False Impressions

by Terri Thayer

  She could see how a young mother wouldn’t want to be this far away from town. Still, she wouldn’t mind living out here. It was quiet and peaceful. She caught sight of a cardinal, sitting on a snow-covered branch. He flew off as she approached, and snow flew up in bursts.

  Mitch’s house was only ten minutes away across the valley. After being in close quarters with the Campbells for the past three months, April relished the idea of no neighbors. She could work all night if she wanted, play her music loudly. She missed being able to blast her MP3 player. In the nice weather, she could work outside.

  She found Kit’s place, but there was no car in the drive. April was early. She had to pull in as mounds of snow made it dangerous to park in the street. She left plenty of room for Kit to park behind her.

  The house was a long redbrick ranch, probably built in the sixties. Not much in the way of charm. Just a functional space. The walk was neatly shoveled, the last snowfall piled high along the drive. Logan’s doing. April walked to the back of the house, following a neatly shoveled walk around to a windblown deck. The property seemed to go back several hundred yards. Woods stood at the far end, and she imagined she heard water. A babbling brook.

  Something colorful stood out against the deck railing. April went to investigate. She found several brightly colored pieces of paper. Rocky was always looking for odd bits of texture to add to her collages. April picked up the papers and stuck them in her pocket. They were an odd shape, but she couldn’t figure out what they were.

  Why wasn’t Kit here? She checked her watch. It’d been thirty-five minutes since she called. April stomped her feet. Her toes were beginning to get cold. She tried to force some blood into them by doing a little shuffle step.

  She heard a car door slam and went back to the front of the house. Kit was getting out and hurried up the driveway. She put a key in the lock of the front door and let them both in.

  “Sorry, April,” she said. “I just ran out to get a few things. Have you been waiting long? You must be freezing.” Kit was talking quickly. April couldn’t tell if the color in her cheeks was from the cold or excitement, but she seemed pent up about something. The kid looked much happier than she had at the party.

  April hurried inside. Kit closed the door quickly. She was carrying several IGA bags. They took off their boots and went into the kitchen. The house was cold, and Kit turned on a space heater as soon as she’d laid down her packages on the plywood countertop.

  Gold-patterned linoleum covered the floor, curling up under the kick plate of the cabinets. The doors to the cupboards were off, standing in rows, leaning against each other and the back wall. They were in various stages of being stripped. A small hand sander was plugged into the socket and lay on the floor.

  That wall still had the original wallpaper, a green and brown design featuring coffee grinders and other old-fashioned kitchen tools divided by rows of cross-stitched exes. A wooden sawhorse had been set up in the middle of the room. It was topped with a full sheet of plywood and covered with paintbrushes and other tools.

  “Welcome to our humble abode. I’ll be appearing here all week. Logan and I are going to pull an all-nighter. He’ll be here in a couple of hours after he puts the kids to bed at his mother’s.”

  “Are you liking it better?”

  “Not really. I just decided I don’t care.”

  She didn’t look like someone who didn’t care. Something else must have happened to make her this happy.

  “But that’s not why I called you. I wanted to talk to you about my uncle.”

  April’s face fell. Her inexcusable behavior last night had hurt Kit, too. “Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’ve been trying to call your mother all day to apologize.

  Kit pulled out a kielbasa and a hunk of cheese from the grocery bag. “My mother needs to stop trying to control everyone’s behavior.”

  April pointed to the food. “You didn’t need to feed me. Mitch is expecting me for dinner. This looks like an expensive snack.”

  Kit had bought a new paring knife and was unwrapping it. “It was expensive. Logan’s going to have a fit when he sees the charge. But it’s not for you.”

  She twirled around. Her eyes were lit with excitement. She was brandishing the tiny knife. April stepped back.

  “It’s for my uncle. He’s coming here.”

  “Your uncle’s dead,” April said slowly. She looked at Kit’s pupils. The light wasn’t great in here, but they didn’t seem to be dilated. She decided to say something harsh, to snap her out of it. “I saw his cremains at Deana’s.”

  Kit shook her head. “That’s just it. He’s not. He’s alive.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Kit had slashes of bright color high on her cheeks and her eyes were glowing. Was she on something? Did she even know what she was saying? Did she think J.B. was truly alive?

  “Kit, really. I know it’s not easy to accept his death, but . . .”

  Kit sighed and began slicing the sausage, using a paper plate for a cutting board. “I know it’s kind of silly. He loves kielbasa and cheddar. With beer, of course. But he’s not drinking anymore, so no beer. I thought about getting the nonalcoholic stuff, but then I thought why even tempt him?”

  April watched, growing more dismayed as the girl rambled. What if this was hormonal? Kit had six-month-old twins. It might be some kind of postpartum depression or something. April was the last person equipped to deal with that. She mentally ran down a list of people she could call. Deana might know what to do.

  “You must miss him terribly,” she said quietly. It seemed like speaking softly was the right thing to do.

  Kit looked up and said at a normal volume, “Listen. I’m not crazy.”

  “I’m sure it feels like your uncle is everywhere . . .” April began.

  “No, seriously. April, he’s alive. It wasn’t him in the meth-lab explosion.”

  “How can that be? Didn’t they find his body?”

  “They found his truck and his license in the glove compartment. The house had burned to the ground. They didn’t find much that was identifiable,” Kit said.

  She looked away, staring at an icicle outside her kitchen window. Her gutters must have been blocked because the icicle was as thick as her forearm and tapered to a sharp, dripping point. April thought about how much it would hurt if it fell on someone.

  “My uncle wasn’t making meth, April, he wasn’t. He’d started going to AA as soon as he knew I was pregnant. Said he wanted to be awake and aware to enjoy my babies.”

  Kit’s voice broke then, and a sob escaped. She stuffed her hand into her mouth. April put a hand on Kit’s shaking shoulder.

  “Kit, do you want me to call your mother?” She took out her cell phone and began scrolling for Mary Lou’s number.

  “No!” Kit took April’s cell away from her. “We’re not telling my mother about this. He won’t come if we do.”

  Her face was like a young child’s. April could see what Kit must have looked like as a five-year-old, throwing a tantrum at the IGA because her mother wouldn’t buy her an Elmo balloon. Her lips were pursed, her eyes steely.

  “What do you mean?”

  Kit opened her eyes. “He wants to talk to me. Only me.”

  April searched Kit’s face. Her cheeks were flushed, and her fingers nervously scratched the surface of the cell phone. Underneath the ruddy blush, her skin was as pale as the icicle hanging from the roof.

  “No one can know he’s coming,” Kit said. She laid down the phone out of April’s reach and went back to arranging circles of kielbasa on a paper plate. “He’s waiting until after dark. If Yost or the state police catch him, he’ll get thrown in jail. We have to do this on the q.t.”

  April looked out the window. Darkness came quickly and early on these cloudy days. The sky was already dusky outside. Within the half hour, it would be inky black. The darkness unsettled April even more.

  “How can you be sure it’s him? What if it’s some kind of hoax
?” April couldn’t hide her concern.

  “It’s not.” Kit was calm, her hands busy with the snack she was making. She stopped suddenly and looked around the kitchen. “We’ve got no place to sit. There are some folding chairs in the basement. Would you go down and get them?”

  Kit pointed to a door off the kitchen. She grabbed a wipe from her purse and cleaned off her hands. “I’ve got an empty five-gallon pail we can use for a table.”

  April looked at her in amazement. Kit was acting like her mother. The perfect hostess. The fact that the house was in a complete uproar didn’t stop that entertaining gene from surfacing.

  Why wasn’t Mary Lou here? April paused in front of the door.

  “Why me? Why ask me to come here?”

  “I promised J.B. I wouldn’t tell anyone yet. But I didn’t want to be alone. You see things that others don’t see. You have insights.”

  April blushed. Kit was flattering her, she knew. But it was somewhat true. She had had a knack for getting to the bottom of mysterious doings around Aldenville.

  She wanted to kick Kit for making her a part of this. Mary Lou would have a fit if she knew. April found a light switch and went down the basement stairs. The stairs were wooden, and the walls were plain cinder block. She stepped slowly, scanning for the promised folding chairs.

  The room was a sea of black plastic.

  All she could see were trash bags, filled to capacity. Wow. These kids really have been busy, she thought. She finally spotted the chairs against the wall at the bottom of the stairs and wrestled three upstairs.

  Kit had covered the bucket with a piece of fabric and stuck a candle in the middle on a small plate. She’d lit the candle. April was touched by the effort to make the place look fancy.

  She took one of the chairs from April and set it up, fussing with the position. April set the other two out and let Kit arrange them. She looked to April, her need for approval nakedly apparent. “How’d I do? These are the old curtains I found in a closet, and the candle was left behind in the bathroom.”

  April smiled. “It looks great.”

  Headlights raked across the ceiling. Tires crunched on the driveway.

  “He’s here.” Kit flew to the front door and yanked it open.

  “Be . . . careful,” April finished as Kit flipped on the porch light. Outside, it was as dark as the deepest night, even thought it was barely suppertime.

  She looked back at April and beamed. “It’s him. I’d recognize him anywhere.”

  She flew outside to meet the man getting out of the car, even as April tried to grab her back into the house. The temperature had dropped again, and the porch steps might be icy. But Kit was young and impervious to the dangerous cold as she flung herself into the man’s arms.

  He’d parked behind Kit’s car. With the door open and the dome light on, April got a glimpse of a man slightly taller than Kit.

  Out on the road, a car slowed. April couldn’t see the driver, but she was suddenly aware that a supposedly dead man was in Kit’s front yard. One wanted by the police.

  “Come in here, you two,” she hissed, holding the door open. “Now.” They complied.

  “Are you okay?” she heard Kit say as they crossed the threshold.

  “I’m so sorry, Kitten. I never meant for you to suffer.”

  They ignored April as J.B. wrapped his arms around Kit. Kit rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. April hadn’t sighed like that since she was in high school. She shut the door behind them.

  Kit broke away from him. She held on to his hand and turned to April. “This is my uncle,” Kit said. “J.B. Hunsinger.”

  He was skinny legged, with a belly bulging under his plaid shirt. He wore a red thermal Henley shirt underneath, probably for warmth as the flannel looked thin and worn through in spots. His jeans were Wranglers. He had inexpensive fur-lined ankle boots. This was a man who did his shopping at Walmart. Unlike Mary Lou, who traveled to Philadelphia to shop.

  J.B. reached over and shook April’s hand. He seemed a bit nervous to find someone else with Kit. He looked around her. “Is there anyone else here? I asked you not to tell anyone.”

  “Of course not. April’s different. She won’t tell anyone. I wanted her to hear your story. She can help you with the police, maybe.”

  April cocked her head at Kit. Seriously? Did this kid think she had a good relationship with the Aldenville police?

  Kit directed them to the kitchen where she shyly pointed J.B. to the vignette she’d set up. He smiled at her, but J.B. didn’t sit. He wandered around the room, touching the half-stripped wallpaper and testing the crooked miniblinds over the window. He walked on the balls of his feet, so he was in a jigging motion much of the time. He looked like someone who found it impossible to relax.

  “So this place going to be okay for you?” he asked.

  Kit laughed. “I guess. It’s not a Victorian on Main Street, my dream house. But I guess those don’t go into foreclosure that often.”

  His face changed, a storm cloud moving across his forehead quickly. Kit didn’t notice the anger April saw. J.B. got himself under control, testing a kitchen drawer, keeping his face turned away from his niece.

  “You look good,” Kit said.

  “I’m doing good, real good.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Not far away,” J.B. said. “In Mountain Top.”

  Kit had just sat down, but she bounced back out of her seat. She faced him, her hands on her hips. “You’ve been, what, fifteen miles away this whole entire time? I thought you’d left the county at least.”

  J.B. used a soothing tone. “No, I’ve been staying with a friend.”

  Kit’s eyes were huge. She settled back in, grabbing J.B.’s hand, pulling him away from the construction zone and over to where she sat. He sat in the folding chair opposite her. “But did you have money? Where did you live?”

  “There was a little money, yes. It’s been okay.”

  “Who died in the fire?” April asked.

  Kit jutted her chin at April. She clearly didn’t want April talking about the explosion.

  J.B. lifted his eyes to hers. He didn’t seem to miss much, and he was probably wondering what her role was. He glanced at Kit, who hadn’t taken her hand out of his and was stroking it in her lap like a cat.

  “Got pictures of the babies, Kit? I really need to know if the young’uns got my nose.” His tone of voice was light, but to April’s ear, a bit forced.

  Kit laughed and grabbed her backpack off a hook on the wall next to the basement door. She pulled out a pocket-size photo album. The cover had been stamped and embossed. She pulled open the ribbon that bound the book and handed it to him.

  The pain of losing her uncle was etched on her face. Rocky had told April she’d been in a precarious stage of her pregnancy when the explosion happened and very nearly miscarried. The joy and excitement of having twins had been tempered by the death of her favorite relative.

  They bent their heads over the pictures. The two looked alike. Their hair color was almost exactly the same. J.B.’s hair was still thick, despite his forty-plus years, and it had natural highlights that April would have paid big bucks for. He wasn’t overly thin. He looked like he’d had been well cared for.

  April sat down in the third chair. They were in an awkward little circle with Kit’s snacks untouched in the middle.

  He hadn’t answered her question about who had died in the fire. It would have had to have been a major conflagration to burn bodies down to ash, with no identifying remains. Of course, in this small town, no one was going to do DNA testing. It would be easy to misidentify the remains.

  But if J.B. were alive, then some other family was missing their son.

  “Everyone was so sad,” Kit said, pointing at a picture of the babies’ christening. “We missed you that day.”

  “Not everyone,” J.B. said. J.B. picked up a round of kielbasa and ate it. “Your parents were happy to be rid of me. And you
r husband.”

  “No one wanted you dead,” Kit said.

  J.B. hung his head. “I was such a loser. I wouldn’t blame them if they did.”

  “Why didn’t you die that day?” April asked.

  “I wasn’t there when the house exploded.”

  “Your truck was there.” Kit’s voice was small. She was understanding something she didn’t want to know.

  J.B. sat back in his chair. He sipped the water Kit had poured for him. “I got involved with the wrong people. I got myself in a situation.”

  He wasn’t being clear. April wanted him to tell Kit everything. She’d be better off if she knew exactly what he’d been doing.

  “Were you making meth?” April asked. Kit looked up sharply. April might as well have smacked her across the face.

  J.B. didn’t look at April. He put his hand on Kit’s knee. “I made some bad choices.”

  April made a snickering noise. J.B. glanced her way and sat back in his chair. He propped one leg up on the other and held on to his ankle.

  “Look, I got to a position where I couldn’t say no when people asked me to help them.”

  “People?” April asked. She was not going to let him get away with this obfuscating. He owed Kit an explanation.

  He closed his eyes. “A gang. A meth-making gang,” he said. He spoke slowly as though the truth was painful. “There were two other guys that cooked in that house. I was the smurf, the one who buys the legal drugs they need to make the stuff. Cold medicine, over-the-counter stuff. Not a big deal to buy, unless you want quantity, which is what they needed. The drugs are regulated, so I would drive all over to different stores. I’d go into New York, New Jersey and get the stuff. It took me all day most days to obtain enough cold meds. They needed a lot.”

  April watched Kit carefully. She was hearing directly from the source. After this, she could have no doubt that her uncle had been involved in making meth.

  “Didn’t you use your truck?”