The Fire of Home (A Powell Springs Novel)

by Harrington, Alexis

  Amy wanted to trust Bax. But life had taught her that people were often not what they seemed to be. She’d crossed paths with liars, poseurs, schemers, and swindlers at almost every turn on the road she had traveled with Adam.

  Worst of all, the most damning, shaming fact of all—she had been one of those people before she set one foot on that road.

  Bax, though . . . there was something about him, something in his eyes, that made her want to finally lay down the burden of all she’d carried with her over the years. She didn’t want to tell him anything, but he pulled scraps of information out of her that she never intended to give him.

  “Adam gets . . . angry. Easily. If he learns that I inherited this house, he’ll try to claim it for his own since we’re married. He’ll force me to go back to Portland.” Fury and her tiresome companion, fear, rose in her. “And I won’t go. I can’t.” She’d gotten a taste of peace, even though it had come at a high price, and she wasn’t going to give it up.

  “You need to talk to Dan Parmenter about that, and right away.” He crossed his ankle over his knee and pulled at a loose thread on the hem of his jeans. “I keep hearing about Jacobsen being a minister here. What has he been doing all this time since you left? It’s hard to imagine that he could have a church and a flock of parishioners.”

  “He idolized Billy Sunday. The man has made a fortune with his traveling revival meetings. Adam got it into his head that he wanted the same thing. Not so much the religion part of it, I came to realize. He wanted the adoration, the money, the influence. When we left here, that was the path he took us on.”

  There weren’t too many people who hadn’t heard of Sunday, the flamboyant, melodramatic evangelist who drew large crowds wherever he appeared. Preaching rigid, grim doctrines, his meetings were a combination of unrelenting hellfire, P.T. Barnum showmanship, and baseball analogies. His followers ate it up with a knife and fork and paid him handsomely when the collection baskets came around.

  “I’m guessing he didn’t find it.”

  “We went from town to town for two years, living like gypsies with no real home. Just rented rooms. His grand plan to pull in big donations was only a pipe dream.”

  “It sounds tough. Especially for a woman.”

  She looked at him straight on. “I hated it.” She surprised herself with her low, bitter vehemence. It was the first time she’d admitted it, even in her own mind.

  “And he’s still doing that?”

  “No. A couple of years ago, he decided to settle in Portland and see what he could find there. What he found was a job for me.”

  “What the hell does he do?”

  “I’m not sure, and I learned not to ask. I believe there was some gambling involved.” Without thinking, she cradled her wrist, and her mind returned to that mysterious book she’d found in the closet in Portland, now hidden in her chest of drawers.

  The muscle in his jaw flexed. “If Jacobsen threatens you—anytime—I’ll see to him.”

  She gave him a jaded look. “No one cares about what happens to women behind closed doors. Least of all the police.” It was a harsh truth that she’d learned early on in her marriage. What a sheltered life she’d lived here. “They treat the situation like it’s none of their business, unless the woman is finally killed. Then they’ll get involved.”

  He unhooked his ankle and leaned toward her. “It’s my job to keep the peace among the people of Powell Springs. That includes you.”

  She glanced at her lap. Maybe that was true. But from a hushed, timid corner of her heart, she wished his dedication stemmed from more than a sense of duty to his occupation. In that instant, she wished for so many things that she hadn’t known for so long. She wanted to laugh again, for old hurts to finally stop; she wanted to be happy again, even if just for a while.

  He stood up and held out his hand to help her from the sofa. His was so much warmer than her own. “I’ve got to go back to the office and finish some things.”

  She rose and looked up into his face. “Oh. Of course.” She wasn’t eager to be left here with just Deirdre. Two women alone . . .

  “Are you afraid here, by yourself?”

  “No, of course not,” she lied. “Anyway, Deirdre is just upstairs.”

  “I won’t be away long. What time is Tom due home?”

  “He’s working the night shift. Did you get your dinner?”

  “Yeah. But you didn’t. You never talked to your sister, either?”

  She didn’t want to tell him what notions that had run through her mind about Jess conspiring with Adam. It was just so . . . far-fetched. “I didn’t. I-I can fix you something more to eat, though.”

  “I’ll pick up something at Mae’s if I get hungry.”

  “No, no, meals are part of your room and board. I’ll make you a meatloaf sandwich to take with you. It’s not fancy, but it’s ready, left over from lunch.”

  He smiled. “If you knew about some of the disgusting things I’ve eaten, you’d know that meatloaf is fancy to me.”

  She headed from the living room into the kitchen, still faintly fragrant of roast chicken and apples, with him following close behind. She pulled a loaf pan from the icebox and began cutting slices, thin, to bring out their flavor. He studied her movements with seemingly great fascination, as if she were repairing a watch.

  “Those interesting things you ate—was it during the war?” she asked with no little trepidation, not knowing how he’d react. And really, she didn’t mean to sound like she was prying, but he knew so much more about her personal life than she did about his. An exchange of information only seemed fair.

  He sighed. “Yeah, a few of them. If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat almost anything.”

  The silence opened between them while she worked, and she thought of those two angry-looking pink scars on his back. “Of course, here at home we heard about some of the odd canned things like monkey meat—we all tried to imagine what that could possibly be.”

  “We were told it was corned beef, but it wasn’t like anything we’d ever tasted before. Sometimes in France we’d get a chicken or a pig from a farmer, although they didn’t have much to share. A dozen eggs was a real prize.”

  She spread mayonnaise on homemade bread, then piled on the slim slices. From a colander on the counter, she grabbed a washed leaf of early spring lettuce, then put it all together and sliced the sandwich diagonally.

  “See, pretty fancy,” he said, watching as she wrapped it all up in waxed paper.

  “I learned to cook when I was a girl, but I was only allowed to find work as a dishwasher. Still, sometimes I’d get a glimpse of what the cooks were putting together. That diagonal cut makes even toast look dressy.”

  “Who said you had be a dishwasher?”

  “My hus—Adam.”

  He accepted the sandwich without another question. “Thanks, Amy. Keep all the doors locked.”

  She followed him to the back door, which he always used, even when leaving. “You could use the front door, you know.” She smiled at him.

  He twisted the knob and pulled it open. The night breeze eddied around them, bringing to her his scent of laundry soap and freshly cut wood. “No—I can’t.”

  She was about to ask why, but he stopped her when he wrapped an arm around her and tipped his head to put a soft kiss on her mouth. Briefly, she leaned forward, her breasts brushing his shirt front, and made a small, anguished noise in her throat. Then he was down the stairs and gone into the darkness.

  She was too surprised by the feel of his lips and the thrilling shiver that flowed through her to say anything more.

  What the hell had he been thinking, anyway, kissing Amy like that? Bax wondered. Instead of disentangling himself from the woman and her problems, as a sane, smart man would, he was just digging in deeper. He didn’t know why, he had no reason to believe it, but she r
epresented home to him, a safe haven where his case-hardened heart would learn to beat again, well and truly washed of the raw grief of war, both on the battlefields of France and upon his return to America.

  He sat at his desk in the office—they’d finally managed to find a real one for him—shuffling papers around, but his mind wasn’t on the task. For all of Amy’s fragility, he detected strength. Despite her past disgrace, he suspected honor.

  They each had pasts that dragged at them. Hers was not a secret. His was, but in Amy he might find understanding. The single biggest problem was that part of her past was still her present. Like it or not, she was bound to Adam Jacobsen.

  And he anticipated the day that his path and Jacobsen’s would cross. That day was coming soon.

  Two days later, Jessica was standing in the back room of her office when she heard someone come into her waiting area. The overhead bell on the door clanged furiously. “Dr. Jessica! Dr. Jess, are you here?”

  Despite the urgency in the words, she recognized Sheriff Whit Gannon’s low, rumbling voice. She hurried through the hall to meet him. He was a tall, rangy man with the most luxurious silver hair and mustache she’d ever seen. “Whit, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s Winks—I think he’s finally pushed himself over the edge. We’ve got him behind the office with Bax watching him.” He glanced out the window. “At least it’s not raining, since he’s pretty much running from both ends and we didn’t want to bring him inside if we could help it. I think he must have gotten some bad moonshine. He says he’s blind, but sees things that aren’t there, he’s twitching, having fits—hell, he’s a mess.”

  “Oh, God,” Jess sighed. “Tilly isn’t involved in this, is he?”

  “No. Virgil knows I’d close him down pronto if he sold that shit—I mean junk.”

  “You don’t think Winks decided to try to make his own . . .”

  “He said he got this stuff yesterday, so cheap he couldn’t pass it up. But it was from someone he didn’t know.”

  She thought for a moment. “Did Cole tell you that I saw Adam Jacobsen at the hotel the other night?”

  “He did, but—you don’t think he has anything to do with this, do you? Whiskey making doesn’t sound like something he’d be involved in.”

  “Why, because he’s so moral?” she couldn’t help but snipe.

  “No, because it’s grubby work and he was never the sort who liked to get dirty.”

  She had to give him that. Even as a child, Adam had been as stuffy and finicky as an elderly bachelor. “You’re right. But we have Winks to worry about right now. Of course, I’ll come.” She put a hand on Whit’s arm. “But you must know he’s probably not going to survive this. I saw some cases in New York. Wood alcohol poisoning is fatal, and it’s a pretty gruesome way to die.”

  “Yeah. I know.” He looked morose. “I hate to see him go this way, though. It’s like giving a kid cookies baked with rat poison. And I’m going to find out who’s selling that moonshine, I hope before someone else drinks it. Damn this Prohibition. People are drinking more now than they did when it was legal.” Winks Lamont was a Powell Springs fixture. He was a pain in the neck for Whit and a few others around town, and rarely drew a sober breath. But people were used to him, and although he was no smarter than a sack of doorknobs and had long ago pickled his sensibilities, he was pretty harmless, and he had a long history in this town.

  Jess grabbed her bag and coat, then scribbled a hasty note and thumbtacked it on the door, telling any visitor where she could be found. She locked up the office behind her and got into Whit’s Model T.

  When they arrived at his office, there was a small group behind the building, standing around two benches that had been pushed together, upon which Winks lay under a moth-eaten blanket.

  The buzz among the onlookers hummed. “Well, if that don’t beat all. I sure didn’t expect Winks to end up like this.”

  “It was bound to happen one day—”

  “Let the doc through,” Whit boomed upon getting out of the driver’s seat. “Give her some room.”

  “I don’t think she’s going to be able to do much about this,” one of Tilly’s regulars speculated.

  “He don’t look too good—”

  “Did he ever look good? He drank himself right into the grave.”

  As soon as Jessica drew near, the first odor that slapped her in the face, beyond her patient’s serious lack of hygiene, was vomit. It reminded her of the grim days of the influenza epidemic and the makeshift hospital she’d set up in the school. Over that, she caught a strong whiff of formaldehyde, the byproduct of a chemical reaction that occurred in a person poisoned with methyl alcohol.

  “Gentlemen, please let me through!” she snapped, elbowing her way to Winks’s side.

  “Everybody, out of here!” Bax Duncan commanded. “This isn’t a carnival sideshow. Go find something else to do.”

  The rubberneckers only backed up and with perceptible reluctance, muttering among themselves.

  Cyanosis was obvious in Winks’s slack, blue-gray face and dirt-embedded fingers. She reached into her bag for her stethoscope and hooked it into her ears. Bending over his still form, she listened hard to his lungs and heart, hoping for some sign of life. She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Whit,” she said gently. “He’s gone.” She gazed down at the wreck of a man in his stained, mismatched clothes, who was, by everyone’s best guess, about forty years old. His hair had already lost most of its color, and even in death he looked twenty years older.

  Whit’s fury collided with regret. “Damn it. I want to get to the bottom of this. We’ve been doing fine working around this crackbrained law. Those fools in Washington want to legislate morality and it won’t work. People are going to drink. This is bad. We can’t have those fools in the backwoods cooking up poison to sell.”

  “No, but it might get worse,” Jess prophesied.

  With a pensive expression, Bax studied the dead man’s scarecrow form and sighed before he pulled the blanket up to cover his face. The moment was not lost on Jess. “Did you know Winks?”

  Bax glanced up at her, and she was struck by how handsome he was. “Not really. He’s spent a few nights here sleeping off a drunk. I’ve just seen a lot of death in my time. It never gets easier.”

  He wore the same look as a lot of men who’d been in the war. She knew he boarded at Amy’s, and for a fleeting moment, she considered asking him about her. Then she thought better of it. She had no idea how much, if anything, he knew about her sister, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to discuss family matters with him.

  “I think some people around town should be persuaded to take up a collection to pay for his burial,” Bax continued.

  Whit nodded. “I’ll have Fred Hustad come and pick him up. He should forgive a dead man for what happened years ago now.”

  “Do you mean that grave-robbing business during the influenza epidemic?” Bax asked, tucking the blanket around Winks to keep the breeze from lifting it away. The gesture touched Jess.

  “Yeah, but Winks was just the brawn, not the brain behind that.”

  The onlookers drifted away in ones and twos, ready to report the event.

  Jessica tucked her stethoscope back into her bag. “Sometimes death is kind of like baptism. Past wrongs are forgiven, or forgotten completely. I’ll go back to the office and write up the death certificate and send it over to Fred.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Jess. I’ll give you a lift.”

  “No, thanks, Whit.” She glanced up at the dark-green hills that backed up to Powell Springs. “I believe I’ll walk.”

  Jess had seen a lot of death, too. Bax was right.

  It never got easier.

  News of Winks’s death flew through town. Whit Gannon delivered it to Virgil Tilly himself. He walked in and saw that no customers were around, so he strode
through the sawdust and peanut shells on the floor and sat at the corner table everyone coveted.

  “What’ll it be, Whit?”

  He sighed and stretched out his long legs. “I wanted to let you know that Winks died.”

  While Tilly’s jaw was hanging open, Whit gave him the details. “Fred came and got him just a few minutes ago.”

  The saloon owner sat down on the nearest chair, his face chalky, his expression stunned. “Well, good God,” he intoned. “Good God.”

  Whit straightened up. “He got that moonshine from somewhere. You don’t know anything about it, do you, Virgil?”

  His head came up. “Me? Whit, I don’t buy that stuff! And don’t think they haven’t tried to sell it to me.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Nobody I knew. But I’ve had two-three shifty-looking types come through here, practically giving it away. I won’t take it. You and I have a deal. Besides, look what happened”—he dug around in his back pocket for his red bandana and blew his nose with a honk—“to—to Winks, that poor old rummy.” His voice broke.

  “You know he didn’t have anyone left alive in town or a penny to his name. His mother died ten years ago. We thought maybe you’d help take up a collection to bury him. I don’t think Fred is going to do it for free. We’re not going to give him a twenty-one gun salute and a war hero’s funeral, but he shouldn’t get put in an unmarked hole, either.”

  Tilly nodded, staring at the floor. “Sure, sure. Whatever he needs.”

  Whit left him to ponder the mysteries of life and death.

  Prodded by conscience, Tilly took up a collection among his customers late that afternoon. “Let that be a lesson to you boys,” he said, passing around an empty pickle jar. “I might have to charge more than a bootlegger, but I’ll never sell you poison.”

  “Winks wasn’t a bad sort,” Jack Willard said. “He just couldn’t give up the drink, and no government was going to make him.” He added this just before downing a shot of whiskey. He signaled to Tilly for another and pushed his money across the bar.