Frozen Stiff (11 page)

Not quite eight months, but then Claire had heard that the baby was born premature.

Claire had told Amy that she didn’t like coincidences. This one definitely needed more investigating.

3:30 pm

Amy had volunteered to talk to John Gordon about his relationship with Daniel Walker and to get the house key from him, but as she drove down the long, winding driveway to the farmhouse, she wished she had handed off the job. She hated having to sound like she was accusing John of anything. Not that she really knew him that well—he was a good ten years older than her—but she had always looked up to him.

As she was getting close to the house, a snowmobile slipped by her in the ditch, going the other way, but whoever was on it was too small to be John.

She wasn’t looking forward to seeing John Gordon scowl at her. But when he answered the door, she was pleasantly surprised. He looked almost happy to see her and invited her in with some cordiality in his voice.

“What’s up?” he asked as he motioned her to take a seat.

“I’m still trying to figure out what happened to Daniel Walker.”

“But it was an accident, wasn’t it?”

“Well, we’re not sure yet. Still checking it out.” She asked, “What do you think happened?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Got me. Dan’s pretty darn charming. But he’s also one slippery fish. Sometimes I think these folks that come here from the cities don’t get it that we’re their neighbors and they’re going to have to live with us for a long time. He’s made some enemies. Even animals know enough not to foul their own nests.”

Amy nodded. “I know what you mean.”

“But as far as him weaseling the farm away from my mom, we got some good news this morning. Our lawyer called and said we might be able to wiggle out of the purchase agreement with Walker. Seems it wasn’t handled the way it should have been. He said worse-case scenario we could call my mom a vulnerable adult and claim he took advantage of her. I’d hate to do that, but it’s nice to have it in our back pocket in case we need to use it. But either way, it looks like we might get to keep the farm.”

“That’s great, John.”

“Yeah, it’s such a relief. I mean, I know it’s not a done deal yet, but I guess I’m hopeful.” He looked around. “I suppose I should offer you some coffee.”

“Wouldn’t say no,” Amy said.

He handed her a John Deere mug and filled it to the brim. “I made the coffee so it’s a little stronger than Mom’s.”

“Strong is good.”

He sat down across from her. “How can I help you with Daniel Walker?”

“Well, we’ve been checking on who has keys to the house. At the moment, we’re treating it like a crime scene.”

“That sounds so official.” He laughed, then said, “I’m sorry. Sometimes it’s just hard for me to take you seriously as a cop. I mean I knew you when you were knee high to a grasshopper.”

“Sometimes it’s hard for me to take me seriously. But I’ve been doing this job for a couple years now. Even moved up in the ranks. I’m not the newbie anymore. That makes a difference.” Amy asked the question she had come to ask. “Have you still got a key to Walker’s house?”

“Sure. Sometimes Dan would have me go check on something for him when he wasn’t here. It’s always handy to have a neighbor with a key.”

“Absolutely,” Amy agreed.

He stood up and went to a line of hooks by the back door and pulled down a key with a piece of masking tape attached to the ring, with the name Walker written on it. “Do you want it?”

“Yeah, just for the time being. Until we figure this whole thing out.” Amy heard a snowmobile pull up to the house. When she looked out the window, Edna Gordon was climbing off of it. At least, Amy guessed it was Edna under the fluorescent orange parka.

When she entered the house, Edna pushed the hood back and took off her glasses which were fogging up. Then she squinted her eyes and smiled when she saw it was Amy. “Colder than a witch’s teat out there.”

“And you really get the wind up here.”

Edna struggled out of the parka. “Yeah, talk about your windchill factor. I don’t even listen to what it is anymore. Just makes my bones ache.”

She pulled a bundle of mail out of her sweater and handed the pile to John. “Nothing but bills and charities. One way or another they want your money.”

“You went to get the mail on the snowmobile?” Amy asked.

“Well, I’m sure not going to walk in this weather.”

“No doubt. I don’t think I’ve been on one for a few years. Used to go out with a friend a lot when I was in high school. My dad would never get one even though I begged him to.”

“You want to go for a ride?” John asked.

Amy remembered one incident where she mired the snowmobile in a huge drift and the guys she was sledding with had to come and dig her out. “I’m not that good at driving.”

“I’ll take you.”

Amy paused. A ride through the white landscape protected behind John’s broad back sounded thrilling. “I’m on duty.”

“You could just say you were casing the territory.”

She laughed at his attempt at cop lingo. “I guess I could.”

Edna handed her the orange parka. “You need to put this on. Zip it all the way up. You got good gloves?”

Amy held out her leather choppers, then she took the parka and pulled it over her jacket. She swam in it, but she pulled the cord in the hood tight. The bottom of the parka came down to her knees, which would give her good protection from the wind. “How do I look?”

“Like a pluffy pumpkin,” Edna said.

John grabbed a down vest and then put a barn jacket on over that. “We won’t go out for long. Just a short spin.”

The snow squeaked and crunched under their feet as they walked out to the snowmobile. A Polaris, Amy noticed, a few years old. John climbed aboard, started it and moved forward for her to climb on back. She swung her leg over the seat and found herself tucked in right behind him. She could feel the warmth of his body through his jacket.

“Stick your hands under my arms. It will protect them.” He revved the motor, then gave it some gas and it grabbed the packed-down snow in the driveway and slid around. He aimed at the ditch and down they went. Then they rode straight up and out of it and onto a field on the other side.

There was a good two feet of snow on the farmlands and it made for a perfect ride on the machine. They sailed along, John gently slaloming over the open field.

Amy had forgotten how thrilling it was to snowmobile: the icy sharpness of the wind on your face, the breathless blue of the sky, the heart-opening feeling of being in another world, the buzz of the machine trailing behind.

She could tell that John had driven a snowmobile as long as he had driven a tractor, which was probably a good thirty years. Kids started on farms when they were in their early teens. While he went faster than she would have and he took sharper turns than she might have, she felt completely comfortable riding with him. He knew the land, he knew the machine, and he wasn’t particularly a risk taker.

At least she hoped he wasn’t. She prayed he had nothing to do with what had happened to Daniel Walker.

2 January: 4:30 pm

Y
up, we’re finally doing it.” Claire had been meaning to tell her sister Bridget about her upcoming wedding, but had been so busy that she finally had to grab a moment at work and call her at the pharmacy. The office had cleared out so there wasn’t anyone to overhear her conversation.

“Well, it’s about time. This calls for a celebration. When are you planning for the big event—in June?”

“No, Valentine’s Day. And I don’t want it to be so big.”

“What? But that’s only a month and a half away.”

“We’re going to have a small ceremony and then maybe a nice dinner afterwards.”

“That’s all?”

“Hey, Rich is over fifty. We’ve both already been married once. I don’t need to wear the big white dress again. I know he’s just doing it so he can get my pension.”

Bridget started laughing. “So you asked him.”

“I figured it was my turn.”

“You two are wild. Let me know what I can do.” Bridget paused for a second, then said, “Well, I might have a date.”

“Great. Who?”

“A doctor.”

“Terrific. Maybe he’ll be as smart as you.”

“He’s younger than me.”

“Good. How much younger?”

“Only three years. He’s from India.”

“Wonderful. What’s his name?”

“Satish.”

“I can’t wait to meet him. Let’s make it before the wedding. We’ll have you over for dinner.”

“We’ve only been out on a couple dates, but I feel like I’ve known him a long time. He’s very sweet and he has such good manners. I’ll tell you more later. I gotta get back to work.”

“Me too. Hey, before you go, is it possible for a woman to get pregnant and go to term and not know that she’s pregnant?”

“I’ve heard of it happening. A big woman who just figures she’s putting on weight. A friend of a friend went in to the doctor because she thought she had a tumor growing in her belly. Turned out she was eight months pregnant. Why?”

“A girl at Meg’s school just had a baby in her bed. Claimed she didn’t even know she was pregnant.”

“Sounds like an easy way to do it.”

“Come over some time. Bring that child of yours.”

“Will do.”

When Claire looked up, Sherri Walker was standing at the front desk of the sheriff’s department. Claire almost didn’t recognize the woman—she was wearing her hair up in a ponytail and had wire-rimmed glasses on. She looked drawn and tired. As Claire walked over to her, she also saw that Sherri had little if no make-up on and was wearing the same clothes as yesterday.
She obviously hadn’t come prepared to spend the night, which told Claire a bit more about her relationship with her estranged husband.

“Thanks for coming down,” Claire said.

“Feels good to get out of that hospital.”

“Let’s go someplace where we can talk privately.” Claire led the way to a small conference room. All that was in the room was a table and four chairs. No windows to the outside, no posters on the walls. A bright overhead light glared down on them.

“It sounds like your husband is doing much better today.”

“Yes, it’s quite a relief. I still can’t believe he’s going to make it.” Sherri sounded genuinely pleased.

“I need to ask you a few questions.”

“Yes, anything I can do to help you find out who did this to Dan.”

“Mrs. Walker, we can’t be sure that anyone else is involved. We have no evidence that anyone else was at the house with Mr. Walker and just your word for it that the door was locked.”

“But it was locked,” Sherri insisted.

“You think it was—but maybe it was just jammed.”

“No, I had to flip the deadbolt.”

“In that case there is a very slight chance that your husband locked the door behind himself and then lost the key.”

“That sounds ridiculous.”

Claire had to admit it did. “What do you think happened?”

“I’m beginning to think that Danielle might have been behind it.”

“Why?”

“Well, I just learned from her today that if Dan died, then she stood to inherit most everything.”

“This was news to you?”

“Yes, she claimed that when Dan and I separated, he changed his will and made her the sole beneficiary. It does sound like something he would do. Dan likes to believe he and Danielle are so close but she is very headstrong and independent. She’s used to getting her way with him. If she wanted some money and he wouldn’t give it to her I could see her trying something like this.”

“You think she would kill her dad?”

“No, I think she would get someone else to do it.”

“She says she was out with friends for New Year’s Eve, but I will check into that.” Claire looked at her notebook. “I also wanted to ask you about your cleaning lady.”

“Sara Hegstrom? Why?”

“Well, I was just wondering who pays her?”

“I used to, I suppose Dan does now.”

“Does Bonnie Hegstrom clean for you too?”

“She’s filled in for her mom a few times. I don’t think she does as good a job, but I figure she’s got to learn somehow.”

“So if Dan paid Bonnie for a cleaning in the spring, then that would mean that you weren’t there?”

“I don’t get why you’re asking these questions.”

“I’ll explain in a moment. Would he only have paid her if you weren’t there?”

“Yes, that’s most likely.”

“Why are you and your husband separated?”

Sherri tilted her head back and tears filled her eyes. She dabbed at them and Claire gave her a Kleenex. “A couple times
I came down to the cabin and found long dark hairs in the bed. I obviously don’t have dark hair and Dan barely has hair. I tried to let it go but things were not going well between us anyways. One night I blew up and just stormed out.”

She paused for a moment, drawing in a deep breath. “I thought he’d come after me. I thought he loved me. But he didn’t. A few weeks later when we finally talked, he admitted he had been sleeping with other women, but he said they weren’t important, he said the marriage just wasn’t doing it for him. A while later he did ask me to come back, but by then I was seeing more clearly how unhappy I had been in our life.” She rubbed her hands on her face. “You know, I do love him, but I just don’t want to go through that again. It’s too awful.”

“Would it surprise you if one of the women he had been sleeping with was Bonnie Hegstrom?”

Sherri cocked her head to one side. “Bonnie? Little Bonnie? But she’s just a kid, still in high school.”

“Well, that little girl just had a baby. And she was working at your house about nine months earlier. I was just wondering what you know about that.”

“Nothing,” Sherri started laughing and then it turned to tears again. “Oh, that poor girl. I don’t know. She’s certainly not Dan’s type. He likes them long-legged and sassy. I should know—he started going out with me while he was still married. Not how I would describe Bonnie. But she was available. I suppose it’s possible. What did she have—a boy or a girl?”

“A little boy.”

5 pm

Amy found Sara Hegstrom standing next to a crib in the nursery, staring down at a mewling baby.