A Lonely Way to Die: A Utah O'Brien Mystery Novel (Minnesota Mysteries Series Book 2) (8 page)

I said, “Where did Sonje park when she met you at the diner? Did she park on the north side, or the south side?”

“South side, near the door. She had a big black car, and she pulled in right next to mine.”

“Were there any other cars in the parking lot when you got there?”

She closed her eyes, with her head off to the side. Then she shook her head. “No, but there weren’t hardly any other people in the diner, and Conrad’s gas station is across the intersection. He would just walk. Pastor Owen likes to walk, too, and the church isn’t very far. It wasn’t snowing yet.”

At least one mystery was now cleared up. John Owen, pastor of the General Baptist church, was the man I saw sitting at the counter when I saw Carol Kramer with Sonje McCrae.

Carol rubbed her chin with the back of her fist, then let her hand drop to her lap. She put both palms on the arms of her chair and pulled in her feet, getting ready to stand up. I rose first and offered a hand. There was no graceful way to get out of that chair without help.

“I’d better get the water turned off,” she said. “Harold will go ballistic if I let the pipes freeze.”

“I took care of it,” Mort said.

“Oh. Thank you. That was kind.” She picked up her purse. “She didn’t kill herself, if that’s what you’re thinking. That’s why you asked if she was depressed, but she was happy. She wasn’t depressed at all.”

Mort said, “You’re probably right. But some people are good at hiding depression.”

She shook her head, almost violently. “No. I won’t believe it. I just won’t. You’re going to look into it, aren’t you?” she said. “That’s why you’re here, asking questions.”

“I have one more question before you go,” Mort said. “Gabe said his mother had something to give you. Would you mind telling us what that was?”

Her face closed down, and she became almost sullen. “He must have misunderstood,” she said. “Sonje didn’t give me anything. She did pay for my coffee, though.”

Before she left, she gave me her a different cell phone number. She didn’t want us calling the house again.

When her car pulled out of the driveway, I asked Mort if the sheriff found Sonje’s cell phone in her car.

“I’ll ask him when he calls,” he said.

I decided to take Sonje’s luggage with us, along with Gabe’s. There was nothing in that house for Sonje’s husband to see. Or the sheriff, either, for that matter. While Mort waited, I gathered Sonje’s clothes, picked up the two bags, and went outside to throw them into the back of my truck. They were expensive and the snow in the truck bed probably wasn’t good for them, but Mort wouldn’t have a place to sit if I put them up front.

On the trip back we didn’t talk much, until Mort said, “When do you think she was lying? When she said she was mad at Gwyneth? Or when she said she made that up, and they were really friends all along?”

I looked over at him, then back at the road. “Maybe it doesn’t matter. Either way, I can’t see how it would give her a motive for killing Sonje. I would like to know what Sonje gave her, though. It must be important, or she wouldn’t lie about it.”

“Yeah. Or she’s so used to lying to her husband that it’s become a habit, and she lies even when she doesn’t need to.”

“That’s another thing,” I said. “I can see why she lied to Harold. He doesn’t have any right to choose her friends. But why would she tell other people in town that she was mad at Sonje? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I can remember people talking about it, back when it happened. I wasn’t all that interested, though. I didn’t pay much attention.”

The half-mile drive back to town didn’t take long, but I pictured Gabe, a twelve-year old kid, carrying a baby and wearing tennis shoes and no hat or gloves, trudging through the snow at the side of the road right before dawn. It made my head hurt, just thinking about it.

It was so dark in the storm that Angie had her neon sign turned on at the front of the diner when I drove across the bridge. I checked my watch—still only fifteen minutes to ten.

I pulled into the parking lot in front of the museum and parked between Sam’s red Silverado and his snowmobile. His pickup wasn’t there when we left to see Carol, so Sam and Gabe must have gone by Randy Johnson’s house to pick it up on their way back from taking Molly out tracking. All of the snow on the mammoth was gone, blown off by the wind.

Mort went into the museum to get warm, but I had a few questions for Angie. I headed across the street.

EIGHT

Sonje’s car was the only one in the diner’s parking lot, but Angie had a few customers inside. Pete Hansen, Rita’s father, was sitting on his usual stool, close to the cash register. Oscar Krueger and his wife, Amy, were sitting in the booth closest to the front door. That was the booth where Oscar’s father, Conrad Krueger, was sitting the day before, when I first saw Sonje McCrae.

Oscar looks like a young carbon copy of his father—square jaw, short-cropped hair the color of old straw, two-day old scruff on the cheeks, and blue eyes with laugh lines. His pregnant wife is pretty, with shoulder-length dark brown wavy hair. She worked as a waitress for Angie for several years after high school, and she was one of the best. Angie had to let her go when the recession hit.

I like to think I had something to do with the couple getting married, because of the time they both spent in that same booth the year before. They used their computer skills to help me out of a jam when I was framed for murder.

The diner still looked exactly the way it did when my mother bought the place, when I was still in diapers. It was built in the 1940s, and it still looks the same as it did all those years ago. The only modern-looking things in the building are the computerized cash register and the TV sitting on top of the soft-serve machine.

I stopped to say hello to the kids, and to ask Amy how she was doing. Her baby bump was so big, I was surprised she could fit herself into the booth. She told me that she and Oscar’s mother were going to pick out colors for the baby’s room that afternoon.

When the chit-chat was done, I asked Oscar if he still had his laptop.

“Sure,” he said. “Why?”

“I could use some help with some online research,” I said. “You and Amy are really good at that. If I can talk Angie into sharing her WiFi password with you, would you have time to look up a few things online?”

He grinned. “I’d love to. Does it have something to do with the dead lady you found? Are you worried that reporters will find out you were trespassing on Susan Webb’s land?”

Amy giggled at his little joke. I smiled, too, to be polite. “No, it’s not about me this time. I need to find out what the Internet has to say about that woman I found this morning. I’d like to know more about her husband, too.”

Oscar was already scooting out of the booth. He leaned over and gave Amy a fast kiss, and then headed out to get his laptop. He didn’t have far to go—he and Amy were living with his parents, and their house was right behind the gas station, one block down on the other side of Main Street. Oscar’s father has owned the only station in town for as long as I can remember.

Angie was standing behind the counter, reading an old People magazine. She looked up and brushed her shoulder-length blond hair out of her eyes when I moved over to the counter.

“I got a call from that Sabina Greene, the reporter from Randall,” she said. “She wanted to know if I’d seen the dead lady’s kids. They’re saying on the news that the woman brought them to town with her. I guess the housekeeper blabbed. The sheriff told the reporters the kids are safe, but he won’t tell them where they are. It’s driving them nuts.”

“Great. I’m surprised the reporters haven’t shown up here in helicopters or something.”

“They’re in Randall, camped out in front of the sheriff’s office, hoping to get a look at Gavril Constantin. They’ll be mobbing this place when he gets here.”

“What did you tell the reporter?”

“Didn’t know a thing.” She smiled and batted her eyelashes innocently. Then she poured me a cup of coffee, black. She held up the pot, asking Pete if he wanted a refill. He did. She splashed coffee in his mug.

He turned to me. “How are the kids? Rita called and said she checked them for frostbite.”

“They’re fine. It was nice of her to come over. How’s your new salvage business going?”

“The boys took down a barn last week. We got a lot of fine old wood out of it, and some real nice hardware. Not many buyers, yet, though. The new bank notes haven’t really caught on.”

I nodded. Oscar Krueger and his friend Percy Walborne came up with the idea of printing our own money. Local currencies were becoming popular all over the country, but we didn’t have a lot of local products for people to buy with the notes. Angie didn’t have any locally-grown items on her menu. That meant that she couldn’t accept the local currency, because her suppliers wouldn’t accept them.

Our Emergency Planning Committee was trying to come up with ways to grow or build more products locally, beyond Pete’s salvaged lumber and the hazelnuts, but we got a late start. In prior years, we spent all our time worrying about the electric grid getting hacked, but it was the banks that got hacked, instead.

Angie put the pot on the burner and turned back to the counter. She moved her magazine to one side and leaned on her elbows in front of me. “The reporters are saying it’s suicide, but you and Mort wouldn’t be looking into it if you didn’t think it was murder. Have you found any clues yet?”

“I wish. We’re just asking a few questions. Wally asked us to. Sort of. Well, at least he didn’t tell us we couldn’t.”

She grinned at that. “You should charge him for your time.”

I gave her a wry smile. “I’m not going to hold my breath,” I said. “What can you tell me about what happened in here yesterday?”

Angie shrugged. “Not much. Carol Kramer was here first. She chatted with the pastor at the counter for a few minutes. Then she sat down at the booth, and waited until the other woman showed up, the dead one.”

“The reporters haven’t mentioned the connection with the Price family yet, have they?”

Pete said, “What connection?”

I looked at him and made a snap decision. “Sonje McCrae used to be Gwyneth Price, Mildred’s oldest daughter. Mildred is really upset. If people find out, they’ll start calling around to share the news, and pretty soon there’s going to be a hundred reporters on Mildred’s lawn.”

He said, “Who would I tell? But I feel for poor Mildred. That’s got to be hard. I hope she doesn’t blame herself.”

Angie said, “So, anyway, she came in and they hugged, and they went over to that table over there. Then you came in.” I bring fresh eggs to the diner every afternoon, from Mort’s chicken house. He keeps the chickens out behind the museum, close to my mother’s little vintage trailer. My place has turned into a small farm since my mother sold the diner and retired.

She said, “They talked for a while, but not very long. The lady, Sonje or Gwyneth or whoever, looked happy and a little excited, but nervous, too. She kept looking out the window. She was looking south, not at your hairy elephant, the way people do when they’re not from around here.”

“Her kids were out there,” I said, “in that old house about a half a mile down the road. The one Carol Kramer inherited from her grandmother.”

“Why would they stay out there? OK, never mind—so they talk, maybe fifteen minutes at most, and then they got up. They were heading towards the door when the woman with Carol Kramer got a phone call. She talked for a few seconds, looked irritated, said ‘no’ a couple of times—pretty firmly, too. Then she puts the phone back in her purse and pulls out an envelope and hands it to Carol. They hug again, and she takes off. Carol stayed a few minutes longer, talking to Conrad Krueger, and then she left, too.”

“Did they both drive away in the same direction? Was Sonje heading back towards the farmhouse?”

“Didn’t see. I was getting ready to close up. I’m binge-watching
Orange is the New Black
, and I wanted to get home. I canceled my Internet subscription, but it’s good for a few more days. Hey!”

The change in tone startled me.

“When is Gavril Constantin coming to pick up the kids? You’re going to bring him over here, aren’t you?”

She was acting like a school girl with overpriced tickets for the latest boy band.

“His wife just died,” I reminded her.

“So? That doesn’t mean I can’t look, does it? Besides, they’re getting a divorce. Everybody knows that. And did you see those tats? He sings like the devil—but I probably shouldn’t say that, what with all the gospel songs. Say—you don’t think he did it, do you?”

“What? Kill his wife? He couldn’t. He was in Europe all week. He was on a plane, flying home, when the sheriff called him. I think that’s a pretty good alibi.”

“Yeah, I guess. Conrad was here yesterday, too. Maybe he did it.”

I smiled, and shook my head. “Did anything else happen that was unusual, maybe even earlier in the day?”

Angie looked at the ceiling for a few seconds, remembering. “We did get a customer that I never saw before. He had real money, and tried to order an Elmerburger, but I don’t keep the Limburger cheese on hand anymore. There just aren’t enough orders for Elmerburgers, since the economy tanked.”