Wind blows down the corridor created by the trees bordering the bike path and I shiver.
“Let’s walk,” I say.
Reba nods and falls into step with me. I shove my hands into my pockets and try to get blood circulating in my fingers again by rubbing them together in little circles.
“Here’s what I’ve been thinking,” I say and outline a plan.
Ten minutes later we stop in the path, Reba looking at me like I’ve just suggested a cure for cancer and she’s won the lottery all at once.
“There’s no guarantee it will work though,” I say. “You know that, right?”
Nod.
Reba picks a well-worn leather wallet from her jeans and empties the billfold, handing me a wad of cash. I flip through it quickly, counting under my breath, then nod and thank her.
“So, here’s what I’ll need ....”
Chapter Fourteen
The next day dawns with gun metal gray skies. My flight is scheduled to leave Burlington at four-thirty. The storm we thought had blown past us returned. Thick, wet snow has been coming down for the past few hours. It suddenly starts to blow and spin in a ferocious wind. I spend some time at the office. Between tidying files and catching up on administrative paperwork that never wanes, I sneak glances out the big windows. I update the website and water the plants. The snow continues to fall. I’m about to head home to pack an overnight bag when the clinking starts against the window.
Sleet. Gray clouds above are still releasing wet snow but now shards of ice are mixed in. Checking the online weather channel, I see that the city of Burlington and many surrounding areas in Chittenden County are under a severe winter weather advisory. I chew a hangnail, then dial the number for the airline. A mechanical voice tells me that all flights have been cancelled. There is as of yet no other information, but I’m encouraged to call back in a few hours and check again. I sigh, visions of desert heat fleeing. After another glance out the window, I decide to call it a day.
I close the office and slip and slide my way to the parking lot behind the building. I pull open the car door. Or rather, I try to. Ice lays in a thick layer over it. It stings the gap between my coat sleeve and glove. Even after several yanks, a curse, and a smack with my elbow, the handle doesn’t budge. I try the one on the hatchback. The big door opens and I crawl over the back seat to retrieve the ice scraper. Feet sticking out of the rear of my Toyota, I imagine what a picture I must make. Cold air and bits of ice bite my calves as I retreat, crawling back out the way I came in.
As though fate has a sense of humor, I hear a low wolf whistle from somewhere nearby. You’ve got to be joking. Cheeks red and irritation boiling in my chest, I ungracefully extract myself the rest of the way and whirl around toward the sound.
A man stands in the shadows nearby, a puffy jacket with a thick hood worn up, shoulders hunched against the wind. He’s smoking a cigarette and the burning end makes a tiny glow near his face when he pulls on it.
“Enjoying the show?” I snarl.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s me, Chad.”
I peer into the dimness and see the outline of long dreadlocks poking out of the hood of his coat. The anger in my chest cools slightly.
“What do you want?” I ask, turning my back on him and using the handle of the scraper to bang on the driver’s side handle. The motion makes my wound ache.
“Just wanted to tell you that Mark is back, that’s all.” He takes another draw on the cigarette.
I point to the cancer stick. “Aren’t you a little health-conscious to be smoking? I thought you were a gym rat.”
He sighs, shakes his head, then pulls the cigarette from his mouth and looks at it with disgust. “I know. Can’t quit. I’ve given up meat, most alcohol, and drugs. But these things,” he sighs again. “Man, they’re hard to let go.”
I hammer at the ice again. Chad walks over and opens his gloved hand and I hesitate before giving him the scraper. It’s not that I can’t do it myself. But I’m pretty wiped out and my shoulder throbs.
“You saw him?” I ask.
He grunts and whacks at the handle of the door a few times, ice spraying out in glittering shard. When it’s free he jerks it open and motions toward the interior. I climb behind the wheel and crank the engine. It coughs, sputters, and finally turns over. Putting the defrost dial up to the highest level, I get out, about to start scraping the windows but Chad’s beat me to it. I’m shivering and my teeth are practically rattling.
“So, when did he get back?” I ask, crossing my arms in an effort to retain more body heat.
“Just this afternoon. He stopped by the restaurant, turned in his notice. He’s all psyched about this raw food school in Arizona. He’s going back in few days. Just home to get things in order I guess.”
I try to look intrigued rather than guilty that I’d broken into Mark’s apartment and had plans to fly to that very location this afternoon.
“Anyway, I just thought you’d want to know.” Chad pauses in his scraping and takes a pull on the cigarette dangling from his mouth.
“Thanks,” I say.
Chad drops the butt on the ground and stomps it with the toe of his boot, then picks it up and flicks it into the nearby ice-covered bushes. I use the opportunity to snatch the scraper from his hand. He grins at me, “Thanks, I’m getting winded. He’s at the billiards club by the way.”
“What, right now?” My breath comes out in big, white puffs as I scrape the last couple of windows. The rearview defroster is doing its work and most of the ice over the hatchback is melting, running in rivulets down the car’s body.
“Yeah. I just came from there,” Chad says. “He’s getting hammered. Celebrating. If you want to talk to him, you might want to go soon.” He stretches, looks out toward the road, then back at me. “I’m heading back over if you want to join me.”
Since my flight is nonexistent and my trip to sunny Arizona has been canceled, why not?
“Sure,” I say. “Want a lift?”
Chad eyes my rust bucket with trepidation.
“Are you sure it will make it?”
“It’s three blocks away,” I say.
He raises his eyebrows. “I know.”
***
The car is still cold when we pull into the billiards club parking lot. It’s well-lit, practically blinding with bright streetlamps, the sensors misinterpreting the storm for dusk. The club is loud when we enter, music pumping out of miscellaneous speakers above our heads. Chad nods and flicks a peace sign to a beefy guy behind the bar. I follow him to a pool table at the rear where a man is hunched low, lining up for a shot. Another guy sits on a bar stool near the table, rubbing chalk on his cue. He glances our way, nods to Chad, and raises his eyebrows at me. I nod, look back to the man prone over the table. Mark Chester, in the flesh.
He’s fit and toned, arm muscles clearly defined through his t-shirt. His jeans don’t fit too badly either. Mark makes a good shot, sinking a red ball into the far corner pocket. He stretches to his full height, grins at his stool companion, and then glances toward Chad and me.
“Hey, Chad-O” he says. “Where’d you go?” He snorts a laugh. Chad smiles but ignores the question.
“This is Tayt Waters. I told you that she’d stopped in to see me at Chantal’s.”
Mark turns his gaze toward me. His eyes are a blue so bright that they nearly glow. Or maybe it’s just the lighting in here. He’s attractive: straight nose, good smile, dark hair that’s cut short. He looks like a younger, slightly beefier, and taller version of Tom Cruise.
“How’re you doing?” he asks, and walks around the table, holding a hand out to me. I shake it. It’s warm and softer than I’d imagined.
“Fine, thanks. Had a good trip?”
Mark inclines his head and Chad says, “I told her you just got back from Arizona.”
“It was great, thanks,” Mark says to me. “Found my lifelong dream, finally, now that I’m in my thirties.”
/> “Better now than never,” I say.
Mark smiles and it’s crooked. His eyes, I notice, are a little glassy. Chad said he was celebrating.
“Buy you a drink?” Chad asks me.
“Sure. Whatever you’re having.”
He walks to the bar. I step closer to Mark.
“Is there somewhere private we could talk, just for a minute?”
Mark glances at the guy on the stool. “Can you give us a few?”
The guy slides off his stool, glares, and follows Chad to the bar.
“This is about as private as it gets here, unless you want to follow me to the john,” he says.
I smile. “Someone asked me to find you, Mark. Did Chad tell you that?” I ask.
Mark nods. “He said you were asking around about me. Should I be worried?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so. But why did you leave without telling anyone where you were going? It’s a little weird.”
Mark rubs a hand over his face and sighs. “I’ll tell you that if you tell me who hired you.”
I give a shake of my head. No go.
“What if I were to guess who it was? Would you tell me then?”
I think about this. There’s a funny little feeling in the bottom of my brain and it has to do with the missing person report Sandra filed with the police. Or didn’t file, as the case may be.
“Okay. Yes,” I say.
“Sandra Garrison,” Mark says without hesitation.
I nod.
Mark swears and brings his left fist into his right hand. The sound makes a loud thud even over the music and pool balls smacking together. “I can’t believe it.”
“Well, obviously you can since you knew who it was. Anyway, why wouldn’t your girlfriend wonder what happened to you after you left town without a trace? Seems pretty logical to me.”
Mark shakes his head. “It’s not logical. At all. That’s the entire problem with Sandra.” Mark’s voice is louder. “She lives in a world of make believe,” Mark waves his hands around his head, enunciating the last two words. “She thinks that I’m her boyfriend. I’m not. She thinks I’m wildly in love with her. I’m not. She thinks that she can stalk me ... well, actually she is stalking me,” Mark shake his head and takes a deep pull from his bottle.
“But ...” my voice drifts as I think of evidence to the contrary. Facebook posts: by Sandra only. Police report: unfiled. Hiring me to track Mark down and going as far as signing an addendum to our contract for my plane ticket to Arizona. Signs of a loving girlfriend. And a stalker.
Crap.
Mark is still talking. I give myself a mental shake.
“... when it started. I mean, I liked the girl, she’s hot. Really friendly and outgoing. What’s not to like, right? But that was before she became psycho cat woman, sinking her claws into me. Every time I went to the gym she was there. I don’t mean at the desk. I mean there. Following me around, coordinating her routine to mine. She probably would have followed me into the men’s locker room if she could have.
“And then there was the great date fiasco.” Mark nods to someone behind me and I turn. Chad has reappeared with two bottles of hard cider.
“Want one or are you still working on that?” Chad asks.
Mark shakes his head and takes a longer pull on his bottle of beer.
“So anyway, where was I?” He continues without waiting for a response. “Oh yeah, date from hell.”
Chad makes a sound that is half snort, half laugh.
“Let’s just say that our first date ended with her in tears because I wouldn’t tell her that I loved her and wanted us to get married.”
“Wow.” I say before I can stop myself.
He nods.
“You can’t make up stuff like this.” He pauses, looks around the room and squints. His arms appear suddenly heavy, and he leans against a half wall, propping himself on it. “She started calling my friends, asking them about me. I caught her more than once outside of my apartment building. She would just sit out there in her car, watching for me.
“It got so bad that I stopped going to the gym for a while. But I’d paid for the year, and I hated to go somewhere else, you know? So, I’d go in when I knew she wasn’t working. Except she caught on and started showing up when I was there half the time. She’s completely nuts.”
Mark pauses to set the empty bottle carefully on the half-wall despite a sign that says, “No bottles or glasses on wall.”
“Anyway, I’d been thinking about going out West for a while. I figured, why not now?” He absently rubs a thumb over the label on the beer bottle and it starts to come apart in tiny shreds. “Maybe she helped me, you know? If she hadn’t been so persistent, I probably wouldn’t have had the balls to do this.”
“But why not go to the police?” I ask. I sip my cider and watch for the machoism to emerge. But Mark just shakes his head, looking more like a sad, old dog than a testosterone filled thirty-something.
“What would be the point? I could have gotten a restraining order, but” he shrugs, “I don’t know. I don’t hate her or anything. Anyway, like I said, this ended up pushing me toward something I’ve been making excuses about for a long time. I guess it’s a good thing.”
I nod. I can’t help but think of my plane ticket. I wonder if I could cash it in for a refund. Or reschedule it and take a little vacation?
“What do you think my chances are of getting paid when I tell Sandra all this?” I’m half-joking.
Chad and Mark glance at each other, Chad raises his eyebrows and they both laugh.
“As good as a snowball in Ecuador?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Mark says, picking up his empty bottle and walking toward the bar. “About that.”
Chapter Fifteen
It’s Thursday evening, the sun has just tucked itself into bed and I’m wishing it were time to roll into my own. Instead, I’m driving back roads in Sheldon, making my way to Prescott’s farm in Enosburg. Town lines are screwy in the country: one road might run through three or more different towns making something as simple as sending a greeting card stress-inducing.
According to Reba, Thursday nights are the one time that Prescott religiously leaves his house. Playing poker is a long-standing tradition. Which works perfectly for me. I chew the inside of my lip, a mix of adrenaline and fear battling in my gut. Flipping through radio channels, I switch from classical to grunge metal, finally settling on reggae. I heard somewhere that reggae literally helps you calm down, decreasing your heart beats per minute.
I glance at my roughly drawn map and then look for landmarks: a huge oak on the right, a small knoll and then, as I crest the hill, a sign for Prescott Acres Farm. It’s large and glossy, the spotlight mounted over it nearly blinding. I coast down the knoll and follow Reba’s map to a second driveway about a quarter mile away. It looks like it turns into a field.
I hold my breath. Turning onto it, I pray that my little beater won’t get marooned in the deep, frozen muddy ruts. I follow the driveway—if you can call a narrow strip of mud that—and park near an outbuilding. It’s larger than a shed but smaller than a garage. The air is freezing when I open the car door and I shiver.
Grabbing a backpack from the rear seat, I skirt the outbuilding and start walking away from the field, toward the line of trees in the rear. Reba said that the farmhands would be too busy to gawk outside, but I’m not taking any chances. I also didn’t take any chances with my appearance, wearing the same garb that I did when I met with Reba—makeup, prosthetic nose, and all—in the off chance that someone sees me.
Twigs and fallen branches snap under my boots. The snow is thinner in the woods though, and other than avoiding branches to the eye, easy to maneuver. My breath comes in puffy white clouds and the cold snakes its way down into my collar and up around my pant legs. The makeup is itchy.
The woods continue, bordering a cow pasture, but I turn right toward the big, white farmhouse. I can see—and smell—two red barns set some distanc
e away. Cows moo and machines hum. I duck low and run toward the house. Arriving on the rear steps, I make my way up quickly. They spill onto a large wrap around porch, typical of many old farmhouses. The porch is chest high and provides a convenient cover.
I crouch down and extract the lock picking kit from my bag. My fingers feel like ice cubes already and I haven’t had my gloves off for more than thirty seconds. Blowing warm air on them, I insert the pick into the lock.
On second thought ... I try the door handle. It opens easily in my hand. I grin, feeling a little stupid and replace my tools in the backpack. Then I use my glove to wipe the door handle where I touched it and push my way into the darkened house.
It’s cold inside. It must cost a lot to heat a large house like this, and the drafty old, single-pane windows don’t help. It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dimness inside. I walk into a mud room, pulling the glove back on. The room is tidy but smells of cows. There are barn boots nearby on rubber mats and smelly clothes hanging on hooks. I move through the room and exit into a large living room. There’s a fireplace but no fire lit. The room itself is comfortable but outdated, the shag carpet in dire need of replacement.
A humongous, flat screen TV is mounted on the wall across from a ratty looking couch, and beneath the TV, an entertainment center with various black and gray gadgets. I look up and sure enough, Prescott, or someone he hired, outfitted the room with surround sound speakers. If you were going to spend this much money on making the room into a home movie theater, wouldn’t you replace the nasty carpet first? Maybe upgrade your couch to one without stuffing poking out of the arms?
I leave the living room and pass straight through a dining room and kitchen, both also outdated but clean. When was Leanne here last, I wonder? Just past the kitchen is a set of wide, wooden stairs. I take these and end up in a long hallway filled with many closed doors. Opening the first, I find what seems to be an old sewing room. There are mountains of fabric and two sewing machines on tables opposite each other. I remember Reba saying that Prescott’s wife left recently. Must be she hadn’t been back to collect her things. Or maybe she wasn’t sure it was for good.
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