was probably right that it was best for everyone that we stayed around while they looked for the killer.”
“They still don’t know anything?”
“Not that I know. Hold on.” She reached into her pocket to pull out her vibrating cell phone. She smiled at first, and then her mouth drooped, and then it looked like she had been stabbed, all the blood drained from her face so fast. She dropped the phone and stood there, staring toward nothing.
I put out my arm to catch her. “What is it?”
“My mom. She’s dead.”
23
Kenya hadn’t remembered to wear her jacket from the library, and it was cold out. I wrapped my coat around her to ward off the brisk lake wind driving waves onto shore with white-capped ferocity, even though she seemed oblivious to the temperature. Gary Wohnt was the first to spot us and strode over to take Kenya off my hands, not even bothering to shoot me a look before leading her off to his car, where he had her sit half in and half out and offered her coffee.
I stayed close by.
“I’m sorry,” he told her gruffly. She didn’t acknowledge the coffee he was offering her, and he set it on the roof of his car before continuing. “Your father called you?”
She nodded.
“He should be here shortly. It looks like your mother committed suicide. We found a note on the scene.”
She looked at him timorously. “Can I see it?”
“I’m afraid not. We’re treating this as a crime scene until we know exactly what happened.”
Kenya began sobbing, deep hiccups of sadness. I stood there feeling helpless until I spotted Bernard Mink skulking along the perimeter, a tiny tape recorder shoved against his mouth. I told a blank-faced Kenya that I would be back and snuck up on Bernard from behind.
“Whatcha doing?”
He jumped and turned. His bruise had become an ugly green-yellow. “Fuck off.”
I was completely appalled. I’d meant to annoy him, sure, payment in kind. I hadn’t expected to be met with crude anger. I feared I was looking at the true Bernard Mink. “You can’t talk to me like that!”
“Looks like that’s one more thing you’re wrong about.”
“What’s the other thing?”
“Go away.”
“You go away. I’m only here because I’m trying to clear your ugly name in the murder of Bob Webber.”
He glanced back toward the second floor to the open door of Glokkmann’s room. “Not necessary. She ’fessed up. In her note.”
“To killing Webber?”
“Among other things.”
“How do you know?” Jeezus, the man pissed me off.
“Good reporting is about being at the right place at the right time. Plus, the officer over there is my sister’s husband and he was the first one on the scene.”
Crap. If his brother-in-law had told him what was in Glokkmann’s suicide note, he probably told him a lot more. It’s a cracking shame that curiosity is such a hard taskmaster. It made me beg this creep for answers. “Who found her body?”
“Cleaning lady.”
I grimaced. “That woman should get a raise.”
He ignored me. “They clean rooms a little after lunch for extended stays. Glokkmann’s body was barely cold when she walked in on it.”
“How’d she do it?”
“Who?” He was starting to walk away from me.
“Glokkmann, of course. How’d she kill herself?”
“Gun. Pretty messy, I hear. Can’t imagine this motel will stay open much longer.”
“No, me neither,” I mumbled as he walked off to talk to the man I presumed was his brother-in-law. Glokkmann’s death didn’t sit right, and it wasn’t just the gruesome manner in which it had been executed. Webber had been murdered in a way that looked like suicide, and then Swydecker had attempted suicide in a stereotypically feminine way while Glokkmann had offed herself with a gun, a rare choice for women. What other connections did all three share?
I returned to Kenya’s side. Wohnt still had his eyes on her, though her sobbing had subsided. “I can stay with her until her dad shows up.”
His eyes flashed at me, and for a second, I thought I saw gratitude.
Kenya didn’t want to talk, and so I retrieved a blanket from my car and sat with her on the motel’s lakeshore deck until her father showed up two hours later. He was a handsome man in his mid-fifties, trim with salt and pepper hair and wearing a suit that had probably started out the day neatly pressed but now looked grieved in. He ran up to his daughter and held her tightly. They both cried, and it about broke my heart. I had actively disliked Glokkmann, but she had people who loved her as a wife and mother, and their sorrow deserved respect.
Seeing Kenya in good hands, I dragged myself back to my car. I smelled something familiar next to it, maybe a combination of BO and tomatoes, but I didn’t see any sign of the drifter. Probably just something washed up on shore.
24
My shock wore off before my mom’s, and I spent the next few days sitting by her bedside as people came and went with casseroles and murmured sympathy. I don’t remember crying. I recalled guilt over my relief, but no tears. I’d seen that same shock in Kenya, and while she had the humanity to sob in the face of her mother’s death, I’d also spied a flash of relief in her eyes, and I understood. I hoped she would go easier on herself than I had.
I steered past the library and all the way to the south end of town, pulling into the Municipal Liquor Store parking lot. Nobody needed to know I’d had a drink. Actually, who would care? I was an adult. I’d only be letting myself down. Stepping out of my car, I wondered whether I should be civilized and buy a bottle of red wine, or be honest and buy vodka. I chose the vodka. I almost didn’t stop at the library on my way back. Mrs. Berns knew how to close up and could do fine on her own. The vodka, on the other hand, needed me.
The yellow brick called to me as I passed, though, and reminded me that I didn’t know whether or not Mrs. Berns had actually made it in. The vodka could wait ten minutes. I twitched into the parking lot and pulled into my Reserved for Librarian space. Walking toward the library entrance, I counted six cars in the paved lot, two of them
