by Sue Henry
Locking the door, she went quickly through the almost-dark toward bed, her wish to read overpowered by a sudden irresistible desire to lay her head on the pillow and curl up under her warm quilt. As she passed the dinette table, the dark silhouette of the rose in its slender vase was visible for a second against the fading light of the window. She wondered again who had sent it but was back to planning the next day’s training before sleep gradually erased all puzzles from her mind. Two runs would assure that all her dogs had been exercised and would take until lunchtime. Then she intended to drive to Palmer, to satisfy a growing curiosity of her own.
7
AT TWO O’CLOCK THE NEXT AFTERNOON, JESSIE PULLED her pickup into the parking lot of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough building in Palmer. Up a short flight of stairs, on the first floor, she located the assessor’s office and waited at the tall counter for assistance.
“I want to find out everything I can about the background of the property I own on Knik Road,” she told the tall man who stepped forward to help her. “I need to know everyone who’s owned it.”
“Which part of Knik Road are we talking about?”
“Approximately eight miles from Wasilla—just before Settlers Bay on the north side of the road.”
“Do you know the number of the lot?”
Jessie explained that her records had burned with her cabin in the spring and that she was still in the process of collecting duplicate copies of deeds, insurance records—everything. “I have the insurance papers at home. I can show you on a map, but do I have to prove I own it to see your records?”
“No,” he said with a grin, as he reached below the counter for a map. “They’re public records, but if you want to go all the way back to the original owner or homesteader, we don’t have everything you need. Earlier papers are filed in the recorder’s office next door—some may even be in Anchorage.”
The map he unfolded and spread out in front of her covered the whole counter and then some. They located Knik Road and the lot that belonged to Jessie and then began the search for information.
Two hours later she was driving toward home, the seat beside her full of papers, copies of maps and records, and two paperbound books of the area’s history, including Knik Road. She had learned a lot more than she had anticipated when she began her quest for information, even without a trip to Anchorage. She had visited three different offices and spoken to the assessor, an archaeologist in the Cultural Resources Office, and the recorder of deeds. Now she could hardly wait to reach home and study what she had collected, but first she had one more errand.
Pulling into a mall between Palmer and Wasilla, she parked and went into the florist she had identified from the small envelope on her single rose.
A short dark-haired woman wearing a rainbow-striped apron met her at the counter. “Can I help you with something?”
“I hope so,” Jessie told her, and described the floral tribute she had received the day before. “The card must have fallen off, and I’d like to know who to thank.”
Opening a drawer, the clerk took out a clipboard that held a list of the previous day’s deliveries. Laying it on the counter, she asked for Jessie’s name and address, then ran a finger down the delivery record. Partway down, she hesitated, then looked up with a half-embarrassed, half-delighted smile. “Oh, that one. A red rose in a bud vase, right? Sorry, there wasn’t supposed to be a card with that one.”
“Why not?”
“The person who ordered it didn’t leave a name, just asked for it to be delivered without a message.”
Jessie stared at her in dumbfounded silence for a long moment. Who in the world would send her flowers without a name? And why?
“Was it a man or a woman?” she asked.
“I can’t say. This person specifically requested that it be delivered anonymously.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t give a reason, just the order.”
“Was it somebody local?” Jessie asked. She had expected that identifying the sender of the rose would simply be a matter of contacting the florist. Now she found herself thumbing through her mental file of friends and acquaintances, confused and somehow irritated at not being able to accomplish that goal. The self-satisfied smile of the woman across the counter did not help to quell an uneasy feeling that had crept in along with exasperation.
“Look,” she said, trying another tack, “I promise I’ll never let this person know that you told me, but I really need to know who sent me the rose.”
The woman shook her head, still maintaining her prim I’ve-got-a-secret smile, though it wavered a bit. “Sorry. A promise is a promise. You wouldn’t like it if I spoiled a surprise you wanted to send someone, would you?”
“I”—Jessie leaned forward with both hands on the counter to take a deep breath, finally out of patience—“wouldn’t send someone flowers without a card or a message. It’s a little creepy, don’t you think?”
“No,” said the florist, her smile vanishing as she took a step back, tossed the delivery list back into the drawer, and shut it with a sharp report. “No, I don’t think so. I think it’s nice and you’re just insecure.” She walked away, leaving Jessie alone at the counter, staring after her in astonished resentment.
“Insecure! I’m insecure?” she muttered to herself, during the fifteen minutes it took her to drive back to the Cottonwood Mall south of Wasilla, where she stopped for groceries. “The smug bitch! Whoever sent the damned thing is insecure. Why not just include a name and have done with it?”
Still, the idea of an unidentified fan or well-wisher was not totally without appeal—someone who had gone to the trouble to send her a lovely thing they thought she would enjoy. It had to be a positive thing, didn’t it? Negative feelings were unlikely to be expressed with flowers. But she remembered a bouquet of lilies sent to her at the hospital by a stalker, after he had tampered with her truck and caused a near-fatal accident. It didn’t make her feel better.
By the time she had done her shopping, loaded three sacks of groceries into the pickup, and was headed out Knik Road, her sense of humor caught up with her and she couldn’t suppress a chuckle, remembering the woman’s stunned expression at hearing that Jessie considered the anonymous gift creepy. Guess I could have found a less shocking word, she decided. Odd, maybe, or unusual. Creepy may have been a bit over the top.
Throughout the evening, whenever she noticed the rose in its green glass bud vase, she had to grin. Knowing who had sent it really didn’t matter much, and things had a way of eventually working out. She would probably find out in time and be able not only to thank the sender but to relate her experience with the unyielding florist as well. Giving up on her mental list of possible candidates, she turned her thoughts to more mundane matters.
Then, having cared for her dogs and in the process of pouring pasta into a kettle of boiling water, a single obvious name popped into her mind that she realized she had been suppressing: Alex Jensen, the state trooper whose move to Idaho had broken up their relationship four months earlier. Stirring the pasta so it wouldn’t stick to the bottom of the kettle, she stared unseeing at the boiling water, her heart doing odd thumps in her chest.
It made perfect sense—was the sort of thing he might do. Though their split had been clean and she had suggested they not write or talk to each other, she really hadn’t expected the silence between them to last long—had thought he would write anyway—or call. Twice, when she had answered the phone and heard nothing but open silence on the line before someone quietly hung up, she had suspected it might be Alex and not just a wrong number. When her cabin burned, she had half expected him to get in touch. She assumed that his friend and fellow trooper, Phil Becker, must be keeping him up to date on her, but, not willing to provide false hope through a third-party communication that might send an unintended message, she had never asked.
Laying aside the spoon and leaving the pasta to cook on its own, Jessie sat down at the table and pulled the rose acro
ss to rest in front of her. Fully opened now, it glowed deep red in a late-afternoon sunbeam that found its way in through the venetian blinds that covered the window. She frowned as she examined it thoughtfully. Even from Idaho, he could have sent it; there were telephones and credit cards. Or he could have had Phil do the legwork, she realized, remembering that a person had gone into the florist shop. She recalled his comment and mischievous grin, the day it had appeared: “Or else you’ve got a secret admirer.” If Phil was involved, his suggestion could have been an attempt at misdirection and camouflage. But she couldn’t find out without a direct approach and was determined not to question him.
With one finger, she gently touched a perfect, soft, velvety rose petal. Leaning forward, she took a deep breath, then frowned and sat back in disappointment. Why didn’t roses have fragrance anymore? It seemed a comment on the lack of substance in much of the modern commercial world.
If the rose was from Alex, why send it now? What could he mean by such a subtle gesture? Well, she thought, shaking her head, two could play at waiting games. When the timer rang for the pasta, she had decided to say nothing—just wait and see what, if anything, transpired. It might not be Alex after all. Perhaps she only wished it were.
A soft knock on the door startled her, as she was tossing the drained pasta with a light sauce of fresh tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and basil that she had set to marinate earlier. Wiping her hands on a kitchen towel, she went first to look out the window.
A man stood outside, looking at her dog yard with his back to the door, hands thrust into the pockets of a light jacket. Another reporter? Not recognizing him, Jessie hesitated, then reached for the handle, feeling a bit silly at her own paranoia. If it was anyone from the media, she would send him packing.
At the sound of the door opening, her visitor swung around to offer her a familiar and unexpected grin.
“Hey, Jess. I hoped you’d be here.”
“Lynn Ehlers! You’re a long way from home. What the hell are you doing back in Alaska?” Jessie shoved the door wide open and stepped back to give him room and a welcoming smile. “Come on in!”
As he accepted her invitation, he pulled off a billed cap with YUKON QUEST, 1,000 MILE SLED DOG RACE printed on the front and held it with both hands in front of him like a schoolboy.
The hug Jessie gave him was full of surprised pleasure and affection for the Minnesota musher, with whom she had shared good times and bad during the previous February’s Yukon Quest distance race.
The hug was returned, with enthusiasm and warmth. “Hey, you’re looking good.”
“You too.”
Stepping back, she made an appreciative assessment of Ehlers. He was a little older than herself but about the same height, and the lower part of his face was still covered with a neatly trimmed dark beard, enlivened with a sprinkling of gray. The creases around his mouth and eyes spoke of time spent squinting into the glare of sun on snow, though they fell attractively enough into a frame for his infectious smile.
“Sit, sit.” She waved a hand toward the table. “Have you eaten? I was just about to. What can I get you, beer? A drink?”
Ehlers shed his jacket, tossed it aside with the cap, and sat, as instructed.
“Guess I could use a beer,” he told her. “I was going to suggest we go out for dinner, but it looks like I’m too late.”
Fishing a cold Killian’s from the depths of the refrigerator, Jessie set it in front of him. “Glass?”
He shook his head. “Naw, I’m fine.”
“Eat with me,” she invited. “This is just about ready.”
They had cleaned up the pasta, finished the new six-pack of Killian’s. It had been late enough to be growing dark when Ehlers drove his pickup, its box of individual compartments for hauling sled dogs filling the bed as usual, away down Jessie’s long driveway. Silhouetted in the light that fell through the open door of the motor home, she looked after him and waved as he turned onto Knik Road, heading toward town.
What a great surprise, she thought with a yawn, as she tossed the last empty bottle in the trash, turned off the light over the sinkful of dirty dishes, and headed for her bed in the back of the Winnebago.
They had talked for hours, catching each other up on what had filled the months since they ran the same race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, with all its complications. Jessie told him about discovering the body in the excavation, the plans for her new cabin, and the construction she anticipated would fill the rest of the summer. Ehlers explained that he had moved to Alaska from Minnesota, at least temporarily, to train his teams in the area in which he intended to race them the following winter.
“Want to have another shot at the Quest and decided I didn’t want to drive all the way up here next fall. Nothing to hold me in Minnesota, so I might as well train ’em here. Besides, there’s a lot of territory I want to have a look at.”
He was sharing a kennel with an Iditarod musher between Wasilla and Willow, a few miles to the northwest.
“We’ll have to do some runs together between here and Skwentna,” Jessie suggested. “As soon as there’s enough snow, I take my guys out there for overnighters. We could go together. More fun for everybody.”
Now, as she brushed her teeth, she was again pleased at the idea of having someone besides Billy, her handler, with whom to run dogs. Billy was a sweet kid. She liked him and appreciated his help with the work it took to keep a kennel going. But it would be nice to have an older, experienced racer with whom to share the trail—especially Lynn, who was good, easygoing company.
Warm and drowsy in her bed, half asleep, she suddenly remembered the question he had asked her during the February race: “You and that trooper…an item?”
He had not asked again tonight, for which she was grateful, knowing she didn’t want to talk about that particular relationship and its painful ending just now. The afternoon’s speculations on the origin of the rose had raised some old feelings she did not wish to examine, content with her decision to wait and see what, if anything, came of it.
She also wanted to know more about Ehlers’s move to Alaska. People came north for many different reasons, some leaving problems rather than solving them. Perhaps the racing and training was all there was to it. If so, it was enough and had been for many sled dog racing aficionados. But she had a feeling there was more involved. There had been something reserved in his brief explanation of a decision that must have required serious consideration, for he did not impress her as a person who did things on the spur of the moment.
Thinking back, she recalled his saying something about a divorce during the Yukon Quest. Perhaps coming to Alaska was part of a move to start over in a place where he wouldn’t constantly be confronted with a failed relationship. If that was the case, given her split with Jensen it was a situation she could understand. She wondered if she might not be projecting her own feelings of failure, on one hand, and relief on the other, in clinging to her chosen lifestyle and occupation.
Lynn Ehlers was a bit of a puzzle. There was something reticent and wary about the way he changed the subject once or twice during the evening, as if the conversation had touched on areas too close to a nerve for his liking—or his willingness to pursue. It was probably nothing but her imagination, Jessie decided, and would work itself out eventually. After all, they didn’t really know each other that well, and everyone was cautious in new relationships, weren’t they? She certainly was.
Rolling over and wrapping the quilt comfortably around her, Jessie drifted off. Her last conscious thought: There would be work tomorrow; Prentice and crew would be back to prepare to pour a floor in the basement.
8
THE DAY WAS SLIGHTLY OVERCAST, WITH PATCHES OF blue between clots of cloud that were sweeping over the Pioneer Peak, when a green Durango SUV swung off Old Knik Road across from Bodenburg Creek just east of the bridge and parked. A short, stocky man got out and strolled across the lot to the edge of the bank to look down at the river below. The
water was high, swollen with snowmelt from the surrounding heights and opaque with silt, ground into a fine powder by the extreme weight and motion of nearby glaciers and washed into the river’s flow by countless streams and rivulets.
With a boyish grin, he turned and walked quickly back to the SUV, the spring in his step reminiscent of a kid playing hooky, as in a way he was. The note he had left on his desk in a Palmer office read, Gone fishing! The Kings are in the river and my wife’s out of town! Though he knew that catching King, or any salmon for that matter, was illegal in the Knik River, the tempting idea of accidentally hooking into one of the few that found their way up it to spawn was irresistible. He would use tackle suitable to catching Dolly Varden, a cousin of the Arctic Char, with a medium to small spoon and some herring on 30-pound-test line, which was heavier than necessary for Dollies. If a King should take bait that was attractive to both fish—well, he could always let it go, couldn’t he?
Putting on sunglasses and his battered fishing hat, he stepped into chest-high waders, adjusted the shoulder straps, collected his equipment, closed and locked his vehicle, and headed for the riverbank. A raven scolded him from the top of a nearby cottonwood, but he ignored the raucous reproach and was soon standing hip deep in water, casting a line into the current that he could feel tugging at his legs. Though the morning was warm, the water was icy enough to make him glad he had worn both long underwear and jeans beneath the waders.
Sunshine came and went as clouds continued to drift across the sky, making it difficult at times to see in the bright reflection of the river’s surface. His second cast barely missed tangling with a deadhead log that came gliding along in the current and forced him to reel in quickly to avoid losing his lure.
Except for the whoosh and gurgle of the water, it was quiet and peaceful, pleasant to stand alone, outdoors and away from his cubbyhole of an office. Through the long winter he had felt like a nocturnal animal in the windowless space, arriving before it grew light in the morning and leaving after dark. He was not one of the Alaskans who suffered from SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, a winter depression caused by lack of sunlight, but he was always glad when the days grew longer and increasing hours of daylight gave him time to enjoy being outside without being cold. It was, after all, what had drawn him so far north in the first place, nine years earlier: unspoiled wilderness practically at his back door with plenty of opportunity for fishing.