Dakota (14 page)

S
HE CAME
to in Thor’s arms, his face close to hers, green eyes fixed on her own grey ones, mouth nearly close enough to kiss. She closed her eyes again, and a second later, was glad she had, thus avoiding the inevitable look of disgust on his face.

“Miss Wicks! You’re drunk! You reek of liquor.”

“Tequila,” she mumbled. “Awful stuff. Hate it.”

“Apparently not. Let’s get you on your feet.”

“No!” But she was too late. He hauled her upward. The moan that escaped her turned into a full-fledged scream.

Thor paused, his face considerably out of kissing range. Lola dangled above the ground. “Miss Wicks?”

“Clinic. Please.” Each word took a great effort. She forced more. “I. Got beaten. Up.”

He lifted her again, more gently this time, to her feet. “Lean on me. Can you walk? Who did this to you? When did it happen? Here. Hold onto me. Like this.” He wrapped her arms around his waist and took a step. Lola dragged her feet through the snow. They worked, a welcome surprise. Thor took another step. When they got to the building’s front steps, he simply lifted her. Lola and Thor groaned in unison. She had forgotten about his back. “I’m sorry,” she gasped.

“We’re a pair, aren’t we?” he said through whitened lips. “Me all stove up, you beat up. Not much farther now. You owe your dog a treat. He stood out there and barked and barked. Otherwise, there’s a good chance nobody would’ve found you until quitting time.”

Dawg was in his usual spot in the front office and stayed put when Thor and Lola staggered in, Bub at their heels. Dawg’s nostrils flared. “She’s drunk. And what’s that dog doing in here?”

“That may be.” Thor’s breath came ragged from exertion. “But she’s hurt, too. And the dog seems to go wherever she goes. Help me out here.”

“No. I can manage.” The last thing Lola wanted was Dawg manhandling her aching body. She put a hand to the wall and followed it to the open door of Thor’s office and eased none too gracefully into a chair.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Thor said to Dawg. “I’m going to need you to help me find whoever did this to Miss Wicks.” He closed the door and turned to Lola. “Do you think you can answer a few questions before I get you some help? Because the quicker I jump on this, the quicker I can get this guy.” He handed her a cup of coffee, and poured a second one. “Drink this. And when you’re done, drink that one, too. We need to get you sober.”

L
OLA TOLD
him the same thing three times in a row.
Cops,
she thought on Round Three. Always trying to trip you up. “No. I didn’t know him. Or if I did, I couldn’t tell. He came out of the alley. Started”—how had Rabbit Face put it?—“whaling on me. He didn’t say a word. And I never saw his face. He wore a mask. He was big. And he hit me really hard. That’s about it.” She was just about to relax, thinking he was done, when Thor got around to the topic she’d hoped to avoid.

“What were you doing over there?”

“Interviewing someone.” Which was true, she thought.

“On the street? In your truck? Where?”

Lola ran one hand over the other, her fingers thick, the skin tight and shiny over burst blood vessels. “In a bar.”

Thor waited.

She lifted a hand before her face. Her thumbnail was black. She was probably going to lose it, she thought. “The Train.”

Thor’s expression changed not at all. It occurred to Lola that there was probably an entire session in the police academy on poker faces. “Indian guy?” Thor asked. “Because that’s what your story is about, right?”

Lola poked at the thumbnail. It wiggled. The man’s pale skin had showed through the eyeholes in the neoprene balaclava. “White guy.”

“Do you always drink heavily during your interviews?”

Bub curled a lip and rumbled. Lola wondered how long it would take Thor to call Charlie and impart the news that his girlfriend had gotten drunk at lunchtime with some stranger in a titty bar. Charlie would probably ask the same questions Thor just had, and would know that her interview at The Train had nothing to do with a story about Indian workers in the patch. Thor voiced that same conclusion now.

“You were talking to him about that girl. What’d you find out?”

Lola thought of the bouncer, how he’d at least confirmed that Judith had been in Burnt Creek, dancing. She saw no reason at all why that information might help Thor catch whoever had lit into her.

“Nothing,” she said. “I didn’t find out one goddamned thing.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“O
h, my dear. Oh, my word. I’m so sorry, Miss Wicks. This is going to hurt.”

“Call me Lola. Please. You and Thor both.” Lola sank deep into a flowered sofa in Thor Brevik’s living room, succumbing without protest to the ministrations of his wife. Charlotte Brevik was a nurse, Thor had told Lola, and would give her far better care than anything she’d find at the clinic. Lola had expected a rodeo queen with a sticky sprayed cotton-candy poof of hair, jeans Saran-wrapped around a hard little butt. But where Thor was spare, a twist of barbed wire, Charlotte was like a stack of plump pillows challenging the double-stitched seams of her nurse’s scrubs. For a woman so ample and soft, her touch was firm as she probed the lump on the back of Lola’s head. “May I?” she asked before easing up the layers of Lola’s shirts. “You turn around,” she commanded her husband. Her tone was playful, but a flush crept up her neck, patching her delicate skin like a rash. Thor hovered in the doorway of a living room crowded with occasional tables and display shelves, all forested with porcelain figurines. Lola wondered how Thor and Charlotte—especially Charlotte, with her excessive dimensions—negotiated it daily without sending things crashing down. Charlotte pushed her fingers against Lola’s breast-bone. “Does that hurt?”

“Hell, yes, it hurts.” Lola slapped Charlotte’s hand away. “Stop that. Where’s my dog?”

“He’s in the mudroom. It hurts because there’s a bruise. A lot of bruises, bad ones. But beyond that—below it, internally—do you feel any sharp pains?” Lola shook her head.

Charlotte pressed the small of Lola’s back, her abdomen. “There?”

Lola’s stomach twisted. Her head spun. She spoke through clenched teeth. “Same. Hurts, but not the way you said. I feel more nauseated than anything.”

“That’s the stress. And it’s good. It means we don’t have to worry about internal injuries. You can thank that big coat of yours. If this were summertime, we’d be looking at broken ribs at the very least. That knock on your head, though. That’s worrisome.” She produced a tiny flashlight and shined it into Lola’s eyes. “Don’t blink.” Her face was inches from Lola’s, eyes so brown they appeared black, cheeks pink with a dusting of blush, lips tinted with gloss, just enough makeup to disguise the faint lines that too soon would become the claw marks of time. She smelled of lotion and face powder, undercut with something tangy and familiar that Lola couldn’t quite place. She put Charlotte at about forty, only a few years older than she was. Lola touched a hand to her own face and wondered when she would have to start taking makeup seriously.

Charlotte caught the gesture. “Does your face hurt? Did he hit you there?”

“Told you she was good,” Thor called to Lola from across the room.

Charlotte simpered. “That’s how we met. I took care of Thor when he was in the hospital after the bull got him. He called me the prettiest little thing he’d ever seen.”

“That bull knocked me in the head,” Thor said.

Charlotte pressed her lips together and turned away. “Sometimes it takes the bruises awhile to come up. You’ve got some dandy ones on your back. Take a look.” She rose heavily from the sofa, and returned with a hand mirror and raised Lola’s shirts again. “Thor! Honestly. Go into the kitchen and make coffee. And make sure the dog has some food and water. Get him an old blanket to lie on while you’re at it.” She waited until he was gone and whispered to Lola.

“Honey, I can tell you’ve been drinking. It’s awfully early in the day. Do you need help with that? There’s a good AA group in town. I’ve sent plenty of people there. I’m sure you’ve got one back where you’re from.”

Lola fished for an explanation that would make sense to someone like Charlotte. Doing tequila shots during an interview in a topless bar probably wasn’t going to cut it. “Someone spilled it on me,” she said. Charlotte’s pitying expression told her the lie hadn’t worked.

“Look.” Charlotte held the mirror inches from Lola’s back. Bruises bloomed like peonies. “You think they’re bad now, give them a couple of days. They’ll turn colors you never knew existed. You’ll want to take ibuprofen, four tablets every eight hours, for the next few days. And if you have the least bit of dizziness, you get yourself to a doctor right away. And if you change your mind about that meeting—”

She stopped as Thor emerged from the kitchen with three mugs of coffee on a tray, along with a cream pitcher, a sugar bowl, and little spoons. The cellphone clipped to his belt rang. He put down the tray and detached the phone. “Dawg,” he announced. He turned his back and spoke briefly. “She’s fine. Or she will be. I’ll be back in a few and we can head out. We don’t have much to go on.” He rang off. “He wanted to know how you’re doing.”

“That Dawg,” said Charlotte. “Bet your first look at him was a jolt.”

Lola minimally lifted a shoulder. She was learning to conserve movement.

“Speaking of looks,” said Charlotte, “did you get a good one at the guy who did this?”

Lola took a coffee mug, hoping that neither Thor nor Charlotte saw her fingers quivering. “No. As I told Thor, he was all bundled up. He even had on one of those ski masks.”

“That describes about half the men—and a good number of the women—in Burnt Creek this time of year.”

Lola heard again the harsh breaths, the grunting exhalations in rhythm with the kicks. “I’m pretty sure it was a man. He was so big.” She nestled into the deep cushions, and sipped at her coffee with her eyes closed, waiting for the shaking to stop. It didn’t take long. The Breviks kept their home a good ten degrees, maybe more, warmer than Charlie’s. It had been weeks since she’d been so comfortable. Something drifted around her shoulders. Lola opened her eyes to see Charlotte Brevik arranging a crocheted afghan over her.

“You drink your coffee and then you take a little rest. It’s the best thing for you. Thor’s going to go back to work and try to figure out who did this, and when he comes home, we’re going to have a nice dinner to help you get your strength back. Oh, and take this.” She dropped a round white pill into Lola’s palm.

“What is it?”

“Something for the pain. It’ll help you sleep. I’ll give you another one to take before you go to bed tonight. Tomorrow, you’ll need to start working through the stiffness, but this will give you a bit of break before then. You’ll hurt for a couple of days, but you’ll be surprised how fast you heal.”

Lola gulped it down and handed over her empty mug. She stretched out on the sofa, the bruises screaming at the movement, but stopping as soon as she’d settled. She’d barely murmured her thanks before she fell asleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

L
ola lifted another forkful of chicken and dumplings to her mouth and closed her eyes as she savored the lightness of the dumplings, the peppery gravy that coated them. “I can’t thank you enough.”

Charlotte patted Lola’s arm with a soft hand graced with unexpectedly long, slender fingers, their nails filed to perfect ovals and painted the same shade of peach as her lip gloss. “Oh, my dear. When I found out that Thor had sent you to The Mint—we like to go there, of course, but it’s no place for a single lady, not these days. Thor, you should be ashamed.”

Thor grimaced obligingly on cue across a round table groaning beneath the platter of chicken, a loaf of homemade bread, a bowl of iceberg lettuce enhanced with cherry tomatoes and bacon bits, and a casserole of creamed butterbeans that Charlotte assured Lola she’d grown in the backyard garden and canned. “Seems like nobody wants to can anymore. But I think there’s nothing better in the middle of a Dakota winter than a little reminder of summer’s goodness. Don’t you agree?”

Lola wondered if she could agree without admitting she’d never so much as successfully nurtured a houseplant in her life, let alone planted a garden and preserved its bounty. She solved the issue by taking another mouthful. Focusing on the food had the added benefit of keeping her from staring at the Jack Sprat disparity of Thor and Charlotte. Despite her good intentions, a question escaped.

“Do you eat like this every night?” She bit her lip, too late. Tried again. Made things worse. “Everything is so delicious. I’d be big as a house if—” She stopped. There was no recovering from that one.

“Oh, yes. Charlotte’s a wonderful cook.” Thor’s voice was flat. Lola couldn’t tell if Thor was coming to her rescue, or his wife’s. Layers stacked his own plate. He appeared to have one of those constitutions that withstood calories and cholesterol and sheer volume. Lola wondered what Charlotte had looked like when they married; if she’d cooked to keep up with her husband’s galloping metabolism, sacrificing herself on the altar of being a good wife, the bright sparkling girl she’d been slowly dimming beneath pads of fat. Lola speared a butterbean and ordered herself not to think about the mechanics of their sex life.