Butter Off Dead

by Leslie Budewitz

  * * *

  “Play nice,” I told Mr. Sandburg. “Don’t snarl at company.”

  Nobody, in any species, enjoys being displaced. Sandy had always had full run of the cabin, and most nights, slept on my feet or curled up behind my knees. I woke Sunday morning to find him occupying the ottoman in the living room, chin on his paws, staring out the French doors.

  Bemoaning his exile, or lamenting Mr. Squirrel’s absence?

  Pumpkin had left the borrowed crate only to use the makeshift litter box I’d set up in the bathroom, sniff her food, and dip her tongue in the water. The deputy had shooed us away as soon as I coaxed her out from under Christine’s bed, not letting me search for her toys or bed, but she seemed reassured by the crate’s confines.

  It’s a universal thing. Consider the appeal of the log cabin. Even an upgraded one like this, with a gas fireplace and stainless steel appliances, is comforting in part because it’s so compact.

  After my talk with Sandy, I threw open the pine double doors between the main room—combined cooking, eating, and living space—and the luxurious bed-and-bath addition. Pumpkin would emerge when she was ready.

  A pot of Cowboy Roast brewing, I cinched the belt on my fluffy white robe and got out flour, sugar, raisins, and buttermilk. Ground flaxseed. Zested an orange.

  I slid the first tray of scones into the oven and closed the door, turning in time to see a giant orange butterball bound onto the black granite-topped island.

  “No, you don’t.” I grabbed the cat in both hands and deposited her onto the pine plank floor quickly, avoiding those slashing claws. “House rules.”

  The cat sidled underneath a high-backed barstool, its wrought-iron legs a protective cage. Flicked her tail and wrapped it around herself.

  Sandburg jumped on the back of the tweedy brown couch and glared at her, eyes narrowed, front paws together. His dark fur began to bristle as the energy built in his shoulders.

  “Don’t you dare,” I said, in a warning tone. “No pouncing, and no hissy fits.”

  One hissy fit in the family had been enough. After Chiara and I had picked up the broken glass and sponged up the sticky mess, we’d polished off our drinks and debated what on earth had gotten into Fresca. Francesca Conti Murphy was not given to flying off the handle, despite her Italian heritage. Strong-willed and capable of deep emotion, yes, but not a drama queen. With three kids in four years, she’d cleaned up plenty of childhood accidents, and Landon certainly caused his share. But her anger over the broken martini glass had been inexplicable.

  “It’s because of Christine,” I’d said.

  “Of course it is,” Chiara had replied, but then we’d circled back, unable to understand why Fresca’s grief had taken that particular form.

  “I hope I don’t lash out at Landon next time he spills his milk,” she’d said. Then we’d hugged and gone home.

  Now I crouched beside the terrified tabby. “You’re confused, and you’re mad, and I don’t blame you. But you have to keep your claws to yourself. We all do.” I resisted the urge to stroke her silky apricot fur.

  “Talking to yourself? Who you got down there? Hello, Pumpkin.”

  I hadn’t heard Adam come in. He crouched beside us and gave me the crooked smile that never failed to draw one from me.

  We’d talked last night. He knew about Christine, and he knew not to touch the cat. His curled fingers rested lightly on the floor, as if they might hold a treat, and she sniffed in his direction before withdrawing into herself.

  “Progress.” We pushed ourselves up.

  “All in good time,” he said, and wrapped his arms around me. Our kiss was long and deep and everything I needed. Letting myself feel safe with him felt like a risk, weird as that might sound. In Seattle, every man I’d dated ultimately chose his career over me. I’d responded by focusing on my own career to the exclusion of almost everything else. Until I met a poetry-spouting retired English teacher named Roxy Turner on a walk around the reservoir in our Capitol Hill neighborhood. We quickly became good friends, and months later when she died, it had been natural to adopt her cat, Mr. Sandburg. A cat my landlord hated. So when my mother needed help at the Merc, the timing was right to take my frustrated career ambitions, my frustrated personal ambitions, and my occasionally frustrating but mostly delightful cat and move home.

  “I’m not keeping her,” I said, stepping out of Adam’s embrace. “Help me think of someone to pawn her off on.”

  “Did you just say ‘paw her off’?”

  “No, silly.” I rattled a tin box of tuna-flavored treats. “Guests first,” I told Sandy, and headed for the bathroom. By the time I’d sprinkled a few tidbits in her bowl and set it on the floor, Pumpkin had inched over the threshold. The moment I stepped back, she fell on those treats like Landon falls on cookies.

  Back out front, I spilled out a few for Sandy. Adam poured coffee in two poppy red Reg Robbins mugs and we sat at the island, drinking in the scents of dark roast and baking scones.

  “You okay? You’re making quite a habit of this, you know.”

  Of finding bodies. I knew. “‘Okay’ is a relative thing. I’m not breaking dishes”—I’d told him last night about my mother and the martini glass—“and I’m not curled up in a ball in the corner. But I feel like a light’s gone out.”

  “It has.”

  I love how he understands my metaphors. He doesn’t always recognize the bits of poems and plays I draw from thin air and the deep recesses of memory, but he listens and responds thoughtfully.

  What is that saying about stars being holes in the sky where the love of our lost ones shines down from heaven, to let us know they’re happy and not to worry?

  The timer buzzed and I slid the scones out of the oven. We carried our bounty to the couch, where Sandburg had reclaimed his position.

  “Best couch-front view in town,” Adam said. Jewel Bay sits at the northeast end of Eagle Lake, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. Twenty-eight miles long, eleven miles wide near the south end. Named for the bay where the Jewel River meets the lake, the unincorporated town centers on the village—the original settlement, what some call downtown—but the community stretches for miles in all directions. Sparsely populated miles with stunning views.

  Today, though, gray clouds hid the mountains and an ominous gloom shrouded the water.

  “She was the force behind the Festival,” I said, a warm buttered scone in hand. “I hope I can figure out what all needs to be done.”

  “Do you have to take over?” Adam said through a mouthful.

  “Who else? Wendy’s in charge of food, Mimi tickets, and Chiara publicity. All I have to do is wait for the movies to get here and make sure everyone does what they said they’d do.”

  “Just seems like you do a lot you don’t get credit for.”

  His words hit home, and I didn’t like it. “It’s not about getting credit. And it’s too late to recruit another volunteer. Easier to do it myself.”

  “Don’t get mad. But this time, you can’t say it’s for the good of the town and the Merc. A midwinter festival is not going to boost business much, no matter how good the popcorn seasonings are.”

  “But it is for the good of the town. Building community. Having fun.” In truth, I’d gotten tired of taking on tasks for the benefit of other merchants, who too often forgot to say thanks, or who griped at me when something went wrong. “Good-idea fairies” who piped up at the last minute with some harebrained notion they thought was wonderful and couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t work or was too late. “Besides, most of the work is done. And Larry and the kids can help.”

  Except that one of those kids might be under arrest, for all I knew.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Adam sipped coffee and changed the subject. “I’ve been thinking about that solar coffee roaster. It’s got potential for a heckuva business.�
� He reached for my hand.

  I knew what he had in mind. A business we could build together. Combine my food and business savvy with his inventiveness and mechanical know-how. And our shared love of coffee.

  Christine was dead, and I did not want to talk about our future.

  “Need a refill?” I stood abruptly. I half wished the Merc weren’t closed on Sunday, so I’d have somewhere to go.

  Because for once, my own log cabin, my much adored, lovingly restored little cabin in the big woods, felt a touch uncomfortable.

  • Six •

  My mother always says when you don’t feel the way you want to, act as if you do, and before you know it, your mood will shift. Sounds crazy at first, but it works.

  And this was the perfect time to act “as if.”

  “He’s not answering,” I told Adam, “and Mom hasn’t seen him. You gotta leave Nick alone sometimes. He’s always been that way.”

  Adam piled my cross-country gear in the back of his dirty black Xterra and shut the hatch. The gear of the season only leaves his car when he’s using it. We’d separated the cats, leaving Pumpkin access to the crate if she felt the need. I wished, again, that the deputy had let me take a sweater or a T-shirt of Christine’s so the cat could comfort herself with the scent. But, no. “Could be evidence, ma’am,” he’d said. Heck, the cat could be evidence, but after she clawed him, he was all too thrilled to be rid of her.

  “Let’s stop at the Playhouse,” I said as Adam pulled onto the highway. “Kim told me they’d give me Christine’s three-ring binder with all the Festival details in a day or two, but I can’t wait. I need a copy of the schedule she and Larry made. One should be posted somewhere.”

  “Sure.” He reached for my hand and this time, I didn’t pull away.

  I had temporary custody of Playhouse keys and let myself in the front door. The lobby was dark, though sounds echoed somewhere in the building. A movie playing? More tests of the new equipment?

  I found a schedule taped to the ticket office wall and peeled it off. It was an old one, still showing the documentary on Friday night, but it would have to do. While the copier warmed up, I stepped back into the lobby to scope it out with my “woman in charge” eyes.

  The control room door stood ajar. A mix of voices, live and recorded, drifted out.

  “You promised. You said if I—” Zayda George, her words obscured by the goose-like honk of an old-time car horn. Screening the documentary one more time?

  A male replied. “But you didn’t.”

  She interrupted. “I tried. It—”

  It was impossible to hear, and anyway, Zayda’s spat with her boyfriend had nothing to do with me.

  Buffet tables along that wall. Drinks at the concession booth. Film Club display there. Most of Larry’s posters would hang on the walls, where signs commemorating past years’ productions now hung, but a few key pieces on easels would set the mood. Where? Good visibility, but out of the way. Pondering, pointing, talking to myself, I focused on the space.

  And backed smack into Dylan Washington, coming out of the men’s room.

  “Oh, Erin. Hi.” His cheeks pinked and he hurriedly finished zipping his fly.

  Footsteps clomped across the lobby floor. “You won’t believe—” Zayda broke off mid-rant.

  So she hadn’t been arguing with Dylan. Then who?

  “How are you, Zayda? I hope Kim—Detective Caldwell—wasn’t too hard on you yesterday.”

  A shadow crossed her face. “Everything I told her is the truth. I didn’t have anything to do with—with what happened to Christine.”

  “It would be easier for her to believe you, if you’d told the truth from the start.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand.” She dashed past us and disappeared into the women’s room, the door ka-thumping on its hinges.

  Strange to be the adult now, part of the generation that doesn’t understand.

  Dylan watched her go, mouth open, his eyes hurt and confused. “I thought I understood her,” he said, his voice catching, “but not anymore.”

  * * *

  Twenty-eight degrees and four inches of new powder overnight. The Nordic trails had been freshly groomed, and we fairly flew down them.

  I always say my favorite part about winter sports is the hot buttered rum by the fireplace afterward, and that’s half-true. But the sensation of gliding through the frozen world is addictive. Whether it’s for the endorphins, the muscle movement, or the opportunity to commune with the lesser-seen side of nature, I keep coming out here, winter after winter.

  And when all your parts are moving in sync, keeping you warm and upright as you sail through the woods, it’s hard to worry about everything that’s wrong.

  Cross-country skiing is a lot less work than traipsing up hill and over dale on snowshoes. No wonder Nick the Wolf Man is in such great shape.

  I was behind Adam on our last loop through the woods, admiring his great shape, when he glanced over his shoulder to shoot me a goofy grin.

  And caught a tip and bounded over his skis. His head disappeared from view, poles flapping like the wings of a drunken bird, and he did a flying somersault. The air froze in my throat as he descended, dangerously close to the broad trunk of an old-growth ponderosa pine. I could not see him land, my vision obscured by a geyser of snow.

  The air cleared. One ski had landed in the trail, facing the direction we’d come. The other stuck out of a drift, beside his maroon-and-gray knit hat. Our college colors.

  “Adam!” I urged myself forward on the trail, then tugged off my skis and plowed toward him. One mitten appeared, then one sleeve, and another. A bellow broke the quiet hush, and two arms gathered me into the downy drift.

  It is possible to make a double snow angel.

  “You scared the bejeebers out of me when you flew off the trail,” I said a few minutes later, tossing my ski boots in the back of his rig.

  “Scared myself,” he admitted. “Not ready to die crashing into a tree trunk.”

  We’d driven a mile or two from the trailhead when I said, “That retired newscaster and her husband have a house up here somewhere. They came to the Festa last summer, and their housekeeper shops at the Merc.”

  “That road. Go left, then back in a ways,” he said. At my surprise, he explained. “I asked for a donation to the Wilderness Camp and they invited me out to hear more. Nice people, great house, big check. Your lighting director, Larry Abrams, lives down that way.” He pointed to another road.

  “You get around.”

  “A bit. Nice guy, generous. But, funny. Odd funny. Place is built of logs salvaged from old barns and cabins, and I swear, he knows where every wall came from. Hand-forged hardware—replicas that function with a modern security system. The place is huge, but I guess he needs all that space for his collections.”

  “What collections, besides the movie posters?”

  “All kinds of stuff. I guess he’s on museum boards all over the state. Even I recognized some of the art. A giant Chatham over the fireplace. Amazing.”

  Russell Chatham, famous for multilayered lithos and oils that capture the changing moods of the Yellowstone River bottoms. “What else?”

  “Horse paintings. Cowboys and Indians. And who’s that guy—painted a lot of teepees? Your mother has a watercolor.”

  “Ace Powell. Wow. And here I thought he was just a quirky guy obsessed with reliving his childhood.” But talking about Larry reminded me of Christine, and that dimmed the glow of the afternoon.

  “His office is jammed—artifacts and old stuff everywhere. He’s crazy for Russell.” Adam turned down the Stage Road, taking the back way into the village.

  Charles M. Russell, aka Charlie Russell or CMR. The most famous Montana artist, deeply admired for his chronicle of the Old West. Before homesteaders plowed up the cattle range and the horseless car
riage chased the pinto and the paint into obscurity.

  Adam started up the driveway of a buddy’s house and a bevy of colored plastic sleds flew down the hill. “He’s got this Chinese gong—”

  “Is that Landon? What are we doing here?”

  He parked behind my sister and brother-in-law’s rig. “Don’t you remember? Friday night? I said we’d stop by today if we came out this way.”

  What else had I forgotten, in the shock of yesterday’s discovery?

  Four couples, half a dozen kids, three dogs, and fresh powder: all the ingredients for delicious chaos.

  “Froster time!” Adam’s buddy, the homeowner, called, and chaos erupted. Jason helped Landon and the other kids make a snow castle in the yard, all wearing shorts or swim trunks and snow boots. The homeowner manned the snow-covered grill. Adam stripped to his shorts and boots, and struck a sunbathing pose in a lounge chair while Chiara did sun salutations on the deck in a borrowed bathing suit.

  I kept my clothes on and snapped pictures. Someone had to record the insanity, even if it was temporary.

  “Nothing cheers me up like making a total idiot of myself.” Adam flashed me that lopsided grin that makes me melt, and we all dashed inside. Robes and blankets were found and cocoa poured, while chili bubbled on the stove.

  Who can stay grouched up surrounded by silliness? Frosting, a trend that sweeps snowy regions every year or two, is the essence of acting “as if”: acting as if the weather is so great, why wouldn’t you be outside in next to nothing?

  I sipped my cocoa and watched Landon. He’d grown so much the last few months. Not just taller, but even sweeter and more thoughtful.

  The past year’s sadness weighed heavily on me as the anniversary of my dad’s death approached. Après–ski and frosting, I did feel lighter. But as I sank into the soft maroon leather couch in our friends’ living room, my mood dipped, too. Did anyone here but me care that Christine was dead? Laughter felt a touch like betrayal.

  Who had killed her? Surely not Zayda. Not anyone I knew.