Seven

  THE second body was discovered when a teenager, skylarking with a snowblower, ran it up on the lawn of his next-door neighbor and jammed the rotating blades on her boot.

  There was no bottle of bourbon with this woman’s body, just four bulging plastic shopping bags carrying all her worldly possessions. One was spilling its contents into the snow near the body’s knees.

  After the crime scene had been recorded in detail, Detective Sergeant Mike Malloy went through the bags looking for some form of identification. He was surprised to find a pair of worn wooden knitting needles and a ball of seriously crinkled yarn that looked as if it had once been a sweater or something and then unraveled. Also in one of the bags was a gray, hard-plastic case about eight inches long, with a crack in it. In it were some sewing materials: embroidery floss, needles, a pair of scissors with one point broken off, a spool of black thread, and a spool of white thread, both almost depleted. He had an uncomfortable feeling that these artifacts meant he’d really have to deal with that amateur Betsy Devonshire. She was clever enough and often provided good information—and sometimes solid conclusions—but she had no official status. He sometimes wished she’d get a private investigator’s license so he could deal with her on a professional level. (Other times he wished she’d get married to that boyfriend of hers and move with him back to his home in Ireland.)

  Also in one of the bags was a Social Security card that had been laminated only after it had become badly worn. It had the name JANET ROSE TURNQUIST on it.

  This time there was only a delay long enough for the body to thaw before it was subjected to an autopsy. Again the toxicology screen was negative, which this time didn’t surprise him. He wished they could do a wider spectrum of tests, but further testing would have to wait until Malloy could give them a clue what to look for.

  One curious thing: While undressing the body, the lower portion of the back of a cotton shirt she was wearing was found to have a mildly misspelled rhyme embroidered on it.

  “Last Will and Testiment” it was headed, and it read: “I leave the summer wind that blows so free, a drink or two or even three, a place thats warm in winter and dry out of the rain, a good and happy song refraine, and everything else I die posessed of I leave to my beloved niece Emily Hame.” Even the signature, JANET ROSE TURNQUIST, was embroidered.

  Malloy did a search for Emily Hame on his computer and was not surprised to find the name listed in the Excelsior directory. Carrie Carlson’s cousin lived in Excelsior, so why shouldn’t Janet Turnquist’s niece? A case with one screwy element tended to have other, equally screwy elements.

  Sometimes Mike Malloy wished Jill Cross Larson was still on the cops. She was good at what he considered one of the worst jobs of being a cop: bringing bad news to a citizen. But she wasn’t, so he dialed Ms. Hame’s phone number. To his dismay, she was an at-home mom, and was willing for him to come over right away.

  When he got there, he found she was also the mom of two small children, whom she could not, of course, lock away in another room while he delivered the news that an aunt of hers had been found dead.

  After the initial spate of tears, which he sat through helplessly, she gulped and said, “I wondered, you know? When I heard another homeless woman was found frozen to death right here in Excelsior.” She picked up the toddler, who was weeping in sympathy with her mother, and held her on her lap. “There, there, darling, it’s all right. Mommy’s just sad right now. It’s all right.”

  “Mommy, why are you sad?” asked the older child, another girl, standing with an open coloring book in one hand and a purple crayon in the other.

  “Because Aunt Janet has died, and when someone you know dies, it makes you sad.”

  “Oh. Okay.” The child, who appeared to be about four years old, lay back down on the floor and resumed coloring an elephant purple. She wielded a very messy crayon.

  Ms. Hame hadn’t seen Janet Turnquist for months, she said. As far as she knew, the only time Janet came to Excelsior was to see her. Janet’s home was in Fargo, North Dakota. She owned a condemned house there, but she didn’t live in it anymore. She traveled around the Dakotas and Minnesota quite a bit, but not predictably. Janet had been diagnosed as having schizotypal disorder—a mild form of schizophrenia—years ago. She wasn’t ill enough to be locked away in a hospital. She was supposed to take risperidone for it, but she mostly didn’t. She was an unhappy loner with few social skills, and sometimes she heard voices that said she was bad, all symptoms of her disease. She believed that the United States government wanted to capture her because it thought she knew something about how the moon shots were faked. She had no enemies that Ms. Hame knew of except these imaginary ones.

  Ms. Hame was startled by the will, but not surprised. “That sounds just like her,” she said, smiling through a refreshment of her tears. She supposed the money would come in useful.

  “Money?” Mike’s interest was suddenly sharpened.

  “Oh, yes, there was a man who came from Fargo looking for Janet a couple of weeks ago, a Mr. Morcambe. He’s a private investigator, and he was looking for Aunt Janet to tell her she had inherited a lot of money.”

  “How much money?”

  “He didn’t know, but he thought it was more than a hundred thousand dollars. Maybe several hundred.”

  “Did you know about the will?” he asked.

  “No, of course not. And I didn’t know about the money, until Mr. Morcambe told me. Poor Aunt Janet didn’t, either, I’m sure. It doesn’t seem fair.”

  “The will may not be legal, you know.”

  “No?” She looked alarmed. “Why, because it’s stitched?”

  “No, because it’s what’s called a holographic will, written by the testator her own self, without the aid of an attorney. No witnesses, either. I’ve been told they aren’t legal anymore.”

  “That doesn’t seem right. Who will get the money, then?”

  “Whoever her legal next of kin is, as determined by a court of law.”

  Ms. Hame considered that. “I don’t know who that is,” she said. “Her husband divorced her years ago, and she didn’t have any children. There might be other nieces and nephews on her ex-husband’s side. And I have a brother in San Francisco, what about him?”

  “There are laws of inheritance, but I don’t know what they are. The money may be divided among all of you. Oh, and of course, there’s the house,” said Malloy.

  “Well, yes, the house. No one has lived in it for years. It’s condemned because a Red River flood damaged it. The taxes on it are really low—we’ve been paying them for her, I’m not sure why, except she asked us to. She always said she’d pay us back, but of course she never did. She was living on SSI, I don’t know where the checks were delivered, I don’t think she had a bank account anywhere. Probably cashed them at one of those awful check-cashing places.”

  That was the longest uninterrupted reply she was able to make, and it was because the toddler had left her lap, climbed onto the couch, and fallen asleep on Malloy’s knee.

  As he went out into the bitter cold morning, Malloy thought about all that money. Ms. Hame had behaved just about right, upset over the news of the death, pleased and surprised and amused by the will. And too new to the news of it to be really upset over learning it probably wasn’t a valid will.

  On the other hand, a couple hundred thousand dollars was one heck of a motive.

  EMILY had taken Mr. Morcambe’s business card off the refrigerator to give his name and phone number to Sergeant Malloy. Now she reached for the phone to call Mr. Morcambe herself. His office was in Fargo.

  “Remember how you wondered if my Aunt Janet Turnquist was deceased?” she asked him. “Well, it turns out she is. She was found frozen to death right here in Excelsior.”

  “Jesus Christ! Frozen to death? Wow, I didn’t expect that. May I offer my condolences?”

  Emily fought against a fresh rush of tears. “Thank you. Even though she was living the kind of life where that sort of thing can happen, it’s still very sad.”

  “Was it some kind of an accident?”

  “They don’t know. A police sergeant came to tell me about it, and I think he’s investigating to find out how it happened.”

  “This is very distressing news for you.”

  “Yes, it is. I really loved Aunt Janet. But there’s one odd thing about this business. She wrote a kind of a will. Do you know anything about holographic wills?”

  “Very little, why?”

  “Because Aunt Janet wrote one on her shirt, and I was wondering if it’s legal.”

  “I think they are, at least in some states.”

  “The policeman who talked to me said they weren’t.”

  “I’m sure he’s talking about Minnesota. Janet Turnquist was a legal resident of North Dakota. I don’t know what the status is in our state.”

  Less than an hour after they hung up, Emily’s phone rang. It was a woman who identified herself as Regina Kingsolver, attorney-at-law, representing the estate of Jasper Bronson. She wanted to know when Janet Turnquist had died.

  “I don’t know,” said Emily. “I only found out about it today, but the body had been hidden in the snow long enough to get frozen. I suppose the medical examiner will have an opinion. Maybe you know Aunt Janet was a little strange?”

  The attorney became circumspect. “I’ve heard that she had cognitive problems.”

  “Yes, she did. She was homeless because she wouldn’t take her meds and would get all mixed up. But sometimes she’d come to us and we’d take her in and feed her, buy her things she needed, like boots or clothes. And here’s the thing: She made up this kind of a will, embroidered it on her shirttail, and it was found when they did the autopsy. It rhymed, mostly—she liked to write poetry, or what she called poetry. She left everything she owned to me. The policeman who came to talk to me, to tell me about Aunt Janet being dead, called it a holographic will and he said he didn’t think they were legal. Are they?”

  Ms. Kingsolver became even more circumspect. “That depends on a number of things. Holographic wills are legal in North Dakota, but Ms. Turnquist might not be said to be of sound mind when she wrote this will.”

  “Oh, yes, ‘of sound mind and body,’ I’ve heard that phrase.”

  “And there’s another problem. The money was left to Ms. Turnquist on the death of Jasper Bronson. If Ms. Turnquist died first, then she can’t inherit.”

  “When did Jasper Bronson die?”

  “Eighteen days ago.”

  “Oh, I don’t think Aunt Janet’s body was under the snow that long!”

  “I understand that another woman’s frozen body was found hidden under snow in Excelsior about that long ago.”

  “That’s true,” Emily conceded. “Oh, you think the two dead women are connected somehow?”

  “I have no way of knowing. Is it at all possible that Ms. Turnquist could have lain hidden in the snow for that long?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” That was a very disturbing thought. “The people who own the house Aunt Janet was found in front of left for South Texas a few days after New Year’s Day.”

  “And Ms. Turnquist was found on January fifteenth. So you see, there are a number of questions that must be answered before this matter can be resolved.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “Could you give me the name of the police investigator?”

  “Sure, he’s Sergeant Mike Malloy, with the Excelsior Police Department.” She looked up the number and gave it to the attorney.

  “Did you know there’s a private investigator looking for Aunt Janet?” Emily asked.

  “Is that Mr. Morcambe?”

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  “I hired him to find Janet if he could. He’s the one who called me to tell me your aunt is dead.”

  “Oh. I guess I should have figured that out. Can I ask you another question?”

  “Certainly.”

  “How much money are we talking about here?”

  “I believe it’s on the order of six or seven hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Oh, my goodness! That’s a lot! How wonderful it would have been for Aunt Janet, though I don’t know if she would have been able to deal with being rich.”

  “Yes, that might have been a problem.”

  “Now suppose it turns out Aunt Janet didn’t inherit the money. So then what happens to it?”

  “There’s a nephew on Jasper’s wife’s side, Alec Porter is his name. He’s a veterinarian. The will stipulates that if Janet predeceased Jasper, the money is to go in equal parts to the American Cancer Society and to Dr. Porter.”

  “Oh. Well, thank you very much.”

  “You’re welcome.” Ms. Kingsolver said she would stay in touch as things developed, and they hung up.

  Emily was shaken to find that greed had taken root in her soul. Six or seven hundred thousand dollars. And it all depended on when Aunt Janet died. Surely she hadn’t lain under all that snow for more than a week! But then there was the issue of “sound mind and body.” That didn’t describe Aunt Janet very well. But she wasn’t locked away in a padded cell raving like a real lunatic. How unsound did her mind have to be to make the will invalid?

  She wondered what kind of a person Alec Porter was. Surely he would be thinking along these same lines and would be willing to fight to have the matter resolved in his favor. She’d talk to her husband; maybe they would have to hire a lawyer. Would Jim agree to do that?

  Six or seven hundred thousand dollars. They could send the kids to college on that money. Pay off their mortgage. Go on a really great vacation. Hmmmm.

  Eight

  DR. Alec Porter sat behind his modest desk in his small office, chewing on his lower lip and thinking.

  Six, maybe seven, hundred thousand dollars.

  He’d had no idea the estate was that large.

  Of course, at the start, it had been enormously larger. But Uncle Jasper had been sick for a very long time, and doctors, hospitals, meds, and nursing homes were expensive.

  Funny how long the body could linger after the mind was gone. If Uncle Jasper had been a dog, he would have been brought in to be put out of his suffering years ago.

  Now there was a dangerous thought Alec had better not share with anyone.

  Especially the police, whom he was pretty sure would be calling on him any day now.

  This mess started when some homeless woman was found dead in Excelsior, which might have been some kind of dreadful accident. But now his cousin Janet’s body had also been found, also in Excelsior, which very naturally made the police suspicious that a killer was on the loose.

  The question was, who would want to murder two homeless women who apparently were not in any way related to one another?

  A crazy person obviously.

  But if they managed to separate the two deaths, Alec might be a suspect in the death of Janet, because with her dead, he was in line to inherit half of that six hundred thousand.

  And the simple truth was, he needed an infusion of money badly. His clinic, the Small Animal Medical Center, was failing. He needed to upgrade the place, and recruit a new partner.

  His attention wandered to a subject that had worn a path deep in his brain. The new veterinarian, if only he could recruit one, must have enough money to buy into a partnership. Unfortunately, with a shrinking practice and a physical plant that needed renovation, not many were interested.

  The situation wasn’t entirely his own fault. His previous partner had decided to go with his wife to Arizona when she got an offer of a great new job in Phoenix. So Alec had had to buy him out. Fortunately, the clinic building had been paid for, so he’d been able to mortgage it to raise the funds. Unfortunately, with the recent drop in property values, the new mortgage hadn’t brought in enough to both pay off Dr. Doug and do some overdue renovations—a new heating/ air conditioner unit, for example, a new X-ray machine, new flooring.

  That wouldn’t have been a problem if Alec had been able to recruit a new partner. That failure was, in part, his own fault. His manner, he’d been told, was brusque. It was possible he put off applicants. On the other hand, the prospective partners had been outstandingly unsatisfactory. Some had no funds to invest. Others were not good material—one prospect had actually come to his interview drunk.

  What’s more, the Veterinary Licensing Board was making his life difficult. He’d done the mandatory twenty hours of continuing education—which was damn difficult, working all the hours he did—but had mislaid the paperwork proving it. He had to find it or they’d pull his license.

  He wondered if they weren’t landing hard on him because he’d been a little mouthy with the woman who’d talked to him.

  Maybe more than a little mouthy, to be honest. He wished he had the smooth and charming manners of his former partner. Then maybe his business wouldn’t be dropping off like it was. For example, apart from two annual-shots visits, his only appointment today was for a routine removal of a benign growth from the skin of a pug, whose hobby, apparently, was growing them.

  Every vet has his or her favorites, and Alec was no exception. For example, he liked Pugslee, and her owner, Ms. Fellows, was a nice enough woman. But he really liked Rodney, the yellow Lab whose tail never stopped wagging. Rodney’s owner was a woman with almost as pleasant a personality as her dog’s.

  On the other hand, Alec had little patience with the sometimes casual, sometimes ignorant cruelty of several other of his human clients toward their pets—the deliberately cruel, of course, seldom brought their pets in. He had tried over and over to instill forbearance in himself. But when someone brought in a dog suffering from the final stages of a disease, a dog that might have been saved by earlier intervention, well, he could hardly refrain from pointing that out, could he? Especially when the owner’s reaction to his recommendation that the animal be humanely euthanized was to ask if he knew anyone with a replacement to sell.

  Dr. Doug would have known what to say to those patients. But Dr. Doug had left for Arizona. “Never liked our long, dark winters anyhow,” he’d said cheerfully. And when he left, nearly a year ago now, the clinic began to wither.