Hazel Syvertsen lived on the edge of town, in a white Victorian with gingerbread moldings, carved pediments, and two big Italianate bay windows. The house was as frivolous as its owner was practical.
Sheriff Luther Tillman climbed the steps to a highly decorated portico, unzipped his snow boots, slipped his shoed feet out of them, and rang the bell.
He had to ring again before Hazel appeared in woodsman’s boots, gray rock-climber’s pants, and a blue flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. In spite of her outfit, she was as feminine as any object of a man’s devotion in a novel of the same period as her house.
“You took your boots off,” she said, “so you’re here to grill me at length. You’ll have to do it without coffee, in my workroom. I’m in the thrall of glass and damn well not taking a break.”
“I accept your terms, ma’am.”
“Don’t ma’am me. It makes me feel even older than I am.”
Now sixty-six, Hazel had retired a year earlier. After college, she served twenty years in the Army, exited as a sergeant, came home, and held the job of elementary-school principal for twenty-four years. She’d been married three times, twice to Army men; the first died in combat, the second in a helicopter crash. Her third was a scoundrel, by her determination; she divorced him after chasing him out of the house with a twelve-gauge shotgun that he thought was loaded, and she reverted to her maiden name.
Her workroom was an add-on at the back of the house. A six-foot-by-three-foot panel frame for a stained-glass window was fixed to the central worktable. She had been making windows on commission ever since she’d come home from the Army; and they could be found in homes, businesses, and churches all over the county.
A full-size cartoon of the work hung on the wall, and a third of the window lay finished: a vibrant swash of reds and blues and yellows and purples.
“It’s abstract. It’s beautiful, but you hate abstracts.”
“Started it yesterday. Up most of the night. It’s yesterday-inspired. Yesterday I decided the world is losing form, coherence, it’s becoming crazy abstract. This is the new reality.”
“So it’s about Cora.”
“Hell, yes, it’s about Cora. It’s going to be beautiful, full of life. I’m titling it Cora, and if any sonofabitch objects to me hanging it in the elementary school, to hell with him.”
As Hazel began selecting precut shapes of glass to fit into the lead came, Luther said, “I’m not here in an official capacity.”
“I noticed—no uniform.”
“The Feds have frozen my department out of this. So I’m only here as a friend. You knew Cora as well as anyone. Did she ever talk to you about a place called Iron Furnace?”
Hazel looked up from her work, her expression of disgust quite like it might have been had Luther asked if Cora ever talked about Auschwitz. “That place. Something happened to her at that place.”