by Julie Howard
The woman gestured into the converted barn, leading the way to a couch piled with folded laundry and magazines. Meredith set Atticus down and started the process of stripping him of the layers of clothes he wore—hat, gloves, coat, and sweater. There was nowhere to put their winter gear so she stacked their belongings at the side of the couch.
Stacey, wearing faded jeans and an “I Love Kittens” sweatshirt, snatched up papers and books from a chair and plopped down. “Just throw the stuff on the floor. I warned you the place would be messy, didn’t I?”
Meredith hesitated and then carefully set a stack of magazines on the floor. Stacey selected a cookie from the bag and then handed the bag over.
“Who would ever think to have cookies for breakfast?” The woman’s eyebrows rose in approval. “People out here always do the same old thing, like doughnuts or bagels. It takes a newcomer to inject some fresh ideas. That’s why I want to go to California—to get out of this rut.”
She decided not to disclose that the store doughnuts were stale, and cookies weren’t an innovative California breakfast. The woman appeared too impressed.
“These are my favorite. Nothing better in the world than chocolate chip, although I can’t eat too much of them or I’ll never get a husband. Hard enough out here.” Stacey took a bite of her cookie and chewed vigorously, dropping crumbs to the carpet.
Meredith handed Atticus a cookie and settled him on her lap. “Have you ever been married?”
She selected a cookie and looked around for a place to set the bag. The table at her side was overwhelmed with tiny figurines and the floor was littered with bulging shopping bags. Folded men’s underwear and t-shirts were on the couch to her side. Not seeing a bare surface, she kept the cookie sack tucked at her side.
The woman waggled her ring-less fingers. “Marriage doesn’t run in my family. You’ve met my brother, Jonathan, right? He sets a bad example for the men around here.”
Meredith nibbled her cookie so she wouldn’t have to comment.
Stacey summed up the men in Hay City. “Too young, too old, too poor, too married. Slim pickings. One of these days, soon as I can afford to live on my own, I’m leaving. Now…” The woman leaned forward. “…tell me about California.”
She did her best to entertain her host with descriptions of long stretches of beach, streets on end lined with stores and restaurants, blue skies, and warm winters. Stacey ate two more cookies, her jaws slowing as she listened in rapt attention. Meredith noticed the beauty mark on the woman’s cheek had disappeared.
“I knew it,” she crowed. “I ask everyone who’s been there and they all say the same thing so the stories must be true. Sounds like heaven.”
“I was starting to think the same thing about Hay City,” Meredith said, surprising herself. “Big mountains, quiet nights. We get deer grazing in our backyard. I’ve never seen so much open space.”
“But it’s so borrrrring here.” The other woman stretched out the word and rolled her eyes. “I suppose maybe not for you. You’ve been up in Twin Lakes with those poisoning deaths. What’s the story up there, anyway?”
Meredith was instantly on alert. Stacey said “poisoning deaths.” Plural. “The last I heard, they were waiting to exhume Jacob Burns’ body.”
Stacey waved a hand. “Done and done. Jonathan filled me in. He heard our sheriff talking on the phone. Once they knew they were looking for poison, they found it straight away.”
Meredith wanted to jump off the sofa and race to Curtis’s office. She wanted to…to do something, anything, but what?
“Guess the sheriff is asking all sorts of questions now,” the other woman went on. “People up there are getting pretty upset.”
“You know more than I do,” she said flatly, more than a little annoyed Curtis didn’t tell her this news. “Did you hear what kind of poison?”
Atticus wiggled off her lap to the floor and began exploring the room. She monitored him out of the corner of her eye, thinking the place was anything but childproof.
“Jonathan didn’t find out,” Stacey said with a laugh. “The sheriff caught him listening and kicked him out of the office.”
There was a crash and Atticus squealed. Christmas ornaments rolled across the floor, pouring out of a large plastic bag underneath a table.
She jumped up and grabbed the ornaments, checking for damage as she gathered them into a pile. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
The other woman rose and grabbed another cookie before returning to her seat. “No biggie. I have lots of those old things. Just stuff them back in the sack.”
Meredith finished cleaning up the mess and then settled back on the sofa, this time holding firm onto Atticus. She handed him another cookie, paused, and took another one for herself as well. While they all chewed, she wondered what else the other woman knew. Stacey eyed the cookie bag pointedly and she handed it over.
“Sooo…” This came through a mouthful of cookie. “What’s the story on you and the sheriff?”
She reddened. “We’re friends.”
“Really good friends, I hear.” Stacey’s tone was matter-of-fact. “That’s okay. When you and I are better acquainted, you’ll tell me everything. We’ll do this again soon, okay?”
She stood, feeling slightly nauseated. At some point, they’d eaten all dozen cookies.
They walked to the door. “I’m so glad we’re going to be friends,” Stacey pronounced. “At least until I get out to California.”
They agreed to get together again and Meredith promised to buy more cookies, which elicited another crooked smile. During the slushy drive home, Meredith realized she enjoyed talking with the mixed-up Stacey. And she learned one key piece of news: Both men in Twin Falls died of poison.
****
Curtis didn’t answer his phone and wasn’t in his office all afternoon. Her mood darkened as she considered he was avoiding her but lifted when she realized he was probably in Twin Falls seeking evidence. As she tucked Jamie into bed that night, her daughter suddenly sat up. “I have an important question to ask.”
Meredith sat back, waiting.
“Can I have an inner net for Christmas? Karin has one. So does Rio. Everyone in my class does.”
She smiled. “What do you know about the internet?”
“If you have one, you can watch movies all the time and learn a bunch of stuff. Karin says all the books in the world are in one. But I don’t think so.” Her daughter sounded doubtful. “It would have to be bigger than our whole house.”
Meredith didn’t know how to describe the internet so a five-year-old would understand so she didn’t attempt it. “We’ll try.” She gave Jamie a hug. “You know I’m trying really hard, right?”
“Mommy, are we poor?”
She gazed down at her daughter, her heart twisting. When she was a child, at times homeless, the question never occurred to her. The teasing over her thrift store clothes and poor kids’ lunch didn’t start until middle school.
“I suppose to some people we are. To people with more than us, we’re poor. There are lots of people who have much, much less. To them, we’re rich.”
“Rio doesn’t have any rabbits,” Jamie said, considering. “Or a little brother. We have two houses too; our big house and our trailer.”
Meredith smiled. Two houses. She’d never considered their state of affairs that way. “We have lots, don’t we?”
The girl scooted under her blankets, laying back down. “Rio’s dad says he can have one of Grendel’s babies.”
She settled the blankets around Jamie and smoothed her curly hair. Her daughter closed her eyes. The world was so simple when you were young. The older you got, the more complicated things were. At least another one of those blasted rabbits was spoken for. Two rabbits gone. Three to go.
Happy birthday to me.
Chapter Twenty
Meredith broke a path in the drifts between the trailer and the front door to the house and shed. That night, the depths grew alarmingly and Mer
edith shoveled and stomped down the path once again. Her fear was Atticus or Jamie would trudge off the path and fall through into a soft spot. To prevent this, she spent time packing down the sides of the trail into solid walls, now too high for her children to easily scale.
The rumble of the snow plow made her turn and wave. Without the road and driveway plowed, they’d be stuck for sure. She’d been meaning to ask someone why her road was plowed in such a strange serpentine manner, zig-zagged from her driveway to the main highway. The only reason she could fathom was it was meant to slow traffic to avoid accidents.
Deli boy. Her eyes widened as she saw him in the driver’s seat, frowning as he steered one direction and then the other, weaving the plow toward her. The crazy plowing pattern wasn’t a favor, it was a curse.
“Hey!” she shouted out once, and then realized he wouldn’t be able to hear her over the powerful engine. Even if he could, it was unlikely anything would change. Not even anticipation of a baby bunny softened his evil heart.
Deli boy kept his gaze on the road and the plow’s controls, even as Meredith stood in her doorway. He pushed snow out of her driveway and turned the machine around and back down the serpentine path.
Meredith stomped back into the trailer to get Jamie off to school and herself to work.
****
The hardware store was quiet. A rare customer came in to buy snow shovels and ice melt and, most days, the mailman was her only visitor. The official start of winter was still a couple of weeks away, but no one spoke of this as autumn any longer. An Idaho winter ate at the edges of autumn and spring, lengthening its intemperate season by at least another month on each end. Weather slowed deliveries and the two-lane highway running past Hay City saw few vehicles pass by. She felt guilty at taking a paycheck for doing so much nothing.
Boots stamping at the entry of the hardware store startled Meredith from her spot on the floor, where she helped Atticus stack blocks. A man stood at the door, pants tucked into heavy work boots and a cap covering his ears. “Hey, where do you want it?”
She scrambled to her feet. Crusty didn’t tell her to expect anything or anyone. This was the most excitement there’d been at the hardware store in weeks. Through the open door behind the man, she could see an unmarked delivery truck idling in the parking lot. “What is it?”
“Hell if I know. Boxes. Twenty-five of them.” He gave the store a critical eye. “They ain’t gonna fit.”
Meredith hesitated only for a moment. The hardware store was her responsibility. It wasn’t as though her boss possessed a system for arranging the store anyway. Items were shoved into every corner and up to the ceiling. “Just carry them all in; we’ll find a place for them.”
He shrugged and the door banged close. Twenty-five boxes full of things to shelve sounded like heaven after months of little to do except sit and stare at the cluttered aisles. Crusty left her in charge, calling earlier and, with glee in his tone, told her he’d slept in and would arrive late. In the background, Honey voice hummed a tune.
The door thumped open and the deliveryman was back, wheeling a dolly piled high with boxes. Meredith rushed forward and pointed down one aisle. “Um, over there. At the back.”
The boxes, dented in places, torn in others, appeared as though they’d been used for other products in several previous shipments. More boxes followed. They filled the back of the store, a couple containers small as a shoebox, and a half dozen in old refrigerator boxes. A trail of wet footprints and dolly tracks led through the store, from the door down the aisles.
The last box, a wooden crate, was the biggest of all and accompanied into the store with grunts and cursing. The oversized crate was scooted off the dolly by the door with a scowl. Breathing heavily, the man shoved a clipboard in Meredith’s face. “Sign here.”
Her hand trembled as she signed, nervous now she’d allowed the motley assortment into Crusty’s domain, turning his hardware store into a used-goods warehouse. The deliveryman strode toward the exit. “What’s in all these?” she called toward him.
He didn’t turn. “You ordered them, lady.” The door slammed behind him.
Meredith gazed dejectedly at the old boxes, sure now there could be nothing exciting inside. It struck her the delivery could have been meant for someone else, for how could the contents possibly fit inside the store? What if she’d accepted delivery of old clothes and broken TVs headed for a thrift shop? She wished now she’d opened a couple while the truck was still there.
Hands on hips, she made the decision to open a box or two. “There’s only one way to find out,” she muttered. Best case, she could start shelving some of the goods. Worst case, she could reseal the boxes and wait for her boss to arrive.
Armed with a box cutter, she started with the smallest box, surprisingly heavy for its size. Nested inside was cabinet hardware, beautiful brushed nickel handles and knobs. It was a strange order to make in the middle of winter, dragging a truck out along dangerous roads to a lonely outpost. Meredith sliced the box cutter down the side of one refrigerator box and nearly choked. The box was full of insulation, the type sandwiched between walls of houses and in attics, secured in tight rolls of plastic wrap. The items appeared to be a special order for someone working on their house, a project for the coming icy months. Either that or Crusty was stocking up early for a spring sale.
She went next to the enormous crate left by the door, first testing its substantial weight, and then tried to peek between the wooden slats. Before she could stop herself, Meredith grabbed a hammer in her hands and was tugging at one of the slats.
“Holy cow, he’s done it now.”
The hardware store was a jumble of goods, but this had to be a first. Inside the box was a full-sized jetted bathtub. There was no way a bathtub was going to fit in one of the hardware store’s aisles, let alone on one of the shelves. Perhaps the tub would sit where it was by the door as a showcase item, a conversation piece for customers as they entered.
“Mama.” Atticus stood at her side. “Ah-ble.”
Meredith set the hammer on top of the box and picked up her toddler. “Ready for some apples? Please?”
“Pease.”
She hugged him and returned to the counter where a snack bag was packed with apple slices, juice, and peanut butter sandwiches. A thud on the other side of the wall made her aware of Crusty’s arrival in the bar, finally roused from Honey’s cozy home. Apples and juice in hand, she settled Atticus in the playpen to enjoy his snack.
Meredith never ventured into the bar, having an aversion to drink and drinking. Having grown up with an alcoholic mother, she worried about having the propensity to follow a similar fate. It was easier to stay away and never find out. The morning’s strange shipment of goods was so unusual, however, she overcame her qualms and opened the connecting door into the bar and peered inside.
“Happy days are here again,” her boss burst out upon seeing her. “Oh, happy, happy days.”
Meredith stepped into the darkened room. A long wooden bar dominated the space, its top smooth and worn by the hands of its many customers. Sweet and malty odors were mixed with stale cigarettes. Peanut shells littered corners of the floor, speaking to Crusty’s usual style of housekeeping.
“Ever have a day when everything goes right?” He waved her closer to the bar where he was putting glasses away. “When even your toes are sitting up and taking notice?”
Meredith nodded even though she didn’t know what he was talking about. It was a good time to let him know about the shipment; if the delivery was a mistake, her boss was in too good a mood to fire her.
“I’m thinking about getting one of those rabbits of Jamie’s,” he said as he gazed around the room. “Kind of a mascot sort of thing. Let him roam around the bar, live here full time. I hear they can be house-trained, mostly.”
She doubted this was a good idea, a rabbit hopping below unsteady feet, likely being fed everything from beef jerky to pork rinds. This was her boss, though, and the r
abbits were growing fast. It meant three down, two to go. Changing the subject, she said, “Your beard’s nice today.”
He stroked the gray hair covering his neck and dipping to mid-chest. “Honey gave me a trim last night. I’ll tell you what, cutting a few hairs didn’t diminish this grizzled Samson’s powers.”
“Delivery,” Meredith sputtered, not wanting to hear any more along those lines. “Big delivery next store.”
“Ah.” he said. “Aha. He showed up this morning, did he?” Crusty reddened then just as quick recovered. “Best take a look.” He was at the hardware store door in an instant, his long legs covering the distance in a few long strides, ponytail swishing behind. “Hey captain,” he greeted Atticus, and gave a low whistle as he took in the multitude of boxes crowding the store. “Yup. Yessiree. Quite a sight.”
“There’s a bathtub in the one by the door,” Meredith offered, hoping he’d explain. “I took a peek.” She added, joking, “It’s like you ordered a whole house.”
Crusty went still. There was no way, of course, he’d ordered an entire house. No one would place such an order through a small hardware store. No one would pack items in used refrigerator boxes and ship them through the snow. The timing was striking. Only one person was talking about building a house in this small town.
“Crusty?” Her voice hardened. “Where’d all this come from? Who’s it for?”
When he fidgeted, her suspicion was confirmed. “No,” she said. “Send the stuff back.”
He looked miserable but she felt no guilt at ruining his perfect day. He was head over heels with the wrong woman; a conniving, meddling woman who wanted to build her a new house. She weighed the possibility the man knew the depths of Honey’s character, the dark side of the sweet, convivial woman. Perhaps, though, her role in Brian’s murder was innocent, a conversation rippling into something harsher than was meant to be.