Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [79]
After grabbing the first cup of coffee that had streamed out into her carafe, she sat at the table and started to go through Charles Folger’s scrapbook. She had been given all the same articles by Harold Peabody. But Folger had a couple from other papers, which were taken from the pieces that Harold had written. She checked every page, every article, but didn’t come across any new information.
Finally Claire came to the photographs in the back of the book. They were so big he had left them loose. Obviously original prints—he must have had a contact with the photographer the sheriff had used. It was hard to look at the pictures of the dead children upstairs, sprawled out alongside their beds. The oldest brother stretched out on the hay in the barn, the cows looking on. The father by the front steps. But the photo that was the hardest for her to look at was the one of Bertha Schuler and the baby. And the table all set for the birthday party. The seven plates neatly placed around the edges of the wooden table, silverware laid out the way it should be, glasses up at the top of the plates.
Rich came down the stairs.
“Are you sure you want to be up?” she asked him.
He came up behind her and snuggled into her hair. “I smelled the coffee.”
“Do you want me to set you a plate?”
“What’s cooking?”
“Just caramel rolls.”
“Perfect middle-of-the-night snack.”
Claire leaned up into the cupboard and pulled down two dessert-sized plates. Then she stood still for a moment. The plates in the picture. How many plates?
She slammed the two plates down on the counter and grabbed the photograph. “Seven plates,” she said.
Rich looked at the picture. “Yup, it looks like seven.”
“But why would there be seven plates when only six people were eating at the table? See?” She pointed her finger at the high chair that was set up for Arlette.
“But there were seven Schulers,” Rich said.
“The baby was too little to eat at the table. They wouldn’t have set a real plate for her with silverware and a glass. She was only a year old. Someone else was there.”
“At the Schulers’?”
“Rich, someone else had come to dinner. And whoever it was either murdered them or got away.”
July 7, 1952
How long to wait? That was the question. How long to wait before he would venture out into the house? The clothes hung down in front of him. He grabbed on to them, clung to them as if they were real people. But he was afraid all the people were dead.
The gun had been fired six times in the house. The last time had been right outside this closet in the room where Schubert was. He had closed his eyes when the gun went off. He had stuffed his mouth with the hanging clothes.
He knew bad things had happened. His dad had always told him that these German people brought nothing but bad luck down on themselves, and now he believed that his dad knew what he was talking about.
In order to get out of the room, he would have to walk past Schubert. By peering through the clothes, he could see Schubert lying on the floor.
It wasn’t the blood he minded so much—he saw blood on the farm when Dad cut off chickens’ heads; he was used to seeing blood. It was the smell of death that would be coming out of Schubert. He would have to hold his nose when he walked by.
He decided he couldn’t wait any longer. He needed to get out of there. It had been quiet for what had seemed a long time. He wanted to go home. He needed to tell his mom what had happened.
He hunched over and scuttled out of the room. In the hallway he stayed still for a moment, hearing his heart beat. Nothing. No noise. He walked by the girls’ room, just glancing in to see the two of them heaped on the floor like a pile of clothes. Couldn’t think about it.
He took his shoes off and carried them. Down the stairs he went as silently as he could. Just as he got to the bottom of the stairs, he heard someone out front; then the door to the kitchen banged open. He hid behind the door that led into the kitchen.
The man walked to the phone and called someone. He talked about murders.