Free The Heirloom Murders by Kathleen Ernst Page A

suicide call he’d taken since he’d met Chloe. Since he’d learned that Chloe had, not so long ago, been in some dark emotional pit herself.
    “OK,” he said, as he turned onto Libby’s street. “I will never know exactly what happened on that trail back there, or what Bonnie Sabatola was thinking in her last moments. I will stop wasting time trying to figure it out.”
    “Good.”
    “But I’m not done trying to find out if she was being abused or threatened, at home or elsewhere,” Roelke added. “Not by a long shot.”
    _____
    That night Chloe wandered in circles, played with Olympia, tried to read a book. Finally she called her best friend. “I think I screwed up,” Chloe told Ethan, a buddy from her forestry school days at West Virginia University. “Twice, actually.”
    Small silence. “What did you do?”
    She pressed the telephone to her ear, wishing they didn’t have half a continent between them. “First I met Markus. Then I agreed to go visit an elderly couple with him.”
    A longer silence. Then, “How was it to see him again?”
    “Freaky.”
    “He’s there just on business?”
    Chloe leaned back in the big brown chair in her living room. “No. He says he still has feelings for me. He wants to try things again.”
    “It took him long enough to figure that out.”
    “No kidding.”
    “Do you still have feelings for him?”
    “I don’t know.” Chloe closed her eyes. “Mostly I just feel pissed off. All those months when I would have given anything for a phone call from Markus, and then, finally , just when I’m putting it all behind me …”
    “What about you and that cop with the funny name? Are you still seeing him?”
    “Sort of. Not really. I don’t know.” Chloe used one finger to stroke Olympia, who had jumped into her lap. “Ever since I told him about Markus, things have been really strained. He was over here the other evening—”
    “Yeah?” Ethan sounded pleased.
    “It’s not what you think. He was here on business. Sort of.”
    Ethan groaned.
    “Don’t freak out. It’s nothing that involves me.” Chloe told Ethan about Dellyn and Bonnie. “Roelke’s investigating Bonnie’s death. He just wanted to ask me about Dellyn.” And he almost kissed me, she thought. Almost.
    “Are you doing OK?”
    “I’m OK,” she said resolutely. “But I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do about Markus.”
    He sighed audibly through the wire. “What do you want to do? What do you want, period?”
    “I just—I think I just want some stability in my life. I’m thirty-two years old, for God’s sake. Isn’t it time I had a savings account, and a stable relationship?”
    “Do you think Markus or Roelke could offer you those things?”
    “I don’t want any man to take responsibility for my savings account. As for the other …” Chloe let the thought dangle. “Honestly? I have no idea. I don’t know that I could ever trust Markus again. And Roelke can be a nut job at times.”
    “Maybe neither one of them is right for you.”
    Chloe didn’t want to think about her tangled love life any more. “How about you and Chris? Everything OK on your end?”
    “He’s good. We’re good. Celebrating three years together next month.”
    “Good for you. I’m glad somebody’s life is stable.”
    He laughed softly. “Things will work out for you, Chloe. Whatever ends up happening between you and Markus … maybe you needed to see him again. You two ended things so abruptly, there was bound to be a lot of stuff left unsaid.”
    “Or maybe talking to him is the verbal equivalent of pressing my hand down on a hot stove just when the first burn was starting to heal.” Chloe switched the phone to her other ear. “Ethan? Thanks for listening.”

1876
    “I’m coming up!” Charles shouted.
    Albrecht frowned. Charles had only descended into the well a few moments ago. “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing! Just tend the rope.”
    Albrecht made sure the windlass was secure.