Winter at the Door (11 page)

From where they stood on the wide pea-gravel driveway, he waved
at the hills rolling away under a moonlit sky, the streams gleaming between sloping pastures, square plowed fields, and the vast, black expanses of forest, looking now like huge shapeless holes that all the rest was in danger of falling into.

Or being devoured by; much more forest than anything else. A city street could look ominous, too, whether emptily menacing or full of trouble. But it never looked … implacable, as if it would do whatever it wished with you without explanation.

As if once you were in it, you’d be just another specimen of prey, engaged in the age-old dance of the hunter and hunted. Trey spoke, breaking the spell.

“Yeah, huh?” he said as he gazed over the dark landscape. “Quite the view.”

“Indeed.” He’d put his arm around her. She let it stay. “It must look even more amazing in the daytime. How do you ever get any work done? With that to look at, I mean. Or do you get used to it?”

“Huh. Good question. No, you don’t. Or I don’t, at least.” He took his arm away, waving to take in the entire scene.

“In a way, though, I’m obliged to pay attention to it. I own,” he confessed, “about half of it. Forty years ago my old man owned the whole thing. All you see.”

She turned, amazed. “You’re kidding. That must be … well, I don’t even know how to guess how many acres. How did he ever get so much—”

Washburn laughed. “Won it in a poker game? No, I’m kidding. His great-grandfather got some in one of the original land grants after the Treaty of 1842. That’s when the Canadian border got put smack in the middle of the Saint John River.”

He took a breath. “All the settlers who’d been on their land since before 1836 got to keep it, basically, whether they’d gotten it from the British or from the U.S. of A. And some who were really only squatters stayed, too.”

His voice grew enthusiastic. “See, until then nobody could agree on a border. They even almost had a war, the Aroostook War, with troops marching here and plenty of fighting words, but—”

He stopped suddenly as, with a deep sigh, Rascal lay down to wait
some more. “But you’re tired and freezing out here, aren’t you? I’ll tell you the rest of it another time.”

He let Rascal into the car’s back seat. “About the war, and my dad and his many thousands of acres,” he finished as she slid behind the wheel.

She looked up at him, noticing the wry twist his voice put on the final words; wry, and something else that was considerably less pleasant.
So. More to the story
, she thought.

“I’d like that,” she said. Rascal stretched out with a whining yawn of satisfaction, ready to ride. “Good night.”

“Oh, and listen, one other thing.”

He bent and leaned into the car, his voice still casual but with something else in it now, something different. Something important.

“If you ever want to meet one of those ponies in the pictures”—from the corridor between his office building and the house, he meant—“there’s a woman just outside of town, she’s got a couple of really nice ones. Althea Sprague, her name is. If you stop in, you can tell her I sent you.”

The name pinged a memory. “Sprague? Was her husband by any chance an ex-cop?”

He was already nodding, like maybe it was a connection he’d wanted her to make. Behind him, the crescent moon low in the sky was pale silver, the color of a knife blade.

In its faint glow, the distant tree line stood sharply in silhouette, the fir tops like pointy teeth. “Yep,” he confirmed, and went on:

“Althea’s a widow now. Since nearly a year ago. I’d say it was a shame, but I can’t help thinking her life’s a lot easier as a result. Anyway, good night.”

She backed the car around, heading out, saw him wave from the porch steps in her rearview mirror as her tires crunched down the white, beautifully maintained gravel driveway.

A lot more to the story, maybe
. With the trees rising up on both sides, the empty, curving road back toward Bearkill was like a lightless tunnel with a broken yellow stripe running down the middle of it.

“You know, Rascal,” she said, unexpectedly shaken by the enormity
of the darkness, the utter completeness of it. A low “wuff” came from the back seat as if the dog understood what she was saying, although of course that couldn’t be.

“You know, now that you don’t smell bad, I’ve got a feeling you’re going to be mighty welcome company around here, once in a while.”

No lit-up signs or other hints of life pierced the night, just here and there an isolated farm driveway with a yard light, barn doors, and shed fronts harshly illuminated like stage sets for a play that might turn violent at any moment.

More to the story. Like how, after he got his thousands of acres …

God, but it was
really
dark out here. An animal scuttled into the road; startled, she hit the brakes and horn together and barely missed it. But the creature, some lumpily gray-furred thing, seemed oblivious in its calm moseying across the pavement, unaware of the bloody fate it had barely escaped.

A mile later she reached the slightly larger highway leading into town. By then her thoughts had returned to what the country veterinarian had said, his hints—were they deliberate?—that he knew why Cody Chevrier had hired her.

That Chevrier might be … well, not unhinged. But maybe not entirely reasonable, either, about his old mentor Carl Bogart’s death. That Lizzie should perhaps meet one of the other dead ex-cops’ widows, Althea Sprague.

And—
admit it
, she told herself, pulling at last into the driveway of her dark little house and shutting off the ignition—that they should see each other again, and not only because there was more to tell of the story of his dad’s thousands of acres.

She sat there in the darkness as the engine cooled, the dog waiting patiently in the back seat.

Like how, after he got them, he lost half of them
.

Which I will bet any money is quite some story, indeed
.

Watch her …
 Spud hunkered yet again across the street from her house in a dark side yard, waiting for her to get home. The people
who lived in the house he crouched beside were out at the high school honors dinner and would be for another hour.

Their son, Brett, was the star of the senior class and was going to U. Maine next year.
Yeah, good old Brett
, Spud thought with savage envy. But then his attention snapped back to the present as in the darkness across the street she got out of her car, finally.
There …

Her slender shape, glimpsed for a moment in the light from the open car door, nearly made his heart stop. Everything about her just knocked him the hell out; he might have watched her even if he hadn’t been hired to by the guy in the van.

He stared, pierced by an awful longing … 
But no, don’t think about that. Or about what ends up happening to the girls you watch, either
.

The thought came unbidden; he shoved it roughly from his mind again. She wasn’t one of them, and besides, he didn’t like thinking about that stuff. Silencing his mind, he went on gazing hungrily until the car door slammed and the light went out.

Might as well go home …
 But then the car’s back door opened and a dog jumped down. A
big
dog … Rascal, of course.

He’d forgotten about the dog. But she’d brought him with her. And now—
Uh-oh
.

As if hearing this, the dog’s enormous head turned. But of course it wasn’t hearing him. It was
smelling
him, snuffling up his scent.

Panic seized him.
Now what do I do?
If he stayed where he was, the dog would uncover him and she wouldn’t even have to call the police, would she? She
was
the police.

But if he ran, she’d hear him, probably see him, too; and the dog might chase him.

Closer …
 As the dog reached the end of the driveway, Spud tensed; if he jumped up and ran, she might not see him clearly. He readied to leap. But in the instant before he made his move—

“Wait,” she said. “Sit.” The dog lowered its head mulishly, its eyes like two coals staring through the darkness. Only when she seized the nape of its neck did the creature obey, turning to follow her reluctantly.

Christ
. He let out a breath. Across the street a flashlight flared
briefly; a key snicked in a lock. A tall, narrow oblong of light with her shape in it showed; she urged the dog through.

The door closed, and very soon the lights inside went out.

Margaret Brantwell. Margaret Brantwell. Margaret …

Lying in the warm, sweet-smelling straw of the cow barn, Margaret recited the name over and over the way she’d written it in her notebook at school. Seeing how it looked, how prettily it flowed from her pen, and it was just as pretty when she said it.

And soon it would be her name. She wouldn’t be Margaret Allen anymore; as soon as she graduated from high school, she and Roger would be married and then they would have a farm of their own, even bigger and better than this one, the one she’d grown up on.

In their stanchions, her father’s cows breathed peacefully, giving off the smells of silage and milk. Margaret snuggled down deeper into the clean straw, content. She was young and in love, just seventeen years old and with her whole life just waiting for her out there, and—

“Mom?” A voice came from somewhere. A light went on, making her blink painfully. “Mom, are you …?”

The voice sounded worried. She sat up reluctantly. “Who is it?” She peered around in confusion at the tractor, its massive tires bulking in the gloom, and at the long, flat wagon loaded with potato boxes, ready to be hauled out into the field.

No cows. No straw. No …“Mom, what’re you doing out here?”

A blond girl in pajamas and robe crouched before her, a look of concern on her pretty face. “Mom, I looked all over for—”

Who is this girl?
She was lying, Margaret realized, not on straw but on burlap sacks. And this barn—

Not seventeen. I’m fifty-nine. I’m in my husband Roger’s barn, not my father’s. And this is
—

“Mom, it’s me.”
Missy. My daughter
.

“Oh, honey.” She managed a laugh, took the hand her daughter offered, and let herself be helped up. “Oh, this is so silly.”

She didn’t remember coming out here, lying down. But Missy wouldn’t understand that, wouldn’t—

A pang of fear pierced her.
She didn’t remember
. “Mom, you aren’t even wearing a coat. What are you—”

Or slippers, either. What had she been thinking? “Oh, honey, it was so pretty outside, I just came out for a minute and then I guess I … I must’ve fallen asleep.”

Inside, she took the robe Missy held out for her, accepted the cup of hot, sweet tea. “You must think I’m very silly.”

Yes, that’s what it is. Silly. Not
—

Her daughter shook her blond head indulgently. But there was a look in her eyes that Margaret didn’t like.

Not anything worse
. “I love this place so much I just wanted to go out and look at it a little while, that’s all.”

She smiled reassuringly at her daughter. “You’ll understand when you’re my age. Now you hop on up to bed. You may be …”

Sipping her tea, she went on. “You may be Jeffrey’s mom, but I’m still yours, remember?”

Finally Missy smiled, relenting. “Okay. Probably when I’m your age I’ll want people to cut me a little slack, too, huh?”

“Probably you will.” Then: “Honey, I know we’ve talked about this before. But about Jeffrey’s father, I—”

It had been on Margaret’s mind lately, maybe because she’d been spending so much time with the baby now that Missy worked part-time at her cousin’s bar. Missy had never revealed who the baby’s father was, probably because she thought opening the subject would make her own father so terribly angry again.

The months that Missy had spent somewhere away from home—she had never revealed where, either—had been hell, the fact of her pregnancy little more than a postscript by contrast. Now they were a family again, baby Jeffrey a beloved addition.

Still, it was hard to see Missy alone. Families should be together. “Honey, don’t you think the baby’s dad should know …?”

That his child exists, that he has a son
, Margaret meant to finish. But Missy’s face closed stubbornly as it always did at the mention of this subject. “Mom,” she protested.

So Margaret gave up again, just as she always did. “Okay,” she relented gently. “You probably know best about that. Sleep tight, honey,”
she added, then waited until she heard Missy going up the hall stairs to let the smile on her own face fade.

Jeffrey. The baby’s name is Jeffrey. And mine is …

Biting her lip, she set her cup in the sink and waited for it to come to her. Then, keeping a sharp ear open in case Missy came downstairs again, she got a pen from the utility drawer in the pantry and inked it in tiny letters on the inside of her arm.

Margaret
, she wrote.
Margaret Brantwell
.

So she wouldn’t forget.

“Hey, Lizzie!” It was Dylan, calling from down the street.

“No time!” she called back, jiggling the damned key in the office door lock and hurrying in, meanwhile hoisting her bag and urging Rascal along.

It was just one week today since she’d breezed into town, thinking the place couldn’t possibly offer her any challenges and that a dog would be no help. But in the days since, she’d brought Old Dan back to the nursing home twice, both times hearing about his son the woodsman but never meeting this legendary personage; she’d also hauled Henry off another Area 51 patron, delivered Missy Brantwell’s mother home after she’d forgotten where she’d parked her car, and right now she was being urgently summoned to find a pig, a task for which Rascal at least was well suited.

“What?” she demanded, rummaging through her desk drawer as Dylan came in.

What she hadn’t done was find out any more about Nicki or solved Chevrier’s ex-cop murders … if they were murders, an idea she found less and less convincing. In her spare time, she’d dug into each of the supposed victim’s histories but found no common thread among them. Except of course that they were dead …