Snowbound Snuggles

by T. F. Walsh

  He opened his eyes in time to watch her sprint toward the pumper, waving for the driver’s attention.

  Cold reality finished waking him at his next breath. He started to be useful, found a stray piece of lumber in the snow, and braced the door. He muttered something between a prayer and a wish for the ordinary spring latch to hold before hurrying to the driveway.

  The first volunteers in full gear entered the shed carrying large canister extinguishers. Brad took a cue from his dad directing traffic at the driveway entrance and motioned the next pickup with rotating green dash light to a parking spot.

  “Workshop,” he yelled the single word and pointed with his light to the familiar shed. Beams of red, amber, and green light flashed around the buildings, reflecting off the windows and making the area look like a Christmas display gone wrong.

  Brad intercepted Laura as she jogged toward the sheriff’s department patrol car.

  She leaned into the window before it was fully lowered. Her body language ignored him, her attention on the unfolding emergency.

  His scars rippled from the only phrase he overheard between wind gusts.

  “It’s arson.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I’m not leaving.” Laura tossed the words over her shoulder an instant before the bedroom door slammed hard enough to shake the walls.

  “Does she mean the farmhouse tonight or Crystal Springs?” Brad’s question to Daryl seeped through the walls.

  She pulled in a deep breath and closed her eyes. They didn’t understand. Either one of them. Daryl cloaked his invitation to spend the remaining hours of the night in town in words like security and company.

  For her it stood for retreat, a prelude to defeat. She needed to stay at the farm, continue the process of opening her business, and deny the cowardly bully behind the threats any satisfaction. Her tormenter had to be male, without the courage to show his face or air his opinions directly. Tonight’s fire added monetary loss to the emotional bruises from the recent phone calls and dead cat.

  Without wasted motion she exchanged her robe and pajamas for jeans and a sweatshirt. She found clean socks before tying her sneakers then glanced in the mirror. Her hair hung unevenly, portions retaining the odd twists and curves from too long under the knit hat. She snatched up a brush and a pair of elastic bands before stepping toward the door.

  “I’ll call her after sunrise.” Brad’s voice reached her the moment she entered the hall.

  “How considerate of you,” she blurted to their backs as they stood side by side facing the dining room window.

  Daryl spoke as they both turned faces toward her. “We were talking business.”

  “I wouldn’t expect less.” She reached up and managed to drag the brush through a few inches of hair before it stalled against a mass of snarls. Both men continued to inspect her as if untangling hair were her biggest problem at the moment.

  Her uncle had arrived among the throng of emergency vehicles and volunteers. He’d acknowledged her presence with a brief greeting and then said exactly nothing to her until the final truck left the fire scene. Then he trailed her into the house with Brad following his boss like an obedient puppy. “The excitement is over. Why don’t you both go home?”

  “You shouldn’t stay alone, Laura.” Brad shrugged and his empty jacket sleeve swayed.

  She returned her gaze and response to Daryl. “Why is he here? He should have gone home with his father.”

  “I invited him. He’s useful.”

  “Not tonight. This morning,” she corrected as the cuckoo bird announced one o’clock.

  Daryl made a generic hand motion to Brad.

  “I’ll be in the basement. Starting the wood stove.”

  She closed her eyes when Brad shut the door at the far end of the kitchen and listened to the muffled sounds as he moved down the stairs. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Your enemy has escalated from phone calls and oblique threats to property damage.” Daryl turned on an additional electric candle. “Are you aware of what comes next on that scale?”

  “Would you feel better if I kept a tire iron within reach all night? My phone still has half a charge.” She shivered at the idea of either of these men under her roof tonight. She stared at her uncle a heartbeat past polite. She could handle alone. How to convince a pair of self-appointed protectors?

  “I could bring the dogs inside. To the back porch,” she amended as his eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “I sneaked an animal into the house years ago. I think Sharon’s reaction was strong enough to turn heads all the way in town.”

  “They would drive you deaf.”

  “Doubtful.” Did either of these men suspect how often she’d noted Brad’s position tonight? She’d moved among the volunteers, fire chief, and sheriff’s deputy answering questions and doing her best to not interfere. Brad stayed on the edge of the lighted area and showed more interest in the far end of the workshop than the damaged portion.

  License plate theft, calls, a dead cat, and a fire. When she overlaid a mental chart with people aware of her movements in those same days she didn’t like the result. Am I entertaining the enemy?

  She jumped half an inch when metal clanged against metal under her feet.

  “It’s stopped snowing.” Daryl gestured to the window where battery powered lights on portable barricades confirmed his statement. “The snowplow will make a pass within an hour. You’re vulnerable.”

  She pressed her lips and sorted through the right words to broach the topic sending the parade of chills up her spine. “I don’t trust him.”

  “Because?”

  “Coincidence. Don’t you teach it as a myth?” She grasped the portion her uncle might understand. That hollow betrayal triggered by the scene between Brad and the unknown woman lay beyond explanation.

  “My employee is not your enemy.”

  “And you know this because?” She stabbed the air between them with her hairbrush.

  “Several words on the calls don’t fit his speech pattern. And arson . . . did you notice his face before he left?”

  I watched his back. To be sure he went.

  She moved her mouth to begin a response when bright lights in the kitchen and the whoosh of the furnace coming back to life distracted both of them.

  “Power’s on,” Daryl recovered his voice.

  “I noticed.” Laura stared out the window as the dusk to dawn light glowed to life. She tugged the hairbrush and tested new phrases to get Brad out of her house.

  • • •

  Brad inspected the short black stove three steps away. In the beam of a single flashlight set on the shelf it appeared a neutral thing, no more of a threat than a lawnmower or power tool. I can do this. I must do this.

  He opened the firebox and reached into the supply of old newspaper. This should be the easy part. A loose paper tent, a few pieces of dry kindling, and two short logs went inside the maw of the cast iron stove in smooth succession.

  His scars ached with fear as he removed a log starter from an overhead hook. He closed his eyes and let a pulse of phantom pain engulf his missing left arm. Pulling determination out of the cool, still basement air he squatted to poke the lighter into the crumpled paper. On his second attempt to thumb the igniter it spit out a yellow flame. He stared without breathing until the paper caught and began to lick the underside of the kindling.

  “Done.” Brad exhaled after the firebox clanged shut. Instinct urged him to grab the light and flee upstairs. He swallowed back a portion of his terror, and checked the damper instead.

  An instant after he returned the log lighter to its hook, the hiss and sigh of the fire vanished in the return of the furnace and water pump. Relief washed his body. The current fire could burn down to ash. He’d not need to glimpse the demon in a box while adding fuel.

  “Everything’s good downstairs,” he announced stepping into the kitchen a few minutes later.

  “Have Daryl take you home on his way.” L
aura opened the oven and withdrew a casserole neglected during other events of the evening.

  “You shouldn’t stay alone.” Brad took a moment to admire her efficient movements.

  Daryl spoke without turning from the dining room window. “She’s not going to.”

  Brad’s stomach twisted under her glare. He didn’t expect her to be happy. A storm, fire, and electrical outage all within a few hours stressed all but the comatose. What he didn’t expect was the predominance of hatred in her eyes. “Is it something I said?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He straightened and tossed off a bad salute.

  “Later, children. We’ve no time for foolishness.”

  Brad gave a nervous laugh, stepped past Laura, and joined his boss in the next room.

  “She’s put both of us on her black list.” Daryl led him deeper into the house, to the far side of the seldom-used formal living room. “I’ve been thinking about the rest of today.”

  “The sheriff is bringing out an arson specialist after sunrise.” Brad shrugged out of his jacket and laid it over the back of a wing chair.

  “You need to spend the day at Rolling Hills.”

  He nodded without understanding. On Monday, he’d brought his real estate agency paperwork up to date, and he’d not received as much as a call of inquiry in the days since. “Will I be doing a records search?”

  “Direct observation. How’s the view to S&T Travel?”

  “Decent. We share an alley.” The file room with the non-computerized records had the best angle on their rear entrance. One of those San Francisco chocolate bars to the clerk should buy a couple hours of solitude. “What am I looking for?”

  “Any male not a customer,” Daryl reached down to turn on a table lamp.

  “Travel agent is a Mrs. Stennis. Her husband farms six miles or so south of Wagoner. Soybeans, hay, and llamas.”

  “Hmmm. Didn’t know about the llamas.” Daryl rubbed his chin. “I’d drive you home now for a few hours rest but I doubt she’d let me back inside. Can you make do with the daybed?”

  “I’ve slept in worse places.” In comparison to packed dirt with a mud wall windbreak in the middle of Nowhere, Afghanistan, the pillows and bright quilt looked like a Hilton. “And you?”

  “After the sun comes up and the sheriff arrives, I’m off to Rochester.”

  Brad raised his eyebrows at the final word. “Carlstead case moved out of our hands.”

  “A detail I want to check.” Daryl glanced back to the kitchen as if confirming Laura’s location. “How much of a look did you get at the original ID Carlstead was using?”

  “About a blink. The Rochester detective, Logan, commented on the quality, among the best he’d seen. He hesitated to give me the copy.”

  “I believe it.” Daryl lowered his voice another level and kept his back to Laura. “Early in my career we arrested a counterfeiting ring. Excellent work on pre-watermark paper. Our team managed to pick up on them via a signature tornado in the left front corner. A tiny one. Gave the engraver the name ‘Cyclone Harvey.’ A fine case.”

  “Related how?” Brad glimpsed Laura perched on the utility stool eating her supper . . . snack . . . whatever name you gave to food in the new hours of the morning.

  “Harvey finished his sentence four years ago.”

  “Relatives in the area?”

  “That’s the word.”

  “I’ll take first watch. Two hour shift?” He’d be a good soldier and obey his boss. His call to Kimberly for the Beel case had already slid one notch down on priorities.

  • • •

  “I should make you both sleep with the cattle.” Laura directed her words to Daryl but remained aware of Brad getting a drink of water in the kitchen. In the half hour since the electricity returned, the two men had staked claim on the informal dining room and now they were sending tendrils out to other areas.

  Daryl stretched out on the daybed, pillowed his head on interlaced hands, and met her gaze. “You’ll think differently of this after you get a few hours sleep.”

  “Optimist.” From first sip to final swallow the oversized mug of hot chocolate finished moments ago failed to relax either her stomach or her brain. She guessed it would be one of too many times when she’d lay in bed with her eyes closed and her mind racing. The only question remained which of several unpleasant scenarios would visit this time.

  “You must have me confused with a different uncle.” He continued a steady look in her direction.

  “I don’t have you confused at all.” She paused at the hall entrance, and yielded to good manners. She remained uneasy about Brad in the house, in her opinion he was a suspect in all but the arson incident. “Don’t worry about your words, Brad. There’s nothing wrong with them at all.”

  “Laura . . . ”

  She turned away and closed the bedroom door before he could say another word.

  The furnace finished its cycle and the house lapsed into silence. Laura lay under a quilt staring at flowered wallpaper by the soft light of the shaded desk lamp. How many times will I count that square of roses tonight? Exhaustion draped over her and she drifted into an uneasy sleep.

  Scott waggled his hand, signaled her to follow at a distance as he stepped into the carnival maze of mirrors.

  She watched him turn out of sight to the right, counted three seconds, and moved forward. Five. Six. The number of her images surrounding her seemed to multiply with each step. “Wait up.”

  Explosions and crashing glass filled the air.

  She stumbled around the next corner, dropped to her knees, and cradled Scott’s bloody head in her lap as she screamed.

  “Laura.” Light and sound broke a bubble around her. “Open your eyes. Take a deep breath. You’re safe. On the farm.”

  She reached out, wrapped her hands around the first thing they encountered, and squeezed. A corner of pillow gave way.

  “Flashback. Rerun. Open your eyes. Look at me.”

  Her eyelids eased up, closed, and opened again. She whimpered and drew the scene into focus. What’s he doing here?

  Brad lowered down until his face was level with hers. “Take deep breaths on my count, Laura. One. Two. That’s good.”

  “Go away.” Her words emerged limp.

  “Not yet.”

  She exhaled with a shiver. The aftereffects of the nightmare made her check her hands for blood and shards of glass. Piece by piece the room and contents came into focus. It took a few more moments before the reality of the dream sent her into another bout of the shakes.

  “You’re safe.” Brad spoke softly and evenly. “You talk. I’ll listen.”

  “Is that how it works?”

  “Worked on the ward at Brooke.”

  She pushed to a half sitting position and pulled the quilt to her chin. “I’m not in the army.”

  “Trauma doesn’t require a uniform.”

  He didn’t have the posture or expression of a man willing to leave easy. Maybe if she played along a little, pretended to be a good patient to an amateur psychologist, he’d back off sooner rather than later.

  She pressed her back against the pillows and clung to the edge of the quilt. “New nightmare tonight. Scott still lay dead at the end of it.”

  • • •

  Brad forced his gaze to move around the room. A shaded lamp on Roger’s desk gave unobtrusive light, enough to reveal portions of her face as she inspected him. He dampened his lips, prepared to talk, but paused. Bad idea. I don’t want to spook her into silence.

  “Once,” Laura leaned against the headboard and worried the edge of the flannel sheet with both hands. “One time, in a year plus a week now, I actually dreamed Scott whole. We danced. Does that sound silly?”

  He shook his head, afraid to shatter her fragile beginning.

  “We were at home. Scott coaxed me away from fixing supper. I read his lips about a surprise out on our deck. There, in the glow of our porch light we waltzed. In the sno
w. The first flurries of the season. They lodged in his hair. His hair was the deepest of dark chocolate, one shade less than black, and tempted to curl when he didn’t get a haircut. I remember laughing and teasing him about his looks in old age. Before . . . ”

  His missing arm ached to reach out, caress her cheek.

  “So much blood. It stays bright red in the nightmares. In real time, it turned dull so fast. His shirt . . . red going rust as I fumbled, searched for a pulse that wasn’t there. That I knew couldn’t exist.” She swiped at sparse tears with the back of one hand.

  He moved his attention to the window in time to see the rotating yellow lights of the snowplow push down the road. “Continue.”

  “I can’t.”

  Wrong. They all say that before they spill the worst. He looked at her face and didn’t fight the prompt rising in his throat. “Gun?”

  “On the floor. Next to his chair. A revolver. Snub nose.” She turned away for a moment then released a huge sigh. “It belonged to his business partner. The coward got someone else to pull the trigger.”

  Brad nodded encouragement but she turned away and busied her hands with a box of tissues on the far bedside table. So Laura labeled Gary Browne a coward. That assessment matched up with the interview he’d conducted. Browne’s sister understood her younger brother. He kept his face neutral and determined to ask again to see Daryl’s file on Scott Tanner’s death. The one interview and glimpses of a few photos didn’t give him enough information to weave into the next trail to follow.

  “Leave me to my ghost, Brad.”

  He raised his gaze, studied the sheen of tears in her deep blue eyes. “What would it take to make Scott a pleasant memory instead of a nightmare?”

  “A miracle?” She tipped her head back as if the answer might be penned on the ceiling. “An arrest? A conviction? Justice? His life needs to be worth that. One time, months ago, I made the mistake of spinning Detective Wilson’s words into hope. I can’t afford to do that again.”

  “Crashed on the asphalt?” He risked a half smile.

  “While speeding.” She pulled a chain holding two rings out from a hiding place. “Yesterday, today, tomorrow,” she held the smaller ring until three small diamonds glinted in the soft light. “The killer stole tomorrow.”