Page 64 of Cold as Hell

“I put away ours,” Dalton says. “Including my wife’s underwear.”

“Well, I don’t. The laundry is her job. Always has been. And before you think that’s some chauvinistic bullshit, I do dishes and she does laundry.”

“When was it last done?” I ask.

He throws up his hands. “How would I know? Again, not my job. She takes the laundry and brings it back.”

We have a centralized facility here, as in Rockton. I can check when it was last done for Lynn and Grant, which might narrow down the window of when that lure could have been dropped off. Still, if it’d been a few days, that increased the risk of Lynn finding it.

“Back up to yesterday morning,” I say.

“I wish I could,” he mutters, and again, I’m reminded that he really is grieving. Or doing a good job of faking it.

“When you left your apartment, did you lock the door?” I ask.

“Lynn and I left together for work. We never lock it.”

“What time was that?”

He peers at me. “Are you suggesting someone planted that lure?”

“I’m running through all possibilities. Now, what time did you leave?”

I make notes of his comings and goings that day. Both Lynn and Grant worked all morning, and neither seems to have returned before the storm. Since then, Grant has come and gone, never locking the door. There would have been plenty of opportunities for Lynn’s killer to slip in and leave that lure.

The family building is currently being used for couples, too, since the only family is Dana and the boys. Being seen hanging around when you don’t live there would be noticed… unless you have a reason for hanging around. Unless people are accustomed to seeing you at that building because you’re tutoring the two boys who live there.

And, once again, the pendulum swings back to Thierry.

I go home after that. I stay up for a while talking over the case with Dalton, but I’m in bed shortly after midnight, and thankfully, I’m too exhausted to lie there working it through. The next thing I know, it’s morning, and I wake to Dalton packing our bags.

“The weather is clear enough to leave?” I say.

He grunts.

I push up into a sitting position. “I’m not going to argue against leaving, Eric. I hate taking off before this case is solved, but I won’t risk our baby’s life for that. If the weather is good enough to fly, I just need time to talk to Will. He’ll be in charge of the case. He can investigate, but mostly, we’ll just need the town to be locked down until we return. Which, I know, maynot be for a few weeks. I don’t expect Will to solve the case, but I do trust him—and the others—to lock down tight and keep the killer from striking again.”

“The weather isn’t good enough to go,” he says. “That’s what I’m grumbling about. The cloud cover’s too low. I’m hoping it’ll clear, though. Meanwhile, you have time to keep working the case.”

When he walks close, I pull him into a kiss. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank the damn clouds.”

“I know, and I also know you want to leave as soon as possible. Which we will. I promise.”

I start my day with a breakfast meeting. It’s supposed to be a private meeting with Anders, in preparation for handing over the case, but I find him at the clinic, and it’s hard to call him away without making April feel excluded. And the more I think of it, the more I realize she should be part of this. Not only is she our medical examiner, but she’s discovered a love of mysteries. They appeal to her problem-solving brain. Our mysteries might not be as tidy as the ones she reads—and she may consider that my fault, for not being as good as those fictional detectives—but she does appreciate any chance to give her mental muscles a workout.

So it’s a meeting for three. Well, four, when Dalton returns with breakfast. But then he also returns with Yolanda.

“She asked the status of the investigation,” he grumbles. “I made the mistake of telling her.”

“He said you were discussing it with Will over breakfast,” Yolanda says. “I decided to join.”

I look up at her from the chair April insisted I sit in. “You’realways saying you want to be treated like everyone else and not pull rank… and then you pull rank.”

“Pfft.” She sets a plate of bakery goodies on the counter. “I never said I won’t pull rank. I totally will, when it suits me. What’s the point of privilege if you can’t wield it to get what you want? So fill me in. I’m guessing this bullshit about Lynn’s death probably being accidental is just that—bullshit. You know it’s murder.”

April says, “Someone stripped her, tied her down, and watched her die of hypothermia.”

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