Kelly tensed upon hearing Robert was in the diner, but he tried to shirk it off. “Seems like as good a place as any to start. Locals wouldn’t be that dumb unless it was some high schoolers.”
“Yeah, there’s a few of them that I might put on the shortlist, too. The ones with cars, anyway.” Dennis pulled his keys from his pocket. “How’s my little cousin and grandma doing, Ryan? I haven’t talked to them in a while.”
Ryan gave a shrug. “Dani’s good, and Madgie is Madgie.”
Dennis nodded. “Good, good. Tell ‘em hi for me. If you two think of anything else, you know how to reach me. I’ll ask around a bit more, then I need to cruise some of the roads to make sure no one’s stranded out there.”
“Hey, if you happen to see the Suhrs around, could you tell them to give me a call?” Kelly asked. “I haven’t been able to get a hold of them since yesterday.”
Dennis nodded. “You’re a good boy watching over the old folks, Kelly. I’ll keep an eye out for them. You guys have a good day.”
Ryan and Kelly watched him leave before looking at one another.
“Should we go hit the bakery for breakfast?” Kelly asked, having no desire to be anywhere near Robert.
Ryan had suffered his own fair share of bullying from their former classmate, and he quickly nodded. “Yeah, and we can ask Dani if there are any good stories about the old ladies getting shuttled around last night.”
Chapter
17
Dani sat perched behind the register in the bakery as usual when they walked in. She offered Ryan a tired smile, but she didn’t get up to come around the counter to greet them.
Ryan frowned at her indifferent reaction to his arrival. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
She looked back over her shoulder toward the kitchen, making sure that Madgie wasn’t within earshot before looking at the guys. “I didn’t sleep much last night. She kept me up after you left.”
“Why?” Ryan asked.
Dani shook her head and leaned forward on the counter. “She was just wound up when she came home. I think she wasn’t feeling well, and she was afraid to be alone. Every time I tried to excuse myself to head off to bed, she got agitated.”
Ryan frowned and shook his head. “She should have given you the day off if you were up all night. I don’t think anyone would have cared if this place wasn’t open today. People are going to lay low at home until the streets get cleared up.”
“God, I know,” she said, straightening up again. “You know how she is, though. This place hasn’t been closed except on Sundays for thirty-four years. She’s back there baking up a storm, even though we’re not gonna sell a damn thing all day. Speaking of, you boys hungry? You can have whatever you want from the case, otherwise, it’s all going into the freezer to be passed out at church this weekend.”
Worried or not, Ryan and Kelly immediately looked through the glass, pointing out a few pastries for breakfast. Dani loaded their order into a box before passing it over the counter to them. “Go sit down, and I’ll bring some coffee and come hang with you. I’ve been bored out of my mind.”
A few minutes later, they were settled in, and Ryan restarted the conversation. “Did Madgie say anything about Mrs. Suhr last night? Kel has been trying to get a hold of her today, but no luck.”
She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Not really. She said they were all at Hazel’s house, unaware of the snow building up outside until they decided to call it a night. When they walked out, they were surprised to see all the snow dumped on the road. Speaking of, we have to go by Hazel’s and pick up grandma’s Caddy if the plow has been down there. I don’t need to be stuck as grandma’s limo service. My little car had a hell of a time with it this morning.”
“I can go pick it up and take it back to your house,” Ryan said. “Kelly can follow in the truck.”
“That’d be great. I’ll get the keys. Grandma will appreciate it.” Dani got up from the table and disappeared into the back for a moment.
Ryan looked over at Kelly, seeing his eyes narrowed and his mouth pulled down into a frown. “What?”
He looked at his friend. “Why would Madgie be up all night like that?”
“I dunno. She’s old and a little touched in the brain?”
“What if the old women did go out there to vandalize the equipment?” Kelly asked. “I laughed off the possibility earlier, but...”
Ryan started to respond, but Dani returned with Madgie’s key ring in hand, tossing it to him before she sat down again.
“She says to tell you thanks for going to get it. Grandma doesn’t like to drive when the roads are mucked up anymore.”
He tucked the keys away. “No problem. It’s not like we’re working today. The equipment has been vandalized bad enough that it will take a week to get it all repaired.”
Dani’s eyes went wide, and she leaned onto the table. “What? When did that happen?”
“Last night,” he replied. “Dad found it all screwed with this morning. Belts, wires, and hoses all cut. Wouldn’t be surprised if they pissed in the fuel tanks while they were at it.”
“Who would do that?” she asked.
“That is the million-dollar question,” Kelly said before biting into a donut.
“And this happened during the storm?”
“Yup,” Ryan replied.
She shook her head. “That’s messed up. I hope whoever did it froze to death out there.”
Ryan made sure that Madgie wasn’t anywhere close before speaking again. “I know your grandma and the other old-timers were all freaked out about the job. You don’t think there’s any chance it was them?”
Dani started to laugh, but she quickly stopped when she realized he wasn’t joking. “I... I can’t imagine that group doing something like that.”
“If they did, do you think she would have been agitated all night like she was?” Ryan asked.
“Ryan, that’s not cool,” she said, growing defensive. “I hardly think my grandma has the technical skill to even know where to start with one of those machines to damage it. Maybe one of the old farmer women would know what to do, but Grandma? Come on.”
Ryan and Kelly immediately looked at one another, both thinking the same thing. They needed to find Mrs. Suhr.
Chapter
18
After retrieving Madgie’s car, Ryan’s dad had called. Henry wanted to start getting an inventory of the damaged parts going, and he needed the truck and his son to come back home. Ryan reluctantly agreed, but he let Kelly borrow his car to go check on Grace as the plows had finally cleared most of the roads through town.
Kelly pulled up before the old farmhouse the Suhrs maintained on the north edge of town. He got out and trudged to the front door, fighting his way through the thick layer of snow. Being almost noon, Kelly was surprised Mr. Suhr hadn’t gotten the snowblower out yet to clear the walkway.
He shook the snow from his boots and pant legs once he got onto the covered porch. Part of him wanted the noise he was making to get one of the Suhrs to come to the door without him knocking, but no one appeared.
Kelly moved to the door and pulled open the glass storm door. When he reached out to knock on the heavy wooden door behind it, there was no resistance, and the door slowly swung open. He hesitated for a moment, unsure what to do. Since the Suhrs were basically family, he stepped inside the entryway, calling out to see if anyone was there.
Kelly stood and listened, not wanting to scare either of the home’s elderly residents, but there was no response. He moved a little further into the house toward the kitchen, wanting to get away from the cold that had infiltrated near the door, but it didn’t get any warmer. His breath was visible before him.
Stepping into the kitchen, he looked around but still didn’t see anyone. One of Grace’s mismatched teacups, this one sporting kittens around the perimeter, sat on the counter. He went closer to see if it was still warm, but the liquid inside was frozen solid. Kelly became increasi
ngly worried that the heat had gone out and perhaps the Suhrs had frozen to death. He left the kitchen and ran upstairs, fearing the worst.
The bedroom door was wide open and he darted inside. While he’d envisioned finding them frozen in their bed, it was neatly made. Nothing in the room was out of place to give any indication that something had gone wrong at all.
Kelly sighed and realized he should have looked in the garage to see if William’s truck was inside. Perhaps they’d simply gone off to retrieve Grace’s car from Hazel’s house. It had still been there when he and Ryan had gone to get Madgie’s.
Then again, if their furnace was broken, they might have left the house to go somewhere with heat until a repairman was available. The wait on such things after particularly cold nights or big storms sometimes went on for days.
Back on the main floor, Kelly went to the laundry room to exit out the back door to reach the detached garage. He was surprised to find the floor of the laundry room covered in several inches of snow that had drifted in, the back door wide open.
He shrugged off any thoughts of robbery as the house was in perfect, if not cold, condition. With as bad as the wind had gotten the night before, it was entirely possible the two doors on opposite ends of the home had simply been blown open. He knew the Suhrs generally didn’t lock up, trusting as they were, so it wasn’t out of the question.
The door to the garage was open as well, and he stepped inside, finding it vacant. William’s truck was gone. Kelly went back out and walked around the garage to see which way any tire marks in the snow headed, but the driveway was just a smoothed over surface of deep snow.
“All right, the furnace went out last night and they left after she got home,” he said to himself, going back toward the house to close it up properly.
Kelly went through the house, opening up a few of the taps to a slow drip to get the water in the pipes moving before they froze and ruptured. Afterward, he locked everything up and went back out to Ryan’s car, firing it up and getting the heater running.
The Suhrs had a son who lived twenty miles outside of town on a farm. If their heat was out, they’d probably gone there. Cellular reception outside of town was spotty with most of the bargain carriers, and Kelly knew he probably wouldn’t hear from either of them until they came back into town. He found a scrap of paper jammed between the seats of the car, and he quickly wrote out a note for them to give him a call when they got back to the house. He ran that back to the front door and pinched it between the door and frame before leaving.
He returned Ryan’s car to the house, but no one was home. Out of options, he made the short walk home.
With his back still nagging at him from the day prior, he took a few more pain relievers and landed on the couch. Though he needed to go outside and shovel the snow from his walkway, he had no motivation to do so.
He kept thinking about the Suhrs, wondering if they really were okay. Had he not seen Grace outside of his window the night before, he wouldn’t have worried about it. However, despite his repeated attempts to tell himself it had been in his head, he knew what he’d really seen.
Chapter
19
Deputy Dennis Bryant was nearly to I-70 along the icy two-lane highway that connected Brayton to the rest of the world. The drive had taken him considerably longer than usual as he’d never dared go over twenty miles an hour on the glassy ice covering the asphalt. Even at that speed, gusts of wind had come up, making him fear he’d be pushed right into the ditch. Though the plow had been by several hours before, drifts were already retaking the road. He came to the single stop sign on the highway, with the interstate only a quarter of a mile away.
Dennis let the old Ford Expedition roll to a halt, noticing the stop sign facing him twisted badly to the side. At first, he thought the plow might have struck it, but the buildup of snow on the sign itself would have been knocked off had the plow bumped it. He scanned the intersection, spotting a large snow-covered mound in the ditch along his side of the highway.
Dennis flipped on the lights and crept through the intersection before pulling his vehicle over and getting out. Though the ditch beside the road wasn’t particularly deep, the amount of snow there, worsened by what the plow had thrown over, made getting down into it a challenge.
He fell when the berm of snow he descended gave way, sending him sliding downward. When he struck the side of the mound he wanted to reach, it produced a hollow thud, knocking snow from the side of the vehicle buried there.
Dennis struggled up to his feet. While he’d thought a small car might have been buried, he was looking at the cab of a diesel pickup truck. It was a blue Dodge, the same as the missing Suhrs owned, and knowing they were missing, his heart sank.
He swiped his gloved hand across the driver’s window and looked in. The windshield had broken in during the wreck, and the only thing he could see inside the truck was more snow.
He climbed back up to his SUV to get a shovel before returning to the truck and excavating enough snow to get the door open. Generally, slide-offs were abandoned by the time he found them, but he still needed to check before calling in a wrecker.
The door wasn’t locked. After several hard tugs the ice gave way and it popped open. Dennis caught his breath when he saw the side of William Suhr’s body exposed. Most of him was packed in the snow filling the cab, but his left leg and arm had been pressed against the door.
Though he already knew it was too late, Dennis dug the man’s body out as quickly as he could manage in the vain hope he was still alive. His body was already stiff in death, however.
Mr. Suhr hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt, and the truck predated airbags. He’d either been killed on impact, or knocked unconscious and died of hypothermia later, but that would be left for the coroner to decide.
Worried he’d find another body in the truck, he frantically dug further until he was sure there wasn’t anyone else inside. He feared Mrs. Suhr’s body was in the immediate area, though, as Kelly had said he’d been unable to contact her. Knowing he needed help searching, he climbed back up to his vehicle and called in assistance.
Chapter
20
The phone started vibrating on the coffee table, and Kelly opened his eyes before reaching out with his right arm to pick it up. The number came up as Tim Suhr’s home phone, the son of the missing couple.
“Hello?”
There was a long pause before Tim managed to get anything out. “Kelly, it’s Tim. The sheriff’s department just called. They found dad a little while ago, dead.”
Kelly jumped to his feet, his chest tightening. “What?”
“Said he was found off the side of the road, almost to the interstate. The truck slid off, I guess.” There was another long pause as Tim desperately fought to keep his composure. “It killed him.”
“Oh, shit, Tim...” Kelly didn’t know how to respond, his legs going numb beneath him.
“They haven’t found mom yet,” he continued. “They’re searching the area around the truck to see if she got out, but she would have died out there, too.”
“Tim, I’m so sorry,” he slowly sat back down on the edge of the couch, his eyes starting to burn. Kelly relayed the story of his visit to their house that morning, and his repeated failed attempts to contact them.
“I appreciate you trying to look after them,” Tim said, his voice wavering and starting to crack. “I’m still waiting for the plow to get down the road, so I can come into town and try to figure out what happened. I’m hoping mom wasn’t with him and maybe she is somewhere else, but I can’t imagine why he would have been out that far in the weather last night, or why she wouldn’t have been with him.”
“I’ll walk down to the store, just to see if she’s there by chance. Roads in town are clear enough for me to get around,” Kelly said, standing again and going to grab his coat. “When you do get into town, call me and I can try and help.”
Tim gave out a few jagged breaths, tears evident in
his voice when he spoke. “I’d appreciate that. County said the plow should be down the road within an hour. Guess it lost a tire earlier or something. I’ll call so I know where to pick you up. I could use the company.”
“All right. I’ll let you know what I see at the store.”
“Appreciate it, Kelly. Talk to you soon.”
He bent to tug on his boots. “No problem, and I’m really sorry, Tim. Bye.”
The tears froze on Kelly’s cheeks as he trudged along the side of the road. William’s death and Grace’s missing status tore him apart. Kelly had never lost anyone close to him before. The nearest thing he’d ever gone through was his parents giving up on farming and moving away. Since all of his real grandparents had passed before he was born, the Suhrs had filled that place in his life.
Thinking about what William had endured was horrific, but to think about what Grace would have suffered if she had been out there with him...
He shook off the thought again, though it was persistent and wouldn’t be held off for long. Kelly tried to clear his mind and resolved to finish the walk to the feed store before giving up his remaining hope. While the walk normally only took about ten minutes, with the snow making his shortcut through the park impossible, it was going to take twice as long.
There was a bank sign along the way that alternated between the time and temperature. When it read -13°F, he wasn’t surprised. While a few vehicles moved along the roads, most were staying in. The going was treacherous, and he slipped multiple times as the road and sidewalk were iced over. While the salt truck had been through at some point, its results weren’t impressive. It was simply too cold for the mag chloride it spread to do much.
Kelly emerged on the main road and heard something behind him. He stopped and turned, seeing Ryan’s car pulling up beside him. Without hesitating, he pulled open the passenger door and got inside, pushing back the hood of his coat.
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