A Cold Christmas (2 page)

Caley started shivering. Susan looked at her—face flushed, eyes glassy—and turned up the heater.

“You come to hear Osey sing,” Caley said, her tone almost accusatory. She was an attractive young woman, late twenties, shoulder-length hair, light brown with a slight wave, oval face with a pointed chin and innocent amber-colored eyes.

“Yes.” O. C. Pickett was one of her detectives. In appearance, nothing but a lanky hayseed, not too bright. A farm boy. Whoever thought that was badly mistaken. Osey had a mind like a steel trap and a photographic memory, useful talents for a cop. He also had the ability to meet people and instantly be an old friend, another good talent for a cop. And he had a baritone voice that lifted the heart. It always amazed her when she heard him sing.

Caley James lived just past an abandoned paper factory in a three-story wood-frame house diminished by giant walnut trees, the leafless branches dark against the gray sky. It sat at the end of a long driveway and looked held together by a coat of white paint about to give up the fight. Perfect setting for a Gothic novel.

“Thank you for bringing me home,” Caley said as Susan pulled up the driveway and stopped at the back of the house.

“Please don't come in with me.”

“I'll just—”

“No. I have three kids.”

“I've seen a lot worse than anything three kids can do.”

“You don't know,” Caley said darkly.

“I need to make sure you get inside safely.”

“I'm fine.” Caley released the seat belt and opened the pickup door.

Susan slid out, nipped around to the other side, and took a firm grip on Caley's arm. “I'll walk you to the door.” She braced herself against the freezing December wind.

“Only the door? Promise?”

“Promise.” Susan helped her across the driveway, avoiding the icy patches that hadn't been cleared after the last snowfall. When snow isn't shoveled, it gets trampled, then it turns to slush that turns to ice at the next temperature drop. She'd learned that to her sorrow. “Just let me—”

“You promised.” Opening the door a narrow few inches, Caley edged around it into the kitchen.

Susan let her go, telling herself to check up later. In this kind of cold weather, cops did welfare checks to make sure the elderly or ill were all right. In ordinary times, she would just add Caley to the list, but with everybody out sick there were no welfare checks. One old woman had frozen to death in her own living room. Susan didn't want another tragedy.

All I have to do, Caley thought, closing the door behind her, is get to my bed. Not even that far. The couch. Miles to go before I sleep. A gargantuan sneeze almost crumpled her. She dabbed at her nose with a soggy tissue. Freezing in here. Tripping over curling linoleum in the kitchen, she went through the dining room and into the living room.

All three of her children were lined up on the couch, covered to their chins with quilts, watching television.

“I told him we weren't supposed to,” Adam said. “We'd be in trouble when you got back.” Adam was the middle child, the eight-year-old.

“I turned it on,” Zachary said, a shade defensively, always truthful. Twelve, the responsible one.

Bonnie, the baby, at six, didn't say anything. In fact, she didn't look so good. Her face was flushed and her eyes droopy.

“It's warmer this way,” Zach said. “And Adam got fidgety.” His younger brother couldn't sit still for more than two minutes unless it was in front of a television set, where his brain went immediately to flat line.

“The Littles needed something to do,” Zach said, from his superior age of twelve.

“Hi, Mommy.” Bonnie was Caley's cuddler and usually available for a hug. Now she simply sat listlessly watching gunmen chase each other through an empty office building.

“Hello, love.” Caley kissed her daughter's forehead, touched one cheek and then the other. Warm. Oh, damn.

“Zach, for goodness sake, why didn't you turn the heat up?” They tried to keep it down because even with the extra job at Basslight Music, she couldn't afford the gas bills. “We don't need to freeze to death.”

“Mommy, are we going to freeze to death?”

“No, darling, of course not.”

“I did,” Zach said. “All the way. Nothing happened.”

“Why didn't you call your grandmother?”

“She called right after you left and said she was going … shopping, I think. Anyway, you weren't going to be gone long. I could handle it. I didn't start a fire because I knew you'd spaz.”

Caley squinted at the thermostat, twisted the dial all the way down and then all the way up. She did it again. Dumbly, she stood there as the enormity of the situation made its way through to her brain. The furnace didn't work. The worst winter since Kansas became a state—when was that? Eighteen something? The furnace was dead.

Clutching her coat tight at her throat, she clumped down the rickety basement steps and peered at the metal monster. Like everything else in the house, it was old. It sat silently in its spot in the corner like a dumb beast too tired and abused to go on.

“Damn it!” She kicked it.

“… got released,” Zach was saying. “And dangerous.”

“Zach, what are you talking about?”

He sighed. “Grandma called right after you left.”

“What did she want?”

“I don't know. Some stuff about this guy being dangerous and you should be careful and not let in any strangers.”

Back upstairs, in the kitchen, Caley flipped through pages. Furnaces, furnaces. “What was Ettie talking about?”

“I don't know. You know how she is.” Her ex-husband's mother was a mixed blessing, great in some ways, but given a topic she was a nonstop talker.

“Where's that flyer that came in the mail?”

Zach put his finger on a flyer tacked to the corkboard over the phone. “When it came I put it here just in case.” Shanky's Furnace and Air Conditioning.

Caley rubbed her eyes, then punched numbers and explained her problem.

A sympathetic female voice said someone would be out within the next two hours. It would cost seventy-five dollars for him to take a look at it. Seventy-five dollars?

“We could build a fire,” Zach suggested.

She put her arms around him, pulled him close, and kissed the top of his head, probably smearing germs all over him. What would she do without this child? This calm sensible child, too adult for twelve. Keep yourself under control and don't panic so much, she said silently. It wasn't fair to him.

He brought in wood, arranged it in the fireplace, crumpled newspapers, and within minutes had a fire going. Even Bonnie perked up a bit with logs cheerily crackling away.

Two hours and twenty minutes later, rescue arrived. He was thin inside a bulky black jacket, thin face with a comma-shaped scar like the letter
C
on his left cheek, high forehead, blondish hair, and blank deep-set hazel eyes, “Tim” stitched on his shirt pocket.

As she started down the basement stairs, Bonnie scrambled over and flung small arms around her waist. “Mommy, don't.”

“I'm just going to show him where the furnace is.”

“Don't go!”

“Bonnie…”

“Nooo!” Tears trickled down Bonnie's round cheeks. “Please, Mommy. You won't ever come back. Like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. You'll be burned up.”

“That was an oven,” Adam said scornfully.

“He's gonna hurt you.”

“Of course he won't, darling. He's here to fix the furnace so we can get warm.”

“He has funny eyes,” Bonnie mumbled, sticking to her guns.

He did, Caley thought. Goat's eyes. Hazel, intelligent, knowing, and taking in everything. When she was a child, she'd owned a book about a troll who lived under a bridge. The evil troll had eyes just like the man she was about to take into her basement.

She gathered up her daughter, kissed the flushed face, and brushed light hair from her forehead. “You sit here. I'll be right back.”

She turned on the basement light and stepped back to let him go first, not wanting him behind her.

A flicker of malice stirred in his eyes before he turned and trotted down the steps.

She pointed out the furnace, against the wall under the dirty narrow window. He placed his toolbox on the cement floor, removed a furnace panel, and crouched to shine a flashlight at its innards.

She huddled on the bottom step, hugging the banister. Never before had the dim lighting down here bothered her. There were only two bare ceiling bulbs sending fingers of light into the darkness spreading under the entire house. Junk was piled everywhere: boxes, old furniture, a rusted bicycle, broken toys, a doll buggy, a crib, a desk—maybe that could be cleaned up for Zach—file cabinets, chairs, a dining table. A good place to hide something, she thought. Like a body.

Tim banged away, said it needed two new pieces, and banged some more.

“Mommy!”

The edge of panic in Bonnie's voice had her racing up the stairs. In the kitchen, the little girl stood in the center of spilled orange juice that soaked the front of her clothes, dripped off the table, and puddled in a widening circle around the dropped jug.

“Go change your clothes,” Caley snapped.

Bonnie's bottom lip trembled and tears filled her eyes.

Oh, God. “I'm sorry, love. It's all right.” She gave the child a one-armed hug, kissed her, and patted her on the fanny. “Get something dry on. It's all right.”

Nothing was all right. She'd just yelled at her baby, she had orange juice all over the kitchen, and she had a weird guy in the basement. Tears prickled at her eyes.

“I'll take care of it, Mom,” Zach said.

“Zach—” Hang on, don't snivel. “You are a great kid. Thanks.”

She found Bonnie in the bedroom, shivering so hard she couldn't manage the buttons on her shirt. Caley peeled off the wet clothes, slipped a dry sweatshirt over the little girl's head, gathering pale hair loose from the neckline, and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. She carried Bonnie into the living room, sat on one end of the couch, and wrapped a quilt around both of them. She hummed softly. Adam, still mesmerized by television, sat on the other end.

Horses galloped across the television and guns blazed. Struggle as she might, she still dozed.

Gradually muscles, tensed to protect her from the cold, began to relax as warmth crept in like soft spring air.

She dreamed.

God, with a mass of fuzzy white hair and the repairman's eyes, put her in an elevator and pressed a button labeled HELL. The elevator descended. When it reached bottom, the doors opened to gigantic, roaring, leaping flames. Hands grabbed her arms and legs, swung her back, and pitched her in.

“Mom! Mom, wake up!” Zach shook her shoulder. “We got a problem!”

“Adam?” She shot up. “Bonnie?”

“They're fine. In the bedroom. Mom, the furnace won't turn off.”

“Turn it down.” She slumped back against the lumpy couch.

“It is down. It doesn't matter. It keeps roaring.”

She untangled herself from the quilts and got to her feet. Hot hot. The room swayed. It had gotten dark while she dozed. Somebody had turned on all the lights. Adam, maybe; he didn't like the dark. She headed for the basement.

“Mom, he's gone.”

“Gone,” she repeated stupidly.

“Wake up, Mom. We have to do something.”

She shook her head, then wished she hadn't.

“Call them.” Zach handed her a bill. She owed six hundred and eighty-five dollars.

“Call. I'll open windows.”

She punched in the number on the invoice and, rather shrilly, explained the situation to the male voice on the other end of the line.

“It's the blower,” he said, superior male to ditzy female. “Takes several minutes before it shuts off.”

“It's been several hours and nothing has shut off.”

“I'll send someone out first thing in the morning.” Bored unworried voice.

“No,” Caley said. “
Right now.
He just left. Get him back here.”

Pause. “I'll try his pager.”

She slammed down the receiver, used ticking seconds to track down a number, then called Kansas Power and Light.

After she explained a second time, a female voice promised someone would be there within an hour.

“Hour? We'll be on the way to mummified in an hour.”

“I'll put a rush on it.”

Caley disconnected and called another number, relieved when the phone was answered. “Ettie, would you take the children for a while? The furnace isn't working.”

“Of course. I'll be right there.”

Caley had the Littles and Zach, their breaths steaming in the cold air, waiting on the kitchen porch when their grandmother drove up. She bundled them into the car and waved as they drove away.

Feverish, shaking, coughing, aching in every joint, she switched on the outside light over the garage door and waited in her car for KP and L—or for the house to blow up, whichever came first.

Before either of those things happened, headlights poked up the driveway, a van parked in the circle of light outside the garage, and the repairman got out.

She scooted from the car and went to meet him. Shaking in the cold, she ran up the porch steps, opened the kitchen door, and let him in.

He smiled a creepy little smile that froze her hand as she reached to close the door behind them.

2

Time ticked by on long seconds. His blank eyes watched her, knowing her fear, amused by it. The kitchen seemed too bright, the ceiling light shined down on bowls of soggy cereal in puddles of milk, a loaf of bread spilling out slices, and a jar of peanut butter with a knife stuck in it. Blobs of red splattered the tablecloth. Clumps of strawberry jam, she assumed, not a foreshadowing of gory smears from her body after he hacked her up with a carving knife.