Heart of Ice

“I’m here now.”

“I know,” she said, as they fell onto the bed. As they kissed, he embraced her with the right mix of tenderness and passion. Emily felt like she was falling into a warm pool, being carried away. She knew she’d always loved Chris. His touch, his taste, his body were everything she missed and everything she needed. She kicked the top quilt to the floor.

“We won’t need that extra blanket,” she said.

Chris kissed her again, deeply. “No, babe, we won’t.” He reached over her and turned off the light.

Sweat pooled under Mitch Crawford’s arms, and his lips were chapped from a nervous habit that had him constantly moistening them with his tongue. He’d had bad days before, but nothing like the ones that were pulling him downward right then. It was one of the late nights at the dealership, with two salesmen on the floor and Darla Montague at her desk answering phones and keeping the glass coffeepots from burning to black bottoms.

Mitch stared out the window at the lot.

“You all right?” Darla asked, entering the room with the week’s sales reports, commissions, and payrolls. She set the file on his desk, but Mitch kept his gaze toward the window.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Do you need anything?”

He turned to look at her. His eyes had flooded. “I’m sorry, Darla.”

“Sorry?”

“Sorry for everything I did to you. I’m a lousy person, I know that. I guess everyone does.”

Darla didn’t want to argue. She knew what kind of man Mitch Crawford was. He was older. He was her boss. He’d taken advantage of her. She probably could sue for something. She recognized all of that on some level. But she didn’t want to do anything but forget her own foolishness.

“It’s OK,” she said. “We were both at fault.”

“I’ve really screwed up,” he said. “I’ve really made a mess of things.” He opened the file folder and glanced at the reports. “Maybe next month will be better.” He fanned out the payroll checks and started to sign each one. The last one was a check made out to himself. He looked at Darla as he tore it up.

“Maybe next month,” he said. “Can’t really afford to pay myself right now.”

Darla stayed mute. The owner of the dealership hadn’t drawn a salary for two months. If he had, she was sure that a couple of the car cleaners would have to be let go. He kept telling her that “those guys have kids” and “Mandy and I will get by. We have savings.”

But then Mandy was gone.

Darla wondered if financial problems had driven Mandy away, away and into the arms of another man. Sure, Mitch was a jerk and a cad, but there were times when it almost seemed as if he’d had a heart beating somewhere inside.

It looked like Mitch was about to cry.

“Mr. Crawford, what can I do?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I found Toby.”

“He came home?”

“No, the damn dog must have fallen into the pool and got caught under the plastic cover. He’s dead, Darla. I thought Mandy took him. But she didn’t. Toby’s dead.”

Darla looked like she was going to cry. She knew what that dog meant to her boss. “You need to tell the sheriff. This is important.”

Mitch lined up three pens in a faultless row and looked out his office window to toward the showroom.

“Why bother? They think I killed her. They’ll probably think I killed the dog, too.”

She wasn’t the jumping type, but Emily almost jumped for joy when Camille Hazelton finally secured a warrant to search Mitch Crawford’s home on Larkspur. It had taken some doing. Certainly there was probable cause within hours of the first report of Mandy missing, but the Crawford name still had a residual currency among the county judges. Camille kept saying she needed more. Finally, there had been enough. The car, the fact that none of Mandy’s credit cards had been used, and that her dependable nature at work had been compromised by her sudden absence all played a role. Techs came from Spokane to comb through the house, spray luminal, and procure the Crawfords’ laptop. Emily and Jason oversaw the small army of CSIs as they poked and prodded the contents of the massive home. No blood was found anywhere. In fact, there was no trace that Mandy had even been there—outside of clothes in her closet in the master suite. Even her hairbrush was devoid of any hairs.

The strobe of a camera flash swept over every space.

“Jesus, Sheriff,” Jason said as they stood in the kitchen and watched the swarm of techies wave their ultraviolet lights over every surface, “you’d think Mr. Clean lived here.”

Emily shuddered as a cold breeze blew in from the open front door.

“Even Mr. Clean can make a mistake,” she said. “Just takes one.”

Chapter Nine

As a waitress swooped around the bar, carrying beers and mounds of nachos with enough cheese to choke even a young person’s arteries, Cherrystone County Prosecutor Camille Hazelton zeroed in on Emily as she sipped a glass of hot spiced wine. Camille had asked—actually commanded, was more like it—to meet after work. With Chris waiting for her at the house, Emily agreed a little reluctantly.

“He did it,” Camille said. “You know it. I know it.”

The words came at Emily like the authoritative pounding of the keys of an old manual Underwood typewriter, the kind her mother used for writing letters to the editor each week until her death.

“He did it. You know it. I know it.”

Camille Hazelton never minced words. She probably didn’t even know how. She was, without question, the single most powerful woman in the county-city building. At fifty-five, she was lean-faced and not at all unattractive—at least when she smiled, which detractors insisted wasn’t nearly often enough.

Camille and Emily had been friends since arriving in Cherrystone about the same time—Emily coming from Seattle to start over and Camille to pick up where her father had left off. Dan Hazelton had been the prosecutor for an astonishing twenty-seven years.

When he died, his lawyer daughter moved back home from a successful law practice in Chicago and did what only the prodigal daughter could do. She ran against three men and was elected. Like Emily, Camille had deep roots in Cherrystone, but she’d also lived outside the insular community. She’d learned that there were dress shops with more to offer than Delano’s on Main Street. She knew what really good ahi was and the difference between Dom Perignon champagne and Andre. And yet, like Emily, she found that nothing resonated deeper in a caring person’s heart than the place called home.

Emily sat across from the prosecutor with hot spiced wines in the cozy confines of TJ’s, a downtown bar that was frequented by law enforcement—pool tables on one side, a long battered bar that had a century of scuff marks and dents from cowboy boots, and later, steel-toed boots. It wasn’t fancy. But neither was Cherrystone.

Emily looked down at her wine, a curl of steam still rising from below the rim.

“Of course we know Crawford did it. Homicide stats. His unconcerned affect. Both point to him.”

Camille motioned to the cocktail waitress that she wanted another.

“You know it. I know it. All of Cherrystone suspects it. But suspicion, as you know, is not enough. We need evidence.”

The waitress deposited a basket of peanuts, and Camille lowered her voice. “I don’t know any other way to say this.” She stopped, clearly pained at the prospect of what she was about to say. “Look, I have to ask. Do you