Old World Murder - Kathleen Ernst [6]
The elderly woman’s seatbelt tethered her to the seat. Roelke snaked his hand past the jagged splinters of glass and crumpled metal, feeling for the driver’s pulse. A Hardees cup had spilled, leaving brown stains on the victim’s dress and the champagne-colored upholstery. The woman’s small purse—white leather, expensive—rested on the ceiling. One white shoe had fallen beside it.
Roelke turned away, and frowned. The dazed blonde woman sat on the ground at the edge of the road, leaning against the Pinto. She didn’t look like a flight risk, but Roelke took note of her plate number before radioing dispatch for assistance. “George 220. This is a probable J3.” Roelke knew the old woman was dead, but the medical people didn’t like patrol cops calling it.
He needed an ambulance, an accident reconstructionist, a coroner, and a wrecker. While he finished with dispatch, the growing wail of another siren sliced the soft spring evening. A county car braked to a shuddering halt, sending a little spray of gravel across the road. Waukesha County Sheriff’s Deputy Marge Bandacek emerged.
Roelke stifled an inward groan. Sheriff’s deputies provided him backup in Eagle, and he provided them backup outside the village limits. All in all everyone got along, helped each other out. But Marge was a pain in the ass.
He went to meet her. “Hey.”
“What we got?” Marge was a big-boned woman, with gray hair cut in a straight line just below her ears.
Roelke gestured. “Just the driver.”
“Fatal?” Deputy Bandacek said, too loudly. Roelke saw the blonde woman wince.
“Yeah. No skid marks, no sign of other trauma.”
More keening wails scarred the stillness as the emergency squad approached. Marge jerked her head toward the blonde woman. “That a witness?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Marge hitched up her pants. “I’ll talk to her.”
Highway S was just barely out of the Village of Eagle limits, which put Marge in charge. “I already got started with her,” Roelke told Marge, keeping his tone friendly. “She’s pretty upset. I’ll finish up there.”
He turned away before Marge could object, leaving her to deal with the EMTs. An old VW bus zoomed over the hill and pulled to a stop—a good Samaritan or gawker—followed closely by a Department of Natural Resources patrol car. Good. Marge could give orders to the DNR guy, and they’d both be busy with crowd control.
Roelke approached the blonde woman. She still sat on the ground, knees up, staring at the wreck. She was probably somewhere in her early thirties. Her pallor evidently came from genetics as much as shock, for she had the look of a classic Wisconsin Scandinavian. The eyes that finally looked up at him were chicory blue.
“I need to ask you some questions.” Roelke pulled a pad and pen from his shirt pocket, and crouched beside her. “What’s your name?”
“Chloe Ellefson. Um, Ingrid Ellefson.” A rosy flush stained her cheeks. “Ingrid Chloe Ellefson.”
“How did you know the victim?”
“I didn’t know her. I mean, I did know her.” Ms. Ellefson stared at her hands, which were trembling. “I’d just met her. Her name is—was—Mrs. Lundquist. Berget Lundquist.”
Roelke kept his tone even. “How did you kill Mrs. Lundquist?”
She jerked. “What?”
“You said, ‘I think I killed her,’” Roelke reminded her.
“I did?”
“You did.”
“Oh, God.” Ingrid Chloe Ellefson swiped at her eyes. The wrecker arrived. Roelke waited. It was a pleasant day, which didn’t feel right, but there it was. The state owned the land on either side of County S, and bits of prairie remnants and oak openings still buffered the rigid rows of pines planted three decades earlier in much of the land southwest of Eagle. In between the sporadic metallic moans emanating from the wrecked Buick as the rescue team bullied the car into releasing Mrs. Lundquist’s body, a meadowlark sang. The spring air smelled damp and fresh.
“She needed help,” Ms. Ellefson began finally. “And I wasn’t able to help her.”
By the time she’d haltingly reconstructed her meeting at the Restoration trailer, Roelke was satisfied