Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [83]
“Why should we believe this version?”
Earl knew they would ask him that. “I didn’t have to come forward. I could have stayed living peacefully down in Tucson. You’ll find the gun in the cistern. And you can ask my son.”
Harold got to the newspaper office early. He hadn’t slept well at all. Agnes shook him awake several times in the night, telling him he’d better start breathing again. She was on him all the time, claiming he had sleep apnea and that occasionally he quit breathing entirely in his sleep. “Doesn’t bother me,” he’d tell her.
He got to the office early, but he didn’t feel very rested. He decided he’d have another cup of coffee. Agnes had him on a restricted diet of one cup of coffee in the morning. She thought that might help reduce his sleep apnea. But he missed guzzling away at coffee all morning. Another cup wouldn’t hurt.
He went out to help himself to the pot that Sarah had started when she got in. She was going over some copy and looked up as he walked by. “What’s going to happen today?” she asked.
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.” When he saw her puzzled face, he realized he was talking like an oldster, using expressions that she wasn’t familiar with. But he was an oldster. “Water, the note said. He’ll poison the water.”
“I saw the deputies by the water tower.”
“I know. I’m not sure that’s where he’ll go. I thought maybe the river, but I just don’t think that would do much. Plus, it would all flow away. He wants to do something we won’t forget.”
When he looked up from talking to Sarah, he saw that the deputy Claire Watkins had walked in with an African American man in a suit. Handsome guy. Wonder what he’s doing here? She introduced him as working for the Wisconsin crime department.
Claire asked Harold if they could go into his office and pick his brain.
“Best to do it in the office,” Harold said. “Less messy that way.”
When they all sat down, she told him about the pointing finger that had been dropped off at the sheriff’s department. The coffee turned in his stomach. She told him about how she had counted the plates on the Schulers’ table and had found one too many. He cursed himself for not ever noticing that. Then she told him that Earl Lowman was back in town.
“His son is recovering. He came out of his coma.”
“Thank the Lord for small blessings.”
“Lowman says that the killer was Otto Schuler,” Claire told him, then continued, “and he said that he shot Schuler because Schuler asked him to. He’s kept this secret all these years. Hard to believe.”
“I’m supposed to say that,” Harold reprimanded her. “Where does that leave us?”
“I think it leaves us with someone out there who wants to know all this and no way to get the information to them in time. Can you print a special edition of the paper?”
Harold thought about it for a moment, calculating what it would take. “We could do a one-sheeter that would hit the streets by late afternoon.”
“Let’s try it. We’ve decided to go public with everything. Lowman’s role in the killings, the fact that we know someone else was at the dinner.”
“We’ll start writing it up immediately. Whatever you’ve got.”
Claire looked at him. “Who do you think might have been the other diner at the Schulers’ that night?”
Harold didn’t have to think too long. “The person that immediately comes to mind is Bertha’s sister, Louise Wahlund. But she’s dead.”
“I talked to Carl Wahlund already. Would he have known?”
“Maybe. I think the person to talk to is her daughter, Arlene. She lives close by her dad. I can give you the address. She and her mom were mighty tight. As I recall, she was born right around the Schuler murders. Maybe her mother told her something.”
CHAPTER 26
“I don’t think it could have been my mom,” Arlene Rendquist told Claire. She had insisted that Claire and Tyrone sit