See Also Murder (13 page)

I looked up to the house, hoped Hank was all right, then made my way to the barn. The boots squeaked as I went, and there was no way I was ever going to sneak up on anyone.

Shep followed after me, staying close enough to my heels to nip at them if he wanted to, if I wasn't going the way he thought I should. At least I had rubber boots on.

Fresh air felt good on my face; a relief from the stench of the cellar. “Ardith, are you there?” I called out as I rounded the side of the barn.

No answer. Just the wind, the pant of the dog behind me, and the bang of the screen door in the distance.

I slowed as I noticed a tall stretch of needlegrass knocked down alongside the garage. The grass had yet to spring up from traffic of some type. It could have been knocked down from Shep running out to greet me, but I gripped the .22 tighter and eased my finger against the trigger with the surety of needed pressure. A flick would have fired off a round. My hand was suddenly sweaty.

I bent around the corner of the barn with a peek, then stepped around a rusted old mower and nearly lost my breath.

I blinked to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing: Ardith Jenkins propped up against the back wall of the garage, her head titled forward, down, the front of her dress covered in blood.

Her throat had been slit. Slit just like Erik and Lida's. Her eyes were wide open, and her skin was as pale as freshly fallen snow.

I couldn't force a scream from my lips. It was stuck deep in my chest. I turned to run, to go back to Hank, to call for help, but something caught my eye. Something that registered in my mind, something that I knew that I had to see.

It wasn't an amulet like had been left behind at the Knudsens', but a piece of greenery; not grass, not any wildflower seen at this time of year, but I was certain I knew what the greenery was. I had seen the plant before. At Christmas. Stood underneath it as tradition called for.

It was mistletoe. Someone had left mistletoe in Ardith Jenkins' dead hand.

CHAPTER 14

I pulled myself out of bed early, before the sun peaked over the eastern horizon, before the most punctual bird whistled its first tune of the day. It had always been that way; long before I started taking index work to make ends meet, I was rising before the sun. Life on the farm, at certain times of the year, was a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operation. It was another commonality that I had discovered that farming shared with the publishing business. Deadlines had to be met no matter the weather or the prevailing circumstances in one's life. There was no union, no labor laws to offer protection or job security. Indexing was a work-for-hire situation, and the publishing cycle had to continue on, uninterrupted, or the job—from the publisher—was lost, and no one wanted that. Including me.

The house was quiet, dark with the exception of the dim lamp burning on my desk. There was no wind; it had vanished soon after the onset of darkness. It was like everything and everyone had retreated from the world and hunkered down somewhere far away. Even the moon seemed to hide, nearly invisible in its new phase.

Most of the time that kind of stillness was reserved for winter. The silence at night, when two-foot drifts pushed up against the door and the stars seemed too cold to sparkle. Desperate isolation could drive a person to madness, convince them that no one else on the planet existed, that they were all alone. If only that were the case.

I could barely process the chaos, the confusion, the sadness that had occurred after I'd discovered Ardith's dead body behind the first barn. Flashing lights, a rush of police, firemen, newspaper men, all followed by a parade of onlookers, gawkers, and rubberneckers driving by the house as slow as they could. Word had gotten out fast. Hank's accident had only been a primer for the reaction to bad news. Folks were curious, afraid. I couldn't blame them, but that didn't mean I liked the idea of our farm being the object of all of that attention. The trail of cars continued late into the night, then finally trickled down to nothing not long after midnight.

Watching Hilo collapse at the sight of his beloved wife was too much. There was nothing I could do for him anymore than there was anything he could do for me on that fateful day when he'd found Hank, barely alive, changed forever. But still here, unlike Ardith.

I was sure Hilo would have traded places with me in a heartbeat to have Ardith's voice, encouragement, and wisdom to draw off of even if her body was only a shell. Hank would have traded places with Ardith, too. I was as sure of that as night had fallen. The look on Hank's face when I told him what was happening said everything. He wished it was him that the killer had come after. He wished he was dead. Not Ardith. Dear, sweet Ardith. He whimpered, then turned away . . . toward the crack of the open window.

I had retreated to the house after seeing Hilo collapse, tried to compose myself, get on with the normal steps of the evening. I bathed a quieter-than-normal Hank, fixed his dinner, which neither of us could touch, and finally attempted to sleep once everyone had left us to ourselves on our blood-marred land. Everyone but the deputy parked at the end of the drive. He was our lone protector, our shield until daylight came again, and the curiosity and madness started all over again.

If I had slept a wink, it was lost on me. I felt like I had been awake for days, numb and delirious, but still strapped with duties, chores that saw no end. There was no hope for rest anytime soon. So, in the middle of the night, I had found my way back to my desk, my sanctuary of sanity, my safe place in all of the storms in my life. The one place where I could leave this world and venture happily, eagerly, and curiously into another.

Books had always been my escape from the daily toil of my simple prairie life. Mother said that reading, both fiction and non-fiction, strengthened empathy, a necessary quality for a happy and productive life. I had never argued with that idea. But at that moment, I was having a difficult time finding feelings that I had in common with a headhunter tribe in Africa.

I had tried to return Richard Rothstein's call, but by the time I got around to it, by the time I could compose myself and speak intelligently, the offices in New York were closed. Any dire publishing emergency would have to wait until morning—New York time. I was counting the seconds with a dry mouth.

I had tried over and over again to focus on the page proofs that were laid out on the desk before me, the same ones, in the same place, as when Hilo had come out to tell me about Lida and Erik. It seemed like an eternity ago.

Hank was no worry. The last time I had peeked in on him, his eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling with regularity. Whether or not he was truly asleep was another question.

The house was as safe as the house could be; it creaked, cracked, and settled in the middle of the night even though the foundation was seventy-five years old. The .22 was within reach, and Shep had settled in at my feet. I had overridden the No Dog in the House rule, and as far as I was concerned Shep could stay inside with us as long as he wanted to, as long as I needed him to.

Every time I looked down at the dog, he was staring at the door, waiting, it seemed, to lunge at the first thing, or person, who pushed inside who wasn't supposed to.

And the deputy, our watchman, none other than Guy Reinhardt, made regular rounds and patrolled the house every half hour. I watched for the orange glow of his cigarette out the window to make sure he was still there, still awake, on the job. All the while, I pushed away the temptation to join him for a cigarette myself. He had a job to do, and so did I.

I knew I was as comfortable as I could be, all things considered, so I put my reading glasses on and tried to relax into my work by reading the same paragraph of
The Forgotten Tribe of Africa and the Myth of Headhunter Civilizations
over and over again:

The Igbo people spoke various Igboid languages and dialects. The languages formed a cluster, a common link with other, nearby tribes. Mutual intelligibility between the Izii–Ikwo–Ezaa–Mgbo languages could be distinguished only on a closely-listened-to basis. The Igboid languages included the Ekpeye as well as the Igbo, a branch of the Volta-Niger language family. The Igbo were one of the largest ethnic groups of people in Africa; thus, the core Igboid language was widely spoken.

Passages like this took me about as far away from my little farm in rural North Dakota as I could go: A thousand miles from the fact that one of my dearest friends had been murdered a few yards from where I sat, while I had been out on a wild-goose chase, looking for information concerning a silly Norse amulet. Except, that amulet didn't seem so silly as the day had come to a close and events unfolded like they had. Still, I couldn't process any of what I was reading. My mind was not a machine that I could turn on and off.

I had not forgotten about the mistletoe left in Ardith's hand, but the significance of it was lost on me. I would have to revisit the notes I made at the library. The truth of the matter was I didn't want to know what the sprig of festive greenery meant. I wasn't sure if it meant anything at all. I was done playing detective, and I meant to tell Hilo just that and return the amulet the next time I saw him in decent enough shape for him to comprehend what I was saying. He would have to find someone smarter, more capable, more mobile than I was able to be. As far as I was concerned, Hilo could call on my cousin Raymond to take that job, or Professor Strand, if he could get him to answer his telephone.

I sighed out loud, drawing Shep's attention briefly, then pushed back from the desk, tossed my reading glasses on the open book—frustrated even more than I had been when I sat down.

Any indexer with the lowest amount of skill would've had no trouble determining the keywords or arranging terms in a discernable order from the passage that I was stuck on. All I had done was stare at the words until they were nothing more than a blur—languages, dialects, Ekpeye, Volta-Niger language family—and found myself unable to commit to any of them, to define the appropriate sorting criteria, or rank the term selection in its importance. Main entry or subentry? I wasn't sure I could decide. I had lost my confidence, or I was just too tired to make a decision. I didn't know what my problem was—or didn't want to face it.

My Underwood typewriter sat silent; waiting. The words were nothing more than marks and hashes floating in a murky white paper-based stew, mixed in with other, more important ideas, concepts, and feelings that seemed foreign and familiar at the same time.

I had accepted Ardith's help so I could run off to town, and the unthinkable had happened. A nightmare on top of another nightmare was beyond my comprehension. I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to get the image of Ardith's lifeless, bloody body out of my mind.

I knew deep in my heart that there was no way I could have foreseen what was to come, that my decision bore no fault, ill-intent, or lack of concern. Plain and simple, Ardith's death was not my fault. I had been told that over and over again, but I didn't believe it. Not yet. I wasn't sure that I ever would believe it, no matter who said so.

And then there was Hilo. I had been trying to help him, and in doing so, my absence had hurt him in a way I could never have imagined. His life was forever changed.

How could I ever leave Hank in anyone's care again and not worry if they were in the same kind of danger Ardith faced? I couldn't ask anyone to do such a thing. Our life was changed, too, even more so than it had been when Erik and Lida had been murdered.

I glanced over to the shoebox of index cards I'd written up since starting Sir Nigel's book, flipped through the letters, and stopped when I got to G. Just as I thought. I hadn't put a main topic entry in the index for Guilt.

Instead of getting up, quitting, and walking away from my desk, I felt compelled to stay, to work out an idea I had considered on the way home from town.

I put my glasses back on, and slid a fresh piece of typing paper into the Underwood, forgoing my normal routine of creating entries on individual index cards. The work I had in mind wasn't about the headhunter book, even though Lord knew it should have been. It was about clearing my mind, organizing the words that danced in my head relentlessly, refusing to go away. If I vanquished them, then maybe I could get on with the real work at hand, facing the Sir Nigel deadline, doing the indexing work that needed to be done, and dealing with whatever it was that Richard Rothstein had found so important to call about.

I had never written a personal index before, but it was the only thing I knew to do:

A

Amulet

found in Erik Knudsen's hand.
See also
murder

Norse mythology.
See also
Norse mythology

theft of

Ardith Jenkins

death of.
See also
murder

married to Sheriff Hilo Jenkins

mistletoe in hand

Asgard, gods of

I stopped typing, and realized that I needed my notes from the library in front of me if I was going to write a proper index, if I was going to purge the words from my mind. There was no sign of my purse, and as I thought back, retraced my path since I'd returned to the farm, I realized that I had left it in the truck. Not only was the notebook in my purse, but so was the amulet that Hilo had entrusted to my care.

I panicked at the thought that I'd let the amulet out of my sight. I knew nothing of its financial value, only that it was an object of value in a murder investigation. On top of everything else, I was concerned that the amulet was safe—safe just so I could return it to Hilo.

“You stay, Shep,” I said, as I got up from the desk. The dog looked up at me and made no move to follow after me. “Good. Watch over Hank.”

I left my office with the rifle in hand and eased past the bedroom door. Hank was in the same position I'd last seen him, still asleep, or resting with his eyes closed. He didn't seem to notice as I passed.