Free January Thaw (The Murder-By-Month Mysteries) by Jess Lourey Page A

though I know the Offerdahl name is tied to the Prospect House.”
    Chuck nodded. He’d expected that. I was starting to think nothing I could say would surprise him. He’d known exactly how this interview would go before he walked in the door, and truly, it felt like a job interview. “Eric is about your age, maybe a little younger. He was a troubled kid, might still be. Troubled, that is, obviously not a kid anymore. I was hoping you could track him down.”
    Some stubborn streak in me refused to ask him why. “Do you have an address?”
    “We think he’s living within fifteen miles of Battle Lake.”
    “Any idea of who his friends might be?”
    “He graduated high school here, but all his friends, if he had any, have moved on.”
    “How long do you think he’s been back?”
    “A month, maybe two.”
    A lovely wedge of warm caramel apple pie with a scoop of melting vanilla ice cream was slid in front of me. I smiled. Yesterday might have been a crap sandwich, but today was going pretty well so far. I ate my pie and pretended to contemplate everything Chuck had told me. I hoped my face was somehow radiating thoughtful intelligence because my brain was cycling over two words, again and again: pie … amazing . I finished the whole slice barely coming up for air, wondering if the speed-calorie conversion applied to pies as well as cookies.
    “You must have been hungry,” Chuck said.
    I looked up to see he was only on his second bite. Second bite of his second piece, though, which did not exactly give him carte blanche to the judgment chair.
    “Thank you,” I said. “For the pie. It was delicious. If I take the case, how much time do I have to find Eric Offerdahl?”
    “Two weeks from today.”
    I did the math in my head. “I could give you twenty billable hours in the next two weeks, at forty dollars an hour. I’ll log all the sites I visit and leads I follow. If I don’t find him, you still pay.”
    I’d made all this up on the spot, but he nodded as if what I was saying was reasonable.
    “Deal.” He held out his hand.
    I shook it, trying not to notice the thick cherry ooze smeared across his teeth like blood.

    My meeting with Gilbert Hullson had far fewer layers. In fact, I’m not even sure it had one layer. I tracked him down at the hardware store where he worked part-time. He was in the screw aisle sorting through a bin.
    “Mr. Hullson?”
    “None other.”
    He kept sorting, not bothering to glance my way. He wore flannel and, except for a spectacularly bulbous nose, looked like your average middle-aged Midwesterner.
    “I’m Mira James. From the Battle Lake Recall ? I’m here to interview you about Jiffy.”
    That got his attention. He immediately stood, his eyes alight. “You shoulda seen it! One minute I’m planning her funeral, and the next, she’s shooting out of a fishhole like popcorn. Poor thing was wet and shivering to beat the band, but she was alive. Ooh, if she could talk, she’d have a story to tell, wouldn’t she?”
    “So she really went into one hole and came out the other?”
    “As real as these two hands.” He held his gnarled palms toward me. He was missing the ring finger on his left hand, which confused the analogy somewhat.
    “Do you have witnesses?”
    He flashed a sly smile. “I’m a fisherman. I can always come up with witnesses.”
    I felt a mirror smile tugging at my lips. The guy was an absolute weirdo, and he was beginning to grow on me. “Good enough. Don’t suppose I could come by your house later tonight and snap a photo of Jiffy? To run with the article?”
    He returned his attention to the screws. “She’d be pleased to meet you.”

Fourteen
    In eighth grade, our health class took a half-day trip to Paynesville Manor, the local nursing home. We were each assigned an honorary grandparent, and our job was to listen to their history and write a mini-biography from it. That’s one of those exercises that must look great on paper, a bunch of