CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“THIS is a house of mourning.” Martha, the Guthmans’ housekeeper, in a black dress, iron-gray hair severely trapped in a bun at the nape of her thin neck, folded her arms and stared at Susan with unyielding disapproval.

“Mrs. Guthman is grieving,” she said, plainly shocked that Susan could be so lacking in decency she would even think of intruding.

“Please ask her,” Susan said firmly, “if she could see me for a few minutes.”

Martha looked down her nose, said, “I’ll ask,” and moved away stiff-backed, leaving Susan standing in the entryway.

In a few minutes she returned and nodded curtly. “This way,” she said, thin-lipped in protest.

Susan followed her rigid back along the gloomy corridor to a room at the end. The curtains were drawn against the sunshine and Ella sat in dimness in a rocking chair with a partially finished pink sweater on her lap.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Susan said.

“It doesn’t matter.” Ella spoke in a low, strained voice. “Nothing matters anymore.”

Susan was gripped by sympathy, so unexpected and so intense her throat tightened, and with it came resentment at Lucille. How could the twit be so stupid? Didn’t she realize prancing around after a killer was dangerous? Was she so young and foolish she thought she was invincible?

“I was making this for her birthday.” Ella stroked the pale pink sweater. “She would be twenty-six on March twelfth.”

Ella wasn’t dressed in black; she wore a gray-and-ivory skirt and a white blouse with an old-fashioned cameo pinned at her throat and, for now at least, she wasn’t crying, but she had been, that dreadful wrenching anguish that tears the soul apart. Susan had seen the effects often enough to recognize them; the slack face, reddened puffy eyelids, dull splotched skin. Strands of gray-blond hair lay damply against her forehead.

She had an impulse to put her arm around Ella’s shoulder, but she sat down on the linen-covered couch and waited like a bird of prey to swoop down on Ella’s grief. The room was large, with a television set and a sewing machine, a grand piano in the far corner, a carpet with red and pink roses, a row of shiny-leaved plants on a shelf under the window, and on the walls, framed photos of Jack and Lucille at various stages of childhood.

“Why was Mr. Guthman so angry with Brenner Niemen yesterday?” Susan asked softly.

“He’s—Otto—is angry that Lucille is—is— And he can’t even say how sad he is. And so he just— When he saw Brenner at the funeral, he lashed out. It was wrong of him. He shouldn’t have behaved that way.” Ella’s voice faded. “He shouldn’t have. Not at the funeral.”

She rocked gently. “I knew something terrible would happen. When Lucille just vanished, I told him. I told him he had to do something. If he’d found her, she might not—” Ella crushed the sweater under her fingers. In her pain, she was blaming Otto for Lucille’s death.

“Why was he upset that Brenner was at the funeral?”

“Something that happened a long time ago. A long time ago.”

“What happened a long time ago?”

“It was because … because…” Ella smoothed out the sweater; pale-pink cashmere threads caught in her fingers. “Otto found him with Lucille. Kissing her and they … her clothes were all mussed—unbuttoned. They were in the barn. In the barn,” she repeated with bewilderment. “Of course, Lucille shouldn’t have … it wasn’t right, anyone could have found them. And Otto just went in and there they were.”

Otto finding them was probably the point, Susan thought. “When was this?”

“Lucille was fifteen.”

“Ten years ago?”

“When it happened he was angry … angry … told Brenner to leave, never to come near Lucille again. He made it hard for Brenner, very hard.”

“Did she see Brenner after that?”

“She didn’t.”

That was said so firmly, Susan assumed Ella doubted it. “Was she in love with him?”

“She was too young.” Ella turned over the sweater and plucked at the inside. “What does it matter? Gossip, disgrace—they can’t hurt her. Nothing can hurt her. Not now.”

“Was she hurt?”

“Of course, she was hurt. She was a young girl. Young girls get hurt.”

“Was she angry with Brenner?” Susan asked gently. Was that why Lucille had wanted to prove Brenner guilty, because of an old wound that never healed?

“Why are you asking about all this? What’s the point? It won’t bring her back.”

“It won’t bring her back”: that brick wall the grieving mind ran up against. Susan remembered her first investigation into the death of a child, the mother’s eyes staring hard ahead with the blank glaze of denial. There were some things too awful for the human mind to accept; and revenge, finding the culprit, were not enough to get over that brick wall. “It won’t bring her back”—the cry of every despairing, anguished, grieving mother.

“Do you play the piano?”

For a moment, Ella looked blank, then looked at the piano. “Oh. No. At least not well. I studied opera as a girl. I had it in mind to be a singer. I always hoped Lucille would learn to play, but she never wanted to.”

“Where can I find Mr. Guthman?”

“I expect in the breeding pen. Always so busy. That bull, that bull, always so important.”

Susan left her swaying slowly, the rocker creaking softly and rhythmically.

*   *   *

THE breeding pen wasn’t a pen at all but a white frame building; inside, it was one large open area with straw on the floor, hitching posts along the walls and the strong odor of cattle mixed with the dusty smell of hay. Sunshine streamed through the doorway and sparkled on the dust in the air. Guthman, wearing blue denim pants and jacket, stood spraddle-legged giving orders to five men who wore the glazed, attentive expressions that said they’d heard it all before. Each man held what looked like a section of oversized rubber hose with a glass tube on one end.

“I don’t want anything to go wrong,” Guthman said. “You know what to do. Everybody be careful. I don’t want any accidents, I don’t want any spillage. Remember, you’re holding thousands of dollars in your hands. Don’t drop it.”

The five men all nodded dutifully.

“Let’s go.” Guthman turned, noticed her in the doorway and with intense irritation strode toward her. “This is no place for you. You’ll have to leave. We’re just about to take collections. This isn’t a picnic. You could get hurt, or likely cause somebody else to get hurt.”

“I’ll wait till you’re free.”

“I’m a busy man.”

“Too busy to help me find out who killed your daughter?”

He gave her a steady, penetrating look and she thought he wanted to pick her up by the scruff of the neck and toss her out on her rear. No doubt, he would lodge more complaints with the mayor. She kept her demeanor unruffled. That high-handed attitude won’t get rid of me; if Bakover’s taking away the job anyway, I have nothing to lose. “I’m staying until you have the time,” she said calmly.

Apparently, he believed her; he scowled, looked at his watch and seemed to conclude talking with her was the quickest way to get rid of her.

“When I can leave here.” He took her elbow, jerked her aside and well back from the doorway. “Barney, get those steers in here.”

One at a time, six steers were led in and tied to posts, where they stood docilely, switching their tails. Steers in a breeding pen? Steers were males, castrated males. Obviously, there was a whole lot about cattle she didn’t understand. “Why not cows?”

“Steers are easier to keep clean and less possibility of losing a collection.”

The bulls didn’t mind?

Guthman’s gaze passed over the steers, checking that all was satisfactory; then he gave a quick nod. As though the whole thing had been choreographed, the men with rubber hoses moved to position themselves near the front of the steers. Again Guthman’s gaze scanned the entire assembly and again he gave a quick nod.

Stomping and snorting, Fafner swept through the door, his handler trying to control him with a rope on the nose ring. The huge bull bellowed and swung his head from side to side. The handler trotted alongside as Fafner curved and lunged his massive bulk in a menacing caper.

Four more bulls were led in and paraded in a circle past the steers. Rumbling bellows rose to a deafening level; stomping hooves kicked up dust. Grunts and muttered curses came from the handlers as they tried to restrain their charges. The steers seemed unaffected by the ruckus, but the bulls appeared to be fiercely aware of each other, and the threat of competition had them raging with eagerness to reach the steers. The handlers, with increasing difficulty, maintained control and kept them moving in a circle.

Suddenly, Fafner plunged toward a steer’s hindquarters and reared on his hind legs. The handler, with great effort, yanked on the lead rope and managed to jerk the animal off balance. His front hooves landed with a thud.

“How much does he weigh?” she asked in awe.

Guthman continued to eye his prize bull. “Twenty-eight hundred pounds.”

My God, she thought, as much as an automobile.

Fafner reared again, and again the handler pulled him down. The bull bellowed with rage. The other bulls got even more avid and made repeated lunges for the steers. When Fafner in a frenzy of lust reared a third time, he was allowed to mount a steer, who stood quite unconcerned.

A man ducked quickly to Fafner’s side, slid the length of rubber hose over the bull’s penis as convulsive shudders passed over the animal. The man stepped back and held up the glass tube. “Good catch!”

Guthman nodded with satisfaction. “Take him back,” he said to the bull’s handler. Now that the king was taken care of, the lesser bulls were allowed to reach the objects of their affections.

“How much is a good catch?” Susan asked.

“About five cubic centimeters.”

She wasn’t sure how large a cubic centimeter was.

Guthman gave her a tight smile. “It sells for four thousand dollars a unit. A unit is a half-cubic centimeter,” he added before she could ask.

She did some rapid calculations, came up with forty thousand dollars and mentally whistled. “What happens to the semen after it’s collected?”

Guthman watched as Fafner was taken out. “Tested and evaluated at the lab. Then packed with egg yolks in straws and frozen with liquid nitrogen. It’s stored in the Bank. We’ll talk there.”

Trotting after him, she squinted in the sunshine. The vast sky was a bright blue with not a cloud in sight, but the air was cold, and she was forced to hustle a bit to keep up as he strode toward the gray stucco building with bars on the windows. No wonder it was called the Bank.

“Egg yolks?” she asked.

“Gives protection from the shock of freezing and feeds the sperm.”

Ah yes. We surely wouldn’t want the valuable little devils to go hungry.

Opening the door, he allowed her to precede him. A secretary looked up with a harried expression as they came in. Guthman, obviously proud of the efficiency and success of his business, showed her around. The pride tempered his irritation as he led her behind the reception area into a large room with the clutter and bustle of any warehouse. Two men were preparing orders for shipment.

Guthman introduced her to a third man. “Slater, my foreman here.”

Slater, a thin man with gray hair and a precise manner, briefly explained the procedures. The straws Guthman had mentioned were actually thin metal tubes; they were kept in vacuum tanks of liquid nitrogen with labels that read ANIMAL SEMEN, DO NOT DROP, in large letters and several languages. Each had a code number that identified a specific bull. For shipping, the tanks were packed in crates.

“Everything running smooth?” Guthman asked.

Slater nodded. “No more trouble with equipment not where it belongs.” He called a sharp command to one of the workers and sprinted off to supervise something that wasn’t being done to his satisfaction.

“Good foreman,” Guthman said, “but fussy as an old woman.” He took her to his office, barking at the harried secretary for coffee as they went past.

A huge world map, dotted with different-colored pins to show where semen was being sent, took up one entire wall of the office. On the opposite wall hung an enlarged photograph, in color, of Fafner standing on a grassy hill, looking virile and gazing into a rosy, profitable future.

Guthman nodded toward two black leather chairs separated by a small table beneath a window with winter sunlight flowing through. He dropped into a swivel chair behind a heavy oak desk, bare except for in tray, out tray, telephone and pencils. She sank deep into one of the leather chairs and the sunshine spilled over her brown-trousered legs. Guthman seemed to tower over her, and like the bull, seemed virile and powerful.

He also inspired the same sort of incomprehensible awe; she was half fascinated by him, half repelled. With the semen collection a success, he was riding on the flush of satisfaction. It put him in an expansive mood and should work to her benefit, making him more apt to answer questions. The secretary scurried in with coffee pot, cups, cream and sugar on a tray, deposited it on the desk and scurried out.

“Why were you angry that Brenner Niemen was at Lucille’s funeral?” she asked.

A dark, dangerous look came over his face. “Lucille’s dead. My only daughter.”

“Do you think Brenner had something to do with her death?”

“Huh. If I thought that, I’d do more than get angry.” Guthman poured coffee, got up to hand her a cup, then reseated himself and picked up the other one. He took a gulp. “He’s a bad one, Brenner. Rotten to the core. Always has been. I told him years ago, I never wanted to lay eyes on him. I meant it then and it still goes. He had no right to be there.”

Guthman had been furious at Brenner for playing slap-and-tickle games with Lucille, and the anger was still strong all these years later? That kind of long-lasting rancor made her skin crawl.

“Did you know Lucille was going out late at night?”

He stared at her. She was already beginning to irritate him—vaguely, like a buzzing fly—and he wouldn’t put up with her long.

He decided to answer the question and nodded, slowly and deliberately. Again she was reminded of Fafner. “I didn’t like it.”

“Did she tell you why?”

He picked up a pencil and tapped one end against the desk blotter. “Working. She had a job and she intended to do it.”

Trying to catch red-handed the culprit dumping drums of toxic waste on Vic’s land?

“I shouldn’t have let her go.”

“Monday night? The night she left?”

“I never should have allowed it.” With the point of the pencil, he gouged small ruts in the blotter. “We had an argument. One of the mares was sick. I went to check on her. She was better. Lucille was leaving when I came back in.” He spoke as though each word had to be forced.

“I told her she couldn’t go out. With a killer running around, it wasn’t safe. She said I couldn’t give her orders. Huh. Living in my house, I give the orders.” He glowered, took a gulp of coffee and went on in a harsh voice.

“She shouted all I knew was orders. Blind, couldn’t see what was going on under my nose.” He snapped the pencil in half. “She said that was the way I felt, she wouldn’t live here any more.”

“What did she mean, ‘blind’?”

“Nothing,” he stated flatly. “Nothing goes on here I don’t know about.”

Well, maybe, Susan thought, but you didn’t know much about daughters. “You thought she hadn’t come back because of the quarrel?”

“God forgive me,” he muttered in a low rumble, “that’s what I thought. I expected her to get in touch with her mother in a day or two.”

“What else did Lucille say?”

“Nothing. She was crying. She ran out and got in her car.” He stared through Susan, unseeing. “And I let her go.”

The phone rang. He snatched it, barked a hello and listened for several seconds. “Couldn’t be,” he said.

She picked up a catalogue from the table at her elbow; a slick, glossy, expensive catalogue, warm from sitting in the sunlight and with the same photo of Fafner on the cover as the framed picture on the wall.

“Your handlers didn’t do it right,” Guthman said.

She flipped through pages of colored photos of bulls with a one-page biography of each and, in the usual glowing terms of advertisements, the text pointed out the remarkable possibilities of the offspring of these animals. Udder improvement. Oh, dear. Two and a half times the usual quantity of milk.

“Cows not receptive,” Guthman said.

She read about tall daughters with fancy rumps and good feet, superior depth of body.

“Not possible,” Guthman said. “Sperm count high.” He listened, grunted and made some notes. “I’ll check into it,” he said and banged down the receiver. “Don’t know what they’re doing, and then wonder why cows not in calf.”

Closing the catalogue, she tossed it on the table where sunshine glinted brightly on Fafner’s picture. “Mr. Guthman—”

He brushed a hand as though shooing the buzzing fly. Damn the interruption. He was back to businessman, mind occupied with whatever the phone call had brought. She’d get nothing further from him now.

As she drove back to the police department, she thought about Lucille’s quarrel with Guthman. What had she meant when she accused her father of being blind? What was going on under his nose?

She was still puzzling over it that night when she got into bed at a little after eleven. The phone woke her three hours later, jerking her from a deep sleep. She snatched the receiver. “Hello?”

“If you want to catch the cattle rustler,” a voice whispered, “go ten miles west of town. Take the farm road off to the right. Down by the creek, across Vic’s land.”

“Who is this? Sophie?”

There was a click and then the dial tone.