Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

classic Craftsman in the University District. It had more built-ins than they had things to stash. David was doing his residency at the University of Washington Medical Center back then. She was finishing up her stint at the police academy south of Seattle. All was good. Too good. Too short. She knew that the fragmentation and ultimate destruction of their marriage had been shared by both, but even so she wished she’d given in more often. For her daughter’s sake, and deep down, she knew, for her own.
    She glanced at the Mapquest printout of directions to Olga Morris-Cerrino’s address and pulled off the freeway onto a two-lane road along the creamy green waters of the Nooksack River. A grove of cell towers flew by the driver’s window. She passed a small dairy farm and wondered how much longer it would be there. New homes were pushing the countryside farther and farther away. It was true of just about every populated part of Western Washington. In time, she knew, there would be no more farms. That would never happen in Cherrystone, of course. As David had pointed out time and time again, “Nobody with half a brain would want to live there.”
    If it was home, you would, she’d thought.
    She passed by an emu farm, its sentinel of birds standing along a wire fence line like prehistoric creatures. All turned their heads in unison as her Accord drove by. Emily thought they were ugly, but considered stopping to snap a photo with her cell phone. Jenna would think they were cute. She thought opossums were adorable. Emily turned right up the long dirt driveway, a tuft of grass separating two parallel grooves. The mailbox: CERRINO.
    Olga Morris-Cerrino was already waiting out front of the big white house, the chief benefit of a very long driveway. Standing over the sink in the kitchen window, one could see a car coming two minutes before it arrived. There was always time to do a little urgent straightening of the house and a cursory check in the mirror to see if the hair looked all right.
    “You made good time,” Olga called out, walking toward the car. “Perfect timing. Minestrone sound good?”
    Emily shut the car door and extended her hand. “You must be Italian.”
    Olga ignored the hand, and embraced Emily with a warm hug. “Don’t let the last name fool you,” she said, with a laugh. “I married into that one. And the minestrone? It’s my mother-in-law’s recipe. I claim nothing.”
    “It is so beautiful here,” Emily said, looking around at the garden as they walked toward the open front door.
    Olga bent down to pick up the cat.
    Emily smiled. “That must be Felix.”
    Olga nodded and the cat purred. “He’s probably the only one who knows the real me. I’m not a cook. Not Italian. And until I married Tony, I thought dirt was something disgusting. Now look at me. I can’t keep my fingernails clean.” She flashed her nails, edged in garden soil. “I never wear gloves. Love the feel of the soil on my hands. You’d laugh if you knew me before I ended up all the way out here. Couldn’t keep a houseplant alive.”
    “My silks even die,” Emily said. And they both laughed.
    The kitchen was authentic in every way. It wasn’t one of those new homes that tried to look old with beat-up butcher blocks and retrofitted stoves from the 1930s. An enormous pine table commanded the entire wall of windows on the south side. Light streamed in, bending and twisting as it flooded a row of colored bottles lined on a shelf that passed through the top third of the windows. It was like a prism, sending shards of color everywhere. A wooden bowl with apples sat in the middle of the table. Not wooden apples out of a Pottery Barn catalog, but the real thing. Above all, the kitchen smelled wonderful.
    “Sit, eat,” Olga said as she scurried to bring Emily a bowl of the steaming soup. Then she handed her a dish of powdery grated parmesan. “Sprinkle some of that on top. And if I overdid the oregano, shoot me with the gun on your hip” She looked at Emily’s gun, revealed on her waistband as she ” sat down. “Just kidding.”
    “Thanks for that, and thanks for seeing me. I’m not too proud to tell you that I’m grasping at straws here, but, well .. She stopped and looked down at her soup.
    I read about your daughter after we talked,” Olga said. “Let’s see if we can’t sort out some of this together.” She looked over at pile of file folders. “That’s Angel’s Nest and Dylan Walker. We’ll get to