Page 28 of Everything You Want Me to Be
“I didn’t catch your name.”
“It’s Mary Beth Lund, Sheriff.” She reached out a hand. “Or Mary Beth Reever, you probably remember me as.”
“Sure, sure.” I shook her hand, which seemed strong enough despite her red eyes. “You and your husband moved in with your mom last year, right?”
“Yeah, Mom’s not doing too well and she won’t move off the farm.”
“Lot of stubborn old people out here.” That got a snort out of the one standing next to me.
Mary Beth smiled. “Anyway, we’re just up the road and Winifred’s been so great, always letting me borrow something or stop by to chat.”
“I’ll walk you out, sweetling.” Winifred put her arm around the woman and used her free hand to puff on her pipe. “Del, you can head on up to the house.”
I watched them go, walking slow and talking quiet. There was no reason the two of them couldn’t be friends, but their conversation didn’t sit right at all. You didn’t come talk murder with Winifred Erickson for the hell of it.
I glanced out at the strip of woods on the north side of the property where Winifred shot Lars twelve years ago. I remembered it like it happened that morning, which is always the way it is with killings. They stick to you after everything else falls away.
I found him laid out on his back, shot clean through the side with a .308 Winchester. It was a bad year for coyotes and the Erickson chickens were suffering. Lars had been coming home from the Reevers’ at the same time Winifred was chasing a coyote away from their coop. She told the jury she shot at it and hit Lars by mistake. Even though she inherited a $500,000 life insurance policy and the entire farm, which Lars owned free and clear, unlike most in these parts, the jury still let her off on account of the number of chickens she could prove they lost plus the fact that she shot Lars in the side from a distance. Apparently the jury thought that to want to kill someone, you had to be facing them and up close.
Lars was a regular son of a bitch, always going on about who was cheating him today and raising stinks about every little thing. Most people figured it was on account of losing both his boys so young—one to pneumonia and the other to Vietnam—but for my money Lars was just born like that. Nothing good enough for him. Didn’t think anyone was on his side. Winifred told the jury, as plain and sober from that witness stand as when I found her standing by him, that there’d been nothing she could do to help him. And I think she meant it, except I doubt she was talking about that morning.
“I don’t know a thing about it, so you can save your breath.” Winifred stumped up the porch steps as Mary Beth’s truck kicked up a dust cloud over the driveway.
“What was she crying about?” I nodded in the direction of the road.
“That’s her business.”
“Everything’s my business in a murder investigation.”
“Marital troubles didn’t get the Hoffman girl killed.” Winifred opened the front door and waved me in behind her.
“You must know a lot about it then, if you can say what did or didn’t cause it.”
She poured out a cup of tea that must have gone cold and set the kettle on for another.
“I know as much as the next person about Hattie Hoffman.”
“The barn’s on your property.”
“When’s the last time you think I made it out there? My arthritis wouldn’t let me get halfway.”
“Oh, I think you could do anything you put your mind to, Winifred.”
She cackled at that and slapped a second cup down on the table. “It’s Earl Grey or go thirsty.”
“Earl Grey’s fine.” I sat down and watched her fix the tea. After she got everything situated, she puffed at the steam over her cup and her tongue loosened up some.
“Course I knew the kids were using it, that’s why I put the No Trespassing sign up on the east side over there, so no one could sue me if the roof fell in on one of their heads. But I haven’t been out that way in years.”
“You didn’t see or hear anything strange on Friday night?”
“Not a thing. Came home from the play and went to bed.”
Something sank inside me when she said it and it wasn’t only because I knew she was telling the truth. I should’ve been up at the school, too, cheering Hattie on, watching her shine for the last time. Drinking in silence, I watched a cardinal land on one of Winifred’s bird feeders out the window. The tea was bitter.
“Mona must be beside herself,” she said after a while.
“She is.”
