice over the phone thin and distant. She was scared to ask the question. “How is she?”

“Stroke.”

“I’m so sorry, Rich. How’s she doing?”

“You know, when I first saw her she looked pretty good. She could talk and she could move both arms and legs, although her left side was definitely weak. But since then, she’s gone downhill. The doctors are watching her carefully.”

“Oh, Rich . . .”

“Claire, she can’t talk anymore. She can wave her left arm, but that’s about it.”

“What’s going on? Did she have another stroke?”

“No. Her doctor says it’s swelling in the brain. They’re going to start her on medication for it, but it might be a day or so before we see results. He says she just has to ride this out. There’s nothing more they can do.”

The discouragement in his voice was palpable. She wished she could touch him. “Do you want me to come to the hospital?”

“No, I’m not going to stay here much longer myself. They don’t think she’s in any immediate danger. I’m going to see her settled in her new room and then I’ll come home. Reiner’s guy is coming to get Harvey today. I should be there.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

Rich fell silent. Claire held the phone, waiting for something more.

Finally he said, “You know what my mother asked for as soon as she saw me in emergency?”

“What?”

“The newspaper. She wanted to do the crossword puzzle. I got it for her, but by then she was getting worse.” He paused, then he said, “Her voice sounds so flat. Like she has lost all emotion.”

“She’s a fighter, Rich.”

“Yes, I know, but how is she going to come through this? What will she have left of herself?”

After they hung up, Claire looked at her desk and decided to chuck it all. She needed to get out of the office. She decided to drive out and talk to Margaret Underwood. It was on her way home.

She called Margaret and let her know that she was coming, then she stuck her head in the sheriff’s office. She explained what had happened to Rich’s mom, then said, “I’m going to run over to Margaret Underwood’s.”

Claire had talked to the sheriff about Margaret’s claim that her stepmother was trying to raid her father’s estate.

He nodded and said, “Yeah, go talk to her. I’m not sure we can stop her stepmother, but it might make her feel better.”

“Then I’m going to go home. Reiner’s guy is coming to take the elk home today. I want to be there.”

“How are you going to move the elk?”

“We won’t make him walk home. Although that might be easier. Caretaker said he’d send a big trailer. Will be interesting to see them try to load him up—not my problem. My daughter’s going to miss him.”

“He has that much personality?”

“He does. And he has big brown eyes. You know what that does to the girls. He’s amazingly tame for such a large animal.”

“Speaking of which . . .” The sheriff tapped a pencil on his desk and said, “I got another call from Reiner.”

“Yeah?”

“He wants us to find out who shot his elk. He’s all torqued up about it, wants to know why we don’t have the perpetrator in hand.” The sheriff paused for a moment, then launched into a speech. “What is it with these townsfolk? They come down here, and if anything doesn’t go their way, they threaten to sue everyone in sight the way we offer coffee to our neighbors. Don’t they realize they’ve got to live with us the rest of their lives?”

“These are people who don’t know their next-door neighbor’s name in town, let alone their problems.” Claire laughed. “I should know, I was one of them.”

“This Reiner seems particularly obnoxious. Where does he get off?”

“He runs a big business. Used to everyone jumping when he demands it. Gets a lot done that way. I know he came from money, but I bet he earns his income now.”

“All I know about the guy is he pays his taxes, and they are nothing to sneeze at. A couple months’ salary of one of our deputies. I suppose he’s an asset to this community.”

“Yeah, but he should look at himself. I don’t think he realizes how stirred up he’s got people in this county over some of the things he’s doing.”

The sheriff swiveled back in his chair. “What’re people stirred up about?”

“I think just who he is, what he represents. The thing is, he doesn’t even see them. It’s like they’re just part of the local color.”

“That’ll make folks mad.”

“But mad enough to walk on his land, cut his fence, and shoot one of his animals?”

“People have done worse with less reason.”

Walking up to the Underwood house, Claire noticed a flower—a clematis vine had crawled up a trellis in front of the house, and a single fading purple blossom bobbed in the autumn breeze. Maybe the last flower of the season.

Claire knocked on the door, and Margaret yelled at her to come in. Opening the door, she found herself looking into the kitchen. An old woodstove stood next to the far wall, Margaret looking into it.

The floors were wide pine planks, polished to a shine. A large porcelain kitchen sink was placed right under a window with a row of plants—rosemary, scented geranium, thyme—lining the ledge. Under another window was the trunk that Claire had helped her carry into the house. There was nothing fancy about the room, but it was full of light and warmth and wonderful aromas.

“Something smells good.”

“Have you had lunch?” Margaret asked, looking up from where she was squatting in front of the oven, checking on something she was baking. “I made some soup and corn bread.”

Claire automatically was going to say no, but when she thought of her options, she changed her mind. “I’d love to join you. Better than a burger at the Fort. You have a great place here.”

Margaret stood and smiled. Claire didn’t think she had ever seen the woman smile before. It made her nearly beautiful, her cheeks full, her eyes lit up. “Thank you.” Then Margaret’s eyes fell and her smile crumbled. “I tried to go see my father this morning, but they wouldn’t let me see him.”

“What? Who?”

“Patty Jo told the nurses I was not to be allowed to see my father. I was standing in the hallway just outside his door, but I couldn’t go in. What will he think when I don’t show up?”

As she often did in her job, Claire felt amazed at how mean people were to each other. “Why would she do that?”

“She’s afraid I’ll talk to Dad about her selling the farm. I didn’t bring it up the last time I saw him, because I didn’t want to upset him. Now I wish I had. He has a right to know what’s going on.” Margaret set another place for Claire. “Can she do this to me? Can she stop me from seeing my dad?”

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure what her rights are. I’ll check into it. You need to get a lawyer.”

Margaret put her face in her hands. “I can’t believe this. How can this be happening? It’s bad enough that my father has had a stroke, but then to have this woman ripping him off and keeping me from seeing my own father . . .”

“I did talk to the county attorney about her selling the house. You need to get your own attorney and file a petition for an injunction. She said the best thing would be if you could prove undue influence.”

“How am I going to do this all in time? I just found out that this Friday she’s auctioning off the contents of the house. It was in the shopper. How do I prove anything before then?”

Claire thought the chances of her stopping the auction were slim. She knew how slowly the court usually moved. “Talk to your attorney immediately. Once you have filed the petition, we can freeze the assets. If you can do it fast enough, there’s a chance we could stop the auction. You need to get right on that. And I wouldn’t spread the word. I don’t think you want Patty Jo to know what you’re doing.”

Mark walked in the kitchen door in time to hear the last few words. “What about Patty Jo?”

“Mark, take your boots off. Claire’s been telling me what we need to do.”

He slid them off on a piece of newspaper right by the door and walked in his stocking feet to the sink to wash his hands. He was a small man, maybe five-eight, but up close Claire could see that he was a solid block, muscles filling out his flannel shirt. He had thin brown hair tied back in a ponytail and deep wrinkles running down his cheeks, but he was handsome. Weathered, but attractive.

As he wiped his hands on a towel, he talked to Margaret. “I’m not happy with Letty’s tit. It still looks swollen to me.”

“I’ll pack it again. Letty’s one of our ewes.” Margaret explained to Claire. “She’s a good producer, but one of her teats has been impacted.”

“Say no more,” Claire said.

Mark reached out his big hand. “I don’t think we’ve actually met.” His handshake resembled his stature: firm and short.

“No, I just saw you that one day I picked up Margaret.”

He sat down in a chair at the table. Claire got the impression he was holding a lot in, as if he might burst if he didn’t control himself. “Patty Jo needs to be taught a lesson. She’s going around like she owns that place. She doesn’t. It’s supposed to go to Margaret.”

Margaret served big bowls of soup and then handed the corn bread around. “How do we prove that Patty Jo isn’t acting with my dad’s best interests in mind? She’s his wife—how can she have undue influence?”

“From what I understand, you need to show that she took advantage of his situation. How did she persuade him to sign the power of attorney? I know it doesn’t sound easy. Did your father ever complain about Patty Jo? How she was trying to take advantage of him?”

“I’ll ask around. I doubt it. He was pretty tight-lipped. To tell you the truth, I don’t think he talked to anyone about those sorts of things.”

“Good luck.”

They were all silent for a moment, then Margaret asked, “What if she had something to do with his stroke?”

Claire looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t mean she brought it on, but she claims she didn’t know anything had happened to my father until she called him for dinner. When I got to the hospital the doctor told me it looked like he had the stroke hours before the ambulance came. The damage was irreversible. Why didn’t Patty Jo find him sooner? He was just out by the barn. What if she just let him lie there?”

This horrifying picture shot into Claire’s mind: an old man on the ground, his wife in the house watching TV.

Meg had known they were coming to take Harvey away, but all day she tried to put it out of her mind, the way you try to keep a tongue away from a sore tooth. But there was no avoiding it when, a few minutes after the school bus dropped her off, two men arrived with a huge trailer. Meg saw them from the kitchen window.

They backed the trailer up to the barn and then went inside. Meg ran out from the house to see what they were doing and found them tying a rope around Harvey’s neck. She could tell that he didn’t like it and she tried to make them stop, but they wouldn’t listen to her.

“You need to wait,” Meg shouted at them. “Wait until my mom gets home. She needs to be here.”

“Sweetie, get out of the way,” one man said. “This animal is liable to buck, and you might lose your front teeth again.”

Meg decided it would be best if she didn’t watch them. She walked into the house and sat on the floor in her room and wondered how Rich’s mom was doing. She knew Rich had left in the middle of the night and that he wasn’t back yet. She felt like praying that Beatrice would be okay, but she didn’t understand prayers. God had always felt so far away from her, even farther than the president of the United States. Older, but with his own tight agenda. God, if she thought he existed, scared her. When her worries about Beatrice started to overwhelm her, she decided maybe it would be better to see how Harvey was doing. He was here, and maybe she could help.

When she walked out of the house, the two men were standing on each side of Harvey, trying to lead him up the ramp and into the trailer. Harvey wasn’t having any of it. He had planted his legs and wasn’t moving. Meg was surprised by how badly it was going. She could see, right off the bat, so many things they were doing wrong. She could try to tell them, but she was sure they wouldn’t listen to her.

Then her mother drove up the driveway.

As her mother stepped out of the car, Meg ran to her.

“Mom, they don’t know what they’re doing. Can’t you stop them?”

Claire wrapped an arm around Meg’s shoulders, and they walked up to the side of the trailer. “Hey, Jim. How’s it going?” she said.

“Not so good. He’s been in a trailer before, but he doesn’t seem to want to budge today.”

“I think I can make him get in the trailer,” Meg told them all.

Her mother looked down at her. “You can?”

Jim said, “I’d like to see that. Do you want to give it a try?”

Claire squeezed her shoulders. “My daughter could get hurt.”

“No, Mom, I won’t get hurt. I know what I’m doing. I’ll be very careful. Plus, Harvey’s used to me. He’s seen me every day for the last week. He knows me. Let me at least try.”

The two men shrugged, and her mother said, “Okay, but we’re going to stand here. If anything happens, these men will jump in.”

“Fine, but stand back. I need Harvey to forget you’re there. He doesn’t trust those guys.” Then Meg laid out her plan. “First let’s take Harvey back into the barn and let him calm down.”

They led him into the barn and tied him to his stall. Meg walked back out with the men and told them what she wanted them to do.