An Accidental Woman

by Barbara Delinsky

“Why not?”

  “I don’t know. She was very upset. It’s like she was traumatized by the arrest itself.”

  “Well, I would be, too,” Poppy argued, because she could feel the panic that Heather must have felt, “but she’s always been practical. She’s always been one to accept and move on.”

  “Something emotional is happening.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But this is how you solve the problem,” Poppy insisted. When Cassie sent her a wry look, she voiced that niggling fear. “I’ve been thinking hard, trying to come up with what I know about where Heather was before she came here, and I’m not finding much. Are you?”

  Cassie didn’t answer.

  “Okay,” Poppy went on, hanging on to hope, “but Micah must know some of it. Did you ask?”

  “About a dozen times,” Cassie grumbled. “I asked both of them. It’s called an alibi, and it would be simple to establish under normal circumstances, but these circumstances aren’t normal.” Her voice died abruptly.

  “What,” Poppy coaxed.

  Cassie started to say something, stopped, then seemed to shift gears. “Maybe someone in town knows. Like Charlie. He hired her when she first got to town. I’m talking with him first thing tomorrow.”

  Poppy was frightened. “She’s hiding something, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Something happened to her before she came here.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Yes, I think so, because I don’t know what else to think. How else do you explain her not being able to talk? How else do you explain her telling us nothing about her life?”

  “So what might’ve happened?”

  Poppy had given it some thought. “Rape. Domestic abuse. If so, she may have post-traumatic stress disorder. Or maybe she lost her family in a totally tragic way like . . . like . . .”—she seached for an appropriate image—“like a house fire, and it was so awful that she’s just blotted everything out. Or maybe she had an accident like mine, only without the paralysis. She did say the scar was from an auto accident.”

  When a sudden knock came against Cassie’s fogged-up window, theyboth jumped. Swearing softly, Cassie rolled it down to reveal in increments the face of her husband, Mark.

  “Hi, sweetie,” she said.

  “The buzzer went off.”

  “Take the casserole out and put it on the counter.”

  “The kids want you inside. They haven’t seen you all day.”

  “I know. I’ll be in in a sec.”

  Mark gave her a skeptical look. Then he turned and left.

  “He’s a saint,” Poppy said.

  Cassie rolled up her window. “Yeah, well, his patience is starting to fray. He thought my hours were too long before. This won’t help. Hell, Poppy, it’s not like I ask for cases like these, but when they come, I can’t turn my back. I know that I have three kids. And, yes, I know the oldest is only six and that these are the critical years in their lives. So am I taking advantage of the fact that my husband teaches high school history and is therefore around more than me for the kids? Of course I am. But I do what I can.” She let out a breath. Then she leaned over and gave Poppy a quick hug. “Call me if you hear anything useful, okay?”

  * * *

  Poppy didn’t hear anything new or useful, at least, not on the matter of Heather. People were back in their own homes, answering their own phones, and the few who called her were asking the same kinds of questions she had asked Cassie. Disbelief had become frustration. People wanted a surefire something to exonerate Heather. Like Poppy, they were looking for an alibi.These calls only made Poppy feel worse. No one seemed to know any more about Heather’s past than she did. All fingers pointed to Micah as the one who should know something, and Poppy did try to call him. But when he finally picked up after four rings, he was monosyllabically terse. Yes, he had fed the girls. No, they weren’t happy. Yes, the press had called. No, he hadn’t talked with them. Yes, he was trying to remember what Heather might have said about where, when, and with whom she had been before coming to town. No, he hadn’t come up with anything.

  Poppy wanted to know why. She wanted to know how a man who hadlived with a woman for four years could not know about her past. She wanted to know what they did talk about when they were alone.

  But Micah didn’t volunteer that information, and she couldn’t get herself to ask. And then she was distracted.

  Mary Joan Sweet, president of the local Garden Club, called her, claiming to have seen Griffin Hughes driving Buck Kipling’s old truck through town. But Mary Joan, with her delicate pansy face framed by wispy gray hair, was known to be nearsighted, so Poppy could comfortably discount her claim. Leila Higgins, on the other hand, was a credible source. She called Poppy to report seeing Griffin in the general store, which was easy enough to prove. Poppy called Charlie.

  “Yup,” Charlie confirmed, “he’s here in town. Gave me the brightest spot in a pretty lousy day. He’s staying out at my brother’s place on Little Bear.”

  Poppy didn’t hear the last for grappling with the first. “Why’s he here?”

  “He’s chasing after you,” Charlie teased, but she didn’t hear the teasing, either. She had told Griffin she wasn’t interested. She had told him that more than once.

  “He must be chasing after Heather,” she decided and vented her annoyance on Charlie. “I can’t believe you gave him a place to stay.”

  “He wanted to stay in town.”

  “He’s a journalist. He’ll use us.”

  “He says he’s working on something else entirely, but the thing is, if he’s determined to snoop, I’d rather he be under my thumb so I can keep an eye on him. Besides, we need answers about Heather. Maybe he can get them for us. So he uses us, and we use him back. Hell, we can play the game, too.”

  “Okay,” Poppy tried. “Forget Griffin. Tell me what you know. You hired Heather when she first came to town. Where was she before here?”

  “Atlanta.”

  Atlanta. Poppy had never heard Heather talk about Atlanta.

  “She worked at a restaurant there,” Charlie said, “but only for a few weeks. She needed money.”

  “For what?”

  “To live. To come here.”

  “Why here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Poppy needed a reason. It would give Heather credibility. “Small town? Lake? Loons? What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t you ask?”

  “Poppy,” Charlie chided, “this was fourteen years ago. I probably did ask at one point or another, but the fact is I was more interested in whether she could waitress.”

  “Did you check out a reference before you hired her?”

  “I sure did. The guy who owned the restaurant gave her a glowing one, just like the one I’d give her if I was asked.”

  That brought Poppy back to Griffin. “He’ll ask. He’ll prod. He may be working on something else, but guys like that keep their fingers in lots of pies at once. Trust me. He’ll get things from you that you didn’t think you knew.”

  “Maybe that’d be good—you know, if I can remember something that’ll help Heather. It sure is a help to me, Griffin’s being on Little Bear. It’s at the far end of nowhere. I wasn’t looking forward to traipsing out there to check on the place.”

  At last the words registered in Poppy’s mind. “Griffin’s on Little Bear? But Little Bear’s all closed up.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “The place must be frozen solid.”

  “Yup.”

  “He won’t get water.”

  “Not this time of year.”

  She heard his smile, and suddenly it seemed fair game that a guy who had enough money in the bank to stick his nose into other people’s business at will should be stuck out in the cold with a minimum of amenities in the depth of winter. Unable to resist a momentary satisfaction, she said, “You’re bad, Char
lie,” and let slip a small smile of her own.

  * * *

  Red squirrels. Griffin wouldn’t have known that if he hadn’t followed the scratching sounds to a spot overhead, not far from the woodstove. He pulled out a ceiling tile and caught a pair of them tearing the insulation apart. Bits of stuff fell down on him, not all of it insulation. Not wanting to know what that other stuff was, he replaced the tile as quickly as possible and returned to the spot he’d staked out for himself in front of the woodstove.He felt hamstrung. Forget his thumb, which throbbed, and knuckles that were raw from the cold. Legs, arms, back—he ached all over. He would have killed for a hot shower. Hell, he’d have killed for a warm shower. Barring both, he yearned, positively yearned, for the sleeping bag that was stashed in the closet of his bedroom in Princeton. It was top of the line and good to twenty below. Even with the woodstove generating steady heat, the cold had so penetrated everything in the cabin that it made the stove’s job twice as hard.

  Normally, he’d have passed an evening at home watching television, surfing the Web, even writing Hayden’s bio, but he couldn’t do any of that here. Nor could he run down the street to the pub to catch a Knicks game or have a beer with friends. Charlie’s café was the closest anything came to a pub; it was closed for the night, and even if it hadn’t been, he wasn’t running anywhere. Not tonight, not in the pitch-black, with the wind kicking up and the air outside the cabin colder than anything he’d ever known in his life. The air inside the cabin wasn’t much better.

  And all that was before he thought of the truck. Oh, it had heat. He had felt that on the drive out to this godforsaken end of the lake. But it was stuck in the snow, likely to be frozen solid by morning, which would make things interesting, particularly with his cell phone useless.

  Of course, he’d been set up. No doubt about that. He figured there might be folks in town at that very minute, sitting around Charlie’s after hours, chuckling at the idea that the city boy was freezing his butt off in the dark, with no running water, no electricity, no phone. He wondered if Poppy was there, but rejected the idea. Truth be told, he didn’t want to think she took pleasure from his discomfort.

  Besides, having driven for seven hours, then trekked through snow and cold, he was beat. So he took cushions off the sofa, laid them outnear the woodstove, then took blankets from the bedroom, which was the only other room in the cabin. Stretching out on the cushions in front of the woodstove, he covered himself, but he pushed the blankets back off seconds later. They were nearly frozen themselves. Relying on the direct heat from the stove, he curled into a ball and let determination ease him to sleep.

  * * *

  Micah couldn’t sleep. He tried, but well past midnight he was still wide awake. The bed was too empty and his fear too intense. Needing to do something useful, he pulled on his jeans, pushed his feet into boots and his arms into a parka, went out back to the sugarhouse, and flipped on the lights. He avoided the woodpile where Heather’s knapsack was hidden, and, instead, heaved up a coil of piping from the to-do pile and began combing it foot by foot for spots that looked weak. Weak spots could break into tiny holes and let sap drain out onto the snow and be lost. He couldn’t have that. Give or take, depending on first run or last, it took forty gallons of sap to yield one gallon of syrup. Lost sap was lost syrup, lost syrup was lost business, and business was what Heather did best.Dropping the piping, he went into the new addition. With his back to the kitchen side, he faced the office side, studied the pile of papers on her desk, and felt the start of panic. The papers were in folders, neat and orderly as Heather’s mind worked, but Micah’s mind didn’t work that way. He knew that the folder labeled “ART” held sketches of the new logo as it would appear on the labels they planned to use on syrup tins, and that the folder labeled “VAC” held information on the vacuum system they had just installed to draw more sap from the trees. There was paperwork to be done for that, and then there was the folder labeled “EVAP,” which held details on loan payments for the new, larger evaporator that they had bought and used the season before—the efficiency of which had told them they could handle more syrup, which was why they had bought the vacuum system, ordered new labels, and put on the addition.

  Information on all of it was in the computer, which sat there like an ugly troll on the desk, and then there was e-mail. E-mail was Heather’s major link to suppliers and customers.

  Micah was an expert with a chainsaw, a drill, and a bit, but he was in over his head when it came to a computer. Heather wasn’t. Hardware . . . software . . . she got it all. She knew about everything on this desk. It all had to do with his business. If she didn’t get back soon, he’d be in big trouble.

  Breaking into a nervous sweat under his parka, he returned to the house, but Heather’s touch was everywhere there, too. Copper pots hung in the kitchen from the frame she’d had him mount on the ceiling; plants thrived in the greenhouse window she’d had him install behind the sink. The sofas were draped with afghans she had knitted. Half-made dresses for the girls in pretty patterns were folded on the sewing machine.

  Unwilling to see more, he shut off the lights and returned to the bedroom. Sitting there in the dark, he felt numb, though certainly not from the cold. The house was plenty warm, thanks to a furnace that spread heat through the rooms.

  He hadn’t had the furnace when he first met Heather. He had a blower system then that worked off the heat generated by the woodstove, and the system had been fine, assuming the woodstove stayed lit. Letting it die out had been a source of constant contention between Marcy and him. She didn’t think it was her job to hang around the house just to keep it going, not when she had a husband who was in and out of the place all day long—and she was right in a sense. He certainly was nearby. Even when he was doing renovations or additions for other people, his jobs were local, so he was home for lunch. During sugaring season, he was around even more.

  His side of the argument said that she was the one in the house. She was strong and healthy, and it wasn’t like he was asking her to chop down the tree, cut and split the logs, and carry armloads at a time to the hearth. He did those things. All he was asking was that she add one or two logs to the stove when the flame got low.

  What he really meant, he had realized after she died, was that he didn’t see why she had to be out all the time. Having babies hadn’t slowed her down. She simply strapped the girls into the car and took off to see friends, shop, do whatever struck her on a given day. She had a kind of frenetic energy, and he’d found it exciting at first. Born and raised on theRidge, she was like a bright light that was never still. He had tried to follow it, but in the end, he had failed. He was too much a creature of habit.

  Habit? Necessity. He had inherited the sugarbush from his father, and the sap season was short. He had to make the most of every minute, couldn’t slack off. And when it was done, when the sap was boiled down and bottled and sent to the many dozens of stores in northern New England that sold it through the year, he had to earn money another way. Frenetic energy was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

  That frenetic energy had killed Marcy. No one had said it in as many words, but it was clear as day. She’d been driving too fast on icy roads. Always too fast, too eager, too ready to get somewhere.

  Heather was the opposite, with her soft, steady voice, her clear silver eyes, and her common sense. She loved being at home. She loved sugaring. She loved the girls. Though he was guilt-ridden each time he thought it, she set a far better example for them than their mother had. He had always trusted Heather with them, had never worried when she was with them, not once, not even at the start.

  A small whisper of sound came from the door. He looked around just as Star slipped into the room. She didn’t say anything, simply ran softly around the bed and came to lean against his thigh.

  As he stroked her hair, he felt a catch in his throat. She was a beautiful child inside and out, and so knowing. He didn’t have to ask why she was awake. Her worries might be
fewer than his, but many of them were the same.

  Where’s Momma? Why isn’t she here? When will she be back? Why did she leave?

  She hadn’t left, he wanted to say. She would be back in the morning, he wanted to say. But he didn’t know whether either was true. Feeling as lost as Star, he scooped up the child and held on until the frightening moment passed. Then, needing to be alone with his confusion, he carried her back to bed.

  * * *

  Griffin slept poorly. He was cold, and he was sore. Cushions on the floor— thin cushions on the floor—couldn’t compare to his own bed, andeven if the rest of the cabin were ever to thaw enough to allow him to use the bedroom, the bed there didn’t promise much more comfort. He was five ten and of average build. Charlie’s brother had to be smaller than that, and he sure as hell didn’t share this place with a woman. There was barely enough room in the bed for one person, let alone two. In fact, not much at all in the cabin suggested that a woman spent time here.Everything was basic, wood-brown, life at its most spartan—which was probably exactly what a cabin in the middle of a lake was supposed to be.He told himself that. He told himself he was paying his dues. He told himself he was getting on Charlie’s good side.

  Using this thought as a mantra, he dozed off, but he was awake again two hours later. The wind had picked up and it wasn’t the howling that bothered him, though it was an eerie sound, so much as the way the cabin shook with each swirling gust. He thought about the trees that were surely swaying, wondered if any might fall and how he would summon help if he were trapped inside here.

  He needed to use the bathroom, but there was no way he was going outside. So he stifled the urge and went back to sleep.

  He woke again and fed the woodstove. Once the blankets had warmed, they were a help in cushioning and layering, and he drifted into a deeper sleep. This time he awoke to a hint of daylight coming through the center of the café curtains.

  The good news was that the wind had died down. The bad news was that in the silence it left he could hear the scurry of feet overhead, which said that the squirrels had gravitated to the warmth. Giving them wide berth, he got up and out of the way, gingerly manipulating stiff muscles and joints until they were marginally warmed.