Free A Colder Kind of Death by Gail Bowen

a.m. when I got home. I checked on Angus and Taylor, showered, put on my most comforting flannelette nightie, and climbed into bed. I was bone-tired, but I couldn’t sleep. Every time I shut my eyes, I saw the red wound in Maureen Gault’s white face: Cherries in the Snow.
    Finally, I gave up and went down to the kitchen. Hilda was sitting at the table, drinking tea and reading a book titled
Varieties of Visual Experience
.
    “Boning up on Abstract Expressionism?” I asked, and then, I began to sob.
    Hilda leaped up and put her arms around me. “Good God, Joanne, what’s the matter? It’s not one of the children …?”
    “No, it’s not the children,” I said. “It’s me. Hilda, I’m in trouble …”
    I started to tell her about Maureen, but I guess I wasn’t making much sense, because she stopped me.
    “Let me get you some tea,” she said. “Then you can start again. This time, tell me what happened in chronological order. Nothing calms the nerves more effectively than logic.”
    Hilda poured half a mug of steaming tea, then she went into the dining room and came back with a bottle of Metaxa. She added a generous shot of brandy to the tea and handed the mug to me. “Drink your tea,” she said, “then we’ll talk.”
    An hour later, when I went to bed, I slept. It was a good thing I did, because the next morning when I picked up the paper, I knew it was going to be a long day. The paper was filled with stories about Maureen Gault’s murder and, whatever their starting point, by the final paragraph they all had an arrow pointing at me.
    I could feel the panic rising, and when the phone rang, I froze. “Whoever you are, you’d better have good news,” I said as I picked up the receiver. I was in luck. It was my daughter, Mieka, sounding as exuberant as a woman should when she was on a holiday with her new husband.
    “Mum, guess where I am.”
    “Some place sunny and warm, I hope.”
    “I’m sitting at a table in a courtyard at the Richelieu Hotel in New Orleans, and I just had grits for the first time in my life.”
    “And you phoned to tell me,” I said.
    “No, I phoned to tell you that Greg and I got the same room you and Daddy had when you stayed here on your honeymoon.”
    A flash of memory. Lying in each other’s arms, watching the overhead fan stir the soupy Louisiana air, listening to thesounds of the French Quarter drift through the open doors to our balcony.
    “I hope that room’s as magical for you as it was for us.”
    “It is,” she said softly.
    I could feel the lump in my throat. “I’d better let you get back to your grits while they’re still hot,” I said. “As I remember it, grits need all the help they can get. And, Mieka, tell Greg thanks.”
    “For what?”
    “For making you so happy.”
    “I will,” she said. “And you tell everybody there hello from us. We’ll call on Taylor’s birthday.”
    I’d just hung up when my oldest son, Peter, called from Saskatoon. He tried to be reassuring, but I could tell from his voice that the stories in the Saskatoon paper must have been pretty bleak.
    “You know, Mum, I think I’d better come home for a while,” he said.
    “In the middle of term?” I said. “Don’t be crazy. You know the kind of marks you need to get into veterinary medicine. Besides, by the time you get down here, this will have blown over.”
    “Do you really think so, Mum?”
    “No, but I really do think you’re better off there. Pete, if I need you, I know you can be in Regina in three hours. At the moment, that makes me feel a lot better than having you jeopardize your term by coming here to hold my hand.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Absolutely. Now let me tell you about what your sister and Greg are doing.”
    “Eating everything that’s not nailed down, I’ll bet,” he said.
    “You got it,” I said. By the time I finished telling Peter about New Orleans, he sounded less scared and I felt better.When I heard Hilda and the kids coming