Heart of Ice (23 page)

Louis heard a mewing sound and turned. It was Maisey, sitting in the shadows. The chair creaked as she got up and came to him. They stood side by side, staring down at Edward Chapman.

“I couldn’t leave him cold like that,” Maisey whispered. “I put the blankets over him and brought the heater in.”

Her eyes glistened in the orange glow, and her face was streaked with tear tracks. Louis stepped between her and the bed and put his hands on her shoulders.

“You need to go downstairs now, Maisey,” he said. “The doctor’s coming. We’ll take care of Mr. Edward now.”

“I can’t leave him alone,” she whispered.

“It’s all right,” Louis said. “I’ll stay here with him. The best thing you can do for Mr. Edward now is to go downstairs
and wait for the doctor. Bring him up when he gets here, okay?”

Maisey was straining to look beyond Louis to the bed, but he tightened his grip on her shoulders. “Maisey, please. You have to do what I say, okay?”

Her body seemed to give suddenly, as if she were exhaling every bit of air from her lungs. Eyes glistening, she turned slowly and left the room. Louis went back to the bed. Except for his mouth hanging slightly open, Edward Chapman looked as if he were asleep. His eyes were closed, and his arms were at his sides under the blankets Maisey had put over him. The plastic tubing was still in his nostrils, and Louis could hear the faint hiss of the oxygen.

A sudden stab of a buried memory came to him—his own mother, Lila, lying motionless in her bed, her body wasted from alcohol poisoning, her skin yellowed with hepatitis, her face frozen in a death grimace. There had been nothing peaceful about her leaving, nothing much peaceful about her life, in fact. At least Edward Chapman looked like he hadn’t suffered, in death or life.

Louis heard a sound and turned to see a short, round man coming into the room. He carried a black doctor’s satchel.

“I’m Dr. Mitchell from the island health center,” he said, nodding to Louis. His glasses caught the glow of the space heater as he looked down at Edward Chapman.

Louis took a step back and watched as the doctor examined Edward Chapman’s eyes, prodded his limbs, and then checked the oxygen tank and every pill vial on the nightstand. With a glance at Louis, the doctor
looked up something in a black notebook and then picked up the phone and dialed Chapman’s personal physician in Bloomfield Hills. The conversation was short, and it seemed Mitchell was not alarmed by Chapman’s death.

As Dr. Mitchell hung up, Ross appeared in the doorway.

“It looks like your father died from natural causes,” Dr. Mitchell said to Ross. He glanced at Louis. “Mr. Chapman had an atrioventricular septal defect.” When he saw Louis’s blank expression he added, “It’s a large hole in the middle of the heart. He was born with it.”

“He had surgery when he was just seven,” Ross said. “And open-heart surgery five years ago.”

Dr. Mitchell reached down and turned off the oxygen. “I’m surprised he lasted this long.”

“I’d like to take him home as soon as possible,” Ross said.

Dr. Mitchell nodded. “You can make arrangements. I’ll have a death certificate for you in a couple of days.”

“Thank you,” Ross said quietly.

Dr. Mitchell pulled a card out of his pocket and held it out to Ross. “This is a funeral home in St. Ignace. They can take care of everything for you.”

Ross took the card and pulled the doctor aside to talk privately. Louis used the moment to head back downstairs. Rafsky and Joe were waiting in the parlor. The room was full of bright light, the slanting morning sun falling full and warm through the big windows.

“What’s it look like?” Rafsky asked.

Louis shook his head. “Natural death. He had a hole in his heart.”

Rafsky got up from his chair and picked up his coat. “Then we’re finished here. Where’s Clark?”

“He went outside,” Joe said.

Rafsky left, presumably to find Clark and get a ride back to town. Joe stayed in her chair, looking at Louis.

“I need to get going, too,” she said. “Not just from here but back to Echo Bay.”

Louis was quiet. It had been pulling at him for days now, this feeling that things were coming to an end. The season here on the island, the search for Julie’s killer, his chances to fix things with Joe. If he wasn’t careful, his moment would be lost.

He looked around the room. “Where’s Maisey?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Joe said.

Louis was wondering if she had gone back upstairs when he saw a blur of green move past the window. Maisey was out on the porch. He excused himself from Joe and went outside.

Maisey was standing on the far end of the porch, staring out at the lake. It glistened in the bright morning sun like a broad, flat mirror. Not a wave in sight, not a cloud on the horizon.

Louis moved to her. She didn’t seem to see him. She was wearing a green plaid overcoat but hadn’t even bothered to button it. She had just wrapped herself in it as if she were trying to retreat into a cocoon. He touched her arm.

“I know you cared for him,” Louis said. “I’m sorry.”

Maisey didn’t look at him. “I loved him,” she said. “We loved each other.”

Louis looked out at the lake. He wondered what would happen to her now, if Ross would keep her on. Where did a sixty-something caretaker find a new home? Where did you fit in when your family had broken apart?

“Mr. Kincaid, I’d like you to do something for me,” Maisey said.

“Anything.”

“When they get Mr. Edward back to Bloomfield Hills, I want you to ask his doctor there to make sure he died naturally.”

“What?”

“I need to know.”

“Know what, Maisey?”

She faced him. “I need to know Mr. Ross didn’t do something to him.”

Louis was stunned into silence.

“Before Mr. Ross went back to Lansing, they had words,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Louis asked.

“Mr. Ross and Mr. Edward. They had words about Julie.”

“What did they say exactly?”

“I don’t know for certain because Mr. Ross sent me out of the room, but I know it upset Mr. Edward.”

Her eyes suddenly darted past Louis. He turned to see Ross standing just outside the door.

“Maisey,” Ross said, “I need your help, please.”

With a glance at Louis she went inside. Louis stayed on the porch, thinking about what Maisey had said. Edward Chapman had been near death, so why would Ross take
the chance of killing him amid the media glare of Julie’s investigation and his own campaign?

But Maisey, by her own admission, loved Edward. Maybe she just needed someone to blame.

Something caught Louis’s eye and he turned to the window. Ross Chapman was standing inside looking out at him, his figure a rippled blur behind the old glass.

T
he interior of the Mustang Lounge was as dark as a tomb and deserted except for one man sitting at the bar. It took Louis a moment to realize it was Rafsky. He hesitated, thinking he’d go back to the hotel and wait for Joe. But she told him she had at least an hour of phone calls to catch up on and that he should go on without her.

The smell of frying meat drifted over to Louis. Finally hunger overcame any trepidation he had about having to make lunchtime small talk with Rafsky and he went to the bar.

“What’s good today?” Louis said, sliding onto the stool.

“Try the Mustang Burger,” Rafsky said.

The bartender placed a plate of fries and a towering burger in front of Rafsky.

“I’ll have the same, no pickles,” Louis said. “With a Heineken, please.”

The bartender left, and Louis watched Rafsky as he took the top bun off his burger. He dismantled the stack of tomato, bacon, onion slices, pickles, and lettuce and then carefully put the hamburger back together again.

“You always do that?” Louis asked.

“Do what?”

“Restack your burger?”

Rafsky turned to stare at him. “Yes. Does it bother you?”

“No.”

“The tomato should always be on top,” Rafsky said.

Louis nodded as though he understood. The bartender brought his beer, and he took a long draw.

“I need to fill you in on something,” Louis said. “After you left the Chapman house this morning Maisey took me aside and told me she thought Ross might have done something to the old man.”

Rafsky stopped in midchew. “Done something? She say what he did exactly?”

“No. She says they argued before Ross went to Lansing.”

“About what?”

“Something about Julie. I think she believes Ross killed his father.”

“Why would Ross Chapman do that?”

“She didn’t have a chance to tell me more.”

Rafsky was quiet, eating.

“Maisey’s just really upset.” Louis paused. “I think she and the old guy were lovers.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. I noticed it between them the first day I saw them together.”

“Yeah. She seemed very protective of him.”

Rafsky nodded. “Every time he looked to her through the glass I got the feeling he wanted her in the room with him, holding his hand while he talked about his daughter.”

Louis was quiet. Had Edward asked for Maisey to be in the room they would have let her come in. But he knew a man like Chapman would never ask such a thing. He thought of his own parents in that moment, something he
rarely allowed himself to do. His black mother, his white father, coming together in the deep shadows of the South just long enough to give him life. Things might have been easier for Maisey and Edward twenty years ago but he doubted it. And he was sure their relationship had been carried on in secret in what he was beginning to believe was a house full of secrets.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d still like to alert Chapman’s doctor in Bloomfield Hills and ask him to take a look before they bury the old man,” Louis said.

“Be my guest,” Rafsky said. “But I can tell you what he’ll say. I had an uncle who was in bad shape, oxygen tank, heart pills, the whole HMO bonanza. He died in his sleep a day before he was going to take his life savings out of the bank and start a cruise around the world.”

“That sounds suspicious,” Louis said.

“One cousin accused the other, and they ended up spending half his money getting expert opinions. It was always the same. There was no way to tell if someone gave him one too many pills or pinched the oxygen tube closed.”

“I’m still going to make the call.”

“Go ahead,” Rafsky said as he slathered his fries with ketchup. “It’s the right thing to do.”

The server set Louis’s burger down in front of him. He ordered another beer.

“How’s Frye like being a sheriff?” Rafsky asked without looking at him.

Louis was surprised at the question—or rather the fact Rafsky had brought up Joe. The tension he had noticed the first few days between Joe and Rafsky had seemed to fade some, but things were still awkward between them.

“She loves it,” Louis said.

“I’ve heard her name mentioned over the years,” Rafsky said. “She’s got a kick-ass reputation.”

“I believe that.”

“You know, I knew her when she was a rookie,” Rafsky said.

Louis took a swallow of beer and set the bottle down. “I know,” he said. “She told me.”

“Did she tell you about the case we worked?”

“Yeah.”

Rafsky was quiet. He set his burger down and just sat there, staring at himself in the mirror on the other side of the bar.

“Did she tell you she saved my life that day?” Rafsky asked.

“She told me everything,” Louis said.

Rafsky was still looking at himself in the mirror, but Louis saw nothing in his eyes. It was as if the man weren’t seeing his own reflection but something—or someone—else.

“She saved my life, too,” Louis said.

It took Rafsky a moment to turn to him. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I said she saved my life, too,” Louis said. “Put six bullets in a man holding a knife over me.”

Rafsky raised a brow, then picked out a french fry, swirling it in the ketchup.

“How do you two manage a relationship twelve hundred miles apart?” he asked finally.

Louis was chewing, and it gave him time to consider his answer. The question didn’t bother him, but he wasn’t sure how honest he wanted to be with this man. But then,
they had both been saved by the same woman. Maybe they had a cosmic connection.

“It’s not easy,” Louis said.

Rafsky was wiping his fingers, probably wanting to hear more but too polite to ask.

“You like PI work?” Rafsky asked.

“It pays the bills,” Louis said. “But I’ve been accepted to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement police academy. I start in mid-February.”

Rafsky continued to pick at his fries. They ate in silence listening to Stevie Wonder’s “Part-Time Lover” on the jukebox.

“Mark Steele and I graduated the academy together back in the seventies,” Rafsky said.

Steele was the state investigator who had worked the case that had cost Louis his badge. When Steele was promoted later he red-flagged Louis’s file, making certain Louis could never again work as a cop in Michigan.

“What’s your point?” Louis asked.

Rafsky turned on his stool, beer in hand. His eyes glistened with the buzz of alcohol. “I can talk to him about you if you want.”

“No, thanks, I’m no good at groveling,” Louis said. “I got a shot at the FDLE academy, and I’m taking it. I’m thirty this year. I might never get another chance.”

Rafsky eyed him for a second, then his gaze moved over Louis’s shoulder toward the front door.

Louis turned to see Joe walking toward them. Tight jeans, leather jacket, a strange fur hat on her head. Her face held a glimmer of puzzlement at seeing him with Rafsky.

Joe gave Louis a kiss on the cheek, filling his nose with the scent of her Jean Naté cologne.

“How is everything? Any news?” she asked.

“Nope,” Rafsky said. “In fact, we have a problem.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re at a dead end,” Rafsky said. “My men spent yesterday taking the sketch of Rhoda to every house on this island. No one remembered her. And the owners of the fudge and ice-cream shops, where this girl probably worked, are all in Florida or Arizona.”