See Also Deception (17 page)

My shoebox full of index cards for
Common Plants
sat on the desk next to my Underwood typewriter, along with my red pen and reading glasses. Everything waited on me, and for that I was glad. I needed a bit of normalcy.

There was nothing left to do but compile the index, type up the first draft, and see what it was that I had made. Most of the time, I saw the index forming in my mind, neat rows of words, garden plots that needed to be fertilized and weeded. But I couldn't edit anything until I had all of the entries on the page.

A

amorpha canescens
(leadplant), 2

arctostaphylos
(kinnikinnik), 50

K

kinnikinnik (
arctostaphylos
), 50

L

leadplant (
amorpha canescens
), 2

G

shrubs, 2, 23, 50, 76, 191

leadplant (
amorpha canescens
), 2

kinnikinnik (
arctostaphylos
), 50

I worked my way through the As—
arctostaphylos
(kinnikinnik),
amorpha canescens
(leadplant)—leading with the scientific names for the plants, as well as double posting them by their common name under their appropriate letter. Leadplant and kinnikinnik were shrubs, so they were also posted under the shrubs main entry. The more access points the reader had into the text, the better. Questions were as variable as the reader.

Of course, I still had to get through all of the grasses, flowering perennials, perennial ferns, shrubs, trees, and vines, and enter the elusive musk thistle were it belonged. But as I typed the entries onto the page from each index card in the A section, I had to try harder than I usually did to focus my mind on the task.

Compiling the index was the end game in the indexing process, nearly the last task before I sent the document off to New York, never to be seen or thought of again—at least until Calla proudly showed me one of my indexes in the book she'd purchased for the library. And that was where I wavered, of course. I seriously doubted that Delia Finch would be as interested as Calla had been in stocking the library with the books that held my indexes.

I stopped typing once I could get no more entries on the page, stood up from my desk, grabbed my cigarettes, and made my way outside. Shep padded after me with curiosity and confusion in his amber eyes. It was too early to feed the chickens.

The predawn air was cold; the temperature had dipped down into the mid-thirties. A heat wave in winter, but nothing more than a tease in October. The air was dry, which made it seem warmer. After living all of my life in North Dakota, I was hardened, accustomed to the cold. I hadn't thought to grab my robe or a jacket to keep myself warm.

I lit a Salem, drew in the cool menthol, and held it for a second longer than I normally would have. No matter what I did, I couldn't tamp down my agitation.

I exhaled the smoke, and it obscured the black, cloud-free sky, smudged the stars so they looked even more distant and unreachable. That was how I felt about the truth, about what had happened to Calla. My mind was cluttered, and I knew right then what I had to do to calm myself down. I took a couple more quick puffs off the Salem, scanned the dark horizon for anything out of place, then nickered Shep along with a click of the tongue so he would follow me back inside the house. Not that he needed goading; it was just habit. Shep had been happy to be invited to live in the house. I hurried to my desk, slid in a fresh piece of paper, and started typing again. Only this time I was indexing my mind, not the shoebox full of
Common Plants
cards. B was the most obvious section to start at:

B

Browning, Robert

Browning, Elizabeth B.

D

death, surprise of

depression, no sign of

E

Eltmore, Calla

murder not suicide

no known enemies

no note left

F

Frakes, Herbert

found Calla

no violent history

G

gun, what kind?

M

Men and Women

by favorite poet—Calla

woman dropped

motive?

What don't I know?

What to gain?

S

Suspects

Herbert, found Calla

woman at library

W

woman at library

doesn't believe suicide

dropped
Men and Women

need to find

I exhaled deeply and sat back in my chair. I was grasping at straws. A good index was meant to answer questions, but also raise some. Any kind of research typically prompted the researcher into uncharted territory with the information they stumbled across. But I had found no answers. I had only managed to raise more questions.

I had no idea who had killed Calla or why. For the life of me, I couldn't begin to wrap my mind around the fact that that was the truth—that Calla had been murdered. But murder was far more believable than her having killed herself, especially now that someone else had validated my opinion.

I only had two suspects, and they weren't really suspects. I only included Herbert because he'd found Calla, but honestly I couldn't imagine that Herbert Frakes would hurt a fly, much less shoot Calla in the head to make the murder look like suicide. He had no violent history that I was aware of. And the woman with the broken glasses? I didn't even know her name. All I knew was that she believed what I believed, that Calla had been killed. That certainly didn't point toward a cold-blooded killer—she walked into the police department, for heaven's sake. I knew she drove a brand new Cadillac with a broken windshield and a dented fender—a car like that shouldn't be too hard to find in Dickinson—and that she was leaving the library with a book of poetry that was by Calla's favorite poet. That could have been coincidence and nothing more. I really needed to find the woman and find out what she knew about Calla. But that seemed unlikely. I had too much to do.

I kept thinking that Hank and Guy Reinhardt were right, that I should just leave things to the police, tell Duke what I'd seen when I saw him and leave it at that. It was obvious that I wasn't very good at playing Sherlock Holmes—but I owed it to Calla to find out the truth. I know she would have done the same thing for me.

CHAPTER 28

As the sun leapt up from the horizon, I started to feel a little more hopeful. I had been able to type up half of the compiled index for the
Common Plants
book once I'd set aside my own personal index. My lack of information about Calla, her death, and the women with the broken glasses had ended in frustration and sadness.

The deadline to mail the
Common Plants
index to New York was just days away, but I wasn't worried about making it. Well, not too much. I'd always worried about missing deadlines. I needed the indexing money, but I was confident about making this deadline, even with everything that was going on.

I expected to bring Hank home in a day or two, and then I could get things back on a normal routine, finish compiling the
Plants
index, start on the next one, the
Zhanzheng: Five Hundred Years of Chinese War Strategy
book, and do my own chores around the farm.

Jaeger had done a fine job of keeping up with the minimal October demands, and I was grateful for that. The hay had been brought in in September, along with the planting of winter wheat. About the only harvesting going on now was for sugar beets, and Hank and I had never planted them. They seemed to fair better in the eastern part of the state, not around our area. My woodpile had grown since the last time I had paid attention to it, which meant I could relax a bit about feeding the Franklin stove in the middle of January. I imagined that Jaeger's life had gotten a little easier since he'd taken on Lester Gustaffson as a hand around his own farm, but I needed to slide some money into Jaeger's pocket, too. I didn't expect him to do work around our place for free, even though I knew he wouldn't ask for a dime—and would refuse to take it when I offered.

Shep happily followed me as I made my way around morning chores. I'd saved retrieving the newspaper for last. I was in no hurry to see the headlines. I'd read enough bad news recently to last me into the next lifetime.

Oddly, I felt refreshed, invigorated, even though I hadn't slept much—I'd laid my head down on the desk and drifted off for a bit just as the sun was cutting away the darkness, but I'd woken up not long after. My neck felt a little stiff, but I was accustomed to the discomfort. I'd slept at my desk more times than I could count. I thought working on both of the indexes had helped me set my mind right. And it felt good to be home, though I missed Hank's presence terribly. The house was just a shell without him, something I never wanted to get used to.

All of the chickens were accounted for, and I was happy that none of them had been lost to hawks or foxes in my absence. Shep had done a fine job of keeping an eye on things. I didn't know what I would have done without him.

I made my way to the road to get the paper, greeted by a hard gust of the ever-present wind. I had on Hank's flannel jacket, which was a little long in the sleeves for me but was comfortable and warm enough to wear in the chill of October—and kept Hank near me in a way. I kept on walking, undeterred by the wind. I was used to that fight, though I did have to shield my eyes. The dust was loose from the lack of rain; little pellets peppered me relentlessly. I was glad for the coat, that my skin was covered; otherwise I would have been covered in welts. Not the look I wanted to carry with me to Calla's funeral. It was hard enough to shake the farm off me in proper clothes.

The sky was pink on the horizon, but as the fingers of color reached up it grew darker, angrier. The taller reaches of light made the sky look blood red where it met the retreating darkness, although there were no obvious clouds. This dry spell was quickly turning into a drought, and I'd hardly noticed. If it kept up, all of Montana was going to blow onto North Dakota's fields.

I grabbed up the newspaper and started to head back to the house, but something stopped me. Something I saw didn't make sense. My heart nearly jumped into my throat. Shep followed suit and stopped at my ankle. He looked up at me curiously, wondering what I was going to do next since it didn't seem obvious, even to me.

I had left the Studebaker parked up next to the door when I'd returned home the night before. Normally, I would have parked the truck in the garage, but that effort had been the last thing on my mind once I'd made my way inside the house.

The front tire was flat. And on second glance, so was the rear one. The truck sat low to the ground, like it was hunkering down, trying to avoid the wind and dirt just like Shep and I.

“What the hell?” I offered to no one. My words slipped away on the wind and Shep followed my gaze with his amber eyes, stopping where mine stopped: on the truck.

I took off and stalked straight to the front tire. Shep remained on my heels, silent, his ears up, his tail stiff, on alert. I was sure he felt my fear, my concern.

I leaned down and examined the tire, and there was no mistaking that the tire had been slashed. A twelve-inch gouge was slit from the air valve to the top of the tire in a perfect curve. I touched it, cold black rubber to finger, like I would touch the wound on a human, wondering if I could fix it somehow. I knew immediately that I couldn't.

I spun away from the tire and made my way to the rear axle. Same exact thing, same exact slit. I stood up, numb, my mind swirling, trying to comprehend what had happened, what I was seeing.

I surveyed the truck from bumper to bumper and it didn't take long to realize that the truck was sitting evenly, not tilted, which prompted me to hurry to the other side. Just as I'd feared, both of those tires were flat, too. All four tires were flat. Slashed. Deflated and destroyed on purpose, with intention.

A wave of panic washed over me. We didn't have four spare tires for the truck. There was only one that I knew of. Thanks to Hank's insistence, I knew how to change a tire; I wasn't going to be stranded between home and town on a flat tire. But this was something else. I didn't know how to fix this.

Someone had been here. Might still be here.

Someone didn't want me to leave.

I looked around quickly and saw nothing out of place. There was no sign of anyone or evidence that anyone had been at the house. Then I looked down to Shep. “How'd you let this happen?”

The dog just looked at me, unable to answer, unable to understand my question. But I was sure he could smell my fear. I knew I could.

“Come on, Shep.” I hurried inside the house, pelted by the dirt and urged on by my discomfort of standing out in the wide open alone.
Alone
.
All alone
, I thought.
I'm stranded. Trapped. Alone.

On the way inside, I grabbed up the .22 from behind the kitchen door and headed to the phone. I didn't hesitate to pick up the receiver, wasn't the least bit concerned that Burlene Standish might be listening in on the party line. The only person I knew to call was Jaeger. He was close by, would know how to fix the tires or would be able to help get new ones on, and he would come running once I told him what was going on. I wouldn't be alone then. But I couldn't call Jaeger. There was no dial tone.

The phone was dead.

CHAPTER 29

I made my way outside, staying as close to the house as I could, and found the telephone line had been slashed just like the tires. It had been cut as cleanly as a shaft of wheat at the stalk for harvesting. The sight of the line in two parts numbed me even more than I already was. I was completely cut off from the outer world.

You get used to being stranded when you live on a farm on the edge of western North Dakota. Losing power, or the use of the phone, happened from time to time, especially in winter, when ice, wind, or a combination of both, brought down the lines. Days could pass before the lights came back, which was one of the reasons that Hank and I still relied on the two Franklin stoves to keep us warm in the winter instead of a modern furnace of some kind that required a spark of electricity to light it.