Crime Times Two

by Julie Howard

  The vibrations struck her before the sound, alerting her to an approaching vehicle. By the time the snowmobile appeared around the bend, Meredith stood in the middle of the road. She waved her arms as though her car could possibly be missed. The vehicle slowed and then stopped. The rider sat for a moment, bundled in ski pants, heavy jacket, face mask and cap.

  The voice under the mask was female. “Seems like you’re in a pickle.”

  “I don’t know what happened,” Meredith said, her tone filled with relief. “My car just started sliding.”

  “Guess you didn’t notice the storm. Or the sign down the road.”

  She didn’t care about being chastised. She wouldn’t freeze, starve or be eaten by a bear. “What do I do now?” How do I get my car out?”

  The woman took off her cap, then her mask. Meredith winced. Caro Reynolds sat on her machine appearing pleased with the situation before her.

  “Most people carry a shovel in their car this time of year. Otherwise, they call the sheriff. He has a tow line on his truck.” She waited a beat before adding, “You don’t have a shovel, do you?”

  Meredith shook her head. “I…” The next few words came even harder. “I didn’t carry my phone today. I didn’t think…”

  Caro chuckled and gazed up the road. “You didn’t think; bet that happens to you a lot. It’s a bit of a hike then.” She settled her mask back over her face and adjusted the eye holes.

  “No. Wait!” Caro couldn’t possibly leave her stranded. Just because…because…well, she implied Brooke killed her own husband. “Do you have a phone with you?”

  Caro hesitated, and then dug deep into a pocket and produced a cell phone. Meredith high-stepped through the snow and took it from Caro’s hand, half afraid the woman would snatch the phone back at the last second. She watched Caro nervously while she dialed Curtis’s number. It rang and rang. Her toes were numb in her boots and her pants were soaked up to her knees. Finally, on the sixth ring, there was a click as the line connected.

  There was a long pause and someone breathed hard into the receiver. Curtis sounded impatient. “Yep.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I interrupted something.”

  In the background something clanked, a sound of metal on metal. A male voice in the background said something indistinct. His tone softened. “Meredith. This isn’t your number.”

  The words spilled from her in a rush. “It’s Caro’s phone. Curtis, I did something really foolish. I’m up near Twin Lakes, a few miles past the closure sign. My car’s stuck. Can you help me?”

  He didn’t pause or ask any questions. “I can be there in an hour.”

  “You’re busy.” Her throat closed up at his forgiving nature, how he set aside their past meeting so quickly. She’d been so awful, her impatience flaring and running out her mouth before she could temper her words.

  “Just wrapping up a project. All done now. Are you safe? Warm?”

  “I’m okay. Fine.”

  Caro made an impatient sound and held her hand out for the phone. Meredith said a quick goodbye and handed the phone over. Caro pocketed it and settled her cap tighter over her ears. She revved the engine and, with one last disapproving shake of her head, rumbled away without another word.

  ****

  There was no doubt Curtis rescued people stuck in the snow a time or two. He expertly hooked her car to a winch at the back of his truck and towed her free in no time. Not once did he say anything about her driving up the mountain and crossing the road closure sign. He hopped out of his truck to face her.

  While she waited for him, Meredith brushed her hair and retied it into a ponytail, then into a braid and then brushed it all back out again. People had always called her pretty, but mirrors never agreed. There were only the flaws reflected. Eyes too big, face too thin, features never adding up to a reasonable whole. Her mother always called her “quietly unique.”

  What the heck did that mean? She’d rather be a classic beauty, sultry and curvy. Staring back at her in the rear view mirror were her anxious eyes and nose reddened by the cold, and she gave up on making herself presentable.

  Now she stood in the middle of the road, soaked to her knees and shivering. “I’m sorry.”

  He smiled at her and the tension loosened inside her. “You do seem to get into messes. Better get going. I’ll follow you home.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sure I can make it from here.”

  The day had been a disaster. Jamie and Atticus would have to stay at Honey’s until her nerves recovered, and she’d put on dry socks and jeans. She wanted nothing more than to go home, even if it was collapsing. Inside her home, there were no seasons, no mountains, and no countries. The crumbling place was her safe haven from the world.

  His words were gentle but firm, brooking no debate. “Go on now. I’ll follow you.”

  ****

  She was almost to her driveway when she noticed the boxy white structure set up between the house and shed. She pulled up close and remained in her car staring as Curtis parked behind her.

  “C'mon.” He was at her door, twisting at the handle, opening it. In a daze, she climbed out of her car and followed him to the door of a large travel trailer. The ground underneath was cleared and the trailer leveled on concrete blocks.

  “You did this? For us? While I was gone?”

  “You need a sturdy roof over your head.”

  “This is what you were doing when I called earlier? Even after how I behaved yesterday in your office.”

  He nodded and handed her a key as he motioned her inside. “Take a look around. I lived in here for more than a year while I built my house. It’s roomier than it seems.”

  She stepped up and peered inside, her thoughts swirling. Did he do this out of charity or friendship, concern or…? She glanced at him and then toured through the compact interior.

  “It’ll be close quarters but you’ll have your house right next door if you need space during the day. Sleeping here will give you peace of mind during the nights. The space gets pretty warm and cozy; you’ll be fine through the winter.”

  She knew he was waiting for her to say something. He offered to build a house for me. He brought this trailer here. Meredith opened cabinets to stall for time. The tiny space contained everything she and her children would need. Jamie would love sleeping in the top bunk and Atticus would be safe in the bed below. There was a larger bed in the back, separated off by a door that would give her privacy. The trailer even possessed a compact kitchen and dining area, complete with refrigerator, microwave, and sink. A miniature bathroom, the size of a closet, consisted of toilet and sink. The trailer was an entire house compressed into the smallest possible space.

  Curtis stood silently and waited for her response. She ran a hand through her tangled hair. The trailer would solve her problems short term. It would keep her children safe at night. He did this for them. For her.

  She turned and stepped into his arms and raised up her face. He didn’t hesitate; they were alone and there were no interruptions.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Curtis settled his shirt back over his head and shoulders and followed it by a sweater. She lay back on the trailer’s bed, the blankets heaped in confusion to one side. The front end of the storm made itself known with a whistling wind knocking against one wall.

  “I don’t think I can move,” she said lazily.

  He stretched out a hand and pulled her up. “If you stay there much longer, I’ll have to undress again.”

  “Please,” she quipped, but started the process of finding her clothes and dressing. Her children needed to be picked up and she needed to figure out something for dinner.

  He grabbed her and drew her close. “It was the purple paint in your hair.”

  “Purple paint?”

  “When you painted Jamie’s room last spring, to cover up the monster she imagined on the wall,” he recalled. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And you.”

  “Then? With e
verything going on?”

  She didn’t want to raise the subject of Brian, not at that moment, but the words slipped out. She’d been the prime murder suspect and was confused about Curtis’s intentions. Running away was in the back of her mind then. She might have left at that point and never looked back, striving to erase Hay City and all that happened there from her memory. It would have been easier then, before this sheriff became so ingrained in her life, before the tire swing and Grendel, and Jamie starting school.

  His expression was serious. “I saw how hard you were trying, how difficult everything was for you. I thought, here’s a woman who doesn’t give up, no matter what. She has grit.”

  Grit. Meredith turned the word over in her mind and decided she liked it. I’m strong, someone with grit. He likes this part of me. She decided to impress him further. “I saw Brooke today. She admitted she didn’t fix the brakes on Jacob’s car; she lied to him.” Meredith lifted her head, working to deliver a pose of a woman with grit. Jacob could still have suffered a fatal side effect from his medication. Or he might have been accidentally poisoned. But her inner voice still whispered murder.

  Curtis shifted away, breaking their connection, his expression darkening. “You did what?”

  “I was in Twin Lakes anyway, to take my final exam. Brooke said Jacob died from his medication and being mentally unstable; that it all led up to a heart attack.”

  “You went back?” The anger in his tone startled her. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  At first, she shrank at his tone, then stiffened her spine. “She told me she’s going back to work soon. She could be dangerous. I don’t wear a silver star, but I have every right to go see her.”

  He took a deep breath. “This is a delicate situation. We’ll have results back before Brooke returns to school; after that, I can move forward. Until then, all we have on record is Jacob died of a heart attack and Father Karl ingested some unknown substance. I need some kind of evidence for proof of murder, if any murders even occurred. I promise I won’t let anything happen to Jamie.”

  She was close to tears. “You can't promise something like that. How can Jacob’s body be exhumed when they can’t get a backhoe up the mountain?”

  His jaw worked; he gave a firm nod. “We’ll get the equipment up the mountain, one way or another, if I have to drag it up there myself.”

  She gave him a weak smile. To her, the case was as simple as A-B-C. A: Jacob predicted his wife was going to kill him. B: Jacob was dead. C…well, there wasn’t even the need for a C. Open-and-shut case. Simple. But for a murder case, you needed to prove murder, and that started with the body.

  “This takes so long,” she groused.

  “An investigation isn’t like the movies; it’s a process,” he agreed, and then added in a rueful tone: “I’m new to this and I need to do it by the book. I need to do this right. If I get ahead of the evidence…if there is evidence…I could ruin a case for a prosecutor.”

  Meredith saw how the confession hurt him. He wanted to do the right thing. Her expression softened. Curtis kissed her once and she leaned in for an encore. Then the wind swept through the trailer and he was gone. She put a hand up to her mouth and brushed a finger across her lips. She could still feel his mouth on hers, the contours of his body and his arms holding her.

  A small worry nibbled at the edge of her mind. Brooke’s grief had been convincing and a priest was vouching for her. Jacob plainly suffered some type of mental breakdown so his outpouring of marital woes could have been wildly exaggerated. Had she stood in the living room of a grieving widow and accused her of murder? Now that she’d prodded Curtis forward, doubts assailed her. His way of getting evidence first was probably better, she acknowledged.

  She peered out the square patch of window in the trailer. Curtis’s truck arrowed straight to the main road, cutting through the snow despite its depths and ignoring the plow’s erratic curves. He carved a new path, straightening out the trail for her. Meredith realized she’d gotten something completely wrong. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about whether there was a murder in Twin Lakes; it was he cared too much. He didn’t want to get anything wrong. She needed to trust him.

  But Curtis didn’t believe people could be wicked and vengeful.

  I do.

  ****

  “Drive A Bulldozer! Wield A Hammer! Knock It Down!”

  She stared at the laminated sign stuck on the grocery store’s single gas pump. Below the words was a picture of a grayish stubby house, windows dark and dreary, frozen onto an empty landscape. She drew closer to examine the sign. Her house. It appeared worse than ever. In the photo, the sad, little house appeared to be sagging in the middle as though the ground underneath was weary of holding it up. Her garden huddled under a bed of white, the trees bare of leaves, and the old rusted metal shed at the side hinted at toxic materials within. None of her hard work over the summer months was evident. Somehow, the house appeared even worse than when she first saw it. This was a house crying out to be torn down.

  But it’s my house. Who put up this sign?

  Meredith glanced around, but she was alone in the freezing parking lot. Long shadows stretched over the valley, reminding her how lengthy a day it’d been. It seemed ages since the morning when she’d vowed: I’m going to advance in my life and not let anything stop me.

  She returned her attention to the sign and wiped the front clean so she could read the print below the photograph. Below the picture were the words: “Pay twenty dollars for ten minutes for the opportunity to knock down walls. Just one hundred dollars for ten minutes driving a bulldozer. Let’s demolish this wreck and raise money for a brand-new home.”

  She caught her breath as she read the last line: “Contact Honey for more information about buying salvage items from the demolition.”

  Honey did this. She’s tearing down my home and turning me into a charity case.

  She snatched the poster off the pump and folded the paper over and over. She marched inside to pay for her gas. Then she would pick up her kids and, once and for all, tell Honey to stay the hell out of her life.

  ****

  Deli-boy grinned at her from the cash register. “My family’s donating the use of our ‘dozer. To knock your place down. I’m in charge. Can’t wait.”

  Meredith glared at him as she handed over money for the fuel. If there were anything worse than having her house destroyed, it would be having deli-boy at the helm.

  “Vroom, vroom.” He made revving noises; pushed and pulled his arms forward and back as though he were shifting gears. “Course, demolition won’t be until the spring melt-off. You shoulda done this over the summer.”

  She gritted her teeth and strode out of the store, avoiding the gaze of other shoppers. Heat rose in her cheeks. She’d been the kid in school in the free-lunch line. She’d been the kid in thrift store clothes, the motel rat, a charity case. The familiar shame of being different and less than others returned to her.

  Honey broadcast her neediness to the entire town and invited the public to witness her humiliation. Her own mother never resorted to begging, even when they were homeless themselves. Anyway, the house just had a hole in its roof. So what if a little bit of snow and water got inside? She’d mop up the mess in the spring, open the windows and let everything dry out. Scrub out the mold, patch the hole and repaint Jamie’s room. It wouldn’t be too difficult. Bit by bit, she’d get ahead of the damage.

  Meredith lifted her head and wrenched open her car door. I’m a woman with grit. I’m a woman with grit. I’m a woman with grit.

  The words echoed in her mind all the way to Honey’s house.

  ****

  Jonathan Pringle answered the door. She took a step back in surprise.

  He waved her in the door with a grin. “Honey’s out back, checking on the goats with Jamie and Rio. She got them earlier than I expected. That leaves just us chickens in the house.”

  Meredith glanced around the living room at the remnants of
a craft project involving tissue paper, glue sticks, sparkles, crayons, and tape. A fire burned in the fireplace, making the room cozy and warm. “I didn’t know you knew Honey. Where’s Atticus?”

  He nodded toward the bedrooms. “Snoozing. The older kids wore him out. Actually, Rio’s worn out too. Only ones still going strong are Jamie and Honey.”

  “So, uh, how did you say you knew Honey?”

  He gestured to her coat. “Everyone knows her. Let me help you out of that.”

  The last thing she wanted to do was stay for a chat but it seemed she had little choice. She shrugged off her coat and stamped the rest of the snow off her boots onto the entry rug. Jonathan loomed over her, with the top of her head barely reaching his shoulders.

  “There’s hot cocoa in the kitchen,” he said. “I’ll pour you a cup while I figure out how I know Honey.”

  She followed him, puzzled by the strange statement. How would you not know how you knew someone? He poured them each a cup of steaming cocoa and then sprinkled mini marshmallows on top. Jonathan smiled at her, unleashing the deep dimple in his cheek. “Let me see if I can get this right. My step-dad was second cousin to Milt, Honey’s late husband. Maybe third cousin. Something like that. I used to come over and play with the piglets. Guess she sold them all now, to go into this goat business.” He shook his head in mock disapproval. “If you ask me, pigs are cuter. And smarter.”

  A banging sounded at the back door; sounds of thunder rumbled down the hallway. Jamie and Rio burst into the kitchen. Her daughter’s cheeks were flushed red underneath the gray knit cap tugged down over her ears. “Mom! Can I have some goats?” Panting, she ripped off the cap, wide and sparkling. Rio stood quietly next to his father, paying close attention to Jamie, admiration shining in his eyes.

  Meredith knew the request would come and she was ready for battle. “Not in a million years.”

  “They’re awesome. I bet Honey would give me a baby.” The young girl faced the kitchen doorway as Honey appeared, huge in her puffy coat. “Right, Honey?”