The Winslow Incident (17 page)

“Your mother, I suppose.” Sarah
laughed. “Anabel and Nate were just like you and Sean—always chasing each
other around.”

“I know,” Hazel said, and that’s
what had always scared her. If Sean kept chasing
her
, would she have any
choice but to run all the way out of Winslow and—poof!—disappear
too?

Her mother used to drive a little
car they called The Lemon. Hazel had always thought it was because it was
yellow, but later her dad told her it was because the car had a transmission no
man could fix. Hazel could never remember the exact moment her mother got into
The Lemon and left, but she could never forget that soon thereafter she’d
discovered all the newly empty spaces—in the house, in her
heart—that her mother had formerly occupied. And afterwards her dad would
drop her off at the hotel every morning where Honey Adair made pancakes with
blackberries from the side yard, which Hazel and Sean would eat in the kitchen
nook. But she hated coming over to play because Sean would chase her around the
long porch and pull her hair.

“It’s because he likes you,” Honey
would say.

Doesn’t feel much like ‘like’
to me
, Hazel always thought.

Sometimes Patience would come over
too, so her mom Constance could
take a break
and the five-year-old
girlfriends would gang up against Sean and chase him around the giant oak,
threatening to kiss him. All the while Hazel pretended her mother would be
coming to pick her up like she always did after she’d just gone down the
mountain to do a big grocery shop. But she never came. Instead, her dad would
return for her in the afternoon and take her to the Crock for a snack of pie and
coffee for him and rainbow sherbet for her. Hazel would sense him willing her
not to ask where her mother had gone, so she never did, because as long as she
didn’t ask, she didn’t have to know that Anabel was never coming back.

“You look tired, Hazel,” her
grandmother said now.

“I am.” Suddenly she felt
exhausted and slouched down in the roomy wicker chair.
I’ll close my eyes
for just a minute
, she thought, and then she dozed on the shady porch,
dreaming about wolves and little girls in braids and Sean running away from
her, into the sun.

When she woke, she found her
father sitting beside her in place of her grandmother. She had to squint
because while she’d slept, the sun had changed position and now violated the
shade of the porch. It was too warm on her skin but her dad’s expression as he
sought something beyond the tree line made her sit still so she could watch
him.

It took only a moment for her to
decipher the look on his face. Worry. Deep, black worry. He wore his uniform
and, unlike last night when he’d gone to the Rhone’s house, he now had his
revolver nestled in its holster.

That further unsettled her. With
his rifle always locked on the rack inside his jeep, he didn’t usually feel the
need to carry his handgun. Despite the sun shining right on him, he looked
chilled.

He must have sensed her awake
because he turned his head to look at her. “Welcome back, my Hazel.” He smiled
at her with such tenderness it made her heart hurt.

She smiled back, feeling safe for
the first time that day. “Thought you’d gone missing,” she said.

But then he gave her a look that
stole her sense of relief at having finally found him, and made her feel
anxious again. “Dad, what is it?”

He ran a hand over her head to
smooth sleep-mussed hair. “You needn’t be concerned.”

“Too late—I’m already
concerned.” She sat forward and eyed the woods. Though she couldn’t see the
water, she could hear Ruby Creek traversing the forest on its journey westward,
running down through Holloway Ranch to its final meeting with the Lamprey
River. She returned her gaze to her father. “Everyone’s acting so weird.”

“Something isn’t right,” he
agreed, resuming his own scan of the woods. “Something’s out there.”

“Wolves?” she asked, confused.

“Something worse,” he said.

And she felt a dark splotch of
fear spread slowly through her like a drop of warm blood in still water.

Z
achary Rhone had no idea how long he’d been in
the bakery staring into the oven, but it was dark out now. He remembered Pard
Holloway stopping by for a while, and he remembered Melanie coming in a couple
of times. But he couldn’t remember why they’d interrupted him.

He could hear Violet and Daisy
outside in the yard skipping rope and chanting, “Not last night but the night
before, twenty-four robbers came knocking on my door.”

Struggling to ignore them, Zachary
continued to stare into the big bread oven, on the verge of figuring it all
out. If only he concentrated a little harder, he knew it would come to him. Though
he felt no heat, he saw flames dance, heard fire hiss his name.

His daughters chanted faster: “And
this is what they said . . . to . . . me! Ladybug ladybug, turn around. Ladybug
ladybug, touch the ground.”

Ice-cold fingers tapped Zachary on
the chest: the fire had a question for him. He leaned closer while the frozen
fingers wrapped around his heart, chilling his blood.

“Shall we bake a cake?” asked the
flames.

Zachary wiped at the sweat
dripping from his forehead into his eyes. He knew this was important—if
only he could pay attention.

But his girls were so
loud.
“Ladybug ladybug, fly away home.”

“Bread buns rolls for everyone,”
the flames taunted.

So hard to concentrate. He spun on
his stool, putting his back to the oven, and shouted, “Can’t you girls be quiet
for one minute and let. Daddy. THINK!”

Faster, faster they shouted, “Your
house is on fire, your children will burn!”

Flames sprang from the oven,
snatching at Zachary’s arms and neck.

I only turned my back for a
second!
he lamented before breaking free
of their fiery grip.

Pinwheeling up from the stool, he
saw a contorted, monstrous face in the window. “What are you?” he screamed at
his own reflection. “What do you want from me?”

He backed away and slammed against
a shelf, upsetting a sack of flour that burst open when it hit the floor and
sent a grayish plume rising in the air.

I can’t breathe!
Zachary choked, feeling his way out of the bakery.
It’s
killing me.

“
J
ust consider it, is all I’m saying,” Owen
Peabody was saying, although nobody appeared to be listening when Pard Holloway
entered the Buckhorn Tavern.

Mounted game heads and antique
horse gear festooned the bar’s wood-paneled walls. And townsfolk were parked on
every last cowhide-covered chair and barstool.
What the hell are all of you
doing out?
Pard puzzled. Even Tiny Clemshaw was there, sucking on a bottle
of beer. Pard hadn’t seen Clemshaw take a drink in years. Not since Nate
Winslow arrested him for plowing down Meg Foster’s poodle Pepé on the sidewalk
of Park Street.

“That rotting old water tank,”
Owen continued, seemingly undaunted. “Bacteria multiplying like gangbusters.
Slime.” He shuddered. “Toxic slime.” Owen paused as if for reaction, but
everyone remained engaged in their own spirited conversations. “Just consider
it, that’s all.” Looking deflated, Owen sank down onto the stool next to his
wife Rose at the bar.

Pard maneuvered around Laura
Dudley and Ivy Hotchkiss dancing to Creedence’s swampy “Susie Q” on the jukebox,
and took the barstool between Tiny Clemshaw and Kohl Thacker. Then he motioned
for the blond, pixyish Marlene Spainhower behind the bar.

Marlene sauntered over to him in
tight jeans and tighter cowgirl shirt. “Hi ya, Pard,” she greeted him brightly.
Marlene and Pard had an arrangement. They’d had it for years. It worked well
enough.

“What’s all this?” he asked her
over the din, gesturing at the crowded bar.

Shriekish laughter spurted from
the table by the jukebox.

She shrugged as if to say,
Who
knows?
and drew him a draft. “People have been acting peculiar all day,
seemed drunk before they had their first.”

“Have you seen Doc Simmons?” Pard
asked. Earlier, Pard had pounded on the vet’s front door but there had been no
answer and Pard hadn’t had any luck finding him anywhere else. Pard was seriously
worried that the vet may have injured himself when he totaled his truck and was
wandering the woods bleeding from the head.

“Simmons?” Marlene glanced around
with green eyes. “Not scraggly hair nor skinny hide.” She set the glass in
front of Pard but he made no move to pick it up.

Instead, Pard turned his attention
to Kohl Thacker who sat mumbling beside him. “What’s that you say?” Pard wanted
information.

“The sickness,” Kohl raised his
voice, then knocked back the rest of his bourbon and banged the glass down on
the bar.

Pard’s unease grew. “What
sickness?”

“The sickness we got!” Kohl yelled
and the bar got quiet, the only sound the
chick chick
of the ancient
jukebox as it loaded the next forty-five.

“And what exactly is it?” Pard
asked in a measured tone designed to encourage Kohl to keep it the hell down.

“It’s spreading, that’s what it
is!” Kohl squawked and murmurs rolled through the tavern.

After talking to Tanner, Pard had
figured he better come into town and see for himself exactly what was going on.
Now he assessed this situation as
not good.
Maybe worse. His visit to
Zachary Rhone at the bakery had been none too encouraging either, the baker at
present being a few slices short of a loaf.

From the jukebox, Peggy Lee spoke,
“I sat there watching the marvelous spectacle . . . ,” while Julie Marsh walked
to the head of the bar as if called for her turn to speak.

“I have been feeling poorly, not
very well,” Julie announced before returning to her table where her husband Jay
Marsh sat sweating into his beer.

“It’s the strangest feeling I’ve
ever had,” Ivy Hotchkiss said.

“It is a most peculiar feeling,”
Rose Peabody agreed. “Sometimes I feel fine and then—”

“The Government!” Laura Dudley looked
convinced. “It’s a secret military experiment.”

Owen shook his head fiercely.
“It’s gotta be the water. We drank it. The cows drank it.”

Pard strode to the jukebox and
pulled the plug. “We all need to settle down.” He looked around the tavern and
felt his impatience shifting toward anger. “You’ve got food poisoning, plain
and simple. Right, Rose?”

From the bar, Rose stared at him
and neither agreed nor disagreed, just looked weary.

“All we have to do is ride this
out,” Pard continued.

“Is that so?” Gus Bolinger said
from the far side of the bar. “I’d like to know where Sheriff Winslow is. What’s
he got to say about all this?”

“Nate must be sick,” Marlene
replied. “He’s made himself scarce today.”

“Now, Gus,” Pard managed to keep
his tone agreeable, desiring no wrangle with the Korean War hero. “You know
we’ve got no need for the law. Haven’t we always taken care of our own?”

Tiny Clemshaw shot up, jabbed his
finger Pard’s direction, and knocked over his beer bottle with his elbow. “It’s
your fault!” he blustered. “You’ve been wantin’ to be rid of us for a long time
and now you’ve gone and poisoned us with your stinking, rotting meat!”

Pard stormed over and shoved
Clemshaw back down onto his barstool so hard it was a wonder the stool
and
the man didn’t snap. The storekeeper was always on the prod but he usually
showed Pard respect. Not tonight.

“All right, Holloway.” Gus rose
from his bar stool. “No need to get rough.”

“Pard,” Ivy piped up from right
beside the door, looking ready to bolt if need be. “Most of us did eat beef at
some point over the past few days.”

“Is it mad cow disease?” Kohl
asked, fright wrinkling his pale face.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Thacker.”
Pard spat out his breath in aggravation. “My cattle eat organic grains, so mad
cow isn’t even a possibility. Besides, it takes
years
for symptoms of
BSE to develop in humans, not days.”

“Oh, no.” Laura looked shocked.
“It’s anthrax, isn’t it?”

Pard inhaled deliberately slow and
let everyone fidget while awaiting his reaction. “Enough!” he finally boomed
and the people nearest him shrank back from the force of it. “I’ll be damned if
I’ll stand by and let you ruin this town with your half-cocked speculating.
Don’t you see? Rumors like that spoil tourists’ appetites. Even the simple
truth—food poisoning—will be enough to ruin our reputation.
Forever.
”
He glared around the room, challenging anyone to argue with that.

No one dared.

Until Tiny Clemshaw, full of piss
and vinegar and abnormal daring, said, “Won’t be carryin’ Holloway meat in my
Mercantile anymore, I can tell you that much.”