Once Upon a River. Bonnie Jo Campbell
shook her head. The most they would find from Crane would be a grocery list jotted on an empty matchbook. His anger at Cal would not be written on anything they could find.
“Any other firearms here? Any unregistered pistols? Can we look around?”
She shrugged, and they took that as a yes.
“Cal Murray said if your daddy didn’t have any money, he’d pay funeral expenses,” said the bigger cop, when the two had given up on finding anything of interest. “Can we give you a ride to Cal’s?”
She shook her head.
“Are you sure?”
“I want to row my boat over there,” she said. When they kept looking at her, she began to fear they wouldn’t leave. “My mom will come to get me. When she hears about my dad.”
“We’ll get her over to our house, Officer Mike,” Junior said, adopting a trusty Boy Scout demeanor.
“Let us know as soon as your mother contacts you,” said Officer Mike. “We may need to talk with her. And we’ll contact you again in a few days if we need an additional statement.”
“And if there’s anything for your ma in the estate, we’ll have to track her down,” Ricky said.
Margo knew there’d be no estate. Crane still owed payments to a guy on his ten-year-old Ford, and he owed the dentist, too. He had sent Margo to get her teeth cleaned every six months—even when he had been drunk and unemployed, he’d sent her with a twenty-dollar bill against the account.
“There won’t be a trial, will there?” Junior said.
“Nobody’s denying what your brother did was self-defense, but he did kill a man. Someone’s evaluating him now.”
“I’m sorry, Margaret,” Officer Mike said. He held up a business card and placed it on the counter. “Call my number if you need a ride to Cal’s. Or if you need anything.”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” the bigger cop said.
When they closed the door, Ricky Murray spoke up. “We ought to find your dad’s papers, any official documents. If he’s got a will, you’ll want to locate that.”
Margo’s eyes were swollen from crying, and when she leaned down beside her father’s bed, her head ached. From beneath it, she produced an army-green tin box. It felt like a violation putting it on the kitchen table and opening the lid in front of Ricky and Junior. The first thing she saw inside was her cut-off ponytail, wrapped in wax paper. In a bulging envelope, she found dozens of photos of her mother smiling ear-to-ear at the camera. While Luanne had rarely smiled enough to show teeth in real life, she had smiled that fake way for every camera snap. There were no photos of her parents together, not even a wedding photo. The only picture of Crane was a tiny dark image on his Murray Metal Fabricating employee ID card.
A business-sized envelope contained a piece of lined yellow paper on which was handwritten, Last Will and Testament. Please cremate me and don’t waste money on any service. Give everything I have to my wife and daughter. Sorry it’s not much. Signed, in full faculties, Bernard Crane, October 14, 1971. Margo would have been almost eight years old then. Nothing bad had happened yet.
“That’s clear and simple,” Junior said. “Are the cops all the way out the driveway?”
“The Man is gone,” Ricky said.
“Then it’s time to light up.” Junior dug something out of the pocket of his jean jacket. It was a plastic baggie containing several joints. He sat on the kitchen table. “What happened to your chairs?”
Margo shrugged and sat next to him.
“They shouldn’t have let you come home last night.” Junior straightened out one joint carefully and lit it with a white lighter. He took a long toke and held it out to her.
“I don’t know.” Margo let her legs dangle beside Junior’s. She noticed how her cousin’s hair had been cut short at the military school, so it no longer curled down his neck. She’d heard last night that he’d be going back to the academy again right after the holiday weekend, so this might be her only chance to see him.
While still holding his breath, he elbowed her and said in a squeaky voice, “This will help you. I stayed high for three months when Grandpa died.”
Margo accepted the joint, took a long draw, and coughed. She passed it to Ricky, who inhaled as he studied the will, turning it over several times, though the back was blank.
“Too bad this will isn’t notarized,” Ricky said.
The next time Junior passed her the joint, Margo inhaled deeply and held the smoke. She didn’t like to feel disoriented, but she hoped the pot would dull her feelings. They passed the joint in silence until it was gone. Then Ricky began to rifle through the papers in a more serious way. “Divorce papers,” he said. “Finalized eight months ago.”
Margo wished she could puff on the joint once more. Crane had never mentioned anything about a divorce.
Junior was reading over the land contract with an absurd intensity. On the third page it was signed by both their fathers.
“Are you going to stay with Cal and Joanna?” Ricky asked.
“Ma said you’ll have to stay with us,” Junior said. He was gazing intently at Crane’s employee ID card now. “You can’t stay alone when you’re fifteen. Where else are you going to stay?”
“I turned sixteen on the twentieth.”
“If you’re staying with an aunt and uncle,” said Ricky, “maybe the cops won’t have to get social services involved.”
“Social services?” Margo took the ID card out of Junior’s hand. She had heard that kids who got involved with social services ended up living in group homes and with strangers who did weird things to them. And she was sure it would mean living far from the river. “I wish you were going to be home, Junior,” she said in a voice that felt slow. “Then it would be easier to stay at your house.”
“Me, too. I’ll be back at Christmas. Maybe then I can talk them into letting me stay home after that.”
Ricky and Junior seemed to move in slow motion as they pulled papers from the box—birth certificates, the title to the Ford. Margo noticed something else: a pink envelope with a handwritten address in the upper left corner, an address in Heart of Pines, Michigan. Her mother’s name was not written above the address, but Margo recognized her loopy, back-slanted handwriting.
“Daddy kept some of his papers on the counter by the toaster,” she said, and when Junior’s and Ricky’s eyes went to Crane’s pile of bills, Margo slipped the envelope out of the box and into her back pocket. She took out her own birth certificate and Crane’s and set them aside.
“Do you know about any other assets?” Ricky asked. “We need to get information on what he owned.”
“You’re not a lawyer, man,” Junior said.
“So? Somebody’s going to have to figure this out. And Nympho here can’t afford a lawyer.”
“He’s got his truck and a chain saw and his tools,” Margo said. She wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve. She didn’t mention his rifle or shotgun.
“Savings account?” Ricky asked. He went into the bathroom and came out with a roll of toilet paper for Margo to use as a tissue. She unrolled a handful of it.
“He paid all his spare money against the land contract. Or to the dentist.”
“According to the land contract, it looks like the house goes back to my dad after two missed payments,” Junior said. “That’s bogus. I hope the dentist doesn’t want your teeth back.”
“Life insurance?” Ricky asked.
She shook her head.