Cold River

by Liz Adair

  “Polish hot dogs?” Mandy found herself salivating. A hot dog had never looked so good.

  “My dad calls them depth charges,” the teenager admitted, “but I think they’re good.”

  “They look heavenly.”

  “All the fixings are on the counter. There’s pop in the cooler. If you want beer I’ll have to have Fran ring it up because I’m not old enough.”

  “I’ll have a root beer.” Mandy got a bun out of the warming drawer and put a wiener on it, leaning down to savor the smell. She added mustard, ketchup, and relish and then thought, what the heck? and added onions.

  As she stood at the counter to pay, the door burst open and a petulant beauty, dressed to the nines and exquisitely made up, strode into the room, followed by an anxious-looking young man in a dark suit with a white carnation pinned to his lapel.

  “All you had to do,” the beauty said, anger showing in the fists she clenched and in the ugly downturn of her mouth, “was to find a place to stay. Was that too much to ask? I took care of the ceremony, the caterer, and the flowers. All you had to do was find a place to stay.”

  “I found it! I keep telling you, Kathy. Winthrop is a marvelous little town— all western style and old-fashioned. I got the honeymoon suite at this great hotel.”

  “Only we can’t get to it,” Kathy almost screamed. “The road is closed. It’s always closed in the winter, didn’t you hear them say? How could you not know that?”

  “I’m sorry, honey.” He pulled her over to the automotive supply aisle, away from the unwitting audience. Only partially shielded by the display table, he tried to put his arms around her.

  She pulled away. “I’m hungry and I’m tired, and I want to know where I’m going to stay tonight.”

  “We’ll find a place,” he said, succeeding at last in pulling her into an embrace. “Don’t worry. Just think of the great story we’ll have to tell about our honeymoon.”

  Her lower lip trembled. “I don’t want a story. I just want something to eat.”

  As Mandy picked up her purchase, the young man stepped forward and asked the question that she was just about to frame: “Where is the nearest motel?”

  “Back downriver at Stallo,” Elizabeth said. “Twenty-five miles.”

  “You’re kidding!” The young man’s face mirrored Mandy’s feelings exactly.

  “But, my grandma runs a bed and breakfast,” Elizabeth added. “She doesn’t advertise when the pass is closed, but she’ll take you in if you need a place to stay. You’ll love it. It’s a log cabin that overlooks the river.” She held out a business card from a holder on the counter. “There’s a map on the back. It’s easy to find.”

  “Will she feed us supper, too?” The beauty followed her new husband as he came to get the card.

  Elizabeth shook her head and pointed to the rotating spit. “You’ll have to have Polish hot dogs.”

  “Come on,” he urged, pulling his bride over to the food counter. “It’ll make a great story for the grandkids.”

  “There may not be any grandkids if we don’t find a place to stay.” Kathy laughed as she said it, and he laughed too, giving her another hug.

  As they began fixing their wedding supper, Mandy approached the checkout counter again, the words bed and breakfast carrying the same emotional charge as blessing and boon. “Uh, excuse me… ” Her heart beat faster as she picked up one of the cards.

  The clerk turned her attention from the couple to Mandy. “I’m sorry. What can I do for you?”

  Just then a woman came out of the back room with a deposit bag in her hand. “All right, Elizabeth,” she said, “I’m off to drop this in the night deposit, and then I’ll come back and let you go on home.”

  Elizabeth glanced briefly at her boss. “Thank you, Fran. I’ve got a ton of homework.” Then she turned her attention back to Mandy and waited expectantly.

  “Your grandmother,” Mandy began. “Does she have any more rooms for tonight?”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry! She only has two, and someone else came in earlier. Do you need a place to stay?”

  “I was hoping to find a place. The nearest hotel is how far?”

  “Twenty-five miles.”

  “But the Yellow Pages lists three right here in town. I looked it up before I left.”

  Elizabeth’s brow furrowed with concern. “They’re closed for the winter. Are you here on business? How long are you staying?”

  “I’m moving here,” Mandy said. “I’m the new school superintendent.”

  Elizabeth’s smile faded. “Oh,” she said in a colorless voice. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

  Fran, who had listened to the conversation from the door, broke in. “You’ll need a house to rent, then. Do you have one lined up?”

  As Mandy turned to this new entrant into her conversation, the woman approached and introduced herself. “I’m Fran Porter. I manage the Qwik-E Markets, but I also have a house to rent. I’ve been renovating it, and it’s almost ready. I have a couple more things to do, but it’s livable. Would you be interested in seeing it?”

  Mandy took only a moment to balance the marginal term livable with the well-kept order of the store and nodded.

  “Meet me here tomorrow morning, say eleven o’clock. We can go look at it.”

  “Thank you very much,” Mandy said.

  Fran waved a reply and was out the door. The newlyweds came back to the checkout register with their supper wrapped in foil and the bride’s humor restored. Mandy carried her own depth charge out into the rain and contemplated her options as she got into her car.

  Twenty-five miles. That’s thirty-five or forty minutes on that two-lane road. Forty minutes down and another forty minutes back tomorrow morning. She leaned against the headrest and watched the raindrops as she considered. Sighing because she had no other option, she wearily turned the key. Just as the engine sprang to life, she remembered the couch in the reception area at the district office. Grange had said there was a bathroom— and a kitchen, too.

  Without hesitation, she backed out and retraced the dark passage down Shingle Mill Road, thinking as she emerged from the conifer canopy into the clearing that the house definitely looked spooky in the dark. The one light she had left on was swallowed up in the high entryway and only served to cast eerie shadows on the ground. The golden daffodils no longer bobbed their artificial sunshine dance. Instead, they were undulating patches of gray, a ghostly, writhing force surrounding the empty house.

  Mandy pulled into the lot and parked in her spot at the back of the house. Her spirits rose to see her headlights turn the daffodils back to gold, and she laughed to think that she had thought the house looked sinister. Even so, she grabbed her Qwik-E Market sack and her suitcase and hurried to the door, where she fumbled with the keys in the darkness, trying first one and then another until finally the lock clicked. She realized that she had been holding her breath, and she exhaled as the door swung open.

  She carried her suitcase in and set it by the couch and then made her way in the dim entryway light to the back of the house. Looking for the kitchen, she opened a closet door first. The next door revealed a bathroom, complete with tub and shower. The third door was, finally, the kitchen.

  “Aha!” She smiled triumphantly as she clicked on the lights and looked around the cheery space. The walls were pale yellow and the cabinets were white, as were the appliances: stove, refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher. A round oak table with six chairs sat in front of a bank of tall windows topped by a yellow and white gingham valance.

  Mandy sat at the table and took out her hot dog and root beer. Unwrapping the sandwich, she savored the spicy aroma. She took a bite and chewed for a long time, staring at her reflection in the windows. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator, but in a moment that stopped, and the house was completely silent. When she finished her hot dog and got up to throw away the wrapping, the scraping of chair on wooden floor seemed unnaturally loud.

  She spent a
moment looking for the garbage can, finally locating it under the sink. As she closed the cupboard door, she straightened up and listened. The wind seemed to have picked back up, but that wasn’t what got her attention. Someone was tapping on the kitchen window.

  She stared at the window, but all she could see was her mirrored image staring back. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and goosebumps rose on her arms. She felt exposed and vulnerable, standing in the light for whoever was tapping to see.

  She looked at the window and called, “Who is it?”

  No answer. But there it was again. Tap tap tap.

  With a trembling hand, Mandy opened the drawer by the sink and looked inside. A dozen table settings of silverware were neatly stored in dividers.

  Tap tap tap.

  Mandy opened the next drawer and found several knives. Picking a wooden-handled butcher knife, she felt wise and foolish, brave and cowardly at the same time as she forced herself to walk to the back door. Thankful to find a porch light switch, she flipped it on. Light flooded the back deck and she opened the door and stepped out, wondering at the last moment if she shouldn’t have called 911 instead.

  When she saw that her “intruder” was a branch of a climbing rose bush blown against the window, her first thought was gratitude that she hadn’t called the police. Her second thought was chagrin that she had let her fancy get away from her.

  She turned off the porch light and went back in the kitchen, shivering from the cold night air as she returned her weapon to the knife drawer. Her heart was still pounding, and she didn’t like the fact that people could see in and she couldn’t see out. After checking to make sure there wasn’t a blind she could pull down, she muttered that she’d do something about that. She turned off the kitchen lights, but that didn’t help. There was no moon, and it was as dark outside as it was inside, so she still couldn’t see beyond the windows. In fact, she couldn’t even see the windows. Feeling her way, she made sure that the back door was locked and then went in to the dimly lit reception area. She pushed the light on her watch and saw that it was eight thirty. That was far earlier than her usual bedtime, but she’d had a long day, and she wanted to be up in the morning in time to shower and get dressed before the first person arrived.

  She dug a pair of sweats out of her suitcase and found an empty hanger in the closet for her suit. While doing that, she found a heavy overcoat and appropriated it for bedcovers. As she spread it on the couch, a Sunset magazine on the coffee table caught her eye, and she carried it into the brightly lit, windowless bathroom. She sat on the floor and, leaning against the tub, read for half an hour until the adrenaline ebbed and she began to yawn.

  Before Mandy put out the bathroom light, she set the alarm on her cell phone and discovered there was no service in Limestone. “You’re kidding,” she muttered. She padded barefoot to the couch, lay down, and covered up with the overcoat.

  Everything was fine as long as she lay curled up on her side, but when she turned on her back and stretched out, the coat didn’t cover her feet. Sighing, she turned back on her side and tried to get comfortable. The entryway light that had seemed so dim now glared in her eyes. The tapping on the window continued erratically, and the old house creaked and groaned as the wind gusted around the eaves. “It’s going to be a long night,” she muttered, but before another thought could come on the heels of that one, she fell asleep.

  She thought at first it was her cold feet that woke her. The clock on the wall said a few minutes to midnight as she pulled her frigid toes under the overcoat and rubbed them together. Finally, she sat up and clasped her feet with her hands.

  It was then that she heard the sound of someone at the entrance door.

  REMINDING HERSELF THAT this might be akin to the rosebush, Mandy tried to stay calm, but her heart started pounding, and she found she was holding her breath. She forced herself to inhale but froze again at the sound of a key scraping in the entry door lock. In the silent darkness, she heard a tumbler click.

  There was an opening squeak, and a shadowy figure entered and turned to close the door. Mandy threw back her cover, rose, and stood in indecision as the lights came on in the room and the figure at the door turned to face her. She was relieved to see it was the district accountant, but he apparently didn’t see her until he had taken a step in her direction and she spoke.

  “Hello, Mr. Smith.”

  Mo Smith’s eyes and mouth opened wide and his arms flailed in the air as he uttered a high-pitched shriek of surprise.

  On edge and startled by his reaction, Mandy screamed too, and they stood silently facing one another for a moment.

  Mo was the first to speak. “What are you doing here?” The brown line of his moustache stood out against the pallor of his skin.

  “I might ask you the same question.”

  He smoothed the thin hair combed over his bald spot. “I forgot my— I left something behind that I need tonight. I came back to get it.”

  “Be my guest.” Mandy stepped back.

  She watched him mount the stairs and disappear into his office. He emerged only moments later with a briefcase, which he showed to her as he came down the stairs. “I just came to get this,” he repeated. “I need it tonight.”

  “At midnight?”

  “It’s just that I… well, you see, I have this… Vince wanted me to…” By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, Mo had run out of sentence beginnings and simply said, “Yeah.”

  “Well, good night, then.” Mandy spoke calmly though her eyes were twinkling. “I’ll lock up after you.” She saw him out the door, but just as she was about to close it, he stuck his hand in and stopped her.

  “Don’t tell Grange I came in tonight. Don’t tell him I got this.”

  “Uh, I don’t even know what you’ve got, Mr. Smith.”

  “Right, right.” He nodded, paused a moment, and then scuttled away, clutching the briefcase to his chest.

  Mandy closed the door and turned off the lights. On her way back to the couch, she opened the closet and felt inside. She found a fleecy jacket, which she pulled out and spread over the bottom of the couch where the overcoat didn’t reach. Then she lay down. When her feet didn’t warm up quickly enough, she sat up and stuck them into the fuzzy sleeves, then lay back and snuggled in.

  She turned on her side so the dim, overhead light wasn’t in her eyes. She giggled as she remembered how Mo looked with his arms in the air and his Adam’s apple sticking out under his frightened face as he screamed, but her smile faded as she began to wonder about the contents of the briefcase and the reason Grange shouldn’t know about it. As her feet warmed she grew drowsy, and she drifted back to sleep with the thought that she’d work it out tomorrow.

  It was still dark when she surfaced again, sure she must be dreaming because of the whirling lights. Around and around the room they raced in quick succession, bands of light that painted the walls red, blue, white, red, blue, white. Mandy watched from under the covers and blinked to make sure her eyes were open. I’m dreaming, she thought. I’m dreaming that I think I’m awake, but this has to be a dream. She sat up and craned her neck to see out the window. Suddenly, the glare of a spotlight caught her full in the eyes, and she cried out as she squinted and turned away.

  Rap rap rap! The sound of metal against window glass reverberated through the stillness. Rap rap rap!

  “I seen you!” someone shouted, the “you” sounding more like “yew.”

  Mandy shrank back against the couch, trying to stay out of the powerful beam of light.

  “I seen you! Come on over here. I seen you!”

  Still trying to work out if this was a nightmare or reality, Mandy stayed put.

  The light moved over to the doorway, and Mandy saw it shining through the leaded glass as she heard the doorknob rattle.

  “You open this door, you hear? I’m the deputy sheriff, and if I have to get Grange Timberlain down here to open this door, I’m going to be madder’n a wasp on the w
rong end of a fly swatter. Now, git on over here and open this door!”

  As the three-tone kaleidoscope continued to whirl, Mandy decided to take advantage of the time when the would-be intruder was at the door to get up without being seen. Heart racing, she swung her legs off the couch and stood, intending to head for the kitchen. Hobbled as she was by the fleece, she only took one step before she pitched headlong. As she put her arms out to break her fall, she felt such a sharp pain in her left wrist that it brought tears to her eyes.

  She cradled her left arm in her right. “Ow, ow, ow.”

  There was the spotlight again, casting her shadow in stark relief against the back wall of the reception area. “I seen you! Now you come open this here door.”

  After tearing the fleece away from her feet, Mandy scrambled up and fled to the kitchen. The light from the open kitchen door was enough to let her find her way to the bank of drawers by the sink. Holding the throbbing wrist to her breast, she opened the second one, and as she reached into the interior, she felt the comfort of a wooden handle against her palm. Pulling it out, she felt a little less vulnerable as she stepped back out into the glare.

  “Who are you?” she called.

  “Doc MacDonald, deputy sheriff of Cascade County. Open this here door!”

  “Come over to the window. Show me your badge.”

  “I’ll show it to you when you open this here door.”

  “I’m not opening anything until I know you are who you say you are,” Mandy shouted. “Show me your badge.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, and then a bulky figure moved across the porch in front of the window and lifted the light to shine on himself as he held his jacket open. A brass shield gleamed on his uniformed chest, and Mandy moved closer to get a better look.

  She saw a middle-aged man, about five foot ten with a stocky build, bulldog jowls, and bushy eyebrows under his Smokey Bear hat. “All right. I’ll open the door.”

  Mandy went to the door and turned the bolt. As she swung it open, the glare of the officer’s light caught her full in the face, and she raised her hand to shield her eyes.