A Wicked Snow

are you?”

Nice touch, Bauer thought, getting the name wrong.

“Jeff Bauer, FBI,” he said, presenting his I.D. badge and photo.

She took it and regarded it, then handed it back. “Oh my,” she said. “I’ve never seen one of those in person. Very official and kind of pretty isn’t it?” She didn’t wait for a response. “I’m going to move the water again. Wish I had installed that drip system my husband had wanted. Would have saved me hours and hours of time. ’Course, lots of time in Alaska, anyway. Want some rhubarb?”

“No, thanks,” Bauer said. “How long have you lived here?”

“Is this part of your official interview?” she asked with a wry smile.

He ignored her. “How long?”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll answer a few of your questions. I’ll give you enough rhubarb for two pies. But you, Mr. Bauer, is it?”

He nodded, but said nothing.

“You will have to tell me who this Claire Morgan is and why you think I might know something about her. Is she in some kind of trouble?”

“I’d say so. Claire Logan murdered twenty people. Surely you’ve heard of her.”

“Can’t say that I have. We never got a satellite dish up here. My husband wanted one, but I kept saying no.”

“The murders were discovered in Rock Point, Oregon. She killed nearly a score of lovelorn military men, plus her own two sons.”

Holding a kitchen paring knife, Mrs. Wallace bent down and started cutting bright red stalks of rhubarb and arranging them in neat rows in the bottom of an antique vegetable basket.

“These will make a delicious pie,” she said without looking up. “Does your wife bake?”

“No. Don’t have a wife.” Bauer felt a little foolish. This woman wasn’t listening and she wasn’t reacting to anything he had to say.

“As I was saying,” he began again.

“As you were accusing,” she said, still intent on her slicing. “Well, I’ve never had any children. And, I’ve never dated anyone from the military. I’m a Democrat.”

“Mrs. Wallace,” he said, stooping to face her directly. “Where were you living in the mid-70s?”

“This stalk is particularly suitable—thick and without all those nasty fibers.”

Bauer was frustrated, and his tone couldn’t conceal it. “Will you answer?”

Wallace stood up gripping the knife dripping, by then, with the red juice of rhubarb. Her eyes were cold, glacial blue.

“I don’t talk about that part of my life,” she said harshly, the first shift in a demeanor that Bauer could only have described as sweet and kindly. “Not to anyone.”

“You’ll need to answer to me,” he fired back. “I’ve waited two decades to find out what rock you’ve crawled under and your grandma-of-the-year act is as transparent as ice.”

She bent back down and resumed slicing. She remained expressionless. “You, young man, are mistaken. Now, do you want the rhubarb or not?”

“I saw Marcus Wheaton last week,” Bauer said. He stared at her, but nothing came from her in the way of a genuine reaction. Not even a flutter. “Saw him with your daughter, Hannah.”

For a half second, Bauer thought he noticed a slight, very slight hesitation in the woman’s cutting of glossy red stalks. Perhaps it was merely his hope that he could find something in her manner, demeanor, and cadence of her speech—anything—that could suggest she was not being truthful.

“I don’t have any children,” she said. “I’ve never had any children, sons, daughters, or any combination thereof. Mr. Wallace and I would have liked children and I suppose the fact that I couldn’t have any is my cross to bear. Satisfied? Furthermore, I don’t know anybody named Wheaton. Your accusations are very, very upsetting to me. I’m sure you didn’t mean for them to be, and truly I’m sorry I can’t help. I live my life being helpful to others.”

With that she reached for her basket, turned abruptly, and started for the house, abandoning Bauer by the garden gate. There was no point in calling out to her to stop because Bauer really didn’t know what to make of her. Louise Wallace was one of two things, a sweet old lady or a cold-blooded killer. He aimed to find out just which she was.

A half hour later and back in his room at the Northern Lights, Bauer used a handkerchief to carefully remove his photo I.D. badge from its protective leather and plastic sheath before sliding it into a glassine. It wasn’t evidence per se. But he was treating it as such. Louise Wallace had held it as they stood in her garden. She had touched it after Bauer had made sure it was perfectly clean. He had only held it on its edge. He phoned Bonnie Ingersol at the Portland office. She was out, so he left a message for her to sit tight until he called her back in about an hour. Bauer got back behind the wheel and drove to the Kodiak airport where he put the small package on a plane that would connect with an Alaska Airlines flight to Portland. With a layover in Anchorage, and a connection in Seattle, Ingersol could pick it up by six the next morning. Bauer looked at his Seiko. In a few hours, he’d know the truth. He scratched his head and smiled. A beer seemed like a good idea right then.

Chapter Thirty

The ladies of the First Methodist Church of Kodiak knew how to put on a wildly successful bake sale, no matter if the cause was directly related to the church or not. One time, the group of thirteen women raised almost a thousand dollars for Kodiak High’s choral ensemble’s trip to compete against school choir groups from Canada and the United States. (The Singing Grizzlies placed in the top ten and were greeted with a modest parade upon their return to the island, again courtesy of the ladies of First Methodist.) All but four were widows with grown children and scads of free time to devote to the cause—whatever it was at any given time.

Harriet Wilcox was in her late eighties, the oldest of the group. The oldest always admits her age as a badge of honor for living longest and still being able to keep up with the younger gals, in their sixties and seventies. Marge Morrison, sixty-two, was the youngest and most active. Morrison was still working part-time at the local public utility as the secretary to the consumer services manager. She was an attractive woman with silvering hair that she wore in a low-slung ponytail held in place by a tortoiseshell barrette. Her only flaw was the fact that gum disease had taken her teeth and she wore a full set of dentures of which she was extremely self-conscious. Others of the group included a retired school-teacher, Beth Tyson; Annie Potter, a crabber’s widow, and Louise Wallace, the owner of a fishing resort.

In early September the ladies of First Methodist met at the church for their fall planning session. A Thanksgiving coat and blanket effort, a food drive for Christmas, and the annual cookie exchange were on the agenda for the next three months, and preparations were necessary. Marge Morrison arrived first. She was chairwoman for the fall events. Beth Tyson followed her inside. Beth took the minutes for the newsletter, Divine Inspirations. Beth propped open the doors, letting the breeze blow in from the Aleutians. September was Kodiak’s second warmest month. Hitting a pleasant seventy degrees was possible, even with the summer wind blowing in from the north.

“Anyone hear from Sandy?” Morrison asked as she settled her considerable frame into a molded plastic chair. “Sandy called me last night. Her son’s wife is ill. She flew to Anchorage this morning. Said she’d be gone for a week.”

“Hope it isn’t too serious,” one said.

“No. Got the flu, a dreaded summer flu.”