Poison Heart (9 page)

CHAPTER 10

The nurse had left Beatrice sitting in her wheelchair in the hallway by the door to her room. She guessed it was the equivalent to the front stoop. She was supposed to make pleasant conversation with everyone who wandered by.

There were many things Beatrice didn’t care for about this nursing home. But her pet peeve was all the senile people. How could one keep up one’s brainpower with such a low level of intellectual activity going on around one?

She looked up when she heard someone coming down the hall. Walter’s wife, the woman with frizzy blond hair, approached her. Her feet slapped the floor as she walked. What was she doing in the nursing home now that Walter had died?

The woman stopped in front of Beatrice’s wheelchair.

“Are you going to play bingo?” she asked.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“I’m Patty Jo.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Beatrice.”

Patty Jo looked her over as she sat in the wheelchair. “Why are you here?”

Beatrice told her, ashamed of the way her body had let her down.

Patty Jo tilted her head toward the community room, where people were getting ready for the afternoon bingo game. “What else have you got to do?”

“Not much. I’d like to do a crossword puzzle.”

“You’re good at those?”

“Yes. At least I used to be,” Beatrice added, “before.”

Patty Jo started pushing Beatrice’s wheelchair down the hall. “Bingo’ll be a good warm-up for you. Then you can move on to the crossword when it’s done.”

Beatrice decided not to argue. One game of bingo wouldn’t hurt.

Patty Jo pushed her wheelchair up to one of the long tables and sat down next to her. All the old, slumped people around them said hi. Beatrice gave a general nod to the table.

A card was placed in front of her and then the woman at the front of the room started calling out the squares. “B-fourteen . . . N-six.” Beatrice found it harder than she might have imagined to cover the squares that she had before the next one was called. Twice Patty Jo leaned over and pointed out one that she had missed. Beatrice didn’t seem to be able to notice the squares on the left side of her card. She had to force herself to look all the way over there.

How stupid she felt that bingo had become a difficult game for her. She was relieved when an older gentleman at her table waved his hand in the air and rasped out, “Bingo.”

While they were handing out new cards, Patty Jo said, “I play bingo at the casino in Red Wing. It’s only about a half an hour away. You see some real action there. I try to get up there a couple of times a week.”

“Do you make any money?” Beatrice had never been to a casino in her life.

“Sometimes. Had a streak of bad luck lately.”

They started the next card, and Beatrice focused as hard as she could. She started on the left side of the card, and that seemed to help her see those squares. When bingo was called, she was one square away from it herself.

“Condolences on your husband’s death,” Beatrice said to Patty Jo as the next cards were distributed.

“Yes, it was sad. But Walter was ready to go.”

“He wasn’t in very good shape, was he?”

Patty Jo shook her head.

“Why are you still coming here?”

Patty Jo smiled. “I like to play bingo.”

By the end of the hour, Beatrice was exhausted. She felt as though she had never worked so hard, even playing bridge for an afternoon with life masters. Patty Jo pushed her back to her room.

“Thanks,” Beatrice said.

“You got the hang of it.”

Without saying anything more, Patty Jo left her sitting in her wheelchair. Beatrice wanted to crawl into bed, although it wasn’t even four in the afternoon. Then Patty Jo appeared in front of her and put a newspaper and a pencil into her lap. “The crossword.”

Patty Jo looked at the balance in the checkbook. Her lawyer told her that it would take a couple of months to move the estate through probate. In the meantime she couldn’t sell anything. She had spent the last of Walter’s ready cash at the casino last Friday. She could run a tab at the grocery store in town, but she needed to get some money to pay the bills. She knew what she needed to do.

The kerosene was kept in the pantry. They had used it to fill the lamps they lit when the storms took the power away. It was back behind the shoe polish and the candles. Patty Jo pulled out the bottle and then bent over and grabbed a handful of old rags. Walter had used them to polish his tools. He’d never let her throw anything away. “Save it,” he would say, “save it. It will come in handy for something.”

These rags would be plenty handy for what she had in mind. The sun would set in an hour or so. She probably should wait until after dark, but she wanted to get it over with. She would get her money out of this farm one way or another.

The stupid barn wasn’t worth the land it was built on, but Walter had insured it to the maximum.

Patty Jo kicked at the dirt as she walked to the barn. The soybean fields looked scorched. Interesting how quickly things decayed when they weren’t attended to. The overgrown lawn had been trampled down at the auction. She sure wasn’t going to pay someone to mow it. She wasn’t going to put another penny into this place.

Once inside the barn, she walked to the far corner, where Walter had kept his tools. He had a big bucket of sand that he would plunge them in after he used them, and then in the fall he would oil them for winter. He’d taken better care of his tools than he had of himself.

It would look like an accident. She stuffed the rags next to the kerosene can and then set up a tall candle in the middle of the kerosene-soaked rags. Patty Jo stood and watched the little spurt of flame light up the top of the candle, then pulled herself away. That should give her enough time to be long gone when the rags caught on fire. At least a good hour.

The car was parked right in front of the house, and her purse was already in it. She got in, started the car, and spun out of the driveway. As she turned the corner to go to town, she couldn’t resist taking one more backward glance. Nothing. No thin trail of smoke. Not yet.

She would be buying her groceries as the barn caught on fire. She would make sure everyone saw her all over town. After she had been gone a good hour, she’d drive back up the hill. She would be horrified by what she saw. The fire truck would be there. Her neighbors would all be gathered around. No one liked to miss a good fire. They would all witness how horrified she was.

She would call her insurance agent later today. She needed the money. She had been counting on the farm sale to Reiner, but now probate was tying everything up. The insurance money would have to tide her over.

The barn stood across a large open area from the house. A little wind was all it would take. If the house caught on fire too, so much the better.

Edwin Sandstrom liked Ella Gunderson. He was driving over to her house and thinking about how much he liked her. He had known her all his life. He could remember what she looked like when she was three years old and he was ten. She had been cute as a button then, and she was still cute as a button even if she was nearly seventy years old. His wife had died ten years ago, and she had liked Ella too.

The last year or two Ella and he had started to get serious. He didn’t know how it had happened. Maybe it was her biscuits. No, it was her rhubarb pie that had put a spell on him. He couldn’t get enough of those pies. He had told her he would mow her lawn if she would just bake him a rhubarb pie. The next thing he knew, he had asked her to go with him to the Friday night fish fry at the Bay Bar. Soon it became a weekly date, the two of them riding down the hill for the fish fry.

They didn’t see each other every night. Two or three times a week seemed to be what kept them happy. They hadn’t talked about living together or marriage or anything. Ella’s eyes weren’t working real well. She had that macular degeneration. She had tried to explain it to him, something about the middle part of her eye being blind, but she could see all around the edges. At night, he’d read to her. She loved listening to him, even though he read kind of slow and didn’t always know how to pronounce the words.

He wondered if he should bring up a more permanent-type relationship. See what she said. Hard to tell with Ella. She had never wanted to live with anyone. “The old spinster teacher” is what she called herself. Said that life suited her. He wasn’t sure they needed to live together. Maybe they should get married but both keep their own homes. Wouldn’t that set tongues wagging. The kids could do it the other way around, but maybe the old folks needed to stay put. That way, if once in a while he was too tired to drive home, he could stay at her house and not worry about what the neighbors thought.

As Edwin drove past Walter Tilde’s place, he shook his head. Poor Walter. What had he been thinking, marrying that Patty Jo? The soybeans were a damned disgrace. He had a mind to come over and plow them under just so he wouldn’t have to look at that sorry field all winter long.

He had just pulled up to the corner and was turning to go down to Ella’s place when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. A flash, he would say later, like from the wing of a plane or a mirror. A bright light of some sort, and it struck him as odd. He didn’t like it. He stopped the car and turned around in his seat. His head didn’t turn as easily as it used to, so he had to twist his whole body. He didn’t see anything and almost continued on his way, but something tugged at him. He couldn’t leave it. He circled the car around the intersection and headed back toward the Tilde farm.

Then he saw smoke rising from the edge of the barn. He felt relieved. Maybe that good-for-nothing Patty Jo was doing some raking and burning leaves. That would surprise him, but miracles never ceased. He wanted to see this for himself, so he kept going and turned again so he could see the back of the barn.

He was about to turn his attention back to the road and drive on when a flame burst through the side of the barn and crawled up the wooden battens. Edwin gasped. The flames danced up and down, tearing a black hole in the side of the barn.

His first thought was to drive in and rouse Patty Jo. He parked in front of the house and went and banged on the door. No one was home. He’d just go in and use the phone. But when he tried the door, he found it locked. That dumb sow. What a piece of work she was. The only person in the county to lock her door. Whatever happened now served her right.

Edwin moved as quickly as he could back to the car and tore back down her driveway. He needed to get help. The closest place was Ella’s, so he drove like a maniac there. As he was driving he was thinking about how his oldest daughter wanted him to get a cell phone. He had always pooh-poohed her, but this was one time when he could have used it.

He found Ella sitting by the radio.

“Gotta use your phone,” he said.

“Sure, go ahead.”

As he dialed the firehouse’s number, he thought about how that was one of the things he liked about Ella. She wasn’t always asking questions about why you were doing something. She let you go ahead and do it and explain afterward, if you needed to.

“Fire at the Tilde farm. Corner of Double E and Pleasant Valley. The barn is up in flames.” He gave his name and the number at Ella’s and hung up the phone.

“Lord, Edwin. A fire?”

“Yes, I saw it as I drove by.”

“What about Patty Jo?”

“She’s not there. I tried the house. She had the door locked.”

“Oh, that’s Patty Jo. She’s never trusted anybody.”

“That’s because she’s so damn sneaky herself.”

“Edwin.”

“Sorry about the swearing, but you know it’s true about Patty Jo.”

“I suppose we better go over there.”

This was the other thing he liked about Ella. She might be going blind, but she still saw so clearly.

CHAPTER 11

There’s a fire. Thought you should know.”

“Ella?” Claire recognized the voice. Meg looked up at her as she talked. They had been going over her social studies homework. “Are you all right?”

“We’re fine.”

“Where’s the fire?”

“It’s not here. The Tilde barn. Edwin’s just saw it. He called it in. We’re heading down there. He says Patty Jo’s not around. Wonder where she is?”

“I’ll see you there.”

Meg closed her social studies book. “Can I come?”

Claire hated to leave her daughter. Not that she didn’t think her precious child could be on her own, but they were having a nice quiet moment together, which happened less and less often these days.

“Yes, you can come. But when I tell you to stay in the car, I want you to do it. It could be dangerous.”

Claire wrote a note to tell Rich where they had gone. They grabbed jackets and ran to the car.

As they were driving up the hill, Meg said, “Hope no one gets hurt.”

“It’s in a barn.”

Meg went wide-eyed. “What about the animals?” she screeched.

“There aren’t any that I know of. Don’t worry. But you stay right where I tell you to.”

“Mom, I’m not dumb. I know this is dangerous. I’m not like some stupid boy who plays with matches. I don’t even like fires very much.”

“Okay.”

“I like candles.”

Claire knew there was no particular reason she needed to go to this blaze, but she didn’t like the sound of Patty Jo being involved with it. The woman had definitely gotten under her skin. At first she’d listened to Margaret’s fears about her with a grain of salt, but the more she was around the woman, the more she thought her capable of evil.

Once on top of the bluff, she could smell the smoke. The sky opened up above them, and Claire could see a band of clouds to the west. But they were merely for decoration; it didn’t look as though they were carrying any rain. Sometimes she drove up onto the bluff just to see the sky, especially in the evening when the sun was setting, spreading a soft glow across the rolling land.

She curved around several fields and then came in view of the Tilde farm. The sun was setting on the western horizon and silhouetted the dark barn with plumes of smoke rising out of it.

“There it is, Mom,” Meg yelled.

“Yes, I see.”

The fire pitched out of the hayloft like a crackling piece of foil. A fire truck was pulling up, and she parked on the edge of the road a good block from the farm, right behind Edwin and Ella. The two older people stood outside Edwin’s car, leaning on it and watching the fire.

“I wonder if Margaret knows,” Claire said to herself as she got out of the car.

“Who?” Meg asked, scrambling out behind her.

“Oh, the woman who grew up here. This was her father’s farm.”

“Is she the one who got it stolen from her?”

“Yes, that’s a good way to put it.”

As Claire watched, the fire traveled up to the peak of the barn roof. The wind played with the fire and made it seem alive. Golden orange flames danced along the roofline. The firemen unrolled the hose from the side of the fire truck. They aimed it toward the edge of the barn facing the house.

Claire realized the house was what they would try to save. The barn was gone. The fire had gutted it, and there was only the structure left. But if the wind shifted at all, the fire could jump to the house.

She walked up to Edwin and Ella, Meg tagging along behind her. “Hey,” she said.

Edwin turned and said, “The barn’s a goner.”

Claire nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”

“At first I thought it might have been started by a brush fire,” Edwin told Claire. “But it seemed to come from the inside.”

Claire nodded again. “What do you think?”

“Nothing good.”

Margaret and Mark pulled into the driveway, next to the fire truck. They jumped out and stood watching the blaze. Mark put his arm around his wife’s shoulders as she folded toward him and buried her face in his shirt.

The blaze seemed to be dying down as part of the wall of the barn gave way. The water had made a considerable dent on it on the side toward the house.

Now that that wall was saturated, the firemen started to play a stream of water up and down the remains of the barn. The golden flames turned to smoldering smoke, and an acrid wind blew their way.

Meg blinked and scrunched up her face, then held her hand to her face and coughed.

Claire patted her on the shoulder. “Time for you to go sit in the car. Roll the windows up.”

“I don’t want to,” Meg said.

Claire turned to her daughter. “What was our agreement?”

“I never agreed to it. You just said it. I won’t do anything dumb. I want to see what happens.”

“You can see from the car.”

Meg folded her arms over her belly and humphed at her mother.

“Meggy, this isn’t up for discussion.”

“I never—”

Claire cut her off short. “You get in that car, young lady, or I’m never bringing you anywhere again.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she almost laughed. What a stupid thing to say. So untrue. But it had an effect on Meg. She turned and marched to the car and climbed in.

Claire walked toward the barn, but before she could get to Margaret and Mark, they got into their truck and drove away. She saw the head fireman, Nick Chovsky. He had a farm a few miles out of Pepin. She didn’t know him well, but they had been introduced at a couple of pancake breakfasts to raise money for the fire department.

When he saw her, he walked over. The two men on the hose were still playing water along the top of the barn ridge.

“I think we got here in time,” he said.

“Not for the barn.”

“That was gone from the get-go. These old structures are tinderboxes. I’m surprised any of ’em are left in the county. But the house—that’s what I wanted to save.”

“What do you think caused it?” Claire asked.

“I’d guess the usual—bad electrical wiring. These old barns were built fifty to sixty years ago. Nothing up to any kind of code. Most people redo their houses, but they never bother with their barns.” He looked up in the sky. “Or thunderstorms. But wouldn’t be that today. Not a cloud in the sky.”

It was hard for Patty Jo to take her time in town. She finished her shopping after a half an hour. How long can you walk around a grocery store when you’re shopping for one person? Then she ran to the bank and the post office. She bought a roll of stamps even though she didn’t need them. She never wrote to anyone. Just used them to pay bills. She made it a point to have a pleasant conversation with everyone she saw. But they kept bringing up Walter’s death.

Judy at the post office said as she was handing Patty Jo her roll of stamps, “You going to have another auction?”

Patty Jo thought,
What’s it to you, you old vulture?
but answered civilly. “Oh, when probate’s settled. That’ll happen soon enough. Makes me sad for Margaret, though. The way she and her dad fought at the end. There was nothing I could do. Walter made me promise not to let her have a thing.”

Judy nodded. “Terrible when a family ruptures like that.”

“You can say that again.” Patty Jo dropped the roll of stamps in her purse and marched out of the post office. She decided it was time to drive up the hill and see what was left of Walter’s farm.

As soon as she got on top of the bluff, she could smell the fire. A good fall smell, like burning leaves. She was disappointed, as she neared the house, to see they had the fire under control. Black smoke rose from the wreckage of the barn, but the house was still standing. She wished she could have seen how high the flames climbed into the heavens.

She increased her speed and pulled into her driveway with a roar. As she got out of her car, everyone’s eyes turned to her. A woman was talking to the fire chief. Patty Jo saw it was that woman deputy again. What the hell was she doing here? She seemed to be sticking her nose into everything.

Patty Jo ran up to Nick Chovsky. “Oh, my lord. What happened?”

“You had yourself a little fire here.”

“How did it happen? Everything was fine when I left.”

Nick shook his head. “Can’t tell. I’m guessing electric.”

Patty Jo jumped on that. “Yes, the electical wiring in the barn was terrible. I was always telling Walter we should have it redone. But his motto was, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

The woman deputy spoke to her. “I’m so sorry. You’ve had a rough time of it recently. We’re trying to figure out when the fire might have started. How long have you been gone?”

“Well, I don’t know. A couple of hours,” Patty Jo stretched the time. No one would remember exactly. “I went to get groceries and then ran errands.”

“Just lucky we got here as quick as we did. You’ve got Edwin to thank for that. Your house was close to going up too.”

“Oh, my.” Patty Jo stood and stared at the barn. “What should I do now?”

“Well, you’ll want to knock that structure down. It’s not safe. And call your insurance man.”

“Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll call my insurance company. That’s what they’re for.” She was sure everyone was watching her. She looked at the barn and shook her head. Then she headed toward the house.

She had left the number conveniently right next to the phone. It was good to be prepared for tragedies.

The clean sheets Claire had put on the bed earlier felt good against her skin. She loved the feel of the stiff fabric, fresh from the clothesline. She was happy in bed, reading Elizabeth George’s latest mystery. She loved reading the dark British procedurals and was glad nothing that bad happened in her neck of the woods. Next to her, Rich was flipping through some farming magazine.

Suddenly, he tossed the magazine to the floor and rolled over and switched off his light. Claire turned her head and looked at the clock. Eleven. She needed to go to sleep. She reluctantly set her book on the nightstand and turned off her light too.

Rich’s hand snaked through the covers and found her hip to rest on. She liked the way he needed to touch her in sleep.

“I know she did it,” Claire said.

“The fire?”

“Yes.”

“Patty Jo?”

“Yes.”

“What’re you going to do about it?”

“What else—try to prove it.”

“What did the fire chief say?”

“Not much. Too early to tell. But he guessed it was electrical. I’ll talk to the insurance company tomorrow.”

His hand moved again, across her stomach now, the slight weight of it pinning her to the bed.

“Are you going to sleep?” she asked.

“Headed that way.” His voice reached her in the dark, a deep whisper. She could hear the fatigue in his voice. He was busy these days shipping out the pheasants.

She turned toward him and reached out to touch his mouth with her hand. He let her finger smooth his lips, then he nipped at it.

She pulled her finger away. “I don’t like her.”

“It doesn’t sound like anyone cares for her a great deal.”

“Deep down inside I think she’s awful.”

“That’s no crime.”

“No, but I think she’s capable of awful things.”

He turned toward her and whispered, “Prove it.”

She moved closer, and he bent his head and kissed her.

“How tired are you tonight?” she asked.

“Medium.”

She kissed him back. “I’m medium too.”

“That doesn’t sound encouraging,” he said.

She laid her head on his chest. “Margaret thinks Patty Jo had something to do with her father’s stroke.”

“How could that be?”

“Left him out there to die.”

Rich put his arms around Claire and pulled her close to him under the covers so that their bodies touched all the length of them, down to their toes. “I think I’m glad you like me and that you don’t think I killed anyone.”

“No. I like you a lot.”

“Prove it.”