P. Parrish - Heart of Ice

“What?” Louis asked.

“Tell Frye. .”

Louis waited.

“Tell Frye I forgive her.”

Louis stood by the bed, waiting, wondering if Rafsky was going to say anything else. When he heard Rafsky snoring, he turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

They followed a snowplow into Cedarville. What should have been a half-hour drive from St. Ignace had taken more than an hour because of the snowstorm that had dumped six fresh inches overnight. The other side of the two-lane highway was still covered in high drifts, so Louis had no choice but to stay in the plow’s wake.

Flowers was snoring in the passenger seat. He had dozed off soon after they left St. Ignace, giving in to his hangover. Louis had let him sleep because it had given him time to think.

About Joe. About Lily. And what Rafsky had said last night: Could it be any more fucking obvious, Kincaid?

What was obvious? That hearing Lily’s voice when he called her on Christmas Eve made his heart ache to see her again? That it had felt so right being with Joe those eight weeks in Echo Bay, even during Thanksgiving when her mother, Flo, was around? That he had never felt so comfortable living with another person before? That he loved her? That he felt like a coward because he still hadn’t told her?

All of that was obvious. But it was also obvious that, as he had told Rafsky, he wanted his badge back. What wasn’t obvious was how he was going to reconcile the two things in life he now needed most.

There was a single blinking traffic light ahead. They were coming into the scattering of stores that was Cedarville’s small core. Louis gave Flowers a sharp poke.

“Chief, we’re here. Where do I turn?”

Flowers came to life and rubbed his face, looking around. “Turn right after the bookstore,” he said.

“Bookstore?”

“Yeah. . there it is. Turn here!”

Louis skidded to a stop in front of a gray bungalow bearing the sign SAFE HARBOR BOOKS. He had to slow to a crawl on the unplowed side street as Flowers peered at the house numbers.

“That’s it,” Flowers said, pointing to a faded two-story clapboard house. Louis pulled to a stop.

The yard was heaped with high drifts, with no car, footprints, or any sign of life. The house was fronted with a glassed-in porch, but the panes had been covered with heavy plastic sheeting, sections of it flapping in the wind.

“It looks abandoned,” Louis said.

“Not for the U.P,” Flowers said. He zipped his parka and got out. Louis followed, trudging behind him through the snow.

Flowers had run a quick record search for Rhonda Grasso this morning, but there had been no current address for her in Cedarville. Or anywhere in Michigan for that matter.

The only things that turned up were an expired Michigan license issued in 1967 when Rhonda was sixteen and her employment record. It included two summers working in Ryba’s Fudge Shops on the island and a short stint at the post office in Cedarville.

But Flowers had found a Chester Grasso in Cedarville. Repeated calls to Grasso’s number had gone unanswered, but they decided to make the trip anyway. Flowers said that, like Cooper Lange, Rhonda could have come home as so many Yooper kids did when they got older and eaten up by the bigger world. She was probably married and living two doors down from her childhood home.

Louis kept back while Flowers knocked on the porch storm door. If Chester Grasso was inside he was more likely to open the door to a guy in a Mackinac Island police parka than a strange black man.

They heard a dog barking inside. It grew more frenzied the harder Flowers banged on the storm door. The interior door jerked open, and a man poked his head out. A second later, a huge red chow chow bounded out and launched itself at the porch door.

The man came out onto the porch and grabbed the dog’s collar. “Pearl! Knock it off!”

The dog retreated behind the man’s legs. The man’s watery blue eyes narrowed as he stared at the police patch on Flowers’s parka. He opened the door a crack.

“Mackinac? Whatcha doing up here?”

“Mr. Grasso? Chester Grasso?” Flowers asked.

The man nodded, now staring at Louis. Louis was staring at the chow chow, but it was sitting calmly behind the man.

“We’re looking for Rhonda Grasso,” Flowers said. “We need to talk-”

“Rhonda? Rhonda doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Is she your daughter?”

Chester Grasso hesitated, then gave another nod.

“Do you know where we can find her, sir?”

“I haven’t seen Rhonda in years,” Grasso said. “She left home a long time ago.”

Louis stepped forward. “So you haven’t had any contact with your daughter, sir?”

The man shook his head. He was rubbing the dog’s ears, and it leaned against his legs, its black tongue hanging from its mouth.

“Your daughter used to work on Mackinac Island, right?” Louis asked.

Chester Grasso’s eyes came alive a little. “Yeah, yeah, she did. Not a lot for a kid to do in a town like this, so she used to go live over there during the summers.” He paused. “Rhonda was a hard worker, and she made enough to buy herself a used Impala when she was just seventeen. After that, she wasn’t home a lot.”

“Did you know a girl named Julie Chapman, Mr. Grasso? Did your daughter ever mention her?” Louis asked.

“No, don’t remember her talking about a Julie anybody.”

“What about Cooper Lange?”

Grasso shook his head. “What’s this all about, anyways? Is Rhonda in some kind of trouble?”

“No, sir,” Flowers said. “We’re investigating the disappearance of this girl, Julie Chapman, and we just need to talk to Rhonda.”

“Well, I can’t help you,” Grasso said. “Like I said, Rhonda moved away a long time ago.”

“Do you remember the date?”

Chester scratched his jaw. “It was after she graduated, I remember that much.”

“Where did she go?”

Chester shrugged. “She just left one day. She talked a lot about going up to live with her brother in Sault Ste. Marie.”

Louis had his notebook out. “What’s his name?”

“Fred,” Grasso said. “His name is Fred. He used to work at Algoma Steel up there.”

“We need his address,” Louis said.

Chester looked down at his dog. “Don’t got it. I haven’t talked to Fred in years.”

Flowers let out a breath, glanced at Louis, then back at Grasso. “Well, thank you-”

“Wait, Chief,” Louis said. “Mr. Grasso, is this the same house Rhonda lived in?”

Grasso nodded. “Yup.”

“Could we see Rhonda’s room?”

“Her room?” Chester Grasso ran a hand over his whiskered jaw. “There’s nothing in her old room.”

“Your daughter left nothing here?” Louis asked.

“My wife. .” He cleared his throat. “Rhonda was, well, she had a wild streak to her. I always said she was just a little high-strung, but Dot said she was boy crazy and Dot was always after her. They were always going after each other. You know how mothers and daughters can be.”

Louis saw Flowers nodding.

“When Rhonda ran off for good, Dot sort of went nuts,” Grasso said. “She packed up all of Rhonda’s things and cleaned out her room. It was like she was so mad at her she just didn’t want to look at anything to do with her, you know? There’s nothing left of Rhonda here, except some old boxes.”

“Can we look through them?” Louis asked.

Grasso closed the storm door a little. “I don’t think-”

“Mr. Grasso,” Louis said. “Wouldn’t you like to see your daughter again?”

Chester Grasso’s face went slack.

“When we find her we can ask her to contact you,” Louis said.