Slowly climbing the stairs, Jenny realized how close she felt to the woman who had lived in this house. She wondered if Caroline had entered the master bedroom with the same sense of hopeless entrapment that she now felt.

It was midmorning before Sheriff Gunderson came back to the house. Again Jenny had had fitful dreams, dreams of walking in the forest and smelling the pine trees. Was she looking for the cabin?

When she woke up she became ill. How much of the early-morning nausea had to do with the physical aspect of pregnancy and how much was the result of the anxiety over Kevin’s disappearance?

Elsa came in as usual at nine o’clock: dour, silent, vanishing upstairs with vacuum and window cleaners and polishing rags.

She was still reading to the girls when Wendell Gunderson came. She had not yet dressed but was wearing a warm wool robe over her nightgown. Would Erich object to her talking to the sheriff in her robe? No, how could he? The robe zipped up to her neck.

She knew she was pale. She’d tied her hair at the nape of her neck. The sheriff came to the front door.

“Mrs. Krueger.” She detected a pitch of excitement. “Mrs. Krueger,” he repeated, his voice deepening. “Last night I received a call from Maude Ekers.”

“I asked her to phone you,” Jenny said.

“So she claims. I didn’t talk to you right away because I decided to figure out where Kevin MacPartland might have driven if he didn’t come here.”

Was it possible the sheriff did believe her? His face, his voice, were so serious. No. He looked like a poker player about to play his winning card.

“I realized it could happen that a stranger might miss your gate if he turned off on the bend that leads to the riverbank.”

The riverbank. Oh, dear God, Jenny thought. Could Kevin have made that turn and kept driving, maybe driving quickly, and then gone over the bank. That road was so dark.

“We investigated and I’m sorry to say that’s what happened,” the sheriff said. “We found a late-model white Buick in the water near the shoreline. It’s crusted by ice and that thick brush keeps anyone walking on the bank from seeing it. We pulled it out.”

“Kevin?” She knew what he would tell her. Kevin’s face flashed before her mind.

“A man’s body is in the car, Mrs. Krueger. It’s badly decomposed but generally answers the description of the missing Kevin MacPartland, including the clothing he was wearing when last seen. The driver’s license in his pocket is MacPartland’s.”

Oh, Kevin, Jenny mourned silently, oh, Kevin. She tried to speak, but could not.

“We will need you to give us positive identification as soon as possible.”

No, she wanted to shriek, no. Kevin was so vain. He worried about a blemish. Badly decomposed! Oh, God.

“Mrs. Krueger, you may want to engage a lawyer.”

“Why?”

“Because there’ll be an inquest into MacPartland’s death and some tough questions will be asked. You don’t have to say anything more.”

“I’ll answer any questions you have now.”

“All right. I’m going to ask you again. Did Kevin MacPartland come to this house that Monday night, March ninth?”

“No, I told you no.”

“Mrs. MacPartland, do you own a full-length maroon thermal winter coat?”

“Yes, I do. No, I mean I did. I gave it away. Why?”

“Do you remember where you purchased it?”

“Yes, in Macy’s in New York.”

“I’m afraid you have a lot of explaining to do, Mrs. Krueger. A woman’s coat was found on the seat next to the body. A maroon thermal coat with the label of Macy’s department store. We’ll need you to look at it and see if it’s the one you claim you gave away.”

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.