Cover of Snow

by Jenny Milchman

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Don’t feel bad for that bitch, stated the version of Teggie who lived in my head as I walked across Jean’s lawn toward my car. If it weren’t for her, none of this would be happening.

  But that wasn’t precisely true.

  I had just reached the driveway when a hand dropped onto my shoulder from behind, all five fingers splayed. At first I assumed it to be Eileen’s—proof that she had felt every ounce of the rage I had seen in her eyes—but even as I was held in place, my brain threw up a string of facts almost too fast for me to parse.

  This person was tall. The hand had landed from above. Whereas my mother-in-law and I were almost exactly the same height. And he was strong in a way no woman could’ve been, at least no past-middle-aged woman who had spent her life collecting relics, not black belts.

  I fought to twist around, but the powerful hand kept me facing forward.

  One finger found an area in my shoulder that I hadn’t known existed, a spot that produced such pain that I went still and silent. I was in a place beyond protest or screams. The next thing I saw was the snowy driveway underneath me.

  The hand was in my pants pocket. Not pulling my pants down or groping me. It was searching for something.

  I tried to get one word out—coat—but my ability to speak had been lost.

  He must’ve found them. I didn’t feel anything when he did. Some unknowable time later, maybe no time at all, I heard the sound of the locks and my car door opening.

  My body twitched on the frozen ground. What was making it move? Aftershocks from my shoulder, which felt as if it had been passed through a meat grinder.

  My head happened to be facing Jean’s house and I squinted at it. Jean had said she was going to make us something to eat. She should’ve missed me by now. An image took shape before my blurred gaze. A wavering glow of color. Jean had the television on.

  Feeling began to return. As if it were detached, I spotted my arm, lying across the snow. I watched my palm appear and disappear as my hand began to open and close.

  I was about to try to lift my head when a boot stomped onto my back, pressing me to the drive. The voice that spoke came at the far boundaries of my consciousness—I would’ve been able to place it if not for the state I was in.

  “I can shut you up,” the voice said, the truth of his statement made clear by my mouth, which gaped open and closed like a fish. He got closer, replacing the boot on my back with his knee, so he could speak right into my ear. “And tell the old bitch to shut up, too.”

  I had no idea how long it took me to get up. First the pain began to recede from my shoulder, then feeling started to return to the rest of my limbs. Only then did the throbbing bruise on my back awaken, along with my raw, frozen cheek, which had rested on the ground.

  I went immediately for my car, crawling across the snow.

  All it held that could’ve been of interest was Brendan’s box. And if that had been taken—because it had value beyond the sentimental unbeknownst to me—I wouldn’t care about the shoulder-grabbing ninja move, which had temporarily crippled me. The cops could steal my things, destroy my house, and ruin my burgeoning career.

  But if they messed with my dead husband’s box, I was going to figure out whoever had taken it, and I was going to hunt that person down and kill him.

  Every item in Brendan’s box had been taken out and dropped or tossed about dispassionately. I found the Stonelickers bumper sticker on the floor of my car, patting my hand around and locating by feel. The letters had been torn from their envelopes, while the toy soldier and red skate laces wound up on the snow. But nothing was missing. I reassembled everything inside the box, then replaced the lid, jiggling it over the side that stuck.

  I hobbled across the lawn like an old woman.

  Jean was in front of the TV when I let myself in. She peered at me in the low light. “Nora?”

  I gave a single nod.

  “Oh no!” Jean got to her feet with surprising alacrity. “What happened? Why is your cheek so red?” Her cushy fingers probed the tender side of my face.

  “I—I was pushed, Aunt Jean.”

  “Pushed?”

  I nodded. “Someone was searching for something inside Brendan’s box. The one that used to be Bill’s.”

  Jean took the yellow box from me, frowning. “You mean something’s missing?” She cradled the box in her hands, absently stroking one side.

  “No, nothing,” I replied. “I don’t know what they could’ve been looking for. Brendan just has keepsakes in there. They wouldn’t mean anything to anyone besides him. Or me.”

  “Yes,” Jean murmured. “I understand.”

  Given who her sister-in-law was, I supposed she did. Surely Jean had stumbled upon Eileen’s dungeon at least once in all these years.

  “Come into the kitchen,” Jean said. “Let me take a look at that cheek.”

  She cleaned it gently, then doctored it with ointment. The fire began to subside.

  I looked up gratefully.

  “I must’ve been making sandwiches,” Jean said apologetically, “when you were …” She trailed off. “Would you like one?”

  My appetite was returning, and I accepted Jean’s offering. She stood by while I ate, though she didn’t pick up anything from the platter herself.

  “I’m worried about you, Aunt Jean,” I said, swallowing my mouthful.

  “About me? Whyever for?”

  I gave a little shudder, recalling the sound of that voice in my ear. Then I set down the rest of my sandwich and looked at the soft creases around Jean’s eyes. “Do you know something?” I asked. “That somebody could be afraid you would tell?”

  I recalled Ned’s fleeting conviction that I had learned something about the first January twenty-third, the one that took place twenty-five years ago. The police investigation had seemed so thorough, according to the articles Ned had brought me. And yet—look what Ned suspected about the police. It must’ve been one of the cops who assaulted me. Not Club. And affable Dave couldn’t have aped that tone if he’d tried. It had to have been Tim, or possibly Gilbert.

  I couldn’t stand to hear that awful snarl again in my mind, and spoke to blot it out. “The man who attacked me outside said something.”

  Jean was staring at me steadily.

  It occurred to me that although she knew at least one crime had been committed tonight, Jean hadn’t suggested calling the police. I took a breath and uttered the poisonous words. “He said, ‘Tell the old bitch to shut up.’ ”

  Her reaction surprised me. Jean let out a laugh, feeble and not all that far from a croak, but still a laugh. She sounded like somebody coming off a long illness maybe, or else someone just waking up. Something sparked in her eyes and caught mine.

  “Is that right? Because I’d say this old bitch has been silent long enough.”

  I frowned. “About what, Aunt Jean?”

  She reached over, squeezing my hand between the folds of her own. “Tomorrow, dear heart, all right? After I figure out the … best way to do this. In the morning,” she said. “We’ll talk.”

  I was about to protest, ask something further, but Jean switched her gaze then, staring out the kitchen window. The moon had finally risen in the sky, and for a moment the view was blinding.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Not long after that I went up to bed. My shoulder still hurt, and my back ached enough to force me onto my stomach for sleep. The spare room was the coldest in the house, and Jean had plugged in a space heater for additional warmth. While I slept, the room grew close and overheated, and I began to dream.

  For the first time since he’d died, I dreamed of Brendan. In the dream chestnuts were heaped on a city street all around us and we were trying to gather them up, but Brendan kept getting fistfuls of my hair instead.

  His hands on me felt wonderful, and then the dream changed—we were back home, making love, as we did that last night. It was just as it had been, Brendan coming and taking me
with none of the usual preventions or pause, just raw, relentless passion.

  I remembered he was dead, but that was impossible, because he was moving inside me, as potent a force as ever. I wanted to cry out—did start to cry out—with pleasure and pain, saying that I had so many questions, what happened on the sixteenth, how much had he known about the police. But then I realized I couldn’t ask Brendan anything ever again.

  I looked down to see him on top of me.

  His body was cold, and soft in some terrible way, the flesh beginning to slide from his bones. His weight was dead weight and I couldn’t get him off me, although I thrashed and bucked, throwing my arms up so that my fingertips dragged against the walls. I woke with a start, the feel of grit beneath my nails, and a moldering taste in my mouth as if I had come into contact with something that’d been lying deep in the ground.

  I sat up in bed, heaving and panting, brushing off my hands. My gaze tore around wildly. It wasn’t only the dream that had woken me; I’d heard something, too. Something sudden and loud, a noise I couldn’t quite place. And I was continuing to hear sounds, not as alien as the one that had startled me awake, but still not as quiet as nighttime should have been.

  My heart tripped through the logical possibilities. Heat ducts contracting and expanding, wood buckling as the cold intensified, branches batting against the glass. Gooseflesh rose on my skin. This wasn’t any of those. One thing I knew was old houses, and what I was hearing was the unmistakable sound of floorboards sagging beneath somebody’s weight.

  Jean? Just after we had said good night, she’d added that she rarely slept all the way through the night. “You don’t anymore once you’re my age,” she’d explained. “A little snack sometimes helps.”

  But the methodical thunks coming from below didn’t sound anything like Brendan’s soft-footed aunt padding around.

  It was warm in the spare room, but as soon as I got up and walked to the door, a rush of cold air met me, and I began to shake. Midway down the hall, I saw why it was so cold. The front door was ajar.

  “Jean?” I called out. A stupid thing to do, betraying my location.

  I reached the flight of stairs and began to descend, wending through the hall and parlor and into the kitchen. Then I stopped and sucked in my breath.

  This room had been ransacked, drawers yanked out, contents spilled onto the counters or floor, table pushed to one side, cupboard doors hanging open. The stove burners sat askew. A toaster was overturned and even the appliances had been breached—fridge, dishwasher, oven.

  The front door, flung wide enough that icy air was rapidly filling the house, gave a view of bare tree limbs splitting the starless sky.

  Someone had rushed out in a hurry after doing all this damage. When he had heard me? Or she had heard? Briefly, I recalled Eileen’s rage, the slap of her voice. Where was Jean? Was it possible she had slept through all this? I supposed that I had missed most of it myself, only awakening at the end. But I had been sleeping particularly deeply, pushed under by the artificial heat, as well as by the weight of my dreams. Jean said she slept lightly.

  I was heading back for the stairs to check Jean’s room when I saw her.

  She knelt on the floor, leaning over a low bench that stood behind the staircase, which was why I hadn’t spotted her on my way down. The first thought in my head was that she must be checking on some especially cherished possession, hoping it had been spared from the demolishment, because one of her hands was outstretched. But the expression on her face was too peaceful to be guarding against great loss; she actually wore a slight smile.

  If it weren’t for the small, black hole in the midst of her hair, I might’ve missed the fact that she was dead.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  I called 911, forgetting that in Wedeskyull 911 calls were routed through to the Chief. I’d known it when I used the pay phone to call about Ned, but the sight of Jean’s fallen form had erased all lucid thought. When Vern answered, my mind went completely blank.

  “State your emergency.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “State your emergency. This is the chief of police. Hello? Jeannie, is that you?”

  “My bag was stolen, Vern,” I said nonsensically. And then I started to scream.

  The police cars arrived in a kaleidoscope of red and blue lights. Vern exited his vehicle first, mounting Jean’s porch stairs with the speed of a much younger man. Dave emerged from the same car, but he stumbled on the last step, squaring his fists on his hips and taking a look around as if there might be something outside to be seen.

  Vern came upon me in the entryway, then took several fast steps in the direction of the staircase. When he spotted Jean, he let out an animal howl.

  It was a bellow of shock and despair, long, drawn out, hollow, and it told me that no matter what else the Chief might be responsible for, he wasn’t the one here in the house tonight.

  His fists were clenched as he roused himself from studying Jean’s body on the floor.

  After that, everything happened quickly.

  The Chief ushered me outside, and the rest of the cops descended. Tim Lurcquer arrived with his kit; a while back he’d been sent downstate to study crime scene investigation. Eileen dashed out of her house, mouth a gaping O of puzzlement. When the Chief spoke to her, her body went rigid, throwing off the Chief’s hand as if an electric shock had been exchanged.

  A spasm shuddered through my whole body as well; it was too cold to wait out here on the lawn. I got into my car, turned on the engine, and wondered how long the gas would last.

  Vern stationed himself on the front porch, barking orders to the cops and pointing a gloved hand to direct them. In their uniforms and masks, they looked like nothing less than a troop of robots.

  An ambulance drove up, along with a state vehicle whose driver looked barely awake. Both vehicles parked on Patchy Hollow Road, and the occupants got out and walked across Jean’s lawn, wheeling a gurney. The gurney emerged from the house, and I wrenched my gaze away from the sight of the black body bag on top. Half a roll of yellow tape was haphazardly affixed to the rails of Jean’s porch, ends immediately torn down and whipped about by the wind.

  There was a reporter speaking into a tiny recorder. I scanned every face in the crowd for a glimpse of Ned, miraculously returned.

  A rap shook my window.

  I opened the car door and got out on the snow-clotted driveway. The Chief stood there, appearing a little more composed. “Planning on going somewhere again?”

  “Just trying to keep warm,” I said, wondering if he would notice anything in my abbreviated reply.

  “We’ll need you to give a statement.” Vern gestured toward one of the cops, and the moment Gilbert opened his mouth, suggesting a place we could go, I knew.

  My gaze shot down to my feet; I had to fight to remain standing.

  I could feel that finger digging into my shoulder, hear the cur’s rumble of his voice in my ear. Gilbert had told me to shut the old bitch up, and I hadn’t. Had he killed Jean?

  I raised my face to the Chief’s. The man I had just been fighting to avoid, or interact with only in the briefest possible way, suddenly seemed my one hope of salvation.

  “Vern—Chief—can you do the questioning?”

  But the Chief was already marching off to meet Club across a snowy field. It looked like he was yelling at him. Club’s finger started a jig against his holster. I caught a snatch of words.

  “—even have the guts to look ’em in the—”

  Gilbert was just starting to take a step forward.

  Dave shambled up to me. “Mrs. H.?” he said. “I can ask you the questions.”

  Gilbert left, then Dave drove off after getting the scant information I had to give. Instinct kept me silent about anything besides the basics. Maybe I was wrong. And if I wasn’t—and Gilbert had killed Jean after attacking me—then voicing that suspicion to the police was far from a safe option. No IA up here. Hadn’t I just told Ned that
?

  Tim Lurcquer stood on the porch, arms folded across his chest, hat pulled down low as he gazed around methodically, right, then forward, left, and right again.

  Club was also still there. Approaching me, he said, “We’ll put you up in a hotel tonight.”

  “What?”

  His reply was grim. “Where did you think you would go?”

  Brendan never had to deal with a murder where the suspect wasn’t obvious and locked up right away. Tim was going to stay here, all night probably, on the lookout for anything that might happen, someone who might return. Did I really think I would just cozy up in the spare room of a woman who’d just been murdered?

  Something plugged my throat; I had to gulp back tears. I turned and headed for my car.

  “I’ll drive you,” Club called.

  “No,” I said. I swiped a gloved finger across my eyes. “That’s not necessary.”

  Club strode toward me, slowed down not at all by the heaps on the ground. “You want to take your own car?” he said. “Fine. It’ll be the Super 8. I’ll have Dave meet you there. You seem to prefer him lately.” Club huffed a cloud of white. He reached for his radio, speaking into it between crackling bursts of static.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Dave pulled up behind me in the Super 8 parking lot. “You’re some driver,” he said, getting out and slipping a bit as he crossed the lot. “That ice was bad.”

  “How does this work?”

  Dave shrugged genially. “Not much to it. Police have an account. I’ll go in and tell whoever’s there that we need a room for tonight. Then you get a key.” Dave looked down at me, and I saw a hint of something sharper than the usual in his eyes. “You can stand next to me the whole time. It’s not like I’ll get a dupe.”

  “I didn’t think that,” I said, and he patted me companionably on the arm. He pulled open the door, started to enter, then stepped backward in a hurry. But Dave was too bulky for me to pass in front of, and when I signaled that it was okay, he shook his head in protest before going forward, so that we got confused and tripped over each other again.