The Grave Soul (11 page)

“Why on earth would I do that? There were only three cars in the parking lot last night. They're not exactly overflowing with guests.”

“Just play nice, okay? I'll try to make my visit with Katie Olsen fast. I'd like to get on the road before the snow starts piling up.”

“What
ever
,” Cordelia spluttered, still tapping on her phone.

*   *   *

A smiling, sandy-haired woman, about the same age as Jane—midforties, or perhaps a little older—answered the front door. “Can I help you?”

“Katie?”

“Yes?” She brushed her hair away from her eyes.

Jane explained who she was, handing the woman a business card. “I wonder if I could talk to you.”

“What's this about?”

“I'm looking for some information on Delia Adler.”

“Delia,” she repeated, her lips parting.

“If I could just ask you a couple of questions—”

“I guess,” she said, eyeing Jane's baseball cap before leading her into a small den off the living room.

Jane understood now why Katie was wearing overalls splattered with paint. “You're painting your living room.” All the furniture had been pulled into the center of the room and covered with a tarp.

“The house needs a lot of work before I can sell it.”

“Are you moving?”

“I'm thinking about it. I've been offered a job in Madison.”

Noting the half-eaten sandwich on a desk, Jane assumed she'd interrupted the woman's lunch. “I'm sorry,” she said. “This is a bad time.”

“You're doing me a favor. I'm sick to death of all of this do-it-yourself crap. I painted the kitchen last weekend. Two bedrooms the weekend before. With very little coaxing, I'd probably be willing to tell you my entire life story.”

Jane noticed that bookcases covered one entire wall of the den. A few of the shelves had been cleared. Most were still filled.

“You like to read,” said Jane.

“I've donated hundreds of books to the local library in the last couple of years, and yet I can't seem to part with these. They're my friends. I don't expect that most people would understand.”

“I do,” said Jane. “I feel the exact same way. Alas, I also collect cookbooks.”

“Cooking's never been my thing. Now eating, that's another story.”

They both laughed.

Jane was glad for the connection. It made asking questions easier. She sat down on a rocking chair as Katie resumed her seat behind the desk. “I understand your father was the chief of police in New Dresden.”

“For twenty-four years, until he retired. He was the best chief of police this town ever had. He won a bunch of awards. Honest as the day is long. He was born and raised here, so he wanted to make sure the police department served the citizenry well.”

“Where you born here, too?”

“Yup. That's why this Madison job, if I take it, will be such a big change. Of course, I'll be back on weekends to see my father. That's a given.” She glanced down at Jane's business card. “I have to tell you, private investigators are fairly rare around these parts.”

“I'm just looking for a few answers.”

“About Delia. Are you investigating a crime?”

Technically, she wasn't. According to the police and the coroner, no crime had been committed. “No,” she said, knowing it was a half-truth. “I just need some information.”

With a shrug, Katie said, “Okay. I'm not sure I know anything that would help you. I'll throw you out if the questions get too personal.”

Jane grinned. “Deal. How well do you know the Adler family?”

Katie crossed her legs and settled in. “Henry Adler, Delia's father-in-law, was my dad's best friend.”

“Is that right.” The chief of police might not have been family, but he was the closest thing to it. It might explain a lot. “How about you? Did you know the Adlers?”

“Sure. Our families did a lot of things together when my brother and I were kids. Skating and sledding in the winter. Swimming and barbecues in the summers. Kevin Adler and I graduated high school the same year. I had a supercrush on him. Most of the girls did. He was athletic, on the track team and the football team. He was never a top student, but he was good-looking and superfriendly, he loved to laugh and have fun, and he was sweet. He wasn't stuck on himself the way so many of the other jocks were.”

“Did he date?”

“Yeah, but I don't think he was ever serious about anybody.”

“What about Hannah and Doug?”

“Hannah was a pistol. She was always in trouble, never wanted to toe the line. If anyone in the family gave Evangeline and Henry gray hair, it was Hannah. But she turned out well. She's a doctor now. Since she's a couple years older than me, we didn't run with the same crowd, but I liked her. Doug was the exact opposite of Kevin—kind of a nerd. Where Kevin was easygoing, fun to be around, Doug was serious, intense, always with his nose in a book. He was a straight-A student, I think. Very smart. He was going places and he wanted everyone to know it. Some kids at school thought he was a jerk. I mean, he was physically awkward, walked with this sort of gangly stride, so he was easy to make fun of. It made me mad, you know? He was my friend. He could be hard to take, sometimes, but he had a good heart. The Adler kids were incredibly tight. Kevin stood up for Doug a lot. The thing is, Doug often acted like he was better than the rest of us because his dad owned the local paper, and he was going to inherit it one day. Big deal. A lot of good it did him.”

“What do you mean?”

“The paper died after he took it over. Not right away, but everyone knew it was mostly his fault. See, the Adler family was always politically conservative and the
New Dresden Herald
reflected that. When Doug took over after Henry's death, the paper began to lean even more to the right. New Dresden's a conservative small town, so there was never a problem with Henry's point of view, but Doug's growing libertarianism was sometimes too much. Advertisers began to pull out. When Doug wrote opinion pieces against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—after 9/11—that was the last straw. People stopped buying it.”

“Did he find another journalism job?”

“Last I heard, he was working at a lumberyard.”

“Do you know his wife?”

“Laurie? Sure, she was in my high school class. She and Doug hooked up at the beginning of her senior year. Doug was away in college, but he'd drive back on weekends. I'd see them walking around town, holding hands.”

“Did you ever meet Delia?”

“Sure. We weren't friends. I was married by the time Kevin brought his family back here.”

“What did you think of her?”

Katie shrugged. “I knew that she liked to party. She could be funny, sometimes more sarcastic than funny, if you know what I mean. She'd order Kevin around—do this, do that—and he'd do it. Totally amazed me. My husband said he was whipped. Never thought he'd end up with a woman like her. Delia was hard. Thought she was the center of the universe. She loved giving people the finger. Maybe it worked for her in big cities, but it sure didn't in New Dresden.”

“What was she like as a mother?”

“No idea.”

“And Kevin? Did he seem happy?”

She looked down. “He never seemed happy to me after high school. He turned sort of silent during the last few weeks before graduation. Never understood why. And then he joined the military maybe six months later, which totally surprised everyone. I didn't see him for years. When we finally did reconnect, he was older, a man, not a boy. He was married, had a couple kids. But the spark that he had in high school, when I knew him best, was gone. I always wondered about that.”

“Was he a good father?”

Her voice softened. “He was wonderful with his girls. Totally in love. When I saw them together, I could sometimes glimpse the old Kevin. Made me sad.” She looked away for a few seconds, then back at Jane. “You know his wife's death was an accident, don't you?”

“I do.”

“Well, okay … inquiring minds. I've been living in this backwater for so long that anything out of the ordinary—like a PI showing up at my door—makes me a little suspicious.”

“Did the Adlers accept Delia into the family? I mean, did her personality cause any particular problems?”

“I would imagine she caused lots of problems. I saw her flirting with Doug once at the county fair over in Union. She really turned on the charm. I thought it was appalling. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think she might have been flirting with a priest that day, too. I'm not Catholic, so I didn't know him. She was like that. Always trying to get a rise out of some guy.”

“Was Kevin there that day? Did he see it?”

“No, she'd come with her two girls—and with Evangeline.”

“Do you think Evangeline noticed? Or Doug's wife, if she was there?”

“Not sure about Evangeline, but I'm positive Laurie did. Laurie was usually pretty quiet, but she wasn't stupid, and she had a wicked temper—something she didn't show very often. She seemed like the kind of person who smolders, keeps things in until they explode.”

“Can you give me an example?”

Katie picked up her can of soda and gave it some thought. “We were on the girls' basketball team together our junior year, practiced after school. She was Laurie Sherman back then. There was this one girl who had it in for her. Not sure why. Laurie took the girl's crap—for weeks—but one day I guess she'd had enough. She jumped on her during practice, started pounding her, biting her. She wrestled her to the floor and got her hands around her neck. I think she might have killed her if the coach hadn't pulled her off.”

Laurie hadn't really been on Jane's radar. Maybe she should be. “Do you think your father would be up for a visit? I'd really like to talk to him.”

“About the Adlers.”

Jane nodded.

Katie tapped her fingers on the arm of her desk chair. “I guess that would be okay. You really don't need my permission.”

“But I do need to know where he lives.”

She hesitated. “Right. It's the Bridgewater Nursing Home on Templemoore Avenue. Remember, he's a frail old man. I don't want him upset.”

“Is his mind—”

“He's as sharp as he always was.”

Jane nodded to a framed photo on the desktop. “Is that him?”

“In his prime. It's my favorite photo of my father in uniform. Handsome, wasn't he?”

“Very. How old is your dad now?”

“He just turned eighty-four. Say, you know … maybe I should come with you.”

“I really need to speak with him privately.”

“You're afraid he won't talk about … something … if I'm there. I sure wish you'd tell me what you're after.”

“As I said—”

“Yeah, yeah. Can't be anything too serious. Nothing very serious ever happens in this town. Just the same old, same old.”

“Some people might like that,” said Jane, rising from the rocking chair.

“That's why I read novels,” said Katie.

“Better to get your thrills and chills from a book than from a stranger with a knife pounding on your front door in the middle of the night.”

“You make a good point. Something to think about. Maybe I shouldn't move to Madison.” She thought about it for a few seconds, then smiled and said, looking up at Jane, “Nah. I'm still going to give that job offer some serious thought.”

 

17

The Bridgewater Nursing Home was a depressing two-story, cinder-block building, with low ceilings lit by fluorescent lights. Jane signed in as a visitor at the front desk, then took the elevator up to the second floor. She found Walt Olsen's room easily enough, though he wasn't in it. Stopping one of the nurse's aides in the hall, she asked the young woman if she knew where Walt might be.

“He likes to sit by the large picture window on the other side of the lunchroom,” the aide said. “Just keep going straight down this hall. When you come to the end, make a right, go past the lunchroom, and you'll probably see him.”

Jane thanked her. She found Olsen right where the nurse's aide said he would be. She would never have recognized him from the photo his daughter had shown her. He was no longer that robust man with piercing blue eyes and a full head of dark hair. This man was frail, rail thin, with white wisps circling a bald crown. The only part of him that still looked vigorous were his fierce white eyebrows.

“Chief Olsen?” she asked.

He looked up at her with milky eyes.

“My name's Jane Lawless.”

“Yes? Do I know you?” His voice wasn't much above a whisper.

“No. We've never met. I'm a private investigator. I'm here to ask you about Delia Adler.” There was no way to sugarcoat the questions. She didn't even pull up a chair, figuring the conversation wouldn't last long.

His lips drew together. “Delia? What about her? She's gone. Died years ago.”

“You were called to the scene.”

He blinked, looked away, stared silently into the middle distance.

“Who called you, Mr. Olsen?”

No response.

“Was it Evangeline Adler? Did she ask you to do her a favor?”

“No, no favors. Just doing my job.”

“And when you got to the scene, you found that Delia had been murdered.”

He drew in a long, composing breath.

“Isn't that correct?”

“You have your facts wrong, Miss. I don't know who you've been talking to, but Delia's death was an accident. She fell off the deck of her house.”

“Then why did she have all those marks on her neck?”

His lips parted, but no words came out.

“You called Brian Carmody, the coroner. Had him come over and pronounce her death accidental. But it wasn't. She'd been strangled.”