Heart of Ice

by Gregg Olsen

  “I see. Seems like you don’t like anyone much, Mitch.”

  “What’s the big deal? So what if I don’t get along with them? I’m not the first husband to have a lousy relationship with his in-laws.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, not doubting that the Laytons didn’t care much for Mitch, but still unsure if he was being honest. Mitch Crawford was that kind of guy, overselling his story like he was trying to upgrade her into a car she couldn’t afford. “I need to know more about Mandy. Did she ever leave like this before?”

  “No. She was very reliable.”

  “Why did she leave, Mitch?”

  “I have no idea. This interview is over. I’ll look for her myself. Thanks for nothing.”

  From the hallway, Emily watched Mitch Crawford’s retreating figure. It was more than a hunch. She knew it in her bones. Mitch was holding back. Crime statistics indicated that Mandy was dead and that her husband had killed her. But there was no evidence. No blood.

  “There’s a reason for that,” she told Jason.

  “Yeah, he didn’t kill her.”

  “But you saw the plastic bleach bottle in the trash.”

  “Yeah, but if you went to my house you’d find two bottles in our trash. Bleach kills germs. I’ve got two germy nephews.”

  Emily smiled. “I don’t know. Something’s with this guy.”

  “Yeah, he’s full of himself, for one. I’ll bet his home gym is the biggest room in the house.”

  “Wouldn’t be hard to guess his priorities,” she said.

  “Anyway, Sheriff, just because the dude is a self-absorbed ass, that doesn’t make him a killer.”

  Emily wasn’t so sure. “That remains to be seen.”

  Across town, in the floodlit darkness of a snow-clad backyard of weed-free grass and four thousand daffodils yet to bloom, a man’s voice called out.

  “Toby! Here, boy! Toby! Come!”

  Mitch Crawford’s voice was nearly raw from calling. He’d turned on the pool lights and the patio lights, even the up-lights that forced a cheery, warm glow up the trunks of artfully grouped aspen and birch.

  He banged a metal food dish against the flagstone patio that ran from a pair of ten-foot-tall French doors to the edge of a lapis-tiled pool. It being winter, the pool was entombed in a covering of blue plastic bubble wrap. A crust of ice formed in patches where it had splashed on the patio.

  “Toby!” A wisp of white vapor rose from the edges where the warm water seeped against the pool’s lapis tile work. “Where are you?”

  Something seemed odd, and Mitch moved closer to the pool. A piece of the bubble-insulated sheeting had curled along its edge. The covering was custom-made for a perfect fit and he wondered if he should ask for his money back. He bent down and started to adjust it, when a shadowy figure caught his eye.

  A cat wandered across the white-dusted lawn. Balls of snow clung to its furry belly.

  “I guess you haven’t seen Toby, have you?”

  The cat barely regarded the man and continued on its path over the grass, onto the flagstone, and then off under the dark green of a precision-trimmed yew hedge.

  “Toby!” he called once more. “Where are you, boy? Come here. Come home!”

  Mitch pulled the covering taut and pulled himself to his feet.

  As Mitch turned to go inside his oversize empty house, an indistinguishable dark shadow at the bottom of the pool near the cascading Jacuzzi caught his eye. What the? At first he thought it was a pile of leaves that had somehow become sucked under the plastic overlay. He ran to the electrical panel next to the cabana and turned on the overheads. Flash! The yard lit up like a high school football game. He bent down and lifted the plastic.

  “Oh God! No!” he cried out. “Please!”

  Chapter Seven

  Emily looked out the window of her office and a smile came to her face. It had snowed for two hours and Cherrystone that December looked as if it had been dipped in white glitter. Main Street had been decorated by city crews the day after Thanksgiving, but the decorations—faux fir boughs with big plastic ribbons that had been a fixture on the streets since the 1960s—had long passed from kitschy to charming. They looked even better with a touch of frosting.

  The rest of the world—the more sophisticated cities in which she’d lived or visited—could keep their fancy holiday accoutrements. Emily still saw what she’d seen as a child—the sparkle of a fake fir bough and the whimsy of an oversize red plastic bow.

  And yet, this year brought with it a touch of the melancholy, too. Jenna was a grown woman with a real job. Certainly, she’d be coming home for Christmas. But that wouldn’t always be the case. At some time, in a flash like all of life had been, she’d be waiting for Jenna, a husband, children—maybe even a dog—to come visit.

  At forty-four, Emily knew she was far too young to give up on herself and live through her daughter. But she’d screwed things up with Chris Collier and probably had missed her chance at a happily ever after. It had been her fault, and she knew her inability to move their relationship forward had been a crushing blow to Chris. Over Thanksgiving, she suspected that he was going to ask her to marry him, and she was right. She loved him, no doubt, but she said she wasn’t sure about getting married again.

  “We need to move this forward,” he said, without any anger, but with the calmness of a man who knew what he wanted. “Or end it and get on with our lives.”

  Why didn’t I just say yes? she asked herself. Why can’t I be ready?

  Cars slowly passed by through the sparkle of the snowfall when the phone rang, snapping Emily away from her thoughts. It was Jenna, calling from Memphis, her first stop on a three-college tour to promote the Beta Zeta Sorority.

  “Hi, honey,” she said.

  “Hi, Mom,” Jenna said, her voice buoyant. “Just thought I’d check in with you.”

  Emily loved that she and Jenna talked nearly every day; the only exception was on the occasion when the day had gotten away from them and it was late at night. In that case, they’d text I love you and Good night.

  “How’s it going with the Crawford case?” Jenna asked, knowing that her mother lived and breathed an investigation on a 24–7 basis.

  “We’ll sort it out, but until we find her, we’re a little stuck right now.”

  “You know that jerk killed her.”

  Emily could hear her own voice coming from Memphis and it brought a wry smile. Jenna didn’t cut a suspected killer any slack. She’d make a good prosecutor someday.

  “What we know and what we can prove, as you know, are completely different.”

  Jenna murmured something that Emily couldn’t quite make out.

  “Sorry, Mom, I’m between recruitment planning meetings and the chapter president here said I could get some privacy in the TV lounge, but these girls keep barging in with their complaints and criticisms about what they did last year and how they are sure that I don’t know what I’m talking about because I’m from up north and I have a regional bias. They won’t give me a minute.”

  “What happened to the good manners of the South?” Emily asked.

  “Gone like everywhere else. This is the most self-centered bunch yet. Seriously, Mom. All they care about is drinking and looking like they’re Paris Hilton.”

  “Sounds like your sisters at Cascade University.”

  “These girls are over-the-top in everything they do. We were never so bad as these girls. I’m not kidding you.”

  “That’s not what I remember,” Emily, said, a slight edge to her tone, meant to remind Jenna of life’s lessons learned the previous year as the chapter president of her BZ sorority. She remembered the time Jenna had to kick a girl out of the house for stealing money from the cook’s rainy-day fund. Or the time one sister came home so drunk that she was found on the couch the next morning with her thong on backward. And nothing else. There were other incidents that made Emily wonder if sending her daughter to CU had been the right thing to do—scholarship or no
t. She held David responsible. He’d promised to send Jenna to a top-tier school out of state, but Dani, his new wife, balked. They were going through a major house remodel and she was sure there wouldn’t be enough cash for Jenna’s education.

  “She can get a job,” Dani had told David. “I had to.”

  Emily played that back in her mind, and almost lost the feeling of joy she had at hearing her daughter’s voice.

  “P.S., Mom, these girls are driving me crazy. They really are the worst. Ever!”

  “How so?”

  “Mostly the same old, same old. Disorganized. Selfish. Boyfriend troubles. One told me she thinks two of her old boyfriends have joined forces to stalk her. I mean really, Mom, how self-absorbed do you have to be to think that one stalker isn’t enough?”

  Her daughter’s comment amused Emily. “I didn’t know stalking could be a group activity.”

  Jenna laughed. “That’s what I thought. There’s also this girl who spends all day crying that her brother gets all the attention, and her dad, some meatpacking bigwig out of Oklahoma, doesn’t do anything but send her money.”

  “I wish someone would send me money,” Emily said, teasing Jenna.

  “Gotta go. I have a P.S. for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “P.S., I had an airport layover in Chicago and got you your Christmas present.”

  “A snow globe or a Graceland T-shirt? I know,” she said drawing out her words as she pretended to ponder it, “a Graceland snow globe. Will I love it?”

  “Did you raise me right?” Before Emily could answer, Jenna cut in. “Love you, Mom. Back to the bitchfest in the dining room.”

  “Talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Good luck with the case, Mom. You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

  Luck would be good, Emily thought, snapping her phone shut. A pregnant woman doesn’t just evaporate into thin air. Amanda Crawford had to be somewhere.

  By the end of the day, Mitch Crawford had found himself on all three Spokane TV affiliates with news feeds across the Northwest. Emily, Jason, Camille, Gloria, and all the others working the case let their jaws fall to the floor when he uttered a line that surely had to qualify for a place in the annals of crime reporting.

  “I’m a successful businessman, a very successful businessman,” he said, dead-eyed to the camera. “Guys like me don’t kill our wives. We trade ’em in and get a new one.”

  “He thinks she’s a used car,” Emily said, staring at the TV. “Unbelievable.”

  Chapter Eight

  The number on the minuscule screen of her cell phone had long been committed to memory.

  She answered it immediately. Before she spoke, she heard his voice.

  “Your Crawford case is making noise all the way over here in Seattle.”

  It was Chris, of course.

  “No kidding,” she said. “Gloria’s been fielding calls from the Seattle media like nobody’s business,” she said, almost feeling a little awkward. She was unsure if he’d called to talk shop—or to ask her to reconsider his proposal. She felt her face grow a little warm and looked around her office to make sure she was really alone just in case the conversation veered toward the personal.

  “I hope some of the media attention does us some good out here.”

  “Reporters are like maggots on a corpse,” he said. “They have a job to do.”

  Emily let out a laugh. Chris always had a kind of cut-to-the-chase perspective when it came to everything. She watched as a pair of reserve officers walked by her office window. She waved at them. The sight of the young men snapped her out of the place that she was revisiting in her mind.

  “Em?”

  “I’m here. Just thinking. Sorry. Chris…” She let her words trail off to a whisper. “I miss you.”

  “I know. Me, too. I’m coming to Cherrystone this weekend. I thought maybe this would be a good time to see where we stand.”

  “In the middle of a possible murder investigation?”

  “You were always best when you were on the hunt for a killer,” he said.

  She laughed. “I think you might have something there. I know that I’m always happiest when I’m going after the bad guy.”

  “Yup. And the guy you have in Cherrystone is as rotten as they come.”

  “Mitch Crawford is really something, isn’t he?” she said. “What did you think of his TV performance? Made me sick to my stomach.”

  “We only got a snip of it on the Seattle news, but yeah, made me sick, too. He seems preoccupied with how clever he is, how much dough he has in the bank, and absolutely everything in the world except for one thing.”

  Emily nodded as he spoke, before interjecting, “Mandy.”

  “He’s your guy, all right.”

  “I can take care of this on my own, you know.”

  “Of course you can. But you know how much fun we’ll have going after him,” he said. “And, Emily, don’t worry about my fee. Dinner with you will be satisfactory.”

  “Let me think about that,” she said, kidding him to within in an inch of his life. “OK. Sounds good. When can you get here?”

  “In my car now.”

  Emily heard a car honk and she spun around and looked in front of the sheriff’s office.

  Chris Collier, his lightly graying hair framing a handsome face that still retained the chiseled good looks of his youth, smiled and offered a quick wave through an open window.

  Gotcha! He was already here.

  While she was glad and surprised to see him, Emily felt a weird flutter of annoyance come over her. Had Chris come because he thinks I can’t work the case without him? Did he think I was too proud to ask for help on my own, when I determined I could use some?

  His smile disarmed her and she glanced at her schedule to make sure nothing was pressing. Good. Quit overthinking, Emily, she thought.

  On the way over to Cherrystone, a simple phrase reverberated during the drive. There was no other life without Emily. No other life he wanted. Chris Collier felt twinges of that from the day they’d reconnected after all those years of being apart—years of being married to the wrong people. Emily had David, the doctor. He had Jessica, the librarian. Neither spouse was the right match. And neither could be.

  From his own failed marriage, Chris knew both the joy and the heartache of trying to make two people into an unbreakable unit. The love he had for his ex-wife had been lost long before Emily came back into Chris’s life. At first, he figured he could chalk up his mistakes to the fact that the life of a cop held little room for anything that resembled a real life. He’d been called away on a murder investigation in the middle of his oldest son’s Little League game—the game in which the boy had pitched a near perfect game. For the rest of his son’s life, there would always be the idea that “your job always came first.” Jessica Collier would not have a problem concurring when her son said those things. She, too, had felt the chilly glow of a cop’s blue light.

  “I can’t compete with a dead girl. No woman can,” she told case-obsessed Chris the morning she packed her bags, took the kids, and returned to Idaho where she had family.

  Chris said he understood, but at the time he was so wrapped up in a murder investigation that he really didn’t process his own personal loss—or the truth behind his wife’s analysis of the state of their marriage.

  With Emily, there was the promise of a do-over. They were no longer kids, no longer bound to make the same mistakes. Their children were grown. Their lives were pitched toward a time when the focus was aimed more at themselves, their needs. They’d had their breakups. They had their passionate, endless nights. The time for being together was now. That moment. Chris Collier was certain.

  He practiced the words in his head.

  “Emily, we’ve had our ups and downs. We’ve been through things so dark and dangerous that we almost have no right to be here anymore. But we are. And I know now, more than ever, that life with you is the only life I want to have.”<
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  Chris smiled at the idea that he needed to rehearse. Why was it so hard to be vulnerable to the ones who love us most?

  But that evening, after dinner, talk about the case, Jenna, Chris’s condo, the subject of their future just didn’t wind its way into the conversation—rehearsals or not. It just didn’t seem to fit.

  “The temp is dropping,” Emily said, pulling another comforter from the bench at the foot of her bed and spreading it across the mint green and white quilt that her mother had made.

  Chris bent down to help her with the covers, and he placed his hand on the small of her back. She turned around and they kissed. She had missed the warmth of his touch, how he tasted. The way that he pulled her close. He undressed her in the pale light of the bedroom lamp, letting her blouse and dark wool skirt fall in a heap by her feet. He unhooked her bra. Emily returned the favor by unbuttoning his shirt. His body was lean, muscular, but not through some ridiculous workout regimen. Chris Collier played racquet-ball, ate right, and was blessed with genetics that kept him off the treadmill like so many men his age chasing after the body that they never really had, even in their twenties. The scar from the gunshot five years before had lightened somewhat; the hair on his chest encircled it with a light brown fringe.

  Emily touched her fingertip to the scar. It was smooth, harder than his skin.

  “I could have lost you forever,” she said.

  “I’m here now.”

  “I know,” she said, as they fell onto the bed. As they kissed, he embraced her with the right mix of tenderness and passion. Emily felt like she was falling into a warm pool, being carried away. She knew she’d always loved Chris. His touch, his taste, his body were everything she missed and everything she needed. She kicked the top quilt to the floor.

  “We won’t need that extra blanket,” she said.

  Chris kissed her again, deeply. “No, babe, we won’t.” He reached over her and turned off the light.

  Sweat pooled under Mitch Crawford’s arms, and his lips were chapped from a nervous habit that had him constantly moistening them with his tongue. He’d had bad days before, but nothing like the ones that were pulling him downward right then. It was one of the late nights at the dealership, with two salesmen on the floor and Darla Montague at her desk answering phones and keeping the glass coffeepots from burning to black bottoms.