Witness in Bishop Hill Read online

  Witness in Bishop Hill

  Sara Hoskinson Frommer

  WITNESS IN BISHOP HILL

  Copyright © 2002 by Sara Hoskinson Frommer

  First Smashwords edition

  Initially published by St. Martin’s Press

  Smashwords License Statement

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords or your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  In memory of Margaret Anne Huffman

  (1941–2000)

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Books by Sara Hoskinson Frommer

  Reviews

  1

  Joan Spencer didn’t know meeting her mother-in-law was about to lead to murder. She had married Fred Lundquist so suddenly that she hadn’t met his family yet. Not that it had been a shotgun wedding, if such a thing still existed. Her children were already young adults, Andrew a junior in college and Rebecca on the verge of marriage. One minute Joan had expected to wait until everyone could be there, and the next minute waiting hadn’t made sense. Not at their age. Not if she was going to worry every time Fred went to work that she might never be his wife.

  Three months later, she was still glad they had gone ahead. She and Fred would get around to visiting the family soon.

  Even before the college closed for the winter break, things were unusually quiet at the little Oliver, Indiana, police station. Detective Lieutenant Fred Lundquist was catching up on old paperwork when the phone on his desk rang.

  “Lundquist.”

  “Fred, it’s me.”

  “Carol?” His sister hardly ever called him, and never at work. “Are Mom and Dad all right?”

  “I guess. They can’t understand why you never come to see them.”

  He bristled. In fact, he and Joan hoped to make the trip to northern Illinois in a few more weeks, after their first Christmas together, but he hadn’t wanted to get his mother’s hopes up until he was sure. “You didn’t call just to tell me I’m a rotten son.”

  “Cut it out, Fred! I wouldn’t call at all if we didn’t need your help.”

  Laying on the guilt, he thought, just the way she used to when we were kids. He sighed. “What can I do for you?” Stretching back against the wall, he automatically caught his toes under the desk in case his old wooden swivel chair tried to dump him.

  “We want to get away for a couple of weeks,” Carol said. “Our neighbor has just offered us his time-share in Florida before Christmas. Right on the beach, can you imagine? We’d love to take him up on it, but we can’t leave Walt alone with Mom and Dad then. It’s his busiest season. He just doesn’t have enough time to give them.”

  Fred’s brother, Walter, and his wife ran a restaurant in Bishop Hill, the tiny restored Swedish community in northern Illinois where their parents lived. Carol and her husband lived in Kewanee, a small town a few miles away that was much bigger than Bishop Hill.

  Their parents, Helga and Oscar Lundquist, still lived in the house in which all their children had grown up. Only Fred, the oldest surviving child, had left the area. Oscar Junior had died in infancy, a loss his mother sometimes spoke about with matter-of-fact Swedish stoicism.

  Fred couldn’t imagine his parents upset about not seeing Carol for a couple of weeks, even if Walt couldn’t spend much time with them in his busy season. “They can’t manage by themselves that long?”

  “If you came around a little more, you’d know they can’t.” Carol’s voice was as sharp as her words.

  Fred bit back a retort. “I’m sorry.” His family had been more than understanding during the rough years around his divorce. If they wanted some of his time now, they had a right to ask for it.

  “I’m sorry, too,” Carol said quickly. “I didn’t mean to be nasty.”

  That helped. “What do they need?”

  “We look in on them at least once a day. Some days are better than others, but it’s really hard, especially on Dad. He keeps expecting Mom to be the way she always was. Even on good days she repeats herself and doesn’t remember where she put things.”

  Neither do I sometimes, Fred thought.

  “On the bad days, she can’t remember how to cook.”

  “Mom?” Maker of Swedish meatballs and the best apple pie he’d ever eaten? Canner of gallons of homegrown tomatoes and green beans? Carol had to be exaggerating. Still, if she’d bothered to call him, and at work … He didn’t want to think about it.

  Carol sighed. “She’s getting old, Fred. Can you come?”

  “Probably. I’ll have to talk it over with my wife, of course.” My wife. The words were still new on his tongue. He savored them.

  “Oh … you think she’ll object?” He could hear the worry in her voice.

  “We’ll have to work it out on this end, that’s all. Give me your dates, and I’ll call you back after we’ve had a chance to talk.”

  Clunking the chair forward, he took down the information with his feet on the floor. After they’d hung up, he sat without moving for a long moment, wondering how Joan would feel about it. She was so good with the old people at the Oliver Senior Citizens’ Center, which she directed. And at the adult day care, with the ones who really were losing it. In those situations, she was cheerful and patient. He hated to put her to the test with his parents. Her own had died young, and he’d never be able to reciprocate. But it wasn’t fair to dump it all on Carol and Walt, either, just because they were close.

  Not that he believed Carol was right about their mother. But Mom, for all her virtues, could exert pretty strong pressure on her children. If she got some bug in her ear, everybody was supposed to do what she asked. He could well believe that Walt and Carol needed relief from time to time. It was his turn. He had to make Joan understand that he had a responsibility there.

  He dialed her work number, but an old woman with a southern Hoosier accent said “Joanie” would be working at the adult day care all afternoon. Was there a message?

  “No, I’ll talk to her this evening.” He remembered only after it was out of his mouth that the woman on the other end of the line would hear “evening” as meaning four or five o’clock at the latest.

  On cue she said, “She won’t be finished there before five,” and he thanked her.

  At five the police station was swamped with half a dozen Oliver College students brought in for falsifying IDs at Jimmy’s Bar. The phony IDs might have fooled someone else, but not Jimmy, after long years of owning a bar near campus.

  “You gonna call my folks?” one boy asked. “Aw, man.” His voice rose on “man.” Blinking hard, he avoided looking at anyone.

  “My father will kill me,” a girl said, and big tears ran down her cheeks. She wiped at them with the hand they’d fingerprinted. Now ink and mascara smudged her face.

  Fred kept his face stern for the students’ benefit, and left them to Officer Jill Root, who had arrested them.

  Then he dealt with a call about a man exposing himself near the campus—a bit brisk outdoors for that. And another about a missing child, a little girl of seven. Her frantic mother said she hadn’t come home from school yet. He checked his watch—almost six.

  “She always comes straight home. I try not to worry, but it’s dark out now, and I heard about that man. She’s just a little girl.” Her voice broke.

  Why did people listen to police scanners, anyway?

  “We’ll be there right away,” Fred promised, and he set the search in motion.

  An hour and a half later, the little girl turned up safe at a friend’s house, as he had hoped, but you couldn’t mess around when it came to children. Even though nobody had made it home in time for supper, the mood at the station when Fred finally left was more of relief and rejoicing than of complaining.

  By now, Joan would be long gone to orchestra rehearsal—she managed the Oliver Civic Symphony and played viola in it. As unpredictable as Fred’s hours were, they’d agreed at the beginning of their marriage that anytime he didn’t show up or call, she’d eat without him. Grateful for her independence, especially after his first wife’s clinginess, he stopped in at Wilma’s Café and sat in his old booth, his back to the knotty pine wall.

  He waved away the menu Wilma brought. “Bring me the pot roast. Salad and coffee. And your homemade rolls, if you still have any.”

  She nodded. “I saved you some—figured you’d be in. I heard you found the little girl. Coulda been worse.
”

  “Yes.” He didn’t want to think about how much worse. Years ago, as a big-city cop, he’d seen the victims of child molesters and kidnappers after it was too late. But not in Oliver. Not yet. He hoped he never would.

  It was almost ten when Joan pulled up to her little house. The big boxes of music folders would have to wait their turn—she didn’t dare leave her viola out in the cold while she carried them in. Her extra job as orchestra librarian meant carrying around the folders people didn’t take home and keeping tabs on those they did take. For this short Christmas concert, they were playing Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, the “winter” section of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and a medley of carols for an audience sing-along. All too many of the players thought they knew this music well enough not to bother practicing. They dumped it in the boxes for Joan to haul to and from rehearsals, instead.

  She’d hoped her son would be home. No light in his upstairs window, though.

  The front door opened, and Fred came down the walk. He bent to kiss her. “You want a little help?”

  “Oh, please. Andrew seems to have vanished.”

  “He’s a good kid.” Fred and Andrew had gotten along well since they’d first met. Sometimes Joan felt they were ganging up on her, but mostly she was glad.

  Fred lifted the heavy, bulky boxes out of the Civic wagon as if they were nothing and led the way to the house. “Keep that man,” her mother would have said, if she’d lived long enough to meet him. Joan smiled in the dark.

  He’d already shed his coat and tie for an old sweater and rumpled chinos, and he’d even made fresh coffee. She kicked off her shoes and let down her straight, still-brown hair the way he liked, and they settled together on the sofa with steaming cups. The coffee was too hot to drink right away, but they found something else to do with their mouths.

  Eventually he leaned back and picked up his cup. “So how was orchestra?”

  “All right. Alex didn’t explode at anyone tonight. Not even me, and I’m still struggling with the beginning of the Nutcracker.” Alex, the orchestra’s otherwise competent conductor, generally blew up at least once a week. Joan was glad to have escaped her wrath this time.

  “Hard?”

  “Just a lot of little fast notes. Not important ones, but they ought to sound clean, and I hate to have to fake them. I suppose I could do something outrageous, like practice. How was your day?” She’d learned not to ask him what had happened. He’d tell her if he wanted to and if he could.

  “Long. A little girl didn’t make it home from school.”

  “No.” She waited. His brows were furrowed, but his voice gave her no idea how it had turned out.

  “We found her at a friend’s. Her mother was too relieved to give her a hard time.”

  “Uh-huh.” The hard time might come later, but Joan hoped the mother’s anger wouldn’t hide her love.

  “Something else I have to tell you about.” He leaned forward, looking down at his own big feet instead of at her.

  “Oh?” It wasn’t like him to lead up to anything. Usually he’d just blurt it out, whatever it was.

  “Carol called today.”

  “Your sister?” Bad news about his parents, maybe?

  “Yeah. She and her husband have a chance to spend a couple of weeks in Florida before Christmas, and they want to go.”

  “Good for them.” What was he working up to?

  “They want me to go help Mom and Dad while they’re gone. She says Walt and Ruthie—that’s Walt’s wife—are too busy during the Christmas season to do what the folks need.” He finally looked at her, as if waiting for her to clobber him.

  Was he proposing to take off without her? He often told her how glad he was that she could manage without him. But she’d hate for him to leave her now, so close to their first Christmas together. Rebecca, her daughter, had even hinted that she might come home to be with them all. And they’d been planning to go see his folks afterward.

  “Of course you said you would.” She kicked herself mentally. How could I say that? How’s he supposed to know what I feel if I don’t tell him?

  “I said I’d talk it over with you. Bishop Hill is just a wide spot in the road, even compared to Oliver. You’ll probably be bored.”

  “Not half as bored as I’d be if you went without me.” She held her breath.

  “I wouldn’t do that.” He smiled, and those wonderful blue eyes crinkled down at her.

  She stretched up and kissed him. “I’d love to go. We were talking about visiting them soon anyway. Might as well be useful. Tell me about them. You never talk about your family.”

  He hesitated. “Well, you know about Dad.”

  “His name is Oscar, I know that. And he taught you to bake that great sourdough bread. And popovers.” She smiled, remembering the day she and Fred had met.

  “Dad was a baker most of his life. Had a little bakery right there in Bishop Hill. Sold it some years back, but he sometimes still helps out in the busy season. At least he used to. I’m not sure what he does these days.”

  “Bishop Hill has a busy season?”

  Fred smiled at her obvious doubt. “These days it does. It’s turned into a tourist attraction. The Heritage Association folks have restored a bunch of the old buildings and told the world to come visit.”

  “How old can they be in northern Illinois?”

  “Mid-nineteenth century. A group of Swedes founded the place as a religious commune, and a lot of the people who live there now are descended from those original settlers.”

  “Your family?”

  “Could be. I’m not sure.”

  It made her want to giggle to think of Fred as coming out of a religious commune. But why not? “So they weren’t celibate, like the Shakers.”

  “No, but they didn’t last as long. The colony dissolved a few years after the founder was murdered.”

  “Murdered? Who killed him? Do they know?”

  “It wasn’t a mystery. The guy walked right up to him and shot him. Best I remember, it was over a woman. You don’t hear people talk about that much, though.”

  “Do they talk about him at all?”

  “Sure. His name was Eric Janson.” He pronounced the J the Swedish way, like a Y.

  “Janson?” She pronounced it in English. “I think I’ve heard of the Jansonists. A small sect?”

  “That’s right. As I said, they didn’t last all that long, but they were amazingly productive for a few years, anyway. They made and sold linen and brooms and bricks, and of course they farmed. One old man told me Janson got so rich he used to light his cigars with dollar bills. No idea whether it’s true, but it’s a good story.”

  “What does this have to do with the bakery’s busy season?”

  “Bishop Hill celebrates some of the traditional Swedish holidays, probably more than they ever did back then. It brings in the tourists, and that’s what the place mostly lives on. The Christmas market at the beginning of December, especially. And Lucia Day, a week or two later.”

  “I’ve heard of that. Something with candles?”

  “That’s right. A daughter wears a crown of candles in her hair while she serves her family breakfast coffee and sweet breads. Nowadays the shops and museums have girls who wear them.”

  “Real candles? In their hair?” It horrified her.

  He laughed. “You should see the look on your face. Those girls don’t use real ones, but that’s the tradition.”

  She tried to rearrange her face, but from the amused expression on his, she might as well not have bothered. “Never mind. Tell me about your mother.”

  That hesitation again. “Carol says she’s forgetting things. Sometimes she can’t remember how to cook.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t seem possible. Mom is … was … the best cook in Henry County. Well, one of them. She and Ingrid Friberg used to fight it out at the county fair every year.”

  “They didn’t!”

  He grinned. “No, they didn’t. They were always good friends. But I’m glad I never had to be a judge at the food tent. Though back when I was about ten, I thought that would be the best job in the whole world.”

  “And now Carol says she can’t do it.” Joan shook her head. She wished she didn’t know as much as she did about what that could mean. She wasn’t usually grateful that her parents had died young, but over at the adult day care she saw how hard the dementia of elderly parents could be for the whole family.