by Jon Jackson
The old lady was pretty spry, Joe thought. Up close, he could see she was really quite old, perhaps eighty. “You must be Mrs. Mulheisen,” he said.
She looked at him closely. “Are you one of the Colonel’s men?”
Joe tossed his head, a gesture that could be taken as yes. He expressed no surprise at her comment. He wondered if the Colonel was keeping a watch, somewhere beyond the nurse. Not likely, he thought, but he might have a man on the premises. “I was looking for your son,” he explained.
“Mul is off up north,” the woman said. “He called earlier. He met some fool up there, says he saw swallows hibernating! Can you imagine?”
“Birds hibernate?”
“Only in the minds of the ignorant,” she said, with a wry expression. “But Mul didn’t know that.”
“Where is this?” Joe asked.
“Some little town up by Traverse City,” Mrs. Mulheisen said. “It’s called Queensleap. This fellow—Luck, his name is—claims he’s seen hundreds of swallows burrowing in a hill. I told Mul the fellow’s daft. He probably saw swallows shooting out of an old stream bank. Country folks, if they don’t actually study the birds’ behavior, can easily convince themselves the birds are burrowing to hibernate. It’s an old folk belief. And Pliny the Elder may have believed it.”
She started off toward the house. He walked a ways with her, out of politeness. He didn’t want to encounter the nurse.
“Who lives there?” Joe asked, indicating the new little house where he’d seen the carpenter, a small cottagelike affair beyond the old barn.
Mrs. Mulheisen said that it was Mulheisen’s latest project, a sort of study. “He needs a place to smoke his cigars,” she said. “It’s been nice for him, building it. I’m surprised how involved he’s gotten in it. It started out just to be a small affair, but it’s grown. He’ll go out there, I suppose, and read his books and listen to music. It’ll be good for him, to have a separate place.”
“Interesting,” Joe said, stopping. “I like the style.”
Mrs. Mulheisen started on toward the older house. “Coming?” she asked. “I’ll ask the nurse to get you some tea. I could use some tea.”
“No, thanks,” Joe called after her. “I think I’ll stay out for a bit, keep an eye on the harrier.”
“Well, you come up to the house when you’re ready. I had a notion to call the Colonel, anyway, but maybe you could pass it on.”
“What’s that?” Joe said, alert.
“I remembered something,” she said, “from the day at the courthouse. Colonel Tucker will know what I’m talking about. I’m sure he would be interested.”
“Uh-huh,” Joe said, encouragingly. He had no idea what she was talking about.
“Yes, I had some difficulty, you know, with my memory. After the bombing, I mean. I couldn’t remember a thing, for quite a little while. But lately some of it has been coming back.”
“I see,” Joe said, eager to be off. “I’m sure the Colonel will be interested. It would be better if you called him. You have the number?”
“Oh, yes. It may not be important, probably isn’t. I talked to a fellow, or rather, he talked to me, in the hall, just before the bomb went off. Quite a strange fellow, very agitated.”
“That’s just the sort of thing Colonel Tucker will want to know,” Joe said. “You call him. I’m afraid I have to go now.”
She would not let him go, it seemed. She briefly described her encounter, the tall fellow who had told her to leave. His manner had been almost rude, but clearly he was a bit deranged, so she’d ignored his rudeness, but then she’d forgotten, and only now, this morning, had she begun to recall. But she still didn’t have it quite clear in her mind. She wondered if she ever would, she mused. “Recall completely, I mean.”
Joe said he was sure she would.
“Well, you mean well, young man, I’m sure,” the old lady said, “but you’re not a doctor, are you?”
No, Joe admitted. But he knew himself, he said, that he often forgot things and then they’d come back at the oddest moments.
“Have you ever been blown up?” she asked.
“Actually, I have,” Joe said. He was thinking, however, of having been shot in the head. He understood very well what her problem was. “Once things start coming back you can’t stop them.”
“Ah. I hope you’re right. It seems unfair to endure such a horrendous experience and not even have the benefit of witnessing it.”
With that she at last said good-bye. When she had gone, Joe set off for the car on a dead run.
9
Dog in the Manger
Mulheisen went for a stroll. It was a gorgeous fall day in Queensleap. The town was liberally shaded with tall oaks, maples, beech and ash trees. The shade was visibly thinning, though; every little breeze precipitated a sibilant cascade of brilliant red, yellow, and orange flakes. It was a splendid sight. A golden sunny day with a tinge of chill. A fine day to smoke a cigar while kicking your feet through the dry, rustling drifts.
He walked a few blocks off the main street and found himself on a street of old, pleasant homes. They looked, for the most part, like old farmhouses: two or even three stories, with steeply pitched roofs. They were mostly frame houses, usually with lap siding, painted white or gray, brown or yellow, with white trim. Broad, covered porches ran along the fronts and halfway around the sides. Some had swing seats on the porch. A few were built with a very warm red brick. One of these latter had a white sign on a post next to little picket fence that read: J. HUNDLY, M.D.
Mulheisen tossed his cigar aside and let himself in through the wooden gate and walked up to the front door. He rang. Shortly, a white-haired man of about seventy or older opened the door. He wore a gray wool cardigan sweater over a shirt and tie.
“Sorry,” he said pleasantly, “but my wife had to run out. Did you have to wait long? I don’t always hear the bell first time.”
“You heard it this time,” Mulheisen said. “I guess you’re the doctor around here.”
“Only one,” Dr. Hundly said. “Come on in.” He closed the door behind Mulheisen. “What’s the problem?”
They stood in a little foyer. A stair ran up along one wall, with a worn carpet. It was very quiet in the house, with a pleasant smell of flowers, which stood in vases here and there. The floor was polished hardwood and there was wainscoting of a pleasing dark hue.
Before Mulheisen could respond, the doctor led him back along the hall to a room that was clearly his surgery. It was all very old-fashioned and comforting, with the addition of an air of professionalism: some modern-looking furnishings of a medical nature, an examination table, a number of electronic instruments poised about.
The doctor quickly slipped on a white lab coat with a stethoscope in one of the pockets, then turned to look at Mulheisen very keenly through his trifocals, his chin lifted slightly. “Take off your coat,” he said. “You can hang it over there.” He pointed to a coat stand in the corner, next to a wall of medical books.
Mulheisen hesitated. “I don’t really have—”
“That’s all right, that’s all right,” the doctor said, helping him off with his light raincoat, which he hung on the rack himself. “Just sit down on the table there and roll up your left sleeve.” He snatched up a blood pressure device and, after helping Mulheisen with his sleeve, deftly wrapped it around the bared arm, securing the Velcro flap and promptly pumping the little attached bulb until the device clamped Mulheisen’s bicep like a python. He inserted his stethoscope on the inner bend of the elbow and listened as he released the air pressure.
“Hmmm. That’s . . . well, it’s not awful,” he said, folding up the sphygmomanometer and setting it aside. “Could be better. Unbutton your shirt.” He listened to Mulheisen’s chest, moving the cold metal disk of the stethoscope around. “Smoking too much,” he remarked gently. “Cut back on the cigarettes. Better yet, stop.”
“I don’t smoke cigarettes,” Mulheisen said, “never have. Cigars.
”
“Too many cigars,” the doctor said. He lifted one of Mulheisen’s eyelids. “Well, what’s the complaint?”
“None,” Mulheisen said. “I was just cur—”
“Open,” the doctor said, cutting him off. He looked at Mulheisen’s tongue. “Too many cigars. How many do you smoke a day anyway? Twenty?”
“Oh, no,” Mulheisen protested. “Only two or three.”
“Bosh. A dozen, more like. Too many. Okay, you can button up.” He went to his desk and began to scribble on a pad. “That pressure’s creeping up. This is a very mild medication. You can get it anywhere. Lane will have it uptown. One a day, in the morning, preferably just before breakfast. What’s the name?” He handed Mulheisen a prescription and prodded his stomach, pointedly. “Cut back on the bacon and the french fries, son. Get some regular exercise. Walk!”
“Uh, doctor, I was wondering . . . did you know Mrs. Luck? Constance . . .?”
The doctor looked at him sharply. “What about her?”
Mulheisen almost reached for his wallet, to show his badge, but he stopped, realizing that there was no badge, no warrant card. “I’m an investigator,” he said.
“I could have guessed it,” the doctor said. “You have that look. Municipal, state, or federal?”
“I worked for the Detroit Poli—”
“Down below, eh? What brings you up here?”
“I was curious about Mrs. Luck’s—”
“Demise,” the doctor finished for him. He sighed. “Insurance, is it? Well, I signed the certificate. Heart failure.”
“Was there an autopsy?”
“What on earth for? Clear as day. Heart attack. Well, there could have been contributing factors, there always are, but what’s the point? The cardiac arrest was sufficient cause. She had a congenital heart defect, you know.”
“No cancer?”
“Oh, no. I’d treated her before. Elevated pressures. Not obese, not like you, but she could have stood to lose a few pounds. Rather a rich diet, I’d say. Didn’t seem like much of a problem, a young woman like that. Essentially in good health.”
“But she had a heart attack.”
“Can happen any time,” the doctor said. “Could happen to you, before you reach the street. More likely to happen to you, I’d say—she didn’t smoke cigars—but these things can come on. Healthy people fall over every day.”
“How recently before the death had you seen her?” Mulheisen asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’d have to look it up. Possibly a few months earlier.”
“And the circumstances didn’t strike you as unusual?” Mulheisen asked the question in a matter-of-fact, pro forma way.
“No. Died in her sleep. Her husband found her dead, in the morning. He’d been out hunting, early, came home and found her still in bed.”
“In the spring? Is that hunting season?”
“Well, you can always hunt something around here, if it isn’t ducks and deer it’s mushrooms,” the doctor said. He looked at Mulheisen thoughtfully. “What’s your name again?”
Mulheisen told him.
“Why are you interested in Mrs. Luck?” the doctor asked. “You’ve left it kind of late.”
“Oh, I know,” Mulheisen said, in a resigned way. He shrugged a shoulder, as if he were satisfied and probably just as glad to close the door on this apparently routine matter. But then he hesitated, asking, “Uh, you didn’t by any chance consult with her previous doctor?”
Dr. Hundly brightened. “As a matter of fact I did. Come to think of it, her doctor called me, from down below. Where was it? Indiana, or someplace. Her husband had called her old doctor first, when he found her. The doctor then called me. So I went out to the house. I’d never treated Luck. He didn’t know me. Oh, I suppose he knew who I was. He grew up around here, although I don’t remember him.”
“You didn’t know Luck?” Mulheisen was curious about that.
“Well, you know how it is in a small community, people go to one doctor or the other. They’re very loyal that way. The Lucks—Imp’s folks—doctored with Pruhoff, over in Manton. They had property over that way. And then I guess Luck was away for several years, working all over the world, from what I hear. So I didn’t really know him.”
“But you knew her,” Mulheisen said.
“Well, she came in to see me once. She had a few complaints, nothing major. Headaches. I gave her some medication.”
“How long had she been dead?” Mulheisen asked.
“Possibly, six hours. No rigor mortis, or very little, but she’d been lying in a bed, covered up, warm room.”
Mulheisen shook his head sorrowfully. “Young woman like that,” he said. “Heart attack. We just don’t know, do we?”
The doctor laughed lightly and patted Mulheisen on the back. “Don’t get depressed, son. It can happen. It will happen. But if you watch that pressure, you’ll be all right for many years, I’d guess.”
He was steering Mulheisen out. Mulheisen stopped and asked, “Say, how much do I owe you?”
“Oh, forget it. I didn’t do anything,” Hundly said. He guided Mulheisen into the hall.
Mulheisen halted firmly. “What was that doctor’s name?”
“Pruhoff? Carl. Two effs. Osteopath. That’s the way of it, you know. One family insists on going to the osteopath, another won’t see anybody but an M.D.”
“No, the other one,” Mulheisen said, not budging. “Down in Indiana. The one who called you?”
“Oh, heck, I’m darned if I could remember that. I only talked to him the once.”
“Tell me, doctor, what did he say?” Mulheisen had a smile on his face but it wasn’t his most pleasant smile and there was an edge to his voice.
Dr. Hundly looked a bit uncertain for a moment, then he said, “I do recall his name! I guess the memory’s not so far gone as all that, even if I am seventy-five in April. Johnson. Dr. Johnson, from Indianapolis.”
“Dr. Johnson,” Mulheisen said with an expectant tone, the edge of his voice a little sharper.
“J. Johnson,” Hundly said. “I’m not sure of the Christian name.”
Mulheisen made a movement back toward the surgery, his hand on the doctor’s arm now. “I’m sure you have a record of it,” he said.
“James L.,” Hundly said. “Ha, ha! Just popped into my head!”
“And what did he say?”
“Why, he told me he’d had a call from Luck. Constance had passed away in the night. Then he recounted a bit of the family medical history. It seems she had a congenital heart defect. Well, it wasn’t the sort of thing one would notice in a simple examination. You’d need an EKG, at least. But he concurred that she also had hypertension. Migraines too.”
Mulheisen relaxed. “Ah.” He sighed. He shook his head again. “Well, you’re sure I don’t owe you anything?”
“Oh, don’t push your luck,” the doctor said. “I’ll sock you the next time. But you watch those darn cigars. Mind, I’m not saying you have to cut them out entirely. But for your heart’s sake, son, get it down to one or two. And don’t give me that ‘two or three’ nonsense. We know better, don’t we?”
Mulheisen strolled back to the motel, puffing on his cigar. He’d been unable to resist looking for the rather sizable butt he’d tossed aside. It was perfectly good, at least four inches of La Donna, lying in the grass. He’d trimmed it up and relit it.
Jimmy Marshall sighed when Mulheisen called again, but he said he’d check out this James L. Johnson in Indianapolis. Mulheisen hung up and thought about lunch, but mindful of the doctor’s jab in his gut he settled for an apple. He ate it while he drove out toward Luck’s. It was still a pleasant afternoon. He wished he’d thought to get a topographical survey map of the area. But he had a pretty good image in his mind of the Luck property from looking at the plat map in the county assessor’s office.
Instead of turning into the lane that led to Luck’s gate, he drove on down the county road. As he recollected, perhaps a mile or
so beyond Luck’s there was another house indicated on the plat map. But when he reached it he found it was a delapidated old farmhouse, clearly abandoned. Just beyond it, however, he saw a small boy pushing a four-wheeled ATV along the dirt road. Mulheisen pulled up behind him. The boy stopped and looked back at him.
“What’s the trouble?” Mulheisen called. He got out of the car.
The kid was about twelve, a pugnacious lad in jeans and a hunting jacket. There was a rifle holster on the ATV. The kid was very open and fresh. “Ran out of gas! This dang thing, I filled ‘er up yesterday!”
“I’ve got some gas,” Mulheisen said. He opened his trunk and pulled out a five-gallon emergency can.
“Here, I can do it,” the kid said. He quickly poured a gallon or so into his tank. “That’ll get me home.” And he yapped on about seeing a skunk and a badger. His dad and mom both worked, he said, and wouldn’t be home for hours. His name was Travis. He lived about five miles down County Line Road. He had a couple of coon dogs, Tige and Mange. He and his dad went coon hunting all the time—there was a world of coons around. He was a better shot than his old man, even his grampa said so. That was a .22 in the holster, but he had a .300 Savage at home, his own. He was going bear hunting with his dad, up in the U.P., later this year, or in the spring. He was going out to Montana to hunt mulies with his grampa, who was probably the best hunter this country had ever seen. His grampa had promised him his old .303 in his will.
Mulheisen was certain that the boy had skipped school and had gone deer hunting, preseason. The kid was clearly relieved to realize that he’d be able to get home before his folks. The prospect of pushing the ATV all the way home must have been daunting, with the likelihood of discipline if he’d been caught. It could hardly have worked out better—a helpful stranger, time in hand. Mulheisen managed to break through the boy’s chatter to ask if there was a road that went back into the bush other than through the Luck property.
“Hell, yes,” Travis told him. “That house back there? That’s the ol’ Sigmiller place. They all died off, years ago. There ain’t been nobody there for a coon’s age. You go through the yard, there’s a road winds back around the ol’ barn that’s all fallen in. It just goes on back there. Miles and miles. You used to could get all the way to the Manistee River on that road. But you don’t want to try it in your car, mister. There’s a couple trees down on it, plus some pretty deep mud holes. You need a Honda.” He nodded proudly at his little red vehicle.
