Free Once Upon a Time by Barbara Fradkin

something.”
    â€œWalker a Kraut? Do you think Mrs. Walker would lie about something like that?”
    â€œI wonder if she even knew. If he’d even tell her. After two world wars, the Brits hated the Germans’ guts.”
    Sullivan whistled. “Boy, that would be some secret to keep from her.”
    â€œStill think this is just an old stiff in a parking lot?”
    Sullivan smiled. “An interesting old stiff, that’s for sure.” He drew the car to a halt at the end of the lane and scanned the highway in both directions. On one side, a multi-gabled red brick farmhouse could be seen far in the distance. On the other side, nothing but fields of stubbled corn half buried in white. But across the highway, about two hundred yards further west, stood a white clapboard Victorian farmhouse with a sagging veranda and a steeply pitched tin roof. It had never aspired to greatness but had clearly seen better times.
    â€œWhere to, boss?”
    â€œNeighbours,” Green said, pointing to the Victorian farmhouse. “Let’s start right there.”
    Green and Sullivan mounted the wooden veranda with trepidation as the splintered boards moaned beneath their weight. Black paint peeled from the door, which proudly sported a shiny new brass door knob. Odd the priorities some people have, Green thought.
    His knock was answered immediately by a middle-aged woman bent from hard work but still brisk in her movements. She had a broad Slavic face, steel-wool hair forced haphazardly into a bun, and deep-set, sun-parched blue eyes which bored through the detectives warily as they settled on the aging parlour couch. In the corner, a smoky black woodstove was turning the claustrophobic room into a sauna. Oblivious, the woman hugged a cardigan around her and folded her arms across her chest.
    â€œI don’t know my neighbours,” she stated flatly as soon as they posed the question. She had no discernible accent, but spoke as if communication were a rarely practised art. Perhaps out here it is, Green thought with a glance out the window at the endless vista of fields. “They had a store in Renfrew, this I know. But we didn’t see them much, especially not him. He never came out. She came out sometimes to go to Eganville or Renfrew, maybe to shop. Sometimes she stopped here to buy corn in the summer. She’d say hello, very nice, but he stayed in the car. Never talked. That’s all I can tell you. I didn’t see nobody, nothing.”
    Green tried a variety of questions about the Walkers’ habits, their relationship to the rest of the community, and any rumours about them. Mrs. Wiecowska stubbornly maintained that she knew and had heard nothing.
    Finally, Green smiled at her with what he hoped was a mournful air. “Mrs. Wiecowska, Eugene Walker seems to have been a very sad old man, and very lonely. Maybe he brought it on himself, but who can know what life does to a man, eh? Who knows what he’s been through? I think it is terrible that someone left him alone to die in the snow. No person at the end of their life should be left like that.”
    She was frowning at him in bewilderment, as if trying to follow him but wary of traps along the way. He paused to let her catch up, then shook his head sadly. “Did no one ever come to visit him?”
    â€œOh,” she replied hastily, as if somehow she herself were being chastised. “His family, sure. His daughter, her children.”
    â€œSon-in-law?”
    She shrugged expressively. “Son, son-in-law? I don’t know them. Sometimes a car would come and go. I don’t know who.”
    â€œSame car?”
    â€œNo, no. Different cars. Yesterday—no, two days ago— there was a car. Strange, because no one was home. The old man died the day before. I watched, because I thought it would come out again soon. But it was not very soon.”
    Green’s pulse soared, but he strove to keep his tone on the