She just stood there with her mouth open, staring at me as if I had just said the most preposterous thing ever uttered on the earth.
But I understood this reaction. Just as some people think they are better than everybody else because they’re descended from some Revolutionary War hero, or the king of England, so it must mean that they are somehow worse than everybody else if they are descended from horse thieves, indentured servants, and ax murderers. Which is silly, of course. Especially if you didn’t even know those people were your ancestors to begin with. So how can your status be elevated or lowered once you find it out? It was really silly, but a common reaction nonetheless.
“Look, Mrs. O’Shea, the only thing I’ve ever had going for me in this godforsaken existence that I call my life is that I have a great pedigree! I’ve got nothing else. I’ve got a two-timing husband, children who don’t respect me, a nonexistent career, and a mother who despises the ground I walk on. You will not take Konrad Nagel from me. Do I make myself clear?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Perfectly.”
“Now, you just take yourself right on back to your aunt’s house and stay there until it’s time for you to go back to your fancy little historical society,” she said. “We don’t need outsiders meddling in our affairs and rewriting history.”
“Even if it needs rewriting?” I asked.
The next thing I knew her fist had slammed square in my eye and I was looking at the water-stained ceiling from flat on my back.
Thirteen
“I can’t believe that bitch hit you!” Aunt Sissy said. She handed me a steak. “Here, put this on your eye.”
“I will not!” I said. “That’s gross. You put a dead carcass on your eye. Get me some ice.”
“Well, aren’t we in a bad mood,” Aunt Sissy said. She proceeded to get me some ice out of her freezer and place it in a Ziploc bag.
“I just got punched in the eye and now you’re trying to put a dead cow on my face. Why wouldn’t I be in a bad mood?” I laid the ice next to my eye and nearly screamed, it hurt so bad.
Uncle Joe came into the kitchen about that time, walked over to the gun case, and got out his shotgun. He came back into the kitchen and loaded it. “Uncle Joe, she just hit me, that’s all.”
“Who hit you?” he said. When he looked up he did a double take. “What the hell happened to your eye?”
“Roberta Flagg punched her,” Aunt Sissy said. “Can you believe it? That woman sure takes her genealogy seriously.”
I sighed with relief. The gun was not for Roberta. “Uncle Joe, why are you getting out your twelve-gauge?”
“Found another … well, what’s left of another animal,” he said.
“So you’re going to shoot it?” I asked.
“No, we think it might be a wolf that’s killing the livestock.”
“A wolf!” I screeched. “No!”
Uncle Joe and Aunt Sissy gave me pretty much identical stares of disbelief. Like I had lost my mind, along with my eyesight and the teeny-weeny trace of beauty I’d had to begin with. “It can’t be a wolf.”
“Why not?” Uncle Joe asked.
“Th-they don’t come this far south. National Geographic said so.”
Uncle Joe waved a hand at me. “Torie, I don’t think National Geographic has ever done a special on Minnesota gray wolves,” he said. “But I can tell you, the wolves have been moving farther and farther south lately. They’re getting much bolder.”
“Well, what do you expect?” I asked before I could stop myself. “I mean, you’re dangling their food source out in front of them and then getting mad when they eat it. How are they supposed to know the difference? They’re just dumb animals, right?”
“Well, then, if it’s so dumb, it won’t mind when I put this barrel between its eyes and pull the trigger, now will it?”
I gasped. “Uncle Joseph!”
“You just keep your nose out of stuff,” he said. “Before somebody punches it, too.”
“Okay, that’s it,” I said. “I’m leaving.”
“You will do no such thing,” Aunt Sissy said.
“The hell I won’t,” I said. “You people are crazy. You asked me up here to read … to read this, this morbid diary about a girl who dies in a fire and a minister who’s the founder of the city who killed his own son and people who kill animals for just being who they are. You just remember something, Uncle Joe. We are the visitors here. Not the wolves.”
With that, I threw the bag of ice in the sink and stormed upstairs to start packing. I yanked my suitcase down out of the top of the guest closet and tossed it on the bed. I pulled my clothes out of the dresser—stopping to gawk at the big black eye that I now sported—and shoved them in the suitcase however I could get them to fit. It was only a moment and Aunt Sissy was standing in the doorway.
“Torie,” she said.
I ignored her.
“Torie!”
“What?”
“Your Uncle Joe’s only trying to protect what is his. Please, don’t go.”
“No, I’m going. I have never felt so unwelcome in my whole life, and it has nothing to do with you. I’m clashing with everybody all over the place. It’s time for me to leave,” I said.
She was quiet a moment while I tried to get my clothes in the suitcase. Somehow, they always fit when I’m leaving for a trip, but they never fit going home. “What did you mean by a minister who was the founder of the city and all that?”
I stopped for a minute and put a hand on my hip. “Anna’s parson was none other than the founder of this city. Konrad Nagel,” I said.
She shook her head and laughed. “Thus the black eye by his esteemed descendant, Roberta Flagg.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I can’t believe you didn’t hit her back,” she said and laughed again.
“Well, I almost did, but then I realized that my stepfather wasn’t the sheriff here. I’m an outsider. You know, somebody who comes along and rewrites history and wants to save the wolves! Y’all would probably string me up for sure. Throw the book at me and whatever else you could find,” I said. “Besides, she was already out the door before I could get up off of the floor.”
Aunt Sissy didn’t say anything for the longest time while I struggled with shoving my dirty socks in a small trash bag. I exhaled loudly. “I can’t believe after you read that diary … you know those wolves are probably hers. They’re probably the descendants of the very wolves that Anna listened to night after night. And I just don’t believe your attitude about it,” I said.
“Are you done freaking out?” Aunt Sissy asked.
“I’m done freaking out unless somebody actually shoots one of them. Then you’re going to see me all freaked out again. So, I have to leave before it comes to that, because I don’t think I’ll ever look at my Uncle Joe the same way again.”
“I’ve never known you to quit anything in your life,” Aunt Sissy said.
“What? What is that supposed to mean? Have you looked at my eye?”
“Can’t help but see it. It sticks out farther than your forehead,” she said.
I crossed my arms and did my best to look menacing with a big purple hunk of flesh bulging below my brow.
“You can’t leave. You can’t leave until you find out everything,” she said.
“I have found out everything! Isaac Nagel was killed by his psycho father, the founder of the city—a hero—because he was in love with a teenage Swedish girl who never harmed anybody. Then she died in a fire, his baby died in a fire, they killed the wolves. Jesus Christ, Aunt Sissy … I found the truth. I found everything. There is nothing left to find.”
“Have you been to the cemetery?” she asked.
“What? What cemetery?”
“The Lutheran cemetery. You go there and tell me if you’ve discovered everything,” she said.
“What?”
Aunt Sissy never hesitated as she walked out of the guest room.
“What is that supp
osed to mean?” I called out after her.
She didn’t answer. I went after her.
“Aunt Sissy!”
She turned around halfway down the steps. “What?”
“He can’t kill the wolf. Not while I’m here, at least. If you want me to stay, he has to promise not to kill that wolf,” I said.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll talk to him. But you have to go to the cemetery.”
“Fine,” I said.
It was at that moment that I suddenly realized how much Aunt Sissy reminded me of my boss, Sylvia. Aunt Sissy knew what was in the cemetery already. She knew what I would find, but instead of telling me, she wanted me to go out and find it for myself. I was just a young whippersnapper, after all.
* * *
I pulled the truck into the parking lot of the Lutheran cemetery in the middle of town. I jumped out and headed through the rusty wrought-iron gates that were connected to the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the entire cemetery. I love old cemeteries. Especially ones with the cool art. In St. Louis the Bellefontaine and Calvary cemeteries have the coolest cemetery art, with large marble statues of angels and the Virgin Mary. And there are some graves that even have life-sized statues of the people that are buried beneath. Kind of creepy, but still cool.
This cemetery had some great art. I passed a statue of an angel bent low and mourning the dead. One angel in the next row was poised, one arm stretched high toward heaven, as if to take flight. Of course, it was the late Victorians who really went all out. Today we could afford the same artwork, but we just don’t do it. Prior to about 1880, it was just as rare to find that kind of extravagant artwork as it is today.
As I walked along, I couldn’t help but wonder where they buried the dead now. This cemetery was full, looked like it had been full for at least twenty years. I passed by a huge tree in the middle of the cemetery and it made me stop. Anna’s words echoed through my head.
As I stand on sacred ground, I vow to thee that we will be together. Soon.
I shivered as I made my way to the older part of the cemetery. There, about ten rows from the last row, was a gigantic monument. It was at least five feet tall. The inscription read:
KONRAD VILHELM NAGEL
19 Sept. 1808–8 Jan. 1859
Beloved father, leader, minister
He has gone home to be with the Lord
There was a blank space between Nagel’s grave and the next one. In a cemetery that was packed full, that sort of bothered me. I kept looking around and I found the graves of Karl Bloomquist and his wife, Brigitta. Karl’s was to the left of Brigitta’s, and his tombstone read that he had died in 1875, at the age of fifty-seven. Brigitta’s, of course, read exactly as the death record had read.
And then, all the way against the fence, was Anna’s. It did not say beloved daughter or beloved sister. It simply gave her dates, and that was it. Then, next to hers, was Isaac Nagel’s. “Oh my gosh,” I said out loud. I wasn’t expecting him to be buried next to her. As far as I could tell, everybody who had been involved in this scenario was against them being together. To put them together in death was just touching. Albeit morbidly sad, but still touching.
And if you love me as you have professed all these long winter months, then say that you will be my wife.
Isaac Nagel’s tombstone read:
ISAAC KONRAD NAGEL
20 June 1840–10 Jan. 1859
The Lord forgives all
Oh, jeez. I couldn’t take much more of this. It was so sad that I could barely stand it anymore. I was ready to go home and forget about Anna Bloomquist and Isaac Nagel and their heartrending story.
Yes, my love. Yes.
And their baby.
Where was little Emelie’s tombstone? Most of the time, when a baby and its mother died within a few days of each other, both names went on the same tombstone. Or children were buried together. For instance, my great-grandfather had three stillborns throughout his life, and when he was older and had the money, he bought one tombstone with the names of all three on it. It was not uncommon. It also wasn’t uncommon for infants to go without tombstones at all. But since Emelie had died within a few days of her mother, I would have thought her name would have been inscribed on the same stone.
But her name was nowhere on Anna’s stone.
I spent the next two hours combing every row of graves, looking for Emelie Bloomquist’s stone. It was nowhere.
I had a headache about the size of Montana and a queasy stomach, but I knocked on the door of the church office anyway. Lisa answered the door and gasped when she saw my eye. “Oh, Lord,” she said. “I heard about it, but I didn’t know it was that bad.”
“What?”
“I heard that Roberta decked you over at the grocery,” she said. “I had no idea she could hit like that.”
“Well, thank you very much,” I said.
“Come on in,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“Do you have a plot of the cemetery? You know, something that tells who’s buried where,” I said.
“Sure,” she answered. “Why?”
“Well, there’s a baby that died with her mother and she doesn’t have a marker,” I said. “So, I just wanted to see if she was anywhere on the plot.”
“Sure thing,” she said. She pulled out a big book that had the graveyard sectioned off into ten areas. “You know, I get genealogists in here all the time. They always seem to be out-of-towners.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. It’s like nobody here cares who the heck they are. It’s always the ones who move away and then somehow glamorize their ‘prairie frontier’ roots,” she said. “As if they’re going to find a life like Little House on the Prairie.”
“Every person who moved out here was living their own version of Little House on the Prairie,” I said.
“Whatever. You family history nuts are weird.”
“Yes, that’s me. The nut that fell off of the family tree.” I looked at the book and went through it section by section. There was no plot of land assigned to Emelie Bloomquist. Or even an Emelie Nagel.
“You know, a lot of people just buried their family on their land,” Lisa said.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve come across that a few times. That’s terrible for a genealogist.”
“I bet.”
I looked through the book some more and decided to check out that blank space next to Konrad Nagel. The name Isaac Nagel had been written in, and then a line had been drawn through his name. That was peculiar. I don’t think I’ve ever come across anything like that before. “What does this mean?” I asked. “There’s a line through his name.”
“Oh, well, I’m not sure how they do it in all cemeteries, but in this one, it means that the body was moved.”
“Moved?”
“Buried somewhere else. See, there’s a few people … right there’s one,” she said, and pointed to another name, “whose families moved their loved ones for whatever reason.”
Indeed, there were a few of them throughout the cemetery that had their names crossed out. Isaac Nagel had originally been buried next to his father and then he was moved next to Anna Bloomquist. So who had moved him? And when had he been moved?
“You wouldn’t happen to have any Tylenol or Advil?” I asked.
She opened her desk and tossed a bottle at me. “Water fountain’s around the corner.”
“Thanks,” I said. I went to the water fountain and took the pills. It’s always a miracle that I don’t choke on the pills when I take them with water from a fountain. I can never figure out how to put the pills in my mouth, lean forward to get the water, and keep the pills in the back of my throat.
When I came around the corner, I smiled and waved. “Thanks, Lisa.”
“Anytime,” she said.
I stepped back outside and stood there for a moment. Then something struck me. The dates on the tombstones. I ran through the cemetery to Konrad Nagel’s grave. He ha
d died January 8, 1859. Then I ran to the back of the cemetery and found Isaac’s. He had died January 10, 1859. There was no way that Konrad Nagel could have killed Anna’s lover and his only son. Konrad had been killed two days before Isaac.
So who killed Konrad?
And who killed Isaac?
I was going to need more than Advil for my head.
Fourteen
Time had gotten away from me. By the time I pulled up in front of the marina, I expected to find Rudy and Colin sitting outside with their fishing gear in their hands and scowls on their faces. Instead, I found an ambulance, a sheriff’s car, and a coroner. I had barely stopped the truck when I threw the door open and jumped out. I ran inside the marina as fast as I could, heart thudding with an adrenaline boost.
“Torie,” Rudy said and grabbed me by the arm. “Am I glad to see you.”
“What is going on?”
“What happened to your eye?” he asked.
“Oh, Roberta punched me.”
He just stared at me for a minute and then he shook his head. He looked as if he’d eaten something that didn’t agree with him. As if he were ready to puke at any moment. “Somebody killed Brian Bloomquist.”
“What?” I asked. “Why? How?”
Rudy seemed to be a little pasty, too. “I don’t know why, but the how … Seems to be a knife in the jugular.”
I gasped. “Oh, no,” I said, and covered my mouth.
“That’s not the worst of it,” he said and hugged me.
“What? What else could be worse?” Suddenly I realized that Colin was nowhere around. “Oh, no. Not Colin.” All I could think about was my mother’s happiness shattering into a million pieces. She’d spent so many years alone and all of a sudden she had found this man who made her really happy, and then I had to take him to Minnesota and get him killed.
“Colin’s fine,” Rudy said. “Well, sort of.”
“What, Rudy? What?”
In Sheep's Clothing Page 10
