Ice Shear by M. P. Cooley Page A

interest.”
    â€œBut not an active suspect,” I quickly added. The last thing we needed was Phil Brouillette going vigilante. “Can we see her room?”
    â€œIt’s empty,” Phil said.
    â€œThere may still be something interesting there, we—”
    â€œAs I said, it’s empty. I had movers take everything from the room and drop it at their apartment.” He raised one arm, as if to make a point, and then a second, as if in supplication. “Look, are we done? We’ve dragged out all our dirty laundry. Just . . . just, she wasn’t a bad girl. Not really. She pushed. She always pushed. But she would have turned things around.”
    The congresswoman nodded in agreement, and sat forward on her chair. I sat forward as well, trying to bridge the gap across the broad fine-weave carpet.
    â€œShe was such a bright, lovable little girl. She would hold teas for me and her stuffed animals, and then play school next to me while I prepared lesson plans, teaching me math and giving me pop quizzes.” I smiled at this, as Lucy was currently in a similar phase.
    Amanda continued: “She said she wanted to be just like me. Then she hit her teens, and it seemed like nothing was going to make her happy. Maybe I could have paid more attention—I was in the middle of my first national campaign and a little distracted—but I thought, ‘Oh, right. Sixteen.’ I remembered breaking little rules, rebelling against my parents, and I guess I missed the point when she crossed the line.” Her voice broke, and she hesitated. When she spoke again, she had her politician’s voice back. “But she would have turned things around. She never had the chance.”

CHAPTER 8
    I DIDN’T WANT TO GO IN. I wasn’t cold on the porch of McKellison’s Funeral Home—it’s always warmer when it snows—and the less time I spent at wakes, the better. Kevin’s funeral had been more than enough for this lifetime. Mourners arrived: local politicians and a few from the state level, employees from Brouillette Paper Company, and any number of Hopewell Falls residents. My second grade teacher from Saint Patrick’s stopped and chatted with me. It turned out she’d taught Phillip Brouillette, too. Hale joined me, and I introduced him to the people who paused to talk. Nobody seemed to realize that I was there on official business, and their glances at Hale probably had more to do with thinking he was my new boyfriend than that he was FBI.
    â€œHow ’bout we head inside?” Hale asked, clapping his hands together. Hale’s cashmere coat and lined leather gloves had to be warm, but his head was bare, and he was wearing his wingtip shoes. Even the most proper of church ladies and obsequious political toadies knew enough to wear boots in this weather.
    Four racks were set up for coats, and the funeral home folks wheeled out a fifth to handle the overflow. The mortuary was a converted house, built over a hundred years earlier for one of the lace-curtain Irish families who managed to clamber out of the mills and make a place for themselves.
    People still liked the big houses—the Brouillettes’ place proved that—but now the functions were different: instead of sitting rooms and bedrooms, the Brouillettes had offices and home gyms. Still, the size of the Brouillettes’ house meant that it had been early afternoon before we completed our search.
    Dave and Jerry arrived at McKellison’s together. A tired Dave dragged, but Jerry’s eager step offset his grave expression: he loved everything this case was doing for his career. Jerry beelined for the Brouillettes. He didn’t get far. The condolence line spilled out of the room and snaked into the opposite sitting room and toward the back door. In addition to the friends and neighbors, the lobbyists were there, wanting to make a good impression on the congresswoman. The guy from the