Текст книги "The Murder Pit"

Автор книги: Jeff Shelby

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

“What got in the way?”

“He started showing up late. Getting phone calls while he was here in the shop.” He grimaced. “Once the divorce was finalized, I thought things might settle down, get back to normal. Olaf was a good employee and he did work that a lot of folks couldn’t handle.”

I nodded again. I wasn’t sure I knew anyone who would willingly scrape roadkill off the highway, even if it paid well. And, from what Olga had said about Helen riding Olaf’s gravy train, I had to believe that Elliott did compensate him well.

“But, it didn’t,” he said. With his free hand, he played with the laces on his boot. “There were some quiet months when things were back to normal. But then the phone calls started again. And then the visits.”

“The visits?”

“Helen,” he told me. “She started popping in while he was here.”

“Here in the shop? Why?”

“At first, it was to bring by papers,” Elliott said, closing his eye in concentration. “Some addendum or something to the divorce. There were a bunch of those. And then she’d swing by with questions about the house; she’d gotten that as part of the divorce settlement. Olaf was polite but distant.” He opened his eye and looked at me. “He was a good man.”

“It sounds like it,” I said. “So, did she finally get the hint?”

He was silent for a minute. “Yes.”

“And so she left? Just decided to leave him alone? Stopped coming by?” This didn’t line up with what Olga had told me. According to Olaf’s sister, persistence was Helen’s middle name.

“Yes and no,” Elliott said, his expression morphing. He looked uncomfortable, like he was sitting on a bed of nails.

“I’m not following…”

He uncrossed his leg and stood up. “That’s all I know.”

I stared at him. “I don’t believe you.”

His mouth twisted into a frown. “I’ve told you nothing but the truth. And I didn’t have to tell you anything.”

I held up a hand in apology. “I know. I’m sorry.” I swallowed and looked at him. “But if there’s anything else, no matter how small of a detail you might think it is, I’d appreciate it if you could tell me.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty,” he finally muttered.

“Excuse me?”

He walked over to the table and poured himself more coffee. “I have a soft spot for pretty women.”

I didn’t know how to respond to this admission so I said nothing, just sat and fidgeted in the rocker and waited for him to return to his seat.

“Helen stopped coming to see Olaf,” he said, adjusting himself back in his chair. He crossed the other leg on to his lap.

“Okay.”

“She started coming to see me.”

TWENTY SIX

“You?”

Elliott nodded.

Now that was interesting. And weird. “Why?”

“At first, I thought it was to make Olaf jealous,” he said. He ran his thumb along the rim of his cup. “But then it…changed.”

I sat up a little straighter. “How?”

“She kept coming by.” He paused, then cleared his throat. I glanced at him and his ruddy cheeks had taken on a deeper red color. “But she came by to see me.”

“You?” I repeated, my voice squeaking a little on the single word.

He nodded. “Hard to believe. But true.”

“I didn’t mean– ” I began, flustered.

Elliott held up his free hand. “No need to explain. The women aren’t exactly lining up for me.”

I thought it would be insulting to argue with his statement, and just as rude to agree, so I simply nodded and kept my mouth shut.

He took a deep breath, his chest expanding like a balloon, then deflating when he exhaled. “I guess you could say she was flirting with me. Granted, it’s been a while since I’ve played the game but I was young once.”

“That must’ve been…awkward. For both you and Olaf.”

“Yes.”

“Did that cause problems?”

“For Olaf?” Elliott shook his head. “No.”

I took a sip of my coffee. It was now lukewarm and I tried not to make a face as I swallowed it down. “For…you?”

“It was uncomfortable,” he said. “Her attention. Helen can be a bit…forward.”

I thought back to my encounters with her and what Olga had told me. She was definitely an in-your-face kind of person. I could only guess how she would interact with the opposite sex.

“Anyway, I nipped it in the bud,” Elliott told me. His ankle bounced on his knee and he kept his gaze fixed on one of the deer mounted on the wall.

“Oh? And how did she take that?”

His cheeks reddened more and he seemed at a loss for words. “Fine. She took it fine.”

I forced myself to take another sip of coffee. I knew he wasn’t telling me everything. It wasn’t adding up. At the beginning of our conversation, he’d told me Helen was a liar. He’d started out willing to talk, then clammed up. And now he was parceling out bits of information the way I handed out candy to my kids after their Halloween haul.

“I’m confused,” I said, deciding to throw caution to the wind and voice the thoughts swirling around in my head. “You said at the beginning that Helen was a liar. What exactly did she lie about?”

Elliott’s ankle stopped. I shifted my gaze to his face and I squinted, trying to focus. I couldn’t be sure but his good eye looked watery, like it had suddenly filled with tears.

He stood up. “I’ve told you all I know.” He rubbed at his good eye. “Damn allergies.”

I was clearly being dismissed. I had no choice but to stand, too. Elliott reached out and took my half-empty cup of coffee.

I glanced out the window of the taxidermy shop. It had started to snow, fluffy white flakes that clumped together as they fluttered to the ground. I dug my gloves out of my purse and put them on.

I looked at Elliott. “Thank you. For taking the time to talk with me.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “You’re welcome, ma’am.” He paused. “And I’m real sorry about what happened to Olaf. Real sorry.”

TWENTY SEVEN

Jake held up his beer. “I’m drawing the line at stuffing that little hamster you forced on me.”

We were sitting at the local sports grill and pub. Without kids. As much as we loved our brood, a weekly date night was a must, even if it only consisted of eating hamburgers and drinking a beer at The Penalty Box. We were halfway through our meal and I’d just finished telling him about my conversation with Elliott Cornelius.

“That thing is going in the trash when it’s done,” he said, referring to the hamster now affectionately known as Lucky.

“Yeah, let’s see how tough you are when the girls are crying their eyes out over it.”

“I will hold strong.”

“Right,” I said, shaking my head. “Anyway, that was how I spent the afternoon.”

He took a massive bite of his burger, a big mess of meat, cheese, bacon and peanut butter. I was convinced they kept it on the menu just because he came in once a week and ordered it.

He wiped at his mouth. “Good to know you had a productive day.”

I took a swallow of my beer. “Look, I told you I was going to poke around.”

“I’m aware.”

“And that’s all I did.”

He eyed me over the table. “So what’s next?”

“What do you mean?”

A corner of his mouth raised up in a knowing smile. “You can’t convince me for one second that just because you had a conversation with the taxidermist that you’re now going to leave all of this alone. Like you should.”

I decided to avoid answering that question directly. “Speaking of the taxidermist, how does he know you?”

Jake shrugged. “No idea.”

“Well, he seemed like he was ready to throw me out of the shop but as soon as I mentioned your name, he backed off.”

“Don’t say I never save you from anything.” His eyes lit up with amusement. “See? I protect you even when we’re not physically together. I’m like a superhero.”

I frowned. “Don’t you think it’s strange?”

“No,” he said. “We probably had a booth near each other at the fair. Or some expo.” Even though Jake wasn’t involved in the day-to-day operations of the plant, he was personable and friendly and, because of this, did a lot of the community outreach events.

I picked up a french fry and dragged it through the puddle of ketchup on my plate. “I still think it’s odd.”

“You acting like a private eye?” He nodded vigorously. “Absolutely.”

I ignored him. “And the way he said he was sorry when I left. It was like he was sorry about more than Olaf being dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like he’d done it or something.”

“So now you think Elliott the animal stuffer killed Olaf?” he asked. “Why would he do it?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “But it was strange how he stopped talking about Helen and then said he was sorry. Almost like he’d done something.”

“And it’s almost like you’ve lost your mind.”

I rolled my eyes and changed directions. “Want to know something else that’s weird? That Helen would tell me one thing, but everyone else says it was the other way around. That’s weird.”

He shoved more burger into his mouth. “Who’s Helen?”

“Were you even listening?”

He washed down the burger with more beer and then laughed. “Do I think it’s odd that his ex-wife lied? No, not really.”

“Why not?”

He wiped at his mouth again, twisted in his chair, and stretched out his legs. “I don’t know. Maybe she was embarrassed. Maybe she still loved him. Maybe she didn’t want people to know their marriage was failing.” He shrugged. “We’ve both been through that to a different degree, right? It’s not the easiest thing in the world to tell people that you’re getting divorced.”

He was right about that. As ready as I was to divorce Thornton, it was still a weird thing to admit to people. It felt like I’d been lying to my family and friends for years and I was suddenly coming clean. My unhappiness with my first marriage was private, not something I shared with the world. Most of my friends were surprised that we were getting a divorce. When it all happened and came to fruition, I was thrilled and felt free, but it still didn’t really feel like something to celebrate and share with other people.

I picked up another french fry and pointed it him. “Okay. Point taken. But how about her showing up at the library? Even if I chalk up her being at the plant as a coincidence, finding me at the library and lying to me about working there is totally weird, right?”

He finished the last bite of his burger and wiped his hands on his napkin. “Yeah, I’ll give you that. I don’t have an explanation for that.”

“So she’s lying about something,” I said, satisfied that I’d at least got him to admit I was right about something. “That is odd.”

Jake picked up his beer and begrudgingly nodded. “Yeah, hard for me to argue that.”

I smiled at him. “See? I’m not completely full of crap.”

He smiled back. “Not completely, no.”

I wadded up my napkin with the intent on throwing at him but stopped myself when I saw Detective Priscilla Hanborn making her way toward us.

Her blindingly white crew cut was standing at attention on top of her wide, flat head. She wore a long-sleeved, white dress shirt with a black bolo tie and gray denims jeans. Pointy black boots stuck out from the bottom of the jeans and instantly brought up visions of the Wicked Witch.

She tried to smile but it came off as more of a wince. “Evening, ma’am.” She looked at Jake. “Sir.”

Jake smiled at her. “Hello, Detective.”

“I don’t mean to interrupt your dinner,” she said, pulling up a chair from the table across from us and sitting down. “But I’m wondering if we could chat for just a minute?”

Jake raised an amused eyebrow at me.

“Sure,” I said, dragging out the word. It appeared to be the only thing I could say since she didn’t seem to be giving us any other choice.

She set her elbows on the table and folded her hands together. “I understand you’ve been doing a little…investigating around town.”

My cheeks warmed. “Investigating? I don’t know if I’d call it that.”

“What would you call it?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Well, I just—”

She frowned at me. “Ma’am, I’m sure you’re curious about a lot of things. But you shouldn’t be running around Moose River, pretending to be a police officer. I went through a lot of training to learn how to do my job and I don’t remember seeing you in any of my training classes.”

Now my cheeks felt like they’d been lit on fire. “I haven’t been pretending to be anything.”

She raised an eyebrow and ran a hand over the top of her flat top. “Right. Look, I can imagine how you might be a little bored at home and how—”

“Now, wait a minute!”

“—it must be kind of fun to get out and play cops and robbers or whatever you’d like to call it,” she continued. “But getting in fights with people and going around and questioning everyone you meet is not a good idea. And I can’t have you getting in the way of my investigation.”

Jake leaned forward. “I don’t think anyone is getting in the way of your investigation.”

I could tell by his body language—shoulders up, brow furrowed, lack of a smile—that while he may have disagreed with what I’d been doing, he wasn’t terribly happy to have Detective Priscilla Hanborn interrupting our dinner and reprimanding me.

Which made me love him all the more.

“Not yet,” Hanborn said, shooting him a look. “But that’s the way we seem to be going and I’d like to put a stop to it.” She looked back at me. “Right now.”

“So, what exactly have you learned so far?” I asked, doing my best to not wrestle her to the ground like I had with Olga.

She looked down her nose at me. “That really isn’t any of your business.”

“It’s not? The body was in my house. I think it’s absolutely our business.”

“The crime committed wasn’t against you,” she said, shrugging. “Therefore you don’t really have a vested interest.”

“I have a vested interest because that man was found in my home,” I said, my voice firm. “And because everyone in town knows he was found there and it’s affecting my kids and my family. So don’t tell me it’s not any of my business.”

She gave me a hard stare, one I’m sure she saved for all of the dangerous criminals that she rounded up in Moose River on a daily basis. I managed to not wither and run away in fear.

“It’s an ongoing investigation,” she said. She tugged on her bolo tie, straightening it. “It’s none of your business.”

It was like someone told her what buttons of mine to push in order to irritate the hell out of me. She’d found the button and stuck her finger on it.

“I’m asking you to mind your own business and stop asking questions,” she said. “I’m the question-asker around here.”

I wanted to reach out and grab her little bolo tie and strangle her.

“We’re going to finish our dinner now, Detective,” Jake said. “If you’ll excuse us.”

She kept her eyes on me for an extra moment, then nodded. “Certainly.” She stood. “It appears my dinner date has arrived, anyway.”

Both Jake and I turned in the direction of the door. A beautiful blond woman was making her way toward us. Her hair fell nearly to her waist and she wore a tight-fitting black top and matching skirt that looked like it was painted on to her ridiculously fit body. She smiled at both Jake and me, then wrapped her arms around Detective Hanborn’s neck and planted a kiss on her cheek.

“Hey, Pris,” she whispered.

“Belinda,” Detective Hanborn said, beaming. “Go grab us a table.”

“For sure.” She nodded and sauntered off.

I stole a quick glance at Jake. His mouth was wide open and I knew it wasn’t because the woman who’d just approached our table was a knock out. He was wondering the exact same thing I was.

Detective Hanborn cleared her throat. “You’ll forgive me for not introducing my sister.”

“Your sister?” Even I could hear the blatant disbelief in my tone. “Really?”

Detective Priscilla Hanborn cinched up her belt and gave me a disgusted look. “Who did you think it was?”

TWENTY EIGHT

“Of course I thought it was her lesbian lover,” I said to Jake as we drove home. “Who else would it have been?”

He turned the wheel and pulled the SUV into the dirt lot we called a driveway. “Her sister, for one.”

“You thought the same thing,” I reminded him.

“No, I didn’t,” he said.

But he was grinning and I just shook my head. “Sisters,” I snorted, shaking my head. “Because they looked so much alike. Please.”

He chuckled. “Just can’t make assumptions these days.”

“Whatever,” I said, crossing my arms. “I don’t like her.”

He cut the engine and pulled the key from the ignition. “No. You don’t like that she told you to back down. Which, by the way, I’ve also been saying.”

“I’m aware,” I said, frowning at him. “But what exactly is she doing? I mean, she hasn’t been back to talk to us and I certainly haven’t seen her around town, talking to the people I’ve been talking to.”

He reached for my hand. “I’m sure she’s doing whatever she’s supposed to be doing. Like her or not, she’s a detective and I’d assume a competent one since the town employs her.”

I shook my head and turned to the window. All of the lights in the house were on. That was standard operating procedure when we were out at night. I was pretty sure the kids thought hitting every switch in the house would keep them safe.

I turned back to Jake. “So do you think I should knock it off?”

“I’ve already given up on that.”

“I’m asking seriously.”

He threaded his fingers into mine. “Do I think that going around and asking questions to try and find out what happened is the best use of your time?” He shook his head. “No. I don’t. But I also know it’s kind of driving you nuts and that it’s not exactly your thing to just sit back and relax.” He smiled. “And that’s why I’m not going to bang my head against a wall telling you to knock it off.”

He leaned over and kissed me and thoughts of the detective and the investigation evaporated. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close and he kissed me harder and I wondered how I’d gone twenty years without being kissed the way he kissed me.

I pulled my mouth away from his. “The kids are going to come out,” I whispered. “And scream that we are making out.”

“Let them,” he said, kissing me again. “We’ve heard it before.”

We stayed out there for a few minutes, kissing, until my phone started vibrating. Reluctantly, I pulled away from Jake and took the phone out of my purse.

It was a text from Will.

Calling the police.

Why?

Car in driveway. I can’t see who it is. Might be robbers. Or worse. When will u be home??????

We ARE home.

???

We are the car in the driveway!!!

Why r u out there? It doesn’t look like u.

Jake and I are making out.

GROSS!!! But I will call the police back and tell them not to come.

“We have to go inside,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because Will called the police.”

“What??”

I continued. “And is now calling them back to tell them not to come—because he mistook his parents making out in the driveway for robbers,” I said.

Jake leaned his head back against the seat and laughed. “At least they would’ve known the address.”

TWENTY NINE

The sun was out early the next morning and the frigid winter winds had once again subsided, which meant I could actually send the kids outside to play without fear of them dying from exposure. The winter had been especially cold, even for Minnesota, and they’d started to go stir crazy having to find ways to entertain themselves indoors. Even Will, who was almost always content camped out in front of his computer, had bemoaned the fact that winter was the only season we’d seen for months.

They foraged for their snow pants and jackets and were out the door as soon as they were done with breakfast, rummaging through the garage for shovels and sleds, intent on tricking out the bobsled track they’d built earlier in the week.

Which meant I had an empty house that I could attack.

I didn’t love housework. But I needed something to take my mind off of Olga and Helen and Elliott and the cast of characters who’d suddenly taken center stage in the my life.

I swept and mopped the kitchen. I gathered baskets full of laundry and took them down to the basement to wash, making sure I avoided looking at the newly identified coal chute. I went back upstairs and filled a bucket with soapy water and got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the stairs. And the wood floors.

The kids came inside at noon on the dot and I fed them warmed-up beef stew and bread. Nick declined the stew and ate half a loaf bread instead, his crusts piling up on his plate. I opened my mouth to comment, then stopped. He’d expand his eating horizons eventually. I hoped.

They finished their lunch by eating the last of the cookies, chattering about the improvements they’d made to the track and boasting over who’d gone the farthest. Grace lifted her bangs and showed me her forehead. There was a small red mark just above her eyebrow.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I hit the trampoline with my head,” she said. “So I went the farthest!”

I stared at her pupils for a second, trying to remember what I was supposed to look for as signs of a concussion. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary and made a mental note to tell Jake that we needed to move the trampoline further away from the house. When the snow melted, of course. Which might have to wait until August.

The kids dumped their dishes in the sink and suited back up and headed outside. I wiped the puddles of melted snow off the kitchen floor and then went back to my mental list of chores. I dusted every horizontal surface in the house and finally batted down the cobwebs decorating the bathroom ceiling. I retrieved laundry and folded it and put everything away.

I glanced at the clock mounted in the hallway just outside of the upstairs bedrooms. It was two o’clock. I’d managed to keep myself occupied with something other than the mystery of the man in my coal chute for six solid hours. I nodded, a satisfied smile on my face, but it disappeared quickly.

Because I was done cleaning…and that meant I was bound to start thinking about it. And thinking usually turned into digging.

I went downstairs and peeked out the kitchen window. The kids were still in the backyard, their coats and hats bright against the white snow. Grace was sitting on a sled and Sophie was pulling her through the yard. Will was in a tree, a rope dangling from his hands. Sophie pulled the sled in his direction and Grace waved at him, pointing to the rope and then a spot on the back of the sled. I took a deep breath and looked away.

Exploring, I told myself. That’s what they were doing. Experimenting. Learning.

I just hoped a trip to the emergency room wouldn’t be a part of today’s lesson plans.

I plopped down on the couch and picked up the laptop that was sitting on the ottoman. I opened the web browser and tried not to think about Detective Hanborn’s comments the previous night. I didn’t like that she’d told me I was getting in the way and that I needed to step back. I felt like I had the right to dig; after all, Olaf had been found in my house. And even though I had started asking questions and poking around on my own, the initial confrontations—from both Olga and Helen—had not started with me. I’d be a little more discreet with my digging, I decided. But I wasn’t going to quit.

I stared at the screen for a minute, the cursor blinking in the search box. I started typing and hit the return key. The home page for Around The Corner loaded. It was the most logical place to return to. After all, it had helped me find Stuff It and it was the one place I knew I could find information about Olaf that was from him and not filtered through anyone else.

I found Olaf’s page again and read through it carefully, sifting through everything that was on there. But, after nearly a half an hour, I realized I wasn’t seeing anything new. Everything I read were things I already knew or didn’t give me any new information to go on. I clicked around a bit, but I just kept rereading the same things over and over.

And then I thought about Helen.

If everything I’d heard from Olga and Elliott were true, she’d spent a long time trying to get his attention. When that backfired, she’d seemingly taken a different tact, trying to make him jealous. I wondered if she’d taken that further than just flirting with Elliott Cornelius.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard for a second. I bit my lip and typed her name into the search bar on the ATC web site.

And there she was.

I stared at her profile picture. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a chunky, cable-knit sweater, a matching cap perched on her head. She really was an attractive woman. Deep green eyes. Strong cheekbones. A nice smile. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she looked like a really nice person.

I scrolled through her page. Lots of photos of her looking happy and active. She described herself as a woman who had extricated herself from a toxic marriage and who was looking to see what was out there and meet some new people. As I scrolled down the page, I looked through some of the conversations that she hadn’t put behind a private wall. On Around The Corner, you could comment on anyone’s page, much like on Facebook, and that person could respond. You usually didn’t see much more than a hello or safe, benign comments. ‘I like your that picture of you with your dog,’ or ‘I like that restaurant, too’ or ‘We don’t live too far from each other.’ At least that was what I’d remembered from my brief stint on the site.

Helen’s was a bit different, though.

There were plenty of men who’d taken a moment to say hello and make a benign introductory comment.

And she’d responded to all of them.

Which in and of itself wasn’t all that weird. But it was the way she responded that made me sit up and take notice.

A man named Jason D. with a beard and a goofy smile commented that he liked the picture of her on her bike. He asked if she was a mountain biker.

“Well, I used to be,” Helen responded. “But it was something I used to do with my ex-husband and I’ve tried to make sure I stay away from anything that reminds me of him and bikes. Bike paths definitely remind me that I made a huge mistake marrying that dunderhead!”

Jason D. did not respond.

A man named Ken W. commented on a T-shirt she was wearing in one of her photos. It had Las Vegas emblazoned across the front in sparkly rhinestones.

“Not anymore,” she wrote. “My ex-husband took me there a couple of years ago and he spent the entire time ogling the cocktail waitresses while I waited for him to notice me! He never did so I dumped his rear end!”

Ken W. did not respond.

A man named Walt K. noted that she was wearing a Twins hat in one photo and asked if she went to a lot of games.

“I used to,” Helen wrote. “But my ex-husband was really the baseball fan. We’d spend hours at the stadium while he chased foul balls and ate too much food that made him too fat. So I’m not sure you’d call me a baseball fan as much as you would call me a fan of divorcing a baseball fan!”

Surprisingly, Walt K. did not respond.

All of her responses were like that, bringing up her ex-husband and denigrating him in some way. She made Olaf look like a moron in half of her comments and like an egotistical jerk in the other half. If I hadn’t met him, I would’ve thought he was the biggest jerk that had ever walked the planet.

But I had met him and I knew that wasn’t true. Or I’d been fooled by the greatest actor of our time. I didn’t think Olaf was an actor. And I didn’t think Helen had a clue as to what she was doing on Around The Corner.

If she had truly been interested in meeting someone, she’d gone about it the wrong way. She spent her time being unbelievably negative and she focusing almost exclusively on her ex-husband—two massive no-no’s for people reentering the dating pool. It wasn’t a coincidence that no one had engaged her in conversation. She came off like she was still hung up on her ex-husband and I was pretty sure that no guy wanted to fight that fight.

I wondered, though, if she’d had any luck in the private messages. Or if any of the men that commented publicly had messaged her privately. Unfortunately, the only way to access those messages would be to log into her account. And I had no way of doing that.

I tucked my legs underneath me on the couch and stared at the screen, tapping my fingers on the laptop as I thought.  I pushed the cursor so it hovered over the Sign In button and clicked.

I wasn’t signing myself back in. But, after a few failed attempts at different combinations of user names and passwords, I realized I wasn’t going to be signing in as Helen, either.

I closed the laptop and set it back on the ottoman. I stretched my legs out in front of me and chewed my lip, thinking. If I’d had to guess right then and there, I would’ve bet everything I had that Helen had something to do with Olaf’s death. Everything pointed in her direction. I wasn’t sure if she’d done it on purpose or if it had been an accident or how it had happened, but she was the only one with anything negative to say about Olaf. Everyone else seemed to love him. He didn’t have an enemy in town. He’d been pleasant to everyone, including the wife he wanted to divorce.

Even as I thought this, though, the doubts rose like the floodwaters during Spring. Why would she have wanted him dead? Why would she have brought him here, to my house? How would she have gotten him in the house.

I didn’t have the answers to any of those questions and I wasn’t sure I ever would.

But there was one thing I knew for sure.

Helen hadn’t wanted that divorce.

Olaf did.