by Cindy Myers
“What have you been up to?” Barb asked. “How’s the job going? How are Jameso and Reg and Danielle and Janelle? Does everyone miss me?”
“Everyone misses you, including me.”
“My tan is fading, so I’ll definitely have to get back up there soon. Not to mention it would be divine to escape this killer heat. It’s been over a hundred degrees for fifteen days in a row.”
“The high in Eureka yesterday was seventy-eight.”
“Stop being so cruel while I sit here melting.”
“Did you know Carter is in Eureka right now?”
“Carter? No! What’s he doing there?”
“I was hoping you knew. I know why he says he’s here.”
“Because he realized what an asshole he was, and he’s come to beg your forgiveness and shower you with riches in an attempt to mitigate his sins.”
“That’s not too far off from the line of bull he tried to feed me.”
Barb laughed. “You’re kidding. He actually said that?”
“Not in so many words, though he did say he thought the divorce settlement might have been a trifle unfair and he wanted to make it up to me with a check.”
“Maybe he got religion. Or joined a twelve-step program. Aren’t they supposed to try to make amends to all the people they harmed in the past?”
“I don’t think Carter is particularly religious or sober.” Definitely not the latter if he’d become a regular at the Dirty Sally. “He offered to pay me if I’d do him a little favor in return.”
“What was the favor?”
“He wants the Steuben.”
“The Steuben?” Barb’s voice rose in a squeal.
“Yes, all of it. For a mere ten thousand dollars, he was willing to take all those painful reminders of the past off my hands.”
“The crook. Didn’t it appraise at twice that?”
“He did up the offer to the full twenty grand when I turned him down the first time.”
“Are you going to take it?”
“Barb! Why would I sell the Steuben to him?”
“You’re right. It is beautiful glass. I bet it looks fabulous with all those windows in the cabin.”
Maggie groped for some believable lie. “It will look fabulous, I’m sure,” she said.
“You haven’t even unpacked it, have you?”
“No.”
“Then why not sell it to Carter?”
“If I was going to sell the glass—and I’m not saying I would—but if I did, it wouldn’t be to Carter. Why should I give the man anything he wants?”
“Good point. Why does he want the glass, anyway?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. He let drop that he and Jimmy still see each other. What does Jimmy say?”
“That Carter cheats at golf as badly as he ever did. I promise you that’s the only time they see each other. You know they’ve been in the same foursome for years. But I haven’t had him and the rich bitch to the house or anything.”
“He must have stopped by before or after a golf game when you weren’t there. He said he saw my address on a letter you’d addressed to me.”
“Probably the thank-you card I sent after my visit.”
The card had featured a full frontal nude of an extremely, um, virile young man. Barb’s idea of a thank-you. “You don’t have any idea why he wants the Steuben bad enough to come all the way to Eureka to try to get it?”
“No, but I’ll ask around. You say he’s still there?”
“Yes, but I have no idea why. He hasn’t been stupid enough to approach me again.”
“I’ll get right on it and get back to you. And, honey?”
“Yes?”
“If you do decide to sell the Steuben, I can help you find a good buyer. One you don’t have any emotional ties to.”
All well and good, Maggie thought. But what about her emotional ties to the damned glass? She didn’t want to have to look at it every day, but there was something to be said for having it.
Cassie parked her car behind the giant lilac bush down the street from the offices of the Eureka Miner and pulled her grandfather’s fishing hat down lower on her head. Her grandmother’s best friend, Sue Ellen Partridge, had planted the lilac slip in 1943, emptying her dishwater on it twice a day and wrapping it in old quilts all winter to keep it alive. The bush had thrived under her care, and when the city had threatened to chop it down in 1966, the Garden Club ladies had marched in protest in front of the mayor’s house. The mayor had argued the bush was a traffic hazard, but the Garden Club ladies had argued that people ought not to be driving so fast in a residential neighborhood anyway. They’d offered a compromise in the form of a hand-painted warning sign. Hazard Ahead, it read, with a picture of a bush looming over the sidewalk and a driver craning his head to see around it. The sign had vanished long ago, stolen by vandals, but when she was a little girl, Cassie had thought it meant the bush was liable to leap out and grab unsuspecting passersby. For years she’d insisted on crossing the street on this side of town.
A familiar red Jeep pulled to the curb in front of the office and Maggie climbed out. There wasn’t a trace of the city girl in her hiking boots and jeans and summer-weight sweater, though the silk scarf she’d wound through her coppery hair had a stylish flair to it. She didn’t even glance toward the lilac bush before she went into the newspaper office and shut the door behind her.
Cassie started her car and cruised past the office. If anyone saw her, they’d merely think she was out for a drive. She’d left her assistant, Gloria Sofelli, in charge of the library for the afternoon, telling her only that she had “personal business” to attend to. Not a lie. She couldn’t imagine anything much more personal than her errand this afternoon.
Out of town, she picked up speed and headed up the road toward Mount Garnet. Today was Tuesday, the day the weekly issue of the Eureka Miner went to press. Barring breaking news—a rare event in Eureka—Rick and Maggie would work until at least six compiling the paper.
Traffic lessened the higher Cassie climbed on the mountain. She saw no one she recognized, only tourists gaping at the view, hands white-knuckled on the curves. The last half mile to Jake’s place she passed no one at all. Perfect.
She pulled into the rutted drive leading up to the cabin and nosed the car alongside the house, where it was mostly hidden from the road. She wasn’t worried about Maggie interrupting her, but she didn’t want anyone else to take note of her car there and report back to the newspaper office.
Before she went inside, she took a moment to look around. She’d never been to Jake’s place, though she’d imagined it often enough. Some people might think of it as little more than a shack, but she recognized the little touches of a true mountain man—the sturdy rock pillars, the carved railings on the porch, the elk antlers mounted over the door. The cabin was like Jake himself—rugged and handsome and strong.
She tried the door, annoyed to find it locked. Who locked their door way up here? Certainly Jake never had. Reaching up, she felt along the door lintel until she found the spare key. Did Maggie even know about this one? It was tradition in these parts to keep a spare key over the door. Such a key could save the life of a lost hiker or a traveler stranded in a blizzard. She fit the key in the lock and shoved the door open. The cabin was small but neat, and smelled of vanilla. Definitely a woman’s home. The quilts on the back of the sofa and love seat probably came from Lucille’s shop, as did the wavy mirror on the wall. A couple of books shared space on the table by the sofa with a teapot, one of those little computer drive thingies, and a little vase of mountain pinks.
The only things out of place in the room were four large cardboard boxes that occupied most of the space between the love seat and the kitchen counter. Fragile was scrawled on the side of each in bold black marker.
Cassie checked the two books on the table. Cheap paperback romances, the kind favored by Janelle and Danielle. Nothing of concern to her. She moved on to the alcove under the stairs.
This was crammed with a jumble of everything from an old oil lamp to a cookbook that dated from the 1950s, plus half a dozen cardboard boxes that would be worth looking into.
She set aside her purse and opened the first box. It was full of paperwork—letters addressed to Maggie, bank statements, a copy of Jake’s will. Cassie examined the sheaf of legal papers. Jake’s middle name had been Charles. “Jacob Charles Murphy.” Cassie said the name out loud. A nice, dignified name.
Of course, Jacob had been anything but dignified. She set the will aside and pulled the next envelope from the carton. Really, Maggie ought to keep these things in a safe. Or a deposit box at the bank. Anything could happen to them in this cabin.
The envelope contained three photographs. Snapshots, really, the kind with white margins all the way around the picture, and the date in block letters in one margin. September 6, 1972, read the date on a photo of a very young Jake holding a swaddled baby. Jake held the baby slightly away from his body, the fingers of one big hand splayed to support the head. He grinned at the infant, such joy in his expression it made Cassie’s throat ache. This was what Jake looked like when he was in love.
She’d wanted him to look at her that way, but of course, he never had.
The sound of a car engine whining up the grade made her freeze. The sound grew louder; then the vehicle turned into the drive of the cabin and stopped.
A door slammed, followed by the crunch of shoes on gravel. Not a woman’s footsteps, though. These were too heavy. They clumped up the steps, across the porch to the door, and stopped. Cassie held her breath, waiting for a knock. It must be a friend of Maggie’s who didn’t realize she wasn’t home. That, or an annoyingly enterprising salesman.
But no knock came. Instead, the knob rattled and the door creaked open. Too late, Cassie realized she’d forgotten to lock the door behind her. She peered around the opening of the alcove and stifled a gasp.
A man she’d never seen before stood beside the love seat. He was short and balding, with a small paunch showing beneath his golf shirt. He wore bright white tennis shoes, the kind that always make men’s feet look like small boats. He glanced around the room and zeroed in on the boxes marked Fragile. He headed straight for them and pulled the top box from the pile and ripped it open.
Cassie watched, fascinated, as he lifted out what looked at first like a basketball-size wad of Bubble Wrap. He pulled at the tape that held the wrap in place, but it refused to give.
He turned away from the boxes and Cassie ducked back into the alcove just in time to avoid being seen. But the man moved into the kitchen and returned a few seconds later with a large knife. He sawed at the tape and began unwinding the Bubble Wrap. Finally, like the heart emerging from an artichoke, he held up a fluted glass vase, the pale green of seawater.
Smiling to himself, the man clumsily wrapped the vase once more in about half the Bubble Wrap he’d removed and stuffed it back in the box. Then he picked up the box and headed toward the door.
He was going to steal the vase and whatever else was in the box. Of all the nerve! He couldn’t just waltz in here and help himself to someone else’s belongings. Cassie had come to take back what belonged to her, but she couldn’t stand by and let him rob Maggie. She stepped out from the alcove. “Stop right this minute!” she called.
The man yelped—actually yelped—and juggled the box frantically before clutching it to his chest. He turned and stared at Cassie, wide-eyed. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked.
“That is no way to address a lady,” she said primly. Her grandmother had taught her that etiquette, if wielded with the proper attitude, could be as effective a weapon as a sword. She moved farther into the room. “Where do you think you’re going with Ms. Stevens’s belongings?”
He drew himself up to his full height—all of five-eight, from what Cassie could tell. “These don’t belong to Maggie. She was merely storing them for me.”
Was he seriously suggesting someone who lived in a 600-square-foot cabin would offer to store something for someone else? Cassie couldn’t see it. If someone as tidy as Maggie was going to have boxes taking up precious space in her home, they were going to belong to her, not some dumpy guy. “I don’t believe you,” she said.
The man scowled, wrinkles cascading all the way up his forehead. He resembled one of those wrinkly dogs—a bloodhound or a Shar-Pei. The image made Cassie less afraid. “What business is it of yours?” the man asked. “Who are you?”
“A friend.” Not exactly the truth, but if he was going to lie, she could do so, too. She took a step sideways, toward the kitchen knife he’d discarded on the floor. “If Maggie was storing something for someone, she would have told me,” she said.
“What are you? Her roommate? Fine. Then I’m the ex-husband. The bastard she’s probably told you about. I gave her this glass and now I’m taking it back. And you can’t stop me.”
Without looking back, he balanced the box on one hip and turned and opened the door.
Cassie stooped to pick up the knife. She didn’t know what she’d do with it, exactly, but maybe he’d respond to a threat. At least she’d be able to protect herself if he tried anything.
“Aarrgh! What the fu—?”
Cassie looked up from reaching for the knife in time to see the box slide down the man’s leg and bounce on the floor. She caught a glimpse of brown and white—was that fur?—and heard the scrabble of footsteps on the front porch. The man’s arms windmilled and he flailed wildly at the door, throwing himself against it until it closed.
Ashen faced, he gaped at Cassie. “What the fuck was that?” he gasped.
Cassie clucked her tongue. “Profanity is the sign of a poor vocabulary.”
“I don’t need a grammar lesson here, Grandma. Just tell me what the hell that is on Maggie’s front porch.”
At that moment, a large pale snout pressed against the window beside the door. The man shrieked and backed up toward the love seat, tripping over the box of glass as he did so, which sent him sprawling. No better than he deserved for calling her Grandma. But the fall put him a little too close to the knife. She kicked it across the room, where it slid under the stairs. Then she turned and stared, fascinated, at the bighorn ram that looked back at her with soulful eyes. “It’s a bighorn sheep,” she said.
“It attacked me,” the man said, still prone on the floor.
“Bighorns aren’t generally known to attack humans.”
“I don’t give a fuck what they generally do. This one attacked me as soon as I tried to go out the door.”
The ram did seem to be guarding Maggie’s door. When Cassie moved toward it, he left the window and she could hear his hooves scrabbling on the floorboards on the other side of the door. “Apparently he doesn’t want us to leave,” she said.
The man sat up. “Well, make him leave. I’ve got to get out of here.”
Cassie sat on the edge of the love seat, as far from the man as the small room allowed. “I don’t think there’s anything I can do about the ram,” she said. “Until it decides to go away on its own, we’re stuck here.”
“Well, shoot it. I thought all you mountain people had guns.”
“No, that’s all you Texans.” She immediately wished she could take the words back. He didn’t have a gun, did he? Surely not. He was the type of little man who would have felt the need to wave it around before now. “It’s illegal to shoot a sheep without a tag,” she said. “And right now is not hunting season.”
“We’re talking self-defense. That animal attacked me.”
“If I did have a gun, I’d just as soon shoot you,” she said coolly. “After all, you did break in and were stealing Maggie’s glass.”
“It’s my glass. I told you. I paid for every damn piece of it.” Cassie could have made a similar argument about the book she’d come to retrieve—well, except for the payment part. But in her case, it was the truth. “You said earlier you gave the glass to her.” She had certainly never given Jake the book, only l
oaned it, with the understanding that he’d return it. Which he hadn’t. So in this case, he was the thief.
She forced her attention back to the man. “If you gave it to her, the glass belongs to her.”
“Goddammit!” The man rose and took a step toward her. Cassie’s heart hammered so hard she thought it must be visible through her clothing, but she kept her gaze steady on the man and fixed him with her best librarian’s glare. “If you lay one finger on me, sir, I will kick you in the balls so hard you will be tasting them for the rest of your unnatural life.”
The man froze, then swallowed hard. Cassie continued to glare. She didn’t know if she could really kick him that hard, but what man wanted to risk finding out?
Chapter 21
“I know why Carter was so anxious to get the Steuben.” Barb’s voice rang with triumph across the crackly cell phone connection.
“Why is that?” Maggie steered with one hand around the first curve up the road toward the cabin. She didn’t believe in driving while talking on the phone, but there was no place to pull over on this narrow stretch, and she was in a hurry to get to the cabin and back to town to finish putting together the paper. She couldn’t believe she’d left her flash drive with the story on last night’s town council meeting on the table by the sofa. Rick had pitched a fit when she told him. Then again, Rick was always pitching a fit about something, and since no one else would work for the wages he paid—and certainly no one would do as good a job as Maggie did—she didn’t think her position at the paper was in jeopardy.
Still, she needed to grab the flash drive and hurry back to the office, or they’d be there until midnight putting the paper together. “I’m sorry, Barb, we had a bad connection there for a minute. Could you repeat that last part?” And this time, Maggie would pay attention.
