by Jeff Shelby
“I am,” I said. “I mean, I am now. I’m giving up.”
He raised the eyebrow again. “I’ve heard that before.”
“But I mean it this time,” I said. “It’s been a waste of time and I’m not helping in any way. More frustrating than anything.”
“What did you learn?”
“You mean about being a private investigator?”
“No, about Olaf.”
“Oh.” I thought for a minute. “I know he was very unhappy with his marriage. I know that he was the one who wanted his divorce. I know that his ex-wife is semi-insane. I know that his sister loved him.” I paused. “But I have no idea who killed him or how he ended up in our coal chute.”
He leaned against a post. “Those are the kind of things you usually feel compelled to know about.”
“I feel like you’re accusing me of being nosy.”
“I’m not accusing you,” he said. “I know you’re nosy.”
“Hmm. Whatever. But I’m telling you, I’m done. I’ve asked all the questions I can think of. There’s nowhere else to go and I just keep hitting dead ends.” I held my hand up. “So I swear. I’m done playing Magnum P.I.”
He stared at me for a long time.
“Magnum P.I. was a really good show,” he finally said. “I’m kind of surprised you know it.”
“Magnum was hot.”
He frowned. “Not what I meant.”
“I know.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Alright. As long as you promise you’re done, I’ll stop asking questions.”
“I promise,” I said. “I’m done.”
“Good,” he said. He glanced up at the ceiling. “Because after we pay for the new vents, we won’t have any money left to bail you out of jail.”
FORTY
I drove Emily to school the next morning.
“Why do you need to come in?” she asked.
“I have to turn in your lunch money and your forms for next year.”
She fiddled with the radio, turning the volume up. “I can drop them by the office.”
“I know,” I said. “But I have a question about the fees for the photography class.”
“That you can’t ask on the phone?”
“I’m getting the distinct impression that you don’t want me to come into your school.”
She bit her lip and said nothing.
“I’ll pretend I don’t know you,” I assured her. “Jake and I will save all of the embarrassing stuff for when we chaperone your dances.”
She whirled to face me. “You will not!”
I just laughed and shrugged. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
She vaulted out of the car the minute we pulled into a parking space, mumbling a quick goodbye. I thought about running after her to give her a big hug and kiss goodbye, but reined myself in.
I pushed through the double glass doors into a wide, open room. The building itself was only a few years old and most everything that I’d seen inside still looked close to brand new. The front office was no exception. The desks were neat, the tiled floor immaculate, and all of the ladies behind the desks were still smiling. They hadn’t been plagued by the cynicism and fatigue that normally overtook school staffs.
It would get them, too, eventually.
“Haven’t seen you in forever, Daisy,” Eileen Varhuus said from behind the first desk. “How are you?”
We’d known Eileen and her family long before Emily had enrolled at the high school. Short and stout, with a wide face but eager smile, she’d homeschooled her two kids for several years before they’d gone the same route as Emily. When we started looking at schools for Em, we’d been pleasantly surprised to run into Eileen, who’d taken a part-time job manning the front desk of the high school. We’d picked her brain a little bit before enrolling Emily and she’d been a great resource for us.
“I’m good,” I said. “Just have some forms and money to turn in.” I found the form for the photography class. “Do I need to pay the lab fee now or wait until next year?”
“Next year,” she told me. “We just need parents to know that there are fees associated with it.”
I handed over the forms and she peered at them over the reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. “Emily’s had a good first semester, I take it, since you’re re-enrolling?”
I nodded. “Very much so.”
“She’s such a sweet girl,” Eileen said. “A pleasure to see around here.”
“She’s a good kid,” I said. I smiled and added, “Most of the time.”
She sorted the paperwork into several different trays, then dropped the check into a small box to her left. She folded her hands on her desk and smiled at me. “So. Guess you’ve had a wild week.”
I tried to laugh. “Yes, been a little…hectic.”
She nodded. “We were driving past the day the police were there. The kids nearly broke their necks trying to look out the window.”
“So did mine,” I said. “It was like a long lesson in crime scene forensics.”
“Do they know any more about what happened?”
“If they do, they aren’t sharing it with us.”
She made a sympathetic face. “That must be frustrating. But I guess the bright side is they don’t think you did anything.”
“Yeah, pretty sure they’ve crossed us off the list.” I took a step back from the counter, intending to leave.
She adjusted the glasses on her nose. “I would hope they are looking at his ex-wife.”
I froze. Slowly, I turned around. “Do you know Helen?”
“Oh yes,” she said, pursing her lips for a moment. “She used to play in a monthly bunco group I belong to.”
I’d never been invited to a bunco group and I’d never played the game. I wore it like a badge of honor.
“We finally asked her to leave about a month or so ago,” she said. “It was…uncomfortable.”
“Why did you ask her to leave?”
She glanced over her shoulder. The other women in the office were deep in conversation, their gazes fixated on a book opened in front of them. “I was never what you’d call friends with her,” Eileen said in a soft voice. “She was always a bit too in your face for me. Telling you all about herself and that kind of thing, like she wanted to show off. I could tune her out most of the time, but I tried to make sure I never sat at her table.”
I nodded. One more person was describing the Helen I’d gotten to know over the previous week.
“But it got to the point where all she’d talk about was this man she was supposedly dating,” she continued. “And none of us really cared. I mean, it was fine that she seemed happy, but a lot of us were still friends with Olaf, so it was just sort of awkward.” She frowned. “But she just wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t play the game. She’d just keep talking about him. We really didn’t understand why she was there.”
“Did she say who he was?” I asked.
Eileen thought for a moment, then shook her head. “No, I don’t believe she ever mentioned his name. She just went on and on about how sexy he was, how good looking he was.”
Sexy. There was that word again. But it just felt like a choice of word being used to impress rather than tell the truth. Of course I thought my husband was sexy, but I didn’t go around using it to describe him to other people.
“I know he came one time to pick her up,” Eileen said. “From bunco, I mean. Her car wasn’t working or something like that, but she made a big to do about him coming to get her.”
I set my hands on the counter, my curiosity piqued. “So did you meet him?”
“No.” Eileen shook her head again and the tiny flare of hope I’d felt extinguished itself. “He didn’t come in. He texted her when he got there and she made sure we all knew he was there to pick her up.” She chuckled. “So we all ran to the window to get a look at Mr. Sexy before they left. I think half of us thought she was making him up and expected to see a taxi outside. Bu
t he was there.”
“So you saw him then?”
“Not really,” Eileen said. “It was dark because it was late. So we really just saw his shadow.”
I tried to hide my disappointment. “Ah, okay.”
“But there was one funny thing,” Eileen said, leaning forward, lowering her voice yo a whisper. “And it makes me sound like a terrible person for saying it, but we all just laughed because of how she’d gone on and on about how sexy he was.”
I wasn’t following. “What do you mean?”
She tried not to laugh. “Helen’s a tall woman, you know?”
“Sure.”
“I did not expect Mr. Sexy to be shorter than her,” she said. “The image was just funny when he opened the car door for her.”
“Shorter?” I asked, disappointed that it wasn’t something more significant.
Eileen nodded. “He barely came up to her shoulder.” She shook her head, her eyes twinkling. “I just expected that Mr. Sexy would, at the very least, be able to look Helen in the eye.”
FORTY ONE
Detective Priscilla Hanborn was leaning against the trunk of her car—which was parked in my driveway—when I returned home. Her thick winter patrol jacket gave her the appearance of a stay puffed marshmallow man. Or woman.
“I saw small bodies scurrying around inside,” she said as soon as I stepped out of the car. “Smart kids, not answering the door.”
“They aren’t fond of visitors unless we are home,” I told her. Nor would they appreciate being referred to as ‘small bodies,’ I wanted to add. But I kept my mouth shut.
“Nothing wrong with that.” She nodded her approval, her buzz cut standing still against the cold wind. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the house. “I was going to show you something, if you have a minute.”
I threw my purse over my shoulder and followed her into the snow-covered yard. I trudged behind her, trying to step in her tracks so my boots wouldn’t sink into the foot of snow that had piled up along the back side of the house.
“I pulled some old blueprints from the town planner last night,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Found the original ones from when your house was built. It’s been bothering since me the first day I came out here.”
I shot her a confused look. The blueprints of my house had been bothering her? Since when had she become an amateur architect?
“Did you know there was an outside access point to that coal chute?” she asked me. She pointed a finger at the side of the house.
I looked down at the side of the house, but saw only siding. “No.”
She squatted down and, with her gloved hands, began clearing snow away from the siding. “It looks like way back when, they probably backed whatever they used to deliver the coal and dropped it right about here, then dropped it down into the chute so they could shovel it into the furnace.” She made a fist and knocked lightly against the siding. “Should be right about here?” She turned and looked up at me. “You mind if I pull off the siding to take a look?”
“Go ahead,” I said, unsure of how one pulled siding off to begin with.
She used both of her hands and ran her gloves along the bottom of the next to last piece of siding. She lifted with both hands and the siding gave, the long strip of white vinyl popping off with a groan. She set it to the side and then began feeling along what looked like concrete or brick beneath the siding. Her fingers flexed, her brow furrowed, and she pulled.
And out came a concrete block.
“Knew it was here somewhere,” she said with a satisfied smile. She set the cinder block to the side, then reached down and grabbed another and did the same thing. She stood and pointed. “Take a look.”
I stepped over to the opening and bent down. I could see the crawl space in the basement through the narrow opening.
“Pretty sure that’s how Mr. Stunderson’s body got into your basement,” she said. “I don’t think they used your door. Those blocks came out pretty easily…which tells me they’ve been moved and replaced recently. If they’d been in place for a long time, they would’ve been a lot harder to move. I’d guess that the ones around it were moved, too, but I didn’t want to take them all out right now. Just wanted to see if I was right about the opening.”
Which she clearly was. If we took out a few more of the blocks, it would’ve been easy for any adult to crawl into.
I stood. “So that’s how they did it.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Would think so, yes.”
I recognized her hesitancy for what it was. “You mean, if I didn’t put his body there.”
She stared hard at me for a moment, then stuck her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “You are no longer a suspect,” she announced.
I raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you’re just saying that to see if I make some false move?”
“This isn’t TV, ma’am,” she said, frowning. “We did our due diligence on you and your family. You had no motive. And I just watched your reaction when I showed you this access point. You didn’t know it was here. Based on this information, we have no reason to believe you were involved with Mr. Stunderson’s death.”
Surprisingly, her declaration of my innocence didn’t foster any relief or goodwill. If anything, it just irritated me. Maybe because it had irked me that I was a suspect to begin with when I knew I shouldn’t have been. Maybe her decision was just too little, too late.
She shifted her boots against the snow. “So, about this access point. If I were you, I’d work on getting it sealed up.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her about that. “Yes. Thank you for letting us know.”
She nodded. “Certainly.” She scratched at her crew cut. “Let me ask you something.”
I waited, the cold seeping through my boots.
“Before the snow fell, you’re sure you never saw it?” she asked. Maybe she hadn’t believed my look of surprise when she revealed the access panel, after all.
I shook my head. “The siding on this house was one of the few things we haven’t had to replace or upgrade. The exterior was in pretty good shape.” I shrugged. “So, no. We had no way of knowing.”
She took a step away from the house, then changed her mind and shifted back toward the access point, her boots crunching against the snow. She stared hard at the opening. “Well, someone sure knew about it.”
FORTY TWO
As soon as Jake came home that night, I showed him what Detective Hanborn had shown me. He was less impressed than I was.
“There are probably holes like that all over this house,” he said, his breath billowing like smoke in the dark, frigid air.
I folded my arms across my chest. “That does not make me feel better.”
“Well, they’re probably plugged up.”
I lifted my booted foot and kicked gently at the exposed cinderblock. “We need to plug this one back up. Now.”
He opened his mouth to protest, then saw the look on my face and closed his mouth, sighing. Five minutes later, he’d changed into jeans and left for the hardware store, promising to grab a couple of pizzas on his way back. Twenty minutes later, he was back with pizza and breadsticks, much to the kids’ delight. He and I wolfed down a slice and left the rest to the kids while we headed out into the dark to seal up the blocks.
“What is that stuff?” I asked, gesturing at the bucket sitting in the snow next to him.
“Mortar.”
“What does it do?”
He stared up at me. “Seals the blocks back in place.”
From the tone of his voice, this was apparently supposed to be obvious. I didn’t know the first thing about building supplies and a retort was on the tip of my tongue but I just closed my mouth and said nothing. I knew the last thing Jake wanted to be doing after work was yet more repair work on the house. Outside. In a foot of snow.
So I stood there and offered moral support, trying to block the wind from hitting him and holding the flashlight steady so he coul
d see.
“There’s a bond beam in here,” he said, shifting on his side and peering into the hole.
“A what?”
“A beam that helps strengthen the foundation. I think it’s okay but I’ll need to check it in the morning.” He pointed at the plastic bag sitting next to the bucket of mortar he’d bought. “Hand me one of those shims.”
I knelt down and reached inside the bag and pulled out a thin piece of wood. I handed it to him and he positioned it into place, using some kind of spreading tool as he worked the cinder block back in the whole.
“You look so…manly,” I told him.
He glared at me. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I grinned. “I dunno. You’ve got all these tools and you’re using all these words I don’t know. It’s very sexy.” As soon as I said the word, I bit back a giggle. My conversations about Helen were clearly rubbing off on me if my go-to word to describe my husband was now ‘sexy.’
“Awesome,” he said. “I’ll be sure to use ‘mortar’ and ‘shim’ when we get into bed tonight.” He straightened and fitted the lid back on the container of mortar.
“That’s it?” I asked. “You’re done?”
“I’m done for now,” he clarified. “It has to set. And I need better lighting to see how bad the rest of the blocks are. I don’t think any are damaged but, if they are, we’re better off replacing them now, before we mortar them in and then have them crumble.”
“So it’s not done?” I frowned. “People can still get in?”
“Daisy,” he said, standing up. “No one is going to get in. No one even knows it exists.”
The words were out of my mouth before he finished his sentence. “Someone knows it exists.”
He didn’t say anything, just picked up the bucket and the bag and headed toward the house. I followed, the light from the flashlight bouncing wildly as I navigated the snowy, slippery terrain.