In Sheep's Clothing

by Rett MacPherson

  “No, just a little late.”

  “So, I hear they’ve let your stepfather out of jail,” Mayor Hujinak said to me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Must be a relief.”

  “Yes, although I never thought for a moment that he was guilty,” I said.

  “Nah, me neither. Didn’t make any sense. Hope it didn’t inconvenience you any.”

  “Well, it may have traumatized him to the point that he may never fish again,” I said.

  “Oh, now that would be an inconvenience,” he said and laughed. He gestured to a few chairs, hiked his pants legs up, and sat back on the corner of his desk. Aunt Sissy and I sat in the worn, but comfortable, leather chairs. I couldn’t help but think it was a far cry better than the lawn chairs at the sheriff’s office. “So, what can I do you for?”

  My grandpa Keith always rearranged the words to that phrase, too. I smiled and scratched my head. Just what was it I had come here to discuss? I couldn’t remember, suddenly. My mind was reeling so much with all of the Bloomquist information that I had found in the past two days that I could barely coordinate my thoughts. “Oh, yes … your parents bought the house, my aunt’s house, in 1928?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” he said and crossed his arms. A lot of people are a little unnerved if you start spouting facts about their family, especially if they don’t know you from Adam. “What about it?”

  “Well, my aunt has asked me to find out the history of her house and her land, and so I thought I would ask you a few questions about that, if you don’t mind.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “Were you born there?”

  “Yes, I was born in 1932,” he said.

  “What do you remember the most about the house?”

  “I remember everything. It was the only house I ever knew until I joined the Navy. Then I came home and married my high school sweetheart and we moved into a house of our own over on the river. We lived there about fifteen years and then bought a house here in town,” he said. “But I remember how my bedroom closet sloped at an angle. And I remember this one squeaky floorboard in the hallway that would wake my parents up, so when I got old enough to go sneaking out of the house, I had to go out my bedroom window, rather than out the front door! Me and my brother Clive used to keep a rope under our mattresses and climb down. Problem was, Mom kept a rose garden planted there and our legs would get all scratched up from the thorns.”

  I laughed and made a mental note to plant rosebushes under Rachel’s bedroom window once I got home. Rose thorns might not have been enough to discourage Mayor Hujinak, but my daughter hated pain of any kind, and so the roses would probably do wonders for discouraging her from a middle of the night rendezvous.

  “Do you ever remember hearing any stories about the people or the families that lived there before you?”

  “Well, my parents bought the house from old Wendell Reed, died back in the fifties. I remember him because he owned a big cattle farm and used to bring us a side of beef for Christmas. Every year until he died.”

  I smiled at Wendell Reed’s generosity. That side of beef was probably a lifesaver during the Depression years.

  “I don’t know anything else about any of the people who lived there before us. Other than that there were some things down in the cellar that were supposed to have belonged to somebody who had lived there. I think there was an old butter churn, some books or papers, an anvil, I dunno, just a whole score of things.”

  “Why do you think those items were left in the cellar?”

  “Well, my dad seemed to think that nobody else had realized they were down there, since the cellar had been damaged during a fire or something. Since there were so many of us, we needed every spare inch we could get. Dad thought we were the first ones to even go in the cellar since the stuff was left there,” he said. “So Dad sort of gathered it all up and stuck it in a corner. I think he felt funny about it.”

  “Did he know about the girl who had died in the cellar?” I asked.

  The mayor gave me a peculiar expression, and I wasn’t sure how to read it. He was either surprised that I knew about her or he didn’t know the story and was surprised to find it out from a stranger. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and regarded me cautiously. “Yes, we all heard the story that there was a girl who had died in a fire. In fact, my older brother used that story to scare the holy hell out of me on dark and stormy nights. Claimed he could hear her down there crying and begging to be let out.”

  “Let out? Like she had been deliberately locked in?”

  “Well, that’s what my brother said, anyway. Said she had been locked in, and so to this day she was still trying to get somebody to let her out.” He shivered. “Still gets me sometimes.”

  “Did you ever hear her?”

  “Oh, Mrs. O’Shea, you don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”

  “Well, no. I was just wondering if you ever heard anything when you were a child. You know, children hear things that adults don’t,” I said.

  “Yes, because they’re listening,” he said. “Adults close their ears to things that children don’t. I really wish we could keep that child’s perspective as we grow older. I don’t think we’d make as many mistakes.”

  I smiled for a moment. My aunt Sissy agreed with his statement and it was awkward for a moment.

  “Well? Did you?” I ventured.

  “Did I what?” he asked.

  “Ever hear her?”

  He took a deep breath and with what seemed like complete frustration nodded his head. “Yes, I heard her. But now that I’m older, I think it was just my sister down the hall crying because Ned Stevenson ran off with Louise Markham.”

  “Well, that’ll do it,” Aunt Sissy said.

  “Funny how all you need is time for the unexplainable to become glaringly obvious,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Aunt Sissy asked.

  “When I was ten, I would have sworn it was the girl in the cellar crying. Now that I’m seventy, I’ve convinced myself it was my sister.” He reflected on something for a moment and then he spoke again. “Is that what this is all about? The girl who died in the fire?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “She is the most colorful part of the history of that place. You know anything else that you can tell me?”

  “Nah,” he said.

  “So, why did the property stand empty so long? I mean, why wasn’t it sold right after your parents died? It stood empty for more than ten years,” I said.

  “You know,” he said. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, and held up my hands. I firmly believe that you have to pick your battles, and there was no point in ticking off the mayor.

  “But,” he said, and sighed, “it’s not like you can’t find that out from any number of townsfolk, so I’d rather go ahead and tell you so that at least you’re getting the right story.”

  Aunt Sissy looked at me and raised her eyebrows.

  “It’s nothing more than we couldn’t decide what to do with it. None of us really wanted it. By the time our parents died, we had all already married and bought houses of our own, except my brother, who became a priest. At the same time, we all felt entirely too guilty about selling it. It was our childhood home, after all. Finally, one year at Christmas we decided that we had to sell it and divide the profit between us,” he said. “No conspiracy. Simple as that.”

  “Well, thank you, Mayor,” I said.

  “My pleasure,” he said. “When are you planning on going home?”

  “Well, I’m leaving early next week. My stepfather may have to stick around a little longer,” I answered.

  “Oh, probably not. Even though the sheriff may not know who killed Brian Bloomquist, I think he’s fairly convinced that your stepfather didn’t,” he said.

  “Oh, that’s encouraging,” I said. I looked at Aunt Sissy. “He must have found some forensics that pointed in a different direction.”


  “Yes,” Aunt Sissy agreed. “But I’ll tell you, I’m not very happy about having a brutal murder like that committed not ten miles from my house.”

  “Don’t you worry, Sissy Morgan. It’s not like we got a serial killer on the loose,” Mayor Tom said. “You’re perfectly safe.”

  As we got to his office door, the mayor said, “Oh, Sissy. You know, some time in the fifties, when Mom got her Deepfreeze, Dad just boarded up that cellar. Never went in it again. Have you been able to get down in there? It should have been pretty much as we left it. Those things might still be in there.”

  “When the Olsons renovated the place, they opened the cellar. They put whatever was in there up in the attic,” she said.

  “So … what was in there?” he asked.

  “Like you said, an anvil, some papers, some of it nice, some of it junk.”

  “Isn’t that something?” he said. “Well, ladies. Have a nice evening.”

  “We will,” Aunt Sissy said.

  Of course, the only thing I could think about as we left the mayor’s office was the fact that we actually had to feed Colin, after he had been locked up for twenty-four hours. I didn’t think that Aunt Sissy had enough food in her house for such an event. Well, that and the fact that Mayor Tom Hujinak had said that he’d heard the ghost of Anna Bloomquist. That would certainly make me look at Aunt Sissy’s house in a different light.

  Twenty

  “Hey, jailbird,” I said to Colin.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Can you refrain from the jokes? I’m pretty traumatized.”

  Colin and Rudy were seated on opposite ends of the table, heads down, tearing into my Aunt Sissy’s homemade bread and chili as if this would be the last meal they would eat for a week. Rudy looked up long enough to wink at me and went back to eating.

  “There’s macaroni if anybody wants mac to go with their chili,” Aunt Sissy said.

  Colin looked up. “Okay,” he said.

  “Me, too,” said Rudy. “Good thing I don’t live on a farm, Torie. I am so hungry. And so sore. I think I could just go to bed right now.”

  “Uncle Joe worked you hard, eh?”

  He gave me the look that said I had no idea just how hard he had been worked. I pulled out a chair and sat down next to Colin. “So? Did you talk to my mother?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “She’s relieved, although I think a little irritated at her husband’s stupidity.”

  “Yeah, well, join the club. She’s irritated with me for my little black cloud that follows me everywhere,” I said. “Hardly my fault, but when she’s upset there’s no convincing her otherwise.”

  He said nothing.

  “Any news? Have they got a suspect?”

  He shook his head and shoveled in another heaping spoonful of chili. Aunt Sissy put the macaroni on to boil and in general went about making noise in the kitchen and acting busy. “How the hell am I supposed to know? And I don’t care,” he said.

  “Excuse me for asking,” I said.

  “I just wanna go home,” he said. “No offense, Sissy.”

  “None taken,” she answered.

  “I haven’t seen that much blood in a few years,” he said. “Wasn’t expecting it. Ticks me off that I had to see it. Angers me that somebody is dead. Irritates the hell out of me that I had to ask…”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.”

  I smiled. “You going to thank me?”

  He made some positively primeval grunting sound and took another bite of chili. I sat back and folded my arms, cocked my head, and stared at him.

  “Good Lord, Colin,” Rudy said. “Thank her and get it over with or you will never be able to ride home with her.”

  “I’m going to fly home, thank you very much.”

  “Colin, for crying out loud. She got you out of jail,” Rudy said.

  “I’d rather die a slow death,” Colin said.

  “I’m sure that can be arranged,” I said.

  Colin just kept chewing and staring at his bowl. Finally, when it was obvious that I wasn’t going to move or stop staring at him until he said what I wanted to hear, he put his spoon down and looked at me. “Okay, the whole 911 thing was brilliant. There. Happy?”

  “Jeez, I liked you better when you thought you were going to jail,” I said. “Is that all you have to say to me? You asked me to think of a way to get you out of jail, and I did.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and looked up at Rudy. “You tell anybody in New Kassel what just transpired here and I’ll throw your butt in jail.”

  Rudy held his hands up and tried to stifle a laugh. “My lips are sealed,” he said.

  “Hey, don’t mention it, Pops,” I said. “I’d do it for anybody who groveled enough.”

  With that I stood up and got a bowl down out of the cabinet and waited for the macaroni to become al dente. Aunt Sissy smiled at me, but otherwise the room was quiet, with only the sounds of spoons clanking on bowls to break the silence.

  The chili-mac was delicious, like everything to come out of Sissy Morgan’s kitchen. Rudy did exactly as he said he was going to and went off to bed. Colin retired to the living room to watch ESPN or Fox Sports, I’m not sure which.

  “So, who do you think killed Brian Bloomquist?” Aunt Sissy said.

  “Lord, I wouldn’t have a clue,” I said. “I don’t know anything about him nor do I begin to know who his enemies are. Or were. Maybe his wife was having an affair and her lover killed him. I honestly don’t know.”

  She stretched and stifled a yawn. “Think I’m going to go take a nice hot bath,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I think I’m going to go and look over the diary again and all the papers I made copies of. Just in case I missed something.”

  “All right.”

  “Is there someplace I can read so I won’t bother Rudy?”

  “Yeah, you can either go to the study and read or you can always come down and share the family room with your stepfather.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Gee, tough decision.”

  I scooted my chair in to the table and took the back stairs up to my room. Rudy was so zonked, he never even flinched when I turned on the light to gather up the papers. I pulled the covers up over his shoulders and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

  The study was just in the next room. I opened the window a few inches and sat down at the big cherry desk. A photograph of Aunt Sissy and Uncle Joe in an old silver frame sat on one side. Looked like an engagement picture. And then a family portrait, taken just a few years ago, sat next to that. I knew the picture was fairly recent because I remembered receiving a wallet-size in my Christmas card.

  I scattered the papers out and started scanning them. I read the article on Sven Bloomquist that I had copied that day in the grocery–post office when Roberta Flagg blacked my eye. The article was all about how Sven had made himself a gentleman out of very humble beginnings, and, of course, it talked about the mill that he owned and operated. Then the article touched briefly on his wife’s family. The humble beginnings that the article alluded to were indeed, if true, quite humble. It said that Sven’s parents were both born in Sweden and immigrated here in the 1840s, right after they were married. They arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs, a bag of seeds, and a few personal items. The family moved to Olin, where Sven’s father sold a silver pitcher to purchase the land and build a house, only to suffer tragedy a few years later when his wife and daughter died in a fire that consumed the entire house.

  The article went on to say that, after the fire, Karl was never the same and that his relationship with Sven became strained. Sven went out on his own with nothing. He was taken in by a family in Darby City, where he lived for a few years and worked as a laborer.

  I skipped over the next few paragraphs because I have no interest in business ventures and such. Suffice it to say he bought a little land at a time and just kept adding on. Then he started his mill on land next to his father’s property; the article
claimed Sven had chosen that piece of property so that he could be near his ailing father and try to make amends. It also speculated that it was possible that Sven knew he would inherit his father’s land, even though their relationship was rocky, and so he knew that eventually he would own a large portion of land on the river. Sure enough, when Karl died, he left the property to Sven.

  I was a little disappointed. What had I thought? That the article was going to come out and say that Sven had eventually taken in his niece because her grandfather either didn’t know she was alive or knew and refused to? Is that what I had expected? I guess it was, because my disappointment was almost palpable.

  A cool breeze floated in through the window, carrying with it the smell of pine and dew and oxygen. It ruffled my papers and made me want to lie on the damp grass beneath the stars and pretend that I knew all the answers to all the questions of the universe. Of course, in my carefully planned fantasy, I would be lying on damp grass that housed no ticks.

  I took a deep breath and picked up the pages that constituted Anna Bloomquist’s diary. I scanned through the last quarter of the manuscript. Nothing really jumped out at me. It was obvious she was worried about her well-being. Statements like: A chill washed through me this morning as I milked the cows. As if somebody was watching me. As if something dreadful was about to happen.

  Was she just paranoid? Was the fire an accident? And if it wasn’t an accident, then she really wasn’t all that paranoid, was she? But what would give it away? Was it merely a feeling, or was her subconcious actually picking up little innuendos and changes of behavior in people that she knew? Judging by the things that she had written, her mother became more withdrawn and quiet. She refused to be seen in public, which could have had something to do with the fact that her daughter had conceived and delivered a baby out of wedlock. But still, the diary read almost as if Brigitta was afraid of her own shadow. Not just ashamed.