Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [63]
“Can I help you with anything?” Mrs. Lindstrom asked.
“I need to talk to your husband about the Schuler murders.”
Mrs. Lindstrom looked blank, then said, “I haven’t heard about anyone being murdered. When did this happen?”
“About fifty years ago.”
“Oh, are you still trying to solve it?”
“More like again. Have you heard about the pesticides that were stolen from the co-op?”
“No.”
Paul Lindstrom walked in the door. “My wife isn’t from around here. She doesn’t follow the local news much.”
Mrs. Lindstrom stood by the sink, hovering with a dish towel in her hands. Lindstrom sat down and turned to his wife and said quietly, “Why don’t you go read one of your books, honey. I’ve got to talk to this deputy woman and none of it has anything to do with you.”
Claire noted that he didn’t say it meanly. He was just clearly telling Mrs. Lindstrom what to do. His wife seemed relieved and scurried out of the room.
Lindstrom settled into the chair across from Claire. Like his wife, he was on the thin side. He had clear dark eyes, high cheekbones, and an aristocratic nose. If he had been an animal, he might have been a mink—dark, handsome, and a little furtive. Farm work had made him wiry.
She pulled out a notebook. “Do you know about the stolen pesticides? The poisonings in the park?”
“Yes, the fellas down at the Kum and Go are talking about it. Gives them something to chew on while they drink too much coffee.” He stated it as fact.
“Well, we feel that these incidents are tied into the Schuler murders. I wanted to ask you about your father.”
Lindstrom jerked as if she had given him a slight shock. “My father? Whatever for? He’s been dead awhile.”
“I’ve heard that he didn’t care much for the Schulers.”
Lindstrom snorted. “What’s that got to do with anything? They weren’t anyone’s favorite people after the war. You know, the father had just come over from Germany before the war broke out. He could hardly speak English.”
“Did your father argue with the Schulers?”
Lindstrom looked at his hands, then rubbed them and kept rubbing them together like he was cold, but it was eighty degrees out. “ ‘Argue ’might be a little strong. It was no secret that Dad didn’t like them. Dad didn’t like any Germans. Didn’t like Catholics, for that matter, and the Schulers were both.”
“Was there some kind of land dispute?”
“Oh, I sorta remember that. Dad claimed that Mr. Schuler’s fence was infringing on his property. They threatened to get a surveyor, but then when the family was killed, I don’t think he did anything about it.”
“How old were you?”
“Well, I’m fifty-seven now. You can do the math.”
“Do remember the murders?”
“Of course. My mother was petrified. She was a fearful woman anyway. I thought she’d never let me go anyplace on my own again. She became so protective of me. Dad didn’t say much. I think he might have felt uncomfortable about the bad feelings between him and Otto Schuler.”
“I heard your father was away from home when the murders took place.”
“Yeah, that’s the truth. He left that morning for Milwaukee and didn’t get back till the next day. I expect the sheriff checked his alibi out carefully at the time. Like I said, Dad made no secret of his feelings about the Schulers.”
“When did you find out that the family had been murdered?”
Lindstrom tipped back in his chair and let his eyes half close while he was thinking. “Hard to think back that far. All I can remember is some neighbor—maybe Folger, Chuck Folger—coming over to tell my dad. I’m not even sure if it was that night or the next morning.”
Claire wasn’t sure what to ask him next. It was so long ago, and he had been just a little boy. What right did she have to suggest at this late date that his father might be a murderer? On no evidence to speak of. Then she remembered the ages of the Schuler children