The Silence of the Llamas (21 page)

“Sit anywhere. Make yourselves comfortable,” he invited them as he more or less fell into a huge recliner that was covered with several afghans. Like a crocheted sultan’s chair, Lucy thought.

The women quickly cleared piles of magazines and old newspapers off a lumpy plaid couch. The upholstery felt sticky and emitted a strange odor. Lucy was extra careful not to touch anything or even to breathe too deeply. From Suzanne’s stiff pose, she guessed her friend felt the same.

Suzanne began the conversation with a few preliminary, warm-up questions. Walter Kranowski responded with his life story.

Potatoes, potatoes, and more potatoes. Sometimes a few cabbages or turnips. But mainly potatoes. He was sick of the mundane, prosaic, ubiquitous tubers, and he wanted out, bad.

His mother had given birth to him in this small house, right on the kitchen table, he reported. Lucy could picture a midwife quickly clearing off a pile of potatoes to make way for his arrival in the world.

He’d lived under this roof his entire life, except for a short stint in the army. More than seventy years now. He had three grown children; two lived in Boston and one in Connecticut.
They’d all left the farm right after high school and never looked back.

No surprise to hear that. Though they could have sent a cleaning service around to visit their father once in a while, Lucy thought.

“I don’t blame those kids one bit. They all did the smart thing. I would have, too, if I’d had any choice in the matter,” their father said finally.

“So you’re interested in putting the property up for sale?” Suzanne eased out of the Kranowski saga into the main reason for the visit.

“I’m thinking of it. You’re not the first real-estate gal who’s been out here,” he added.

And probably not the last, Lucy guessed. She sensed a cagey spark under his potato-ish appearance. He seemed the type who would gleefully pit one agent against the other, negotiating down the commission.

Had he been talking about potatoes so much that he’d skewed her perception? Or did his head really resemble the vegetable? His face was long, his features lumpy, and his skin dark brown from the sun. He had a full head of white hair, buzz-cut, flat on top and short on the sides of his head. A hairstyle that was so far out of fashion it had come back in. Shaggy white eyebrows punctuated his heavy brow and his chin jutted out in a perpetual defensive expression.

The sound of a cell phone jarred Lucy from further study of the farmer.

“Sounds like my telephone. . . . What did I do with that now?” Kranowski sat up and patted his clothing, frisking
himself for his phone. When he finally found it in the pocket of his shirt, it flew out of his big hand and rolled under his recliner.

“Oh, blast . . .” He peered over the edge of the chair, like a man in a boat watching his car keys sinking.

“You sit, Mr. Kranowski. I’ll get it for you,” Suzanne gallantly offered.

Lucy nearly gasped and nearly pulled her friend back before Suzanne jumped up off her seat. But it was too late. She crouched down to look under the chair, and Lucy squinted. She did not want to imagine what might be under there. She was sure Suzanne was motivated by some innate saleswoman code of honor, believing she must go to any length to clinch a deal. But Lucy thought a listing for Buckingham Palace would not be worth a Dumpster dive under that chair.

Seconds later, Suzanne’s dark head popped up. “Here you go, sir,” she said, handing up the phone to Kranowski. She had a strange smile on her face, Lucy thought, as she poked under the chair with a ballpoint pen, fishing out something else.

“Why look at this. . . . Is that a hand spindle?” Suzanne took a tissue from a box on the coffee table and used it to pick up the hidden treasure.

Lucy had to stifle a gasp when she saw the distinctive stamp on top. It was one of the spindles from Ellie’s fair. She quickly looked at the farmer to gauge his reaction. Had Suzanne just uncovered a spare murder weapon?

“Is that what you call it?” He pulled his head back, staring down at the object. He didn’t look particularly alarmed, Lucy noticed. But maybe he was just a good actor.

“Do you spin, Mr. Kranowski? Or knit, perhaps?” Suzanne sat down on the couch again, going on in her talk show hostess voice. “I hear many men are taking up that hobby now.”

“Me . . . knit?” He laughed at her. More of a snort, Lucy thought. “No way, that’s ladies’ territory. My daughter must have left that here. She’s a knitter. She came out for a visit and went over to that fair, at the llama farm. What a racket. I think people should get permission from their neighbors for that sort of thing. They can’t make a carnival ground out of this whole place . . .”

“I know what you mean. But it was their grand opening,” Suzanne cut in smoothly. “The Kruegers are trying to start a new business.”

“So I heard.” He shifted in his chair, wearing a grumpy expression. Lucy couldn’t tell if his feet were aching or if he just didn’t like being contradicted. By a “real-estate gal,” no less.

“Those Kruegers will need all the help they can get,” he predicted. “That farm is bad luck for anyone who lives there. No one’s ever been able to make a go of it on that land for as long as I can remember.”

Lucy had never heard that bit of folklore, and she could tell from Suzanne’s expression this was news to her, too.

“Bad luck? How is that?” Suzanne leaned forward in her seat. “Did you know the former owners there?”

“Of course I did. I’ve lived here forever. Let’s see, before the Kruegers there were the Dooleys. Husband had an accident, fell out of the loft, and broke his neck.” He made a cracking gesture with his hands, as if breaking a stick in two. Lucy hid a shudder.

Then he leaned back and looked up, thinking. “Before them, there were the Turners. Husband ran off with a waitress.
The wife kept the farm up by herself for a while. But she got up on a ladder one day, to fix the roof or a broken window or some darn thing. Fell into a bunch of wires and electrocuted herself.”

Lucy winced at his lethal litany. “That is a bad run of luck.”

“Damn right. And I’m not done yet,” he said quickly. “Then there were the Hoopers, Joe and Trudy. The wife was a real looker. Only about twenty or so when she married Joe. He was maybe fifteen, twenty years older? That never works out. He drank too much and slapped her around. I thought, Well, here we go again. She’s going to run off with the first guy who knocks on the door. Some fellow reading the gas meter is going to get lucky. Turns out, one night, Hooper just walks out on her. Trudy came over here, all banged up. My wife took care of her. She told us they had a big fight. Joe beat up on her and jumped in his car. Like he always used to do. But this time, he never came back. I think they found the car up in Maine somewhere. He drove off a dock, right into a lake. I don’t think she ever got the insurance money, though. She couldn’t keep up the mortgage. She lost the place pretty quickly after that. Long time ago. I think Jimmy Carter was president.”

That was a long time ago, Lucy thought. She and Suzanne could hardly believe these tales of woe. Personally, she didn’t need to hear more. Did Ellie and Ben know the history of the farm when they bought it? It seemed almost . . . cursed.

Since they were on the subject of neighbors, Lucy decided to jump right into the deep end. “What about your other neighbor, Justin Ridley? Did you know him?”

“Sure, I knew him. I flat-out hated him. I know it’s awful
to say, but I nearly did a tap dance when I heard that news. Not that I can even stand on my feet right now,” he clarified, looking at his slipper-covered feet, elevated on the recliner. “I’m not surprised someone crept up on that dude. He was a dirty, thieving scoundrel. A phony, to boot, for all his ‘nature boy’ talk. What a crock of cheese.”

“Was it just his opinions about land use that annoyed you? Or was there something else? Something more personal, I mean. If you don’t mind me asking,” Suzanne added politely.

Walter Kranowski gave her a wide-eyed stare and shook his big head. “I don’t mind one bit. He was a nasty son of a bee. He stole my electricity . . . and my cable TV! Can you beat that?”

The women stared back at him with puzzled expressions. Lucy wondered if Mr. Kranowski was a little senile and prone to imagining things.

He answered with a look that was a mixture of amusement and disgust.

“You girls are naive, aren’t you? That low-life scum would sneak around in the middle of the night and fix a hookup to my wires. All hidden in the branches and such so I couldn’t see. Until I got wise. All the time acting like he was so self-sufficient with his little windmills and solar panels.”

Kranowski started to cough and shook the recliner with such force that a coffee cup dropped off a tiny table attached to the arm rest and rolled on the floor.

Suzanne began to rise to pick it up, but Lucy caught her arm and shook her head. Who knew what else was under there? Suzanne had already done her duty in Lucy’s book.

“Don’t mind that, I’ll get it later.” Kranowski waved his
hand, and they felt absolved. Though Lucy wondered what he meant by “later.” In a year or so?

“Wow, that’s quite a story,” Suzanne said finally. “Did you ever get the police involved?”

Kranowski made another frightful face and nearly shouted at her. “What could they do? Make him give me back my electricity? That guy was nuts . . . and he owned guns.” He took a breath and calmed himself, realizing that he’d lost his temper. “I didn’t need to add that worry to my list every night when I went to bed. Besides, my wife was pretty sick back then. I had more important things to think about. I just let it go.”

“Sure, that was the smart thing,” Suzanne assured him. “Is that why you say he was a phony? Because of the electricity and cable?”

“That’s not even half of it. All this ‘saving nature’ baloney. Like he’s J.C. and Al Gore rolled into one. Those Friends of Farmers are no friend of mine.” He’d gotten the name of the group wrong, Lucy noticed, but the revised version fit fine. “I’m sure Mr. Ridley had a sweet deal set up for himself, once they got their way with the zoning. I’m sure they all do.” His face turned beet-red, and he was shouting again.

Lucy was glad he was fairly immobile and didn’t have any dangerous weapons of his own nearby.

“What kind of deal, Mr. Kranowski? I’m not sure what you mean.” Suzanne’s calm and curious tone seemed to calm him down a bit, too.

“The county has a big slush fund to buy up land out here and protect it.” He let out a raspy breath and stared at the women, as if deciding whether to tell them the rest. His eyes
were beady and bloodshot, Lucy noticed. She hoped all this excitement didn’t give him a stroke. “I heard Ridley had a deal with someone in the county to sell his land for triple the value, drawn out of this fund. Nice profit . . . even after deducting a few kickbacks to grease the wheels. I think all those Friends are on the inside, waiting to sell back to the county and clean out this fund. Well, most of them anyway.” The old farmer shifted in his chair, the conversation making him restless and annoyed. “Take it from me, Ridley was no folk hero. He was just a pig at the trough, him and the rest of them.”

Suzanne sat back against the couch cushions, her binder balanced on her lap. “That’s a pretty serious allegation. Have you told anyone at the village hall that you heard this gossip? The trustees, maybe?”

Kranowski waved his hand, as if batting away an insect. “Who am I going to tell? They’ve all got their hand out down there. They wouldn’t do anything. Besides, what’s the difference now?” He shrugged. “Ridley’s gone. I think his group is going to lose steam pretty quickly and disappear, too.”

It didn’t look that way to Lucy, but she didn’t bother to contradict him.

“Most problems solve themselves, if you wait long enough.” He sat back in the recliner and sighed. “Even a guy like Ridley. There he was, gumming up the works, preventing a lot of honest, hardworking people like me from finally reaping the fruit of our labors.” In his case, one might say the potatoes of his labors, Lucy thought, but she didn’t interrupt. “What right did he have to do that? Now he’s gone. Out of the way. I can’t say I shed any tears to hear that news.”

Lucy nodded. But the problem had not really solved itself. Someone had deliberately stepped out of the darkness that fateful night and forcefully removed Justin Ridley from the picture.

Had it been Walter Kranowski? His ailments appeared real enough. But couldn’t immobility from gout and arthritis easily be faked, Lucy speculated. If the old farmer could get out of that chair, he would be a force to be reckoned with. Even if it had not been Kranowski, maybe Ridley had met with some other hardworking farmer like him?

“You ladies want to see the house? I’m sorry I can’t give you the grand tour today.” He looked down at his feet regretfully. “Walk around, take your time. Go on outside when you’re done in here. I have a copy of the property lines for you, out on the kitchen table. My feet are aching something awful. Do you mind?”

“That’s just fine. We can find our way around. Don’t you worry.” Suzanne rose and patted his shoulder.

“Let’s go upstairs first, Lucy.” She tilted her head to the side, and Lucy followed.

“So . . . what do you think?” Lucy whispered once they had reached the top of the stairs.

The smell on the second floor was even worse than in the parlor, and Lucy held her hand over face and tried to hold her breath. Suzanne was much hardier, used to these situations, no doubt, though she did have a sour expression.

“It’s a knock-down. No question,” she whispered back. “I’ll just take a few pictures so I won’t insult him.”

“I don’t mean that,” Lucy whispered back hoarsely. “I mean, about him and Ridley.”

Suzanne glanced down the stairs and put her finger to her
lips. Lucy caught her meaning. Walter Kranowski was sharper than he looked and could very well be listening.

Suzanne quickly peeked into the bedrooms and pushed open the bathroom door with her pen. She made a few notes on her pad, while Lucy waited in the hallway.

They walked down a back staircase and emerged in the kitchen—another disaster area, Lucy thought. Suzanne found the surveyor’s map of the property on a small wooden table and led Lucy out the back door.