Free Murder in the Air by Ellen Hart

don't know. And you know me. I can't do anything halfway.”
    The waiter arrived with a basket of bread. Once they'd placed their orders, Sophie leaned forward, rested her chin on her hands, and said, “So, what important information did you want to talk over?” She hoped the change in subject would ease the tension between them.
    “Did we finish our fight?”
    “I think so. At least for now.”
    Gazing at her for several long seconds, Bram nodded. “All right. For now.” Pulling some notes out of his coat pocket, he smoothed them out on the tabletop. “Believe it or not, this is everything you'd ever want to know about the Kay Collins murder case.”
    Bram had talked of little else all week. “Where did you get the report?” she asked.
    “From Al Lundquist.”
    “Ah, yes. Mr. Knuckle Cracker. You can hardly hear his voice over the din his joints make.”
    “Cute.”
    “So what'd he have to say?”
    Bram buttered a cardamom roll. “He gave me the official police report along with a bunch of newspaper clippings.”
    “And?”
    “In a nutshell? I don't see how this Justin Bloom could possibly be innocent.”
    Sophie was intrigued. She was also glad to be concentrating on something other than hotel business for a few minutes. “Start at the beginning, honey. I don't want to miss a thing.”
    “God, I love it when you're as pruriently morbid as I am.” He took a bite of the roll and chewed while he searched for a particular page. “Okay, here's the scoop. Kay Collins was murdered on December twenty-fourth, 1958. Christmas eve. It was late afternoon, sometime around four. An off-duty police officer named Arn O'Dell was walking near Bryant and Min-nehaha Creek when he heard what he thought was a gunshot. He rushed down the embankment toward the water and saw a man shouting at a woman. They were clearly fighting about something, though O'Dell couldn't make out the words.”
    “It was Collins and Bloom?”
    “Exactly. Now, even though it was getting dark, the cop still got a good look at both of them. He later picked Justin Bloom's photo out of a file. At the time all he knew was that the two people were young, and that the man was very, very angry. About twenty yards away, O'Dell slipped on a piece of ice and landed in a snow pile. When he looked up, he saw the man level a gun at the woman's head and shoot. Since O'Dell didn't have a gun himself, he shouted for the man to stop, but Bloom took off up an embankment. Thinking that the woman might still be alive, he raced to where she'd fallen and checked her vital signs. It was too late. She'd been horribly disfigured by the gunshot. The medical examiner said she died instantly. There was a citywide search that lasted for days. The police even found the clothes Bloom had been wearing that night. They were hidden in his bedroom closet, and they were covered with blood, Sophie—Kay's blood. The upshot was, Bloom got away. The story made the headlines for weeks afterward. It was a brutal, bloody murder, and no one had a clue where Justin Bloom had gone.”
    Sophie shook her head. She, too, was amazed by the brutality.
    “And it doesn't stop there,” continued Bram. “From whatothers pieced together after the murder, Justin and Kay had apparently been dating. They told friends they were in love. Bloom even broke an engagement with another woman to be with Kay. Guess who that other woman was?”
    “Who?”
    “Mitzi Quinn.”
    Sophie was surprised. “I met her the other night when she checked into the hotel. She's very attractive. Didn't look a day over fifty. But”—she did the math in her mind—”she must be in her sixties.”
    “Fascinating, huh? And there's more. As I understand it, Kay had two roommates. They were all close friends, all from the same small town. They'd come to Minneapolis together to attend the university. But get this. Neither of the two roommates could be found for questioning after Kay's death. They'd disappeared. Vanished into thin