A Lonely Way to Die: A Utah O'Brien Mystery Novel (Minnesota Mysteries Series Book 2) (10 page)

“The palm of the hand has a lot of sweat glands,” he said. “Molly could tell it was her.”

Then Sonje headed south towards the river instead of back to her car. The farther she went, the more erratic her path. There were a few places where Molly stopped and snuffled over a larger area, where the woman may have fallen. The bloodhound finally stopped where I’d found the body.

“It was a miracle that she didn’t stumble over the bank and into the river,” he said. Although, in the end, it didn’t matter very much.

Molly found Sonje’s coat about fifteen feet from the body. There was a little silver flask in one of the big pockets.

“The way she was stumbling around, it looked like she was drunk, or drugged. But she didn’t get drunk off the whiskey in that flask. It was still full. I put it back in the pocket and we brought the coat back here. A deputy drove by and picked it up while you and Mort were out talking to Carol. Gabe says she liked to have a sip once a day, at exactly four in the afternoon. It was a reward for finishing her day’s work. That’s the only time she ever drank, though. And he says she didn’t do drugs.”

I gave him a look, and he quickly said Gabe volunteered that part himself. “I think the boy watches too many cop shows on TV.”

Gabe broke down and cried when they were standing near the place where his mother died. “It was good for him to get it out,” he said. “He’s strong. He’ll get through it. He felt better when we were walking back, but it’s going to take a long time to get over this. I’m glad you and Mort are trying to find out what really happened. So is Gabe—even if you don’t find anything, at least he knows you cared enough to try.”

We pulled the luggage out of the bed of the truck, brushed off the snow, and went back inside.

As we walked through the unlit, unheated museum, I glanced at the dusty sculptures scattered around the old barn of a building. The giant ground sloth was still looming over the room, still reaching for the same paper mache leaf after twenty-three years. Was I really doing the same thing that Pastor Owen was doing? Hanging on, long after it was time to let go?

Sam turned around when he noticed I wasn’t following him. I snapped out of it, and joined him. A whiff of baking nut bread came wafting out into the museum, and my stomach rumbled. I was ready for lunch, in spite of the nice breakfast Sam cooked for us, but when I looked at my watch again, it still wasn’t quite eleven o’clock.

When we were a few steps from the kitchen door, Gabe and Jocko came out. “Mort said I should go find out what you two are jawboning about,” he said. “I think he wants to talk to Josie, and he didn’t want me to hear what he said.”

“Sounds like Mort,” Sam said. “Always subtle.”

“Yes,” I said. “But Mort doesn’t actually live here.” Sam looked at me, with one eyebrow raised.

“OK, he hangs around a lot, but he doesn’t get to kick us out of our kitchen.” I moved towards the door, but Gabe wandered off to look at the unfinished sculpture standing in the middle of my studio space. I let go of the doorknob and leaned on the extended handle of his damp suitcase.

Gabe walked around the tableau, and stopped at the young man and the six-year-old boy. He looked at the man’s face, then at Sam. “He kind of looks like you,” he said.

“It’s my nephew, Willy. He posed for it, and Utah did a good job. I might have looked like him, a little bit, when I was a lot younger. Utah got a couple of local women to pose for the ladies in the sculpture. The one with the baby is Amy Krueger, and the older one is Angie, from the diner.”

“They look like they’re having fun,” Gabe said. “Are they Indians?”

“They might be ancestors of modern Native Americans. The scientists have different theories.” I said. “They’ve found a lot of their arrowheads and tools, but they’ve only found one body with the tools, so I don’t think they can really know for sure. They’re called Clovis people, and they may have died out about the same time as the big animals. Or maybe they moved somewhere else. Or they just started making their tools a different way. It’s a mystery.”

He turned and looked at the big window that gave us a view of the hazel hedge along the river. A cottontail bounced across the snow-covered herb garden between the museum and the hedge. The wildlife population around town exploded after the hazel hedges were put in.

“My dad called a minute ago,” Gabe said. “He’s sitting in a restaurant in a little town. He had to pull off the highway because they closed it.”

“I’m glad you got to talk to him,” I said. “Did it make you feel a little better?”

He shrugged. “I guess. He said we would figure something out.”

Gabe turned his attention to the short wall that separates the studio from the public part of the museum. He put his hands in his armpits, trying to stay warm.

“We could make that wall go up higher,” he said. “Stick a door over there, to make this into a real room. And you could make another one of those wood stove things like you’ve got in the kitchen, and put it in here so it wouldn’t be so cold. Mort said him and Sam and a few other guys made that other one. I could help, too. And there’d be room for a couple of couches. The kitchen gets kind of crowded, and there aren’t enough soft places for everybody to sit.”

I expected Sam to mention that we already have a living room at his house, but he was looking at the wall between the studio and the kitchen. Low cabinets run along that wall, for my art supplies, and a few masks were hanging in the wide space above the storage cabinets. A slow grin spread across his face. I was pretty sure it had something to do with his flat-screen TV.

“Gabe,” I said, “you’re brilliant.” He grinned at the compliment.

I looked at the studio, mentally filling in the short wall, adding the door, putting a window in the storeroom to turn it into a spare bedroom. Maybe that big southern window could be taken out, and replaced with a lean-to greenhouse. Josie would really like that.

Gabe picked up a curl of newspaper that was lying under one of the Clovis people. He started to shred it into long strands. “Mort says your school lets kids make stuff. Real stuff, like the little windmill out by Josie’s trailer. He showed me how it puts the electricity in the battery and keeps her lights on. He said the kids at school get paid for making them, too. He says it isn’t real money, but the stores take it sometimes, anyway. I could learn to make things like that. It would be fun. We never get to do anything like that at my school. I want to stay here.”

Sam and I looked at each other. He held his lips compressed in a line, and I bit my lower lip.

I turned back to Gabe and said, “Has Mort showed you how to play cribbage yet?”

He grinned. “I skunked him the first time. He was letting me win, but I figured out how to do it. Next time I’ll beat him fair and square.”

ELEVEN

The kitchen smelled heavenly with the scent of baking sweet bread. Music was playing. It was coming from the little speakers Sam uses with his smart phone.

Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

It’s always been one of my favorite songs—the simplicity of it, and the melody—it tugs at my heart every time.

But this time it sounded very different. A man with a gravely, bluesy voice was singing, and a trumpet was playing softly in the background, sounding almost like a second voice. Then more male voices came in on the chorus, with tight, warm harmony.

“That’s Blue Malachi,” Sam said. “Constantin’s band. They’re good, aren’t they?”

The song ended and the music changed to an old ballad that might have originally come from Scotland, or the Appalachian mountain folk. It was done with a modern twist, with a drum beat and horns.

We plopped the luggage on the floor near the bathroom door and took off our jackets. Gabe went to the table and sat opposite Mort, and they started playing another game of cribbage.

My dog went to his toy box and selected his favorite, a raggedy brown teddy bear, and brought it back to Gabe. He tried to balance the bear on the boys thigh. Gabe looked down, gently took the offered gift, and smoothed his hand over Jocko’s head.

The boy looked up at me. “You guys have really nice dogs,” he said.

Mort growled. “Pay attention to the game. It’s your turn.”

Gabe grinned, and laid down his cards. “Fifteen two, and sixteen for the double-double run. Eighteen, total.” He moved his pegs.

“Punk,” Mort said. He shuffled the cards for the next hand, and gave me a wink.

Josie was at the other end of the table, with my laptop open in front of her. The baby was in the plastic laundry basket, on top of the mattress made with folded towels. Little Grace was giggling. Molly was standing over her with her big head down in the basket, moving her sensitive nose over as many baby parts as she could reach, and tickling the baby with her whiskers. Little arms and legs waved around, and then one tiny hand wrapped around the edge of Molly’s ear, and tugged. Josie reached down and rescued the ear. Molly settled down next to the basket, with her chin resting on the edge.

I looked in the glass window of the oven to peek at the loaf of quick bread, with the split top starting to brown. There were nuts in it, and berries. I stood back up. The coffee pot was empty.

While I was pouring water into the back of the coffeemaker, Sam’s phone rang. He answered, and then looked at the ceiling with a grimace. “No, that’s OK, Sally. If I don’t fix your furnace today, I’ll have to fix your pipes tomorrow. I’ll be right over.”

He went to the back door and pulled his jacket back on. He took his work gloves off the shelf above the coat pegs, and put his tan baseball cap back on his head.

“Where ya going?” Gabe asked.

“Sally Morgan’s furnace is on the blitz. I have to go fix it. You want to come?”

“Sure.”

“Hey,” Mort said. “We just started a game.”

Gabe’s grin evaporated, but he stayed in his chair.

Mort took pity on the boy. “Take Utah’s jacket,” he said. “You don’t want to be mucking around in Sally Morgan’s basement in your nice coat. And take a warm cap off the shelf there, and some gloves.”

Gabe jumped up and headed for the back door, where the jackets were hanging on pegs. Jocko followed him.

“Take the light brown one,” I said. “With the fleece inside.”

With their matching jackets, he and Sam looked like a matched set.

“You boys wait a minute,” Josie said. “I’ll make a couple of sandwiches. You can take them with you.” She got up from the table and dug around in the fridge for a few minutes, and came out with a loaf of home-made bread, hazelnut butter and Saskatoon jam. She quickly cut four slices of bread, and then looked at Mort. He smiled back with his tongue hanging out, mimicking Jocko, who was sitting near the fridge, acting hopeful.

She glanced at me, and I shook my head, declining. I would wait for the nut bread in the oven.

Josie cut two more slices and put three sandwiches together, and then handed them out, without bothering with plates. She tossed Jocko a small bite of bread spread with hazelnut butter, his favorite.

Sam kissed Josie on the forehead in thanks, and she waved him away. The ‘boys’ left to fix Sally Morgan’s furnace. Jocko wanted to go, too, but I made him stay. He sat by the door, and whined.

Josie sat back down in front of the laptop. I walked around behind her, to see what she was looking at. It was a government site, family court. The page had information about step-fathers getting guardianship papers after the death of a spouse. She closed the laptop when I was half-way through the first paragraph. She stood, picked the baby up out of the basket, and went to sit on the couch.

I poured myself a cup of coffee. I brought Mort a mug, too, but Josie didn’t want any. When the bell on the oven rang, she stood up and handed the baby to me. Then she went to the stove to pull out the bread. The smell of Saskatoon berries and walnuts and sugar filled the air. Jocko sat politely a few feet from the oven door, hoping for a stray crumb.

“You can’t have any yet,” Josie said to me, before I even asked. “It’s too hot. And anyway, if you and Mort start in on it, there won’t be any left for the boy.”

Which was true, of course. I thought about making myself a sandwich, but decided I could wait.

Josie retrieved the baby, and then sat on the couch and tucked her long green wool skirt around her legs. She let the baby reach up and grab her nose.

I sat down across from Mort with my back to the aromatic bread on the kitchen counter and facing Josie and the couch. I put my steaming mug of coffee on the table and pulled the folded flier out of my pocket. I unfolded it and tried to smooth it out. It was badly wrinkled, but you could still read the words. I pushed it across the table to Mort.

“Huh,” he said. “Where did this come from?”

“John Meecham left a whole stack of them at the diner. Pete Hansen says it was Laura Rey’s idea, and John Meecham has been spending a lot of time with her lately. He’s even going to church with her.”

He shook his head, then turned in his chair so he could hand the paper to Josie. She took a look at it, shook her head, and handed it back. “Laura Rey never was all that bright,” she said.