by Lisa Jackson
Cassie sighed loudly, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Allie found the syrup bottle and squeezed a puddle large enough to cover ten pancakes. Her two small waffles were saturated and then some.
Jenna didn’t comment. She was too busy staring at the small screen, watching as the image changed and the reporter was talking to Sheriff Carter, a tall, broad-shouldered man who dwarfed the woman. “It’s too early to determine the cause of death,” he was saying cautiously, his voice having the hint of a drawl. He was a rugged-looking man with chiseled features, suspicious deep-set eyes, and a dark brush moustache. His hair was straight, coffee-brown, and trimmed neatly. “We’re still trying to identify the body.”
“Are you treating this as a murder investigation?”
“We’re leaving our options open. It’s still too early to tell,” he said firmly, ending the taped interview.
“Thank you, Sheriff Carter,” the reporter said, rotating to face the camera again. “Karen Tyler reporting from Catwalk Point.” The screen flipped to the anchor desk, where a clean-shaven man with receding hair said, “Thank you, Karen,” then, with a smile, turned to the sports report.
Jenna snapped off the set. “Let’s go,” she said.
Cassie stared at her mother as if Jenna were out of her mind. “I told you I can’t go to school like this.”
“And you were wrong. Move it. I don’t have time to argue.”
Muttering under her breath, Cassie shoved her uneaten breakfast aside and banged up the stairs.
“You, too,” Jenna said, pointing a finger at her youngest daughter. The waffles were nearly gone.
“My throat really, really hurts.”
This was just Allie’s most recent ploy to avoid going to Harrington Junior High. Jenna wasn’t buying it. Especially when she saw how easily Allie swallowed her juice. “I think you’ll live…but I’ll call the school later and see how you’re doing. Now, let’s go.”
Seeming to decide that her current strategy wasn’t working, Allie crammed the last piece of waffle into her mouth and flew up the stairs while Jenna dialed Hans Dvorak, a retired horse trainer and now part-time foreman of her small ranch. Hans, like Critter, had come with the property. He picked up on the third ring, his voice deep and rattling from too many years of cigarettes. “Hello?”
“Hans, it’s Jenna.”
“Just on my way over,” the older man said quickly, as if he were late.
“And I’m taking the kids to school now, but we’ve got a little problem here.” As she heard one of her girls clomping down the stairs, she explained about the lack of water.
“Probably the pump,” he said. “It’s had an electrical problem. Happened before, ’bout five years back.”
“Can you fix it?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ll give it a try. You might need an electrician, though, or some kind of handyman who knows more about wiring than I do—possibly a plumber as well.”
Jenna inwardly groaned at the thought, though she did know Wes Allen, an electrician and sometime artist who did work at Columbia Theater in the Gorge, the local theater where she volunteered. Then there was Scott Dalinsky, who, too, helped out with the lights and audio equipment at the theater, though Jenna wouldn’t trust him with work at her house. Even though he was Wes’s nephew and her friend Rinda’s son, Jenna felt uncomfortable around Scott. She’d caught him staring at her one too many times to feel at ease with him.
“I’ll be there in half an hour,” Hans said.
“Thanks.”
Hans was a godsend. At seventy-three, he still helped with the livestock and kept the place running. He’d been the caretaker for the previous owners and when Jenna had moved into the house, she’d nearly begged him to stay on. He’d agreed and she’d never regretted the decision for a second. Today was no exception. If Hans couldn’t fix what was wrong, he’d find someone who could.
Allie, her wild hair somewhat tamed, walked into the room. She was already wearing a fleece jacket and had the strap of her backpack slung over one shoulder.
“Did you brush your teeth?” Jenna asked, then realized what she was saying. “I know this isn’t what the Dental Association would suggest, but chew some gum on the way to school if your teeth feel fuzzy.”
“They’re fine,” Allie said in a weak voice, gently reminding her mother that she wasn’t well.
“You’ve got a math test today, right? Ready for it?”
Frown lines drew Allie’s eyebrows together, and for an instant she was the spitting image of her father. “I hate math.”
“You’ve always been good at math.”
“But it’s pre-algebra.” Allie’s nose wrinkled in disgust.
“Yeah, well, we all suffered through it,” Jenna said, then heard herself and thought better of her response. She pulled her jacket off a peg near the back door and slipped her arms through its sleeves. “Look, I’ll try to help you with it tonight and if I can’t, maybe Mr. Brennan can. He was an engineer and in the Air Force and—”
“No!” Allie said quickly, and Jenna backed off. Neither of her daughters was comfortable with their mother dating, even though since the divorce Robert had remarried twice. A record even by Hollywood standards. Harrison Brennan was their neighbor, ex-military, and a widower. He’d shown more than a passing interest in Jenna since she moved in and yet hadn’t treated her with the kid gloves and awestruck attitude of many of the townspeople when she’d first moved to Falls Crossing.
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do,” she said, marching to the bottom of the stairs as she tugged on a pair of leather gloves. “Cassie, get a move on! We’ll be in the car!”
“I’m coming, okay?”
“Yeah, right.” Back in the kitchen, she said to Allie, “Let’s go warm up the car,” and was out the back door in a heartbeat. Outside, the air was cold as ice and just as brittle. It swept over the covered walkway and caught in her hair. As she unlocked the garage door, she caught a glimpse of the sky. Low, gunmetal gray clouds skimmed the surrounding hills and threatened snow, just as the weatherman had predicted. “Brrr,” Jenna muttered, shivering and promising herself that next summer she would enclose this breezeway with triple-paned, insulated windows and add heat.
Critter and Allie followed her into the garage—another building that could use thick insulation and a new roof. They all piled into her Jeep, and Jenna rammed her key into the ignition.
Pumping the gas, she flicked her wrist.
The engine ground.
Didn’t catch.
“Oh, come on,” Jenna urged the SUV, then glanced at Allie, who was buckling her seat belt. “It’s just cold,” she said, as much to herself as her daughter. Determined, Jenna tried again. And again. And yet again, but the damned thing wouldn’t start and she didn’t have time to try to figure out what was wrong with it. Frustrated, she glanced to the next bay of the garage where an old Ford pickup that had come with the ranch was parked. “We’ll take the truck.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Come on.” Jenna was already out of the SUV and headed for the driver’s side of the truck when Cassie, cell phone pressed to her ear, hurried into the garage.
She took one look at what was happening and stopped short. “I’ll call you back,” she said, and snapped her cell phone shut. Dropping the phone into her purse, she said to her mother, “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
“I can’t be seen in this…wreck,” she said, motioning to the truck’s dented fender.
“Sure you can.”
“But—”
“Keep complaining and I guarantee you, it’ll soon be yours.”
“Oh God!” Cassie’s face was a mask of sheer horror.
“Get in. Now.” Jenna was through with complaining teenagers. It was bad enough that Cassie was lobbying hard for her own set of wheels, but that she somehow thought she needed to drive a BMW or sporty Mercedes or the like really bugged Jenna. All those years of privilege in L.A. hadn
’t worn off. She climbed behind the wheel, inserted the key, and the truck roared to life on the first try. “Thank you, God,” she said as her girls, subdued, squeezed in beside her and she started down the long lane leading out of her fifty acres.
Finally they were on the road, icy though it was.
Allie played with the radio, and between bouts of static finally found a station that she liked and Jenna could stand while Cassie groused about the weather, noting that she’d seen on the Internet that the temperature in L.A. was supposed to reach eighty-two degrees today. Perfect, Jenna thought sarcastically, and attempted to ignore her daughter’s bad mood. She only hoped the last few hours weren’t a precursor of things to come. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? she silently asked herself as she glanced in her rearview mirror and saw her own worried green eyes.
What else could go wrong?
Another glance in the mirror and she had her answer.
Red and blue lights were flashing as a cop vehicle roared up behind her truck. She eased off the road, expecting him to fly by.
No such luck.
“What’s going on?” Cassie demanded, and both girls swivelled their heads to look through the dirty back window. “Oh, shi—shoot!”
“Watch it!” Jenna warned, but her eyes were focused on the side-view mirror where she could see what was happening behind her. It wasn’t good.
An SUV from the sheriff’s department followed her onto the shoulder. A tall, broad-shouldered man in county-issued jacket and hat stretched out of his vehicle. Long legs moving swiftly, harsh expression fixed on her truck, a few flakes of snow catching in his thick moustache.
All business.
“It’s that sheriff,” Cassie whispered. “The one on the news.”
“Our lucky day,” Jenna said under her breath. Cassie was spot-on. Sheriff Carter himself was striding up to her pickup. The morning was going to hell in a handbasket at breakneck speed.
CHAPTER 4
“Was I speeding?” the woman asked as she rolled down her window. Carter recognized her in a second. Jenna Hughes. Falls Crossing’s most famous citizen. Fresh out of Hollywood and squeezed into an ancient farm truck with bald tires, a few dents, and brake lights that weren’t working. Sometime back, he’d heard she’d bought the old McReedy place and he’d seen her from a distance a few times, but they’d never met. Until today. Helluva way to introduce himself to a woman whose beauty was legendary, and, from what he could see of her, accurate. Her face was small, knotted now in concern, and she gazed at him with the famous green eyes that he’d seen in half a dozen of her films.
“No, speeding’s not the problem,” he said. “Your brake lights aren’t working.”
She winced. “Great,” she muttered.
“Oh, God.” This from the girl seated on the far side of the truck, a teenager whose features were a near match to Jenna’s. Daughter number one, he guessed, while the kid in the middle of the bench seat was younger, with wild reddish hair poking out of her stocking cap and a mutt of a dog on the floor at her feet. The dog growled and was shushed quickly.
“Can I see your license and registration, please?”
“Of course.” Jenna fumbled in her purse, then the glove compartment that opened with a creak. “I’m sorry about this, Officer. I usually don’t drive this truck, but my Jeep wouldn’t start this morning and I had to get the girls to school and—”
“Mom! He doesn’t want to hear your life story,” the teenager cut in. She slid Carter a dark, surreptitious glance, then stared pointedly out the passenger-side window as if the frozen roadside sludge and snow were fascinating.
“I was just explaining,” Jenna said, and managed a smile that, he supposed, was meant to melt his bad attitude. It didn’t. Not when he had a decomposed, unidentified dead woman dumped in his jurisdiction. “This must be it,” she said, pulling out a dusty envelope.
“I assume you have proof of insurance.”
“It should be in here, too.” She handed him the packet and stole a peek at her watch, reminding him that she was in a hurry.
“Look, I don’t think you want to do this,” she said.
He skewered her with a look.
“I mean, we both have better things to do.”
Pampered princess. Probably never had a ticket in her life. Yeah, I have a lot better things to do than to freeze my butt off here and listen to you try to talk your way out of a ticket you damned well deserve. “This will just take a few minutes,” he said, and was rewarded with a bored sigh from the far side of the truck.
“Good, because the girls are already late.”
“They won’t be the only ones,” he said.
“Oh.” Again the well-practiced, sexy Hollywood grin. As if she knew she could turn a man’s head and probably change his mind, a subtle attempt to get her way. Her ploy had probably worked more times than not, but this wasn’t Jenna Hughes’s lucky day. Not when Carter was in a foul mood already.
He took the information to his vehicle, checked it, and started to write out a warning, then caught himself up short. The woman deserved a citation. No doubt she was used to privilege, to getting people to do her bidding, including starstruck officers to let her off easy. Well, this wasn’t L.A., and he didn’t give a damn who she was.
Even in the heated Blazer, his fingers were half frozen as he scribbled out the citation and heard the crackle of his radio barely audible over the howl of the wind. Man, it was blowing today. A few vehicles, seeing his lights flashing, braked quickly as they passed. Cowards. More afraid of getting ticketed than of being safe or legal.
Angry at the world, he tore off the citation and climbed out of his rig. As he approached through the blowing snow, he noticed Jenna Hughes’s famous eyes watching him in the truck’s side-view mirror. Lord, she was beautiful. Drop-dead gorgeous. Not that it mattered. This morning, on his watch, she was just Jane Citizen-With-Bad-Taillights.
“Here ya go, Ms. Hughes,” he stated when she rolled down the window again and he handed her the citation. “You can go to court and they’ll most likely reduce the fine. Meanwhile, get those taillights fixed pronto—and I mean while you’re in town today. They’re a hazard.”
“I’ll try,” she said, her voice clipped, her full lips pinched at the corners.
So she was angry. Big deal. “Try real hard,” he advised with a well-practiced, humorless grin. “Drive safely, ma’am.”
She sent him a stare that had probably cut weaker men to the quick. He didn’t give a damn what she thought. Turning, he fought the wind back to his Blazer. As he climbed inside, he watched as Jenna “Hollywood” Hughes eased onto the road, using her turn signal, careful to be the considerate, law-abiding driver.
They all turned into perfect drivers once they’d gotten spanked with a ticket. He figured her new cautiousness would last all of ten minutes.
Hey, she wasn’t speeding. Wasn’t driving erratically. She just had the bad luck to have her taillights out. Give the lady a break.
Carter would. As much of a break as he’d give anyone else. No more, no less. He slid into his vehicle, turned off the overhead lights, and followed her into town.
He sat in the Canyon Café, in a corner booth near the window, and cast a quick look over the top of the half-curtains. Through the ice-glazed panes, he caught a glimpse of the old church, a wreck of a building that had seen better days and several renovations, the most current being a local theater—The Columbia Theater in the Gorge—a pretentious name if he’d ever heard one.
His hot tea came and he poured it over a glass of ice, listening to the cubes crack, noticing how they melted as the amber liquid cooled quickly. There were few patrons this morning, only a few old coots chatting about the weather. Hash browns and bacon sizzled on a grill in the kitchen, country music was barely audible, and the waitress slipped from the tables to the booths and counter. Some of the regulars were huddled over papers or deep in discussion. He waved at a few, smiled up at the waitress, and kept one eye o
n the theater.
Stirring his tea, he stared through the slit in the lower curtains while pretending to pore over the sports page. He tried to appear calm but his nerve ends were strung tight as piano wire. Energized by the cold front. Enraged by the placard in front of the theater announcing the Christmas play.
It’s a Wonderful Life.
Like hell.
He remembered seeing the movie in black and white. He’d shuddered at the scene where George Bailey’s brother had fallen through the ice and had imagined all too vividly what the boy had felt…cold, cold water swirling, pulling him down, freezing his lungs as he gulped the frigid water, the entire world swimming, his heart pounding…the black terror that struck…
“Are you okay?”
His head snapped up and he looked at the waitress, a girl of about eighteen who held a carafe of coffee in one hand and a pitcher of ice water in the other.
Noticing the cubes floating in the water, chilling it, he managed a smile. “Yes…fine. Just not happy that the Trail Blazers lost again.”
“Nobody is. Aside from the weather, it’s all the talk this morning.” She seemed mollified, managed a wide grin that showed off her braces. “More water or tea?”
“I’m fine.” To prove it, he lifted his glass and took a long swallow.
Satisfied that her customer was content, she slid to the next table.
You idiot! he silently admonished. Don’t blow this! Not now. Be patient. Everything’s working fine. Perfectly.
Calming himself, he slowly picked up the paper and turned the page; then, through the slit in the café curtains, caught the image of an old, beat-up truck just outside the window. His heart jolted as he hazarded a closer look and recognized Jenna Hughes at the wheel.
It was fate. He was sure of it. She’d driven up solely to remind him of his purpose.
He trembled.
She was so close.
His breathing became shallow.
Her pickup was paused at a stoplight and she was looking straight ahead…no, she checked the rearview mirror, touched the corner of her perfect mouth as if to brush off a bit of errant lipstick, then focused on the street again.