The House on Creek Road

by Caron Todd

  “I thought maybe you went off to see the Prince of Wales in your curtain dress.”

  “Not that year.” Eleanor laughed at their startled expressions. “I could tell you anything, couldn’t I? It’s a benefit of age.” She tucked the two photographs back into the box and fit the lid over top.

  “I’ll put it away, Grandma.”

  In the living room, Liz stepped over Emily’s stretched-out legs and returned the box of pictures to its place in the hutch cupboard. She heard snippets of a few quiet conversations. Nell’s reluctance to sleep through the night was being discussed again.

  “She’ll be fine,” Aunt Edith said.

  “I know she’ll be fine,” Pat replied, a bit tartly. “It’s Martin and I who aren’t fine.”

  Brian’s wife, Sandy, sat across the room. “Imagine,” she said, “our last Christmas in this house. Six weeks and it’ll be over. We’ll have to get a really special tree and give the place a proper send-off.”

  Six weeks. That wasn’t too soon to start baking and shopping. Liz realized she had no intention of going back to Vancouver for the holidays. She wanted to be here helping her grandmother with the plum pudding and joining everyone to decorate the family tree. She’d have to let her parents know right away. Maybe they would come back, too.

  It wasn’t until the others had left and the house was quiet that Liz remembered Daniel’s cryptic warning at the arena. She had forgotten to ask Jack if he knew why Daniel thought she should be careful.

  CROKER HADN’T STUCK AROUND for an explanation of the mathematical game Reid and Jack had played during high school and university. He’d left the office with his entourage of goons, and stayed away for the rest of the day. Reid divided his time between deliberating the wisdom of smashing the Collected Garbage of Jack McKinnon, plus a serious here’s mud in your eye infection, and listening for the sound of the door.

  He’d gone to them, with promises. One of those friend of a friend of a friend situations. Or it might be more accurate to say a shadowy figure known to an acquaintance who worked at another computer security company. But he’d gone to them, that was the thing. He’d promised to deliver the encryption algorithm of their dreams. It was a gutsy move, even for him. Or a stupid one. That was the problem with taking a gamble—you never knew which it was until you saw the outcome. It would help if he could be sure brass knuckles wouldn’t be part of the equation.

  Jack had always been the careful one. The way he looked at it, gambling on your future could send it swirling down the drain. You just worked, step after step after step, until you had scholarships and degrees and a dream business.

  And then, apparently, you threw it away. You got what everybody else wanted, then turned your back on it to be Johnny Appleseed, of all things.

  Maybe Croker and his people would cut their losses. If they did, should he keep trying to find the code on his own? He didn’t even know if he could market it safely without help. Whether or not he kept looking for it, should he play along with the game? If he didn’t, Jack might get suspicious. The worst thing would be if he called to see what was happening. Then Reid would have to be a snake to his face, a much different proposition than being one behind his back.

  They weren’t friends. That was the thing to remember. They’d been classmates for years, since before junior high, competitors for marks and scholarships and theorem proofs. That didn’t mean they were friends.

  About seven o’clock, when Reid was about to go and grab a burger, Croker came back to the office. No goons. The tic beside his eye was gone. Reid wondered if he’d met with whoever was on the other side of his cell phone, or if he’d just gone for a long walk, kicking his way through the snowdrifts. It was a picture he liked, leather-clad Croker communing with nature.

  Croker went to the window, hardly glancing at Reid as he went by the desk. After a few minutes of staring silently at the opposite rooftop, he turned, leaned against the sill and started talking, his voice and face as flat as cardboard.

  “Here’s where we stand. I’ve got you taking care of technical problems and offering insights on McKinnon’s psychology. I’ve got Webb mingling with the locals in Three Creeks, picking up useless gossip and telling me when McKinnon’s going shopping. After weeks of time and effort and investment, we don’t know anything.” Croker raised his hand, stopping his own listing of facts. “Let me correct myself. We know he knows we were in his house.”

  “He knows I was in his house. I tried to tell you, we played these math games all the time in the old days. Treasure hunts. Puzzles. You solve one, it leads you to another—”

  Croker didn’t want to hear about the old days. “If McKinnon had the code he would have hit the roof when he saw that someone had been in his house. He wouldn’t start playing games. So he must have destroyed the code. You said he wouldn’t do that. You were certain.”

  Abandoning his rule not to be first to break eye contact with Croker, Reid looked away. He held his fingers to his aching eyes, then rubbed his forehead and temples. He could probably get into the Guinness Book of World Records with this headache.

  One more try. His neck muscles were so tight. Burning. “Jack saw that someone was in his house looking for something. What did he conclude? That it was me, starting a game, the way we used to do. He didn’t conclude it was someone after the code. If he knows I was searching his house, and he isn’t worried about me finding the code, then you’re right, he doesn’t have it with him. I see two possibilities. Either he destroyed it, which I still don’t believe, or it’s hidden somewhere else. Anywhere else. In a locker at the bus station. In a bank vault. At RCMP headquarters. In his neighbor’s sewing basket. I don’t know. And I don’t know how we find it.” There. He’d said it. He’d admitted he was of no further use to them.

  Croker had stared at Reid without blinking during his whole speech. “Or…maybe McKinnon knows exactly what we’re doing. Maybe he knows you better than you know him. All this idiocy about games could just be distraction. We need to check for post offices boxes, safety deposit boxes, more hidden real estate. Places he might stash the code, people who might know about it. Colleagues, business partners. Who does he talk to? Who matters to him?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE BORDER COLLIE PICKED UP the puck and ran. Two small figures took off after the dog, but they didn’t stand a chance of catching him. Laughing, Uncle Will turned as Jack’s truck drew into the yard. He waved and started kicking the goal-marking stones out of the way. Jack eased ahead, stopping near the path to the back door.

  “That dog has taken every ball and puck we have,” Will said, when the truck’s doors opened. “Don’t know where he keeps them. Got something for me to carry?” He took a casserole from Eleanor, then helped her to the ground, nearly lifting her down. He put out a hand for Jack’s pies.

  “With apologies,” Jack said. “It’s not really the season for it anymore, but it was this or pumpkin soup.”

  “Any season’s right for pumpkin pie,” Will said.

  “That’s the last of them, I promise.”

  “Until next year,” Tom said gloomily.

  Jennifer sat on the back step, hunched up inside her parka. Two small fuzzy heads were just visible inside its folds. In the month since she had started her campaign to get the kittens into the house they’d grown enough that it was almost time to call them cats.

  Eleanor, Liz and Jack stopped in front of her. Eleanor said, “You shouldn’t sit on cold cement.”

  Jennifer nodded grimly. “No one should be on cold cement. They won’t listen, though. My opinion doesn’t mean a thing around here. As if these little kittens can survive a whole winter outside. What about when it’s forty below? It’s cruel. I should report them to the Humane Society. I will.” Tears welled up in her eyes, so she clamped her mouth shut and stared at her boots. Liz heard one loud sniff.

  “Ah, sweetheart,” she began, but then the back door opened, and Pam leaned outside.

  “You’re jus
t in time! The game’s about to start.” It was Grey Cup Sunday, a good excuse for a potluck dinner.

  Young Will and Anne raced for the door, edging past the grown-ups and kicking off their boots as they went inside. “We found his hiding place! Right in the middle of the caragana bushes. The branches were so sharp we could hardly get in. But we got ’em, three pucks and three tennis balls.”

  “You’re bleeding!” Pam exclaimed.

  Will ducked away from his mother. “The branches were sharp,” he repeated. “So, who wants to play after dinner?”

  “You could have poked your eye out!”

  He wiped his mitt over the scratch, smearing blood. “Dad? Mr. McKinnon?”

  “Maybe at half-time,” Tom said. “Put away your sticks and get cleaned up. We’re going to miss the kick-off. Never mind Jennifer, Liz. She’s having a sit-in. Pouty, but peaceful, so we’re ignoring her.”

  Eleanor stepped around her great-granddaughter. “I’ve brought ginger cookies. I hope you’ll be in soon to enjoy some.”

  “I don’t think I will be.”

  Jack and Liz told Pam they’d stay out for a while, too. They sat on the step, one of each side of Jennifer. She wasn’t just being pouty. Digging in her heels, yes. But the child was honestly upset.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked. “Never mind Jennifer. I might as well not be here, ’cause that’s their motto.” She explained the whole story from the beginning for Jack, concluding, “And it’s ridiculous because there’s thousands of animals on this farm, hundreds anyway, and not a single one in the house. The dogs are watchdogs and the cats are barn cats. We eat the hens and their unborn children and we eat the cows. If we had horses I bet you anything we’d eat them, too. We’re just a bunch of carnivores.”

  “It doesn’t look as if you can win this fight,” Jack said.

  “Oh, I’ll win it.” She hunched down further, as if she had every intention of spending the winter right where she sat.

  “What’s the main point you want to make?”

  “I want the kittens in the house.”

  Jack nodded. He looked so serious Liz wanted to hug him. How many men would care about a ten-year-old girl and her kittens? “Why?”

  “So they’ll be warm.”

  “Is that all?”

  “And safe. And so I’ll have a pet. To sleep on the end of my bed.”

  “From what I’ve seen, I don’t think your parents will give on that last point, for whatever reason.”

  “For no reason. Just because they have power over me.”

  Jack was quiet for a minute. “What if we could keep the kittens warm and they could be your pets, just not in the house and not on your bed?”

  Jennifer heaved a long, slow sigh. The part about the house and the bed was clearly important to her. “Mom already gave them a box at the door, with a blanket in it.” Liz hadn’t noticed the box. It was just cardboard, but it offered protection from the wind.

  “She’s trying, isn’t she?” Jack said.

  “Not very hard.”

  He laughed. “C’mon. Let’s go to the barn.”

  “The barn?” There was doubt and a trace of indignation in Jennifer’s voice.

  “The barn,” Jack agreed. “Let’s see what we can figure out.”

  They went single file on a hardened path through the snow, Jennifer still holding the kittens, who made themselves feel better about their bumpy ride by digging their claws into her coat. A Pacific air mass had come through, and the air felt almost warm on Liz’s cheeks. If it got much warmer, the snow would start melting.

  The calves crowded to the front of their enclosure when the three humans came in. Just as she had with Liz, Jennifer assured Jack they didn’t need anything, not even attention. They had plenty of food, and they had each other. She got the lights, and Jack pushed the door almost shut, leaving enough room for them to go in and out easily.

  “Why would we need to go in and out?” Liz asked. “What are you planning?”

  Jack just smiled, and went ahead to look around the barn. He soon stopped at a center stall about five feet long and four feet wide, well away from the walls and windows. “What do you think, Jennifer? This seems just right.”

  She looked disappointed. “You mean for the kittens?”

  “I mean for you and the kittens.”

  Jennifer looked from Jack to her aunt. “For me?”

  “What, are you going to build Jennifer a bedroom in the barn?”

  “Not a bedroom exactly—”

  Liz had been joking. Jennifer jumped excitedly, and the kittens dug their claws deeper into her coat. “A bedroom? That’s so cool! I can live out here, I can eat out here and do my homework!”

  Liz saw a fundamental problem. “Shouldn’t we ask Tom first?”

  “No,” Jennifer said at once. “I’ll need a really warm sleeping bag. Do those tin can phones work, Auntie Liz? I could run a string between here and the house…”

  Jack had gone off to explore other stalls and dark corners of the barn. There were blocks of livestock salt, bags of feed, small rectangular bales of straw, burlap sacks and coils of binder twine hanging from the hooks. Against the north wall, he found a pile of weathered boards. He lifted one, brushing off dirt and flecks of straw. “These look good, Jen. Solid, no rusty nails or splinters.” He sneezed. “They could use a serious cleaning.”

  “Tom might have plans for the wood.” Liz hated to be the practical one, but it seemed like an important point.

  “If he does, they’re plans he’s had for a very long time. Dust like that doesn’t build up in a month, or even a year. I should know.”

  “I can have sleep-overs,” Jennifer said. “Maybe I could get a stove hooked up and a fridge…”

  Jack leaned the first board lengthwise against the wall and continued sorting through the stack. He muttered to himself, “Twenty ten-foot boards, six inches wide, ten, four, sixteen feet of wall, five feet high…yup.” Louder, he said, “We should have enough right here. Now we need hammers, a saw, nails.”

  “I’ll get them!” Jennifer detached the kittens’ claws from her coat. “Down you go.” There was a loud, protesting meow. “It’s okay, Charlotte. You’ll be fine.” She ran outside.

  Liz watched Jack lift and inspect one board after another. “You’ve made her very happy.”

  “Ten year olds should be happy. Going to give me a hand?”

  By the time Jennifer returned with the tools, they had brushed the worst of the dirt from the wood. Jennifer held the boards while Jack sawed them into shorter lengths, and again while he hammered the pieces in place. Liz doled out nails as he needed them. They enclosed the stall, making walls five feet high, with window openings on two sides. Jennifer couldn’t contain her excitement when the peaked roof went up.

  “It’s so cool! Like a real house!”

  They piled straw bales around the outside of the walls for insulation, and opened one bale to scatter straw on the floor. Without a word, Jennifer whipped out of the barn again. She came back hauling a child-size table. She repeated the trip three more times, bringing two matching chairs, then an armload of books and finally a flashlight, blanket and pillows.

  “We can make a door eventually,” Jack said. “We’ll need to get hinges and a latch.”

  “We can make curtains,” Liz said.

  “And if a little fridge won’t work, I could have a cooler. And what about one of those slow cookers?”

  Jack started to laugh, but he stopped when they heard boots clamping against the barn’s cement floor. Tom’s lower half filled the playhouse doorway.

  “What’s going on out here?”

  Liz, Jack and Jennifer looked at each other guiltily.

  Tom bent over and peered inside. “Wow. Neat.” He looked at the kittens sleeping on the blanket spread over a straw bale bed. “This is something else.”

  “I hope you didn’t have plans for the wood,” Jack said.

  “Nothing beyond thinking it should com
e in useful. And it has.” He smiled at his daughter, then at Jack. “It’s half-time. Stew’s hot. Beer’s cold. Great-grandma’s cookies are waiting.”

  No one moved.

  “I see your point. If we could hook up a TV out here I’d stay, too.”

  Tom disappeared, but he soon returned with Pam and a box full of dishes and food. The five of them sat around the little house, on chairs and on bales, and tucked in.

  “I’ve never tasted such good stew,” Liz said.

  Tom took a deep breath, sniffing the air. “Smell that—the straw and the cattle and the stew. This must be what it’s like out on a range.”

  “I could get a harmonica,” Jennifer said.

  “It’s hard to imagine,” Tom went on, “but this playhouse isn’t much smaller than the log cabin in the woods. Remember it, Liz?”

  “I remember.”

  “Grandpa’s grandparents lived in that cabin their first year here, through the winter, even. I don’t know how they did it. I wonder if it’s still standing? It can’t be. It’d be, what, a hundred and twenty years old? It has to have fallen down.”

  “It must have.” Liz didn’t want to talk about the cabin with her brother. She wasn’t comfortable thinking about it in such a casual way.

  Jack packed his dish into the box. “Liz, what would you prefer? The second half of the game, or a little stargazing?”

  She hadn’t told him about the cabin. How did he always know when she needed rescuing? “Let’s begin with stargazing and then catch some of the second half.”

  They thanked Pam and Tom for dinner and wished Jennifer well with her house. After they’d squeezed through the doorway they clearly heard the voices inside.

  “Isn’t that great?” Pam said. “I’ve been hoping those two would get together from the beginning.”

  Tom warned her not to jump to conclusions. “Looking at stars doesn’t have to be romantic, and football certainly isn’t. Besides, Liz will be gone soon and Jack has a big investment in his farm. They’re committed to different ways of life.”