Heat of the Moment (10 page)

Kids noticed how different I was from every other Carstairs on the planet, which led to a lifetime of comments about the “stork getting it wrong,” and other oh-so-amusing jibes.

I loved my parents, my siblings, loved this town, or I wouldn't have come back after college, but there was always a part of me that felt as if I'd been plunked into Three Harbors by strange forces and not born here like everyone else.

“Sweetheart.” My dad kissed the top of my head, paused, sniffed. “You've been playing with cows again.”

You'd think he wouldn't be able to smell cows on me since he had enough cow smell on himself. You'd think wrong.

“Watley's.” My mom brought my dad both his coffee and his plate. “Twin heifers.”

I used to find it beyond frustrating that she waited on him like that. Then she caught the flu once—and only once, which is another subject entirely. She'd had four kids. Four! And we'd brought home all sorts of things—germs, foster sons, hedgehogs.

While Mom had been down with the flu, Dad had trashed the kitchen just trying to make cereal, and all became clear to me. She didn't wait on him because she was the woman and he was the man; she waited on him because he was a slob and she didn't want him anywhere near her kitchen.

“Trouble?” My dad stirred cream and sugar into his coffee.

“I wouldn't have been there if there weren't trouble.”

Most of the time cows had calves all by themselves, sometimes the farmer didn't even know about it until the cow walked back in with an extra.

“Good point.” He toasted me with his cup, drank.

My father's face was well lived in—weather crinkles around the eyes, smile lines framed his mouth. His hair had highlights without help from anything but the sun, though his roots were gray. As he said when Mom teased him, at least he still
had
hair. A lot of his pals didn't.

“Where's your car?”

“Owen brought her.”

Silence fell. Everyone but my mother, who was pouring bacon grease into a tin can, stared at me.

“Owen's back?” Jamie asked.

“It would be a little hard for him to give me a ride if he wasn't.”

“Ha-ha.” Jamie took the chair across from mine. His plate was so full he really should have used two. “Why's he here? Where'd you see him? Is it true he's in explosives detection? What—”

I held up my hand. “I'll tell you all I know if you just zip it.”

Jamie didn't have to be told twice. If his mouth was asking questions he couldn't eat. Not at my mom's table. So he zipped it, then tucked into the plate as I recited all I knew. Almost.

I wasn't going to discuss the new breadth to Owen's shoulders, the fresh calluses on his hands. I especially didn't plan to relate the same, great taste of his mouth.

My father began to make a waffle sandwich, something he did only when he had someplace else to be.

“Where are you going?”

He glanced up in the middle of squirting syrup on top of the butter he'd spread on two waffles like bread. “I need to check the fence on the north side.”

Joe started to rise, and Dad shook his head, then proceeded to snap bacon in half and position it on a waffle. “One of you take Becca to her apartment. The other can do inventory on the feed. We'll need to place an order this week.” He slapped the second waffle on top of the first, picked up his sandwich, and left.

I was still frowning at that abrupt departure when Jamie said, “Call it.”

A quarter flipped end over end over end through the air.

“Tails.” Joe shoveled the remains of his breakfast into his mouth.

Jamie slapped the coin onto the back of his hand, peeked and tucked it into his pocket. “You take Becca; I take inventory.”

I kissed my mom then followed my brothers out the door.

My dad's truck was gone, which was odd. To check a fence he usually took a tractor or an ATV.

“Who won the toss?” I asked.

Jamie winked. “Wouldn't you like to know?”

 

Chapter 8

Joe was his usual silent self as we headed toward Three Harbors. I didn't mind. I half dozed with my forehead against the window.

The flash of brilliant blue from Stone Lake brought me out of my stupor in time to witness Owen's white rent-a-truck parked in front of a cabin. He'd taken Chief Deb's advice. He hadn't had much choice. With Reggie in tow it was Stone Lake or … my parents' house. I could understand his reluctance to return there. Too many people, too much action.

Too many memories.

I closed my eyes. Seeing Owen again had brought back just how hard it had been to get over him. I'd been right to say we should avoid each other as much as possible. Spending any more time with him might erase all the progress I'd made. Not that there'd been all that much. I dreamed of him weekly, thought of him daily, missed him hourly.

Yeah, I was over him all right.

“Lot of sighs coming from over there,” Joe observed.

I made a snoring sound and kept my eyes closed. Because he was Joe, he let me.

A blip in the road tapped my head against the glass. I opened my eyes. We were trolling down Carstairs Avenue.

Ahead of us, the newspaper delivery van rolled from business to business distributing a daily dose of information. While many small towns had lost their newspaper completely, or had at least had their daily subscription scaled back to biweekly, Three Harbors maintained a healthy circulation.

Perhaps part of the reason was that the owner of the
Three Harbors Herald
also owned the Lakeside Hotel, a thriving business that could fund the dying one. Perched on the shores of Lake Superior, the place had recently been filled to capacity with tourists in town for the annual Falling Leaves Festival.

Three Harbors had prospered on tourism. Summer vacations, autumn leaf viewing, winter snowmobiling and cross-country skiing, as well as various hunting seasons ensured that the town didn't struggle often. Even when the economy tanked, we remained busy. Folks that would have gone to Europe, or the Caymans, or some other expensive place, would instead remain closer to home.

Spring was our only down season, and in northern Wisconsin spring was mostly a myth. If it did make an appearance, people often blinked and missed it completely. I could probably make a bundle on T-shirts that read:
SPRING IN WISCONSIN? JUST LIKE WINTER EVERYWHERE ELSE.

“Will you be able to catch some sleep this morning?” Joe asked.

“I think I can.” No messages on my voice mail yet. Almost a miracle. Still … there was something I was supposed to do today. What was it?

“Jeremy,” I muttered.

“I'm Joe,” my brother said, enunciating his name, drawing out the “oooo.”

“Very funny. A professor from the university is supposed to come in today and take a peek at the crime scene.”

“Why is that bad?”

“You didn't see the crime scene.”

“Can I?”

“No!” I glanced at him, and he stuck out his tongue. “Why would you want to?”

Joe slid the truck to a stop at the curb in front of my building. “I'm a seventeen-year-old boy,” he said, as if that answered the question. And it kind of did, along with raising another one.

“You know anyone who's got an unhealthy interest in Satan?”

“Is there a way to have a
healthy
interest in Satan?”

He made a good point. “I meant are there any kids at school that seem overly weird?”

“Define
overly.
”

I rubbed my forehead. I was too damn tired for this. “What do they call kids who look very Ozzy these days?”

“I don't know what that means.”

The only reason I did was because my college roommate had been obsessed with the reality show
The Osbornes
.

“Dyed black hair, black eye makeup, piercings, black clothes.”

“Emo,” he said. “They call it ‘emo' now, and that's half the kids in school in some way or another.”

“Really?” Sheesh, I was old.

Joe shrugged. I wasn't sure if that meant he was telling the truth or pulling my leg. Did it matter?

“If you hear anything about Satan, witches, covens, black magic, sacrificial whatever, you'll let me know, right?”

“Really?” he echoed. “Sheesh. People are sick.”

“You have no idea.” I got out of the car. I started to slam the door and had another thought. “You know Joaquin?”

Joe blinked.

“Joaquin Ramos?”

“You think there's more than one Joaquin in school? Of course I know him. Why?”

“Could you … I don't know … Ask him over or something?”

“You want me to plan a playdate with the new guy?”

“That a problem?”

“He's a sophomore.”

“Meaning?”

“I'm a senior.”

I lifted my eyebrows and waited.

“It's kind of strange for me to do that. Borderline creepy. He's a kid.”

“You're not?”

“Not the same way he is.”

“He doesn't have any friends,” I said.

“He can't have mine,” my brother muttered, but at my narrowed glare, he continued. “Tell him to join a club, try out for a sport, something. That's how you meet people and make friends. Not by sitting alone or working for you.”

“People might be picking on him.”

Joe frowned.
That
he didn't like. “I'll keep an eye on him.”

Which meant Jamie would too. I shut the door. Joe did a U-turn and headed back the way we'd come.

Thank goodness no one stood outside the clinic with a pet in his or her arms. I might not hold office hours today, but that didn't mean people listened. Emergencies happened. However, a client's idea of what constituted an emergency—a cough—and mine—copious blood flow—were very different.

Another thing I'd learned—if I opened the front door in plain view of town, word got around I was open for business, so I snuck around to the rear.

I smelled like a duchess, and not the
Downton Abbey
kind, so I scrubbed up in the sink, I was too tired to do more, donned my idea of pajamas—pale green scrubs dotted with dancing dogs—then crawled into my bed, a daybed that served as both couch and sleeping area. The red numbers on the digital alarm atop the end table read 8:14. If I was lucky I'd be able to catch a few hours' siesta before Jeremy arrived.

I'd trained myself in college to fall asleep quickly and pretty much anywhere—night or day, dark or light. A talent perfected by med students, mothers, and soldiers everywhere. When the only sleep you got was sleep you took, you adjusted or you lost your marbles.

My ability to sleep quickly and deeply was augmented by my ability to wake up and function within seconds as well. Lucky for me.

The long, low wail of a wolf, closer than a wolf should be, woke me, confused me. Wolves didn't often howl at the sun.

I opened my eyes an instant before the pillow smashed down on my face.

*   *   *

Owen was lucky that a duck hunter from Waunakee had rented one of the cottages at Stone Lake, then slipped on freakishly early ice and broken his wrist. Which equaled no hunting for him and an empty cottage for Owen. He even received a discount since said Waunakee hunter had canceled too late to get his deposit back. Sucked for that guy.

“I'm not sure how long I'll be staying,” he told the fellow behind the bar, which, from the papers and the laptop spread all over it, doubled as the front desk. Since a sign announcing
OFFICE
had been hung directly beneath the one that read
STONE LAKE TAVERN
that made sense.

“This is the last week of duck hunting,” said the man, whom Owen decided was the owner since the pocket of his bowling shirt read
KRAZY KYLE
, and the business registration certificate on the wall read
KYLE KRASINSKY
. “Next week I'm empty.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Except for that guy.”

Owen followed the wobble of the man's two chins toward a table in the rear. As it was daytime, none of the lights were on in the tavern except for those above the bar, and the area was wreathed in shadows.

There was someone there, but Owen couldn't see whom. Then a door-shaped swath of daylight highlighted a tall, cadaver-thin, impossibly old man wearing a bandolier of bullets and more guns than Owen had ever seen draped over a single person, even in Afghanistan.

The door closed, eliminating the sunshine and the man. Krazy let out a relieved breath. “I'm glad he left. He makes me nervous.”

“Can't imagine why. What's up with him?”

“He said he's hunting wolves.”

Owen doubted the fellow had been hunting them with the pistols at his hips, but he'd also carried a rifle and a shotgun. “That legal?”

“Gotta have a permit, and they ain't easy to get, but yeah.”

“It's wolf-hunting season?” Seemed early but what did Owen know? He'd never hunted anything but terrorists.

“Mid-October to February. Though if the quota's met, they end it early.”

“You get a lot of wolf hunters in here?”

“He's the first.” From the twist of his lips, Krazy hoped he was the last.

“You don't approve of wolf hunting?” Owen asked.

“I don't know. They say there are too many now. They've been protected so long. But around here I've only seen one. Black as the ace of spades.”

Owen must have started because Krazy's gaze flicked from his perusal of the back door to Owen. “You've seen her too?” He didn't wait for a response. “She's beautiful, and she doesn't seem to be bothering anyone.”

She'd bothered Owen, and Reggie too for that matter.

“They say wolves steal small dogs, cats, chickens, calves. Sometimes an old horse or cow. But I've never heard of any being lost around here.”