Archer Mayor - St. Albans Fire

“What do you want to know?” Marie Cutts demanded.

Joe took the direct route, hoping it might earn him some small amount of credit. “For one thing, I’d like to reconstruct the last hours of Bobby’s life-maybe find out why he was out there in the middle of the night.”

“He went up to his room early, mooning about that tramp he was stuck on, and that’s the last we know.”

“What made you aware the barn was on fire?”

She made a sour face. “You think sixty cows and the barn they’re in burn without a sound? Mister, you haven’t lived till you’ve heard that.” She tapped her temple. “That’ll stick in my head till I die, ’cause somewhere in the middle of it, I’ll always think my son was calling for help, with no one to hear him. You don’t think that’s a mother’s nightmare, you’re stupider than I thought.”

Gunther sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his placid demeanor hiding the anger he now showed in his voice. “Mrs. Cutts, if you want me to stuff the sympathy and act like someone who’s just punching the clock, fine. But do me a favor. You stuff the attitude. I don’t need a lesson in heartbreak from you, ’cause you know absolutely nothing about me.”

Marie Cutts’s mouth opened in shock. For a long, measured moment, she said nothing. Joe waited, wondering how this version of a splash of cold water would work.

Finally, she pursed her lips, frowned, looked down at her hands for a slow count of five, and then glanced up-serious, honest, and for the first time, vulnerable.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. It was the noise that woke us up. I called 911 as Jeff and my husband ran out, but it was already too late. We couldn’t even free the animals. It seemed like the fire was everywhere. And that sound…”

Joe spoke softly. “Do you know of anyone, for any reason, who might have wished this on you?”

Her hands clenched tighter in her lap, but her eyes remained on his. “So it was set?”

He hedged. “We’re making that presumption so as not to miss anything.”

She shook her head. “People are so crazy nowadays. What’s it take to push them over the edge? Not getting a parking place or not wanting to wait in line any longer? I don’t know. We do our work, we mind our own business. It’s not like in the city, where people get on each other’s nerves.” She suddenly waved at the view out the window, similar to the one he and Jeff had shared earlier. “Look. We can’t even see our neighbors. We might as well be living on the moon.”

Joe let her calm down a few seconds before suggesting, “But you don’t live on the moon. You have neighbors, you belong to the dairy co-op, you interact with people in town. What’s the farm’s financial situation?”

She sighed. “Like everybody else’s. You borrow money against the year’s production, and then you keep your fingers crossed you’ll have something to produce. We have good years and bad. I heard the average farmer’s income in the U.S. is like twenty thousand a year, net. That fits us, if nothing falls on our head. This last year wasn’t too bad. But we have debts, if that’s what you’re asking. Cal and Jeff work all summer baling other people’s hay, to tilt the balance a little, ’cause Cal’s got the equipment for it when most others don’t.”

“And Jeff’s still set to take over when you and Cal retire?”

She looked surprised. “Where did you…?” Her voice then flattened, catching him off guard, and she turned away. “Oh, you were talking to him. Yes, that’s right.”

He studied her staring at the blank TV again. Her tone had turned hostile, as when the topic of Jeff Padgett marrying Linda had come up.

“You don’t seem very happy about it,” he said quietly.

Her eyes didn’t move. “It’s not my farm.”

Ouch, he thought, and pursued this new vein, taking an only slightly educated guess. “And it wasn’t going to be Bobby’s, either?”

She cut him an angry look. “What’s your name again?”

“Joe Gunther.”

“Well, Mr. Joe Gunther, if you want me to clean up my attitude, then you can stay the hell out of our private business. Bobby’s death has nothing to do with who gets what in this family. You do not get a free pass to poke around, leastwise not from me.”

Joe nodded. “Fair enough. You made it pretty clear you weren’t super fond of the girl Bobby was dating.”

“Marianne Kotch is a slut; that’s why.”

“How rocky could things get between them? I gather they had their ups and downs.”

Marie Cutts looked scornful. “Jeff tell you that? He’s just jealous. Probably wishes Linda wore tight clothes and no bra, too.”

“Is it true, though?”

“They weren’t happy,” she conceded. “Marianne tried to dump him once. I don’t know how they were doing lately, but my guess is, she was putting him through hell. I warned him about her, but that’s all he needed to make a big deal out of it. I even caught her in the supermarket parking lot, not long ago, making out with some long-haired greasy guy in a car. She was all over him. I told Bobby, like it would make any difference. I swear that half his interest in that girl was just to spite me.”

“You know who the greasy guy was?”

“No. I mean, I’ve seen him around. He’s a St. Albans kid. No good.”

“You have a name?”

Her eyes narrowed again. “What is it with you? We’re talking about a teenage whore making out in the parking lot. Who cares? You think either one of them killed Bobby? They know how to do one thing, and it isn’t striking matches, unless it’s to light a joint.”

Joe just watched her in silence.

Losing the staring contest, she looked away again. “It was John Frantz’s boy. I don’t know his name. Frantz runs a feedstore in town. You can find out that way.”

“How did Bobby react when you told him?”

“I didn’t actually tell him who it was. He pretended like he knew anyhow. Said he and Marianne had already talked about it, but I could tell he was lying. I saw the hurt in his eyes.”

“Would he have confronted this boy, do you think, had he known who he was?”

“I wish he had,” she said hotly. “Bobby would have kicked his skinny ass.”

“But he didn’t, as far as you know?”

“No,” she admitted mournfully. “Bobby was too much like his father that way. Not much of a fighter.”

As if on cue, Calvin Cutts appeared at the doorway, his expression telling Joe that he’d overheard-and that he was used to it. “Linda’s asleep, finally,” he said quietly, regaining his seat beside his wife. He reached out to take her hand again, but she moved it away.

Gunther kept focused on Marie. “What about Barry Newhouse? Jeff told me Marianne dumped him and used Bobby to rub it in. Barry lives nearby, doesn’t he?”

Marie turned on her husband, rather than answering. “Would you tell your fair-haired boy to mind his own business? He’s been shooting his mouth off with all sorts of crap about Bobby’s love life, none of which will have anything to do with the price of eggs in the end, assuming there is an end.”

She stood up abruptly, her husband’s return clearly triggering the fury she’d been barely controlling so far. “My son was just killed,” she addressed Cal, “along with your entire herd. Everything we worked for, saved for, everything we sacrificed for, is a pile of ashes. And what are we doing? We’re letting a cop give us the third degree based on a bunch of gossip from Jeff Precious Padgett.”

She’d been pacing the floor during this diatribe, and now came to a dead stop in the middle of the room, finally rendered motionless by her outrage. Her arms stiff by her sides, her fists clenched, she tilted her head back and yelled at the ceiling, “Goddamn you all,” before storming out the door, slamming it behind her. The two men stared at the door in silence before Calvin Cutts said in a soft voice, “This is hard on her.”