“What’s my best choice for lunch?” Floyd asked. “Of course you have to keep in mind that I have to save room for a piece of pie.”
“Hot turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy,” Beth suggested. “If you want to go lighter than that, I suggest a bowl of hamburger sauerkraut soup.”
“I’ll have the hot turkey sandwich,” Floyd said, looking over a hand-written list of pies marked on a chalkboard behind the counter. “Then a piece of sour cream raisin pie.”
“I’ll take a bowl of soup and lemon meringue pie,” Pam said.
Beth poured coffee for Floyd and Pam without asking, and then topped off Ray’s coffee. “Coffee is always on the house for law enforcement,” she explained.
“So, what brings two Pine County deputies to Winthrop?” the chief asked, glancing at their shoulder patches.
“We’re on our way back home,” Floyd explained. “We had to interview someone in Redwood Falls this morning.”
“Where’s Pine County?”
Halfway between the Twin Cities and Duluth,” Pam said. “Highway 35 cuts it almost in half with the east edge up against Wisconsin along the St. Croix.”
“Drove through a couple times, but I guess I never paid attention to what county I was in. Did Redwood Falls arrest somebody for you?”
“No, just talking to someone connected with an old missing person’s case. We picked up some new leads in a case and some of the people involved have moved on.”
“Yup,” Ray agreed. “It’s tough to keep people in these dying little farm towns anymore. The farms keep getting bigger with fewer people working on them and even fewer people able to actually make a living off the land anymore. I think half the people in this county are retired and the other half are living off welfare.”
“So what kind of criminal excitement is there in Winthrop these days?” Pam asked.
“Not much on the day shift. We get a few drunken drivers after the bars close and a few break-ins to steal the copper wire from abandoned houses, but that’s about it for excitement. How about Pine County?”
“Pretty much the same,” Floyd said. “We’re spread out over almost twelve hundred square miles, so we spend a lot of time just driving the back roads. Some nights I’ve seen more deer than cars.”
“I used to be a county deputy, so I hear what you’re saying. I remember serving papers on folks, and sometimes I’d spent half a shift looking at plat books, just trying to locate their houses.”
“I was doing the same thing just this morning,” Floyd said. “We had a guy murdered in a seasonal lake home, and I was trying to figure out who owned the house and what connection they had with the people involved.”
“That was the Bradshaw house?” Pam asked.
The waitress showed up with their orders. Floyd’s plate was mounded with mashed potatoes and gravy dripped off the edges of the plate. Pam’s portion of soup was only slightly smaller.
“How am I going to have room for pie after all this?” Floyd protested in jest.
“Eat dessert first,” the waitress said. “Life’s uncertain. You’re pie will be up momentarily.”
“Are the owners of the house the same Bradshaws who own the funeral home?” Pam asked. To the police chief she said, “Floyd always claims that there are no coincidences in police work.”
Floyd stopped mid-bite and set the fork back on the plate. He took out the cellphone and dialed information. “Please connect me to the Johnson-Bradshaw Funeral Home in Pine City.”
“Paul Bradshaw, please,” Floyd said to the person who answered.
A few seconds later Floyd said, “Paul, this is Floyd Swenson. I need your help with a couple quick questions. First, are you related to the Bradshaws who own a house on Round Lake?”
“My brother owns a house on Round Lake. They usually come up for two weeks over the 4th of July, so they’re probably still around. Is there some problem?”
“No problem. Just trying to nail down some loose ends we’ve got in the Aaron Roberts disappearance,” Floyd said. “So, you’re related to Melissa Smith?”
“Sure, she’s my niece. Dottie Smith is my oldest sister. What’s up, Floyd? Why the questions?”
“Bear with me for one more,” Floyd said, “and then I’ll try to explain. Has Melissa ever worked for you?”
“She was my receptionist one summer during high school, and she took night calls for a whole year while she was in the nursing program at the technical college. Now, please explain your questioning.”
“I’m in Winthrop right now, on my way back from Redwood Falls. I just spoke with Melissa and she gave me a lead on Aaron Roberts. This has to be kept in complete confidence, but Aaron may have been killed in your brother’s house.”
“Melissa told you that?”
“Again, I have to ask you to keep this in confidence. I need to talk to you about some other aspects of the case. Can I meet with you when I get back to Pine City? I’m probably four driving-hours from there now.”
“We have a wake tonight, so I’ll be here. But please, remember to honor the solemnity of our service, too.”
“I need you to do one more thing for me,” Floyd said. “Pull out the records of the caskets you held for spring interment over the winter Ken Solstad died.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.”
“It’s not going to get better,” Floyd said. “Trust me.”
“What was that all about?” Pam asked as she started her pie.
Floyd wolfed down a bite of turkey sandwich and said, “I went to the funeral home last night on the way to Sandy’s cookout. I’d read an article in the newspaper about Ken Solstad’s death, and something was nagging at me. Paul Bradshaw told me that Ken had been badly injured in the accident, and I was toying with the thought that maybe it was Aaron who had been killed in the accident instead of Ken. Anyway, he said that they’d held a closed-casket service because Ken’s body was so badly injured, and because the ground was frozen they didn’t actually bury the casket until spring.”
“This is great!” the police chief said, allowing Floyd to get a few more bites of sandwich eaten. “The most interesting mystery I’ve investigated in the past ten years is what caused the food poisoning at the Lutheran Church hot-dish contest. Turned out that Mrs. Olson had left her mayonnaise-tuna casserole on the counter too long before taking it to church. We had eighty folks doing the two-step trot for days.” He paused to sip his coffee. “So, you’re thinking your boy, Aaron, is double-bunked in a casket with another guy?”
“I didn’t need that image in my mind while I’m eating,” Pam said with a grimace.
“Assuming Aaron’s actually dead and the group of friends isn’t trying to throw us a red herring so we leave him alone in whatever new life he may have,” Floyd said, pushing aside half his sandwich and starting to eat his pie. “We haven’t had any sign of a body in over a decade. He could’ve easily been dumped in a swamp but two bodies in one casket seems so much more logical, especially if Melissa had access to the mortuary and maybe even the storage facility at the cemetery.”
Pam almost choked on her pie. She covered her mouth with a napkin and then took a drink of water. “It’s what Melissa said. That’s where the body is! Double-bunked.”
She took another swallow of water. “Melissa said twice that it would be too painful for Ken’s mother. It would be painful because it would prove that Ken was the murderer, it’d be painful because we’d have to exhume Ken’s coffin to find Aaron!”
Floyd pushed the pie aside and dialed the sheriff’s private office number on the cellphone. “John, I think we’ve got it! Aaron Roberts is most likely buried in Ken Solstad’s coffin.”