The Heirloom Murders (11 page)

Chloe turned to go, but Roelke paused. “Miss Burke. Have you thought any more about what might have been troubling your sister? Any new ideas?”

Dellyn sighed. “I don’t
know
what was bothering her. I already told you that.”

Chloe struggled to maintain her composure until she and Roel
-
ke had settled into the squad car again and watched Dellyn disappear back inside the house. “What was that for?” she demanded.

He turned the key in the ignition. “What?”

“That last question! Do you think Dellyn wasn’t upset enough about what happened tonight without bringing up Bonnie again?”

Roelke checked his mirror and pulled into the road. “Sometimes people remember things a day or two after a crisis. Details that didn’t come to mind right away.”

“But what does it matter? Do you think Dellyn doesn’t feel terrible enough? Geez!”

“I want to know why Bonnie Sabatola did what she did,” he said stubbornly.

Everything that had been pushed away in the last hour—Markus and the awkward introductions at Sasso’s and her own muddled feelings—roared pride-like back into the car. Whatever sense of safety and calm Roelke’s presence had given her evaporated.

“Maybe you are letting your friendship with Dellyn get in the way of thinking clearly,” he said. “She’s overwrought.”

“Get in the way of thinking clearly?” Chloe echoed incredulously. “You’re criticizing me for trying to take care of a friend? A friend you’re dismissing as ‘overwrought’? You self-righteous jerk! Why not call us both ‘hysterical females’ and be done with it?”

“There’s nothing wrong with trying to take care of a friend. But this is police business.”

“Well, it’s personal business to me. Dellyn is my friend. She doesn’t have anyone else right now.”

“She has other friends.” Roelke pulled up behind her car, in front of the police station. “Libby, for one.”

Chloe shook her head. “You know what? This is the stupidest argument we’ve ever had.”

“I think you like feeling important.”

“I—
what?
” She gaped at him. “Maybe I just like having a woman friend in my life, Roelke. Ever think of that?” She’d never parsed it quite that way, but it was true. At West Virginia University’s forestry school, most of her friends had been guys. She’d gotten along fine with the small group of museum studies students she’d gone through grad school with, men and women, without hooking up with any one in particular. In Switzerland, her social life had revolved around Markus and his friends. Libby was great, but she was Roelke’s cousin, first and foremost.

Roelke pressed his knuckles against his forehead. “Chloe—”

“Dellyn is my friend, and I’m worried about her. I’m afraid she might end up depressed herself.”

“I don’t want that to happen,” Roelke said, in a patronizing tone that could not have been calculated to annoy her more. “But I still have a job to do. When it comes to that, you need to back off.”

“
You
need to back off,” Chloe snapped. “And leave Dellyn alone.” She scrambled from the squad car and slammed the door. She was aware of Roelke watching as she unlocked her own car, slid inside, started the engine, and pulled away.

“Neanderthal,” she muttered. She drove down Main Street carefully. She wouldn’t put it past him to ticket her for going two miles over the limit.

When she reached Dellyn’s house she braked and pulled over. She briefly considered knocking on her friend’s door again. But
…
no. Dellyn wanted to be alone. And Chloe understood the feeling of being besieged; of knowing that the last tattered scrap of the energy needed to interact with other homo sapiens was about to disintegrate.

That was a big part of why Chloe wanted to help. She knew how
it felt to be broken. She knew how it felt to be alone. She knew how it felt to try, and try, and try, and still feel every sense of mastery over her own life drift away.

And when Chloe had hit the sucking muck at the absolute bottom of her personal well, one person had saved her: Ethan, her best buddy, who had put his own life on hold long enough to get her firmly started on the long climb toward daylight.

A lamp blinked on in the attic window. Dellyn, back to work on the artifact inventory.

Chloe had never known how to thank Ethan for helping her. Until now. “You’re not all alone,” Chloe whispered to Dellyn.

Then Chloe pulled back on to the road. As she left Eagle she realized that her hands ached, and she loosened her death grip on the steering wheel. “No way I’m backing off, Officer McKenna,” she muttered. “No frickin’ way.”

She knew Roelke would do everything possible to track down whomever had attacked her in the barn. That was police business, and she was happy to leave it to him. But she also doubted that he’d give any credence to Dellyn’s theory about the Eagle Diamond.

Might someone actually be searching for the diamond? Or even information about the diamond? It was hard to imagine. But criminals weren’t the brightest bulbs in the box, now, were they? Besides, what mattered most was that
Dellyn
believed it possible. And Dellyn needed to have someone on her side.

“OK,” Chloe told the windshield. “Time to learn more about the Eagle Diamond.”

First, she’d need to keep helping with Dellyn’s inventory project. Perhaps they could unearth her father’s missing files about the diamond. That would provide some comfort, and probably shut the whole stranger-seeking-diamond theory down cold.

Second, she’d look for more information about the diamond herself. She was a curator; she knew research.

Chloe slowed as she reached the outskirts of Palmyra. Suddenly she flipped on her turn signal. “And third, talk to Libby,” she said. Two minutes later she knocked on Libby’s door.

Libby’s eyebrows raised in surprise when she saw her visitor. “Chloe!”

“Sorry to drop in unannounced,” Chloe said. She could hear Libby’s son complaining about something from the next room. “I was driving by, and just have a quick question. Would it be OK if I invited someone else to come to our next writers’ meeting?”

“Justin, I want the Legos picked up, and the whining to stop, by the time I get back there,” Libby called over her shoulder. Then she turned back to Chloe. “Who do you have in mind?”

“A friend of Dellyn’s. Her name is Valerie Bing. She recently moved back to Eagle from
…
well, I don’t know, from someplace. She’s trying to get established as a freelancer. She just had an article about the Eagle Diamond published.”

Libby regarded her. “Is Roelke going to be pissed at me if I say yes?”

“I can’t imagine that Roelke would be at all interested in our writers’ group meeting.”

Libby snorted with laughter. “Fair enough. Sure, go ahead and invite her. Just phrase it as a one-time thing, though, until we see how everyone gets along.”

Done, Chloe thought, as she headed back to her car. She didn’t need to wait for Roelke to decide if Dellyn’s problems were worth exploring. She could do some exploring on her own.

Roelke’s phone was ringing
as he trudged up the stairs to his apartment that night. “Jesus,” he muttered, fumbling for his key. It was after midnight. One of the part-timers, a new kid, was on duty. If he’s asking for help on something stupid, Roelke thought, I will not be happy.

When he finally grabbed the receiver, though, a lazy voice greeted him. “Cow-boy!”

“You need new material,” Roelke told Rick Almirez. His oldest buddy from his Milwaukee PD days frequently chastised Roelke for trading in the city for cow country. “What’s up? And why the hell are you calling so late?”

“I’ve been trying for hours. Figured you’d get off shift sooner or later.” Rick didn’t sound even mildly chagrined. “Joe Dawson’s getting married. Third Saturday in September. He wants the band to play at the reception.”

“
Our
band?” Roelke loved playing blues and jazz with a few other cops. They called themselves The Blue Tones, and practiced every month. But honestly, they weren’t that good.

“Yes, our band, nimrod. Evidently Sharon is preggers. Thus the haste.”

“We should squeeze in some extra practice.”

“Oh, yeah. Can you make it next Saturday?” The question was punctuated with a faint woosh of expelled air.

Roelke pictured Rick, sitting at his old Formica-topped kitchen table, phone in one hand, cigarette in the other. A sudden twist of melancholy hit Roelke in the chest. “Um … Saturday might be a problem,” he said. “I’m on duty.”

“So, get somebody to switch with you.”

“I can’t.” Roelke sighed, knowing what was coming. “It’s Movie Night in Eagle.”

Brief silence. Then, “Movie Night?”

“Yeah. And it was kind of my idea, so I have to be there.”

“Movie Night,” Rick repeated, with a tone he might have used to say Hepatitis Night.

Well, Rick was an adrenaline junkie. No point in belaboring the topic. “See if the guys can do Sunday night,” Roelke said. “I could make that.”

“OK.” Another pause, another whoosh of expelled cigarette smoke. “One more thing. Joe’s leaving the force.”

“No shit?”

“Sharon’s folks offered him a job in the family business,” Rick said. “A lumberyard, I think. Up by Tomah.”

“Well, hunh.”

“You know what that means. There’s going to be a vacancy opening up.”

Roelke’s knee began to bounce up and down. Fast.

“I talked to the lieutenant about it,” Rick said. “Off the record. He can’t make any promises, but he did say he’d be pleased if you applied. Said he’d look for your application.”

“Rick—”

“Just think about it,” Rick said. “Everybody would welcome you back, McKenna. But the clock’s ticking. They want to move on this thing. Application deadline is end of the week.”

“
Rick
—”

“You might not get another chance like this!”

“A permanent position just opened up here. I’ve already put in for that.”

“Are you sure you’re going to get it?”

“No.”

“So, put in for the Milwaukee job too, all right? That’s all I’m sayin’.”

Roelke sighed. “All right,” he heard himself say. “I’ll think about it.”

After hanging up the phone, Roelke scrubbed his face with his palms. He didn’t
want
to go back to Milwaukee. But it felt good to be want
ed
.

The Eagle Police Department was only four years old. The officers all got along well enough. Usually, anyway. But they were a collection of mostly part-timers, some kids trying to break into police work, a couple of vets trying to ease into retirement, one detective from Waukesha who picked up stray patrol shifts in Eagle to earn extra cash. The person Roelke liked best was the chief. But the chief was his boss, not his friend.

“Well, hell,” he muttered. He stamped down the cramped under-the-eaves corridor to his miniscule kitchen, opened the fridge, and stared at the shelves with disapproval. He never kept beer at home. But every once in a great while, he wished he did.

Just as every once in a while, he wished he’d never left the MPD. He missed shooting the shit with Rick every day. Missed hanging out with guys he’d gone through the academy with.

Roelke poured himself a glass of apple juice and looked out the kitchen window. Beyond the exterior staircase to his apartment, which was a total bitch to shovel in the winter, was a parking lot. Nothing to see at this hour except his truck and a dumpster.

“I
like
working in Eagle,” he muttered.

But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he seemed hell-bent on screwing himself out of the permanent position. Something about this Sabatola case was making him nuts. He was losing perspective. Just when he should be hunkered down, playing everything by the book, not giving Chief Naborski a single moment’s pause.

And then, of course, there was Chloe. He was doing a pretty good job of screwing his chances with her, too.

He thought about his dad, and his brother Patrick. Both of them had self-destructed. Roelke had always tried to hold himself above their examples. And despite his momentary longing for a cold one, he didn’t have their problem with alcohol.

But there was more than one way to self-destruct. If anyone should know that, a cop should.

“What’s eating you?” Marie
demanded.

Roelke slammed his locker door. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve been barking at people all morning,” the clerk said.

“No, I haven’t.”

Marie held both palms toward him in surrender. “Right. Have it your way.” She swiveled back to her desk.

Great. Pissing off Marie did not bode well for anyone at the EPD, most especially a part-timer trying to win a full-time slot. “Marie,” he began.

“Chief needs to present bids on new tires for the squad car,” Marie said. “I’ve got to get this written up.”

Well, hell. Roelke grabbed the squad keys and left. As he drove down Main Street, he realized that his fingers ached. He was clenching the steering wheel like a terrified first-time driver.

Well, hunh. Maybe something
was
eating him.

Five minutes later he climbed the front steps of a small brick ranch house, just north of Dellyn Burke’s place. Clouds of flowers lined the walk, and spilled from a dozen or more hanging baskets. No wonder Sonia Padopolous and Dellyn’s mother had been friends.

The front door was open, but no one answered his knock. He was about to try again when he heard faint chords of … something vaguely musical. He followed the sound around the house.

A plump woman wearing a lavender sweat suit and Keds sat in a lawn chair, strumming a ukulele. “When the red, red robin comes bob-bob-bobbing along,” she sang, evidently to the robin splashing in a cement birdbath nearby.

OK, this was a first. Roelke waited until the song ended before coughing politely. “Mrs. Padopolous?”

“Oh!” Sonia Padopolous jumped to her feet, her eyes wide. The expression that chased the surprise aside, though, was not fear, or even wariness. Instead, a look of … regret, perhaps resignation, shadowed her eyes. Her shoulders slumped.

He waited for her to speak. She didn’t. “I’m Officer McKenna,” he said finally. “I got called to your neighbor’s house last night. A friend of Dellyn Burke’s startled a prowler—”

“A prowler? At Dellyn’s? Last night?” The color drained from the woman’s face, leaving two artificially pink blots of blusher on her cheeks. She stood with the instrument dangling from one hand.

Something not quite right here, Roelke thought. “Might we step inside?” he asked politely.

Mrs. Padopolous ushered him into a spotless kitchen. “You go through there and have a seat in the parlor. I’ll get you a snack.”

Roelke remembered Chloe’s warning. “No thank you, ma’am,” he began, but she flapped her hands in a shooing motion. He watched her bustle about the kitchen with what seemed to be an excess of movement, avoiding his gaze. Was it better to keep an eye on her, or to keep things friendly and obey her command? Friendly, for now. He kept going.

In the living room, Roelke took a quick look around. Paperback romance novels filled two bookcases. A vase of red silk roses stood on an end table. A card table in the corner held a partially completed jigsaw puzzle of some European castle.

Sonia Padopolous had time on her hands. She was lonely. And she dreamed of people and places far beyond Eagle, Wisconsin.

No pictures of grandchildren graced the walls, but a framed portrait on the credenza showed a much younger Sonia posed with a trim, dark-haired man. A flag folded with military precision and encased in a triangular glass-topped box sat nearby, next to a black-and-white photograph of a man in army uniform, circa World War II.

“That was my husband,” Sonia said behind him. “He survived the Battle of the Bulge, came home, and died of the flu five years later. Here.” She held out a plate of cookies.

Roelke accepted one oatmeal cookie and a napkin. “How long have you lived next door to the Burkes?”

She perched on a chair upholstered with huge mauve flowers. “Since nineteen forty-six. Loretta—that was Dellyn’s mother—and I hit it off right away.”

“So you’ve known the family well.”

Sonia pulled a tissue from a decorative container, and used it to polish the base of a brass table lamp by her chair. “Well … I watched Loretta’s girls grow up. My heart just breaks for Dellyn. One tragedy after another.”

Roelke nibbled his cookie, and almost choked. Perhaps Mrs. Padopolous had mistaken salt for sugar? He coughed into his napkin, and tried to keep his voice steady as he said, “Bonnie’s death must have been especially difficult.”

Mrs. Padopolous rubbed fiercely at an invisible spot. “Yes.”

Roelke tried to decide the best way to encourage confidences. “I was the first officer on the scene,” he told her. “And I don’t mind telling you, I can’t quite shake what happened. Did you have any inkling that Bonnie was depressed?”

She began to cry. After a moment she sank back in her chair, and used another tissue to blot her eyes. “I
should
have known. I blame myself for what happened.”

That seemed harsh. “Why do you say that?”

Sonia tore a corner from the tissue and rolled it into a tiny ball. “A few weeks ago, Bonnie came to see me.”

“Did she seem distraught?”

“No, but … Wait just a minute.” Sonia disappeared, and emerged from the kitchen a few moments later with several folded pieces of cloth. “She gave me these. That’s Loretta’s work.”

Roelke accepted what appeared to be dish towels, each sturdy white rectangle embroidered with a different flower. Some were familiar—pansies, daisies, lilies of the valley—and some were not. But he had no idea why Mrs. Padopolous was upset. Not even a clue. You may win that full-time slot with the EPD, Roelke told himself, but you obviously are not detective material.

“Bonnie said she wanted me to
have
these.”

“Ah.” A light finally flickered on in Roelke’s brain. He laid the towels on the coffee table with due reverence. “She was distributing favorite possessions.”

“Right.” The older woman nodded fiercely. “Only I thought she
was ashamed of these. Of me. Of her mother, even.” Tears brimmed
over again. “But that poor child was struggling.”

Roelke’s job often put him in proximity of weeping women, but it never got easier. “Some people get very good at hiding their feelings,” he told her.

“Her mother was concerned. Had been, anyway. She wasn’t real happy when Bonnie married Simon Sabatola.”

“And … why was that?”

Mrs. Padopolous tugged at one nylon knee-high, which had pooled around her ankle. “Well, people don’t like to say so, but class matters. Simon was already a big executive. The Burkes were plain folks.”

Roelke remembered Sabatola’s home—the leather, the chrome, the oil paintings. “I see.”

“I think Loretta was afraid that Bonnie would get spoiled by all that money.”

“And did she?”

“I wouldn’t say
spoiled
.” Mrs. Padopolous exhaled a long sigh. “All I know is that she got more and more … distant. I asked her over and over to bring Simon by for dinner, but she never did.”

Perhaps that was Simon’s influence, Roelke thought. Or perhaps Bonnie didn’t dare bring her husband to Aunt Sonia’s for an inedible meal.

Mrs. Padopolous dug the fingers of both hands into her hair. “I think she was depressed. It can just sneak up on a person, you know.”

Roelke didn’t know. He wanted to
never
know. “Did you ever happen to see any uncomfortable exchanges between Bonnie and Simon? Did he ever mistreat her?”

She shook her head. “He treated her like spun gold.”

Roelke turned that tidbit over in his mind.

“Maybe some of his people were surprised that he chose to marry a farmer’s daughter, but I never was. Bonnie was a beauty, but it came from the inside. She used to run in and out of this house like it was her own, and let me tell you, she was the sunniest girl you can imagine.”

Sonia pulled a blue photograph album from a shelf, the kind with pocketed plastic sheets inside to hold pictures. She flipped to a page near the end, then pivoted the book so he could see it. “Here,” she said, tapping one snapshot. “Here’s Bonnie and Dellyn, back in the day when I was the local 4-H leader.”

Roelke stared at a fading snapshot. He recognized Dellyn in the grinning girl on the right, proudly holding a red ribbon. A lovely girl, with features similar but more defined, posed on the left with a chicken in her arms. She was beaming.

So … how had everything gone wrong? Had Bonnie struggled to live up to the expectations that came from becoming an executive’s wife? Had she struggled to gain acceptance from the women in her husband’s circles? To be a charming hostess? To make polite small talk at cocktail parties?

“She had a dazzling smile,” he said. “I expect that’s what caught her husband’s eye.”

“Likely so,” Sonia Padopolous agreed. “Dellyn has it too. She did, anyway.”

Had those last words held a touch of … what, anger, bitterness? Roelke made sure his cop-face was in place. “Dellyn hasn’t had much to smile about lately, I suppose.”

“I haven’t seen much of her since she’s been home.” Sonia pulled the album from Roelke’s hands and slid it onto the coffee table.

“Ah. Mrs. Padopolous, were you at home yesterday evening?”

“No. I was at a baby shower at my cousin’s place in Mukwonago.”

“Have you ever seen a prowler around here? Had any break-ins?”

She shook her head vehemently. “Never in all the years. But I’ll double-check my doors tonight. And I’ll stop over next door. See that Dellyn’s really all right.”

Dellyn Burke might not thank me for inspiring a carry-over, Roelke thought. “Ma’am, do you live here alone?”

“Oh, yes. But I’m quite used to it. Nothing rattles me.”

“Do you have any children? Someone you could call if you needed help?”

Sonia hesitated before turning an album page and gesturing toward another snapshot. This one showed her younger self surrounded by perhaps a dozen grinning kids. “These were my children. My 4-H family. My, we had good times!”

Which did not, Roelke thought, answer the question. “Well, ma’am, we’re just a phone call away. Please call if you see anything suspicious in the neighborhood.”

“I will,” she promised brightly. “Thank you.”

Roelke was almost to the door when he turned, smiling pleasantly. “Oh, just one more question. I couldn’t help noticing that you looked …
resigned,
perhaps, when you first saw me. Were you expecting trouble?” It was a shot in the dark but not, he judged, completely wild.

“Expecting trouble?” She began folding one of the towels. “Why, I can’t imagine what you mean.”

He waited. Waiting often made people uncomfortable. Often made them talk just to fill the silence.

But Sonia stayed silent. Roelke thanked her again, and let himself out.

Back in the squad car he made some notes, and then considered. He needed more information. And he knew where to get it … if Marie was ready to forgive him. He liked Marie. He admired Marie. But the woman could hold a grudge.

First, though, he had a funeral to attend.