Up in Smoke (2 page)

The cleaning company Cass had called had taken care of dust and polished the hardwood floors, but unused air hung heavy throughout the house. She pulled off her wet shoes and went around opening all windows that could be opened without rain blowing in.

She hauled the carrier inside and set Monty up with food, water, and a litter box in the guest bathroom, then went back for the dog who wagged its tail in appreciation of her not abandoning it. Favoring its right rear leg, it hobbled through the rain to the porch where it shook itself vigorously. Cass coaxed it into the kitchen and filled a bowl with cat food and another with water. The dog scarfed down the food in about fifteen seconds. Cass found a blanket in the hallway linen closet and spread it out on the floor next to the refrigerator. The dog looked at the blanket, looked at her, stepped onto the blanket, looked at her again, and lay down with a heavy sigh.

“Good dog.”

When she walked away, the dog struggled up and followed. It watched from the shelter of the porch as she trotted through the rain to the car for the bags of groceries she'd picked up earlier. She plopped them on the kitchen table.

“You don't live here, you understand,” she told the dog. “You're just visiting.”

Hauling her suitcase into the guest bedroom, she dropped it in the corner under the window, then stripped the bed and made it up with clean sheets. From the doorway, the dog watched.

“Did somebody dump you out there on the road?”

The injured leg would have to wait until morning. It didn't seem that serious and she couldn't deal with any more tonight. Anyway, it was way after nine. No vet would be open and she had no idea where to find veterinary emergency service.

The answering machine, on the lamp table by the bed, was frantically blinking with five messages. Her throat tightened and tears sprang to her eyes. Messages for the dead. She pressed a button.

Three hang-ups and then, “This is Gayle Egelhoff. I really need to talk with you. Please call. No matter what time.” She rattled off a number. Gayle Egelhoff? Did Cass know the woman?

Beep.

“Cassie, it's Eva. I'm so thrilled you're back. Call as soon as you get in. Love ya.”

Beep.

Cass looked at her watch, after ten. She tried the number Gayle Egelhoff had left and got no answer. Tomorrow would be soon enough for Eva. They'd known each other since a hotly competitive spelling contest in sixth grade. Always friends, but never close. Eva was a saint, saints had a way of snagging the fabric of those less exalted.

Without Monty's yowling, the house suffered from lonesome quiet. Cass clicked on the television set in the living room for the sound of human voices, plodded back to the bedroom to dig out pajamas and maybe a robe to put on after a hot shower.

Lost in memories being back in the house evoked, she wasn't really paying attention to the news. “… woman called 911 from the trunk of a car—”

A commercial for toothpaste had Cass mentally adding that item to the list of things she needed.

“… speculation about whether Governor Garrett, in town for a rest, will win his bid for the nomination.”

Casilda stumbled around the dog to reach the television set and up the volume.

“How is the campaign going, Governor?” A reporter aimed a microphone at the governor's face as he came down the flight steps of a private plane.

“Jackson Garrett,” Cass said. “The hero himself.” She hadn't seen him since graduation twenty years ago. Where was Wakely? Ever since the tragedy, she'd heard he was Jack's shadow, a silent hulk in a wheelchair.

Fatigue and self-inflicted nonsense sent nerves crawling along her neck. Nobody ever talked much about that whole awful tragedy.

3

When Mary finally got to Hampstead, she almost wept with relief. She didn't much like driving anyway and driving through this thunderstorm had frightened her until she wondered if she'd make it. Rain came down so hard at times she couldn't see, cars zoomed past splattering muddy water over her windshield. She stopped in front of the first motel she came to that looked decent.

“What a terrible night,” the elderly woman behind the counter said in response to her request for a room with a kitchen.

“It certainly is.” She signed her name M. L. Shoals. Never Mary anymore, that was her other life. Now she was only M and if people heard Em when she told them her name, then so be it. She pulled her car around and parked at the door with the room number on the key, and retrieved her suitcase from the trunk. The room had a slight musty smell, but no matter. All she wanted to do was take a bath and fall into bed, but first things first. She examined the bathroom and was relieved to discover that the tub looked clean. The kitchen consisted of a tiny refrigerator, a two-burner stove with a tiny oven, and a shelf with a handful of mismatched dishes.

She was quite satisfied. It would do, it was cheap, and, she hoped, she wouldn't have to be here long. She slung the suitcase on the bed, opened it and took out the framed picture of her daughter taken at her twenty-third birthday, and set it on the bedside table. So beautiful. Blond hair, bluish-green eyes. “We're here, darling. We've taken the first step. It's going to be hard, but for you I'll do anything.”

Unpacking could wait until tomorrow. Em stripped off her wrinkled clothes, routed out her nightgown, and went to take a bath.

4

Rain lashed the windows, the lights flickered, thunder crashed. Susan slid another log in the fireplace. Maybe the fire would jolly up her mood a little. When the leaves began to turn red and gold, a melancholy had settled on her shoulders that she'd been unable to shake. It irritated her. There was no reason for the blues. Rain wouldn't last forever. The sun would come up in the morning and the morning after that and the morning after that.

Another clap of thunder rattled the windowpanes. She felt like a child who didn't get a promised treat and was still sulking. So she didn't get home at Christmas as she'd planned. That was last December. It's October now. Get over it. Plans don't always work out. So her old boss had not held the temporary position he'd offered her. It didn't mean she'd never get back, that she'd be here forever, for God's sake.

In Kansas. On the prairie. Neat farms, empty roads, an endless sky that stretched from horizon to horizon over vast open spaces, days framed by sunrises and sunsets that fired the spirit, awe-inspiring thunderstorms, and rainbows that brought tears of joy. The very wind and soil formed a race of people who were conservative, hardworking, and didn't trust anyone who didn't fit snugly into life as they knew it. Arrogantly, they worshipped a God created in their own image.

She pushed a CD of Mozart concertos into the player. Nothing like Mozart to brighten your mood. An old joke flashed into mind. Cheer up, things could get worse. So she cheered up and sure 'nuff, they got worse.

When the phone rang, she turned down the music, trotted to the kitchen, and picked up the receiver. “Chief Wren.”

“We have a problem,” Parkhurst said.

“What?” she said, more waspishly than she intended.

“A 911 call from a cell phone. Female said she was in the trunk of a car. Didn't know what make of car or where it was.”

“The trunk of a car? Was it a kid trying to be funny?” With Halloween so near, that kind of thing happened.

“Hazel didn't think so. Said the woman sounded in pain and groggy.”

Hazel, the dispatcher to beat all dispatchers, had been with the Hampstead police department longer than Susan and Parkhurst combined and could run the whole thing herself if pushed to the wall. When Hazel said they had a problem, Susan paid attention.

“You tried a trace?”

“Cell phone people want a number and a warrant.”

“I'll talk to them,” Susan said.

Of the three companies servicing the area, two gave her no grief and checked into the matter, but told her they had no 911 calls. Since it was coming on toward ten on a Saturday night, the one person she knew well at the third wireless company wasn't at work. She wrangled several rounds with assistant manager Thelma Paxley and lost all of them. Tracing a call required a number and a warrant, no matter who was in trouble or how she got that way.

“Right,” Susan said, holding on to her temper. “Will you do one thing for me? Will you zing in on the cell phone call to 911 and ask the caller if she needs assistance? You don't have to give me any information. Just find out if the person is in trouble.”

There was silence from Thelma.

“If you don't do this and the woman dies, you will have her death on your conscience.”

After a twenty-second pause, Thelma agreed to do that much. Susan hung up and listened to the rain hitting the window. It sounded like gunfire. The lights dimmed, then brightened. She wondered where she'd put the candles and pulled open a cabinet drawer where she thought they might be. To her surprise, there they were, just where they belonged, and snuggled up against them were the matches. She took out two candles and stuck them in holders, just in case.

The phone rang and she snatched it. Thelma informed her there was no call currently in to 911. Either the caller had hung up or had gone out of range. There was nothing further Thelma could do.

Damn.

She tracked down her trench coat, launched herself out the back door into the storm, and staggered on toward the garage. Despite the short distance, she got soaked. She fired up the pickup and headed for the shop. Zero visibility, flooded streets, power lines down. There'd be a slew of minor traffic accidents tonight.

“Heard anything more?” she asked Hazel when she got in.

“Nothing.”

“Where's Parkhurst?”

“Out on patrol.”

Susan gave a nod, not that he'd get anywhere. With nothing to go on, there was nowhere to look. She gave instructions for patrols to stop all motorists and ask to see inside the trunk. Parked cars—track down the owners and get a look at the trunks. “Anybody who refuses gets cited for DUI and brought in.”

She paced up and down once in front of Hazel's desk. “If the woman calls again—”

Hazel looked at her. “Yes?”

Susan didn't go on. Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, whatever the hell that meant. She went into her office and tackled some of the work on her desk while she waited. Two fender benders on Main Street, streetlights out on Walnut, tree down on Filbert. Collision on Fourth, teenage driver taken to hospital.

Two and a half hours later when there was still nothing further from the woman in the trunk, Susan got in the pickup and battled her way toward home. She had a bad feeling about this.

After rolling into the garage, she cut the lights and motor, gathered her trench coat around her and kept her head down as she trotted to the house. When she got inside, she went to the bathroom, hung the wet coat over the shower rod, and blotted her face and hair with a towel, then went to the kitchen to put on some water for tea. Lightning sizzled, lighting up the sky outside the window.

The lights flickered, came back, flickered again, then went out.

5

Sean Donovan jogged through the pouring rain to the press bus rumbling at the curb, clambered aboard, and folded himself into a seat by the window. Pam dashed in, flopped down beside him and gave him a smile. Young, blond, pretty. A new face. The press corps tended toward young, and the turnover was fast—half the faces here were new since he'd last done this stuff. Shaking umbrellas and snatching off hats, they rushed in and stashed tote bags and briefcases under the seats. Rain hammering on the roof flattened the buzz of conversation.

Through the window, he watched highway-patrol cops hover in a shield around Governor Jackson Garrett and his wife as they went with them to the limo. The doors slammed, the troopers got in a cop car, and the long black car pulled away. Aides and political hacks and campaign workers piled into a second limo that followed.

The bus was just revving up to get in line when Sean realized something. “Stop!” He muttered an apology to Pam as he brushed past her knees.

“Where you going?”

“Need to take care of something.” At the door, he said to the driver, “I have to get off.”

Irritated grimace from the driver—what could he expect from press people—and the door opened with a hydraulic hiss.

“You'll miss the speech,” Pam called.

“Take notes for me.”

He'd heard it, or variations thereof, a dozen times, he wouldn't miss a thing. Just as the governor's limo had started to pull out, Sean had realized that Wakely Fromm wasn't in it. Wakely went where the governor went. The story handed out was that they'd been friends since the cradle and the governor had taken care of Wakely since the accident that put him in the wheelchair. Gossip on the bus was that Wakely had a wee problem with alcohol and was often just a little on the wrong side of sober. He owned a house on the edge of town and sometimes the powers of the campaign committee—read Todd Haviland, campaign manager—stashed Wakely there. Since Wakely hadn't gotten in the limo, he'd be at the governor's farm or his own house. Sean wanted to know more about the relationship between Garrett and Wakely, why Garrett took Wakely with him everywhere and why he took care of the man. There was a story there, maybe important, maybe soft human-interest fluff, whatever—it made Sean curious.

He trotted to the hotel garage, up a flight of concrete stairs, and got his rental car. Wakely had a minder who was usually by his side, but even so, with all the politicos gone, Sean might be able to have a little conversation with the man. On the way, he stopped and picked up a bottle of bourbon. Give Wakely a drink or two, maybe interesting words would come forth.

Sean, highballing down the road, wipers working overtime to keep up with the rain pouring over the windshield, topped a rise and sped down the other side only to plow into a flooded spot. Water fountained up on both sides of the car and, as he slowed to a more appropriate speed, he hoped to hell he didn't drown out the car.