Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [53]
His wife was busy cooking his lunch. She would eat her cottage cheese and tomato slices, claiming she was on a diet. A thin woman, she didn’t really like to eat much. She didn’t like anything to do with her body very much. But she took good care of him and left him alone.
He had work to do today. He had scouted the area and figured he could go over to the pond right before sunset. The last of the pesticides were all ready to go in the back of his truck.
After this event, he had only the grand finale to do. All the other poisonings would dim in comparison.
His wife set down a plate of fried eggs. He liked two eggs and two pieces of bacon and a piece of toast cut in two equal pieces. He liked it laid out so there was a symmetry to the plate. Two was a very safe number. It was about pairing up, which he had done with his wife, which all the animals had done to go into Noah’s ark. There was a balance to it that felt like the right way to be in the world. Being with his wife didn’t make him stick out so much. He appeared more normal.
His wife had learned how he liked things at the very beginning of their marriage, and she easily went along with his requests. She had always felt bad that they could have no kids and so she worked harder at being a good wife to him.
“Isn’t that terrible about those poisonings? Aren’t you glad we didn’t go down to the fireworks? You must have known something was up. Maybe you’re psychic,” she said, and gave a little laugh.
“Too old for fireworks.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Sometimes I think you appreciate things like that more as you get older.”
He cut his eggs in quarters and humphed at her. She took it for an answer and filled his cup and her cup with more coffee. Without demanding anything more of him, she went back to her book.
They ate in silence. She was reading one of her romance novels while he browsed through the paper. She was a good wife. She lived in her own world, too. It was safer for her to read about romances than to have had to live through one. He understood. They were meant for each other. He would miss her if she had to die in the end.
When Claire walked up Carl Wahlund’s sidewalk and found him sitting on the front steps of his porch, he looked like the archetypal picture of the old farmer: white band of skin circling the top of his forehead from where his hat sat on it all day long, face lined like a dark, furrowed field, and the finishing touch was the blade of grass sticking out of his mouth.
Claire introduced herself and asked how the grass tasted.
“It’s good this time of year,” he said, removing it from his mouth to talk. “Timothy grass. Nice and sweet. Perfect time to harvest it. It’s been a good growing summer. Turned hot just when we needed it.”
“Plenty hot,” she agreed.
“You look a little warm in that uniform. Come up here on the porch out of the sun and sit.”
She was surprised by his solicitude. She walked up on the porch and sat in an old yellow wicker chair. When she sat down in it, it sank a little more and then sprang back. The movement of the chair surprised her and she let out a little yelp.
Wahlund chuckled. “That’s called a Rockerfeller. Darn comfortable chair. Got them when I was first married.”
“I came to talk to you about the Schuler murders,” she said abruptly.
He nodded. “Wondered if someone might not show up, asking some questions.”
“What do you remember of what happened?”
“Well, it was a hot day like today. My wife had just had our daughter. I remember that. She and her sister were real close. We would have gone over for Arlette’s birthday if my wife had felt up to it. Maybe then they wouldn’t have been killed.”
“It’s hard to say.”
“Yes, it is.”
“When did you hear about the murders?”
“Pretty quick. I think it was the sheriff who called us. I went over there before it was dark. I wouldn’t let the wife come. It would have been too hard on her. He wanted me