Cold Hunter's Moon Read online

  John stopped to light a cigarette. “Lark guessed at least a year but said it could be longer.”

  Tears spilled down Ann’s checks. She brushed them away before they could freeze. “I wonder if there was something we could have done for either of them if we’d being paying more attention to what’s going on out here.” Hand in hand, they walked the rest of the way home in silence.

  TUESDAY AFTERNOON

  NOVEMBER 21–THE RANSONS

  When Ann and John got home, they took a hot shower. As they came out of the bathroom, they heard Lark’s voice on the answering machine saying he and Paul would be back in half an hour. John grabbed the phone and offered them lunch.

  The front doorbell rang just as Ann was defrosting chili. “They got here early,” she said, glancing at her watch as she hurried to the foyer. She opened the door to find Sara Waltner smiling at her.

  “Hi, Ann. I thought I’d pick up my Venetian glass and Steve’s Flow Blue. I just couldn’t wait to see what you found.” Ann stumbled back, shocked to see her, and Sara stepped into the foyer. For a minute, Ann couldn’t figure out how Sara knew she had anything for them. Then she remembered the message she’d left on their answering machine over the weekend, back when life was normal.

  “Let me run and get your glass. I don’t have Steve’s Flow Blue unpacked yet so I’ll have to get it to you later. You can pay me then,” Ann said, hurrying to the family room. “John and I are having company for lunch.”

  Sara yelled hello to John as she followed Ann into the family room. She picked up the heavy, white, heart-shaped bowl ribboned with burgundy glass and held it to the light. “How lovely. I can’t thank you enough,” she said, handing it to Ann to be wrapped. She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

  “I hear the sheriff’s been over here,” she said, surveying the haul from the weekend. “What excuse did you use? I’d sure like to have that hunk stop by my house.”

  “Good grief, Sara,” Ann said, sliding the tissue paper-wrapped glass into a paper bag. “What about Steve?”

  Sara leered and raised her eyebrows. Ann thought Sara always acted like she’d hit the matrimonial motherload, even though rumors abounded in the community that Steve was having an affair with his assistant. Her interest in the sheriff surprised Ann. Steve Waltner, quite the handsome guy himself, owned several businesses in Mason County, all of them bearing his name and purported to be very profitable. If there was such a thing as high society in a county with more cows than people and more deer than cows, Sara and Steve were it. The Waltners appeared to be the personification of the American dream, complete with Michael, twenty-four, and Sandra, twenty-two, both attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

  Ann studied Sara’s peaches-and-cream complexion, mass of chestnut colored hair, and huge brown eyes. Sara was older than Ann but she looked thirty. Women joked that they’d never seen her in the same outfit twice. True to form, she wore a plum colored sweater and matching skirt that Ann had never seen. Ann felt positively frumpy in her forest green sweats and crew socks. She envisioned them together on Glamour’s Do’s and Don’t’s page, Ann as the fashion Don’t.

  “Ann, we’re married but we aren’t dead. We can still look.” Sara flashed Ann an amused smile and patted her arm, her well-manicured left hand showing off the biggest marquise diamond Ann had ever seen. “I’m sure John’s just like Steve, he’s not blind to a good-looking woman. Why should we be any different?”

  Ann didn’t have time to answer her. The oven timer went off just seconds before the doorbell rang.

  “Can you get that?” John yelled. Sara followed Ann into the foyer and slipped on her coat, a gorgeous midcalf-length mink. She was sitting on the bench pulling on her boots when Ann opened the door. Sara’s mouth dropped open when Lark leaned in.

  “We don’t want to mess up your floor. We’ll come in through your mud room.”

  Lark turned to go but Sara was too quick for him. Smiling, she walked over to the door, and extended her hand. “You must be the new sheriff. How nice to meet you, I’m Sara Waltner.”

  Lark took off his glove and shook her hand. “Mrs. Waltner.” He beamed her a hundred-watt smile. “I’ve worked with your husband on a couple of things. Please let me walk you to your car. We’d hate to have another casualty on top of all the deer hunting excitement.” He stepped inside, slipped her package from her hands, and guided her out the door. Sara winked at Ann as she left.

  “Well, Jesus Christ,” Ann said, hurrying through the kitchen to unlock the mud room door. “That man’s charm is wasted in law enforcement. He should be a politician.”

  Ann let Paul in. Exhausted, he flopped down on the bench. He looked at Ann’s angry face and jumped up, “Jeez, Mrs. Ranson, is it OK that we came back here? If we’re in the way …”

  “No, no,” she interrupted, raising her hand to silence him. “You’re fine, there’s nothing going on around here that a prostate exam or a giant dose of salt peter wouldn’t cure.”

  Paul looked confused, but Lark, who had just come in, almost fell off the bench laughing. Paul glanced back and forth between them, trying to figure out what he’d missed. Ann shut the door and walked back to the kitchen before her mouth could once again betray her better judgment.

  John had a pan of cornbread cooling on the island and was busy stirring a pot of chili. He glanced at Ann. “What did Sara want?”

  “She came to pick up their glass and find out why the sheriff was here,” she replied, scooping cornbread onto a serving plate. The cops walked in as Ann put out the soup bowls.

  When they were done eating, Ann and Paul cleared the table while John and Lark built a fire in the family room. Fifteen minutes later, everyone sat down in front of the fireplace. It wasn’t even three o’clock and Ann was ready for a nap. She pulled a quilt around her and picked up her knitting, trying to stay awake. Lark munched a cookie and sipped a cup of tea as he explained that the state police would help remove the bodies and search the marsh. Then he told the Ransons that he needed to interview them.

  Ann grabbed John’s hand. “Do you really suspect us?”

  Lark sat his tea down on the end table and stretched his legs out towards the fire. “I don’t think either of you are responsible for this, but we can’t automatically eliminate you. Right now, you are the only people we have connected to these bodies. That will change as soon as we learn who they are and what happened to them.” He sighed. “I’d like to interview you today.”

  The Ransons agreed. Paul set up a tape recorder in the study and John went to be questioned. Ann sat alone in the family room. She turned on the television but found the noise irritating and turned it off. She picked up the Janet Evanovich novel that she hadn’t been able to put down prior to the weekend, but even it couldn’t hold her attention. She pulled an unfinished quilt out of the trunk that doubled as a coffee table.

  She willed herself to relax into the quilting and began thinking about how horrible it must have been to die like the two people they’d found in the marsh. She wondered if they were dead before they got into the woods. Did they know who killed them? Did they cry out for help? She wondered what caused their deaths. Did they suffer? Did someone betray them? Someone they loved? Someone they trusted? She worried about their loved ones not knowing where they were and racked her brain to remember if she’d heard about anyone missing from the area.

  Most of all, Ann worried that if she’d taken the time to check out the snowmobile in the marsh on Saturday night, just maybe they’d only have one body. The thought that they might have saved a life was almost more than she could stand. She stopped quilting to wipe tears away with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

  All of a sudden, John’s interview was over. Ann was so startled when she heard the study door open that she ran the quilting needle deep into her right thumb. In her effort to get it out, she ripped it across her thumb, creating a deep, half-inch cut. She jerked her hand away from the quilt and popped the cut into her m
outh. She was in the kitchen running it under cold water when John came in.

  Ann smiled with relief when she heard John and Lark talking about golf. They seemed very relaxed after the hour-and-fifteen-minute interview. John’s smile vanished when he saw the blood in the sink. He rushed over and grabbed Ann’s hand.

  “What happened?” he asked, looking at the gash in her thumb.

  Ann pulled her hand out of his grasp and stuck it back under the cold water. “I stuck myself with my quilting needle. I don’t know how a needle that small can cause so much blood.” She pulled it out of the water, saw that it was still bleeding, and plunged it back under. She didn’t look up, concerned that she had mascara running down her face. After a few more seconds she turned off the water and wrapped her thumb in a paper towel.

  “I’ll get a Band-Aid and be right back,” she said, heading for the bathroom. Ann glanced up to find Lark, Paul, and John staring at her, their faces creased with worry.

  John took a hold of her wrist and turned her around before she could get away. “What have you been crying about?” he asked, putting his hand under her chin and gently raising her face so she had no choice but to look at him.

  “It’s just stress. I’ve been wondering if we could have saved the second girl if we’d checked on that snowmobile we heard Saturday night. Please let me go deal with this cut so I can get my interview over with,” she said, not meeting his eyes, as she disengaged her wrist and went to the bathroom.

  The view in the mirror was not good. She didn’t have mascara running down her face; it was long gone. Her face was red and blotchy and her eyes were bloodshot and swollen. She felt a bit like a manic depressive who had hit both ends of the spectrum in twenty-four hours. Yesterday she’d been laughing hysterically and today she was in the crying phase.

  Ann plopped down on the commode lid to think. Sometime during her hiatus, she heard the dogs bark and run through the house. Since the doorbell didn’t ring, she figured the crime scene team had arrived. She finally got herself together by turning out the bathroom lights and putting a cool washcloth over her eyes. John knocked twice before she was ready to leave.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” she said to no one in particular when she came out and found the three men sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. “That stuff will keep you up all night,” she said, getting a caffeine-free Diet Coke out of the refrigerator.

  She walked over to the table. “Are you two ready?” she asked, glancing at Lark and Paul.

  “Ann, we don’t have to do this now. I can come back tomorrow morning,” Lark said as he rolled his coffee mug back and forth between his hands and studied her face. “We’re going to be out in the marsh most of the day so it won’t be any trouble.”

  John wrapped his arm around Ann’s shoulders. “That’s a great idea. You can get a good night’s sleep and do the interview first thing in the morning.”

  “I want to get this over with.” She patted John’s hand as she walked out of his embrace and headed to the study. She heard chairs scraping the tile floor and glanced back to see Paul and Lark getting up to follow her.

  After Ann agreed to be taped and waived her right to an attorney, Lark asked her once more if she wanted to do this tonight. Despite, or maybe because of, his kindness, tears welled in her eyes. She retrieved a box of tissues from one of the bookcases as she assured him that she wanted to get it over with.

  “I’m always fine when I’m in the middle of a crisis. It’s later that I cry. Too many years as an ER and ICU nurse,” she said, patting her eyes.

  “I really think we ought to do this tomorrow,” Paul said. “You look worn out.”

  “I look like hell but I’m fine,” Ann said, glancing from one to the other. “You’re both probably just like John. It drives him crazy to see a woman cry, especially if he thinks he had anything to do with it. My tear ducts may be in hyperdrive but my mind is fine. I don’t have anything to hide. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know if it’ll help you figure out who killed those poor people. Let’s get this over with.”

  The interview lasted until seven. Lark questioned Ann about their activities the last few days and the only thing out of the ordinary she could remember was the snowmobile on Saturday night. He probed about any significant events during the time they’d lived there, and she couldn’t recall anything other than the construction of their house. She assured them that they’d never been to Big Oak until Sam left them the property. They had vacationed in northern Wisconsin, but they’d always been in the St. Germaine or Rice Lake areas.

  Lark seemed uncomfortable but plowed ahead through the personal questions.

  His eyes bored into Ann’s and she broke eye contact. “Have you ever had an affair?”

  “I haven’t, and I’d have to see John in action to believe he has. We’ve been very happy.”

  “Do you and John have any family close by?”

  She studied the colorful book jackets to the right of his head. “Our families live in Ohio and West Virginia. I’m the oldest of six. I have two brothers, a sister, and a stepsister. My other sister died five years ago in a car accident. My father died when I was fifteen. My stepfather died two years ago. My grandparents are dead. My mother and I aren’t on the best of terms, but I’m very close to my brothers and sister.”

  Ann stared down at the table, deep in thought. All those things she thought she’d dealt with were coming back to the surface. The things she’d worked so hard to get beyond were creeping out of the dark recesses of her mind where she’d so carefully packed them away. The agony over not being able to have children; the painful deaths of close family members; her estrangement from her mother. She had a blinding realization that the experts she’d privately scoffed at were right. These excruciating things never truly went away, as she had been so cavalier to think. She could pack them up and send them back to their designated tombs in her subconscious. She could get them back into places where she could talk about them apathetically. But it was devastatingly obvious that any significant emotional event in her life could trigger their return. Lark interrupted Ann’s reverie to tell her that he didn’t have any more questions.

  “When will you know how long the second person has been dead?” Ann asked. “I just can’t get that snowmobile we heard on Saturday night out of my mind. What was it doing in the marsh without headlights? Either someone was picking up a deer they poached or dropping off that body. If that person was still alive when she was dumped, it’s going to be very hard for me to live with the fact we may have let someone die.” A tear trickled down Ann’s face.

  “Is that what you’re upset about?” Lark asked.

  “Mostly.” She reached for a tissue. “Let’s not talk about this anymore,” she said, wiping her eyes as she got up.

  “Ann, wait a minute,” Lark said, stepping in front of her. “I doubt there was anything you could have done and you might have gotten hurt if you’d gone out in the marsh after that snowmobile.”

  Ann listened, staring silently over his shoulder.

  “I’ll let you know what the autopsy says about the time of death.” She nodded and he stepped out of her way.

  John met them in the kitchen. He asked Lark and Paul to stick around and have a snack. Paul quickly accepted and Lark agreed to stay for a few minutes before going to check on the progress of the crime scene team.

  Ann went upstairs to pull herself together. Twenty minutes later she was back downstairs after a modestly successful makeup repair. John had stoked up the fire and she was just settling down on the sofa with some cookies and a mug of hot chocolate when the doorbell rang.

  “For chrissakes, what is this, Grand Central Station?” John asked as he went to answer the door. He returned to tell Ann that Betty Chevsky wanted to speak with her. Ann squared her shoulders and headed into the living room.

  Betty was sitting in one of the navy blue wingback chairs in front of the living room windows. Ann was used to seeing her in a blue housekeepe
r’s uniform. Tonight, she was wearing a neat, dark green skirt and matching sweater. Her black purse was perched on top of her knees and she clutched the top of it with both hands. Ann sat down on the sofa across from her, noting that the front-porch lights were on and big, fat snowflakes were coming down.

  “Betty, what brings you out on a night like this? Can I get you some coffee or something to warm you up?”

  “No, thank you,” she said, staring up at the wall behind Ann. “That’s a beautiful quilt.” Sixteen angels in various shades of red were appliquéd on light blue plaid blocks. Betty’s eyes shifted to the red, white, and navy Log Cabin quilt that hung over the other sofa.

  “Log Cabin is my favorite pattern. I made me one just like it. I mean, not just like that one,” she stammered, “not them same colors, but that same pattern.”

  “Thank you. These were my quilting projects for the last two years,” Ann said, watching surprise cross Betty’s face. People who only knew her from work never dreamed she quilted.

  “I can’t believe all your carnival glass. I have some of my mother’s.” Betty’s eyes darted between the two corner cupboards. She continued to cling to her purse like it was a lifeline and she was drowning.

  “My grandmother gave me my first piece and I’ve loved it ever since,” Ann said, studying Betty’s weary face, trying to figure out why she had come.

  Betty leaned forward and stared down at the carpet. “Mrs. Ranson, I got to talk to you about my husband. Lonnie didn’t mean no harm. I like working at the hospital and I don’t mind the night shift’cause I get more money.”

  “I’m glad you like your job.”

  “I told Lonnie you made me go to nights so he wouldn’t make me go off’em.” She glanced up at Ann and rushed on. “I don’t know why he said I don’t like you. That ain’t true. I never said it. I don’t understand what you’re doin’ at the hospital, but none of us want it to close’cause then we wouldn’t have no jobs or insurance.” She continued to study the carpet. “Lonnie was drunk today and he shouldn’t have been hunting on your property. I’m begging you not to press charges against him.” She looked up at Ann with tears in the corners of her eyes.