by Mary Logue
Marie did as he asked.
“Thank you for calling me, Marie. It means a lot.” His voice was trembling and he needed to get off the phone. He needed to move.
“You’re welcome.”
They both hung up. Earl sat for a moment, fighting back the urge to kick or punch the wall, knowing it would do no good. He would just end up with a broken hand or a bruised leg—might even put a dent in the wall.
He walked over to his coffeemaker. The timer was set for six in the morning. He turned off the timer and turned on the machine. It made a small gurgling that he found reassuring. He would need to tank himself up on caffeine if he wanted to get to Wichita by tomorrow night. Then it would be another day’s drive to get to Pepin County.
If he could stand to fly, he would do it, but he hadn’t been able to get on a plane since he was twenty—when the first and only plane he had ever boarded had felt like it was going to fall out of the sky.
He hoped he would still have a son to talk to when he got to the hospital in Wisconsin.
The frogs in the slough alongside the lake were so loud that they sounded like they were screaming themselves hoarse. Claire was sure that their calls were something about love, but she didn’t want to think about their yearning.
Sitting by herself at a picnic table in the park, she watched the last patrol car pull out onto Highway 35. Claire knew she should stand up and go home and try to sleep for a few hours, but she wanted to sit for a moment. She needed this time of stillness to gather herself together. Over the last few hours, she felt she had flown into fragments.
A small prayer had pulsed through her as she worked with everyone on this crime scene: Please let no one die. A few minutes ago she had called the hospital to learn that they had released the little girl; that news had lifted her spirits. However, Andy Lowman’s condition had been given as critical. The nurse told her that the other three were stable.
The lemonade stand, with police tape wrapped around it, had been shunted off to the side of the road that led down to the lake. The lab hadn’t wanted the stand to be moved, even though they took half of the poor woman’s equipment with them.
The ambulances had left first. The interviews had gone on until after midnight. The sheriff had gotten right in with the rest of them, asking questions, writing down names. They had needed all the hands they could get.
Out of the full sheriff’s department of twenty deputies, ten had been in the park, transcribing the testimony of eyewitnesses. At first questioning, no one had seen anything suspicious.
There must have been over two hundred people in the park when the poisonings occurred. How many of them were men? How many of them had a farming background? They could start narrowing all this down in the morning.
However, she couldn’t be sure that the pesticide had been put in the lemonade while it was in the park. It could have happened at the woman’s workplace. More to check on.
Claire desperately hoped this incident didn’t escalate into a murder investigation. When she had seen the five victims off into ambulances, four of them had looked pretty good. But not Andy Lowman. Apparently he was the one to worry about.
This whole scene reminded her too much of the street dance she and Rich had gone to last summer—a festive gathering of people that was blown apart by violence when a man had been stabbed to death. This wasn’t supposed to happen out in the country.
She slumped over the picnic table. It was after two o’clock. She had to go home. She hoped Rich was sleeping. She didn’t want to rehash everything with him. Not that he wasn’t a good sounding board—he was. But she was weary from thinking about what might happen next.
However, before she went home, she was going to make one more phone call. She took out her cell phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.
A sleepy man answered. The tone of his voice reminded her of the man she had loved for most of her adult life. Steven’s dad sounded so much like her late husband that she couldn’t say anything. He said hello again.
“Sorry, Thomas. It’s Claire.”
“Claire, what’s the matter?” His voice rose at the question.
“Not anything to do with us. Meg and I are fine. But we’re having some problems down here, and I know you and Beth said you’d like to have Meg for a week or so this summer.”
“Yes,” he said, and waited.
“Could you come and get her bright and early tomorrow morning?”
“Of course. Is nine okay?”
She hated to do this to him, but she knew she would need to get to work before then. “How about eight?”
“Eight will be fine. We’ll see you then. Go to sleep, Claire.” He hung up.
He was a good man. Asked no questions. Did what he could. His son had been like him. Talking to Thomas made her miss Steven more than usual.
Rich hated this. He knew he would always hate Claire’s work demands: the waiting, the worrying, the putting the kid to bed alone, the attempt to sleep, the attempt not to sleep. It stank.
Here it was nearly three o’clock in the morning, the fifth of July, and Claire still wasn’t home. He was sitting on the edge of her bed, in her house, holding his head in his hands and feeling mad.
What would she have done if he hadn’t been there to take care of Meg? He knew he didn’t dare ask because she would only get mad and tell him she could manage without him. One of the things he liked most about Claire was how independent she was. It also drove him crazy.
He wondered if she could manage without him. He wondered if she had any suspicion that she couldn’t.
But he couldn’t do anything about that. Claire had to resolve those things herself. What he needed to work on was his own attitude. If he were going to marry this deputy sheriff, then he needed to learn how to be a supportive, understanding, calm partner—not always typical male characteristics, and certainly ones he needed to improve on.
He had been angry when he climbed the stairs to go to bed. He had left all the dirty dishes piled next to the sink. Washing dishes was good for the soul, his grandmother used to tell him.
Rich stood up from the bed and pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt. He felt a bulge in his pocket, and when he patted it, he remembered he had slipped the box with the ring in there just in case. With Claire deep into a new case, he wasn’t sure when he’d ever have the chance to propose. What did all this say about their relationship?
He walked down the stairs quietly, so as not to wake Meg, and started running hot water into the sink.
And that was how Claire found him—elbow-deep in warm, soapy water, digging the last few utensils out of the bottom of the sink.
She walked in, gently closing the door behind her. She leaned against the door, then saw him. “Oh, you’re up.”
“Couldn’t sleep. I tried. Thought of going down to the park, but knew that wasn’t a good idea.”
“Oh, Rich, you wouldn’t have wanted to be there.” She walked in to the kitchen and stared at all the dishes stacked in the drainer. “Thanks for cleaning up.”
“What happened?”
Claire looked exhausted. When she got tired, her hair seemed to get messier, out of control. Wisps of black hair had come loose from her ponytail and floated around her face. She had a smear of dirt on her cheek that looked like a blurred beauty mark. Her eyes were red-rimmed.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t really know. We talked to everybody. Nobody saw anything that we know of yet. Maybe when we go over all the notes tomorrow, something will jump out at us.”
Rich knew that Claire had thought she would have the next day off and had no day care set up for her daughter. “You want me to watch Meg for you tomorrow? I’ve got some errands, but she can come along with me.”
“No, that won’t be necessary. She’s going to stay with her grandparents. It’s all set up.”
This was the first he had heard about Meg’s going away so soon. When had Claire arranged that? “Oh, that works out well.” He hated the edge he
heard in his voice.
“Well, I know you’ve got your work to do and I just didn’t want to have to worry about her.”
“I don’t mind watching her.”
“I ask enough of you already, Rich. I need to save you for special times.”
“Special times—what a load of crap! What does that mean? You don’t have to save me for nothing.”
“I don’t?” Claire looked up at him with trepidation. “What does that mean?”
He decided to be very clear. He pulled out the box with the ring and handed it to her. “I want you to marry me.”
“Oh!” Claire held the box out in front of her as if it might explode.
Rich knew he was deep into it now and there was no way to go but straight ahead. He plunged forward.
“I want to be next to you when these things happen. I want to have a reason to get so worried about you. I want to know that if anything happens to you, I’ll be the first person to be notified. I’m in love with you and I want to make a life with you. Will you marry me?”
Claire opened the box and saw the ring. Then she sat down in a chair at the kitchen table and burst into tears.
July 7, 1952
Louise Schuler was sitting on the floor in her bedroom, showing Elisabeth how to put clothes on a paper doll. Louise didn’t really like to play with them much anymore—she was almost too old for that—but she loved to cut them out.
She heard a loud bang downstairs in the kitchen and then Arlette cried for a moment and then another bang and the baby stopped. Louise stood up. It must mean something, that noise. It nearly sounded like a gun. She hoped it meant it was time for dinner. Usually her mom hollered out the front door to tell them to come in and eat. Maybe she was trying something new. Or maybe her dad had dropped something.
She hoped he hadn’t dropped the birthday cake. Mom had let her help frost it and she had dipped her finger in the frosting when her mom wasn’t looking. It was so delicious her mouth watered just thinking about it.
Louise stood up and told Elisabeth to put her paper dolls away. It was time to go eat.
“I didn’t hear Mom.”
“Mach schnell,” Louise said, imitating her mother. She didn’t know many words in German, but her mother said those words all the time. It meant, Make it snappy; be quick about it.
Elisabeth couldn’t do anything fast. She carefully put her paper dolls back in their folder and put all their clothes away. Louise decided to practice her pirouettes in the middle of the floor. She was wearing only her stockings, so she could turn better. She wanted to take ballet lessons but her mother said they didn’t have enough money.
She heard some steps coming down the hall and stopped turning around, but her head was still dizzy from all the spinning and she couldn’t walk straight. A third loud bang happened, only this time right outside the door. Elisabeth fell down on the bed.
Louise stood very still, her arms stretched out for balance. The fourth time the gun went off she didn’t hear it.
CHAPTER 13
Meg sat out on the front steps in the shade of the crabapple tree. Another hot day. Too hot to even think about being productive. All she felt like doing was going down to the beach. But it didn’t look like the day was shaping up that way.
She wanted to have her life be the way it was supposed to be: her mom with the day off, Rich and her mom smiling and happy, her visit to her grandparents’ not for a few weeks yet. Instead her mom had woken her up early this morning and helped her pack a suitcase. Now she was sitting on the front steps, waiting for her grandparents to pick her up.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like her grandparents. They were great, even if they tried too hard. She always felt like they were trying to make up for their son, her father, being dead. They always gave her toys and took her to movies. They did some kind of major activity every day—went to the science museum, took a bike ride—but sometimes she found it exhausting.
It was hard to adjust when things changed so rapidly. She needed to get her mind ready.
She wasn’t bored with summer yet. If it were the end of summer, she would be ready to go and stay with them, but she still could think of so many things to do. She wanted to stay home. But looking at her mom’s face, she knew a tantrum would do little good. Claire was bustling about at top speed, making sure Meg hadn’t forgotten to take anything. Rich was nursing a cup of coffee and pretending to read the paper. But it was yesterday’s paper and he wasn’t turning the pages.
Meg decided to go along with the plans. She had a feeling her mom and Rich needed to have it out, and it might be easier for them to do that if she wasn’t there. She wanted to have Rich as the permanent guy-dad in life, but she wasn’t the one who had to marry him and pledge for better or for worse. She could only give her mom so much advice on these matters and then she was on her own.
Meg walked into the house and let the screen door slam behind her. A small protest. “Mom, how long am I staying for?”
Her mom stopped what she was doing, turned her head, and then said, “What?”
Meg knew the What? wasn’t a real one. It was a stalling What? She sat down on a porch chair and just looked at her mom, waiting for her to provide a real answer.
“How about a week?” Her mother looked over at her with her face slightly crinkled.
“That’s a little long.”
“Maybe it will be shorter.”
“You just want me out of here, don’t you?”
Her mom wiped her hands on her pants and walked over and sat down next to Meg. “In a way. I’m not going to lie to you. You know this job of mine is demanding sometimes.” She flicked back a strand of Meg’s hair. “We’ve talked about this. I need to focus on this case. People got hurt last night.”
“Poisoned?”
“It appears so.”
“Did anyone die?” Meg had to ask the question she had been framing since she woke up.
“No, just got very sick.”
“God, Mom, you almost drank that stuff.”
Her mother’s head jerked up. “Meg, don’t say that word.”
Meg clamped her hand over her mouth. How had that word come out? She had only said God a couple of times in her life, and then it had been around friends. But she knew she should never have even tried out the swear words. Once your mouth got used to saying them, you never knew when they might pop out. Words had a life of their own.
“I just don’t want you to worry,” her mother said.
“That’s stupid to tell me not to worry. It makes me know there’s something to worry about.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Mom. It’s okay. Will you promise to call every day?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Will you promise to let me come home as soon as I can?”
“Yes, the very moment.”
Meg felt her mother’s arms fold over her the way the wings of a mother bird covered her young. But she didn’t sink into the embrace and close her eyes and cuddle. She kept watching—because there was something out there that was trying to get them all.
Five people were poisoned in the Fort St. Antoine park as people gathered to watch the Fourth of July fireworks. It appears that the lemonade sold at one of the concessions had been spiked with a toxic product, possibly a pesticide. The sheriff’s office believes there might be a connection to the pesticides that were stolen on July first.
“How’s it coming?” Sarah popped her head in his office door. They were on a tight deadline. Usually they didn’t have breaking news that needed to go above the fold on the front page. It meant a major reordering of all the other articles.
“I’ll have it done,” Harold promised.
With that, Sarah returned to the outer office.
Harold paused in his typing. Maybe he should have let Sarah write the lead article. He could work on layout and she could interview him as a material witness. Harold still remembered the weight of Andy Lowman as he fell into his arms. It was urgent th
at this piece get finalized in the next hour, but Harold felt his mind wander into the past to another Fourth of July celebration.
Sitting at his desk with a pile of old papers in front of him, Harold remembered the first time he had seen Bertha Schuler. She had been Bertha Ostreich then. Eighteen years old and brimming with life. Blond hair down to her waist, green-blue eyes that called to any man, a full figure, and strong arms. She was a farm girl. Even though she was born in Wisconsin, she had a bit of a German accent left over from her parents.
He had seen her at a dance. He had been only fifteen, but he thought of asking her to dance. He mentioned it to one of his friends, Danny Swenson, who had laughed at him and slapped him on the shoulders, saying, “don’t dance with her. don’t you know she’s a kraut?”
Harold had thought to tell his friend that he, too, had German blood in him, but decided not to bother. He didn’t really know how to dance well enough to have the courage to ask her. Watching her spin around the floor in the arms of one older man and then another had been good enough for him.
Two men had vied for her attention: Carl Wahlund and Otto Schuler. Wahlund had gone off to the service a few months later, and Bertha had married Otto Schuler that same year. Harold had finally danced with her for a short moment at her wedding.
Years went by. He had hardly thought of her again until the murders.
He had gone off to Madison to the university and had met his lovely Agnes there. He had brought her back home and started working at the paper.
Two years later, the Schuler family had been murdered and he had written about it in the Durand Daily. He picked up an old issue, dated July 8, 1952.
The headline read: FARM FAMILY MASSACRED, NO SUSPECT
Last night the Otto Schuler family, five children and their two parents, were found shot to death on their farm outside of Fort St. Antoine. A young deputy sheriff discovered the bodies at about seven p.m. when he returned a saw he had borrowed. No one was at the scene when he arrived. The house had not been ransacked and the table was still set for dinner. It is assumed the killings took place in the late afternoon.
