The Heirloom Murders - Kathleen Ernst [91]
It was 7:15. Roelke looked up a phone number, dialed. “Hey, Peggy—yeah, it’s me. I’m sorry to call so—yeah, I am at work. I—yeah, I am feeling better, thanks for asking. I—sure. I could meet you then.” Roelke closed his eyes, hoping he was doing the right thing.
He’d made one more call before Marie arrived fifteen minutes later. The clerk assessed him with raised eyebrows. “Isn’t this your day off ?” She sat down at her desk, opened a file drawer, and dropped her purse inside.
“Yeah. But I needed to ask you a question.”
“There’s this thing called a telephone …”
Roelke grabbed a vacant chair, scooted it close, and dropped into it. “Has the Police Committee made their decision?”
The clerk sobered at once. “No. Nothing yet.”
That was good, right? He needed to get through the next day or so without any walls crashing down. “Anything new on Harriet Van Dyne’s murder?”
“No. Chief has a call in.”
OK, down to business. “Marie, you remember that day we got the suicide call from Bonnie Sabatola? What happened after Skeet and I left?”
“Not much. I tried to keep her on the line, but she wouldn’t talk.”
“Do you remember what she said?”
Marie frowned. “What’s this about?”
“Probably a wild goose chase,” he admitted. “But I just can’t put this one to rest until I’ve run every detail to ground.”
“I asked her to tell me how she was feeling. I told her it would help me understand.” Marie rubbed at a chip in the nail polish on one thumbnail. “Sometimes if people just have a chance to talk to someone, it can help. And Roelke, for a minute there, I thought I’d reached her.”
This was new information. “Yeah?”
“I said that I imagined she must feel exhausted. And she said, ‘I am. I’m just so, so tired.’” Marie looked at Roelke soberly. “And I thought, OK! We’ve actually made a connection!”
“What happened then?”
“Mrs. Sabatola said, ‘Oh Jesus.’ And then she hung up.”
Roelke grimly considered that tidbit. He should have talked with Marie about this days ago. For Bonnie’s sake, but also for Marie’s. Very little got to Marie. Her conversation with Bonnie Sabatola obviously did.
“Sometimes all we can do is try,” he told her.
“Yeah.” Marie straightened her shoulders, and swiveled her chair back to her typewriter. “Get out of here. I need to get some work done.”
Roelke collected some pamphlets from a file on the counter. Then he headed back out.
The village of Eagle had maintained a fire station since the fifties—decades longer than the police department had been in business—and an EMT squad since 1978. Other than the chief, all the responders were volunteers. And there was a long waiting list to get in. The cops and the firefighters often went out on calls together. Everyone pretty much got along and worked well together. It was another thing Roelke liked about working in Eagle.
Denise Miller wasn’t on call that morning, but Roelke had phoned her at home, and she’d agreed to meet him at the station. She was so short she needed to stand back from most of the men so she didn’t crick her neck making eye contact. But she was good at her job, and didn’t seem to have any trouble fitting into the mostly male world at the fire station.
Roelke found her in the break room. “Hey, Denise. Thanks for coming in.”
“No problem. The kids are at summer camp, so I’m fancy free. Whatcha need?”
Someone had left a bowl of pretzels on the table. Roelke took one and snapped off the tip. “You were on that suicide call in the state forest. I’m just trying to close the file on that one. I went over that scene with a flea comb, but …” He snapped off another piece. “Sometimes it helps to have another pair of eyes. Did anything strike you as odd there?”
Denise tipped her head, considering. “Odd? No.”
“Do you … that is, could you go over what you remember?”
“Well …” Denise thought a moment before cataloging what she’d found. Her memories of Bonnie’s body—its condition—meshed perfectly with Roelke’s.
No surprise there. That was good, actually, even if unhelpful. “Thanks,” he said.