Hell's Roundabout. Benjamin Vance
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questions he’d outlined on the plane. He found Mrs. Peterson had many good friends and she was a regular tither and church attender. They both assumed she had wealth since she’d tithed very well, lived in a very large home and was never seen without proper conservative clothing. The pastor visited when she was sick and knew the home was full of priceless relics as well. She had a little white poodle named “Barf” and treated him like family, of which she had almost none. She doted on her only nephew, who the Pastor obviously didn’t like but prayed for, and she hardly ever left St. Lawrence County in her little Prius.
The Pastor and his wife both saw and greeted Mrs. Peterson during Bible study the night before she disappeared. Army asked if they noticed anything different about her that night and they both admitted she was her normal, quiet, kind self. That’s when Army asked the Pastor if he would accompany him to Mrs. Peterson’s home. Pastor Shells hesitated because he didn’t know who was sitting the house until Mrs. Peterson’s final disposition could be made. He asked to make a call and ended up making three, but finally decided that a local realtor could do more for Army than he could. He introduced Army over the phone and he made an appointment to see the realtor the next morning. The delay didn’t bother Army that much, because he was ready to get warm and shake the fatigue of jet lag.
He inspected the small community from its roads and returned to the motel about 3:00 p.m., where he found a young lady waiting for him. She introduced herself in the lobby as Chiara Logan. She’d rented a small cottage and workshop from Mrs. Peterson and said she would like to talk to him about Mrs. Peterson. He was delighted and offered to buy her coffee or tea and chat. They both had coffee while they talked in the motel’s warm restaurant.
“So you rented a place from Mrs. Peterson? Was she a good landlady?”
“ Absolutely, she was never nosy and always asked if I needed anything from the store or drug store or wherever she went with her dog, Barf. Initially, I thought she was just being nosy, but eventually I realized she was just lonely. She had no kids, just a nephew that seldom came around in his big Mercedes. She said the only time he visited was when he wanted something.”
“You mean money?”
“No … apparently everything else, including assistance with things at the county level. I guess he thought because she knew some important people; she could get them to help her nephew with real-estate deals and zoning; stuff like that. Anyway, every time he left, she would come over and ask if his visit bothered me. What she really wanted to do was to talk about him and what he wanted.”
“What do you do for a living Ms. Logan?”
“Please call me Chiara if you can; I’m an artist. I do pottery, paint landscapes, create vine art and I write some. I work during the winter and sell the stuff like crazy in the summer. I do okay … hey I actually have a painting I did of Lois. You can have it if you like. I think it’s a great likeness of her if it would help. She was a great lady … or … is I hope. I still rent from her, you know.”
“I’d love to take a photo of your painting, but can’t take the actual painting back on the plane unless it’s small. So tell me … what she liked to do with her time and tell me about other visitors and anything else you think might help.”
“Well, she loved being involved in her church, she loved her flower garden, and she loved her poodles. Barf was her latest and he was only about a year old. She lost her last one about two years ago. She named him “Pete” after her late husband … that was his nickname. Back to the point, she was involved with a quilting group, and she loved to drive the back roads around the lake and the area around the mine and to the spot where her husband and father are buried; it’s the family plot.”
Army broke into her concentration and asked, “Exactly where is this graveyard or family plot. I’d like to see it.”
“Well, you’d never find it by yourself, I’m afraid. I can take you there if you’d like, if that’s not too forward.”
“No mam, I’d love the company. Do you think we could go today or will it get dark too soon?”
“It’s not that far. We could be back by six, easily.”
“Okay, great, can I get my camera from the room? I’ll be right down.”
Army also slipped his voice-actuated recorder into an inside pocket of his parka. Being alone in a car with an unfamiliar woman in an unfamiliar place was career suicide if one didn’t cover one’s ass. He and she were on the way within minutes amid a light dusting of new snow. He asked about the possibility of a storm and she said it was just a light dusting which happened constantly during the winter due to lake effects.
Surprisingly, it only took about twenty minutes to arrive at the location of the family plot. It was on a hill, which would have been beautiful during the summer, and it overlooked an area which appeared to be an old strip mine with a lake and other nature slowly reclaiming it. Chiara explained that she helped Lois with flowers from time to time and they would bring them up to the graves and she would sit in the car while Lois visited with her departed husband. Army noticed old depressions in the snow, almost covered, but plain nonetheless. Another vehicle had visited the plot just days before.
He asked, “How many days of snow have you had in the last two weeks”?
She said, “Only two; last Thursday and Friday and it’s been spitting a little snow ever since.”
Army broke a limb off a low pine and swept the snow away from the furrows and beneath the snow were beautifully defined tire tracks in the old snow. He took photos and told Chiara he’d like to follow the tracks as far as possible. She agreed and since there was no real hurry he followed the tracks in his SUV, attempting to discern the direction and driver’s intentions. The tracks circled the small cemetery plot and he saw faint foot tracks leading from the car ruts to a series of headstones. He got out and brushed away the snow again and found a set of small boot prints leading to the graves. Under the new layer of snow on the headstone marked Donald Lynch Peterson he found a small bouquet of frozen flowers. He stood to look pensively over the small plot and the wintery countryside, then turning toward Chiara saw she had tears in her eyes.
She offered, “Those are part of some flowers I gave Lois Peterson about a week ago.”
Army didn’t initially comment and thought better than to offer condolences to a woman he hardly knew. Instead, he said, “She must have loved him very much.”
Chiara didn’t speak, just turned back toward the SUV and its warm interior. Army followed her back to the car, watching her beautiful, snow-flecked auburn hair ruffle in the slight breeze. They followed the car tracks around the cemetery’s oval and then back to the county road, where he stopped the car and looked both ways uncertainly.
Chiara blew her nose and offered, “Lois often visited an overlook that allows one to see the entire old mine operation and the graveyard at the same time. The open mining pit is a beautiful lake now. You have to turn left here to get to it. It would be a gorgeous view if not for the mining scars. She might have liked it anyway though. It probably reminded her of her late husband. This was his mine you know. His family made millions during World War II and then it turned over a couple of times after they sold it ... post war. He actually came back in to run it for a while after one big union strike. They lost some important equipment during a big storm though and it finally shut down completely.”
Army turned left and drove, awaiting further instructions. It was getting dim and he didn’t want to drive far in the snow in any case. To keep the conversation going he asked, “What kind of equipment goes missing during a storm?”
“The mine operators believed someone stole it and they blamed some union guys, but nothing was ever proven. The mine shut down shortly after that. Turn right, here!”
As he turned, they saw the single set of dim, snow-covered tracks leading from the main road. They followed slowly with the headlights helping define the way. Very soon they had a commanding view of the valley, the cemetery and the entire water-filled, mile-long gash in the Earth caused by the old mining operation. The puzzling artifact