08 - December Dread (28 page)

“And I hope that everyone I love will grow up and mind their own beeswax. Amen.” She resumed pouring.

Mom stared from one to the other of us, confused, and decided to return to her food. Mrs. Berns and I did the same. Eventually tryptophan, the great sedater, turned the blood in our veins to a hot, slow stew. We worked together to clean up after dinner and once all the leftovers were packed and a massive pot of turkey stock was simmering on the stove, we retreated to the living room to open presents. Mom had not had time to set up a tree, but the windows were festooned with twinkle lights. The soft snow outside had picked up its pace. Delicate flurries blanketed the world in white. Mom put on a Bing Crosby Christmas CD before joining us on the couch and chairs.

My mom and Mrs. Berns opened their presents from me first, at my insistence. My mom loved the quilt and dishes I’d bought her. Mrs. Berns was surprised and then beaming as brightly as a lighthouse when she unwrapped the fedora that I’d found for her at a vintage clothing store in Willmar. She adjusted the jaunty feather in its brim and dropped it onto her head. The hat fit perfectly and made her look as cool as a cat.

“These are for you two,” Mrs. Berns said, handing my mom and me each a delicately wrapped box. My mom opened hers first. Inside was a cameo brooch, a white silhouette against coral-colored background and wreathed in ornate gold. My mom gasped.

“It was my mother’s,” Mrs. Berns said.

My mom immediately handed it back. “I can’t possibly take this.”

“It’s an honor to give it,” Mrs. Berns said simply. “You raised one of my best friends in this world, and I’d like to give you a little something to show you how important that is to me.”

My eyes grew surprisingly hot. My mom didn’t bother to stop the tears flowing down her face. She pinned the brooch to her collar and looked at me with deep love.

“You’re next,” Mrs. Berns said.

I pulled the ribbon off my package. A hard black stone sat nestled in the bottom of the box. I pulled it out, and it had a greasy feel. “Was this your grandfather’s?” I asked.

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head confidently. “That’s a lump of coal. Didn’t want things getting too sentimental. Better luck next year!”

I smiled broadly and placed the top back on the box. I loved her more for giving me the coal than even giving my mom the brooch. “Thank you.”

“You two next,” my mom said. She handed Mrs. Berns and me each a red rectangular box, the kind that JC Penney sweaters usually come in. We both unwrapped ours at the same time. Mine held a hand-knit scarf created from the softest emerald-toned cashmere I’d ever felt. I held it to my cheek and almost purred. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She beamed proudly.

Mrs. Berns’ box also held a scarf, though hers was done in the bright oranges that she preferred. They were both absolutely lovely. Next, Mom gave Tiger Pop a sock full of catnip and Luna a peanut-butter flavored rawhide chew bone tied with a red bow. Everyone was happy, the room itself a box of contentment wrapped in a red ribbon.

Mrs. Berns chose that moment to leave for her date with Sharpie. I recognized that the warm glow on her face wasn’t just from time spent with me and Mom. She had a genuine crush on the man, and I had a hunch that she’d been spending more time with him than at the nursing home the last two days.

“You remember the wrist lock?” I asked her, referring to the self-defense move we’d covered on our first day of class.

“I do, but I favor the nut-splat, followed by the eyeball popper and then the throat punch. Don’t worry, ninny. I’m a smart woman.” She patted my head. “I’ll be back by 1:00, deal?”

“Deal.” I thought I caught her and Mom exchanging a “she worries too much” face, and I couldn’t believe it. As far as I was concerned, Minnesota women were currently operating in a war zone. There was no such thing as worrying too much. I walked to the bay window to watch Mrs. Berns drive away in my car, which doubled the anxiety I felt.

“C’mon, Mira,” my mom said, motioning me away from the window. “Let’s play cribbage.”

We’d played so many games back in high school that we’d needed to replace the pegs several times. It was our together time, when we’d talk about her day and mine. Our games had dropped off after Dad’s accident, by my choice, I imagine, but they still held a warm memory. I allowed myself to be distracted as she retrieved the glossy, hand-polished wooden game board from the closet. It was over this board that I’d told her all the secrets girls tell their moms until they turn fourteen or so and decide their mothers could never understand a teenager’s complicated life. I smiled as I ran my hand over the smooth surface. “When was the last time you played?”

“Not since you left,” she said. She cut the cards and shuffled them with a whirring snap. “But don’t worry. I’ve still got some tricks up my sleeve.”

She won the first round. I won the second. We were on our rubber match when I ran up to the question I’d been too scared to ask and threw it at her before I could change my mind. “Do you really miss Dad?”

A deep furrow appeared between her eyes. She rearranged her cards, and then rearranged them all back. “Every day.”

“Even after what he did to us?”

She set her cards on the table and looked at me with her clear blue eyes. I was startled at the number of wrinkles around them. She looked closer in age to Mrs. Berns than to me. When had this happened? “Your dad made mistakes. He also loved us. Do you remember the October weekend he packed you and me up in the Chevy Caprice station wagon and drove us to South Dakota? I think you were in fourth grade, and you’d come home crying because you had to write a report on Mount Rushmore and didn’t know what to say. We toured the whole park, and he spent the money he’d been saving for a motorcycle to pay for the motel and gas.” Her eyes had a faraway look. “You earned an ‘A’ on that report.”

I dug a little and remembered that trip, though faintly. “Why’d he drink so much?”

She sighed. “His dad taught him that. He also beat him every day of his life, until your dad ran away from home and joined the army as soon as he was old enough. I consider it a great achievement that he never raised a hand to either of us. He loved you completely, honey. For that, I will always love him, and I’ll always miss him.”

I knew he’d had a tough childhood. I’d heard bits of it all through mine. I still didn’t understand why he chose to drink so much when his life finally got good. I shuffled my cards.

“There’s something else I need to tell you, sweetheart. Something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a while now.”

Her voice was laden with regret and an odd note of excitement. The combination made me uncomfortable. I was grateful when the phone rang. “I’ll get it,” I said, hopping up.

Luna followed me to the phone in the kitchen, her bone in her mouth.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hello. I’m looking for Miranda James.”

“Speaking.”

There was silence on the other end for a moment. “This is Agent Briggs. We need to talk.”

Forty-five

His voice had an
urgency that chilled my skin. “What is it?”

He sighed on the other end, followed by a shuffling of papers. The faint whisking noise echoed oddly, as if he was in a large empty space. “You heard that they got the wrong guy in Agate City.”

It wasn’t phrased as a question, so I continued to hold my breath.

“You’re not making this easy on me, are you?” The background noise ceased. “I’m sorry I came down on you so hard in Orelock. You were in my way, no doubt about it, but this case has gotten under my skin and I overreacted. I don’t even know who I am some days.”

The odd familiarity of the exchange was unsettling. “Have you been drinking?”

“Hey, Merry Christmas to you, too.” He either chuckled or coughed. “Here it is. De Luca told me about the Greg/Craig guy you found online, and I need to hear everything you’ve got on that. Everything.”

“What’d Adam tell you?”

That chuckle-cough again. “Just like you did in River Grove, you posed online in Orelock as a woman whose physicals met the killer’s MO. You did a backward search as if you were that woman looking for a man in the area. In both towns, you came across a profile of a man without a photo, with different handles and physicals, but with a similar phrase used in both profiles, something about sheep shaking their tails.”

“That’s right. That’s the meat of what I know.” I’d wanted him to hear the information and to take it seriously. I hadn’t expected him to call me. Mr. Denny’s words hammered in my head:
Don’t let a position fool you!

“You sure? This is important.”

I teetered on a line so thin it was a shadow. Something in the light camaraderie of his voice was all wrong. I was also hyper-aware that he wasn’t my biggest fan, and that he seemed the type to shoot the messenger. In the end, though, the possibility that he really was the good guy and close to catching the killer forced my hand. “I know that the Candy Cane Killer lived in River Grove when he was younger.”

The silence on the other end was so profound that it was almost a vacuum.

“Hello?”

“Who told you that?” His voice was deep, as dangerous as an iceberg scraping the underside of a boat.

I didn’t want to get Adam in trouble or compel him to reveal his sources. I also couldn’t sit on information that might help this case, and if what Adam said was true and Briggs didn’t know it, he needed to. “Adam. He didn’t tell me his source.”

A crackle of a walkie talkie shocked its way through the line. On the other end, Briggs’ voice had gone from dangerous to urgent. “You’re there with your mother?”

“Yes.”

“Lock your doors, stay away from the windows, and don’t let anyone in. I can be there in 20 minutes.”

He was barking into his walkie talkie as he slammed down his end of the phone. I hung up mine, my body light with fear. It was the exposed terror of a lightning-slashed nightmare, the kind where you wake drenched in sweat and paralyzed with fear as all the terrors of the night shamble toward you and you are too scared to call for help. Only I very much needed to find my voice and get my mom’s attention so we could escape. It had all clicked into place, right there on the phone. I finally knew who the killer was, so help me, and we needed to escape before he arrived.

Forty-six

“Mom?” It came out
as an empty husk of a sound. “Mom.” A whisper. It was no good. I’d have to force my legs to carry me to her. Outside the kitchen window, the yard light reflected a tiny plate of light off of each snowflake. They swirled in a dancing confusion, miniature searchlights fighting a black night. Against all predictions, a Christmas storm was descending. I could see nothing beyond the hill that hid the road. Black trees rimmed the house, remnants of a windbreak planted when this had been a working farm. Their branches moved in the blustery weather like skeleton fingers and their trunks hid and manipulated shadows. The nearest neighbor was over a mile away.

Luna nuzzled my hand. I glanced down. She was looking at me with a fierceness that I hadn’t witnessed before. She was by my side, and she wasn’t going to leave me. Her faith spurred me to action. I shuffled forward, into the dining room. Mom had taken up her knitting while I was on the phone. She set it down when my shadow spilled into the room.

“I hope you’re prepared to lose the Christmas rubber match!” she said. The happy expression fell off her face and clattered to the ground when she caught sight of me. “What’s wrong? Is it Mrs. Berns?”

“We have to get out of this house right away. We need to take your van. Don’t ask questions.” My tone was mechanical.

My mom stood and crossed the room, her hands on my shoulders. “No. You’re going to tell me what’s going on. Finally.” Her voice was firm.

Oddly, I gained a mote of strength from her command. “I know who the serial killer is, and he’s on his way.”

Her eyes widened, but she chose action over words. She ran to the kitchen to grab her purse, searching for her keys. I followed, my brain racing. How much time had I spent with the killer, how much information had I given him, not even suspecting? The hints to his identity were little things, certainly, but little things that when added up were overwhelming. Who else was at the scene of every murder? Who overheard me hearing the story of the orange begonias at the funeral home before threatening me off the case with an orange begonia shipped to the
Battle Lake Recall
? Who’d specifically called me here when I’d asked him to call me at the hotel or on Mrs. Berns’ cell, indicating he was tracking my whereabouts? Who else could travel near the murders without causing suspicion? Who’d said to me only hours before, “a leopard can’t change his spots,” a phrase almost as clunky and dated as “two shakes of a sheep’s tail?” And finally, who’d told me a piece of information so rare, so intimate, that only the killer and possibly the FBI agent who was about to capture him would know?

Don’t let a position fool you.

Adam De Luca was the Candy Cane Killer.

Dammit. I’d allowed myself to be so intimidated by Briggs’ judgment that I hadn’t told him information I should have been feeding him all along, regardless of how unprofessionally he’d behaved. Adam really was unraveling, everything about his appearance at the gas station today had revealed that, but I was certain he wasn’t going to quit until he’d murdered his fourth victim. The fact that he had told me the secret about the killer-who-was-Adam growing up in River Grove made clear that he didn’t intend for me to live long enough to reveal it to anyone else, and that he was banking on my fear of Briggs and my ability to sit on secrets.