Jill Elizabeth Nelson (11 page)

“You'd think, but unless they got careless this time, and there are fingerprints or some other evidence on the glass shards, we're pretty much still at square one. I didn't even get a make or model on the vehicle, though the trailer was a flatbed with low sides.”

Terry snorted. “About a dime a dozen around here.”

“You got it.” Rich pointed toward the gravel approach the thieves had used. “You're our best tire specialist. See what you can do about finding a clear set of tread marks. Maybe they'll match what we found at the other implement dealership.”

“Will do, Chief.” Terry strode past his boss.

A heavy dousing of Old Spice tweaked Rich's nostrils. Terry obviously hadn't had time to shower due to the emergency call-out. Which woman's cologne was his deputy trying to cover up this time?

Rich went over to Derek. “Look into the whereabouts of Ralph Reinert the evening of the fire at the shop and also this morning. He's been way too vocal about the Kellers to suit me, and he's just the sort of knothead who'd think of lifting small equipment as a sideline career.”

“I'm on it.” The young cop jerked a nod.

“And I'm heading for the sack. We won't be locking up any thieves today.”

“Well, maybe you scared them enough they'll lay off for a while.”

“I hope not. They need to keep at it so we can catch them.”

Derek pursed his lips. “Funny the local grapevine hasn't caught wind of anyone bragging or letting a careless word slip. It's hard to keep anything under wraps in a small town like this.”

“Keep the feelers out there.” Rich walked away, frowning.

The kid had a point. Usually, it wasn't much of a challenge to get information on penny-ante drug dealers or shoplifters, but no one seemed to know a thing about these thefts. And the identity of the thieves wasn't the only secret well guarded around here. Something terrible had happened in the Elling mansion years ago. He'd stake his badge on it. And the kidnapping was the tip of the iceberg.

What had Goody Hanson meant about “those poor women”? Nicole interpreted the statement to mean the hardships of the Elling wives over the decades. Rich had checked her research, and she was spot on. Henry the Eighth didn't have much on the Elling men. But the context of Goody's outburst smacked of a specific reference to when Derek's grandmother worked for the Ellings. What did the old woman know, and why couldn't she speak of it without tipping off her rocker?

Rich shuddered. A part of him didn't want to probe the darkness and find the answer. But even an ugly truth was better than a beautiful lie that protected the guilty and wounded innocents like Nicole. Even if the facts proved one or both of her grandparents guilty in that infant's death, wouldn't the knowledge be easier to bear than forever wondering?

A
fter a short night's sleep, disturbed by every creak and groan of the old house, Nicole was unable to stay in bed past the first birdsong. She found the insurance policy on the shop shortly after sunup in a stack of papers removed during the police search from a drawer in her grandmother's china hutch. She read the name of the agency and smacked her forehead. Of course, Grandma would take her coverage through the bank where Grandpa Frank worked his way up from teller to president.

Nicole flopped onto the couch, wiped out before the day hardly began. Now that she knew who to contact about the insurance, she needed the official word to go ahead and have the debris cleared up. She pulled out her cell and punched in Rich's number. The connection started to ring and she gasped. What was she thinking? It wasn't even 6:30 a.m. Rich must be sleeping. She started to close her phone but his crisp voice answered on the first ring.

“Oh, I'm sorry, Rich,” she burst out. “I shouldn't have called so early. Did I wake you up? You certainly sound chipper.”

He let out a dry chuckle. “Chipper? No. Awake? Yes. I haven't been to bed yet. I just got home from a crime scene.”

Nicole groaned. “Another robbery?”

“Attempted. They got away when one of them chucked a Molotov cocktail at me.”

“Are you hurt?” Nicole's throat tightened.

“Not a scratch or a singe. More than I can say for the other evening outside your grandmother's shop.”

“Does this mean that these thieves are responsible for what happened there?”

“It's a pretty strong connection.”

“Maybe they stole sewing machines and then burned the place to hide the crime.” Several beats of silence answered her. “You don't think theft was involved?”

“I can't rule it out, but stealing household appliances hasn't been among their interests. But to eliminate the possibility, have the crew you hire for cleanup check to see if the remains of sewing machines are among the debris.”

Nicole ran her fingers through a rat's nest of bed hair that she hadn't combed out yet this morning. “Cleanup is what I was calling about. Do I have your permission to get it done?”

“The sooner the better. That kind of wreckage is a hazard to the public.”

“I'll get something going as soon as possible then.”

“Have you called a security company about wiring the house for intruders?”

“Done,” she assured him, “but they're not sure how soon they'll get here.”

“I'll call and jack them up a bit. See if it'll get faster action for you.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

They ended the call. The concern in Rich's voice touched Nicole's heart. Then again, maybe she should set no store by it. He might be mostly thinking about his staff that could ease up on the extra drive-bys after the house had a security
system. It would be best to interpret the note of caring in his tone as impersonal. After all, she and Rich could never be anything more than friends. For the sake of her own sanity she should probably keep her distance from him. Hard to do when this case kept throwing them together.

Gusting a long breath, Nicole stretched out on the couch. She could afford to relax for a few minutes. It was too early to call anyone about insurance or cleanup anyway.

She stirred awake to the neighbor's dog barking. How long had she slept? Nicole lifted her head and looked at the wall clock. Yikes! She'd been totally zonked for more than three hours. It was after nine. She sat up and stretched. But the z's had sure felt good.

A quick call to the hospital yielded the usual report. Jan Keller was stable, but still comatose. Next, Nicole called the insurance agency at the bank. The agent was warm and sympathetic. He even recommended an excavation crew. But after a ten-minute conversation, she closed the connection with her stomach dropped somewhere near her toes. Grandma had insured the shop, all right, but at a rate that might have replaced the business twenty-five years ago. The payout would nowhere near cover reopening the business at today's costs.

“I'm so sorry,” the agent had said. “I kept recommending that Jan increase her coverage, but she didn't want to pay a higher premium.”

Nicole had assured the man that she didn't hold him responsible for her grandmother's decisions. She didn't add that she understood his frustration with her stubborn, frugal grandmother. Now the store might never be rebuilt. Grandma would be devastated. And that wasn't all.
She
was devastated. Nicole hadn't realized quite how deeply she was emotionally invested in her idea for a machine embroidery business. There had to be a way!

Nicole sat down at the kitchen table with a piece of paper and her checkbook calculator. Twenty minutes of noodling and doodling later, she sat back with a smile. The dream might still come true. She'd have to deplete her husband's pension and the life insurance benefits she'd socked away, but she'd end up owning a large share of the business outright. Grandma could still have her yard goods and sewing notions, and maybe…hopefully—
oh, please, God!
—they could both be happy in a symbiotic setup.

There was a lot to do between then and now. Nicole picked up her cell phone and called the number the insurance agent had given her for the excavation company. They agreed to start at the shop tomorrow. Now she could use the rest of the day to work on setting the house to rights. Her stomach let out a yowl. First things first. A little sustenance. She went to the refrigerator. Pretty slim pickings. She took out the milk, sniffed it, and made a face. Sour. A trip to the grocery store was in order.

Nicole gathered up her purse and headed out to her car by the garage. She opened the driver's-side door and a stench assaulted her. She backed away with her hand over her mouth and nose. Had a skunk invaded her vehicle? No, the smell was different. Nothing appeared wrong in the front seat. She peered through the window into the back. A garbage bag sat on the floor between the passenger seat and the rear of the driver's seat.

How did that get in there? Hadn't she locked her car door when she returned from the Elling home the night the garbage bag went missing? She searched her memory and came up blank. She'd been upset about finding those bones and the weirdness at the Elling place. Maybe she didn't lock up, and whoever moved the garbage bag between the time Grandma put it out and Nicole came looking had stuffed it in her car. Then the next day when she drove to
the shop and back with the police, the bag hadn't been in there long enough to ferment whatever was inside. Nor had she looked into the back that morning. She hadn't driven the car since.

Who had moved the garbage bag? And why?

Her grandmother seemed to have believed the garbage bag had been collected by the city truck. Obviously, someone else hadn't wanted that to happen. Or was this just a prank? It would be less threatening to believe the bag got into her car as a product of idle meanness, but she couldn't convince herself the incident was so simple. The bag had been placed in her car on purpose, and she was meant to find it. Her breaths came shallow and rapid. She should report this find to the police—to Rich—and let them handle the potential evidence. But she couldn't. Not yet. She had to know what was inside before they did.

Nicole hustled into the house and returned with the garage key. Inside the garage, she donned a pair of gardening gloves then retrieved the garbage bag from her car, leaving the door open to air out the vehicle. She spread old newspapers over a bare spot on the cement floor. Poised to dump the contents of the bag onto the newspapers, she hesitated, heartsick.

Did this sack of refuse contain evidence that stunk worse than the rotten garbage?

 

Rich came wide awake around the 1:00 p.m. hour. How did the regular night-shift guys do it? Sleeping during the day was a hopeless proposition for him. He got up, shaved and showered, and called the office for an update on open cases, even though it was his day off.

Terry was in and reported on results from the MBCA office on fingerprints, though nothing had come in on DNA yet. That sort of thing took a lot longer than the TV shows
made it look like. Prints on the bat came back primarily to Jan Keller. A few degraded ones were from her son, Nicole's father, and some other old ones came from an unknown donor. Rich speculated out loud that they were from Frank, Nicole's grandfather, and Terry grunted agreement. No other fresh prints were found, and the bat showed no signs of having been wiped down.

“Which means whoever attacked Jan Keller must have been wearing gloves,” Terry concluded.

“What about prints on the bag that contained the infant's remains?” Rich asked.

Paper rustled in the background. “Now, here's where it gets interesting. Two sets of prints on the bag. Judging by size, the smaller are likely from a female or possibly an adolescent.”

“No match to Jan?”

“Negative. But the larger set of prints, likely male, are a match to the unidentified prints on the bat.”

“Frank Keller.” Dread clutched Rich's chest.

“Strong probability. Sorry, Chief. I know you were hoping none of the Kellers were involved.”

The guy sounded genuinely sympathetic, which was a surprise. But then, he seemed to have his eye on Nicole, too, and wouldn't want to get on her bad side, either. Rich suppressed a rush of jealous protectiveness.

“We still have no one to question, much less arrest,” he clipped out.

Until and unless Jan woke up. He didn't verbalize that thought. Even though there was no physical evidence connecting Jan to the buried infant, her behavior following the discovery suggested she knew something. Provided she retained her mental faculties, would she be more or less apt to come clean after the attack in the attic?

“Anything else on the fire or this morning's incident?” Rich went on.

Terry made a game show buzzer sound. “Derek didn't find any prints on the bottle used for the Molotov last night. It was clean, and the same type as the one from the sewing shop.”

“Sun Drop?” The brand of soft drink was manufactured by a local bottling company and regionally distributed, mostly in cans, but some folks paid extra for the nostalgic bottles. “That narrows our suspects to anyone in west central Minnesota.”

“Maybe not. I hunted pretty hard for Ralph Reinert this morning, and he seems to have skipped the area. He didn't show up for work this morning, and his car is gone. None of his usual cronies knows where he is.”

“He's definitely a person of interest. Did you put out an APB on his vehicle?”

Terry snorted. “I didn't enroll in the police academy last week.”

Rich chuckled. “I had to ask.”

“Right.”

“In your canvas of Reinert's known associates, did you talk to Mason Elling?”

“Nope. The Elling kid seems to be laying low, too, not haunting his usual watering holes.”

“Maybe he's got a reason to stay home and out of sight.”

“I could pay a visit to the mansion on the hill.”

“Leave it. You've got enough on your plate. I'll track the kid down tomorrow when I'm back on duty.” While he was at it, he'd see if he could finally corner Fern for an interview. The woman hadn't called him back since his last attempt to see her. Not that he was surprised.

Rich ended the call to the office and then wandered
around his lonely house. There were household projects he could tackle, but he didn't have the heart for them. His whole being was occupied with this tangled mess of cases that seemed to somehow be connected…and the tether led straight to the Kellers.

Nicole, the innocent party, had been stuck with enormous issues, not to mention a massive household cleanup project. That part was his fault. Rich checked his watch—2:00 p.m. Maybe she'd welcome a helping hand at straightening up the place. The Keller residence was a focal point of this cold case gone sizzling. It couldn't hurt to spend more time there. He picked up his phone and punched in her cell number. That way, if she was out and about, he'd still catch her.

The phone rang and rang. Just when he thought the call would go to voice mail, she answered.

“H-Hello? Rich? Is that you?”

“Your caller ID is correct. Did I interrupt a well-deserved nap?” She sounded groggy. No, more like dazed and upset.

Nicole spluttered a laugh. “No, I wasn't sleeping. Not with all I've got to do around here. I'm just…overwhelmed. Distracted. Whatever you want to call it.”

“How about I give you a hand? I've got the day off, and I'm bouncing around my empty house like a pinball.”

“I don't know, Rich. You don't have to feel like you should—”

“Are you telling me you couldn't use another pair of willing hands?”

The connection went silent long enough for him to wonder if she'd closed the call.

“Okay. I guess I could use the help.”

“I'll be right there.”

Whistling, Rich grabbed his keys and his wallet and climbed into his off-duty vehicle—a sports-model Ranger
pickup. Nicole had sounded jittery, but she had plenty of reason to feel that way. And good cause to wonder if she should let him in that house, but he was glad she said yes. Too glad. His poor heart was running big risks, and a reckless part of him didn't care one bit.

An unsmiling Nicole opened the front door to him. He followed her through the foyer into the living room. Most of the furniture remained out of place.

“I'll put your muscle to work with that to start with.” She motioned toward the couch that stood kitty-corner in the middle of the room.

Rich moved toward the piece of furniture. Nicole darted ahead of him and grabbed the far end. Together they put the couch back in its place then worked steadily to set the rest of the room to rights. She must really be skittish of him because she didn't talk except to give directions and kept her distance.