Dead Poor

by M. K. Coker

  He might be from a higher social strata than Nadine, but not a moral one.

  “You must be Ted Jorgenson’s heir.”

  Digges managed a sorrowful look. “Dear Uncle Ted. I’m just trying to do his memory proud. Make sure we’ve got good tenants here that won’t cause trouble for you.”

  Tenants who wouldn’t cause trouble for him, more like. She couldn’t imagine how this man shared even a drop of blood with the unpretentious Ted Jorgenson. Marek returned with the crime-scene tape, but Digges blocked the way, puffing out his nonexistent chest.

  “Hey, hey, hey. You aren’t putting that up there. There’s no crime here except that an airhead like you carries a badge. Your boss and I just came to an understanding. She shows up with the paperwork, and we do the work. You won’t have to lift a finger, though you look like that’s about all you’re good for.”

  Marek took a step then another, and Digges cursed him and moved back.

  While Marek applied the tape, Karen applied her tongue. “What we have, Mr. Digges, is murder.”

  That brought his head around. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Bunting. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard.”

  “Are you serious? He’s been murdered?”

  She wasn’t green enough to take Digges’s surprise at face value. “Where did you go after the recount last night?”

  “You want my alibi?” He fingered the knot of a tie that had probably cost more than Karen’s monthly pay. “I’m a respected businessman, not a killer. My wife has connections in the statehouse. And after this latest insult, you better believe I’ll be using them.”

  Though he might well have such connections, Karen wasn’t going to let him shake her. First Biester, now Digges, had threatened to take their complaints to a higher level. Took three strikes, not two, for an out, she hoped. “Just answer the question.”

  “Under protest.”

  “So noted.”

  “Very well. I stopped by here to see if any progress had been made on the evictions, which none had, and to start the process on several more. I then returned home to Sioux Falls. You can check with my wife, Michelle Bayton.” He said that as if it were supposed to mean something, and when he got nothing but blank faces, he shook his head sadly. “You really are out in the boonies. Baytons? Big-time real estate tycoons. We own millions, probably billions, in property in this state.”

  Anyone who needed to brag about their money hadn’t always had it. What was his story? She was willing to bet her bottom dollar that he’d married into that money. The only surprise was that he hadn’t taken the name Bayton, at least hyphenated.

  “What did you say to Bunting after the recount that made him turn white?” Marek asked.

  Digges blinked at her detective as if surprised to hear the dumb speak. As if only then remembering the piece of paper he held in his hand, he lifted it and slapped it against Marek’s chest. “Here. Read that. If you can.”

  Marek trapped the paper before it could fall then tilted his head down to read. It took him a second, if that, before he handed it back to Karen. She recognized the form, though it was a homemade version, not one issued by her office. Perfectly legal, even if it said as little as legally possible.

  Three Day Notice to Vacate.

  Bunting was being evicted from his trailer.

  Digges gave a satisfied nod at their silence. “I expect action on those prior evictions within the required window, Sheriff Mehaffey, or I will contact Judge Rudibaugh, who issued them, and let him deal with you. By the way, that means by tomorrow, since Friday was the third day, and Monday is the next official business day.”

  As threats went, it was a good one, but fortunately, he didn’t see her flinch. He’d turned to stalk his way back to his sleek, slick Benz, though his exit was marred by the sucking sounds of his loafers.

  “Looks like I’ve added one more thing to tomorrow’s agenda. Joy.” Karen stuffed the eviction notice on the dash of the Sub. “Why did I want this job again?”

  This time, Marek didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER 15

  Pulling up in front of her bungalow, Karen felt her spirits lift. During her quick shower earlier, her mind had been focused on the case, so she hadn’t really settled into what this place meant to her. Here, finally, was home. Her home for at least the next four years, assuming Digges didn’t get her impeached or whatever. Home for her, home for the Okerlunds for generations, home for now. Home for her daughter.

  Eyre was going to turn twenty-two in just another day. The same age Karen had been when Eyre was born. But Karen had given up the right to be called mother. Her daughter had been raised by a very good mother—a gracious and seriously smart mother who was a professor of English down in Vermilion. It had been her idea for Eyre to live with Karen after Eyre’s apartment was burned to the ground. Neither had expected to be so different from each other, and they were still treading cautiously.

  Still, after taking her temporary leave from a brooding Marek, Karen opened her front door with a bubble of happiness she hadn’t felt in a good long while. The smell of German pot roast, the same recipe that her mother had served on numerous weekends, scented the air with good memories. Eyre must have heated up leftovers.

  Karen stowed her gun and followed her nose into the kitchen. Only to stop short. The two young women sitting at the old oak table before untouched plates looked like sisters, not cousins. Their rounded faces were as long as possible. And their long brunette hair unadorned.

  That wasn’t right. The younger, only fourteen, was a member of the Eder Brethren. Mary Hannah had been baptized into the faith only the past spring and wore a bonnet and dress with a short cape as a badge of identity, much as Karen did her uniform.

  But the bonnet was gone.

  Had Mary Hannah abandoned her faith after little more than a month as a freshman at Reunion High? That would be a real barn-burner, razing right down to the ground the tentative ties that Karen was building with the Eder Brethren and its leader, her mother’s brother, Sander Mock. But when Karen saw the ice in Eyre’s Okerlund eyes and the downcast hazel of Mary Hannah’s, she knew something else was afoot.

  “What happened?” Karen demanded, food forgotten. “Why are you still here on a Saturday when you should be with your family, Mary Hannah? Is something wrong at home?”

  Mary Hannah grabbed a new plate and began filling it up. “No, they’re fine. Nothing happened. Please, eat. I had Eyre call Mr. Hahn to let my parents know that I would not return this weekend. We need to celebrate Eyre’s birthday tomorrow and your homecoming. I know it’s just pot roast, but...”

  Karen understood babbling to hide a hurt, as her mother had done, as Karen still did on occasion. “Mary Hannah, I appreciate any and all food that you choose to put before me. I’m a terrible cook, and you know it.” She took the proffered plate and set it down on the table but didn’t pull up a chair. “But I am responsible for you while you live here. I need to know what’s happened to you, to your bonnet.”

  Mary Hannah’s chin rose, a bit of spirit that Karen took in with secret pleasure, as the Mock women had never, despite their supposedly submissive beliefs, been meek and mild. “The Brethren do not speak of those who wrong them. It is of no import.”

  “No import?” Eyre pushed away her own plate. “After school yesterday, a boy named Sean snatched her bonnet off her head and stomped on it in the mud. Told her that she must be dirt poor, wearing the same clothes every day, never taking a bath. Said she was nothing but a ho to a bunch of randy little cowards.” Dots of color appeared on her cheeks. “I had to explain to Mary Hannah what a ho was.”

  With simple dignity, and not a little bewilderment, Mary Hannah said, “I am not a prostitute. Why would I ever wish to be? All I want to do is to bring children into the world. Why would this boy, who I barely know, accuse me of such a thing?” Her hand went to her head as if to search for a vital body part. “Why would he take and ruin my bonnet?”

 
“It wasn’t the first time he’s taunted her, either,” Eyre said darkly. “Always after school as she walks back home. He’s the coward, not her.”

  Karen closed her eyes. “And you said nothing, Mary Hannah? Have you told your father?”

  Sander Mock had experienced his own culture clash after being drafted into the Army during Vietnam, despite his religious stance against violence.

  “No, I don’t want to distress him. And... he might pull me out of school, and then I cannot be a midwife.” That clearly distressed her young cousin most of all. “Besides, Father said it would be hard sometimes. He told me not to judge all by one, that the one—and there’s always one—will try to make my life miserable, just because they can. And that’s what nonresistance is about. You pray for your enemies, you love them, and you forgive them.”

  And the sky was blue. It was that simple for the Brethren. But Karen’s mother had broken that cardinal rule by calling in the police—and she’d been placed under the ban. The Brethren didn’t have a mechanism to deal with evil. At least, not in this life.

  But Karen did. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Mary Hannah looked alarmed. “I don’t want you to put him in jail.”

  If only she could. “I won’t. Look, what would you do if that had happened at Eder?”

  She blinked. “Tell my parents.”

  “How do you think they’d handle it? Just tell you to forget it?”

  “Oh, no, they’d talk to the boy’s parents, and he’d be punished... but it’s not the same.”

  “Isn’t it? Consider me in loco parentis. Substitute parent.” Karen ignored Eyre’s flinch. She could be a parent to Mary Hannah, but not to her own daughter? Karen sighed inwardly. She went to the closet and retrieved a small chest that had belonged to her mother. She hadn’t opened the lid since she was a kid. And her father had always feared the contents would lead Hannah Mock Okerlund away from him.

  But they never had. All that she’d left Eder with was in that chest. The modest blue dress, looking no different in style from the one her namesake wore, lay on top. Removing that and the cape, Karen found the bonnet underneath, still stark white, not a bit yellowed. Why her mother had kept the clothes of her former life, despite her husband’s silent disapproval, Karen was never really sure. Had they been a security blanket, knowing that if things didn’t turn out, she could always return to the Eder, make her penance? Or were they a reminder of what she’d lost—or what she’d gained?

  Whatever the case, Karen didn’t think her mother would mind that the bonnet would at last return home to Eder. “Here you go, Mary Hannah. I don’t think your parents will notice the difference. After dinner, Mr. Hahn can drive you home.”

  Her young cousin took the bonnet as though it were a crown, with awe, with responsibility. “Thank you. I will treasure it. And I will bring my other bonnets with me so that the boy does not ruin this one.”

  “He won’t be ruining any more, regardless,” Karen told her. “Now, let’s all dig into this excellent pot roast before it goes cold. Waste not, want not.”

  By the time Karen went out to meet Marek at the Sub, she and the girls had laid waste to the roast. Marek looked a bit more substantial, as well, as if he’d re-centered himself with his supper. Mex-Mix, she guessed, from the faint lingering scent of green chile. A faint twinge of guilt surfaced that she hadn’t asked him over to partake of the roast, as she knew that Becca was over at Arne’s until Marek picked her up for the night. The arrangement suited all parties, even if that was never officially acknowledged. Karen opened her mouth to apologize then caught sight of Nikki, Marek’s sort-of significant other, heading out from the back of Marek’s bungalow toward her bluff-side home. So he’d had company. Good for him. At least his life was progressing. Hers? Not so much.

  “Where does Mindy live now?” Marek asked as he got into the Sub.

  Karen pulled away from the curb. “With her brother’s family near Fink. Jeff Hansen. He married Ann Schwartz and farms her father’s land. I don’t expect a warm welcome.”

  As they pulled up in front of the cheap modular home on a section line, Karen’s prognostication was proven true. She’d barely gotten out of the Sub when a man stepped in her path. Jeff had been a year ahead of her in school, while his sister, Mindy, had been three years ahead. A hard worker, Jeff wore grease-stained jeans and a torn flannel shirt.

  He re-seated his seed cap on his head. “You got something to say, say it to me, then get out. My sister don’t need any more grief from you.”

  Because she saw grief as well as anger, Karen tamped down on her own. She turned her head away to regain control and saw the faces behind the front window. Mindy and her kids... and Ann and her kids... all huddled together in little windbreaks of hurt. How did they all fit in that place? Just a cheap home on a concrete slab, it had no basement or second story. Why couldn’t they make those things homier? Her own bungalow, after all, was a Sears model, yet it looked like a home.

  “I don’t intend to give her any grief,” she told Jeff when she looked back. “I just have some questions for her about Bob Bunting.”

  He crossed his arms. “She had every right to support the man against you. If you think you can pin his murder on her, just for payback—”

  “Don’t go there,” Marek said with an uncharacteristic edge.

  Karen wasn’t sure who was more surprised by the interruption, her or Jeff. But she was even more surprised at Jeff Hansen’s reaction.

  He dropped his head and kicked at the gravel with a work boot that was on its last tread. “Sorry. I just... it eats away at me. I go from hating Cal to hating meth to hating me, that I couldn’t have seen it coming, couldn’t have helped Mindy keep the farm, but I can barely keep my own head above water. And Cal had mortgaged the farm to the hilt, supporting his habit, not his family.”

  He scuffed the gravel again. “Mindy... she’s messed up with the shame of it, the anger of it, and needed a target... and you Okerlunds ended up being in the crosshairs.” He raised his head, his eyes pleading. “Look, Mindy told me what happened last night. Let me answer your questions. My sister... well, she’s on a new med to keep her upright and out of the dumps, and it’s starting to work. She’s interviewing tomorrow for a job at that new grocery co-op that’s going to start up in Reunion. I don’t want to upset the apple cart. If she can get back on her feet, it’ll be the best thing for her, for her kids, and, well, for my sanity—and my marriage.” He put his hands into empty pockets. “I got no trouble helping family in trouble, happy to do so, but there comes a time...”

  When too many people in too little space would backfire, leaving them all scorched.

  “Fair enough.” Karen relaxed her shoulders, not realizing until then just how tense she’d been. “What we’re really after is the players at the recount and any motivation they might have had to kill Bunting. We’ve identified Alan Digges, Mindy, and Nadine Early as three of the five who were in Bunting’s corner. We need to know the other two: a young woman and what looked to be an older male relation, described as a big bruiser, perhaps a bro—”

  “That would be Kaylee Early and her big brother, Kyle.” The disgust in his voice rang clear. “You want to be looking for a motive for murder? Take that Dud-amic Duo. Kaylee’s half a brain short of full—some difficulty with her birth—and her brother is basically her pimp. He’s a dealer in whatever vice you care to indulge in. I’m surprised he isn’t on your radar. I told Mindy that if those two were backing Bunting, your victim was on the take, and she’d better get out or get taken down with him.”

  Karen mulled that. “Are the Earlys related to Jim Early, who married Nadine Kubicek?”

  “Cousins, I think, though they take after their mother, a Rezac. But Jim’s a good man. Dumb to fall for Nadine, yeah, but smart enough to kick her to the curb within the year—and run off to Mexico to make sure he wouldn’t get pulled into her nasty little games. Have you talked to her? She’s the sort who’d enjoy stuffing a
man’s mouth with her own shit.”

  Karen felt her own mouth fall open. “Where did you hear that detail?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “YRUN.”

  Great. So much for playing it straight, Nails. “Okay, I think that’s all we need to know.” Karen hesitated and hooked her thumbs into her belt. “I’m sorry about Mindy, her kids. I hated to kick them off the farm. Evictions are my least favorite thing to do, other than death notifications.”

  He shot an uneasy glance at the window then back. “Look, I know you served that eviction personally because that’s the way you Okerlunds operate. You don’t hand off the hard stuff. But Mindy? She took it as another slap. I’d appreciate it if you go through me if you’ve got more questions.”

  “Will do.” She started for the Sub then turned. “Oh... I’ve seen a large fifth wheel for sale in Reunion dirt cheap by Maggie Dietrich now that her husband’s gone. Just a thought. Looked structurally sound, and you could hook it up here without much difficulty.”

  Jeff pursed his lips then nodded. “Thanks for the tip.”

  Turning back, Karen risked a quick look at the window. The elder Bullard kid, the boy, gave her the finger. Almost, she let it go. Then she flashed him another gesture, a comeback learned on her last trip. The Vulcan salute. She prayed it would come true, for his sake, as well as hers—she didn’t want to see his name on an eviction notice or a court reporter’s docket.

  Live long and prosper.

  CHAPTER 16

  Back down bad-memory lane.

  Marek stood on the leaf-and-dirt-littered porch of the battered brick bungalow. Figured that the wayward Earlys would live in the same house where he’d spent his four long years in Valeska, a stone’s throw from the high school where he’d struggled to pass class after class in a gauntlet far more grueling than the gridiron where he’d found more success.