Heart of Ice

Chapter Twelve

The next day, Emily Kenyon’s morning started as it always did: She pulled into the line at Java the Hut, and ran through a mental checklist of what she’d be doing that day. She wrote a quick “luv u, jenna. see u soon!” to her daughter, using the instant-note feature that allowed her to scroll down and select a prewritten message without having to write each letter. It was cheating, in a way. But at 7 A.M., what in the world was a mother with a murder investigation supposed to do?

She ordered a quad latte instead of the usual triple and tipped the girl a dollar instead of the remaining change. It was the holiday season, of course.

Her list for the day:

Call Chris about condo listing.

Thank Mandy’s supporters.

Talk with Mandy’s parents.

Review Crawford financial documents.

Check cell phone records.

Check Internet activity and e-mail.

Review ATM and credit card transactions.

Pray for a miracle.

Christmas music was playing softly in the background of the Landon Avenue Methodist Church meeting room, where three women worked in unison to find Mandy Crawford. With the color-coordinated finesse of the champion scrap-bookers that they were, they’d set up a Mandy Central that rightly would be the envy of many larger organizations. Even professional ones.

When Emily stopped in on her way to the office and did a quick once-over, she half-expected missing child advocate John Walsh to pop out of the men’s room down the hall. They’d made two trips to the copy center for fliers and had made two dozen outreach calls to community leaders who might be able to spread the word. Not a bad amount of work already done, considering that it was barely half past eight in the morning. The three women all had jobs, but had taken the early part of the morning off so they could get a start on their efforts to bring Mandy Crawford back home.

Emily was troubled by something she’d heard on the Spokane newscast she’d watched with Jason the day before. She entered with a smile, said hello, and then got right down to business.

“Has Mitch Crawford been over here to help with the search?”

Erica Benoit, who’d been friends with Mandy through a scrapbooking group, let out a laugh.

“I saw that SOB on TV last night, too. He’s only been over here one time. I asked him to bring one of Mandy’s photos—a recent one—so we could put it on the flier and on the Web. The way he put us off, you’d think we were going to swab his mouth for DNA or something.”

The other women laughed.

“My daughter, Michelle, is making a MySpace page for Mandy,” Alana Gutierrez said, looking up from her laptop.

“Good idea. So did Mitch get you the photo?” Emily asked.

Alana looked disgusted as she snapped her laptop shut. “Begrudgingly, I’d say. He made sure we cropped him out of the photo.”

“Like we wanted to include him,” Erica said, rolling her eyes.

“The guy’s ego is so big,” said Tammy Sells, another scrap-booker. Tammy was older than the other two, a heavyset redhead with a penchant for gauzy tunics even in the dead of winter. “I’ve never liked him. I’ve never, I’m glad to say, never bought a car from him, either. Gives me the creeps. I’d rather pay twice the amount to some other car dealer than to line the pockets of that abrasive piece of scum.”

“You seem to be holding back,” Emily said with a smile. “Tell us how you really feel about Mitch Crawford.”

Erica and Alana laughed a little, but Tammy didn’t crack a smile. “I guess you know how I feel. Good God, we’re trying to help bring home his wife and he’s too busy to come down here.”

“So,” Emily said, “he hasn’t been down here making calls, pouring coffee, preparing fliers?”

“Are you kidding? It seems like he’s the last one on the list when it comes to people in Cherrystone who care about Mandy.”

“I know what you’re getting at and I’d say that his lawyer is as big a liar as his client,” Erica said.

Emily didn’t argue with that, in fact, Tammy’s remark made her feel pretty good just then.

“Coffee, Sheriff?” Alana asked. “We’d love to find out what’s going on with the case.”

Emily shook her head and did what she hated more than anything. She lied. “I’m sorry that I can’t tell you anything right now. But as soon as I can, you’ll hear it from me before it’s on the news, OK?”

It was a lie because there really wasn’t much to report—and when there was, they’d be among the last to know. That fact pained her.

“Fair enough,” Tammy said.

Emily thanked them for what they were doing, told them how they exemplified the best of the community. The words might have seemed canned, like those given to the Chamber of Commerce or the Rotary. They surely weren’t meant that way.

“I promise to keep you up to date. You do the same,” she said, referring to the big whiteboard with the color-coded notations of calls that had come in with tips, who’d made the call, how the calls had been handled. None had panned out, but it was the continuing effort that really mattered.

As Emily turned to leave, Alana stopped her by standing up.

“Sheriff Kenyon,” she said, her voice brimming with emotion, “you don’t think that Mandy’s dead, do you?”

The other two women looked at her with sympathy. It was clear that they had already made up their minds about what happened to Mandy.

And who was to blame.

“We’re doing our best to bring her home,” Emily said, looking through the open doorway toward the church sanctuary down the hall. “But you’re in the right place here, I’m afraid. Right now, we need a bit of a miracle.”

It wasn’t that she could feel the warm breath of another person, but Emily could feel the presence of someone right behind her. Emily turned on her heels in the parking lot of the sheriff’s department.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

Cary McConnell stood in front of her next to her car. It obviously wasn’t a court day for Cherrystone’s brashest and most self-absorbed lawyer. He wore indigo-dyed jeans, a tan jacket over an olive-colored button-down shirt. The cut of everything he wore was athletic—tight enough to show the world what he had, but not so to reveal an extra pound if he’d eaten too much for lunch. The cold breeze mussed up his hair, and for once, he didn’t seem to care. She thought the clothes he was wearing were too thin for the winter weather, but she loathed him so much, she considered him nearly reptilian anyway.

Cary folded his arms. “That’s not a very nice greeting for an old friend.”

Emily reached for her car keys and pulled them from her purse. “Is that what you’re calling me these days?”

He stepped a little closer. “Very funny. Seriously, Emily, this whole Crawford thing is pitting us against each other. I don’t like the guy any more than you do. He’s a client.”

“I’d love to quote you on that,” she said.

Cary smiled. It was a grin as dazzling as ever. It didn’t melt Emily’s heart like it once did, but it was, without a doubt, completely disarming. “Look,” he said, “I feel really bad about my behavior back when we were seeing each other, and even more recently.”

“You should feel bad, Cary. You were a Class A jerk.”

“All right, guilty as charged. I’m here because Cherrystone is too small of a town for us to be bitter about the past. I want you to forgive me. OK?”

Emily pushed the button for the Crown Vic’s automatic locks and they popped up like soldiers at attention. She reached for the door handle. “We’re OK.”

“No, really, I wanted to talk about Mitch. Do you have a minute?”

Emily waved her hand at him, pushing him back from her personal space. “We can’t talk about that. I mean, you don’t want to talk to me about it. Do you?”

“Some things are bothering me. You know, I care about the truth. That’s why I went to law school.”

Emily seriously doubted the revisionist rationale for the profession he chose. She figured that Cary McConnell had gone to law school to make big bucks.

“What is it?” she asked.

Cary looked around, his dark eyes finally landing back on hers. “I don’t want to talk about it here. Trust me. I’m very concerned.”

Trust him? Emily felt a flutter of anxiousness. Camille would pitch a fit if Cary had some kind of information that he’d offered up on a silver platter and she turned a deaf ear to it. Even so, the conversation should be between the prosecutor and the defense lawyer—not the sheriff and the man with whom she’d had an affair.

“You really ought to tell Camille.”

“I don’t know her like I know you.”

The comment made Emily’s skin crawl. She wondered if he was referring to the fact they’d had sex, and not the bond of a long-term friendship.

“What do you want to tell me?”

“Follow my truck, OK?”

“I didn’t know you were driving a pickup. What happened to the Mercedes?”

The question was meant to sting a little because all that Cary used to talk about was how expensive his car was and how it was “the most kick-ass car in Cherrystone.”

Cary ignored the intent of her remark. He was good at that, she thought.

“I like hauling stuff around on the weekends,” he said.

“I’ll pass on following you, Cary. Thanks,” she said. Cary was a jerk, maybe as much as his client Mitch Crawford, but he was also an astute judge of people. She remembered how when they were dating he pegged a local mail carrier as Cherrystone’s panty thief—a man who broke into women’s bedrooms to steal their underwear. Cary’s reasoning was a little disturbing at the time, when she thought back on it. All he said was: “I know the type.”

But he had been right. If there was something that was troubling him about the Crawford case, which she assumed he was intimating, then she ought to hear it.

“What’s with you and Chris Collier?” he asked.

The question was out of bounds, inappropriate, pushy. Very Cary.

“None of your business,” Emily said, turning her attention to her Crown Vic and getting inside.

“Sounds like you still care,” he called out.

Emily didn’t bother opening her driver’s window, something she would have done to give a homeless person a five-dollar bill despite the icy weather. She merely mouthed the words she hoped he could read: “The only thing I care about is forgetting that you ever laid a hand on me.”