A Lonely Way to Die: A Utah O'Brien Mystery Novel (Minnesota Mysteries Series Book 2) (17 page)

Gavril watched his baby feeding for a moment, then turned, not sure where to sit.

“Where is your living room?” he asked, while looking for a doorway that might lead to a more comfortable room.

Gabe and Sam answered in unison. “On the other side of town.” They smiled at each other, enjoying their little joke.

“Come sit at the table, Constantin,” Mort said. “Utah doesn’t usually have so much company. She’s not really set up for it.”

Gavril and Gabe sat on one side of the table, while Mort and I sat on the other side.

“The sheriff told me you volunteered to help him with his investigation into my wife’s death,” Gavril said.

“We’re looking into it,” Mort said. “We haven’t turned up anything conclusive, yet. Can we ask you a few questions? It might help, might not.”

“Of course.”

Mort laid out a line of cards, starting a game of solitaire. He looked at me, with one eyebrow raised. My turn.

“Gavril, did you know Sonje was coming to West Elmer this weekend?”

“No. We spoke last week. I called her after the London concert. She told me she received a letter from her mother, and they spoke on the phone. It was the first time for many years. She hoped to come but I didn’t know she’d made plans for this weekend. We didn’t tell each other everything, you know.”

“You were getting a divorce.”

“Yes. But we were still very good friends. I was so looking forward to seeing her again. I had news I wanted to share with her. Son, you should hear this, too, before you read it in the news. The band has decided to break up. We all agreed to keep it secret until we had time to tell the people closest to us.”

Gabe’s frown showed his concern. “Why, Dad?”

“Why keep it a secret?”

“No. Why break up?”

Gavril pulled the cribbage board closer to him, and started fiddling with the pegs. Mort kept a watchful eye on the musician’s hands.

“Son, it is hard to explain, but I think it was the right decision. You know the music doesn’t sell on the Internet now.”

“Yeah, I know, Dad.”

“Most of Blue Malachi’s biggest fans are in Europe. The other band members, they have families and they don’t want to be away from home so much. They want to try smaller gigs at bars and clubs without having to travel. They would have to play different music, of course. Our kind of music—it won’t work in a bar. I told them I don’t want to do that, so we’re splitting up, but amicably.”

Mort kept laying down cards, occasionally moving one to give himself a better chance to win his game. I’ve never understood why people cheat at solitaire.

Josie came to join us at the table, taking the chair at the end near the heated bench. Grace was still in her arms. The bottle was half empty. Sam came, too, sitting at the opposite end of the table.

Sam asked Gavril what he intended to do, now that the band was breaking up.

The musician looked up at him and shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly. Maybe I’ll play solo gigs. One of the bigger churches might hire me. Or maybe I’ll get a real job. I intended to make plans on the plane, but then I picked up Gabe’s messages on my phone, and I couldn’t reach him. My mind was not on my career, you know. But something will come up.”

He reached out his arm and put it around Gabe’s shoulder, pulling the boy closer to him.

“Son, I am so sorry this has happened. Your mother was such a good woman, a wonderful mother. This is all so unfair.”

“Then why didn’t you want to live with her anymore?” Gabe said. “How come you’re such good friends, but you didn’t want to stay married?”

“Ah. Such a good question.” He dropped his arm and went back to inspecting the tiny cribbage pegs. “She and I had many long talks, trying to understand that very problem. We did love each other, but I love music, and crowds, and lots and lots of people. I even love noise. Your mother, she had a good ear for music, but her life was solitary, a writer. She loved quiet, and getting to bed at a reasonable hour every night. She thought we should try to find partners who fit us better. Does this make any sense?”

Gabe brushed away a tear and picked a red peg off the cribbage board. “I guess. Not exactly, but kind of.”

Mort watched Gabe, and the peg. Then his eyes darted to Gavril’s hands. He looked at the board, probably counting the pegs that were left.

Nobody spoke for a moment. Sam smiled at me. I smiled at him. I wanted to get up from the table and crawl onto the couch, cover myself with the afghan, and fall asleep. The day had been truly exhausting.

“Gavril,” I said, “we’ve been told that your wife often used bits and pieces from conversations she had with other people, putting them in her books.”

He shook his head, then nodded. “She did that, yes, using people’s stories. Every writer does, I think. But she would change it so it could not be recognized. This is what writers do—they borrow people’s lives, but they mean no harm. And with all that magic in her stories, and the witches, and all the gods, who could believe any of it was real?”

He smiled, remembering something. “I liked to tell her some of the stories I remembered from my childhood in Romania, and pretend I was the little boy in the fables. She wrote nothing down, but the next time I came home, she would show me the pages in her book where the stories appear. They would be changed, perfected, and it made me happy to see them there, for people to read. And sometimes I told her funny stories that really happened to me, or to my parents, and she would use them, too. It made me proud to be a part of her stories.”

Gabe said, “Me and Mom did that, too. It was fun. If something really cool happened at school, or maybe somebody was mean, I’d tell her and we’d make up a story, and then she’d write it down. But you couldn’t tell who it was. Unless somebody was really super mean, like they made somebody cry. Then my mom wouldn’t change it very much, and you’d be able to tell if you knew the person.”

Gavril smiled. “Son, do you remember when we would all cuddle up on the couch and we would tell stories until late at night? We would drink hot chocolate, and—”

“Yeah, and sometimes you played the guitar. It was really nice.” A tear escaped and fell down his cheek. “I wish this didn’t happen, Dad. I really wish it didn’t.”

The baby fell asleep, and Josie stood up so she could tuck the baby into the laundry basket. “I’m going to miss this little lady when she goes home,” she said. “Gavril, you have the nicest baby.”

The man turned in his seat and thanked her for her compliment to his child. So far, he hadn’t moved to hold Grace or even to touch her. Single-fatherhood was going to be a challenge for this newly-unemployed musician.

Mort retrieved his pegs, reaching across the table and gently pulling one last red peg from Gabe’s hand. He stowed them safely away in the little cubby at the back of the cribbage board.

“Gavril,” I said, trying to get back to our informal interrogation, “was there any sign lately that Sonje was depressed? You know what the reporters are saying …”

“I heard it, but it isn’t true. She was happy to finally be speaking with her family again. And there’s a new book a few weeks from being finished. She had the house up for sale for months, and she finally got an offer. She was not depressed.”

Gabe said, “See? I told you.”

Mort said, “Constantin, do you know anybody who would want to harm your wife?”

The musician shrugged and held up his hands, helplessly. “Everyone who knew her loved her. I can’t imagine anyone hurting her on purpose.”

Maybe Sonje wasn’t depressed, but I was getting there. Nobody wanted her dead, and she wasn’t unhappy. The only thing left was accidental death, and an accident wasn’t possible because Sonje wouldn’t go walking around in a strange field all by herself in the middle of the night.

I said, “Her friend, Carol Kramer, told us that Sonje may have left town many years ago because someone here was bothering her. An older man. Did she ever say anything about that incident to you?”

He shook his head and shrugged.

Mort stood up. “You’ve got to be tired, Constantin. I know I would be after flying from Europe and then following the snow plows all across the state. Josie will let you take a nap in her trailer, won’t you, hon?”

“Of course, dear. I put new sheets on the bed. It’s all ready for you, Gavril.”

“Thank you. Thank you all for everything, for taking such good care of the children, for—well, for all you’ve done for us today. You have been so kind.”

Mort handed my old tan jacket to Gavril. “You don’t want to take your nice coat out to the trailer. There’s no good place to put it out there. The trailer’s kind of small.” This was a major understatement. When Jocko and Molly are both in there, they create a wall-to-wall dog-body carpet that takes up the entire floor space.

Mort and Gavril left through the back door, to walk through the garden to Josie’s trailer.

When Mort and Gavril were gone, Josie handed the baby to Gabe and jerked her head towards the door to the museum. I followed her out while Gabe and Sam looked on curiously.

We didn’t go far. It was dark and cold, and we both hugged ourselves to stay warm.

My mother moved over to look at the paper mache Clovis man standing on the wooden platform with his six-year-old son. Their outlines were barely visible.

Without turning to look at me, she said, “I changed my mind. That man can’t be given two children to raise all on his own. He’s a nice man, but he doesn’t have a clue. The boy loves him—that’s obvious. But Gabe needs more stability in his life.”

She turned to look at me and said, “I’m sorry about the way I acted today. It was selfish of me. I wasn’t thinking about what would be best for the children.”

I reached out a hand and laid it on her shoulder. “I’ll tell Sam tonight. He’s going to need some help if Gabe stays here. So will I. And someone will have to negotiate with Gavril. A shared custody sort of thing, perhaps. Will you talk to Gavril? Try to make it work for everyone?”

There was just enough light for me to see her nod. She said, “Gabe told me you’re turning this area into a living room.”

I put one foot over the other to warm up my toes, and looked at the paper mache family standing, unfinished, on their platform. “So, are we good?” I said. “No more evil eye?”

She gave me a lopsided smile before turning to go back into the kitchen. She stopped so suddenly that I almost ran into her. I backed up, and she turned around to face me. “Mort got a call from the sheriff while you were talking to Emma. A man walked into the station this afternoon claiming to be Sonje’s fiancé. He followed the family from the city, all the way out to that ratty old house, so he’d know where to find them when she called this morning. He says he stopped at the diner for a cup of coffee and then went back to Randall. He checked into a motel and spent the night. He was expecting her call this morning, and then saw the news on TV. The sheriff says he didn’t see any reason to keep him.”

“Do we know his name?”

“Mort has it. And I looked him up on your laptop. He’s a businessman, so I found his photo.”

I thought about this new development while we walked into the kitchen. Gabe told us earlier that his mother had a surprise for him. Maybe this guy was the surprise.

TWENTY

I looked at my watch. It was ten minutes to six. I couldn’t believe it wasn’t later, but I had a few phone calls to make.

“Gabe, could you get the afghan off the heater bench for me?”

He brought it over and we made Josie comfortable on the couch.

While Sam and Gabe sat at the table and played one more game of cribbage, I pulled my cell phone out of my sweatshirt pocket and showed it to Sam. Then I headed back out into the studio area at the back of the museum, and made my first call.

Mark Price confirmed what we’d heard from Emma earlier, about Sonje’s will. And he told me, without prompting, that he called Sonje while she was in the diner with Carol Kramer. He asked her for a loan, and she refused him. He’d already asked before and she refused then, too. She said he didn’t need a handout, he needed a job. She didn’t come to his place after he talked to her on the phone.

Mark sounded dejected as he talked, and depressed, and a little bit drunk, but I didn’t get the feeling that he was lying. Of course, even when you’re standing in front of someone, looking them straight in the eye, you can’t always tell.

I asked him about the older boy or man who might have been bothering Sonje before she moved to the city. Was it John Meecham? He laughed at that idea. “She wouldn’t have anything to do with Meecham. She was never that stupid.”

He said there was a boy in her class who kidded her about being overweight in front of her friends, but he didn’t think it bothered her enough to move out of town. “She fought back like she always did. She let it simmer for a week or two and then she wrote a really good story that got read out loud in English class. The main character was the spitting image of the guy who teased her, and she made him look like a fool.

“That’s how my sister fought, you know. The pen is mightier—well, you know. But he was in the same grade as her, he wasn’t older. She never told me about anybody else bothering her, but I was out of school by then, and we didn’t talk all that often.”