Turn to Stone Read Online Free PDF Page B

The size of the town didn’t matter. Money and land always talked. “What happened to Hamlin?”
    “Nobody knows,” Kelli replied. “He vanished. So did his car. Percy was spending day and night on the case, but I don’t think he’d found anything. He wouldn’t talk to me about it, but he didn’t seem to be working on anything else. I figured he was getting pressure from Sheriff Weik to figure out what happened.”
    “That’s it?”
    “That’s it,” she said.
    Stride chose his words carefully. “Suicide is usually personal, Kelli. It’s not work or friends. If there’s a motive, it’s closer to home. It’s rooted in depression.”
    “I know that,” Kelli insisted. “Percy wasn’t depressed. Something was bothering him, but he wasn’t depressed. I know the difference.”
    “I have to ask. How were things between the two of you?”
    “Fine.”
    She answered too quickly.
    “In other words, not fine,” he said calmly.
    Kelli tilted her head back and stared at the blue sky. “Yes, okay, it was difficult between us.”
    “In what way?”
    “Every couple struggles,” she replied. “When you’ve been through what I went through, you don’t necessarily embrace intimacy too well. Add in a straitlaced Lutheran husband, and let’s face it, you don’t have a recipe for a couple that’s going to talk out their emotional problems.”
    “Were you faithful to him?” Stride asked.
    “Yes,” she snapped.
    “Was he faithful to you?”
    “Percy would never cheat on me.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “I’m sure,” she insisted. She read the look on his face and added: “I know where you’re going with this, Mr. Stride. You think I should open up my Psychology 101 textbook. Intimacy issues, emotional struggles, loneliness. Percy couldn’t deal with his problems, and he wound up with a gun to his head.”
    Stride frowned. “Sometimes it happens exactly like that, Kelli.”
    “I know it does, but not this time. This was something different. If I never find out what it was, then I’ll spend the rest of my life seeing the same look in people’s faces that I’m seeing in yours right now. Everyone will think my husband killed himself because of me.”

5
    Standing in the corridor outside Sheriff Weik’s office, Stride heard shouting. He couldn’t make out the words, but it was a woman’s voice, angry and shrill. The heavy oak door flew open, and a petite blond charged into the hallway like a racehorse out of the gate. He didn’t have time to dodge her, and she barreled headlong into him, bouncing off his chest and spilling the contents of her clutch purse on the marble floor.
    “Watch where you’re going!” she shrieked.
    Stride smiled patiently. “Actually, I wasn’t going anywhere.”
    The woman huffed in exasperation. She squatted awkwardly in her dress and began to retrieve items from her purse: coins, lipstick, pocket mirror, ballpoint pens, and dozens of business cards. Stride bent down to help her, but she interrupted him sharply.
    “I can do this myself!”
    She gathered most of what she’d lost and stuffed items haphazardly into her purse. Loose change littered the floor, but she left it where it was. When she stood up, she smoothed the lines of her peach dress and patted her poufy helmet hair. She was small, no more than five-foot-four even in pumps, and probably a size zero. Her face was buried under makeup, with lips as red as Door County cherries. Tiny wrinkles surrounded her blue eyes. The perfect color of her yellow hair didn’t match her age, which he guessed was late fifties.
    “Who are you?” she demanded. “Are you a cop, too? I don’t know you.”
    It sounded like an accusation, as if she knew everybody in town and everybody should know her.
    “I am a cop,” he acknowledged, “but not in Shawano.”
    She opened her mouth to bark at him and then snapped it shut. She let loose with another irritated yip and clicked away on top of her high heels. Stride had one of her