“Should be less than a mile now.”
They rounded another curve. The land opened out to the right in a strip of prairie that sloped gently down toward the creek. House lights shone through scattered trees, but a vast black hill loomed on the left. Elsewhere it would have been called a mountain. The county road, recently widened and resurfaced, skirted its base.
“Jesus, Prune Hill.”
“Cat Crouching,” Maddie said in Klalo. That was the old name for the hill. Cat meant cougar. She shivered and turned up the heater.
When Jack pulled into the McCormicks’ driveway, he parked the mud-splattered Toyota Tacoma behind a BMW that was already in place. The bumper of the pickup almost touched the car’s gleaming trunk. Jack was still mad.
Kayla Graves slipped into the little black dress she kept to wear when she was dating somebody respectable and smiled at her image in the long mirror. Not bad for a thirty-two-year-old. Her January birthday always started the New Year with a blast. She was recovering nicely from the celebration, which had not been at all respectable.
Tonight might be dull or fun, depending on who the McCor-micks had invited. Her escort, Fred Drinkwater, was a dead loss, but maybe Rob would show up with the librarian. Back when Kayla had been on the right side of thirty, she and Rob had had an affair—well, more like a hot weekend—and she retained a soft spot for him. She bore the librarian no ill will, but Rob had a sly sense of humor, and Kayla thought an encounter under the sheriff’s righteous eye might amuse him. Serve the old bastard right for putting that dork, Earl Minetti, in over Rob’s head.
Kayla leaned toward herself and concentrated on inserting beaded and feathered earrings into her lobes. Fred would hate the earrings, she thought complacently as the doorbell rang.
She grabbed her black cashmere coat from the walk-in closet and inspected it for dog hairs. Tiffany’s Lhasa Apso had left souvenirs. Kayla’s ex-roommate had been gone two months, and she’d vacuumed heavily since then, but the dog hairs still rose up and smote anything black. She needed a new roommate, someone to help with the mortgage, but no pets next time. No more wind surfers either.
The doorbell rang, insistent. “Coming!” She was wearing three-inch heels, so she took her time going down.
“You’re late,” Fred snapped when she opened the door. “Come on, Kayla. I told you this dinner was important.”
Important to Fred. He was a developer with a single-track mind, and the track led straight to Profit. When she’d locked the house, she shoved her small purse into her pocket. Have to get one of those gigantic leather handbags the fashionistas were flaunting this year. Maybe Fred would buy a pistachio green one for her. He liked to bestow expensive gifts, if he could write them off.
Fred took her elbow, so she let herself reel against him, hip to hip. He staggered but didn’t lose his footing. For an old guy, Fred was pretty athletic. More ways than one. She grinned.
He inserted her into his warm Lexus and himself into the driver’s seat. “The new commissioner will be there.”
“Mrs. Green?”
“Bjork.” He let out his breath in a huff when her joke registered, put the car into Drive, and pulled out onto Old Cedar Street. “You look good, Kayla, but you should lose the earrings.”
Kayla was peering at the librarian’s house across the way—lit up, somebody moving around, yeah, there was Rob in the hallway with his back to the street. His own house on the corner was dark. So he was coming. Contented, Kayla adjusted her seat belt and leaned back to enjoy the ride.
“We’re going to be late.” Meg McLean flicked on the air conditioner of her ancient Accord.
“Hey!” Rob gave an exaggerated shudder.
“It’s the fastest way to defog the windows.” She swished the wipers a couple of times. She was driving her car because neither of them had wanted to go in Rob’s somewhat newer pickup. “Won’t take long.”
“You do realize it’s twenty-two degrees out.” Rob yawned and stretched. He’d had a stressful day at his laptop, writing reports.
“Seat belt,” Meg murmured. When Rob clicked the belt into place, the little warning bell stopped. She eased down the street behind a county sand truck. “You know the way?”
“The development’s on the open land below Prune Hill. According to Maddie, the Klalos never had a settlement there. Probably for good reason.” Rob had grown up in town and knew the area almost as well as the chief did.
Meg had grown up in Los Angeles. “I have no idea where or what you’re talking about.” No traffic. She passed the truck and headed out on the county highway.
Rob laughed. “I know Prune Hill. Apart from that, I’m parroting Maddie.”
“She’s quite a character.” That sounded patronizing to Meg as soon as the words were out. She winced.
“Quite a bulldozer,” Rob said dryly. “I figure she and the new commissioner are evenly matched. If they decide to team up, look out.”
“I don’t see a San Francisco greenie like Bjork touting a casino.”
“Maddie has interests other than the casino. She stopped a clear-cut up by the lake without breaking into a sweat. Bear left at County Road 12—about half a mile.”
“Thanks.” Meg squinted at the odometer.
“Turn the AC off.”
She complied. “Sorry.” The Accord began to warm up.
“Staff meeting okay?”
Meg had met with the library supervisors that afternoon to announce her plans for a bond levy next fall. She’d been head of the county library system for only two months, and she’d kept changes to a minimum to begin with. The levy would be her first big project. She described the meeting in some detail, and Rob listened with the intelligent attention she had come to expect and appreciate.
“Jackman giving you trouble?”
“Giving me the ten-year history of failed levies.” Meg’s chief assistant had also been her rival for the top job. “I can handle her. What she doesn’t understand is that tax revenues will jump with all the new housing. She knows,” Meg amended. “She just doesn’t believe.”
“I have to sympathize with her. Things have been tight for a long time.” Unemployment was still high in the county among people in traditional occupations like logging.
Meg signaled for the turn and headed uphill. The Accord sighed and shifted down. They rode awhile in silence. She could not get used to the utter blackness of the countryside at night.
“Watch it!”
She stood on her brakes. The car spun out and stopped on the shoulder facing backward. Two black-tail does walked across the road unscathed. Meg let out a shaky breath.
“You okay?”
“Y-yes.” Very carefully, Meg wheeled the Accord around and drove on, but she was still trembling with reaction when she parked in front of the McCormicks’ gaily lit house. Rob rang the bell and gave her shoulders a hug as they waited for someone to come to the door.
When Meg and Rob entered the Great Room, the guests were in cocktail mode with the sheriff and Fred Drinkwater—smoothly fit, dressed in casual winter wear, and half a foot shorter than McCor-mick—in deep conversation by the bar. The developer had brought Kayla Graves. She looked gorgeous, as usual, and winked at Meg in a neighborly way. Mack and Drinkwater glanced around. Madeline Thomas, in full regalia, turned away from a greyhound-like woman and smiled.
A brief hush fell. Everyone except an elderly man sitting by the fireplace looked at Rob. There was a burst of over-hearty greetings.
Meg stole a glance at Rob. He flushed and a muscle bunched at the hinge of his jaw, but he smiled and went into the hand-shaking ritual with Meg trailing him. Beth slipped out of the room. The sheriff, red in the face, poured Meg’s tonic and lime and asked Rob what he wanted.
“Whatever Jack’s drinking.”
Mack poured a Full Sail Amber. Meg hadn’t noticed Jack Red-fern. Given Maddie’s flamboyance, he was easy to overlook. Meg had the feeling that might be a mistake. He rose from one of the love seats by the
blazing hearth and strode over to Rob, beer glass in one hand.
“Rob.”
“Jack,” Rob said amiably, shaking hands. “Good to see you. Not exactly fishing weather.”
Jack snorted. He had been known to use a gill net, about which he and Rob had a running joke, but he didn’t look to be in a joking mood. “I want to talk to you.”
“Sure.” The two men strolled to a conversation area that featured two armchairs, a lamp, and a framed print, a sophisticated takeoff on the petroglyph Tsagiglalal, She Who Watches. Clearly Beth had kept her old furniture. It didn’t suit the house, and there wasn’t enough of it to fill the huge room.
As Rob bent his head to listen and Jack started to wave his arm, Meg turned away. They were probably going to talk about the appointment of Earl Minetti as undersheriff, which Rob thought was hilarious, though so far he’d shared his amusement only with Meg. As a subordinate, Earl had been a pain in the butt. Now he was so grateful to Rob for not raising a fuss, he’d probably bend over backwards to cooperate with Criminal Investigation—for a while anyway. Meg didn’t like Earl, but she also thought Mack would stay on as sheriff for at least two more terms, so she had come around to Rob’s way of thinking. Mack would keep Minetti under control.
As Maddie introduced her to the new commissioner, Meg saw that the man on the love seat was still staring at the fireplace. She thought he must be Catherine Bjork’s husband, though the woman made no attempt to introduce him.
“We’re late,” Meg said brightly. “Have we missed the tour of the house?”
“The sheriff took us around.” Mrs. Bjork sounded neutral.
Maddie did not look enthusiastic.
Time to get down to business. Meg meant to sound out the new commissioner on the subject of library levies.
Maybe it wasn’t going to be so terrible, Beth reflected as she dished up the entrée in the kitchen. Rob had apparently eased Jack Red-fern’s anger. Skip and Peggy were removing the soup plates—the tiny Willapa Bay oysters in a light cream stew had vanished with satisfying speed. The roulades smelled great—sage stuffing. She napped each slice with wine sauce and began to dollop garlic mashed potatoes onto the plates.
Peggy whisked in. “What’s with the old guy, Mom?”
“Mr. Bjork? I don’t know. He’s hardly spoken.”
“He didn’t touch the soup, either. He looks like he’s going to cry.”
A squawk came over the baby monitor. “Speaking of crying, is that Sophy?”
Peggy sighed. “I hope not. She should sleep for an hour. God knows she ate enough, little pig.” Peggy was breast-feeding. Since that gave her boobs worth mentioning for the first time in her life, she didn’t complain much about the inconvenience.
“Maybe you should bring Sophia into the kitchen.” Skip carried the last soup plates in. “She could snooze on the counter here while the dishwasher runs.” He began putting the shallow bowls into the machine without rinsing them.
Oh, well. “Dishwasher lullaby,” Beth said.
Peggy sprinted for the bedroom wing. “Back in a sec.”
Beth took a slotted spoon and doled out the fashionably crisp beans-with-blanched-almonds that looked better than they tasted. She preferred to cook the hell out of green beans, seasoning them with garlic, chopped bacon, and a dust of cayenne, but that was family food. Skip hoisted three plates and made for the dining room.
She and Skip were pouring another round of cabernet when Peggy slipped back and took her place between Fred Drinkwater and Maddie. As Beth poured, conversation rose like the buzz of bees drunk on fresh nectar. Mack and Fred had a three-way flirtation going with Kayla Graves, who was a subversive rogue. Beth wished her well. Rob, Maddie, Jack, and the commissioner were talking across the table with Maddie in full flow and Jack almost cheerful. Beth sat down and picked up her fork. Silverware clanked.
“There’s a crack,” Lars Bjork said. He looked at his plate. A wisp of steam rose from the beans.
Beth stared. She hoped the movers hadn’t damaged her china. Surely not. “A crack in the house?”
“The house. It’s a new house. Did I say that?”
“Uh, no, but you’re right. It’s new.”
He looked relieved and picked up his knife and fork.
“We just moved in,” Beth babbled. “Haven’t had time to buy much furniture. I really haven’t decided what to do with the living…the Great Room. It’s a large space.”
He chewed. “Tastes good.”
“Glad you like it.” Beth took a bite of the beef.
“There’s a crack,” he repeated. “Did I say that?”
Beth felt a chill.
“I can’t tell you how much I like the house,” Cate Bjork interjected, smooth. “I recognize the idiom.”
What did that mean? “Thank you.”
Lars was silent. Cate talked pleasantly of her own new house, which stood on a twelve-acre parcel with a view of Mount Hood. They were leaving the high meadow natural—no lawns or intrusive alien plants. The air was like champagne, she said.
The baby woke, and Skip took her off for a change while Beth and Peggy served dessert. Eventually he brought his daughter back for a round of admiration. Then there was coffee. Beth poured it in the Great Room. Lars Bjork was sitting on the love seat again, staring at the fireplace.
“There’s a crack.” He took the cup Beth handed him and gave her a smile that subtracted twenty years from his age.
Beth smiled back. She felt like crying, but she didn’t have time because somebody noticed it was snowing, and suddenly everyone wanted to leave. It wasn’t until after the last guests had driven off—Fred and Kayla in the Lexus —that Beth could think.
“He must have dementia.”
Mack gave her a bear hug. “Who, me? Not yet, old girl, but I’m glad the meal’s over. How about that Sophy? Great timing, the little minx. Come to bed, Betty Boop.”
Beth wandered back into the Great Room and sat down where Lars Bjork had spent a good part of the evening. Tears welled, and she wiped them away. “The poor soul. I wonder what he meant?”
She stared at the mantel and the flagstone chimney. Running down the wall beside it, from the high cathedral ceiling to the ledge at its base, was a hairline crack.
January 2005, the following Friday
THE WEATHER CHANNEL was promising an ice storm. It had better deliver, Meg reflected, snug in her warm kitchen (propane furnace) with a pot of soup simmering on the range (also propane). She had just closed the county-wide library system. She was going to look like a dumb Californicator if the storm turned out to be a flash in the pan.
Tales from her staff that chronicled weeks without electricity had convinced her the locals enjoyed scaring new arrivals. After she’d shut down the library, Meg had driven to Safeway to stock up on candles. Half the town got there first. Meg took the last of the regular candles. Latecomers would have to be content with perfumed votive objects in Christmas colors. And it was slick out. She almost fell twice bringing her loot in from the garage.
When the phone rang, Meg answered on her cordless. Her cell phone sat charging on the counter, calls forwarded. She was saving it to use when the lines went down. Everyone said they would.
“You’re home.” Rob’s voice crackled with atmospherics. In the background she heard clanging and a siren’s whoop.
“I closed the library. What’s happening?” She poured herself a scotch and settled in for a cozy chat.
“Fender bender.” He sounded irritated rather than gloomy. If he had been investigating an injury accident, his tone of voice would have told her. Still, there he was, out in the storm, doing a job the uniforms usually handled. It was a small department. In emergencies, everybody took a hand at everything, and ice storms rated as emergencies.
“Are you coming here tonight?”
“Are you making soup?”
“Chicken with rice. It’s already on the stove.”
“I’ll be there.” Amusement warmed his voice.
Rob thought feeding people was her ingrained response to disaster and was apt to tease her about it.
“Good.” At least she hadn’t had to make soup from scratch— she’d thawed it.
“Don’t stay up for me. God knows when I’ll get in. Oops. Gotta go. Jeff just fell on his ass.” Jeff Fong was Rob’s new sergeant, replacing Earl Minetti. Must be a big fender bender if both of them were sorting it out.
She clicked the phone off and went to look out the side door, which led onto the wraparound porch.
Ice had formed a delicate coat on every twig, weed stalk, and blade of grass. In the dim light of afternoon, the effect was magical. Icicles drooped from the garage roof. Branches of the huge old-growth cedar tree near Rob’s garage bent almost to the ground. Under the spell of the ice, telephone wires looked like fairy chains, and everything shone silver. “Silver thaw” was the local term for ice storm. Meg shivered with alarm and delight.
As she watched, an old pickup with a camper edged around the cedar. Freezing rain slashed the beams of its headlights. Moments later a blue Civic started to pass, slid, overcorrected, and headed like a demented billiard ball toward the left rear end of the pickup. Neither vehicle was going fast, but the result was inevitable.
“My garage!” Meg shrieked.
The car hit and slid slowly around, stopping in the middle of the street. The heavier pickup, with the driver hunched in a futile effort to maneuver, oozed sideways up Meg’s short new concrete drive. Rear-end first, the truck smacked into the door of her garage. The new door buckled. Plumes of exhaust from both vehicles streamed in the icy rain.
Meg stuffed her feet into her boots, yanked her coat on, and dashed out. That was a mistake. She skated across the porch and saved herself at the last moment on the rail. Icicles tinkled and fell. She clung to the post and watched as the driver of the pickup opened his door and jumped down. He took two long strides, then both feet went out from under him, and he fell flat on his back on the slick asphalt of the street.
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