Opening the stall door, he pushed the dogs back, stroking and pummeling them, and stepped out into the alleyway. Moving out between the two rows of stalls past the restless horses, he approached the barn door with curiosity, where the white streaks of light shot in.
When he slid it open, the yard was white around him, the pastures white, the far hills, the roof of the house, the tops of the cars, all white, snow piled up in a white dazzle, snow on the sills of the bay window framing the lighted kitchen where he could see Charlie inside, getting breakfast.
The dogs had already bolted past him bouncing and barking and biting at the snow. Still wearing the old sweatsuit he slept in, he ran to join them and pummeled and pelted them with snow, rolled in the snow with them, laughing as they barked. Not in his whole life had he ever seen snow, only in pictures in books. He played in the snow with the dogs until he was freezing and soaking wet and then turned back inside the barn to get dry. He put on his day clothes, and fed the horses, measuring the grain carefully, following Charlie’s instructions, flaking off just the right amount of hay for each, filling their buckets with clean water. By the time he’d turned the horses out into the pasture and cleaned their stalls, the smell of bacon and pancakes was nearly more than he could stand. The two big dogs had long since gone in the house, and as he headed across the yard he could see Max Harper at the table hurriedly eating his breakfast, as if something pressing was pulling him away.
The minute Billy pushed into the warm kitchen, Charlie dished up his plate. Even as he pulled off his boots, Max gulped the last of his coffee and was up and headed for the door.
“A murder victim found last night,” Charlie said when he’d hurried away to his truck. “An old murder.” She said no more and he didn’t like to ask. The thought of murder made him queasy. She moved to the bay window, stood looking out at the white world, the snow-deep pasture. “Who would have imagined?” She watched her mare shying at the snow and acting silly, and Max’s buckskin gelding pawing at the white stuff with his usual single-minded determination, as if to clear the world of this unwanted intrusion. The kitchen table was piled with papers and flyers where she’d been working on the Cat Rescue Auction. A stack of posters lay on the sideboard showing pictures of three rescued cats, with a list of the donations to be auctioned: a weekend for two at the fancy Molena Inn, six months’ housecleaning service, a year’s car maintenance donated by Clyde Damen, three of Charlie’s original etchings of dogs and horses and two paintings. The impressive list went on and on down the page, making Billy wonder what he’d bid on if he had any money for such luxuries. Sitting down at the table, he reached for the syrup and butter, spread his pancakes liberally and began to shovel in breakfast.
Emmylou woke stiff and uncomfortable, bent nearly double in the too-short backseat. No matter how long she slept in the car, she couldn’t get used to not stretching out. She had pulled all the blankets over her, but still she was cold. What time was it? Her watch said seven, barely dawn, but a curious white light shone in, pale and icy. Rising up holding the blankets close around her, she peered out.
The world was white. The ground and roofs white, the tree branches patched with white, snow stuck to the car windows. Snow. In Molena Point, that wasn’t possible. But during the night it had snowed. The very fact of it made her joints ache.
Snow was fine if you had a warm little house and a fire on the hearth, a hot shower, something warm to eat and drink. She had none of these comforts, and she was damned cold. And soon she’d have to leave even this poor nest, before people came out and saw her, she’d have to get back in the cold driver’s seat and move the car before some do-gooder reported a homeless woman camping on the street and the damned cops hauled her in.
She longed for a hot shower. Longed to be inside a warm house with the furnace turned up all the way and maybe a blaze on the hearth, too, and a nice hot cup of tea. And the only place was Sammie’s.
Yesterday, she hadn’t thought to see if Sammie’s power was on, hadn’t had time before the law showed up. Even if the heat wasn’t on, the house would be warmer than outdoors, and there was the fireplace.
Slipping to one end of the backseat, she folded her covers neatly. Laying them over the bags and boxes, she thought about Hesmerra—wouldn’t she have been amazed at the snow. Waking with her usual hangover, she’d look outdoors, startled, and then turn the old stove up high and call across the yard to her, tell her it was snowing, tell her to come on over for coffee and they’d fry up some breakfast.
Hesmerra would do that, would have done that. She thought about Hesmerra dead, maybe poisoned, and a sick reality filled her, she couldn’t really believe Hesmerra had been poisoned. By whose hand?
But Hesmerra was dead, and Sammie had disappeared. And the fact that the two events were related was her secret.
Even the fact that that Realtor’s house stood empty, up there so close above Sammie’s, that could be a part of it, too. All a part of what Sammie knew.
Shivering, she crawled over into the front seat and, on the third try, started the engine. She let it idle a while, the poor thing was as cold and stiff as she was herself. She backed out clumsily from the swale, the water in it running fast enough to keep from freezing solid, and she headed up the hill toward Sammie’s. Despite whoever or whatever had made the mess in there, despite what she knew that no one else knew, it was the only place she could think of to get warm. If the cops weren’t nosing around again, if the cops would leave her alone.
She drove slowly, didn’t use her brakes, or barely touched them in little feathery motions, staying in the tracks of other cars, which had crushed the snow and ice to slush. She drove the last two blocks within the wide prints of some heavy vehicle, but when she came in sight of Sammie’s she stopped suddenly, braking in spite of herself, skidding sideways into the snowy berm.
There were cops all over. A black-and-white sitting in the side yard, two more in front parked beside a couple of civilian cars with bubble gum lights attached to the top. A white van with the logo of the state of California. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good, she guessed those patrol cars last night had been headed up here.
She could see where they’d cut a great hole into the cellar and dragged bright lights in under there, and that made her hands begin to shake. Two men stood leaning down, looking in, talking to someone. She sat looking for only a minute, then backed up beneath a low-hanging willow, halfway into a driveway where she might be able to turn around, unnoticed. They had found Sammie. She knew they had. She sat for a moment hugging herself, thinking about what she was seeing. She cracked her window open, wondering if she could hear the cops talking, and then wished she hadn’t, she went sicker, at the smell.
From this moment, she was going to need all her strength. She couldn’t let herself fall apart. First she had to get warm, and eat something, or she would be sick. She had to take care of herself, and then think about this, think about the cops in there under Sammie’s house.