Free The Heirloom Murders by Kathleen Ernst

didn’t seem right.
    Libby was carrying dishes inside when he rejoined her. “I need your help,” he said. “Let’s go for that ride. It won’t take long.”
    Libby insisted on putting the food away before leaving, but twenty minutes later, the two of them stood at the head of the White Oak Trail.
    “Why are we here?” Libby gave Roelke her I am not amused look.
    “An experiment. I’m going to head in a ways. I want you to walk the trail until you reach me, and count your steps.”
    “Roelke—”
    “Holy toboggans, Libby, do you think I’d bring you here if it wasn’t important?” He turned away and jogged to the spot where he’d found Bonnie Sabatola’s body. In the canopy overhead, songbirds warbled the day’s final songs. No evidence of the violent death remained. How many children had skipped unknowingly over this spot? How many hand-holding couples had wandered past?
    Libby joined him a few minutes later. “Two hundred and thirty-two steps,” she announced flatly. “Now, what the hell was all that about?”
    Roelke told her about Bonnie Sabatola’s instructions. “She said she’d be three hundred paces up the trail. I reached her in one-eighty-seven, but I was running. I wanted to calculate a woman’s pace. According to Bonnie’s driver’s license, she was five-feet-seven.”
    “About my height.”
    “Exactly. But you didn’t get even close to three hundred paces. Besides that, she said her wallet would be on the wheel of the car. Instead, I found it by the trail.”
    “Let’s get out of here,” Libby said. She turned and started walking back toward the parking lot.
    Roelke followed her. For a moment neither one spoke. Finally he said, “I just want to understand what happened.”
    “Are you trying to understand the last minutes of Bonnie’s life?” Libby asked. “Or are you trying to figure out what sent Bonnie to that trail in the first place?”
    Libby had a habit of out-thinking him. He hated when she did that. “Well, first of all,” Roelke said, “I want to know what pushed her over the line. Someone must have done something to make her feel the way she did.”
    “Dellyn wasn’t aware of anything going on. If Bonnie’s sister didn’t know about any problems, and her husband says he didn’t know, what can you possibly do now? Even if Simon was having an affair or something, that’s not a crime.”
    “I know,” he admitted. “And maybe I’m way off base. But something doesn’t add up here. What if someone was abusing or threatening Bonnie Sabatola in a criminal way? Isn’t discovering that worth some effort?”
    Now Libby looked away. She had some experience with domestic abuse. After her husband’s first punch she’d left him, gotten a restraining order, and started divorce proceedings. But lots of women weren’t as strong-willed as Libby.
    They reached the parking lot. Libby didn’t speak again until they’d climbed into his truck and left the trailhead behind. “Roel-ke,” she said quietly, “if someone was brutalizing that woman, physically or emotionally, I hope you find some way to nail his ass to the wall.”
    “Thank you.”
    “But I also think that you’re wasting your time obsessing about Bonnie’s last moments.”
    “I’m not obsessing!”
    “All I mean is, you’ll never understand what she was thinking. What she was feeling. You’ll never know why she said three hundred steps, and only went two hundred and thirty. I worry that …” She sighed. “Shit, I’m not your mother. I just don’t want you to make yourself nuts, OK?”
    He thought about that, and reluctantly conceded that Libby had a point. He’d been on suicide calls before without feeling a need to get inside the head of the person just before they did the deed. Examine the scene, piece together motive from a letter or those left behind—sure. No more.
    But something about this case was haunting him. And even he could figure that one out. Bonnie Sabatola’s was the first