Aftermath Page 18

Standing near the fireplace, the deputy clicked off his latest call as I traipsed back into the great room. “Word’s gone out on the Jag, ma’am,” he said. “Statewide.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You okay? Looks like you took some kind of fall.”

  “I was looking for this and got a little dirty.” I tapped the gun vault with my boot. “Unfortunately, the key to it was on the ring in my purse that Tara stole. Can you pick locks?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Damn. In the movies, all the cops knew how to do that. “Can you shoot it open?”

  B.J. glanced at the case and appeared to give it some thought. “Not a good idea, what with the ammo that’s probably in there.” He just looked back at me, apparently not willing or able to offer a solution. His gaze flicked again and again to the powdery ruin of my left side.

  I sighed and said, “I need to go to Cindy Dwyer’s, but would you mind waiting while I freshen up? There’s coffee in the kitchen and leftover pasta in the fridge—help yourself.”

  “Chief told me to see to you, make sure you got settled in.” He spat into his Styrofoam.

  It probably was an indication of what he thought about that duty, but Cade’s consideration touched me. I assured B.J., “It’ll just take me an hour to get ready.”

  He blinked at me. “A whole hour?” His examination of my left side resumed, now accompanied by an expression that seemed to say it was a lot of time to spend for such an unpromising outcome. Or maybe I was projecting.

  I said, “If you want to go and come back, that would be fine, too. I wouldn’t impose, but I don’t have money for a cab.”

  “Naw, it’s okay, I reckon.” He examined the great room, perhaps trying to decide where he wanted to wait.

  After looking at what twice had been my battleground with Tara, I walked over to the fireplace mantel. “Here’s something cool you can play with. Sit in that big leather chair.”

  There was just enough lag time between pushing the button atop the mantel and the start of descent to get in position on the square of flagstone. B.J. had taken to it like a kid at Six Flags.

  Still damp from the shower—somehow Tara had managed to soak all of the towels, and I’d been forced to wring them out and reuse them—I donned comfort clothes: a fuzzy, roll-neck, mohair sweater in mocha over a plain tee, flannel-lined jeans, and my favorite ankle boots. I assumed the deputy was still taking himself down to the basement and back up again, over and over, as I finished with my make-up and did the right side-left side comparison a final time. It seemed to be me from all angles again, which would have to be good enough.

  I called Cindy Dwyer back about returning to the original plan of me staying with her and scratching Tara’s reservation. Then I rolled the two suitcases out of the bathroom in time to hear the click, electric whine, and scissoring metal that indicated a happy lawman, oblivious that an hour had passed so quickly.

  Peering down through the square gap at the lit basement below, I said, “Deputy? I’m ready when you are.”

  His voice echoed a bit as he called from the recesses, “You see all the photo lab stuff and cameras and all? There’s a whole ’nother room set up for a shoot.”

  “No, I must’ve missed that when I was fearing for my life.”

  “Come on down and take a look—you came into some right fancy gear.”

  “Uh, sorry, no spelunking tools up here.” Actually, that wasn’t true. I’d packed so many belts, I could’ve linked them all together, secured one end to a couch leg, and shimmied down. The deputy didn’t respond, so I pointed out another fallacy. “If I press the switch, the platform will come up and the basement lights will go out.”

  “Well that ain’t good. Never did like the dark much.” Soon, the platform started its ascent, and I backed away so I wouldn’t crowd him. B.J. rose through the floor, seated in the leather chair like the King of the Rednecks, his .45-caliber sword in its holster, his scepter a radiantly white spit cup. At some point in the last hour he’d exchanged the half-filled one for new Styrofoam, making me wonder if I’d find the used one in my trashcan. Note to self: Don’t reach into the garbage blindly.

  “Thanks for waiting,” I said.

  “Sure thing—that was a hoot. I knew your daddy liked to take pictures, but don’t that beat all what kind of setup he had.”

  “Did he just shoot landscapes and architecture?”

  “Naw, he’d take picture of just about anything or anyone. Never saw him without a camera around his neck when he was tooling around town.” The deputy took in the large shots mounted on the walls. “He loved to shoot high school sports, too. Had a reserved seat at all the games.”

  He walked with me to the foyer to collect the luggage but then stopped and stared out the windows in horror and fascination. “Uh oh,” he said. “It’s started.”

  I spun around to look in the same direction. Outside, fat flakes drifted down. “You’ve seen snow before, right?”

  “Sure. Every five years or so we get a tich of it. Sometimes it sticks around, turns to ice. Trucks spinning out, bumper cars on all the streets, broken bones from falls. We best get moving.”

  Doing a final walkthrough, I spotted something outside the kitchen windows: Tara had left the garage door open. Why I expected her to show any sort of consideration I didn’t know, but it pissed me off all over again. I marched through the back door and out into a fantasy snow globe. Silence except for the gentle tick of flakes settling on everything. Immediately I felt my temper calm and a smile warm my face.

  What I still liked best about Graylee was that hush, as if I were a million miles from the chaotic clatter of any city. Deep into the night, I knew my Horsewomen would return with a vengeance to tell me I was, in fact, that far from anyone who possibly could love me. For now, though, I didn’t hear those hoof beats—there was only the delicate landing of a thousand tender spots of snow.

  “Careful, ma’am,” B.J. called behind my back.

  I checked the path around my feet. The snow was sticking, sure, but it would need to come down like this for hours just to blot out the ground. “I lived in New York most of my life,” I reminded him, as he sheltered under the porch overhang. “Walked on a ‘tich’ more than this.”

  At the garage door, I entered the code to lower it and noted there now were three empty bays. Tara has stolen the Jag, the BMW was stranded in the courtyard, and there was the space with only faint oil drips to show some mystery vehicle once had been there.

  Back up on the porch with the deputy, he looked at me head-to-toe and back again, perhaps wondering how anyone could’ve survived such an onslaught by nature. I grinned and did a full rotation for him, to display the fat, glistening flakes stuck to me. “Covered in white again, but at least this will melt.”

  “Hurry now.” He glanced again at the weather and muttered, “This keeps up, it’ll be a danged white Christmas for sure.”

  We each took a suitcase. B.J. refused to let my luggage roll behind him—maybe he thought it was more macho to carry the pink and purple bag. At the front door, I stopped to punch in the security number, in case someone other than Tara decided to drop by, seeing as how I couldn’t lock up. And who knows, maybe she would lose the yellow pad with the code and get caught revisiting the scene of her crimes.

  Before we headed out, I also hefted the twenty-pound kettlebell I’d created from what had been a perfectly good gun vault. I told myself it balanced the suitcase I hauled in my other hand, down the steps and out to the deputy’s cruiser. Cade would’ve taken these items from me and I would’ve reluctantly—but gratefully—let him be chivalrous. B.J., however, didn’t seem to notice my arms stretching longer with every step, and anyway he did have to carry his spit cup in his free hand.

  The snowfall had thickened a bit, making me narrow my eyes as we walked to the cruiser. My cute mohair sweater wasn’t exactly wicking away th
e moisture and promised to be a wet mess for a while. I really missed that coat Tara had stolen.

  With everything stowed in the trunk except the Styrofoam, which went into a cup-holder near his hat on the console between us, we settled into our seats. B.J. cranked up the heat and put the wipers on a slow, groaning sweep across the damp windshield. When the glass cleared, I glanced at my father’s house—I was leaving it yet again, with no certainty about when I’d be back.

  The deputy sawed the wheel one way and then the other and rocked the car with abrupt starts, stops, and reverses. I saw his dilemma. He’d parked close behind the rental car with the flattened tires, and then I parked the Beamer behind him. Not tight on his bumper like on a New York street, but close enough to make him work hard.

  “Think we’ll escape?” I asked him.

  He only grunted and continued to extricate us an inch at a time. To distract him from wanting to kill me for putting him in this predicament, I said, “Did my father once have a fourth car? There are four spaces in the garage.”

  “Naw, that last one was for the girls.”

  I turned to him. “He had other daughters?”

  “What?” His tobacco-packed lower lip pushed out farther in ridicule. “No, the girl that would stay there each year.”

  I imagined a parade of live-in girlfriends, my father replacing one with another annually. Maybe that’s why Mom had left him—he got bored easily and just couldn’t keep his hands off other women. It also would explain the weird mix of decorating styles—the Hemingway and Laura Ashley mashup. I guess he had so much space he let them have their choice of suites to decorate. Of course, maybe it was just a live-in maid that Dad swapped out each year while he led a monkish existence. Add another mystery to the pile.

  The deputy pounded the steering wheel. “Look, I’m gonna have to nudge one of your cars or the other. You pick.”

  “The rental. We’ll just include the dent in the vandalism report Cade wrote up.”

  B.J. said, “Buckle up.” He bared tobacco-flecked teeth, stomped the gas, and banged into the beleaguered sedan probably a little harder than he needed to. Even with the tires flattened, the rental rolled forward a few feet. He moved us clear at last and made a big half-circle across the snow-speckled courtyard to point the cruiser toward town.

  My phone rang. The scooped-out seat behind me made it easy to reach into my back pocket. I checked the screen and saw Cade Wilson’s name and cell number. Plugging one ear with my index finger so I could hear him over the rubber-on-damp-glass squeal and stutter of the wipers, I drawled, “Darrell’s Demolition Derby, what can we do fer ya?”

  “Uh…everything all right?”

  We coasted onto Brady Stapleton Boulevard, which showed white patches where the snow hadn’t melted. I switched to my regular voice. “Sure, Deputy Tindale is moving heaven and earth to get me to Cindy’s. Any luck finding Tara?”

  “No. I got J.D. checking the neighborhoods, and I’ve been doing the side streets, but I think she’s long gone. We need to quit the hunt anyway, because the snow’s starting to stick and we’ll be responding to calls soon.”

  “I heard. Hey, the one bright spot about Tara is that she solved ‘the why’ for us: Wallace Landry was her fiancé and wanted to get enough cash to buy her an engagement ring. It’s like the cop shows always say: follow the money.”

  “Darn, I knew I should’ve paid more attention to those shows. Talk to you after I binge-watch some Law & Order, so I can do my job better.” He ended the call.

  Playful friskiness underlay his derision, a good sign. The snow would be a major plus if it kept up: it could strand Bebe way out in the woods at David’s, while I would be close by in case Cade had time for dinner. If he didn’t, I could help him set out roadside flares at accident scenes and assist with fallen pedestrians. Afterward, we’d warm up with some brandy at his place.

  On Main Street, B.J. jounced me out of my fantasy by jabbing my arm and pointing repeatedly at the road, which had begun to show faint tire tracks through un-melted snow. Only a few cars remained parked in the slanted spaces, their windshields, hoods, and roofs slowly turning white. Graylee had rolled up its sidewalks early. Not a single person was outside, and the lights of the diner and other businesses had been turned off. I looked behind me and saw the Denny’s was dark as well. So much for my free meals.

  “Cade hung up,” I said, “so feel free to give voice to your panic.”

  He frowned at me and replied, “I’m telling you, this is the real deal. We’re gonna spend tonight and all of Christmas Eve on accidents, stuck cars, and folks slipping on the ice.”

  “It’ll be a nice change of pace from the weekend drunks, meth dealers, and brawlers Cade told me about.”

  “That’ll be Christmas and the days after. Domestic violence goes way up. DUIs and overdoses through the roof. Snow and the holidays make everything that much worser.”

  “Bah humbug.” He didn’t appear to be in the mood, so I dropped the banter and thought back to his earlier comment. “Did my dad have a lot of girlfriends?”

  “One a year, like I said.” We headed into a neighborhood behind Main Street, nearly all of the houses bright with Christmas lights as the sky darkened further and the snow kept on coming. In one yard, some kids methodically slid all of the so-called accumulation together in an attempt to build the smallest snowman ever. In another yard, a boy used a plastic tarp as a makeshift sled to pull a girl across green grass dappled with white.

  We stopped in the driveway of a lovely lavender Victorian with white gingerbread moldings and old-fashioned, big-bulb colored lights draped over fir trees in the front yard and strung across the porch railing. A sign hanging from a wrought-iron pole identified the house as the “Graylee Bed & Breakfast” and promised a “stay in gracious luxury.”

  “Any of them still live here?”

  “Not the younger ones, like Cindy’s daughter, but I heard Cindy once dated your daddy for a bit. Long time ago.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The deputy didn’t elaborate as he assisted me with the luggage. He merely wished me luck and left me on the porch. I waved as he backed down the drive. A blur of white continued to settle in the grass and even balance on the pine needles and narrowest tree limbs.

  Behind me, the front door opened, followed by the screen door. “I know it’s a cliché,” the voice of a middle-aged woman drawled, “but we Southerners do love our snow.” I turned to her—trim build, face sagging a bit at the edges, hair dyed raven-black, stylish glasses. Eyes as dark as her hair and not nearly as welcoming as her smile. “Can’t drive on it a lick,” she added, “but we sure do think it’s pretty to look at.”

  “Janet Wright,” I said automatically, putting out my hand.

  “I know,” she replied, shaking it. “Cindy Dwyer. I’m looking forward to getting to know you better.”

  I gestured at the snowfall, the accumulation of which might’ve reached a whole sixteenth of an inch in spots. “I hope so, since we might be cooped up for days.”

  She nodded in earnest and hugged herself, shivering in her sweater, slacks, and boots. “I went to the store and bought milk and eggs and bread. Good thing I went early—a friend on Facebook said they’ve sold out of all that now.”

  “I guess everyone here sees snow and wants to make French toast?”

  Cindy laughed. “I never thought of that, but maybe it’s what I’ll fix for breakfast tomorrow instead of the usual menu.”

  “You have other guests coming for the holidays?”

  “Always a few. They ought to be here soon unless the weather keeps up. It can be fractious at some family get-togethers, everybody cooped up in one house, so my place is a kind of refuge. A sanctuary where folks can recharge before going back into battle.”

  She helped me get my bags indoors. I carried the gun vault and kept the name facing away from her, worried
that she might react badly to me bringing a weapon, even if it was trapped inside a dense plastic shell.

  The interior of her home reminded me of any number of bed-and-breakfasts I’d stayed in: woods polished with fragrant lemon oil, sedate blue-yellow flames in the gas fireplace, bookcases, antiques, doilies, and scented candles galore. What always drew me in, though, were the personal items of the host. A family photo on one wall of her opulent parlor showed a much younger Cindy—with authentically black hair—arm-in-arm with a tall, mustached man, an adolescent girl and a younger boy standing in front of them.

  We bypassed a large staircase, and Cindy led me to a guest room in the back of the house. “This one is my favorite,” she said, unlocking the door and handing me the brass key, which was labeled “Dan. Mod.” The door opened onto a medium-sized sitting room decorated in Danish Modern earth tones, with low-slung chairs, long, narrow tables, and boxy lamps. Either teak was her favorite thing, or she longed for a return to the 1960s.

  In the next room, I wasn’t surprised to find a platform bed, a dresser with lots of slim drawers, and more horizontal lines everywhere I looked. Even the bathroom had teak cabinets and a sandalwood frame bordering the bathtub. No shower attachments: anything with a vertical orientation apparently would’ve been in violation of the Scandinavian aesthetic.

  The preponderance of horizontals made me want to follow suit and lie down, but B.J.’s comments about my dad, Cindy, and her daughter wouldn’t let me rest. “It’s lovely,” I told her. “Would you mind if I made some coffee? We could talk and watch the snow.”

  “Hot tea would be even better. Kitchen’s this way.”

  Though I wasn’t a fan of hot tea, I decided not to insist. She’d no doubt heard about my “benevolent dictator” crack—and word probably had gotten around about my Denny’s meltdown already—so I needed to counteract all of that with a charm offensive.

  She led me to the foyer, turned right into a dining room with a maple table that could seat a dozen, and walked toward the back again. We ended up in a large, warm kitchen with a granite island, a six-burner range, a sink large enough to bathe a German shepherd, and a corner fireplace. Blue gas-jet flames there made the ceramic logs glow in oranges and reds.