The Iced Princess

by Christine Husom

  I gave Emmy a hug and slipped out to leave her to her packing. I briefly considered stopping by Erin’s house but didn’t think I had the energy to rehash the afternoon and evening events with them. Emmy’s comment about doing something special for Molly’s family sparked the idea to drive by her house to see how many people had gathered there to support her husband. Call it morbid curiosity.

  The Daltons lived in a newer upper-scale section on the outskirts of the city. I’d heard the lots were two acres each, and the average value of each property was over a million dollars. There was a small lake in the middle of the community. The original owner had plotted the land so the backyard of each lot ran down to the lake. If my ancestors who’d founded Brooks Landing a century before could come back today and see the monster homes in their fair city, they would not believe it. For them, living on a lake meant having easier access to fishing, not a place to take a pontoon or speedboat ride.

  I turned onto the street that wound in an oblong around the lake. It was a drive I’d taken a number of times, mainly because I admired the beautifully kept properties. I dreamed about how I might landscape my own yard someday. If I ever bought a house, that is.

  The Daltons’ house was on the west side of the oblong, so I veered left. There were four houses on each side and one on each end. Theirs was the second one in. When my dad’s unmarried brother died some years back, we must have had eighty or ninety people crowd into our house when the poor man’s body was still warm. I had no idea how many friends and relatives the Daltons had, but I certainly expected a large number of cars in their circular driveway and out on the street.

  There was not a vehicle in sight. If there were any on the property, they were tucked away in one of the four stalls of their attached garage. There were security lights outside the house, and there may have been some on inside the home, but none were evident. I did one loop around the neighborhood and then another. It had been a couple of hours since Will Dalton left Curio Finds. Was he alone in there drowning his sorrows, or had he gone to a relative’s house—maybe Molly’s mother’s, or his own parents’—to grieve with loved ones?

  Pinky had been afraid of Will Dalton when he was in my shop demanding to know what had happened to Molly. Would he file a lawsuit against Pinky or my parents because of what happened to Molly? I’d read about people suing over wrongful deaths all the time. And unless Molly herself had put the poison in that cup of coffee, her death was about as wrongful as they came. Not that I was more concerned about getting sued than Molly losing her life, but a lawsuit would devastate my parents and Pinky. Not to mention that it would also likely destroy the businesses they had worked so diligently to build.

  Molly had mentioned that her mother still lived in the same home as when she was a teenager, which Molly found a little embarrassing. I drove there next. At some point in the very near future, Pinky and I would have to pay her a visit and extend our sympathies. Oh my, how did a person talk to a parent about something that tragic? Will Dalton had said he’d inform the family, and I was glad for that. Mrs. Ryland lived in a very old, fairly well-kept two-story home. It was one that would look haunted if ivy had been allowed to grow across the windows. There were a few cars parked outside, and the inside of the house appeared to have lights on in every room. Good, Mrs. Ryland was not alone; she had someone to share her grief with.

  —

  I’d done enough snooping on Molly’s family. It was time to concentrate on my own. It had been a few hours since I’d left the original message for my parents and an hour since I’d written the note. If they’d gone to a movie, they would have chosen an early show, either the four o’clock or six o’clock one. When I got home and saw I had six new messages on my answering machine, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. It was deader than a doornail. Oops.

  The first two messages were telemarketing calls, and the last four had all come in the past six minutes. One was from Pinky. “Erin and I are checking to see how you’re doing. Did you turn your cell phone off?” The next one was the local newspaper’s star reporter and town gossip. “Camryn, it’s Sandy Gibbons. I just heard that someone died under mysterious circumstances in your shop this afternoon. No one is there to talk to about it, and the police haven’t returned my call. Call me. Right away, please.” The next was Pinky again. “Sandy Gibbons is hot on your trail, so you’d better turn off your lights. She saw my car at Erin’s and had the nerve to stop here to try to get all the juicy details. I told her to talk to the police.” The last and most welcomed message was from my mom. “Hi, Cami. We were at your nephew’s basketball game over in Sibley and just got home. Call when you can.”

  I dialed them right away. Unfortunately, Sandy Gibbons had phoned them a minute before, and my mom hung up on her to take my call. “Cami, I can’t believe what Sandy just told me.”

  “It was horrible, Mom. That’s why I called Dad earlier and asked about the bathroom key because it was locked from the inside. I didn’t know why Molly wasn’t answering, or if she was even in there for sure.” I sniffed. “Molly Dalton got poisoned in our shop, and died in the bathroom. And I was the one who found her.”

  “We’ll be right over.”

  I knew my mom would be exhausted from their outing. “No, really, Mom, I’m okay. I’ll stop over tomorrow and we’ll talk about it.”

  “How would she get into poison?”

  “Someone put it in her coffee. No idea why. I mean, who would hate her enough to do that?”

  “Oh dear me, are you saying someone deliberately poisoned Molly?”

  “It looks that way, and the police are investigating, of course. None of it seems real. And if Sandy Gibbons keeps bugging you, tell her the police put a gag order on us for now.”

  “Cami, this is a horrible thing. For you, for her family . . .”

  “And for Molly, especially.”

  “Of course. I don’t know her mother very well, but we’ll be sure to send her a nice bouquet of flowers. We’ll order one for Molly’s husband, too.”

  “That’s thoughtful.” It was not the time to bring up my fear that her husband might file a lawsuit against us. He didn’t get high up on the corporate attorney ladder on good looks alone. If we sent him flowers, would he take it as a kind gesture or an admission of guilt?

  Mom asked me more about Molly’s death, and I filled her in, leaving out some of the upsetting details. And she didn’t need to hear that both Mr. and Senator Zimmer had darkened the shops’ doorways at different times that morning. “Oh, and our other employee, Emmy, is already taking a leave of absence to go stay with a friend in need.”

  “Goodness me. Well, if you need your dad to fill in, I’m sure he’d be happy to help you out.”

  “Thanks, I will let you know.”

  “And you get some sleep tonight, Cami. All right?”

  “All right.” But nothing was all right, not by any stretch of the imagination.

  We’d barely said our good-byes when the front doorbell rang. I braced myself, thinking it would be Clint wanting to ask me more questions. I peeked around the drape that covered the living room picture window. I had zero desire to see Sandy Gibbons, but there she was, standing on my front step with her brown hair flying straight up in the wind. I opened the door so she wouldn’t try to pump my parents for information they didn’t have. And she did look cold.

  “Cami, if it weren’t for bad luck, you wouldn’t have any at all. That’s certainly been true lately, at least.” Sandy was not known for her tact. She was missing the filtering gene that stopped most of us from saying things that might offend others. “Brrr, that north wind is brutal tonight.” She stepped inside, and her hair fell back down and formed an unusual hairdo. Not unlike what mine looked like when I crawled out of bed in the morning.

  “I’ve had a couple of bad—okay, really bad—things happen in the last month or so, but I don’t know if it has anything to do
with luck.”

  Sandy waved her hand in the air as if she were dispelling my words. “Can we sit down for a few minutes? I’ve been running all over town, and I’m not exactly a spring chicken, you know.” She had seemed about the same age, sixtyish, for as far back as I could remember. She was likely nearing seventy by now.

  “Let’s sit at the kitchen table.” I led the way. She plopped her large purse on the table then fished inside of it and came out with a notebook and laid it on the table. Then, as she lowered her body onto a chair, she slipped off her coat and let it drop on the seat behind her. She reached into the front of her shirt and pulled a pen from heaven knows where, ready to write.

  Sandy sucked in a giant breath and looked me squarely in the eyes. “All right. I know someone died in your shop and that it’s being investigated as a homicide.”

  “How do you know all that?” I said and sunk down on a chair myself.

  Because I heard the Buffalo County dispatcher call for the major crimes investigators to go to your shop address, over my police scanner. I got down there as soon as I could. The shop doors were locked, and I saw the coroner and the Buffalo County crime team there, a sure sign it was a homicide.

  “I was afraid you or Pinky had been robbed and killed on top of it all, but then I saw you through the window before they closed your blinds. Pinky’s were left open, and I was relieved to see Erin and Pinky were safe and sound, too.” Sandy admitted she had been one of the snoopers sitting in a vehicle outside. Not a bit surprising.

  “Sandy, since the police won’t tell you anything, what makes you think I can?”

  She brushed at something on her notepad. “Cami, the police left your shop a couple of hours ago and said they’d be releasing a statement soon. Were they just saying that to get me to leave?”

  Maybe they were. “The police need to talk to everyone in the family before they talk to the media and the rest of the world.”

  “It’s the same old thing every time something big breaks. We have to practically beg, borrow, and steal to find out any details.”

  “But in the end you always get your story, right?”

  “Well, back to your comment about everyone in the victim’s family. Are you saying this person comes from a large family?”

  I smiled. “No, it was just an observation.”

  She leaned closer. “Is it someone you know?”

  “Yes, Sandy, it is, but that is absolutely the last thing I can say about it until the police tell me—” The ringing of my home phone cut me off. I jumped up and saw it was Mark calling.

  “Oh, you are home. You weren’t answering your cell,” he said.

  “It’s on the charger. What’s up?”

  “Clint just released Molly’s name to the major media channels and said her death was under investigation. It’ll be on the ten o’clock news.”

  That would make it seem more official. “Oh. I don’t think I’ll be able to watch it.” I glanced over at Sandy, who was obviously eavesdropping. “And how about our local media?”

  “Sandy Gibbons was chomping at the bit for the info, but she’s been MIA for the last ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Consider her found. You want me to tell her?”

  “Yeah, go ahead, but no details yet.”

  “I understand. And how are things going there?”

  “So-so. Hey, I’ll catch you later.”

  By the time I hung up, Sandy’s body had turned around in her chair. “My ears are burning.”

  “It was Mark Weston, and he said I can tell you that it was Molly Dalton who died, and that her death is being investigated.”

  Sandy almost toppled out of her chair. “Molly Dalton! Oh my God, I would not want to be the guy that killed her. Her husband will make sure he gets the gas chamber.”

  “You’re jumping to conclusions. First of all, we don’t know that she was killed. For sure. And even if she was, we don’t have the death penalty in Minnesota.”

  “Oh, of course. But William Dalton and his family can probably move the trial to a state that does.”

  “Sandy, it doesn’t work that way.”

  “Not for regular folks, it doesn’t.”

  Thinking about what Will Dalton might do to hurt Pinky’s and my parents’ businesses was scaring me more and more by the minute.

  6

  The phone rang first thing the next morning. I reached over and lifted the cordless out of its cradle and managed to get it right side up. “Yes?”

  It was Pinky talking in a quiet voice. “Cami, I hate to ask you this, but do you think you can come in early today? I am freaking out being here alone. That darn Erin and her ghost talk. And I don’t even believe in ghosts.”

  I hadn’t slept much all night. Between Molly’s face with her unseeing eyes being front and center in my thoughts, and then worrying about her husband’s reaction to the tragedy, I tossed and turned until after three o’clock. I rolled onto my side and looked at the clock: 7:20 a.m. It would have been dark outside when her shop opened at 7:00, since the sun came up just a little before that.

  “No customers?”

  “Not right now. The early crowd came and went, and I’m hoping the next wave will start soon, but in the meantime, here I am alone with my scary thoughts. The lights are off in your shop, and I keep seeing all kinds of shadows that seem to be moving whenever I look that way.”

  “It’s going to take me twenty minutes to get there. Hang on ’til then.”

  “Oh, there’s a customer coming in now, thank the good Lord!”

  I hung up, and my body fought me every inch of the way as I got out of bed and waddled to the bathroom. I washed and brushed my hair and teeth and put on some light makeup then walked with less of a waddle to my bedroom closet. I threw on a peachy pink knitted pullover and gray pants, fluffed my hair, and stuck a silver necklace and earrings in my pocket to put on later. With my coat on and purse in hand, I was at the shops in fifteen minutes.

  Pinky smiled from ear to ear when I walked through the door. She ran to meet me and threw her arms around me in a bear hug. “Wow, that was fast. Thanks for coming in and for wearing my color. I feel better already.”

  “That’s what friends are for.” I hadn’t chosen Pinky’s favorite color on purpose when I’d put on the sweater. Or maybe I had, after all. “I’ll go turn on my shop lights, and that should dispel any scary thoughts you’re having.” If only it were that easy. I crept into Curio Finds, trying to ignore the moving shadows Pinky had referred to. I knew they were from cars passing by outside, but shadows had taken on a whole new meaning since yesterday.

  I turned on the lights but kept the shop door locked. We wouldn’t be open for over two hours. Pinky had another few customers to wait on, or I would have asked her to stand beside me as I checked out the place where Molly had died. I flipped on the bathroom light switch and took in every detail of the nondescript space. Toilet, sink, toilet paper holder, mirror, paper towel holder, and a picture of multicolored snow globes on the wall. Everything looked normal. I wondered how long it would take before it felt normal again.

  When Pinky was free, I called for her to join me.

  “Busy,” she called back.

  “Doing what?”

  “Just busy.”

  I went into her shop, and when I saw she was standing there, not busy, I took her hand and led her to the bathroom door. She threw her free arm over her eyes. “I can’t look.”

  “Pinky, there is really nothing to see. That’s what I needed to see, too; that Molly really isn’t still there.”

  She lowered her arm and opened her eyes. “Same old bathroom, but I’ll never go in there again.”

  “Remember what they say about never saying never?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  The bell on Brew Ha-Ha’s door dinged, and we returned to the coffee sh
op. In walked Assistant Chief Clinton Lonsbury, of all people. Officer Mark Weston came in seconds later. Mark’s expression was almost as solemn as Clint’s. “What?” I said.

  Clint cleared his throat. “Just how much do you know about Emmy Anders?”

  Pinky and I looked at each other and shrugged. “Like what? Where she lives? Where she goes to church?” I said.

  “More like her history, her life before she moved to Brooks Landing,” Clint said.

  “Before she moved here? Next to nothing,” I said.

  “I have to go along with Cami. Emmy started coming in here more the last six months or so but didn’t like to talk about herself. And you know me; I tried to get her to open up more.”

  Mark nodded. “We have a pretty good idea of why she didn’t say much.”

  Pinky and I were drawn in by his words and took a step closer to the officers.

  “Do you know where she moved here from?” Clint said.

  “The metro area,” Pinky said.

  I agreed. “Yes, it was Minneapolis.”

  “About three years ago, a man named Howard Andersohn was poisoned. His wife was arrested, charged, tried, and acquitted by a jury of her peers for lack of conclusive evidence.”

  “Why are you telling us this? Was it similar to what happened to Molly, or what?”

  “There could be a common denominator,” Mark said.

  “We did an abbreviated background investigation on Emmy Anders and came up with some troubling information.”

  My heart started pounding. “No.”

  “Emmy Anders’s real name is Emaline Andersohn.”

  Pinky clasped her hands and drew them to her chest. “I remember that name. But it can’t be our Emmy.”

  “Unfortunately, Emaline and Emmy are one and the same. Her husband was poisoned, and just about everyone thought she’d done it. The problem was, they could not prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt in a court of law.”

  “I wasn’t around here three years ago, I don’t remember hearing about that case, and I have trouble believing Emmy would hurt anyone.”