The Valentine's Day Murder Read Online Free Page B

I hope he’ll come home to enjoy it all again.”
    She stowed my luggage in the trunk and we were off. We stopped somewhere for a light lunch, and she smiled when I ordered milk with my sandwich.
    “We decided to wait to have children,” she said.
    “I was just married last year, so this is my first opportunity. I think I told you last fall, I was a nun till two years ago. I never thought I’d have children, so it’s a real bonus for me.”
    “Then this may be your last case for a long time.”
    “Maybe,” I hedged. “I haven’t even gotten to the point where I need maternity clothes. I can’t think that far ahead.”
    “Just find Val,” she said. “Then you can retire.”
    * * *
    On the way to her house she took a detour and stopped at the point where Matty’s four-wheel drive had been found the day after the men disappeared. I haven’t traveled much, and the Great Lakes were completely new to me. If you had told me I was standing at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, I would have believed it. The lake was vast, and the wind blowing off it, cold. Like the strip of beach on the Long Island Sound near my own home, this one had the cold, deserted look of off-season. The water was darkly forbidding, waves and whitecaps everywhere and the water slapping the shore as though angry.
    “It’s a great place to swim in the summer,” Carlotta said. “I know it’s hard to imagine it covered with ice and snow, but it gets that way when we have a cold winter. What happened this year around Valentine’s Day is that we had a few warm days, and I guess the ice started to melt, not around here or they wouldn’t have gotten as far as they did.”
    “It’s possible a gunshot may have gotten a hole started.”
    “That’s possible, too.”
    “Where was their vehicle?”
    “Right where I’ve parked.”
    “Was it locked?”
    “I’m pretty sure it was. Matty’s wife, Annie, had to find the extra key.”
    “Anything left inside?”
    She composed herself before she answered. “Val’s watch was in the backseat. It was a very fine watch. He was probably afraid of falling and damaging it.”
    She had not told me that before, not indicated in any way that Val had been with the other two men on the beach. “So we know he came this far,” I said.
    “This far, yes.”
    I didn’t say it out loud, but it certainly looked to me as though Val must have made the trek with the others. If he were going to leave them at this point, why would he leave his expensive watch behind?
    “I know what you’re thinking,” Carlotta said. “You think he went with them. I think he took his watch off and walked across the beach with the others. Maybe he even started walking on the ice with them and then turned back when his head cleared, but it was too late to retrieve his watch because the car was locked. He assumed he’d pick it up in the morning.”
    “Did he go home?” I asked. “Were you able to find any indication that he went to the house, packed a bag, took a toothbrush, and then left?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You mean it’s possible.”
    “It’s possible. I know he didn’t take a toothbrush; I would have noticed that. But I never counted how many pairs of socks he had, how many sets of underwear, how many casual shirts. Is a navy blue shirt missing? I don’t know. I know which jacket he was wearing that night because it’s not in the closet, and I’m pretty sure he was wearing his snow boots because they’re gone, too. Aside from that, I’m just not sure.”
    “What did he wear when he took you out to lunch?”
    “A suit. It’s in his closet.”
    “So he went home and changed after he took you to the airport.”
    “Sure. All three of them probably went casual.”
    We turned away from the lake and walked back to the car.
    “You said it snowed that night,” I said.
    “A little. Enough to obliterate any footprints. And there was a wind, so the snow may have drifted a little. When a police car stopped next to