Buttons and Bones (9 page)

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 fantastically 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.

“Been waitin’ to get a word in edgewise,” retorted the little man. He went on in an old-fashioned Minnesota accent, pulling out some vowels and changing
th
s into
d
s. “Maybe some o’ yoo-oo remember dere was a German POW who escaped from a camp near here an’ dey never found ’im?” Two of the old men nodded, and the little man continued, “They had five men walk away from there, you betcha, an’ caught four of ’em. Two built a raft, they was going to float down the Mississippi to New Orleans an’ stow away on a ship back to Europe. Saw a big city an’ t’ought they was there, heh, heh, heh.” His laugh was soft and high-pitched. “But they was in Minneapolis. I guess they didn’t realize what a big country this is. The other two was found in the woods a couple miles from the camp,” he continued. “But one was never found at all. I was fourteen, maybe fifteen years old at the time and I remember he had a funny first name. It was ...” He thought deeply, the crinkles on his forehead and around his eyes deepening into folds. “Jeeter? No. I remember it rhymed with Peter, but it wasn’t Peter.”

“Well, isn’t that interesting,” said Lars, who could move silent as a ghost, and was suddenly behind Betsy.

The little man started and gestured sharply. “You betcha. They published his picture in the paper and put up posters, but they never found ’im. My Aunt Pauline told me a bear probably got ’im, it was in the late summer he ran off, and that time of year them bears are eating anything they can get a paw around to put on weight for their hibernation.”

“My grandmother told me a bear ate a dishtowel she had drying on the line one autumn,” offered the largest old man. He had small, sad eyes, a long nose, and scanty white hair.

The little man said, “That ain’t the point; the point is, I bet that skeleton is the missing German soldier.”

“Awww!” scoffed the fat man.

But the others were silent, thinking this over.

Betsy was amazed by this conversation. “What were German soldiers doing in Minnesota?” she asked.

“Well, they had to put ’em somewhere!” replied the little man. “We was turning the tide in North Africa, capturing thousands of ’em. But Europe was still overrun by Germany, except for England, an’ England couldn’t take ’em all—and besides it was looking like Germany was going to invade. So they packed ’em onto ships an’ brought ’em over here. Just about every state had camps set up for them, I heard. I read somewhere that most of ’em were converted Civilian Conservation Corps camps.”

The largest old man said, “I remember my dad went to CCC over at Remer in the thirties. He used to talk about cutting trail and building shelters in this very state park.”

The littlest old man thrust in, “You bet, and during World War Two they repaired them camps and built fences around them and brought captured Germans to them. Italians and Japs, too, though I never heard of any of them in Minnesota.”

“But wasn’t that dangerous, bringing combat soldiers to America?” asked Betsy.

The little man snorted. “Not really. They took away their weapons, o’ course, and made ’em wear clothes with big letters
PW
painted on ’em, set guards on ’em—not that they needed guarding. Brought to the middle of this great big country—where was they goin’ to run to?”

Betsy thanked the men for the information, and they went out to the SUV.

On the ride back, Betsy said, “So that badge they found in the cellar ...”

Lars said, “I’m betting it’s some kind of ID tag. It didn’t look like a dog tag, but maybe they were issued them at the camp—or maybe their own dog tags didn’t look like ours.” He fell into a thoughtful silence. “You know,” he said after a while, “it was a double badge, with the same name and some numbers on the top and bottom of it, and what looked like a row of dashes cut across its middle, maybe so you could break it in half. That’s not a bad way to do a dog tag; our way, making two of them, means they clattered every time you moved.” Lars, unsurprisingly, was a former Marine.

Betsy, more surprisingly, was a former WAVE. She nodded, remembering how noisy they could be. Less so for the females, who could tuck them into a bra.

“Why two of them anyhow?” asked Jill a little while later, over bacon and eggs scrambled with sweet peppers and onions—plain for the children.

Betsy and Lars looked at each other. “In case you get, um, terminated,” said Lars at last. “Someone, on his way somewhere else, finds you in the field and takes one dog tag as proof you’re, um, and leaves the other one with you for easy identification.”

“Oh,” said Jill, now aware this was not a suitable topic with the little pitchers present. “More coffee?”

“None for me, thanks,” said Emma Beth in a perfect imitation of an adult.

Betsy choked back a laugh. Emma Beth took herself seriously and perhaps it was cruel to show amusement when her dignity was on display.

“Do you think it’s really possible Dieter Keitel was here at the cabin back in the forties?” Jill asked, carefully avoiding saying scary words like “die” and “skeleton.”

“I guess so,” said Lars. “The question is, what was he doing here?”

“Is Dieter a friend of ours?” asked Emma Beth.

“No, darling, he’s someone who may have visited this cabin back before even your father was born.”

Imagining a time that long ago was beyond Emma Beth’s ability, so she returned her attention to her eggs. “’Kay,” she murmured.

“Nice!” announced Airey, waving his spoon.

“What’s nice?” asked Lars.

“Aaaaaae-guh!”

“Well, we’re glad you approve. Now eat it all up.”

“’Kay,” he said, very satisfied to find himself in a place where an echo of his big sister’s reply was appropriate.

“Maybe nobody was home when he got here,” suggested Betsy.

“Then who, um, terminated him? He didn’t hurt himself falling down those stairs, not with wooden steps and a dirt floor at the bottom. There were three fractures, remember.”

“Three?” said Betsy.

“Two on his head and one to his right arm.”

“Wow. All right, he ran into someone here.”

“I runned into Minnie at The Common,” announced Emma Beth, paying attention again.

“Ran into Minnie. Yes, you did, silly girl, not watching where you were going.”

“I fell down and hurt my knee.”

Airey made a sound like a car engine being gunned, his version of scornful laughter, and waved his spoon. “Faw down!”

The adults surrendered and focused on the children and their own breakfasts.

They had barely finished clearing away the breakfast things when there was the sound of a vehicle coming into the clearing. Lars looked out the front window and said, “Uh-oh.”

“Is the sheriff back again?” asked Jill, dismayed.

“No, the media.”

“Oh, no!”

“Not going to talk to them?” asked Betsy, hurrying to the window to peer out.

“Not on your life,” said Jill. “Up here we are private citizens and prefer to remain that way.”

A big white van with a satellite dish on top of it and a television station logo on its side was in the clearing. Men and women had emerged, one with a television camera on his shoulder, another with a furry microphone on a boom, yet another in a close-fitting suit, her perfect hairdo being blown a trifle awry by a vagrant breeze.

After they got set up, the woman stepped in front of the little porch and Betsy could hear her say, “On me in three, two, one . . . This is your KCCT reporter Marla Johnson from the scene where a human skeleton was discovered in a root cellar yesterday. Sheriff Randy Fisher refuses to speculate on the identity of the skeleton or how it came to be under this cabin.” Pause. “Cut.”