Degrees of Separation

by Sue Henry

  Malone fired a shot that hit the ground directly in front of Maxie.

  “Let me go,” Fenneli begged Alex, pushing against his arm. “I’ve already been responsible for one death. I don’t want to make it more.”

  “You didn’t kill Donny Thompson.”

  “I didn’t shoot him, no. I loved him. But if it hadn’t been for me, he wouldn’t have been killed. That makes me responsible, doesn’t it?”

  “How?”

  “Donny came up the hill that night from this side, heading for Chuck Landers’s old cabin on the other side, where I was supposed to be waiting for him. But I didn’t wait. I climbed the hill and was at the top to meet him when he came up. We were going back there—to be together and decide what to do about our relationship. It just happened—us loving each other—neither of us intended it. But we both knew that Jeff was crazy jealous and already suspected that something was up.

  “He showed up before we could go down. He’d found Donny’s bike across the road, where he’d parked it. He didn’t say a word, just shot Donny in the head, and went back down this side of the hill and back to the bar, I guess. Donny was dead before he fell.”

  “You lying bitch,” Malone shouted, taking a step forward into the light. Before anyone else could move, he leveled the handgun at her, and fired.

  The bullet hit her in the left shoulder below the collarbone. Before Alex could catch her, she took one sharp breath and crumpled to the ground where he had been standing.

  But he was not standing there anymore. With more people in the line of fire, before Malone could aim and pull the trigger again, Jensen was on him, shoving the gun wide and wresting it away with one hand, while he directed a solid blow to the man’s midsection with the other. It left him rolling on the ground as he tried to regain his breath.

  Flinging the gun out of reach, Jensen turned him over facedown, put a knee in the middle of his back, and held him there.

  “Jess,” he called. “Call 911 for an ambulance ASAP. Then get my handcuffs out of my duty coat in the house, toss ’em out here, and call the detachment for assistance—in that order. Tell them I’ve got it covered, but need backup on a shooting here. They’ll know who to send.”

  Jessie sprang up, moving fast to do what he asked.

  “Then bring some towels, a blanket, and ice in plastic for Fenneli,” he called after her.

  He turned to Maxie, who was on her knees beside Fenneli, holding pressure on the damage in the woman’s shoulder with the winter scarf she had been wearing.

  “How’s she doing?”

  He was surprised to hear the wounded woman herself answer in a weak voice. “It’s starting to hurt a lot, but I can breathe okay.”

  “She’s okay for the moment, I think,” Maxie assured him. “How long will that ambulance take? She’s bleeding a fair amount.”

  “Just keep solid pressure on it. Jessie’ll be back quick. She knows. Lying on frozen ground won’t hurt her for a little bit, but as soon as I get Malone secured we’ll move her inside if the medics aren’t here yet.”

  They showed up in record time and the driveway was soon busy with an ambulance and a pair of medics, who were then gone with Robin Fenneli on her way to the hospital in good hands. All the law enforcement Alex could wish for showed up, sirens screaming, to take Jeff Malone to a holding cell in Palmer, where the investigation would proceed, eventually to trial and, hopefully, conviction.

  Finally left alone, Alex, Jessie, and Maxie proceeded into the house, where they reviewed the events of the evening over hot coffee and much appreciated shots of Jameson.

  “Well,” observed Jessie, peering out the window for perhaps the dozenth time. “It’s still snowing and there’s over an inch on the ground out there and it doesn’t look like stopping. Want to go for a dog sled ride tomorrow, Maxie?”

  “Sure. But then I think I’d better arrange to get on back to Homer and make sure my own nest is still as cozy as I left it. If it’s snowing here, the way the weather pattern’s been going the last few years, it’s undoubtedly snowing there too.”

  “Bet you’re glad you’re flying and won’t have to drive on slick roads this time,” Alex said, coming back from the kitchen, where he had taken their used glasses.

  “You bet.”

  She stood up, drained the last swallow of her Jameson.

  “Good night, all. I’m for bed,” she said, heading for the stairs that led up to the guest room. “I’ve had more exercise in the last couple of days than in a week at home. And you two really do know how to entertain your guests with unusual events like those of this evening, don’t you? Haven’t had so much excitement since Jessie and I came up the Alaska Highway together.”

  “If I’d only had a light I would have got up it faster,” Alex said the next evening, recalling his aggravating struggle to make it up the hill in the dark. “It’s amazing how one small thing can alter the outcome of an action.”

  Then, with a grin, he gave those assembled a literary scrap memorized in childhood, as he often did: “For want of a nail a shoe was lost. For want of a shoe a horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

  “My Daniel always said it was ‘tup-ney nail,’” Maxie said. “But that may have just been the way Aussies say it.”

  “According to my mother, it’s ‘two-penny,’” he agreed. “But I looked it up once online and couldn’t find two-penny used anywhere. Did you know that Benjamin Franklin used the verse in Poor Richard’s Almanac?”

  “Where do you get all that stuff, Alex?” Becker teased him.

  “Oh, here and there. We were big readers. My folks both encouraged it.”

  They were five around the big round table for Maxie’s Friday night send-off dinner, which had been appreciated, and dessert had now taken its place—a peach cobbler that had been keeping warm in the oven and was served with a side of vanilla ice cream, much to Alex’s approval.

  Jessie sat with her back to the kitchen and to her right around the table were Maxie, Phil Becker, his sister, Alvina, and Alex, who completed the circle of friends, old and new.

  Tank and Stretch, also well fed, were, as usual, snoozing on the rug in front of the sofa and kitty-corner from the stove.

  “How’s your arm, Phil?” Jessie asked.

  “Doc says it’s doing better than he expected,” came the answer. “But I’d still like to know who cut my seat belt and ran me off the road out there.”

  “So would I—and I intend to find out. I think the key is in the Road Pirates, if we can convince someone to talk.

  “There are some other loose ends I’d like to tidy up,” Alex added, and contributed one that was still on his list of things to investigate. “I want to know who sabotaged the brakes and steering on Sharon Parker’s motorcycle—and why. But I’ve a feeling it has nothing to do with Donny Thompson’s death, so I’ll have to look elsewhere. First, I’m going to have a serious sit-down with Pete at the Alpine Inn in Sutton tomorrow. There’s been enough of him keeping his own counsel.”

  “You going out for the funeral?” Becker asked.

  “Yes. I think it’s the least I can do—that and explain to the family exactly what happened, as well as I know it. Jessie and I went to see Robin Fenneli today and she laid it all out pretty clearly for me, and I believe her. Jessie’s volunteered to go to Sutton with me and has an errand of her own. Robin asked her to deliver flowers, since she’ll be in the hospital a few more days.”

  “Malone?”

  “Will be in jail from now till next Tishah-b’Ab, if I have anything to say about it.”

  The next morning Jessie drove Maxie back into Anchorage to catch her short flight to Homer at the far end of the Kenai Peninsula, hugged her good-bye, and sent her on her way.

  “And thanks again for the ride with your sled and dogs yesterday,” Maxie told her. “I’ve always wanted to do that. It wa
s great.”

  Jessie watched her walk away and wave before she disappeared onto the tarmac to board the small plane for the flight home.

  She felt singularly lonely all the way back to the Mat-Su Valley, but very glad to have such a dear friend.

  “I’m glad we went to the funeral,” she said to Alex late that evening, laying down the day’s paper and getting up to bank the fire in the cast-iron stove for the night.

  “Me too,” he agreed, unfolding himself from where he had been sprawled on the opposite end of the sofa with the editorial page. “It was good to be able to have a few answers for some of the Thompsons’ questions, and though I’m not fond of funerals, it was a nice, short service.”

  Stepping up behind her, he waited until she finished with the fire, stood up, and turned around into his arms, where he held her close for a moment or two before leaning back to look down and say, “Hey. You know that thing about degrees of separation?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m glad I don’t have to search through five or six people for the one person I’d want most to find.”

  “Oh, really?” Jessie gave him an impish grin.

  “Yeah, really.”

  “How many degrees, then?”

  “None, love,” he told her. “No separation at all, okay?”

  “Works for me, Trooper.”