The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(44)

Could that be—blood?

And whose hair was it?

I dropped the hammer and heard it thunk against the garden detritus.

My heart was pounding and I felt like all the saliva in my mouth had suddenly disappeared.

The dress I had found in the shed, dotted with blood along the back of the neck. The stone that looked like it had been made to mark a grave. And now this.

A hammer with hair on it that suggested violence. A woman whose cause of death was rumored to be any of several different things, even among her immediate family. A woman who had died young, leaving her sons with her husband. A woman whose gravesite was unknown. I walked out of the shed and back inside the house. I pretended that everything was fine with Tomas and Liam, though Anna was still alone upstairs with Tobias. A man who might very well have murdered his first wife. Should I stay to tell her what I suspected? No. Not until I knew for certain. I could not add to her burdens, which were already considerable.

So I said I felt ill and needed to go home, and asked the boys to give their mother my regards.

For an hour or more, I waited on our front room couch for the bishop to come home. Then I asked if I could speak to him in his office.

His eyes flickered with surprise. “If you want.”

I nodded. I felt like this should be official. Kurt had said he didn’t want me to play detective, and I hadn’t meant to. But now I had to tell someone. I had to know what to do, and I wanted Kurt, as the bishop, to tell me. I wanted this taken out of my hands.

He sat at his desk. I sat on the couch opposite. And I listed the facts I’d uncovered. The stone in the dirt in the garden that looked like a headstone. The hammer under the dirt by the headstone. The blood and hair on the hammer, and the pink, faded dress with its stain.

“How can you be sure it’s blood this many years later? It could just be dirt that looks like dried blood,” he began.

I glared at him.

He sighed. “And even if it is blood, it could be from an animal. Or …” He seemed unable to think up another explanation.

“Why would Tobias put the hammer near that headstone? Why doesn’t anyone know what his wife really died of? Why doesn’t anyone know where she is buried? Why is Tobias so desperate on his deathbed to see his wife’s grave?”

“Maybe the hammer has nothing to do with the headstone,” said Kurt. He waved a hand, dismissive enough to make my fear simmer into anger. “Maybe it’s not a headstone, anyway. It could be a decorative stone.”

“Kurt, his garden is carefully groomed. Everything has a place. The decorative stones all match. This headstone doesn’t.”

“It could still have another, perfectly innocuous explanation,” he said. But he didn’t suggest one.

“Kurt, if there is a human being buried in his garden, don’t you think we should find out who it is?”

“You think it’s his dead first wife there,” said Kurt.

I shrugged. Who else was it likely to be? And with all the different versions of what happened to her, it almost made sense. But now that I was away from the garden, away from the sight of Tobias kissing the winter dirt, I was starting to reconsider my own conclusions. Tobias Torstensen, a killer? He was the nicest man. Could he do something like that to his wife? And no one had guessed for all these years?

“You seem to have a sudden tendency to think men guilty of killing their wives,” said Kurt. “Even if there’s no real evidence of foul play. Is there something wrong? Something you want to tell me about how you feel for me?” He smiled, trying to make it into a joke. He’d used that trick on the boys more than once, and they were all in stitches moments after being in the midst of a fight.

It wasn’t going to work on me. “Don’t talk to me like that,” I said, and stood up. “Don’t patronize me. I’m not making things up here. I’m not leaping to conclusions. I didn’t call the police to trample through Tobias’s garden while he is on his deathbed. I’m talking to you.” I didn’t move to the door, but I wasn’t going to let him treat me like a child. I hadn’t made up what I’d seen in the garden. Or the hammer. Or the headstone. It was all there, and it had to mean something.

“He’s an old man, Linda. What do you possibly think we could get out of him at this late date? From a man who is dying?” asked Kurt. He had his hands templed on his desk. I knew that move, too. It was the “calm down” motion that he used when couples were arguing with each other in front of him. “Even if he is a murderer—which I don’t for one minute believe—what is the point of trying to punish him when God has already taken care of it?”

What about Anna? Didn’t she deserve to know the truth about her husband?

“I think you may want to consider that this is really about something else,” said Kurt.

“And what’s that?” I asked him.

“I think you’re letting your guilt over not noticing Carrie Helm’s unhappiness make you see abusive men everywhere. You’re angry. At God, at my entire sex, and at yourself, for not stopping what happened to her.”

Maybe I was angry, but if that was true, I had a right to be. And if Carrie Helm was fine, Tobias Torstensen’s first wife wasn’t.

But I put the anger aside, and sat back on the couch and tried to speak to Kurt the way he could hear me. Without emotion. “Look, I don’t think Tobias’s mental state is that much in question. And if he did this, he’ll want to confess to you before he dies. Asking about his wife’s grave, and the whole show yesterday in the garden—it means some part of him wants to let his sons know before he’s gone. It might be his last chance. So you could hint to him that you know. You could make it easier for him to tell you the truth, when you’re in private. That’s all I’m saying. Give him a chance. Don’t accuse him, but listen if it comes up. Will you do that for me?”