Free Mortal Fall by Christine Carbo

center of the room and a gunmetal file cabinet hid in the corner with a wilting ficus on top. I smelled a slight antiseptic tang mixed with the familiar old and dusty scents of the building.
    We’d moved the printer/fax machine into the room at that time and everyone got used to using it where the sink and coffeemaker was, so we kept it there. I felt strange but energized at the same time to be utilizing the room again for something other than a staff meeting. “I’ll need you to check the phone records while I hit the credit card statements,” I said to Ken.
    “Gotcha,” he said. “What exactly am I looking for?”
    I leaned my hip against the counter and thought about that for a minute. I turned my head and set my gaze out the window at a plump robin picking at worms in the lush lawn and wondered whether I had the right guy helping me, then decided I was being unfair. Ken’s day did not usually involve investigative work. It normally consisted of ticketing speeding tourists, responding to petty thefts at a campsite, attending to disorderly conduct reports, keeping people out of dangerous situations, helping someone get into their rental cars after accidentally locking the keys inside. . . . In fact, that’s what my day consisted of now that I was out in the field more.
    “Just look for numbers that are out of the ordinary,” I said. “If they’re not his wife’s or kids’, see who they belong to.”
    “Okay if I grab something to eat first?” Ken looked at me wide-eyed, his hand on his stomach. “I’m starved.”
    “Sure.” I smiled. “Grab a bite, but if I’m not here when you return, after I finish with the statements, I’ve gone to talk to Dr. Pritchard, Wolfie’s research vet.”
    • • •
    There was zero pointing to anything remiss in the Sedgewick family statements. They were good, responsible people who paid their bills on time with the exception of a late payment to an Old Navy credit card that Cathy paid soon after the first notice of delinquency had arrived. Jeffrey’s baseball club and Abbey’s dance studio fees were put on the Visa card. Gasoline purchases were as well and once in a while, groceries. There were some car maintenance fees: thirty-dollar oil changes and $575 to a Subaru dealership repair shop.
    When I didn’t find anything interesting on the statements, I placed a call to Cathy and asked if she could come to headquarters later for a few more questions. I figured a less personal environment might be conducive for her to talk. Then I called Dr. Pritchard, whose practice was halfway between Columbia Falls and Whitefish on Highway 40. It was coming up on his lunch hour, so we arranged to meet at a local pub in downtown Whitefish. It was a popular place to go because they had great sandwiches and a wide selection of microbrews on tap.
    I found parking on the main drag going through the town, which was tough to do in the summer with all the tourists visiting. I could remember a time in the nineties when you’d rarely find more than ten cars downtown on any given weekday, even in the heart of summer or ski season. Now, people from all over the United States and especially Canada swarmed the place. Many had second homes in the area and others were just visiting the mountains and all the Flathead Valley had to offer in the summer: boating, golfing, mountain biking, fishing, rafting. . . . I stepped out of the car and walked the busy sidewalk until I reached the bar.
    Whitefish was prospering, but it was conflicted about its growth, trying not to seem too contrived and Aspen-like with the influx of wealth, and at the same time, trying to keep from bulging into a basic, midsize sprawl with typical billboards and chain stores that would destroy the very quaintness that lured tourists in the first place. Right now, it was chaos, with roads under construction and the building of banks, office buildings, and new restaurants on several of its corners.
    I looked up and saw