“How about drugs?”
“Yeah. And booze. But she worked hard not to let it show.”
Jo wrote in her notebook, then looked up.
“Let’s talk about your wrench,” she said. “The one that was used to kill Charlotte. Did you know it was missing?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“A couple of days after Charlotte disappeared. My fan belt was squealing. I thought the alternator was a little loose. I’ve got a tool chest built into the bed of my pickup, and I went there to get a pry bar. The hasp on the chest was broken. I went through everything. Only thing missing was the wrench. I went to Hardware Hank’s and bought a new one. New hasp, too.”
“Before that, when was the last time you checked your tool chest?”
Again he closed his eyes and spent time being sure. “I don’t remember.”
“Do you have a receipt for the hasp and wrench?”
“I probably threw it away.”
Cork said, “Remember who waited on you?”
“Sure. It was old man Springer.”
Cork glanced at Jo. “I’ll talk to him, see if he remembers.”
Jo nodded. “Okay. How about the bottle found at the scene? The night Charlotte disappeared, did you have a Corona?”
He smiled at her. “Corona’s my favorite beer. Everyone knows that. I drink it all the time.”
“Were you drinking it at Valhalla?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you do with your empty bottles?”
Solemn scratched his cheek while he puzzled that one. “I don’t remember.”
“Okay.”
“Wait. When I was leaving, I took a beer with me out to the truck. I had to pee, and I set the bottle down in the snow while I took care of business. I don’t remember picking it up.”
“Good.” Jo looked seriously at Solemn. “Did you have sex with Charlotte Kane?”
“Yes. And right from the beginning. She knew what she was doing. That surprised me. She didn’t seem the type.”
“I mean that night. Did you have sex with her on New Year’s Eve, before she disappeared?”
“No, we were history by then.”
Jo said, “Tell me about the break-in at St. Agnes. It wasn’t you alone, was it? I’m betting Charlotte was with you that night.”
“Yeah, but it was my truck that got reported, and when they grabbed me I didn’t see any reason to bring her into it.”
“The break-in, your idea or Charlotte’s?”
“Hers. But I did the damage.”
“Why Mendax? Why ‘liar’?”
“I don’t know. She was pissed.”
“At the church?”
“I got the feeling it was the priest.”
“Father Mal? Why?”
He shrugged. “A lot of the time, she was hard to figure.”
“Did she talk about him?”
“No.”
“What did she talk about?”
“Reincarnation. She was real big on that. Always talking about her other lives, things that had happened in them.”
“Like what?”
“Awful things, mostly. She claimed that in her first life, she was raped as a child. In her second, she was a prostitute.”
“She believed this?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And in her next life, she was murdered,” Cork said. “What kind of karma is that?” He remembered the poem Jenny had told him about, the one Charlotte had written. Lazarus, angry at being raised from the dead. Given what he knew now, he thought he had a better sense of the girl’s perspective.
“It’s almost dinnertime,” Solemn said. “And I am hungry. Mind if we call it?”
“One more question. In your statement, you admitted arguing with Charlotte at her home shortly before Christmas. Her father overheard. He claims you threatened her. Is that true?”
“No. What I said was that someday somebody was going to tear her heart out like she’d torn mine.”
“That was it? No threat?”
“Just something to hurt her. Like she needed more of that.”
“I think we’re through for now. If there’s anything you need, just let me know.” Jo lifted the wall phone and called Pender.
The deputy opened up and stepped in. “Come on, Winter Moon. Got a dinner reservation for you.” He held a small, black Bible in his hand. “Oh, and the priest stopped by, brought this for you. Sheriff asked me to check it out before I gave it to you.” With a snort, he handed the Bible to Solemn. “Believe me, there’s nothing in here that’ll do the likes of you any good.”
“You’re quiet,” Cork said as they drove home.
“Just thinking about Charlotte. She wasn’t exactly the young woman we all thought she was.” Jo looked out the window. “I feel sorry for her, Cork. And a little guilty that none of us saw how troubled she was.”
“We have our own children to worry about.”
“And who worries about the Charlotte Kanes?”
After a little while, Cork said, “I’d love to know exactly what Nestor Cole has, what he intends to base his case on.”
“From the documents I’ve been able to look at so far,” Jo said, “it goes something like this. At the party, just before midnight, Charlotte made it clear that she was going to the guesthouse to grab her snowmobile for a ride, some kind of crazy way to see the New Year in. But according to the statements of some of the kids at the party, the snowmobile didn’t actually leave until around one A.M. In the meantime, Charlotte had sex with someone. Probably she was assaulted with Solemn’s wrench after leaving the guesthouse, since there was no blood found inside. If she bled outside, the snowfall covered it. She was carried to the snowmobile, driven to Moccasin Creek where the ‘accident’ was staged. After that, someone calmly feasted on junk food and watched while the girl froze to death. Then her assailant either walked back to Valhalla, only a mile or so away, or went to a vehicle parked in the lot at the trailhead.
“So, Nestor has the bottle found at the scene with Solemn’s prints all over it, and the murder weapon with his prints on that as well. There’s the argument at the party, and the fact that Solemn has no alibi. It’s still circumstantial. I keep thinking there’s something else, something we don’t know about, and probably won’t until Solemn’s charged.”
Cork paused for the traffic light at the intersection of Oak and Fox.
“I keep asking myself if Solemn didn’t kill Charlotte, who did?” he said.
“And why.”
“Let’s start with why. Maybe that will lead us to who.”
Jo said, “In making the case against Solemn, I’m sure the prosecution’s going to say it was scorned love. Maybe what’s a good motive for Solemn would be good for someone else. Maybe the man she was having the affair with?”
“That would make sense. When I saw her at the creek, she looked peaceful, her arms across her chest. She seemed composed, almost tenderly so, as if whoever killed her had put her gently to rest. If that’s true, it might point to someone with very mixed emotions about her, someone who loved her, and maybe killed her in a moment of jealous rage. That would fit with some of the other things we know. He killed her with an object at hand, Solemn’s wrench. And the beer bottle that points to Solemn’s guilt, I don’t see how that could have been planned. Just Solemn’s bad luck that he left it in the snow. All of which would point toward not a lot of forethought in the killing. It could be that he arrived at the party, saw Solemn’s truck, assumed that Solemn and Charlotte were an item again, and went ballistic.”
“On the other hand,” Jo said, “maybe he’d wanted to kill her. Maybe she wasn’t satisfied with an illicit affair and wanted more. She threatened to go public if he-what? — didn’t leave his wife and marry her? At the party, he finally saw his chance and killed her.”
A car honked behind them and Cork realized the light had changed to green.
Jo leaned back against the headrest and stared out her window at the familiar houses of Aurora. She could probably give the names of the families who lived in them. When she spoke again, she sounded weary and sad. “This seems unreal, somehow. Do you realize we’re talking about Aurora, Cork, about someone we may see every day on the street? It feels dirty, speculating this way. Is this how the police always look at people in an investigation?”