Murder at Spirit Falls

by Barbara Deese

  “And since you reported hearing a crash that night, they can pinpoint the time,” Louise said.

  Robin sighed, “It’s only speculation, and it doesn’t mean much unless they can prove Melissa died in his car. The sheriff was saying that the car must have been worked on by professional criminals, or was it criminal professionals? Anyway, I heard him say he’d run out of ideas since they’d checked all the body shops in southwestern Wisconsin looking for a car repair job that matched Martin’s car. He also said Minnesota had come up with ‘a big zero.’”

  Grace hitched up an errant bra strap. “It sounds like they’ve got a pretty flimsy case for murder.”

  Cate turned to Robin. “Well, they know Melissa was in the area, I mean, they have your photo to prove it, and you noted the date in your photo log, right?”

  Robin nodded.

  “You know, what you said, that we haven’t done anything? Well, it just isn’t true!” Louise’s voice rose in indignation. “Just listen to what all y’all are saying.”

  Robin thought Louise must be plenty agitated. She’d heard her use the occasional y’all, but all y’all, well, that was deep old South.

  “Y’all found the body,” Louise continued. “Robin, you heard the crash, then we found the tree with paint on it. You took a picture, for God’s sake, placing the victim right above where she was found, and because y’all recognized Cate’s bracelet in that guy’s trailer, and then you went with to console Melissa’s mother and Cate remembered the creep buying the bracelet—” She gasped for breath.

  “Chicago!” Robin said, clapping her hands together.

  They looked blank.

  “Chicago,” she said again. “What better place to find criminal professionals to strip your car of the evidence?” And then she told them about Lee Ann’s account of having to deal with Ross Johnson on the Chicago leg of her flight.

  “When was it?” Foxy asked.

  “If I remember correctly, it would have been a week or so after our weekend at Spirit Falls.”

  As she laid out the idea, Grace began to nod.

  Foxy leaned forward, suddenly excited. “I think you’ve got it right. I’ll bet anything he was picking up the car for Krause.”

  Cate screwed up her mouth. “Yeah, he really could have.”

  “So it was Johnson all along.” Grace’s expression was smug.

  “Maybe,” Robin said grudgingly, “but why would he be picking up Krause’s car without his knowledge, not to mention his consent?”

  “I don’t know, but you’ve gotta call the authorities,” Louise said, and Grace agreed.

  Cate nodded, a smile starting to grow.

  But Foxy’s excitement faded. “Are you sure? It’s just an idea. It’s not like we have proof or anything.”

  Cate grabbed Robin’s arm. “Do you know the sheriff’s number?”

  Robin shook her head. “Wait, I have it on my cell phone.” She sprinted upstairs to get it out of her purse.

  The question of making a charge against Krause was being debated by Maki’s team and in the offices of the district attorney. They all knew the realities. Smelling a rat was not the same as successfully prosecuting one.

  Some of their best stuff might not hold up well in court. First of all, there was the testimony of Candi Damiano. They hadn’t been able to corroborate, well, any of it. Johnson himself was certainly in no position to talk. Then there was the supposed friend she claimed had brought her to Johnson’s place and had arranged for her to be his “date” for the weekend, a man with the improbable name of José Churchill. Gone. His belongings were still in the apartment, but the absence of money and any form of identification indicated he had disappeared on purpose. Miss Damiano had also named a certain ballplayer who’d attended the weekend party or orgy or whatever. On questioning, he had denied being there, and his wife sewed up his alibi by saying he’d been by her side the entire weekend.

  “Fine!” Maki spat the word out. “I want someone on Krause around the clock. That scrote’s still lying to us.”

  26

  Between appointments, Grace called Brenda. “I just wanted to check up on you, see how the two of you are doing,” she said.

  Brenda laughed brightly. “We’re doing fine. In fact, it’s been wonderful.” She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “He hardly leaves my side. Last night he kept his arms around me as though he was afraid he’d wake up and I’d be gone.” She giggled.

  This was a side of Brenda that Grace had never seen. “Wow! Maybe now you can get back to rebuilding your lives.”

  “I’m beginning to believe for the first time that we have a chance—” Brenda’s voice caught. “… now that Ross Johnson is out of our lives.”

  Grace wasn’t sure why, but she felt obliged to add, “May he rest in peace.”

  Brenda sighed heavily. “And leave us in peace.”

  She listened as Brenda, her speech rapid with excitement, talked about the future, using phrases like put everything behind us and a fresh start and water under the bridge. Grace winced at that last one.

  “It’s hard to believe I have my old Martin back.”

  Grace found herself wondering if she could be as gracious as Brenda Krause if Fred ever cheated on her. It took a special person to be able to see all the good things in someone when he’d done such a glaringly bad thing. Grace tried to consider it from Brenda’s point of view. Maybe she figured he’d been punished enough. And maybe he had. Being handcuffed and brought in for questioning had to have been excruciating, not to mention what all that negative press had done to his career.

  Brenda addressed none of this. She was clearly basking in Martin’s renewed attention. “It really couldn’t have been resolved any better, could it? Oh, that’s my other line. Do you mind?”

  Grace didn’t know if she was supposed to hang up. She was faintly disturbed to hear Ross Johnson’s ugly death referred to as a resolution. She checked her watch. Her next client would be in shortly.

  Brenda came back on the line. “That was my neighbor, Phyllis. She wants to go out to lunch tomorrow. We’re going to eat at the Mall of America and do a little shopping. Want to make it a threesome?”

  Grace flipped a page in her appointment book. “I have two clients in the morning, but I could get away by, say 11:30.” She erased her tentative notation: Lunch @ Galleria w/ Louise? She would have to call Louise and say that she’d goofed and scheduled clients for the afternoon.

  Brenda said, “Great! Phyllis said she’d drive. We can just swing by your office. I think you’re going to like her. Besides, Phyllis has an impeccable sense of fashion, and she can smell a bargain a mile away.”

  The next morning, Grace took extra care choosing her clothing. She wasn’t sure what someone with impeccable taste would think of her standard wardrobe. She stepped on the scale and grinned. Thirteen pounds, so far. She decided it was time to try on the black slacks and sapphire top that hadn’t fit her in two years. The pants zipped and buttoned with ease. The buttoned top no longer strained across her breasts.

  “Diet and exercise. Who knew?” she commented to her reflection. She’d have to thank Brenda. If it hadn’t been for her encouragement, she surely would have expended much of her energy, albeit subconsciously, coming up with diversions to avoid the gym.

  Grace sat through an interminable session in her Bloomington office with a husband and wife who needed marriage counseling more than financial advice. The wife wanted to set up a trust fund for her children from a first marriage. The husband said her son was a deadbeat. The wife reminded him that neither of his daughters would have anything to do with him. They glowered at each other just long enough to reload. He continued with a terse complaint about the negligible financial contribution she made, and she returned fire, accusing him of taking his higher earning capacity as a male entitlement.

  Grace sighed and clicked her fingernails on the arm of her chair, knowing that nothing she said would elicit agreement. “I think we should table this
until you’ve had a chance to discuss a few things in private.” She dug in her file drawer and handed them a questionnaire. “Use this as a discussion guide, and try to find some common ground.”

  The husband grunted.

  Grace opened her Franklin Planner. “How about two weeks from today?”

  From her second floor window, she watched the couple leave, squealing out of the parking lot and almost hitting an entering car, which turned out to be a nondescript black Chevy driven by Brenda’s neighbor, Phyllis Carson. Grace hurried outside and slipped into the backseat.

  As Brenda predicted, Grace liked Phyllis. She wore her ivory pantsuit loose and her black hair in a swingy bob. She had an easy laugh, even before their second glass of wine at the Napa Valley Grill. When they toasted their new friendship, Grace felt a momentary pang of guilt for lying to Louise. She glanced around, imagining Louise walking up right now. She could only hope Phyllis and Brenda wouldn’t blow her cover when she introduced them as “clients.”

  After lunch, as Phyllis steered them from store to store, Grace seriously regretted her choice of shoes, a pair of low-heeled sandals that looked and felt far better before her feet had puffed like rising dough between the straps. She tried not to hobble as she toted bags from Nordstrom’s Rack and Macy’s, tried to smile when Brenda suggested getting facials at the spa on the other side of the gargantuan mall.

  When they got to the spa, Grace opted for a pedicure. She placed her feet in the whirlpool of hot water, opened a People magazine and leaned back in the vibrating chair. Minutes later, she woke from her impromptu nap, wondering if she’d snored, as Fred claimed she’d been doing for the past couple of years. She put fingertips to the corners of her mouth. Thank God she hadn’t drooled.

  When at last she met up with Brenda and Phyllis, she sported newly painted toenails. “Mata Hari Red,” she said. She looked pointedly at her watch.

  “Yeah, let’s call it a day,” Phyllis said, and they gathered up their purchases. Suddenly Phyllis stopped and faced the other two. “Does anyone remember where I parked the car?”

  “East side, just to the right of center and three rows back,” Brenda said with assurance.

  “Okay, but what floor?”

  Grace and Brenda looked at each other and shrugged.

  “Wait,” Grace said, “Didn’t we come in on the same floor as Marshall’s?”

  They found an escalator and went up to the third floor.

  Grace, visibly limping now, said, “I can’t believe my feet are hurting again. I broke down a couple years ago and admitted I needed to buy a half size larger. But still my shoes don’t seem to fit.”

  Phyllis nodded agreement. “I know what you mean.”

  More slowly now, they walked through the doors and into the corridor leading to the ramp.

  “Ugh!” Brenda said, waving a hand in the air. “Keeping the mall smoke-free just sends all the smokers out here.” Her hands went to her neck and she stopped walking. “My silk scarf!”

  “Oh, no,” Grace commiserated. “And I was thinking earlier how beautiful it was.”

  Brenda made a face. “I’m sorry, ladies, but I have to go back and look for it. Martin bought it for me in Florence.”

  Grace looked toward the parking ramp and groaned. “Do you mind—?”

  “You two just wait in the car,” Brenda said and took off.

  Grace eased herself into the front seat and kicked off her sandals. “My husband thinks I should get orthopedic shoes.” She made it sound like a profanity. “Granny shoes! I’d rather go barefoot. I’m not vain, but I have my limits.”

  “I understand.” Phyllis smiled. “I sure hope Brenda finds her scarf. She was so lighthearted today. I’d hate for our day to end on a note of disappointment.”

  Grace shook her head. “I don’t know how she keeps her spirits up with all she’s been through. I think I’d wind up in a rubber room.”

  Phyllis expelled a mouthful of air. “I know what you mean. I feel so bad for her.”

  “It’s not fair,” Grace said. “She’s just one of those people you’d expect to have it all.”

  “And she did,” Phyllis agreed. “When I first met her, I thought they were a little too perfect, you know, the beautiful people—never a hair out of place, and they were always so lovey-dovey together. She looked at him the way Nancy Reagan looked at Ronnie.”

  Grace could picture it. “I never knew her before the—” She groped for the word. “I never saw them together.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll reserve judgment on him, but Brenda really is the perfect neighbor. So thoughtful, too, like this spring when we had that awful storm. Gil and I were down in St. Louis for my nephew’s graduation when it happened, and we came back and, well, she’d just cleaned everything up, raked up the branches and debris; she even gathered up all our lawn furniture that had blown all over creation.”

  “I can believe it.”

  “And you know Brenda, how she just thinks of every little thing,” Phyllis continued. “She said she’d had to borrow my car for some errands while we were gone—I guess hers wouldn’t start one day—and she brought it back with a full tank of gas. She’d even had it freshly wa—Ooh, she found it.”

  Grace saw Brenda coming toward them, waving her scarf triumphantly.

  Phyllis tugged at her shoulder harness. It stuck and she tugged again.

  “Wait, it’s twisted.” Grace leaned over, and from her angle, pulled the harness free. “What’s this?” She pointed to the dark stain on the inside of the belt.

  Phyllis looked. “Soy sauce?” she guessed. “I have no idea.”

  Brenda threw open the back door and flapped her scarf at them. “Ta-da! It was under the table at the restaurant.”

  Robin checked all the zippered pockets in her purse before setting it on the foyer table. Damn and damn again! She’d already checked pockets, looked under her dresser with a flashlight and crawled under the bed, but her wedding ring was nowhere to be found.

  She sat on a hassock and tried to picture where she’d left it this time. She’d been wearing it infrequently, and this was the consequence. Damn it all! She ran her fingers through her hair.

  She called Cate.

  “I wish you and Brad would get back on track,” Cate said. “This is the third time you’ve mislaid your wedding ring. I think you have to start wondering why.”

  Robin felt like hanging up. She wanted to remind Cate of all the times Cate had gone looking for her glasses. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” she retorted.

  “What?”

  “It’s what Freud said when, oh, never mind. I keep losing it because my hands are too puffy half the time to wear it.”

  “I can resize it for you,” Cate offered.

  “Then half the time it would be too loose and fall off.” Robin cradled the phone on her shoulder and twisted her fingers together in her lap. “Dang it all, Cate, I can’t remember. I think I had it at the cabin last time, but I just don’t trust my memory.”

  “Maybe it’s part of George’s collection by now.” Odd little man, Cate added to herself.

  Robin pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Well, I guess I’m headed back to Spirit Falls, but not for a few days. Brad actually said he’d go to church with me Sunday. Can you believe it?”

  “Why did he stop going, anyway?”

  “He never said, but I think he doesn’t like me in the choir because he has to sit by himself, but I’ve been in some choir or another most of my life.”

  “Well, I’m glad he’s going. So when are you going back to Wisconsin?”

  “Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.”

  There was a long pause. “Grover says he’s too confined in our house. Can we come too?”

  “Of course.”

  “Want me to drive?”

  “I’d enjoy your company, but I do not need a chaperone.”

  “Face it, Robin, the police can’t say for sure who murdered Melissa Dunn. It’s just too easy to s
ay it’s the dead guy, but I still think it could be—”

  “I know, I know. Poor old George.”

  Cate sounded miffed. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  Still on the portable phone, Robin went downstairs to check the workbench in her darkroom. “Sorry I’m puffing,” she said to Cate. “I’m just coming up the basement stairs. My ring’s not down there either.”

  “Could the cats have played hockey with it?”

  “I checked everywhere I can think of.” Hopeless, she thought, absolutely hopeless. “I can’t blame it on chemo-brain anymore, Cate. I know we joke about Alzheimer’s, but what if it really is?”

  “Then I guess we’ll be roomies again. At the home.”

  27

  The next Wednesday, Grace took advantage of a morning cancellation and headed to the club for a lengthy workout. Brenda was already there, doing laps on the track. Grace, still nursing blisters, skipped her warm-up and went directly to the Nautilus machines.

  She was grimacing, trying to bring her elbows together on the butterfly machine when Brenda popped up at her side. “Want to grab lunch?”

  Grace thought she seemed downright carefree compared to the past weeks. “Sounds good.”

  “I’m ready for the shower.”

  Grace nodded and finished her repetitions. “I’m right behind you.”

  Twenty minutes later, standing next to Brenda in front of the long mirror, Grace squinted, looking back and forth between her own image and that of her friend. “Sometimes I think you’re lying to me,” she said, her brows pulled together.

  Brenda’s eyes opened wide.

  “About your age, I mean. Look how old and tired I look next to you.”

  Brenda let out a sigh. Reaching into her Laura Ashley bag, she proffered a small container. “Here, try this undereye gel.”

  Grace unscrewed it and dabbed some on.

  “Now the concealer.” She handed a tube to her.

  With her fingertip, Grace tapped some onto the bluish crescents under her eyes.