The Best Laid Plans

by Judy Penz Sheluk

  Besides, with Aaron’s good looks, he assured himself, his brother would get a ride as soon as he stuck his thumb out.

  Seth fell asleep on the couch shortly thereafter, and when he woke around eleven his mother had already left for work. There was still no sign of Aaron.

  By noon, Seth was deeply worried by his brother’s absence. Had the cops caught him? Would they be coming for him next?

  To his relief, the swelling of his ankle was down considerably. Maybe it was a sprain, not a break. He remained worried about his other problem, though—his ATV, lying abandoned on the mountainside. If the cops found it, it would lead them directly to him.

  And he only had Aaron’s word that it was trashed. Perhaps with a little work he could get it back in running order. If not, maybe he could drag it away from the trail and bury it under some rocks.

  Around one o’clock he decided that he couldn’t wait any longer; he had to find Aaron, and he had to check his crashed ATV. He wrapped his ankle in elastic bandages and covered it with duct tape so that it felt stable. He also stole a couple of the pills Harmony took for her back, which left him feeling lightheaded but pain free.

  He slowly worked his way up the mountain on his brother’s ATV, riding like a rookie, slow and stiff, all to keep from putting weight on his ankle.

  He was only a few hundred yards from the crash site when he forded one of the larger creeks spilling off the mountain. As he bounced up the far bank, he caught a glimpse of something lying on the edge of the creek downstream a few yards. He stopped, rolled back. Even though the body was lying on its face, he could tell it was Aaron.

  He sat stone still for several minutes, just listening to the water. He felt the cold now that he’d stopped moving, and there were ice crystals in his beard.

  He got off the ATV and hobbled down the bank toward his brother. Aaron’s legs were in the water. The back of his skull was thick with dried blood, and his clothes were soaking wet.

  Seth grasped Aaron’s jacket by the shoulders and dragged him up onto the bank, then rolled him over. His brother had never had a particularly bright expression, but it had never been as vacant as it was now.

  He couldn’t look at Aaron’s face for long. Instead, he returned to the creek and studied the place where the trail forded it. There he saw the muddy boot prints where his brother had entered the creek, and on a large boulder in midstream he saw more dried blood. Aaron must have slipped on a wet rock in the dark and fallen, his head striking the boulder.

  Still at a loss about what to do, he left his brother and continued up the trail on Aaron’s ATV until he reached his own. It was on its left side and it took all the muscle he had to right it. He inventoried the damage. Fortunately it was mostly to the body panels, hunks of plastic that he could replace at his leisure. He unbolted what he couldn’t wrench back into position, and straightened the handlebars as best he could. Crossing his fingers, he hit the starter. It ground for a minute and caught.

  He rode his ATV down to where he’d left Aaron, then limped back up the mountain and returned with Aaron’s.

  He sat there for a few minutes, looking at the ford. His brother was dead and there was nothing he could do about that. He also contemplated jail.

  Time, he thought, for more practical concerns. How was he to play this? It wasn’t too long before he came up with a plan.

  He rode his brother’s ATV into the creek and stopped halfway across, front wheel in a hole. He managed to tip the machine on its side. He then retrieved his brother’s body and placed it downstream of the ATV, his head near the boulder that was stained with his blood.

  Lastly, he pulled out the lottery tickets they’d stolen and stuck them in Aaron’s jacket pocket. He felt like a traitor setting up his brother to take the fall, but what else could he do?

  Now what he needed was an alibi. As he rode home, he thought about his cousins Chris and Barry Couch, jailbirds that would as soon lie to cops as breathe. It would probably cost him all he’d cleared from the holdup, but at this point he was a desperate man.

  He rode down to the Black Diamond Bar & Grill and found his cousins in their usual spot next to the jukebox, so they could impose their selections on anyone feeling generous enough to squander a quarter.

  The two had no trouble remembering that they’d played poker with him in Chris’s trailer the night before, in exchange for a hundred dollars each. If they hadn’t been family, Seth would have worried that his money wouldn’t go far, but he knew things about his cousins that the cops would be very interested in finding out, so there was a bit of a Mexican standoff to support his alibi.

  Now, all he had to do was wait for Aaron to be found. He tried to avoid thinking about his brother’s body out there in the cold.

  To his dismay, it started to snow an hour later, big, wet flakes that fell in clumps like goose down. In two hours, three inches were on the ground and the blizzard was already pushing it into drifts. The weatherman estimated that they could get a foot or more before nightfall.

  Harmony returned home late afternoon, released from work early because of the storm.

  “Where’s your brother?” she asked as she placed a bag of groceries on the countertop.

  Seth had polished off the vodka, and took some time coordinating his response. “I don’t know for sure.”

  She stopped putting groceries away and turned to him, hands on hips.

  “I haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon,” Seth said. “He was going to hang out with some tourist he met on the trail, a guy named Peanut.”

  “So where do you think he is now?”

  “He and this Peanut guy were talking about riding into Elkins, so I figured he met some girl and got lucky. And now he’s probably snowed in.”

  “Damn it, why’d you let him take off like that? That boy is too gullible to let run with strangers.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I might not want to spend my life as a babysitter? You don’t give him enough credit anyway. He can make his own decisions.”

  “Like he did yesterday?” she said. “I just hope he’s safe in Elkins and not out on some godforsaken trail trying to ride home.”

  “What you want me to do?” Seth asked. “Go try to find him?”

  “Don’t be an idiot.”

  After fretting through a couple of pilsners, Harmony called the Sheriff’s Department. They had no reports of stranded riders in Elkins, and they didn’t seem much interested in the possibility that someone would have been dumb enough to get caught out on the trails during the blizzard.

  To Seth’s surprise, a sheriff’s deputy did make it out to their house later that afternoon; she had a plow attached to the front of her Chevy truck, doing double duty clearing the road as she responded to calls.

  The deputy, a middle-aged woman packing extra pounds above and below a duty belt tight as a tourniquet, had obviously put two and two together and came up with the equation Aaron = Marlington. She questioned Harmony about Aaron’s movements without mentioning the holdup, but his mother caught onto the tenor of her inquiries and asked the deputy why she was asking such questions.

  “There was a holdup in Marlington last night,” the deputy said, watching Seth out of the corner of her eye. “They got away on ATVs. We think this might be the same guys that have committed three other holdups in the county in the last month, although they never used ATVs before. One clerk on an earlier holdup was shot bad.”

  The deputy turned to him. “Where were you last night?”

  Seth was still processing the frightening possibility that he could be charged with holdups he didn’t commit, so it took him a moment to respond. He was glad he’d set up the alibi, although he knew it sounded thin. His mother, to his dismay, was shaking her head as he spoke.

  The deputy also wasn’t pleased with Seth’s story about the stranger Peanut, especially when Seth said he’d never seen the guy. She asked Seth for a DNA swab, and, with his mother staring daggers at him, he couldn’t help but comp
ly.

  “We’ll do what we can when we can,” the deputy told Harmony as she prepared to leave. “But we don’t have the equipment for a backcountry rescue with all this snow, if it comes to that. If you hear from him, please tell him it’s in his best interest to contact us.”

  “I understand,” Harmony said, and continued to gnaw on her thumbnail.

  When the deputy left, she turned to Seth. “You want to tell me about that?”

  Seth remained composed. “I can’t believe Aaron would steal, although the way he described that Peanut guy he sounded pretty wild. Maybe he’s the guy that’s been doing all these holdups.”

  “Bull,” Harmony said, slumping onto the couch. She leaned forward, elbows on knees, and rested her forehead in her hands. “There’s only one person that could convince Aaron to break the law.”

  “I was playing poker,” Seth said. “Like I told the cops.”

  “You’ve never had any trouble lying to me, have you? I always did my best by both of you. How’d you grow up to be so goddamn evil?”

  The thaw didn’t come for almost two weeks, weeks during which Seth found himself staring out the window of the house for hours at a time. Even when the thaw came, the first couple of days the water running down the creeks was so heavy they were unfordable. It wasn’t until the third day that Seth, his ankle feeling back to normal, was able to get on the mountain on his ATV. He couldn’t stand the thought of his brother being up there any longer, even if finding Aaron himself would probably convince the cops he’d been in on the heist.

  Given the conditions, he wasn’t surprised that it took him the best part of two hours to reach the ford where he’d left his brother.

  But the body and the ATV were gone. The stream was out of its banks, the once-bloody boulder submerged.

  He could understand how Aaron’s body might have been washed away, but what about his ATV? It was too heavy to be moved by the water. Someone must have stolen it. Did they drive off with it while Aaron was still lying freshly dead in the creek?

  He stepped off his ride and followed the creek down the mountain. It wasn’t far before it disappeared into a thicket of rhododendrons the size of a dump truck. Hung up in a snarl of fallen tree limbs on his side of the creek was a lonely boot, the same type that Seth was wearing. He reached out and grabbed it by the heel.

  When he turned it over, a foot fell out and landed back in the stream, floated into the dense foliage. Before it disappeared, Seth could see bite marks in the flesh.

  Seth was surprised by the depth with which he missed his brother. He no longer found any joy in trail riding and took to spending his afternoons hanging out with his cousins at the bar.

  Therefore, it was a coincidence that he was at home one afternoon three weeks after the holdup, playing a video game against himself, when the sheriff came to call.

  The sheriff was a massive man, with arms that would rip the sleeves out of a tailored shirt. At Harmony’s invitation, he took a seat at the kitchen table.

  “We finally got the DNA test back on that holdup in Marlington,” he said, speaking across the room to Seth. “It wasn’t a match for you.”

  “No surprise here,” he said. “I wasn’t there.”

  “Well your brother was,” the sheriff said.

  Harmony shot Seth a murderous look.

  “Your DNA is close enough to the blood we found on the store floor that it had to be from a sibling. You don’t have any other brothers or sisters?”

  Harmony shook her head. “The two of them are all I got.”

  The sheriff idly fingered the tips of the star he wore on his chest. “I’m not believing for a minute that you weren’t with him,” he said to Seth. “But I don’t have any evidence tying you to those holdups. Yet. Next time, though, I’ll be right in your face, and I guarantee you don’t want that.”

  “You’ll never catch me breaking the law,” Seth said. “You can bank on it.”

  Harmony didn’t say anything until the sheriff left. Then she unloaded.

  “You little a-hole. I know he’s dead. I can feel it in my heart. He’d never have run away by himself even if he was guilty, not unless you were leading him.”

  “You think you’re the only one that misses him? We never had anybody except one another. I miss him like I’d miss my leg if they took it off.”

  “If you loved him so much, why’d you lead him to his death?”

  He didn’t have the heart to deny it yet again. Let his mother think what she wanted; she’d never loved him anyway.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said to his silence.

  She stood and crossed the room into her bedroom returned with the shotgun and a couple of shells in her hand. Loaded it, then handed it by the stock to Seth.

  He took the shotgun, mystified. “What’s this?”

  “It’s our family heirloom. I figure now’s the right time to pass it along to you.”

  He took the gun and laid it in his lap, trying to decipher the expression on his mother’s face as she stared out the window at the mountain, a cup of cold coffee sitting at her elbow.

  Peggy Rothschild

  Peggy Rothschild grew up in Los Angeles. Always a mystery-lover, she embraced the tales of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys before graduating to the adult section of the library. An English major in high school, she switched to art—her other passion—in college. Peggy has authored two adult mysteries, Clementine’s Shadow and Erasing Ramona, and one young adult adventure, Punishment Summer. She is a member of Sisters in Crime National and Los Angeles. Find her at peggyrothschild.net.

  The Cookie Crumbles

  Peggy Rothschild

  This is the God’s honest truth: Momma never loved me. At least not the way she loved my big sister, Marnie. I once complained about it to my aunt and got the “mothers love all their children equally” speech. After that, I kept my mouth shut on the subject.

  At least Dad and Gramps adored me. And I them. They made me feel special, like my thoughts mattered. The car accident that took them away turned me into a sad little lump two weeks after my ninth birthday. I didn’t understand why they were gone and, through the fog of pain and loss, it didn’t dawn on me for almost a week that no one loved me anymore.

  Now, I’ve got to be fair—a concept Gramps drove into me—Momma had other things on her plate besides being interested in me.

  Keeping the house looking just-so, losing that last five pounds, and, of course, Marnie. Golden-haired. Gorgeous. Graceful. Bigger than life, she took all the love and attention Momma had to give.

  Momma wasn’t crazy. From my earliest memories, Marnie was special. When she danced, her toes barely touched the earth. A feat I failed to replicate, no matter how hard—or how many times—I tried. And her voice. She had a five-octave range, never hit an off-note, played piano by ear, and could harmonize on the fly.

  Most days—at least according to Momma—Marnie was perfect. But Momma refused to notice the scratches on my arms or bruises on my shins. Apparently appearing perfect makes a person cranky.

  Momma had big plans for my sister. Enter her in a few local beauty pageants, then go regional, before moving up to the talent shows. Marnie would fix all of Momma’s broken dreams.

  Of course, I didn’t see that when I was nine. All I saw was me alone, with no one caring whether I brushed the tangles from my mousy hair or scrubbed off the day’s smudges in the bath. No one caring what I wore to school. And no one caring whether I succeeded there. Or failed. So of course I succeeded. Because the hell with them.

  The hell with Momma and Marnie for making me an outcast in my own home.

  When I was twelve, Momma pulled Marnie from school and took her to the beauty parlor where they both got their hair done. The next morning, Marnie put on the cornflower blue dress that matched her eyes. Momma scrutinized her appearance, then noticed me. “Better get going or you’ll be late for school.”

  I took my time getting dressed. Finally the door to the garage sna
pped shut behind them. They were headed to Marnie’s first big talent show—all the way up in Nashville, an eight-hour journey. Momma touted this fact many, many times before they departed, saying Marnie could use the drive to practice her song and her acceptance speech. I’d been deemed old enough to stay home alone.

  After four days of skipping school, watching TV at all hours and eating nothing but microwaved wraps and burritos, I got the idea to make a “welcome home” surprise for them. Momma never liked to have anything fattening in the house, but after a contest win, she and Marnie sometimes allowed themselves a treat.

  I poked around in Momma’s white-on-white bathroom until I found the chocolate laxatives I knew she kept there. They were maximum strength. Perfect.

  I scanned her cookbooks in search of cookie recipes, made a list, then dug into my small stash of cash in order to buy flour, brown sugar, butter, and a bag of chocolate chips.

  On the six-block walk to the grocery store, I passed a man running a mower across the lawn of a large house, the smell of diesel mixed with the rich scent of pine. He didn’t raise an eyebrow at a kid my age being out of school. No one at the store gave me the hairy eyeball either. I was starting to wonder if I might be invisible.

  At the last minute before heading to checkout, I bought a bag of chopped walnuts. If the chocolate laxative gave the cookies a funny taste, adding nuts might explain it away.

  By block three of the return trip, my arms ached from the weight of the flour and sugar. But tired muscles would be worth it. I smiled at the idea of Momma and Marnie taking turns rushing to the bathroom. A part of me knew I was being mean. Gramps certainly wouldn’t have approved. But why’d they have to leave me behind?

  Back at home, I threw out the frozen food wrappers and washed the dirty cups and plates I’d left in various rooms. After re-reading the recipe, I prepared a batch of doctored cookies, carefully inserting a quarter of a piece of laxative in each. I stayed within earshot of the oven timer’s tick-tick-tick. If I burned the cookies, Momma and Marnie would never eat them.