Broken River: WHEATFIELD SOULS, #2

By W McKittrick

Olivia knew her late husband's sudden death was not of his own making. Adam Helmus worked hard as a small farmer, community pasture manager and an outfitter. The outfitter business was a hit, with guests arriving from all over North America. Ten years later, a moonlighting private investigator and a mechanic on a social outing listened to Olivia's innate thoughts. They took a risk. With a small tight-knit community none the wiser, and a limited budget for their services, but to do the right thing for a friend, they went to work.

Randy Johnsen works for a Saskatchewan heavy equipment dealer. His demons may return to haunt him. His failings in the eyes of critical authority continue to happen. Harry McNamara, ex-cop, fallen from grace, and insurance investigator. His existence becomes extraordinarily threatened.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W McKittrick
• Release date: Jan 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215925102

Book preview

1  The Keepers of The Land

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Summer of 1961.

The feed store sales agent approached. The recent exertion made him red-faced and winded. Joseph Hoover rolled down the window of his green fifty-six Ford pickup. Sweat beaded on Jack’s sunburned, aging face.

Joe had just experienced a father and son fun prank with his son Isaac, who handed him a deliberately shaken can of Coca Cola. The sticky liquid still clung to his hand as he released the steering wheel to grab the knob to the window crank.

Did I get the date wrong on the check again? Joe inquired, looking at the winded old man.

No, the date is good. Jack had to catch his breath.

Joe felt a flash of fear for the man’s immediate health.

I called the bank.

Another pause to breathe. You don’t have funds to cash this check, Joe.

Okay, I can go move money out of the rotating operating loan now.

I need you to back up to the loading dock and unload this feed now.

Joe paused as if not believing what the feed sales agent said and wondered how he had the breath to get that many words out this time.

Jack, I have paid my accounts in full here for six years. Since I took the farm over from dad. I can just go to the bank and get things straightened out?

I’m sorry, Joe. It is what it is. Old Jack appeared to catch his breath by now. The bank won’t cover this check. They told me there is no other way. You better go talk with Gibbons, but I can’t let you leave with this load.

What the hell is Gibbons telling you?

Nothing except there is no way to cover this check.

What the hell is Gibbons telling you? Joe asked again, as he remained calm but firm.

Nothing, Joe. I just called to confirm the check will clear.

Do you call a bank to confirm everyone’s check will clear, or just mine?

No.

Why call about mine today?

The sales agent appeared to switch to a new shade of flush.

Joe persisted, what has Gibbons been telling you?

The scene was becoming intense in front of his twelve-year-old son. If he were alone, old Jack would have to fight to get his fifty bags of high protein feed supplement off loaded. But now is not the time.

Joe, remaining calm, reversed the pickup back to the wood framed loading dock. The two men piled the fifty bags onto two freight carts. They remained silent through the process. A train whistled at a crossing and rumbled past the rear of the feed store. The boy sat silently in the pickup cab, not understanding the confusion.

Sorry about this, Joe, the feed sales agent confided. I will leave this out so you can load it up after you talk to Gibbons.

Thanks, Joe said in a forced mumble. The words ‘hugger mugger’ came to mind, but he tactfully refrained. After all, he thought, there could be nothing to this. Jack was an old busybody.

An eighteen-wheeler waited with the rear doors of the white van opened, ready to off load stock into the feed store warehouse as Joe drove away.

Ross Gibbons, the branch manager for Citizens State Bank, Clarinda Iowa, filled his chair with his ample size. Joe observed he appeared stuffed into the oak chair. Ross wore a green toned tweed suit jacket unbuttoned, exposing the ample gut that would allow the jacket buttons to reach their holes only when he stood. Joe had asked his son Isaac to sit out in the seating area lining the front of the aging bank building. If a conversation becomes heated, Isaac need not be in attendance.

Joe, good you came in. We need to talk over matters regarding your accounts, Ross began assuming a definitive patronizing tone.

This was the small town of Clarinda, Iowa. Joe and Ross were classmates. Not long-time buddies. Only classmates. They both signed for their time in the military after college and went their separate ways. They were too late in age for the second world war. There were only business connections thereafter. Joe returned to the family farm after two years on the oil rigs up north. Ross assumed a bank management position with the help of family already working for the bank.

A wide cultural gap existed between the two men. They were on the same side only as card-carrying Republicans. Joe was a mover and a shaker in agriculture and the community. Ross was an educated slacker who sought the easy ideas to get rich fast. They went their separate ways on seasonal hunting trips with their own friends. They engaged in friendly conversation about their most recent hunting trips, but that was where the relationship ended. Joe and Ross were two different sport hunters. Politically, the brand of Conservatism a guy like Gibbons observed worried Joe. 

Joe and his family were all church members and served the community where they could. The Hoovers served on boards and committees. They were not the stuck-up leaders who refused to get their hands dirty. They cooked and served food at community functions and the last ones to leave after putting the facility in order after an event. Joe and his wife Myrtle appeared in public only occasionally with a drink in their hand. It was the only drink they accepted during the evening at the event and always discarded it unfinished. They enjoyed the occasional community dance and often a night out at the local movies.

Ross possessed a circle of heavy drinking friends. He wore a huge white cowboy hat for style only. He had not been in a cow pen or rode a horse since he was ten. He supported the local sport teams, the reason the Hoovers son dropped out of soccer and softball. Ross bullied the less aggressive young players continually from the stands. The local junior sports association fired the last umpire who ejected Ross Gibbons from a ball field. At thirty-one, Ross was now on his third marriage to a bride eleven years younger. His last wife left after a drunken target shooting event on the Gibbons ranchette where one of the Gibbons drinking buddies took a shot in the leg. No charges resulted. The hapless individual claimed the shooting was accidental. The runaway spouse knew stuff she did not like.

What seems to be the problem, Joe asked, taking a seat in a client’s chair.

He had sat in these chairs many times before making financial arrangements, then rearrangements. The Hoover family had used their current three hundred and fifteen acres of land as collateral to buy out a neighboring two-hundred-acre farm. A developed herd of Herefords came in the deal. Joe started a breeding program by renting Charolais bulls.

The ideas were great. The operation would have returned cash in six months as the two-year-old stock of heavy beef animals went off to market. Heavy crops of corn and wheat were not paying the bills. Much of the acreage in corn, oats and barley was feeding the cattle. The cultivatable land on the newly purchased acreage had to remain in pasture and hay. They purchased additional hay and grain occasionally.

Cash turnover before the first big crop of finished steers was slow. Grandfather Eli Hoover had dumped his pension and part of his family savings into operating the farm. Joe owed his dad and the bank.

By now, Joe admitted his own folly, using the large bulls to sire oversized calves from the Hereford cows. But he learned, and the losses were not excessive.

The Hoovers found themselves left after the bankruptcy with their subdivided acreage, with the house remaining in their name.

There had been a new standoff with the bank. The agreed upon acreage to accommodate the Hoovers keeping their home sat eight-hundred feet inside the quarter section. Counties require subdivisions to have a road to it to accommodate for a driveway within the acreage leading from the county road. The bank did not want to forgo the extra ten acres to survey a full acreage to encompass the home and driveway. Local politics drove the bank’s decision to forgo the property to make the driveway.

Iowa farmer bidders at the eventual auction sale would be less than supportive if they knew the bank repossessed the farm home from under a popular, well-loved local family. The Hoover family had been active in the community for the last two centuries since their Mennonite ancestors immigrated from Switzerland. All the land the feedlot and buildings were on remained within the new subdivision. This imposed compromise was only the first of many irritations Gibbons imagined the Hoovers dealt him over the coming years. 

Eli Hoover spoke first within minutes after the family gathered in the farm home kitchen in silence after the auction.

You’re still pounding out them job applications, Mertie?

Only her father-in-law could get away with affectionately calling her Mertie. Myrtle preferred her given name and could not consider Mertie an affectionate replacement. But old men will be old men. She knew it was coming from a man who loved her like his own daughter.

Myrtle Hoover, a tall lady with a massive head of blond hair, sat at the far end of the kitchen table hammering out documents on a noisy Brother typewriter. I have a few more to go on today’s list. A furniture company man phoned this morning. I meet him in Des Moines Monday morning for a job interview.

Myrtle, a commerce graduate, remained an active partner in the once budding Hoover farm operations. Now she sought work only to make an income until they redeveloped a new farm business strategy.

Well, now they didn’t sell the coffee pot, Eli said. He approached the stained birch plywood and arborite topped kitchen cabinets to start a fresh pot.

Eli, Joe, and Myrtle had to get on with business as usual. Grandfather Hoover, Eli, unknown to anyone, continued to hold a partnered title on eight hundred acres of prime cultivated land inherited from his late wife’s family. In addition, he had a third share coming to him in a sixty-one-thousand-dollar account in State Savings Bank in Bedford, Iowa. This fortune remained unknown and untraceable by the Citizens’ State Bank in Clarinda. 

Joe always knew Eli had a last wish in life. A hunting trip up in Canada was his lifelong dream. Other forces in life prevented this choice. He could not see fit to leave the farming operations for such a trip. Eli’s late wife guarded her family’s inheritance with her life. She delayed the estate settlement, fearing her husband and their son Joe were taking them all down with their ambitions and expanding livestock enterprise. Her fear and anxiety may well have caused her failed health.

Joe felt Eli should have his dream hunting trip. Perhaps that is why he saved a summer copy of Field and Stream magazine bearing adds for Canadian hunting outfitters. 

Adam Helmus, New York born from Dutch and Irish ancestry, had his new seasonal outfitting business going into its second year. The previous fall general hunting and spring bear hunt seasons found cabins booked solid.

The Carrot River gumbo farm had dried up for the year of sixty-one. He expected a minimal cash crop and not enough oats and hay for the family horses.

His rates were reasonable, and he filled five cabins, paid a guide and a cook, and ended the hunting seasons with a profit. Born and raised American himself, he knew a service that guests, working Americans and others could afford to fulfill their dreams would sell.

He placed an add in Field and Stream magazine;

‘Opportunities to hunt, moose, deer, elk and bear in the east central Saskatchewan boreal forest and wooded farmland. Guided hunts. Near frontier conditions and the price is right. Everything but your gun and clothes provided in a peaceful location. Enjoy time in a game room after a hard day of hunting. All meals and evening snacks provided. Drinking alcoholic beverages in the game room allowed.’

Full package - $50 dollars per night. For bookings - Box 852 Carrot River Saskatchewan. Phone [phone]. 

Adam Helmus, a farmer, rodeo cowboy, community pasture manager and now operating an outfitting company, maintained a hard work ethic. Hard work and honesty with a measure of a belief in God were the answers to a good life. He loved his work and, except for the racetracks, he rarely craved a hobby.

His clientele built fast as word spread amongst working Americans, business owners, and farmers after a first successful year. Little did he know then he was wasting his money on the Field and Stream add. It would, however, find two men to use one unreserved cabin for a weeklong stay. 

At fifty, the hard work began wearing on him. The bull and bronc riding were far behind him. He still run the chuck wagons and broke good horses in a partnership with his wife, Olivia. He managed Broken River Community pasture in their neighborhood throughout the summers. The farm operations, the new outfitter business and the community pasture conflicted in time requirements only by a few days per year. Being a loved leader and well at delegating his pasture and outfitter employees, the operations ran well.

Adam married late in life to a woman several years younger. They had four children. He pushed the limits of the time frame that anyone can expect a man to provide a labor earned living. His much younger wife did well to keep up the family provisions.

Along with all farming operations, she trained and marketed the horses with Adam. They got the children off to school with her husband, who would be up ahead of the family starting breakfast and lunches.

Like many farm families, the family pride centered on the farming operations and livestock facilities, and the horse barn in particular. Community events and excessive alcohol consumption were a part of their lives. Their alcohol consumption, although heavy, had not interfered with their business enterprises or employment. 

Then Adam died suddenly under the tracks of a rented bulldozer. Olivia, heartsick at the sudden death of Adam, treated her intense depressions with a cocktail of alcohol and drugs for a time. She found recovery.

She bore her own thoughts on the cause of Adam’s death. The local police officers viewed her as a paranoid conspiracy theorist. Years after her recovery with a clear mind, one evening she spoke to the first person who would listen to her thoughts about the death of her husband.

2  Olivia

The four men stood around the beat-up pine desk singing in close harmony the verses from popular songs. The foursome started off singing Alde Lang Zine as the group of sober revelers sang and danced in New Year’s 1982. Three of the men were talented vocalists. They continued their passion at every opportunity.

The red-headed man only had a minimal ability to sing along and keep a tune. Randy Johnsen wore a basic two-piece suit, dress shirt, and tie as he was the guest speaker earlier in the evening’s events. He thought he was a talented vocalist during his drinking days. In sobriety, he realized only minimum talent but worked on improving when he could. The big accomplishment over ten years before was the ability to do anything sober, and taking a place in an impromptu quartet was one.

The melody and identity as recovered alcoholics were the only matching factor about this group of men.

Playing the guitar was a tall, aboriginal man. He hailed from the Big River Cree nation but grew up with an affluent Idaho farm family. Meeting the eighteen-year-old Callie Harper from Saskatchewan, who became his wife, led to him discovering his real family and home where he was born.

As a lawyer, he was taking a break from three-piece suits. He wore jeans and a green turtleneck. Benjamin de Jarlis’s closeness with these men deepened in recent months.

A third man, the shorter of the group, with a dark brown, well-groomed beard and dressed casually in jeans and turtleneck, was Harry McNamara. As a onetime cop, fallen from grace, he now ran a dual career as an insurance investigator on payroll and moonlighting private investigator. Harry wanted to be there for the guest speaker and friend, Randy, and stayed in town for the balance of the AA group’s New Year’s party.

The fourth man in the group, tall, nearing Ben’s height, was just married and new father, Brad Bennet. He wore a light brown tweed blazer over a blue shirt, opened at the top with no tie. Brad, a Newfoundlander, onetime bike gang member, came west to train with the RCMP in Regina and now worked as a city police detective. Brad once spoke of his ancestors as the ‘ones who got away.’ They made it to Newfoundland before being arrested and transported to Australia.

Randy dropped from the group for a refreshment break. Ben invited the now mom, Brad’s newly married soul mate, Brenda, and Dianna, Randy’s long-time soul mate, up to sing along. 

No one in the group felt the freedom and irony of the celebration, like the two school friends, Randy, and Brenda. It had been a crazy year for them since they turned themselves in to police for killing a fifteen-year-old on a November day in the fall of 1963. The fifteen-year-old kid was a neighborhood tormentor who beat and attempted to rape the fourteen-year-old Brenda.

The passing year looked better for Randy the day a jury returned a not guilty verdict on second-degree murder.

Brenda married her love, Bradly Bennet, soon after Randy’s trial. She was six months pregnant with her first child at the time of her wedding. At age thirty-two, her God given time for childbirth was running out. Waiting for the formalities of a wedding day was not in her best interest. At the time of conception, an aggressive police investigator was pressing a prosecutor to agree to charge her for murder with Randy. It is difficult to become pregnant while locked up in prison.  

Randy went over to the food table and served himself a krumkake stuffed with berries and whipped cream and refilled his coffee. Randy and Brenda, who grew up together, remembered the authentic Norwegian treat Randy’s grandmother served up at Christmas celebrations. Brenda and Randy’s wife, Dianna, put krumkakes on the dessert table that evening for the program’s guest speaker and to celebrate his 10th year of sobriety.

So much happened for everyone in the months since the court case. Randy’s long-time love, his wife Dianna, began psychology classes at the University of Saskatchewan. They kept their home in Grande Prairie expecting better resale value and moved into a rental townhouse in Saskatoon.

Randy hired on with the heavy equipment dealer, Rhoads Tractor, in Saskatchewan with only one catch. He had to commute out to the Adamsville branch. Randy would spend his weekdays working out of Adamsville servicing the new Francis Finley Hydro Electric Station and Codette Lake project and other customers. He soon found himself dispatched to Cluff Lake and Key Lake uranium mine projects, which made him wonder about the company’s rationale for placing him in Adamsville.

What couldn’t make Randy happier was Brenda’s happiness? Damaged by childhood rapes and alcoholic parents, she remained messed up for longer than he had. She was Randy’s best lesson in accepting destiny. Randy’s first desire was a romance with Brenda, with no idea how he would help her. As destiny had it, once Randy found his own sobriety, life with a worsening emotional Brenda would not work. Meeting the true love of his life, Dianna, in a Calgary tech school, then in an AA meeting, he moved on. With Brenda finding sobriety and developing into her true self, thoughts of romance came back to haunt him. Now, seeing his best childhood friend happy with a great guy was all he could wish for.

Twenty remaining members cleaned the room so it would be presentable for the hosting group.

For the first time in the last hour since they sang in the new year, Randy noticed Harry McNamara off in a far corner of the room. He appeared in deep conversation with a tall lady wearing a western theme gray and red evening dress.

The conversation did not appear to be light comradery. An opened cigarette carton served as an emergency note paper. They ended their conversation with Harry, placing his business card in her hand and pulling her close for a light hug. They joined their respective partners to leave.

Outside was a brisk, cool night. Windshields frosted over during the hours since 7:00 PM. Vehicle antennas had fattened up with thin columns of frost forming on them. Feet crunched on the packed snow as the sober revelers walked to their vehicles.

Harry approached Randy’s driver side window of the family Jeep Cherokee, whirling a figure in a signal to roll down. Looking to see Dianna wasn’t in the car, he leaned in speaking quietly, do you remember a community pasture manager out near Carrot River? They found him run over by his own bulldozer. Seventy-two.

A horn honked. The men looked up to see a passing city police car. Both officers waved when they recognized Harry.

Doesn’t come to mind now. Living in Alberta, I missed a lot here.

That was around ten years ago. The lady I was just speaking to was the man’s widow. She remains convinced it was not an accident.

Randy was not ready to hear from another workaholic wanting to talk business. Then, being in the heavy equipment trade, these events always caught his attention.

I can drop by the library this Saturday and check the newspapers on microfiche. I planned to take the girls to story time anyway while Dianna studies. It would help if I had an exact date.

November, seventy-two. Harry peeked at the flap of his Export A package where he had written notes. Second, he said.

It is getting old. If there was no reason to suspect foul play then, how much do you have to go on?

I’m not sure if I will take it on. Ten years is a long shot, and the investigating officers did not have reason to suspect foul play at the time of their investigation. Olivia said she can afford a hundred hours, which won’t get me far with a case this cold if it involved foul play. With no reason to suspect foul play, they probably collected nothing that would amount to evidence.

Is there an active police investigation now?

Olivia said no. I will take it up with the Carrot River officers.

Harry and Randy became friends when Randy’s lawyer, Benjamin de Jarlis, recommended Harry to locate the evidence that got Randy off his recent murder charge. 

Harry and Randy met again weeks before New Year’s on the job. Days after Randy hired on with the Rhoads Tractor heavy equipment dealer, Harry accompanied the insurance adjuster to inspect a Cat D8K drive train the company service manager delegated Randy to work on. The owner, a contractor from LaRonge, claimed someone had sabotaged his machine. By the time Harry arrived with the adjuster, Randy had already located the actual failure. Harry and the police issued orders to move the machine into a secure shop while switching to a fraud investigation.

The owner claimed a vandal placed sand into the machine transmission, causing the failure. The insurance company was to cover the vandalism. The end of the customer’s story came when obvious traces of sand remained at the transmission fill tube entry.

Randy became suspicious when he wondered why there was not enough oil circulating in the transmission to wash the sand away from the powertrain fill area. Upon inspection of the drivetrain filter and screens, Randy found both plugged only with iron and aluminum particles and other larger metal nuggets. The powertrain hydraulic pump had not operated long enough to move the sand into the particle screen or the filter.

The power train pump, being an easy item to remove, revealed the failure. Randy found a damaged pump drive gear. Caterpillar designs the pump to drive off the rotating members of the drivetrain torque converter. When the torque converter had a catastrophic failure, the transmission pump stopped working. With no drivetrain hydraulics, nothing happened. The oil in the sump or the pile of sand in the fill area never moved.

Randy impressed the onlooking insurance company officials looking on. He failed to understand who would not find the problem and determine a scam. Such a failing series of events is not rocket science.

The contractor did not receive a free repair job, compliments of the insurance company, who employed Harry McNamara as their fraud investigator.

By now in his career, Randy understood the long term, if there were to be a long term, consequences he may face with his new employer because of the D8 investigation. What could he have done? Outright lie to the insurance investigators and police? Then what about the moment of inevitable truth on his part?

The downside of all was a salesperson’s customer missed out on a free repair job. Meet Barney Nash.

Harry forewarned Randy that he may come for advice on matters related to heavy equipment incidents, or any mechanically related matter.

Harry had an ulterior motive for having Randy scouting for him. Randy figured that one out. Harry could use the help, but not from an everyday want-to-be hotshot cop. Randy based his findings on his own best experience. Not imagined conspiracies.

Dianna and the girls piled into the Jeep Cherokee. Randy and Harry exchanged warm parting greetings with a stiff handshake. The Bennet’s Land Rover, now warmed, pulled out of its parking place with Brad at the wheel.

The girls fell asleep by the time they reached the Coronet Motor Hotel at the south end of Prince Albert’s Second Avenue. The couple remained silent until they reached the junction and turned on Highway 11, headed for Saskatoon.

Dianna spoke. What is that all about? Is Harry still concerned about the trouble you got in with Nash over that transmission job?

About what?

What you and Harry were talking about.

Olivia’s late husband. Something we need to keep between us about. He only wants you and me in on this now. She thinks someone murdered him. Harry just wants me to hear out what the locals have to say without raising alarms.

Alarms?

He just wants to hear more with no one knowing there could be an investigation happening.

Is there an investigation?

No. Not yet. Harry doesn’t want to take her money until he knows there is reasonable doubt that the man’s death was accidental.

Dianna became silent with her thoughts again for a time.

Then she spoke. Who is Olivia?

The wife of the late Adam Helmus, the man who died in an alleged industrial accident. They lived on a farm north of Carrot River. That is all I know.

Olivia, born to Metis parents in a community west of Prince Albert Saskatchewan, went to work at sixteen. She missed the country life and family animals she grew up with.

She started with domestic duties for a farm family who cared for and protected her like she was their own daughter. The mother of the family taught elementary school.

Olivia came on as a big sister and guardian to four younger children. By the time she turned nineteen, the older children in the family could care for themselves while the parents worked. With excellent references, she took a job as a server in a small café in Carrot River, where she met Adam. A chance to ride again drew her to her first date. The man, much older than her, who took her on that first date became the reason her life changed on a Saturday afternoon.

Within months, she married, became pregnant, and broke her first horse under the guidance of her new husband. They moved a three-bedroom bungalow to their Ravendale farm. Anywhere on that gumbo property was not ideal for a yard site. Least of all near the municipal road that ran between two massive ponds. But it