Old Chaos (9781564747136) (5 page)

“Cheerios and a Mars bar,” Kayla said, looking at the mess on the ice. She took a tissue from her pocket and wiped his mouth. He was unconscious again, if he had roused at all. Fright gave strength to Meg’s flagging arms and screaming thighs. She tugged hard at his ankles. When they reached the porch steps, she was panting.

Kayla was not even winded. “One giant boost up to the porch, then we drag him into your kitchen. You have gas heat, right?”

Meg shook the kinks from her arms and legs. “Propane. Rob said it should keep on working, because the thermostat’s so old it’s not electronic.” Meg’s house was the oldest on the block, older even than Rob’s gingerbread Victorian.

“You may have the whole neighborhood in with you before the night’s out.
My
heat’s electric.” Kayla grinned.

“You’re welcome to stay.” By tomorrow everybody in the county would know that the new librarian was having a flaming affair with her next-door neighbor. If they didn’t know already.

“Thanks,” Kayla said. “On the count of three…”

The first attempt failed. The man rolled off the blanket, face down in freezing slush. Under Kayla’s grim direction, they did better the second time, and Meg didn’t quite spring her back. She opened the door on a blast of heat. They got their patient into the room eventually. He lay still in a widening puddle of water.

“Towels and dry clothes if you’ve got them.”

Meg scurried off. She found a set of Rob’s sweats in the powerless dryer, and a thermal blanket and half a dozen towels on the folding table. It took a while to mop up. By the time they’d dried a place on the floor, laid out the blanket, and stripped their victim naked, he was mumbling.

He was a true redhead, Meg noted with interest. It seemed that Kayla was still in a clinical frame of mind, however, so intent on warming him up, she didn’t pause to admire his anatomy. Rob’s gray sweats were an inch short but fit him otherwise. He lay inert.

Meg hauled his sopping clothes and the wet towels back to her tiny utility room. Then she changed her own wet clothes at the folding table. One of these days she would put the laundry away. She brought Kayla a set of sweats.

Kayla still knelt by her patient. She was slipping a self-sealing bag full of crushed ice under his head.

“Ice!” Meg offered the dry sweatsuit. It was pink.

“Reduces the swelling.” Kayla took a look at the sweats and burst into laughter. “Yours? Way too short. I’m going home.” She jumped to her feet. “Back in fifteen minutes. If you have more towels, warm them in the oven and wrap him in them.”

“What if he wakes up?” Meg wailed.

“Talk to him. Find out who he is.”

“His wallet fell out of his jeans.”

“So what’s his name?”

Meg flipped the scuffed leather wallet open. “Charles Morris O’Neill. Pullman address, Visa card, debit card, gas card. What’s he doing down here?” Pullman lay three hundred miles to the northeast, on the Idaho border. Its chief claim to fame was Washington State University, the science and engineering school. Maybe O’Neill was a professor. He was too old to be an undergraduate. Maybe he was—what was the current euphemism?—a returning student.

When Kayla disappeared into outer darkness, Meg set the oven to two hundred degrees, lit it with a long match, and ran upstairs for more towels. She also found socks. She warmed everything and swaddled O’Neill, then sat by him on the floor. He still looked cold, but that might be the light of the Coleman lantern. Ice slapped the windows. She thought of her neighbors trapped in their chilling houses and of Rob out on the road.

The man said something. Meg jerked from her reverie. “What is it, Charles, uh, Charlie?” Maybe he went by Chuck.

“Head.”

“Yes, you fell and hit your head. We think you have a concussion.”

“Mmmm.” He drifted back into stupor.

Meg sat still, willing Kayla to hurry. After what seemed ages, O’Neill stirred again and said something else.

“What did you say?”

“Cousin.”

Meg stared.

He was frowning. His eyelids fluttered and opened. His eyes were blue. “Looking for my cousin.”

“So you shall but not now. You’ve hurt your head.”

The brilliant eyes closed, but the frown didn’t ease. “Got to find him. They must’ve lost the report.”

Meg digested that, or tried to. It didn’t make sense. “Where does he live? Your cousin.”

“Right here.” He sounded aggrieved.

She opened her mouth to say no he doesn’t, closed it. “Er, what’s his name?”

But he had drifted off again.

Meg was busy adding and subtracting. O’Neill. Neill. Rob was this man’s cousin. Charles O’Neill looked familiar, not because he resembled Rob, but because he looked like Rob’s father.

Rob had shown her one of those studio portraits taken of soldiers before they go on active duty. Charles Neill, staff sergeant, killed in Vietnam in 1968, a long time ago. He’d had red hair. Rob took after his maternal grandfather, Robert Guthrie, who had raised him in Klalo. He talked of the Guthries often and with affection, but he rarely mentioned the other side of the family.

“Nasty out there!” Kayla shouldered her way in the door carrying a load. She’d been gone half an hour by the kitchen clock, which was battery-operated.

Meg relieved her of a laptop computer.

“It’s his.” Kayla shifted her remaining burdens, a small carry-on bag and two grocery sacks. She had changed into wool slacks and an angora sweater under a parka. Ice slid from the parka onto Meg’s antique linoleum. “I shut the pickup down. The engine was still running. I think he was living in the camper.” She held up the grocery bags. “Clean socks and underwear, jeans, a sweatshirt. I locked the camper. He’s a rock hound.”

“What?”

“Trays of rocks. Books on geology.”

“It’s cold weather for rock hunting. He was probably going to ask Rob for shelter from the ice storm.”

“What?”

“I think he’s Rob’s cousin. Something he said.”

“Strange.” Kayla shook her head. A spray of water sprinkled their patient, and he stirred again. “Good. He’s waking up. Where can we put him? I don’t like the idea of hauling him up the stairs. Is there a downstairs bedroom?”

“It’s my office these days. There’s a hide-a-bed in the living room.”

“That’ll do.”

“I’ll have to make the bed up.”

“Well, hurry.” Kayla knelt at her victim’s side.

Meg ran upstairs. As she hunted down linens, pillows, a duvet, and a blanket, she wondered where she was going to put Kayla, who was clearly set to stay the night. There were three upstairs bedrooms, but Meg didn’t want Kayla lurking up there, and she didn’t intend to send Rob home.

By the time Meg had transformed the hide-a-bed, O’Neill had wakened and was sitting up, though he looked green.

Kayla was kneeling beside him with her arm around his shoulders. “Do you think you can walk?”

“Give me a minute.” He clenched his eyes shut. “Christ, what a headache.”

Kayla explained the concussion in earnest detail. He was obviously not listening. After a while, he opened his eyes and held out his hands to Meg. She grasped them, and with Kayla’s help, he staggered to his feet. The three of them lurched down the hall to the living room, where he collapsed on the bed. The wonder was, he didn’t throw up. Kayla went back for another Baggie of ice for his head.

Meg thought he’d passed out again, so she was startled when he spoke. “What’s your name?”

“Margaret McLean. Call me Meg.”

“Okay. I’m Charlie. Thanks for taking me in.”

“You’re welcome. You asked about your cousin.”

“Robert. Neill he calls himself.”

“I think his father dropped the O.”

He smiled. “Caused a big stink. My grandfather was a local light of the IRA. They quarreled, and my namesake went off and joined the army.”

“I see.”

“Doesn’t matter. Grandpa died last year of old age and bad temper. The IRA will do the same any time now.”

Meg laughed. “I’m a Scot myself.”

“Jaysus, I’m in enemy hands.” The smile faded. “Robert is some kind of cop, right?”

“How do you know?”

“I Googled him.”

Well, of course. “You were curious?”

“I was. Uncle Charles, Robert’s father, must have been an interesting man. I have two first cousins named Charles and one called Charlotte.” His mouth quirked. “The other guys, Chuck and Chaz, are older than I am, so I got stuck with Charlie.”

Meg smiled. “I expect Rob will be glad to meet you.”

“Well, I dunno. I e-mailed him last time I was in the area and didn’t get a reply.”

“Maybe you came across as spam.”

“Maybe. He’s a deputy?”

“He’s head of Criminal Investigation for the county.”

“That’s good. I need to talk to him.”

“Did you stumble across a crime?” Meg spoke lightly.

He frowned. “Not exactly. I just need his advice.” He flopped back on the pillow and groaned. “Ow.”

“Well, he’ll come here sometime tonight. I promised him hot soup.”

“Sounds good.”

Kayla bustled into the room. “This is the last of the ice, Meg, unless there’s some in your freezer.”

Meg’s turn to groan. The refrigerator and freezer were definitely electric. She could send Kayla out to the nearest snowbank for ice.

It was half-past two in the morning before Rob entered Meg’s kitchen. He was cold, tired, and hungry. He was also annoyed, because he’d run a make on the pickup embedded in her garage door and discovered it belonged to a Charles O’Neill, who had to be his shirttail relative, the one whose e-mail he had deleted a year ago last July.

Rob stripped off a layer of clothing, removed his boots, and carried the wet stuff into the utility room where he’d left a set of sweats in the dryer. They were gone.

Irritated, he fumbled his way back to the kitchen for a candle, lit it, and returned. No sign of the sweats. He did find another sweatshirt and a pair of dry jeans, which he put on. He tossed his wet clothes into the dryer before he remembered the power was out. Must be really punchy.

When he’d eaten a cup of succulent chicken-with-rice soup and swallowed a shot of whiskey, he ladled more soup and went exploring, cup in one hand, candle in the other. A dim light burned in the living room. Meg waiting up? Unlikely. He padded down the hall barefoot.

Kayla Graves was dozing in Meg’s recliner. When Rob entered the room she sat up, blinked, and smiled at him.

“Hey, Rob.”

“Hey, yourself. Your house cold?”

“I’m on duty.” She nodded at the couch, which was in its bed configuration. A candle burned on the end table.

He looked at the sleeping figure and felt a jolt. Hot wax from his candle spilled on his hand.

“What’s the matter?”

He shook his head, not ready to trust his voice.

She got up. She was wearing flannel pjs, a heavy wool robe, and bedsocks, startling get-up for a Victoria’s Secret kind of girl. “Let him sleep. I’ll wake him in half an hour.” She took Rob’s candle and herded him back down the hall. “Your cousin, Meg said.”

He cleared his throat. “I guess so.” There was no doubt in his mind. The man on the hide-a-bed looked so much like Rob’s father it was the same as seeing a ghost. Worse.

As Kayla explained his cousin’s concussion, Rob, emotions still churning, listened with only half his mind. She ladled soup for herself and warmed his. “So I’m giving him the private patient treatment. Maybe he won’t sue me.”

“Maybe not. Why aren’t you out at the nursing home?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Please. The managed care facility. I have Friday and Saturday off. With any luck, the ice storm will clear out by Sunday.”

“I doubt it.”

“You’re a bundle of good cheer.” She ate soup.

“Comes of dealing with idiot drivers.” He was beginning to feel more like a sane person. The man on the couch was not, after all, a ghost. Rob offered Kayla a drink, which she refused, poured himself another, and yawned. “I ought to go to bed.”

“With Meg?”

“Well, not with you, sugar. Mind your own business.”

“What I’m doing.” She gave him a crooked grin. “Stick around a few minutes and meet your cousin. I like him. Even concussed, he has a sense of humor.”

Unlike me, he thought ruefully. He supposed it would be best to get the grand reunion over with. With luck, the kid wouldn’t want to move in or borrow money. That pickup was a real beater.

Kayla gave Rob a comic account of the accident and its aftermath. She was chattering, filling in his silences. When he had swallowed the last of his scotch, she stood up. “You bring the candle. I’ll do the introductions.” He followed her down the hall.

It took a while for her to wake O’Neill, which she was apparently supposed to do every hour lest he slip into a coma. Whatever she did was bound to be correct. Kayla was a good nurse, and she was sharper than a tack when it came to reading people. Too sharp, sometimes.

“C’mon, Charlie, wakey-wakey.” She shook his shoulder, and he groaned. “Time to meet Cousin Robert.”

“Nnngh.” He opened one bleary eye. “Hi.”

“Hello.”

He held up an unenthusiastic hand. “Glad to meet you.”

Rob took it. It was hot—or his own was icy.