Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery (Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries) (7 page)

“What? Why?”

“We’ve got seven days to convince a majority of the board that shutting down the department is monumentally stupid. I can’t do that if I’m sitting on my ass, ice fishing.”

“No offense, but you’re not my first choice as a lobbyist. Or my second or third.”

“Who, then?”

“I’m pulling out the biggest gun I can think of. Kevin Flynn’s mother.” Lyle smiled and held the door open for an attractive middle-aged woman entering the bakery. She blushed and smiled back.

“Flynn’s
mother
? What’s she going to do? Play a sad Irish song about her soon-to-be unemployed son?” Except it wouldn’t be Kevin left high and dry. It would be Knox, who had to stay close to town in order to take care of her grandfather. And Noble, who would never find employment in another department. And Tim and Duane, the part-time guys. And Eric, struggling to keep himself and his marriage together.

“Elle Flynn heads up the state Small Business Finance Organization. Before that, she was a policy assistant to the last governor, and before
that,
she was the director of the Municipal Development Foundation. Word is she’s going to run for Congress this year. She put together an exploratory committee last month.”

“Kevin Flynn’s
mother
?”

“Yep.”

“How come I didn’t know any of this?”

“Because for most of the last year the only news you’ve been interested in came from Iraq. And then when the reverend finally got home, you were a little distracted.”

“You can say that again.” Russ pulled his own cap on. “Huh. Good job.”

“I keep telling you, I’m more’n just a pretty face.”

“I guess so.” A car rolled past them, and both men automatically stepped to the side to avoid getting slushed. “Okay. Keep me up to date. I mean vote by vote.” He shook his head. “Maybe if you sew this up fast enough, I can avoid telling Clare the bad news.”

11.

Bumping over the poorly plowed road that led to Amber Willis’s family’s cabin, Clare kept sneaking peeks at Russ. It had been almost dark when he’d gotten home, fully an hour after he had planned on leaving, to be confronted by Clare and Amber and her baby.

Of course there was a baby. Clare had wanted to smack herself in the head at her blank surprise at the sight of Amber emerging from the nursery with a one-year-old. It was, after all, the Young. Mothers. Program. At the rectory, instead of dragging Clare into the kitchen for a heated, whispered argument about strangers and boundaries, Russ had greeted the addition of mother, child, diaper bag, car seat, backpack, and suitcase with a resigned “Right. Sure. It is on our way.” Clare found it disorienting. During the hour-long ride up to the lake, while Amber chatted and the baby babbled and the dog snored beneath Clare’s feet in the passenger well, Russ had been … distracted? Depressed? She couldn’t tell. It worried her.

Russ swung the truck off the county highway and onto the road that ran along the south shore of Inverary Lake. There were a cluster of winterized houses and a mom-and-pop store near the highway, identifiable by their lit windows and parked cars. They petered out within a half mile, and the road closed in, rutted snow below, dense pines above. In the headlights’ halo, Clare could catch glimpses of the summer houses: log cabins, vinyl-clad cottages, angular redwood garrisons. Most of them jostled for space between the trees and the shore.

“Is it this crowded all the way around?” she asked.

He shook his head. “The north shore, where our place is, is part of a land trust. Nothing’s been built on it since the conservation easement. So there’s more space, a lot more trees, and you won’t see any tear-downs like that.” He pointed toward an incongruously large, many-gabled house that threatened to squash its rackety one-story neighbors. He raised his voice. “Uh—”

“Amber,” Clare whispered.

“Amber, where’s your family’s place?”

The girl leaned forward to get a better view out the windshield. “About a mile more on, maybe? It’s a lot closer to the turnoff to North Shore Drive.”

“I didn’t think any of the houses out here were winterized.”

“It’s not insulated, but my grandpa installed these electric baseboard heaters back when I was a little girl. If anyone wants to stay off-season, all they have to do is turn them on. My dad and my uncle taped the pipes so they won’t freeze.”

“Taped the pipes?” Clare had spent—what was it now, three? four?—winters in the North Country, but there was still a lot she didn’t know.

“Heat tape, with electrical wires in it,” Russ explained. “Amber, you’re sure your boyfriend is going to be there?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Russ flicked a glance at Clare. She had a sudden vision of arriving at the girl’s destination and finding it dark and snowbound like all the other homes they were rolling past. Then what would they do? Host the teen and her baby overnight in their cabin? That would be the cherry on the cake.

“Look. There it is.” Amber pointed past Clare’s head to where a light gleamed through the trees.

Thank you, Lord.
Russ rolled to a stop. Only the top of the place was visible from the road, but someone had shoveled the steps leading down the embankment to the house. There was no driveway. Why waste the waterfront view on parking? Instead, like several of the homes they had passed, Amber’s family had a two-door garage on the opposite side of the road. Russ didn’t bother trying to pull alongside it. He yanked the parking brake and switched on his four-ways.

“Okay.” He opened his door to a swirl of icy air. “Let’s get you two down there first.” He tipped his seat forward and helped Amber and the baby out.

“I can help with her bags,” Clare offered.

“You”—he pointed at her—“stay put. The last thing we need is you slipping and falling down a flight of stairs.” He slammed the door, definitively ending the conversation.

Oscar sat up and pawed at the door.

“Do you have to go out, boy?” Clare reached around him to wrestle a lead—left over from a dog-sitting stint several years back—out of the glove compartment. She shrugged into her parka, clipped on the leash, and opened her door. Oscar bounded down, Clare scrambling to keep up with him. He barked once, then got down to the business of sniffing the tires, the snowbank, the mailbox, and the top of the stairs. Clare could see the lit windows down below, their warmth somehow more lonely for being the only sign of life around. Behind her, the road glimmered white in the reflected glow of the truck’s headlights, then disappeared into inky blackness. She tugged on the leash and led Oscar toward the front of the pickup, where the headlights’ illumination ensured she wouldn’t take a wrong step along the side of the road and end up sliding down the steep embankment. Oscar peed and sniffed, sniffed and peed.

Russ hove back into view and opened the door again to collect the rest of Amber’s things. “Everything okay?” Clare asked.

“Yeah, the boyfriend’s there.” He swung a backpack over his shoulder and wedged the car seat under his arm before reaching in for the suitcase. “Jesus, babies take a lot of stuff. I’ve gone on deployments with less than this.”

Clare bit back a grin. “Be careful,” she said. “The last thing we need is you slipping and falling down a flight of stairs.”

“Smart-ass.” He slammed the door and vanished down the stairs. Clare walked a little farther down the road, pausing so that Oscar could mark two more mailboxes.

“All set,” Russ called. She turned around. He was waiting beside her door, and behind him, in the distance, she saw a pair of headlights.

“Somebody’s coming,” she said.

He turned around. “They can get by us. Come on.”

She tugged the lead and Oscar obediently followed. The lights slowed as they grew closer, until an SUV pulled up alongside them and stopped. The window rolled down. “You folks lost?” the driver asked. It was hard to make out his details. He was a large man, with a knit cap pulled down low, concealing his hair.

The dog lunged toward the SUV, barking at the man behind the wheel. “Oscar!” Clare hauled on his leash. “Bad dog! Bad!”

“Nope.” Russ raised his voice to be heard over Oscar’s deep-throated barking. “Just dropping someone off.”

“Sorry.” Clare tugged the dog back toward the truck.

“You’ll be able to get home before the storm, then,” the driver said.

Oscar was bracing himself, stiff-legged, refusing to budge. Clare hauled against the lead. “We’re not going home—”

Russ cut her off. “Storm?”

“Yep. They don’t know if it’s going to dump snow or rain or wintry mix. Supposed to be an unchristly mess, through. You staying here at the lake?”

Russ made a noncommittal noise. “Thanks for the heads-up on the weather.” He opened Clare’s door. “Oscar, come.” The dog gave one more bark, then jumped into the truck. Russ handed Clare up and shut the door behind her. She watched him say something, then wave. The SUV’s window rolled up and it drove off, making new tracks in the poorly plowed road.

“What was that?” she asked, as soon as Russ had climbed into his seat.

“I don’t like telling strangers my business.” He buckled in but didn’t shift the truck into gear. “We don’t know who that guy is.”

“This is a cop thing, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s a sensible safety measure thing.”

“And we’re sitting here instead of driving on because…?”

“I’m giving him lots of space. The road’s not good. I don’t want to risk skidding into his tailpipe.”

She rolled her eyes. “I bet you got his license plate, didn’t you?”

Russ made another noncommittal noise. He shifted into gear and drove on. After another mile or so, Clare spotted the green of a road sign. “I think this is it,” she said. Russ slowed the truck. “Haines Mountain Road and North Shore Drive,” Clare read.

“That’s us. North Shore.” The road itself, once they had turned onto it, was barely more than a depression in the snow. Russ shifted into a lower gear. Clare peered into the darkness on either side of them. The mailboxes and shadowy roof lines of the cottages had disappeared. Nothing but thick evergreens and bare, gnarled branches bending beneath the weight of the snow. “Are we going to get stuck?” she asked.

“If we do, we eat the dog first.”

She whacked his arm. Suddenly, the trees fell away. The darkness lightened, and Clare could see open land rising to her left and the long, empty stretch of the lake to her right. After the claustrophobic tunnel of trees, the vastness of the sky was dizzying. “Wow,” she said.

“This is where the conservation easement begins. There’s a public beach and boat launch down there in the summer, but you won’t see any more houses until we come around to the north shore.” She could make out the dark, irregular edges of the shoreline against the ice. A narrow islet rose up in the middle, like a galleon caught in the ice.

The road turned to the east again, and the trees closed around them, blocking off the view. Russ shifted again as the road rose higher. Clare could feel the tires churning through the snow, trying to maintain a grip on the surface. “They’re sure not spending a lot of time plowing out here. You do realize we could be trapped if there is a bad storm.”

“Don’t worry. I’m an expert in winter survival.”

“Oh, you are?” She tried to suppress her smile. “So enlighten me. What are the basics?”

“First, find a hot woman and get her into your bed.”

Clare laughed.

“Second, make sure you’ve got enough food to keep an entire platoon going for a month.”

“Which we do.” Some women overpacked clothes or beauty items. Clare could go away for a week with just a small overnight bag, but if she was going to be cooking, she brought half the contents of her pantry along.

“Right. Third, you have to have a plan to keep yourself occupied until rescue arrives.”

“And you plan to keep yourself occupied…”

“With sex and eating.” Without taking his eyes off the road, he flashed a grin. “Maybe a little ice fishing, if I can fit it into my busy schedule.”

Despite the darkness and the claustrophobic closeness of the pines and the slow, shaky progression of the truck, Clare felt everything was a little lighter. Whatever had kept Russ quiet and unresponsive, it wasn’t bothering him now. Which meant it must have been a work issue, not an I’m-still-pissed-off-that-you’re-pregnant issue. Thank God.

“This is it.” A sign announcing
PRIVATE DRIVE
marked the turnoff from the North Shore Drive. A dozen weather-beaten slats with names like
ALTPETER
and
THE ROSENS
hung off the pole. The barely discernible lane dipped low, bringing them close to the water again. More trees, more darkness, more barely passable road surface. They passed one snow-mounded, dark cottage, then another, and then—“Here we are.” Clare craned her neck, but just like at Amber’s father’s place across the lake, all she could see was a ramshackle one-car garage on one side and a mailbox and the suggestion of a roof line far below the other edge of the road.

“It looks like we’re going to have to shovel out the garage door,” Clare said.

“Yeah.” He switched on his four-ways. “Let’s get you inside first.”

“I can help unload the truck, Russ.” She bit off the words
and why do you care, anyway?
She knew why. Whether he disapproved or not, he would take care of her.

“You can help by getting the fires going and lighting the kerosene lamps.” He reached under his seat for the safety box and retrieved his Maglite. Clare opened her door and let Oscar out before climbing to the ground. Snow crunched beneath her boots. When Russ had first proposed a week in an unelectrified cabin, the idea of cooking on an old-fashioned woodstove and evenings by lamplight had seemed cozy and romantic. Now, with the wind blowing stiff and cold off the frozen lake and nothing but a flashlight to show the way down a half-buried flight of steps, it sounded like complete insanity.

“Okay,” she said in her most chipper voice. “Let’s go!”

12.

It was getting close to sunset when the arson investigator said he was ready to wrap up. “Nothing more I can take away here,” he told Kevin. The ME had left an hour earlier, after confirming that yes, those were gunshot wounds to the cranium. He promised to have the preliminary autopsy results to them tomorrow. Not that it was going to make a big difference in the investigation. Shot and then burned or burned and then shot, some bad guy out there was going up for murder one.