Page 29 of The River We Remember

The third woman was Charlotte Bauer, who preferred to be called Charlie. Angie Madison liked this woman enormously. She saw Charlie Bauer as a kindred spirit, independent, strong, and outspoken. She was nearing sixty, an attorney, mostly retired though she still did some pro bono work in Black Earth County. Charlie was fond of whiskey, although she didn’t drink to excess. She sometimes allowed herself the pleasure of a cigar, an oddity that Angie knew was also true of Gertrude Stein and George Sand and was a habit Charlie claimed to have acquired early in her life while defending striking farm laborers in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Most often she wore jeans and work shirts, except in the courtroom, where she dressed smartly but without flair. Angie suspected that Charlie had more in common with Gertrude Stein than just a taste for cigars, but it was a subject they’d never broached and that made no difference in how Angie thought of her friend.

Across several years over coffee at the Wagon Wheel, Charlie had shared a good deal of her history with Angie. She’d left Jewel when she was eighteen, had attended Mills College in Oakland, and afterward had read for the law. She’d spent most of her career representing the downtrodden in California but had returned late in life to Jewel and had qualified to practice in her home state. Although Angie had never actually seen her at work in the courtroom, she’d heard plenty of stories from others of how valiantly Charlie defended the defenseless.

They had already talked about the high cost of food—“Eggs, sixty cents a dozen! Milk, a dollar a gallon!” They’d commiserated about the death of Ruth Coffee, whom they’d all loved and admired. They’d discussed Jimmy Quinn’s death at great length, though they didn’t have a lot of details yet. And now they were on to Brody Dern.

“I heard,” Ida said, “that she got tired of waiting for Brody to pop the question, and she up and ran off with a piano salesman from Saint Paul.”

“It was Saint Louis,” Charlie said. “But Brody doesn’t seem all that broken up about it.”

They were talking about the mysterious woman Brody had been dating for a lot of years but no one in Jewel had ever seen. For a good long while, Brody had been leaving town on Saturday nights and would be gone for hours. His mother had let on that he was seeing a girl in Worthington, a teacher, she thought, though she seemed a little uncertain about that. In his personal life, Brody was circumspect at best, even with his family. But for several Saturdays now, Brody hadn’t made his usual disappearance, and folks had begun to wonder and to talk.

“The door’s wide open,” Ida said to her daughter-in-law.

Angie set her coffee cup down and said levelly, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You and Brody have been dancing around each other for ages. But there’s always been that Worthington girl in the way. Not anymore.”

“You make me sound like some kind of vulture waiting to swoop down.”

“Honey, I can’t imagine a more delectable morsel than Brody Dern.”

“Speak of the devil,” Charlie said.

The three women watched as Brody and Scott walked toward the café from the direction of the jail. Scott split off to the house, but Brody came in. He said his hellos to the few diners finishing their meals and to Wendell Moon, who wore an apron around his waist and was wiping down a table. The sheriff took a stool at the end of the counter where Angie, Ida, and Charlie sat.

“Ladies,” he said.

Before Brody even asked for it, Angie got up, poured coffee from the pot on the burner, and set the mug in front of him.

Charlie Bauer wasted no time on small talk. “True about Jimmy Quinn?”

“Is what true?” Brody reached for the sugar on the counter.

“You found him in the Alabaster, all chewed up by channel cats?”

Brody stirred sugar into his coffee. “I didn’t find him, but the other part’s accurate.”

“Drowned?” Angie asked.

“I can’t say yet. Doc Porter’s doing an autopsy right now.”

“Drunk?” Ida asked.

“It appears that he’d been drinking. I don’t know if that contributed to his death.”

“Well, it probably didn’t help him any. How’s Marta taking it?”

“She seems to be holding up.”

“This on top of everything else for that woman,” Angie said. For a moment, her face was full of sympathy, then she looked at Brody and gave him a playful scowl. “Didn’t want the turkey sandwich I sent over?”

“I’m thinking that’ll be dinner. I wanted something good and hot for lunch.”

Ida said, “Meat loaf maybe?”

“Now you’re talking.”

“Be right back,” she said and left.