by Kris Bock
I leaned back, eyes closed, until Eslinda and Nascha bustled into my office. I managed to lift my head and tried to focus.
Eslinda hurried forward. “Are you all right?”
I blinked at her, trying to make sense of the question.
She leaned down and gave me a quick hug. “You poor girl! You’ve had an awful couple of days, haven’t you?” As always, she smelled of cucumbers and mint. Since I’d never seen her eat either of those things, I assumed she used some kind of lotion or shampoo with the scent. I found it oddly comforting.
I rubbed my hands over my face, worrying only vaguely that I was smearing the makeup I’d taken such pains to apply that morning. “It hasn’t been great.”
“Yesterday must have been terrible,” Eslinda said. “And to have to go through it all over again today!” She pressed a hand to her large chest. “I tell you, I got nervous talking to the police, and I didn’t have anything to do with it. Oh! I didn’t mean that you had anything to do with it, except by the most unfortunate accident.”
I looked from her to Nascha, who hadn’t yet spoken, but who gave me a sympathetic smile. I pushed myself a little straighter in my chair and took a deep breath. “That’s not entirely true.” I met Eslinda’s gaze. “I did something really stupid yesterday. I lied to you.”
Her lips twitched. “Oh, honey, if that’s the worst thing that happened yesterday, we could all be grateful.” She leaned against my desk. I felt as if I should give up my chair but couldn’t bring myself to rise.
“I think I’d better explain.” I glanced at the door, and Nascha moved to close it.
My story should have been polished to a fine sheen after my time with the police, but I was so tired I’m not sure I made much sense. Still, they listened with occasional murmurs of sympathy and sounds of shock at Jay’s behavior.
“I should have called the police right away,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Eslinda rubbed my arm. “That was pretty foolish. But I can understand. You certainly aren’t the first girl who’s been talked into something stupid by a man, and Jay put you in an awful position.”
“It may be even worse now. His father threatened to fire me if I involved Jay, and I just told the police everything.”
Eslinda drew herself up like an offended quail. “How dare he! You’re my employee, not his. I’m the only one who can fire you.”
That didn’t exactly put me at ease.
She pushed away from the desk. “I’m going to give him a piece of my mind. Don’t you worry about Lewis Preppard.” She stormed to the door but turned back with a motherly smile. “You should get out of here. Nascha, go buy Audra a drink or something.”
“You heard the boss,” Nascha said. “You want a drink?”
“But it’s only…” I glanced at the clock. Huh, after four. How time flies when the day sucks. And realistically, I wouldn’t get any work done in the next hour. I hauled myself out of the chair. “If I drink alcohol, I’ll be asleep in five minutes. But I’ll give you—” I almost said “my right arm,” but that brought back the memory of the one-handed man. “—anything for an ice cream sundae.”
“Even better, since I don’t drink, but I do eat ice cream.”
She drove. I gazed idly out the window as we passed slowly down Center Street looking for parking. A man stepped out of the hardware store. I recognized him even before I checked for his missing hand. When I glanced at his face, our eyes met and held for a long moment as we drove past. A shiver slid down my spine.
“Nascha, do you know who that was?”
She began to back into a space by a meter. “Who?”
I resisted the urge to turn around in my seat. “The man who just came out of the hardware store.”
She craned to look in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“He was in the woods yesterday. After the police got there.” I shrugged. “It’s probably nothing.”
She gazed at me. “But you think he’s connected.”
“I’d just like to know who he is. I saw him in the parking lot and his truck was making a strange sound.” I shook my head. “Not the truck itself, something inside it.”
She checked the rearview mirror again. “He’s still looking this way. Okay, now he’s turning away. Was it a blue truck?”
“Yes.” This time I couldn’t resist twisting around. The man was opening his truck’s door. He tossed a small bag inside and closed the door, then crossed the street. Nascha and I watched him until he was hidden by parked cars, then we looked at each other.
“You heard something strange in his truck?”
I nodded. “In the back. Kind of like screaming, but inhuman somehow.”
She frowned. “Let’s take a look.”
We got out of the car. I was glad to be on the sidewalk side, better hidden from the one-handed man. Nascha joined me and we strolled the short distance to the blue truck, acting casual.
We glanced around. No one seemed to be paying much attention to us. I stepped behind the truck and shaded my eyes to peer through the tinted window. Nascha did the same.
It took a moment for the shapes to make sense. Cages. Two wire cages, a couple of feet in each direction. They were empty. Behind them some darker lumps appeared to be tote bags and a toolbox.
We stepped back and stared at each other. Nascha said, “He must keep animals of some kind.”
“But what? That wasn’t a dog I heard. A cat?” I hesitated and shook my head. I’d heard cats yowl, but I didn’t think that was the sound from yesterday. Besides, why would anyone be carrying cats around in cages in the back of his truck?
“Rabbits?” Nascha said.
“Rabbits don’t sound like that! I didn’t think they even made noise.”
“They can scream when attacked.” She looked back at the truck window, her face troubled. “If he had rabbits and some other animal threatening them…. But why?” She shook her head. “I grew up in Santa Fe. I’m a city girl. This is not my area of expertise.”
She glanced down the street toward her car. “Oh, I forgot to put money in the meter, and they’re checking! I’m not usually here this early in the day.” She hurried back to her car.
I took one last look in the back window. Those cages were not big enough for a person. Definitely not. Whatever they were used for, they were not used to transport screaming women into the woods. But instead of solving a mystery, I’d increased the questions.
I stepped back, studying the dried mud splattered halfway up the sides. The truck obviously went off road in all kinds of weather. I wondered if you could look up license plates online or if you had to have official access to some database. I memorized the number just in case.
I stepped back onto the sidewalk. Someone spoke from beside the truck. “Hello.”
My gaze swung to the one-handed man. I jerked back in shock and stumbled off the curb. I almost fell out into the street, barely catching myself on the bumper of his truck and the hood of the car behind.
I held myself there, gasping. He stepped around the truck. “Are you all right?”
I pushed myself up. The hot metal of the truck hurt my hand, but I wasn’t sure of my ability to stand without help at that moment so I held on. At least he didn’t offer to help. If he’d gotten close enough to touch me I would have leapt into the street without a thought for traffic.
I scrambled for some excuse for my presence. The only reason I wasn’t babbling was that I was breathing too hard to speak.
The man gazed at me solemnly. “You found Bethany.”
“I… yes.” I was too startled to say anything but the truth.
“Thank you.”
What an odd thing to say. His mouth carried a hint of a smile, but his eyes were so bleak my heart ached even as it slowed its furious pumping.
“I remember you,” he said.
I couldn’t think of an answer. Of course he remembered me from yesterday. We’d just established that he recognized me.
His lips curved a fraction more. “You had a locker down the hall from me.” I must have still looked blank, because he added, “In high school.”
Understanding dawned. His smile became more natural than I’d seen it yet. “You don’t remember me.”
I struggled for something—anything—to say, so I wouldn’t look like a complete idiot. “I’m … sorry?”
“No surprise. You were a grade ahead. And I was kind of a geek.”
That was hard to believe. At a glance he was nondescript, but on closer examination, he had a lean, tough build, though his clothes hung a little too loose. I would have believed he was a wrestler in high school, but geek didn’t come to mind. He was kind of cute in a boy-next-door way, with close-cropped brown hair and those sad gray eyes that probably would have had Eslinda going all motherly.
But there was something about the way he stood, something lurking under the surface of those eyes, that warned against getting too close. He reminded me a bit of a stray dog, thin and abused and tragic, but still tough and wary, the kind you wanted to feed but were afraid to touch because you couldn’t quite trust it not to bite.
My quick examination ranged over his faded jeans, hiking boots, and the long-sleeved gray T-shirt he had pinned up over his missing hand. I was pretty sure I would have remembered someone missing a hand in high school.
He lifted the arm in question. “I didn’t have this then. It came later.”
I felt myself blushing. I hadn’t meant to stare. I was dying to know how he had lost it, but of course I couldn’t ask. I tried to think of something else to say, but questions crowded my mind. What was Bethany to him? He was younger than me, or maybe the same age since boys sometimes started school later. Surely he was too young to be one of Bethany’s rumored boyfriends.
I could ask. Surely it was a natural question in the circumstances. Not whether he was her boyfriend, but how he knew her.
I glanced around, anywhere but at him. Nascha stood about twenty feet away, watching us. She raised her eyebrows as if asking whether she should interrupt. It was tempting to ask for rescue, but that would end the conversation before I’d gotten any answers.
I turned back to the man and said in a rush, “How do you know Bethany Moore?”
His eyes closed for a moment. “She’s my sister.”
Someone had mentioned a brother—Eslinda—she’d said something had happened to him. I hadn’t wanted to ask what, but had vaguely assumed he’d also died. But maybe this was that brother. I forced myself not to look down toward his hand.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said.
What? His hand? Or—my gaze wanted to shift toward the back window of the truck, but I made myself look at his face.
His mouth twisted unhappily. “That can’t have been easy for you. Especially without warning.” He added very softly, “She was pretty, once.”
He was talking about seeing the body. And he had been in the woods while the police were there. To see her, too? I cringed as the memory rose in my mind. It had been hard enough for a stranger. I couldn’t imagine seeing someone I’d loved in such a condition. And he offered me comfort! “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Sorry for your loss.” That sounded pathetic and clichéd.
“You did us a favor. Now we know.” His face hardened and his gaze shifted to the distance. “Maybe now we can do something about it,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. He met my eyes again. “Anyway, thank you. Your friend’s waiting. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“I guess so.” I started to walk away, but spun back. “Wait! I don’t know your name.”
“Kyle. Kyle Moore.”
I nodded. “I’m Audra Needham.”
He smiled. “I know.”
Chapter 12
He got into his truck and I joined Nascha. As we headed down the street, she asked, “What do you think about that drink now?”
I blew out a breath. “That was definitely more than I bargained for. But it’s all right. Everything makes sense now, I think.” I hadn’t actually had time to figure it out. I paused by the ice cream parlor entrance and glanced back as the truck pulled away. “It’s her brother. Bethany Moore’s brother.”
“Oh, of course. He was there yesterday to identify the body.”
“How do you know that?”
“It was in the newspaper that her brother identified the body. I forgot until now.”
“But that doesn’t explain the cages in his truck, or the strange screaming.” I shook it off. “That poor man, to have to identify his sister’s body. It was bad enough for me to see it from a distance. If it were someone I knew and cared about….”
“Assuming, of course, they cared for each other.”
I stared at her. She shrugged and added, “Not all families are happy.”
I knew that well enough. “Did the newspaper article mention me?”
“Not by name. They just said a female employee of the resort found the body. But I imagine it’s no secret now, at least at the lodge.”
“So the whole town won’t know until tomorrow, maybe.” I pulled open the door. “I really need that ice cream.”
We settled in chairs by the window. Nascha finished her sorbet and watched me plow through my caramel sundae. When I finally leaned back, she said, “Feeling better?”
“Yeah, I needed that. Well, I needed food. I wanted ice cream. And I want to never have another day like today or yesterday.”
“At least those officers were pleasant to look at.”
I nodded absently.
“I’m not sure which I prefer,” she added. “The one was so tall and had very nice green eyes. But the other had more of a sense of humor, I think. I liked the way he smiled.” Nascha looked at me, clearly waiting.
“Oh … no, really, you can’t think … I couldn’t….” I shook my head emphatically, even if I couldn’t explain what I was so emphatic about. “They’ve been very nice. Nicer than I deserve. But I wouldn’t know what to do with men like that.”
She grinned, suddenly much less serious—and more wicked—than I’d ever seen her. “I have a few ideas.”
I smiled reluctantly. “I just mean they’re so, well, competent. And older. Intimidating. I’d feel like a shy, awkward teenager with a crush on a teacher or something.”
“You wouldn’t feel equal.”
I nodded. “It’s hard, isn’t it? I don’t want to be like my mother, how she is now. Maybe she was different with my father; she was only sixteen. He was here for the winter, teaching skiing, and left before he found out she was pregnant. Or maybe when he found out. But I’ve seen Mom with other boyfriends, and she dominates. Everything has to be her way.”
Nascha leaned her elbows on the table. “Has she ever married?”
“Yes, she married Ricky’s—my brother’s—father. It lasted less than three years. He left when Ricky was a baby.” I sighed and poked my spoon at the melted swirls of vanilla and caramel in the bottom of the bowl. “And I can’t really blame him. He was a nice guy, but Mom made his life miserable.”
“You were fond of him?”
“Yes. I was ten when they started dating, and I very much wanted a father. I tried to be the perfect daughter. He was always kind to me, but….” Memories I’d tried to forget lurked in the shadows of my mind. My stomach churned.
“Audra.” Nascha touched my arm. “Are you all right? Did he try something?”
“No! Oh no, he didn’t do anything wrong. It was my mother.” I rubbed my hands over my face. Tears pricked my eyes and I couldn’t believe how easily the pain came back. But it was better to acknowledge it and move on. “I matured early. Physically, that is. I realize now I was incredibly naïve in high school. Anyway, by thirteen I’d shot up to five foot ten and gotten a figure, such as it is. I think my mother was jealous.”
“I don’t think I like your mother very much.”
I gave a watery chuckle. “When I’m feeling generous, I can feel sorry for her.” I straightened.
“But she started picking at Richard for everything. And me, too. Making snide innuendos. I guess she finally found his breaking point. He walked out. I haven’t seen him since. She won’t even let him see Ricky.”
“If he really wanted to, he could fight for that right.”
I sighed. “Yes. And that hurts, too. He was nice, but weak. Mom is strong, but such a perfectionist she’s often cruel. I don’t want to be like either of them.”
She patted my arm again. “You aren’t. From what I’ve seen, you’re already better than either of them.”
“Thank you.” The ache started to recede.
“But I can understand why you don’t want a handsome, dominant police officer.” She gave her wicked grin. “So then you won’t mind if I take both of them.”
I laughed. “You’re just trying to cheer me up.”
“Is it working?”
“It is, thanks.” Tears wanted to well up again, but I blinked them back. I wasn’t usually this weepy. “And thanks for, well, putting up with me. You and Eslinda. You didn’t have to…” I broke off.
She scowled at me. “Am I going to have to buy you another sundae?” I managed a weak laugh and her voice grew gentle. “Audra, you’re not the villain here. We’re on your side.”
“I’m glad. It makes a difference.” I checked the time and sighed. “I should get going.”
Nascha rose. “At least it’s Friday.”
“Is it? I guess it is.”
“You’ll be at the festival tomorrow?”
I groaned. Even though Eslinda and I had been talking about it that morning, I’d forgotten. Working in event planning meant I often had to work evenings and weekends. The summer festival would attract tourists and locals alike, and I had to help keep the crowds happy and under control.
