Crime Times Two Page 8

  “Please…the costume,” she interrupted, desperate to make her stop. Jamie was exceptionally bright for a five-year-old and she didn’t want her daughter asking questions.

  Honey spun Jamie around. “Now, look at this. A ferocious lion ready to roar.”

  Covered head to toe in an orange costume, and with a long tail trailing behind, Jamie raced around the room. The five-year-old threw her head back and let out a roar in front of Atticus, who chuckled deep in his throat at his sister’s antics. The two children ran down the hallway and then back again.

  “The costume is a success,” Meredith said, glad the subject was changed. “I can’t thank you enough for doing this.”

  A satisfied smile filled her friend’s face. “Let’s get you some eggs to take home.”

  ****

  Honey first spent a few minutes convincing Jamie to take off her lion costume, telling her the chickens wouldn’t appreciate a lion in the hen house. Then they all headed out to collect eggs. Meredith protested they couldn’t eat more than a dozen and finally limited the pile of eggs in her basket once she counted out eighteen.

  Back out in the yard, Jamie practiced her lion’s roar and tormented a handful of chickens running loose. She tried to get Atticus to share in the fun, but he was content splashing in a puddle left from the recent rain. The afternoon chill settled in, the sun lowering earlier in the day now autumn was in full swing, and it soon would be time to return home. They’d encroached too long on Honey’s hospitality for one day. For the moment, it was comforting sharing the moment with a friend and watching her children play.

  “Now, tell me all your news,” the other woman demanded. “How’s school going for you?”

  “Fine. Good.”

  Atticus walked through the puddle, squealing, and Meredith considered calling out to him to stop. His shoes would be wet, but there were other shoes in his closet for tomorrow.

  “There was snow up there the other day,” she added.

  Her friend gave a satisfied sigh. “Oh, there’ll be a heap of the stuff. It sneaks up on you, keep an eye out on those roads.”

  Jamie left the chickens and joined Atticus. They raced through the puddle, kicking mud up the knees of their pant legs.

  “About the man in Twin Lakes. I’d met him before he died.” She stopped. She hadn’t meant to say anything but the words popped out. That was the problem with holding onto things; they bubbled up and out at unexpected moments.

  Honey’s eyes glittered at the information. “Well, this is news. You didn’t say anything earlier.”

  She swallowed tightly. She wasn’t sure how much she should divulge; the woman was a tremendous gossip, avidly trading information around the valley. But it was good to talk about Jacob to someone. “I met him in the library. He was creepy. Pushy. He knew about me…and what happened to Brian.”

  The other woman gave a knowing nod. “There are men who’ll prey on you, take advantage of a grieving widow. Doesn’t hurt you’re a looker, too.”

  Perhaps that was all it was, a way to get her attention with a common story of murder. Not the best come-on line, but a compelling one. Still, he’d talked of death and then died shortly afterward. The occurrence was all too strange to be a coincidence, surely.

  “Probably was married as well,” Honey continued, pursing her lips as she further developed the story in her mind. “Creepy married men are the worst type. Just as well he’s dead, I suppose.”

  Meredith glanced at her, startled at how casually she tossed out the heartless comment. Her friend had a sharp edge to her personality that rose to the surface from time to time. She had little patience for creepy men who took advantage of women. She decided not to say anything about Jacob’s plea for help. The woman was the biggest gossip in the county. Curtis would be furious if this kind of talk muddied his investigation.

  Atticus sat in the puddle and Jamie danced around him, splashing water high in the air. The older woman gave a happy sigh, a wistful expression softening her features, as though she were remembering her own children getting muddy in the yard. “You might reconsider learning to handle a gun.”

  This was the last thing she planned to do. She was surprised anyone would suggest a gun to her, after what had happened to Brian. “No,” she said firmly.

  Honey ignored the flat rejection. “I have extras. You could do some target shooting over here.”

  There was no way, absolutely no way, she would allow another gun into her house. The last and only gun they owned had been used to murder her husband. On one terrible night, she’d been tempted to use it on him. Best to not have one at all. “I’m not getting a gun,” she stressed.

  “Next time then, when you all come over,” Honey persisted. “A single mother way out here in the country; predators lurking. I have this little Ruger that doesn’t have too much of a kick. You’ll enjoy a bit of target practice.”

  The conversation was going sideways. “I’m more into meditation these days,” she said, trying to change the subject. “It makes a lot of problems disappear.”

  “No, no, no,” the other woman said, with a solid shake of her head. “That’s not how meditation works.”

  Meredith wished she hadn’t said anything about her meditation now. Only, she’d felt so very proud of herself for taking a step toward becoming more confident and taking care of her own problems. Isn’t self-sufficiency the number one priority of becoming a real adult?

  Honey heaved herself to her feet with a grunt and a huff. “Meditation isn’t meant to push away your problems,” she added. “It’s there to help you deal with them, to put you in a state of mind where you can deal with them. Trust me, a gun is much more efficient.”

  Leave it to Honey to have a better way of doing everything, she thought. Her friend meant well, really was a godsend to her for taking on Atticus while she drove to Twin Lakes. But did the older woman always have to be right?

  Jamie sat in the puddle next to her brother and jammed both hands into the mud. Both her children were as wet and filthy as they could be. They also were happy and healthy.

  She was on the verge of mentioning her encounter at the hardware store with Egan and then reconsidered. The subject of the young man would prompt the subject of Gemma and that was an explosive subject. The last she heard, Gemma had given birth to a baby boy. Brian’s child and this woman’s first great-grandchild. Her friend was clearly thrilled at witnessing a new generation being born, regardless of the calamitous circumstances. Gemma and her baby was a delicate subject between them.

  Meredith decided to wait until there was more time to talk about Egan and what happened with his relationship with Gemma. She’d meditate first to get her state of mind in a place where she could deal with the awkward topic. “I’d better go.”

  Her friend appeared unfazed by the refusal to get a gun. “My goats are arriving in a few weeks. They should keep the kids entertained and out of puddles. Let’s get your things.”

  Meredith forced a grin although she was less than happy at the idea. Goats. Jamie would start a campaign for a baby goat. This news was potentially more dangerous than a creepy married man and target shooting with this older woman.

  In the house, they toweled off the wet children and Jamie immediately put on her costume. She resumed roaring and pouncing on a squealing Atticus all the way out the front door to the car. Honey followed them out and they stepped over the mud puddles in the walkway.

  Her friend sidled up close. “Don’t dally too long. Opportunity’s knocking, my dear,” she advised. “Do your homework and open the door.”

  ****

  The sunset flamed red before it was extinguished behind the mountains. Meredith checked her phone for messages, frustrated at not hearing from Curtis. She debated calling him but held back. He believed she was interested in the case because of Brian’s murder. She’d play it cool.

  The house was quiet, with both kids tucked in bed, and she curled up on the couch rereading a section of her chemistry book
. It was difficult to stay focused when there were so many distractions in her life: her children, Jacob Burns, Egan Barker, work, Curtis. In her shed was a noisy rooster and a pregnant rabbit; her house needed repairs and her car…well, her car was flat-out hopeless. What was she doing staying in this middle-of-nowhere town? A reasonable woman would head to a city where she could find decent employment and give up on silly dreams of a country house and a county sheriff. There was a reason rural places stayed rural; there was nothing out here for sensible people.

  The phone rang and she dropped her book. She ran to the kitchen to answer it. Curtis’s voice rumbled through the line and sent a charge down to her stomach. She clutched the handset a little tighter. The hell with being reasonable. There was no way she could leave and not find out if there was something between them.

  “Meredith,” he said, then paused.

  “Yes, yes it’s me. Who else would be here?” She laughed lightly to soften her tone. “Did you hear anything? About the autopsy?”

  He spoke slow and even. “I knew you’d want to hear as soon as I heard, to settle your mind about Jacob, to give you closure. Doctor Rose did a limited autopsy to examine his heart and said there was significant damage. He had a fatal heart attack. That’s all.”

  She stared blankly at her refrigerator in disbelief. A piece of paper stuck on the door listed her bills, one by one. Tiny check marks were by some, indicating they’d been paid in full, but the list had grown lately. There was little closure in her life. Problems didn’t get solved so much as they morphed into yet another.

  “Heart attack,” she repeated, feeling a strange sense of disappointment. Jacob hadn’t been murdered.

  He cleared his throat after a moment passed. “You confirmed he was acting very stressed, when you talked to Jacob in the library,” he said in a gentle voice. “Stress puts a heavy burden on a person’s heart. A heart attack makes sense if you think about it.”

  Rain pattered against the window and roof. The sound grew louder, like water bullets hitting her house, trying to get inside.

  “Hey, are you okay? Want me to come over?”

  “I’m fine,” she mumbled, not feeling fine at all. The news cut deep. Jacob’s death wasn’t like Brian’s at all. In some strange way, she’d merged the two cases in her mind. She rubbed her temple. I’ve gone crazy. No one cares about a stranger this much. No one wants to hear someone was murdered.

  They both breathed into the phone line for a moment.

  “It’ll take time,” Curtis finally said, breaking the silence. His tone was pained. “You have two children and…you’re not over what happened. You don’t get over something like that in six months or even a year. Maybe not ever.”

  She heard a surrender in the phrasing. He was telling her he would wait no longer. She couldn’t blame him. Her behavior over Jacob’s death made no sense to her either. She cared more about dead Jacob than a live Jacob.

  “I’m going back up tomorrow afternoon, to let his wife know the official manner of death,” he said. “Doctor Rose would have told her already, but the outcome’s not official until I sign the papers.”

  She gave a soft humorless laugh. “I’ll be up there too, in the library. The librarian…what’s her name, Leona…she’ll be happy to see me again.”

  “None of this is your fault. He was going to have a heart attack, regardless. Don’t listen to her. You know by now how these small-town people can be.”

  “I know. Small-townish.”

  He chuckled, though it sounded forced. “Exactly.”

  She considered asking for a ride up the mountain, but recalled how the last trip ended. “I guess maybe I’ll see you on the road.” It’s up to him to offer me a ride. If he wants to be with me.

  “Right. Have a good night, Meredith.”

  She said goodbye and hung up, her heart leaden in her chest. That was that.

  ****

  Deli boy raised his eyebrows, waiting. She glared at him, waiting, too. The phone call the night before plunged her into a dark and edgy mood. “Turkey and ham,” she ordered, giving in to his game. It was her standard order, week in and week out for months, never changing, but the pimple-face teenager always pretended he was seeing her for the first time.

  He examined a fingernail and then veered it up to his mouth to nibble at a jagged edge. “How much of each?”

  “Half pound.”

  He pulled on plastic gloves with a flourish, stretching them on each finger as though he was getting ready for a surgery. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t help rising to the bait. Aside from his attitude toward her, there was something about him that provoked her. She forced a hopeful tone to her voice. “I saw the ‘help wanted’ sign in the window. Are you moving on?”

  He ran the slicer and then, not missing an opportunity, added, “Just temporary help, but I don’t think you’re quite right for us.”

  Her nostrils flared, her hatred renewed. From the start, they were enemies. “I wasn’t applying.”

  He wrapped her turkey and ham slices in white paper and slapped the packages on the counter. “It’s hunting season.” Deli boy puffed his chest out, tucked his chin in a strange pose he must have thought adult-like, and deepened his reedy voice. “I get busy this time of year. Someone else needs to man my counter for a few days a week.”

  Meredith couldn’t imagine this boy with a gun in his hands, aiming at deer or elk or passing cars. She was horrified at the idea of him prowling the mountains where she and her kids hiked. “What are you shooting at?” She waited for him to say something terrible.

  He shook his head, giving her a derisive look. “I hunt mushrooms.” His face lit up in a glow as he said the next two words. “Black chanterelles. Something only true locals would know about. Finding them is like finding gold. I earn more in a week out there hunting mushrooms, than I do working here in a month.”

  She wrinkled her nose. Leave it to deli boy to spend his free time prowling the countryside for something as disgusting as fungi. She detested mushrooms and the way they tasted of dirt and slid around like snails in her mouth. Fool’s gold for a fool, she thought. At least I won’t have to see this kid every time I come in to the store.

  Thankful also at the news deli boy wouldn’t be wielding a deadly weapon, she grabbed her packages and turned away without another word. She had more important things on her mind than deli-boy crawling around plucking slimy growths from the muddy earth. An idea came to her in the night after hours of tossing and turning. Today, she would visit Jacob Burn’s wife and see for herself what the woman was like.

  Closure, she decided.

  Part Two

  “The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’”

  - Sigmund Freud

  Chapter Eight

  The day ripened crisp and clear over the valley. Gray clouds swathed the mountains, cutting off the tops from view. In California, there’d been plenty of foggy mornings shrouding the rolling hills of Oakland, enveloping the city in gloom only to melt away as the sun rose in the sky. A little bit of early gray was nothing to fear.

  She headed up the mountain after she stocked her groceries away in the refrigerator. The clouds only thickened as morning edged toward noon, but the weather didn’t appear anything to fear. The season was still autumn, after all. When snow fell in earnest, as it certainly would soon enough, she would figure out another option for getting her homework done. It would be awkward asking Curtis for help, considering the conversation the evening before. Worse than losing an option for doing her homework, he surely implied he was giving up on her. Brian’s murder cast a shadow over her life and his abuse had bruised her psyche. She’d felt so good through the summer—healthy, strong and in control for the first time and perhaps ready for a new relationship. The chance meeting with Jacob and his talk about murder showed her how fragile her recovery was. />
  Jamie and Atticus didn’t deserve to suffer from imperfect parents. She needed to dig in deeper and fight to give them a stable home. A house and a decent job—those are my priorities right now, she vowed.

  Just a few weeks remained in her class before she took her first college final. She’d achieved a solid B-minus so far, and was pleased with herself for this result. A B-minus was still a B, after all. Considering she’d since discovered in herself a true lack of interest in chemistry, a B wasn’t bad at all.

  White flakes drifted down in slow motion halfway up the mountain, creating a snow globe effect both mesmerizing and dizzying. By the time she reached the Twin Lakes library, the size of the flakes had grown and white flecks polka-dotted everything. Parked cars, trees, telephone poles. The new snow merged into the existing slush, one flake followed by another and then another. Meredith glanced up at the sky, willing the sun to burn through as it was supposed to have done. Fall had scarcely arrived and already winter was in sight.

  The library parking lot was deserted when she arrived. Jacob, with his wild stories, wouldn’t be playing computer games in the library today, or ever again, interrupting her. She wondered whether Leona would speak to her and repeat her veiled accusation about an affair occurring in the library’s dark corners with Jacob. She glanced down the block, wondering if Curtis was already in Twin Lakes talking to Doctor Rose and Jacob’s wife. The only person visible was a man walking his dog. Such a peaceful, lonely place, she thought.

  She strode into the library, her gaze darting to the counter, but Leona wasn’t there. A rustle alerted her to a far corner where the unfriendly librarian was shelving magazines. Her back was to the door so Meredith tucked her head down and hustled to the computers.

  The library remained quiet and Leona, who must have known she was there, ignored her. Class work kept her occupied for the next ninety minutes and no other patrons came through the doors. Once again, she wondered why a county government would place its only library in a remote mountain location snowed in a third of the year. No matter. A few more weeks and she’d have one class done. After finishing her work, she logged off and shrugged her sweater back on.