Frozen Stiff

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Book: Read Frozen Stiff for Free Online
Authors: Mary Logue
Tags: Mystery
even five years old. She had done it with an older friend. They had gone into the neighbor’s bedroom and put on some lipstick. When they had been found, the evidence was right there on her face, bright red and smeared.
    The other problem was she didn’t really know what she was looking for. If someone had locked Daniel Walker out of his house, that person had more than likely been in the sauna with him. An invited guest. Claire had told her that the Walkers had separated, so conceivably some other woman had been withhim. But why would she have locked him out? What would have pushed someone to do such an awful thing?
    Of course, if Amy knew the why, she’d know everything. The longer she worked in law enforcement, the more she realized that even the perps didn’t always know why they did something.
    Funny how on television and in books the criminals seemed so smart. Amy had found they were rarely that.
    So she should be looking for any evidence of another person, probably a female, in the house.
    Amy opened the drawer of the bedside table and wasn’t surprised to find the usual paraphanelia: lotion, nail clippers, Kleenex, aspirin, and lubricant. No diary, unfortunately. No little black book.
    A stack of towels were at the head of the bathtub folded neatly on a chair. A rumpled pile of damp towels were next to the tub, obviously just tossed there. Mr. Walker must be used to having other people pick up after him. Might be a good idea to have the towels checked for hair—if a woman was visiting she might well have taken a bath. Amy looked in the tub and noticed a ring of hair and grunge. They could collect those too.
    After a quick perusal of the rest of the drawers, which turned up only clothes, she walked down the stairs to the main floor.
    In the kitchen she found dishes in the sink, not much in the refrigerator—salami, ajar of mayonnaise, pickles, a six-pack of beer, and some moldy cheese. No signs of lipstick on any of the glasses. But they’d all have to be fingerprinted. An opened box of crackers sat on the counter, a jar of peanut butter with a sticky knife next to it. He certainly was batching it.
    She scanned the dining room and living room, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
    Time to go down to the basement and check out the sauna. The bottom floor wasn’t really a basement as only part of it was underground. The side toward the lake was a walkout, with the sauna built in next to the back door.
    She opened the door to the sauna and sniffed. The cedar smelled wonderful, deep and tangy like a pine forest after a rain. The room was large enough to fit six people comfortably. A bench ran the length of the room with a small sauna heater, rocks sitting in the top of it.
    Three objects sat on the bench: an ashtray with the butt end of a cigar perched on it, a half-empty bottle of expensive vodka and a glass etched with the letter W. So far no trace of anyone but Walker’s presence.
    As she was backing out of the sauna, Amy heard a clicking noise coming from upstairs—it must be coming from the front door on the main floor. She had purposely locked the door behind her when she came in so it had to be someone who had a key—maybe Daniel Walker’s daughter. Amy also knew her presence would not be a secret as her squad car was parked in the driveway.
    She ran up the stairs and was surprised to see Sara Hegstrom carrying a vacuum cleaner and a bucket of cleaning equipment. Amy had heard that Sara was supplementing their farm income by doing housekeeping. While she didn’t know the woman very well, her dad was friends with Sara’s husband Clyde.
    “Sara, stop where you are. You can’t come in. I’m sorry but you can’t clean in here today.”
    Sara set down the vacuum cleaner in the entryway and held the bucket like it was a baby in her arms. “I saw your squad car out front. What’s happened? Are the Walkers okay?”
    “We’re not quite sure yet, but Mr. Walker was locked outside his house last

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