Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [51]
Claire couldn’t help herself. She reached out and took hold of Marie Lowman’s hands. They seemed like frantic birds to her. She stroked them. “I hope he’s going to be all right. I’m sure he wants to come back to you.”
“My Andy’s strong. You don’t know how strong he can be. If anybody can pull out of this, Andy can.”
“Good.”
Marie looked at Claire suddenly as if she had finally seen her. Then she looked down at her hands and slowly pulled them away. “Why are you here?”
“Do you want to go sit down?”
Marie turned around in the hallway. “It’s so hard to be away from him. I try to go and get something to eat, but I keep thinking he’ll wake up and I won’t be there and no one will notice.”
Claire waited. She understood how hard it was to pull away even for a moment. “We could go and talk in Andy’s room, if that would make you feel more comfortable.”
“No, I need to do this. I need to leave him for a while. He will come back.”
Claire followed her down the hall to a waiting room, a small room with no windows, but what looked like a Mary Cassatt picture of a woman holding a child. There was one other woman in the room and she was reading a thick book. They sat on the opposite side of the room from her.
“Do you want some coffee?” Marie asked Claire.
“Yes, I could use a cup.”
“It’s not very good, but it’s awfully nice of them to provide it for us.”
Claire thought of the price this woman’s insurance was paying for every moment of her husband’s stay in the hospital, but decided not to mention it. “Black is fine,” Claire told her as she lifted up a Styrofoam cup and held it out to her.
“Thanks.” The coffee looked like beef bouillon in strength and tasted like stewed leaves. “Marie, I’d like to talk to Earl Lowman, Andy’s father. Do you know how I can get in touch with him?”
“Earl? Why do you want to talk to Earl?”
Claire didn’t think this was the time to go into the whole long story. “About something that happened a long time ago.”
“I talked to him this morning. I can give you his number in Tucson. He’s usually there.” Marie dug around in her purse and found a napkin on which a number was scribbled. “I called him last night from the hospital to let him know about Andy. He and Andy haven’t gotten along so well the last few years, but I knew he would want to know. He’s taking it real hard.”
Claire copied the number down.
Marie looked puzzled. “Something that happened a while ago? What does that have to do with Andy?”
“Did Earl ever talk about the Schuler murders with you and Andy?”
“Not often. It was a touchy subject for him. He and Andy didn’t agree about something that had to do with the murders. I never knew what it was. It all happened when Florence was dying—Andy’s mom. They were both so mad about her dying and they took it out on each other. Sad when that happens.”
As Ray Sorenson was walking out to pick up a bag of feed, he ran into Chuck Folger, the agronomist, whose office was close by. It looked to him like Mr. Folger had been waiting for him, or waiting for someone to come along. Or maybe he was just leaning against the wall of the long building, working on his tan. It could use some work—the man looked like a ghoul.
“You got a second, Ray?”
“Sure, Mr. Folger.” Some of his buddies who worked at the co-op thought Mr. Folger was a pervert, but Ray could never be bothered to be rude to the guy. Folger had helped him out a time or two, even if he was kind of weird.
“Come on into my office.”
It wasn’t too busy in the store, so Ray didn’t figure he’d be missed for a few minutes. He followed Mr. Folger down the long hallway that ran along the front of the building, small offices off of it until they got to the end and the hallway ran right into Mr. Folger’s office. It was as neat as a pin. That