by Mary Logue
It was still beastly hot out, but the weatherman promised a break in the weather, maybe even a thunderstorm by tonight.
When Mrs. Swaggum opened the door, Amy was surprised to see how changed she looked. The older woman was wearing no make-up and her hair was in a tangle, which aged her a good ten years.
“Mrs. Swaggum, we had talked about me going through your husband’s office. I tried to call earlier but the line kept being busy.”
“I put the phone off the hook.” A hand drifted up to her ratted and uncombed hair.
“May I come in?” Amy asked.
Mrs. Swaggum stepped back and Amy entered a clean living room. “Come this way. The office is off the garage. Stay as long as you like.”
Swaggum’s place of business overflowed with paper, empty Mountain Dew cans and newspapers. There was no glimpse of the desk that must have been holding all that clutter up. Duct tape bandaged the seat of the desk chair, which was the only place to sit. The shades hung off the window like the carcasses of some old birds. Dust covered every surface with a felt finish.
A huge impulse to turn and run flooded Amy, but then she saw a small air-conditioning unit, turned it on, and got comfortable in the duct-taped seat, which was surprisingly comfortable. The hum of the unit filled the room with white noise. A cool breeze settled on her shoulders. No people talking at her, the room became a little womb of cool. She wouldn’t mind staying for an hour or two. She might even find something.
While she wasn’t particularly neat herself, Amy liked order. Her desk at work was arranged so she knew where everything was. She cleared off a section of Swaggum’s desk, temporarily piling those papers on the floor.
She was stunned to see bills from seven years ago still floating in the paper sea. Anything over two years old, she stuffed in a cardboard box she found in the garage. Using her own judgment she just figured it would be hard to hold a grudge for that long.
Hours later she had sorted all the papers by year and had read through everything from two years ago. As she started into
the current year, she felt her stomach rumble. She was starving. She stuffed all the current bills and papers in the box to take back to the office.
Mrs. Swaggum came to the door. She looked at the desk and then around the cleared room. “We should have hired you.”
Amy showed her what she had done with the various boxes. “Is it all right if I take these with me? I’ll return them.”
“Hey, I’d just have to go through them myself. If you find any outstanding client bills, let me know. I didn’t pay attention to Dean’s work. Even though it was a mess in here, he seemed to manage. I think he kept it all in his head.” Mrs. Swaggum’s face crumpled. “I miss him so much already. He was my buddy.”
The word “buddy” jolted Amy in the heart. That described how she felt about Bill. Amy stood with the box of paper in her arms and watched Mrs. Swaggum try to pull her face back into shape. She knew she needed to say something.
“We’ll find out who did this to him,” Amy said.
Mrs. Swaggum patted her face, blinking her eyes to clear the tears. “I don’t really care. I mean, I know it’s your job. But it won’t bring him back. It’ll never bring him back.”
Amy carted the box of bills and papers out to the squad car and slid it into the back seat. As she shoved the box to secure it, some of the papers came spilling over the top. She reached down and gathered them up. An invoice caught her eye, so she unfolded it:
June 28
Please pay Timber Tree Service $800.00 for services rendered.
The name of the customer was Chet Baldwin.
* * *
“You’re going to work today?” Rich asked as he got out of the pickup truck and saw Claire sitting on the deck, dressed in her uniform.
Claire could hear by his tone of voice that he didn’t think it was a good idea. “I’ll take it easy. Amy is picking me up. With these two murder cases, I just don’t feel I can take much time off.”
“You could.”
Claire decided not to argue with Rich. Even though he had stayed at the house last night, he had slept down on the couch, supposedly so she could get some sleep and not worry about hitting him with her cast, but there was definitely some mending that needed to happen between them. She wanted him back in their bed.
“Everything look okay over at Baldwin’s?” Claire asked. “No sign of Chet?” She had told the sheriff that she and Rich would keep an eye out for the missing man. They didn’t have the manpower to keep a deputy stationed over there.
“Nope. Didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. You think Chet would really go back there?”
“What do you think?” Claire asked. “You know him better than almost anyone.”
“That’s what I thought, but now I don’t feel like I know him at all.” Rich pulled his t-shirt out from his body and blew down the front of it. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he showed up.”
“The sheriff said he’ll have the deputies do drive-bys. You be careful if you go over there,” Claire said.
“I’m not worried. Chet wouldn’t do anything to me.”
“How do you know?”
Rich walked into the house without answering.
Amy drove up in the squad car and Claire headed to the passenger side, which felt odd to her. She was usually the driver.
It surprised Claire how awkward every action was because of her broken arm. It was even difficult getting into the squad car. She ungracefully landed on the passenger seat holding her cast against her body and said hi.
Amy started talking so fast about papers that had slid out of a box and what she had found in Hastings that Claire had to hold up her good hand and stop her.
“Start over. Pretend I’ve had a serious brain injury and you have to be very slow and clear with me.”
“Are you still on meds?” Amy asked.
“No. But I feel like there’s residuals in my system, and my arm …”
“It still hurts, doesn’t it? I broke my baby toe once. Rocked it in a rocking chair. Man, I couldn’t believe how much that hurt, and for weeks.”
“Since they put the cast on it has really calmed down, but it still aches.” Claire adjusted the sling. “So what did you have to tell me? Let’s get going.”
Amy pulled out onto Highway 35 and told her story more slowly, describing the Swaggum’s house and digging through the office, speeding up as she got deeper into her story, but this time Claire followed her and finally she got to the important piece of information: The Baldwins had hired Dean Swaggum to cut down a tree toward the end of June, less than two months ago.
“What do you think?” Amy asked.
“Seems like a pretty big coincidence. Two deaths, two murders possibly, happening within a week or two of each other and they had met less than two months previous. I think some pretty serious sniffing around needs to be done. Swaggum came down to this area to cut down a tree for the Baldwins. How do we find out what happened after that?” Claire asked out loud, then immediately thought of Colette, Anne’s sister. Maybe she knew something. “I think you need to go back to Swaggum’s wife and ask her if she remembers anything in particular about that job. I’m going to check in with Anne’s sister. Oh, and why don’t you pull the phone records for both the Swaggums and the Baldwins. See if anything shows up.”
When they got to the department, Claire heard from one of the secretaries, Gwen, who had learned from Patsy, who worked at the mortuary, that Colette was trying to arrange for a small private memorial service at the funeral home. Not even in a church. To have a private ceremony of any kind was very unusual in Pepin County where often both weddings and funerals were announced to the general public in the paper, everyone welcome at either event.
But the bigger problem was that it wasn’t clear if the sister had the legal authority to bury Anne Baldwin.
It was only a few minutes later that Colette stood in front of her desk. “They’re telling me I can’t bury m
y sister. They say that only Chet has the authority to do that. But where is he?”
Claire raised her unbroken hand and motioned for her to slow down. Her broken arm was starting to throb. “Sorry,
Colette, I don’t think I can do anything to help you there. Chet hasn’t turned up yet.”
“I have every right to bury my sister. What if he never shows up? What then? What if he killed her? I’d like to throttle him, leaving her in the lurch like this.” Colette seemed to realize for a moment where she was and who she was talking to. “Well, I just don’t know what I might do.”
Claire felt her arm throbbing faster, the tiny jolts of pain felt like torture. So did this woman’s voice. “Let’s step into the conference room where we can talk more privately.”
Claire led the way to the small conference room down the hall. One big round table, chairs, no windows. Colette sat down. Claire sat right next to her. Maybe that way she would talk more.
Colette launched right in. “I can’t stand the thought of Anne not being buried. It’s just not right. I want to take her back to the farm and bury her beside our parents. I tried to get the funeral home to let me take over the arrangements of her burial but they say I don’t have the authority. Can’t you help me?”
Claire felt an unexpected wave of compassion for the woman. She didn’t blame Colette for wanting to put her sister to rest.
“I’m sorry to say I don’t think so. We haven’t charged Chet with anything. He is still the legal guardian, the next of kin, for your sister and as such can make all the decisions.”
“Well, where the hell is he?”
Claire felt like hanging her head, but instead she looked right at Colette and said, “That’s my fault. I picked him up at
the hospital and he ran away.” Claire rubbed the slightly swollen fingers that were sticking out of her cast. “That’s when this happened.”
“Doesn’t that prove how dangerous he is?”
“Not really. My broken arm wasn’t exactly his fault.”
“But his running away?”
“Yes, that’s concerning us.”
“Why haven’t you found him? Why aren’t you doing more? You know, get out the troops?”
“We have deputies out looking for him, but this is a small county and we just don’t have the resources.”
Colette deflated. Her shoulders slumped, her face sagged. She leaned forward and collapsed on the table, her head resting on her hands. “She’s just lying there in the cold, waiting. This isn’t right.”
“I can promise nothing, but we hope to find Chet very soon and we will get this resolved.” Claire needed to ask her some questions. “I found out that Anne was taking some medication for depression and also discovered that she was seeing a therapist. Did you know this?”
Colette puffed up again, sitting up tall. “Yes, she had told me about that. But so what?”
“Well, can you tell me why? What she was depressed about and why she was seeing the therapist?”
“I don’t know everything. I mean, I didn’t push her that hard to find out what was bothering her, but she would have told me if I had.”
“What do you know?”
“I told you that things were difficult with her and Chet. She’s been talking about that for a while. Concerned about how they were getting along. As I told you it seemed to have something to do with their sex life. You know he had surgery on his prostate.”
“No, but I was wondering. He had some medication for prostate problems.”
Colette wrinkled her forehead. “You know, don’t all guys get that as they grow older?”
“Many of them do, but to varying degrees. How badly was it affecting Chet—do you know?”
“I don’t know about that. But I do know …” Colette’s voice broke and her shoulders shook. She clasped her hands together and looked like she was ready to plead with Claire. “I know that something bad had happened. Very bad. Anne wouldn’t tell me what it was. She called one night about a week ago and was hysterical. She said that she couldn’t stand herself. That she was a horrible person. That she didn’t deserve to live.”
Claire was stunned. Why hadn’t Colette told her this before? No sense asking her that now. “Did she tell you why?”
“No. I tried to get her to, but she just wasn’t talking straight. I thought she was drunk. Maybe it was those pills she started taking. I don’t know. I couldn’t get her to tell me what was wrong. When I asked her straight out, she hung up on me. I suppose I should have told you this before.”
“Did you talk to her after that?”
“Yes, sure. I called her right back but she wouldn’t answer the phone. When I called her the next day, she brushed it off.
She said she’d been having a hard day, no big deal. I couldn’t get her to tell me anything more. I asked her what was the matter, but she shut up. I should have …” This time Colette started sobbing, the cries pouring out of her throat, shuddering through her whole body.
Claire reached out and put a hand on Colette’s shaking shoulder. “You did all you could. You tried.”
* * *
Rich sat at the kitchen table in the Baldwin’s house and looked at the beer in his hand. Chet was a good friend. He wondered if they would ever drink a beer together again.
Rich knew he wasn’t supposed to be in the house—Claire would have his head if she knew—but he had gone in to get some more dog food for Bentley. This afternoon Bentley had acted a little more territorial when Rich had gotten out of the truck, but then warmed up to him again. The poor guy must be missing Anne and Chet. Hard to be all alone, responsible for the whole farm.
After Rich found another bag of dog chow in the pantry, he had looked in the fridge—just an automatic gesture—and seen the six-pack of beer. He grabbed a beer, thinking how much he deserved it.
It was late in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, and Rich was exhausted. He had slept very poorly on the couch last night. No matter what position he had put his body in, he hadn’t been comfortable. Three nights of not sleeping in his own sweet bed were taking a toll on him.
The couch in the living room looked tempting, but he had work to do.
He took another cool swig of beer. He was mad at Claire and tired of being mad at her. Superwoman had to go to work. Certainly he wanted her to find out what had happened to Anne as much as anyone.
He was trying to figure out why he was so bothered lately. Yes, Claire had been difficult this summer, possibly because of sliding into menopause. Yes, he would have to be somewhat understanding of that. But somehow, he had never felt that she had fully committed to him, that she would trust him with her life.
It wasn’t just the fact that they had never married. Although that did irk him. It was more how separate she could keep herself, how self-contained. He also knew that her first husband’s death had damaged her and that the revenge she had taken had caused even more destruction in her soul. She deeply distrusted the world. She had looked evil in the eye and, unfortunately, saw it everywhere.
Rich had hoped she would get over that. He had hoped that years of being with a solid man who stood by her and fed her and loved her would make her believe in the basic goodness of people again. But he was losing faith that even all his love could change Claire.
Rich was no longer sure that Claire would ever give herself completely to him. He was afraid that she would always hold back a part of herself as protection.
He wasn’t sure he could live that way with her.
That scared the shit out of him.
Rich finished the beer. When he bent over to throw the bottle in the trash under the sink, he heard the front door open.
CHAPTER 20
In the late afternoon, Jeremy drove Claire over to see Dr. Singh in Wabasha. The judge had come through with the court order, which was a piece of good luck. Court happened to be in session and the judge happened to be in a decent mood. Plus, Claire made a convincing argument—Anne’s state of mind
might make all the difference in a murder investigation.
Jeremy pointed out some of his favorite fishing spots as they drove the long causeway over the delta formed by the Chippewa River flowing into the Mississippi. Claire spotted some mallards paddling in the reeds of the slough, then through the trunks of the alders she saw the tall, angular form of a Great Blue Heron.
For a moment, she wished she could be in a small fishing boat in those quiet backwaters, staring at a bobber. Nothing on her mind, the heat bearing down on her like a comforting hand, a fish a possibility, but not necessary.
Then Jeremy asked, “How’s your arm feel?”
She looked down at the fiberglass cast that covered her limb and said, “It’s okay if I sit really still.”
“That’s hard to do.”
“Impossible,” Claire said.
Five minutes later, they parked in front of the clinic where Dr. Singh worked. “Jeremy, why don’t you take a break? Go someplace cool, get a Coke, and come back in about a half an hour.” Claire thought Dr. Singh might be more open with just one deputy asking her questions.
From her thin voice on the phone and her name, Claire had thought Dr. Singh would be small and Asian, but she was a tall, thin woman, with straight brown hair. If Claire had to guess her nationality she would have said German. Her blue eyes shone behind silver-rimmed glasses.
Claire introduced herself, handed Dr. Singh the court order, and waited while the woman perused it.
“Please come in.” Dr. Singh opened a door to a very comfortably appointed room. A large oriental rug covered the floor, bookshelves rose floor to ceiling on one wall, and a large abstract painting in soft blues and greens filled most of another wall. Windows behind the desk looked out on a small garden.
Claire sat in a chair opposite the desk. Dr. Singh sat and folded her hands on top of her desk as if in prayer, or as if she was trying to keep them still. “I’m glad you’ve come. I thought about this all night and I’ve decided I needed to tell someone what I know.”
