by Peg Herring
Hua looked slightly offended. “Get me the proper equipment and I will do this for free,” he said. “You won’t need Andy again.”
Robin had bought Thai food for herself and Hua, but Cam refused to eat it, suggesting it was every bit as likely as Chinese food to contain cat meat. She’d bought him a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, which he ate in four bites while she set out steamed rice, jasmine tea, and an assortment of wonderfully fragrant dishes in neat cardboard boxes with wire handles. Apparently unwilling to even watch his friends eat foreign food, Cam took his fries and the oversize Coke to the motel parking lot, mumbling something about checking the tires on the car. When he was gone, Hua and Robin addressed Cam’s reluctance to go after Judge Comdon as they ate their meal. Hua used a pair of chopsticks that for some strange reason had been included with their food, and they both laughed at his clumsy efforts. Robin ate her food with an all-American Spork.
“If Cam won’t manhandle a woman,” Robin said, “we’ll have to get her into the van some other way.”
Hua slurped some noodles, chewed, and swallowed. “You might purchase a gun.”
Robin frowned. “I know it’s wimpy for a kidnapper to say, but I don’t want to get into using weapons. It makes things seem wrong.” She shivered. “I guess I should say more wrong.”
Hua didn’t argue the point. “Drugs? Perhaps Rohypnol, such as is used in many crime dramas?”
“She’s almost seventy. I’d hate to cause her to have a stroke or something.”
They ate in silence for a while. “You could change the method,” Hua suggested. “Approach her at home.”
“I’m sure there’s security at her house.” She set her carton aside. “We need to find a neutral spot where we can isolate her long enough to make our pitch.”
A knock sounded on the door, and Robin rose to look through the peephole. Cam’s face was all she could see, and he grinned in a way that indicated he had a surprise. When she opened the door he stepped aside, revealing Em Kane behind him. Apparently dressed for a trip to the Arctic, she wore heavy boots with felt liners; a wool coat in large blocks of red, black, and white; mittens that reached almost to her elbows; and one of those hats with fur-lined flaps everywhere. Em hadn’t been kidding about disliking cold weather.
There was more. Beside Em on a short leash was the stray that had facilitated Senator Buckram’s abduction. He sat quietly next to Em, eyes fixed on Robin as if he knew it was an important moment. His tail thumped hopefully on the floor beneath him.
Foregoing comment on Em’s outfit Robin said, “You kept the dog?”
“Bennett,” Em replied. “I named him after a supervisor I had once—same eyes.”
Robin stepped back. “Please, come in.”
“I’m almost done outside,” Cam said. “A few more minutes.” He disappeared down the hallway as Em entered the room.
Introductions were made, and Hua bowed graciously, giving “Ms. Em” his chair. They offered her food. Em said she’d already eaten but her companion was always hungry. After asking permission, Hua took what remained of the pad prik, opened the container so it was flat, and set it on the floor. The dog devoured the food in two snuffling bites and looked to Hua for more. “He eats enough to feed a third-world village,” Em said fondly. “The other Bennett could eat too.”
“I thought you were going to take him to the Humane Society.”
She shrugged. “I figured if I was going on the road by myself, it might be good to have him along.”
“About going on the road,” Robin said. “How did you find us?”
“I have my ways.” Robin guessed that meant she and Cam had been in touch.
“What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to help you.” Her tone was belligerent. “Maybe you don’t always need me to make a diversion, but I can man your base when you find one.” Though her voice was gruff and her words confident, there was a plea in Em’s eyes. Despite the downside to having a grumpy, seventy-plus woman with a bad hip in the group, the thought of being able to draw on Em’s experience made the knot between Robin’s shoulders loosen a little.
“We found our base today, so you came just in time.” She looked at the dog, who seemed to be listening with interest. “And now our gang has a mascot too.”
“I like this Bennett,” Hua said, reaching down to scratch the dog’s ears. “He is a very nice animal.”
That cemented Hua’s place in Em’s esteem. “The better you know people, the more you like dogs,” she told him.
The KNP crew has a house mother. And a pet.
“What will be your clown name?” Hua asked.
“I’d like to be called Loonette,” Em said. “She’s sort of a Canadian version of Pee Wee Herman.”
“Did she have a dog?”
“A cat, I think, but I’m sticking with Bennett.” She patted the dog’s sleek head.
“Em, we’ve got a new target, but Cam’s got issues because it’s a woman.”
“I could have predicted that,” Em responded. “If she’s about the same age as his mother, he won’t want to mistreat her.”
“Bev Comdon is nothing like Mrs. Halkias,” Robin said. “In fact, she’s the worst kind of cougar.”
“Likes ’em young, eh?” Em snorted disdainfully. “Never understood people who can’t act their age and not their shoe size.”
Robin explained how the judge manipulated young men into her program. “We need to figure out how to get to her.”
“But Robin says no weapons or drugs,” Hua said.
“And Cam won’t grab her because she’s female,” Em sneered. “Boy scouts and nuns, that’s what this gang is made of.”
Robin felt defensive in the face of Em’s derision. “We are what we are, Em.”
“I guess.” Taking Robin’s cookie, Em broke it in half and crunched it between her dentures. “Now that I’m here, we’ll put our heads together and come up with a way to teach an old cougar new tricks.”
***
Elizabeth Terrin was much as Robin had imagined from her voice on the phone, fortyish and enthusiastic to an almost irritating degree. She pooh-poohed the treacherous driveway as a minor problem that required only a little gravel, though she left her car on the road and tiptoed in bright pink, leopard-print boots around the pond-sized puddle. As she showed them through the house, Cam obeyed Robin’s instructions and said little. He nodded wisely when Elizabeth waxed eloquent on the property’s possibilities and managed not to let on that he’d been inside before, which Robin saw as real progress toward understanding the role little white lies play in everyday life. Once she’d done more griping about the price, which the bank obligingly dropped again the next day, they began the purchasing process. Elizabeth sparkled at the prospect of unloading a place her office had listed for decades, and when they met to make a formal offer a few days later, the bank’s representative seemed equally pleased, though being a banker, she was much more decorous about it.
One problem Robin faced in the negotiations was Elizabeth’s overly-developed desire to be helpful. A kind soul who didn’t seem able to grasp that her newest clients didn’t want her around, she launched a campaign to “integrate” them into the small community of Gardiner. In addition to shopping coupons and informational pamphlets, she offered contact information for a host of local organizations that would “love some new blood.”
Em, who had been introduced to the Realtor as Cam’s stepmother, had an idea, as usual. “Try to sell her something.” She straightened the yarn snaking from her current project to the skein at her side. “She’ll move in a different direction quicker than a cat when the broom comes out.”
The next day, when Elizabeth called with the suggestion that “Lynn” accompany her to the Chamber of Commerce After-Hours that evening, Robin followed Em’s suggestion, though her face burned with embarrassment. “I can’t come tonight,” she said, “but I would like to meet everyone soon. I have several ideas for changing the face of Gardiner, and it won’t be all t
hat expensive.”
Elizabeth hesitated. “Changing Gardiner?”
“I’m thinking our artists could do murals or statues for each of the businesses in town. It will help them offset the cost of the retreats, and for twenty, maybe thirty thousand each, your people will have original art on their buildings.”
“Thirty thousand dollars? That sounds like a lot.”
“For original art? Not at all. I was thinking your office could be the starting point, since you have that nice side wall with the empty lot next to it. I’d do the work at a discount—say, eighteen thousand. I’m thinking a scene from the Napoleonic Wars, but of course you’d have a say in that. I love creating battle scenes—so full of action, you know? Life and death—everything is there.”
“A battle scene.” Elizabeth’s voice was faint.
“Once people see what you’ve got, we’ll start signing up the other businesses. It might take them some time to get the money together, but we’ll need to get the house ready and the artists on site, so it should work out great.”
“Eighteen thousand dollars.”
“Plus the paint, of course. And good brushes—I can’t work with substandard equipment.”
“Well.” The Realtor’s tone was cool. “We’ll talk about it once you’re settled, shall we?”
“Of course. I just had to share my idea with you because it’s such a great deal for both of us.”
“Umm. I’ll be in touch, but I think everything we need to do right now is all caught up.” She hung up so fast that Robin giggled. “Em, I think you just guaranteed Ms. Terrin will go out of her way to avoid talking to me ever again. But what if she’d loved the idea of spending thousands on a Napoleonic mural?”
“We’d have figured something out,” Em replied. “Sometimes you have to go out on a limb, because that’s where the fruit is.”
***
For two weeks, Robin used the time she wasn’t signing documents to do the shopping she’d been putting off. First she took Hua to a second-hand store some distance down the freeway from Gardiner. Though his taste ran to the flamboyant, she stressed the need to blend in. They bought several plain outfits and one he promised to wear only at home. Eyeing the emerald green silk shirt, rhinestone-studded black jeans, and fringed leather vest, she hoped he meant it.
At least an artists’ colony allows for the possibility of someone who looks like an Asian Michael Jackson.
Once he had decent clothing (and his own economy-sized bottles of ginger biloba shampoo and conditioner), Hua and Em took her car to Cedar to get the van they’d left in Robin’s storage unit. Though Hua had no driver’s license, he promised to drive carefully on the way back to Kansas, ignoring all distractions. When they returned Em admitted he’d been pretty good, though she commented that following Hua was like “chasing a chipmunk across the back forty.”
Without telling either the bank or the Realtor, Cam began work on the house. Each morning Robin drove him out to Bobby Road and dropped him off, laden with tools bought at the local hardware store. He spent the first few days assessing what needed to be done and fixing minor problems, loose boards, broken locks, and corroded hinges. Each afternoon when Robin picked him up, he was filthy, odiferous, and undeniably pleased with himself.
Once Hua returned with the van, the two men began buying larger items and transporting them to the property. The small electrical generator they’d bought for the first KNP came in handy for running power tools, since they couldn’t turn the electricity on until the purchase was complete. “Now I can really do something,” Cam told them after he and Hua bought two new toilets, a sink, and an array of accessories. “I’ll get the plumbing working so the bathrooms are usable. It’s good that we’ve got our own well.” Robin noticed how he’d slipped into speaking of the house as “ours,” long before that was true.
Due to his farm background, Cam seemed to know a little about every aspect of home ownership, and his confidence amazed Robin. “It isn’t like you’re going to call somebody in for every little problem,” he said, unaware that most people she knew did exactly that. Because he was Cam, he was a little compulsive, focusing on a problem with a single-mindedness that recalled their early meetings in the workout room. A couple of times Robin sat in the car entertaining herself for an hour or more while he finished his to-do list for the day. For Cam, tomorrow wasn’t here yet, so it was beyond consideration.
Hua began serving as Cam’s gopher, hauling tools and turning spigots on command, which left Robin free to make lists and worry about things that might not happen. In the evenings Hua extended the Taylors’ excellent though imaginary financial background, so her fears their loan would be denied didn’t materialize.
Robin and Em spent their days cruising the area, learning the roads and locating stores where they could buy furniture when they were ready. By the time they officially became owners of the house on Bobby Road, the four new tenants had three working bathrooms (the upstairs wasn’t yet operable) and a list of places that delivered home furnishings within their area.
Relocating was easy, since none of them had much to bring in. Em’s first impression of the house was important to the other three, and as they showed her around, they each painted word pictures of its future. Though both Cam and Hua offered to share their respective wings with her, Em politely declined. The upstairs floors she deemed unsuitable due to her physical limitations. Finally, after sticking her pointy nose into this place and that, she announced, “I’ll make an apartment out of the two parlors if nobody objects. The bath under the stairs is small but it’s close, so I won’t wake you all when I get up to pee in the night.” Once she proposed it, they agreed it was the perfect place for Em.
With Hua in what he called the terrace apartment and Cam claiming the “hero wing,” Robin was left the whole second story to herself. She took one room at the front of the house for general use, and a small one beside it for a bedroom. Not that she had a bed; only Em had one so she didn’t have to sleep on the floor. The others would get beds as time and funds permitted. Robin insisted anything with fabric had to be new. “There’s enough mold, dust, and bugs in this place,” she insisted. “We aren’t bringing more in.”
Which meant she needed to do more shopping. Was there ever a time when I looked forward to it?
Mental unease and physical discomfort made the first night long for Robin. The house was cold, since Cam had refused to build fires in any fireplace until a chimney sweep was called in to clear the debris and check for broken flue pipes. The hardwood floor was uncomfortable despite the layers of blankets she spread out. The wide, mullioned windows were cracked in several places, so when the wind blew, the glass rattled and drafts swept the room.
With her nose chilled and her shoulders and hips squished against the adamant surface, she questioned every decision she’d made since that first day, when Cam had asked for her help. She couldn’t count all the places she’d gone wrong. Her latest worry was that they’d be easier to find with a house, three vehicles, and a mortgage. Would Private Investigator Tom Wyman track them down tomorrow or the next day, call in the local police to surround the house, and capture them all? If he did, Robin knew she’d be responsible for ruining four lives. As she finally drifted into sleep, her last thought was how creepy the absolute quiet was. A house far from traffic, far from people. How in the world did I ever end up here?
The first order of business on the morning of their first full day in their new home was to scrub the whole place. Robin had bought buckets, sponges, brushes of all shapes and sizes, and anything else she thought looked useful for cleaning. Everyone pitched in, and Robin found having something to do—lots to do, in fact—lessened her worries and made her more optimistic.
That was despite the physical problems they faced. They had electricity, but the hot water heater was inoperable. That meant heating the icy well water in pans on the stove. Hua took responsibility for that, making many trips back and forth to add warm water to their bucke
ts before returning to his own cleaning chores. Soon the strong smell of bleach was everywhere, but Em, wearing rubber gloves that came almost to her elbows, said that was better than mold and mouse droppings
After their cold first night, Robin called a local chimney sweep and offered a bonus if he’d come to the house right away. Next she called for firewood, promising the man an extra twenty dollars if the wood arrived that day. When the chimney sweep showed up, she put Cam in charge of dealing with him, and she was pleased to see that it wasn’t long before the two of them were kneeling at the hearth, peering up and discussing fire safety. Later she heard footsteps on the roof and slightly alarming sounds from various rooms. When he was finished, the sweep pronounced all the chimneys usable except one and promised to return when the parts he needed were available.
Though they all looked forward to warmer temperatures, another problem arose when evening came and the temperature dropped. Neither Robin nor Hua had experience with fire-keeping. “That’s okay,” Cam said. “I’ll show you.”
Making a fire wasn’t too difficult, Robin found, but keeping it burning was a problem. Used to setting a thermostat and forgetting it, she let her fire go too long without fuel the first night and had to start over again. She also learned that wood heat meant being either too cold or too hot. Near the fire, she felt like a piece of toast, but five steps away she felt brisk drafts from the poorly-insulated windows. When she woke in the morning the fire was low, and she hated getting out from under her pile of blankets to stoke it and re-warm the room. There will be a furnace in that creepy, spider-filled basement by fall, she promised herself.
“Cleaning will warm us up!” Hua said when she arrived in the kitchen with a blanket wrapped over the old felt bathrobe she’d found at Goodwill. She wore two pairs of socks inside her slippers to insulate her feet from the dank, cold floors. Hua seemed not to mind the cold, apparently adjusting his activity level to the need for warmth. Cam too accepted the chilly morning cheerfully, already hauling in more wood and leaving a trail of bark and sawdust in his wake.