The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [37]
All three Grossmans were certain that the snowmobile had departed heading southwest. Carrie had apparently heard it first, and said it sounded like it was coming from the Borglan place.
We asked, and Harvey told us that he’d been at the Borglans’ on Thursday, and was scheduled to go there tomorrow. He hadn’t been there since he heard the snowmobile. Some farm people are like that. He’d go up and see when it was time to do his job at the Borglans’. Otherwise, he had enough to do without taking an unnecessary excursion. Not what I would have done, but I was a cop and he was a farmer.
We asked the three of them for written statements, and they complied. Carrie was really cute, so very serious and studious, and showing off a bit for the company.
Mrs. Grossman, Linda, struck me as being somehow edgy. It took me a few minutes, but I finally recognized the behavior pattern. She seemed overalert, and kind of watchfully aggressive in a way that reminded me of an abused woman. Most people imagine women who are abused as shy, meek, and downcast all the time. Not so. Very often, they come on a bit too strong, in a way that will seem uncalled for, or out of character. The best defense is a good offense, and they are really trying hard to conceal the fact they’re being abused. They become almost too gregarious. An overcompensation that will fool most people. Anyway, that’s how she struck me. Abused, but not to the point of real hazard or flight. With my batting average being nearly zero at this point, though, I just filed it away. No point in embarrassing myself completely.
Anyway, she made a mean cup of coffee. I mentioned that.
“Thanks,” she said. “I learned that when I worked at a hospital in Kansas City.”
“You want me to put down the last time I was up at the other place?” interrupted Harvey.
“Uh, sure, yeah,” I said. God, I was tired. I turned back to Mrs. Grossman to continue, but she was bent over her statement.
I almost got the impression that he didn’t want her to talk to me. Not about her past, anyway. Abuse? Maybe. Or, maybe he just didn’t want her talking about his past. Or, maybe he was just antisocial. God knows, it couldn’t have been my charming ways.
I had an unsettled feeling that I thought had begun when Art and I had compared notes about an hour ago. I got more unsettled when I discovered I couldn’t figure out why. The last time I’d felt this way, I’d left a burner turned on on our stove at home, before Sue and I took a short trip to Dubuque. I remembered it about ten miles out. That kind of persistent, almost ominous feeling. Coupled with my feeling that I was being watched up at the Borglan place … Lack of sleep? I thought that might have a lot to do with it. Especially since I felt no sense of fatigue at all, so I could assume I was still wired from the case. I refilled my coffee cup.
Then, as he finished up his statement, Harvey Grossman asked a question of his own.
“Just how were those burglars killed?”
Before Art could leap in with his standard disclaimer about how we just couldn’t possibly discuss this, I said, “They were shot, Harvey.”
“Oh.”
Simply that. No further curiosity no further questions. Didn’t ask where, when, or why. Really didn’t seem all that interested, either. It didn’t tell me much, but it was the sort of thing I liked to hear and see. Most of the time, if you give a little, you get a little, and in the information business, that could become important at the oddest times. Harvey sort of owed me one.
We collected the statements, all three of them, and cautioned the Grossman family not to discuss anything that had been said with any outsiders. Standard procedure. They said they wouldn’t. Also standard procedure. Except I believed Carrie.
As we were tearing off the pink copies of their statements and handing them back to them, I noticed that Harvey and Linda had