I HAD DRIVEN PAST my parent's farm and had almost reached Peter Frost's when an idea occurred to me. The police were looking for – more accurately thought they had found – the killer. I was looking for a reason for Frost to be at our barn. The searches were not mutually exclusive, but they could take a person in different directions.
I drove by the Frost farm slowly. As with the Donovans' place, the barn sat behind the house. Frost's two-story house was smaller than my parents' and had only been built about forty years ago. Pretty modern for a working Iowa farm.
Though my memory of the day or two after Frost's murder was imperfect, I didn't remember seeing any police tape at his house. Granger would have let the sheriff look at anything – no warrant. And because he had not died there, the sheriff didn't do a CSI-type investigation, probably.
Would the house contain evidence of how Frost acquired the cash he'd been depositing more frequently? Could there be a computer that required no password and contained email records?
Even as I had the last thought, I discounted it. Electronic communication always left bread crumbs. If I tried to look at anything Frost had, the effort would probably lead the sheriff right to me.
It was the second of July. How early would it be dark enough to poke around?
Nine o'clock. Iowa was close to the eastern part of the central time zone, so it got dark earlier than, say, Kansas. Even in farm country, cars would still be on the road at nine. I decided to wait until about eleven.
I NAPPED BETWEEN seven and ten p.m. Wednesday evening. I'm not usually a napper, but the longer this whole thing went on, the more emotionally exhausted I felt.
Mister Tibbs acted very confused. After she circled my recliner four or five times, I patted the arm of the chair. She took this as permission to join me, a special treat.
I set the alarm on my cell phone, half hoping I would oversleep and stay home. After all, I didn't know what I expected to find, and I could get arrested for breaking and entering.
Mister Tibbs and I both slept the full three hours. The alarm woke her with more of a start than it did me. From her swift glance at the door, I knew we needed a near-immediate potty trip.
When we got back upstairs, she yawned and cocked her head. It seemed she expected us to head to bed. Instead, I didn't hang up my lightweight jacket and took a bottle of water from the fridge, then put it in my pocket.
"I'll be back soon."
She lay down and rolled, exposing her belly. I stooped to scratch her.
"You won't miss me."
Her whimper said otherwise, but I stood and gently pushed a chew toy toward her.
With only a quarter moon, darkness enveloped me as I walked to my truck. I tried not to crunch the gravel much and didn't turn on my headlights until I'd driven half a block. "You're being silly. No one cares if you head out this late."
I planned to turn off my headlights when I was a quarter mile from my farm. I would pull behind the barn and leave my truck there while I hiked to Peter Frost's house.
Most farm families leave one or more doors or windows unlocked. Even if Frost did, Granger could have locked his uncle's house after his murder. Even if it was locked, I figured at least one door would have a simple doorknob lock rather than a deadbolt. I had a flat screwdriver in my jacket pocket.
I pulled into our barnyard, careful not to even pause in the spot where I often parked my pickup. Every cricket within a mile seemed to be rubbing its legs to announce me.
I drove behind the barn and turned off the engine. The silence that followed almost made my ears ring.
I nearly laughed at how softly I closed the truck door. No one could hear me.
The way to remain out of sight, so I thought, was to walk along the edge of our corn until I reached the boundary that separated our property from Frost's. His crops weren't planted as close to his house, so I'd have to walk nearly an eighth of a mile across rutted terrain that had almost knee-high grass.
I picked my way carefully. There would be no good explanation for an ambulance call for a broken ankle.
Half of me hoped I would find no way into Peter Frost's house. I touched the pair of cotton garden gloves in my jacket pocket. I didn't expect to be stopped at any point, but if I were, the garden gloves were common items for me. Latex or vinyl gloves would not be.
Not one car drove along the road. Even so, I felt relieved that the moon ducked behind a few clouds when I got near Frost's house.
As I got closer, I looked for a dog. I thought it had died before Frost, and then realized if it hadn't someone would have taken it.
I'd never been this close to his house and had not realized it was so shabby. The aged aluminum siding meant no peeling paint, but the porch that ran across most of the front of the house had unpainted boards that looked like recent replacements for rotten ones. Perhaps Granger or someone had done the work after Frost died.
Implements in various states of rust cluttered the area just behind the house – a push lawnmower, two large tubs that probably had held water for livestock at some point, and a single metal swing. Smaller items littered the back porch – an old rake, empty plastic milk cartons, and overturned bowls.
Something brushed against my leg. I jumped and pulled away. The small, clearly malnourished, gray cat wound between my legs and meowed loudly.
"Damn." My pocket had half of a dog treat, and I pulled it out. The cat smelled it and meowed more noisily. She butted my calf as I stooped, crushed half of the treat in my hand, and held it out. She nearly ate my palm.
"I'm sorry, girl. If I'd known you were here, I would've taken you home with me." She gobbled the rest of the treat and looked at me expectantly.
I climbed the three steps onto the back porch and turned a bowl over. She – I assumed a girl, since she didn't have the large head many males have – stuck her nose in it and looked up expectantly. I took the bottle of water from my pocket and poured half in the bowl.
She drank with gusto. I left her to it and put on my gloves before I touched the porch door knob. It was locked, but the door rattled gently. No deadbolt.
Before I used the flathead screwdriver to try to open it, I went to the two windows that faced the back porch. The first was locked, the second wasn't.
The windows were single-paned and, given the rotting caulk, probably let in every gust of wind. I shook my head slightly. Rusting stuff in the yard was less a sign of poverty than leaky windows.
I had no idea Peter Frost lived like this. Or maybe he had money and hadn't cared to keep his place in better shape.
Clouds moved, and the moon cast a bit of light. A glance through the porch window showed the kitchen. The chairs boasted piles of newspapers, and the counters had a mix of canisters, seed packets, and shaving supplies. Typical bachelor, I thought.
The floor was clean, and dishes were stacked neatly in the drainer. I wondered if someone, maybe Aaron Granger, had cleaned up a bit after Frost died.
The window creaked as I raised it, but no one would be near enough to hear it. Before I could raise a leg to enter, the cat leapt onto the sill and into the kitchen.
"Damn, damn, double damn!"
It scampered to the cabinet door under the sink and began to paw at it.
"I guess we know where your food is."
I climbed into the dark kitchen, shut the window, and pulled my pencil flashlight from the pocket of my jeans. I didn't need to turn it on to open the cupboard. As soon as I did, the cat darted in.
A bag of cat food tumbled onto the floor and the cat flew out and pawed it. I stooped and unfastened a clip, which let food pour onto the floor. I let her eat her fill and walked from the kitchen into the living room.
The house was a center hall colonial, though I doubted the builder had used that term. The first floor had four rooms – living room, dining room, kitchen, and office – with stairs in the center that led to an upstairs.
I started with the cluttered office. I hoped to find something that said Frost had dealings with whoever had used our barn. It was a longshot, but I had no short answers.
The wooden desk was light-colored, like old teachers' desks, and just as scarred. The drawers opened with protest, yielding a few pens and pencils, paper, bank statements, and several prior years' copies of the Farmer's Almanac.
At first, I decided against opening the bank statements. The cash deposits would probably be the most relevant information, and I knew about them. I closed the drawer. Then I changed my mind, reopened it, and took out the statements.
When did the deposits start? Probably there would be no way to tell changes in deposit patterns, but maybe I'd get lucky.
January through April of the current year showed Peter Frost received Social Security deposits and small monthly credits from some sort of financial firm. A 401K or something like that, I presumed. The fairly low income level partially explained the shabbiness.
He didn't seem to use an ATM card. Instead, he wrote checks to places such as the Hy-Vee grocery store, the local electric co-op, and a seed company.
Things changed in May. A two-hundred dollar cash deposit appeared on the tenth, and another on the twentieth. Then there was another one on the thirtieth.
June saw the same on the tenth, but the amount went up to four hundred dollars on the twenty-first. That was just a few days before he died.
I closed the drawer and turned off my penlight. After staring at the desktop for several seconds, I placed my elbows on the desk and rested my chin on my balled fists. If Frost had taken a part-time job, it probably would have been in the obit.
In Chicago, people might not think two hundred dollars was a lot, but in our part of Iowa it could pay one month's electric and phone bills and a satellite dish subscription. If you didn't have a lot of extra channels.
Wishful thinking did not yield copies of an extortion note in which Frost threatened to go to the sheriff if someone didn't provide bigger paydays. Or a note from the someone telling him to back off or else.
I stood to walk upstairs when headlights bounced on Frost's driveway. Acid bubbled at the base of my throat. How could anyone know I'd broken in?
Frost had a long driveway, so I figured I had a minute, maybe two if the driver dawdled before coming into the house. And they would come in. Why else drive onto the property at nearly midnight?
I stooped and made my way to the kitchen. Two car doors slammed in front of the house. Where could I hide?
The cat had stopped eating and gazed at me with drooping eyelids. Then she straightened and zoomed down a stairway I had not spotted. The narrow opening was more like a food pantry. It had been partially open, and I hadn't searched it yet.
I walked down into a musty cellar that was darker than the interior of a locked trunk. I turned on my penlight just long enough to spot a huge boiler on the far side of the cellar. As I slunk behind it, the sound of the cat pawing in a litter box reached me. That explained her quick bolt downstairs.
Few farm families used the front door unless they had company, and whoever had arrived was no exception. There was a faint jiggling of keys, and the back door opened.
I squatted and closed my eyes. Thank God I hadn't jimmied the door. I knew I'd closed the kitchen window. I hadn't wanted the cat to get back out.
Said feline raced up the steps, and a man made a startled cry. "Bear! I looked all over for you!"
Aaron Granger, I was sure of it.
A second voice, this one I thought Newt Harmon's, said, "What do you want with a barnyard cat?"
Aaron's voice was muffled, and I could almost see him putting the cat up to his face. "She was an inside cat. She got out the day… The day we came over here to search."
So much for the gruff deputy persona Granger usually had.
"I don't get why you think she'd be here," Newt said.
Gulp. I knew they weren't talking about the cat.
"I was sitting at the speed trap just off the square, and I saw her truck go by. When I got off a few minutes ago, I checked the Keyser place. No pickup parked there."
Newt's tone sounded like that of someone trying to reason with a person in distress. Which he probably was. "Listen, Aaron, she has friends in town. She could be anywhere."
Granger apparently ignored him. "I put food on the porch for you. I didn't know you'd be locked in here. No water for days."
"My dog drinks from the toilet," Newt said.
I was familiar with that option.
"Looks like she finally got into the food under the sink. She's awful thin. Must have taken her a while to get it open."
"Aaron, I'm on duty. I can't stay here long."
"I know. If she was here I didn't want to be the one to find her."
"I don't see her truck here," Newt said. "You want me to look upstairs?"
"Would you? I'll put Bear in my car."
A thump and light running brought Bear to the top of the stairs that led to the cellar.
"Bear. Come on. You're coming home with… Damn!"
Bear had run down the steps.
I'm not sure my heart ever beat that hard. If the cat came to greet me, I'd have a one-way ticket to the county jail.
Granger's heavier footfalls started down the stairs. "Kitty, kitty. Come on, Bear."
Bear stood next to the boiler, yellow eyes blinking through the dark. I made a shooing gesture. She turned and walked away.
A clicking noise led to dim light. Probably a single bulb, but more than enough to see me if Granger were to look behind the old boiler.
"What do you have? Okay, string. Is that what you came down here for?"
He had to have a lousy nose. I could smell the litter box from fifteen feet away. I'd have figured old Bear came down to use it.
Granger grunted and bent over. "I got you, girl."
Bear meowed mildly, and Granger turned off the light. He started up the stairs, seemingly carrying Bear.
Newt and Granger apparently met in the living room. Newt said, "No one up there. Listen, maybe you need a break, some time off."
"Damn it, Newt. She hated my uncle, and now she thinks." He stopped.
"Thinks what?"
"That ass-hole Hal Morris was writing a stupid book about some people who died in a car accident. He made it sound as if it was her parents and my uncle might've fixed the brakes on their car."
So he did read it when the sheriff had my pickup!
The silence was what novelists call protracted.
"Listen, Aaron, I didn't know Morris. I mean, he was a jerk, but who would believe some piece of crap book he wrote?"
"She would. That Perkins broad would. She used to work for him."
Finally, Newt said, "I gotta get back on the road. Lucky there hasn't been a radio call the last few minutes."
I was afraid Granger would stick around, but Bear had been a good diversion. As the two men left, Granger's tone was calmer as he had a friendly chat with Bear about where she would sleep.
For a full minute after I heard car engines start, I sat on the cellar floor. My heart slowed to a normal beat. I leaned against the limestone wall and wiped sweat from my forehead.
Scurrying noises reached me. I stood and brushed off the seat of my jeans. I hoped it was a mouse or ground squirrel and not a slithering snake.
Ears on alert, I crept up the cellar stairs. I sat on the top step, where I couldn't be seen through any window should Granger come back, and simply thought.
If Granger had made a copy of Hal's mangled prose, he would have something to show the county attorney. Something that might sound like a reason for Ambrose and me to be even angrier at Frost.
But for the manuscript to be used against Ambrose, Granger would have to admit he had read it while it was in the sheriff's custody. Read it, and probably not shared it with Gallagher.
And he wouldn't have shared it. Hal's ideas, even if true, couldn't be proven. Could they?
The intense fire the night of my parents' accident surely made it nearly impossible for anyone to tell if the car had been tampered with before the wreck. How would Peter Frost have known to damage a car enough to make it crash, but not right away? And was he really that determined to get my parents' farm?
I hated Peter Frost for putting Ambrose and me through two years of anger and uncertainty. And for getting his ass murdered in our barn. But I didn't think he killed my parents.
I couldn't think he did that. Years of being a journalist, even for a small paper, had taught me to evaluate information thoroughly. I could not associate Hal's book with my parents' death. At least, not now.
I stood, debating whether to leave through the kitchen window or door. I decided on the window, since I wasn't sure the door would lock behind me.
The window's creak sounded like fingernails on a school chalkboard. I grimaced as I climbed out and shut the rickety window.
I began to walk the distance from Frost's house to my barn quickly, not even being careful to duck into a row of corn. No one else would drive on these gravel roads at nearly midnight.
I was wrong.
Just as the moon came back out from behind a cloud, dust swirled on the road. Someone was driving maybe forty-five miles per hour, and when they got to my farm, they turned into the yard and parked immediately next to the house.
I lay flat. I wasn't close enough to our corn to duck into it, and anyone looking toward Frost's house would see me standing up.
My cheek rested on the damp grass for several seconds. A car door opened, and I raised my head. Two figures, dressed in dark clothes, sprinted from the car into the cornfield.
What the heck?
Corn leaves are as sharp as a knife, but no one cursed. Had they said anything, sound would have carried in the nighttime silence.
In less than thirty seconds, the two dark figures came out of the field. Each carried a large plastic tub with a lid. They must have been heavy, as the men trudged slowly to the car. A green car, I thought, though it could have been black.
Each went to a different back car door, opened it, and shoved their box onto the back seat. They literally jumped into the driver's and front passenger seats, before the car started.
I raised my head more. Neither man, I thought they were both men, would be looking in my direction. As they pulled back onto the road, I squinted at the car. It looked like an older Ford or, maybe, a Dodge. I'd never been good telling cars apart.
I couldn't see the license plate, not even to discern the state.
I stood, slowly. Whatever that cornfield might have yielded to prove Ambrose's innocence, I'd never find it.