Free Crazy Mountain Kiss by Keith McCafferty Page A

Cinderella before taking matters into my own hands. I won’t make that mistake again.”
    Stranahan told her he could be on the road in an hour. “I might be intruding on your dinner. I wouldn’t want to disturb you.”
    â€œMr. Stranahan, you must not have children. I have not eaten. I don’t know when I will ever eat again. I have no appetite for food. Surely you understand that.”
    Again he heard the swallowing sound and the click of the imagined glass.
    â€œMs. Huntington?”
    There was no answer. She had hung up.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Acts of Kindness
    H ow are the boys?” The county medical examiner’s customary greeting came out as one word, “Howrtheboys?”
    â€œDavid will be here for four weeks starting Memorial Day.” Martha Ettinger paused a beat. “I can’t wait.” She lifted her eyebrows and let them fall.
    â€œAre you being sarcastic, or do I detect a note of apprehension?”
    â€œI’m scared to death. Ever since he went to college I’m down to seeing him three weeks a year, tops. He chose his dad after the divorce, you know that, everybody knows that and it makes people look at me funny, like I must be a cold fish. I can live with looks. What you don’t know is David’s been having a lot harder time growing up than Derek. I guess because Derek’s older and he just came out of the chute sure of himself and rolling with the punches. But David’s sensitive. He just hides it well.”
    â€œLike you hide it?”
    Martha grunted. She shifted her eyes to the sheet covering the body on the morgue’s examination table. “You said you confirmed the ID. Teeth or bone?”
    â€œI got the X-rays from the compound fracture of Cinderella Huntington’s forearm and compared it with the ulna of the body.”
    â€œCause?”
    â€œThat’s harder to determine. No brain or spinal injury, no sign of aneurism, and no arterial failure or scarring of the heart muscle or lining. Frankly I would be surprised if there was coronary system damage with a person this young. Toxicology was negative. Her body,under her clothing, was filthy, her palms and the pads of her fingers are cracked and callused to a very unusual degree for anyone but a homeless person. Third degree frostbite on four fingertips of the right hand. And she’d lost three toenails. It’s all consistent with a life of exposure, hiking around on rough ground. But that’s immaterial with regard to health. The only signs of trauma, beside the dislocation of her hip, which I understand was a result of the extraction, are two pairs of nodules on the vocal cords and an injury to her right foot. The nodules are sometimes called screamer’s nodules. No doubt the poor girl hollered her head off.”
    â€œCould she have been moved postmortem?”
    â€œStuffed down the chimney?” Hanson shook his head. “Livor mortis is as you’d expect in the dependent portion of the body, in her case the feet and right hip. There’s no evidence that the body was shifted or that she died anywhere but the chimney.”
    â€œSo we’re going with exposure?”
    Hanson nodded. “Hypothermia. The time of death is mid-April, give or take a week. During that period average nighttime lows were right at the freezing mark. They dipped as low as the upper teens. This is at the nearest weather collecting station with similar elevation. So we’re guessing a corresponding temperature curve, but the bottom line is it was cold. All she had on were jeans and a polyester pullover and maybe that Santa hat. Even with the highest temperatures of the period, we’re looking at death within twenty-four hours. She may have survived a day but probably not a night. I made the call to the family an hour ago. Her mother had heard about the crows, so I took the liberty of assuring her that in all probability her daughter had died before that happened.