A Killing Frost

by Hannah Alexander

  How well he knew what they had to think about. He reached across the console and touched her arm, felt the smooth silk of her skin. He felt goose bumps form beneath his touch, and he enjoyed that connection.

  Maybe he was being selfish-he needed the comfort of her touch as much as he needed her presence right now. He couldn’t help believing his presence-his touch-might also lend her comfort. Encouragement. A reassurance of his love.

  “You’ll call me if I can be of help at the clinic?” he asked as she turned onto River Dance Road.

  “I’ll call. Promise.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jama dropped Tyrell off at the grocery store to pick up Fran’s car, her senses still tingling from the touch of his hand. He had no idea what he did to her.

  Did he?

  The moment she walked into the clinic, she regretted dismissing his help so quickly. The smell of smoke hung in the air. Eight people huddled in the waiting room, where it seemed everyone was talking at once.

  Down the hallway, Zelda Benedict rushed from one treatment room to another, still in her jogging clothes.

  Ruth Lawrence stepped out of a room and caught sight of Jama. “You’re here in time to suture a wrist. We’ve got a smoke inhalation in three.” She pointed across the hallway to the room Zelda had just entered. “There are more to be seen, and more are probably on their way.”

  “Any that are life threatening?”

  Ruth shook her head.

  “If we need more help, I know a good paramedic.”

  Ruth’s eyebrows rose. “In this town?” She said it as if she couldn’t imagine such a thing.

  “Tyrell Mercer supported himself through school as a paramedic, and he still takes a shift from time to time to keep his skills sharp.”

  “Good. We’ll call him if we need him.” Ruth nodded toward the four men and two women hunched together near the unmanned reception desk. All six pairs of eyes watched Jama.

  She recognized several former classmates, including Jim Hammersmith, who’d been a couple of years ahead of her in school. She nodded to him, and he stood up. “Did you hear about the fire, Jama? A little gas heater we had in the storeroom exploded. Caught a couple of crates on fire, spread to a bunch of wrapping paper, and whoosh! It was an inferno in that place.”

  “Everybody’s coming here, though, right?” she asked. “No one was sent on to a hospital by ambulance?”

  “Naw, everybody’s coming to the clinic. I’m a little worried about Scotty. He fell into a stack of bottles trying to get out, and cut his wrist pretty badly.”

  Scott Hammersmith. Jim’s little brother. Jama frowned. He’d been in her class at school, and he’d had a crush on her forever-at least it had felt that way.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of him,” Jama said.

  Jim’s eyebrows reached for his hairline. The others seemed to grow more interested.

  “You’re the one who’s gonna sew on him?” Jim asked.

  “My handiwork’s pretty good, and we’ll have him numbed up so he won’t feel a thing.” She’d expected to encounter these misgivings from a few of the people who’d known her in school. It had to be a little uncomfortable to think that the girl who’d been sent to the principal’s office more than once for sassing a teacher might now have a sharp needle in her hand.

  Merilee Jacobs, who’d grown a bit more chunky, with lank brown hair, cleared her throat. “You know, Jama Sue, you weren’t the best at sewing in school.”

  And then, of course, there was that. “I wasn’t sewing on people then, Merilee, and I’m not using one of the old sewing machines. I’ve learned a few things since high school.” Jama shot a glance at the others on her way to the treatment room, and felt as if she’d stepped back into a time warp.

  It happened whenever she came to town. She tried not to imagine two years of this kind of scrutiny. She couldn’t escape the stares, and her self-consciousness dredged up memories of the people who had known her.

  She glanced at Ruth as she passed the director’s office. “The folks here might prefer you to do the suturing.”

  “We don’t always get what we want in life, do we?”

  Jama stopped and blinked.

  “You were in a surgical residency before you switched to family practice.” Ruth looked up from a stack of paperwork on her desk.

  “The mayor tell you that?”

  “Zelda did. Someone might have given me more information about you. I’d like to know what other skills you might have that can be utilized.”

  “I can do the sutures.”

  “Do you know how to operate the new monitors, the phone system, the Pixus dispenser and all the other brand-new, state-of-the-art equipment around here?”

  “Of course. You’re not going to have to break me in from scratch.”

  Ruth leaned back with a sigh of exasperation. “Not good enough. I told Eric we needed time, but no one seems interested in giving it to us. What difference would a couple of extra days make?”

  “My fault,” Jama said. “I opened the barn door when I treated Monty this morning. You may not come from a small town, but word spreads fast in River Dance. Why are you so concerned that I be familiar with the equipment? Don’t you know how to operate these things?”

  Ruth rolled her eyes. “Where I come from, everything is secondhand ancient. Let’s get with it. Don’t forget we may have more patients coming from the winery. I have applicants to be interviewed, and some have waited more than an hour.”

  Jama glanced down the hallway to an older woman and a young man, both seated at the far corner from the winery workers. “Tyrell has already offered to help us if we need him.”

  “How can I reach him?”

  Jama jotted Tyrell’s cell number on a sticky note. “There’s something else you need to be aware of.”

  Ruth looked up, her expression plain on her face. What is it this time?

  Jama drew the office door shut behind her and placed Tyrell’s number on Ruth’s desk. “You know that man I flew out this morning? It is feared that his eleven-year-old granddaughter, Doriann Streeter, has been kidnapped.”

  Ruth closed her eyes and took a heavy breath as an expression of distress flashed over her face. “So that would be Tyrell’s niece.”

  “Yes. I think he would welcome the distraction of working with patients.”

  Ruth nodded. “Zelda’s been running herself ragged today. She needs a break. Get the suturing done, then send her home. If more patients come in, we’ll call Tyrell. Meanwhile, since we seem to be up and running in spite of our lack of staff, I’ll see if I can’t interview someone with X-ray training. Maybe I can check out those skills with practical testing.”

  Doriann stared at the barn siding three inches from her nose. One day a couple of years ago, Aunt Renee had brought a real-live private detective to the house to speak to a group of homeschool kids about his job.

  What Doriann had always thought would be fun and exciting turned out to sound like the boringest job in the world. The detective told the kids that he had to sit for hours in his car, or in some other hidden location, waiting for someone to make a move. Then there would be a rush of adrenaline when he hurried to make sure the person didn’t get away.

  Then he told them that he usually didn’t chase convicted criminals. The police did. He checked out people who might be pulling an insurance scam, or having an affair.

  Unfortunately, just when his speech got interesting, Aunt Renee quickly cut him off, thanked him for his time and assured the kids that there were all kinds of opportunities for them in their future. Criminal justice was only one career option.

  Doriann didn’t want to be a private detective. But now it seemed she was doing it, like it or not. Clancy and Deb needed to fall asleep before she could get her cell phone, and even then, she wasn’t sure if she’d have the guts to go into that barn.

  But if she didn’t go in, that would mean she’d wasted all this time. She’d begged Mom and Dad f
or that GPS navigational program on her new phone last year, and now she could use it as she never imagined. She had to get out of here, wherever she was, and lead the police to the killers.

  It’d be easy to find the Katy Trail or the river or the road if she could only get to that phone!

  This whole waiting game was worse than boring. It was deadly. What if she fell asleep? She’d hardly slept at all last night. What if she snored? Clancy and Deb could be all over her.

  That was the way the undercover detective said it happened. If he slipped for just one minute, he could lose his case, lose his client, be out of a job.

  She couldn’t help wondering what that detective would do if he were here now. Of course, being a big, tough man with a gun, he wouldn’t be hiding here, he’d be charging into the barn with that gun drawn.

  Doriann wished she was armed. But Grandma always told her prayer worked better than any man-made weapon. Aunt Renee always prayed for a “hedge of angels to surround us in our time of need,” whatever that meant. Doriann had heard of hedge trees and trimming hedge bushes, but she couldn’t imagine angel hedges. She’d sure love to be surrounded by angels right now, though.

  Maybe she was.

  And yet, she was getting tired of waiting. And she didn’t have the patience of the private eye. She itched in places she couldn’t scratch, even more than usual. Her eyelids were getting heavier and heavier. She could use a nap, which was crazy.

  Still, she closed her eyes for just a moment.

  She was feeling herself relax when a sharp cackle startled her. She jerked her head upright, realizing she’d fallen asleep enough to drool down the side of her face.

  “Guess what I just realized,” Clancy exclaimed. “I’ve still got the kid’s phone.”

  “So?”

  “Her cell phone.”

  Deb groaned. “What good’s that gonna do us?”

  “You got a cell phone with power left in it? Mine went down with the truck. We could call anybody we wanted to with this, anywhere in the world, and it’d be free.”

  “Who’s there to call?” Deb asked.

  “Your contacts in St. Louis, for one. Let ’em know we’ll be there as soon as we can rustle up another car, and we’ll be needing some stuff to cook.”

  “Wow, what a great idea.” Deb spoke as if she thought that was anything but a good idea. “If I had their numbers, we’d be all set. Think you can find my contact numbers on a kid’s cell phone?”

  Clancy didn’t reply, but he chuckled a moment later. “Oh, man, would you look at this? She took pictures. Gotta be family. There’s this old couple, and a big honkin’ guy with black hair, and then here’s this dog. Hey, doesn’t this look like that dog we saw on the road? The one I would’ve bagged if the brat hadn’t kicked my leg.”

  “The one that almost got us killed,” Deb said.

  Doriann remembered the day she went around River Dance taking pictures with her new cell phone. She loved what Grandpa called her “gadgets.”

  “Stop that, will you?” Deb complained. “You’re going to run the battery down. Then who’re you gonna call?”

  “Doesn’t sound like we’ve got anybody to call,” he grumbled, then as Doriann peered through a crack in the side of the barn, he tossed the phone aside, into the hay he’d called “stinking.”

  “Say.” He straightened. “That did look like the hound we saw on the road. That thing had one red ear and one white, just like the one in these pictures.” He reached once more for the cell phone.

  “Would you leave that thing alone! We may need it and won’t have the power.”

  “Yeah? And I told you when we first started this trip that I’m the one in charge. Keep your ideas to yourself.”

  Deb turned over onto her side away from Clancy. “Whatever.”

  Doriann could have pounded her head on the ground in frustration.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Zelda assisted while Jama sutured Scott Hammersmith’s wrist. It was a bad cut, needing a two-layer closure, but it came together nicely, and there was no muscle involvement. Jama was relieved. Scott’s whole life consisted of fishing and hunting.

  “Scotty, honey, you don’t know how lucky you are today.” Zelda watched Jama’s work with obvious admiration. “What you’ve got here is a family-practice doc who’s got the skills of a surgeon. She knows just where to place the sutures so-”

  “Uh, don’t do that.” Scott’s face was still nearly as pale as the towels draped over his arm. “Would you please not give me a play-by-play, Zelda? If I pass out in here, the guys’ll never let me forget it.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Jama assured him. “And even if you did pass out, we’d never tell a soul.”

  Scott switched his attention from the far corner of the room to Jama’s face, clearly not wanting to observe the action. “You’re as pretty as ever, Jama Sue.”

  “Now, Scott, no flirting with the doc,” Zelda said. “You’re a married man now. Besides, you don’t want to distract her from her work.”

  “I’m not flirting, I’m just saying…well…anyway.” Some color returned to his face.

  “You know what, Dr. Keith,” Zelda said, “I might’ve been a little hasty turning down Dr. Ruth’s offer this morning.”

  Jama completed her final suture and took a second to study her handiwork. The scarring would be minimal. Then Zelda’s words registered.

  “Don’t call her Dr. Ruth to her face. And are you saying what I think you are?”

  “I might talk to her about a part-time job.”

  Jama and Scott exchanged a look. “Part-time?” Jama asked.

  “Well, it’s not like this place will be overcrowded in the first couple of weeks, is it?”

  “You never know. Judging by the amount of traffic we’ve had so far, we could have our schedule packed.”

  “Still, it wouldn’t hurt me to try it on for size,” Zelda said. “It’s awfully good to be able to work with you again, see how far you’ve come. Besides, I’ve got these new, high-tech shoes that make me feel like I’m walking on clouds, so it’s not like I’ll have too much trouble standing on my feet all day. I could try it for a while.”

  Jama felt some of the load slip from her shoulders. She met Zelda’s gaze and nodded.

  Jama sent Scott out with scripts for an antibiotic and pain meds, with instructions to return. She watched with relief as he and his friends said goodbye and trooped out the front door, trailing the faint scent of smoke behind them.

  She turned to find her director standing with arms crossed, leaning against the threshold of the reception office.

  “He needed an appointment,” Ruth said.

  “He can call when we have the office set up to schedule appointments.”

  “You could have made one for him and entered it into the computer later, once you’ve figured out how to do it. And he needed printed instructions about wound care, and a doctor’s pass for work.”

  Jama ran her tongue along her teeth before speaking. “A doctor’s pass? There was a fire. You think his employer doesn’t know what happened? This is River Dance. Everybody in the Missouri River Valley probably knows about it by now. Everyone also should know we’re not set up for clinic hours yet.”

  “Keep it in mind for future reference,” Ruth said as she walked toward her office.

  Jama was still frowning as she entered the suture room to find Zelda wiping down the tray table.

  “You heard?” Jama asked.

  Zelda nodded. “It’ll be okay.”

  “She intimidates me,” Jama said.

  “Maybe you should take a look at her from my end of the life cycle. She’s not so intimidating then. She’s a young woman, probably in her late thirties, if that, and she’s overwhelmed. Probably never directed a clinic before, never had this much responsibility.”

  “You think she’s still in her thirties?” Jama asked. “She seems older than that.”

  “Lots of things make a person look older. Stress
. Bad experiences, whatever.”

  “Hello?” came a slightly annoyed voice from the hallway. “Am I being psychoanalyzed by people who don’t even know me?”

  Jama and Zelda looked at each other sheepishly when Ruth entered the room, arms crossed, chin out.

  “Well, it was supposed to be a private conversation,” Zelda said. “We didn’t expect our eaves to be dropped.”

  In spite of herself, Jama couldn’t help reevaluating her director’s appearance. There was a stiffness in the way she held her mouth, a tightness around her eyes-which were, now that Jama was paying attention, pretty-in fact, Ruth looked as if she could be friendly. If she ever smiled. The lines in her face were not deep.

  “I’m thirty-eight-not that it’s anybody’s business. And neither is my private life your business. I’ll thank you to keep your thoughts about me to yourselves.”

  “Well, folderol,” Zelda muttered. “That yanks it. Even if I did want the job, I’m not getting it now.”

  There was a surprised pause. “I thought you weren’t interested,” Ruth said.

  “It’s not like I’m ready to give up and sit at home, so what else am I going to do? Lately I’ve been working three or four times a week, long shifts, long drives to Columbia or Jeff City. It’d be easier and quicker to walk across the street than drive halfway to the moon and back.”

  “Then you’re hired,” Ruth said. “That’ll get one position filled and cut down on the interviews considerably.” She turned and walked out, leaving Jama and Zelda to stare after her.

  “She doesn’t waste much time, does she?” Jama asked.

  “Suppose she’s that desperate?”

  “I warned you,” Ruth called back from the hallway. “Jama? Are you coming? We need to get someone hired to answer the phones.”

  Doriann opened her eyes to the sight of gray-pink wood. She froze. She’d fallen asleep again! What if…

  She turned her head slightly, straining to see if someone might be standing next to her, listening for the sound of Clancy or Deb breathing above her, for the sound of footsteps, sniffing for rotten breath.