Heart of Ice (21 page)

Maisey thought for a moment, then slowly shook her head. “No,” she said. “I would have known.”

“Well, how did she spend her time here?” Louis said. “Did she go anywhere, do anything special?”

“She went riding and went for walks,” Maisey said. “Mr. Edward was always worried about her being too shy, so he told Mr. Ross to take her to the dances down at the yacht club.” She paused. “I don’t think she enjoyed it much, truth be told.”

“Were you and Julie close?” Louis asked.

Again her eyes welled. She picked up the empty bowl and took it to the sink. “I should go check on Mr. Edward,” she said, her back still to him.

“There’s one more thing,” Louis said. “I’d like you to look at some drawings.”

Maisey turned. “Drawings?”

Louis took a sketchbook from the envelope. They had found a hundred and forty-two sketchbooks during the processing of Danny Dancer’s cabin. Joe had suggested the drawings might help them find persons of interest or witnesses. She had gone through every sketchbook, finally giving one to Louis that contained drawings of teenagers in sixties-era dress and in settings like the beach at British Landing or Fort Holmes, places Sergeant Clark told Louis were popular for the local kids to hang out at.

Louis opened the page that Joe had marked with a Post-it. It was a picture of Julie. She looked beautiful, her long hair wind-whipped around her face, her mouth tipped in a smile, and her eyes focused on someone unseen off to her right.

Maisey came to the table and stared at the drawing for a long time. Finally she sat down and looked up at Louis.

“Where’d you get this?” she asked softly.

“Danny Dancer drew it,” Louis said. “He drew almost everybody on this island for more than twenty years. We think he might have done this that last summer here.”

Maisey nodded slowly. “Yes, I recognize that blouse.”

“She looks very happy,” Louis said.

A small smile came to Maisey’s face. “This is how I remember Julie that summer.” She ran a finger lightly over
the drawing. “A boyfriend,” she said softly. “How could I have not seen it?”

“Maybe you did,” Louis said.

He flipped the sketchbook back to the first page. “He could have been the boy who delivered groceries or someone she met in town, maybe someone she was afraid to bring home,” Louis said. “Please look, see if you recognize anyone.”

Maisey began to turn the pages. The kitchen was quiet as she studied each drawing. She was on the last few pages when she suddenly stopped. She turned the sketchbook around toward Louis.

It was a drawing of a girl. Round-faced, large-eyed, a gap-toothed smile, a cascade of curly light hair held down by a braided headband across her forehead.

“You recognize her?” Louis asked.

Maisey nodded. “She came to the house a couple of times. She and Julie used to sit out on the porch. I remember her because . . . I heard her making jokes about Julie having a mammy.”

She gave Louis a wry smile, which he returned with one of his own.

“Do you remember her name?” he asked.

Maisey frowned. “It started with an
R
. It was . . . Roberta.” She paused. “No, wait. Rhoda. That was it. Rhoda.”

“Can you remember her last name?”

“No, but I think she worked here on the island because she always came here after five or so.” She looked up suddenly at Louis. “She smelled like chocolate.”

Louis took the sketchbook back, slipping it into the envelope. He was disappointed Maisey hadn’t been able
to recognize Julie’s boyfriend, but this Rhoda could be a lead.

“If there’s nothing else you need, Mr. Kincaid, I really should go see to Mr. Edward,” Maisey said.

“Actually, there’s one more thing,” Louis said. “Can I see Julie’s room?”

“Her room? Why?”

“It helps me get a sense of a person. Sometimes if I see where they spent their time, what things they had, it helps me figure out what might have happened to them.”

“The room’s not the same as it was then,” she said.

“I’d still like to see it.”

She gave him a nod. Louis followed her up the staircase. At the first open door, she paused, listening for a moment. Louis got a glimpse of the interior—burnished antiques, the edge of a plush bed, and light streaming in from the bay windows.

Maisey moved on down the hallway. All the other doors were closed. At the end of the hallway Maisey stopped and opened the heavy oak door.

The air inside was stale, the drapes drawn. Maisey touched a wall switch and an overhead light went on.

Louis had been expecting something different, maybe like the room back at the Grand Hotel with the canopy beds. This was just a small plain room with two twin beds, one oak bureau, a small bookcase, and a braided rug on the wood floor. Except for the white chenille bedspreads the only thing that looked remotely feminine was the wallpaper dotted with pink rosebuds.

“It’s not what I thought it would look like,” he said.

“What were you expecting?” Maisey asked.

“I don’t know. Something that tells me a teenaged girl used to be here.” He turned to Maisey, who was still standing by the door. “Stuffed animals. A monkey, to be exact.”

“A monkey?” Maisey pulled her sweater tighter around her. “Julie wasn’t much for that kind of thing.”

Louis went to a closet and opened the door. It was empty. “There’s nothing left of her things?” he asked.

“After Julie disappeared Mr. Ross ordered that everything be taken away. He said it upset Mr. Edward too much to see the room like it was.”

Louis heard a sound, like someone calling out. Maisey stepped out into the hallway and looked toward the far end.

“That’s Mr. Edward,” she said quickly. “Do you mind seeing yourself out?”

“Not at all. Thanks for your help, Maisey,” Louis said.

She gave him a brisk nod, then went down to the first bedroom at the top of the stairs.

Louis watched Edward Chapman’s bedroom door close and stepped back into Julie’s room. He went to the drapes and pulled them open. The room looked out over the backyard. He let the drapes fall and turned to consider the room again.

There were seven bedrooms in this place. Why had Edward Chapman’s “princess” been given this small one in the back?

He went to the bookcase and scanned the titles of the books, but they all appeared to be novels. He started for the door but something tucked in the shelf of the bookcase caught his eye. It was a small ceramic horse, similar to
one he had bought Lily, right down to
MACKINAC ISLAND
painted on the base. Just a cheap souvenir, and it seemed out of place in such a grand house, even in this plain little room.

He put it back on the bookcase and left the room, quietly making his way down the stairs.

Outside he paused to look back at the house. He saw Maisey standing at the upstairs bay window. He felt her eyes follow him as he walked back down West Bluff Road.

L
ouis stared out the window of the police station. This morning when he had walked up to the cottage to see Maisey, the watery horizon had been bloated with steel-gray clouds. Now it was snowing.

“Louis?” Clark came up next to him. “Dancer’s attorney wants to talk to you.”

“Attorney?” Louis asked.

“Don’t ask me what got into him all of sudden, but Dancer asked for one late last night. Mackinac County sent a public defender a few hours ago. Name is Lee Troyer.”

It was inevitable that Dancer would get a lawyer for the shooting charges, but the problem was that a good attorney would steer Dancer away from answering questions about Julie Chapman.

“Do you know where Rafsky is?” Louis asked.

“He’s over in St. Ignace, visiting the chief,” Clark said.

“How’s the chief doing?”

“I went and saw him this morning,” Clark said. “He’s mad as hell that he can’t eat or talk. But I know one thing. He’s real glad Carol is there, even though he’ll never say it out loud.”

“I understand.”

Clark smiled. “I guess when it comes to women we’re all too stubborn sometimes.”

Louis was quiet. Stubborn. Was that what it was? Last night, in the cool darkness of their hotel room, wrapped in each other’s arms, listening to the clinking of the old radiator and the faraway crash of water against the giant boulders, he had almost said it.

I love you
.

Until that moment he had not realized that when Joe wasn’t with him there was a strange emptiness that nothing else—no one else—could fill.

He had been about to say it, but then Joe rolled away from him and reached for her wineglass. The moment—and his courage—was gone.

“Almost forgot,” Clark said. “Rafsky said to tell you that Dancer is being transferred to the county jail in St. Ignace first thing tomorrow.”

“Okay, thanks,” Louis said.

He headed upstairs, taking Dancer’s sketchbook with him. At the top of the stairs he was met with the pungent smell of gardenias. Lee Troyer was seated in a folding chair, head down. Everything about her seemed cut on severe angles. Even her hair looked sharp, a blond pageboy style that reminded Louis of the kid in the Dutch Boy paint commercials.

“Miss Troyer? Louis Kincaid.”

She looked up from her legal pad. “You’re the person who so roughly subdued my client on the steps of his cabin.”

“After your client shot at me and two other officers.”

Louis glanced at Dancer. He was in one of two cells, drawing.

“And you, a Miss Frye, and a Detective Rafsky questioned my client that same evening?”

“Yes. And it’s Sheriff Frye.”

“You questioned him without giving him a Miranda warning?”

“He was read his rights in the cruiser, Miss Troyer.”

“For the shooting of Chief Flowers, yes,” she said. “But you then proceeded to question him about the homicide of Julie Chapman.”

“Now wait a—”

“So,” Troyer went on, “not only was he
not
advised of his rights pending any charges in the Chapman case but he was also questioned by two people who have no jurisdiction on this island.”

Louis studied the woman. Was she good enough to somehow tangle up the Chapman investigation with motions and accusations, or was she grasping at legal clichés?

“Dancer was not given his rights for the Chapman homicide because at the time of questioning he was not in custody for that crime,” he said. “By voluntarily drawing a picture of the victim
he
brought the subject of her murder into the discussion.”

Lee Troyer squared her shoulders. “I could argue that you set my client up by giving him a sketch pad, knowing he draws obsessively.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Detective Rafsky thinks Dancer killed Julie Chapman,” she said. “Even as we speak he has officers searching my client’s property for her skull. That act makes Danny a suspect in the Chapman murder, and for you to deny he isn’t is the ridiculous part.”

She was right, but he’d be damned if he would admit it.

“Look,” Louis said. “The fact is, your client has not yet been charged with Julie Chapman’s murder and won’t be on the basis of a single drawing.”

Troyer was quiet, trying to keep her gaze level.

“Off the record,” he said, “I don’t happen to think he killed Julie Chapman, and I don’t think Detective Rafsky is going to find proof out there that Dancer killed anyone.”

Troyer looked down at her legal pad. He could see she had jotted down bullet points of her argument and was now out of bullets. She couldn’t be more than twenty-five, and he knew she had been sidetracked by Julie Chapman’s case. With the simple act of drawing a picture Dancer had elevated a small-town cop shooting to a high-profile cold case homicide, complete with a locally connected politician running for national office.

“Look, Miss Troyer,” Louis said. “You’re probably right about Mirandizing Dancer before we asked him about Julie Chapman, but that aside, if you want my advice you need to focus on the crime he is charged with—the attempted murders of three people, two of them police officers.”

“Well, I do know that, of course,” Troyer said.

“I know I have no real say here, but if you want to help Dancer you need to find him a say-what-the-defense-pays-you-to-say psychiatrist,” Louis said. “That’s the only way you’ll keep him out of prison for the rest of his life.”

“He can’t afford that, and my office can’t—”

“Then you petition the court to provide equal resources,” Louis said.

“Excuse me?”

“You argue that Dancer can’t compete with the state’s criminal psychiatrists on the public defender’s budget. If you make a good argument you can get the court to order that the state pick up the tab for your experts.”

Troyer raised a thin brow. “I never heard that kind of advice from the law enforcement side of the table before.”

“I have an ulterior motive to keep things friendly with Dancer,” Louis said.

“Which is?”

Louis opened the sketchbook. “Dancer has thousands of drawings of people whose names he doesn’t remember.” He pointed to Rhoda. “This girl was a friend of Julie Chapman’s. I need to talk to Dancer about her.”

Troyer stared at the drawing for a moment, then looked at Dancer.

“I won’t ask him any questions about Julie’s murder,” Louis said. “I just need to know who this girl is.”

“What if he blurts out something incriminating?”

“I can’t control that and neither can you,” Louis said.

There was something about this woman that reminded Louis of himself when he was a rookie investigator in rural Mississippi. Way in over his head, floundering for clues, afraid to make the wrong decision, but determined to go it alone.

“I won’t screw your client,” Louis said. “I promise.”

Troyer gave Louis a nervous smile, then looked back at Dancer. “You feel like talking today, Danny?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Come to the bars, please,” Troyer said.

Danny didn’t get up. All his attention was on finishing his drawing. He was also mumbling.

“What are you saying, Danny?” Louis asked. “We can’t hear you.”

“Fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five.”

“I think he’s counting the wrinkles,” Louis said to Troyer. He looked back to Dancer. “Is that Aunt Bitty?”