The Club (Anna Denning Mystery Book 4)

by Karin Kaufman

  “Do you know if he lived in the county?”

  “He didn’t always take out books, but the librarian remembered seeing him a number of times over the past few months, so he probably wasn’t a tourist.” Schaeffer paused for a gulp of coffee. “But there’s no one else named Hetrick in the entire Elk Valley, and no one named Hetrick bought a house or rented an apartment in the area. And we’ve contacted police departments throughout the county and up and down the front range about missing persons.” He tapped the morgue photo. “No one’s missing this guy.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Mid-thirties. We faxed an artist’s drawing of the photo to various police departments, and this morning we’ll release the photo to newspapers and websites. That might stir something up.”

  “You don’t sound hopeful.”

  “I’m not. Some people live isolated lives and no one misses them when they’re gone.”

  “Someone must miss him.”

  “You’d think so.”

  “There are only nine thousand people in Elk Park. You can’t disappear here. Someone always knows.” Anna noticed a single sheet of paper left in Schaeffer’s folder. “What’s that?”

  “This is up your alley.” He turned the paper her way. “A photocopy of the only other thing we found on Hetrick.”

  Anna leaned forward. “Johannes . . .”

  “We don’t know what it is either. It doesn’t come up on any police database.”

  “Sorg.”

  “Is that how you pronounce it? With a hard g? We’ve been saying it like sarge, only with an o.”

  “I’m only guessing. It looks like an Old World European name. Johannes Sorg. Swedish or Norwegian, maybe. Or Danish or German.”

  “Sore-guh,” Schaeffer said, setting down his mug and scribbling an approximation of Anna’s pronunciation into a spiral notebook.

  “Written on a small piece of paper?”

  “Yes, that’s the actual size. Handwritten in blue pen on cheap, lined white paper, about one by three inches. And here’s the really interesting thing. That piece of paper was found in his right shoe.”

  Anna looked up. “Did he put it there?”

  “Possibly. It was under his foot, and it wasn’t put there postmortem. Which doesn’t mean someone else didn’t put it there before he died.”

  “How did he die?”

  “A puncture from something sharp, shaped like an ice pick.” Schaeffer touched the back of his neck. “Just below the base of the skull.”

  Anna took another sip of coffee, trying to keep the stomach flutters at bay. “Was he taken by surprise?” Though her instincts were to squeeze her eyes shut, even to picture the deathblow that had taken Hetrick’s life, Anna forced herself to ask questions. If she was going to work with the police, she needed to toughen up. Or appear to do so. It wasn’t just the money police work brought in—though that was a big part of it—it was the work itself she liked. This work mattered. It put her genealogical people-finding skills to good, important use.

  “He probably knew his attacker.”

  “Who was probably a resident of Elk Park?”

  “Not necessarily.” Schaeffer put his mug on his desk and handed Anna the folder. “Because of the cold, the medical examiner can’t give a precise time of death, but he thinks somewhere between four and eight o’clock at night on New Year’s Eve. He was found by the hiker just after dawn on the first of January. Now it’s the fifth, and we still don’t have a clue as to who he really is.”

  “Identification and background of the deceased is step one in any investigation.”

  “Exactly. All we have is a name, which may or may not be real.”

  “And he can’t be buried—not properly—before his family is notified.”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Anna slipped the photo and photocopied sheets back in the folder. She was eager to begin. If she discovered who Hetrick really was, and that meant locating his family, she could not only give him the burial he deserved but also help the police catch a murderer.

  “There’s one more thing,” Schaeffer said. “Hetrick was missing the index finger of his left hand.”

  Anna stared at him a moment before she replied. “Was it an old injury?”

  “No, the medical examiner says it happened postmortem.”

  “Someone killed him then cut off his finger?”

  “The perpetrator and finger cutter aren’t necessarily the same person.”

  “Yeah, true.”

  “You can’t make assumptions.”

  “I’m learning that.” Anna grabbed hold of her coffee mug and took a long gulp. Should she tell Schaeffer about her talk with Melinda Maxwell? About the finger Melinda found in her father’s attaché case? It was fake, that’s what Melinda had said, and surely a real finger looked like a finger, no mistaking it.

  “Keep this to yourself for now,” Schaeffer said. “Both the finger and this Sorg business.”

  Anna downed the rest of her coffee and then set the empty mug on Schaeffer’s desk. “What about Liz? Can I tell her?” In less than two years, Liz Halvorsen had made ElkNews.com the Elk Valley’s number one website for news and entertainment. Only the local paper, the Elk Park Herald, bested Liz in the news department, and in a year or two that would change. Anna hated to leave Liz out of the news loop, something Schaeffer knew full well.

  “I’ll let you know when you can tell her. For now, keep those two things quiet.”

  “I will. What about the manner and time of death?”

  “We just released that. She probably knows by now.”

  Anna smiled. “Probably.”

  “You can give her anything but the photo and information on Johannes Sorg and Hetrick’s finger. If you find a possible family member, keep that quiet too until we release the name.”

  “Of course.”

  A rapping sound behind her caused Anna to turn.

  “Sir?” A uniformed officer, his knuckles resting on the pane of glass in Schaeffer’s office door, waited for the signal to speak.

  “Holtz?” Schaeffer said.

  The officer took two steps toward Schaeffer’s desk, his eyes shifting from his commander to Anna.

  “This is Anna Denning. She’s a consultant with the department.”

  “Oh, are you?” the officer asked, relaxing and moving for Schaeffer’s desk. “The genealogist-slash-researcher? I’d heard you’d be joining us.”

  “What’s on your mind, Officer?” Schaeffer said.

  “Sir, it’s happened again. We found someone else.”

  “Don’t be cryptic, Holtz.”

  “Another body in the pines. A couple hundred feet from Saddleback Road.”

  Schaeffer exhaled loudly and leaned back in his chair.

  “Two snowshoers found him,” Holtz added. “We’re securing the scene, and the CSI unit and medical examiner have been notified.”

  “Right.” Schaeffer stood. “Who took the call?”

  “Banner. He says the victim has all his fingers. It looks like he was stabbed in the chest and abdomen. The abdominal wound was open and—”

  Schaeffer held up a hand, interrupting Holtz’s gruesome description of the scene. “Any ID?”

  “He had a wallet with a driver’s license, and Banner knows who he is.”

  “Does he?”

  “A lot of people do. He’s the editor of the Elk Park Herald, Henry Maxwell.”

  3

  Anna let Jackson off his leash behind the Buffalo Café, in the small yard where Grace Bell kept her Siberian husky, then entered the café by the back door. “Grace, Jackson’s out back with Suka,” she said, stopping at the counter.

  “I thought that was you I heard. As soon as I saw Liz, I knew you’d be coming in.” The Buffalo’s owner nodded at a table by the front window. “The woman she’s with came in first, asking for you. Coffee?”

  One glance at Melinda—the drooping shoulders, the ball of white tissue in her hand—
and Anna knew she had heard about her father’s death. Liz had probably found out shortly after Holtz told Schaeffer. “Um . . .” Anna looked back to Grace.

  “You never turn down coffee.”

  “Sure, I’ll have a cup.” She held a hand to her stomach. “I had some police department coffee a little while ago. It’s not sitting well with me.”

  “Police? For work, I hope.”

  “Work.”

  “Isn’t that something?” Grace said with a grin. “Anna Denning, PI. Hang on, I’ll get you a cup.”

  When Anna looked back to the table by the window, Liz acknowledged her with a small wave then latched on to her coffee cup. She looked relieved, ready to lay the burden of talking to Melinda onto Anna’s plate. Melinda turned and gave Anna a small smile. She was holding up remarkably well for a woman who had just found out her father had been murdered, Anna thought, but then she hadn’t seen the man in eleven years. She didn’t know him.

  Grace placed a freshly poured cup of coffee on the counter, holding firmly to its handle. “And how’s Gene? Where’s my wedding invitation?”

  “We haven’t sent them.”

  Grace’s eyes fell to Anna’s finger, to the simple platinum band topped with a pear-shaped blue topaz. “Such a lovely ring.”

  “I’ve worn it for two months and I still stare at it every morning.” Lovely, Anna thought. Beautiful beyond her wildest dreams, exactly her style—thanks to Gene asking Liz for her help in choosing it—and far too expensive. In her twenties she wouldn’t have thought twice about the cost, but at thirty-seven she envisioned a price tag every time she saw the ring.

  “You’re soon to be Mrs. Westfall.”

  “Weird, huh?”

  “Have you set the date?”

  “Not yet. Can I have my coffee?”

  “How about June?”

  “That’s what we’re thinking. It’s the first reliable month for weather.”

  “Though May might work.”

  “I’d get married tomorrow, but Gene’s family would have a fit.” At an altitude of 7,500 feet, Elk Park almost always had snow in May. A June wedding it had to be. “When are you going to get married again, Grace?”

  “Where did that come from?” Grace released the cup and Anna took hold of the handle.

  “Just something I was thinking. You shouldn’t settle for a life alone.”

  “Go on, off with you.” Grace shooed Anna with the back of her hand, took a damp cloth from the counter, and started wiping down the espresso machine.

  Anna pulled two bills from her purse and laid them on the counter. “Thanks for the coffee, Grace.” She made her way to Liz’s table, hung her purse from her chair, and sat. “Grace needs to turn up the heat in here,” she said, jamming her hands into the pockets of her jacket.

  “She’s trying to save money,” Liz replied.

  “Isn’t everyone these days?” Anna said sourly. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Melinda. I imagine you’ve heard, and here I am complaining about the cold.”

  “My father? Liz just told me he’s dead. It’s fine, you can say the words. I’m shocked, that’s all. I can’t say I’m sad. Isn’t that awful? But I didn’t know him. I vaguely remember a decent father, back when I was still in grade school.”

  “How old were you when you left home?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Why so young?” Liz asked.

  “He’d become a monster. I would have left earlier if I could have.”

  “Do you still want to know his background, his ancestry?” Anna said.

  “Mostly I want to know who my grandparents were—or are. I want to know about my dad only enough to understand why he became who he was. I want to know what turned him.”

  “Turned him?” Anna asked. “Turned” was an odd word. The sort of word you used about a traitor or a man who had experienced a radical change in personality, or even morality.

  Melinda paused to take a drink of her coffee, set the cup out of her way, then leaned forward and crossed her arms on the table. “I’ve been asking myself what happened. When we lived in Wyoming, we were a happy family, at least until my mom died.”

  “When was that?” Anna said. She dug through her purse, retrieving a pen and small notebook.

  “I’ve got everything you need here,” Melinda said, opening her purse and extracting several folded sheets of paper. “Liz told me to write down everything I remembered—names, nicknames, dates, places, schools, organizations.”

  “You two met at the town office?” Anna asked, glancing from Melinda to Liz. She took Melinda’s papers and slipped them into her purse.

  “Melinda was asking around, trying to scare up info on her family,” Liz said, “and I was there doing research. I heard the name Henry Maxwell. It piqued my interest.”

  “Your newspaper nemesis,” Melinda said.

  “Is that the impression I gave?” Liz said, patting the back of her head, where a butterfly hairclip held her loosely twisted dark brown hair in place. “To be fair, I never had any contact with your father, only his underlings.”

  “Be glad of it,” Melinda said. “Be very thankful.”

  Anna blew over the rim of her cup, cooling her coffee before taking a drink. No wonder Liz had become involved at the mention of Henry Maxwell. The editors of the Elk Park Herald, not to say Maxwell himself, had tried to destroy her reputation, along with her website, last spring, in what Liz had come to call the Sparrow House Affair. “Did your father change after your mother died?”

  “That’s what I remember. She died, and two months later my dad lost his job.”

  “Wow,” Liz said. “One thing on top of the other.”

  “It almost killed him. A few weeks after that he found a job at the Herald and we moved to Elk Park. In fact, it was seventeen years ago this month we moved. I was eleven. Six years later I left for Iowa and my brother moved to Indiana.”

  “You have a brother?” Anna said.

  “Before you ask, I haven’t seen or heard from him since then.”

  “And you never saw your father again until this week.”

  “That never bothered me. I didn’t want to see him. I can even handle not seeing my brother. But it bothered me that I never saw my grandparents or aunts and uncles again. They’re not in their old houses, not in any phone book, not online.” Melinda straightened and drew her coffee cup toward her, cradling it in her hands. “What happened to them? Are they still alive? Why did they abandon me?”

  The plaintive tone in Melinda’s voice was almost heartbreaking. She was pleading for answers, but as Anna knew, genealogical answers, though they often explained, rarely satisfied. After all, they were nothing more than facts and figures. Melinda wanted something more. “Did the break with your extended family come at the same time you left Wyoming?”

  “Exactly the same time. After we left, I never heard from any of my relatives again.”

  “It sounds like your dad needed to move for the work,” Anna said. “He found a job at the Herald and he had no choice but to go. Didn’t they understand he had to support his family?”

  Slowly Melinda shook her head. “I sensed . . . they never told me why they were angry about the move, but I sensed there was much more to it than them being unhappy we were leaving Wyoming. They knew he’d found a job in Colorado. But the father I knew before the move would never have cut them out of his life over a stupid disagreement. It had to be something big.”

  “Were they angry because he lost his job in Wyoming?”

  “I don’t think so. To start with, it was a pitiful job. Teaching journalism at the community college. He wasn’t even a professor, just an instructor.”

  “If I can find enough facts,” Anna said, “you might be able to put together the pieces of what happened, but I can’t guarantee that. Though I think at the very least I can find out which of your relatives are still alive. Then you can contact them and try to get their medical histories.”

  Liz, who had been silent for some tim
e, perked up. “Medical histories? That makes sense. I always thought adopted kids have a disadvantage in that area. Not that you’re adopted, Melinda, but it’s helpful to know the DNA you’re dealing with.”

  “I wonder if they’ll talk to me,” Melinda said.

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Liz said. “It wasn’t your decision to move to Colorado.”

  “But it’s very sensitive,” Melinda said.

  “How is—”

  “Anyway,” Melinda said, cutting Liz off, “just finding out they’re alive would be awesome. So you’ll take the job, Anna? I can pay you up front.” She started to unzip her purse.

  “Later,” Anna said. “I charge by the hour, and I bill when the job’s done.”

  “How soon can you get started?”

  Her new client was looking for a rush job, Anna thought. Rush as in done yesterday. This morning the matter had been important, but now, after her father’s death, Melinda’s need was urgent. “I’ve got a little job with the police department to finish, then I’ll give it my full attention.” A little job? A murdered man with no past and no index finger on his left hand was not a small matter, and Anna had no idea how long it would take her to find someone who knew Jordan Hetrick—if that was his name.

  “I see.” Melinda was crestfallen.

  “It won’t be long. If my current job takes more than a couple days, I’ll take on yours simultaneously. You said you live in Iowa now. Are you planning to stay in Elk Park for a while?”

  “I have to. Funeral arrangements, all that. I’m at my dad’s house.”

  Anna nodded her sympathy. From the corner of her eye she saw Liz fidgeting with the handle on her cup. Her friend wanted information on Anna’s job as a consultant with the police, but she knew that with Melinda at the table, Anna couldn’t say a word about it. “Maybe you’ll find something in your dad’s papers that can help,” she said.

  “I’ll see what I can find tonight. Last night I checked a couple desk drawers—and that attaché I told you about.”

  Mention of the attaché brought to Anna’s mind the finger Melinda had found, and she had to suppress a shudder. Even if it wasn’t real, what was such a thing doing in the editor in chief’s attaché case? And the souvenirs from Scotland—why keep them in an attaché?