St. Albans Fire Read online

  “Yeah,” he admitted wryly. “I’ve seen her do this before when times were tough. First she crashes, then she rallies like a trouper, charging around putting everything right.”

  “And then she crashes again?” Joe surmised.

  “Not always. I never know. Makes me nervous; we’ve never had anything hit us this bad before.” He paused. “She’s in the kitchen, you want to see her.”

  “I do,” Joe said, “but first I was wondering, since you brought it up, what are you and Cal going to do now?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered simply. “We’re meeting with the insurance people, then the bank. Guess we’ll know what we’re facing after that.”

  Joe slipped by him across the threshold and patted his arm. “Well, good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  Gunther walked through to the kitchen door, hoping Marie wouldn’t also be in attendance. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief as he saw only Linda, the two kids, and Calvin, who was sitting at the dining table reading the funnies to the little girl. Linda was showing her son how to load the dishwasher.

  His quiet arrival allowed him to survey the scene unobserved, which, despite its domestic appearance, did strike him as Jeff had implied—a thing of infinite fragility. Cal reminded him of the haunting pictures of Lincoln shortly before his death. His appearance was ravaged by grief and sleeplessness, his eyes dark-rimmed and sunken, surrounded by careworn creases. His voice was soothing and quiet.

  Linda, by contrast, was the epitome of brittle cheer, like a lightbulb whose filament was burning dangerously bright. She fussed about, instructing and teasing her son, her voice high-pitched and nervous, her hands fluttering like cornered birds, grasping plates and glasses, then lighting on the boy’s narrow back as she directed him.

  As at the service, however, Joe was again struck by her beauty. Even now, dressed in an old flannel shirt and jeans, she was distractingly attractive—slim-hipped, athletic, and graceful, with shoulder-length, thick blond hair that always fell perfectly in place as she moved.

  He cleared his throat, causing the four of them to look his way.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was just wondering if I could ask Mrs. Padgett a few questions, since we missed each other the first time.”

  There was an awkward silence as father and daughter exchanged glances, using body language to determine how to handle the kids.

  Cal finally rose and waved young Mike over to join him. “Why don’t we go up to the sugar house and see how Billy’s doing?”

  It was the right suggestion. Both children grasped their grandfather’s hands and escorted him from the room, barraging him with eager questions.

  With a sad cast to her face, Linda watched them leave. Afterward, she smiled weakly at Joe and pointed to a chair at the dining table. “Would you like some coffee? It’s fresh.”

  He nodded as he sat. “That would be great. Thanks. I haven’t had the chance until now, I’m afraid, but I wanted to extend my condolences.”

  She poured him a cup and brought it over to the table, sitting down opposite him. Facing her this close, he could see the exhaustion around her eyes and the slight pallor to her cheeks. This was a woman working hard to maintain her composure.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I keep waiting for it to sink in. Right now it’s more like he’s just running late or something.”

  “That’s pretty common.”

  “I suppose you see this kind of thing a lot.”

  “Often enough,” he admitted, before asking, “I heard Cal say that someone named Billy was at the sugar house. You going to do some sugaring, after all?”

  “No. Billy St. Cyr volunteered to collect our sap and boil it down for us. He only wanted a percentage of the yield, so Dad said it was okay.”

  “St. Cyr?” Joe questioned, recalling the big man at the funeral. “I thought they didn’t get along.”

  She smiled faintly. “Guess that’s what tragedy will do. He came over this morning and offered to help. I’ve never seen him so sweet.”

  Joe took a sip from his mug before commenting, “That’s what I hear about your brother—that he was a very sweet guy.”

  She cupped her cheek in her hand, her elbow resting on the tabletop, and stared into middle space. “Yeah,” she said softly. “He was that.”

  He matched her tone of voice. “What do you think happened?”

  Slowly, she refocused on his face. “It was an accident.”

  He waited for more, but she stayed silent, looking at him.

  “How do you mean?”

  “He wasn’t supposed to be in the barn. I mean, it’s not like he shouldn’t have been. Annie was going to calve, although not for a few days. But there was no reason for him to be there.” She scratched her forehead. “I guess I’m not making much sense.”

  “No, you’re doing fine,” Joe reassured her. “Did he often visit the barn at night?”

  “We all do now and then. It’s a peaceful place at night—not peaceful-quiet, mind—it’s actually pretty noisy. But peaceful in that you feel all alone on the face of the earth, just you and the cows. I used to think it felt like what Noah’s ark must’ve been. I’d stand at the window sometimes and imagine there was only water out there. I swear to God I could almost feel the floor rock under me a little, just like a ship.” She sighed. “Maybe that’s what he was feeling.”

  Joe doubted it. He’d been caught in a fire, years ago, and it had been nothing like being on board a boat.

  “Did he have reason to seek out a little thinking space?” he asked instead.

  She looked at him more directly. “There’d been some trouble in his love life.”

  “Marianne Kotch?”

  She smiled slightly. “I heard you’d been asking around. Yeah. Mom wasn’t too keen on her. But then, that’s kind of her way.”

  “Like when you and Jeff got together?”

  “She wasn’t too thrilled then, either.”

  “How did she react?”

  Linda straightened and crossed her arms. “Angrily. She’s never liked Jeff.”

  “Why?”

  She glanced at the door, as if checking to see who might be listening. Her voice was barely audible when she spoke. “I think because he got in the way of Bobby.”

  “As a sort of surrogate son?”

  “Yeah—that’s a good way of putting it. The sad thing is that Bobby loved Jeff and was really happy when Dad said he’d give us the farm.”

  “Bobby didn’t resent not getting it himself?”

  She shook her head. “He was very happy being number two. Told us that straight-out when it happened, and I know he wasn’t lying.”

  “Didn’t he like farming?”

  “He loved it. It was his whole life, which is a good way to look at it if you’re going to do this. He just knew he had a lot to learn and that Jeff would be the perfect teacher, that’s all.”

  “How ’bout you?” Joe asked suddenly, noticing how her phrasing became almost clinical at times.

  She raised her eyebrows. “It’s all I’ve ever known.”

  “But do you like it?”

  “What’s not to like? It’s a good life.”

  “The hours are brutal, the work’s tough and nonstop. I was born on a farm.”

  She gave a laugh. “Well, then you know. I kept milking and haying the fields and stacking bales even after the kids arrived, just so I could see my husband other than late at night, when he’d come in smelling of cow manure and engine oil and fall asleep with a beer in his hand.”

  Joe stared meditatively at his coffee, thinking back to his own father and how he, too, would come in exhausted every night, barely able to talk to his wife and two sons.

  “I always wonder how women put up with it,” he mused.

  “They don’t always,” she commented. “Even though more and more women are becoming farmers themselves.”

  He looked up at her, studying her serious blue eyes. “Your mom seemed to be having a har
d time even before Bobby died.”

  Linda pursed her lips. “That goes way back,” she admitted. “Her father’s to blame.”

  “How so?” he asked, remembering the story Calvin had told to him.

  “You heard he was a drinker?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, that’s it in a nutshell. ‘He drank the farm and five generations’ worth of hard work.’ That’s how Mom puts it. She hated him for it, and maybe she hated the farm for pushing him too hard, ’cause she loved him, too.”

  “And then she married a farmer?” Joe asked. “Risky move.”

  “She didn’t feel she had a choice. For some of us, it’s all we know, till we wake up too late.”

  “Does that include you?” he asked.

  She smiled. “No. I married Jeff, and my dad’s nothing like my grandfather. My mother’s disappointments aren’t my own.”

  “But you are in a pickle now,” he said. “What happens if this farm can’t recover?”

  She held his gaze. “The farm may not, but we’ll recover. We’ll just do something else. Dad can retire. Jeff can get another job. IBM’s hiring all the time in Burlington. There’s no telling what the bank and the insurance company will say. Maybe something will work out.” She leaned forward again for emphasis. “The point is, it’s not what you’re doing so much as who you’re doing it with. As long as our family’s okay, we’ll be okay.”

  He took one last sip of his coffee and stood up. “Well, it’s getting late. I ought to get out of your hair. I do thank you for talking with me. It helps to get as much background as possible.”

  She stood up with him, in the process brushing against a corkboard hanging on the wall. He noticed, among the snapshots, children’s drawings, and assorted business cards, one from a Realtor named John Samuel Gregory, out of St. Albans.

  He pointed at it, something tugging at his memory. “Quite the name.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “People like him come by all the time, especially these last few years. Flatlanders pay top dollar for farmland. I’ve heard some of them say it’s like getting back in touch with the land. They have no clue.”

  “He offer to list the place?”

  “We didn’t let him get that far. Do you think you’ll catch who did it?” she asked, circling the table.

  “We’ll do everything we can,” he promised.

  Linda escorted Joe out of the kitchen to the front door. “That’s not the same thing, is it?”

  He reflected on that for a moment, wondering what to say. He preferred to be honest, although official training on the subject suggested a little bravado never hurt, especially when people were feeling vulnerable.

  “We’ll catch him,” he finally said, for that split second believing it himself.

  Perhaps not surprisingly, she didn’t break into applause. Instead, she studied him for a couple of seconds, reached out to touch his forearm lightly, and said, “I think you will do everything you can.”

  Chapter 10

  GAIL ZIGMAN WAS DAYDREAMING ABOUT JOE. Hardly a novelty. She did that a fair amount, when her mind was drifting. They had been a couple for so long that thinking about him was pretty much second nature.

  Although lately, sadly, that hadn’t been as comforting as it used to be. Gail was undergoing a change—a fundamental life change, she realized—and her relationship to Joe was looming large within it.

  She blinked a couple of times and checked into what was happening around her. She was sitting in Senate committee room 7, the so-called Ag Committee, along with her five colleagues, listening to some ideologue ramble on about the perils of the United States falling behind the rest of the world in food production. Nothing to be learned or believed there, she thought, allowing herself to drift once more.

  Gail had come to believe that her life was losing purpose. Born to wealthy New York parents, one of two daughters well trained, well traveled, and well educated, she’d hit the social tidal wave of the 1960s at just the right time and age to be swept completely off her expected course. She’d ended up in Vermont several overstimulated years later, in a commune outside Brattleboro, wearing cotton tie-dyes and pulling garden weeds, her brain foggy, her body worn, and her ideals a jumble of rehashed political and social rhetoric. That period had started a rebirthing process that had led her to running a successful realty business, to local and now statewide politics, and to completing an interrupted law degree and pursuing a short and tumultuous career as a deputy state’s attorney.

  In the midst of it all, she had met and fallen in love with Joe, whose steady, stalwart presence had often served as a crucial anchor in turbulent times, despite his being—on the surface, at least—her exact opposite: a farmer’s son, a lifelong cop, and someone whose travels had been almost exclusively paid for by his employer, including the military, who’d seen fit to put him into combat at a tender age. To all her friends, he could not have been less suitable for any A-list of potential suitors.

  Except that in her mind, she, like Joe, had made a life of being purposeful, successful, and of use to others, especially after she’d left the commune.

  But something else had happened during these years just past, something so overwhelmingly pervasive that it had truly changed her life. She’d been raped. She’d survived, of course, had suffered no physical handicap, and had seemingly resumed a healthy, normal life, whatever that meant. But she’d never been the same. It was following the rape that she returned to law school, became a prosecutor and later—by contrast—an environmental lobbyist, and then accepted the urgings of friends to run for state office. The rape started her on what had first appeared as a random progression but which, looking back, now seemed like a blueprint for political ambition, including high-profile stints on both ends of the polemical spectrum.

  And one of the reasons that this evolution hadn’t appeared contrived or cynical was that she’d devoted herself completely to each step, with no thought about the next until she’d found herself taking it with a true believer’s zeal. It was only now, in hindsight, that she recognized that a series of haphazard choices born of trauma and emotion had turned out looking like a coherent plan. Even so, Gail was slowly realizing—long after most of her friends, including Joe—that, as a result, she might be poised on the threshold of her most exciting stage yet.

  She cleared her head enough to once more check in on what was unfolding before her. The witness had broken out hard-backed charts that he was holding up to buttress his argument in favor of genetically modified plant seeds—charts already included in the folders he’d handed out earlier. Eyes open and expression intent, she retreated back into her thoughts.

  So why was she constantly returning to Joe during these ruminations? It wasn’t like things were amiss in their relationship. If anything, his switch from the Brattleboro Police Department, where he’d worked from the start, to the VBI had done them both some good, exposing him to new challenges and making their own conversations more interesting—to her, at least.

  One of her colleagues, a liberal Democrat from Chittenden County, interrupted the witness to challenge him on a point he’d just made. Gail sat forward in her chair, using her own mental autopilot to retrieve from her subconscious what had just been said. It was a long-standing and handy talent, being able to do two completely separate things at once, even if one of them was daydreaming.

  The topic being discussed—if not the speaker—was actually of great interest to her: the exponential use of so-called GMO seeds versus the concerns about their potential long-term effects. Vermont, frequently a hotbed of political controversy, was, as usual, garnering national headlines with the debate, and the statehouse was buzzing with a pending showdown between the two camps, of which this small piece of boring testimony was just a preliminary twitch. E-mails and phone calls were already escalating as interested parties began waking up. It was looking as though Vermont might be made a litmus test on the subject.

  But not right now, Gail thought, watc
hing the bland face of the man addressing them. This one was a bench-warmer she doubted would be around for the final showdown. And that, she had to admit, was a battle she was looking forward to.

  The mere thought of it brought her back to the here and now, and Joe was allowed to slip from her mind as she asked a pointed question of her own.

  · · ·

  The setting this time wasn’t a restaurant. For one thing, no restaurant had a big enough table for what these three men required. For another, Tim Shafer was now safely on board and no longer in need of a nurturing environment. As a result, he found himself lugging his two boxes of files down a narrow hallway and into the conference room in the Vermont State Police barracks building in St. Albans. There Joe Gunther and Jonathon Michael were already setting up their own paperwork piles along the length of a large wooden table. A thermos of fresh coffee was parked in the middle like a surveyor’s cairn.

  “Hey, Tim,” Michael greeted him as Shafer bumped the door open with his hip. “You need help?”

  “Nah,” Shafer grunted, dumping the stacked boxes on the table’s one clear area. He began opening them up and distributing their contents, mimicking his two colleagues. “You wouldn’t think traffic in Vermont would be anything to bitch about, but Burlington is going straight to the dogs, if you ask me. Be faster to use the back roads.”

  Burlington, also along the shore of Lake Champlain, and the state’s largest town, was about twenty-five miles to the south. Gunther checked the clock on the wall. “It’s after five. You must’ve hit rush hour.”

  That did little to calm Shafer down. “Story of my life.”

  Michael was oblivious, still shuffling his paperwork. “I heard Chittenden County’s population is growing every week.”

  “Well,” Shafer countered, “you can have it. I’m happy living in St. J. with two woodchucks and a cow next door.”

  Joe, the first to have arrived, chose a seat and propped one foot on the edge of the table, waiting for the others to catch up. “Not to get the cart ahead of the horse, Jonathon, but did you ever find out why that developer bought out Loomis?” Loomis was the farmer who’d lost his farm to a presumed electrical fire.