The Heirloom Murders - Kathleen Ernst [103]
Chloe caught up at the springhouse door. Martine grabbed Guest’s shiny new padlock and gave it a wrenching pull. “Damn!” she muttered, then raised her voice. “Gran? You OK in there?”
No answer. Fear darkened Martine’s eyes. Chloe followed as Martine ran around the building to a waist-level hole where several stones had been hacked from the crumbling mortar. She thrust her upper body through the hole, pushed off the ground, and slithered through.
As Chloe reached the hole she heard Martine moan. “Oh, Gran.”
Something hot and white and furious boiled up and over. Chloe forgot that her muscles didn’t work. She ran across the yard, past Martine’s father and uncle where they stood with shotguns trained on Guest. “You killed Frieda!” she screamed. “You maybe killed Dellyn! And you almost killed me! All for some seeds!”
Guest’s lip curled in a sneer. He opened the fingers of his clenched fist. The breeze snatched a folded bit of brown paper he’d been holding and danced it away, scattering its miniscule contents.
_____
Roelke had asked Meili to call dispatch once he was sure Chloe and Dellyn were OK. Since getting back to the EPD, Roelke had radioed twice to see if Alpine Boy had checked in. Nada. Roelke didn’t know whether that meant the women were not OK, or if Meili was just being a jerk.
Maybe, Roelke thought, I shouldn’t have threatened the guy.
He’d just finished faxing his report on Lester Odell to the DA when the phone rang. Roelke snatched it. “McKenna here.” He braced himself to hear Meili’s voice.
“R-Roelke?” Chloe quavered.
Jesus. The clock stopped ticking. Roelke’s unnecessary functions—sight, for example—stopped working. His body rejected everything other than her voice. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“I’m f-fine,” Chloe said. “But Dellyn’s in the hospital. She got m-mauled by a German shepherd. She lost a lot of blood, and for a while they weren’t sure …” Another loud sniffle. “They think she’ll pull through. But Roelke? Frieda and Johann—they’re both dead.” She began to weep.
A man’s voice murmured something in the background. Meili. Roelke ached with the longing to be there, to be the one providing comfort. “Who are Frieda and Johann?” he asked after a moment.
She blew her nose. “This wonderful old Swiss couple. I’ll tell you about them when you get here. We’re at the hospital in Monroe. I mean … can you come? You really need to. The cops have Edwin Guest, and—”
“Hold tight,” Roelke said. “I’m on my way.”
Roelke drove hot, lights-and-sirens, and made it to Monroe in an hour. He found Chloe and Meili huddled into orange plastic chairs in the ER waiting room. Chloe’s head was on Meili’s shoulder; her eyes were closed. Roelke was enormously glad that he saw them a moment before Meili saw him. Roelke’s cop face was in place when Meili nudged Chloe awake.
Roelke pulled another chair in front of the couple and sat. “You’re OK?” he asked Chloe.
Chloe sat up straight, wiped her eyes, nodded. “I’m OK.”
Roelke forced himself to look Meili in the eye. “Thank you.”
Meili nodded. There was no look of triumph in his face. Triumph would likely come later, when the shock of whatever had unfolded this evening had passed.
_____
“Guest won’t be released tonight,” Officer Buckley of the New Glarus PD told Roelke. “The arrow—”
The arrow?
“—came close to the hip. There’s joint damage.” Buckley shrugged. He was middle-aged but still compact and muscular, with a welcome air of competency. “He might need surgery.”
“Did he kill the elderly couple?” Roelke asked. “The Frietags?”
The other man spread his hands in a Who knows? gesture. “That’s not yet clear. Guest lawyered up real quick. Then Miss Ellefson told us what she knew, and said she’d called you. I figured I’d wait, since you’ve already had contact with the guy.”
“Thanks,” Roelke said. “I’ll see what I can shake out of him.”
Buckley led him into a closet-sized room. Guest looked even smaller than usual lying on the pillows of a hospital bed, wearing a gown. A gray-haired man in a navy pin-striped suit sat vigil