by Linda Welch
I might have had better luck with Lindy’s photo, but the only one available was of her body lying on a mortuary slab. I made a mental note to ask for a copy.
I visited a book-swap store on Charmane Avenue called Books Galore. A couple of books on Lindy’s bedside table bore their stamp on the back cover. No luck there either, but the sales assistant suggested I return the next day when the manager came back from vacation.
I hoped Clarion’s branch of the Lincoln County Library would get better results. Lindy had a whole stack of books from them. I wondered if anyone from the PD would return them to the library.
They remembered Lawrence. “He comes for Miss Molly’s Story Hour every Thursday evening,” one of the librarians told me. “I could never forget a face like his. What a little angel. Parents like the story hour because they can safely leave their children with us while they browse the library.”
The implications of my questions and flashing the boy’s picture in her face sank in. “Oh my goodness! Has something happened to him? Oh! Oh! I remember. His mother died!”
I pushed back a strand of hair escaped from my braid and stuck to the corner of my mouth. “Lawrence is missing. We know very little about Ms. Marchant and we’re trying to track down her friends. He could be with one of them. Did she come here with anyone apart from Lawrence?”
She must have been in her seventies, a plump little gnome-like woman who wore face powder much too pale for her, bright-pink lipstick, and dyed her hair the peculiar pale rusty-red some elderly women seem to favor. She put one pudgy hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. “Let me think. Yes.” She opened her eyes and squinted at me. “I did see a young man on several occasions. Very tall, with long blond hair and the most beautiful blue eyes.”
I perked up. “Do you know his name?”
She put her head on one side and pursed her lips in a cupid’s bow, which made her look like a chubby little bird cocking its head. “No. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t hear her say it?”
“They were always very quiet when they came, very respectful of library rules.”
Which was no help to me at all. But I would turn it over to Mike. Perhaps he could sit the librarian down with a police sketch-artist.
Blond hair. Yellow-haired. There he was again. The man in the apartment the night Lindy died? The way she described the guy’s speed, he must be a demon. Library guy could be a demon—the librarian would see a regular human male. Was the man in the apartment and the library one and the same? But maybe Lindy had a yellow-haired man friend who accompanied her to the library.
Walking from the library and down the steps, I paused to slap my forehead with the heel of my hand.
I could always ask her.
Murphy’s Law struck again. Lindy was not there.
“Have you seen Lindy today?” I asked Jack.
He went to the window and looked out. “No, but I haven’t been looking. Have you misplaced her?”
“Apparently.” I went in the pantry and got an empty five-gallon plastic jug off the floor. “Typical! Just when I really need to talk to her.”
I put it in the sink and turned on the cold tap. “I guess she managed to take off after all. Wonder if she’s at her apartment?”
“And I would know because… ?”
“I don’t have time to go see. And I don’t have time for your sarcasm either, Jackson.”
He clapped both hands to his face. “Oh no! It’s Monday!”
“Yep.” I left the water running to root through the pantry for the supplies I needed.
“Can’t you leave him there?”
“Leave who where?” Mel asked as she came in the kitchen.
“Don’t be stupid,” I told Jack.
“It’s Monday,” Jack told Mel.
“Oh, good grief; I forgot. What are you doing, Tiff?” she asked.
I came out the pantry with a small cardboard box containing a loaf of bread and a box of cereal. From the fridge I took sliced lunch meat and a couple of cheese slices. “I have to go to the cabin, and as Janie’s place is nearby I’m taking Mac with me. Peace and quiet and a bit of one-on-one will be good for both of us.” I put a carton of milk and some plastic sachets of mayonnaise and mustard in the box
“Peace and quiet!” from Jack. “What about us?”
“What about you? I’m sure you’ll have a lovely peaceful night.”
“I’m sure. But tomorrow morning… .”
I tuned them out. They would have to wait. Lawrence Marchant had to wait. Everything had to wait. I was going to get my baby.
MacKlutzy - not to be confused with McClusky - is my seven-year-old black-brindle Scottish terrier and the light of my life. For years, Janie insisted if she just had Mac to herself for a few days she could turn him into a model of doggy good behavior. This was her third attempt. Janie is a professional trainer and Mac is her nemesis.
If his legs were a bit longer, his ears a bit bigger and he were not badly cow-hocked; if he were about three pounds lighter, Mac would be the perfect show animal. Honest. His temperament? A little feisty. Okay, a lot feisty. Royal would not have sauntered into my house if Mac were here. He would have left two seconds after he arrived, maybe with a small ball of fury attached to his calf.
MacKlutzy? He’s a klutz. He tends to trip over things when he has his nose to the ground, or leap without looking where he’s leaping. No tall, lithe, agile four-footer for me. I much prefer the small, stubby, bumbling type.
Mac has a thing about Jack and Mel. I have no idea if he can actually see them, or just sense them, but he seems to know they’re here. He’ll go for days ignoring them, then suddenly charge. Literally. As my roommates are not physical barriers between Mac and cabinets, chairs and sundry other hard objects, Mac often hits them head on. Luckily, Scottish terriers have very hard skulls, but his unexpected attacks discombobulate Jack and Mel.
“Turn the TV on before you leave,” said Jack.
“Sure.” I turned on the 19-inch TV on the counter, took the TV listing to the kitchen table and found the page for the evening’s television. Mel and Jack looked it over as I made sure I had everything Mac and I needed.
“USA’s showing Braveheart,” Mel said. “Mel Gibson in a kilt. Blue woad, long unruly hair, muscular thighs… .”
“And after it’s finished we’ll be stuck with solid repeats of The Cosby Show all night,” Jack pointed out. “ESPN’s got Classis Boxing, Classic Car Auction and American Gladiators.”
He just tried to get a rise out of her. Jack doesn’t like that kind of show any more than Mel.
“Like hell!” Mel leaned for a closer look at the guide. “HBO. To Die For and Hairspray.”
“We don’t have HBO,” I said. I joined them and looked through the listings. “TNT. Night of the Living Dead.”
“Been there, done that,” from Jack.
They settled for watching AMC, which gave them an entire night and early morning of Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, and something called Snakes on a Plane. I dreaded to think what would be playing when I got home.
I left them riveted to the television and set off for Janie’s place.
When MacKlutzy lays his ears back flat on his skull and slits his eyes, he looks positively evil. I have never seen an expression quite like it on another dog. After giving Janie the look, he wrapped his front feet around my arm and clung to me.
“How did it go?”
“He did really well,” Janie said. “Look.”
She confidently reached out her hand and laid it on MacKlutzy’s flat skull. The ears went back, but he didn’t lunge or snap.
“Wow!” I was impressed. “You are good!”
“That’s what reinforcement and half a sack of liver treats gets you.”
The supplies were in the front with me, safe from a Mac-attack, and MacKlutzy had a fine time in the back seat with his box of toys, rooting them out and tossing them all over the place. He would be content during the short trip to the cabin.
The cabin was a kind of co-op. When I worked at Bermans and Peter Chasten complained he had to let his little cabin go because the lease skyrocketed, a few of us thought it was a shame. Peter leased the land up in Monchard and built the little cabin. Unfortunately, if he let the lease lapse, he lost the cabin.
Monchard is really close to Clarion, the dirt road leading to it about ten miles up Pineview Canyon, then another three miles in. Once through the gate, you are in undeveloped backcountry. Lessees can erect a small structure in Monchard, but the area doesn’t have water or electricity. Anyway, five of us co-opted with Peter and shared the cabin. And it was my turn to go up there and get it tidied up and battened down for the coming winter.
I left the street lights behind as I drove out of Clarion. When I got to the turnoff for Monchard, I flicked on my high beams and crept along. There are moose, elk and deer and they have right-of-way.
Mac got restless. He could smell a hundred and one enticing scents.
“Almost there,” I told him as I turned on the narrow trail leading to the cabin.
Light shone through the pines and quaking aspen.
I braked slowly so as not to send Mac flying off the seat, and turned off the engine. Someone was in the cabin.
Chapter Twelve
A pickup truck was parked next to the cabin; one of those huge ones with a cab half a mile off the ground and a back seat big enough to sit in comfortably. I couldn’t make out the color, but it looked shiny and new.
From the look of it, every oil lamp glowed inside the small log one-story structure.
“Looks like we have visitors, Mac.” I reached inside my jacket and pulled out the Ruger, took off the safety, then reholstered it. “You stay here,” I told my dog.
The interloper must have heard the Subaru’s engine, but nobody came out of the cabin. I climbed from the car, carefully closed the door behind me and crept along.
Keeping to the trees, I walked abreast of the dirt road. The air was bitterly cold, redolent with pine and rotting forest mulch. I had in mind some hunters took over the cabin. Hunting is permitted if you lease in Monchard, and maybe someone decided to spend the night in relative comfort before they headed farther up the mountain. I could handle one man, but more? The sensible thing to do would be get out of Monchard, drive home and call Peter.
I circled the cabin and came at it from the side, silently crossing the surrounding thirty-foot swath we kept free of grass and undergrowth. A peaked tin roof tops the small one-room affair of rough-hewn logs, jutting over small windows. Inside, two bunks, a sofa and armchair, small dinette table and four chairs take up most of the area, with a free space in front of the open fireplace. There are two cabinets, a shelf and a tiny gas stove. No shower, and the toilet, an outhouse, is forty feet away. I hunched beneath a window and eased up just far enough to look inside.
Next minute, I banged open the only door and marched in.
“Coffee?” Royal asked, measuring tablespoons of ground coffee into the pot. “I just got the fire going, but it should be hot enough to brew. I tried the stove. It does not work.”
A few logs smoldered in the fireplace under the iron grid stretched across it, which I sometimes used to slow-cook a stew. I didn’t tell Royal the stove was disconnected from the propane; it was the last thing on my mind.
“What… ? How… ?”
He hoisted an almost empty five-gallon jug and poured water in the pot. “I hope this is not too old. Did you bring more water?”
I felt a headache building. “Mortensen, get out of here.”
He took the pot to the fireplace and positioned it on the grid. “Not going to happen, Tiff. Some nasty people are after you, you need protection.”
Yes, I needed protection, from him. He came in my house and now the cabin. And I was alone with him, way out in the middle of nowhere. Sure, we were not too far from Clarion, but no one goes to Monchard unless they lease property and I didn’t think many, if any, were here at this time of year.
Past experience taught me pulling my gun would be wasted effort. I looked at him, his tight black jeans and a pale-green shirt open at the neck, multicolored hair loose on his shoulders, the lamplight making strands of it glisten. My gaze lingered on his slightly parted lips. Past experience taught me he kissed like no other man alive.
Snap. Out. Of. It!
“How did you know I was coming here? And for that matter, how did you know where here is?”
He looked back at me seriously as he crouched at the fireplace. “You won’t like it. I have been keeping an eye on you.”
So that was it. “You heard me talking about the cabin and got here ahead of me.” I imagined him standing outside my house, listening. Hearing voices through walls several feet thick must be a demon thing.
He rose to his feet and went to the cabinet above the shelf. “You surprise me, Tiff. I did not think you were the type to talk to yourself.” He got two ceramic mugs and put them on the shelf. He peered in the cabinet. “I don’t suppose you brought sugar and creamer?”
I ignored that, and his comment about me talking to myself. “How did you know where to come?”
“We drink it black, then.” He frowned. “I’m a detective. Discovering everything there is to know about a person is my job. And a GPS is a wonderful gadget.”
I literally felt the outrage creeping through my chest. “You checked me out?”
“You did not do the same with me?”
“No, I didn’t.” But I wished I had thought of it. “Seriously, you can’t stay here. If you won’t leave, I will.”
He came toward me and I stepped back a pace. He stopped moving. “I’ll sleep in the truck. Okay?”
I briskly shook my head. “No, not okay. You’ve been masquerading as human long enough to know when you’ve stepped over the line. This is it, Royal. This is the line. I have to work with you, but you have no right intruding in my personal life.”
“Did you not hear me say you are in danger?”
I nodded my chin jerkily. “I heard.”
“If I can find you, so can they.”
I guessed he meant the two demons at Lindy’s apartment. “They couldn’t, could they, if you’d arrested them.”
He sighed audibly and leaned against the counter. “You were right and I was wrong, but apologies do not change a thing. I feel responsible for your safety.”
I heard a whine from outside. “Oh, good grief.”
Royal straightened up. “What was that?”
I stalked across the room. “My dog. I came here to get the cabin ready for winter. I am going to do that and leave. You can do as you please.” I used a hot pad to pick up the coffeepot, and carried it outside. Royal came behind me as I emptied the lukewarm coffee on the ground.
I turned, and he stopped moving. I saw the tension in his body, the stiffness, and realized we were both keeping our distance.
I wanted to reach out and grab him.
He stuck his thumbs in the back pockets of his pants. “I’ll wait and follow you back to your house.”
I nodded wordlessly, for some inexplicable reason feeling a lump in my throat. I handed him the coffeepot.
Another whine from the car. I stepped down from the porch. “I’m bringing Mac inside.”
I drove the car to the cabin and parked out front. I got Mac from the back seat, carried him in the cabin, shoved the door shut with my rear end and put him on the floor.
Royal stood beside the dinette table, body at an angle, supporting himself with one hand. He looked at Mac. Mac looked back.
Mac shot across the floor and his mouth closed on Royal’s left ankle.
“Ow!” Royal said. “That hurts.”
I smiled admiringly at Mac. “Did you know the jaws of a Scottish terrier can exert two hundred pounds of pressure?”
Royal stood straighter. “About what it feels like.”
“His vet says she’d rather be bitten by a German shepherd than a Scottie.”
&nb
sp; “Is that so?” Royal gave his ankle a tentative wiggle. Mac wiggled right along with it.
I knelt down beside Mac. “Drop it, Mac,” I commanded. He rolled his eyes at me and slowly opened his mouth. I took his head in both hands. “Good boy! You must not bite the man, he’s… .” I was about to say he’s a friend. I amended that. “You don’t know where he’s been.”
Royal edged back to a chair and sat. He peeled up the leg of his jeans. No socks. “Not a mark.”
“He has it down to an art. Mac can bite just hard enough to hurt without breaking the skin.”
I headed back to the door. “I’ll get his water bowl from the car. Don’t let him cock his leg on anything.”
“How do I stop him?”
“You yell, No, bad boy!”
I went out, closing the door behind me. As I approached the car, I heard, “No! Bad boy!” from the cabin. I smirked.
I got Mac’s water bowl and a chew treat and headed back.
The ground in front of me exploded.
I had never been fired at before and I reacted automatically. The ammo bit the dirt in front of me, so I ran in the opposite direction.
I heard Royal yell my name, but another burst of gunfire overpowered his voice.
I charged through the forest, and pretty soon I didn’t know where I was or where I was going. I’d walked over much of Monchard before, but in daylight. As I moved farther from the lights in the cabin, I entered the true, deep darkness of night. I could look ahead to avoid trees which loomed up in an instant and trip over an obstacle, or I could look at the ground and slam into a tree. I did both, several times.
I tripped over a fallen branch and fell prone next to a towering aspen. With the wind knocked out of me, I lay there trying to suck air. The silence of the forest closed in on me.
