A Lonely Way to Die: A Utah O'Brien Mystery Novel (Minnesota Mysteries Series Book 2) (7 page)

I drove about thirty miles an hour because the blowing snow made it hard to see the edge of the road. There was no traffic, but there rarely is on that highway. If you keep going south, the road would eventually bring you to Warden, about 12 miles away, and the people who live there sometimes come to West Elmer to shop at the lumberyard or the grocery store. During a blizzard, they would have enough sense to stay home.

Even going so slowly, we got to the old house before Carol did. The clapboard siding was gray weathered wood, with a few patches of green, blue and yellow paint sticking to areas that were out of the weather. Abandoned swallow nests were attached to the siding, up below the eaves. A decorative shutter was missing a screw, and banged repetitively against the house. A rusty old Chevy Bel Air that was once black and white was parked in the side yard, covered with snow. It was missing the tires on the driver’s side.

The front door was unlocked. We went in. The wood stove was stone cold. Wood was stacked nearby. A couple of charred sheets of paper and a few small sticks of kindling were sitting on top of big splits of wood inside the stove. Gabe was trying to get the fire going again, but didn’t know how. His family must not go camping very often.

There was old furniture in the house that had seen better days in a previous century. Mort went down into the cellar, and I headed for the back hallway.

There were two bedrooms. Both beds had sheets, but all the blankets were on the bed in the small room. That bed also had a dark spot on the sheets, probably marking the place where the baby spent the night with her big brother curled around her to keep her warm. The puddle was frozen.

There was a small black carry-on bag on the floor next to the bed, with the handle retracted. It was empty. I checked the drawers in an old wooden dresser, and found a few pairs of underwear and socks, a t-shirt, and a sweatshirt. A paperback book,
The Lightning Thief
, was lying on the floor beside the bed. It was one of my favorites. I put the book and the clothes in the bag, and took it to the front room.

There was a small saucepan in the sink, probably the one that Gabe used to warm up the baby’s formula on the old electric stove. I tried to imagine myself at his age. Would I have been so brave and responsible? I hoped so, but, fortunately, I wasn’t tested so young.

Mort came back upstairs. “I turned off the water,” he said. “I couldn’t tell if any pipes were frozen or not. Maybe they’ll get lucky.”

I went to the other bedroom. A larger travel bag was lying on the bed. I was trying to decide if I should take Sonje’s belongings back to the museum, or if I should let the husband come out and get them, when I heard Carol Kramer come through the front door.

I went back out to the small living room. Carol’s eyes were red and her shoulders sagged. She gave me a nod, said hello to Mort, and went to an overstuffed chair. She almost fell into it. She didn’t speak for a moment, but sat there, slumped over, looking like she wasn’t sure she’d ever get up again.

Carol is a small woman, 5’5” or so, and underweight. She wore a long gray quilted winter coat, and she didn’t take it off. It was too cold for that. Her dark eyebrows were scrunched together in the middle, accenting the deep vertical lines on her forehead. She’s blond, but it isn’t natural. She’s in her early forties, but she looks older. I didn’t know her well, just enough to say ‘hi’ when we met on the street. She’s a part-time teacher’s aid at the elementary school.

I sat on the end of the couch near her chair, careful to feel for broken springs first. Mort flopped down on the other end and put one leg on his knee.

“Tell me what happened,” she said, looking at the worn rag rug on the scuffed wooden floor. “She was fine when I saw her yesterday.”

“We don’t really know yet,” I said. “Not really. I found her body out on that vacant piece of land at the end of the river walk, the Webb land, early this morning.”

“What on earth would she be doing out there?”

“We have no idea,” I said.

Mort asked if she knew of any history the woman might have with that abandoned corn field. “The high school football field backs up against it, on the north side. Maybe something happened in the past that would make her think of that place?”

Carol shook her head, confused by the question. “I don’t …” She looked at me. “And why were you out there? How did you find her?”

“My dog found her. She was covered with last night’s snow. I recognized her from yesterday, at the the diner. I called Mort and the emergency crew. When her boy saw the fire truck, he followed the men down to the river.”

She sat up straight. “What? The children were here? I didn’t know she was bringing the children. I talked to Mark a few days ago, and he said the family talked her out of bringing them.”

“Gwyneth didn’t mention the children to you at all when you talked to her yesterday at the diner?”

“No. She was in a hurry, but she didn’t say why. Lord—how did Gabriel keep the fire going?”

I looked at Mort, and he told Gabe’s story one more time.

Carol held her hand over her mouth and looked at the stove with fearful eyes. It was easy to imagine what she was seeing, the tragedy that could have taken two lives, or three, instead of one. When she was ready, she started to talk.

“That stove kept my grandmother and her whole family warm for all those years, but she knew how make it work right, how to keep fire burning longer, how to get the kindling started. I came out here and lit the fire, to make sure Sonje would come into a warm house. She could have kept it going all night. But Gabriel, a city boy, here all by himself …”

She continued, trying to focus. “Sonje got a call, right before we left the diner. The call made her angry, but she didn’t say who it was.” She brushed her hair back, away from her face, and then brushed a tear off her cheek. She seemed to be shrinking, like a balloon with a slow leak.

“You were close.” I said.

Her eyes darted towards me, then away. She adjusted her hips to get a more comfortable spot on the old chair. “We used to be,” she said, looking towards the window that gave a dusty, fly-specked view of the old, rusty Chevrolet. “After she left town, we kept writing to each other. She went to school, University of Iowa, because of their creative writing program, but we still kept in touch.”

She rubbed the fabric on her coat, thinking. Then she continued, speaking quickly, as if she was trying to get the story told and over with. “We had a falling-out after her first book was published. She wrote about my little brother, who drowned when I was eleven years old. She changed the name, and the place, and added magical stuff, so it sound totally different, but I knew who it was. I told her I didn’t think it was right, that she kind of stole part of my life. She said I was being silly. We never spoke after that.”

I let that sink in. I looked over at Mort, and shook my head, a fraction of an inch. One of his eyebrows went up, and he gave me a little nod. I turned back to the grieving woman, slumped into the beat-up old chair.

“Carol,” I said, softly, so it wouldn’t sound quite so much like I was calling her a liar. “I’ve read every single book that Sonje McCrae ever wrote. A lot of people die in her books. They’re fantasies, and they’re written for teenagers. But no children die in them. No animals, no children. Ever. Why are you saying that?”

She looked at me, then at Mort. She fiddled with her gloves for a minute, and then said, “She disguised it by making my brother Timmy into a dwarf. It was in the first book.”

She looked at her hands, and the tissue, and then took a deep breath and looked out the window again. “There were lots of little stories that we made up when we were kids that ended up in her books, too. I didn’t mind that—she started most of the stories, and I didn’t have any right to say they were mine. The dwarf’s death bothered me, though.”

She sat up a little straighter, and looked at us. “But I didn’t really break off my friendship with her, the way I said. If she’s gone, there’s no point in lying about it now. Harold didn’t want me to be friends with her. He said my trips to the city were too expensive, and it was putting ideas in my head. I pretended to be angry at her, but I still visited her a few times a year, whenever I could find an excuse to go to the city for some other reason.”

She looked back at us, pleading. “Don’t tell him. Please. He can’t know.”

I could feel my face pinching up. I looked to Mort for help.

“I remember your brother’s drowning,” he said. “I was a brand new deputy at the time. That was a bad business.” He shook his head sadly.

I waited for Mort to fill in some details about that incident, but he moved to safer ground. “Why did Sonje come to West Elmer? She hasn’t been here in years.”

“She called and said she wanted to make things up with her mother, with Mildred. Sonje and I always kept in touch, with letters and sometimes phone calls. We don’t do email, because Harold—”

She looked out the window for a second. A muscle on her jaw was jumping, until she took a deep breath and forced herself to relax.

I said, “Whose idea was it for her to stay out here? Did you offer to let her use this place?”

“No, she asked if she could stay here. We used to ride our bikes out here to visit my grandmother when we were in grade school. This is where West Elmer used to be, you know, before they moved it to the other side of the river. Of course, that was a really long time ago. This is the only original house still standing. Sonje and I would go out into the fields and find things we called ‘artifacts’ that were turned up by the plows. It was junk, really, but it was fun. The house was much nicer then, and Sonje loved my grandmother. When she called I told her the place was a wreck, but she still wanted to stay here.”

She looked around at the peeling wallpaper and the old furniture, and bit her lower lip. “We let this place go. Harold didn’t think it was worth fixing. He wanted to sell it right after my grandmother died, but it’s in my name, and there are a lot of memories here, so I said no. It was a mistake. A house doesn’t last long out here, if you don’t keep it up. It isn’t worth hardly anything, now.” She shrugged, and wiped her nose again.

“Carol,” I said, “most towns, if one of their own people get famous for any reason, even if they don’t live there any more, the town would make a really big deal about it. Maybe even put big streamers across the street or something. But Mildred never told anyone Gwyneth was the same person as Sonje McCrae, the writer. Emma and Mark must not have said anything, either. And you couldn’t have mentioned it to your friends. That’s quite a big secret for so many people to keep in a small town. Can you explain that to me?”

She nodded. “Emma and Mark kept quiet out of respect for their mother. Sonje’s success would be the talk of the town, and people would keep coming up to Mildred to ask about her famous daughter. Mildred didn’t want that, because she was hurt when Sonje moved away to live with her father. Mark asked me to not mention it, either, for Mildred’s sake. I told everyone that Sonje and I weren’t speaking to each other anymore. I didn’t tell people about the stories, because then they’d know about her books. I just told people that I was mad at her for a personal reason.”

“But Harold knew she was a writer, and that her books were selling quite well?”

“Yes, he knew. But he wouldn’t have any reason to talk about her to anybody. He’s not interested in books. I kept expecting someone to come up and tell me she was an author, especially since the entertainment channels seem to be so obsessed with her husband lately. They show her picture all the time. Someone should have recognized her, even with the black hair. Maybe they don’t say anything to me because they think I’m still mad at her.”

She shook her head and grimaced. “I told her it was a mistake to try to keep their divorce a secret. It isn’t final yet, what with the lawyers dragging things out as long as they can, but Sonje and her husband decided to break up over a year ago. Ever since then, every time Gavril Constantin is seen with a woman, they splash it all over the Internet and claim he’s having an affair behind Sonje’s back. They should have just told people. Besides, all the reporters found out about their divorce eventually, anyway.”

I asked if Sonje sounded depressed, either on the phone or yesterday, at the diner. She said no, just the opposite. “She was excited to be seeing her family again after such a long time.”

Mort asked, “Why did Sonje go to live with her father, instead of staying here? Was she taking sides in the divorce, like Mildred thought?”

She shook her head. “No, she wanted to go live in the city. She would graduate from high school in a year, and then she wanted to go to college—”

Her face took on a slight scowl, remembering. “I forgot about this, but there was something else. She said somebody older, a boy or a man, she wouldn’t say who, was bothering her. I tried to ask her what that meant, but she wouldn’t say. But I don’t think that’s why she left. She thought living in the city would be more exciting than living in a small town. She wanted to be a writer as long as I can remember, and they have more programs for kids like her in the city. I was kind of jealous, to be honest.”

Mort pressed her. “She never told you who was bothering her?”

Carol shook her head. “I forgot all about it, and I never asked. I don’t think it was really all that important.”