Frozen Stiff (21 page)

He managed to convince her to crawl into bed. He also got her to take a couple Tylenol. When Amy called and told them that she had taken Andy Palmquist into custody, Claire finally relaxed.

After Rich had turned off all the lights in the house, said good-night to Meg, who was reading, he walked quietly into their darkened bedroom and climbed into bed. He was surprised to find that Claire was still awake.

“You came after me,” she whispered. “You found me. You always find me. If it weren’t for you, I might be dead.”

“Now don’t go getting all mushy on me.”

“No, I mean it,” Claire said more clearly. “This is good. I’ve been figuring out something, Rich.”

“What’s that?”

“I think I know why I resisted getting married to you for so long.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. It has to do with my first husband.” She nudged her head into the crook of his arm. He tightened his grip on her.

“Hmm.”

“I think I was worried that if I married you, you would get killed, like he did, because of me. I didn’t really know that’s what I was thinking until I saw Daniel Walker dead, his wife holding his head in her lap. I remember how I felt when Steve was killed and I never wanted to go through that again, and somehow I thought, if I didn’t marry you, then you wouldn’t get killed. I could keep you safe.”

“Makes a convoluted sense.”

“Isn’t that the only kind of sense there is?”

“I guess.” He thought for a second, then asked, “But now you do want to marry me?”

“Yes, I think I’m finally trusting that you won’t get killed. And you more than proved that tonight.”

“How so?”

“Well, not only will you not get killed, but you’ll save me.” She started to cry.

“And you save me.” He kissed her wet face. “Go to sleep. I’m right here.”

6 January: 9:15 am

F
or all his height, Andy Palmquist looked like a young boy when Claire walked in the conference room to talk to him. He was wearing the orange uniform of a prisoner and his eyes looked bruised as if he’d been crying all night long. She wouldn’t wonder he had. How had he come to this? How could he possibly have killed a man? She was about to try to find out.

“Hey, Andy,” she said as she pushed open the door. “Surprised to see me?”

He looked up, defensive. “I told that woman where you were. They told me you were all right,” he said quietly, his head facing the table, his elbows holding him up on either side.

She waited to see if he’d say more. She had come to learn how effective silence could be in an interrogation.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I just didn’t know what to do.”

Claire turned and asked Amy to bring her a large coffee and a can of Coke. Then she walked in and sat down across from Andy. She had some papers that she shuffled around while she waited for him to lift his head.

Finally, he looked up again. “I don’t know what more you want to know. I already said I did it, that I killed him.”

“Yes, I know. Amy told me.” She stacked the papers with a slap. “I just have a few questions and I was wondering if you could help me understand why.”

“Just for fun, I guess.”

Claire waited a beat. Then she tapped the table once with her pencil and said, “That’s not what Amy said. She said, last night, you told her you did it for ‘her’. Who’s her?”

He shrugged.

Amy came to the door and handed her the drinks.

“You want a Coke?” Claire asked.

He shrugged again. She took that as a yes and pushed the can across the table to him.

“Andy, this is very serious. You’re old enough that you could be charged as an adult. Unless you start talking, there’s no way you’re going to see the light of day again. We might be able to help you if we knew why you did this.”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled. He put his hands around the Coke can but didn’t open it.

She waited.

“He bugged me.”

“How?”

“He thought he was so great. Like he got everything.”

“So you killed him because he bugged you? That seems a little extreme.”

“What do you know?”

“Not much,” she conceded.

He lifted his eyes to her. “He pulled people in, promising them stuff, and then when he was tired of them, he’d push them away.”

“Did he do that to you?”

“No,” Andy said and looked down again. “I didn’t really know him that good.”

“Who did he do that to? Danielle?”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“You and Danielle were friends, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, we hung out.”

“Did you kill Mr. Walker to help out Danielle?”

He shook his head.

“Was he being mean to her?”

“Kinda?”

“Like what?”

“Just like that. He was a puppet master. Pulling the strings. Controlling everything.”

“It’s hard to watch that sort of thing, isn’t it?”

Andy popped the Coke and took a swig. He nodded.

“What made you do it, Andy? What pushed you to shoot Daniel Walker?”

“It just got to me.”

“What?”

He didn’t say anything.

Claire decided to tell him what she had seen. “I was up there right after he died. Mrs. Walker was holding his head in her lap, tears streaming down her face. You killed her husband.”

He lifted his head up at the mention of Sherri’s name, then asked, “Sherri? She was crying?”

Claire noticed the surprise and anger that was in Andy’s voice. A thought flashed through her mind. “Yes, she was crying. She was very upset.”

“But she didn’t love him. She told me that.” His hands locked together as he struggled with this news.

“That’s who you did it for, wasn’t it, Andy?”

“He treated her like shit. Sleeping around on her. I just wanted her to be free of him.”

“You did it for Sherri, didn’t you?”

“She acted like she loved me. Then it changed. He wanted her back again. I couldn’t stand the thought of her being with him, that old man.”

“It wasn’t Danielle,” Claire said, more to herself than to Andy.

“Danielle and I went out a few times, then she brought me home to meet her parents. That’s when I met Sherri. She had me come up to the house to help her with the garden. We got to know each other. I’d never met anyone like her. Then when they separated, I’d drive up to the cities to see her. She made me promise not to tell anyone what was going on between us until the divorce was final. But I know she loved me. I just wanted it to stay that way.”

“What happened between you and Sherri to make you want to kill Mr. Walker?”

“As soon as he got hurt, it all changed. She wouldn’t answer my phone calls when she was at the hospital. I knew she was there. I had to talk to Danielle to get any information on what was going on. Sherri totally cut me off. I couldn’t stand it.”

“So you went to their house. Did you intend on killing him?”

“Danielle told me that Sherri was there in the house with him. I couldn’t stand it. She was supposed to be with me. I didn’t want him to put his hands on her. She said it was over between them. I just wanted to stop him from touching her again.”

12 February: 5 pm

“Even I was taken in by her,” Claire said to Rich as she packed their suitcase for their brief honeymoon. He was sprawled on the bed watching her. “Sherri admitted to having a fling, as she called it, with Andy. She claimed she was just so hurt by Walker wanting a divorce and that Andy was right there. The more I think about it, the more I feel that Daniel and Sherri were really meant for each other—both of them fooling around with kids half their age.”

“So Andy pled guilty?”

“Yes, thank god. For a while his lawyer was threatening to throw the blame on Sherri. I was not looking forward to having to go to trial with that case. Andy saw reason, I think his mom had a good talking with him, and he took the twenty years. For a kid that age that has to seem like eternity.”

“I imagine.”

“His mom brought in his gameboy and I swear he sits in his cell and plays it twenty hours a day.”

“Stupid videogames. But I guess they’re one way to avoid thinking about what’s going to happen.”

“I suppose.” She folded his flannel pajamas and tucked them in next to hers. They were only going for two days so she was just packing one suitcase. “What’s weird is that Daniel had actually cut Sherri out of the will so she won’t be getting a cent from the estate.”

“So Danielle gets everything?”

“No. It gets even better. Because it was written that the inheritors were to be his progeny—he didn’t stipulate Danielle—Bonnie’s little boy will be getting half the estate. That will go a
long way to helping her out. She just got the results back of the DNA test which proved that he was Walker’s son.”

“Nice compensation for her,” Rich said.

“I guess.” Claire pushed down on the pile of clothes. She had a little more room in the suitcase. “You want me to pack another pair of jeans for you?”

“Why don’t you throw in my corduroys, they’re a little more big city.”

“Red Wing’s really the big city.” Claire laughed.

Claire tucked in the pair he handed her and managed to close the suitcase. “The weird thing is that Andy swears up and down that he did not lock Daniel out of his house on New Year’s Eve. He says he was at a party, which Meg and Curt confirm, and then he headed right into town to see Sherri. Which also gives Sherri a rock-solid alibi. Maybe Sherri was wrong about the door being locked.” Claire scrunched up her shoulders. guess we’ll never know.”

5:15 pm

As she drove up to the top of the bluff, Amy noticed a light shower of snow. The temperature was still sub-zero and it didn’t usually snow when it was this cold, but this was a phenomena she had noticed all her life. Rather than the snow falling out of clouds in the sky, these flakes seemed to precipitate out of the brittle air.

She was nervous. Not that she was worried about meeting John’s mother, because she had already met her many times, but more about how John would treat her in front of his mother. It was her first official visit to the farm as his girlfriend.

John and she had fallen into the habit of him coming over to her apartment when she was done with work two or three times a week. They would get a pizza or throw together some dinner—she was surprised to find that he wasn’t a bad cook—and then just hang out watching TV or sometimes playing cards, 500 or gin rummy. Then he’d stay the night. She was a little worried about how close she was getting to him, not knowing if and when he would have to leave again for work.

But he had asked her to come to the farm for dinner and then said that if she wanted to she was welcome to stay overnight there. Amy had brought her flannel nightgown, but wasn’t sure she would be comfortable spending the night. Even though they were grown adults, it would just seem weird to do that with his mother there. She’d have to see how she felt once she was there.

She turned in the well-plowed driveway. John had been picking up some money plowing out driveways for people and certainly did a nice job on his own. Amy could tell he was getting a little stir-crazy and she hoped that he would find some steady work soon.

When she entered the house, she relaxed. The kitchen was warm and bright, the table set with colorful fiestaware.

“We’re having pork roast and potatoes. Nothing special. But I made an apple pie. How does that sound?” Edna Gordon asked.

“Sounds great. I haven’t had a roast in a while. When you live alone, doesn’t make sense to cook like that.”

Edna nodded. “I know. When John was gone, I’d often just have a baked potato or scrambled eggs for dinner. That’s no way to eat. I’m glad to have him back.”

John came in with a bottle of wine. “I dug this out of our basement wine cellar. All three bottles down there. But one of them was this champagne.” He held it aloft. “We’re celebrating. I wanted to wait to tell you tonight, Amy. We have the farm back.” He walked over and gave her a kiss on the lips.

“Wow! That’s wonderful!” Amy’s heart leaped. He would be staying on to work the farm. She was so relieved.

John popped the cork and Edna pulled out three dessert glasswares, explaining, “We don’t have any of those special glasses for this bubbly. We’ll have to use these.”

“How did this come about?” Amy asked.

“Well, Danielle didn’t want to go through with the purchase,” John said. “I guess she’s got her eye on a condo in the cities. She has no use for a farm. So she released us from the contract.”

They all lifted their glasses. John said, “To the farm. May it stay in our family forever.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Edna.

They all clinked glasses.

The dinner went fine. The pot roast was well-cooked, probably overcooked, but it was just the way Amy liked it, with the meat crisped on the outside.

Finishing up the champagne with a slice of apple pie, she was full and happy. John had been very affectionate with her and Edna very welcoming.

“This was absolutely wonderful, Mrs. Gordon,” Amy said after eating her last bite of pie.

“Heavens sake, call me Edna. If you’re going to be staying overnight, you can’t keep that up.”

Amy looked over at John and he just smiled back at her and asked, “How was work today?”

“Well, we got the news that Andy Palmquist pled guilty to Daniel Walker’s murder. He’s looking at twenty years in prison.”

“Poor boy. Not that he doesn’t deserve it for killing Mr. Walker, but that man was no good,” said Edna as she started to clear the table.

“But we still don’t know how he got locked out of the house on New Year’s Eve.” Amy said.

Edna stopped what she was doing and said, “You know I’ve been wondering about that. I didn’t think to mention it at the time.”

“What, Mom?” John asked.

“Well, what really happened to him? I’m not really clear on that.”

“Where have you been?” John said.

“I don’t know. I haven’t gone any place. It’s just been too cold.”

“Well, he was taking a sauna and went outside to cool off and somehow got locked out of his house. He almost died.”

Edna sat back down in her chair. “Oh, no.”

“Mom, what is it?”

“Well, I might have done it.”