Chilling Effect (7 page)

made-up eyes.

“Are you okay?” the woman shouted.

She nodded yes, but the woman’s forehead was still crinkled

with worry, so she gestured for the Good Samaritan to move back

so she could open the car door. She unlocked the door, stepped out

into the cool night air, and smiled reassuringly at the woman.

“I’m fi ne. Th anks for stopping to check on me.”

“Sure, okay.” Th e woman pulled her jacket closer around her body.

Aroostine noticed she was wearing a sequined leotard under it.

Gray yoga pants and fl ip fl ops completed the outfi t. She examined the woman’s face more closely. Th ick eyeliner, lots of blush, and

bright red lipstick couldn’t hide her tired pallor.

“Are you a cocktail waitress up at the casino?” she asked. It was

the only explanation for the attire.

“Yeah. Ruby Smith.” Th e woman stuck out her right hand to

shake and her coat fell open.

Aroostine took her extended hand. “Aroostine Higgins.”

“Are you having car trouble or something?” Ruby jerked her

head toward the Jeep’s engine.

“No, nothing like that. I’m just waiting for my husband.”
While
he stomps around in the woods or communes with nature or whatever
he’s doing.

Ruby cocked her head and glanced over at her car.

“Uh, okay. Listen, I don’t know if you’re from around here or

what, but a guy was killed tonight. It’s probably not safe to just be hanging out on the side of the road, you know?”

So word of the murder was getting around.

47

MELISSA F. MILLER

“No, I’m not from here. I’m sorry to hear about the death.” She

considered Ruby’s tense face. “Were you . . . close to him?”

“Not like that. He lived next door to me. He was a completely

harmless, nice guy, and he took a bullet right between the eyes . . .”

Ruby trailed off and took a long, shaky breath. Th en she frowned

and gestured toward her own car, moving her hand in a downward

motion,

“I can see how that would be disturbing—” Aroostine began,

then she turned to look where Ruby was gesturing and stopped

midsentence.

A tiny face was pressed up against the rear passenger side win-

dow, grinning. Its owner waved excitedly at her.

Th e pieces began to fall into place. She turned back to Ruby.

“You’re Lily’s mom?”

“How do you know Lily?” Ruby’s voice was raw with suspicion.

“I met her when I was leaving the steak house. She was playing

fairy in the bushes while she waited for you,” Aroostine hurried to explain.

Ruby’s posture softened just a bit.

“Oh, okay,” she said with a nod. Th en her eyes widened and her

voice shook. “I don’t usually bring her up to the casino. I just . . . I didn’t know what else to do.”

A twinge of guilt ran through Aroostine for her earlier judg-

ment of the woman. “First of all, you don’t owe me any explana-

tions. Second of all, I’d say you did the right thing. Your next-door neighbor was murdered. You couldn’t very well leave her home alone

after that.”

Ruby gulped down air and nodded again. “Yeah.”

Ruby’s rear car door opened slowly.

“Lily Lotus Smith, don’t you dare!”

Th e door closed. Lily made a sad face out the window.

Aroostine tried not to laugh.

48

CHILLING EFFECT

“She seems like a great kid,” she told Ruby.

“She is. She’s so smart and hardly gives me any trouble. She’s a

little bit fl ighty, though. Always living in her make-believe world.”

Ruby paused for a moment. “I think it’s her way of dealing with

living on the reservation. She pretends she’s in some faraway land

or something to escape.”

Aroostine thought of another little girl who used to pretend she

lived on the moon, under the sea, anywhere but where she really

lived—a place of limited opportunity but no end of misery.

“Th at’s normal. She’s just creative.”

Ruby gave her a sidelong glance, as if she knew she was receiv-

ing parenting advice from the childless. “She’s got to keep her head on straight. Th at was one reason I liked her spending time with

Isaac. He . . . he made something of himself. He got a degree, had

a good job. I thought it would show her that it wasn’t a fantasy—a

better life was a real possibility for her, even if she never got off the res . . .” Ruby choked back tears.

Aroostine gnawed her lower lip. She had no idea what to say

to comfort the woman. She was obviously shaken up enough to be

confi ding in a complete stranger who she met on the side of the

road. Before she had the chance to frame a response, Ruby wiped

her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing mascara and eyeliner

across her face, and sniffl ed.

“Sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” She straightened her

back like a woman who was used to doing hard things and pushing

back fear and doubt.

“Please, don’t be,” Aroostine said. Th en she plunged in, unwill-

ing to let the opening pass. “You know, I found him.”

Ruby blinked. “Found him—Isaac?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a friend of his or something?”

“Not exactly.”

49

MELISSA F. MILLER

Ruby eyeballed her. “Th en who are you,
exactly
?”

Aroostine exhaled slowly. If she was going to stick around and

try to get to the bottom of Isaac Palmer’s death, she’d need an ally.

And, so far, the cocktail waitress seemed like the most viable candi-date, if only because she was actually willing to speak to Aroostine.

Her inner lawyer took over and blurted out the words before she

could second-guess herself. “I’m an attorney with the Department

of Justice. Do you know any reason why someone would want to

kill Isaac? You said he was well liked.”

Ruby stepped back as if putting physical space between them

would shut down the line of questioning. “I think what I said was

he was harmless. And he was—he was just a numbers cruncher for

the casino.”

Ruby’s words were neutral, but her tone was saying
I know more

about this than I’m letting on.
Aroostine decided to push her, just a little.

“So in his position he had access to the casino’s fi nancial infor-

mation, bank accounts, and a lot of money, right?”

Th e other woman shrugged and glanced over to check on her

daughter again. “I guess. I wouldn’t know. In
my
position, I hav
my

e

access to the casino’s watered-down rail drinks and domestic bottles.”

Wrong approach. Aroostine dropped the all-business lawyer act

and appealed to the mother standing in front of her.

“Ruby, listen, you don’t know me and I don’t know you. I get

that. But I can tell you’re a good person.”

“Oh, yeah, can you read minds?”

“No. But I can interpret what I see. You stopped on a dark,

rarely traveled road to check on me. You didn’t have to do that.

You’re worried about your daughter’s future. A daughter who, by the way, is delightful. So I can tell you’re doing a good job raising her on your own. And you’re upset about Isaac’s death, which is more

than I can say about your tribal police. I don’t need to be a mind

50

CHILLING EFFECT

reader to know that you’re a good person. I want to fi nd out who

murdered your friend and why. Help me.”

Ruby’s eyes fl itted to her car again. Lily had abandoned her win-

dow vigil and was waving her wand around the backseat, probably

casting some sort of spell. She watched her daughter for a moment

and then glanced back at Aroostine with a hard expression, like she’d made a decision.

“You have to keep my name out of it.”

“I will.”

“I need your word. I have Lily to worry about.” She said her

daughter’s name with heavy emphasis, driving home the point that

Aroostine’s promise wasn’t for her benefi t, but for the girl’s.

“I understand. You have my word.”

Th ey regarded one another for a silent moment that seemed to

stretch endlessly into the night. Ruby gave a small nod, like she’d seen something in Aroostine’s face that satisfi ed her.

“Okay. Isaac said someone was siphoning off money from the

casino.”

“He told you this?”

“Yeah. A couple weeks ago, I ran into him when I was going to

pick up my paycheck. He was all excited about it.”

“Do you know who else he might have told?”

Th e woman shook her head fi ercely, swinging her high-combed

hair wildly around her head. “No one. No way he would have told

anyone else.”

“But he told you.”

“Right. And I told him that running around saying things like

that was a great way to get himself killed. Looks like I was right, too.” Her voice cracked.

Aroostine stopped herself from pointing out that if Isaac really

hadn’t told anyone other than Ruby then she was going to fi nd herself 51

MELISSA F. MILLER

the principal suspect in a murder investigation. “How can you be so sure, though, that he didn’t confi de in someone else?”

“I think I really scared him when I said that. He started to get

paranoid, fearful of everything. I just know he wouldn’t have. Plus, who else would he tell?”

“I have no idea. Why’d he tell you? Th at seems like an odd thing

to share with a neighbor.”

Ruby pursed her lips and grappled with how to respond. She

let out a small sigh. “Isaac had a crush on me, okay? He was try-

ing to impress me. I liked him, I liked how he was with Lily, but I didn’t feel that way about him. So I acted like I didn’t know about his feelings, even though they were pretty obvious. But he wouldn’t have told anyone else. I know it.”

“Okay. Understood. Did he tell you any details—how he found

out about the embezzlement, who he thought might be behind it,

anything?”

Another pause and another breath. Th en Ruby said, “Yeah. I’d

gotten angry with him about the whole mess and told him not to

talk to me about it. Th en, about a week ago, Lily was at his house—

he was teaching her how to play chess. I went over to pick her

up, and I could tell something was wrong, you know? He had this

real tight expression on his face. He was a million miles away even though he was laughing at Lily’s jokes or whatever. I was worried

about him. So after I put her to bed, I walked back over and invited him to my place for a drink.”

“And?”

“And he got drunk, sloppy, because he’s not—wasn’t—a big

drinker. And he started running me this wild story about how he

thought the stolen money was somehow related to the missing drones.”

Aroostine tried to make sense of the words Ruby was saying,

but it was as if the other woman were speaking some language other

than English.

52

CHILLING EFFECT

“I’m sorry, did you say drones?”

Ruby stared at her, disbelief and panic fl ooding her face.

“You mean Washington doesn’t know?”

“Know what?”

“I can’t believe they haven’t noticed. Listen, I have to get Lily to bed. Come to my house in the morning and I’ll tell you all about

the military drones that have disappeared from the testing facility here.” She started back to her car and her sleepy daughter.

“Wait. Which side of Isaac’s house?”

“I live to the left as you’re looking at the houses. Lily leaves for school at seven thirty. Come any time after that.” Ruby looked at

Aroostine over her shoulder and then shook her head. “You really

didn’t know?”

“About the missing drones? No.”

Ruby shook her head again as she slid behind the wheel of her

late-model Buick and started the ignition.

Aroostine stood motionless beside the Jeep processing the news

that Ruby had just dropped on her.
Missing military drones?

53

Joe parked the Jeep two houses to the right of Isaac’s front door,

with its bright yellow X of crime scene tape. Aroostine made out

the silhouette of Ruby’s Buick parked in front of the house to the

left of Isaac’s. Her house was still and dark. Aroostine imagined her sitting on the edge of Lily’s bed telling her a story as she smoothed the girl’s hair over her pillow.

“Now what?” she asked Joe.

She hadn’t fully understood his change of heart—something

about a bird and a man named Boom, but he’d come out of the

woods with a lead on accommodations for the night and a desire to

stay—so she wasn’t complaining.

“Uh, I’m guessing it’s unlocked,” he said defensively.

She arched a brow at that, but the response forming on her tongue

melted away when she noticed the sky. “Look up,” she breathed.

It was as if someone had thrown a blanket of stars over the

earth. Small pinpoints of light stretched overhead, almost dizzying CHILLING EFFECT

in number and brightness. No moon, no clouds. Just stars, some

clustered close together in the black sky and others sprinkled far-

ther apart.

“Whoa.”

He reached for her hand, and they stood together in silence—

their breathing the only sound—and drank in the sight. Th en as if

by unspoken agreement, they walked across the road to the meadow

where just hours earlier she’d found the dead jackrabbit. Th ey settled on the fallen log, and she leaned back against his warm chest and

tipped her face to the galaxies, planets, and constellations swirling above them.

After a long silence, he said, “Th at Boom guy knew about the