Twisted Creek

by Jodi Thomas

  Climbing the stairs, I wished we had enough furniture to make the apartment above as livable. My grandmother might not ever be able to change her environment, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t rearrange it. I hoped the outbuildings we hadn’t gotten to yet contained furniture, otherwise we’d use boxes for nightstands by the beds.

  “Allie,” she called up from the kitchen. “You want catfish for supper?”

  “Sure,” I answered, thinking she was kidding.

  A few minutes later I smelled fish frying. The aroma drew me down the stairs. I hadn’t had my grandmother’s catfish since we’d left the farm.

  “Where’d you get fish?” I asked as I came into the kitchen.

  “Found it in the sink, so fresh I swear it was still wiggling.” Nana giggled. “Maybe it swam up the drain.”

  I wouldn’t have been surprised, but I wasn’t about to look a gift fish in the mouth. I carried in the box of cooking supplies and combined them with the few staples Nana discovered stored in the freezer near the back door. We had enough to serve fried potatoes and hush puppies with the fish.

  After we were both so full we could eat no more, Nana covered the leftovers with a tea towel and set them in the oven as she’d done every night of my childhood. Grandpa’s supper left to warm.

  I started to mention her mistake, but a forty-year-old habit must be hard to break. The year after he’d died, many a morning I’d scraped dishes that she’d left in the oven, but since we’d been traveling she’d stopped the practice. Maybe because we usually didn’t have leftovers. Or maybe because she never felt at home…until now.

  She waved good night and headed upstairs without a word.

  I cleaned up the kitchen and walked out back to make sure the fire I’d built with old clothes hadn’t gotten out of hand. It might not look too good to burn down the property on my first day at the lake.

  I was almost to the campfire before I noticed a shadow sitting close to the dying flames, his back to the house, his shoulders rounded forward.

  “Luke?” I whispered. If he planned to kill us, he’d had all day to do it.

  Blue Eyes turned around and stared at me. In the smoky firelight I swear I saw an intelligence in his gaze that would miss little. “Allie Daniels,” he whispered as if testing his memory.

  I moved closer. “Thanks for the fish.”

  He nodded so slightly I wasn’t sure I’d seen it. “I figured Old Jefferson would have wanted you to have fish your first night on the lake.”

  “You knew him?”

  Luke nodded again. “I came out summers to fish as a kid. He served with my granddad in the army. They’d fish all day and tell war stories half the night.”

  “Know much about him?”

  Luke shook his head. “I hadn’t been out in years. After my grandfather died, I always planned to drop by, but I only made it once in the past ten years.”

  He looked out over the lake and I waited him out.

  Finally, he added, “I know his mother’s relatives founded this place over a hundred years ago. Worked a ferry service across the creek. He was named after them, and this dock has been called Jefferson’s Crossing since the first settlers passed by here.”

  I liked the name. I liked having a place with a name and not just an address. Before I thought to stop, my fears babbled out. “I think he made a mistake leaving it to me.”

  Luke didn’t answer. He just stirred the rags around as the last of Jefferson’s old clothes burned. He was as easy to read as a billboard. Plain and simple. A loner who didn’t like people. Every inch of his body seemed to be telling me to leave.

  “How far do you live from here?” I said, sounding more like an interrogator than a neighbor.

  “Not far,” he answered, staring at me. “You finished growing?”

  I hated comments about my height, or lack of it, but since I’d asked a personal question I guess he thought he had a right. I raised an eyebrow in challenge. “Which way?”

  His blue eyes glanced down at my chest and I felt like I was back in junior high when I’d first developed. Then, I swear, he blushed when he finally met my gaze. A slow smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Sorry, maybe I should have said, ‘How old are you?’ With those pigtails you could be fifteen.”

  “I’m twenty-six.”

  He nodded and moved away from the fire as if that was all he needed to know about me.

  Feeling a chill, I watched the fire glowing in the night and tried to think of something to say. But I didn’t really want company and I guess he didn’t either. Every bone in my body hurt from cleaning, and a part of my mind was still mourning the “might have been” part of inheriting this place. I’d hoped for a cottage, not a big, old building that looked like it was put together with spare supplies. The store was empty, the café old and useless, and the apartment barely livable.

  Trying to think positive, I listed as likes the big windows facing the lake and the huge rock wall that made the place seem like it had been part of this land forever. Also, if I was listing, I’d have to add Nana’s joy. She’d been humming gospel songs all day.

  The moon came out and the air chilled, but I kept staring at the fire, forgetting Luke. I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the lake. A bird called somewhere on the other side. Every few minutes the splash of a fish or frog rippled the water now black in the night. A low buzz of summer’s last surviving insects stuttered in the air like a faraway telegraph. I could feel my heart slow to the rhythm.

  The creak of wood along the dock ten yards away sounded and I looked up. Luke was gone.

  It took a few minutes for my eyes to focus enough to see his form moving slowly along the dock over the water. He walked, removing his clothes fluidly as if he’d done it a thousand times.

  His last stitch of clothing fell just before he dove into the water, slicing through with barely a ripple.

  I stood, making out powerful arms reflecting in moonlight as he swam in long strokes toward the center of the lake. I could still hear his movements even after I lost sight of him in the inky water.

  If it had been a normal day, I might have reacted to a strange man stripping and diving off my dock, but I hadn’t had a normal day in so long I wouldn’t recognize one if it came along.

  I walked back to the house, locked the doors, and went up to bed.

  Chapter 6

  2300 hours

  Twisted Creek

  Luke swam the lake trying to clear his mind. The strange woman unnerved him. She had an innocence about her, but at twenty-six, it had to be an act. He’d long ago given up taking people at face value. In his line of work everyone had secrets. Everyone had a past.

  She was a rare mix though. A shy honesty about her blended with a body that would haunt his dreams. When he’d met her, he was sure he saw fear in her eyes, but tonight Allie had wandered out to the fire as if she trusted him. She hadn’t flirted at all, but she had to have known he was watching her. He decided the safest way to handle Allie Daniels was not to handle her at all…friendship, that’s what he’d offer, and nothing more until he knew who he was dealing with.

  When he returned to the dock, she was gone. He wasn’t sure if he was glad or disappointed. The fire had died, leaving the dock so dark that he had to feel for his clothes.

  He tugged on his jeans and carried the rest. Dropping off the side of the dock, he walked in the ankle-deep water until he circled onto his property, then crossed into the blackness of the trees. Scolding himself, he decided to be more withdrawn around her, telling her nothing. Despite her innocent act, if Jefferson’s death was not from natural causes, she was the most likely suspect.

  Forcing his brain to look at only the facts, he reasoned: She had the most to gain from Jefferson’s death. For all he knew, the outdated tags on her van were stolen and she lived somewhere around here. Allie could have somehow worked her way into Jefferson’s good graces in the five years since Luke had visited the old man and talked him into leaving her the
place. Then, she couldn’t wait for him to die naturally, so she helped him along. Even if she was small, how hard could it be to push an old man off the dock?

  He laughed as he stepped onto the porch of his one-room log cabin. His theory didn’t hold water. Nana and Allie didn’t fit any profile of any kind of criminals. Allie didn’t seem the type to murder and he couldn’t imagine Nana driving the getaway van.

  But that didn’t clear the fact that something was going on out here at the lake. Luke had seen signs. If someone had killed Jefferson, they might have done so because he noticed something he shouldn’t have seen. When he’d circled the lake on foot yesterday, Luke swore he smelled meth cooking, even if he couldn’t find it. Half the cabins out here, including his own, weren’t on any map anywhere.

  A chilling thought crossed his mind. If someone killed Jefferson Platt, he might go after Allie and Nana next.

  Luke locked his door, then walked past his couch and swung up to a tiny loft in the rafters of his cabin. He’d slept there as a kid and now the space barely accommodated his six-foot height, but if someone came through the door, he’d be wide awake before they could spot him.

  In his line of work it paid to be where people did not expect him to be.

  Chapter 7

  Sometime after dawn, I smelled biscuits baking. Without bothering to open my eyes, I took a deep breath knowing the aroma was just a hangover from my dreams. I wanted to enjoy it as long as possible. Last night I’d planned to stay awake and worry about which bed Uncle Jefferson spent his last night on, but I’d fallen asleep before I could get all my worries organized.

  Between no job, little hope of money coming in, and a nude man jumping off my dock to chase the moon across the lake, I felt like I had my quota of problems. The lake house hadn’t been what I’d hoped for in Garrison D. Walker’s letter, but then nothing in my life ever measured up to the mountain of hope I always managed to come up with. If they gave awards for pointless dreaming, I’d have a room full of trophies.

  Opening one eye, I noticed Nana had raised all the windows in our two-room apartment. The morning had a chill to it that the bright sunshine would burn away long before noon. The breeze smelled of the lake. Nothing bad. Just that earthy odor of fish and water.

  I stood, pulled on my grandpa’s old flannel shirt I’d used as a robe since college, and headed downstairs following the hope of biscuits. The main room at the bottom of the steps smelled cellarlike with the windows still boarded up. To my left were the empty shelves that had once been a tiny store. To my right sat the little café with round tables, wire chairs, and a long bar. I’d passed the rooms too many times yesterday for them not to feel familiar to me.

  Tiptoeing across the floor, I forced myself not to look at the dead animal heads on the wall, but their shadows crossed my path. Deer, antelope, wild sheep, and some kind of ugly pig I’d glanced at yesterday and been afraid to face again. When I pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen, I let out a breath as if I’d just run the gauntlet.

  Nana swayed as she hummed “Amazing Grace.” I slipped into the sunny little room that already looked like it belonged to her. My grandmother must have been up for hours, for she’d removed the burlap curtains and polished the two windows over the sink. She’d stacked her rooster-painted tins of staples along the sill. She’d also opened the back door, letting in long beams of sunlight to dance over a worn brick floor. Her gray hair bounced slightly as she kept time to her humming with little nods of her head.

  A cookie sheet of fresh biscuits cooled on the table. “Where?” was all I managed to mumble. I raked one hand through my tangled hair and tried again. “Where did these biscuits come from?”

  Nana turned and winked at me. “A nice man in a white truck stopped by about an hour ago. He said he always delivered dairy to Jefferson and wondered if I wanted any. I told him I needed pretty near one of everything.”

  I opened the old refrigerator. Milk, butter, cheese, and eggs filled the top shelves.

  “I got you something in the freezer.” She turned back to the gravy she’d been stirring.

  “Cherry Popsicles.” I laughed and pulled one out. Slamming the middle of the treat on the edge of the counter, I broke it in half and slid an icicle into my mouth.

  I hadn’t had a Popsicle since I’d been in grade school and was surprised my grandmother remembered how dearly I once loved them. I curled into one of the wingback chairs and let the icy treat freeze my tongue while I waited for the frozen juice to melt just enough to bite into.

  Pulling my feet up to the seat of the chair, I hugged my legs, trying to keep warm as I ate. The sweet flavor sliding down my throat was worth every shiver.

  Finally, I asked, “How’d you pay the man in the white truck?” I’d stashed my purse, with the last of the traveling money, under my bed, but I knew Nana wouldn’t have opened it even if I’d left it in the kitchen.

  Nana shrugged. “He said he’d put it on the account and that he’d see me next week.” She never worried about money, probably because she’d never had any.

  Shoving the warm pan toward me, she laughed. “I put a little cheese in the biscuits just like we used to do when I cooked at the grade school. Those kids always loved my recipes. I had one boy ask if his mother could come up and watch me cook. Another wanted to take me home for show-and-tell.”

  Picking at one biscuit, I worried. We had enough to pay for the groceries and the bills on this place for a few months, but the money would run out soon. The money always ran out. I thought of telling Nana to be careful, but she was having so much fun cooking with real supplies and remembering and, I didn’t want to spoil it. Besides, there was a good chance I’d find a job before we got down to zero.

  The problem was, any work would be back in Lubbock and that would mean leaving Nana out here alone for long hours.

  She handed me a cup of coffee and I pushed aside problems with a smile. “What do you think we should do first?”

  Nana frowned. “I’d like to get rid of all those heads in the front room. I think one of them winked at me.”

  I couldn’t agree more. An hour later, we’d managed to take them down and line all the animal heads and stuffed fish up on the fence by the road. Nana wanted to put a FOR SALE sign out, but I just hoped someone would take them.

  She shrugged her thin shoulders almost to her ears. “Maybe someone will steal them if we don’t watch too close.”

  “That’s about as likely as one of these critters running off. But we can always hope.”

  We went back to the house and started cleaning the area that had been a store. To my surprise, beneath the cash register I found a wide ledger filled with neat entries, each dated and balanced to the right. The totals showed Uncle Jefferson made a small profit most days. If so, what did he spend his money on? The lawyer said he had none at the time of his death except for what he wanted mailed to me for traveling expenses and lawyer’s fees. There was no sign he’d bought anything, from clothes to furnishings, for thirty years. But if there was income, somewhere there had to be money going out. The only thing on the place that looked younger than me was the final ten feet of dock planks.

  I shoved the ledger back under the register and pushed the “no sale” button. The drawer sprang open. Empty except for ten pennies and two nickels. I returned to dusting, plugging in the twinkle lights along the back wall.

  Next to a potbelly stove old enough for Ben Franklin himself to have delivered, I found a small safe covered in dust. Most of the lettering on the two-by-two door had worn off and mud was caked to the sides. I rattled the handle, but it didn’t open. If I strained, I could push it a few inches, but after a few minutes of effort I decided the safe would make a fine footstool to sit on when winter came and I lit the stove.

  In a closet behind the twinkle lights, I found a bucket of cane fishing poles and a stack of dusty, but never used, blankets. I spread the blankets inside the display case and put the bucket in a corner. The place still didn’t look
like much of a store, but it was a start.

  An hour later, the old fisherman I’d seen in the boat the day before stepped up on my porch as I was testing out one of the wicker chairs. “Morning,” he muttered around a wad of tobacco, sticking out his hand. “I’m Willie Dowman. Got a fishing shack on the other end, close to the dam.” He pointed with his head. “I was admiring that bass you got out by the road.”

  I fought down the need to question his taste. “Good morning, I’m Allie.” I put my hand out to shake his.

  He nodded, small little nods in rapid succession like his head was loose and we’d just hit a bump in the road. “I know. Jefferson told us you’d be coming.”

  Tugging my hand out of his sandpaper grip, I took a step backward, disturbed by the fact he must have known I was coming long before I did.

  Nothing about Willie was the least bit threatening, but the short, square-built man smelled like a neglected aquarium. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see algae growing out his ears.

  “I used to come out on weekends to get away from my wife.” His bushy eyebrows wiggled, doing the wave across his forehead. “Since I retired, I come out most every day.”

  “Why don’t you leave her and move out here?” I asked just to see what he’d say.

  Willie looked like he thought about it for a minute, then shook his head. “Who’d cook all the fish I catch if I left her?”

  I asked him who Mrs. Deals was since he’d yelled that he planned to tell her I had arrived. But talking to Willie wasn’t easy. We might be standing eye to eye, but somehow I got the feeling he was having a different conversation than I was. He never answered the questions I asked, but rambled on about people I didn’t know as if they were family. Talking to Willie made my head hurt.

  I moved inside out of the sun and he followed, taking the third stool at the bar as if it were his assigned seat. I introduced him to Nana and they both nodded at each other in greeting.