Strawberry Hill

by Catherine Anderson

  “There are approximately thirty thousand black bears in Oregon alone. The sanctuaries, shelters, observatories, and zoos are already filled. Transplanting him to another area would be the only option, but the state tries to avoid doing that. It costs a small fortune, for one thing, and believe it or not, some bears manage to find their way home again. But the more serious concern is a possible contamination of the black bear gene pool in another wilderness area. Black bear populations have risen. Disease is always a threat. If Four Toes is a carrier of a virus that he’s built up an immunity to, he could introduce that viral strain into another population of bears and wipe them out.”

  Vickie drew her hands from between her knees and chafed her palms. “So . . . before he’s transported, a vet needs to run a blood panel on him to rule out that possibility. That’s a no-brainer.”

  “The state won’t get on board. I guarantee it.”

  “Maybe not without some pressure.”

  He angled her a questioning look. His gray eyes reminded her so much of Brody’s. “You got friends in high places or something?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “I’m a cook. I prefer the title of chef. It sounds more impressive. I even went to culinary school. But I’m still just a cook. We may serve people who are wealthy and important, but we aren’t good enough to socialize with them.”

  “Don’t say that. You could rub elbows with the president and do yourself proud.”

  Vickie waved her hand to erase all that nonsense from the air between them. “I was thinking more of becoming the proverbial squeaky wheel. Mystic Creek’s a small town, but if you get its people all fired up and they start to demonstrate with signs that read SAVE OUR BEAR, the state will have no choice but to pay attention. Squeaky wheels get the oil, Slade. If animal activists got wind of it, our capital city of Salem would be swarming with demonstrators. The upper-ups would be messing their pants. People in governmental positions of power think they wield a big stick until the people raise their voices, and then they realize very quickly that they’re one election away from losing their jobs.”

  A thoughtful frown pleated his forehead, deepening the creases between his grizzled eyebrows. “You know? You may be onto something.”

  Vickie stifled a moan as she struggled back to her feet. “Of course I am. It’s me, the rabble-rouser, remember. Back me into a corner, and I come out swinging.”

  He grinned. It was that fabulous, slightly crooked grin that she remembered so well, just a little bit cocky, but a hundred percent charming, flashing his strong, white teeth and the crevices in his lean cheeks. They’d started out as dimples when he was but a boy. Time had chiseled them deeper, and now they slashed from his cheekbones to each corner of his mouth. She gazed down at him, feeling miffed at herself for noticing how handsome he still was. He hadn’t shaved yet this morning, and his whiskers hadn’t grayed evenly. He had silver patches bracketing the cleft in his chin. If he grew a tidy mustache and beard, it would undoubtedly look sexy as hell and have women half his age swooning at his feet.

  “Where you off to?”

  She answered as she walked away. “First I’m going to wash my face and brush my teeth. Then I’m going to deliver breakfast to a bear. Leftover chili, still in the cans. That’ll keep him busy for a while.”

  “The hair, Vick. Don’t forget the hair.”

  Vickie wondered what was wrong with her hair. Three minutes later when she finally located the unbreakable hand mirror in her duffel, she stifled a shriek of dismay. Her mane of kinky curls was always impossible to control, but she’d slept on it wrong last night and had a rooster tail poking up about eight inches from the top of her head. If she’d stiffened it with helmet hair spray, she couldn’t have made it stand up straighter.

  * * *

  • • •

  Setting up base camp was always a hellish experience for Slade, and this year was no different, except that Vickie was present. Though he tried to resist it, Slade was filled with a feeling of rightness. Even though bitterness and anger simmered between them just beneath the surface, he enjoyed hearing her voice ring out, sometimes grouchy in tone, other times laced with good humor. Vickie had always been an energetic, no-nonsense person who jumped into a job and did what had to be done. But she wasn’t afraid to complain, either, and the unorganized condition of the cookshack and everything that had to go inside it gave her plenty of reason to bitch.

  It amused Slade to watch his hired hands scurry around to do her bidding. She was fond of following an order with, “Chop, chop!” And when she did, everyone stepped a little faster. More than once, he heard her yell, “If you hope to put a hot meal in your belly tonight, don’t ask me why, just do it!” And amazingly enough, the work got done in short order. At one point, she advanced on the three new guys that Slade had hired. He still didn’t have their names straight, and clearly neither did she, but Vickie didn’t let a little thing like that hold her up. She just called them you or hey, you. The men were sorting and organizing the saddles and tack, something that needed to be done, for sure, but wasn’t exactly a priority.

  For almost a full minute, Vickie stood with her hands on her hips and watched them work. There was a method to her madness, because when the fellows noticed their audience of one and asked what she wanted, she said, “I’m just wondering if you can brown pancakes and fry eggs on one of those saddles.”

  The taller guy—Slade thought his name was Ron—decided to field the question. “No, ma’am.”

  Vickie folded her arms at her waist. “Uh-huh. I see. And what about those canteens? Can you make coffee in them?”

  Ron shook his head. “Um, no, ma’am. I’ve heated water in metal ones, but I don’t reckon I could ever make coffee.”

  Vickie tapped a fingertip on her chin. “I guess I’m just confused,” she observed. “You’re all over here, busy as bees. As important as it may eventually be to have everything sorted, saddle-soaped, and placed within easy reach, I don’t think your efforts will put a hot meal in your bellies.”

  Ron made the fatal mistake of chuckling. “No, ma’am. That’s your job.”

  Vickie smiled and snapped her fingers. “Oh, I understand. I’m getting our job descriptions confused, right?”

  “Kind of, I think. We’re outfitters, not cooks.”

  She nodded. “Thanks for getting me straightened out.” She started to walk away. Then she stopped, turned back, and flashed a hundred-watt smile. “Just out of curiosity, have you boys ever heard the story called ‘The Little Red Hen’?”

  “No, ma’am,” Ron replied. His two sidekicks mumbled negative responses as well.

  “It’s such a shame that parents stopped reading to their kids. Stories like ‘The Little Red Hen’ teach children valuable life lessons. I suggest that you read it. Sooner rather than later, I think. Because I’m really big on the Little Red Hen’s philosophy.”

  “What’s her philosophy?”

  Her smile turned syrupy sweet. Slade knew that boded ill. “It’s simple. She found seeds to plant, but none of the other farm animals would help her. When the seeds produced wheat, none of the other animals would help her harvest it. When it came time to take the wheat to a mill to be ground into flour, none of them would help carry it to town. When she got back to the farm with the flour, she had to make the bread all by herself. And, then, guess what?”

  “I dunno,” Ron said with a shrug of his shoulders.

  The syrupy smile flashed again. “All the other farm animals wanted to help her eat the bread, but she ran them off and ate the bread all . . . by . . . herself.”

  Vickie waggled her fingers in farewell and walked away. Ron glanced at his buddies. “What the fuck? Did she just threaten not to feed us?”

  The shorter of the three men, a stout redhead, said, “I think maybe so.”

  “Well, shit,” Ron said. “She can’t do that. Right? We work har
d. We have to eat to keep our energy up. The boss will cloud up and rain all over her if she cuts us off from the chow line.”

  Slade grinned and rested his shoulder against a tree. Watching Vickie in action was more entertaining than a three-monkey circus act. A powwow ensued between the new boys, the exchanges punctuated with curses and plenty of blackguarding. Slade wouldn’t worry about their language unless they spoke that way in front of Vickie, but he doubted they would. Ron seemed to be the leader, and he’d been respectful during his conversation with her.

  After a goodly amount of grumbling, the three men abandoned their task of organizing the riding gear and headed for the cookshack. Slade spent a couple more minutes propping up the pine tree with his shoulder and observed all the activity. Men opening boxes to discover the contents. Others assembling racks and more shelving. Slade figured that Vickie would have the kitchen in tiptop shape by late afternoon, which would break all of Cheyenne’s records. Not that Cheyenne was a slouch when it came to work, but she hadn’t yet acquired the ability to make grown men snap to and salute. Vickie definitely had. Slade could only applaud her.

  He nearly parted company with his skin when Wyatt’s voice rang out just behind him. “She’s really something, boss.”

  Slade nodded. “Yep. Always has been.”

  Wyatt stopped on the other side of the tree and volunteered his shoulder to help hold it up. “She’s the one. Isn’t she?”

  Slade shot him a surprised look. “The one, what?”

  Wyatt, who stood slightly forward so he could read Slade’s lips, merely grinned. “The one, the love of your life. I knew it the instant I saw her last night.”

  Slade didn’t like the sound of that. “Was I that obvious?”

  With a shake of his head, Wyatt said, “No. Neither of you said or did anything out of the ordinary. I just sensed it. The air between you sizzles. I’m talking high voltage.”

  Slade sighed. “You could’ve knocked me over with a feather when she showed up. It was like seeing a ghost. I was going to send her packing, but then I changed my mind.”

  “What changed it?”

  “My need for a cook.”

  “Now that she’s up here, are you sorry you let her stay?”

  Slade considered the question. “No,” he finally admitted. “I’ve been waiting over forty years to see her again.”

  “What caused the two of you to split up?” Wyatt asked. “I know it’s a personal question, and you don’t have to answer. It’s just that you seem so right for each other.”

  “We are.” Slade backed up to rephrase that. “At least we were, way back when. Then someone told her I’d been unfaithful. She didn’t believe me when I denied it. And she walked.”

  “Wow. And you just let her go?”

  “Yep. I gave her my word that I was innocent. She thought I was lying.” Slade saw Four Toes rolling around at the edge of camp, scratching his back on the grass. He watched for a moment. “The way I saw it then, she either believed me or she didn’t. Without trust in a relationship, what the hell do you have but a recipe for misery?”

  “What the hell did you have after you let her walk away?” Wyatt countered.

  “Nothing.” Slade heard the hollow note in his voice and didn’t care. Wyatt wouldn’t pick up on intonations. “Absolutely nothing.”

  “If you could go back in time, would you handle the situation differently?”

  “Knowing what I know now, I would. With age comes wisdom, and all these years later I realize what I didn’t know then. I’d rather be miserable with her than miserable without her.”

  Chapter Ten

  The navigation in Erin’s old car had always sucked, but it was especially bad in Mystic Creek. She’d named the woman whose recorded voice issued all the directions Peach, after a female character in Lonesome Dove who’d been obnoxious and overbearing with the weak-willed men in her family. Erin had disliked the character in both the book and the film, and she liked her navigation lady even less, mostly because she managed to be thoroughly unpleasant even when her every utterance was polite and sweet.

  Erin was seldom polite and sweet in return, mainly because, in Mystic Creek, Peach couldn’t find her ass with both hands. And, unfortunately, today was no exception. Noreen lived on Elderberry Lane, and the address to her residence had been properly entered into the nav system, but Peach had been taking Erin up and down the same section of road for over ten minutes, telling her to turn where there was no driveway. It made no sense. Erin finally concluded that road construction must have revamped some of the turnoffs and the maps had never been updated to satellite. She slowed her car to a crawl and started reading the numbers on the mailboxes. She needed to find 3234. When she found that address on one of the roadside receptacles, she almost gave a victory shout, but the urge quickly vanished, because finding the right sequence of numbers on a mailbox didn’t tell her which house it belonged to.

  Erin decided she’d wasted enough time and called Noreen’s cell number. The other woman answered the call with a pop of her bubble gum and, “Hello, this is Noreen.”

  Erin explained her dilemma. Though Noreen sounded reluctant to have Erin drop by her house, she was much nicer over the phone than she usually was over the department radio. She explained that the county had excavated all the ditches to install new drainage culverts and some of the driveways had been rerouted over easements that crossed other people’s land.

  Once at Noreen’s house, a small blue structure with spotless white trim, Erin got out of her car and took several deep breaths. She wanted this meeting to go well, knew it probably wouldn’t, and really wished she could just drive away. But workplace animosity couldn’t be dealt with by running from it, and Erin had reached her breaking point. Getting little time off and even less sleep kept her on the brink of losing her temper, and if Noreen woke her up one more time in the middle of the night, Erin feared she might explode. It was time for a talk.

  When Noreen answered her knock, Erin expected the exchange to be unpleasant, but Noreen’s face was puffy and swollen, either from the worst allergic reaction in history or from crying, and the head of steam Erin had built up for a nasty confrontation lost pressure the moment she stepped over Noreen’s threshold. “Are you all right?” Erin asked.

  Unfolding a tissue she’d wadded up in her hand, Noreen dabbed at her eyes. “Would you be all right if you had kids and knew you were about to lose your job?” Noreen’s voice wobbled as she asked that question. “I made cookies last night, and I’ve got fresh coffee.” She gestured at a table that was so large it overwhelmed the small dining area. “When the kids get home from school, the cookies will be history, so please, have a seat, and don’t be shy about helping yourself.”

  Erin felt completely off balance, and a dozen questions zigzagged through her mind, but she expressed none of them. She sat at the table, which was covered with a plastic cloth. With three kids living there, Erin guessed plastic was a smart choice. Spillages would trash a regular tablecloth, and kids tended to be messy eaters. Well, most were, anyway. Erin’s mother, whom Erin called Martha Stewart in jest, had insisted that her daughter practice impeccable table manners, and that had left no room for dribbled food or knocked-over glasses of milk.

  Given Noreen’s lackadaisical approach to dispatching, Erin scanned the living area of the home with a measure of incredulity. The house was about the size of Erin’s cottage, and with small children in residence, it could have been a wreck, but instead it was tidy and welcoming. Bookcases lined the television wall and sported organized collections of paperbacks, children’s books, and DVDs. The walls were tastefully adorned with hodgepodge, blending trendy accessories with older items, a sure sign that Noreen had decorated on the cheap, possibly picking up stuff at garage sales, but it worked well together. Erin lacked that talent and wished, not for the first time, that she was better at making a house into a home. Th
e living room branched off into a short hallway that Erin guessed led to one bathroom and two bedrooms, a common layout for small homes. What alarmed her was that boxes sat just beyond the archway, two standing with the flaps open and several flats leaning against a tiny closet.

  Was Noreen planning to relocate? In the process of moving? With three children, she needed a bigger place, for sure, but it seemed like an odd time for her to uproot her kids. School was in session. The holidays would soon be upon them. And bad weather was on its way. Erin had experienced only one winter in Mystic Creek, but by spring, she’d felt like a lifelong resident. Snow berms higher than her head on Main. Roads that were ice rinks. Absurdly low temperatures that crystalized the air, burned the lungs, and turned hands numb in two-point-five seconds. Many locals wore shirts emblazoned with MYSTIC CREEK AIN’T FOR SISSIES. That was true, and Erin sure wouldn’t want to move in the winter.

  With a trembling hand, Noreen poured coffee into a mug for Erin and then sat across from her. She nudged the plate of cookies toward her guest. “Please, help yourself. I can be accused of many things, but I’ve never been inhospitable.”

  Leashed anger threaded the comment, which made Erin want to bolt. She glanced at the baked goods, saw that they were chocolate chip, and wondered if Noreen had laced them with chocolate laxatives. She smiled and said, “Only if you’ll join me.”

  Noreen shrugged and reached for a cookie. “Why not? I’ve blown my diet all to hell anyway.”

  Only after her hostess had shoved an entire cookie into her mouth did Erin take a bite of her own. The delicious taste rolled over her tongue. “Oh, man. You know just how long to bake them. I love them chewy like this.”

  Noreen’s cheeks turned as pink as the end of her nose, which had apparently been rubbed raw by tissues. “Baking is the one thing that I do really well,” was all she said.

  Erin’s stomach knotted. This woman wasn’t the sarcastic, bubble-popping Noreen that she’d come to know. “I’m sure you do lots of things well.”