Clandestine

"You from Chicago?" a small beetle-browed man asked. His small blue eyes danced with the knowledge that he had a live one.

I didn't want to disappoint him. "I'm from Hollywood. You can get anything you want in Hollywood except good sauerkraut juice, so I came to Wisconsin because I couldn't afford a trip to Germany. Take me to your wisest cabbage."

This got a big laugh all around. I dug into my coat pocket and brought out a handful of my business cards, giving one to each man. "Fred Underhill," I said, "Amalgamated Insurance, Los Angeles." When the stolid-looking farmers didn't seem impressed, I dropped my bomb: "You men ever read the L.A. papers?"

"No reason to," the big man said.

"Why?" the beetle-browed man asked.

"What's it got to do with the price of cheese in Wisconsin?" another asked.

I took that as my cue: "A Tunnel City girl was murdered in Los Angeles last month. Marcella DeVries. Married name Harris. The killer hasn't been found. I'm investigating a claim and working with the L.A. police. Marcella was here four years ago, and she may have been back even later than that. I need to talk to people who knew her. I want the son of a bitch who killed her. I . . ." I let my voice trail off.

The men were staring at me blankly. Their lack of expression told me they knew Marcella DeVries and weren't surprised about her murder. Their immobile faces also told me that Marcella DeVries was an anomaly to them, far beyond the limits of their smalltown bailiwick.

No one said a word. The other group of tractor worshipers had halted their conversation and were staring at me. I pointed across the street to a white three-story building that bore a sign reading "Badger Hotel—Always Clean Rooms."

"Are the rooms there really always clean?" I asked my rapt audience.

No one answered.

"I'll be staying there," I said. "If any of you want to talk to me, or know anyone who might, that's where I'll be."

I locked my car, got my suitcase out of the trunk, and walked to the Badger Hotel.

I lay on my clean bed for four hours, in my skivvies, waiting for an onslaught of farmers bent on detailing every aspect of the life of Marcella DeVries Harris. No one called or knocked on my door. I felt like the marshal summoned to clean up the rowdy town who finds that the townsfolk are unaccountably afraid of him.

I checked my watch: five-thirty. The heat and smothering humidity were starting to abate, so I decided to go for a walk. I dressed in slacks and sport shirt and strolled through the clean lobby of the Badger Hotel, getting a suspicious look from the clean desk clerk before entering the clean streets of Tunnel City, Wisconsin.

Tunnel City had one business thoroughfare, named, appropriately, Main Street. Every bit of Tunnel City commerce existed on that one street. The town's residential streets spread out from this commercial hub, pointing outward to the bordering farmland.

I walked south, toward the cabbage fields, feeling out of place. Every house I passed was white, with a perfectly tended front lawn bearing well-pruned trees and shrubs. Every automobile parked in every driveway was clean and glistening. The people who sat on the porches looked resolute and strong.

I walked all the way to where Tunnel City proper ended and Tunnel City's nourishing farmland began. Walking back to my hotel I knew why Marcella DeVries had had to get out—and why she had had to return.

I was strolling down Main Street looking for a place to eat when a man crossed the street toward me, coming from the direction of the hotel. He was a tall man in his forties, dressed in blue jeans and a checked sport shirt. There was something different about him, and when his gaze zeroed in on me I knew he wanted to talk.

When he hit the sidewalk he planted himself firmly in my path and stuck out a large bony hand for me to shake. I took it.

"I'm Will Berglund, Officer," the man said.

"Fred Underhill, Mr. Berglund, and I'm not a policeman, I'm an insurance investigator."

"I don't care. I knew Marcy DeVries better than anyone. I—" The man was obviously very moved.

"Where can we go to talk, Mr. Berglund?"

"I run the movie theater here in town." He pointed down Main Street. "The last show is over at nine-forty-five. Meet me there then. We can talk in my office."

When I walked into the lobby of the Badger Theater Will Berglund shooed the few remaining moviegoers out the door, locked it, and wordlessly led me to an upstairs office crowded with beatup theater seats and inoperative movie projectors. "I like to tinker," he said by way of explanation.

I took a seat without being asked, and he took one across from me. My mind was jumping with questions that I never got the chance to ask—I didn't need to. Berglund opened all the windows in the room for air and began to talk.