A Lonely Way to Die: A Utah O'Brien Mystery Novel (Minnesota Mysteries Series Book 2) (16 page)

“Pastor Owen explained the law to me,” she said. “He came over to see Mother right after you and Josie talked to him, and he explained it. I thought the children should come here to live, because I’m next of kin. But I know that was silly of me. Of course the father will take them home. I’m so embarrassed—I got angry at him for telling me the truth, and I left without even saying goodbye to him. But he was right, wasn’t he? Even if Grace isn’t really the husband’s baby?”

I wasn’t sure I was the right person to be giving legal advice. “I think you’d need to talk to a family lawyer,” I said. “But when you say that Grace isn’t Gavril’s baby, do you mean that Gwyneth had a boyfriend? Someone we don’t know about?”

She shook her head. “I asked her about that on the phone. She said the reporters made it up. I didn’t believe her, but I should have. Is her husband a nicer person than they say he is in the gossip columns?”

“We haven’t met him yet,” I said. “By the way, do you know of anyone, other than you, Mark and the pastor, who visited your mother today?”

“Just Rita. Mother called just before you came, and she said Rita was there. Rita’s dad was there, too. Mother said they were worried about her health, but I can’t imagine why.”

She held the door open for us. Ernest Rupertsson pulled up to the curb as we stepped onto the porch. The three of us watched as he got out of his truck and the spaniel ran up to him, all wiggles and toothy smile. He opened the passenger door, and she jumped in, as if she’d been waiting for him. He turned and waved to us. We waved back, and he drove off.

When we were still on the porch, I stopped Sam with a hand on his arm and turned. “Emma, why don’t you come over to the museum tonight? The sheriff wants the children to stay with us until this is all straightened out, but you should come and meet your niece and nephew. You know you’re welcome. I already invited Angie to supper, so you should come, too.”

Sam’s phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket. He listened for a minute, signed off, and said, “Gavril Constantin will be here in a few minutes.”

We said our goodbyes. Emma promised to come to the museum later to meet Gavril and the children. We got in the truck, and headed home.

EIGHTEEN

The sun was almost down as we drove away, but there was still a light orange stripe of light on the horizon. I said, “You don’t think she would kill her own sister for the baby, do you? This morning she really did think she or Mildred would get the baby.”

He said. “I don’t want to believe it. She’s a good person, and the town needs her. I don’t want her to be the bad guy. But that tea—yuck. If somebody wanted to, they could stick something in that tea. It tastes so bad, how would you know?”

“There weren’t any painkillers in the medicine cabinet, but I suppose she could have them stashed somewhere else. I do think she wants a baby, but not like that.”

“Our list of suspects is pretty short, though. If somebody tried to poison Mildred, too, it had to be somebody who went to her house. That’s Emma, Mark and the pastor, and Emma is the only one with any kind of motive.”

“There’s John Meecham, too. The pastor thought he might be the guy that bothered Sonje before she left town. But he wouldn’t visit Mildred. Carol Kramer’s story is full of holes. Maybe Carol visited Mildred, but the drugs made her forget. Still, I can’t see how Carol would have a motive.”

I picked at the denim on my knee and pondered our problem. “We haven’t really considered John Owen as a suspect, but I can’t imagine what motive he would have, either. And Mildred could have given herself a small dose, just to make herself look like a victim instead of a suspect. People do that on crime shows all the time. But she doesn’t have a motive, either …”

I was losing steam. I watched the houses go by as we passed.

Sam mercifully changed the subject. He said, “Say, I forgot to tell you. When we were at the diner, Oscar was there with Amy and they started talking about everybody canceling their Internet because it’s so expensive. Gabe said we should turn the diner into an Internet cafe, like the ones they have in the city. Oscar got real excited about that idea and he said he’d come talk to you about it. He thinks we could close the library and use that money for the WiFi connection at the diner, as a public service.”

“The library committee will never go for that. And if the town pays for the Internet, shouldn’t we have the connection at the library, instead of the diner?”

“Oscar called Sally Morgan while we were there. She’s on the library committee, and she likes the idea. She says we could move the books to that back hallway in the diner. He called Carol Kramer, too. She’s on the committee, but her husband said she wasn’t home.”

“Wow. Oscar is really turning into a good politician. I hope he runs for mayor next time.”

Sam smiled. “Now you know why I quit after one term, eh?”

We both laughed. “At least you got the hazel bushes planted when you were in office. I haven’t accomplished anything. What did Angie think about turning the diner into an Internet cafe?”

“She likes it. As long as somebody else is paying for the connection. She thought about having movie nights at the diner, but it would be too uncomfortable, the way the booths are set up. It hurts your neck to look at the TV she’s got in there, and the set is too little, anyway. Maybe we could have people over to watch movies in our new living room at the museum. The WiFi signal should be strong enough to get across the street. We could borrow the password.”

I was grinning. Sam noticed. “What?”

“That’s the first time you’ve ever used the word ‘our’ when talking about the museum. You never admit you actually live there.”

He turned onto Main Street, and headed south. “It feels more like home today. I’m not sure why.”

Gabe was why, and he knew it. He said, “I’m really going to miss him.”

He turned into the museum parking lot and parked next to a silver Ford Explorer we’d never seen before. While he was turning off the engine, I pulled the wrinkled flier out of my pocket and handed it to him. He read it. Then he started laughing.

“It’s not that funny,” I said.

He kept laughing. “Yes it is.”

I started to giggle, too. I couldn’t help it. I sobered up quickly. “Angie told me I was a lot like Pastor Owen, because I’m hanging onto an old, dead building. Maybe she’s right.”

“And her motive for that remark?” Sam asked, reasonably.

I smiled. “Your TV is bigger than hers. If we lived at your house, we might invite her over to watch a movie more often.”

He smiled back at me. “Well, then.”

My cell phone rang just as we were about to climb out of the truck. We both sat back while I answered the call. It was Oscar.

“We saw you drive in,” he said. “Can you come over to the diner for a minute?”

“You found something?” I said.

“Maybe. Or maybe not.”

Sam didn’t need to talk to Oscar and Amy, so I went across the street alone.

It was a little after five o’clock. The diner usually closed at four. Oscar and Amy were sitting in the same booth and Angie was behind the counter. She was wearing a nice sweater and jeans instead of her usual white uniform, and her eyes seemed brighter than usual. She was at the counter, reading another old magazine.

I sat down next to Oscar. “What did you find?” I said.

Amy leaned forward. “Lots of gossip. The husband is seeing a lot of different women, but it also looks like they’re getting a divorce. We can’t find any references to him playing around earlier than twelve months ago.”

I said, “Emma told us there were rumors that Gavril wasn’t the father of the baby. Did you see anything about a boyfriend?”

“A couple of recent remarks, no names. It sounded like they were just guessing, or even making it up.”

“But there’s something else,” Oscar said. He brought up a web page on his laptop screen, and turned it so I could see.

“Popular Fantasy Author Sued for Slander,” the headline said. I pulled the laptop closer and skimmed the article. A man claimed that a scene in one of Sonje’s books was copied from an event in his own life, and she made the incident look like a criminal act instead of a prank. The scene was quoted in the article, and it was, indeed criminal—but the characters in the scene were a witch and a Druid in the seventh century.

Oscar said, “They lost the suit and had to pay court costs. It was dumb for them to bring it up. Nobody would have connected the guy to that scene if he just kept quiet about it. They didn’t say if he was the witch or the wizard, but I guess that doesn’t matter, because they were both pretty sleazy.”

“Do you have a photo of the guy who sued?”

He looked through the history screen on the computer and brought up an article that showed the man’s face.

“Did Angie see it?” I asked.

He shook his head. I borrowed the laptop and took it over to the counter. She looked up from her magazine and shook her head. “Not the guy who came in yesterday, if that’s what you’re asking.”

I went back to the booth and sat down. “Did you find anything else?”

Amy pulled the laptop to her side of the table and pulled up another website. She turned the screen towards me. The article was about another lawsuit, this one for copyright infringement.

“Did she win this one, too?”

Amy nodded. “The court said you can’t copyright something that isn’t written down or recorded. Sonje McCrae wrote a scene that was supposedly about a deceased relative of the person who brought the lawsuit. She told the story to Sonje McCrae so she thought she should get part of the royalties from the book. Sonje didn’t deny the friend told her the story, but she still won the lawsuit.”

She brought up a photo of the person who sued. It was a woman.

I thought about it for a minute while I played with the chrome wire basket that held the syrup and sugar dispensers. Sonje ‘borrowed’ the story about Carol Kramer’s little brother drowning in the backyard pool. Was it possible that she finally felt guilty about it? Was that the reason for that large check? It didn’t seem likely.

I turned back to Amy. “Did you find anything that would suggest that Gavril Constantin is in any of her books? In a way that wouldn’t be very flattering, I mean?”

Amy shook her head, and then looked at Oscar. He shrugged.

“Thanks, you guys. I really appreciate it.” I scooted out of the booth and stood. “How long until the baby gets here?”

“Three weeks,” Amy said. “We’re going to stay with my Aunt Mary in Randall the last week to be closer to the clinic. Rita says she’s thinking about taking some midwife lessons. I hope she gets her license before the next one comes.”

I glanced at Oscar. His face was suddenly much whiter than it was a moment before. Amy and I smiled at each other, and I headed home.

NINETEEN

The sun was down and there was a full moon was just starting to rise. The clouds were gone and the moonlight reflected off tiny ice particles on the drifts of snow, sparkling like fairy dust. I could see my way through the museum without turning on the big overhead lights, but just barely.

When I came into the kitchen, everyone was standing around Gabe’s step-father. They all turned when they heard the door close, and Gavril Constantin came forward to introduce himself. We shook hands. I expressed condolences, and asked him about his trip.

“It was harrowing, in parts,” he said. “The sheriff asked me to come to the back of the station to avoid the reporters, but they’ll probably show up sometime tomorrow. I hope they don’t bother you too much.”

Gavril Constantin didn’t look like my idea of a rock star. His dark hair was full, but not long, and the soft waves were expertly cut to frame his face. He had a fashionable five-day beard, neatly trimmed, straight dark eyebrows, and a narrow nose. He fit my stereotype of a classical musician, someone who would look at ease on the stage at Carnegie Hall. There was an interesting rasp to his voice and a faint Eastern European accent, which explained his unusual name.

He was wearing a long, expensive coat, the color of deerskin, probably cashmere. It reminded me of the coats Clint Eastwood wore in some of his spaghetti westerns.

In a break in the talk, he took off his coat and folded it carefully over the back of one of the wooden chairs at the table. I didn’t offer to hang it on a peg by the back door because it was too long—it would drag on the floor and end up in the dogs’ water bowl.

Underneath the coat, he was wearing a short-sleeved black t-shirt that was tight across his chest. His left arm was completely filled with an expertly crafted sleeve tattoo, in an intricate Celtic design. I couldn’t help but wonder if it extended across his chest. The man had good taste in body art.

Josie moved to the couch and sat, holding Grace on her lap and giving her a bottle. My mother’s eyes were slightly puffy, but she was calm and she didn’t glare at me like she’d been doing all day. She glanced at Gavril, then looked at me and shook her head, only an inch or two. I looked at him, too, trying to see what she was telling me. I couldn’t, so I let it go.

Sam sat on the couch next to Josie and watched as she fed the baby. She smiled at Sam, then glanced over at me with slightly raised eyebrows. I shook my head, to let her know I didn’t tell him yet. She looked back down at the baby.