Frozen Stiff (9 page)

“Together? They don’t seem to care for each other.”

“Not sure what the sleeping arrangement was.”

Claire’s cheeks were rosy and she had a scarf wrapped around her neck over her uniform. “How long have you been here?”

“Not that long. I relieved Billy Boy an hour or so ago.”

“How’s Walker doing today?”

“I’ve heard him moaning, but I thought I’d wait for you to come and talk to him. Dr. Cornwall came by about an half hour ago and checked all his vitals. She told me he’d stabilized, in fact, I guess he’s doing pretty good, but they’ve got him rather doped up. She said we could talk to him if we kept it short. She still thought he would lose a couple toes for sure and maybe even a finger or two. But not bad for a guy who was nearly frozen to death.”

Claire tucked her hands under her arms as if she was trying to warm them up. “Every year I forget how cold it can get here. I heard down in some of the coulees it was almost 40 below last night.”

“My car barely started this morning. Even plugged in.”

“Well, let’s go see if we can rouse Mr. Walker.”

Amy followed Claire into the room. Daniel Walker’s face looked like he had been badly burned. Odd how intense cold was similar to fire. Blisters circled his mouth and eyes, his skin was red and cracked open.

Daniel Walker opened his eyes slowly and painfully. Then he took a moment to focus. He stared at Claire’s face, moved his head slowly to take in Amy, then looked down at their uniforms. He closed his eyes, then pulled them open again.

He cracked his mouth and whispered some words. Amy couldn’t make out what he was saying.

Claire leaned in closer and said, “Could you repeat that?”

He cleared his throat, then asked in a louder, hoarse voice, “What did I do?”

“Don’t you remember?” Claire asked.

“I hurt all over. What happened?” His bandaged hand wandered up to his face and he stared at it. “Why is this wrapped up?”

Amy wondered what Claire would tell him.

“You nearly froze to death,” Claire said.

Amy wasn’t surprised by how blunt Claire was. She really liked that about her. She told it like it was. No beating around the bush with her.

He closed his eyes again.

Claire looked back at her.

“Where am I?” he asked without opening his eyes.

“In the hospital.”

“How’d I get here?”

“Your wife found you outside, in the snow.”

“Where is she?”

“Sherri’ll be here soon. She’s been here most of the time, but she went to get some sleep.”

Walker closed his eyes and seemed to drift off, his breathing getting heavy and labored. Claire looked back at Amy and she shrugged. They were just about to leave the room when he jerked awake and his eyes popped open as if he had seen something horrible. “Where am I?”

Claire leaned in closer to him. “You’re in the hospital. You’re going to be fine. Do you remember what happened to you?”

He looked around frantically. “I don’t know. This isn’t right. I think I need to be somewhere else.”

Amy had read that when people are agitated often touching them calms them down. She walked up to the head of his bed and put her hand on his shoulder. Claire was always encouraging her to take the lead in questioning people. Here was her chance. “The doctor said you would be fine.”

He lifted his wrapped hands as if to show them to her and said, “My hands hurt. Why do my hands hurt?”

“They were severely frostbitten,” Amy said, looking back at Claire.

Claire nodded at Amy, motioning for her to continue.

“Mr. Walker, you were found outside your house yesterday morning. We’re trying to figure out what happened to you New Year’s eve. What do you remember?”

“At night? I was at the cabin, I think.”

“Yes,” Amy encouraged him. “That’s where you were found. You’re in Durand right now.”

“Oh, Durand. Okay. But why am I here?”

“Your wife found you outside in the snow and called the ambulance. They brought you here.” Amy looked at Claire again. She wasn’t sure how much she should tell him about his situation. Claire shook her head as if to say, give him a chance to talk, and Amy turned back to Walker.

Walker shook his head. “I don’t seem to remember much about last night. Sherri wasn’t there, at the cabin. I think I was by myself.”

“No one else came over? It was New Year’s. Did you invite someone over to celebrate with you?”

“Danielle was busy. I remember that. I don’t remember anyone else coming over. I think I was alone.”

“No one stopped by?” Amy asked.

He looked up at her, distress creasing his face. “I just can’t remember what happened. It’s like a blank. Why can’t I remember?”

Amy wanted to reassure him. “The doctor said that it’s not unusual to not remember much.”

Claire stepped forward, patting Amy on the shoulder. “Mr. Walker, when you remember more, just let us know. We’ll let you rest now, but before we go I have one final question. Who all has a key to your house besides you and Sherri?”

Walker calmed down but seemed confused when he said, “Sherri and me.”

“That’s all?”

He thought for a moment. “And Danielle, my daughter.”

“No one else?” Amy asked. “You didn’t give it to anyone else? No friends or neighbors?”

“Oh, yeah,” he licked his lips. “My neighbor has a key. He was doing some work for me. John Gordon.”

Amy’s heart sank when she heard him say John’s name. She was afraid of that. John had a key. Unfortunately she knew he also had a good reason to want Daniel Walker dead.

2 January: 11 am

A
s Meg left her fourth hour class, history, she knew that Curt would be waiting for her at the lunch room. They had their routine and usually it made her happy, but today she felt like skipping lunch. She didn’t want to be mad at Curt anymore, but she didn’t seem to be able to let go of her anger at what he had done.

Focus on Andy, she thought. Put your anger there. He’s the one who is making Curt behave this way. Plus, she wanted to find out if Curt knew anything about Bonnie’s pregnancy. He certainly would have heard about it by now. News traveled the school faster than the speed of sound, if that was possible.

Curt was standing by the lunch room door, waving his brown paper bag. That gesture meant he had something good to share. His mother was a wonderful cook, old-fashioned, but wonderful. The Queen of the Bars, Curt liked to call her. Dessert bars, he would clarify.

“What do you have there?” Meg asked.

“Something you like,” he teased.

“My favorite or my second favorite?”

“I get them mixed up.”

“Lemon bars are my favorite, brownies are my second.”

They walked into the lunchroom together and went right to their usual table. Meg tried to grab the bag, but Curt held it up high, over her head. “I think the word you’re looking for is please.”

She laughed, then kicked him in the ankle. When he bent over to rub the spot, she grabbed the bag and opened it. “Pumpkin walnut bars. I think they’re around my fifth favorite. But still that’s plenty high enough to thoroughly enjoy.”

“What’s on the menu?”

Meg didn’t even have to look. “Olive loaf.”

“When are you going to get tired of olive loaf?”

“Never. I’m fascinated by the pattern the olives make in the loaf.”

“You’re fascinating,” Curt said and leaned over and kissed her on the nose.

“Ooo, public affection. You’re trying pretty hard.”

“I should have asked Mom to make lemon bars, then you’d be putty in my hands.”

“Save the putty part for later.”

“So you’re not so mad at me anymore?” he asked hopefully.

“No, I’ve decided to blame it all on Andy.” She laughed as she said it. Andy had always been a fairly popular guy in school. In fact when Curt and Andy had first started to hang out together, Meg was rather pleased. She sometimes felt that Curt kept to himself too much. Except for her, of course.

“That’s a great idea. He has been a very bad influence on me.

They sat down and swapped halves of their sandwiches, even though Curt wasn’t crazy about olive loaf. His meatloaf sandwich
was on thick whole wheat bread that his mother baked. Hers was on slightly above average store-bought bread. She thought they complimented each other. She started with the meatloaf and then would move on to the olive loaf.

“Don’t you wish we had a Starbucks down the street?” she asked.

“A big frappucino would sure taste good with our pumpkin bars.”

“The cooks here just don’t seem big into the idea of an espresso machine.” Meg neatly folded up the wax paper that her sandwich had been wrapped in. She reused it as many times as she could. For the environment. “Speaking of Andy,” she said, “did you hear that Bonnie Hegstrom had a baby?”

“Yeah, Kenny told me in fourth. I’m probably the last person in the whole school to know.”

“Doesn’t she live like in the next farm over from Andy?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“Well, do you have any idea who the dad is?”

Curt slumped back in his chair and frowned. “Geez, I haven’t seen Bonnie with any guy. She rides my bus. She usually just sits with one of the other girls. You don’t think that Andy...?”

Meg raised her shoulders. “He’s the closest guy to her. Could have been literally just a roll in the hay.”

“Boy, he’s never said anything, but then we don’t tend to talk much about those kind of things.”

“Why don’t you see what you can find out?”

Curt scrunched up his face. “Really?”

“For me?” Meg rubbed his ear lobe. She knew he just loved that. “You know, for the putty factor.”

11 am

“And the cleaning lady,” Amy said as she climbed into the passenger side of the squad car.

Claire had asked Amy to come back to the department with her as the floor nurse had assured her that they would let no one enter Daniel Walker’s room except the nurses and doctors. His room was right across from the nurses’ desk and Claire trusted them to keep a good eye on him. Plus, Walker seemed fully capable of yelling for help. By the time they left him, he was complaining about the service in the hospital. Being nearly frozen to death didn’t seem to have affected his vocal chords.

Claire wanted Amy to start checking alibis. She also thought it was time to talk to Walker’s lawyer and find out who got the money if he died.

The squad car turned over hard a couple times, sounding like a cow stuck in a chute, then caught and roared to life. Even through her polar-fleece gloves, Claire could feel the frigid cold radiating out of the steering wheel. “The cleaning lady, what?”

“Has a key. She let herself in while I was searching the house. I forgot to mention that. Sara Hegstrom. You know her?”

“Don’t think I do.”

Amy rubbed her gloved hands together. “Her husband’s Clyde. They have a farm out on Goatback.”

“So that makes four people with keys besides Mr. Walker: his wife, his daughter, his cleaning lady and his handyman. No butler.” After scraping a small peephole through the ice on the windshield, Claire crawled out onto the street. The plows had been by but the slick surface of the roads was still treacherous.

“I guess a cleaning lady is as close as we’re going to get to a butler.”

“Yes, but why would the cleaning lady want to kill him?”

“Search me,” Amy spoke with her head tucked turtle-like into her jacket collar. “Although maybe she was letting herself in today so that she could be the one to find him out in the snow. Clever.”

“You’ve been reading too many Agatha Christies.” Claire pulled into the government center lot. They both sat for a moment, not wanting to get out of the warm car. The sun was shining in a vivid blue sky but it looked pale and far away.

“I don’t get her books. Too prim and proper for my taste. I like James Lee Burke better. Plus, there’s never any snow in an Agatha Christie,” Amy pointed out with satisfaction.

“Well, there’s certainly no snow in a James Lee Burke book. Aren’t they all set down in the bayou?”

Amy hunched her shoulders, preparing to go out into the cold. “What is a bayou anyway?”

“I think it’s a slough that has never frozen over.”

As they both walked into the department, Amy said, “Also, I should tell you that I think John Gordon might have a reason for wanting something bad to happen to Daniel Walker.”

“John Gordon. Wasn’t he Walker’s handyman?”

“Yeah, he built the sauna for Mr. Walker.”

“He’s mad about that? What, did Walker not pay him?”

“No, it’s not that. When John was gone this fall, Walker bought the family farm for a song from John’s mom. She’s old and not completely on top of things. Walker took advantage of her. John’s pretty mad about it.”

“So of the four people who had keys—two might actually want him dead.”

“You know what else is weird? The cleaning lady’s daughter is in the hospital too. I guess she had a baby and they didn’t
even know she was pregnant and she lost a lot of blood and the baby’s not doing so well either.”

“That is very weird.” Claire wondered if these two situations could be tied together. A pregnant girl and a frozen man. “Did the girl ever clean for the Walkers?”

11:30 am

Sherri peeked her head into her husband’s hospital room and could see he was sleeping. He didn’t look great. They had bandaged his hands so she couldn’t see the damage there, but on his face his nose had turned dark blue and he had blisters on his cheeks.

A young red-haired nurse took her arm and said, “I’m afraid no one’s allowed in to see him.”

“But I’m his wife.”

The nurse gave her the once over and said, “Sorry. Doctor’s orders.”

“Why?”

Got me.

As Sherri walked out of the room with the nurse she asked her, “When’s the doctor going to be back? I’d like to speak to her.”

“She said she’d stop by early afternoon. I’ll let her know you’d like to talk to her. She’s still quite concerned about his toes.”

“He might lose them?”

“Maybe one or two. Depends on if the circulation comes back. Usually they give it a day or two.”

“Thank the lord that’s all he might lose.”