Summerkill Read online

  Giving herself a night off, Vicky came along on the excursion, bringing the makings of a cookout. We celebrated the television news stories about my exoneration. None of them were readers, or had yet heard about that dysfunctional family piece in the Record, and I wasn’t about to ruin the mood of the occasion by bringing it up. It was a nice couple of hours.

  And then they all left and suddenly I wasn’t busy enough.

  Well, there was no shortage of wood to be split and stacked for seasoning. The downstairs I heat mainly with the woodstove, and while the ready-to-use stacks out front held enough for this winter and well into the next it wouldn’t hurt to get still further ahead. This was the fall I intended to finally catch up and process everything usable that was lying around on the ground.

  There wasn’t time to get used to my solitude before it went away again. I don’t know how long he’d been there— Roxy had already taken him off her bark-at list. Me, too, pretty much. He stood a little down from the porch, watching me. My dog stood at his side, wagging her tail. He was still wearing his uniform pants, but the shirt had been replaced by a T bearing the message PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS. “Hi,” he said when I looked over.

  “Hi,” I responded, positioning another log on the horse.

  When the two pieces fell to the ground he moved in. “You’re stacking these over by the woods?”

  “Right.”

  He took the newest splits and toted them away. I brought up another log. He waited for those splits. This went on for as long as I could tolerate, which wasn’t very. I leaned the splitter against the horse, pulled off my chopping gloves, picked up my beer can, and asked, “What do you want?”

  “Oh, just to see how things are going. And if you’ve simmered down from this morning, maybe pick your brain a little. Or did that story in the Record set you off again?”

  “You don’t need to save me a copy for my scrapbook.”

  “So your stepfather’s one of the political Keegans.”

  “That family—he’s a businessman, not a politician. Also, we don’t think of ourselves as being related, even by steps.”

  “And it’s time for a subject change if I hope to continue this conversation.”

  “You’re a perceptive man.”

  “They teach you in cop school. Any more of that beer around?”

  I gestured toward the cooler. “You’re allowed to drink on duty?”

  “Whose permission do I ask? If it makes you happier, we’ll say I’m off duty.”

  He and Roxy went over to the cooler. More empties surrounded it than I’d have displayed, given warning, but what the hell.

  The two of them came back. “I’ve never met a dog called Roxy.”

  “It’s short for Roxanne.”

  “What the hell kind of name is Roxanne for a watchdog?”

  “The one I selected, and she’s a companion, not a watch-dog. What the hell kind of name is Baxter for a sheriff?”

  “My parents didn’t know they were naming a future sheriff. I didn’t foresee that in my future either until it was too late.”

  “It failed to occur to you anywhere along the campaign trail that you might win?”

  “What was I going to do at that point? I took the nomination to be a good Republican. Dad’s active in the party or I’d never have gotten into the department fresh out of a two-year college. My predecessor was a surething vote getter, so nobody was keen on running against him. The county chairman said it would look bad if we didn’t at least field a candidate and asked if I’d mind. It seemed safe.”

  “And then your predecessor literally screwed up and had to withdraw, so you won by default.”

  “Or you could look on it as the biggest plurality in county history. And you may as well call me Baxter even if you don’t think it fits.”

  I shrugged. “Then I’m Val.”

  “Val. Could we sit down somewhere? It’s been a long couple of days.”

  “Tell me about it. Is the porch okay? The mosquitoes are starting to come out.”

  “Want me to bring the cooler?”

  “Good idea.”

  There was the glider and the two big cushioned wicker chairs. We both opted for the latter, Roxy democratically settling down on the floor between us. “The boys aren’t around?”

  “You missed them by half an hour. Their sister and her boyfriend are taking them up to Speculator for a week. His parents have a camp on the lake.”

  “You put that together in a hurry.”

  “All we did was move up the departure time by twelve hours. After Speculator they’ll stay in Albany with their mom for several days, and then we’ll all pile into my Bronco and go to the Cape for Labor Day weekend.”

  He looked like he wanted some amplification, there, but settled for “Do the boys seem okay?”

  “Pretty much. Alex thought some of the kids were looking at him funny today, but that’s as far as it went. He wasn’t too enthused about going to Speculator until after we watched you on the television news. I guess if the sheriff says something, it must be so.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if more people adopted that attitude.”

  “Thanks for doing that for me, by the way. I might not have seemed grateful at the time.”

  He smiled his agreement. “You’d just come from Rodney Etlinger. Are things straightened out yet?”

  “They were straight enough before I steamed into your office. I’m gone.”

  “I almost gave him a call. Do you want me to?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure this isn’t going to squeeze you financially?”

  “Trust me, I’ll turn a profit.”

  “Then from what I keep hearing, you’re well away from that place. One thing I’d like to ask you about is their finances. When Ryan Jessup tried to assign you this stuff you refused to do, he pegged it to a need to generate more revenue. Eleanor and Rodney admit to having a cash-flow problem. They claim it’s temporary and not that serious. Why should there be a problem at all? Last year they landed that huge contract. Is Clete holding up payment or something?”

  “I don’t know, specifically. On projects like that there’s usually a payment schedule—a given percentage of the total as each specified part of the work is completed. My guess would be they didn’t negotiate themselves very workable terms. The Etlingers went into Hudson Heights more as a reputation builder than a moneymaker. They bid low to get the contract, and the cost overruns must be horrendous. Next year, when they get going on the Hudson Heights residentials, they should turn a decent profit.”

  “Why should the cost overruns be horrendous?”

  “A bunch of factors. You’re bound to run into scheduling delays on a complex project, and they didn’t line up enough small fill-in jobs. They lost their best crew chief when Skip Boyles left this spring, and the labor crews have not been functioning efficiently. A major plant supplier suffered a wipeout in a freak storm, which meant we had to scramble to find suitable replacements, at higher prices. And Willem’s afterthoughts on his projects usually happen too late to go as pass-alongs. For all that, it’s one hell of a design.”

  “If you say so. I’m one of those crotchety natives who liked things better when Crane Hill still had its top. Back when I was in high school we went out there a lot in the summer. Dove off this shelf about two-thirds up into the quarry pond.”

  The image made me queasy. “You were out of your minds!”

  He grinned his denial. “It was fun. We’d all pile into a couple of cars with food, something to drink, girls if we got lucky. Nobody ever got hurt. Our biggest challenge was getting around Toby Babcock. He kept trying to chase us off.”

  “The man probably didn’t want you to break your necks on his property.”

  “Toby? Nah—he just didn’t like anybody making use of his land for free. He must’ve collected a nice piece of change in hunting season.” He frowned. “I doubt there’s a huntable creature on the premises anymore, the way the whole landscape got re
arranged.”

  “Mother Nature’s not always into golf courses. It’s beautiful, though, that one: the vistas of the river, the different perspectives you get on the quarry pond.”

  “You’re a Hudson Heights enthusiast, then.”

  “Not really. I’m too uneasy about hanging around at the edges of high places to enjoy those views. Golf bores me silly, and my social life doesn’t run to country clubs. None of which keeps me from considering it a quality project. And a legitimate use of the land. They satisfied every objection people raised.”

  “Well, who knows? Twenty years down the line it may start looking like it’s supposed to be there.”

  “Give it ten. Even the crotchety native human eye is very forgiving. Want another beer? I do.”

  “Sure.” He reached over and opened the cooler. “Yesterday morning, when I asked why you didn’t get along with Ryan, you implied he was a man who cut financial corners. Was he doing something illegal?”

  “Not that I know of. Dishonest, sometimes, or at least mean-spirited. I’ll give you an example. I would spec out a landscaping project, the contract price would be figured, the contract signed. Then Ryan would start making cheaper substitutions on some of the materials—the ones not spelled out in detail in the final agreement. He had no intention of passing the savings along to the client. And there were a lot of other things—he was always coming up with some new wrinkle on saving money. The man was fixated.”

  “I doubt you were the only one he ticked off around there. The good words the rest of the staff scrambled to say about him did not ring with sincerity.”

  “Ryan had a weakness for picky little economies that save a dollar on the surface and inspire ten dollars’ worth of alienation. Also, he was one of those people who has to know everything about everything. After hours he’d go through people’s wastebaskets. When he found something that didn’t meet his disposal criteria, it’d be on that person’s desk the next morning, topped by a memo sheet with a big question mark and his initials. Generally speaking, he must’ve been easier to stomach for the one giving the orders.”

  “Which means Clete Donnelly, according to several people. Naturally the Etlingers didn’t put it that way, but Clete did force him on them, though, right?”

  “Nobody out and out said so. That was the general impression.”

  “Who functioned as their business manager before?”

  “Well, officially Rodney was the treasurer. He signed the checks. The thing is, Rodney’s specialty is promotion and public relations. He wasn’t into anything I would describe as central financial management. Each of the other principals had their own area and pretty much did their own thing: Eleanor with the nursery business, Kate with the store, Willem with the landscaping.”

  “It sounds to me like Willem was the one who had the most to lose, the way Ryan was muscling in.”

  “You must be assuming that Willem wants to run the Garden Center some day. He wouldn’t know how and isn’t interested in learning. Willem’s purely a designer—nobody’s ever managed to nudge him much beyond that, though his folks keep trying. Besides, he was in Marysville night before last. Spur of the moment stayover. He called Kate, I assume. He called me.”

  “About what time?”

  “Nine-ish. I hadn’t been home long.”

  “The timing might be doable.” We both let that one hang. “How does Kate take to calls like that, I wonder? Willem appeared to be in some measure of family disgrace today.”

  Which meant either they were very rattled indeed or this man sitting on my porch was acutely observant. “That happens once in a while. They get over it. How well do you know him?”

  I could almost watch the censoring. “He was five years behind me in school, a year behind my sister. I asked her once, is this kid a queer, the way he’s always hanging out with the girls? It took her a long time to stop laughing.”

  “There a lot more to Willem than a penis,” I snapped.

  He flashed me a what-did-I-say look. “How many sore subjects do you come with?” he asked mildly.

  “I can make you a list.”

  “I may request one. Anyhow, getting back to Ryan Jessup, there’s one thing that keeps coming up odd. Whether the Garden Center people viewed him as a valuable employee or the colleague they loved to hate, none of them seems to have done anything with him beyond the work environment. We asked some of the Elks and got Ryan who? Oh, yeah, that guy. Apparently he was good about pitching in on projects, but nobody could remember much about him beyond that. Ditto with the Rotary people. This man didn’t have family in the area unless you count the Donnellys, and he doesn’t seem to have been tight with any of them, in the personal sense. How about girlfriends, boyfriends, friend-friends?”

  “Got me there.”

  “There must be more you can tell me about this guy. Think. Did anything happen recently that was different or unusual or out of character?”

  Maybe, I admitted to myself, startled. Something I’d stored in my head, somewhere, but I didn’t feel close to dredging it up. A private recovery project, then. “I keep thinking about him being at Stewarts before he came out here that night,” I said evasively. “That’s a pathetic place to have your last meal.”

  He looked at me hard—marking the evasion, perhaps? “I don’t think he came out here,” he said finally. “He was brought. There was nothing in the treads of his sneakers to indicate he’d walked along your driveway.”

  “You’re suggesting somebody abducted him from the Stewarts’ parking lot?” I asked, trying to visualize such a scene in that brightly lit area at a time when it normally saw a lot of in-and-out traffic.

  “I hope we wouldn’t still be looking for anybody that inept. The way it probably happened is there were at least two people involved, and they either followed him home from Stewarts or waited till he showed up at his apartment. It’s on the second floor; the side yard where the outside stairs are is unlit, and there’s a row of tall spruce trees screening it off from the next house. He had a trauma to the back of his head, which they tried to pass off as him hitting it on that rock when he fell. But the wound doesn’t quite conform. Most likely they sapped him and put him in his car. One of them drove it out to the Berkmeiers’ pasture lane, the other or others followed in another vehicle. They carried him over here, laid him out, and proceeded to make use of your pruner. After which they went back to the second car and drove off.”

  “You’ve learned a lot for a couple of days’ work,” I said, impressed.

  “Not nearly enough. Most murders that get solved, there’d already be somebody behind bars.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Are you taking calls from anybody named Etlinger?” I looked at my watch—it was a few minutes short of midnight. “Depends,” I said, settling comfortably onto the sofa. Willem’s fun as a disembodied voice. Also when you add the body. Hard to capture, though, in more ways than one. A souvenir snapshot doesn’t cut it—he only works in motion. Stilled and silent, he’s nothing special: a man of less than average height, ultraslim, curly light-brown hair you’d suspect was permed (it’s not), sharp features. Plug in the animation, you’ve got your center of attention. Some men don’t take to him much, but they all notice when he’s around. Heterosexual women? Maybe a few are immune.

  Ten minutes into that first interview I hadn’t the remotest doubt I wanted to sleep with him, though I did have many reservations that this could or should happen. I have never been tempted to marry, nor do I have much respect for the institution, per se, or a great deal of faith in the exclusivity it’s supposed to guarantee. My parents were married, which didn’t stop my father from heading west on his Harley with a new girlfriend before I turned two. My mother’s second marriage has endured, but it never had the trappings of a love match. Before the wedding, even, Ma made no bones about going for the financial security; what Jon Keegan wanted from the arrangement he probably didn’t talk about.

  Vicky’s union with Gina’s father was a s
hort-lived formality, and she and Jason’s father didn’t bother with documentation. We both talk as if her marriage to Estevan Gutierrez, the younger boys’ father, would have endured; it makes a warmer story that way. They did have some serious problems. Pete and Janey continue to delight in one another; beyond them, there aren’t many officially knotted pairs I look on with envy. Being part of a really good long-term couple seems beyond the reach of most people.

  I have usually sidestepped entanglements with married men, partly as a moral stance regarding their official status but more, I have to admit, to avoid potential messiness. So I held out against Willem’s moves until I learned how regular his infidelities had been and currently were, and beyond that, how little official difference they were apt to make. It’s hard for me to see why this marriage should endure, why Kate continues to settle for what he has to offer. But on the surface, at least, they function well together, and they’re both devoted to their young daughters. Maybe they consider that enough? Maybe one or the other feels stuck?

  Anyhow, I took the plunge. It got scary there, for a while. What hooks women on Willem is he’s one of those rare people open to experiencing undiluted joy, and he can take you there with him. You want to lock in on that, hoard for yourself. He’ll tell you up front that’s not going to happen, but even believing him you still keep wishing. After my first season with Etlingers’ I gave serious thought to pulling the hell out of there. I didn’t, though, and gradually grew comfortable with the role he could play in my life, mine in his. I’ve never grown comfortable around Kate, though—surely I must owe her something.

  Vicky says it’s a matter of settling for less, but I can’t see it. Not until I was almost nineteen did I begin to think maybe there were some activities involving the male sex organ that could be fun. Never have I been what I could call “in love,” even with Willem, and not once have I daydreamed of living with him. My few forays into such arrangements have been stressful and brief. I just can’t hack it—I crave my own space too much. My longest relationships have been with men who value breathing room as much as I do. In that kind of setup you almost surely drift apart eventually. I’m still friends with a couple of them, though.