“They look good,” Mark commented. “They’ll grow to be fine riders.”
“They love those animals.”
Erich left them to lead one of the ponies.
“I’ve never seen Erich happier. He was showing their pictures to everyone at the Hanovers’ the other night. Emily was sorry you couldn’t make it.”
“Couldn’t make it?” Jenny repeated. “Couldn’t make what?”
“The Hanovers’ party. Erich said you weren’t feeling up to par. Have you seen a doctor yet? I just overheard you mentioning your back. And that fainting spell that night, Jenny. Was that unusual? Do you have any history of weak spells?”
“No. I never faint. And I will see a doctor soon.”
She felt rather than saw Mark studying her. Somehow she didn’t mind. Whatever conclusion he had reached about Kevin’s possible visit and her supposed widow status, he had not condemned her.
Should she tell him that she had no idea about Emily’s party? What good would it do? Erich left us together here because he knew Mark would probably bring up the party, she thought. Erich wanted me to know about it. Why? Was it simply another way of trying to hurt her, to punish her, for the gossip around the Krueger name? How much did people in this community know? She was sure Emily had told her family and friends about the sheriff’s visit.
If Erich believed people thought he had made a mistake and were pitying him, he’d be furious. She remembered his anger when Elsa suggested he had made the smudge on the wall.
Erich was a perfectionist.
As Mark turned to leave, Erich called, “See you tonight.” Tonight? Jenny wondered. Another party? Business of some kind? Whatever it was, she wouldn’t hear about it.
The girls ran to her when they dismounted. “Daddy is going to ride Baron with us soon,” Beth said.
“Don’t you like to ride with us, Mommy?”
Joe led the ponies into the barn. “See you, Mrs. Krueger,” he said. She was very sure he would not call her Jenny again.
“Come along, dear.” Erich took her arm. “Didn’t my little princesses do beautifully?”
My princesses. My girls. My daughters. Not our, only my. When had that begun? Jenny realized that the emotion she was experiencing was stark jealousy. Good Lord, she thought. Don’t let me start getting upset about that. The one good thing in my life right now is that the children are so happy.
They were almost to the house when a car pulled into the driveway, a car with a dome light on the roof. Sheriff Gunderson.
Did he have news about Kevin? She forced herself not to hurry, not to let her face show anxiety. As the sheriff got out of the car, Erich linked his arm in hers. He was holding Tina by the other hand. Beth was running in front of them. The devoted husband standing by his wife in time of trouble, Jenny thought. That had to be the impression the sheriff was getting.
Wendell Gunderson’s face was grim. There was a trifle more formality in his manner even when he greeted Erich. He wanted to speak with Jenny alone.
They went into the library. Jenny thought how in the first weeks this had been her favorite room. The meeting with Kevin had changed everything. The sheriff ignored the couch and chose the one straight chair.
“Mrs. Krueger, there has been absolutely no sign of your ex-husband. The Minneapolis police are treating his disappearance as possible foul play. There is no evidence he planned to stay away. There was two hundred dollars in cash in a desk drawer; he took only a small overnight bag with him when he left. Everyone he worked with at the Guthrie agreed that he wouldn’t walk away from that opportunity. I realize that last time it would have been much easier if I insisted on speaking with you alone. Please tell the truth, because once this investigation is in full swing, I promise you the truth will come out. Did you phone Kevin MacPartland on the afternoon of Monday, March ninth?”
“I did not.”
“Did you see him on the night of Monday, March ninth?”
“I did not.”
“He left Minneapolis about five-thirty. Driving straight through, that would get him here about nine. We’ll assume he might have stopped along the way to get something to eat. Where were you between nine-thirty and ten that Monday night?”
“I was in bed. I turned out the light before nine o’clock. I was very tired.”
“You insist you did not see him?”
“I did not.”
“The Guthrie operator confirmed that he received a call from a woman. Is there any woman who might have called him in your name? Any close friend?”
“I don’t have any close friends here,” Jenny said, “man or woman.” She stood up. “Sheriff, no one wants more than I do to find Kevin MacPartland. He is the father of my children. There’s never been even a hint of animosity between us. So will you please explain to me what you’re driving at? Are you suggesting that I invited or enticed Kevin here knowing that my husband planned to be away? And if you believe that, are you insinuating I had something to do with his disappearance?”
“I’m not suggesting anything, Mrs. Krueger. I’m only asking you to tell us everything you know. If MacPartland was definitely on his way here and didn’t show up, it gives us a starting point. If he was here and we knew what time he left, it gives us something else. Can you see what I’m getting at? I can understand why that might be embarrassing for you but . . .”
“I don’t think we have anything more to discuss,” Jenny said. Turning abruptly, she left the library. Erich was in the kitchen with the girls. He’d made ham and cheese sandwiches. The three of them were eating companionably. Jenny saw there was no place set for her.
“Erich, I think the sheriff is ready to leave,” she said. “You might want to see him out.”
“Mommy.” Beth looked anxious.
Oh, Mouse, Jenny thought, that antenna of yours. She tried to smile. “Say, you two looked terrific on the ponies today.” Going to the refrigerator, she poured a glass of milk.
“Don’t you know better, Mommy?” Beth asked.
“Know what better?” Jenny picked up Tina, sat at the table with the little girl on her lap.
“Daddy told Joe when we were on our ponies that even if you don’t know better than to have Joe call you Mrs. Krueger, Joe should know better.”
“Daddy said that?”
“Yes.” Beth was positive. “You know what else he said?”
Jenny sipped her milk. “No, what?”
“He said that when Joe got home for lunch today, he’d find a brand-new puppy Daddy bought for him because Randy runned away. Can we see the puppy, Mommy?”
“Sure. Let’s walk over there after your nap.”
So Randy “runned away,” she thought. That’s the official version of what happened to that poor little puppy.
21
The new puppy was a golden retriever. Even to Jenny’s unpracticed eye, the long nose, thin face and slender body indicated good breeding.
The thick old quilt on the kitchen floor was the same one Randy had curled up on. The bowl with water still had his name in the jaunty red letters Joe had painted on it.
Even Joe’s mother seemed mollified by the gift. “Erich Krueger is a fair man,” she conceded to Jenny. “Feel as though I was wrong accusing him of maybe doing away with Joe’s dog last year. Seems as though if he got rid of that dog he’d a come out and said so.”
Except that this time I saw him, Jenny thought, and then felt unfair to Erich.
Beth patted the sleek head. “You must be very careful because he’s so little,” she instructed Tina. “You must not hurt him.”
“They sure are pretty little girls,” Maude Ekers said. “They favor you except for the hair.”
To Jenny there was something different about the woman’s attitude today. Her welcome had been restrained. She had hesitated before inviting them in. Jenny would not have accepted a cup of coffee from the ever-present percolator but was surprised when it wasn’t offered.
“What’s the puppy’s name?” Beth a
sked.
“Randy,” Maude said. “Joe’s decided he’s another Randy.”
“Naturally,” Jenny commented. “Somehow I knew Joe wouldn’t just forget that other little dog so quickly. He’s much too good-hearted.”
They were sitting at the kitchen table. She smiled at the other woman.
But to her astonishment Maude’s face showed worried hostility. “You leave my boy alone, Mrs. Krueger,” she burst out. “He’s a simple farm boy and I already got enough worries with the way that brother of mine is bringing Joey to the bars with him at night. Joe moons about you too much as it is. Maybe it’s not for me to say but you’re married to the most important man in this community and you should realize your position.”
Jenny pushed the chair back and stood up. “What do you mean?”
“I think you know what I mean. With a woman like you there’s bound to be trouble. My brother’s life was spoiled because of that accident in the dairy barn. You got to have heard that John Krueger felt my brother was careless with the work light ’cause he got so flustered around Caroline. Joe’s all I got. He means the world to me. I don’t want accidents or problems.”
Now that she had started, the words tumbled from her mouth. Beth and Tina stopped playing with the puppy. Uncertainly they clasped hands. “And something else, it may not be my place but you’re awful foolish to have your ex-husband sneaking around here when everyone knows Erich is in his cabin painting.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m no gossip and this ain’t passed my lips but one night last month that actor ex-husband of yours came here looking for directions. He’s a talky one. Introduced himself. Boasted you invited him down. Said he’d just been hired by the Guthrie. I pointed the road to your place myself but let me tell you I wasn’t happy about doing it.”
“You must immediately phone Sheriff Gunderson and tell him what you know,” Jenny said, keeping her voice as steady as she could. “Kevin never arrived at our house that night. The sheriff is inquiring for him. He’s officially listed as a missing person.”
“He never got to your house?” Maude’s normally strong voice became louder.
“No, he did not. Please call Sheriff Gunderson immediately. And thank you for letting us visit the puppy.”
Kevin had been in Maude’s house!
He had specifically told Maude that she, Jenny, had called him.
Maude had pointed the way to the Krueger farmhouse, a three-minute drive away.
And Kevin had not arrived.
If Sheriff Gunderson had been insolent with his insinuations today, what would he be like now?”
“Mommy, you’re hurting my hand,” Beth protested.
“Oh, sorry, love. I didn’t mean to squeeze it.”
She had to get out of here. No, that was impossible. She couldn’t leave until she knew what had happened to Kevin.
And beyond that. She was carrying in her womb the microcosm of a human being who was a fifth-generation Krueger, who belonged to this place, whose birthright was this land.
Afterward Jenny thought of that evening of April 7 as the final calm hours. Erich was not in the house when she and the girls got home.
I’m glad, she thought. At least she would not have to keep up some sort of pretense. The next time she saw him she would tell him what Maude had told her.
Maude had probably called the sheriff already. Would he come back here tonight? Somehow she didn’t think so, but why would Kevin tell people she’d called him? What had happened to him?
“What do you want for dinner, ladies,” she asked.
“Frankfurters,” Beth said positively.
“Ice cream,” was Tina’s hopeful contribution.
“Sounds terrific,” Jenny said. Somehow she’d felt the girls slipping away from her. That wouldn’t happen tonight.
Recklessly she let the girls bring their plates to the couch. The Wizard of Oz was on. Companionably nibbling frankfurters and sipping Cokes they huddled together as they watched it.
By the time it was over Tina was asleep in Jenny’s lap and Beth’s head was drooping on her shoulder. She carried them both upstairs.
Just over three months had passed since that wintry evening when she’d been carrying them home from the day-care center and Erich had caught up with them. There was no use thinking about that. He probably would stay in the cabin again. Even so she didn’t want to sleep in the master bedroom.
She undressed the children, buttoned them into pajamas, patted their faces and hands with a warm washcloth and tucked them into bed. Her back hurt. She should not carry them anymore. Too much weight, too much of a strain. It didn’t take long to stack the dishwasher. Carefully she examined the couch for signs of crumbs.
She remembered the nights in the apartment when if she was very tired she left the dishes stacked and rinsed in the sink and got into bed with a cup of tea and a good book. I didn’t know when I was well off, she thought. And then she remembered the leaky ceiling, rushing the girls to the day-care center, the constant worry about money, the relentless loneliness.
When she was finished straightening up it was not quite nine o’clock. She went through the downstairs rooms, checking that no lights had been left on. In the dining room she stopped under Caroline’s quilt. Caroline had wanted to paint and had been shamed and ridiculed away from her art. She’d “done something useful.”
It had taken Caroline eleven years before she’d been driven away. Had she too experienced the sensation of being the outsider who did not belong?
Slowly climbing the stairs, Jenny realized how close she felt to the woman who had lived in this house. She wondered if Caroline had entered the master bedroom with the same sense of hopeless entrapment that she now felt.
It was midmorning before Sheriff Gunderson came back to the house. Again Jenny had had fitful dreams, dreams of walking in the forest and smelling the pine trees. Was she looking for the cabin?
When she woke up she became ill. How much of the early-morning nausea had to do with the physical aspect of pregnancy and how much was the result of the anxiety over Kevin’s disappearance?
Elsa came in as usual at nine o’clock: dour, silent, vanishing upstairs with vacuum and window cleaners and polishing rags.
She was still reading to the girls when Wendell Gunderson came. She had not yet dressed but was wearing a warm wool robe over her nightgown. Would Erich object to her talking to the sheriff in her robe? No, how could he? The robe zipped up to her neck.
She knew she was pale. She’d tied her hair at the nape of her neck. The sheriff came to the front door.
“Mrs. Krueger.” She detected a pitch of excitement. “Mrs. Krueger,” he repeated, his voice deepening. “Last night I received a call from Maude Ekers.”
“I asked her to phone you,” Jenny said.
“So she claims. I didn’t talk to you right away because I decided to figure out where Kevin MacPartland might have driven if he didn’t come here.”
Was it possible the sheriff did believe her? His face, his voice, were so serious. No. He looked like a poker player about to play his winning card.
“I realized it could happen that a stranger might miss your gate if he turned off on the bend that leads to the riverbank.”
The riverbank. Oh, dear God, Jenny thought. Could Kevin have made that turn and kept driving, maybe driving quickly, and then gone over the bank. That road was so dark.
“We investigated and I’m sorry to say that’s what happened,” the sheriff said. “We found a late-model white Buick in the water near the shoreline. It’s crusted by ice and that thick brush keeps anyone walking on the bank from seeing it. We pulled it out.”
“Kevin?” She knew what he would tell her. Kevin’s face flashed before her mind.
“A man’s body is in the car, Mrs. Krueger. It’s badly decomposed but generally answers the description of the missing Kevin MacPartland, including the clothing he was wearing when last seen. The driver’s license i
n his pocket is MacPartland’s.”
Oh, Kevin, Jenny mourned silently, oh, Kevin. She tried to speak, but could not.
“We will need you to give us positive identification as soon as possible.”
No, she wanted to shriek, no. Kevin was so vain. He worried about a blemish. Badly decomposed! Oh, God.
“Mrs. Krueger, you may want to engage a lawyer.”
“Why?”
“Because there’ll be an inquest into MacPartland’s death and some tough questions will be asked. You don’t have to say anything more.”
“I’ll answer any questions you have now.”
“All right. I’m going to ask you again. Did Kevin MacPartland come to this house that Monday night, March ninth?”
“No, I told you no.”
“Mrs. MacPartland, do you own a full-length maroon thermal winter coat?”
“Yes, I do. No, I mean I did. I gave it away. Why?”
“Do you remember where you purchased it?”
“Yes, in Macy’s in New York.”
“I’m afraid you have a lot of explaining to do, Mrs. Krueger. A woman’s coat was found on the seat next to the body. A maroon thermal coat with the label of Macy’s department store. We’ll need you to look at it and see if it’s the one you claim you gave away.”
22
The inquest was held a week later. For Jenny the week was a blur of unfocused pain.
In the morgue, she stared down at the stretcher. Kevin’s face was mutilated but still recognizable, with the long straight nose, the curve of the forehead, the thick, dark red hair. Memories of their wedding day in St. Monica’s kept flashing back to her. “I, Jennifer, take thee Kevin . . . Till death do us part.” Never had her life been more entwined with his than now. Oh, Kevin, why did you follow me here?
“Mrs. Krueger?” Sheriff Gunderson’s voice urging the identification.
Her throat closed. She hadn’t even been able to swallow tea this morning.
“Yes,” she whispered, “that’s my husband.”