“We need to talk to Elise again. She’s in the dark as much as we are, and I don’t think she’d mind us asking her more questions. How about tomorrow morning, after we call Melinda?”
“You’re worried about Melinda being alone in the house.”
“Someone’s entering that house at night, Liz.”
“Maxwell’s will left the club everything. It’s all theirs, so why would they break in tonight of all nights?”
A new suspicion crept up on Anna, a sliver of a thought, terrible if true. “Maybe the break-ins aren’t about Henry Maxwell’s things.”
13
“Anna,” Liz called. “Coffee’s ready. And it looks like you have a visitor.”
Even with her bedroom door closed, Anna could smell her favorite morning scent—freshly brewed coffee. For years Liz had been a late riser, but running ElkNews.com had forced early-morning habits on her, and with all the murders lately—and thus all the news articles to write—sleeping late wasn’t an option. Anna forced herself out of bed, dressed, and headed for the living room and the sliding door, Jackson on her heels.
“What visitor?” She lifted the sawed-off broom handle from the door’s track, cringing as a gust of frigid wind hit her. “Outside, boy.” Jackson loved the cold, and normally so did she, but not first thing in the morning, standing on the cold wood floor in her stocking feet, peering into a dark backyard. She flipped on the floodlight, slid the door shut, and watched as Jackson bounded through short drifts before getting down to his morning business.
“On your driveway,” Liz said. “Someone parked behind my car.”
Anna turned to see Liz gesturing with her coffee mug at the front door. “Who would it be at this hour?” she said, making her way to the door.
“I can’t tell. It’s too dark and there’s snow on the windshield. They’re just sitting out there.”
“Melinda?” No, she wouldn’t show up unannounced again. Especially at just after six o’clock in the morning. Would she? “Why wouldn’t she come inside?”
Anna unlocked and opened the door. It wasn’t Melinda. She owned a white SUV, but the car behind Liz’s, its back end blocking the sidewalk, was a dark-colored four-door sedan. Whoever was in the car wasn’t running it either. There were no white clouds of exhaust, and the windshield wipers hadn’t been used in a while. She shut the door, pressed her back to it, and looked to Liz, who was watching her from the kitchen, resting her forearms on the island. “That’s weird. When did you notice it?”
“Just before I called you. Could it be one of your neighbors?”
“They’d never park in my driveway.” Anna took quick strides to the sliding door and let Jackson in. He shook himself, spraying droplets of snow across the floor, and dashed into the kitchen, sliding on snow-caked paws before coming to a stop at his water dish.
Anna grabbed her shoes and fleece jacket from the closet by the front door. “Something isn’t right about that car. Come outside with me?”
Anna and Liz made their way down the front steps, walking gingerly so as not to lose their footing on patches of ice. No one stirred in the car, Anna noticed, and when she knocked on the frost-covered passenger-side window, no one responded.
“There’s someone in there,” Liz said. “I see something.”
“Hello?” Anna said. She yanked on the door. Locked. She walked around to the other side of the car, steadying herself on the sedan’s hood, as Liz scratched at the window frost.
“Anna, there’s definitely someone in there, in the driver’s seat.”
“I know,” Anna said. “I don’t like this.” The driver’s side door, sticky with the bitter cold, opened with a crunching sound. Anna sucked in her breath. Behind the wheel was Dean Price, his mouth slack, lips blue, eyes half open. “Oh God, Liz. We need the police.”
Liz edged her way around the hood and came up beside Anna. “What happened to him?”
Anna pulled her eyes away from Dean’s face and quickly surveyed his legs, his chest, his neck. A single trickle of crusted blood ran from the back of his neck to his left collarbone, like half a red-brown necklace. “It looks like the same neck wound Hetrick and Goff had.” She pushed gently on the car’s door, closing but not latching it, and headed back to the house.
Five minutes later Detective Lonnie Schaeffer and two of his officers were at her house, taping off Dean Price’s car, the driveway, and much of the front yard as they waited for the medical examiner and CSI unit. Twice in one week she had been present at such a scene, Anna thought. Soon there would be heads poking in and out of Dean’s car, photographs taken. The medical examiner would gently bend Dean forward at the waist and look at the back of his neck.
She watched from a window by the front door, waiting for Schaeffer to come inside and ask her an inevitable but impossible to answer question: Why had Dean Price come to her house? For the past five minutes she had asked herself the same question. She had no answer. She wondered too if Dean had been killed on her driveway. If he received the same kind of lethal puncture wound to the neck as Goff and Hetrick had, he couldn’t have driven to or from her house. He would have died almost instantaneously.
“Was he killed while we were sleeping last night?” Anna said. “Did he come to my house and never make it out of his car?”
Liz wrapped her arms across her chest. “Why would he come here? He hated both of us.”
“His car wasn’t running.” Anna shook her head and turned to Liz. “There’s no way he could have turned it off after being stabbed like that.”
“So the murderer turned it off? Got in the car, killed Price, and turned the engine off?”
Anna saw the CSI van park in the street twenty feet from her driveway. “If Dean was killed on my driveway, where did the murderer go? Did you see two sets of tire tracks? I didn’t.”
“I didn’t look. CSI will check it out.”
“Whoever killed Dean didn’t walk to my house and back to wherever in ten-below-zero weather.”
“Here comes Schaeffer.”
Anna opened the door as Detective Schaeffer mounted the porch steps. “Sorry to call you out on such a cold, dark morning,” she said. “Can I get you some coffee?”
“I wouldn’t say no.”
Anna poured herself and Schaeffer a cup as the detective fished a notepad from his coat pocket and took a seat at the kitchen table. “I don’t know anything more than I told 911,” she said, setting Schaeffer’s mug on the table and turning the handle his way. “I didn’t hear anything last night.”
“Neither did I,” Liz added, seating herself across from Schaeffer. “I stayed overnight and got up first. I noticed the car when I looked out the window to see how much snow had fallen.”
“And then?” Schaeffer asked.
“Then I called for Anna, told her she had a visitor, and we went out to see who it was. That’s it.”
“We didn’t touch him,” Anna said, dropping into a chair, “but I touched both door handles and the hood of the car in a couple places.”
Schaeffer jotted some notes, took a sip of coffee, and sat back, tapping his pen on the table. “Mrs. Halvorsen, you haven’t broken this news on your website, have you?”
“No, I’d never do that. I’m waiting until Rose Price has been notified.”
“I figured as much. I saw your web report on Hetrick’s finger and the name Johannes Sorg. Nicely done. I’m hoping it stirs up some info.”
Liz beamed. “Thank you, Detective.”
“Has Rose reported Dean missing?” Anna asked.
“Did Dean Price ever talk about visiting you?” Schaeffer said in response.
That was his style. Give away as little as possible. Completely understandable, of course, Anna thought. He was a detective, not a source for Liz’s website or her private investigations. “No,” she said, “I wasn’t even aware he knew where I lived.” She then told Schaeffer about their chance meeting in the Prices’ art gallery the day before, as well as Melinda’s confrontation with Dean and their
discovery of Henry Maxwell’s Dala horses.
“It’s not theft if Maxwell gave everything he owned to the January Club,” Schaeffer said. “Despite his daughter’s feelings.”
So he knew about the will and the art galleries. Of course he did. Schaeffer was no country—or mountain—bumpkin.
“If the club thinks the Prices took club property for their own use, it’s up to them to press charges,” Schaeffer went on. “They haven’t done that, and except for the house and the land it sits on, Melinda Maxwell has no legal right to her father’s property. Legal right being different from moral right.”
As Schaeffer spoke, Anna thought about Melinda alone in her house, about the movers that would arrive there any minute now, ready to haul away every single childhood memory of hers, save for the ones she had hidden somewhere. The legal issue aside, she was glad Melinda had stolen back a few of her father’s things. Sometimes fairness and the law were far from the same thing.
“Someone’s killing the members of the January Club,” Liz said. “Stating the obvious.”
“I’m thinking you two don’t plan to visit Curt MacKenzie’s house again,” Schaeffer said. He wasn’t asking, he was telling them. Stay away from the January Club.
“I have all I need from that house,” Anna said.
“Anything on Johannes Sorg?” Schaeffer said, sitting forward.
“I can’t find a real person with that name who lived in Norway from about 1703 to 1749, the dates Curt MacKenzie gave me, and eighteenth-century Norwegian records are surprisingly complete. That doesn’t mean he didn’t exist, but if he did, he wasn’t well known in the occult world.”
“He was an occultist?”
“A necromancer probably.”
Schaeffer groaned. “What’s happening to my town?”
“It’s happening everywhere,” Liz said. “And it’s growing. Haven’t you noticed?”
Schaeffer sniffed loudly, pocketed his notebook and pen, and stood. The rise of the occult wasn’t a subject he wanted to contemplate, at least not on a dark January morning. “If either of you think of anything else, let me know.” Taking long, slow gulps, he downed most of his coffee before placing his mug in the sink.
“Club members call Sorg the January Man,” Anna said, following him to the door. “In English his name means John Sorrow. I don’t think he existed in real life, but I think they’ve formed a cult around this mythical figure.”
“Good to know,” Schaeffer said. “Keep me informed, but stay away from the MacKenzie house.”
Keep me informed. Anna repressed a smile. Schaeffer valued her research. It was useful to him in his search for the bad guy, and that was infinitely more rewarding than the dry facts of a stranger’s family tree—though breaking through genealogical brick walls would always be fun.
As soon as Schaeffer opened the door, the medical examiner strode to the front steps. He had news, but when he spied Anna, he clamped his mouth shut. She closed the door and watched again from the window. A minute later Schaeffer rang the doorbell.
“This doesn’t go further than this house,” Schaeffer said when Anna opened the door.
“Absolutely.”
“Price probably wasn’t killed on your driveway. The weapon was the same or similar to the one that killed Hetrick and Goff, but this time the killer missed the sweet spot below the skull. Price could have driven for several minutes before he died. I thought you’d feel better knowing that.”
“Wait,” Anna said as Schaeffer started to leave. “How does that explain why he drove here?”
“It doesn’t. He probably lost consciousness before he could get out of the car. But there’s no evidence of another vehicle or of footsteps leading to another vehicle.”
“But you think it was the same killer?”
“Either that or someone doing a copycat. We’ll know more after the autopsy. But Dean was probably attacked in his car a couple miles from here.” He poked his head inside the door. “Liz, give us an hour to contact his wife.”
“Will do,” Liz said.
Anna shut and locked the door.
“Four murders in eight days,” Liz said.
Anna headed back to the kitchen, tossed out the used filter in the coffee maker, and started brewing a new batch. Someone was on the rampage in Elk Park. Or was there more than one murderer? If you wanted to disguise the motive for a single murder, there was no better way than to hide that murder among similar but unrelated murders. Do a copycat. “Is it possible that three of the murders were committed by one person and one of them by another?” she said, joining Liz at the table.
“The Maxwell murder was different,” Liz said. “The only one where the weapon was a knife.”
“But Maxwell was a January Club member, and he had Hetrick’s severed finger in his house.”
“And he was killed in the same place Hetrick was—another connection.”
“Then again, Maxwell’s attacker came at him face on, stabbing him in the chest and abdomen.”
“You’re right. The others were taken by surprise.”
“Oh cripes!” Anna sprang to her feet. “I’ve got to call Gene. He’s going to hear about the police being called to this address.” She dashed into the kitchen and dialed his house, catching him between taking Riley on his morning walk and leaving for Buckhorn’s. Thank goodness he was a man of habit who usually started his day in silence—no TV, no radio—because he hadn’t yet heard the news.
Nevertheless, he insisted on stopping by on his way to work, and Anna didn’t argue with him. She needed to hear his calm, no-nonsense voice. Working with the police was rewarding, but it had inevitable downsides, like finding a dead man on your driveway. Why had Dean Price, in the last minutes of his life, chosen to drive to her house? Maybe he hadn’t known he was dying—or dying so quickly. But he must have felt something in his neck, seen the blood. Most people would drive to the hospital, not a near-stranger’s house.
Anna took the carafe to the table and poured Liz a fresh mug of coffee before dumping the cold coffee from her own mug down the kitchen sink. It was a waste, but coffee never tasted right reheated in the microwave, and this morning of all mornings, she had to have a fresh, hot mug. “Dean must have looked up my address before he was attacked, but why did he want to see me?”
“Have you got anything that could end up in one of his galleries?” Liz said wryly as she looked into the great room.
“What’s Rose going to do now?” Anna said, shivering slightly and wrapping her cold hands around her mug.
“How do we know Rose didn’t kill him?”
Her lips inches from her mug, Anna froze. “He wouldn’t have suspected a thing.”
“She could have said, ‘Oh look, your collar’s wrinkled, let me fix it,’ stabbed him in the back of the neck, then gotten out of the car.”
“Gotten out where?”
“At the galleries. He might have lived long enough to drive here. The knifing of Maxwell sounds like something a man would do, but this ice pick in the back of the neck—anyone could do that.”
“Anyone angry enough at Maxwell could have knifed him. Including Melinda.” Anna took a long, savoring sip of coffee, willing away the images that now crowded her mind.
“Let’s admit it, any one of them could be a murderer. I still think Maxwell could have killed Hetrick.”
“He wouldn’t have kept his finger if he was the killer.”
“Then why did he have the finger?”
“Juju. An amulet. It fits with the other things Maxwell had in his room—soil from so-called fairy sites, bones, scented oils. The question is, who gave him the finger and what was he going to do with it? Were the lunatics trying to raise Hetrick?”
“Remember your proper terminology, Anna. Curt said they wake, not raise.”
High-pitched beeps began to sound from the driveway. “They must be towing Dean’s car,” Anna said. That meant the medical examiner had removed his body. Thank goodness. She didn’t want Gene
to see a crime scene in full swing when he arrived. It was bad enough her neighbors had. Though it was still somewhat dark, light was breaking on the horizon, turning it pink and purple, and no doubt drapes were twitching.
Liz opened her laptop and began to type.
“Are you writing an article about Dean?” Anna said.
“I won’t hit send until the hour’s up.”
“Are you still game to talk to Elise Van Rossem?”
Liz’s hands hovered over her keyboard. “Tell me again why we’re doing that.”
“It’s something Gene said to me. This murder spree began with her husband’s death. We need to start at square one, and square one is Jordan Hetrick.”
“Do you think Elise is lying about him belonging to the January Club?”
“No, but he might not have told her he joined. He lied about the hunting trip to Wyoming, so he wasn’t honest with his own wife. Anyway, she might know more than she thinks she does.”
Liz nodded and resumed her typing. “I’ll finish this, you call her to let her know we’re coming, and we’ll take her coffee from the Buffalo.”
“Phone call,” Anna said, remembering Melinda. The movers had to be there already, so she wouldn’t be waking her. “I wanted to check on Melinda.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. Angry, but fine.”
Anna headed for the kitchen phone. “Someone’s breaking into her house at night, and I don’t think it’s all about stealing.”
“What then?” Liz stopped typing. “Do you think she’s next?”
Anna had to admit to herself that she hadn’t considered that. She had wondered if Melinda was the killer, or one of two killers, and she had spent no time at all wondering if she could be the killer’s next victim. Maybe that was because someone, or more than one person, had already entered the Maxwell house while Melinda was sleeping and hadn’t harmed her. Though they had try to scare the living daylights out of her. She dialed Melinda’s home phone. “Someone’s trying to scare her, Liz. Even though she’s heading back to Iowa soon. Why is that?”
After several rings Anna heard a recording. The Maxwell landline had been disconnected. She grabbed her cell phone from the kitchen counter and dialed Melinda’s cell.
The Club (Anna Denning Mystery Book 4) Page 13
