by Maddie Day
Lou did the same, but he must not have noticed us. He sat there without moving.
“Listen, you’re the sprinter,” I said. “You head for the parking lot. You have your phone, right?”
Lou patted her pocket. “Yep.”
“Drive somewhere if you don’t have reception in the parking lot. I’ll stay here.”
Relief crossed her face. “You sure?”
“I am.” Somebody had to remain there.
“But why not come with me?”
I shivered. “I don’t know. It just seems right to stay with him.”
“I’ll go fast.” She tugged her hat down as a gust of wind swept by. “I wonder how he got there.”
“I don’t know. But, Lou? Don’t walk in those tracks, okay?” I pointed. “They might be evidence.”
“Evidence? For what?”
I scrutinized the hole. “I doubt he went for a swim. It was either an accident, a suicide, or—”
“Or murder,” Lou whispered again. She glanced around with wide eyes.
I looked around, too. “I’m afraid so. But make sure you tell the officer who shows up about the tracks. And hurry, okay?”
Lou nodded and headed out, her long legs lifting and planting in a sprint worthy of an Olympian, laying parallel tracks to the ones leading to the hole.
I pulled my hat farther down and snugged my collar around my neck. Charles didn’t seem to be going anywhere, so a piece of his clothing or a body part must be frozen into the ice underneath. I skirted the hole several feet away and peered at the footprints leading to it. There were two lines of tracks, but the snow was stirred up as if they’d trudged on an unbroken path. I doubted the police would get anything useful from them, but you never knew. Maybe they could. I pulled out my phone and took pictures of the tracks, too.
I had a feeling this wasn’t an accident. And Charles seemed too full of himself to want to end his own life. Had he walked with his killer, chatting, unsuspecting? Was he already dead and had been carried out there? It was far from the shore. The killer would have had to be awfully strong to do that. I didn’t see signs of anything being pulled through the snow, like a sled or a bag that might have carried a body. When could it have happened? Surely not during daylight hours or other ice fishers would have seen the crime.
Wait. Maude had said her son Ron was out fishing this morning. How terrible if his father was already dead on the same lake. I drew in a sharp breath. What if Ron . . . ?
“Don’t go there, Jordan.” I shook my head and went back to the position where I’d first come up to the hole. I backed up a few steps and began to lift and lower my knees as fast as I could to stay warm. Out here in the open and wind, the sweat from our tramping through the woods was cooling. I felt bad worrying about trying to keep my body temperature up when Charles would never be warm again.
I checked Lou’s progress. She’d paused at the red stool for a minute and seemed to be talking with the guy sitting there before jogging on past him.
Let her get reception in the parking lot. Please let the police come soon and relieve me from this dreadful vigil.
Chapter 5
I was chilled through by the time I heard a siren approach the lake. It had seemed like forever, but when I checked my phone it had only been twenty minutes since Lou had taken off. Two snowmobiles roared onto the ice from the parking lot. I’d been hopping around, sprinting to the woods and back, doing whatever I could to stay warm, but it wasn’t working. As I watched, one of the snowmobiles, which towed a type of sled behind it, stopped at the guy on the red stool, then followed the other snowmobile. The guy stood and looked like he was packing up.
As the snowmobiles grew closer, I saw Lou straddling the back of the one being driven by a tall figure. It had to be Buck, otherwise known as Lieutenant Buck Bird, the second in command on the South Lick police force. The snowmobiles skirted the two original tracks as well as Lou’s and pulled up a few yards away from the side of the hole where Charles floated. The smell of exhaust tainted the clean air.
I hurried over to them. Buck removed a helmet and hung it on the snowmobile. Under it he wore a navy watch cap with a South Lick Police insignia. The dark cap made his thin face look even narrower.
“Thanks for coming, Buck.” My teeth chattered so much I could hardly speak.
“Hey, Robbie.” Buck spoke slowly as usual, dragging out the first word into almost three syllables. “Heared you found yourself another body.”
I pointed to the hole, then wrapped my arms around myself again.
“You’re freezing.” Lou put her arms around me and hugged, rubbing my back. “Buck, do you have a blanket or anything for her?”
The other snowmobile clattered up. Officer Wanda Bird, Buck’s cousin, sat in the driver’s seat.
“Robbie needs a blanket, Wanda,” Buck said. “Robbie, go and sit on my machine, now. The engine’s still warm and it’ll get your feet off the ice.”
I bent down and fumbled with the clips on my snowshoe bindings, failing with my stiff fingers to release them. Lou knelt and undid them for me while Wanda opened the container on the sled behind her snowmobile.
“I feel terrible,” Lou said. “I called the police from my car and then sat in the lot with the heat on until they came.” She helped me get settled on the snowmobile seat. “Buck tried to make me stay on shore, but I told him I had to direct them around the tracks.”
“Here.” Wanda draped a foil blanket over me. “Hold on to that in front. It’s what you call one of them space blankets. Reflects your own heat back.” She wrapped a thick wool blanket around me next, draping it over my head, and expertly tucking it into itself so it didn’t fall off.
“Thanks, Wanda.” My shivers were already receding. Although she’d been gruff and officious in the past, I appreciated her kindness when I really needed it.
Buck was snapping pictures. Of the hole. Of the original tracks. Close-ups of the area around the ice hole. He straightened. “Good thing he ain’t floating away like a piece of flotsam. Wanda, some measurements.” Buck turned to Lou. “You say his name is Charles Stilton?”
“He’s a professor at IU, but he lives in South Lick,” she said. “I think he might be from here.”
“You’re a student over there in Bloomington, ain’t ya?” Buck watched her.
“Right. He and I are . . . I mean, we were in the same department,” Lou said.
“Huh.” Buck rubbed the top of his cap.
Another siren wailed up and cut out at the parking lot. I saw an officer stretch yellow tape across the entrance to the lake as static erupted from under Buck’s winter jacket.
He unzipped it part way, pulling out a clunky device, then tapped something on it. “Bird here.” He listened, squinting down at the hole, then over at me. “Yes, ma’am.” He listened some more. “No, ma’am.”
I’d bet a California sushi roll that was Detective Octavia Slade on the other end.
“Got it. Over.” He clicked something and resecured the radio under his coat again. “The detective is tied up. She said to go ahead and let you ladies get off the ice. Be dark in a hour or three. She’ll want to get your statements later tonight after y’all have warmed up.”
So I was right. Detective Octavia Slade, who’d basically made off with my boyfriend, Jim, back in November. Great. I knew she was a competent state police detective, but the last thing I wanted to do was spend any more time with her.
“I thought she was on temporary assignment to Brown County,” I said, struggling to keep my teeth from chattering as I spoke.
“Seems to be a pretty darn long temporary. She’s still the lead detective in these parts.” He frowned. “Now how in blazes are we going to run you both back to shore?”
Wanda pointed to the parking lot at the same time as I heard another engine come to life. Sound traveled so well across the open expanse the noise seemed like it was only yards away instead of way across the lake. Another snowmobile roared onto the ice and headed i
n our direction.
“She musta sent reinforcements,” Buck said. “Good. Whoever it is can ferry you two back. And your gear, of course.”
“Buck, what do you think happened to the professor?” I asked, still clutching the blankets around me.
“Welp, since I’m seeing two sets of tracks, I’m thinking it wasn’t no suicide. And it’d be harder than Chinese arithmetic to jest fall into a hole of that size. Yep, I’m guessing it was murder, plain and simple.”
I didn’t know what Chinese arithmetic was. But I did know that murder was neither plain nor simple.
Chapter 6
Lou followed me into my apartment at the back of the store. We’d agreed, since she lived in Bloomington, it made more sense for her to warm up and eat something at my place before we were summoned to the police station for our statements. Maybe we could convince Octavia to interview us right there. Either way, I was glad for the company after seeing a dead body in the ice. I hung Lou’s jacket on a hook next to mine before turning up the thermostat.
“How does beef stew sound?” I asked her after checking the contents of my refrigerator. “I made it a couple days ago. Or we could have the leftovers from last night. They’re in the restaurant cooler.”
With a shudder, Lou sank into a chair at the kitchen table. “I don’t even want to think about last night. How can a person be alive and then just be . . . dead?”
“You’ve never seen a body before?” I’d seen one murder victim, and that was one too many. “It’s really a shock.”
“I have not, and it is a shock. I can’t stop seeing Charles under the ice. The poor man.”
“The poor man, is right. And his poor wife and son. Maude was in the restaurant this morning.” I carried over wine glasses and a bottle. “A glass of red?”
“Only one. Don’t want to be a tipsy testifier.”
“For sure.” I poured for both of us, and set out a piece of Brie and my favorite crackers, a seed-dotted crisp made with brown rice flour. I poured the stew into a pan and put it on to simmer, then joined her at the table. Warm air blessedly blew up from the grate above the baseboard.
Lou reached down to pet Birdy, the black-and-white long-haired cat who’d adopted me in the fall. Glancing at me, she said, “I’m afraid, Robbie.”
“Why?” I sipped my wine.
“Everybody knows Charles and I had problems. And I’m bigger than he was. What if they think I killed him?”
I tsked. “That’s ridiculous. You don’t murder somebody simply because you had an academic tiff with them.”
“Of course not.” She straightened, bringing a mew of objection from Birdy. “But they might think so.”
I stood, opened a can of wet food for Birdy, and plunked a spoonful into his treat bowl. It always made him happy. At the moment, doing anything happy was a welcome relief from the horror of the afternoon. I watched him lap it up, then asked Lou, “Did Charles have that kind of conflict with a lot of people?”
“He did. Mine was only the most recent. And most public.”
“If he was a horrible man, he probably had enemies right here in South Lick, too.”
“Maybe.”
“I wonder when he was killed. Everybody was gone from here by nine last night.” I frowned at her. “Where were you last night?”
“You’re thinking about my alibi. That’s the next problem. I live alone, you know that. After I got home, I went to bed. I stayed home in my pj’s in the morning and worked on the paper I’m going to present in Sweden. I didn’t get dressed, go out, or talk to anyone until I came out here to run at about ten. Charles must have been dead by then. I was alone. No alibi, Robbie.” She tapped her index finger on the table, her heavy silver rings gleaming against her skin, which somehow stayed tan all winter.
“Neighbors. A neighbor might have seen that your car didn’t budge.”
“Maybe.” She hugged herself.
“You look cold. Let me find you a sweater.” I rummaged in my bedroom closet until I found a fleece sweatshirt that was too big for me, and I pulled on my own IU hoodie, too. In the kitchen, I tossed her the fleece.
“So you didn’t go out on that part of the lake this morning?” I asked her.
“No, I went all the way around on the trail, then I did a loop on the lake from the parking lot. I didn’t reach where we found him. He must have already been there, don’t you think?”
“Were there lots of people ice fishing?”
“Yeah.”
“That means if somebody didn’t see him, he must have been killed during the night. I tilted my head. “Do you hear something?” A faint tune was playing.
“Phone, maybe?” she said, pulling the fleece over her head.
I snorted. “Doh.” I headed for my jacket pocket and pulled out the phone. The call had discontinued, but I smiled when I saw the name. I sent a quick text to Abe saying I was home but missed his call, then I took the phone back to the kitchen with me. Almost immediately he texted back.
Can I stop by?
I tapped out a reply. Sure. Lou is here. We’re in the back. I set the phone on the table and glanced up to see Lou studying me.
“What’s that little smile?” Lou asked.
“It’s Abe. He’s going to stop by.”
“And now you’re blushing.” Lou pointed at my face.
“Hey, I like the guy. So shoot me.”
She made her hand into a gun. “Bang.” Her grin slid away. “No, let’s not go there.”
I stirred the stew, lowering the heat. “Do you think I’m making a mistake, getting involved with him?” I set the wooden spoon on the stove and sat again.
“A mistake? Why, because you don’t want to get dumped again?”
“Yeah.” I wrinkled my nose. “I’m really happy hanging out with him. But what if I let myself get too close and get hurt?”
“Is that how you want to live your life, holding back in case someone hurts you? You’re tough, Robbie. If that happen, and I don’t think it will, you’ll survive. Anyway, third time’s a charm.”
“I guess. I know I’m tough. And I have a good life, a successful business. But I like Abe. I want to have children and have a family life one of these years.” I took a sip. “Then I hear that little voice saying What if ?”
“Tell it to shut the ef up, then.” She grinned. “Here’s to this one working out for you.” She lifted her glass and clinked it with mine.
When knocking sounded from the back door, I got up and let Abe in. His big brown eyes beamed at me under curly hair peeking out from a bright green watch cap. He planted an enticing kiss on me.
“Come on in.” I led the way to the kitchen.
Lou raised a hand in greeting. They’d met when I’d thrown a small Christmas party in my apartment, and at least one other time, I thought.
Abe said hello and slid into a chair.
“Have you eaten?” I asked.
“No. But I need to pick up Sean at seven and we’re going to cook dinner together. I’ll take half a glass of wine, though.”
I handed him a glass. “Help yourself. Fun that you and your son cook together.” Abe was a divorced and still fully involved father, sharing custody and being part of his thirteen year-old’s life.
“Agreed. My dad taught me to cook, so I’m just passing it on. How’s it going, Lou?”
“Good. Sort of. You?”
He swirled the wine in his glass. “Heard you two had an adventure on the ice today.”
I stared at him. “How in heck do you already know that?” I sat, too.
He scratched his jaw with a grin. He’d let a full beard grow over the winter and the trim brown growth suited him. Luckily, it didn’t hide his delicious dimple. “Haven’t you learned yet what a small town South Lick is?”
Lou tilted her head to the side. “I’ll say.”
“Rotten for Charles.” Abe shook his head.
“We were saying the same thing. Did you know him?” I asked Abe.
�
��Not well, but I had a few dealings with him out at his house. The last time was after that big storm we had in January and we were fixing a line. The power to the neighborhood had been off for a few hours and Professor Stilton was not a happy camper.”
“You’re an electrician, right?” Lou asked.
“Sort of. I work for Brown County REA, so I work on the electricity outside houses, not inside.”
“What’s REA?” She kept tapping her finger on the table, beating out a rhythm of some kind.
“Sorry. Rural Electric Association. It’s the electric company around here, except it’s a cooperative. Eighty years old now.”
“So Charles was acting badly when the power was down?” I asked.
Abe nodded. “He made it seem like I’d done it to him personally. Said he had a big lecture to prepare. You’d have thought he was King of Indiana or something, the way he was acting. People down the street were in worse shape, a mom home alone with three little kids. She wasn’t out in the street yelling at me, and when the lights came back on she brought out a plate of cookies for us.”
“Takes all types,” I said.
“It must have been tough for you to discover the body, hon.” Abe stroked my hand where it lay on the table. “And that makes twice.”
I didn’t speak for a moment, picturing Charles’s face in the ice. I’d thought finding a body in my restaurant last November would be the first and last time I would ever encounter a corpse outside of a funeral home. I was wrong. “Very tough. Lou and I were out for fresh air and exercise, which snowshoeing sure is. I definitely didn’t expect to come across a dead person on the lake. And someone I’d met, who was alive right here last night.”
“Last night?” Abe looked from me to Lou and back. “That’s right, you have that study group thing. I forgot.”
