The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies (13 page)

A woven wire fence topped with a double strand of barbed wire separated the field from pasture on two sides. McIntire walked along the fence line until it abruptly ended in a weedy strip a couple of yards wide that lay between the potatoes and a field planted in oats, hardly larger than the potato patch. On the far side of it, he could make out another stretch of pasture, beyond that, he knew, lay the hayfield where Reuben Hofer died.

McIntire slowed his steps and studied the ground until he found what he was looking for. The hazy blue carpet of oats was bisected across its width by a straight line of clearly trampled stems. It might have been done by a deer. McIntire bent and peered under the stems. The soil was soft and moist from the night's rain. It had rained hard, but not hard enough to obscure the deep imprints of a deer's narrow hooves, had they been there. The tennis shoe covered toes of an adolescent boy in a hurry might not have made remaining impact.

McIntire skirted the field to the point where the path emerged on the other side. From here, a quick jog through the adjoining pasture would bring him straight to the north end of the hayfield. In little more than five minutes one of those boys could have dropped his hoe, picked up a shotgun, and had it trained on the back of his father's neck.

It was a disgusting thought, but barring any new information, the two were the most likely suspects. They probably hardly knew their father. They couldn't have been much more than six or seven years old when he was drafted; they hadn't grown up with him. In their early years he must have been home only long enough to conceive a couple of siblings, before he was off again to be locked up somewhere, including a federal prison. When he finally turned up for good, he treated them like indentured servants. They had every reason to despise him, to not even think of him as a father.

But still, the sort of kid who could blow someone's head off—let alone his own father's—and then calmly go back to hilling spuds, McIntire wouldn't want to have a run-in with.

But Sam and Jake Hofer hadn't been responsible for the shenanigans of the previous night. Koski was right. In all probability, that been the work of one of Reuben's old buddies. Maybe he would take that trip to Benton.

Chapter Twenty-three

She'd managed to act half way normal when the sheriff was there. Even when he asked her if Pa had a shotgun, she didn't look away when she said that Pa didn't believe in guns. Now that skinny guy comes snooping around, and she was shivering so hard that her teeth were chattering, and she couldn't stop. Like it was the middle of winter instead of a warm summer afternoon. It was those glasses. The sun glinted off them and you couldn't see his eyes inside. He looked like some kind of giant beetle; it gave her the creeps. Whether her brothers knew how to shoot a gun was none of his business. She should have told him off. She should have said right to his face,
None of your damn business!

Mrs. Thorsen was on her knees scrubbing the syrup off the kitchen floor. Claire could have gone in and told her that it would work better to use hotter water, but she didn't want her to notice the shaking.

She folded a sheet and stuffed it in the bottom drawer. The drawer where the gun used to be.

Ma had said the same thing when the sheriff asked her. Pa was a pacifist and wouldn't allow guns. And now bug-eyes was nagging about it, too. What would Joey say if they asked him? He wouldn't know to lie, and if she told him to, he'd want to know why, and Claire wasn't sure why, herself. She didn't want to think about the reason Ma didn't just tell the sheriff that they had a gun. It was gone now anyway, stolen by the burglar, so it didn't matter. It would matter plenty if they caught the person who stole it, and he confessed, and the sheriff found out that they all lied. Claire didn't want the person who made her sit in the barn all night to get away with it, but she wasn't sure she wanted him to get caught either. Unless it was the same person that killed Pa. He might be wanting to kill them all, and now he'd have two guns to do it with.

Joey didn't ever look in the chest of drawers, and he probably didn't even know that the gun used to be there.

Mrs. Thorsen came to the doorway. “I'm going out for more water. By the time I get this syrup off the floor, the well will be dry!”

“Okay.” Claire scrunched down to look under the davenport and stayed that way until she heard the door shut.

She stood up and said low, “Joey?” He was wandering around, picking up marbles from the Chinese checkers game.

“What?”

“Remember when we used to have Grandpa's gun?”

His eyes opened wide. Maybe she shouldn't have mentioned guns after what happened to Pa, but it was too late now. “It's too bad Ma didn't bring it along when we moved here. If we had it, we could go hunting.”

He kept staring at her like she was nuts.

“I could shoot a deer,” Claire told him.

“You couldn't hit a deer in a million years.”

“I could practice. You never know what you can do until you try. I bet I'd be a darned good shot. It doesn't matter now, anyway. Ma left the gun at Grandpa's house.”

“Ya,” Joey said. “That's too bad.”

“What's too bad?

Claire jumped. She hadn't heard Mrs. Thorsen come back. “Some of the marbles are missing.” She spoke up quick before Joey could answer. He looked at her funny, but he didn't say anything.

“They always are. It's one of life's rules. Checkers, marbles, and mittens. They disappear.” She straightened the shade on the table lamp.

“Our father made that.” Claire had forgotten about the lamp when Mrs. Thorsen said her father made things. “He carved it from wood.” It was painted plain black with some designs, blue and red and gold, and Pa had done a good job of making it perfectly round. The shade slipped sideways again. It wasn't that the burglar had broken it. It was always that way.

Mrs. Thorsen picked it up in both her hands and bounced it up and down, like she might be planning to shoot a basket. “Don't you think we're about done here? I'm ready for some afternoon coffee.”

Chapter Twenty-four

McIntire had never entered a beauty parlor. He wasn't sure he could do it. He stretched across the seat, pretending to be engrossed in retrieving something from the glove compartment, and strained to see through the front window of Wanda's Cut ‘n Curl. It was no use. The Venetian blinds were closed just enough to keep out the late afternoon sun and prying male eyes. The only thing visible beyond their slats was a feline shape on the window sill.

He exited the car and strolled nonchalantly past the brightly painted door. The sign said that Wanda closed things down at five-thirty. He dawdled, staring into the window of the drugstore next door, and made a lengthy show of checking his watch. It was now five-twenty five. Wanda might live on the premises, in which case maybe McIntire could find another entrance and avoid the shop entirely. But if she didn't, she might leave by the back way while he was snooping around out in front, or vice versa, and he'd have wasted a trip.

He strode resolutely back, resisted the urge to cross himself, and opened the door. The bell above jangled like the voice of doom. McIntire had never seen a place that looked so pink and smelled so…acid green. An odor of ammonia burned his nose. All eyes—all seven of them—turned his way. The apparent Wanda froze in the act of applying a whisk broom to the back of a closely-cropped neck. The neck's owner, a youngish woman with an overbite, stared at McIntire's reflection in the mirror, while a rigidly coifed blonde near the window gaped at him above the pages of the
Saturday Evening Post
. His entry could have inspired the perfect Norman Rockwell cover for that magazine—
The Invasion
. The tortoise-shell cat recovered first and settled back onto its haunches, closing its single eye.

“May I help you?” Wanda Greely was, no question about it, stacked.

“I was hoping to have a word,” McIntire said, and added, “once you've finished for the day.”

“I'm done now.” She lifted the cape off her client's shoulders and shook it over the floor with a flourish that jiggled anything remotely jiggleable.

The ladies took their time settling up their bill and arranging for their next beautification, sneaking occasional peeks at McIntire from under blackened lashes. At last the doorbell pealed raucous relief as they walked out onto the street.

Wanda leaned on her broom handle, her hip protruded in an attractive curve, and looked at him expectantly.

“John McIntire. I'm here from the sheriff's department. I understand that you were acquainted with Reuben Hofer.”

“I thought I was also acquainted with Sheriff Koski's deputies.”

“I'm on special assignment.”

“Is that so? Special assignment? For little ol' me?”

“That's right.”

“Well,” Wanda shifted her weight, and the other hip took over, “Special Deputy, what's on your mind? My husband will be here to pick me up soon.”

For no good reason, McIntire hadn't expected Wanda to come equipped with a husband. It could complicate things if her dealings with Hofer hadn't been restricted to poker hands.

“How did you meet Reuben?”

“I don't remember. Through friends, I suppose.” An auburn wave fell across her face as she began sweeping up the piles of hair clippings. What would it be like to mess around with other people's dead hair for a living? Just wiping his own out of the sink, where more and more of it was ending up these days, turned McIntire's stomach.

“Which friends?”

She straightened up and pushed the hair from before her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“We're trying to locate people who knew Reuben Hofer when he was in the CPS camp. So if you can tell me who introduced you….”

“I just said, probably through friends. I don't remember the details. I doubt we were ‘introduced,' as you put it. We most likely just ran into each other somewhere.”

“Word is that he played cards with some of your friends.”

“Well, that's it then, I imagine that's where we ran into each other.”

“And that ‘where' was right here.”

“Some of the guys liked to get together, and I let them use the room….” A crimson tipped finger pointed to the ceiling. “I didn't join them.” She flicked the hair back again and effected an innocent stare. “I'd have lost my shirt.”

Subtlety wasn't one of the lady's failings, but then subtlety was generally lost on McIntire. He hoped his glasses didn't start steaming over. “Can you tell me who some of those men were?”

“No. I don't remember.”

It was a blatant lie, but names weren't something McIntire could force out of her. He sighed, trying to sound like the embodiment of reason and kindly forbearance, “Mrs. Greely, someone hated Reuben Hofer enough to murder him. Very possibly it was someone who knew him during the war. We need to know who he was involved with back then.”

“He wasn't
involved
with me.”

“You were close enough friends that you paid a call on his widow.”

She went back to sweeping and hiding behind the hair. “I had something I wanted to give her. Something that belonged to her husband.”

“What was it?”

“None of your business. I drove all the way out there to have my casserole grabbed out of my hands and the door slammed in my face. Far as I'm concerned, she can forget it!”

It did sound sort of rude. McIntire said, “Her husband was murdered, and she's not in good health. She might not have been feeling up to having company.”

“I wasn't expecting to be company, but I didn't expect to be sent packing by some scrawny…. Well, I won't be troubling myself to go there again. I can get another baking dish!”

The angry words were softened by the view of Wanda's well-rounded backside as she bent to sweep the hair into a dustpan.

“What kind of person was Reuben Hofer? When you knew him?”

The wad of hair plopped into the waste basket. How much did she collect in a given year? It ought to be good for something. Stuffing pillows? No, that would be disgusting.

Wanda rested her chin on the tip of the broom handle. “Not a bad guy. Good looking. He didn't have the beard then. He was the sort that didn't waste time. He stuck to his principles and got things done. And the sort that couldn't hold his drink.” McIntire hadn't been conscious of the vampirish look of her flame-red lips until a smile playing around them wiped it away. “He was a heck of a lot more fun when he'd had a few, though,” she went on. “Get some drink into him, and he actually had a sense of humor. Well, maybe he always did, but just kept it under wraps when he was sober.” The smile grew into a full-fledged grin. “Walking around with that ball and chain
was
funny. I suppose you heard about that?”

McIntire nodded. “Didn't he ever take it off?”

She shook her head. “It was welded. He'd have had to use a blowtorch. Or a hacksaw.”

It was time to get to his real reason for coming. At the risk of losing the new, friendlier, Wanda, McIntire began, “Do you always close at five?”

“No. I keep working as long as there's somebody here, and I take appointments until eight on Fridays. You looking for a permanent wave?”

“I'd like permanent hair, if you can arrange that.” They were getting positively jolly. That wasn't going to last. “Where were you last night?”

“Why?”

“Last evening somebody went into the late Mr. Hofer's house and tore it apart. Ransacked it.”

“No kidding? And you think it was me? I was peeved about driving all that way to see his wife for nothing but not mad enough to go all the way back!”

“Somebody was pretty damn mad, or looking for something, or both. Where were you around nine o'clock last night?”

She smiled again, but this time the lips stayed the color of blood. “I was home with my husband and my son.”