A Cold and Lonely Place: A Novel (12 page)

“Does anything seem to be missing, anything that you can see?” he asked Win. “Television, microwave, anything like that, things that might have serial numbers?”

It looked like a cartoon scene, every drawer opened and emptied, every kitchen cupboard cleared out, and all of it on the floor. The oven stood open. The lining of the box springs was ripped loose, the sofa cushions pulled off and sliced open, the sofa overturned. Win’s suitcases were opened and the contents dumped in a pile.

Win looked around, surveying it all, then shook her head. “I can’t see that anything is gone. I had my laptop with me, and my purse.”

“You’ve been up here just a few days, right?” he asked Win.

She nodded—I don’t think she’d realized quite what a small town this was. People pretty much knew who did what with whom and where. Now I recognized the policeman was the father of twins who had been on the Lake Placid High School hockey team. I’d seen him at games several times, once in uniform. I’d gotten a great shot of the twins, intent on chasing the puck down the ice, and had given them a print. His nod told me he’d recognized me as well.

“This cabin’s owned by a fellow downstate, right?” he asked Win. “You know his name?”

She nodded. “I called and left him a message.”

He pulled out a pad and took down the owner’s info. “Your brother used to live here?” he asked. “Your, er, deceased brother.” He looked uncomfortable, and I liked him for that.

“Yes, he did. I came up here after his body was found, and the owner let me stay here.”

“Would your brother have had anything valuable here? Anything in particular someone would want to steal?”

Win shook her head. “He had an old watch of our grandfather’s, but I don’t think much else.”

He waited, as if expecting her to say more, but she didn’t. “The door wasn’t damaged. You left it locked?”

When Win nodded, he asked, “Do you know who else has a key?”

I thought, not for the first time, of the key that had been stored under the flowerpot—which anyone could have had copied at any time.

“The owner, and of course my brother did, and there used to be one kept on the porch. Otherwise, I have no idea.”

He wrote more in his notebook. “You’ll want to get that lock changed. And you shouldn’t stay here tonight,” he told Win, and then looked at me, in a sort of turbo-charged hint.

“Of course, she can stay with us,” I said. Which I would have assumed she would. I wasn’t leaving her in this mess.

Win hesitated. “I don’t really want to leave the place like this—and with someone having a key.”

I was shaking my head without realizing it. “Win, you can’t stay here. And you don’t really think they’re going to come back tonight?”

She looked around. “There are papers and things here I don’t want to lose.”

“Well, you can’t stay here until you get a new lock and we get it cleaned up. Not even if I left Tiger with you. Look, try Dean
again and ask him to keep an eye out, and we can leave your car or mine here so it’ll look like someone’s here. If there’s anything you’re really worried about, bring it with you.”

The policeman was watching us. Win looked around the room again, and I think she realized that she couldn’t stay here, not now. She stepped toward the mattress and pulled at something, and when she turned she had the quilt she’d given her brother in her arms. She handed it to me, then moved toward an opened suitcase, pushing inside whatever fit in one brisk motion, grabbed up papers from the floor and dumped them on top, then snapped it shut and stood. “It’s okay to go in your car?” she asked me, her fingers gripping her bag tightly.

I nodded. “Sure.”

We locked the door of the cabin behind us, however pointless that might have been. She retrieved her things from her car, and got into mine. We followed the police car down the road to the highway. We didn’t talk on the drive.

No one was downstairs, and the house was quiet. I showed Win into the downstairs bedroom. I’d realized she’d need clothes and toiletries, and had brought in my emergency bag from the car for her. “There’s sweats and stuff in there,” I said. “In case you don’t have what you need.” I nodded at her suitcase.

She grimaced. “Thanks. I won’t be wearing any of those until they’re laundered, anyway.”

I nodded, and heard her close her door and snick the lock shut as I walked down the hall. Not a bad idea, I supposed. As I went upstairs I closed and locked my door.

It was cold when I got into bed. As I lay there waiting to warm up, I began to think that there had perhaps, after all, been more to Tobin’s death than a tipsy late-night ramble across a lake, on ice too thin, in weather too cold.

By the time I got downstairs in the morning, Win had wheeled the portable washing machine to the sink, figured out how to hook it up, and had a load of wash going. She was wearing some of my old clothes from the emergency bag, jeans I didn’t like and a ratty sweatshirt. Somehow they looked elegant on her. Somehow very little seemed to look elegant on me, or stay that way for long.

I asked if she’d like to try cornmeal pancakes, and she thought that would be fine. I melted butter in my cast-iron skillet and within five minutes slid a plateful of corncakes on the table, and set out my blackberry preserves from Nashville and the crunchy natural peanut butter I bring back from Ottawa. This I never would have done with my own sisters—they would have been highly disapproving of the picnic table used as a dining table, never mind the plastic-coated tablecloth. Not that they ever would have visited me.

“I don’t have syrup, sorry,” I said, but Win spread the crispy corncakes thinly with jam and even tried one with peanut butter, and said they were delicious. The trick is using butter instead of oil, and not using a packaged mix—it’s not as if mixing flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder takes a lot of skill. Patrick ambled
in, and I convinced him to help me out by taking one of the too-brown corncakes.

Win asked if I knew a locksmith.

“I imagine there’s one in the phone book. Or you could buy a new lock or take the cylinder in yours to be rekeyed. Either would be cheaper and faster than getting a locksmith out there. They’re easy to install. I could do it.”

She thought about it, and decided a new lock would be best—the owner had told her she could do what she wanted.

“So you heard back from him?” I asked.

“Yes, he called back. He says that key’s been under that flowerpot for ages, and anyone could have made a copy. Of course, I didn’t leave it there when I moved in, but I didn’t think about getting the lock changed.”

“Do you know … were Tobin’s keys found with him?”

She was quiet for a moment. “They told me his wallet was in his pocket. But no, no keys.”

I could see the keys in Tobin’s hand, see him jingling them, sliding them into his pants pocket. “He carried a ring of them, maybe four or five. In his right front pocket.”

“That sounds about right. He would have had a key to the cabin, one to his truck, his post office box, one to my place. You’re thinking someone could have used his keys to get in.”

I shrugged. “Maybe,” I said. Of course, then that person would now have a key to Win’s home. Her brain was trekking along the same path.

“I had a deadbolt installed on my door at home,” she said. “Tobin didn’t have that one yet.”

“Probably his keys just fell out of his pocket in the lake.” This had happened to me when I’d dived into Lake Champlain last summer to rescue Paul. But I wasn’t going to discuss the forces of water and current and the deepness of Carhartt pants pockets.

Win sat up straighter. “I’d like to go talk to the state police. I haven’t been able to get answers over the phone, and I’d like to
go in person. I wondered if you might like to go, although I know you have a lot to do.”

Sure, I had lots to do, but I wasn’t going to pass this up.

“Do you …” I stopped, then started again. “Do you know why the state police are investigating?”

“My parents may be pushing it. They may want someone to blame.”

“Blame … as in, it’s an accident someone had something to do with? Or that someone did it on purpose?” It’s a common refrain with parents—their child couldn’t be at fault.
My boy never would use drugs … cheat on his exams … haze his fraternity brother … drink until his blood alcohol level was so high he could hardly walk
. But somehow, they did.

“They won’t discuss it. I don’t know that they’ve thought it through, just that Tobin moved to this town, where no one he knows lives, and he died—so someone has to be at fault. But I think it likely would have been declared an accidental death if not for that article, and maybe my parents.”

“And the truck,” I said without thinking.

“Yes, the truck. That’s the thing that doesn’t make sense—unless someone hid the truck so no one would realize Tobin was missing.” She saw the expression on my face. “Yes, I’ve thought of all kinds of possible scenarios.”

So Win wasn’t just here to grapple with loss and walk in her brother’s footsteps. I cleared my throat. “I didn’t know if you had thought about that. You’ve had a lot going on.”

She gave an odd smile. She was smart, very smart, I realized, and her brain worked at things whether she mentioned them or not. Sort of like me.

“Oh, I’ve thought about it,” she said lightly. “I’ve thought of all kinds of things.”

I spoke impulsively. “You know I have no idea what happened to Tobin.”

This time her smile was wry. “I know you don’t, Troy. You wear your honesty on the outside.”

And this left me with nothing to say. I went up and sent a quick e-mail to Jameson, telling him about the break-in. And then we headed off to the state police headquarters.

Win had deliberately not called ahead, but we didn’t wait long, and someone brought us coffee. When Jessamyn and I had been interviewed, mind you, we hadn’t been offered anything. But Win had that manner that made people pay attention, and she was the sister of the victim, and not a suspect.

I could tell the investigator thought it was odd I was there with Win, but he didn’t object. She told him we were friends and that I was writing a series of articles on Tobin. His look said he was well aware I was writing a series of articles on Tobin, and wasn’t entirely happy about it. But his letting me sit in pretty much told me they didn’t suspect me of anything.

He went through the basics quickly: No, they hadn’t yet gotten all the toxicology reports. Yes, the preliminary findings showed water in the lungs, indicating drowning, and some bruising that neither definitively indicated foul play nor the lack thereof (he actually said the words
foul play
), which could have been caused by a fall onto or into the ice, or in the water. No, no keys were found with Mr. Winslow, only his wallet. He brought it out in its plastic bag and let Win look at it, take it out and thumb through it, glance at the bills inside, remove every crumpled and dried-out scrap of paper that had been put in there by her brother’s hands.

Win looked up at the investigator. “Could I have a photocopy of everything that’s in there? Not the money, of course, but everything else.”

Now he blinked. He’d been prepared to tell Win she couldn’t have the wallet, but apparently hadn’t anticipated this. Then he nodded, took the wallet and its contents, and started out of the room.

“Everything on one or two sheets is fine,” Win said as he reached the door. “I don’t need each thing on a separate page.”

He smiled then, what seemed like a genuine smile. It was almost impossible not to like Win. Then he was back, waiting for Win’s next question.

“Someone supposedly said that Tobin had a lot of cash that night—but this was all the cash found on him?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Did you find out anything from the people in the bar with him that night?”

Yes, a number of people had been interviewed. No, Mr. Winslow apparently hadn’t done or said anything out of the ordinary. No one had reported seeing him after he’d been at the Waterhole.

Chowder saw him leave, I thought, and wondered if he’d told the police.

“So do you think his truck was stolen? Abandoned? Is there a chance it’s in the lake?” Win asked.

“No, if a truck had been driven across the ice and gone through, almost certainly people would have seen tracks in the snow and a large opening, even the next morning.”

A woman came in and handed him several sheets of paper and the plastic bag with the wallet. He thanked her, and handed the papers to Win. She smiled her thanks.

“Miss Winslow, I understand you had a break-in last night.”

So they were paying attention; this wasn’t just paint-by-number.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m heading there now to clean up.”

“You have no idea who would have done this?”

She shook her head.

“Who do you know here?” he asked.

“Troy and Tobin’s girlfriend, Jessamyn, and their roommates Brent and Patrick,” she said. “And Dean”—she looked at me, and I supplied his last name,
Whitaker
—“Dean Whitaker, who was a friend of Tobin’s and lives near him. And I’ve met a few other of Tobin’s friends here, just briefly.”

“Would Miss Field have any reason to resent you? Or to want to look for something at Mr. Winslow’s cabin?”

Win shook her head. “No, we’re friends, and she would have had months to search his cabin before I showed up. And she was with me all afternoon until she went to work.”

His eyes turned to me. “You as well, Miss Chance?”

“No, but I was out with Win all evening. And I have no reason to search Tobin’s cabin. If I want something for the newspaper articles, all I have to do is ask Win—she’s been very helpful.”

Somehow I kept getting myself in the middle of these situations, and not managing to keep my mouth shut. This was just the sort of behavior that makes the police think you might be involved. Like firebugs who set fires so they can help put them out, and nuts who commit crimes and show up afterward and want to be helpful.

He started to rise, the signal, I figured, that this interview was over. But then he turned to Win. “Your older brother drowned as well, correct?”