Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

The guest bedroom down the hall was neat, clean, and impersonal. The closet had a shelf full of wrapping paper, ribbon, and items marked with sticky notes reading “Sandy for Christmas” and “Carolyn for her birthday” and “Cathy for her birthday” and “CathyO for the dinner.” Downstairs, the kitchen looked like it was used, and through it, aha, an office.

There was a desk in the middle of the room and file cabinets lined all the walls except one, which had a bookcase filled floor to ceiling with cookbooks. Kate remembered that Charlotte was a caterer. She went to the desk and opened the first drawer that came to hand and found a big red book of lined pages full of writing Kate recognized from Charlotte’s check. Each page was dated. Sometimes you just got lucky.

She sat down and found the date of Charlotte’s death. From there, she worked backward, slowly and methodically, one eye on the clock.

All the Monday entries began the same way: “Went out to Eagle River, tried to see Mom.”

Kate closed the diary and looked around. There was a shelf full of similar diaries. She pulled down a few and leafed through them. Every Monday began with the very same entry: “Went out to Eagle River, tried to see Mom.”

There were only twenty-two diaries on the shelf, so Kate couldn’t confirm that Charlotte had been trying to see her mother every Monday for the past thirty years, but it was a safe bet.

She went back to the current year and began reading steadily, with critical attention to detail, from the first of January. Some of it was personal: “Emily and I talked. She’s working too much, too many late nights. I hardly ever see her anymore, and I don’t like it. She’s promised to cut back.” Some of it was business: “Catered the Williams-Lujon wedding. Everyone really liked the cheese puffs, so I’m including them in the A menu from now on.” Some of it was social: “Took the governor’s wife to lunch in hopes of interesting her in establishing a culinary arts school at UAA. We could use a friend at court, and she actually admitted to cooking the occasional-meal, so fingers are crossed.” Some of it was trivial. “Shopping at Nordie’s with Chris, who always makes me buy more than I should. But oh, how could I resist that little black dress! Emily will drool!”

And then, suddenly, an unexpected entry in mid-July.

“Dad called. He wanted to meet so I went out there. He wanted Oliver to come, too, but Oliver said no. Oliver says no a lot. He’s like Dad-he doesn’t think Mom did it. I don’t know why he won’t go out there with me. Dad’s all we’ve got left.”

Oliver didn’t believe Victoria was guilty? Since when?

Well. Kate sat back. Charlotte, in spite of protestations to the contrary, had kept in contact with her father. Witnesses always lied-any cop could tell you that-but it always pissed Kate off when they did.

Only one other entry did Kate find of interest, the one the night before Erland’s party, and Charlotte’s last entry:

“Uncle Erland’s party is tomorrow. I hate those things. I hated them when Mom used to make us help out with the ones Grandfather used to have, and I hate them now. The boys were braver than me when they told her they wouldn’t go anymore. I wouldn’t except for Alice. Alice needs somebody there.”

Kate replaced the diary and went out the front door, locking it behind her. “Come on,” she told Mutt, and led the way back to the Subaru, where they waited another hour for Emily to come home. As before, the gold Cadillac hushed up the driveway, there was the sound of a car door opening, a moment of murmured conversation, the door closed, and the Cadillac purred back down the driveway and out onto the road.

Kate waited for ten minutes before starting the Subaru and driving up to the house. Emily took a long time answering the door, and when she saw Kate, she closed it again immediately. Kate put a hand up to catch it before it latched. “Emily? I need to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

“Anyone, or just me?”

Emily tried to close the door again. Kate exerted a little muscle and Emily was forced back a step. “Emily, what did Charlotte tell you about hiring me?”

“Nothing.” Emily refused to meet Kate’s eyes.

“Driving to the Park takes at least a day. You didn’t ask her where she was going, or why?”

“No.”

Before her better self could take over, Kate said, “You and Charlotte were on the outs, weren’t you?”

Emily’s head jerked up. “What? That’s not true. It’s a lie. Where did you hear that? I-”

“You’d been working a lot of late nights, and Charlotte was tired of never seeing you. I can understand-no point in living together if you never see each other. Did she want you to move out?”

“No! She loved me! We loved each other. She would never have asked me to move out!”

“If you loved her so much, then help me find who killed her.”

Emily’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. Through stiff lips she said, “They caught the man who was driving the truck that hit her. He’s in jail.”

Kate waited until Emily looked up again, and said in a soft voice, “But you and I both know somebody paid him to do it. Who was it, Emily? And why? Am I getting too close to the truth of William Muravieff’s murder? Why didn’t Victoria fight harder? Why has she stayed in jail all this time without complaint?”

“She’s out now,” Emily said desperately. “It was what Charlotte wanted. That’s what she always wanted. Whatever you did, it got Victoria out. The job is finished. You’re done. Go home. Go home, and leave me alone.”

Kate regarded her in silence for a moment. “You’re terrified of something,” she said. “What? Or should I say, Whom?”

Emily cast a hunted look over Kate’s shoulder. “You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t understand.”

“Make me understand.”

“Go home,” Emily whispered. “Go home now. Go home before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what? Emily? Emily!”

Emily closed the door, and this time Kate let her.

Kate manhandled the Subaru into the garage and slammed into the house.

Jim looked up from the couch in the living room, marking his place in the book he was reading. “You got up early.”

“I know.” She looked more closely. “Are you wearing glasses?”

He whipped them off and tucked them out of sight. “No. Well, yes. They’re just reading glasses. Listen, Kate. My case is done. I don’t have to go back to court. I could have gone with you this morning. Where did you go, by the way?”

She walked toward him, shedding her jacket and starting to unbuckle her belt.

He gaped at her. “Kate?”

“Put the glasses back on,” she said.

Half an hour later, he flopped back, gasping for breath. “Jesus,” he said, wheezing a little. “I think you broke something.”

Kate rolled off him and waited for the ceiling to come back into focus. She was suffused with a warm glow, trembling in every limb, covered in a fine mist of perspiration. Also, her knees were smarting from carpet burn. She definitely felt better. Maybe even leaning toward immortal. Who knew glasses could be such a turn-on?

They hadn’t made it out of the living room. One end of the sofa was jammed into a corner, the coffee table was tipped over, and the magazines on it lay splashed across the floor, along with the pillows from the couch and their clothes.

Jim wheezed some more. “Maybe even everything.” He mustered enough energy, barely, to raise his head and look at her. “Mind telling me what that was all about?”

“I saw, I wanted, I took,” she said, stretching lazily. “Oh yeah.”

“It’s not that I’m objecting.”