Heart of Ice

Chapter Eight

The number on the minuscule screen of her cell phone had long been committed to memory.

She answered it immediately. Before she spoke, she heard his voice.

“Your Crawford case is making noise all the way over here in Seattle.”

It was Chris, of course.

“No kidding,” she said. “Gloria’s been fielding calls from the Seattle media like nobody’s business,” she said, almost feeling a little awkward. She was unsure if he’d called to talk shop—or to ask her to reconsider his proposal. She felt her face grow a little warm and looked around her office to make sure she was really alone just in case the conversation veered toward the personal.

“I hope some of the media attention does us some good out here.”

“Reporters are like maggots on a corpse,” he said. “They have a job to do.”

Emily let out a laugh. Chris always had a kind of cut-to-the-chase perspective when it came to everything. She watched as a pair of reserve officers walked by her office window. She waved at them. The sight of the young men snapped her out of the place that she was revisiting in her mind.

“Em?”

“I’m here. Just thinking. Sorry. Chris…” She let her words trail off to a whisper. “I miss you.”

“I know. Me, too. I’m coming to Cherrystone this weekend. I thought maybe this would be a good time to see where we stand.”

“In the middle of a possible murder investigation?”

“You were always best when you were on the hunt for a killer,” he said.

She laughed. “I think you might have something there. I know that I’m always happiest when I’m going after the bad guy.”

“Yup. And the guy you have in Cherrystone is as rotten as they come.”

“Mitch Crawford is really something, isn’t he?” she said. “What did you think of his TV performance? Made me sick to my stomach.”

“We only got a snip of it on the Seattle news, but yeah, made me sick, too. He seems preoccupied with how clever he is, how much dough he has in the bank, and absolutely everything in the world except for one thing.”

Emily nodded as he spoke, before interjecting, “Mandy.”

“He’s your guy, all right.”

“I can take care of this on my own, you know.”

“Of course you can. But you know how much fun we’ll have going after him,” he said. “And, Emily, don’t worry about my fee. Dinner with you will be satisfactory.”

“Let me think about that,” she said, kidding him to within in an inch of his life. “OK. Sounds good. When can you get here?”

“In my car now.”

Emily heard a car honk and she spun around and looked in front of the sheriff’s office.

Chris Collier, his lightly graying hair framing a handsome face that still retained the chiseled good looks of his youth, smiled and offered a quick wave through an open window.

Gotcha! He was already here.

While she was glad and surprised to see him, Emily felt a weird flutter of annoyance come over her. Had Chris come because he thinks I can’t work the case without him? Did he think I was too proud to ask for help on my own, when I determined I could use some?

His smile disarmed her and she glanced at her schedule to make sure nothing was pressing. Good. Quit overthinking, Emily, she thought.

On the way over to Cherrystone, a simple phrase reverberated during the drive. There was no other life without Emily. No other life he wanted. Chris Collier felt twinges of that from the day they’d reconnected after all those years of being apart—years of being married to the wrong people. Emily had David, the doctor. He had Jessica, the librarian. Neither spouse was the right match. And neither could be.

From his own failed marriage, Chris knew both the joy and the heartache of trying to make two people into an unbreakable unit. The love he had for his ex-wife had been lost long before Emily came back into Chris’s life. At first, he figured he could chalk up his mistakes to the fact that the life of a cop held little room for anything that resembled a real life. He’d been called away on a murder investigation in the middle of his oldest son’s Little League game—the game in which the boy had pitched a near perfect game. For the rest of his son’s life, there would always be the idea that “your job always came first.” Jessica Collier would not have a problem concurring when her son said those things. She, too, had felt the chilly glow of a cop’s blue light.

“I can’t compete with a dead girl. No woman can,” she told case-obsessed Chris the morning she packed her bags, took the kids, and returned to Idaho where she had family.

Chris said he understood, but at the time he was so wrapped up in a murder investigation that he really didn’t process his own personal loss—or the truth behind his wife’s analysis of the state of their marriage.

With Emily, there was the promise of a do-over. They were no longer kids, no longer bound to make the same mistakes. Their children were grown. Their lives were pitched toward a time when the focus was aimed more at themselves, their needs. They’d had their breakups. They had their passionate, endless nights. The time for being together was now. That moment. Chris Collier was certain.

He practiced the words in his head.

“Emily, we’ve had our ups and downs. We’ve been through things so dark and dangerous that we almost have no right to be here anymore. But we are. And I know now, more than ever, that life with you is the only life I want to have.”

Chris smiled at the idea that he needed to rehearse. Why was it so hard to be vulnerable to the ones who love us most?

But that evening, after dinner, talk about the case, Jenna, Chris’s condo, the subject of their future just didn’t wind its way into the conversation—rehearsals or not. It just didn’t seem to fit.

“The temp is dropping,” Emily said, pulling another comforter from the bench at the foot of her bed and spreading it across the mint green and white quilt that her mother had made.

Chris bent down to help her with the covers, and he placed his hand on the small of her back. She turned around and they kissed. She had missed the warmth of his touch, how he tasted. The way that he pulled her close. He undressed her in the pale light of the bedroom lamp, letting her blouse and dark wool skirt fall in a heap by her feet. He unhooked her bra. Emily returned the favor by unbuttoning his shirt. His body was lean, muscular, but not through some ridiculous workout regimen. Chris Collier played racquet-ball, ate right, and was blessed with genetics that kept him off the treadmill like so many men his age chasing after the body that they never really had, even in their twenties. The scar from the gunshot five years before had lightened somewhat; the hair on his chest encircled it with a light brown fringe.

Emily touched her fingertip to the scar. It was smooth, harder than his skin.

“I could have lost you forever,” she said.

“I’m here now.”

“I know,” she said, as they fell onto the bed. As they kissed, he embraced her with the right mix of tenderness and passion. Emily felt like she was falling into a warm pool, being carried away. She knew she’d always loved Chris. His touch, his taste, his body were everything she missed and everything she needed. She kicked the top quilt to the floor.

“We won’t need that extra blanket,” she said.

Chris kissed her again, deeply. “No, babe, we won’t.” He reached over her and turned off the light.

Sweat pooled under Mitch Crawford’s arms, and his lips were chapped from a nervous habit that had him constantly moistening them with his tongue. He’d had bad days before, but nothing like the ones that were pulling him downward right then. It was one of the late nights at the dealership, with two salesmen on the floor and Darla Montague at her desk answering phones and keeping the glass coffeepots from burning to black bottoms.

Mitch stared out the window at the lot.

“You all right?” Darla asked, entering the room with the week’s sales reports, commissions, and payrolls. She set the file on his desk, but Mitch kept his gaze toward the window.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Do you need anything?”

He turned to look at her. His eyes had flooded. “I’m sorry, Darla.”

“Sorry?”

“Sorry for everything I did to you. I’m a lousy person, I know that. I guess everyone does.”

Darla didn’t want to argue. She knew what kind of man Mitch Crawford was. He was older. He was her boss. He’d taken advantage of her. She probably could sue for something. She recognized all of that on some level. But she didn’t want to do anything but forget her own foolishness.

“It’s OK,” she said. “We were both at fault.”

“I’ve really screwed up,” he said. “I’ve really made a mess of things.” He opened the file folder and glanced at the reports. “Maybe next month will be better.” He fanned out the payroll checks and started to sign each one. The last one was a check made out to himself. He looked at Darla as he tore it up.

“Maybe next month,” he said. “Can’t really afford to pay myself right now.”

Darla stayed mute. The owner of the dealership hadn’t drawn a salary for two months. If he had, she was sure that a couple of the car cleaners would have to be let go. He kept telling her that “those guys have kids” and “Mandy and I will get by. We have savings.”

But then Mandy was gone.

Darla wondered if financial problems had driven Mandy away, away and into the arms of another man. Sure, Mitch was a jerk and a cad, but there were times when it almost seemed as if he’d had a heart beating somewhere inside.

It looked like Mitch was about to cry.

“Mr. Crawford, what can I do?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I found Toby.”

“He came home?”

“No, the damn dog must have fallen into the pool and got caught under the plastic cover. He’s dead, Darla. I thought Mandy took him. But she didn’t. Toby’s dead.”

Darla looked like she was going to cry. She knew what that dog meant to her boss. “You need to tell the sheriff. This is important.”

Mitch lined up three pens in a faultless row and looked out his office window to toward the showroom.

“Why bother? They think I killed her. They’ll probably think I killed the dog, too.”

She wasn’t the jumping type, but Emily almost jumped for joy when Camille Hazelton finally secured a warrant to search Mitch Crawford’s home on Larkspur. It had taken some doing. Certainly there was probable cause within hours of the first report of Mandy missing, but the Crawford name still had a residual currency among the county judges. Camille kept saying she needed more. Finally, there had been enough. The car, the fact that none of Mandy’s credit cards had been used, and that her dependable nature at work had been compromised by her sudden absence all played a role. Techs came from Spokane to comb through the house, spray luminal, and procure the Crawfords’ laptop. Emily and Jason oversaw the small army of CSIs as they poked and prodded the contents of the massive home. No blood was found anywhere. In fact, there was no trace that Mandy had even been there—outside of clothes in her closet in the master suite. Even her hairbrush was devoid of any hairs.

The strobe of a camera flash swept over every space.

“Jesus, Sheriff,” Jason said as they stood in the kitchen and watched the swarm of techies wave their ultraviolet lights over every surface, “you’d think Mr. Clean lived here.”

Emily shuddered as a cold breeze blew in from the open front door.

“Even Mr. Clean can make a mistake,” she said. “Just takes one.”