Free Cold and Pure and Very Dead by Joanne Dobson

place—one of the few functioning family dairy farms, Wendy informed me crisply, remaining in the Berkshire foothills. When we’dleft her office, I’d asked a few wide-eyed, titillated questions about the Nelson Corners homicide, and the realtor—not averse to dishing the dirt—had brought me straight to the scene of the crime. The Finches’ sprawling white farmhouse sat back a hundred and fifty feet from the road at the end of an unpaved driveway. To the left of the house stood two well-kept red barns and a tall royal-blue silo, to the right, a smaller barn and a compound of fenced-in sheds. A herd of Holsteins graced the sloping fields, whimsical black and white against verdant hills.
    “I still can’t believe it.” Wendy shook her head, baffled. “No one could ever have predicted that Milly would do such a violent thing. She was so quiet and privatelike.” I noticed that the realtor was referring to Milly Finch in the past tense, as if she had already been tried, convicted, executed, and buried. “And she didn’t even
know
the man—whatshisname …?”
    “Marty Katz,” I replied without thinking, then hoped the realtor wouldn’t wonder how I knew.
    “Katz—yeah, that’s it. A reporter, someone said he was. But what the heck was he doing all the way up here at the Finches’ place? Must of got lost, and was asking for directions. Tsk. Tsk.”
What’s the world coming to?
    “Must of,” I repeated. “Must of got lost. Tsk. Tsk.” So the news about Milly’s literary fame wasn’t out yet. If it had been, Wendy Vandenberg would have told me instantly.
    There was a moment’s contemplation as we sat, looking over at the peaceful farmyard scene. “Those are Milly’s goat pens, those sheds over there,” the realtor informed me, breaking the silence. “She sold goat milk to some gourmet-cheese maker down county. Did pretty well, too, at least according to my husband, Fred,” the realtor said, pulling her vehicle back on the road andaccelerating past the Finches’ well-kept acreage. “Fred’s a fireman. He knows everything that goes on around here.”
    “I can imagine.”
    “Jimmy Finch is in the department, too. One night when the boys were out for a few,” she bent her elbow, flexed her thick wrist twice, “Jimmy told Fred quite a story.…” She let it trail off, tantalizing me.
    “Oh, yeah?” Maybe
this
was what I’d come to Nelson Corners for.
    “Yeah. About how he met Milly.” She shifted down as we climbed a steep hill between a hayfield on one side of the road and a half-built housing development on the other. “It was maybe thirty-five, forty years ago—late one Saturday afternoon—and Jimmy was driving home from the cattle auction. I think Fred said it was November, cold and getting dark. Two miles out of Chatham, he sees something strange on the side of the road. He pulls the pickup over—Fred says it was a big old blue Ford F-150—Jim’s truck, that is, not the thing on the side of the road … like it matters what kind of a
truck
it was! Men! Anyhow, Jimmy pulls over, gets out of the truck and finds a suitcase. Nice monogrammed leather piece with a good bronze lock—initials, M.D.”
    M.D.?
I was paying heightened attention now. “Really?”
    “Yeah. So Jimmy figures maybe it fell off a car, and he tosses the thing in the cab. He’ll take it to the police station next time he’s in town. Then he goes along another couple of miles, and there’s something else on the side of the road—smaller. So he pulls over—and it’s a portable typewriter. You remember the kind? In a case? With a little handle? Kind of like a laptop, only bigger? Anyhow, Jimmy picks the typewriter up, and says to himself,
What the hell is this?
He throws it in the cab,gets back in the pickup, starts up, then jams the brake—there’s a body lying in the middle of the road. Well, Jimmy’s freaking out—he’s just a kid at this point, maybe eighteen, nineteen, and he jumps out of the truck