Changing Direction
We rode across the farm toward the house. Charlie hadn’t said much since we left the Krengel place. I was pretty sure I knew what he was thinking. “You think I’m nuts for hiring that old coot and his friends, don’t you?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
“Do you know why I did?”
He didn’t have an answer, so he made fun. “Cause you’re nuts?”
“Because that old timer shot straight with us from beginning to end. He could have pocketed those stones and said he didn’t find anything, but he didn’t. He could have pretended they weren’t worth much, but he didn’t. He’s an old man and nobody has any use for him except me. If his friends are anything like him, they’ll guard this place with their lives and they’ll do it for sandwiches and beer and a measly ten bucks a day. If they manage to capture a bad guy, I’m going to recommend your dad pay a fat bonus plus a bottle of good whiskey for each of them.
“The other great thing is this frees us up to be investigators. Once we have our guards situated, we’ve got some running around to do. We’ve got to see your dad’s lawyer and get an update from him, and we gotta run by the state police and talk to the officer who took care of Lars Krengel’s death. I’m also half tempted to try to find the sabotaging cowboy and put a tail on him. Either that or Sheriff Andy. We might also look up the well driller who started this mess. So far all we have is suspicion. We need to start to build a case against one man. We’ve got no idea who that man is.”
We pulled into the farmyard and parked behind the house. Charlie lit a smoke before we went in. I struggled out of the Jeep and glanced around. I noticed a radio aerial on the roof of the bunkhouse and assumed it was attached to the land-based set that all the vehicle-mounted radios communicated through. “Is the bunkhouse radio monitored twenty-four hours?”
“No, why?”
“Is there a way to have it monitored?”
“There’s an extension wired to the house. We use it at harvest time.”
“I’m thinking of the old timers. They’ll need to be able to reach us in an emergency. Is there a spare radio set they can use?”
“All the remote ones are in trucks.”
“Is there a truck that isn’t used all the time? Something we can park in the barn?”
“The grain truck only gets used at harvest. It’s got a radio.”
“Will it fit in the barn?”
“No problem.”
“Let’s get the food and the beer and we’ll take it up in the grain truck. Hopefully the mad king and his codgers will be back by then and we can get them set up.”
Charlie hesitated. “We should ask dad about using the truck.”
“He put this operation in our hands. When you see him at dinner, tell him we took it. He’ll be glad for our initiative.”
He agreed and we set to work gathering supplies.
* * * *
We made enough sandwiches to last a day or so and filled a pair of coolers, one with food and the other with green and gold cans of Grain Belt Beer. David didn’t hold with drinking, but he kept cases of beer around for the farm hands. Charlie figured out how to set up the extensions for the radio set. He put a receiver in his room and one in the room I shared with Walt. We loaded the supplies in the grain truck and moved it up to the barn. We had it parked and unloaded by the time George showed up with his friends.
They arrived jammed four across the front of George’s ancient pickup. The men were all my age or better and universally weather-beaten. George introduced us to Denny, Oscar, and Eli. Each wore a sidearm and came with a rifle or shotgun. In spite of their advanced age, each was as spry as George. They organized themselves efficiently and hauled their bedrolls and supplies into the hayloft with ease. They pulled down bales of hay leftover from Lars’ doomed herd and arranged them as mattresses for their bedrolls. I worried about the dry hay and the risk of fire, but none of the men smoked. The three who used tobacco chewed it.
The loading area of the loft would be their observation post. From there they could overlook the whole property. George parked his truck in the machine shed to keep it out of sight. Once everything was put away, the only sign that there might be someone around was the open door to the hayloft loading area on the upper floor of the barn.
I gathered the troops for a quick chat. “No one is to be shot on sight. The goal is to protect the property and capture someone who can lead us to the one who is bankrolling the mischief. The radio in the truck is for emergencies only. Charlie and me will check on you a couple times a day. I don’t want to get blasted when I come. Can all of you see well enough to pick us out from anyone who might come to do harm?”
They promised they could. I believed them because each one’s eyes were clear and sharp and none wore glasses. I added some information. “The property is not being used right now, except for the well head for water for the crop sprayers. That doesn’t mean that farmhands might not wander up here from time to time. I’d rather you stay out of sight as much as possible. I don’t want it known that we posted guards. When I see the owner later, I’ll ask him to dissuade his crews from coming up here. I don’t want anyone hurt, that means the farmhands, or you four, or me and Charlie. Be careful and stay vigilant. Clear?”
All four of them saluted like limeys. I pulled George aside and handed over the rest of the original fifty I owed and forty more for the first day’s work. He squirreled the money away in his vest and smiled with his tobacco stained teeth. “Don’t you worry, sonny. We know what we’re doin’. I was in the Spanish-American war with old Willy McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt. Denny and Eli were Pinkertons back in the strike-breakin’ days and Oscar was in The Great War. Ev’ry one can shoot and nary a one is afraid of nuthin.”
“I was in The Great War.”
He whooped for joy and walloped my shoulder hard enough that I staggered. “I knew I liked you, sonny. A man can always tell. Yur in good hands.”
I couldn’t believe I was leaving a ninety-one-year-old in charge of security for my friend’s farm, but that’s what I was doing. I didn’t love the idea, but the property needed to be watched, and the case needed to be investigated and I couldn’t do both. “I trust you, George. Good luck.”
“You too, sonny!”
Charlie and I left for town.
* * * *
We stopped at the lawyer’s office first. He’d spoken to the law firm in Billings, but they refused to reveal who their principle was. We left and checked in at the state police barracks. They radioed Officer Koenig and asked him to stop and talk to me. They also recorded my full statement from when I found Lars Krengel’s body. They agreed to forgo a statement from David because he was busy with his farm and I was the only one who entered the house.
Officer Koenig arrived just as I was finishing up with the stenographer. We called Charlie in and had our chat in an interview room. I briefed the officer on what the mad king found in the tailings from the well. He was impressed. “Blue sapphires, huh? That’s a heck of a find.”
“The sabotage makes sense now, doesn’t it?”
He was cautious. “I don’t know that any crime was committed. You’ve got nothing but circumstance and a hunch.”
“Fair enough. Any luck on the evidence David’s wife brought the other evening?”
He shook his head at the table between us. “The photos are good. They establish the condition of the scene as you found it, but that’s all they do. As I said, they can’t be taken as official evidence because they weren’t taken by a police photographer. The flare cap was no help either. It’s made of waxed cardboard and should have held prints, but it didn’t yield any. It didn’t even have a partial. It was clean as a whistle.”
I drew a logical conclusion from the information. “I know what that means. Andy wiped it.”
Charlie didn’t understand. “How do you know anyone wiped it? What if the guy who started the fire wore gloves?”
I explained. “Prints don’t fade with time. At some point, that flare was handled by someone who didn’t wear gloves. It would have had a partial print or at least a smear from the man at the factory, or the guy at the hardware store who sold it, or the man who bought it. We all leave prints behind us everywhere we go. It’s not logical that the man who torched the house was concerned about prints. If he was, he would have tossed the cap through the window to burn with everything else instead of dropping it in the bushes.
“The only thing that makes sense is the man who retrieved it wiped it before he put it in the evidence envelope. Andy retrieved it, that means he wiped it. That also means he’s involved in the scam, but I don’t know how that helps us. He’s an officer of the law and therefore unapproachable.”
Koenig played with his hands on top of the table. “I haven’t agreed with anything you said. I gave you the bare facts, and you drew a conclusion. As I said, everything you’ve told me is circumstantial. I can’t give an opinion or investigate any of it. Do you understand?”
“I understand. I appreciate you being willing to listen. I’m going to investigate…or maybe I won’t. I don’t have any standing in this jurisdiction. I’m a licensed private eye in Philadelphia, but I’m just a regular citizen here. What are the rules in Montana?”
He smiled with his attractive full lips. “We don’t license private investigators in Montana.”
“Really?”
“Yup, no license and no regulations other than you’re not allowed to work on active cases. There are no open investigations into this matter, so you may do as you like. You are only required to keep us apprised of what you find, if anything. That doesn’t mean you can harass our citizens. The fact that we don’t license investigators cuts both ways. You have no special standing, but you can look around and ask questions and gather facts as long as you don’t break any of our laws.”
“May I deal with you instead of the sheriff’s office?”
“You may, up to a point. The sheriff keeps the law in the town. We handle the highways and coordinate on the outlying areas. We also have the prerogative to investigate any capital crime. We don’t have full jurisdiction on the farms, but we’re involved. If you need to talk, I will make myself available to you and our discussion will go no further. If you notify me of something in my official capacity as an officer of the law, I am obligated to share what I know with the sheriff’s office unless there is a compelling reason not to.”
He didn’t say anything more, but he said enough. “Works for me. Thank you.”
Charlie thanked him as well and we left. We went out and got into the Jeep. Charlie asked the obvious question. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t have the first fucking clue.”
He lit a cigarette, and offered one to me, but I refused. He smoked while I talked to the air. “The timeline as near as I can figure it runs like this. Lars Krengel needed a new well. He got a driller to dig one. The driller found blue sapphires in his drill tailings and kept the information to himself. He told someone…someone with money. It might have been his boss Simon, but it doesn’t have to be. Whoever it was had to have money, or they wouldn’t have been able to make an offer in on the land.
“It’s interesting that they didn’t offer to buy the property right away. That could mean one of two things. Either they didn’t have enough money to make their offer attractive to someone with a fully functioning dairy farm, or they’re cheap and didn’t want to pay up what it would take.
“They tried to demoralize Krengel into selling. They sabotaged his farm and eventually infected his stock to devalue the property. That’s interesting because doing that requires technical knowledge and access to the virus or bacteria or whatever. Where does one get a vial of hoof and mouth disease? I don’t know. Once they have it, how do they transmit it? I suppose they’d have to sneak onto the property and inject one of the cows and it would spread from there. They would also have to count on the government inspector noticing the infection or Krengel reporting it on his own. Krengel seemed like the honest type. He likely would have reported it. Even if he didn’t, I imagine inspections are a regular thing.
“If we set that aside for a moment, we’ve got a few confederates to think about. There’s the well driller, the arsonist cowboy with truck trouble, and Sheriff Andy. I doubt the cowboy is in for the big money. He’s a hired hand, so we set him aside. The real schemers are the well driller and the sheriff and whoever is bankrolling the operation. I don’t know how we approach the driller without alerting him that we’re onto his game, and I don’t know how we go up against the sheriff without getting thrown in jail.”
Charlie blew a lungful of smoke at the sky. “So, what do we do?”
I turned the question over in my head. I monologued some more to try to figure it out. “I thought about following our conspirators to see who they talk to, but I changed my mind. Following people in a town this small is impossible. There isn’t enough traffic to get lost in. Even if we did follow them, we wouldn’t know when they met with the mastermind. The mastermind doesn’t even have to be a member of the community.
“For all I know, Sheriff Andy might be bowling buddies with the well driller and one of them might have a rich brother-in-law in Billings who is bankrolling the enterprise. The fact that they contacted a lawyer in the capital to make their offer speaks to the possibility. Then again, they might have picked an attorney out of the telephone book because there aren’t enough lawyers around here to keep them covered if they made the offer locally. There’s loose ends and blind alleys all over the place. We need something unique to track.”
“What do you mean, unique?”
“We couldn’t track the flare because they’re everywhere. Half the cars on the street probably have them in the trunk. The cops all carry them. They’re too common to trace. I wonder about the hoof-and-mouth infection. How could we find out where the disease came from? Krengel hadn’t bought any new cows and never any from out of the country. We’re close to Canada, but the Kanucks are as sophisticated as we are when it comes to medicine and agriculture. If we were near the Mexican border, I could see something coming across from there, but that’s a thousand miles away. If we could figure out where the disease came from, we might be able to point our finger at someone.”
Charlie crushed his cigarette against the dashboard and dropped his butt in the can. He started the engine and backed from the parking spot. “I got an idea.”
* * * *
I noticed the smell as soon as we arrived at the dairy farm whose ice cream we ate the other night. “What the fuck is that stink?”
“Cow shit.” Charlie pointed to what I thought was a muddy lake some distance from the massive barn. “See that? It’s a shit lagoon. The cows spend a lot of time in the barn because they have to be milked twice a day. They shit wherever they are. Sven shovels out and washes down between milkings. The shit and the wash water all goes to the lagoon.”
I was horrified. “Why the fuck keep it?”
“Where would he get rid of it? It’s not like there’s a sewer he could pipe it to. The lagoon allows some of the water to evaporate and provides a source of revenue. The farmers buy the liquid to use as fertilizer. Once or twice a year, he pumps down the pond and sells the solids out of the bottom. They’re especially good for feeding the soil.”
There was a nice house on the property. “He fucking lives here with that stink?”
“Yeah. I bet he doesn’t even smell it anymore. I don’t mind it so much. What’s got you so upset?”
“It reminds me of the war. I told you we didn’t have Jeeps in France. We had horses and mules. They shit everywhere and made great targets for the Krauts. They were impossible to get rid of once they were dead because they were too damn big to move or bury. Everywhere you’d go, there’d be a fucking bloated, rotten mule carcass full of maggots and rats. The stink of this place brings me right back to the trenches.”
“Should we leave?”
“I assume you didn’t bring me here just to torture me with memories. Let’s talk to whoever we need to and get the fuck out of here.”
He jumped out of the Jeep and went to find the owner of the dairy. I called after him. “Wait! Give me a cigarette before you go.” He handed over his pack and lighter, then hurried away. I lit a cigarette and exhaled smoke through my nose to drive out the shit smell. It helped, but not very much.
Charlie came back with the biggest Swede I’d ever seen in my life. Sven Samuelsson was enormous. He had to be seven feet tall and as broad as a freight truck. He was blond and had a bushy beard that made him look like a Viking. He wore a plain white undershirt and rubber hip waders that were splattered with shit. He spoke English very well, but used choppy sentences and never said ‘I.’ He used his name to refer to himself.
He met us outside his dairy barn and greeted Charlie like an old friend. “Welcome, welcome! Sven just finished the milking. You ready for more ice cream? Got a big batch ready, fresh today!”
The idea that the ice cream we ate was made by this shit spattered Swede in the presence of the stench of the shit lagoon made me want to vomit up everything I’d ever eaten. Charlie didn’t seem bothered by any of it. “We’ve still got a couple gallons left. We’ve also got enough butter and cheese to start a new country. You’re too generous.”
Sven waved away the praise with a gigantic hand. “Your papa was good to Sven. It’s only right Sven is good to him.”
“You know dad doesn’t expect anything from you.”
“Just like Sven didn’t expect anything from your papa. He saved Sven, your papa did, then he tries to pay Sven for his ice cream. ‘No sir,’ Sven says. Not a cent from Mister David, not ever.”
I was glad Sven and David were such good friends, but the atmosphere of the place was getting to me. I chain-lit another cigarette and begged the men to cut to the chase. Sven didn’t understand my urgency. Charlie tried to explain. “Sorry, Law isn’t feeling well.”
“Well, no wonder as much as he smokes!”
Charlie asked the question that brought us there. “Dad wants to get Lars Krengel’s dairy running but he’s worried about the hoof-and-mouth. He sent me over to ask you about it.”
Sven’s startling blue eyes flared wide at the mention of the disease. He crossed himself and spat on the ground to ward off the implied evil of the words with a blend of Christian and pagan rituals. “Don’t talk of that around Sven. Poor old Lars. A shame to see him lose everything like he did. Happy your papa bought the property and wants to run the dairy again. Been a dairy for sixty years. The poor land misses her cows.”
Charlie agreed it probably did. “About the…you know, where do you think it came from?”
Sven spat on the ground again, this time eschewing the Christian for the pagan. “Sven knows where it comes from. Comes from Winnett!”
Charlie nodded like he understood. “I forgot about Winnett.”
I didn’t understand. “What’s Winnett? Is it a place?”
Sven explained. “Lab they say. Research they call it. Deviltry says Sven.” He crossed himself again.
Charlie wrapped up the conversation and tried to leave. It was all we could do to get away empty-handed. Sven offered us everything he had. Charlie said there was more milk, cheese, butter, and ice cream in the family’s refrigerator than they could possibly use. Sven only relented when he insisted that more would only spoil.
We were a mile or so away when I started to feel better. That drive was the only time I was grateful for the openness of the Jeep and the plentiful fresh air it afforded. Charlie aimed us toward his home. “It’s getting late. I’ve got to pick up Great Aunt Violet soon.”
“Tell me about what you and Sven were talking about back there. I feel like I missed something.”
“Hobson College is a big school outside of Billings. They teach farm management, modern techniques of animal husbandry, stuff like that. They also teach animal medicine, not veterinary stuff for dogs and cats, but specialized farm stuff for cows and sheep and pigs and chickens and stuff. They have a research place in Winnett, which is the next town over, where they experiment on cattle. I think the government is involved. They help fund it or something. I forgot about it because they mostly deal with the ranchers. If hoof-and-mouth came from anywhere around here, it came from there. Maybe we can ride out there tomorrow and see if they’ll talk to us.”
I shoved his shoulder in camaraderie. “You’re a genius, you know that?”
“If I was a genius, I wouldn’t have needed Sven to remind me what I already knew.”
“Don’t dismiss yourself. We needed a new place to start, and you found it. I’m impressed.”
He basked in the praise.
“If we’re going any farther than Grass Range, we have to find something else to drive. After riding around in this thing for a couple days, I feel like someone threw me down a flight of steps. I’ll rent a car if I have to.”
“You can’t unless you want to drive two hours to Billings. There isn’t anywhere to rent a car around here.”
“Are you kidding?”
“The entire population of Grass Range is five hundred people. Who would they rent cars to?”
I shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea. I don’t even understand how places like this exist. I thought Reading was a small place, but they’ve got something like a hundred thousand. How the hell can you have a town with five hundred? I’m baffled.”
“Most of the places around here are even smaller. We’re the biggest for miles because we’ve got the railroad freight terminal. That’s why we’ve got the market and the school and the state police barracks. Winnett only has ninety.”
We arrived at David’s farm and pulled into the yard. Charlie parked and lit a smoke. He savored it while I struggled out of the Jeep. I leaned back in. “The restaurant I ran with Walt serves five hundred patrons on an average Friday night and we’re considered small to medium size. The big places can handle three times that.”
He waved his cigarette at me. “No wonder Walt loves to cook for a lot of people. The fifteen or twenty around here is nothing compared to what he’s used to.”
“That’s why I don’t worry about him so much. He can have fun cooking for fifteen. Five hundred got to be too stressful.”
“Sounds stressful! I don’t understand how places as busy as Philadelphia exist.”
“You’ll have to come see it to find out.”
I left him to have his cigarette and went into the kitchen. Abby and Walt and the two girls were bustling around. There was activity everywhere. Walt was stirring the Sunday gravy while simultaneously coaxing butter and cream and flour into a smooth bechamel sauce. Abby was spreading stuffing on the pounded flank steak for braciole. One of the girls was rolling out very thin dough for pasta and the other was seasoning herb-stuffed chickens. The room was a medley of scents, all were delicious and none was cow shit.
Walt welcomed me ‘home’ with a quick kiss. Abby and the girls greeted me warmly. I washed my hands and asked if anyone needed help. Abby said she did. I went over to see what was needed. She pushed a plate of oatmeal cookies into my hand along with a glass of milk. “I need someone to eat these cookies.”
I took my snack to the table with a laugh. “Abby, for a woman like you, I might have learned to like women.”
Walt spoke up from his pots. “I’m insulted!”
“Don’t be insulted. Take a lesson. Every time I offer to help you, you make me help. Next time, feed me cookies.”
He directed his next comment to Abby. “You’re going to spoil him, Abby; and at his age, it’ll take me forever to retrain him.”
She laughed beautifully and rolled up a flank steak. “I’m sure Law is working hard in his own way.”
I went to my own defense. “You should see what I’ve accomplished today. Because of my work and scheming, the Krengel place is now under guard, and David and Abby are the new owners of a blue sapphire mine.”
She reeled around so quickly that she knocked a spoon from the bowl of seasoned breadcrumbs, and it clattered onto the floor. She ignored it. “What’s that about sapphires?”
I started to say when Charlie walked in. I waited for him to come through the door before I answered. “It was Charlie’s idea. We suspect there’s bad people trying to get David to sell the Krengel place. That’s why they burned the house. I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want it. Charlie mentioned all the minerals around here, so we found an old prospector to look at where they dug the well last year. In less than an hour he washed out enough blue sapphires to fill the palm of your hand.”
She came to the table and leaned against the edge. “Show me.”
“I don’t have any.” I looked at Charlie to see if he did.
He came forward with the deep blue gem David took from the mad king earlier. Abby accepted it reverently and held it up to the light. “It’s beautiful. Look at the blue.”
Walt called out. “It’s the color of your eyes, Abby.”
“Is it?”
He confirmed it was. “It would make a striking pendant for a necklace.”
She shook her head. “I never wear such foolishness.”
“Maybe you should.”
She let herself imagine for barely a moment. “Maybe I should.” She slipped the gem into the pocket of her apron and snapped back to reality. “Charlie, you’ve got to get a move on if you’re going to get Aunt Violet in time for supper.” She tilted her head toward several sets of keys which hung from hooks next to the door to the porch. “Take my car and make sure you’re a proper gentleman. And no smoking!”
“Yes mom.” He said with a touch of exasperation like every teenager who ever lived.
Charlie went to get his aunt, and everyone got back to their work in the kitchen, including me. I dutifully ate my cookies and drank my milk. I almost balked at the milk after my visit to Sven’s dairy farm, but I drank it anyway. I was curious about the big Swede and his attitude toward David. I asked Abby about it.
She explained while she worked. “It was eight or maybe ten years ago, I guess. Poor Sven almost lost his farm to the bank. He took a loan for a new refrigeration plant and repairs to his milking equipment. He was stretched very thin. He made a mistake when he was putting his hay up for winter. He doesn’t have the space to store it inside, so he bales it and stacks it in the field and stores it under tarpaulins to keep the weather off. Some of the bales he put up weren’t dry.
“If they’re damp, they’ll ferment and catch fire. That’s what happened and he lost a lot of it. He was counting on the hay to see his herd through the winter. He didn’t have any money to buy more. He came to us desperate. David cuts hay to sell in winter. We don’t have any stock, so we don’t need any for ourselves. Sven offered a part interest in his dairy for the hay he needed to get through. David brought Sven right into our barn and he and our boys, Marcus and Robert, loaded the truck and every single wagon we had and brought it all to Sven.
“When he came with the papers for the part interest, David refused to sign. He told Sven it was just some grass, and he didn’t need it anyway. Sven insisted. His pride was hurt, poor man. David stood firm. He said, ‘if you want to do something for me, send along a gallon of ice cream for the children.’ Sven just cried. You’d never think it to look at him, as big as he is, but he cried on my husband’s shoulder and thanked him a hundred times. Ever since then, we haven’t wanted for a pound of butter, a gallon of milk, or cream, or ice cream, or cheese, or anything Sven makes at the dairy. David told him he paid us back ten times over, but he brings it anyway, and I never have the heart to refuse.”
Walt sniffed and had to walk away from the stove to wipe tears from his eyes. I had tears in mine as well. “That’s a lovely story. David is quite a man.”
She agreed. “He is. So are you.”
I refused the praise. “I told your husband just the other day that the money I gave him meant nothing to me.”
“But it meant everything to David. The hay meant nothing to my husband, but it meant everything to Sven. Don’t judge the value of what you give away based on what it means to you. Judge it based on how much it means to the person receiving it.”
“Thanks, Abby. You’re quite a lady.”
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