Everything You Want Me to Be(28)

“I’m looking for Mary Beth.”

“Oh, she’s over at Winifred’s.” She braced a hand on the doorjamb and squinted toward the woods that separated the two farms.

“I don’t think so. I stopped by there and saw her leave.”

“Oh?”

“Looks like her truck’s in the driveway.”

The evidence of it seemed to confuse her, so I switched gears.

“I met your son-in-law up at the play yesterday.”

“The play.” She said it like she was trying to bring a memory into focus. “I think we were supposed to go see a play this weekend.”

“Must be nice to have some extra hands with the farm.”

“Mary Beth does it all. He doesn’t do enough around here to fill a thimble.”

“The fields and the animals, huh? That’s a lot for one person.”

“No, she doesn’t work the fields. We rented them out when John passed on. Just the chickens and the gardens.”

“Nice to have fresh chicken on the table.”

“Exactly.” Elsa pointed at me, inexplicably vehement. “That’s what any regular man should say.”

“Mind if I check around for her?”

“Go on ahead. I better not. She gets after me when I try to pull this oxygen tank through the mud.”

I touched my hat and headed across the way, poking my head in a few buildings until I found Mary Beth in the chicken barn collecting eggs. A group of hens pecked around her feet, some white, some brown and orange, all of them scratching and clucking away. They weren’t packed in like I’d seen in some farms, where you could barely see the floor through the sea of animals. This flock looked more like a mismatched extended family gathered around their matriarch.

“Mrs. Lund?”

She yelped and jumped about a foot out of her skin, scattering the chickens in all directions, but managed to hold on to her basket. She had the look of her dad, now that I knew who she was—fair and sturdy, the kind of bones built for weathering storms, and it seemed like she was in the middle of one right now. The basket trembled on her arm and her breathing didn’t quite settle down, even after she saw me.

“Sheriff. My God.” She put one hand over her heart and checked her harvest for breaks.

“Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“That’s okay,” she said without looking up.

“How are things going out here?”

“Fine.” She wasn’t the chatty type, apparently. Mary Beth had never been a troublemaker growing up, so I didn’t know her too well. I think she played volleyball in high school and had been in the paper for National Merit Scholar things now and again.

“I was just up at the house talking to Elsa. She said you do most everything around here these days.”

“I do what I can. I’m not my dad, that’s for sure.”

“He’d be the first one to say thank God for that.”

She parted with a small smile, but it disappeared as quick as it came and she busied herself checking the remaining nests.

“What brings you out here?”

“Eggs, to tell the truth,” I lied, watching the chickens dart in and out of a low door that must have led to an outdoor space. “When I saw you at Winifred’s I happened to remember you’d started selling them again. I used to buy some from John from time to time.”

“Sure.” She went through the last of the nests and then motioned me to follow her to the main barn, where a series of old refrigerators lined one wall.

“How many do you need?”

“A dozen’ll do me fine. How much?”

“No charge.” She handed me a carton and waved off the five-dollar bill I’d pulled out of my wallet.

“Sorry, I can’t take them for free. Got into a bit of a sore spot with that once. Had a bartender who let me drink free for about a year during one of those years you don’t want to remember too well anyway. It seemed like a great deal until I found out he was selling the marijuana his cousin grew in the middle of his cornfields. He thought I owed him. Never forgave me for throwing them both in the clink.”

“I’m not growing marijuana,” Mary Beth said with a nervous laugh.

“All the same.” I held the money out until she took it.

“I don’t have change on me, so you’ll have to take another dozen.”

“Sure, I’ll come back when these run out.” I shifted the carton under my arm and switched topics. “You didn’t know Hattie Hoffman, did you?”

“No,” she answered quickly, starting to unload the eggs she’d just collected.

“She was practically family to me.”

“I’m sorry.” Whatever else she might have been feeling, she sounded like she meant it.

“You okay, Mary Beth?”

“Yeah. There’s just a lot going on right now.”

“Mmm. Your mom and the farm and everything.”

She nodded and kept working.

“Why were you talking about murder with Winifred?”

“What?” Her head shot up and she finally looked me in the eyes. Hers were surprised and tense, the kind of tense that builds up over months and years, where the muscles don’t even remember how to relax. Winifred had said something about marital troubles.