Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
I got terribly lost on the way home. In the dead of winter when everything is white, it’s not hard to lose your bearings.
It was lightly snowing, and I took a right when I should have taken a left—or vice versa, I still don’t really know.
Normally, it’s not that hard getting around.
Lake Michigan is to the west. If it was on your left, you were driving north.
That meant getting home should have been a snap, since I lived across the street from Lake Michigan.
Of course, there are half a dozen other lakes to contend with.
And that might be part of the problem. I think I took a different way out of the condo community that put me on a street behind the complex driving east. Well, mostly east, it was one of those roads that changed direction on a regular basis.
When I realized I was lost, I decided to backtrack and try again.
That didn’t work because I didn’t remember where I’d turned onto the road I was on.
Yes, I looked for signs. The street names made no sense.
Then I started looking for someone to ask directions, but there really wasn’t anyone on the street.
It was snowing enough to discourage people from taking a walk but not enough yet for anyone to be out shoveling their driveway.
I slowed down a bit and started looking down side streets to see if I could find anyone… or figure out where I was.
After a few miles of nothing, I looked down one road and saw a sheriff’s SUV and the funky yellow Subaru.
I made a quick turn and slid around a bit.
I narrowly avoided going off the road entirely.
The Metro did not have winter tires, and I wasn’t going to buy them since I’d be leaving soon.
It was a very practical decision, one with a harrowing moment here or there.
When I arrived at the property, I pulled in behind the black SUV, managing not to drive into the back of it.
Barely. I took a good look at the property.
It was a large lot with a good number of buildings on it.
In the center was a two-story, white clapboard house with a wraparound porch.
It needed a paint job and probably a new roof.
On one side, near the road, was a small building that had three doors and three windows.
It was some kind of hastily constructed roadside motel from the sixties.
Behind the house was a sort of barn, which looked like it might now be inhabited, and beyond that two single-wide mobile homes—one that had had the siding taken off and was waiting to have new siding applied.
Situated behind the mini-motel and next to the main house was an RV trailer, eighteen or twenty feet long.
A picket fence peeked out of the snow. Redundantly, crime scene tape was wrapped around the fence.
The door to the RV was open, and the one of the deputies I’d seen earlier peeked inside.
I got out of the car and tried to figure out how to get to the trailer.
There was a plowed driveway on the other side of the house. Next to the mini-motel and in front of the trailer, a parking place had been plowed. It was empty.
After a moment I saw a narrow path shoveled from the driveway to the gate of the picket fence.
Walking up to it, I noticed that the snow was dimpled with footprints, some heavily covered with snow, some barely covered.
Some went across the yard to the trailers in back, others to the house.
The freshest footprints logically belonged to the deputies, but why had they left the path?
When I got to the gate, the deputy walked over to me. TWISS was written on a nametag that adorned his massive chest. I looked up at him, and asked, “Is Detective Lehmann inside?”
“You don’t have any business here.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“That’s a fuck off.”
I stood my ground. Fortunately, Lehmann came out of the trailer, so the deputy didn’t have an opportunity to crush me like a bug.
Lehmann looked tired. Of course, he hadn’t had a three-hour nap in between crime scenes.
“How long have you been here?” I impulsively asked. “It’s been hours.”
“I was stuck waiting for the foren—you know that’s not your business.”
“I was curious, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, following us around isn’t a good idea.”
“Actually, I’m lost.”
“You’re lost? M-22 is a block that way.” He pointed in what was apparently an easterly direction.
Okay, that was embarrassing. I’d come awfully close to not being lost all on my own. “Thank you. So, are you finding evidence?”
“Also, not your business.”
“You can live in one of these things in the winter?” I asked, meaning the trailer.
“It’s got a heater. Now go away.”
And I almost did. But as I turned, I realized something important. To Lehmann’s back, I said, “She wasn’t killed here, you know.”
“This morning you said she was.”
“I didn’t know her car wasn’t here.”
He turned around and stared at me. “That doesn’t mean what you think it means. In the winter, people up here get drunk and drive off the road. Rather than call us and get a DUI, they walk home and go back in the morning to get their vehicles.”
“Oh.” That was plausible. I’d heard Bobbie spent most nights at Main Street Café. She could easily have driven into a snowbank, walked home, and gotten ready for bed when… bam! Someone’s at the door ready to kill her.
“The car can’t be far,” I said. “She was seventy-something, wasn’t she? She couldn’t have walked far.”
“My deputy’s out looking for it.”
“Oh. Good idea.”
“Is that all, Mr. Milch?”
It was, so I turned and walked down to the Metro.
As I walked around to the driver’s side, I noticed a middle-aged guy looking out a window in the main house.
Dark circles under his eyes, pasty skin.
He looked like a creature out of a Stephen King novel, which should have been enough reason to get into my car and drive away.
Instead, I walked down to the other driveway and made my way up to the house.
I climbed the front steps, which hadn’t been shoveled in days, and were icy and thick with snow. I knocked on the front door.
I wondered if he was going to ignore me, but a moment or two later the front door opened a crack.
He stared at me. Through those four inches, I could see that he was in his mid-fifties, his hair was thinning and unruly, his eyes a bit yellow.
I didn’t want to get to close, he looked like he smelled and I didn’t want to confirm that.
Brightly, I said, “Hi. I’m Henry Milch.”
“Go away.”
Not good. I decided to play my one and only card. “I’m Emma Cole’s grandson.”
“Are you Emily’s kid?”
“Well, yeah. When it suits her.”
He softened, but didn’t open the door any wider. “How is she? We were in the same class in high school.”
Okay, not mid-fifties. Forty-three. A very rough forty-three.
“My mom is… great. She just got married.”
“Oh,” he said, clearly disappointed. I didn’t want to break it to him that despite her generally terrible taste in men he wouldn’t stand a chance. Then, he rallied and added, “Good for her. Tell her Buford says hello.”
“I will. Next time I talk to her. Listen, did the detective ask you if Bobbie had any visitors last night?”
“Nope.”
He didn’t? That seemed weird. It was such a basic question. Then Buford added, “Didn’t talk to me.”
“Oh, so he hasn’t talked to you yet.”
“Didn’t answer the door. He shoved the search warrant in a crack. Not much point in talking after that.”
“Well, thank you for talking to me.”
“Curiosity got the better of me. Didn’t know what you was at first.”
“I’m a Cole,” I said, because it was my only leverage, and because I didn’t appreciate being called a ‘what’. Seriously, people up here had no idea what to make of a sense of style.
“Yep, always was an odd bunch,” he said.
Seriously? This was where he lived, this is what he looked like, and he thought my family was an odd bunch? I decided it was best not to pursue this line of questioning.
“Did you notice if Bobbie had any visitors last night?”
“She’s dead? For sure? People keep calling to tell me. I don’t want to believe it.”
“I saw her body.”
He seemed to absorb that like a puff of smoke.
Then he said, “My cousin. Second cousin, actually. Once removed. Barely even a relative. Always was trouble. Even as a girl. Destroyed her family, that’s what they say.
A lot of fighting over what to do about Bobbie.
Her mother died round nineteen seventy. After that there was no stopping Bobbie.
She got married a few times. Don’t even know how many.
Three, maybe four. Got arrested a few times but nothing stuck.
My dad always thought jail might have straightened her out. ”
All of that was interesting, but it wasn’t what I needed to know. “Did she have any visitors last night?”
“Yep, I think she did.”
“Do you know who they were?”
“I didn’t know the woman. I don’t get out much”
“It was a woman?”
“Well, I think it was. Hard to tell. Had on one of those pillow coats down to her ankles. Could have been a man, I suppose.”
“Do you know what time that was?”
“I don’t sleep. I try. Every night. But I’m up and down. Up and down.”
“What time?”
“Well, after Main Street Café closed, obviously.”
“So two, three o’clock in the morning?”
“No. Twelve-thirty.”
I could never get used to how early things closed.
“Oh, okay. Is that all you can tell me about the woman you saw? What color was the coat?”
“Coat was purple. Hair was blond.”
Uh-oh. Melanie Frasier’s hair was blond. And she had a crap alibi. “Did you see what kind of car this person came in?”
“Red pickup.”
I remembered a red pickup in the parking lot at Three Friends that morning.
“Was she the only person you saw?”
“Only one I remember.”
“Was Bobbie’s car here?”
“Don’t think so.”
“What kind of car does she drive?”
“Some kind of German thing. Old. One of her husbands bought it for her. Long time ago.”
“Color?”
“Piss yellow.”
Lovely. I chewed my lip for a moment. I knew there was more I should ask, but I couldn’t think—
“So did you see if the woman went into the trailer, or did she just drop Bobbie off?”
“Well, she got out of the car, didn’t she?”
“I guess she did. Well, thank you for talking—”
“Heard a gunshot, too.”
“When? When did you hear a gunshot?”
“Sometime after the woman in the purple coat went into the trailer. It woke me up.”
Okay, this was getting messy. At first, he wasn’t sure if the woman went into the trailer or not. Now he was saying she did and there was a gunshot. And it woke him up, even though he didn’t sleep.
Roberta looked like she’d been strangled. Could she have been shot? I wasn’t sure.
“Might have been two gunshots,” Buford said, unhelpfully.