Читать книгу One Frosty Night - Janice Kay Johnson - Страница 12

CHAPTER THREE

“KNEW?” BEN SHOOK his head. “No. I’ve just had an uneasy feeling that something wasn’t right. Too many conversations that fell silent when I was seen approaching. Tension. Maybe—” he had to think it out while he was talking “—a different kind of shock than I’d expect at the announcement of the girl’s death.”

Olivia crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward, her vivid hazel eyes fixed on his face. “What do you mean?”

“I held an assembly.” He waited for her nod. “A lot of the kids—freshmen and sophomores—reacted about how I’d expected. They were ghoulishly fascinated. Most likely thinking, Wow, horror movie awful, and she was, like, our age.”

Olivia smiled at his mimicry, as he’d meant her to do despite the grim subject.

“But the juniors and seniors went really quiet. Not all of them. I saw heads turning, but also a lot of people not looking at anyone else. Definitely shock.” This was the first time he’d put any of this into words. “I didn’t necessarily have the sense they’d all gone on a rampage and were now afraid I knew. But I had to wonder whether a whole lot of them either thought they knew what happened or at least suspected something.”

“You must have asked questions.”

“In a subtle kind of way. Did a lot of eavesdropping, too.”

She made a face. “Like I was doing.”

“Yeah, sometimes I think it’s a shame the architect didn’t add a secret passage that leads behind the lockers.” He waggled his eyebrows. “I could know all.”

He hadn’t heard that small choked laugh in an eon. Or seen the tiny dimple that flickered in one cheek. Mostly because he hadn’t seen a lot of amusement or happiness on her face since she’d been back in town.

Her smile faded, though. “So you haven’t learned anything.”

He lost any vestige of humor, too. “No, and that’s made me even more uneasy. High school kids aren’t good at keeping secrets, not en masse, and not for so long. A girl being sexually molested at home, she’s got it down to a fine art. But when more than one kid knows?” Ben shook his head. “After so many weeks, I’d almost convinced myself I was imagining things.”

“I could be wrong,” she offered. “I mean, it might just have been a party that got wild and didn’t have anything to do with that girl. Maybe at somebody’s house when the parents weren’t home, and damage was done.”

He shrugged acknowledgment. “You’re right. But if it was that bad, wouldn’t you expect the parents to have been bitching?” He shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

He could tell Olivia didn’t, either. From her quote, it was apparent the boys she’d overheard were scared, not just afraid someone’s dad would be pissed. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened this fall in Crescent Creek—except for the one tragic death—so there had to be some sort of connection there.

Their pizza arrived. Different waitress than he and Carson had had, fortunately. He didn’t tell her he’d eaten here last night with his son. He was glad to have gone with a veggie special today, for a change of pace.

They dropped the subject for a minute, but between bites, he asked about the boys she’d heard talking.

“Maybe you don’t want to tell me who they were.” She looked uncomfortable, and he nodded. “I assume they were juniors or seniors?”

“I think all the kids we employ are. I mean, they have to be sixteen.”

“Right.” He frowned. “Tell me one of them wasn’t Tim.”

Olivia chuckled. “No, Tim doesn’t talk.”

Ben laughed. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I’ll ask Lloyd to keep an ear to the ground, too,” she offered.

Lloyd Smith was roughly the same age her father had been, early sixties. Growing up, Ben hadn’t known him well, but his face was familiar. He had thinning white hair, a deeply creased face and brown eyes framed by crow’s-feet. Days spent lifting heavy sheets of plywood and operating the forklift kept him lean and fit. He seemed like a good guy to Ben.

“He okay with you being in charge?” he asked.

“He seems to be. I half expected a problem, since I’d never worked with him before. He was at the lumber mill, you know, before they closed the doors.”

Ben nodded.

“But he says he’s happy running his side and letting me handle the hardware side. Claims he doesn’t know much about keeping the books, but I’ve found him to be sharp when we sit down to try to figure out directions to go.” She took a couple of bites before her next question showed that her thoughts had reverted to Jane Doe. “Have you talked to the police?”

“Sure.” The Crescent Creek Police Department consisted of the chief and five officers, two of whom weren’t that long out of high school themselves. It was the chief himself who had been to see Ben immediately, the morning Marsha found the girl. “Chief Weigand’s first thought was that the girl had to have friends here in town. Why else would she be here? It was at his prompting that I called the assembly. He spoke to the kids, described her, asked for a call if she sounded familiar to anyone. He borrowed an artist from the sheriff’s department, and they got out a sketch as soon as possible.”

Again, Olivia nodded. Presumably they hadn’t been able to make a dead girl look alive enough to want to flash around a photograph. Especially to kids, he thought, although he worried about the liberties the artist had had to take to give that illusion of life.

“Did he notice the reaction you described?” she asked.

“He didn’t comment. I didn’t, either. How could I, when I don’t know anything?”

And, God—when he’d been excruciatingly aware that Carson had been out the night before. Supposedly spending it at a friend’s house, but who knew? He was one of the students whose reaction to the news had been subtly off. Who had been more withdrawn than usual since. And until Ben knew what role, if any, his son had in the events being kept hushed up...he’d as soon the secret wasn’t sprung open.

Seeing the slight crinkles in Olivia’s high, usually smooth forehead, he was assailed by guilt. She thought they were having an open and honest exchange of information, and really he was holding something in reserve.

But how could he help it? His first loyalty went to Carson. It had to.

“So...what do we do?” she asked.

He was warmed by that “we” even as he shifted on the bench in renewed discomfort because he was holding out on her.

“I don’t know what we can do but keep an ear out.”

That dimple quirked again. “Thumbscrews,” she suggested.

It felt good to laugh again, to let go of the guilt. “Keep some in my desk drawer.”

He was pleased when she asked how he’d ended up in administration instead of teaching, and especially how he’d gotten himself hired as principal when he was younger than most of the teachers at the high school. He hoped it meant she was curious and not just scrabbling for a topic to get them through the rest of the meal.

He told her about going back for his master’s degree even as he taught high school history and government, then making the decision to return full-time for a doctorate in education. “I always liked to be in charge,” he admitted. He opened his mouth to say, I guess you knew that, but he changed his mind when he saw the way her eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t have had a chance at a position as principal anywhere but here, not so soon. I gather they weren’t getting many quality applicants, and, well, I was the hometown boy.”

“So that’s why you moved back.”

“Partly,” he said, then shook his head. “Mostly it was for Carson’s sake. You know I have a stepson?”

Her “I’d heard” wasn’t very revealing.

“I thought he needed family.” He shrugged. “This seemed like a good opportunity all around.”

She nodded. He waited for her to ask about Carson—why he was raising a boy who wasn’t his biologically—but she didn’t go there. Either she wasn’t curious, or she didn’t want to admit to being.

So he asked what her plans were, and she told him she really didn’t know.

“I never intended my return to be permanent. When I first came, I thought I was just filling in for Dad.” She sighed. “Then I was so focused on him, I didn’t think much about the future. It was just day to day.”

She looked so sad, Ben wanted to lay his hand over hers, but he didn’t dare.

“And now it isn’t necessarily in your hands.” He’d no sooner heard about Charles Bowen’s death than he’d worried that it meant Olivia would be returning to whatever life she’d temporarily laid aside. That was when it struck him that her mother must now own the store. And Marian had never, as far as he knew, so much as worked part-time to help out. If she could get a good price for the business, why would she want to keep it?

The “if” was a big one, though; in small-town America, “Going Out of Business” signs were more common than transfers of ownership were.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Her smile was small and crooked. “That hit me about the same time she announced she was selling the house. I’ve been having fun running with some ideas—only suddenly, it was bam. Not my store, not my decision.”

“Tough,” he said with a nod.

She told him some stuff she and her mother had talked about—including the fact that they had talked last night. Made up after their lunchtime debacle. He liked all her ideas for the business and was impressed at how well thought out they were. The hardware store had always been solid, and, from all reports, her dad had made a success of the lumberyard, too. Ben couldn’t imagine that Charles had done much to build the business into anything bigger and better in recent years, though, not the way she seemed to do by instinct.

“Was opening the lumberyard your idea?” he asked.

“Well...we talked about it.” She showed some shyness. Didn’t want to imply she was smarter than her father, he suspected. “Hamilton’s went out of business the summer between my junior and senior years in college. So...I guess I might have prodded Dad some.”

Ben nodded. “Your mother was receptive to your ideas?”

“Willing to think about them, anyway.” Olivia made a face. “As she pointed out, the higher the receipts, the better price she’ll get if she does decide to sell.”

Was it possible the business had been in Charles’s name alone, meaning Marian now had to wait for probate to sell it anyway? The house had presumably been in both their names, so she wouldn’t be hampered the same way. Could that be why she’d so generously encouraged Olivia to try to build business? If so, Ben wished she’d been honest with her daughter. Otherwise, Olivia was going to be hurt when probate was complete and her mother brought down the hammer.

Damn, he hoped that wasn’t the case.

“You’d be working for your mom,” he pointed out.

She made a horrible face at him. “I am so trying not to think of it that way.”

He laughed and didn’t argue when she then decided she really needed to get back to work. A glance at his watch startled him; they’d been talking longer than he’d realized.

She was so insistent on splitting the bill, he had to agree. He reminded himself of his philosophy with teenagers: don’t push. Olivia was as wary as any adult-leery sixteen-year-old.

He winced at the thought. Yeah, she had been sixteen when he’d broken up with her. Not a good memory. Leery was probably a good word for what she felt, though, assuming it wasn’t way stronger.

During the short drive, she said suddenly, “Chief Weigand has been really closemouthed about the girl. Everybody talks about her freezing to death, but is that really what happened? Was she injured? Sick? Drunk? Has he said anything to you?”

“I think it’s clear the freezing to death part is accurate, but you’re right. He hasn’t wanted to say what else he knows. I’m actually surprised he’s been able to keep so much information close to his chest.”

Olivia would know what he meant. Small town translated to few secrets and gossip transmitted at a speed faster than light. Which made the mystery all the more shocking—and it all the more improbable that nobody at all knew anything. Nonetheless, Ben didn’t like the idea that any number of people might know little bits of something, puzzle pieces that, if shared, would put together the whole picture. Yes, there was lots of talk about her death, but he’d have expected some of those puzzle pieces to be slotted into place by now. And yet not a one had been.

The girl had to have hitched a ride with someone, for example. And since the highway closed in winter only a few miles past Crescent Creek, that ride had been with someone going to Crescent Creek, not a trucker passing through. If she’d been in good health, not drunk, not injured, she wouldn’t have died out there however cold the night. If she was drunk—she probably hadn’t gotten that way alone. If injured—how?

And, God, he had a sudden thought he should have had earlier. The autopsy would have revealed whether she’d had sex recently before her death. Was there any chance Phil Weigand had some DNA and was waiting patiently for a suspect to emerge to whom he could match it?

No, I’m reaching, he told himself, trying to tamp down that anxiety. There’d been no suggestion of murder. Sure, everyone wanted to know how she’d gotten there and why she hadn’t asked for help, but mostly they wanted to know who she was.

Still—damn, he wished he knew whether Carson had been at that kegger.

Olivia gave no sign of noticing his abstraction. The moment he braked in front of the hardware store, once again double-parking, she reached for the door handle. “I’ll let you know if I hear any more,” she said breezily and hopped out. “Thanks for listening.”

He barely had a chance to say goodbye before she was gone. There was not the slightest suggestion she’d enjoyed talking to him, would welcome a call asking her out.

On his way to pick her up, he’d been worried about what she’d heard but had also felt...hopeful. Having her call the very next day after they’d talked... Now, half a block from the hardware store, he had to sit briefly at one of the town’s four red lights. The hope had leaked out, as if it were air in a balloon she’d punctured.

What he’d been doing was dreaming, without the slightest encouragement.

Would they have made it, if he’d been patient and smart enough to wait for Olivia to grow up? He grunted. No way to know. Water under the bridge.

Besides, her mother might announce tomorrow that she was putting the business up for sale along with the house.

Maybe, Ben admitted, bleakly, for him that might be for the best.

* * *

SUNDAY MORNING, BEN woke to an astonishing silence. Frowning, he focused on the digital clock on the bedside table, groaning as soon as he saw what time it was. He’d overslept. Mom wouldn’t approve if he didn’t appear at church.

Thinking about it, he threw off his covers. Was Carson still asleep? And, damn it, given the hour, why was it so quiet out there?

His suspicion was confirmed the minute he looked out the window. The world was cloaked in white, and the snow was still coming down in lazy, gentle flakes.

Well, the Lord was going to be responsible for skimpy attendance at his houses of worship this Sunday morning.

“Hey!” Carson’s voice came from behind him. “It’s awesome!”

“Well, at least it’s Sunday.”

“Bummer,” his son said. “If this was tomorrow, we could have had a day off.”

“You may still get one off, although it’s not coming down the way it must have during the night.”

A storm had been forecast, but not the eight inches or more that already blanketed the front yard and street.

Now that he listened, he heard a snowplow working in the distance. He’d be able to get around with his four-wheel drive, but not everyone would. He and Carson could have their driveway shoveled in twenty minutes, but folks farther out of town with long driveways...

No surprise, it was Olivia he was thinking about. She and her mother would be trapped this morning. Unless—

“Let’s have breakfast,” he suggested, “then get out and clear our driveway.”

“Do we have to?”

He laughed and clapped Carson on the back. “We have to. But I’m not making you go anywhere if you don’t want to.”

“We don’t have to go to church?” the boy asked hopefully.

“We wouldn’t make it in time if we wanted to.” He had only a small moment of guilt at having implied he didn’t much want to go, either.

As he mixed up pancake batter a few minutes later, Ben decided to wait until they were outside and their muscles warmed up before he suggested performing a good deed. He could pretend it had just occurred to him.

Yep. His kid wouldn’t see right through that.

And...which part of giving up didn’t he get?

As he watched butter sizzle on the griddle, Ben admitted that he wouldn’t be giving up, not until he heard Olivia had left town again, and for good this time.

Worse came to worst, he and Carson could feel virtuous because they had performed a good deed.

* * *

“WHO ON EARTH...?” Olivia’s mother exclaimed, setting down her cup of coffee. The two sat at the breakfast table, where they’d been making lists of supplies they’d need to begin packing.

Olivia’s head came up. She’d heard the voices at the same time. “Maybe kids playing out in the snow?”

“That doesn’t sound like kids to me.”

And the voices should have come from farther away, too. The Bowen house only sat on an acre, but neighbors had at least as much land, and even if the people on either side had grandkids visiting, they wouldn’t be right outside. There was no hill out front good for sledding, much to Olivia’s regret when she was a kid. In fact, the closest hill that offered decent sledding was far enough away, she’d had to wait until one of her parents could drive her—which meant shoveling a very long driveway first.

Leaving pencil and list behind, she reached the front window with her mother close behind. Two men were shoveling their driveway. The voices were theirs, as was the laughter. As she watched in astonishment, one threw a snowball at the other, who dropped his shovel and bent to pack a snowball of his own.

“Oh, my goodness,” Marian murmured. “Isn’t that...?”

Olivia was gaping. “Yes. It’s Ben and his son.”

“They came all the way out here to make sure we could get out of the house.” For just a moment, Mom looked like...well, like Mom, her eyes amused.

Olivia couldn’t think of a single thing to say. A fist seemed to have closed around her heart, which might explain why she was breathless. Say something, she ordered herself.

“I should go out and help.”

“That’s a good idea,” her mother agreed. She chuckled, watching as Carson whopped a gloveful of snow against his father’s neck. “Dress warmly.”

Suddenly energized, Olivia donned boots, parka, scarf and gloves faster than she could remember moving in quite a while. Just as she opened the front door, Marian called from the kitchen, “Invite them in when they’re done. It never seems worth baking just for the two of us, but I’ll make a coffee cake.”

Man and boy stopped wrestling when Olivia stepped gingerly from the porch into snow that had to be nearly a foot deep. Having started shoveling down at the road, they were still quite a ways away. She waved. “I’ll grab my shovel.”

She saw the flash of white teeth as Ben grinned. “Guess we got distracted.”

He looked...amazing. Even bulkier in quilted pants and parka, the color in his cheeks high. The dark shadow on his jaw told her he hadn’t bothered shaving this morning.

Carson might be a stepson, but with his height he could have been Ben’s biologically, too. Their coloring was the greatest contrast. His hair was sandy, not dark like Ben’s, his eyes light-colored...blue, she saw, as the two tramped toward her. His grin was as bright and friendly as his dad’s.

Olivia hadn’t felt butterflies like this in a very long time. Ben hadn’t decided to come shovel her driveway because he felt sorry for the two lone women. There were a lot of single women in town. He might as well have presented her with a bouquet of red roses. Which she’d have sworn she didn’t want him to do, but—

Dismay washed over her. Oh, damn, she was more susceptible than she’d believed. The trouble was, he’d gone from being the sexiest boy in her high school to being...the sexiest man she’d ever seen. No, it was more than that, she knew. The warmth flooding her also had to do with her realization the other night that, despite their past, she did trust him in many ways.

“I was just wishing we had a nearby hill for sledding,” she said, because she had to say something.

“Yeah, cool,” Carson exclaimed. “The one by the high school is perfect.”

He was packing another snowball when Olivia let herself into the garage, but she was aware that Ben was watching her. When she reappeared, his dark eyes were still trained on the doorway. Hoping her blush wasn’t obvious, she narrowed her eyes at Carson. “You weren’t planning to greet me with that, were you?”

“Nah.” He turned and slung it at his father, who dodged just in time and then grabbed the boy in a headlock. They were both laughing by the time Ben let him go.

“This is awesome,” his son said.

“We could go sledding once we finish here,” Ben suggested. “What do you say, Olivia?”

She hadn’t felt even the tiniest spark of pleasure this morning when she’d looked out the window and saw the snowy landscape. All she’d been able to think was that they’d buried her father a week ago today. So it felt really good now to see the wonder in it.

“I say yes. Except first you have to come in and have coffee and a goodie Mom is baking right now.”

Ben laughed, his teeth a brilliant flash of white. “I think we can manage that. We’ll have worked up an appetite.”

Olivia looked at the expanse of pristine snow marked only with their parallel tracks. “Maybe I should start on this end while you take up where you left off.”

“No fun. We’re here now. Might as well work our way back to the road.” Ben yanked off the red fleece hat he’d been wearing. “Your ears will get cold.” He put the hat on Olivia, tugging off one glove so he could smooth her hair beneath it. “There. I’m already warm.”

Had his fingers lingered momentarily? She hoped the color in her cheeks could be explained by the cold. “Thanks.” She turned a smile on the teenager. “I’ve seen you, but I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Olivia.”

“Carson.” He grinned. “Dad said this was our good deed for the day.”

“In lieu of church attendance,” his father said with mock solemnity.

“Rescuing the little women,” she said.

“Right,” the boy agreed.

“Except the little woman isn’t so little,” she pointed out.

“Did I tell you Olivia took our girls’ basketball team to a league championship her senior year?” Ben asked his son. “She was a heck of a center.”

That caused a sting. Suddenly she wasn’t smiling. “How would you know? You were long gone.”

They stared at each other for a moment. “I...actually came to a couple of games. Anyway, Mom kept me up-to-date,” he said.

He’d come to watch her? Probably only because his parents were going to the game anyway and he was home, so why not?

“You were a center?” Carson studied her with open interest. “I guess you are tall for a girl.”

Olivia laughed. “And that’s a compliment, right?”

He really looked like his dad right now. “Right.” He spoiled his solemnity with a big grin. “Who likes little bitty girls anyway?”

Olivia mumbled, “Most men,” at the exact same moment when Ben said something under his breath that might have been, “Not me.”

His kid smirked.

“Work,” Ben reminded them.