A Cry In The Night

22

The inquest was held a week later. For Jenny the week was a blur of unfocused pain.

In the morgue, she stared down at the stretcher. Kevin’s face was mutilated but still recognizable, with the long straight nose, the curve of the forehead, the thick, dark red hair. Memories of their wedding day in St. Monica’s kept flashing back to her. “I, Jennifer, take thee Kevin… Till death do us part.” Never had her life been more entwined with his than now. Oh, Kevin, why did you follow me here?

“Mrs. Krueger?” Sheriff Gunderson’s voice urging the identification.

Her throat closed. She hadn’t even been able to swallow tea this morning.

“Yes,” she whispered, “that’s my husband.”

A low, harsh laugh behind her. “Erich, oh, Erich, I didn’t mean…”

But he was gone, his footsteps decisively slapping the tiled floor. When she got to the car he was there, stony-faced, and did not speak to her on the way home.

During the inquest the same questions were asked a dozen different ways. “Mrs. Krueger, Kevin MacPartland told a number of people you had invited him to come to your home in your husband’s absence.”

“I did not.”

“Mrs. Krueger what is the phone number of your home?”

She gave it.

“Do you know the telephone number of the Guthrie Theater?”

“I do not.”

“Let me tell you or perhaps refresh your memory. It is 555-2824. Is it familiar to you?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Krueger, I am holding a copy of the March telephone bill from Krueger Farm. A call to the Guthrie Theater appears on this bill dated March ninth. Do you still deny making that call?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Is this your coat, Mrs. Krueger?”

“Yes, I gave it away.”

“Do you have a key to the Krueger residence?”

“Yes, but I’ve mislaid it.” The coat, she thought. Of course it was in the pocket of the coat. She told the prosecutor that.

He held up something, a key; the ring had her initials, J.K. The key Erich had given her.

“Is this your key?”

“It looks like it.”

“Did you give it to anyone, Mrs. Krueger? Please tell us the truth.”

“No, I did not.”

“This key was found in Kevin MacPartland’s hand.”

“That’s impossible.”

On the stand Maude unhappily, doggedly, repeated the story she had told Jenny. “He said his ex-wife wanted to see him and I pointed the road. I’m very sure of the date. He came the night after my son’s dog was killed.”

Clyde Toomis on the stand was embarrassed, tongue-tied, but patiently honest. “I told my wife she had her own good everyday winter coat. I scolded her for accepting it. I put that maroon coat back in the closet in the hall off the kitchen of Krueger farmhouse myself, put it there the very day my wife wore it home.”

“Did Mrs. Krueger know that?”

“Don’t know how she coulda missed it. The closet ain’t that big and I hung it right next to that ski jacket she wears all the time.”

I didn’t notice, Jenny thought, but knew it was possible she simply hadn’t paid attention.

Erich testified. The questions were brief, respectful. “Mr. Krueger, were you at home the night of Monday, March ninth?”

“Did you make known your plans to paint in your cabin that night?”

“Were you aware your wife had been in contact with her former husband?”

Erich might have been talking about a stranger. He answered with detachment, weighing his words, unemotional.

Jenny sat in the first row watching him. Not for a second did his glance meet hers. Erich, who hated even talking on the phone, Erich, who was one of the most private people she had ever known, who had become estranged from her because he was upset about Kevin’s phone call and her meeting with him.

The inquest was over. When he summed up, the coroner said that a severe bruise on the right temple of the deceased might have been incurred during the impact of the crash or might have been inflicted previous to it.

The official verdict was death by drowning.

But as Jenny left the courthouse she knew the verdict that the community had passed. At the least she was a woman who had been seeing her former husband clandestinely.

At the worst she had murdered him.

In the three weeks that followed the inquest, the dinners Erich ate with her fell into a pattern. He never spoke directly to her, only to the girls. He would say, “Ask Mommy to pass the rolls, Tinker Bell.” His tone was always warm and affectionate. It would have taken sensitive ears to pick up the tension between them.

When she put the girls to bed, she never knew whether she would find him still in the house when she came downstairs. She wondered where he went. To the cabin? To the home of friends? She dared not ask. If he did sleep in the house, it was in the rear bedroom that his father had used for so many years.

There was no one she could talk to. Something told her that he would get over it. There were times she caught him looking at her with such tenderness in his face that she had to restrain herself from putting her arms around him, begging him to believe in her.

Quietly she mourned the waste of Kevin’s life. He could have accomplished so much; he had been so talented. If only he had disciplined himself, stayed away from involvements with women, drunk less.

But how did her coat get in the car?

One night she came downstairs to find Erich sipping coffee at the kitchen table.

“Jenny,” he said, “we have to talk.”

Not sure whether the emotion she felt was relief or anxiety, she sat down. After the girls were settled, she’d showered and put on her nightgown and the robe Nana had given her. She watched as Erich studied her.

“That red is perfect against your hair. Dark cloud on scarlet. Symbolic, isn’t it? Like dark secrets in a scarlet woman. Is that why you wear it?”

So this was to be the “talk.” “I put it on because I was cold,” Jenny said.

“It’s very becoming. Maybe you’re expecting someone?”

Odd, she thought, in the midst of all this I can still feel sorry for him. What had been worse for him, she wondered suddenly, Caroline’s death or the fact that Caroline had been planning to leave him?

“I’m not expecting anyone, Erich. If you think I am, why not stay with me every night and reassure yourself?” She knew she should be outraged and furious but there was no emotion left in her except pity for him. He looked so troubled, so vulnerable. Always when he was upset he seemed younger, almost boyish.

“Erich, I’m so sorry about all this. I know people are gossiping and how distressing this must be for you. I don’t have any logical explanation for what happened.”

“Your coat.”

“I don’t know how it got in that car.”

“You expect me to believe that.”

“I would believe you.”

“Jenny, I want to believe you and I can’t. But I do believe this. If you agreed to let MacPartland come here, maybe you did want to warn him to stay away from us. I can accept that. But I can’t live with the lie. Admit you invited him down here and I’ll put this behind us. I can see how it happened. You didn’t want to bring him in the house so you had him drive to the dead end at the riverbank. You warned him and you had your key in your hand. Maybe he made a pass at you. Did you struggle? You slid out of your coat and got out of the car. Maybe when he went to reverse he went forward. Jenny, it’s understandable. But say so. Just don’t look at me with those wide, innocent eyes. Don’t look thin and wan like some kind of wounded victim. Admit you’re a liar and I promise I’ll never mention this again. We love each other so much. It’s still there, all that love.”

At least he was being totally honest. She felt as though she were sitting on a mountain looking down into a valley, observing what was going on, a disinterested spectator.

“It would almost be easier to do what you wanted,” she observed. “But it’s funny; we’re all the sum total of our lives. Nana despised liars. She was contemptuous of even the social life. ‘Jenny,’ she used to say, ‘don’t evade. If you don’t want to go on a date with someone just say no thank you, not that you have a headache or have to do math homework. Truth serves everyone best.’”

“We’re not talking about math homework,” Erich said.

“I’m going to bed, Erich,” she said. “Good night.” There was no point in continuing like this.

Such a short time ago they’d gone upstairs arms around each other. To think she’d objected to wearing the aqua nightgown. It was so unimportant in retrospect.

Erich did not answer her even though she went up the stairs slowly, giving him the chance to respond.

She dropped off to sleep quickly, the exhaustion weighing her down, forcing her into weary dreams. She slept restlessly, always just under the conscious level, aware of herself moving around the bed. She was dreaming again; this time she was in the car, struggling with Kevin; he wanted the key…

Then she was in the woods, walking in them, searching. She flung up her arm to push away the nearness of the trees and touched flesh.

Her fingers felt the outline of a forehead, the soft membrane of an eyelid. Long hair brushed her cheek.

Biting her lips over the scream that tried to escape her throat, she bolted up and fumbled for the night-table light. She snapped it on and looked around wildly. There was no one there. She was alone in bed, in the room.

She sank back on the pillows, her body trembling helplessly. Even her facial muscles were twitching.

I’m going crazy, she thought. I’m losing my mind. For the rest of the night, she did not turn off the light and the first rays of dawn were filtering through the drawn shades before she finally fell asleep.