See Also Murder (15 page)

My father, engaged in his own lifelong battle for his place in life, had once said to me, “There are two kinds of men in this world, Marjorie. Ambitious ones and ones with ambition. One's to be avoided and the other's to be encouraged.” I'm not sure why I remembered that at that moment, maybe it was the look in Guy's eyes, maybe it was the way he said my name. I just wasn't sure. But I knew I'd seen that look before.

Guy didn't seem to me to be the kind of man who would take advantage of someone else's tragedy, but then again, he had been a star basketball player when we were young, and he had to be competitive and aggressive to achieve that kind of praise and skill. Age didn't always erase those kind of traits. Sometimes, the disappointments that came along the way were nothing more than fertilizer, causing the ambitions to grow in an ugly, out of control way. Me and everyone else in Stark County knew Guy Reinhardt had had his fair share of disappointments.

“I've known Hilo a lot of years,” I said. “He's one of the strongest, most dependable people I've ever met. But you may be right. This might just be enough to bring him to his knees, get the best of him.”

“I hope you're wrong, Marjorie. I sure hope you're wrong.”

The mix of coffee and cigarettes put a foul taste in my mouth. I wasn't used to the combination so early in the day. I pinched the fire off my Salem, then hesitated before I ground it out with my rubber-soled house slipper. Guy noticed, stepped over, and took care of it for me.

“Can't be too careful, Marjorie,” he said. Grassfires were another nightmare; a spark brought to flame by an easy wind could destroy the year's crop and a hundred-year-old farm in one fell swoop. We'd both seen it happen more than once.

“Thank you,” I offered, as I watched him pick up the butt, perform the same stripping operation, then stuff it into his pocket with his own.

When Guy straightened back up, he fixated on the horizon for a long second. “Be a lot of comin' and goin' around here today. You up for that, Marjorie?”

“I suppose I have to be, don't I?”

“I suppose you do.” He hesitated, then looked me in the eye. His gaze cut through the early gray dawn like a hot knife to butter. “State Police'll take over. Hilo can't handle this. Three murders in a matter of days, all so close together. They're gonna look at you and Hank awful close, Marjorie.”

Guy's words bounced around inside of my head and nearly took me off my feet. “What do you mean, ‘look at us close,' Guy? Hank and I haven't done anything wrong.”

“Don't matter, Marjorie. They have to do their jobs. I just wanted you to know what was coming your way. Everybody's a suspect, Marjorie, everybody. At least till they've been cleared, alibis and such checked. Even you and Hank. You're a suspect as much as anybody else.”

CHAPTER 16

I stared at the telephone. I didn't want to touch the black receiver, hear the crackle of the live line on the other end, but there was no avoiding the call to New York that I had to make.

My indexing income was just like some farmers' royalty payments from the oil wells that teeter-tottered unattended in their fields. Hank had always chased the oil and gas men off, afraid the pumps would foul the water and the land.

My payments weren't royalties. It was a one-time payment. The author saw royalties from the publisher, I supposed, but I never did. I saw no long-term benefits from writing indexes. If I wanted to make more money, I had to take more work, or go out and find it—and that wasn't as simple as it sounded. It wasn't like publishers put help-wanted ads for indexers in the back of the Dickinson, North Dakota, newspaper.

My fingers tingled as I looked up at the clock on the wall. There was a two-hour time difference between New York City and North Dakota. I had waited as long as I could; otherwise, I risked getting a call back from Richard Rothstein, and I was positive that call would not be pleasant.

Not that any call is ever pleasant. Even on the occasions when I had spoken to Mr. Rothstein for normal business purposes, he had been curt, quick to speak, and bordered on being rude; the kind of rudeness never seen or heard in this part of the country.

I understood that things were different, faster paced, on the East Coast than they were on the prairie, and I'd had to adjust my sensitivities when I dealt with anyone in the New York offices, but I never ever looked forward to talking to any of them. It was like they spoke a different language.

I picked up the receiver reluctantly and listened before I dialed the 212 exchange.

There was a distant hum, which was normal most of the time, but the hum echoed, reverberated with distant, unidentifiable sounds, and that meant someone else was on the line, waiting, or getting ready to make a call. I listened for a couple of extra seconds to make sure that wasn't the case, that I wasn't stepping on someone else's conversation or intention.

The sound continued. Hum, hiss, distant voices. A television turned down low.

“Is that you Burlene Standish?” I demanded, frustrated. I was in no mood for eavesdroppers, all things considered. I wanted this call over with, and the traffic on the road out front had already picked up.

A steady line of curious folks drove by the house as slow as they could, turned around in the field just beyond the end of the yard, then drove back by again. They pointed grimly at the first barn. I'd had enough morbid curiosity to suit me for a lifetime, but I knew there was nothing I could do about any of it.

Burlene didn't answer me. Whoever it was on the other end of the line cupped their hand over the bottom receiver a little tighter. The echo diminished, but it didn't disappear completely. I knew her ways. It wasn't like this was the first time she had listened in on my conversations. Hardly.

“I know you're still there, Burlene,” I hissed. I could barely contain my anger. Rage was as foreign to me as finding a dead body on my property, but I recognized them both—and they made me equally afraid.

Funny thing was, I wouldn't have recognized Burlene Standish if she was standing next to me at the checkout at the Red Owl grocery store. Her husband, Miller—Mills to most folks—scowled at everyone when they mispronounced his name by accident or on purpose, and called him Miles. He'd worked as a butcher at the Red Owl for as long as I could remember, so come to think of it, I doubt she'd be there at all. Miller most likely took home all of the groceries.

I wasn't sure why, but I'd heard Burlene had always been sickly, a shut-in if there ever was one, so I supposed her sources of entertainment and human interaction were limited. Television should have kept her occupied. Still, being elderly and lonely didn't give her the right to be a class A nibnose.
Damn party lines
. That's what I thought. I needed some privacy to deal with the things that had presented themselves in my life.

I heard a whisper on the other end of the phone, but I didn't understand the words, couldn't hear them clearly. “What?” I snapped. “Look, I've got important business to attend to, Burlene, so if you've got something to say to me, then speak up, and get on with it.” I might just need more coffee, since I hadn't slept well and had spent longer talking to Guy Reinhardt than I should have. Maybe she needed to make a call, but I doubted it.

“I heard something, Marjorie,” the quivering old woman's voice said just above the former whisper. It
was
Burlene, there was no mistaking her wobbly voice. I wanted to continue to be mad, but any anger I felt disappeared once her words settled in my mind, confronted my rage with consideration of the timing of her bad habit of listening in on other peoples' business.

“What do you mean you heard something?”

I remembered the telephone dangling when I had come home from town. Ardith had been on the phone, taking a message from Richard Rothstein, when something had drawn her away. Burlene had been listening to the whole thing. Most likely, she had heard Ardith's last words. I shivered at the realization.

“I heard something,” she repeated. It sounded like Burlene was afraid, had just seen a ghost, or someone lurking outside her window. I imagined her cowering behind a plastic-covered davenport.

Click. Hiss. The line was open, and Burlene was gone, but that didn't stop me. “What did you hear, Burlene? Damn it, what did you hear?”

Silence. No answer. Just the rustle of the wind from outside my own house. I stared at the phone, frustrated. How could Burlene do that, say something like that, then hang up? It was mean and frightening at the same time.

“You all right, Marjie?” Hank called out.

“I'm fine,” I answered back, cupping the mouthpiece myself, just in case someone else had picked up.

“You were yelling,” he said.

My fingers trembled on the phone. I exhaled deeply. “I'm fine, Hank,” I called back to him. “It was just Burlene Standish on the line.”

“Sad busybody she is.”

“It's fine, Hank, don't worry about it.”

The window was open, and an easy morning breeze fluttered the curtains. The hem was starting to unravel, but mending was low on my list at that moment.

It was going to be a warm day, there was no mistaking that, but it wasn't uncomfortable yet. Perspiration beaded up on my forehead, and my heart beat like I'd just run from the third barn to the house without stopping.

“If you say so,” Hank said. His struggle to speak reverberated through the house, though my veins. I stared at the bedroom door and let Hank's voice fall away without offering a response.

I tried to push away what Burlene had said, but I couldn't get it out of my mind. She had heard something. But what? A scream? A gunshot? If she had heard something, wouldn't Hank have heard something, too? What had he said?
“I heard her ask the person on the other end of the line to hang on, then Shep barked and she padded out the door. She never came back.”

My mouth went dry all over again. Hank hadn't said a word about hearing something other than Shep barking.
Could that have been what Burlene had heard?
There was no way to know. Not at that moment.

I exhaled deeply again and chided myself silently.
Now you're questioning Hank? What's next, Marjorie? What the heck are you doing? He's never lied to you in all of the years you've known him, and you've never lied to him. What the heck are you doing?

I shook my head, listened again to make sure the line was clear, licked my lips, swallowed hard to moisten my throat, then dialed Richard Rothstein's number. I had to get on with it. There was more at stake than I could imagine.

The rotary dial snapped back with a loud clack, hard plastic hitting hard plastic, and I waited for the other end to start ringing. I breathed deep, thoughtful breaths, preparing myself the best I could.

It took half a second and the line buzzed with a ring on the other end. The miracle of technology never failed to amaze me: Invisible pictures flew through the air, caught a metal antenna, and danced on glass screens all over the world. Voices in real time, traveling over a thousand miles of wires, networks, switches, from one telephone to another, all in a matter of seconds. The president wanted to put men on the moon within a decade. I didn't question a bit that that could happen.

A receptionist picked up on the second ring. “H.P. Howard and Sons. How may I direct your call?”

Each time I called the office—which was rare—it sounded like a different receptionist. The publisher was either difficult to work for, or much larger than I had ever imagined. I had only seen a picture of the skyscraper the offices were located in, and that building might as well have been on another planet. I had never seen a skyscraper in my life.

“Richard Rothstein, please,” I said, trying to steel my voice, shoving any nervousness away that may have been there, doing my best to forget the state that Burlene Standish had put me in.

“One moment.” The woman's voice was distant, and it sounded like she had a clothes pin attached to her nose. The speed of her words was not lost on me. Every time I called New York I had to listen extra close. They spoke so fast, along with the sway of the wires, and it was all I could do to keep up.

A click, then another ring. The whole time I was also listening for Burlene Standish, or someone else, to come onto the party line. So far, I was pretty sure I was alone. I was grateful for that. There was no way I would admonish anyone while I was on the line with an editor.

“Richard Rothstein.” He always sounded rushed, overwhelmed, angry.

“Mr. Rothstein, this is Marjorie Trumaine returning your call.”

Silence. The lines buzzed between North Dakota and New York City. My words echoed, and I wondered if my accent sounded as odd to him as his did to me?

“Trumaine?” Richard Rothstein finally said, like we had never spoken before.

“I'm working on the Nigel Preston title . . . Headhunters.”

He cut me off. “Oh, the indexer. Right. Sorry, a lot of balls to juggle here. That was yesterday.”

“I understand.”

“There's a problem.”

My heart sank. I was hoping for good news, not bad. There'd been way too much bad news to process. I wasn't sure how I would handle any more. Quit? Fight back?
Calm down, Marjorie. Listen. It's your job. Don't assume the worst.

“I received some corrections and new material from Sir Nigel,” Richard Rothstein continued. “He's been on safari and out of touch for far too long. I was worried about him, all things considered. I'd be wary of those people. It might be his head on a stick next. Anyway, the pages are on the way to you. I airmailed them yesterday. They should be there tomorrow.”

“Corrections? New material?” I asked trying to hide the dread in my voice. “I'm a good ways through the book, Mr. Rothstein.”

“The pages rewrapped from the beginning of the book. Sir Nigel discovered some holes in his research, and we couldn't let it slide. This is an important book for us, Miss Trumaine. The pagination had to be changed. There was no avoiding it. I'm sure you've handled situations like this before.”