Stranded

by Lorena McCourtney

  A Christian, an animal lover, and good with kids. I right away wanted to know if he was married, but Abilene jumped in before I could ask. “I told him I couldn’t take a job because we were just passing through, but … ?” She looked at me questioningly.

  “I don’t think we’re just passing through.”

  “Then maybe I’ll go talk to him again about the job. He said he’d train me and teach me whatever I need to know.”

  She spoke in an offhand way, but I could see she was bubbling with eagerness. She clapped a hand to the side of her face. “Oh, but I forgot all about the plastic wrap!”

  And, temporarily, the toothache too, apparently. “I think we’ll survive without it,” I assured her. Probably neither Abilene nor Kelli could, but I could well remember back to the days when we did without plastic wrap because there was no such thing.

  I envisioned Dr. Sugarman as young and handsome, though I doubted that mattered to Abilene. The chance to work with animals was what was important to her. And there was that big barrier to a romantic relationship for Abilene anyway, a barrier in the form of brutal, vindictive Boone Morrison, who was still, unfortunately, her legal husband.

  Kelli jumped up. “Okay! Good. Do you want to go over to the house now or wait until tomorrow?” She answered her own question. “Actually, tomorrow would be better. Uncle Hiram had the place modernized with a heat pump a few years ago, and I have the heat on to keep the pipes from freezing, but it’s down really low. I’ll go over now and turn it up, so the house will be warm tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  Kelli offered to come pick us up, but I said we could walk, so she drew a map of streets and suggested we meet at the house at ten o’clock the following day. She said it would be quite a walk, but I said we didn’t mind.

  “But we don’t want you taking time off from work just for this. Ben Simpson mentioned you’re a lawyer, and I know how busy lawyers are. We can come earlier or later.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t also mention that I’m not exactly overwhelmed with business.” Actually Ben had pointed that out, but I didn’t mention it now. “I’m still working on Uncle Hiram’s estate, and I’m handling a couple of real estate things, but I let my receptionist go a few weeks ago.” She gave us a little wave as she went out the door. “See you tomorrow.”

  Nick closed and locked the gate when he left for the night, and I felt comfortable and secure behind the wooden fence. I fixed pork chops and microwave-baked potatoes for dinner, and Abilene added a salad. Koop snuggled up at my feet when we all went to bed, me in the bed up over the driver and passenger’s seats, Abilene on the sofa. I’d offered numerous times to switch with her because she’s so much taller than I am, but she always insisted the sofa was fine.

  I crossed my hands behind my head on the pillow and reflected on the day. It had been stressful, no doubt about it, and I knew we might be stranded here for who-knew-how-long. But the Lord, working in his usual mysterious ways, was looking after us. A dream job for Abilene. A house to live in.

  Thank you, Lord.

  And an intriguing, unsolved murder lurking in the wings …

  5

  Kelli’s Bronco was already parked in the driveway when we arrived, me huffing from the climb, because the house was well up on a steep hillside on the east side of town. This had no doubt been a lone-wolf, power position overlooking all of Hello at one time, and the view of town below and mountains beyond was still spectacular, but homes of more recent vintage rose on the hillside above the house now.

  The house looked like a late Victorian, maybe built in the 1890s or early 1900s, I guessed, although it had probably been modified since originally built. We’d seen other Victorians on our climb up here, but this one, though not as well-kept as some, showed evidence of past glory. A steep roofline topped the three stories, with odd angles and juttings here and there to accommodate dormer windows and other projections. A round tower rose from each front corner of the house, which struck me as unusual. Perhaps built that way because other houses constructed locally in that time period had only one tower, and whichever McLeod ancestor had built the house felt the need to proclaim his superiority with two?

  The tower on the right was open on the third floor, making it a circular balcony with a fancy railing below a peaked roof rising to a weather vane of a trotting horse. The tower on the left had a semicircle of tall, narrow windows with arched tops and a graceful roof that matched the opposite tower. When we peered through the tall hedge surrounding the front yard, I saw that a brick walkway outlined each tower.

  Subtracting from the elegance of the tower on the left was a chunk of unpainted plywood covering one of the windows. A pillared porch loaded with gingerbread trim ran across the front of the house between the towers. Most of the house was painted a dreary mold-green, but an impressive brick chimney rose beyond the right tower. An addition appeared to have been built on the back side of the house at some time, a flat-roofed oblong unfortunately tacked on with no regard for architecture or style.

  I felt, as freeloading tenants, perhaps we should go around to some servants’ entrance, but Kelli had been watching for us and swung the front door open.

  “A rather grand old gal, isn’t she?” She motioned us up the front steps. “Too bad it has this pall of doom hanging over it. Like a curse or infectious disease, and anyone who gets too close might catch it.”

  “People will get over whatever prejudice they have against the house because of the circumstances. It’s a beautiful old place.”

  “It needs some work, but it is beautiful, isn’t it? And if you live here and don’t get murdered, maybe the death-taint will be defused.”

  If we didn’t get murdered? Not a reassuring thought. But free is free, I philosophized. Can’t be fussy about details.

  Apparently realizing how what she’d just said sounded, Kelli smiled ruefully. “That didn’t come out quite right, did it? But I’m sure you’ll be perfectly safe here.”

  “You didn’t live here with your uncle?” I asked as Kelli shut the door behind us. The heat pump had brought the interior temperature to a comfortable warmth.

  “No. I stayed here for a short time, but it wasn’t working out. Now I have a little log cottage over on the other side of town.”

  The front door, with a heavy oval window of etched glass, opened onto a large, hardwood-floored foyer centered with a broad stairway leading upward. An archway opened to a living room, or perhaps it was called a parlor at one time, on the right. A door to the left was closed. I looked at it curiously. There’s something magnetic about a closed door, at least for someone as curious as I am. I could almost feel, as my good friend Magnolia back in Missouri would say, vibes coming off the room. Was that where Hiram had been murdered?

  Kelli ignored the closed door and led us into the living room, brushing aside a spider web draped catty-corner across the archway.

  “Living in the same house wasn’t working out because … ?” Okay, it was a nosy question. But little old ladies can often get away with nosiness, and I’m willing to take advantage of any perks available to LOLs.

  “The rumors are rampant, of course. One is that Uncle Hiram didn’t want me living in the house with him because he was afraid I’d poison him. Another is that I didn’t want to live here because it would cramp my lifestyle. I’m from the Los Angeles area. Which to the local imagination could mean anything from nude dancing on tabletops to throwing cocaine parties with my friends from the Hollywood Mob. It’s all so outrageous that it would be funny, except …” She shook her head and blinked, and I guessed the town’s suspicions hurt her more than she wanted to let on.

  “And the real reason you didn’t want to live in the same house was … ?”

  “A big reason was that Uncle Hiram didn’t like cats, and I have my Sandra Day. I didn’t care for his heavy smoking, and we also had some … philosophical differences.” An intriguing comment, I thought, but she moved on without elabo
rating. “I also prefer something a little more cozy than this.”

  She waved toward the distant ceiling, the molding and elaborate crystal chandelier liberally draped with more spider webs. The enormous fireplace had been covered over at some time and was now just a blank brick wall beneath an elaborately carved mantel. The mantel would still be a nice place to hang a child’s stocking at Christmas, and I felt an unexpected wave of nostalgia about a fireplace mantel hung with stockings back in my son Colin’s childhood. Sometimes it’s hard to believe how old Colin would be now if he hadn’t disappeared in a ferry accident while on a military peacekeeping assignment in Korea so long ago.

  A round tower room opened off this larger room, a charming, airy space, lace-curtained but quite devoid of furniture. Actually, both living and dining rooms were rather skimpily furnished, though a few impressive and no doubt valuable antiques remained. A lovely grand piano and a grandfather clock dominated the living room, and a heavy, claw-footed oak table and matching hutch stood in the adjoining dining room. A number of oversized portraits and photographs of various stiff-backed, bearded gentlemen hung on the walls, a couple of the men accompanied by wasp-waisted women in enormous, elegant hats.

  Abilene, hands stuffed in the back pockets of her jeans, studied one of the photos. Although I suspected she was less interested in the people than the woman’s hat, probably looking to see if the feathers were from some endangered species. Abilene notices things like that.

  “Are any of these pictures of Hiram?” I asked.

  “No. That was his father.” She pointed to one elaborately framed oval photo of a wiry man with an unexpectedly rakish look in spite of an unsmiling countenance. The cane in his hand looked more like a stylish accessory than a necessity. “But I’m not certain who the others are. Various grandparents and uncles and cousins, according to Hiram. But he could be mischievous. I wouldn’t put it past him to just pick up some old photo in an antique store and blithely claim it was a distinguished or rascally old McLeod.”

  An odd but probably harmless peculiarity of character.

  Jarring next to the classic lines of the piano was a modern sofa with a purple and green pattern that looked as if it had been overrun by some virulent species of jungle fungus. Folding metal TV trays doubled as end tables, and most of the fringe on an old-fashioned floor lamp was missing. Blotchy gray paint covered the wallpaper on one wall, as if in preparation for some remodeling project that had never materialized.

  In total, not the elegant rooms or furnishings you’d expect in a big old Victorian house with a wealthy owner. That thought must have zipped across to Kelli.

  “There are more antiques stored upstairs, but what usually happened was that one wife would move in and change things to suit herself. Then another would come along and redo everything. Except for the first two, who he married when he was quite young, the wives were always much younger than Hiram. Maybe Ben Simpson mentioned there had been eight of them?”

  I nodded.

  She didn’t comment on Ben Simpson’s eager dispersal of gossipy information. “Apparently the wives always wanted things different than how they were, and Uncle Hiram was happy to humor them. The most recent wife threw out most of the previous wife’s furniture, but she didn’t last long enough to replace anything, so that’s why it’s so bare in here. I’m not sure where that came from,” she added with a nose-wrinkle of distaste at the sofa.

  There was nothing good to be said about the sofa, so I didn’t say anything. “Did Hiram play the piano?”

  “Oh yes, and he was quite good at it. I was always surprised when I’d come over and hear this wonderful Mozart floating out to the street. I think it relaxed him.”

  No doubt he needed relaxation after eight temperamental, furniture-tossing wives.

  Kelli led us on through a swinging door into the large kitchen. “He did most of his living in here in his last couple of years.”

  This did not look like the world of a quite good, grand piano player, even a mischievous one. Actually, it looked … sad. And lonely. An enormous big-screen TV blocked most of one window, and a single cot covered with layers of khaki blankets stood against the opposite wall. A tiny microwave sat on the kitchen counter beside a huge combination refrigerator/freezer. A folding card table apparently served as Hiram’s eating area. It was set up near an electric fireplace. A lone yellow silk rose stood in a cheap vase on the windowsill over the sink, beside it a mayonnaise jar filled with feathers.

  “Uncle Hiram hated to shop, so when he did do it he bought enough to last for a while. Like the thirty-four TV dinners, all Mexican enchiladas and tamales, that I found in the freezer. Plus seventeen cans of chili in the cupboard and rotten tomatoes in the refrigerator. Because he’d bought something like twenty pounds of them, way more than he could use.”

  “He was a bit … ummm … eccentric?” I asked, curious but not jumping to conclusions on the basis of thirty-four TV dinners. Before living in the motor home full-time, where space is limited, I’d been known to stock up on good buys too. I’ve also discovered that a bit of eccentricity, like the invisibility that comes to many of us with the advance of years, can occasionally come in useful.

  “Living like this, it looks that way, doesn’t it? But I think it was more that he considered his present living conditions temporary and irrelevant. He really wasn’t concerned about the details of everyday living.” She smiled. “But maybe that’s one definition of eccentricity?”

  “I wonder why he didn’t hire a housekeeper?”

  “I wondered too. I even suggested it, but he got all huffy, as if I were implying he was getting incompetent and couldn’t take care of himself. So I just dropped it. I don’t think many people knew he lived like this. He always dressed very well and cut quite a distinguished figure when he went out.”

  “Did you know any of the wives?”

  “They were all past-tense by the time I moved here. One is still around, though she’s elderly now and I think would rather no one knew she was once married to Hiram. But he was planning to marry again this spring. I suppose Ben told you that too?”

  I nodded. I glanced around, wondering how a new wife would react to all this. “Hiram was an optimistic sort of man, then.”

  Kelli surprised me by laughing with delight. “I hadn’t thought of it in exactly that way, but yes, that’s true. Uncle Hiram was an optimistic man. He always had big, sometimes grandiose ideas, and he never gave up on marriage. And I think he had a right to be optimistic in this case. The next wife was to be Lucinda O’Mallory. She’s the widow of a man whose early family established the first bank in Hello.”

  “Not as young as the others?”

  “She’s about Uncle Hiram’s age, late sixties. By far his best choice in wives, I think. Actually, it’s quite a romantic story.”

  “Oh?”

  “Lucinda was his old flame way back in their high school days here in Hello. I don’t know what happened, but something did, and she married the banker and Hiram married someone else. She stayed married to the banker all these years, but he died a few years ago, and she and Hiram got together again not long ago. I sometimes wonder if the reason none of Hiram’s marriages worked was because, deep down …” Kelli smiled self-consciously as if embarrassed to be caught romanticizing about the endurance of lost love. “Maybe I should be trying to write syrupy romances instead of a legal thriller.”

  “You’re a writer?”

  “I’ve had a considerable amount of free time since coming to Hello. I figured I might as well try to use it constructively.” Her tone was wry, but her smile unexpectedly mischievous, perhaps a trait that ran in the family. “Also a perfect opportunity to fictionally skewer a few local personalities.”

  Hastily she jumped back to the story of the upcoming marriage that was not to be. “Lucinda has a beautiful home on the other side of town, a Victorian like this, only much better kept up. They were planning to live there.”

  Wise Lucinda, I thought. “
What did Hiram intend to do with this place?”

  “He talked about selling it after they were married, though I’m not sure he’d ever actually have done it. He had a sentimental streak.”

  “You approved of the marriage?”

  “Oh yes. Lucinda’s a wonderful woman. Very upbeat and cheerful. Active in local charitable and civic affairs, and very health minded too. I’ve seen her working out at the local health club. She’s in incredible shape for someone her age. She’d have taken good care of Hiram.”

  “Too bad, then, the way things worked out.”

  Kelli nodded. “I know he must have had enemies from business dealings or personal differences over the years. He was a shrewd businessman. But it’s hard to believe someone could have hated him enough to kill him. He was so generous to the town. To me too. He bought my little cabin for me. And then to have people think I murdered him …” She swallowed hard.

  “Does Lucinda think that?”

  “No. She says anyone who claims I killed him should be forced to write ‘Kelli Keifer is not a killer’ 349 times. She’s always been wonderfully kind and nice to me, both before and after Uncle Hiram’s death. We worked together on his funeral arrangements.” She gave an unladylike snort. “Their upcoming marriage was another reason people think I murdered him, of course. I had to kill him before he and Lucinda married, otherwise I might lose out on some or all of the inheritance.”

  “There’s a lot to inherit?”

  She hesitated slightly. “I’ll be working on that for some time yet.”

  “Hiram was still mentally okay?”

  “Oh yes. He had an excellent memory. He could tell wonderful stories from when he was a small boy and spent time with his father out at the mine. Like when his father shot an attacking bear out there. And another time when he was playing in a creek and found a gold nugget as big as his thumb.”

  Abilene, always quiet, hadn’t said anything all this time, but I knew she was anxious to get out of here and go talk to Dr. Sugarman about the job in his vet clinic.