Stranded

by Lorena McCourtney

  Suddenly another chilling thought occurred to me. “Could someone have deliberately loosened the plug?”

  Nick looked surprised. “Well, yeah, I suppose. But why would someone do that? Anyone who knows enough to do it would also know it could ruin the engine.”

  “Malicious vandalism.” Ben Simpson nodded wisely. “You never know what some people will do these days.”

  “That’s right.” Kelli’s tone suggested personal experience.

  I looked around. I wasn’t surprised that nosy Ben Simpson was still there and listening with interest, but I was surprised that Kelli Keifer had paused with her hand on the doorknob to listen to the details of our disaster. Even more surprised that a little frown between those blue eyes suggested concern about our predicament.

  “So, you want me to start tearing out the engine right away, or … ?” Nick left the question open ended.

  “Not just yet. I’ll have to … see what I can do.”

  “We’ll just pull the motor home out of the shop for now, then.”

  I nodded. The money numbers swung in my head like a hangman’s noose. Warm desert sunshine was now a mirage shimmering on the far side of an uncrossable wilderness spiked with dollar signs.

  Because, as far as I could see, the here-and-now fact was that we were stranded in Hello until I found $4,000 I’d tucked away and forgotten in my billfold, or a new motor home engine dropped out of the sky. Whichever came first.

  4

  “After Nick gets through with the Durango, I can give you a lift to a motel or one of the bed and breakfasts,” Ben offered. “There’s a couple of ’em stay open during the winter.”

  I hesitated. More expenses. I probably shouldn’t have told Abilene to buy that plastic wrap.

  I looked back at Nick. “Perhaps we could stay in the motor home right here until we figure out what to do?”

  Nick shook his head regretfully. “City passed an ordinance a while back. No occupied RVs except in RV parks within the city limits.” He hesitated. “I could probably get by letting you stay in it here for one night. But no longer.”

  “Thank you. We appreciate that.” I turned to Ben. “I think we will stay here for tonight, then. But thank you for the offer to take us somewhere. That’s very nice of you.”

  For the moment I blocked out worries about what we’d do after tonight. Kelli Keifer, apparently deciding we were taken care of, opened the door and went on out to her Bronco. I stood at the window and watched Nick and his helper use the truck to pull the motor home out of the shop and drag it over to a space by the fence. Motor homes are unknowing, unfeeling lumps of metal, of course, but ours certainly had a dejected look at the moment.

  “Tough break,” Ben said.

  “God probably has something in mind.”

  Ben nodded. “That’s kind of what Edna used to say when things went wrong.”

  I picked up Koop’s carrier and sloshed across the puddled yard to the motor home. By now I was beginning to worry about Abilene. She’d been gone a long time. Inside the motor home, I let Koop loose, turned on both the furnace and generator, put water on to heat for tea, and sat down to consider our predicament.

  The big question, next to “What are we going to do now?” was whether someone had deliberately loosened that oil plug. Because there were two definite “someone” possibilities. The Braxton clan was out to get me. I’d been the star witness in sending one of their own to prison for murder. They’d already retaliated by trying to burn my house, with me in it, back in Missouri. They’d located me in Arkansas and booby-trapped my old Thunderbird with dynamite. They’d chased me across a couple of states and almost caught up with me again in Oklahoma. They were vindictive, murderous, and determined.

  Then there was Boone Morrison, Abilene’s abusive husband. She’d incurred his wrath when she accidentally wrecked his treasured Porsche while trying to escape from him before he escalated the abuse, which included a broken arm and threats of murder, to actual homicide. He, with the help of a sheriff cohort, had tracked her to Oklahoma, where we’d barely managed to elude him before he had a chance to carry out his threats.

  I didn’t doubt that both our menacing shadows were still on our trail, persistent as prison-break bloodhounds. They were why we’d kept on the move ever since leaving Oklahoma, and why we tried to leave no clue where we were headed next.

  But there was one reason to think neither the Braxtons nor Boone Morrison had caused our present predicament. Just pulling a vital plug on the engine wasn’t malicious enough.

  The Braxtons had vowed to make roadkill out of me. Boone Morrison had sworn to make mincemeat out of Abilene. The wording of their threats got low points for originality, but the threats themselves were all too real.

  Sabotaging the engine on the motor home would mean a big inconvenience as well as a financial disaster for us, true. But it wasn’t likely to have fatal consequences, and neither the Braxtons nor Boone Morrison would settle for merely inconveniencing us. They were out for blood. Our blood.

  So, I decided with a certain relief, I could safely rule out Braxton or Boone involvement in our present predicament. We were here because of carelessness on the part of the guy who had last changed the oil, or perhaps even because of a simple mechanical malfunction. These things happen.

  Which didn’t mean the Braxtons or Boone Morrison wouldn’t take advantage of our sitting-duck situation if they caught up with us here in Hello …

  But what to do? I didn’t want to get Nick into trouble for illicitly harboring two women and a cat on his property, but where could we go? And where, I wondered again, was Abilene? It’d be dark before long.

  I poured a cup of tea, dumped some liver-flavored crunchies in a bowl for Koop, and sat down to think again.

  I had a little money in a CD, but I needed the small amount of interest income it supplied to supplement my Social Security. There’d also be a painful penalty to pay if I took anything out of the CD. And there was always the possibility of some even more drastic emergency than this one for which I’d need the money. It might be me going thumpety-thump-clank-clank-clunk next time, and there was a big gap between Medicare coverage and total medical costs. But what other solution was there?

  Sitting on a street corner with a sign reading “Will work for motor home engine” did not strike me as a likely solution. Nor, in spite of Ben Simpson’s generous assessment, did I think I had a big future as a chorus-line dancer.

  So, some mundane job in Hello until we saved up enough to pay for an engine transplant? I’d had a couple of housekeeping/caretaking type jobs recently, and I had been a librarian back in Missouri for some thirty years. I’m industrious, dependable, and curious. Also a reasonably quick learner.

  Character traits which, I suspect, could also describe anything from a con artist selling snake oil to a bag lady going through dumpsters, and I don’t see many job openings for either.

  I’m also rather over-the-hill in the eyes of most employers.

  Feel free to jump in here anytime, Lord. Got any ideas?

  And where is Abilene? She should have been back by now.

  A vehicle pulled up outside, and I peered out the window. I was surprised to see Kelli Keifer’s muddy Bronco, even more surprised when she headed for the motor home door rather than Nick’s shop. I opened it before she knocked. The sun had dropped over the mountains now, turning them to cold blue silhouettes. Kelli wasn’t wearing the sunglasses now. An icy breeze tousled her long blond hair.

  “Hi,” she said. She didn’t strike me as an uncertain sort of person, but there was something tentative about the greeting. Perhaps as if, given her status as Hello’s designated murderess, she wasn’t certain of her welcome?

  “Hi.” I tried to sound friendly.

  Then words came out all in a rush. “Maybe it’s none of my business, but I got to thinking after I left … You’re going to need someplace to stay after tonight, right? Apparently you’re stuck here for a while, and I got the impressi
on your finances might be—” She broke off as if not wanting to sound nosy or insulting.

  “Shaky?” I suggested. “Tight?”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’m afraid so. Definitely tight and shaky finances.”

  “Anyway, I have a house. It’s empty, and I wouldn’t charge anything if you’d like to stay in it for a while.”

  “A free place to live?” I asked, astonished. “Just like that, you’d let us stay in your house? You don’t even know us.”

  “I know you were honest enough to tell me you and Ben were gossiping about me. And nice enough to apologize. No one else has done that. You and your cat don’t look like you’d throw big, drunken parties and wreck the place. Not that wrecking it would probably be much of a loss, under the circumstances.”

  “The circumstances being this was the house in which your uncle was murdered?” I guessed. “And everyone is acting as if it’s tainted?”

  She smiled. “I should have known you’d spot the worm in my apple.”

  “I’ve lived in a house where someone was murdered.” Two someones, actually.

  “You have?” Her head jerked back as if she were startled, and I wondered if she was reassessing her generous offer. Probably most inconspicuous little old ladies don’t come with murder in their resume.

  “Not anyone I murdered,” I assured her.

  “I wasn’t thinking that,” she protested. She smiled and made a gesture of putting forefinger and thumb together with a narrow space between them. “Well, maybe just one teensy little thought. I saw a rerun of Arsenic and Old Lace not long ago.”

  “Although I don’t have any references to offer,” I had to admit.

  “I didn’t kill anyone either,” she said suddenly, her voice unexpectedly fierce. “No matter what Ben or the townspeople think. I didn’t do it.”

  I didn’t know Kelli well enough to jump in with a resounding echo of belief in her innocence, but I was certainly leaning in that direction. Does a murderer offer down-and-outers a free place to stay?

  “Do you have any idea who did?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, no one who makes as good a suspect as I do.”

  “Maybe we can talk more about this sometime,” I said.

  She regarded me thoughtfully. “Maybe we can.”

  I briskly returned to the matter of the house. “It’s not just Koop and me who need a place to stay. A younger woman, my friend Abilene, is traveling with us. Though I don’t know where she is at the moment.”

  “The more the merrier. Uncle Hiram isn’t going to mind. And I think the house would be better off occupied than sitting there empty. You know how old houses get when they’re empty. They start smelling strange. And they get broken into.”

  “Has this house been broken into?”

  Reluctantly, as if she were afraid it would scare me off, she said, “Somebody shoved in the back door and went through things, though I don’t think anything was taken. But I’m sure that wouldn’t happen if the house was occupied. There isn’t much crime in Hello.”

  “Do you have time to come in and wait until Abilene gets back? I just made tea.”

  She instantly pulled off the stocking cap. “That’d be nice.”

  Kelli was sitting on the sofa, under inspection by Koop, and I was pouring tea for her when the door burst open. Abilene’s cheeks were pink with exertion, and excitement lit up her eyes.

  “Ivy, you won’t believe what happened—” She broke off when she realized I wasn’t alone in the motor home.

  “Kelli Keifer … Abilene Tyler,” I introduced. Abilene had stopped using Boone Morrison’s last name. “And I guess I haven’t introduced myself yet, either. I’m Ivy Malone.” To Abilene I added, “Kelli has offered us a place to live.”

  “We’re staying here?” Abilene said, and I remembered she hadn’t yet heard the bad news about the kaput engine.

  I briefly explained our problems and the probable cost of a new engine. She dropped into a seat at the tiny dinette, obviously as shocked by the figure as I was. Yet at the same time, she didn’t look as disappointed or panicky about this change of plans as I was afraid she’d be, which surprised me. So far, she’d been as eager as I to keep on the move.

  We all contemplated that $4,000 figure for a moment, until Kelli said, “You’ve been out for a run?” Abilene wasn’t really breathing hard—she’s in too good physical shape for that—but her breathing was still fast enough to suggest exertion.

  “No. Well, I did run back here. I’d been gone so long that I figured Ivy’d be getting worried.”

  “I was.” Abilene is kind of the granddaughter I never had, and I do worry about her. I took her under my wing back in Oklahoma. Although I have to admit that sometimes she’s the wing, and I’m the one under it. “Where have you been all this time?” I added, trying not to sound as if I were scolding.

  “I walked downtown, past all these little antique-y places and a city square with a statue of a miner with a gold pan, and then I looked down a side street and saw a palomino horse rearing up on its hind legs.”

  “A horse? In town?”

  “I was surprised too. I thought it must have gotten loose from somewhere.”

  Kelli laughed delightedly. “Dr. Sugarman’s horse.” She spoke the name with unexpected warmth, considering her chilly attitude toward the other residents of Hello. “And the horse does look real, doesn’t it? But it’s made out of fiberglass.”

  If there’s an animal of any species within jogging distance, Abilene will find it or it will find her. Maybe that includes fiberglass varieties.

  “So I walked over there to look, and by the time I got there I saw what it was. It’s in front of a veterinarian’s office. And there was a sign in the window saying ‘Assistant Wanted.’ I wondered what kind of experience or training a veterinarian’s assistant would need, and I decided I’d just go in and ask.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “Nothing right then. The door was locked, and there was one of those clock-face signs in the window, with the hands showing the vet would be back at four o’clock.”

  “Dr. Sugarman does mostly small animals,” Kelli explained, “but in an emergency he’ll go out to a ranch for a sick horse or cow. Or over to Stella Sinclair’s, if she gets in a tizzy about her potbellied pig eating too many Godiva chocolates.” Kelli rolled her eyes, apparently not overly sympathetic to the plight of a pig on a chocolate high.

  “Anyway, I didn’t have a watch to know what time it was,” Abilene went on, “so I was just standing there trying to decide whether to wait for a while, when an SUV screeched up. A little girl jumped out with a cat wrapped in a blanket, and her mother jumped out right behind her. And both of them were frantic when they found the vet wasn’t there, because the cat was unconscious.”

  “Oh no—”

  “They’d had some old Christmas lights out and were testing them. The cat chewed on the electrical cord and got shocked.”

  “And it was still alive?” Kelli said. “That’s a wonder.”

  “I didn’t think it was alive. It was limp. Then I remembered seeing on TV about how this fireman gave CPR to an unconscious cat he’d pulled out of a burning building.”

  “You gave CPR to a cat?” Kelli asked.

  “I wasn’t sure exactly how to do it, but I figured I couldn’t hurt the poor thing. It wasn’t breathing at all. So I tried to remember what I’d seen on TV, and I closed the cat’s mouth and put my mouth over its face and breathed into its nose. It’s different than how you do CPR on a person,” she added.

  “A whole lot different,” Kelli said, which I had to echo. Then Kelli added thoughtfully, “But I guess I could do it if I had to. If it were my Sandra Day …”

  Now it was my turn to be astonished. “You named your cat for a former Supreme Court judge?”

  Kelli smiled self-consciously. “Not many people make the connection. It’s kind of a lawyer thing.”

  I nodded toward Koop, who was bu
sily kneading Kelli’s lap. “He hates smokers. His name’s Koop.”

  Kelli looked blank for a moment, then awareness lit up her face with another smile. “After the surgeon general who was such a fanatic against smoking!”

  “Not many people make that connection either.”

  It’s odd how bonds form between people. You wouldn’t think cat names would do it. But we smiled at each other, and I felt a definite link here. It didn’t prove Kelli Keifer wasn’t a murderer, but it was going to take more than Ben’s “everyone knows she did it” to make me think she was.

  I turned back to Abilene. “So what happened with the cat?”

  “After a little while it started breathing on its own.”

  Kelli clapped. “Hey, that’s awesome!”

  “I was really surprised when it worked,” Abilene admitted. “And then the vet drove up, and the woman told him what I’d done. So he asked if I’d like to go inside and wash out my mouth—”

  “Good idea!” Kelli said, and we all laughed. I was still trying to decide if I could do what Abilene had done.

  “So I went in and washed out my mouth, and then I watched while the vet checked the cat to see if it was going to be okay. Its name is Mittens. The woman had a camera with her and took a picture of the little girl and me and Mittens all together.”

  “Do you know who these people were?” Kelli asked.

  Abilene shook her head, and I had to smile. She knew the cat’s name but not the people’s. Or why the woman had a camera with her. Typical Abilene. “After they left, the veterinarian said I’d done … good.”

  Abilene is a modest person, not given to bragging. I guessed she was being modest now about what the vet had said.

  “And then he offered me the job as his assistant.”

  “Dr. Sugarman will be a great guy to work for. I always take Sandra Day to him. This is great!”

  I echoed the thought. A job involving animals would be a perfect job for Abilene.

  “Everyone likes Dr. Sugarman,” Kelli added. “He does everything from teach Sunday school at a church to run a 4-H club for the kids.”