“I’ve been meaning to buy a proper dining room set, but no one ever eats in here,” Bob says, looking at the picnic table. “It’s just me, and I either eat in the kitchen or in the living room. And frankly, that wallpaper gives me a headache.”
Finally, something we agree on. “What about the woman you were dating a few months ago?” I ask. “Did you ever bring her out here?”
“You mean Rose?” Bob shakes his head, and his face flushes red. “Naw, I knew she’d hate it. Her house was heavily decorated, and she had all these designer names for things. All I know is that it was a lot of pink, frilly crap. Being inside that house felt like being inside a bottle of Pepto Bismol.”
I can’t help but laugh at this despite a determined effort not to. Fortunately, Bob not only doesn’t appear offended by my laughter, he visibly relaxes and chuckles along with me. After a few seconds he says, “Yeah, our tastes were definitely not in sync. I like your place, your taste. It suits me.”
There is an odd sense of intimacy in his words, and for a few seconds we hold one another’s gaze. Then I clear my throat and look away. “Again, lots of potential in this room,” I say. “Show me the kitchen.”
Finally, we enter a room with plenty of natural light and it’s as if we took a ride in a time machine back to the fifties. Unlike the other rooms, this one is painted a sunny yellow color. The cabinets are painted a minty green, and the floor is covered in large, square, black-and-white tiles. In the center of the room is a table made with yellow Formica and chrome, with four matching chairs. The refrigerator is a standard, white model, and the only newer-looking thing in the room. The stove, which I instantly covet, is a gas, four-burner behemoth of white enamel with a griddle in the center, two side-by-side ovens, and two storage drawers. There is no dishwasher. Instead there is a large porcelain sink with two sections, one deeper than the other, and a built-on drainboard to one side, sporting a dish rack with several plates and glasses drying in it. The counters are covered with black-and-white tiles that are a smaller, mirror copy of the floor.
“This room is amazing!” I tell Bob. “I love the retro look of it.”
Bob looks surprised. “Really? I thought it was kind of outdated.”
“Oh, it is, but in a good way.” Bob looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “It’s complicated,” I say with a shrug and a smile.
“Apparently,” Bob observes with a hint of sarcasm. Then he changes the subject. “I’ll reheat our sandwiches in the oven. And I have some chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer for dessert, if you’re up for it. It’s low fat but it tastes decent enough.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Bob turns on the oven while I check out and use the first-floor bathroom, a simple half bath with a pedestal sink and a toilet located off the kitchen. The toilet seat is chipped and cracked, and the floor is covered with worn white linoleum, the underlying floorboard showing through in front of the sink. Over the sink is a mirrored medicine cabinet that is rusted on both sides. I check myself out in the mirror and see that P.J.’s makeup is holding up well. Then I try to decide if I should wash my hands with hot or cold water since there is no way to combine them—each one has its own faucet. I opt for cold, happy to see that the hand towel hanging from a hook in the wall is freshly laundered. Bob isn’t a pig, at least. The house may have a little more dust than some places, but it’s largely neat and clean. I know from experience that bachelor pads often aren’t.
This gets me to wondering how Bob managed when he was over four hundred pounds and didn’t want to climb the stairs. Had he used this tiny bathroom for his daily ablutions? Presumably there is a tub or shower upstairs somewhere, but I suppose he might have made do with sponge baths here, though given the tiny size of the room I’m inclined to think he used the kitchen sink instead.
The sandwiches are still heating in the oven, and Bob invites me to join him at the kitchen table, which is in such amazingly good condition that I can’t help but wonder if it’s a modern replica. “Can I get you something to drink?” he offers as I settle in. “I have water, sparkling water, and coffee or tea. Not much else I’m afraid.”
“I’d love a cup of coffee,” I say.
He has one of those modern cup-at-a-time coffee machines and in just over a minute I have a steaming mug in front of me. “Do you take anything in it?” he asks. “I have some skim milk in the fridge and sugar if you want it.”
“Black is fine,” I say. “Thanks.”
As Bob sits down with a can of sparkling water, I say, “Danny Hildebrand doesn’t strike me as a killer. He might be a cam bolt shy of being fully assembled at times, but he’s basically harmless.”
Bob gives me a confused look and I gather that he’s never had to assemble any furniture. He sighs, his brow furrowed with doubt. “I don’t know, Hildy. I’ve seen too many people with mental health disorders take an unexpected ride on the wild side to think they’re predictable at all. Hell, plenty of so-called normal people do the same thing. If there’s one thing about us humans that’s predictable, it’s our unpredictability.”
I smile at that. “Speaking of unpredictability, what have you found out about our Mr. Fletcher? How long do you think he’s been growing pot?”
“Laura got a preview of his financials at the house and it looks like the bank was about to foreclose on his farm two years ago. Then a sudden influx of cash arrived and there have been other similar deposits ever since, about once every three months. I’m not too concerned about the pot. It’s going to be legalized soon enough anyway. But the other plants he was growing are certainly worrisome. The guys at Homeland Security are quite interested in Mr. Fletcher’s secret garden.”
I nod, feeling a worm of unease in my gut. “Any idea who he was growing it for, or where the money was coming from?”
“Laura said all the transactions she could find were cash. Nothing traceable.”
“It was a daughter who called in requesting the welfare check. What does she have to say?”
“There are two daughters, actually, both married, both living in Minnesota. His wife died four years ago in a car accident. I haven’t had a chance to talk to the daughters yet. The local cops in Minnesota served the death notice to the daughter who called asking for the welfare check.”
“We have a positive ID then?”
Bob nods and gets up to check on our sandwiches, talking while he works. “Doc Morton was able to identify him from scars and birthmarks. Mr. Fletcher had a lot of scars from mishaps he had with his farming equipment. There was a wound on his right leg a few years ago from a machinery incident that got infected. It cleared up after some antibiotics and a few trips to Milwaukee for treatment in a hyperbaric chamber. While the wound eventually healed, it left a distinctive scar on his leg that was in the shape of a maple leaf. There was a picture of it in his medical record—or rather several pictures—taken at various stages in the healing process, including one of the wound after it was completely healed. That picture showed the distinctive shape of the scarring.”
Bob dons a pair of oven mitts that are covered with burn marks and removes the sandwiches from the oven, putting them on plates. He carries them over to the table and sets them down, then shucks the gloves and retrieves a couple of forks from a drawer, and two paper napkins from a package sitting on the counter. He hands me a fork and a napkin, and then sits down and uses his fork to remove the hot foil wrapping from the remnants of his sandwich.
“Did the Minnesota cops have anything to say about the daughter’s reaction when they told her?” I ask him, picking up my fork and unwrapping my sandwich. The reheating has worked well; the roll is still soft, the cheese inside the sandwich is melted nicely, and the pepper and onion toppings are steaming.
Bob grins at me. “You sure ask a lot of questions,” he says. “Good ones, no less.”
“So, she did say something significant?” I ask, eager for the details.
He shakes his head. “Not exactly. It wasn’t anything she
said, it was her reaction to the news.” He pauses and takes a bite of his sandwich. After a few chews he nods and smiles at me. “This is really good,” he says with a full mouth.
I set my elbows on the table, lace my fingers together, and use them as a hammock for my chin. My sandwich can sit for now and cool off a little. I suspect Bob is drawing out the telling of his story on purpose, and I’m more than happy to put the pressure on him while I wait him out. I fix him with a laser-like stare.
A hint of a smile crosses his face as he swallows, and he washes the food down with a swig of water. After dabbing at his mouth with his napkin, he finally says, “The cops up there said she barely reacted at all. She didn’t seem particularly surprised or upset to hear that he was dead. Didn’t even ask for any details about how he died. She just thanked the cops and closed the door.”
“Wow. That’s cold,” I say.
“I thought so, too, so I did some inquiries. I called a neighboring farmer, spoke to Mrs. Fletcher’s sister, and spoke to the minister at the Lutheran church in town because Laura noticed that despite his financial problems, Mr. Fletcher has been making regular donations to the church for the past few years. It turns out that Arthur Fletcher was driving in the accident that killed his wife.”
“How awful.”
“And he was drunk.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. The neighboring farmer said it was well known that Artie Fletcher had a drinking problem. That’s why he was always getting injured by his farm equipment. The minister said Mr. Fletcher wasn’t a member of the church; his wife was. Arthur Fletcher has never set foot in the place. But he sobered up after his accident, and he’s been making the donations on a regular basis ever since, in memory of his dead wife.”
I decide I’ve waited long enough, and I finally take a bite of my sandwich. Bob takes another bite of his, too, then another, and after one more, his is gone. There is a period of relative quiet as we both chew.
Bob picks up his story after he swallows his last bite. “According to Mrs. Fletcher’s sister, who lives in Chicago, the girls blamed their father for their mother’s death and didn’t speak to him for two years after the car accident. They were both living away from home already at the time, so it was easy to maintain an estrangement. One of them, the one who called about the welfare check, apparently forgave her father, or at least decided to start speaking to him again, and even visited a time or two over the past year. But I gather his relationship with both of his daughters is a strained one.”
“What about their inheritance? Won’t they get the farm?”
“Doubtful,” Bob says. “The property will most likely be seized by the DEA. Fletcher wasn’t actively farming other than the stuff in the barn cellar, if you can count that. He was renting out his fields to other farmers. I suppose it’s possible they might sell off the property in parcels to the farmers who are renting.” He shrugs. “I don’t know for sure how that stuff works.”
I finish off my sandwich in silent contemplation while Bob gets out some bowls and serves up the ice cream.
“Any theories about where Fletcher’s cash was coming from?” I ask Bob after sampling the ice cream. For low fat, it tastes quite good.
“There are private militia groups all over Wisconsin and Michigan,” he says. “Some are based on religious beliefs, some are anti-government, others have their own agendas. My best guess would be one of them. There’s an anarchist group that’s been compared by some to the Branch Davidians that’s based in the U.P. not far from the Canadian border. Rumor has it they have recruits all over the country.”
When Bob says “U.P.”—local shorthand for the upper peninsula area in both Wisconsin and Michigan—it makes me snort with laughter, and that garners me a peculiar look from him.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m not laughing at what you just said. It’s not only not funny, it’s scary as hell. It’s the mention of the U.P. that got me. One of my foster sibs used to pee in her pants whenever anyone would say U.P. and when the foster parents would question her on why she did it, she’d always say that so-and-so told me to, with so-and-so being whoever had uttered the words, or for her the command, U.P. It always made us laugh... us kids, that is. The grownups definitely did not find it funny.”
“Why did she do that?” Bob asks, looking puzzled and perhaps a bit wary as well.
I shrug. “I think it was her way of protesting, of acting out. We all did it in one way or another.”
Bob contemplates this as he scrapes the last of his ice cream from his bowl. “It must have been hard growing up under those circumstances.”
“It had its ups and downs.” I finish my ice cream and drop my spoon in the bowl with a clatter.
Bob snatches up both bowls and carries them to the sink. Over his shoulder he says, “Did you act out?”
“Hell, yeah. I was probably one of the worst kids.”
“Really? What sort of things did you do?”
“I stole. A lot. Food, mostly.” I leave out the fact that I still steal food even now and do it without realizing it most of the time. “I also mouthed off a lot, and broke my curfews, and I ran away a few times. There were some physical altercations here and there, usually with other kids.”
Bob looks amused by this. “I gather you lost most of the time, just by virtue of your size.”
“Actually, no,” I tell him. “I was small, but I was mean, determined, and fueled by my righteous indignation. Because of my size, people were always underestimating me.”
Bob has returned to the table and he’s standing there looking down at me with an odd expression. “I’m betting people still do,” he says.
Sensing that it’s a good time to change the subject, I say, “Are you serious about wanting to redo this house?”
“I am. It’s been the same for thirty years or more. I’m ready for a change.”
“I’d love to help.”
“I could use it.”
“I’ll write down some ideas and we can talk it over.” I glance at my watch. “But it will have to wait. I need to go home and get ready for my shift tonight.”
“Who did you say you’re riding with tonight?”
“Brenda Joiner. I like her. I think it will be fun. Devo was okay, but I don’t think he’s bought into the whole social worker idea yet.”
“Give him time. New programs tend to be a bit rocky straight out of the gate. People don’t always take to change.”
“Want some help with those dishes?” I say, nodding toward the sink.
“No, I can manage. It’s the least I can do since you cooked. Thanks for dinner.”
“And thanks for dessert.”
“We should do it again some time.”
“We should.”
There is a long, awkward moment of fleeting glances and shuffling feet before Bob clears his throat, turns away, and makes a beeline for the front door. Neither of us says a word as we get into the car, or during the ride back to my house.
Bob finally breaks the silence as he pulls up to the curb and says, “Have a good shift.” He makes no effort to move toward me, and he has a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel as if he’s afraid it will get away.
I decide to let him set the pace of things for now and simply say, “Thanks. You have a good night.” Then I get out of the car and head inside. He pulls away and disappears before I reach my front door.
Chapter 13
When I get inside, I find P.J. sitting on my couch, Roscoe curled up at her feet... no, on her feet, I realize. “You two look cozy,” I say.
She’s having none of the small talk. “How did the date go? Did you kiss him? Did he kiss you? Did you do anything else?”
I’m not sure what P.J. knows about the “anything else” part, and I don’t want to find out. “You’re being rather personal,” I say. “I’d like to keep things private for now. People often feel that way and it’s rude to push too hard when it comes to things like that.” Anyone else might take offens
e at my correction, but P.J., who seems to sense her own lack of social skills, takes it like a champ.
“Okay.” She pulls her feet out from under Roscoe and gets up from the couch. She heads for the door and I assume she’s leaving for the night, so I tell her goodnight.
She stops, looks back at me, and says, “Would it be too personal or rude if I asked you how you learned to kiss?” I arch my brows at her, surprised, and wondering what’s behind the question. P.J. elaborates when I’m not immediately forthcoming with an answer. “You know, kiss in a romantic way, not like the way you kiss a mother, or father, or brother.”
“Why are you asking me that?” I say. “Are you thinking about kissing someone in a romantic way?”
“No,” she says matter-of-factly. She turns to leave but I call her back.
“P.J., a couple of weeks ago you asked me a question about how to tell if a boy likes you. I get the sense that there is a boy out there that you are interested in. If there is, you can tell me.”
She stares at me for the longest time, her face expressionless, revealing nothing. Then she shrugs and says, “I don’t have a boyfriend if that’s what you mean. I heard some older girls on the track team talking and I didn’t understand some of it. They were talking about letting a boy kiss them, and how some of them don’t know how. And then they were talking about playing some weird baseball game where they let the boys go to first or second base.”
Oh, my. P.J. is only eleven years old, still much too young to be dealing with such things, in my opinion. Then again, I knew way more than she apparently does when I was only five. Having a mother who earns her living as a hooker tends to educate one on those matters. I don’t want P.J. to lose her innocence the way I did, but I also don’t want her to be ignorant of the things that could happen to her. Have her parents talked to her about the birds and the bees yet? I suspect they haven’t, only because they don’t seem to spend much time with the kid. When did they cover this stuff in school? Surely not in the fourth grade. Today’s kids are often quite precocious when it comes to their knowledge of sexual matters, at least the nitty-gritty part of it, but I can’t imagine that any official sex education starts much before middle school.
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