“I don’t charge much…just room and board and a hundred dollars a week, and I’m a hard worker—not one of these soft slack kids you mostly see around nowadays. I can turn my hand to just about anything, from mending fences to breaking horses, and I’m neither a drunk nor a gambler, so you won’t need to worry about me not showing up on time or not at all.
“Ma’am, is something wrong? You’ve not spoken a single word, and the way you’re staring at me, I’m beginning to think I’ve suddenly grown two heads or something!”
“No…no, it’s not that.” Hallie swallowed hard, attempting to collect her wits. “It’s just that I’m experiencing the strangest sensation that I’ve…that I’ve seen you somewhere before. Have we ever met, Mr…. ah…Coltrane? No, forget I even asked that question—because if we had, I’m sure I’d remember. Still, you seem familiar to me somehow.”
“I certainly can’t imagine why, Ms. Muldoon.”
The stranger’s face was politely impassive, but for some unknown reason, Hallie abruptly had the oddest feeling that he was inwardly laughing, and that, somehow, she had missed a joke she should have got.
“Are you a longtime resident of Wolf Creek, Mr. Coltrane? Perhaps you’re someone I recall from my childhood. I was born here, you see, even though I’ve not lived here for many long years now.”
“No, ma’am. I’m just drifting through, trying to earn a little money as I go along. Even if he’s rootless, a man’s still got to eat—and keep a roof over his head. I noticed your barn’s in sad shape, so could use some work. Still, it’s got an old tack room that would suit me just fine as a place to bunk if you agree to hire me.
“So, what do you say, Ms. Muldoon? Will you give me that job or not?”
The wheels in Hallie’s brain churned furiously. From her tour of the farm this morning, she already knew there was far too much heavy labor that needed doing for her and Aunt Gwen to accomplish it on their own, and she also knew she was unlikely to find anyone else who would do the work for room, board and a hundred dollars a week.
Still, she hesitated. Despite the bizarre sense of familiarity she continued to experience as she gazed at him, Trace Coltrane was, in reality, a stranger to her, and by his own admission, he was nothing more than a drifter, besides, just passing through town. What if he actually possessed wicked designs upon Meadowsweet and her and Aunt Gwen, meant to rob them or worse?
“I’d need references, Mr. Coltrane—one from Mr. Kincaid, at the very least,” Hallie stated firmly.
“Of course, ma’am.” Trace nodded. “I expected no less.”
“We can phone Frank Kincaid, Hallie, if you like.” Aunt Gwen spoke behind her in the main hall. “Hello, Mr. Coltrane. I’m Gwendolyn Lassiter, Hallie’s great-aunt. I apologize if I seem to have been eavesdropping. But when it didn’t appear to be Blanche at the front door, after all, Hallie, I grew curious and a trifle concerned.
“At any rate, I’m sure Mr. Coltrane’s all right. It was I who mentioned your homecoming to Frank in town the other day and that if you intended on staying at Meadowsweet, you’d undoubtedly need some help. So I know Mr. Coltrane’s been laboring at Applewood for quite some time now, and believe you me, Frank’s not the easiest person in this world to please. In truth, he’s rather an old curmudgeon.
“So I feel certain he could find little fault with Mr. Coltrane or his work—and as you are now well aware, we really could use some assistance here at Meadowsweet, dear. I’m afraid the place has gone rather downhill these past years, becoming way too much for Hennie and me to manage on our own. We fully intended to hire some outside help this summer. But of course, after Hennie passed away, I was reluctant to do anything without your permission and until I knew what you meant to do with the farm.”
“Yes, very well, then, Mr. Coltrane. Because my great-aunt has vouched for you, the job’s yours if you want it—but naturally, I will place that call to Mr. Kincaid, simply as a matter of course.”
“That’s fine with me, Ms. Muldoon,” Trace replied laconically, as though he could not have cared less.
But once more, Hallie suffered the strange sensation that he was laughing inside, and really, it was most unnerving to her. Despite her great-aunt’s endorsement—and the evidently notoriously irascible Mr. Kincaid apparently approving of the stranger, also—she felt Trace Coltrane might well prove insufferably arrogant, and she suspected he would be a dangerous man to cross, too.
For all his outward affability, she sensed an alertness and tension about him, as though he were habitually on his guard, poised to spring like some predator upon its prey.
At that thought, Hallie abruptly realized whom—or, rather, what—the stranger reminded her of, why he seemed so familiar to her. He bore an uncanny resemblance to the huge black wolf that had leaped upon the hood of her car last night—right down to the silky silver-tipped black hair, the striking blue eyes and the facial scar.
What were the odds, she wondered, that an animal of that unique description should have run out in front of her car the previous evening and that a man bearing those very same characteristics should show up on her verandah this morning—especially right after that strange mist she had seen on the landing?
Unbidden, the frightening tales she had heard in her childhood about the beasts that populated Wolf Creek being something more than just mere wolves again returned to haunt her.
Was it possible Trace Coltrane was a werewolf?
No, even the very idea was ridiculous! Hallie remonstrated herself sternly. There were no such thing as werewolves. They were nothing more than mythical creatures, made to appear actually to exist by tales told about them by ignorant peasants of bygone centuries, who had not understood congenital generalized hypertrichosis, a rare disease in which the patient suffered an abnormal, excessive growth of hair, thus resembling, some claimed, a wolf.
Or perhaps the stories stemmed from the practices of ancient cultures who had donned animal skins during celebratory pagan rituals, pretending to become the beasts they portrayed.
Really! Ever since she had returned to Meadowsweet, Hallie’s wild imagination had run away with her in ways it had not done since childhood. Truly, she must get hold of herself and stop all these fanciful indulgences.
“Aunt Gwen and I were just on our way into town, Mr. Coltrane,” she explained. “So perhaps you could start work first thing tomorrow morning.”
“There’s no time like the present, I’ve always thought, Ms. Muldoon. So I’d be more than happy to begin right now. If you’d like, I can start by driving you and your aunt into Wolf Creek. I assume that because you’ve only just arrived at Meadowsweet, you will, among other things, be picking up groceries, so there might be some heavy stuff I can help with.
“I’m afraid my pickup truck’s seen better days—” with one hand, he indicated the battered old vehicle parked on the circular gravel drive “—and wouldn’t prove very comfortable for either one of you ladies. But I notice you’ve both got cars—and to be honest, I wouldn’t mind taking a spin in that Mini.”
For the first time, Trace grinned—a wide, devastating smile that crinkled the corners of his deep-set blue eyes and showed even, white teeth.
It was a pleasant, friendly and yes, very sexy grin, Hallie mused—honest enough with herself to admit she found Trace Coltrane a highly attractive man. Still, his smile reminded her vividly of the way she had thought the wolf had grinned at her, and so she was also assailed with another wave of uneasiness.
Had she made an awful mistake by hiring the stranger?
He might not be a werewolf, as she had so ludicrously imagined just moments past. Still, there were other kinds of wolves….
“Why, how very kind of you to offer,” Aunt Gwen said. “Hallie and I would be more than pleased to have you drive us, wouldn’t we, child? I’m sure Hallie has driven so much these last few days that she would be grateful just to be a passenger, and to tell you the truth, I’m much more comfortable nowadays if I don’t have to
drive myself, either. When one gets old, no matter how hard one tries, one’s wits and reflexes just still aren’t ever as fast and sharp as they are in one’s youth, are they?
“Come along, then, Hallie. You don’t mind if Mr. Coltrane drives your car, do you? I’m sure your insurance policy covers anyone whom you give permission to drive your vehicle. Most of them do these days, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“No, I’m not bothered, Aunt Gwen. I’m just…still a little tired from my long trip, that’s all. I’m quite happy to have Mr. Coltrane drive us.” Hallie handed him her keys.
“Please. Call me Trace. I’m not in the habit of standing on formality,” he declared. “Why don’t you ladies wait here, while I fetch the car.”
As he loped off toward the carport on the side of the house, Hallie turned anxiously to her great-aunt.
“I sure hope you’re right about that man, Aunt Gwen,” she said. “Because I really would hate to see my car suddenly speeding clean away from here without us!”
“Oh, good heavens, dear! I sincerely doubt Mr. Coltrane is a car thief! Trust me. There is simply no way Frank would have employed anybody like that. No, I’m certain everything will be fine. Indeed, Mr. Coltrane seems like a very nice young man…most handsome and personable, in fact—although I do so like to see a man dressed up, rather than down. But of course, it wouldn’t be at all practical to wear a suit for farming chores.
“So, while I surely wouldn’t want to be placed on a par with Aggie and Edie, child, I can tell you haven’t lost the vivid imagination Hennie used to say you’d been blessed with, and I think perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to err a bit more on the practical side. No offense intended, dear.”
“None taken. Oh, Aunt Gwen, I’ve been telling myself pretty much the same thing for the past two days! I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Ever since I came here, I’ve felt somehow as though I were only seven years old again…imagining all sorts of highly improbable things…things I know full well are simply ridiculous. Why, if you heard some of what I’ve thought, you’d no doubt believe I’d taken leave of my senses. It all started with that damned wolf!”
“What wolf, dear?”
“I’ll tell you all about it when we get home. I don’t want Mr. Coltrane to think he’s come to work for a real nutcase. If there’s one thing at all I remember about Wolf Creek, it’s that everyone in town knows everybody else’s business, and I certainly don’t want people believing I need to be locked up in a mental hospital someplace.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, child. I’m sure that half the time they all thought that about Hennie. She just used to laugh and say she hoped she gave them something to talk about, that otherwise their lives would be pretty darned boring.”
There was no time to speak further, as just then, much to Hallie’s vast relief, Trace pulled up in her vehicle, clearly having had no intention of absconding with it.
Jumping out, he courteously opened the two passenger doors for the women, and somehow, despite all her protests that Aunt Gwen would surely be more comfortable in the front seat, Hallie wound up sitting there instead.
“I’m surprised you didn’t get a manual six-speed transmission with this Mini,” Trace remarked as he deftly maneuvered the vehicle around the circular drive and then down its winding length toward the narrow dirt lane that led to the highway into town.
“I thought the automatic would be more practical for me,” Hallie explained. “It’s a continuously variable transmission with Steptronic control, so I can choose between the usual automatic mode and a six-gear semiautomatic transmission. The former makes driving in city traffic a whole lot easier, and before I returned to Meadowsweet, I did a great deal of that. The latter is for sportier operation. To try it, just switch the gear from D to S. I confess I hardly ever do so myself, I’m just so accustomed to using the normal automatic.”
“Well, I’m afraid it’s all Greek to me!” Aunt Gwen declared, chuckling. “But it is certainly a very attractive little car. I can see why you fell in love with it, Hallie. If I were many years younger, I’d be tempted to buy one myself. You know, now that I think about it, I believe I saw one of these cars in a movie once. Actually, there were two or three of them, as I recall, and they were used to transport a large load of stolen gold bars. I always wondered how vehicles that small could carry all that weight.”
“It was called The Italian Job—the movie, I mean, Mrs. Lassiter,” Trace said, “and in it, the thieves had the three Minis professionally modified in order to handle the weight of the gold bars.”
“I see. I must have missed that part somehow. When one gets to be my age, one usually can’t hear as well as one used to, so I often miss much of what’s going on in a movie. Because of that, I’m so glad I can watch the subtitles for the deaf on cable television.”
“We have cable TV at Meadowsweet?” Hallie asked, somewhat bemused.
“Oh, yes, dear. Time has marched on here at Wolf Creek, just as it has everywhere else in the many years since you’ve been away. We have a laptop computer and a high-speed connection to the Internet, too, at the farm. Did you think we were still pumping water by hand and utilizing an outdoor toilet?”
“No, Aunt Gwen.” Glancing over her shoulder to the backseat, Hallie grinned at the elderly lady. “We were never that backward, even when I was a child.”
“But you did have some idea that we’d been somehow frozen in time, that the progress made by the rest of the world had somehow passed us by?”
“I suppose just a bit,” Hallie admitted sheepishly.
“I’ve never known why people who live in big cities invariably seem to have the mistaken belief that everybody else is still living in mud huts.” Trace spoke wryly. “Like, if something doesn’t happen in a major metropolis, it’s not of any consequence. To my mind, that’s a thoroughly dumb and dangerous way of thinking.”
“How so?” Hallie inquired, a trifle dryly, wondering if the man were actually insulting her or merely speaking in general terms.
“Well, let’s just take a couple of diseases like AIDS and Ebola, for example,” he went on. “They didn’t initially break out in any large city, but, rather, in rural Africa. But it wasn’t until they migrated out of those areas and into cosmopolitan ones that anybody outside of a handful of medical and scientific specialists sat up and took and any real notice. Yet the global repercussions of those diseases—particularly where AIDS is concerned—have been devastating.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Aunt Gwen agreed. “My late husband, Professor Lassiter, used to say much the same thing. He’d point to disease and famine, earthquakes and tsunamis, customs and cultures, all kinds of things that originally appeared to affect only a small region, but that eventually wound up producing worldwide consequences. He was an archaeologist, and I assisted him with his work, so we both saw how easy it was for entire civilizations simply to disappear from the face of this planet.”
Tiredly, Hallie closed her eyes, allowing the sound of their conversation to wash over her unimpeded. She was glad her great-aunt’s own good etiquette dictated carrying on a polite dialogue with Trace Coltrane, because right now, Hallie wasn’t sure she could have managed it.
She felt the man—whether consciously or not—had been ill-mannered, at best, with his observations about big cities, especially since he knew she had journeyed straight from one to Meadowsweet.
But at the moment she simply did not care, felt far too weary to take up the gauntlet he had perhaps thrown down before her. In truth, she was grateful not to be the one driving them into town. The past few days of doing nothing but driving had taken their toll on her, and she had not been fully rested when Aunt Gwen had inadvertently wakened her this morning.
Surreptitiously, from beneath the thick fringe of her sooty lashes, she briefly watched Trace and knew she need have no fear he was not a capable and expert driver. Her car was in good hands, unlikely to be driven recklessly into a ditch or a head-on collision.
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Thus satisfied, after a moment, with the bright yellow sun beating down on her warmly through the windshield, Hallie slipped drowsily and inexorably into slumber.
Chapter 7
Wolf Creek
“M s. Muldoon. Ms. Muldoon—Hallie—wake up! As much as I’d like to permit you to continue sawing logs, Sleeping Beauty, I can’t leave you out here, locked in the car in this heat, and I need to help Mrs. Lassiter with her luggage, as it appears Lucy Bodine’s wayward grandson is nowhere to be found on the premises of her bed and-breakfast.”
Starting wide-awake, Hallie abruptly sat up straight in the passenger seat, glancing around wildly, momentarily completely disoriented by her totally unfamiliar surroundings.
She had been dreaming—about the massive black wolf that had leaped upon her car—and at this instant, all she knew was that it had somehow managed to shatter the Mini’s windshield, to open the passenger door to loom over her, preparing to spring. Its dark, scarred visage was now pressed ominously near her own pale, tremulous one, its breath warm against her skin, one paw grasping her shoulder, shaking her in a way that was not particularly gentle.
Terrified, she screamed loudly.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Trace swore, baffled and dismayed.
Then, not knowing what else to do, he swiftly clamped one hand over Hallie’s mouth, covertly looking around to be certain no one was paying attention.
“Please, Ms. Muldoon…Hallie…please, be quiet! I’d sure hate for everyone in town to get the wrong idea here, and I really don’t want to wind up spending the night in jail for something I didn’t do. I was only trying to waken you—not rape you or something, for crying out loud! Are you fully awake now? Do you comprehend what I’m saying to you?”
Mutely Hallie nodded, and slowly Trace removed his hand from her soft, generous lips.
“I’m…I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her lovely countenance still ashen. “I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep. I—I was having a bad dream…a-a nightmare, and for a minute I didn’t know where I was or who you were…I’m so sorry,” she reiterated lamely.
From the Mists of Wolf Creek Page 6
