May Day (20 page)

I had a sinking
suspicion Mr. Poling was back at the party, but I knew there was no way I was going to stay and start lifting masks. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and go to the nursing home in the hopes that he was sleeping. I parked a block up from the Senior Sunset. I was right by the police station, but I knew where the head cat was tonight, and it made me cocky. I strapped on my flashlight and made my way to the one-story Sunset. I counted off windows until I saw what I thought was 11A and peeked in. Through the cracked shades I saw Curtis Poling wrapped in a hospital blanket and sleeping like a baby. Or a really old guy.

I rapped my knuckles on the glass and waited. Nothing. It occurred to me that he might wear a hearing aid during the day that he took out at night, or that he maybe just slept really hard. I tapped the glass again, this time with a pebble I picked off the ground. Curtis opened one eye and looked toward the door. I waved my arms and he glanced toward the window. He squinted his eyes, nodded his head, and was out the door.

I strolled over to the garden and waited, enjoying the moonlight and the sound of crickets. Residential Battle Lake went to bed early, even on Fridays. I was wondering about old people. There was a lot about them that I didn’t know. I had previously viewed them as a sort of wrinkly garnish: I saw them around and didn’t mind that they were there, I appreciated their decorative purpose, but I never really thought they had nutritional value. Here I was finding out they were as clever, horny, and inclined to party as the rest of us. It was a little reassuring and a little disturbing. Oh well, it gave me some hope for my future. If I couldn’t get laid again in what was left of my twenties, I still had another sixty or so years to work on it. Curtis was out in the blink of an eye, naked except for boxers and work boots. Given what I had seen tonight, I was grateful for the boxers.

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked.

He pulled a cigarette out from behind his ear and a lighter from his boot. “Nah. It’s darn near fifty degrees out here! I got the blood of an ice fisherman.” He sparked the lighter and held the flame to his smoke. I could see a flash of his vivid blue eyes in the temporary light. “I was wondering when you’d be back.”

“Sorry to wake you up, Mr. Poling. Why did you think I’d come back?”

“You got curious eyes, missy, and they didn’t look satisfied when you left. I suppose you got the right questions to ask this time?”

I did. “Jeff came to talk to you on Saturday. You told him to watch out for the Jorgensen land. Did he tell you about the Indian etchings he found that morning?”

Curtis smiled. “That he did, missy. And that’s when I told him he can’t build there, no matter what, no matter how. I told him that Mrs. Jorgensen never did want that land sold, and it’s because she knew what was on it. You find her will, you find out all about that. That land is about as sacred as it comes to the native people.”

“And when Kennie talked to you later that day, did you tell her that Jeff needed to find some different land in this area to build on?”

I think Curtis may have blushed at the mention of Kennie, but given what I knew about him, it was probably just a trick of the moon. “That woman can make the dead talk, I tell you.” He shook his head in disgust. “I told her that Jeff was smart enough to figure out the Jorgensen land wasn’t no good. She asked me what I knew about Skinvold’s acreage over by Glendalough Park, and I told her I knew about as much as she did. And that was the end of that.”

“Thank you, Mr. Poling. You’ve been very helpful.” My head was dancing. I knew Herbert Skinvold was selling a good-sized chunk of prairie on the north side of town. I had seen the flyer on the library bulletin board.

“I believe you’re going to find who killed that Wilson boy, missy.”

“I believe I am too, Mr. Poling.” I smiled at him, took one last whiff of his Old Spice and tobacco smoke, and walked back to my car.

Talking to Bev that morning and then stumbling into the geriatric hedonism fest had clarified some things. The first was that Jeff was about as decent as they come. I had never wanted to believe that he would have OK’ed building on the Jorgensen land after he found the petroglyphs, and Curtis had proved my faith justified. A visit to the Skinvold farm would verify that Jeff never had any intention of approving the Jorgenson purchase for Trillings and that Trillings was never going to buy the Jorgensen land, which meant Jeff’s death was unrelated to his archaeology work.

His murderer was clearly someone with a grudge, and my guess was that it was either Lartel, who was also blackmailing Karl, or Gary Wohnt, who maybe loved Kennie enough to murder the man who had done her wrong in high school and could win her love back in the present. I didn’t have all the pieces yet, though. I was hoping Herbert Skinvold could fill some in for me the next morning. What he couldn’t tell me, a travel agent could.

Before the sun had
fully risen on Saturday morning, I made a quick call to Ron’s machine telling him to hold the front page space for a last-minute article that revealed who Jeff’s killer was, and I hurried out to Skinvold’s. Based on the directions I picked up at Ben’s Bait on the way, the farm was close to Lartel’s house, which was also relatively close to the land over by Glendalough State Park that Skinvold was reportedly selling. That concentrated a lot of weirdness in one place, and I wondered how much time I had wasted barking up the wrong tree by focusing on the petroglyphs and the Jorgensen land.

When I turned west off 78, I found myself on a familiar dirt road. Blocking it were two pickup trucks, one pointing east and one pointing west. The drivers were holding a conversation that included leaning out their windows to make energetic one-armed gestures. I sat impatiently, knowing that it wouldn’t do any good to rush the road-exchange of farmers. After about four minutes, they waved at each other across the three-foot space between their vehicles and pulled forward in opposite directions. I drove through the middle and did the pointer-finger wave, avoiding eye contact. In my rearview mirror, I saw them back up to their original positions and begin conversing again.

I drove past Lartel’s and on to the Skinvold farm. Herbert Skinvold was a small-time dairy farmer, a dying breed. I knew he would be up bright and early; when animals are your business, there’s no such thing as time off. Sure enough, when I pulled into his bumpy, one-and-a-half mile driveway, I could see the barn lights in the dawn glow. I pulled up in front of the red building and inhaled the earthy smell of manure as I got out of my car. Before I knew it, three ratty dogs jumped at me and sniffed my crotch, and a mewling cat crawled into my tire well. I held my hands up so I didn’t get dog tongue germs and waded through the squirming bodies to the barn. I pulled the wooden door open and squeezed myself in while keeping the dogs out.

The interior was huge and stuffed with cows in stalls, some of them bawling but most of them eating hay and licking their snot with thick pink lizard tongues. A few looked at me with morose brown eyes, but most continued to contemplate their cowness and the far wall. The drone of machinery was pervasive, and I couldn’t see any humans.

“Mr. Skinvold?” I tried to stay equidistant from the rumps lining each side of the cement walkway. I wasn’t going to get kicked by a cow—it’d be a bad way to go.

Three cows up on my left, there was a black-and-white heifer pooping, and I was amazed to see the used food get carried away on a permanently turning belt housed in the trough behind the cow’s back legs. I wondered if I could get Tiger Pop to use one of those. I found a man I presumed to be Mr. Skinvold on the end of the row, hooking the shiniest metal tubes to the teats of a bored cow. Once on, they sucked her baby’s milk to a faraway place where it could be sanitized for human consumption.

I self-consciously adjusted my bra and made thanks that I hadn’t been born bovine. I also pledged to keep drinking soy milk and stop eating cheese. I wasn’t a big fan of the booger-eating poopers, but they deserved better than this.

I raised my voice to be heard over the humming of large machines and the muttering of cows. “Mr. Skinvold, I’m Mira James with the
Battle Lake Recall,
and I’d like to ask you a couple questions about the land you’re selling.”

The man glanced at me, nodded, and went back to what he was doing. He wore pinstriped Carhartt dungarees under a frayed denim jacket, knee-high green waders, and a feed cap with greasy salt-and-pepper hair curling up around the edges. I noticed the roughness and strength of his hands as he adjusted the suction tubes on the dangly cow boobs. I bet in the winter his hands got deep cracks from his hard, cold work. I turned my back to his cow molestation and feigned an interest in barn trusses.

“We can talk outside,” he yelled, then walked down the clean cement path that had led me to him. He even slapped a cow butt on the way. I cautiously followed him outside and was relieved at the noise reduction. Dog noses pushing between my legs quickly repelled my respite. I tried to pull my coat in front as a shield and wondered if I should consider douching. They were treating me like I was packing a Milk-Bone.

Herbert Skinvold spat on the ground. “What can I do ya for?” His brown eyes had pleasant crinkles around the corners, and his posture was relaxed.

“Like I said, I’m writing an article about Jeff Wilson for the
Recall
and was wondering about that land you’re selling over by Glendalough. I heard he looked at it on behalf of the company he was working for, Trillings Limited.”

“Damn shame about that boy. They know who killed him yet?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“Yes, ma’am, he was interested in that land. I got two-hundred-plus acres over there that I’m getting too old to farm. These cows keep me too busy, anyhow. Some of it’s flat farm land, been growing corn on it for years. The rest is woods and such. Part of it even touches on Blanche Lake. Right beautiful over there.”

“Did he say anything about not buying the Jorgensen land?”

“We didn’t talk specifically about that, but Ms. Rogers made mention that the Jorgensen land wasn’t going to work for what he had in mind. When we drove—”

“Kennie?”

“Yes, ma’am. Ms. Kennie Rogers, the mayor of Battle Lake. She and Jeff drove out here together. Then the three of us drove over to my land for sale. Spent a good three hours out there looking around. Jeff seemed pretty pleased when he left.”

“This was Sunday?”

“Sunday morning, bright and shiny. Jeff said he had to talk to his boss and tie up some loose ends but that my land was looking real favorable. Said he’d get back to me Tuesday. Of course, he wasn’t alive no more come Tuesday.”

“So you only had that one meeting with Jeff, and Kennie was there? You never heard from him before or after?”

“No, ma’am. George, down!” The black-and-white Springer-something cross continued to pump my leg, but I was too caught up in my thoughts to notice.

“Well, thank you, Mr. Skinvold. You’ve been very helpful. Can I call you if I have any more questions?”

“Sure you can. I got a phone in the barn, but sometimes you need to let it ring for a while before I hear it.” He smiled and tipped the corner of his feed cap.

“Will do. You have a good day.”

“You bet I will!” And he returned to the barn. I tried to shake my leg lover, but he had a good grip. I dragged him to my car, leaned over and pulled the kitty out of my wheel well, and peeled the dog off as I got inside. I closed the door and checked for wet spots on my pants. Give me an arrogant, aloof cat any day. I wondered how long a creature had to go without real sex before a stiff leg came across like a pinup. I hoped it took at least a year, because it was looking like I was in for a dry spell myself.

My next stop was Karl’s house. Skinvold had told me what I had expected. Jeff was no longer interested in the Jorgenson land at the time of his death. He had been killed because of jealousy, and I needed to drill Karl to find out more about the person who had called him earlier in the week impersonating a Trillings rep. That caller was Jeff’s killer. I was sure of it.

Karl’s house was a neat little clapboard two-story over by the Battle Lake Public School. I hoped he and his wife would be up this early. I drove by twice, parked out front, and got out. Karl’s Chevy pickup was in the driveway, and a light was on in what I figured was the kitchen. I had never actually been in Karl’s house before. We didn’t have that kind of friendship.

I walked up his orderly walk, taking in the absence of kids’ toys. Karl really seemed like the kind of guy who should have at least two kids. I’d have to ask him what was up with that. I pushed the doorbell and waited. Karl appeared promptly, wearing sweats and tennis shoes. His hair was tousled, but his eyes were bright. “Morning, Mira! Come on in. Can I get you coffee? Tea?”

I walked through the door he held open for me and looked around. It was exactly like I had expected—fancy country decorations on knickknack shelves, comfy flowered furniture, and plenty of doilies.

“Come into the kitchen.”

I followed him to the next room and found myself in Martha Stewart’s dreamland. Everything was blue, white, or blue-and-white checked. The few containers on the counter were lined up and clean, and the only dish to be seen was a coffee cup that had been scoured and was drying in the rack in the sink. I think I now knew what kind of wife Karl had.

“I hope I’m not waking you, Karl. Is your wife still asleep?”

“You betcha. She’s always been a night owl, and I’m the early riser. ‘Dear Abby’ says we can make it work, though.” He smiled. “What do you say to some coffee?

“I’d love some tea if you have it. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Karl kept his back to me while he busied himself with tea. “What’s that, Mira?”

“Trillings isn’t interested in the Jorgensen land. Jeff found some petroglyphs out there and wasn’t going to recommend building. He was looking into the Skinvold land.”

Karl turned to me. “I knew about Jeff’s interest in the Skinvold land. He told me that when he called last Sunday afternoon. But Mira, like I told you, a Trillings rep called on Wednesday to tell me to get the paperwork ready. Where are you getting your information?”

“Lots of places. How do you know it was really a Trillings rep? Couldn’t anyone have called and pretended to work for Trillings? Couldn’t Jeff’s killer, for example, have called?”

Karl got a concerned look in his eyes and sat across from me. He put his warm hand on mine. “Mira, I know you’re shook up by this. The whole town is, and you got a little closer to Jeff in the couple days he was here than the rest of us had a chance to. But I don’t think there is some big conspiracy here. Why would someone impersonate a Trillings representative? It would be a very short time before I’d call the company with questions about the sale. That lie wouldn’t hold up long, and what would be the point?”

I pulled my hand away stubbornly. “The point is that it would be a distraction from the real murderer’s motive. What did the rep sound like? Did he say anything unusual?”

Karl opened his mouth and closed it again. He looked out the window and then back at me, a look of parental resignation in his eyes. “He didn’t sound familiar, if that’s what you’re asking. He had a regular man’s voice, a little deeper than average, and he talked like his lips were tight, like he measured every word. Typical eastern accountant type.”

Tight lips and measured words. A perfect description of the local chief of police. “Did he give a name?”

“Yes, a Tim something or the other. Do you want me to go into work to get it for you?”

“No thanks, Karl. You could do me a favor and get a copy of Mrs. Jorgensen’s will, though. I have a bet to settle.”

“That’s not public information, Mira.”

“I just need a peek, Karl. I’ll stop by the bank in a couple hours. You’re a great help!” I kissed the balding top of his head and was out the door before he could argue.

I was home in seven minutes flat and on the phone to Trillings not long thereafter, glad I had gotten the number off the Internet. Too bad they were closed on a Saturday, though the robotic female voice on the machine encouraged me to try back Monday during regular business hours. I didn’t have that long.

I tapped my foot impatiently, then remembered the original “Call Trillings v.p.” note I had found in Jeff’s field book when I’d discovered it under my bed. I scrambled to my bedroom, found the tin I had stored the loose pages in, and whipped through them until I came up with the phone number. I dialed it immediately, hoping against hope that it was a direct line, or better yet, a cell number. Luck favored me. I had reached the Trillings vice president on his cell. When I explained who I was and why I was calling, he was understanding and said they were all saddened by Jeff’s death. He confirmed what I already knew, which was that no representative had called the First National Bank in Battle Lake since early April.

The company had only received one short note from Jeff since the time he arrived in Battle Lake. The vice president read the message Jeff had e-mailed one week ago today in lieu of the report he was supposed to send to Trillings. It said, “Jorgensen’s land won’t work—looking for other options in area. Have a great idea to make this work, but need a last bit of research. Expect report Monday.”

The next the company heard, Jeff was dead. The vice president and I exchanged sympathies, and I hung up and went to pet Tiger Pop. That usually helped me to concentrate. He purred as I stroked his calico fur and scratched at the base of his ears, and my head began to clear. I had already crossed Kennie off my list of suspects because she really had cared about Jeff. That left Lartel, on account of pure weirdness, and Gary Wohnt, due to jealousy. From Karl’s description of the Trillings rep impersonator’s voice, Wohnt was my number one candidate. But why pretend to work for Trillings and call Karl? Why not just murder Jeff? And why put his body in the library? That sounded like something purely irrational and creepy, AKA Lartel McManus.