A Dismal Thing To Do (2 page)

She wadded up a piece of newspaper—just an advertising circular, unfortunately, with no address on it that might help her orient herself—and put it in the stove with some of the kindling. Nobody had bothered to rake out the ashes for ages, she noticed. Whoever lived here certainly didn’t go in for housework. Or else nobody really lived here at all.

Madoc had told her about what he called “squats,” derelict houses that people with no place else to go simply moved into, making out as best they could with none of the facilities people nowadays had got accustomed to. Maybe this was a squat. All right, she’d be a squatter. Janet touched one of the cardboard matches to the newspaper, waited till she saw the kindling start to catch, and shut the stove. She’d have to go easy on the firewood unless there was a cache somewhere. Too bad she hadn’t brought some of those barn boards. If, God forbid, she got stuck here for the night, she supposed she might go back there and drag in a load, using her trusty plastic blanket for a skid.

Think positive, she adjured herself. Somebody absolutely had to come along pretty soon. The road had been plowed, so it must lead from somewhere to somewhere. Any car that tried to get through would be held up by that mass of wreckage in the road. She could rush out and yell to its driver for help. In the meantime, she’d better hunt around for something else to burn. She might even find a kettle and the odd tea bag. She could melt snow for hot water on the stove if she had to.

And, please God, let there be a bathroom, or at least a privy she could get at without wallowing through any more snow. Janet didn’t relish leaving the meager warmth of the stove to poke around this dark old place by herself, but she had no choice, so she went.

The next room had nothing in it at all except more dirty footprints, but there was a kitchen of sorts beyond it, and a woodshed behind that. There she did find some stove wood. She’d also, judging from the reek, found out where the squatters did their personal squatting.

This was perhaps the most distasteful act Janet had ever performed, but by now she was in no condition to cavil at local custom. At least she had a few tissues in her coat pocket. She used one as daintily as possible under the circumstances and took it back with the logs to burn in the stove. A detective inspector’s wife knew better than to leave any clue that she’d actually peed on somebody else’s woodshed floor. Then she opened the front door to wash her hands in snow and take a long look up and down the road. Then she sighed and went back to see about that tea bag.

There wasn’t one, but she did find a bottle of brandy about two-thirds empty and a few smeary tumblers on the counter. She ignored the glasses, took a dusty teacup down from a shelf, wiped it out on her petticoat, poured herself a modest slug after having sniffed with care to make sure the stuff in the bottle really was brandy, went and got another dollop of snow to tone it down a little, and carried the cup back to the front room.

She also took along an oil lamp she’d found while she was looking for the tea bag. The chimney was smoked up and the wick in need of trimming, but there was still oil in the bottom, so she lit the lamp and set it in the window, for whatever good that might do.

The stove was sending out some warmth now, not enough to encourage taking off one’s hat and coat, but enough to suggest setting one’s wet boots underneath and hoping for the best. Janet dragged the less ratty of the armchairs as close as she dared, wrapped herself in the emergency blanket, and took a sip of the brandy. It landed in her empty stomach with an agreeable wallop.

Now that darkness had made it impossible to see the shambles around her, the yellowish glow from the lamp and the bit of red showing through the stove’s open damper made the room seem almost cozy. Janet was tired, she realized, more tired than she ought to be. Now that she had nothing to do but sit and count her aches and pains, she discovered quite a few. Lots of bruises, no doubt, from getting the barn dumped on her. Madoc would have a fit.

Whatever had been in the truck to create such a blast? Could an exploding gas tank knock down a building a fair distance away? That had been no great tractor trailer, just a truck. A top-heavy truck. Janet could see it well enough even now, lying there across the road with its roof in the snowbank. Like a horse box, she thought. High in proportion to its length. Bigger, of course. A giraffe box? Silly! A moving van. A van for moving giraffes. This must be terrible brandy.

And why had the explosion been so long in coming? Janet was sure she’d seen no sign of fire while she was standing there wondering how to get up to the cab. She’d had time to back her car down to the barn, time to get inside. The person in the cab had had time to get out, time to run down and make a safe getaway in her car.

Why should there have been an explosion at all? The truck hadn’t crashed, it hadn’t lost a wheel or snapped an axle, it had simply tipped over and nestled into the snow. Janet couldn’t even remember its making any noise to amount to anything.

But there must have been something. Damage to the body on the side she’d never got to see? Inflammable cargo? Acid dripping out of broken carboys into—what? Crates of kitchen matches? If the driver had hijacked the truck, he might not have known how to drive it properly, and that was why it tipped over. Maybe he’d then set the fire himself before he ran off, trying to cover up what he’d done. Anybody who’d steal a lone woman’s lovely new car and leave her stranded in the middle of nowhere when she’d only been trying to save his life would do anything. Janet finished her brandy and went to sleep.

S
HE WOKE AT HALF-PAST
seven on the dot. Her watch said so. That meant she’d been stuck on this hill for four solid hours, and still nobody had come. Unless there’d been cars going by while she slept. But how could they? That mass of wreckage must still be blocking the road. They’d have honked or got out and tried to move it, or seen her lamp and come here to ask what had happened. Besides, she hadn’t been asleep so very long, probably not more than an hour by the time she’d been held up by the wreck, blown down with the barn, waited around all that time for the fire to go out so she could get in here and do the various things she’d done before she nodded off.

She had to go and do one of them again pretty quick. She must have caught a chill in her kidneys standing around out there with wet feet. She’d better fetch in more firewood while she was about it. Sighing, Janet stuck her feet back into her boots, warm and fairly dry inside by now, thank the Lord, picked up her security blanket for company, and dragged herself back to the woodshed.

What the heck had she been dreaming, anyway? Something about dinosaurs prowling around outside, making strange noises. That must have been the wind. Up here, with nothing to break its force, it was roaring loud enough to wake the dead. If she were to get stuck in this old shack all night, she’d have to hump some to keep herself from freezing.

But first things first. Janet was attending to her most urgent need when all of a sudden she heard voices beyond the door she’d instinctively closed. And here she was, the wife of a detective inspector in the RCMP, with her panty hose down around her knees.

That embarrassing circumstance no doubt saved her life. Now they were in the kitchen, two men, talking plenty loud enough to hear.

And the first thing she heard was “Did he have sense enough to kill the woman before he took her car?”

“He claims he did, says he knocked her down and kicked her head in, then tossed the body in the barn under some boards so it would look as if she was killed when the roof caved in.”

“The hell he did. That kid would say anything. I’ll bet the crazy bugger didn’t even wait to make sure she was dead. She might still be down there, yelling her head off.”

“Not by this time she isn’t. Anyway, who’d have heard her? Come on, quit swilling that rotgut. We’ve still got work to do.”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Lug the furniture out in the road and set it afire.”

“I thought he said to torch the whole house.”

“Yes, but we’ve got to account for the burnt patch in the road. With the wreckage gone, people are going to wonder what caused it. We take away the detour signs when we leave, remember. The blaze is bound to attract attention then, and it’s got to look reasonable.”

“What’s so reasonable about burning the furniture in the road?”

“Nothing, that’s the point. We’re just teenage vandals having some fun.”

“Oh, I get it. Not bad. What gets me is why the kid bothered to light the stove and the lamp. He claims he took off right after the truck went over.”

“Huh, I know that lazy bastard. He’d never dream of hiking out on foot. He came in here, made himself comfortable, and waited for a lift. Along comes this woman, sees the lamp he’s put in the window for bait, and comes trotting up here looking for somebody to move the nasty old truck so she can get by. So he whomps her one, dumps the body, and takes off in the car. I’m surprised he didn’t just leave her here.”

“Damn shame he didn’t. We might have had some fun with her. Here, quit hoggin’ that brandy. I’ve got a mouth on me too, you know.”

There was a pause, then the sound of glass smashing against the wall. Teenage vandalism. Janet didn’t know what else to do, so she simply froze where she stood until the dishes quit crashing and the men left the kitchen. She didn’t leave the woodshed then, either, though she did make sure her garments were in order. From the grunts and curses she could still hear, she assumed they must be juggling that gone-to-pieces chesterfield out the door. There was silence for a bit, then some more tramping and swearing and sounds of splintering wood, then a great crash that must have been the parlor stove going over, then a small explosion that was no doubt the oil lamp tossed on to whatever they’d piled up for kindling. Then the fire began to catch and the flames to outroar the wind.

They wouldn’t wait around now. No doubt they’d already set fire to the stuff in the road. They’d toss a bottle of burning gasoline into what was left of the bam, then they’d make tracks. As for herself, it looked like a case of fry or freeze.

The woodshed had an outside door, frozen shut, with drifts piled against it probably higher than the door. Janet wasted no time there. She did the only thing she could do: wrapped the emergency blanket around her, ran back into the kitchen with smoke tearing at her lungs and flames already licking in through the doorway; tried the one window, found it stuck, pulled the tough plastic over her head, and jumped through, glass and all.

D
ETECTIVE INSPECTOR MADOC RHYS
had gone off duty. This was a matter for mild jubilation, since he’d been on a good deal longer than he’d intended to be. Time had been when hours meant nothing to him, but now he was a married man with a wife to come home to. He savored the thought of his Jenny waiting for him in the house his mother had badgered them into buying, or imagined she had. Lady Rhys could badger as effectively long distance as she could in person, but nobody badgered Janet, not really. She just let them think they had, if it made them happy.

They’d bought the house simply because they’d needed a place to live. The miserable bachelor pad he’d occasionally roosted in before his unexpected marriage at Christmas time hadn’t been worth trying to make livable for the two of them. They’d read all the articles, listened to scads of advice, then gone out one Sunday afternoon and seen a place vacant with a cupola on top and etched glass panels around the front door, and that was it.

Like most New Brunswick women, Janet had a passion for antiques, or reasonable facsimiles thereof. She’d insisted they do the house in period, partly because it was obviously the only thing to do and partly because it meant they could use a lot of old furniture various relatives had tucked away in their lofts and attics. If she wasn’t at home right now, it was because she was out chasing down a Morris chair or a black walnut whatnot. She’d get the seller to deliver it free of charge, too, not by coercion or seduction, heaven forbid, but because she was Janet.

Jennet, she called herself. That was the way they said it around Pitcherville. Madoc’s brother Dafydd, the famous operatic tenor, had teased her about that. “A jennet’s a lady mule,” he’d insisted. She’d just given him the full force of those dark gray eyes, shown her dimple ever so slightly, and replied, “That’s right.” Madoc treasured the memory.

Madoc ran the old Renault into the carriage shed, raising his eyebrows when he noticed the empty other half. Then he went in through the side door, kicked off his boots, hung up his storm coat, and went to put the kettle on for tea. He was surprised Janet wasn’t here to do it for him, not that he minded waiting on himself but because he’d told her he’d be home early tonight for once and she’d been glad to hear they’d have a little extra time together.

She’d put some beef to marinate in a basin beside the sink, he noticed. Red wine, bay leaves, and various other odds and ends; one of Annabelle’s mother’s recipes, no doubt. Janet had known he’d be hungry for something special after living on what snacks he could grab for the past two days and nights.

He opened the refrigerator door and stood staring in, the way men do when their wives aren’t around to say, “Shut it.” She’d got salad greens crisping, mushrooms ready sliced to put into whatever would come out of the basin. She’d promised him a pie; where was it? All Madoc could see was a blob of what might well be piecrust dough wrapped in waxed paper.

“Resting its gluten,” Janet had explained rather hilariously after she’d watched a cooking program on television. The Wadman women had always let their dough set a while before they rolled it out, but they’d never quite known why. Madoc didn’t know why now. It was a quarter past five, early for him but still later than he’d meant to be. Damn it, why wasn’t she here rolling out that piecrust?

If she were, he might have coaxed her into doing something other than rolling piecrust, but that was beside the point. Madoc began to fret. This was not like Janet. Had she popped down to the grocery store for something she’d forgotten, and run into a problem with the car? Why should she? The car was new, but they’d had it long enough to get the bugs worked out. Anyway, she could have had the kid from the garage drive her home while it was getting fixed. She could have phoned their neighbor Muriel and asked her to pin a note on the door. She could have called headquarters and asked him to pick her up himself. Not that he meant to be a possessive husband, but where the bloody hell was she?