Heart of Ice

holder at her desk.

Darla looked crestfallen when she opened the door and saw the sheriff. No reassuring words or warm smile could placate her.

“Please don’t tell my baby’s daddy,” Darla said as Emily confronted her with what Patty Crawford, a.k.a. Tricia Wilson, had indicated earlier that day in her office. The twenty-two-year-old with the baby in her arms started to cry. “I don’t want my parents to know, either.”

Emily felt for the young woman. She saw her as the type who probably meant well, but through her own gullibility was constantly a victim of circumstance. She was working as a receptionist at the car dealership, she had a baby, and she was worried about what her parents would think of the fact that she’d slept with the boss.

“Is the baby Mitch’s?” Emily asked as she took a seat on a sofa half-covered in folded diapers and baby blankets.

Darla, in a rocker, held her son tighter. “Oh, no. I didn’t do anything with Mitch until after the baby was born. I swear it.”

“I see,” Emily said, more of an acknowledgment than an acceptance of Darla’s story. “Tell me what happened.”

“You mean about how we did it?”

“No. No, Darla. Not how you did it, if you’re referring to the sex act itself. What I’d like to know is what was the extent of the relationship? How involved were you, really?”

Darla became quiet. She turned around with her back toward Emily, her baby boy facing the sheriff. She looked out the window.

“This is really embarrassing,” she said. “We only did it one or two times.”

“Was it one or two?”

“OK, two times.”

“All right. Now when did this happen?”

“This summer. After my son was born. I’d come back to work, from my extended leave. And you know, I was feeling bad about myself. I felt fat. My boyfriend called me a cow. Can you believe that? I just had his son and he called me a cow?”

Emily felt strongly about a two-parent family, but this baby daddy of Darla’s was a piece of garbage.

She shifted the subject back to the concern at hand. “I’m sorry, but what happened with Mitch?”

“Well, Mr. Crawford, err, Mitch, said that my boyfriend was a jerk to call me names. He said that he thought I was pretty. He said that I had potential. Real potential. And then, you, know, one thing led to another.”

Emily felt sorry for Darla. Potential? Honestly, what didn’t work when it came to getting a lonely girl into bed?

“No,” she said, “I don’t know. Tell me.”

“OK, it was after closing and he told me to come into his office. My son was at my mom’s so I didn’t have to rush out. It was a Friday night. I was going to go out to party. Anyway, he told me he was lonely. He said Mandy was cold to him. Then, well, then he kissed me and we had sex.”

“In his office?”

Darla turned around, tears streaming down her face. “Yeah, and I’m not proud about it.”

“Did he say he was in love with you?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“But he wanted to see you again, didn’t he?”

“I guess I’m not explaining myself very well. He said that I was pretty and we had sex two times. I don’t think he ever said he wanted a relationship with me. He just told me that his wife was cold to him and I was fun.”

“Did you know Mandy?”

By then, Darla’s tears were uncontrollable and her baby started to cry, too. “I’d seen her come into the dealership a few times. She was nice enough. I mean, she pretty much acted like she was put out having to come into the dealership. She never stayed long and she didn’t seem to appreciate how hard her husband worked.”

It passed through Emily’s mind that Darla Montague was probably the most naive person she’d ever met. Youth alone wasn’t the reason she’d gotten involved with a charismatic man. She had also felt sorry for him. Maybe, she thought, Darla had hoped that he’d fall in love with her.

Yet he only wanted her for one thing.

“I have to leave now. My mom invited us to dinner.” She balanced the baby against her shoulder and looked for her purse and car keys.

“All right,” Emily said, starting toward the door. “We can talk more later.”

Darla dug her keys out of the space between cushions on the sofa. She looked nervously at Emily. “OK. Please don’t tell my mom. Please don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t say anything to your mother. But I do have to tell the prosecutor. If we get to the point where there is a need for you to testify, you best tell your mom, OK?”

Darla wanted to buy some time. “But that will be a long way off, right?”

“I hope not. But, yes, you have some time.”

Right then, Emily wanted to give Jenna’s former classmate some motherly advice. But she resisted telling her that she’d be all right, that this would pass, that they’d all laugh about it someday. Because she knew she wouldn’t. Darla Montague had been stupid beyond stupid. It was best for her to live with that and let it sink in.

Emily left Darla’s apartment and its baby smells with more questions than answers. Chief among them was whether Darla’s relationship with Mitch had anything whatsoever to do with the fact that Mandy was missing. She seemed to be a truthful young woman, one more worried about what her mother might think about her affair with her boss than being involved in a potential criminal matter. One question that gnawed at her was the source of the tip that led her to Darla. Who inside the dealership had it in for Mitchell Crawford? Judging by his reputation, she imagined that the line of people with a score to settle might a long one.

A very long one.

Emily looked out the window. The streets of Cherrystone glittered with ice.

“Jenna, where are you?” she said aloud.

She looked at her watch. It was half past the hour. Jenna’s plane had landed long ago and she was due on the Inland Empire Airport Shuttle an hour ago. Emily chatted on the phone with Chris a while—he was doing things around the condo that he hoped to sell in a slowing Seattle real estate market.

“I’m worried. Something could have happened to her.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” he said. “Jeesh, Em, you act like you’re going to put out an APB on your daughter because she’s a half hour late.”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t. And she’s forty-five minutes late.”

Chris laughed and asked Emily if she needed him to bring anything from Seattle when he came for Christmas.

“Chestnuts,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yes, fresh ones.”

He promised he would, though he didn’t have any clue as to where he’d find them.

“Pike Place Market,” she said. Just as she was about to tell him which stall to zero in on at the venerable farmers’ market in downtown Seattle, a pair of headlights pierced the darkness in front of her house.

The van had arrived.

“She’s here,” Emily said.

“OK. Tell her I’m looking forward to chilling with her tomorrow.”

“Chilling?”

“Hanging. Whatever. Love you, Em.”

“I love you, too.”

She snapped her phone shut and spun around in time to swing open the door for Jenna.

“Merry Christmas, Mom!”

Forgetting the nightmare of the Mandy Crawford investigation as she drank in her daughter with a hug that