Page 59 of Snow Creek

Should have borrowed the ugly Crocs, I think. At least no one would have seen me in them. Maybe a squirrel but I could live with that.

I remove my jacket and fold it neatly to carry the rest of the way. I can’t show up looking like some derelict at Mrs. Wheaton’s memorial. For all I know, Bernie notified the media.

I had no idea they were coming. Really, I’m just as shocked as you are.

The trail leads me to the exact spot where the truck went down. A deep cut in the earth shows where the tow truck driver dragged it up to the road, where a flatbed had been brought to take it for processing at the same crime lab—only to tell us that an accelerant had been used and the VIN hadn’t been completely removed. The last three digits and one of the middle letters were still legible.

The truck was indeed Merritt Wheaton’s.

When I get back to the Torrance house, I try the door one more time. Again, no answer.

Twenty-Seven

Crime scene tape makes for an unsettling memorial decoration. It flaps in the breeze over by the barn and around the Quonset hut. I look at my phone, but of course, no word on the blood and hair evidence that Mindy collected yesterday. A half dozen cars are lined up in the field adjacent to the small apple orchard. I park behind Sheriff.

Before I shut my door, I smell wintergreen.

Ruth Turner is standing next to me. Behind her, a young woman of about twenty. She has long dark hair parted in the center. Her eyes are blue like her mother’s.

“You must be Eve,” I say.

She gives me a shy smile. “That’s me.”

Her mother surprises me and hugs me. I feel her body wilting in my arms. It’s uncomfortable because I don’t know her, but she needs it.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Ruth,” I say. “I know that words don’t fill an empty space. I know that from experience.”

“Thank you, Detective Carpenter. I prayed all last night you’d be here. I’m so grateful that it’s over. Thank you for finding her. Ida is in our heavenly Father’s loving arms. No more pain. Only the joy of being with Him.”

I look up. “Damn, you, Bernie!”

A news crew is setting up.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Ruth and Eve. “Let’s go inside.”

“I had no idea so many would come,” Bernie says.

“I doubt that.”

She glares at me. “Excuse me, Detective?”

I want to say there’s no excuse for you, but I don’t. Given the occasion and the fact that I’m in my almost, not quite mid-thirties.

Sheriff is drinking lemonade.

“Hey,” I say, standing close. “I think I’m on to something.”

“What?” he says, reaching for Sarah’s homemade taffy.

“We need to go back to the Torrance place.”

He wants to answer but his teeth are stuck.

He’s going to lose a filling for sure.

“Later,” I say.

On the beautiful cherry table her husband built is the shroud-wrapped body of Ida Wheaton. Joshua and Sarah are talking with their aunt and cousin. I approach and don’t interrupt. Instead I look over the white muslin used to wrap her. The sad irony of it all comes to me. She was wrapped up after she was murdered. And wrapped a second time the morning of her memorial. I thought it would feel odd, burying someone among trees. Creating an environment that would break down a human body for the good of the earth. It didn’t. In part because of the strange beauty of it all. Ida’s children have decorated the outside of the shroud with orange and yellow nasturtium blossoms, bright green sprigs of spearmint and the dusty green of rosemary. It is needed and so is the fan on the window. It faces out, spewing the underlying odor of their mother’s decaying body. It had been super-chilled at the morgue, but that can only slow decay. It can’t stop it.

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