Heart of Ice

“Oh, Emily, I tried to get ahold of you all afternoon.”

“I saw your calls.”

He told her about Irv Watkins’s beloved DVR and how he’d recorded a TV magazine show’s segment on Belinda Harriman’s murder.

Emily’s eyes flooded just then. “I remember that case. She was found at Phantom Lake, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah, in a sleeping bag,” Chris said, pausing to let the words sink in. “Em, in the background of the video you can clearly see Cary, putting up posters. He was a law student back then. The police questioned him. They just liked the boyfriend better for the crime.”

“They convicted the boyfriend, didn’t they?”

“Yes, he’s still in prison.”

Within hours, the media swooped in on Cherrystone to cover the story of the crooked lawyer and the client he’d almost defended right into a date with the gallows. Mitch Crawford had retained a new lawyer by then, threatening all the players in the saga with a lawsuit “the likes of which Cherrystone had never seen.”

Emily tried to stay out of the fray as much as possible. Certainly a killer was captured, but there was nothing to be gleeful about. It wasn’t justice at all. Just a twisted end to a very sad saga. She felt sickness in the pit of her stomach when the Idaho police investigator said they’d found Cary’s pickup a half a mile from the cabin. She wondered if hidden in the grooves and spaces around the rivets were pieces of Mandy. Her DNA. Her hair. Her blood. Or Donna Rayburn? What about her? She knew that no matter how many times he might have detailed that truck, something would be there that would scream to the world that Mandy had been back there. Heaped like garbage, wrapped in a cocoon.

To be hidden away in a frozen pond.

I like hauling stuff around on the weekend, he’d told her.

She thought of how Cary had touched her. How they’d made love. How he told her that she was beautiful, sexy, smart. How he wanted to possess her. A shiver went down her spine.

Instincts, Emily, she thought. Trust your instincts.

She took a deep breath. She’d be OK. She was strong.

Emily didn’t know that someone had come to Cherrystone with a dark payback plan that could cost her everything.

Chapter Sixty-nine

Garden Grove

Olivia Barton had never been a stupid woman. No one could say so. But as the hours melted she thought back to the moment of truth, the time when her life’s lessons–forged brilliance should not have been dimmed by her love for Michael Barton.

What happened the morning her husband left for the Pacific Northwest weighed on her. It was an anvil on a chain around her neck, choking her, reminding her that what she had with Michael Barton might have been nothing more than an illusion. It was like a slice of the skin, an opening so wide and bloody that it would never heal. She played it over and over.

Late again! The truck from St. Vincent’s would be at the Bartons’ later that morning, after Michael left for the airport. On the corner of the bed sat Michael’s suitcase, opened, packed with everything but toiletries. While he showered, Olivia carried a stack of old kids’ clothes to some boxes he had set aside for the charity collection in the garage. She’d meant to be more organized and was grateful to get the things out of the house and into the hands of someone who could use them.

Olivia had always taken great care with Danny and Carla’s hand-me-downs. She’d been through hard times with her own family growing up, and knew how much a little boy or girl would appreciate that what they’d been given was truly a gift and not someone else’s garbage. Her mother told her that a decent person knew the difference between giving something to someone who needed it, and boxing up junk no longer wanted.

Four cardboard boxes were lined up next to the flawlessly organized workbench. Olivia bent down with the stack of baby blankets that she’d ironed into perfect squares and placed into separate gallon-sized plastic Ziploc bags. They were, she knew, as good as new. She imagined Danny and Carla as babies. A bittersweet smile came to her lips. She felt the surge of love that comes with the reminders of how tiny, how precious her children were.

Good memories in these blankets.

She looked around to see if there was anything else she’d be able to offer up before the St. Vinnie’s truck lumbered down the street. And there it was. A perfect candidate up on a shelf along with some paint cans, gardening supplies, and a minigraveyard of kitchen countertop appliances.

“Someone out there could use a pizza cooker more than we did,” she thought as she pulled the box from the shelf. It had been a wedding gift. Never used. Never really needed by anyone, but it was brand new and might make someone happy. She blew off a very thin layer of dust and the particles illuminated in the morning sunlight from the garage’s east-facing window fell like tiny stars to the cement floor. She looked back up at the space where the pizza cooker had been. Another, smaller box had been behind it. A picture on the side indicated that the box held a Waterford vase.

“I don’t remember getting that,” she said, aloud.

It was heavy, but not Waterford heavy. She pulled off the top and peered inside.

“What?”

Coiled like snakes were a half dozen dog collars and chains.

Olivia pushed her fingertips through the cardboard carton, moving the collars and chains to get a better view. She tilted the box toward the window to catch more light. A silver B and Z glinted from a slender cable chain. She recognized the Greek letters.

Michael stood in the doorway, proffering two steaming mugs. “Honey, coffee’s ready!”

Her back to him, Olivia slammed the lid shut and set it behind the stack of baby blankets. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d seen. She knew, however, that it was not meant to be seen. Her pulse accelerated. She spun around and put on an exaggerated grimace.

It was false affectation and she worried that he’d think so. He could read her so easily.

“So much to get rid of,” she said, taking a cup from Michael’s outstretched hand and willing her heart to stop pounding.

She didn’t know it, but her husband had been thinking the very same thing.

“Isn’t that the truth,” he said, his eyes moving across the garage from the box of hand-me-downs to the shelf where the pizza cooker and Waterford box had been.

The flight from LAX had been uneventful. Michael Barton changed planes in Seattle and took a midday flight that landed him in Spokane at a little after three. During his downtime at the airport, he had a cup of coffee and answered some e-mails from work and an “I miss you already” note to Olivia. They’d talk after he got settled in Spokane. He checked into the Davenport, one of Spokane’s grand old hotels, built originally in 1914 as the first hotel with air-conditioning—a monumental feat of its day. It had fallen on hard times, but had been restored in recent years to its former luster. Uniformed bell captains and front-desk clerks were back in force.

The Kmart on Spokane’s South Hill had one of those parking lots that covered about ten acres, though one or two would have sufficed even on the busiest shopping days of the year. On a rainy day, all slick and wet, it was a black sea anchored by a pier of blocky buildings outfitted with a giant red K.

Michael Barton parked his rental car farther from the front door than necessary and walked inside. Despite the season, he wore dark glasses. He wore a hooded sweatshirt that made him look like a Unabomber wannabe. He wore the getup so that he wouldn’t be noticed, couldn’t be identified. Past the Martha Stewart collection, past