Requiem at Christmas
by
Melanie Jackson
Version 1.1 – July, 2012
Published by Brian Jackson at KDP
Copyright © 2012 by Melanie Jackson
Discover other titles by Melanie Jackson at www.melaniejackson.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Chapter 1
“You can’t back out now! We are so close.”
“But he’ll know it was me. We can’t do it!” Desperation was growing and it showed in his voice and the sweat on his brow.
“It won’t matter. By then we’ll have the money. We can leave. We wanted to be there to see the rebirth of our spiritual home.”
“Look, I can’t. I just can’t. It’s too dangerous. We’ll find some other way.”
“There isn’t any other way.” The usually lovely voice was flat. “And it has to be now. The elections are coming.”
“No! I won’t and I won’t let you. Don’t push me on this! You keep pushing and someone will end up dead.”
* * *
Juliet Henry loved snow. Without snow there was no cross-country skiing. No skiing and there was no Christmas spirit, however feeble, to shine on the bleak winter. While others might scan the December skyline looking for the first Christmas lights in their neighborhood, or search the stores for the principal Christmas tree to go up at the mall, or even to hear the first Christmas carol to grace the airwaves, each winter she waited for the weather reports and news of the first fat flakes falling in Maine.
Or Vermont. She wasn’t fussy. Any snowy reason to leave D.C. and office politics behind was fine with her, and her boss had always arranged leave early in December no matter what was going on because seasonal pathos turned her into Scrooge’s twin sister if she didn’t get time away before the bell-ringing, hall-decking, manic-shopping season began.
She had known, of course, that things would be different in California. Down in her heart, she had a flatlander’s mistrust of the western coastal expanses that have both serious-sized mountains with yearly killer mudslides in winter and deadly fires in summer—and those violent, random earthquakes which happened in any and all seasons. It had taken time to adapt and to cease expecting disaster at every turn. Especially after their brush with fire the summer before.
Also, one had to admit, a lot of very strange people lived in California. The state encouraged eccentrics of all stripes, including the insanely brave who dared to build their cities right out to the coast when it was slowly—and sometimes quickly—being eaten away by the ocean. And it was being eaten away. Every winter more houses toppled into the sea. But now that she had made the adjustment she wouldn’t give up living in the coastal mountains for anything in the world.
So she had been sure she could adapt to a more New Age kind of holiday as long as there was snow sometime in the winter. But it turned out that the coastal mountains rarely saw snow and never enough to ski on. Last year she had been sick over Christmas and had been very busy with work as well, so her skis had been in the closet since she moved, chiding her for their neglect every time the door was opened. But this year would be different. Had to be different.
In spite of adapting in every other way, somehow she had expected—and desperately needed—more than a Winter Fireworks Spectacular! at the beach to get her in a holiday mood. She wasn’t just looking for time away from the job anymore. She actually liked the exertion of skiing. Without it, she was left feeling downtrodden and cheated, unable to bustle about like the rest of her neighbors who seemed to adore the holidays, smug in the knowledge that they had family and friends who would keep them from ever being alone on the world’s most depressing holiday.
She decided that this year she would need to travel to the Sierra Nevada Mountains where they had real snow—and now she had a good reason to go. And also an inexpensive package deal at the inn where Harrison had booked a block of rooms for the concertgoers.
Perhaps it would have been wiser to have left Wednesday and trekked to Tahoe on the bus with the other artists from Bartholomew’s Woods so that she would miss driving in the first real storm of the season. But vanity, vanity—all is vanity. She had been sure that she could finish her Christmas sweatshirt order on Thursday, get paid, and cope competently with the falling barometer and extreme cold predicted by the owl-eyed meteorologist on the weather channel—if she got an early enough start. After all, she had chains and four-wheel drive, and bus travel with Carrie Simmons was not—not—going to happen. The woman had always been a self-aggrandizing chatterbox, but the condition had worsened when she was almost killed by an irate lover during the early summer. The men in the compound pretty much thought she was attractive and scatterbrained, but that was because most of them hadn’t noticed that it was all big breasts unleavened by brains or charm. They had also conveniently forgotten that the collateral damage from her last internal affair had involved three deaths and two serious injuries.
Perhaps if her company had been diluted a bit Juliet would have chanced the group travel arrangements, but Darby O’Hara had gone ahead with Harrison Peters. They were romantically involved and the retired vet was being his prop and mainstay as he rehearsed the orchestra at Saint Clair Church, which was a gorgeous mix of Swiss chalet and old-world cathedral, but with tricky acoustics that made recording difficult.
And Raphael and Esteban, her two favorite people and both men of excessive good looks, had had some mysterious task up north they needed to see to before they could holiday and had left two days previously. So that left only Asher and Elizabeth, Rose Campion, Hans, and Mickey, and the two new tenants—Jerry Hill, an inarticulate glassblower, and Thomas Jones, a stuttering potter—both friends of Robbie Sykes. Jerry and Thomas were very quiet and inclined to hide behind books, and that simply wasn’t enough to water down Carrie in full dramatic performance. Bus travel was trying enough without being cooped up with someone who could always be depended upon to make an irritating situation even worse.
No, she would manage on her own. This was her second winter in California. She had seen what people called storms and they were nothing. How much worse could it be in the Sierras?
Marley had known better, being a cat and being sensible. He had listened carefully to the weather report and warned her before she left him with Sheriff Garret that the wisest course would be to throw another log on the fire, pour herself a little spiked eggnog, and have some Christmas cake. She could be happy with a box of sparklers and a seat by the reservoir where they would set off pretty red and green explosive synchronizations to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” and “Jingle Bell Rock” if she just tried a little harder.
But no, Harrison Peters was preforming the Requiem Mass he had written for his father, who died in Afghanistan. He had a venue at the Celtic Christmas Festival just outside of South Lake Tahoe and she wanted to be there to hear it, and to pray for peace on earth and an end to all wars.
And to ski.
So Juliet had donned her thermal underwear and pulled on her warmest sweater, which happened to be something Rose made her for her birthday, in a cheery red wool woven from itchy goat hair she got from a nearby farm—and which, when damp, still smelled vaguely of that farm. She strapped her skis on the Subaru and then, armed with a thermos of coffee and pumpkin cupcakes from the bakery and a full tank of gas, she hit the road for her great Christmas adventure, leaving her bungalow thick with paint fumes behind.
Juliet loved the coastal highways, but for the sake of efficiency she cut inland almost immediately and traveled by the most direct route toward Sacramento. The traffic in the Silicon Valley was appalling and the roads ugly and monotonous until she reached the foothills.
As promised, the snow began as soft as a bridal veil, billowing gently in an easy breeze. Rooftops looked like vanilla cupcakes with sugar sprinkles and brought on a small burst of giddy pleasure. Snow! Real snow! Taking a vacation was a great idea!
But soon pewter skies tarnished black, the veil thickened into a shroud, and all thought of cupcakes and sugarplums disappeared. Sleet and then heavier snow began to come down west of Kyburz and she stopped to have chains put on the tires. Progress became slow and the heater had to be threatened with bodily harm before it saw reason and started getting serious about its job.
Her nose reminded her that she had pumpkin cupcakes, so she tore open the bag and fortified herself with sugar and fat as she crawled into the ever thickening storm.
Juliet admitted to herself that it had been a mistake to listen to her GPS when it recommended another route in order to avoid a bad traffic accident on Highway 50. Her newly purchased “smart” GPS kept track of traffic reports. It did not listen to the weathermen who, the car radio proved, were gloomy in their most recent prognostications. In her defense, the snow hadn’t begun falling in earnest until she turned off of the main highway and onto what was laughably labeled a two-lane road, abandoned by a logging company a decade before. By a mile in, the snow was coming down in sobering waves that rolled over her with the wind. For another fifteen miles, she thought about how pretty the snow was and how great the skiing would be. After that, she thought about little except finding the reflective markers that showed her the edge of the road which was increasingly more difficult to do with sleet clogging her windshield wipers.
She passed a few small summer cabins, but they were dark, huddled boxes and no smoke came from their chimneys, no porches were shoveled, and no children played outside under twinkle lights. There was one charred ruin where two deer were crowding together, looking miserable. She couldn’t blame them. A strong crosswind had begun to blow, its voice a low moan that could be heard even above the radio static. The only hope of human help, should she need it, was from a ranger’s station, hidden from view by a belt of trees but likely there since there was still a sign for it.
The road had been plowed since the last storm the previous Monday, creating a six-foot-high drift on one side, which failed to hide the jutting pustules of the rock wall beneath, and a mere curb on the other that did nothing to disguise the steep drop into a wooded, boulder-strewn chasm where the wind wished her to go. Though this was the first snow since the plowing, there had obviously been at least one thaw and subsequent freeze, because under the fresh powder the road was a slick as an ice rink and she had trouble keeping traction.
Soon even the sparse cabins disappeared. Once in a while there was a break in the rocks perhaps caused by a long ago earthquake. There, people had forced in narrow roads that led to small shacks built decades ago, but these looked like storage sheds rather than buildings intended for human habitation, and as with everything and everywhere else on the mountain, there were no signs of life.
There was only one other car coming the opposite way, a red something that was long and low to the ground and whose engine could be heard over the wind. It had on its high beams which it didn’t bother to lower as it barely scraped by her door, forcing her very near the snow drift whose solid gleam proclaimed it to be of ice and stone and not billows of cushiony snow. She glanced at the driver through the frosted windows. All she saw was a profile. He was an older man with long, silver hair and a rictus grin, who clung to the wheel like grim death. Juliet thought there was a passenger too, but the car was past her before she could be certain.
Juliet found herself hoping for a glimpse of some other automobile traveling her direction as the grade grew steeper and harsher, but as visibility neared zero, she began praying there wasn’t anyone else on the road ahead because she could be right on top of them and still never see a thing.
Days were short and because of the storm, long before she expected it, night began to close in. She began to feel insignificant among the trees lashed with storm. The mountains were so much bigger, and so much more threatening, than she had expected. The woods back east had always seemed friendly. These weren’t. They were denser, taller. Darker.
The grade increased until she was looking at a road that seemed nearly vertical. The rear wheels began to slip more than they grabbed, but she gave it more gas and the front tires held until she reached a slightly more level spot where she could stop. Snow on the flat and snow on a grade were two different beasts. The difference was making her hands sweat inside her driving gloves. She finally stopped under a stand of trees that offered some shelter from the snow and looked at the fuel gauge. She calculated. Using the low gears was sucking up gas at an alarming rate. If she went on, she might run out of gas before she hit another town.
Forward, backward, right and left—visibility was poor. At the base of the next grade there was a small cabin set back in another of the narrow ravines that fractured the cliff wall. She thought for a moment that she saw tracks leading to the door, but it was probably just a trick of the dying light bouncing off the snow. The shack was as dark as every other she had passed and there was no smoke coming out the chimney.
On the map, the road looked like nothing, and railroad grades were supposed to be gently sloped so loggers didn’t end up with runaway trains. But, in that case, maps had nothing to do with reality. Admitting defeat, Juliet decided to turn back while there was a place to do it. The helpful GPS said it was thirty more miles before her “road” of uphill ice would rejoin the highway near Strawberry. She would never make it even if the gas held out.
Turning the car was tricky. A three-point turn became more like five. The wind was causing snow to drift, making the edge of the road hard to judge, and even with chains she was having trouble getting traction. The downhill ride was as harrowing as the uphill one had been and far less controlled.
She was only a few hundred yards back the way she had come, doing her best to see her old tire tracks through the increasing blanket gathering on her windshield, when she turned a corner and stopped after a long slide, dazzled by headlights. The big car was slewed sideways, blocking the road. Its back left tire was hanging over the edge of a precipice whose depths Juliet decided not to contemplate since she suffered from vertigo. There was no movement except for the snow and the occasional crumble of ice and frozen rock from under the hanging rear tire.
“Damn.” The steady downfall of nearly vertical flakes periodically shifted ninety degrees and blew sideways. The buffets rocked the car and felt strong enough to knock a person flat.
Squinting, she made out that the car was red, probably the one that had passed her, though it was difficult to tell for sure because the snow was piling up on it everywhere except the hood where the heat of the engine had so far kept it clear.
Juliet relaxed her grip on the steering wheel and realized that she had an urgent need to urinate. Unfortunately it would have to wait.
She backed her car up far enough to have her own headlights pointing at the stranded auto. She left her engine running and the heater on high. It took effort to force her door open since the wind was against her and the locking mechanism seemed to have frozen. Eventually she was able to muscle her way out of the car but the heavy door slammed hard behind her.
She was wearing leather boots, driving gloves, and warm clothing, but the temperatures had dropped like a rock since she stopped to put chains on the car and she was aware of the intense cold, especially on her face where the gale of icy needles made her eyes tear. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel one’s heart thudding in the eye sockets when cold threatened the brain.
When she was a yard away from the automobile, she could hear that the
engine of the other car was still running. This struck her as ominous, though it made sense for a driver to keep the heater on if he was stuck and waiting for help.
Juliet was usually a great believer in following hunches. They were her brain’s subconscious processing information which it then categorized by emotion, which in turn led to immediate impulses which arrived ahead of logical thought and which could—and did—sometimes save lives. It also, almost always, made her look for evidence of chicanery since this was how her brain was trained. This was a habit she wanted to leave behind since chronic suspicion made no one happy.
Still, the hairs on her neck were raised. She paused, wondering if she should go back to her car for her gun. She felt watched—maybe by an animal. There were bears up there, weren’t there? But they should be asleep for the winter. And if there were wolves they would be howling—at least they always seemed to howl on those nature shows. Actually, nothing would be abroad in the storm. As the old saying went, it wasn’t a fit night out for man nor beast. Even the boulders were hunched down trying to avoid the lashes of the wind.
No, going back to her car would take time. The driver could be badly hurt, possibly dying of a heart attack or hypothermia or heaven only knew what while she dithered.
Juliet shook off her foreboding and forced herself forward, pushing into the wind until she reached the Jaguar. She could tell what it was because of the hood ornament. The silver panther looked like it was diving into the snow.
The driver’s window was completely covered in clumps of ice which had frozen into a solid sheet and would not break away though she tried clearing the snow. She beat on the door and shouted but there was no answer and no suggestion that anyone was trying to open it from inside. She began to worry about carbon monoxide poisoning. Had the tail pipe been plugged somehow and had the building exhaust overcome the driver?
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