Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [45]
When she lifted up her head to clear it, she thought about Rich. He had asked her to marry him, as she thought he might. But she hadn’t said anything definite, just put him off. They had agreed to talk again in several days. She had awakened in the night and felt his body sprawled against hers. She would lose him if she couldn’t commit to him. He wouldn’t stick around for long. Why did she have to be so unsure? It should be easy to link up with this gentle man.
“I’ve called in reinforcements,” the sheriff told Claire, standing over her desk like a totem pole.
Claire stood up, not liking the way he was towering over her. “I’m all for that.”
CHAPTER 14
A plat map of the county covered Claire’s desk. The date was 1950, two years before the Schuler murders occurred. The drawings were in black and white with dotted lines for the roads, doubled lines for the sections, and single lines for the property divisions. The names of the owners of each property were written in a clear, slanting print. Names like the Vogl brothers, John Green et al., and Paul & Martha Moody explained relationships.
Claire let her eye follow the road up the bluff from Fort St. Antoine. Turning a page, she continued her descent and curved around the road as it meandered between streams and farmland.
There it was—the Schuler place. An L-shaped, sixty-acre piece of property right next to the Carl Wahlund farm. That name sounded familiar to her. She’d have to see if he was still alive.
“What you poring over there, Claire?” Scott Lund, another deputy, leaned over the desk next to her and stared down at the map.
“Do you know this area, Scott?”
“Sure.”
“Is Carl Wahlund still alive?”
“Alive and kicking. Last I heard he was still farming.” Scott reached down and traced the edge of the Wahlund property and then followed it around to encompass what had been the Schuler property. “He’s farming all that piece of land.”
“He now owns the Schuler property? How’d that happen?”
“Well, he inherited it. He married Bertha Schuler’s sister. When the whole family was killed, they were the closest of kin. I guess you could say that his wife inherited it. She died about ten years ago. Nice woman. But Carl ruled the roost.”
“But I thought that was the Daniels farm?”
“Naw, they just rent from Carl. I think they rent the farmhouse and about five acres right around the homestead. He farms the rest of it.”
“Who’s back here?” Claire pointed to the farm behind the Schulers’.
“That’s the Lindstrom place. Theo Lindstrom is dead now. So’s his wife. But their son, Paul, is working the farm. He’s a nice, quiet guy. Married. You see him around once in a while.”
“How old is he?”
Scott thought for a moment. “Jeez, I’d guess about fifteen, twenty years older than me. Don’t really know.”
“So in his late fifties, which would have made him pretty young when this all happened. But he’s probably worth talking to.”
Scott stared at the map and then pointed his finger at a swampy area marked by slash lines on the property to the west of the Schulers’. “You ever been up here?”
“I don’t think so. What is it?”
“It’s that trout farm. You can go up there and fish. They’ll fillet your fish and send you home with them ready to fry up. I took my nephew up there once. He thought it was great.”
“I bet Meg would like it,” Claire said, and felt her heart lurch slightly at the thought of her absent daughter. How she missed her when she was gone, like an amputated limb that continued to tingle.
“Let me know if I can be of more assistance,” Scott said before he walked away.
Claire continued to study the map. This is where it all happened, she thought. This piece of land at the top of the bluff. It was pretty up there. She had always admired it when she had gone up to get eggs from the Danielses. She’d have to ask them if she could come up and walk around, get more of a feel for the place.
She wondered what it