Free Witch Cradle by Kathleen Hills

“You’ll be pretty safe around half-past June.”
    â€œI don’t seem to recollect that it snowed every day last winter.”
    McIntire recollected it all too well. “It’s like childbirth,” he said. “You forget.”
    â€œChildbirth,” she said, “I
do
remember.” She stood up to refill the kettle and went about rinsing the teapot.
    When his wife was giving birth to her daughters, McIntire was…where? On the other side of the world from her in one of those cramped desks; a gangly, pimply-faced high school sophomore. What would she have been like then? Much the same as now, he suspected, determined and pragmatic. But what had she really felt, evicting those twins from the shelter of her body into a world wracked by war, while her nineteen-year-old husband lay dying a few miles away? What did she feel now, separated from those daughters by an ocean and half a continent?
    â€œWhat have you discovered about the elusive Teddy and Rose?” She held up the pot with a questioning look, and McIntire nodded.
    Teddy and Rose
. It sounded like a team of oxen. “I don’t think they’re elusive,” McIntire said. “I think they’re dead.”
    â€œA lot of people who were in Russia before the war are dead.”
    â€œNo, Leonie.” He accepted the steaming cup. “I think at least one of the Falks, maybe both, died before they could leave, right here, at their farm, in their own house.”
    Leonie looked as befuddled as McIntire felt.
    â€œJust because nobody got a letter from them? On that basis my sister in New Zealand has been strumming a harp for the past four years.”
    â€œIf I dig up her handbag in the back yard, and discover bloodstains on the sheets, I’ll be alerting the authorities.”
    â€œYou’d turn me in? You never met Esther, did you?”
    Had Teddy or Rose Falk, or both of them, instead of finding a socialist Utopia, found death in their bed? All those years when anyone who thought about it probably assumed they had met with some terrible fate at the hands of Joe Stalin, had it happened right here? How? And what could be done about it now? There was no statute of limitations on murder, but the chances of finding how it came about were slim. If they were both dead, it could have been a case of murder-suicide. No. If that was what happened, at least one body would probably have been found. If they were dead, what did happen to the bodies?
    There was, or had been, one other person who must have known that the Falks hadn’t gone to Karelia—the person who buried their passage money in Eban Vogel’s yard. Most likely to have been Eban Vogel. So why had he let everyone think that the Falks had gone abroad if he knew different? And why had he secreted the money?
    McIntire examined the dregs of his own cup, found the leaves unhelpful, and walked to the phone. He picked up the receiver and cranked his way through to the Flambeau County sheriff’s office.
    Marian Koski’s voice on the phone sounded pinched. “The sheriff,” she said, “is flat on his back
because
of his back. Shoveling snow.” Her sigh was audible even over the static on the lines. “Cecil Newman is in charge. Would you like to speak to him?”
    Speak to Cecil Newman? It was too early in the day. Too early in the year. “Oh, I don’t think we need to bother Deputy Newman right now,” McIntire said. “It’s not urgent.”
    â€œAll right then. Let me know if I can be of help.”
    â€œSame here. Give my best to Pete.”
    Babyface Newman in charge? Well, with any luck, the weather might keep anyone with otherwise criminal inclinations at home.
    McIntire made one more call. This one to Harald Anderson. “Harald,” he asked, “you still got that Ten-B?”

Chapter Thirteen
    WASHINGTON—The Defense Department raised its manpower sights to 3,462,205 men under arms