Buttons and Bones (13 page)

“I’m not sure. For once in my life, I’m going strictly on my feelings. And I feel like I need to do this.”

“Do you feel like you’ve outgrown raising the kids?”

“No, of course not. They’re my number one priority, my pride and pleasure. It’s just that here is our very own mystery. Our own skeleton in the cellar of our own cabin. I’m fascinated by it. I want to know how he came to be down there. I’m so glad Betsy is at least interested—and that she’s willing to let me help. And I’m actually of use to her. I never thought I had a head for investigations, but now I think maybe I do.”

“So if you do go back on the cops, you’ll apply for Mike Malloy’s job?”

“I told you, I don’t want to go back on the cops.”

“So what then, private eye?”

“Maybe,” she said. But he had a feeling that’s exactly what she was thinking.

But the next few days showed Jill how frustrating sleuthing could be. There were two other families with the surname Ferguson in Cass County—but neither was related to Harlan Ferguson, who had sold the cabin to Matthew Farmer. The neighbors around the Larson cabin had bought their cabins long after World War II, and knew nothing about the Farmers. Betsy had no more suggestions about where Jill should look.

Then came a break, and Jill called Betsy. “I found the Nowickis,” she announced.

“The
right
Nowickis?” asked Betsy.

“Yes, one of them is the grandson of the couple that bought the cabin from the Farmers. They’re both dead—the couple who bought it are dead, I mean. Murder-suicide.”

“Uh-oh. When did that happen?”

“Nineteen sixty-five, the year the cabin was sold to Buster Martin.”

“That’s a long time after Dieter Keitel’s body was hidden in the root cellar. Any idea what brought it on? Was one of them terminally ill, for example?”

“I don’t know. I just found the story in the back editions of the
Star Tribune
. It was a short article. There was no mention of one of them being sick, or a record of domestic abuse. I found their son first, and he refused to answer any questions. Then I talked with the grandson briefly and while he seemed standoffish, he agreed that he would talk with me or with the both of us day after tomorrow. His name is Robert and he lives in Morris.”

“Where is Morris?”

“About three hours west of here, almost to the South Dakota border.”

Betsy groaned softly, and Jill said, “Hold on, there’s good news. He’s coming here. He’s got some appointments in the Twin Cities, to interview nursing home managers on behalf of his mother-in-law. He says he’ll stay over so we can talk with him, if we’ll either put him up or pay for his hotel room. There’s something wrong about him, about the way he talks about his grandparents.”

“Small wonder, considering.”

“No, it’s not just the way they died. He sounded more angry than sad—even after all those years.”

“Ah. Then definitely a motel,” said Betsy.

“I agree. I’ll split the charge with you, but pick something inexpensive.”

“How about the Hilltop? It’s right on the edge of town and it’s clean.” That was about the best that could be said for it. “Or did he sound like the kind of person who would expect to stay at the Hilton?”

Jill smiled. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, I’m sure he’d like to, but then so would I. I don’t think it’s necessary to put him up in first-class accommodations.”

But Betsy said, “Still, let’s have him stay at The Birdhouse Inn, all right?” The Birdhouse was Excelsior’s one remaining bed-and-breakfast; the other, Christopher Inn, had been sold to a developer, who made it part of a big condo complex.

“All right,” agreed Jill. It cost more than the Hilltop, but was far nicer. “Where shall we meet to talk with him?”

“How about we take him to dinner? I read somewhere that people are friendlier over a shared meal. Is Patisserie Margo open in the evening?” The Patisserie was new in town, offering homemade soups, muffins, breads, and croissant sandwiches. The croissants were huge and thick, with a dark and flaky surface; Jill and Betsy both loved them. Since the town bakery had closed, the Patisserie was particularly welcome. Plus, it was just two blocks from The Birdhouse.

“No, right now they’re only open for lunch. How about Ming Wok? Everyone likes Chinese.” It was four blocks from the inn.

“Fine with me.”

“I hope Robert can tell us something about the cabin,” said Betsy.

“I’m sure his parents took him to it while he was growing up. And told him stories about it—maybe about how their parents came to buy it. That would be useful to us.”

 

 

GODWIN came in to work the next morning very down. He slouched through the opening up operation, hardly saying anything. Betsy finally asked, “What’s the problem, Goddy?” expecting to hear of a quarrel with Rafael.

But Godwin said in a voice of doom, “Golf.”

“But you like golf!”

“Not anymore. I’ve developed a
slice
. No matter what I do,
zoom
!” He gestured forward then off to one side. “The ball goes sailing off to the right. I spent half of my game yesterday playing the ball from the rough and
twice
on the
next fairway over
.” He bowed his head, and his lower lip actually trembled. “It was very embarrassing, and Rafael laughed at me,” he concluded in a low voice.

With an effort, Betsy kept from laughing, too. “Poor Goddy,” she said then, with real compassion, and came to put an arm around his waist.

He turned and hugged her, wetting her shoulder with his tears. “Oh, what am I to
do
?” he sobbed. “I—I love him, and I even love his silly, stupid game, and I’m so
bad
at it!”

“There, there,” she said, hugging him back. “You’ll get better, you know you will. Isn’t Rafael a good teacher?”

“Yes, of
course
he is! The
best
! He’s so kind, and so, so
patient
with me.” When upset, Godwin used a lot of italics.

“That’s right, you told me about that. Was he impatient yesterday?”

“No,
of course
not—at least, not that I could
tell
. But he
must
be! I’m so slow and stupid about this
wretched
game, I don’t understand it, I just don’t
get
it! I was doing so
well
just last week!”

“How long has Rafael been playing?”

“Oh, his father started taking him golfing when he was about
four
! He’s been good at it for so long, I don’t think he remembers being bad at it! So what am I going to
do
? I was such an
embarrassment
yesterday! I think I should just
quit
!”

Betsy stepped back and took Godwin by the shoulders. “And then what will you do on sunny afternoons when Rafael is out on the course? Or will you try to get him to quit, too?”

“Oh, I would
never
try to get him to quit! Golfing is
too important
to him!” Godwin thought. “I don’t know what I’d do. They won’t let people who aren’t golfing on the course, so I couldn’t just follow him around.”

Betsy smiled. “You wouldn’t like that anyway. By the third hole you’d be begging to borrow a driver and hit just one ball, just once. And when it went sailing down the fairway, straight and true, you’d kick yourself for not bringing your clubs along.”

Godwin nodded, and a smile started forming on his lips. “You’re probably right.
Especially
if it went sailing straight and true.”

“And of course it would, that’s the perverse nature of golf.” Betsy had never played, but she was sure that was right, because it was true of a lot of things.

Godwin laughed bitterly. “That’s just exactly what it would do.”

“So don’t quit. Try to figure out why your drive is hooking—”

“Slicing.”

“Slicing, or listen to Rafael tell you what you’re doing wrong, and fix it. Maybe before you go out with him again, go to a driving range, and hit a couple of hundred balls to see if you can get it fixed before you play again.”

Godwin nodded. “That’s a good idea.” He cocked his head at her. “You always give me such good advice. Maybe you should listen to yourself next time you and Connor have a quarrel.”

“I’d rather listen to you. My advice to myself is unreliable while your advice is always excellent.”

A few minutes later, Betsy heard him whistling a show tune while straightening up the mess a customer had left in a bin of patterns.

Less than an hour later, Jill called. “Good news. I’ve got a new lead. Remember the old Cass County sheriff, who kept a record of the search for Dieter?”

“Yes?”

“He kept records of the POW camp at Remer, too. And I’ve got permission to come up and look at them.”

“What do you think you might find?”

“Probably nothing. But who knows? I’m just going up for a look.”

“When?”

“Right away, today.”

“Wait a minute, what about that interview with Mr. Nowicki?”

“You do it, you’re better than I am at talking with strangers.”

Aaaack
, thought Betsy. But she asked, “Are you taking the children?”

“No, they’re spending today and tomorrow with their Ganfer Erik and Gram Elise.”

Betsy managed not to show her relief at not being asked to baby-sit; she had taken the children one time while in the shop, and found that work was incompatible with two small, rambunctious children. But she promised herself that she’d make up for it pretty soon by taking them for a day. Or an afternoon anyhow.

Betsy was doing bookkeeping that evening when Jill phoned, and in as close to an excited tone as she ever got said, “I’m back—and guess what? She worked at the camp.”

“Who—oh, Helga did? That’s amazing! What did she do out there?”

“Secretary to the commandant—who was a lieutenant. You know there were nearly five hundred POWs in that camp? Guarded by a handful of soldiers. Must’ve been an interesting job watching them mill around the exercise yard, driving them out to the forest to cut down trees every morning and picking them up at sunset, counting the knives in the kitchen to make sure they didn’t steal one after peeling the potatoes. But much, much better than dodging bullets while slogging through the mud toward Berlin.”

“You’re in a funny mood.”

“There’s a book about the POW camps called
Swords into Plowshares
. I found it at the Hennepin County Library at Ridgedale. Reading it puts me so strongly back in that time that I have to remind myself that I’m living in the second decade of the twenty-first century, not in the 1940s.”

“I’ve had books do that to me, but generally they’re novels. Anyway, what about Helga?”

“That’s all I could find. She worked at the Remer camp as a secretary—probably an administrative assistant, really, if the lieutenant was grass-green, which he was. The sheriff wrote a single word after his name:
Shavetail
, which means new at his job. New at being in the Army, too, more than likely. Probably some grizzled old sergeant really ran the camp—actually, some of the camps did have noncoms in charge.”

“Did the information you found give her age? Her date of birth?”

“No, nothing helpful at all. Just her social security number.”

“Why her social security number?”

“Beats me. But all the civilian employees, all four of them, had their social security numbers given. Maybe it was a way to make sure they were citizens.”

“Can we find something out about her using that?” asked Betsy.

“I don’t know what.”

“Well, did you find out anything else useful?”

“Both those linoleum patterns were sold for years and years, from about 1938 to 1960, so there’s no joy for us there.”

“Uff da. Anything else?”

“I think our cabin used to have two bedrooms and no bath—that part we should have deduced from the outhouse.”

“How did you find that out?”

“I was driving back and decided to take a quick detour to our cabin, just for a look, you know, to see if it had burned down or something, and so long as I was in the neighborhood, I went for a look at the one down the way—it’s for sale, you know. The real estate agent was there, so I stopped in. That one is in its original configuration, according to the agent. Two bedrooms, a back porch, and an outhouse.”

“Is that a negative or a positive fact?”

“I’m not sure when ours was remodeled, so probably another negative.”

“Anything else?”

“The investigator up in the Cass County Sheriff’s Department has gone through that old sheriff’s file, too. He’s thinking he’s established a link between Helga and Dieter. What do you think?”

“Well, it’s probable the POWs knew about the camp commandant’s secretary. But I can’t see how Helga would know Dieter, unless he was the sort always in the commandant’s office about something. And even if he was, why would she tell him where she lived?”

“He probably wouldn’t be in there much anyway. I mean, he wouldn’t be the spokesman for the POWs, he was just a corporal, and a teenager.”

“Maybe he was a troublemaker, always being called in for a scolding or some kind of punishment. Though,” added Betsy thoughtfully, “if I were thinking about an escape, I wouldn’t be calling attention to myself beforehand. I’d want those guards to think I was just another cowed prisoner and not pay any special attention to me.”

“Hmmmm,” said Jill. “Maybe. Or maybe the running off was the final event in an escalating series of misbehaviors and punishments. You know, ‘That does it, I’m out of here!’ ”

Betsy chuckled. “That sounds very plausible. Say, Jill, I had another idea. Do you know how to contact the bear lady, what’s her name, Molly something?”

“Fabrae. No, Lars gave her his card with the Cass County Sheriff’s Department number on the back of it, but she didn’t give us a card in return.”