Heart of Ice

“Yes, please.” She waited a beat. “Jason, you are my deputy. Chris offered to assist.”

“Yeah, but I heard you deputized him.”

“Only so he could help. He’s not here to replace you. OK?”

Jason looked down at the floor. “I’m glad to hear that, Sheriff, because I thought you and I worked well together. I’m not so green anymore, you know. I have more to contribute.”

“I know,” she said, now feeling a twinge of shame for keeping him outside an investigation that he had every right to be part of. “That’s why you need to see Darla. Find out about the security of the keys, all right?”

“Yes. Will do.”

Chapter Sixty-five

Steffi Johansson turned off the TV. Her heart had almost stopped beating. Spokane Afternoons had just aired a segment on the Mandy Crawford murder case. She had watched with keen interest, having been down at the Cherrystone jail looking at the lineup of potential suspects. She had wanted so much to help. There was something very unnerving about the handsome stranger who’d come into the coffee shop after supposedly traipsing around the woods in search of a Christmas tree.

The local TV show had done a nice job, showing Mandy’s mother and pictures of a little girl who would grow up only to be lost before she reached her fullest potential.

“All my daughter ever really wanted was to be a mom,” Hillary Layton had told the host. “She said she wished that someday she’d be as good of a mother as…I was to her.”

She felt her knees go weak as she went toward her purse and the telephone.

Oh, my God, she thought, I really did see that woman’s killer that night. I can identify him.

She looked for Emily Kenyon’s business card in her wallet. Where was it? Credit cards, receipts, and a punch card from a sandwich shop that she forgot she had. When she found it, Steffi started to dial.

The Crawford car dealership had undergone the kind of change in vibe that was usually reserved for a new model introduction that actually brought in prospects and rang up sales. The smell of hot dogs rotating on a little wheel in the front window still excited or turned the stomach, depending, of course, on how one viewed hot dogs. The abundance of helium balloons and strands of crepe paper still signaled that the dealership was a cool and fun place for the entire family. Jason Howard noticed that everyone working there seemed to be in good spirits.

Maybe having a boss arrested for murder is a real boost to morale? Jason asked himself as he came upon Darla, who was shuttling coffee and files from Stan Sawyer’s office. Sawyer was the acting manager, filling in until Mitch came back.

Jesus, she’s even whistling.

“Hi, Darla,” Jason said.

“Hi, Deputy,” she answered, a warm smile on her face. “You want some Starbucks? That’s what Stan’s offering to customers these days. Says he wants our customers to ‘wake up and smell the coffee.’ Isn’t that cute?”

“Pretty cute,” he said. “But I’m not here for coffee. I’m here for information. The sheriff sent me.”

The smile fell from Darla’s face. “I’m not going to have to testify now, am I? Not about you know what?”

“Oh, gosh, I don’t think so. Anyway, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here about some, you know, odds and ends.”

“What kind of odds and ends?”

“We’re just crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s before trial.”

“OK. How can I help?”

“Well, what we need to know about is the key situation with Mr. Crawford. He says that he had several sets of house keys at the office.”

“That’s right. He took a different car home two or three times a week. You know how when you buy a new car and there’s like sixteen miles on it? That’s from a dealer like Mitch driving it. Important to have product familiarity, you know.”

“Cool. I didn’t think of that.”

“Not many people know what happens behind the scenes in a car dealership. It’s kind of like what happens behind the scenes at McDonald’s.” Darla paused. “You just don’t want to know.”

Jason had worked at McDonald’s in high school. He knew what she meant and he smiled. “Yeah. So about his keys. Could anyone get them or were they kept in a secure place?”

“I kept them with all the dealership’s master keys. In the vault. So, yes, they were always secure. I log all vault entries.”

“I was hoping you did. Can you do a favor for me and look up who came and got keys on November twenty- fourth or twenty-fifth?”

“You mean, when Mandy disappeared?”

Darla was young, a little reckless considering her affair with her boss, but she was sharp. Her immediate recollection of the date surprised him.

“Yeah. Can you?”

“Sure.”

She walked across the showroom and retrieved a logbook in a metal case next to the vault.

“Only one thing jumps out at me.”

Jason drew closer. “What’s that?”

“Cary McConnell. I remember how he came over to get some keys to help out when all this started with Mandy.”

“OK. Anyone else?”

“Just me. And trust me, I really did learn from my mistakes.”

As Jason went for the door, he got a whiff of bleach coming from Crawford’s office. The smell triggered a memory. Bleach had been smelled at the Crawfords’ place when he’d first been questioned. At the time, it had been an odoriferous alarm that Mitch might have done something to his wife and used bleach to obliterate the evidence of his crime.

“What’s with the bleach?” he asked.

“It’s Friday.”

Jason looked puzzled.

“Every Friday we do a wipe-down of all surfaces in Mitch’s office. Even when he isn’t here.”

“Why bleach? Why not Fantastik or something else? This stuff smells.”

Darla looked around to make sure no one was in earshot. “OCD,” she said, lowering her voice. “Doesn’t want anyone to know. But Mitch is a little crazy when it comes to germs. I used to have to do his house, too. Finally, someone convinced him that it wasn’t my job to clean his house.”

Jason could relate. Emily sometimes had him photocopy things that Gloria could have done just as well. He carried a badge, after all, not a degree from a clerical college.

Having her call go to Sheriff Kenyon’s voice mail was exceedingly frustrating, given what Steffi Johansson had to say. She tried three times to dial the number, but in her haste and fear, her fingers felt fat and kept hitting the wrong keys on her touch pad. Finally, after getting the voice mail a second time, she hung up. She dialed the