Archer Mayor - St. Albans Fire

“How did Bobby seem lately?” Joe asked.

Padgett tilted his large, round head to one side. “Fine, I guess. Having a hard time with his love life, but who doesn’t, right?” He smiled suddenly, the flash of teeth startlingly out of context. Joe couldn’t resist responding in kind.

“One girl, one too many, or none at all?” he asked.

Padgett laughed sadly. “Oh, it was one, all right. Poor guy couldn’t see straight ’cause of her.”

“How do you mean?”

He glanced over at his daughter, making sure she wasn’t listening in. He continued in a low voice. “Bobby wasn’t a ladies’ man. Kind of shy and retiring. Somehow or another he hooked up with Marianne Kotch, which nobody could believe, and it totally messed him up.”

“Not a match made in heaven?”

“Not a match made anywhere. I told him to his face he was headin’ for trouble with her, but he just got mad. She only picked him to piss off her ex-boyfriend. It wasn’t serious for her. But old Bobby, I swear, he was making plans from the first night.”

“So they were intimate?”

Jeff was lost enough in his story that the reason for telling it was temporarily overshadowed. He chuckled. “Marianne Kotch makes it a point to get intimate with just about every man she meets. That’s what I mean about her not being serious.”

“But they continued being an item?”

“I think she felt sorry for him. She tried dumping him once. He went crying to her in the middle of the night. Made a big fuss. So she took him back. She wasn’t happy about it, though. Everybody but him could see it.”

“How were they lately?”

Padgett scratched his cheek. “Same, I guess-him the love puppy and her trying to find a way out. After he chewed me a new one, I generally avoided the subject.”

Gunther glanced out the window at the glaring, snow-covered view, a portrait of Bobby Cutts emerging like a ghost at the bottom of a pool of water. He knew this process well, and knew also that at this stage, it was difficult to tell reality from whatever he might be hearing, making it both easy and dangerous to jump to conclusions.

“Would you say Bobby was depressed?” he asked quietly.

“Frustrated is more like it.”

“What about Marianne? She must have been pretty frustrated, too. She ever complain that you know of?”

Jeff shook his head. “Nah. It was more how she acted around him, all pouty and resentful. But she and I don’t talk. Linda wouldn’t like it, not that Marianne’s my age or my type. But you know women.”

“I would never claim that.”

Padgett laughed.

“How’s the farming business been lately?” Gunther asked conversationally, hoping to coast on the genial mood between them.

His companion looked at him dubiously, his eyebrows arched, almost snide. “Lately? I’d have to say not too good.”

Joe shook his head, irritated with himself, but also caught off guard by the sudden sarcasm in Padgett’s voice. “I meant before. Any financial troubles?”

Padgett placed his hand on his forehead theatrically and gave Joe a quizzical look. “You know anything about farming?”

Gunther leaned forward in his seat, the edge in his voice designed to settle the man down a notch. “My father farmed his whole life. That’s where I was born. I’m talking reality here, not the all-farmers-are-martyrs-for-feeding-America line. I know about that, and I don’t argue the point. I’m asking about unusual financial problems, for you folks-personally.”

Jeff Padgett didn’t take offense. He actually laughed, albeit shortly. “I like that-martyrs. I never heard that one. Sad but true, though.” He looked at the floor in contemplation for a moment, before adding, “God, it sure does get complicated, don’t it? I mean, you’re right. We do sort of walk around holier-than-thou sometimes. I used to get tired of teachers doing the same thing, complaining about how they were underpaid and unappreciated.” He waved his hand in mock surrender at Gunther. “Okay, I get the point. The answer is no, we didn’t have any more money headaches than the next guy, I guess. I can’t say what this fire will do, though. Bobby’s death could change everything.”

“What was the insurance?”

Padgett made a face. “Less than it should have been, like everybody else I know.”

“Little enough to shut you down?”

The young man looked wistful. “You met Cal?” he asked.

Joe knew Calvin Cutts to be Jeff’s father-in-law. “Not yet. Thought I’d talk to you first.”

“He took me in as a teenager. Believed in me when most people figured they’d be visiting me in prison next. He put me to work, set me straight, treated me like a son, even took it in stride when Linda and I got together. And after I proved myself and she and I got married, he told me this place would be ours-the same place he got from his father before him.”

He pointed in the direction of the barn. “When something like this happens, it’s one of a farmer’s biggest fears. I suppose you know that, coming from where you do. But you deal with it. Hanging by a thread is who we are. And Cal is among the best I know at making it work.”

He paused, as if worried this might be taken as bravado, and returned to the shadow haunting them all. “I don’t know about Bobby, though. That’s gonna be rough.”

“Could you handle the load alone if Cal called it quits?” Joe asked.

Padgett sighed. “Depends on the money, like always. I’d do everything I could, I’ll tell you that. I say the same thing to the developers who come by, trying to buy us out. I do this because Cal used it to save my life. I owe it to him, to Linda and the kids, and because it’s all I want to do anyhow.”

This wasn’t said with any fervor. Instead, in contrast to moments earlier, the words came out almost mournfully, as if Jeff Padgett weren’t so much proud as resigned to what fate had decreed. But there was more, which Joe recognized from his own experience. He’d watched his father carry the same sense of destiny, as if farming, with all its insecurities and dangers and hardships, simply boiled down to the reason he’d been put on earth.

“Did Bobby get along with his parents?” Joe asked, mindful of all the odd feelings that feed a survivor’s grief, sometimes including an emotion that has little to do with love and harmony.

“Yeah,” Jeff said, immediately and unequivocally. “He really did. I mean, they’d have their disagreements, Marianne being a whopper, but it never ran to much. This whole family just seems to keep on going, you know what I mean? Like a tribe or something.” He paused and added thoughtfully, “I suppose that’s why I feel the way I do being taken in. It’s pretty special. You’ll see why when you meet Cal.”

Joe nodded. “I’ll do that next. I’m almost done, by the way. Just a couple more questions. When did you last see Bobby?”

“Gosh, let me think. We pretty much hang around the TV set at night, but some of us come and go.”

“You live here, too?” Joe asked, surprised.

Padgett gave a slightly crooked smile. “Yeah. I know it’s weird, but this is a whole lot nicer than anything I could afford if we were on our own.”

Gunther made a dismissive gesture. “No, no. Of course. Makes perfect sense. I just didn’t realize, is all.”

“Yeah,” the young man agreed. “A lot of families have almost done the same thing, though, building houses right next to each other and spending nearly every night together.” He hesitated and then added, “It is a little embarrassing sometimes, not to mention crowded.”

Joe moved him along. “You were telling me when you last saw Bobby.”

“Right,” Padgett exclaimed, clearly relieved. “I think it was on the early side, to be honest. I remember him saying he had something to do in his room.”