Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [47]
With a big spoon, she scooped up a handful of the meat mixture and rolled out the meatballs.
She lifted out the big cast-iron frying pan and got it heating up. She cooked the meatballs slowly; they held together better if you did them that way.
Precisely at noon, her father showed up.
“Hey,” he shouted in at her from the back door.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Smells good.”
He washed up and came and sat at the table. She poured him a glass of water, which he drank down, and then she poured him a glass of milk. He drank milk with every meal.
“Where’s Larry?”
“Had to get a thingamajig in Eau Claire.”
“I don’t know if they have them there.”
A bark of a laugh came out of Arlene. Her father had made a joke. He must be in a good mood.
“Where were you last night?” she asked as she set his plate down in front of him.
He spilled his milk. “Why?”
How like him to answer a question with a question. Nothing was easy. “I just wondered. Saw you coming home.”
“What’re you, spying on me?” He started stirring his food. He always did that, and it bugged Arlene. Why couldn’t he simply lift the food off his plate with his fork and eat it? Why did he have to move it all around?
“Dad, I was washing the dishes and looking out the window. Don’t think that counts as spying.”
“Went for a drive.” He stabbed his fork into a meatball and ate it. He nodded his approval.
“Nice night for that.” She would leave it at that. No need to stir him up. She wished she had never asked.
Claire parked in the Danielses’ driveway and sat in the squad car, staring out at the buildings. She had studied photographs of the crime scene so carefully that she knew where all the bodies had been found on this farm. Most of them in the farmhouse, but the father and oldest son had been outside. The son’s body had been found right in among the cows, beside buckets of milk sitting out, gathering flies.
The trees around the homestead had grown up since 1951. The thicket of arbor vitae that Bertha had planted around the side of the house was as tall as the roofline, forming a courtyard. The maple, only as high as the clothesline in the photos, now towered over the house, creating a canopy of green leaves for the kids to play under.
Chickens were scratching away at the ground. One was sleeping in the hollow of the maple tree. She wondered what the Danielses had decided to do about them. According to Rich, they didn’t feel they could use them anymore as egg layers.
Why had she come up here? It didn’t make a lot of sense. There would be nothing here, after fifty years, that would help her understand what had happened. But she felt clear that she needed to look around.
As she opened the car door, the smallest Daniels came running out. What was her name—Julie, Jilly?
“Hi,” the girl said, stopping a few feet away and standing so her belly stuck out under her sunflower T-shirt.
“Hi, yourself. Your mom home?”
“Sure, she is.” The little girl waved her arms up and down. “I know you.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, you’re Meg’s mommy.”
“I am.”
The girl tilted her head and squinted at Claire. “So why are you dressed up like a policeman?”
“This is my job.”
“Oh. That’s a funny job.”
“Not always.”
Claire heard the screen door slam behind her and turned to see Celia Daniels jogging down the path, worry tightening her face. “Is anything wrong? Why are you here?”
“Hi, Celia. Nothing that you need to worry about, but we did have another poisoning last night.”
Celia stopped a few feet in front of her and folded her arms in front of her waist. A tall, thin woman, she had muscles that showed through her shirt that were from working, not working out. “Where? Who?”
“Down in the park at the fireworks. Five people went to the hospital, but all but one are doing fine.”
“Who isn’t doing fine?”
“Andy Lowman.”
Celia shook her head. “I don’t know him.”
“He’s from around here. His father was a deputy.