Mountain Ice (David Dean Mysteries)

Before Dean could answer, there was an almost inaudible knock at the door. It was Effie Quincy. She came into the room, glancing over her shoulder like a spy on over time.

"I...I found this," she said, holding out the missing picture of the Reverend and Mrs. Martin. "It must have been picked up by mistake."

Dean couldn't help raising his eyebrows at the obvious lie but when he looked at her tear-stained face, he felt compassion. "What's the problem, Effie?" he asked.

She let herself be led to a corner chair. "It's nothing, really. That policeman upset me, I guess. And Claire is in there now. I don't know what she's going to say."

"Is there something about the accident she knows?" Fred asked, but Effie just shook her head.

She bit her lip. "Claire won't talk to me about it. But she's so pleased Mr. Shipton is dead, it frightens me. It's so unlike her."

"Seems to be some question about that," Fred said. "'bout him being dead, I mean."

"He may still be alive?" she asked. Fred nodded. "Oh, my! Claire will be livid!" She rose and started toward the door.

"Has your sister given any indication Shipton might have told her the truth about Annie Quincy?" Dean asked. Effie just shook her head, turned without a word and hurried from the room.

Fred examined the picture as Dean slumped back in his chair. "She never did say where she found it, did she?" Dean said. "Probably in Claire's suitcase. I guess she was afraid the police might search their stuff."

"I'm beginning to wonder which of them ladies is the strangest!"

For the second time in a few minutes, there was a knock on the door. It was Janet O'Brien, telling Dean he had a visitor at the back door. When Dean kicked the door loose from the accumulated snow blown against it, he found Jake Weller dressed in civilian clothes, huddled against the frame of the unshoveled rear entrance.

"Come on in," Dean said. "Why didn't you use the front door? You look like the poor little match boy." Weller had tromped through several feet of snow and was white to his thighs.

"Naw," he growled. "Get a coat. Let's walk and talk."

Dean donned coat and boots and joined the lawman. Both high-stepped their way through the deep snow to the plowed alley in the rear of Bird Song.

"So why the cloak and dagger stuff?" Dean asked as he paused beneath a streetlight. Weller prodded him further to the shadows beyond before he answered.

"They cut me out of the investigation. Corday would write me up for just talking to you."