Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [48]
“Was it pesticides again?”
“We’re pretty sure.”
“What can I do?”
“Well, the reason I came out—“ Claire stopped to collect her thoughts. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but it seems that this wave of activity is tied in with the Schuler murders.”
Celia gave a slight nod of her head, then said, “Jilly, I want you to go find Thomas and help him with whatever he’s doing.”
“Mom, I want to be with you.”
“Jilly!” At the sound of her mother’s voice, Jilly scampered off.
“Come on in the house.” As they walked down the gravel path, Celia told Claire, “I haven’t really told the children much about what happened here. Actually I don’t know much myself. When we rented the place from Carl Wahlund, he told us about the murders, but he didn’t go into great detail. I got the impression it was a painful subject for him. He knew we’d find out and he didn’t want us to feel like we had been duped. The house was in real bad shape when we moved in. No one had lived in it for over forty years. Carl had kept a roof on it and that saved the structure.”
The kitchen was lovely. Sunshine came through white dotted-swiss curtains over the sink. A row of white ceramic pots lined the windowsill. The sink was full of white and red radishes, the chore Celia had been in the midst of when Claire arrived.
Claire looked around the room, which seemed sunnier than she remembered it from the photographs. “You’ve made this such a nice place to live. Hard to believe what happened here. Why would someone have killed the whole family?”
Celia answered, “Love or money.”
This answer surprised Claire, and she gave Celia an odd look.
“I read mysteries. That’s what it always is in the end—love or money.”
“Maybe in books, but in real life the reasons are usually more basic—stupidity, anger, or craziness.”
“I suppose.”
“Why did you rent this house?”
“It’s not that easy to get a farm around here, and we figured this way we’d get a foot in the door.” Celia looked around. “We’d love to buy this place. But I don’t know if Carl will sell it. We’ve brought it up a couple of times, and we can’t get him to say anything definitive. I suppose it’s hard to sell because it was in the family.”
“Well, not really his family. His wife’s family.”
“That’s right.” Celia pointed her to a stool. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Just water would be fine. What I’d like to do, if you don’t mind, is look around the house.”
Celia filled a large glass with water from the tap and handed it to Claire. “Sure. It’s a mess, though. This is our busy time of year and we don’t do much to keep the house straightened.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Do you want to do it on your own?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“That’d be fine. I’ve got more to do than I can manage. Just wander around. If you need anything else, let me know.”
Claire stepped out of the kitchen and looked back in at it. Whoever had done the killings must have started outside. First the boy, then his father. Then the killer must have come in through the kitchen door and shot Bertha Schuler as she was putting food on the table. Then the baby had been shot.
The rest of the kids would have been upstairs, hearing the noise of the gunshots. It broke her heart to think of them. What a horrible time it must have been. What had they tried to do? Three were shot in their rooms—one of them had even tried to crawl under a bed to get away.
She walked up the stairs, hearing the sound her shoes made on the treads—impossible to sneak up on anyone. She turned down the hallway and looked in one room. This was where the two girls had been found. One by the door, the other over by the window.
Claire squatted down and looked at the wood floor. Right by the door frame there was a small mark on the floor, a marring of the wood surface.
She stood up and walked into the other room. The bed had been up against the wall. A large braided rug covered the floor. She rolled it back and knelt down, stared at the floor. She found the same mark again. A sawing mark, where a knife had chewed into the floor.
Maybe this was why she had come here—to examine the