The Long Dark January: A Nadine Kelso Mystery

by A. S. Andrews

Ingrid Moody lit another cigarette and stared at the faces in the photo album. Her husband Walter with Susan as a child. Then Susan as a young woman, holding a child of her own. Finally her daughter with Bobby and Andrew Gordon, right after their move back to Castle Rock. Each face appeared multiple times. Except for Timothy’s.

  Down the hall, Bobby slept in his mother’s childhood bedroom. He hadn’t said much since coming home. The doctor had given Ingrid instructions for his medication. At this point, the more the child rested, the better.

  Ironic that she’d worked so hard to connect with one grandson, then been given custody of the other.

  They were all she had, and they were hers. What else could she lay claim to? A café and a few friends in town.

  If Lee Miller and his wife still thought they could keep her from knowing Timothy, they’d find out swiftly how mistaken they were.

  The burials and funerals still had to be seen to. Ingrid had been so subsumed by the investigation she hadn’t moved forward on those as fast as she’d liked. Even the shooting seemed far away.

  Had Karl Roach really tried to shoot her? She thought it more likely he’d wanted to scare her and Kelly. Why, though? To cast blame on Peter Quayle? Peter had been the first to spot what Roach really was. If the goal had been to discredit Peter, it seemingly had worked, for the chief and that Seattle woman had spoken as if Quayle was a suspect himself.

  Was he?

  All Ingrid could be sure of was the sheer amount that had been taken from her, and the lengths she was prepared to go to preserve what she had left.

  Chapter 50

  Rain, the great Pacific Northwest purifier, pattered the windows of Jennifer Eng’s prowler as she drove to the Traveler’s Lodge. For a few fitful hours she’d pretended to sleep, then got up and dressed to get back to it. If she had Nadine Kelso’s help for only one more day, it was best to make the most of it.

  But when she walked into the lobby, the desk clerk told Jen that Ms. Kelso had already checked out, and handed her a folded slip of paper with her name on it.

  Had to go on short notice

  back soon

  No signature. No acknowledgement of the case. Jen wasn’t sure she understood the woman from Seattle.

  She headed to the station and met up with Bill Coker. Bill said it had been a quiet night. He’d just brought breakfast to Peter Quayle, who was surviving his incarceration.

  “Did you see Nadine Kelso this morning?” Jen asked.

  “She stopped by to check something, but only for a few minutes.”

  Bill gestured to the spare desk, on which were piled the Gordons’ autopsy reports, Quayle’s files on the Cover Model Killings, and her notes from the last few interviews with Gary Gordon and Ingrid Moody.

  Jen sat down at the desk and took in the tableau of scattered papers. Somewhere in there was something crucial that they’d missed, that had struck Nadine so forcefully she’d left in the middle of the night and come here to figure it out.

  She began at the beginning, with the report she’d written detailing the discovery of the bodies. She remembered Gary Gordon’s face, the cold efficiency of the fire response team, the bright (cherry) red skin of the bodies. The epiphany of the CO detector, which now felt like the only good idea she’d had in the entire investigation.

  The autopsies…the interviews…maybe it was too much. A murder investigation drew in information like the mouth of a whale, hopefully straining what was pertinent and expelling what wasn’t. In this case, though, she still couldn’t tell. Was there a real connection with Karl Roach, or had Peter Quayle so desperately hoped for one that he’d created it out of pure fancy?

  Jen looked at the incident report on the shooting. Quayle and Roach had been the only suspects, but could it have been someone else? She still felt that Quayle hadn’t had any part in it. But she was bound by the facts, and the gun, planted or not, had been found in Quayle’s house.

  So what was she left with? Two bodies, an elaborate means of murder, a broken window, and a town that had been ripped apart by suspicions and lies. The only sane approach was to take each statement fact by fact and assume each could be false.

  And Nadine herself? Was she even planning to return at all? Maybe Teddy Fowler had called her back early. Or maybe it was something to do with her family.

  Even so. At the very least, Jen had expected a goodbye.

  After an hour of studying the files, Jen broke and made her way to the holding cells. She brought Peter Quayle an orange juice and cookie, the very best that the station’s vending machines had to offer. The former officer was grateful for the food.

  “Manage to get any sleep?” Jen asked her former subordinate.

  “A little,” Quayle said. “Did you make a decision?”

  “Not yet. There’s been so much going on, Peter. You’ve been a good sport, and I realize you can’t stay here much longer. I’m trying to clear things up before I have to charge you.”

  “I suppose my career’s finished,” Quayle said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “And you might have to be tough on me, just to show people you don’t play favorites. I understand all that, Chief, and I meant what I said yesterday—I’m sorry I put it on you.”

  Jen nodded.

  “But,” Quayle said, “if I’m not a cop anymore, and you can’t make a case against Roach, then I have to look out for myself. I’d like to phone a lawyer, please.”

  “Give me some more time, Peter. There’s a way out of this.”

  “You said yourself, I can’t stay in here forever. And you can’t force me to.”

  “How about till tonight?” Jen asked.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What about till noon?”

  Quayle thought about it and nodded. “Twelve oh one I want out of here.”

  Jen thanked him. As she was leaving, she noticed on the floor below his bunk, the fishing magazine, torn into thin strips. Like the nest of an animal, she thought.

  Chapter 51

  The young man had been travelling for almost twelve hours straight. He’d slept on a bench in the airport, his downy camouflage jacket rolled up as a pillow. He’d eaten a sandwich on the train south from Seattle. And now a shuttle bus from the train station to Castle Rock. The young man stepped off the bus, adjusted his Stetson, and stared at the main thoroughfare of the town where he was born.

  Nothing about the snow-dusted trees and slushy roads reverberated in his memory. When he left he’d been very young. Tim Miller was now twenty years old, and had nothing but questions about the reason his father had taken him from Castle Rock all those years ago.

  The town was small, and he noticed that the businesses catered to a passing-through trade. Garage and gas, food and coffee. Some of the towns he’d been through in Texas and Vermont had felt the same. Waypoints on a destination. What did it make him, to come from a place where everyone else only passed through?

  He’d phoned his stepmom last night to tell her they’d shot their limit and were coming home. She’d mentioned the call from the police chief. The woman who’d birthed him was dead. He found the news story, and made his decision that whatever the woman had done, she’d been his mother. His father had tried to talk him out of going, but there was no stopping Tim Miller once he’d made up his mind.

  “Stubborn as a mule,” his father had said. “Like her.”

  He’d taken nothing with him, not even a toothbrush or change of clothes. Perhaps he could have found out answers to his questions over the phone. But something was drawing him to Castle Rock. The closer he got, the more strongly he felt that he’d been ignoring this psychic tug since he was a child. Guilt, maybe, for not questioning the comfortable version of the story he’d been told.

  She gave you up. She didn’t care.

  He had a father and stepmother who loved him, and they had presented Susan Moody as someone who simply didn’t. The villain of a very straightforward tale. If he questioned that, he was questioning his own identi
ty.

  And maybe that’s what he was here to do. Maybe there were no answers in Castle Rock. But that itself would be an answer.

  He knew from the time he’d spoken to the old woman that she ran a coffee shop. There was one on the main drag, Ingrid’s Café, and he saw through the glass a silver-haired woman futzing with an espresso machine. He opened the door and waited until the other customers had dispersed.

  “What would you like?” the woman asked him, her eyes still focused on the machinery. When she turned she smiled professionally at him. Then looked at his face. The smile faded.

  “We spoke on the phone once, ma’am,” he said. “Maybe you don’t know who I am.”

  “Timothy.”

  “Tim.” He wasn’t sure what else to say, found himself blushing. “I guess I’m your grandson.”

  He’d expected either disbelief from her or an immediate surge of emotion—grandson!—followed by a tight hug. Instead the woman seemed as unsure and embarrassed as he was. She awkwardly maneuvered around the counter and, after staring, did offer him an embrace. It was tight, and he returned it, and then they both felt foolish and dropped their arms to their sides.

  Two of the tables had been stacked along the wall, a play mat rolled across the corner of the café. A small, quiet child pushed a truck along the highway loops on the mat.

  “This is Bobby,” the woman said. Ingrid. Her name was Ingrid. “Your half brother. Bobby, would you like to meet Tim?”

  “Hi, Tim,” the child said without looking up from his toys.

  The woman smiled. “Shy,” she said. “He’s been through a lot.”

  “I understand.” Tim tipped his hat. “Nice to meet you, Bobby.”

  “You’ve heard about your mother, I guess,” Ingrid said.

  For a second he wasn’t sure what she meant—his stepmother was at home in Tyler, Texas, probably helping his father wrap up parcels of venison. Then he realized who she was referring to. Mother. The term sounded strange to him.

  More customers entered, and Ingrid attended to them. “The morning rush,” as she called it. Something beeped from the kitchen behind her and Tim asked if she wanted him to help.

  “If you don’t mind swapping the muffin pans?”

  He used a dish towel and burned his hand, then found the oven mitts. Ingrid shouted instructions to him about turning on the fan, then filling the display case.

  When the mini-rush was over she offered him breakfast, and while he ate one of the muffins—then another, then a scone—she told him about Susan Gordon. A rough history of his mother’s life, ending with her murder.

  Through it all, Bobby continued playing. Not sullen or shy, Tim realized. The poor kid was still in shock.

  “This is kind of a naïve question,” Tim said. “Did she want to be my mother?”

  “More than anything. Between the doctors and lawyers your father hired, they had her half-convinced she was unfit. It drove her crazy to be separated from you. The hurt went deep, and took years for her to recover. To forgive herself. But she did. She became a new person.”

  “With a new family,” Tim said.

  “That was part of it.”

  “Was she happy?”

  Ingrid didn’t answer right away, or in a straightforward manner. After refilling their cups, she said, “The last few years, working at the bank, raising Bobby, she was as happy as I’d seen her since you were born.”

  It took him a minute to digest the answer. He wondered if his grandmother was idealizing Susan. That was all right for the time being. Anything that clashed with what his father had told him was worth hearing, since it brought the woman to life.

  Something stirred in his stomach, and he realized why he’d really come.

  “Have they caught the person that did this?” he asked.

  Ingrid mentioned that the police were close, that they knew of a suspect, but that so far there hadn’t been any arrests. She began telling him about the shooting, catching herself when she saw a stony look come over his face.

  “Someone tried to hurt you?” he said. “And he’s still out there?”

  “I think it was meant to scare me, Timothy.”

  “Tim. What’s this person’s name?”

  He wouldn’t be lied to anymore. Ingrid began to tell him, but stopped when the door to the café opened. A pretty woman stood there, out of breath, holding out an envelope for his grandmother.

  Chapter 52

  At ten, not knowing what else to do, Jen made her rounds of the town. She still hadn’t heard from Nadine, and had gone from anger to worry and back to anger. Nadine wasn’t answering her phone, Teddy Fowler hadn’t called her back to Seattle, and her ex-husband, Jimmy Russo, hadn’t heard from her.

  “Nadine can be pretty darn inconsiderate,” Jimmy told the chief. “She doesn’t mean to be. It’s not even a one-track mind, it’s a one-stretch-of-one-lane-on-one-track mind.”

  “There are pressing concerns right now. I need her here.”

  Jimmy had laughed ruefully. “Good luck with that. If you figure it out, teach me your secret.”

  Jen had wasted her morning trying to track the woman down. In less than two hours she’d have to charge Peter Quayle or release him, which probably meant wrecking the investigation into who actually shot at Ingrid and Kelly. And that would, of course, affect the case they were building against the killer of the Gordon family.

  It was all so precarious. With Bill at home asleep, Peter locked up, and Nadine wherever she was, it all fell to her.

  She drove by Ingrid’s Café. The proprietor was inside, talking with a young man in a cowboy hat and a puffy camouflage jacket. A customer, most likely. Gary was at work in the garage. She decided to take another look through the Gordon house.

  Unlocking the front door, she began her walk-through, taking herself through the same steps as the night when the Gordons had been killed. The generator on the back patio, the closed windows of the two bedrooms, the open connecting door to the garage. She stared at the mark on the ceiling where the smoke detector had been.

  Who but Gary Gordon had sufficient motivation to want Andrew and Susan Gordon dead? Who else besides Karl Roach possessed the malevolence to flood the house with carbon monoxide, then remove almost all trace of his presence? And who but Ingrid Moody had connections to each person in the town who’d come into the orbit of the case?

  Maybe Nadine had cut out because she knew that the murderer had beaten them. That it would never solve, and the lies wrapped around the events of January 1st could never be fully unraveled. Maybe the kindest thing to do was go quietly, without announcing your retreat, and pretend they hadn’t wasted these days attempting to sort through the morass of falsehoods and dead ends.

  Jen locked up and left the house, and drove back towards the station. As she passed the Traveler’s Lodge she saw Kelly Wells scurry along the side of the road. Probably taking Nero for a walk. Only there was no sign of the dog. Jen pulled alongside the desk clerk and rolled down her window.

  “Need a lift?” she asked.

  “Have to deliver a message,” Kelly huffed.

  “For who?”

  She stopped, panting. “Gary and Ingrid got theirs,” she said. “I left yours and Peter’s on your desk at the station. The last one is for this Karl Roach guy.”

  “Where did they come from?” Jen asked, but she could already guess the answer.

  The blue envelope was already open. On the outside was Roach’s name. Inside it read:

  At noon let’s talk in the parlor of the Traveler’s Lodge.

  I know who killed the Gordons.

  “They’re all the same,” Kelly said. “Ms. Kelso dictated to them to me over the phone.”

  “She phoned recently?”

  Kelly nodded.

  “Why the Lodge?” she asked.

  “No clue. She asked me if it was okay and I said sure. I’ve been running myself ragged to deliver these.”

  Jen dropped her near Roach’s house. She watch
ed her walk up the short drive, knock, and when Roach opened the door, thrust the letter into his hand. Kelly ran back down the drive to the car.

  Roach opened the envelope and read the slip. Nodded towards them.

  Jen returned Kelly to the Lodge. It was quarter to eleven. She drove to the station and found her envelope left at the front desk. She’d hoped it contained more than the others. An explanation of sorts. But it was the same message.

  If this was how a murder case was handled in a big city, Jen thought, she wanted no part of it.

  She brought Peter Quayle his copy, and walked him out of the cell to the toilets. She waited for him to shower and dress. As she did, her phone went off.

  “Apologies,” Nadine said. She sounded harried, out of breath. “I’ve been driving nonstop since four. I had to check on something—two things, actually—before doing anything else.”

  “You couldn’t have done it by phone?” Jen said.

  “They’re not the kind of things people admit to over the phone.”

  “And where are you now?”

  “Just cleaning up,” she said. “Is there any problem with releasing Quayle?”

  “He’ll be there,” Jen said. “You were cutting it close, though. He said noon was when he wanted to be charged or released.”

  “He’ll want to be at the Lodge,” Nadine said. “Though he might not like what he hears.”

  “Do you know who the killer is?”

  “Yes,” she said. No hesitation. “And while I can’t prove it just yet, we won’t have to.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because they’re going to admit it,” Nadine said.

  Chapter 53

  Ingrid, Jen, and Peter all arrived a few minutes early. Ingrid had brought the young man Jen had seen at the café with her, along with three pastry boxes containing what looked like half the wares from the café’s display case. “They’d go to waste anyway,” Ingrid said. “I’m taking some time off after this. Darlene from the bank is looking after Bobby. This is my other grandson, Tim.”