Old World Murder - Kathleen Ernst [50]
Roelke glanced at his watch. “If you can be ready to go in, say, twenty minutes, I can run you down to Elkhorn.”
She shoved some hair back from her face. “Well … OK. Thanks. That’ll save me another cab fare. Just let me call work and say I’m going to be late.”
Roelke’s good humor slipped back behind his cop face on the drive. He didn’t speak until he pulled up in front of a nondescript diner called the Cloverleaf. “This place serves good food.”
Chloe climbed out of the truck and turned back to him before shutting the door. “Thanks again. I’m grateful.”
“Get some eggs, and some juice,” he ordered. “A nutritious breakfast will do you good. After you get your car, don’t forget to stop at the sheriff’s station.”
“I don’t need you to tell me …” Chloe stared at her double reflection in his sunglasses and swallowed what she’d been about to say. “I won’t forget.”
The diner was noisy and smelled of fried eggs and baking bread. Most of the customers were farmers and truckers, by the looks of them. Always a good sign. Chloe bought a newspaper and an enormous apple fritter, and settled down at a corner table. Three cups of coffee later, she felt more ready to face the day.
A large check freed her car from George, the mechanic. Car repairs were not in the budget. Chloe was starting to think she’d have to hit her parents up for a loan. Depressing thought.
An incident report freed her from further responsibility at the sheriff’s office. A polite young deputy declined Chloe’s offer to produce the window screen in question. “Call us if you see any further suspicious activity,” he said.
My suspicions are spread over three counties, Chloe thought, as she drove toward Old World Wisconsin. The historic site … her own farmhouse … Mrs. Lundquist’s home. Maybe she should have searched the dead woman’s home more thoroughly when she had the chance. But for what?
____
Roelke sat at the station that afternoon, trying to tune out the music from Marie’s radio. Her favorite station played groups like Air Supply and The Little River Band. The bland sugar-pop made his teeth ache.
All right. Focus. He opened his file box of index cards, and spread out his big Eagle street map in front of him. Whenever he answered a call, Roelke either created an index card for the address or added to an existing card. Then he made a tiny corresponding X on the map. Red for domestics, green for drugs, blue for everything else. A line of red Xs marked a house on Hawthorne Drive. The woman who lived there called 911 whenever her husband hit her, but then always refused to press charges. A line of blue Xs marked an elderly widow’s house. She lived behind the school, and called whenever she heard kids on the grounds after dark.
Now he penciled a circle around an empty rectangle that represented Stanley Colontuono’s house, a nondescript ranch at the end of a quiet residential street. Roelke had checked his record. Two traffic violations in the past three years, nothing more. Nothing more in the county files, either.
Roelke frowned. He didn’t have a damn thing to pin on Stanley Colontuono. But the man had been hiding something, that night at the bar.
“Watcha looking at?” Skeet Deardorff suddenly loomed over his shoulder. He was a round-faced, ginger-haired man in his mid-twenties who was already married and the father of two.
“Nothing much.”
“That’s the blue house at the end of Marigold Court?” Skeet leaned close and tapped the spot Roelke had circled. “Did you get another disturbance call?”
Another? Roelke turned his chair to look at Skeet. “What was the first one?”
“I responded to a call … I think it was two Friday nights ago. A neighbor complained about loud music.” Skeet stepped to his locker, opened it, and began unbuttoning his uniform shirt.
Roelke frowned. “Did you write it up?”
“No,” Skeet admitted, with a sheepish shrug.
“Jesus, Skeet!”
“I was about to go off shift, and I was dog-tired.” Skeet said defensively. “It was no big deal. I knocked