Buttons and Bones Read online

  “It’s possible Helga never told Matthew, you know, if it was such a shameful thing. Maybe she wrote him a letter saying she just couldn’t bear living out in the woods alone and was selling the place.”

  “Yes. In fact, that sounds more likely. Maybe she knew about quarter round edging on a floor. Or she hired someone to lay it professionally.”

  “Just to show that we’re not speculating too wildly,” noted Jill dryly, “how could we prove any of this?”

  “I don’t think anything can be proved. That’s why we’re letting our imaginations run free. It’s what you do when you don’t have any facts. When you have nothing but a skeleton in the cellar, and two layers of linoleum when the first one didn’t look worn at all.”

  Jill looked thoughtful. “You’re right about the linoleum. Though I thought the bottom pattern was ugly and it’s possible she did, too, after she saw it laid. I painted our bedroom dark blue right after I married Lars, then went out the next day and bought another, lighter, less depressing color. So it’s possible she got buyer’s remorse and bought another pattern and didn’t feel like tearing out the old one before laying the new one.”

  Betsy nodded. The lower layer of linoleum was a too-busy “moderne” pattern of muddy brown and dull green squares, ovals, and circles, while the upper one was a cheerful pattern of pink pebbles and gray stones. Of course, that first pattern might have been fashionable back then. Or were they wrong about when the linoleum was installed?

  “Anyway, it’s not just bones,” said Jill. “There were the buttons. Buttons and bones.”

  “And a badge and a few jars of beans. Could the buttons be significant?”

  Jill shrugged. “Lars said they looked like buttons in a jar his grandmother had.

  Betsy asked, “Did you ever do any canning?”

  “No, but I had an aunt who did. It seemed like an awful lot of work when canned or frozen peas were so cheap. She did it because her mother and grandmother had done it, and they taught her how. She baked her own bread, too.”

  “Now baking bread is different. Not so much work—and it’s very satisfying to do. I don’t really have time for it anymore, but I used to love to do it.” Betsy sighed.

  Jill remembered how her aunt’s house smelled on the days she baked bread. “You’ll have to show me how sometime. Then I’ll bake for the both of us.”

  “What a splendid idea!”

  They sat in comfortable silence for a little while. Then Betsy said, “I wonder who made those quilts you found in that trunk.”

  “Didn’t I tell you? It was Mrs. Farmer. Helga. Her initials and the date are embroidered down in the corner of each one—except the last, which isn’t a quilt but a crocheted rug.”

  “She crocheted a whole rug?”

  “Yes, about four by three feet, a set of deep-pile squares connected by double crochet. Very attractive. It’s at the bottom of the trunk. When we get back to the cabin, I’ll show you.”

  The door to the upstairs opened and Wilma, owner of the camp, came in.

  “I just got a phone call from the sheriff’s department. He says you all can go back to your cabin now.”

  BETSY went out with Jill to find Lars down at the little beach showing the children how to skip stones across the water’s surface. Emma Beth could throw pretty well, though skipping was beyond her. Airey could pick up a fistful of pebbles and sand and fling wildly. It would as often go sideways or even over his shoulder as into the water. He was dancing with excitement and shrieking with laughter after every fling.

  “Airey scared the turtles away!” complained Emma Beth when she saw her mother approaching.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Jill, though not with a great deal of sympathy. “Dear,” she said to Lars, “we can go back to the cabin now.”

  They paid their bill, thanked Mrs. Griffin, and took the twenty-minute drive back to Thunder Lake.

  Seven

  BACK at the cabin, Lars got the ladder out of the shed and used it to climb up on the roof. Betsy winced at the sound his huge feet made on the wooden shakes—wasn’t he damaging them?

  Inside, Jill gave Emma Beth and Airey a set of bright-colored wooden blocks to play with on the back porch. Betsy watched the children quarrel cheerfully, then joined Jill in the kitchen as she built a fire in the stove. She said, “I went to one of those historical farms not long ago, where they do everything as it was done back in the 1800s, and the woman in the kitchen said she uses corn cobs to start her fires. Less work than chopping kindling.”

  “I’d remember that if I was going to keep this stove,” said Jill. “There, that should be up to cooking temperature in half an hour or so. Ah, the good old days!”

  Betsy laughed. “Come on, show me that crocheted rug.”

  Back out on the porch, Jill lifted the trunk’s heavy lid and said, “Here, take a look at this. We were interrupted before we finished looking at the quilts.”

  She pulled out the Wedding Ring and Log Cabin quilts, laying them on the turned-back lid. Under them was a quilt covered with clusters of tiny hexagons made of pastel shades of pink, yellow, green, and blue fabric. “This pattern is called Grandmother’s Flower Garden.”

  Betsy lifted a corner for a closer look. “Gosh, this is all hand stitched!” She unfolded it to see it was full size. “I wonder how many hours were invested in making this?”

  “Hundreds, probably,” replied Jill. “You used to see quilts like this at yard sales for five dollars, but nowadays people are waking up to the value of them.” She pulled another quilt out of the chest, also full-size, whose squares were made up of four highly stylized birds with pointed wings and tails, each diving with its beak toward the center. “This is the bear paw pattern,” said Jill, and Betsy adjusted her imagination accordingly. “It’s also hand stitched—they’re all hand stitched.”

  “Another reason to think someone lived here year round,” noted Betsy. “What better way to occupy the winter hours than by making quilts?”

  “Now, here’s the rug,” said Jill, lifting out an attractive article in cream-colored wool yarn about four feet long by three wide. The squares were made of dense loops, each loop a couple of inches long, each square about nine inches wide. The rug was soft to the touch.

  “Ooooh,” said Betsy, “I can just see this beside my bed, how sweet to step onto it with bare feet!” She ran the length of it through her fingers. “No tag or anything on it, so I guess it’s handmade, too.”

  “And seeing it was in the chest with the quilts, it’s hard not to think it was also made by Helga Farmer.”

  “You’re sure it’s crochet?”

  “Yes, I recognize the flat areas between the looped squares. That’s double crochet.”

  “So it is. How did she do those loops?” wondered Betsy, looking closer.

  From outside came a piercing whistle: three rising notes.

  “That’s Lars calling us,” said Jill. She turned and hurried to the front door, with Betsy at her heels. The children tumbled down the tower they were building and trotted after them.

  Standing near the far side of the clearing was a woman, a little heavyset, dressed in a brown suede jacket, brown denim pants, and brown boots. Even her hair was a streaky brown that matched her outfit. She raised a tentative hand to them.

  “It’s the bear lady!” shouted Emma Beth.

  “Hello there!” called Lars from up on the roof.

  “Hello,” the woman called back, but not loudly.

  “Come on over!” called Jill, gesturing, and the woman obeyed.

  “We’re the Larsons,” said Jill when the woman was close enough that shouting wasn’t necessary. “Jill and Lars—he’s the one on the roof—and Erik and Emma Beth. And this is our friend Betsy Devonshire.”

  “How do you do?” said the woman in a soft voice. “I’m Molly Fabrae, and my father used to own this cabin. We’ve been coming up to this area for years but I’ve never come over before. Never wanted to, really.” Up close, the
woman appeared to be in her later sixties, though she moved with the grace of a much younger woman.

  “Was your maiden name Nowicki?” asked Jill.

  “No, Farmer.”

  “Oh, we were just looking at some quilts your mother made!”

  “You mean Helga, of course. She was my stepmother, not my mother.” Her tone of voice made it suddenly clear why she had never visited the cabin.

  “My father divorced my mother when I was four,” she continued, “and I never saw my father again. He wrote a letter to me on my birthday every year until I was eight, then he disappeared. That was in 1944. It was quite a mystery, perhaps you’ve heard about it. The Army looked for him but couldn’t find him.”

  “Did he go missing in action?” asked Betsy sympathetically.

  “No. He was supposed to go overseas but he never got to his place of embarkation. No one knows what happened to him. My stepmother sold this place soon after he disappeared and she disappeared, too. Some people think he was a deserter, and she joined him wherever he was hiding and . . . well, that’s a story they tell. I don’t think it’s true, though.” She was looking around the clearing and then at the cabin, trying to sneak a peek at the inside through the screen door.

  “Would you like to see inside?” asked Jill.

  She hesitated, then said, “No, never mind, but thank you. I just wondered . . . You see, my father was a career soldier, a major who had done a lot of good things. He had joined the Army as a private and was promoted to corporal and then sergeant and then was sent to Officer Training School. He wouldn’t be afraid to do his duty. So when I heard that a skeleton was found under the cabin, I was curious.”

  “Oh,” Jill said, “I see. You think maybe . . .”

  “Yes,” said Molly, nodding. “I’m sure they have ways of identifying bones. I’m wondering if they’ll tell you who the bones belong to, and if you would, in turn, tell me.”

  Lars, having come down the ladder, joined the conversation. “Why didn’t you contact the sheriff’s department on your own? I’m sure they would be very happy to talk to you about a possible identification.”

  “Oh, it’s the sheriff’s department I should contact. I didn’t know who to call. I guess I was thinking there should be a police department in the area, but the address out here is Remer, and they don’t have a police department.”

  “That’s right,” said Lars. “So it’s the sheriff’s department who is responsible for investigating. I can give you a name and a phone number, if you like.”

  “Yes, please. Thank you.”

  “You bet. I’ll be right back.” Lars went inside to search for a pen and slip of paper.

  “You said you vacation up here,” said Jill. “Where is your home?”

  “We live in Saint Paul.”

  “ ‘We’?”

  “My husband and I.” She pulled a wry face. “We used to own a cabin on Long Lake but sold it to help put the kids through college, and somehow never bought another. But we miss coming up here, so a few years ago we began renting a cabin at Anderson’s Resort. I was walking close to your property, reminiscing about our old place. But I saw the two little children and realized I was trespassing and somehow lost my nerve.”

  “We thought you were a bear!” declared Emma Beth. “’Cause you’re all brown!”

  “Yes, I suppose I must have looked something like a bear,” said Molly, smiling down at the child.

  Jill said, “I hope the local law enforcement manages to put to rest what must be an unhappy memory for you.”

  “Yes, me, too.”

  Lars came back out with a business card. “This is all I could find to write on. That’s my name and contact numbers on the front. The deputy investigator’s name and number are on the back.”

  Molly took the card. “Thank you.” Then she read the front of the card and glanced up at him in surprise.

  He grinned at her. “Excelsior Police,” he said, “but up here I’m just another civilian.”

  She smiled back, thanked them again, and departed.

  “Poor lady,” said Jill.

  “You know, that’s an explanation we never thought of,” said Betsy. “That Helga batted her husband on his head.”

  “Mama, why would a lady hit her husband on his head?”

  “Maybe because he was being naughty and asking too many questions. Like a silly little Em-Beth girl I know.” Jill made a growly face and began to chase Emma Beth, who ran laughing back into the cabin.

  THE lingering summer twilight had at last faded into darkness. The tourists had retreated to the resort or their cabins; the only sounds were of crickets and frogs and the occasional night bird.

  Jill, Lars, and Betsy were sitting on the back porch, with Airey asleep on Jill’s lap and Emma Beth determinedly awake on Lars’s. The three adults were talking quietly.

  “Turns cool when the sun goes down,” noted Lars approvingly. “Better than air-conditioning.”

  “Good sleeping in air like this,” agreed Betsy. “I can see why people buy cabins.” She was thinking of Connor. How sweet it would be to have him sitting on a back porch like this, waiting for loons to sing! She tried to suppress a lonesome sigh.

  “Cold in the winter, though,” said Lars.

  “In the winter we stay in town,” said Jill.

  “But what if they have some ski trails around here?” said Lars.

  “Well, that might be different,” said Jill. “We’ll have to look into that. I hear these log cabins are fairly easy to keep above freezing if you install double-pane windows.” Jill was an avid cross-country skier, and “above freezing” was her definition of comfortable.

  “I can ski,” said Emma Beth.

  “So you can, darling, so you can.”

  A little silence fell. “Look, Mama, fireworks!” exclaimed Emma Beth.

  A bright falling star was coming down the sky. It broke into three pieces, which quickly faded and were gone.

  “Wow! That was amazing!” said Betsy.

  “I’ve never seen a falling star do that,” said Lars.

  “It was beautiful,” said Jill.

  “Do it again,” prompted Emma Beth.

  “I’m afraid that’s not something anyone can do on demand,” said Jill.

  Another silence fell, gradually moving from anticipatory—would there be another falling star?—to relaxed as the night settled in again.

  It was suddenly broken by what seemed the brief, nervous titter of an old-fashioned comedy-act spinster. It was loud, and it echoed off the trees.

  Betsy sat up straight. Was it what she thought?

  Emma Beth said loudly, “Go ’way!”

  “Hush, darling,” said Jill.

  The titter was repeated, and echoed by another spinster, then a third.

  The loons.

  The giggling went on for about half a minute then came the cry known as the “yodel.” A rising note, broken into a higher register, then falling, a sound with all the sorrow of the world in it. It was repeated, and this time broke again at the high end into a third register.

  Emma Beth began to cry. “Don’t be afraid, honey,” soothed Lars.

  “I’m not afraid! But the loon is crying. Why is she crying, Daddy?”

  “I don’t know. Why do you think she’s crying?”

  “She’s sad. She’s crying ’cause she’s sad.”

  “Does that make you sad, too?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Me, too, just a little bit. But it’s not a bad kind of sad. It’s the kind of sad you feel when it’s time for bed and you’ve had a busy day and you’re all tired.”

  After a few seconds, Emma Beth sighed. “Yes,” she said. “Go to bed, Looney!” she called out, her voice full of sympathy.

  But the adults laughed anyway.

  Eight

  THE next morning they discovered they had forgotten to pack the eggs. Jill had the stove all heated up, the coffee made, and the bacon frying—the air in the cabin smelled fan
tastically delicious—but there were no eggs to accompany it.

  “I’ll run over to The Wolf,” announced Lars, meaning the general store about ten minutes away.

  “May I come with you?” asked Betsy, afraid if she stayed she’d start sneaking the bacon—there was something about the northwoods air that did amazing things to the appetite. Not that hers needed encouraging.

  “Sure,” said Lars, and the two ran out to the SUV. It was a bright, sunny morning, and the air was still, if a little chilly. Betsy was glad she’d brought along her heavy flannel shirt.

  The Lone Wolf was a shaggy clapboard building with at least two obvious additions to its original structure. Two old-fashioned gas pumps were out front, one with a faded cardboard OUT-OF-ORDER sign hanging from it.

  Inside, on the left, was a huge old bar, but instead of liquor bottles it had coffee mugs and patent medicines on the mirrored shelves behind it. Six old men were gathered at the near end of the bar, drinking coffee and talking. “They had to restock that lake after them boys used dynamite all one summer to catch fish,” one was saying. They fell silent as Lars and Betsy entered, then one said, “Larson, isn’t it?”

  “Yessir,” said Lars. “We bought the old Buster Martin cabin. This is our guest for the weekend, Betsy Devonshire.” He added to Betsy, “Wait here, I’ll get the eggs,” and hurried off to the right, where a row of chill boxes stood.

  “Ms. Devonshire,” said one old man, bald and plump, in a high, rough voice. “How do you like it up here in the northwoods?”

  “Very much. It was thrilling to hear the loons last night.”

  “Say,” said another man, small and very elderly, though his eyes were keen. He lifted a gnarled hand and said, “Wasn’t it the Farmer cabin where they found that skeleton yesterday?”

  “Yes,” said Betsy.

  “Thought so. I bet I know who it was.”

  The other men turned on their stools to look at him. “You mean you been sitting there for the past half hour and never said a word about that?” demanded the plump man indignantly.