An Accidental Woman (11 page)

Depositing his belongings, he quickly pushed back the little café curtains that hung on the windows. That helped some with the darkness, though the light outside was pathetically weak. He spotted a switch on the wall, threw it, got nothing. He tried another switch and another, finally realizing that there had to be a master switch. Intent on calling Charlie, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket, only to find that he was in a no-service zone.

This did not please him. If he had no phone reception, he wouldn't be able to talk to friends, access e-mail, or log on to the Web. Without phone reception, he couldn't work. Unless he had an antenna installed. He could do that himself. But not now, not tonight, not with darkness falling fast.

Afraid of dallying, he looked around. The room in which he stood
housed the living room and kitchen. Heading for cabinets in the kitchen, he opened one after the other until he found candles, a lantern, and matches. In no time, he had the lantern lit, but the relief was small. The woodstove sat inside the fireplace, looking as dark as the cabin and twice as cold.

Blowing on his hands for warmth, he rubbed them together to combat numbness as he went back outside. He brushed snow off the top of the pile of wood, but it was another minute before he was able to dislodge pieces that had been frozen together. Needing them to be as dry as possible, he whacked several together to free them of errant snow and ice, and, in the process, whacked his thumb.

The good news was that it hurt, which ruled out frostbite. The bad news was that it
really
hurt.

Ignoring the pain, he carried as much wood as he could inside. Making tight rolls from some of the newspapers he had bought, he placed them inside the stove, placed wood over them, opened the damper, and struck a match. The paper burned, then went out; the logs didn't catch.

No longer working up a sweat, Griffin was growing colder by the minute. Swearing softly, he began chipping at one of the pieces of wood with the ax he found just inside the door. When he had enough kindling, he removed the logs, added more paper, then kindling, then logs.

He held his breath—a challenge, given that he was shivering—and watched the paper burn and the kindling catch. He didn't breathe freely until the first of the logs hissed softly and burst into flame.

Buoyed by the thought that the heat of the fire would grow and begin to spread soon, he went to his overnight bag, dug out a sweater and knotted it around his head to protect his ears, pulled out a pair of socks and pushed his hands inside, then set off in the near-darkness to get the rest of his gear from the truck.

So did she, if for no other reason than to find out what was happening. Poppy's friends had begun calling her here, but she didn't have any more answers than they did. With each call, the girls grew more uneasy. After an initial spate of questions, they had taken to sitting quietly by her wheelchair. She tried reading to them, but they were distracted, uninterested. She tried getting their imaginations going with the dollhouse village in the spare room, but they were quickly bored with that, too. Now, silent and serious, they were watching television. Not even Barney could make them smile.

Poppy had barely heard the sound of Micah's truck when the girls were up and out the door. She hung back, waiting until Micah shooed them inside again. His face was ashen and his eyes so dark that Poppy felt a jolt. She hadn't seen those eyes so dark in years. The light Heather had put there was gone.

The girls stood inside the door, watching their father and waiting.

Poppy raised her eyebrows, inviting him to speak.

Micah simply shook his head and set off for the kitchen.

* * *

He fought with frozen, snow-crusted laces and stiff fingers to get his hiking boots off, then pulled on two layers of dry socks and a dry pair of jeans. The sweater he'd used on his head went over the sweater he already wore, and the Yankees cap went back on his head. Using the candle in its lantern for light, he searched the cabin and pushed every switch he could find, but couldn't get the electricity to kick on.

Without electricity, he had roughly two hours of laptop use. Long term, that would be a problem. Short term, he was more concerned with warmth.

So he searched the cabin again. This time he found an oil lamp and a tin of kerosene. With that lit, he went into the bathroom. It was a tiny room, with a tiny toilet, a tiny sink, and a shower stall that would have been tiny, too, had there been anything closing it in—not that Griffin cared. Taking a shower was the last thing on his mind. He'd had enough trouble taking off his jeans to put on a dry pair. The idea of stripping down in a room with the look and feel of a refrigerator did not appeal to him.

The toilet did. But there was no water in it. He pulled the flush knob that sat on top. Nothing happened. Same thing when he tried to run water in the sink. Nothing.

If you need to chip a little at the pipes for water, use the ice chisel inside the door.
Charlie had said, so Griffin went looking for the chisel. Oh, it was there as advised, right inside the door near the ax and a shovel. Griffin picked it up and looked around. Chip a little at the pipes?
What
pipes?

It occurred to him then that he'd been set up. If John hadn't known the pitfalls of the cabin on Little Bear Island, Charlie surely did. They wanted him to fail, wanted him to come running for cover on the mainland.

Well, he wasn't about to do that. Dropping the chisel by the door, he pushed his feet back into his wet hiking books, and, with the laces hanging loose, went outside and relieved himself in the woods. He was retracing
his steps when he spotted the generator crouched low by the cabin's rear wall. Feeling a small sense of victory, he waded through the snow and brushed it off. He checked the propane and the oil—he was no dummy. Then he found the pull-start and pulled. When nothing happened, he pulled a second time, then a third. Fearing that he'd flooded the thing, he gave it a moment's rest, but he was no more successful when he tried it again.

So he kicked it for the satisfaction that brought and went back inside, where the woodstove had started to warm the area closest to it. Thinking that this was a good sign and needing to feel in control, he pulled an iron saucepan from the kitchen cabinet and set about heating soup on the woodstove.

The soup was barely hot when he realized that the small scratching sounds he heard weren't coming from the pot.

* * *

“What is happening?” Poppy asked quietly. Micah's silence had shaken her. It suggested serious problems, rather than what should be a simple case of mistaken identity.

Cassie's face reflected only the red glow of the dashboard. “What did Micah say?”

“Not much. He was nearly catatonic, and I didn't want to push things with the girls right there. But it should be easy to prove who Heather is. You produce something from her childhood—a relative, a report card, a high school yearbook, a doctor, a friend. Did she give you names?”

Slowly, Cassie shook her head.

“Why not?” Poppy asked, nearly as unsettled by that headshake as by Micah's silence.

“She wouldn't talk.”

“Why
not?”

“I don't know. She was very upset. It's like she was traumatized by the arrest itself.”

“Well, I would be, too,” Poppy argued, because she could feel the panic that Heather must have felt, “but she's always been practical. She's always been one to accept and move on.”

“Something emotional is happening.”

“What? Why?”

“I don't know.”

“But this is how you solve the problem,” Poppy insisted. When Cassie sent her a wry look, she voiced that niggling fear. “I've been thinking hard, trying to come up with what I know about where Heather was before she came here, and I'm not finding much. Are you?”

Cassie didn't answer.

“Okay,” Poppy went on, hanging on to hope, “but Micah must know some of it. Did you ask?”

“About a dozen times,” Cassie grumbled. “I asked
both
of them. It's called an alibi, and it would be simple to establish under normal circumstances, but these circumstances aren't normal.” Her voice died abruptly.

“What,” Poppy coaxed.

Cassie started to say something, stopped, then seemed to shift gears. “Maybe someone in town knows. Like Charlie. He hired her when she first got to town. I'm talking with him first thing tomorrow.”

Poppy was frightened. “She's hiding something, isn't she?”

“I don't know.”

“Something happened to her before she came here.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes, I think so, because I don't know what
else
to think. How else do you explain her not being able to talk? How else do you explain her telling us nothing about her life?”

“So what might've happened?”

Poppy had given it some thought. “Rape. Domestic abuse. If so, she may have post-traumatic stress disorder. Or maybe she lost her family in a totally tragic way like . . . like . . .”—she seached for an appropriate image—“like a house fire, and it was so awful that she's just blotted everything out. Or maybe she had an accident like mine, only without the paralysis. She did say the scar was from an auto accident.”

When a sudden knock came against Cassie's fogged-up window, they
both jumped. Swearing softly, Cassie rolled it down to reveal in increments the face of her husband, Mark.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said.

“The buzzer went off.”

“Take the casserole out and put it on the counter.”

“The kids want you inside. They haven't seen you all day.”

“I know. I'll be in in a sec.”

Mark gave her a skeptical look. Then he turned and left.

“He's a saint,” Poppy said.

Cassie rolled up her window. “Yeah, well, his patience is starting to fray. He thought my hours were too long before. This won't help. Hell, Poppy, it's not like I
ask
for cases like these, but when they come, I can't turn my back. I know that I have three kids. And, yes, I know the oldest is only six and that these are the critical years in their lives. So am I taking advantage of the fact that my husband teaches high school history and is therefore around more than me for the kids? Of
course
I am. But I do what I can.” She let out a breath. Then she leaned over and gave Poppy a quick hug. “Call me if you hear anything useful, okay?”

* * *

These calls only made Poppy feel worse. No one seemed to know any more about Heather's past than she did. All fingers pointed to Micah as the one who should know something, and Poppy did try to call him. But when he finally picked up after four rings, he was monosyllabically terse. Yes, he had fed the girls. No, they weren't happy. Yes, the press had called. No, he hadn't talked with them. Yes, he was trying to remember what Heather might have said about where, when, and with whom she had been before coming to town. No, he hadn't come up with anything.

Poppy wanted to know why. She wanted to know how a man who had
lived with a woman for four years could not know about her past. She wanted to know what they
did
talk about when they were alone.

But Micah didn't volunteer that information, and she couldn't get herself to ask. And then she was distracted.

Mary Joan Sweet, president of the local Garden Club, called her, claiming to have seen Griffin Hughes driving Buck Kipling's old truck through town. But Mary Joan, with her delicate pansy face framed by wispy gray hair, was known to be nearsighted, so Poppy could comfortably discount her claim. Leila Higgins, on the other hand, was a credible source. She called Poppy to report seeing Griffin in the general store, which was easy enough to prove. Poppy called Charlie.

“Yup,” Charlie confirmed, “he's here in town. Gave me the brightest spot in a pretty lousy day. He's staying out at my brother's place on Little Bear.”

Poppy didn't hear the last for grappling with the first. “Why's he here?”

“He's chasing after you,” Charlie teased, but she didn't hear the teasing, either. She had told Griffin she wasn't interested. She had told him that more than once.

“He must be chasing after Heather,” she decided and vented her annoyance on Charlie. “I can't believe you gave him a place to stay.”

“He wanted to stay in town.”

“He's a journalist. He'll use us.”

“He says he's working on something else entirely, but the thing is, if he's determined to snoop, I'd rather he be under my thumb so I can keep an eye on him. Besides, we need answers about Heather. Maybe he can get them for us. So he uses us, and we use him back. Hell, we can play the game, too.”