The Dead of Winter (A Piper Blackwell Mystery Book 1)

by Jean Rabe

  “You must be Phan,” Piper said, as she reached into her pocket for her wallet. “I’ll need a receipt.” The Taurus appeared to be getting twenty-three miles to a gallon.

  “Nang,” the man said, taking her credit card and running it through the machine. “Phan is my family name.”

  “Nice to meet you, Nang.” Piper looked at the menu, twelve items on it plus a “today’s special.” It was well past lunch, but she hadn’t eaten. And though she’d told Oren they’d compare notes at the department, she knew he wouldn’t get there until later. She could spare the time to eat. The spices swirling in the air were making her mouth water.

  “You hungry, Sheriff?” She noticed he had no trace of an accent, beyond the Midwestern one people in the area spewed.

  “Yes, very.”

  Piper saw that everything was Vietnamese fare—except the drinks.

  “I’ll take the Crab Meat Sui Mai and Dan Dan Noodles Chen. That’s for here. To go, and so I don’t need that hot, I’d like…what is your Tears in Eyes?”

  “Spicy mung bean noodle soup. It is good. I make everything fresh.”

  “A large cup of that and an order of pork dumplings in chili oil.” Her father liked spicy food, and she intended to stop home and check on him before returning to the department, bring the food as a treat, hoping the chemo treatment left him with an appetite. “Oh, and a large cup of coffee, that’s for here, too.”

  “Take a seat, please, and I will bring it to you.”

  Piper picked the table that afforded the best view of the store and the pumps outside. There were decorative cardstock placemats with a January calendar on one half and a picture of a striking pagoda-style temple on the other with big red flowers growing around it, making her wish for warmer days. A website was listed beneath the flowers, and she raised an eyebrow. “Maybe—”

  A bell jangled and she looked up as a burly man in lightweight jacket came in, stomping snow off his shoes.

  “Nang, I’m at the diesel,” he announced. “Got my truck out today. This weather!”

  Piper thought that an obvious statement, about the diesel, as his was the only vehicle she saw out the front window.

  “Fifty-two,” Nang returned.

  The burly man chuckled. “Yeah, I always have to finesse the pump so I owe an even amount, don’t like to keep coins in my pocket. They make holes.” He pointed to a small display on the counter. “And give me eight dollars worth of scratch-offs, the ones with the bluebirds on them.”

  Piper watched the snow come down, a few minutes later noting another person come in for gas, a man in an oversized Indianapolis Colts jacket and stocking cap. He looked familiar, probably the Colts’ fan that had been standing in Conrad’s driveway, a Hagee New Year’s Eve guest who lived around here. He looked her way and nodded, paid for his gas, and bought a lottery ticket.

  Where’s my lunch? She touched the cell phone in her pocket, could call Oren and see if he and Randy had found anything especially interesting at Miss Thornbridge’s house, could call her dad and see how he was doing, could just watch the snow fall and wonder what she’d be doing if she’d stayed in the Army and how much longer she’d have to twiddle her thumbs until her meal arrived. Where’s my coffee?

  More to the point: What the hell am I doing here?

  “Here you go.” Nang carried a tray and sat it on the table, and then took off a plate brimming with crabmeat and noodles and placed it in front of her. He arranged the silverware—metal, not plastic—and retreated, coming back with a tall Styrofoam cup and pouring coffee in it. “Cream? Sugar?”

  Piper raised an eyebrow. She was being treated as if this were a restaurant, not a gas station’s convenience store. “Black’s fine.”

  “I voted for you,” he said after he returned to behind the counter. “Thought the county could use some new blood.” He adjusted the display of lottery tickets, and then picked up a rag and wiped the counter.

  “Thanks.” Piper took a sip of the coffee, hot, not as good as her dad’s, but passable. Better than the liquid sludge in the department office. She speared into a piece of crab and started eating. “This is very good.”

  “Everything I make is very good.” Nang came back to the table with a cup of coffee for himself, pulled out the chair opposite her and sat without invitation. “Did you find out who killed Conrad Delaney?”

  Piper swallowed hard. That was blunt. “No.” She took a bite of the noodles, finding them also delicious. “In fact, I stopped in to talk to you about Mr. Delaney.”

  “Two other deputies talked to me yesterday.”

  “That’s fine. But I wanted to talk to you, too.” Another swallow of coffee. “If you have a few minutes.”

  “Sure.” He rested his cup in the middle of the pagoda on his placemat, leaned forward, and steepled his fingers. “I bought this place from Conrad. It used to be called Conrad’s Quick Stop and Go.”

  “You seem young to own a business.”

  “You seem young to be a sheriff,” he countered.

  “Touché. Were you born here, Nang?”

  “In Owensboro. First generation American. My parents moved here from Vinh. My father was hired as the associate dean of electrical technology at the community college. He is still there, full dean now, but my parents are divorced.”

  “A lot of that going around,” Piper said softly. “So Owensboro isn’t all that big, but next to tiny Fulda—”

  “The air smells good here, in Fulda. It is a place with history, dates to the 1840s I’d read, founded by German immigrants, and named for a city in Germany more than twelve hundred years old—where missionaries joined with Charlemagne’s armies to spread the Christian word.”

  “I didn’t know that about Fulda,” Piper confessed. “And I don’t know the history of most of the tiny towns around here.”

  “I like tiny towns, this one especially. Very quiet, clean, lots of trees, and most of the people are very friendly.”

  “But not all of the people,” Piper said after another bite of crab. “Word is some were upset you bought this place.”

  “A few, I suppose. I think they got over it.”

  A bell rang announcing another customer. Nang got up but left his coffee cup. “Busy day,” he said. “All this snow, people fill up their tanks.”

  The shopper was a stoop-shouldered man in a coat two sizes too big. He paid for gas and a snow shovel, turned around and fished in his pocket for a dollar and bought a scratch-off ticket. “For Mary,” he said. “She likes to waste money on these things. Self-taxation at work, huh?”

  Piper continued to eat, decided she would come back and try some of the other dishes, maybe bring her father.

  Nang returned and sat. “A few people,” he repeated. “Yes, a few people, I suppose, were upset I bought this business. One man who’d wanted this shop told Conrad he should not sell to a foreigner. But Conrad, he pointed out that I am an American. Then the man said it was because I was not local. But I am local now.”

  A silence settled between them for several minutes, Piper eating, the purr from the bank of refrigerators providing white noise, Nang sipping his own coffee.

  “It was summer five years ago, and I was driving back from the winery near the Monastery,” Nang said. “I had bought a case of peach wine for my mother, her birthday. She likes wine, maybe likes it too much. I needed gas and so I stopped here. There was a ‘for sale’ sign in the window. Mr. Delaney was behind the counter, and I paid him for the gas, bought a carton of chocolate milk to drink on the drive home. I lived in Owensboro then, with my mother. I also bought a lottery ticket.” Nang paused and finished his coffee, got up and brought the pot to the table, pouring first for Piper, and then refilling his cup. He folded a towel and set the pot on it, careful not to let the heat mar the vinyl tabletop.

  “I wasn’t doing anything with my life,” he continued. “Turned twenty-one, had just graduated from Owensboro Community College with an automotive technician degree, living at home. Ha
dn’t found a real job yet, was flipping burgers, figuring out what I should do, where I should go.”

  Piper swallowed the last bite of crab and took a long drink of the coffee. “So you bought this place? Why? At twenty-one?”

  Nang’s smiled big. “That lottery ticket I bought. I won. A million and a half. I figured it was a sign, God telling me what to do with my life. Mr. Delaney wanted eight hundred and fifty thousand for this place, and that’s what I had after taxes…and after I bought my mom a new couch and recliner and replaced her microwave. I figured my buying that ticket and winning was a sign.”

  Piper laughed.

  “You shine,” he said. “You have a good laugh.”

  “So you’re twenty-six years old now, and you own a convenience store.”

  “A convenience store and a gas station.” Nang tapped his coffee cup. “And I will add a big garage bay in the spring, where I will repair cars, use my degree.”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “And you are twenty-three, according to the older deputy who talked to me yesterday.”

  Piper really didn’t like Oren. “So, like I said, word is some people around here weren’t pleased you bought Mr. Delaney’s station.”

  “Conrad, I am so sorry that good man is dead. Conrad, he was a friend. He said three people made him offers for this place, but said he would not take so little for something he put so much time and work in. I did not…” Nang paused as if looking for the word. “—haggle. I paid exactly what he asked.”

  “The mobile home back there—” Piper gestured behind her.

  “—I bought that with a loan, and since paid it off. I live there. Maybe someday I will have a house built instead. But for now the mobile home is big enough.”

  She let out a low whistle. “Impressive, Nang.”

  “Conrad…Mr. Delaney…he would come here every week, order lunch, a different day every week because the specials changed, and he always got the special. I never charged him. He would argue with me about that, but I wouldn’t take his money. He was a very nice man.”

  “Someone didn’t like him,” Piper said softly.

  “You find out who killed Conrad Delaney.”

  And Abigail Thornbridge, Piper thought.

  “I will bag your to-go order, Sheriff.”

  “Piper,” she said.

  “Piper,” he returned. “A fun name. You shine.”

  She stood at the counter, staring out the window while he rang up her bill. Five inches, wonderful. It looked like it was snowing even harder now. She added a window scraper to her order, as the one in the Taurus had a short, cracked handle. Briefly, she thought about buying a lottery ticket, but dismissed that notion.

  “So you were born in Kentucky, and in teeny tiny Fulda you serve only Vietnamese food. Not a hot dog on your menu.”

  “Hot dogs are bad for you.” He smiled wide again. “I like Vietnamese food, and I have no competition. I am the only place in all of Spencer County that serves Vietnamese food. Sometimes I cater if I have enough notice. I also like Italian fare, but I limit my menu as it makes things more manageable.”

  “Sounds like you’re not a fan of free time.”

  “I have two part-time employees, three in the summer. I want more time off then because I am restoring a car, and it is best to do that in good weather.”

  “So you fix cars, run a business, and cook.”

  “Of all those things, I probably cook the best. Why don’t you come back and I will prepare Bún bò Huế and Bún Thịt Nướng, they go well with pear wine. I will make sure I have free time to do that.”

  “I have no idea what those things are, but they sound delicious.”

  “Everything I cook is delicious. Friday?”

  Piper stared. Had he just asked her for a date? “This murder investigation keeps me busy—”

  “But you have to eat.”

  “Friday. Sure.” Had she just accepted?

  “Six,” he returned. “I don’t like to eat late, have to get up early and open this.”

  “Six. Sure.”

  A white Volkswagen beetle pulled up as she was leaving. It looked like a rolling mound of snow. Piper brushed off the Taurus, cranked the heater, and headed to the Delaney house to pick up all of Conrad’s Christmas cards and poke around one more time.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  Eight

  Piper thought, perhaps, she’d found Conrad Delaney’s Christmas card list. Not a list, actually, but the names of local folks he likely sent Christmas cards to. Searching through a desk drawer—again—and she kicked herself for not noticing this before, she saw that the county phonebook had post-it strip notes affixed to pages. The notes didn’t extend outside the book, and so she understood why Randy hadn’t noticed it either. The top margin of each note served as an underline to the name, address, and phone number above it. A. Neufeld had a bright lime green tab under it. Christopher P. Hagee had an electric orange tab. Carefully flipping through the book, she saw other post-its. Rough guess, forty names were tagged. There were other phonebooks—for Evansville, Owensboro, and Henderson, but those lacked post-it notes, or any notation for that matter.

  She bagged the phone book, quite pleased with herself, called the department, and learned Oren and Randy were still at the Thornbridge house. So she spent another hour looking around, mostly trying to get a better feel for Conrad. A glance at her watch told her it was 5 p.m.

  Gotta head back, check on Dad, bring him dinner. After a chemo session, he usually didn’t have the energy to cook.

  It looked later than that, the sky so full of clouds and dark like wood ashes. Looked like evening. Another glance at her watch: 5:05. She’d call her dad on the way, tell him not to fix anything, she had a treat. One more sweep through the house.

  By the time she pulled out of the Delaney driveway the snow had worsened still, becoming a veritable blizzard. The Christmas cards—she couldn’t find the envelopes they’d come in, no doubt tossed by Conrad—were properly stored in evidence bags and resting on the seat beside her with the bagged phonebook. Five inches, the dispatcher initially had said of the forecast. Typically, Southern Indiana saw about a foot of snow total during winter, four or five inches of that coming over the course of January—not in one day. There were exceptions, this winter certainly—so far more than double the average—and Piper recalled a ten-inch overnight dump during January 2014. The record was twenty inches in one whollop a century back. Global warming? El Niño, or dumb luck? Her dumb luck.

  “Teegan?” Piper called the dispatcher. “The forecast updated yet?”

  Static, then, “Supposed to quit about eight or nine. They’re calling for a foot now, Weight Watchers meetings, flyball, and Catholic bingo cancelled, and some more will come in. Maybe we can set a new record. Good thing schools haven’t started back up yet, huh? Oh, and Randy and Oren radioed, said they’re on the way. Randy anyway. Oren’s going to some vet in Santa Claus who’s staying open late. Buck’s Vic slipped off the road and is getting towed.”

  “Wonderful. Hey, has anybody had any luck finding Anthony Delaney?”

  “Nope. Nada. Zippo. Coroner’s gonna release Conrad’s body tomorrow to the Rockport funeral home. I guess his son Zachary has set something up.” A pause. “Any suspects, Sheriff Blackwell?”

  “Not yet. Talk to you later, Teegan.”

  So far, she and Oren had nada…zippo…on the suspect list, though maybe her chief deputy had some names and wasn’t about to share them yet, keeping the investigation firmly in his age-spotted hands.

  A glance at the bags of Christmas cards. Maybe she wouldn’t have nada after she gave the cards a closer look—she’d found one from Abigail to Conrad, and it was unsettling. While she had the phonebook, and certainly that would help, what she really wanted was Conrad’s Christmas card list, and no one had found such a beast at the Delaney house. He had to have a list, as precise as he’d been, as Better Homes and Gardens as his place was. Hadn’t found those antiq
ue sleigh bells either. Maybe Randy had found a list at Abigail’s.

  A plow had been this way a while ago, but it should make another pass, Piper thought as she left Fulda, driving past Phan’s Quick Mart and heading south on 545. She was the only soul on the road, everyone else wisely staying off it, at least around here. She’d pick up 66 near Troy, another dinkburg, and take it back into Grandview, stop by the Thornbridge house for another ogle, then keep going. Rockport was a straight shot out of Grandview where 45 led off 66, drop the food off and check on her dad, grab a change of clothes, and go back to the office. It might be an all-nighter.

  Piper could smell the spicy takeout, nestled on the passenger side floorboard. Friday dinner at Nang’s? She wondered if he meant his trailer or the Quick Stop, and she wondered if she’d actually take him up on it. Was it a date? Or was it just a friendly invitation to dinner? Easy to find an excuse to cancel in any event. But it could be a good way to learn more about Mr. Delaney; it seemed the two had become friends. Could also be a good way to gain tidbits about Fulda’s residents, maybe find a suspect or two. Was it a date? Nang was good looking, clean-cut, polite, near her age, and—

  The Taurus lurched and Piper grabbed the wheel and pumped the brake. She looked up into the rearview mirror and saw snow and the ghostly image of a big pickup, no lights on. When the truck struck the Taurus again, hard enough to make her swerve, she knew it wasn’t an accident. The driver was trying to run her off the road. Some idiot with a hate for law enforcement, or maybe just some idiot playing in the snow. Couldn’t get the license plate number; he was riding so close she couldn’t see a plate.

  Piper’s throat tightened as she thumbed the radio and pressed on the gas. Not good conditions to drive fast, but the pickup outweighed her Taurus by at least a ton, and so she wanted to put some space between them, consider her options.

  “Teegan…Teegan.”

  Static came back.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit.” Piper slammed the palm of her hand against the wheel and took option #1, flipped on the lights and siren; that might get the truck driver to call this quits. Again she focused on the rearview mirror, trying desperately to make out something…color of the truck, something about the driver…the license plate was a hopeless notion. Two pickup trucks had pulled into Phan’s while she was there, a blue and a silver. But everything was gray and indistinct in the rearview, the snow coming so fast and angry that the world looked like an impressionist watercolor. Couldn’t even tell if the driver was a man or a woman, just the vague shape of a head and shoulders.