A Lonely Way to Die: A Utah O'Brien Mystery Novel (Minnesota Mysteries Series Book 2) (5 page)

Sam put a bottle of maple syrup in front of the boy, a napkin, and butter. Mort and Wally waited while Gabe ate.

“Wally, would you like breakfast?” Sam said.

“Thanks, but no—I need to be getting back to the office.”

“Mort?”

Mort looked at Josie, who was still walking the baby up and down the room. She shook her head. Sadly, Mort turned to Sam and admitted that he’d already eaten at the diner.

Sam poured more batter onto the griddle, fried more eggs, and then he and I both sat down at the table to eat. Mort reached over and stole a piece of bacon off my plate.

When Gabe was finished, Wally said, “Son, I’m awful sorry this happened to your mother. I’ve got your dad’s number and I called him to let him know what’s going on.”

“OK.”

Josie laid Grace on the couch, near the corner, and held her hand on the baby to make sure she didn’t turn over and fall off. I stood and went out to the studio to get the laundry basket. I came back in and pulled a few clean towels out of the linen closet. I put them in the bottom of the basket, for a mattress. My mother carefully moved the baby into the makeshift bassinet, without waking her. She put it on the floor, near her feet, and Molly came over to lie down next to it.

Wally had one more question for Gabe. “Son, this is a hard question to ask, but has your mom been feeling poorly lately? You know, like sad? Crying a lot? Depressed?”

Gabe jumped up, scooting his chair back and scraping the legs against the old plank floor. “She didn’t do this on purpose,” he said, choking back the anger. “She wouldn’t. And she was happy, because her mom was going to talk to her, and she’s almost done with a new book, and she got an offer on the house, and …” He shoved the chair, and it crashed to the floor.

The baby was startled awake by the noise, and started to cry. Molly stood up, on alert, but Josie put out her hand and calmed the old hound.

Gabe went over to the couch, flopped down next to Josie, and reached over to pick up the baby. He held his little sister, and rocked back and forth.

The cries petered out, and Grace fell asleep again in his arms.

“She wouldn’t,” he said, into his little sister’s fluffy hair. “She just wouldn’t.”

FIVE

Sam and I followed Wally out into the museum.

I said, “Wally, you’re not going to investigate this as a possible homicide, are you?”

He rolled up his watch cap and squeezed it. Then he relaxed his hand and put the cap on his head. “I hate saying this, but the department can’t afford the manpower right now. Not without any sign of foul play. There was a big drug bust a few towns over—heroin—and we got a pile of paperwork to fill out on that. Two of my guys are out sick, and the county is telling me I have to let a couple more go because they don’t have the money. And we’re getting a lot more domestics, because of the hard times. We can’t—”

“So, would you mind if I look into it? Unofficially?”

He stopped walking and turned, his head held slightly to the side. He gave me a searching look. “You’d take Mort with you, to keep you in line?”

I smiled, remembering how well Mort managed that task the last time we did a little investigating.

“Sure,” I said, to ease his mind. “We’re going to see Mildred, anyway. We might as well team up for a few more visits around town. I’ve been wondering why Sonje left her car on the north side of the diner? I mean, wouldn’t she park her car on the south side, up close to the river walk, to make it easier to get out to the Webb property?”

Wally zipped up his coat, and started walking again, towards the front of the building. “Suicides aren’t all that rational, Utah. You can’t expect a person to be reasonable when they set out to do something like that.”

“But still. Sam, what do you think?”

“I can’t see her going out there at all. Gwyneth Price hasn’t been here since we put in the river walk. It wasn’t there when she was in high school.”

We were nearing the front desk now, where I used to sell souvenirs when the museum was still open.

“Sam, could Molly tell us exactly where Sonje went, after she left her car?”

“I’ll ask her,” he said. “She might like that. She hasn’t had a job for a long time but her nose still works, and the snow would trap the scent. Still, we can’t expect too much.”

Molly won an award when she was younger, for finding a toddler who walked away from his family when they were camping down by the river. Mort loves to tell that story, about how Molly spent her time on the stage during the award ceremony checking out the bigwigs’ nice polished shoes and leaving trails of slobber on the expensive leather.

Sam went back to the kitchen to pry Molly away from the baby. I stayed at the front of the building and watched the sheriff walk through the blowing snow to his patrol car. He waved to the deputy, who was sitting inside the diner, staying warm. Wally got into the car, the deputy came out and took the wheel, and they drove away. The only car left in Angie’s parking lot was the dead woman’s black SUV, under a blanket of snow.

It saddened me to see the diner so empty. I grew up there. My mother and I lived in the little apartment at the back of the building, and I did my homework sitting on one of the revolving red and chrome stools at the long counter. During the many years while my mother owned the place, there were ups and downs, times when people could afford a good breakfast at a good price, and times when pennies were pinched and business slowed to a trickle. But it had never been as bad as it was now.

Sam came back. Molly was wearing her working harness. Gabe and Jocko came out after Sam, and they hurried to catch up.

Gabe was more animated than I had seen him all morning. He was wearing his nice blue and gray jacket, Josie’s calf-high sheepskin-lined snow boots, and Mort’s black insulated gloves. My bright yellow wool cap was pulled down over his ears.

“Molly’s going to help us figure out what happened to my mom,” Gabe said. “Sam says Molly used to be really good at tracking, but she might not remember how. But I think she’ll remember. She got real excited when he put her harness on.”

I looked at Molly, who was inspecting a knot on the wide plank floor. She looked exactly like she always did, with ears dragging on the floor. A string of slobber slowly descended from her lips. She didn’t look very excited to me, but I don’t speak bloodhound. Sam gave me a peck on the cheek. Then he and Gabe left the building with Molly.

Jocko wanted to go, too, but I made him stay. Molly didn’t need his kind of help.

SIX

I went back to the apartment and up the stairs to look for my old jacket. I rummaged around in the back of the closet until I found it, a sheepskin-lined tan jacket that looked way too much like the one Sam wore every day when he went to work. His jacket looked a lot better on him than mine did on me. However, it was warm and it wasn’t in the washing machine, so it would have to do.

I went back downstairs. Mort already had his coat on, and he was waiting for me.

Josie asked where we were going.

“We told Wally we’d go tell Mildred what happened,” Mort said. “It’s best for her to hear it from people she knows.” He walked over to the couch and leaned over to give his ‘girlfriend,’ as he called my nearly seventy-year old mother, a peck on the forehead.

“You’re doing more than that,” she said, pushing him away. “You’re investigating, aren’t you? And Sam’s helping, too. It’s a terrible idea. It’s not right.”

I said, “We need to go see Carol Kramer, too, because she may have been the last one to see Sonje McCrae alive. Conrad probably can’t help us, but we should talk to him anyway. And there was someone else at the diner. I still can’t remember who—”

“I’m telling you it’s not a good idea,” Josie said, forcefully. She stood up and started walking up and down between the table and the couch, as Mort and I looked at each other, and shrugged.

“Why not?” I said.

“It’s not your job,” she said. “Let the sheriff handle it.”

Mort walked up to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and planted a wet kiss on her lips. “It will be fine,” he said. “I promise we won’t get into any trouble this time.”

He turned, gave me a wink, and we walked out through the door into the museum.

Jocko came with us, but as soon as we were outside I regretted letting him come. There wasn’t room for both Mort and Jocko in the passenger seat of my little Ford Ranger. Jocko would have to ride in back, but my truck bed was filling up with a mini-drift of blown-in snow.

I pulled my brown wool hat down over my ears and turned to put Jocko back inside the museum, but Mort held up a ring of keys and jingled them. Then he swept the canvas cover off Sam’s snowmobile and stowed it under the hinged seat. It’s a two-seater, with a short cargo platform attached to the back. Sam got it in trade for a big remodeling job he worked on, but he rarely uses it.

When Jocko figured out which machine we were riding on, he jumped onto the cargo platform, probably because it reminded him of the platform on the back of Mort’s golf cart. He thought riding around in blowing snow would be great fun.

“I don’t know,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the wind. “He might fall off.”

“Oh, come on. Sled dogs ride these things all the time.” Mort was already straddling the front seat, and he called Jocko. My dog jumped down from the platform and came around to the front. When the old man patted the small space on the padded seat in front of his big belly, Jocko jumped up in front of him and sat, pointing forward between the handlebars. He looked like he was ready to drive the rig. I was still not so sure.

“We’ll go five miles an hour,” Mort promised. I believed him, because that’s about how fast he drives his golf cart all over town during the summer.

Reluctantly, I climbed on behind him. I should have said ‘no,’ but Mort and Jocko were having so much fun, it wouldn’t be fair to deprive them.

We drove at a very leisurely speed to the north end of town, while the snow blew in swirling eddies in front of us. I tried to keep my face out of the wind by leaning against Mort’s back, but it didn’t help much. I was feeling pretty miserable by the time we stopped at Mildred’s little yellow bungalow and pulled up onto the yard, but Jocko was still enjoying his adventure. Mort didn’t mind the cold, either, although his nose and cheeks were red.

Mildred’s front walkway had been cleared that morning, but another inch of snow had fallen since then.

We opened the storm door on the covered porch and went inside, out of the wind. Mort rang the doorbell.

When Emma opened the door, she looked a little frazzled. Her short blond hair was damp and listless, and she had a spatula in one hand. A big smile was pasted on her heart-shaped face, but it looked a little painful. When she saw us standing there, the smile was replaced by an honest look of confusion.

Mildred’s voice came from several rooms away. “Emma, bring her in. Don’t make her stand out there in the cold.”

“Oh—I don’t know where I left my manners,” Emma said. She stood aside. I left Jocko on the porch and walked into the front room, and Mort followed me.

Emma taught third grade, and I’d been getting to know her rather well since the beginning of the school year. I volunteered to teach an after-school drama class, and Emma came to help out sometimes. She was great with the kids, especially the little ones from her class who volunteered to play the dwarfs.

She gestured towards a coat rack, and we took off our hats and jackets as she called out to her mother. “It isn’t her, Mom. Mort and Utah are here.” The smell of baking cookies was almost overwhelming—chocolate chip, my favorite. We kicked off our boots and left them by the door.

Mildred came out of the kitchen, rubbing her hands on a kitchen towel. She was wearing an apron over a dress I’d never seen her wear before, a nice cotton print with lavender and green flowers on it. She had her hair done—I could tell because the last traces of brassy red had been cut off the ends, and her curly gray hair looked nice framing her round face. She took a fast look at her watch. I did the same. Eight thirty-five, not a normal time for drop-in visitors.

“Well,” she said. “This is …” She looked from me, to Mort, then back to me, with a question written on her face.

I glanced at Mort. He didn’t say anything. I guessed it was my turn.

“Mildred, we need to talk to you. Can we sit for a minute? We won’t stay long.”

“Well …” She looked back towards the kitchen.

Emma caught the glance, and said, “Go ahead, Mom. You should sit down for a second, anyway. You’ve been working all morning.”

Emma went into the kitchen to watch the cookies, while Mildred graciously invited us to sit. I saw myself in the big mirror over the fireplace. Hat hair—it was not a good sight. I patted my flattened curly white hair uselessly and took my place beside Mort on a soft, flowered sofa. It was comfortable, and I wanted to sit back and relax, but I didn’t. Emma peeked around the edge of the kitchen doorway and said, “Can I bring you some coffee? And a cookie?”

We declined. Emma disappeared again into the kitchen. Mildred sat across from us on an overstuffed blue chair and waited, while picking at the hem of her apron. “Is it about something at work? I can’t go in today—”