Winter Song (Seasons Pass Book 1)

by Susan C. Muller

  “When I said you sent me, he must have thought we were close friends. He asked how you were doing and said he hadn’t seen you since he handled your wife’s probate last November. Said he’d been worried about you at the time and meant to call you over Christmas.”

  She shifted in her chair and glanced up and back down quickly. “I should have stopped him, but it was like a train wreck. You know you should look away, but you can’t. Anyway, I apologize for nosing into your business. I didn’t want you to think I asked.”

  Fuck. Damn lawyers, he knew he couldn’t trust them. Now what was he supposed to say? He could handle the loneliness, he could handle the dark thoughts, but he couldn’t handle it when people tried to make him talk.

  Now it was his turn to avoid eye contact. “Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled.

  She pushed back her chair and stood. “Let me heat up that coffee for you. Or I could warm it with something stronger.”

  Noah cradled the cup, drawing strength from its warmth. “Just coffee for me. I’m still on duty. I have to go back to the office in a few minutes.”

  “This late?” she asked, refilling his cup.

  “There’s something I need to ask you about. Did you and Crystal ever talk on the phone?”

  “You’re kidding, right? Almost every day.”

  “Did she talk about her situation? What she might be planning to do?”

  Laurel played with her coffee cup, pushing it around on the table. “Mostly we talked about me, and now I feel like such a shit. All the times I cried and whined on her shoulder. If I’d been a better friend and asked how she was doing . . .” She twisted in her chair and wiped tears from her eyes.

  At least someone’s crying for her. Her husband acts like her death is an inconvenience. “Did she ask any questions or give any suggestions that would lead you to think she might be making plans of her own?”

  “I can’t remember. But when she took that car in a couple of days after Christmas to pick up the floor mats, and found out it was leased in his company’s name, she was livid. There was no doubt she was in the exact same position I was in, and she knew it. Did we talk about it on the phone or in person, I’m not sure.”

  I’ll know as soon as I hear those tapes. And if I know, then Hudson knew.

  He placed his hands on the table, ready to push himself up. “I better get moving. Have to make sure all the evidence is logged in correctly. I’d love to start going through it tonight, but I better wait and look at it fresh in the morning. Don’t want to take a chance on missing something.”

  She reached out and touched him. “What in the world happened to your hand? It doesn’t look good.”

  He was so surprised, he almost jerked his hand away. How long had it been since someone touched him? His sister, sure, she was always hugging him and his nieces kissed him, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d tried to hug his mother-in-law after the funeral, but hugging Betsy’s mom was like hugging a marble column.

  He cleared his throat. “My dog. It’s just a little nip. I don’t think she knew what she was doing.”

  She ran her fingers over the teeth marks and Noah couldn't decide if the tingling came from her or from the bite.

  “Let me put something on it. It isn’t hot to the touch, so I don’t think it’s infected, but no reason to take a chance.” She rummaged in a cabinet until she found peroxide and gauze and cleaned both sides of his hand.

  He wasn’t used to being taken care of, and the contrast between the sting of the peroxide and the softness of her hands was disconcerting, but he left his hand in hers for several seconds longer than necessary.

  “You do know that dogs can grieve just like people. If she’s acting out too much, you might want to talk to your vet.”

  “I’m not putting her down,” Noah snapped. He could understand Hudson suggesting it, but it was like a punch in the gut to think Laurel would say the same thing.

  “Heavens, no.” Laurel looked shocked. “I meant doggie Prozac or something. Of course you don’t want to put her down. It’s just that the vet might have some suggestions on how you can help her. Behavior modification, training, stuff like that.”

  Noah flushed. He hadn’t shown that much emotion since, well, he couldn’t remember. He pushed his cup away and stood. “Thanks for the coffee and the advice. I’d best be getting back to the office. Don’t want to leave Conner with all the work.”

  He would never have thought of Prozac for a dog. And he certainly hadn’t realized that Sweet Pea might be grieving as much as he was. Maybe talking wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

  Tonight he’d go home early, leave the log-in to Conner. He’d feed Sweet Pea on time. Take her for a walk. Show her a little more attention. That would be a start.

  The driver’s car was slow to start, producing a loud grinding sound before finally turning over. It hadn’t been driven in more than a week and the weather was unusually cold, but it reminded him that the car was now five years old. It irked him to drive a car that could no longer be called a late model. Intellectually, he realized he didn’t need a nicer car at this point, nor could he afford the attention a new car would bring, especially with his parents. Still, he was used to better, he deserved better.

  He took his time driving home. If he arrived too soon, he’d have to listen to his father gripe about everything from the economy to the programming on TV. Any respect he’d had for his father had vanished when he lost his job and made no attempt to find another one.

  He’d had to step in before his parents headed for welfare.

  If he timed his arrival correctly, he could do a load of laundry, eat, grab his electric blanket, and be gone with as little conversation as possible.

  He smelled food when he walked in the door, but it wasn’t steak. Chicken. His mother had stopped for take-out fried chicken. He hadn’t been home since New Year’s Day and greasy fast food was the best she could do?

  She set the table in the dining room, as if that would make up for the lousy meal.

  He was finishing a piece of dry, store-bought cake when he noticed a large man with a tiny dog stroll past the dining room window. The cake caught in his throat as he recognized the man. It was dark outside, maybe he was mistaken.

  “Who’s that?” he asked his mother. “I think I’ve seen him before.”

  “The policeman who moved into the Yates’ old house. I can’t think of his name. You met him at the Fourth of July picnic. His wife brought that delicious cobbler. Then a month later, she was gone. Killed by a speeding driver on her way to work. I think she was a teacher.”

  His mother slid another piece of cake onto his plate. “Are you sure you can’t spend the night? We never get to see you anymore. I bought those sweet rolls you like.”

  Now he knew exactly where the cop lived. And how to get in there. Fortune did sometimes smile on the worthy. If he could put up with his parents for another couple of hours, he’d have all the information he needed to throw the cops off his trail. How deliciously ironic that it was the same cop who spoiled his plans in the first place. “I suppose I could stay. But I’ll have to get moving first thing in the morning.”

  “Of course he can stay. There’s free food involved and his mother to wait on him,” his father grumbled.

  The driver sat with his parents and watched an inane reality cooking show. Why did they watch such drivel? Neither one of them cooked.

  His mother went to bed before the news started. She had to get up early for work in the morning. But his father showed no signs of retiring. When the driver turned the TV to an in-depth program on global warming, his father headed for the bedroom.

  After fifteen minutes, his father’s snores shook the house like a semi with a bad muffler and the driver picked up his laptop and slipped out the back door. Keeping to the shadows, he made his way down the street to the Yates’ old home. He knew the house well.

  As a kid, his mother had forced him to play with the Yates’ son, Kenny. She thought
it would be good for him to socialize with kids his own age. What a joke. Kenny was dumber than a bag of dirt, but tormenting him was always good for a laugh.

  A light was on in the back bedroom. The cop must still be up. With any luck, he’d be on his computer. Using his sweatshirt as protection against fingerprints, he jiggled the side garage door until the lock let loose.

  The door gave a screech when it opened and his heart skipped rope in his chest. What was he thinking, breaking into a cop’s house? Sure, he’d done this dozens of times in the past, but then the worst that could happen if he got caught was that his mother would ground him. This guy had a gun. He might get shot.

  Still, he needed the information and this was the best way. The fact that this nosy cop had spoiled his perfect crime had nothing to do with his decision.

  The cement floor looked cold and hard. The driver found an old lawn chair cushion and pulled it off a shelf. Last summer’s pollen flew into his nose and eyes as he set it on a stack of brand new, tightly rolled garden hoses. Turning on the overhead light was too risky, but he’d planned ahead and brought a headlamp. He pulled it over his forehead and switched it on low.

  In less than ten minutes, he’d hijacked the cop’s computer and was reading everything the cop did. He had expected porn. Didn’t macho men like cops troll those sites all the time? But this guy was studying dog behavior. No matter. He’d found the password and would come back tomorrow to discover how much the police knew about the Hudson case. That cop’s computer belonged to him now.

  When the cop turned off his computer, the driver powered his down and stood to leave. The back door slammed and he recognized the cop’s voice from TV.

  “Get a move on, Sweet Pea. It’s too cold to dawdle.”

  Bad enough the guy looked ridiculous walking such a tiny dog, but he named it Sweet Pea? This was going to be a piece of cake. The guy obviously had as much brain power as the dog.

  Before he could slip out the side door, the dog began barking ferociously. Tiny claws scraped against the brick, but the only door on that side opened into the house.

  The cop called softly, probably worried about the neighbors. “Sweet Pea, Sweet Pea, stop that. Come back inside. Nothing’s out there. I’ll set traps tomorrow, just in case.”

  The driver eased the door shut and hurried home through darkened streets. He needed to get into that house tomorrow to look for any papers that might tell him how the investigation was going. Getting inside would be easy. A passage from the garage up through the attic led into the laundry room. He’d slipped inside to play practical jokes on Kenny several times when they were kids, moving things and hiding his homework, and no one had ever figured it out. Of course, it might be a tighter fit now that he was grown. And the stakes were much higher.

  The dog was the problem. If it carried on like it did tonight, the neighbors might hear. But all problems could be solved with a little ingenuity.

  His father’s snores still filled the house and he tiptoed into the master bathroom. On the counter were his mother’s sleeping pills. He helped himself to four: two for his father and two for the dog.

  That dog was toast.

  The alarm woke Noah at five-thirty with an annoying beep, beep, beep that set his teeth on edge. The first thing he saw when his feet hit the cold floor was Sweet Pea, glaring at him.

  “Sorry to wake you so early, Pea, but that’s the price you pay for having me come home in time to walk you last night.” The dog turned her back on him and sat down.

  By the time he had showered, shaved and dressed, the aroma of coffee filled the house and he poured himself a cup, savoring the first sip. He placed some bread in the toaster and heated a sausage patty in the microwave before carrying his cup to the back stoop where he waited for Sweet Pea to do her morning business.

  The sky was still dark and the air cold, but several degrees above freezing. “No barking this early, girl. We don’t want to wake the neighbors. They’ve already complained about you.”

  The Yorkie made her circuit of the yard, stopping to sniff at the garage before moving on. “Nothing there, girl. It was all your imagination,” Noah called softly. She refused to look at him as she scampered in the house. Noah set out food, water and fresh pads for her before buttering his toast.

  The dog ignored the food so Noah picked up a toy and held it out to her. “Want to play? Here’s Mr. Squeaky Man. Come get him. Here you go.” He tossed the toy beside the dog but nothing happened.

  Sweet Pea and Noah glared at each other while he drank a second cup of coffee and ate his breakfast. “I’m trying, Pea. Really I am. But you have to meet me halfway.”

  Finally, he held out a piece of sausage patty. “You know you’re not supposed to eat people food. It doesn’t agree with you.”

  The dog grabbed the meat and darted away again as Noah wiped grease from his fingers.

  At least she didn’t bite me. That’s some improvement.

  By nine o’clock, enough light seeped into the room to wake the driver. He rolled onto his back and stretched. The room was warm, the bed was soft, and the pillow smelled like home. He sighed and settled deeper into the bed until he remembered why he was there.

  He padded barefoot into the living room, yawning and scratching his head. “Morning, Pops. Any coffee left?”

  His father glanced up from his favorite spot in front of the TV and frowned at him. “Thought you were in some kind of hurry to get out of here this morning.”’

  “I have to be back by eleven-thirty, but I don’t need to rush. “ He poured lukewarm coffee into an old Santa mug and heated a sweet roll in the microwave. On a shelf next to the spice rack, he spotted a pill bottle with his father’s cholesterol medication. He smiled. A solution always presents itself, if you stay prepared.

  “Hey, Pops, did you take your pills yet?” He held his breath and waited.

  “Don’t Mother-Hen me. I’ll get to them during the next commercial.”

  “Give me a second. I’ll bring them to you.” The driver fished in his pocket and pulled out two sleeping pills. He ground them into powder and reached for a glass. No, the pills might make the water cloudy. He poured the powder into a coffee mug, added water, and stirred until it dissolved.

  “Here you go, Pops. No need for you to get up.”

  The older man held out his hand without taking his eyes off the TV. He popped the pill in his mouth and grabbed the cup, downing the medication with one quick swallow before handing the cup back to his son.

  “Uh-uh, the directions say to take with a full glass of water. Drink it all.”

  “Don’t pull that tone with me, kid. You aren’t any kind of doctor, not yet anyway.” Pops up-ended the cup and drank the rest of the liquid. “Are there any sweet rolls left? Those pills left a nasty taste in my mouth.”

  Would the sugar in the sweet rolls offset the sleeping pills? “Mom said you were on a diet. I’m not getting into the middle of that one. What’s on TV?”

  “These guys buy abandoned storage lockers and sell the stuff inside. Some of the stuff is really valuable. I’ve been thinking I might try that. It looks like good money and no boss to give you a hard time.”

  Shit. Those guys were professionals. They knew what things were worth and where to sell them. They’d see Pops coming a mile away. Like playing poker with card sharks. If you looked around the table and didn’t know who the mark was, you were it.

  If his folks weren’t bankrupt yet, they would be when Pops started gambling what little was left of their nest egg. That wasn’t his problem. He didn’t plan to support them. He’d already done his good deed.

  When Pops first lost his job, his mom had applied for a promotion. She complained bitterly that while she had seniority, another woman seemed to have an inside track. “She must be sleeping with the boss. It’s the only explanation.”

  Yeah, right. Like his mother’s sloppy work habits hadn’t entered into it. The driver expected Pops to find a new job soon—he was an engineer fo
r God’s sake—but if they got behind in their bills and tightened the purse strings, they could refuse to pay his room and board. He might have to move home.

  Taking out Mom’s rival was easy. A carjacking gone wrong. A garrote around the neck meant no blood on his clothes. The three hundred dollars in her purse was a welcome extra. Now his folks should be able to hold on until Pops got a new job.

  Only Pops didn’t get a new job. He took to the sofa instead, complaining how life did him wrong. Without his parents to count on, he was the one who discovered a new sideline. One that took skill and planning. One that suited him to a T.

  When Pops began to snore, the driver put on his shoes and headed for the back door. The kitchen reeked of grease and fast food. He reached into the garbage for a few chicken bones and started down the street.

  At the cop’s house, he acted as if he were ringing the bell but then slipped around and entered through the side door to the garage. Two rat traps were set that hadn’t been there the night before. Lifting a ruler from the unused workbench, he touched the spring on first one and then the other, smiling as they snapped closed on nothing but air. If the cop suspected anything, he’d think it was rats.

  A cord hung from the ceiling. One pull opened a panel and a ladder unfolded, allowing dust and insulation to drift down into his face. He stifled a sneeze. No one to hear him but the dog.

  The stairs creaked and groaned as he climbed into the attic. How many years had it been since he’d last oiled them? He pulled the ladder up behind him, closing the door completely. The morning sun seeped through a louvered vent, but did little except accentuate the darkness. Holding a penlight in his mouth, he crawled toward a small square of light. The panel lifted out as easily as if he’d used it yesterday.

  The dog growled and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up, but she didn’t bark out loud. He coated a chicken bone with the powdered sleeping pill and dropped it into the laundry room from the hidden opening to the attic. The dog grabbed the bone and carried it to her bed in the kitchen.