The Fire of Home (A Powell Springs Novel) (5 page)

The spring-sparse tree branches cast slim shadows across her small frame as she passed. Whatever she had done to get to this point in her life, she didn’t look as if sh
e’d
prospered from it.

Aw, what the hell—he shrugged and with his bottle of ink turned toward the sheriff’s office. It was none of his business. They had finally released Winks Lamont this morning, and he hoped the place was aired out by now.

“Do you think you can find her?” Adam Jacobsen asked a man who looked as if h
e’d
crawled out of the gutter. He handed him a photograph of Amy that had been taken shortly after they left Powell Springs. She looked better kept in the picture, but it would have to do. Sh
e’d
let herself go over time, turning scrawny and tired-looking all the time.

He had arranged to meet Milo Breninger here at Porter’s Café, a working man’s lunch joint down the street from the café where Amy worked. Or had worked. No one there had seen her in days and they were surprised that he hadn’t either. Amy was as dependable as a railroad watch. H
e’d
left with their concerned good-luck wishes ringing in his ears and a hot ember of rage burning in his gut.

They sat at a table in a dark corner with a rough-sawn plank floor, sipping gin hidden in coffee thanks to Prohibition. A few well-placed inquiries around the neighborhood had led him to Milo. He had a huge, ragged mustache and the diary of a hard life on his weathered face. He might have been in his early or midthirties, but it was hard to tell by the look of him. His nose appeared to have been broken a few times, and beneath the black scruff of a two- or three-day beard, old scars crosshatched his rough features. With his cheap, rumpled suit, he looked like someone who would kill a man for the gold in his teeth. But what could he expect? Adam asked himself. He wasn’t talking to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This was a shady, under-the-table arrangement.

The man studied the photograph. “Yeah, I might be able to track her down. But why ask me? Why don’t you go to the police?”

“
I’d
rather keep them out of it if I can. For my wife’s sake.”

“What if someone kidnapped her? Wouldn’t you want the law on the bastard who did it?”

“Of course,
I’d
want that . . . or maybe something else done about him. I thought you might handle it if that’s the case.”

Milo sat back in his chair and looked at him from beneath brows almost as bushy as his mustache. “What’s really going on here, mister? Did she run off with some other fella and you just want revenge? I don’t have a problem with that, but I need to know the straight goods or I won’t touch it. I don’t like surprises or walking into something unprepared.”

Adam put on the expression of a wronged husband and sighed. “Yes, it’s very possible there’s another man involved.” He doubted it but it sounded better. “But she also took something very valuable to me. That isn’t part of the deal. If you find
her
, I’ll find what she took.”

“So what you really want isn’t your wife. It’s your property.”

Adam signaled a waiter to bring two more cups of “coffee.”

“I want both. After all, she’s my property as well. You only need to send me a wire care of Porter’s to let me know where she is. I’ll take care of the rest. Of course, depending on the circumstances, I might have other work for you. But trust me, you’ll be well compensated for your time and expenses.” The cups were set before them. “Well,” Adam continued, “are you interested in the job?”

Milo took a long swallow of the gin coffee, leaving a fringe of droplets on his tobacco-stained mustache. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and let out a rumbling belch. “How well compensated?”

“One thousand dollars. One-third down right now, in cash, if you agree.”

Milo nearly choked, and put down the cup. “By God, you’re not fooling around here.”

“No, I’m not.”

“And you say I wouldn’t have to do anything but learn where she’s hiding out?”

“Ideally. If you encounter obstacles,
I’d
expect you to take care of them. But otherwise no, unless I find that I need more help, for which I will pay extra. And you must be discreet about your business. If she discovers you and she’s scared off, you’ll forfeit the rest of the money.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m pretty good at dodging trouble.” The man sucked on his lower front teeth—the upper ones were missing—until he found whatever was stuck in them. He gestured with a spoon he picked up from the table. “When the law got too close to my trail a few years back, I just ducked into the army and went to war. It was a risk, but a better one than life in prison.”

Adam replied, “I would have made sure there was no one left who could tie a crime to me to begin with.”

Milo gazed at him with obvious amazement. “I never would’ve figured you for such a cutthroat. You look more like a schoolmaster or a preacher or something in your plain, prim clothes and with that baby-smooth face.” He shook his head once. “Well, yo
u’d
better give me what details you have so I’ll know where to start.”

With the agreement made, Adam volunteered just enough information to get Milo headed in the right direction. He kept his tone direct and unsentimental.

Milo fingered the three hundred thirty dollars that Adam had given him in an envelope, then looked up. “I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be your wife or her fancy man when you catch up with them. Nope, I surely wouldn’t.”

Adam drained his cup. “I imagine not.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“Harlan, all you do is work. You put in so many late nights, and now you’re leaving again,” Tabitha Pratt Monroe complained.

Harlan Monroe stood in front of a full-length mirror and knotted his tie. “Now, Tabbie, you know I’m a busy man. I have details to attend to. I’m paid well but Robert Burton demands a lot for his money. It’s hard to believe he’s retired—I can only imagine what he was like before he started running his lumber business from his office at home,” Harlan replied, buttoning his vest. Moving to the marble-topped dresser, he picked up a pair of silver-backed hairbrushes and buffed his dark hair into place. Then he fastened a sterling stickpin in his necktie. He had dressed in his own bedroom but saw to the fine details here so he could reinforce his expectation that she spend her day with effective purpose.

He glanced at Tabitha’s reflection in the mirror. They had been married for just over a year and she was still getting accustomed to acting as the lady of the house. She sat against ornate bed pillows and pouted in her satin-and-lace bed jacket just as the maid, Elsa, brought her breakfast tray of tea, a poached egg, and toast with specially imported rose petal preserves. Tabbie’s bobbed blonde hair looked like an abandoned bird’s nest after the night the
y’d
spent. At least she was a willing lover, if a rather dull one. He faced her and gestured at the beautifully appointed bedroom, with its tall leaded-glass windows and French hand-carved furniture purchased from Gevurtz Furniture, one of the best stores here in Portland. “You can’t say that you’re unhappy with your lot. After all, you may have admirable social connections, but you were trapped in that schoolteacher’s job until I rescued you.” He tipped a smile at her and her pout disappeared.

“I know. I never dreamed
I’d
live on Park Place, on the same street with the Ledbetters and Washington Park.” She sighed. “I just would like to share more time with you in this grand home you’ve gotten for us.”

“You have all that luggage we bought—we’ll take a trip later this year. And summer will be here soon. We’ll have dinner on the veranda and you’ll be cheerful again. Which reminds me, don’t forget about that dinner party we’re hosting here tomorrow night. I’ve taken care of the liquor and wine. I hope you’ve gone over the menu with the cook,” he said, taking one last look at his reflection.

“There are a few things left to settle.” She adjusted her ostrich-trimmed bed jacket with an impatient huff. “I wish the Burtons would host a dinner once in a while. Their house and grounds are so much more . . .
aristocratic
than ours with that beautiful view of Mt. Hood. And they have more servants.”

They hosted many dinners. The Monroes weren’t usually invited, a situation Harlan was working hard to change.

“Excuse me, Mr. Monroe.” Elsa reappeared at the door. “The car has been brought around.” They didn’t have a chauffeur, but one of the gardeners did odd jobs like this one.

He reached for his coat. He had just recently taken delivery of a Chandler Metropolitan sedan. It wasn’t as imposing as a Cadillac or a Lincoln, but it certainly turned more heads than one of Ford’s proletariat vehicles. “Thank you, Elsa. And try to help Mrs. Monroe find something useful to do today.”

“Yes, sir.” The maid withdrew.

Tabbie stirred her tea and gave him a stony look. “Harlan,
really
, I wish you wouldn’t talk to me like that in front of Elsa. She won’t respect me.”

“She will as long as she knows that you’re her superior and not someone to share gossip with. We’ll continue to do well, but your role in this is just as important as mine. You can’t lollygag around the house all day, just puttering.” He considered an overcoat and then looked toward the window to see if it was raining. The sun had emerged so he abandoned the idea.

“Puttering!” She sat up straight against her pillows. “I have a number of responsibilities and things I tend to. The Rose Society is meeting today, and that alone takes a lot of my time. I’m the recording secretary, and you know we’re in the midst of planning the annual Rose Celebration. Putting together the rose show alone is a herculean task, and that doesn’t even begin to address the parade. Those women are impossible to deal with. They won’t listen to a single suggestion I make even though they know I’m right. I know the correct process for
everything
. After all, I was a teacher—I went to normal school.”

Harlan often thought that she had probably been at the bottom of her graduating class. Dogmatic, arrogant, and full of herself, but certainly not academic. Now and then he had to bring her down a notch, and that wasn’t an easy thing to accomplish. But then, he hadn’t married her for her intellect or for love. She was an old-maid cousin to an established Portland family. The
y’d
been eager to marry off this highly opinionated biddy wh
o’d
been living on their charitable sufferance, and they had just enough influence to help him on his way to a life of power and wealth. That was the dowry that Tabitha had brought with her, although she didn’t realize it. Power was important, but wealth, that was the icing on the cake. If one had money, one could easily acquire power. Thus far, sh
e’d
proven herself worthy on that note.

“Do you know anything about roses?”

“No, but our gardener does. Besides, that’s not the point!”

“Do they know anything about roses?”

“Harlan, I’m talking about proper procedure and—”

“Do they know anything about roses?” he demanded.

She gave him a venomous glare. “Yes, of course the flowers are beautiful.”

“I don’t care if they’re growing flowers or weeds, but isn’t that the objective of the society? To help establish and protect new varieties of roses? That was what I heard.”

A frown scored her brow. “But those people simply don’t follow
procedure
. There are ways of doing things that cannot be ignored.” Her mouth thinned to a slit in her face before she continued, and he felt a twinge of sympathy for any child wh
o’d
sat in her classroom. “I could make nagging them a full-time job if I thought there was any hope the
y’d
finally admit their ignorance, accept that I’m right, and learn what I’ve tried to teach them. They barely know the difference between meeting minutes and old business. I don’t know why I bother wasting my valuable experience on them. They should be paying me for my knowledge.” Her mouth thinned out again.

“It must be so very trying to possess a brilliant mind and have to deal with the rest of the simpleminded rabble.”

“You have no idea,” she replied with resignation, missing completely the sharp irony of his remark.

What an excruciating bitch she could be, he thought, and she wasn’t important enough for people to tolerate it, or forget that he was married to her. She always tried to squeeze in the last word. “Well, for God’s sake, don’t offend any of them. Most of them have husbands I have to deal with every week, including Mr. Burton. His wife is the president of the society, isn’t she?”

“I am the very
soul
of tact.”

“Is that
s-o-l-e
or heel? Insulting them won’t do us any good.”

She made an impatient show of flapping out her napkin. “I am not incompetent, you know. And I can’t pretend to be.”

He rolled his eyes. “I mean it, Tabitha. Now, I really have to leave.” He approached her side of the bed and leaned over to give her cheek what passed, at best, for a dry peck. “When I get home tonight, I want to hear about the final plans for the party.”

“
Harlan
,” she huffed.

It’s that dream
, Bax heard himself say in the dream’s setting. This moving-picture show had been playing an exclusive engagement in his head for the last four years. It usually ran at night in his sleep, but once in a while his mind showed a matinee if he took a nap during the day.

The details might vary, but they were always vivid, and the end was always the same.

The stench of rotting corpses, garbage, sewage, and mildew was everywhere under the gray skies of the Western Front. Even when they tried to bury men in shallow graves, the thundering shells and pounding rain blew them out of the ground again. The task was futile.

Sometimes a German officer shouted the command.

“Lassen Sie ihn nicht entkommen! Schießen Sie!”

Sometimes it was an American.

“Duncan! Get back here, by God!”

In the end, the result was the same. He was left to die. In the dream, he watched the life flow from him, leaving his body to join the dozens of other corpses in the mud. Blood ran thick with the rain, filling holes and forming puddles. The very earth, scourged and gouged with horrible wounds, seemed to be bleeding.

The cause of his injury never changed and neither did the outcome. In the dream, he did die. And even though he knew it was a nightmare—didn’t he tell himself so?—he was always shaken when he woke. But he was also grateful that it
was
only a dream. He was supposed to die but someone had decided to save him. Bax had rejected his commander’s heartless stupidity and had paid the price for it. Of course, though the true consequences were miserable, he wasn’t sorry for what h
e’d
done. That had really irked everyone he encountered wearing a uniform—his lack of remorse. But insubordination had its price.

The battlefield promotion, the medals, and commendations had been stripped from him without the pomp that often marked the French army’s elaborate ritual, but had lacked only a cigarette and a blindfold. In fact, the American Expeditionary Force rarely bothered with as much trouble as they had taken with him.

Several years later, h
e’d
gone back to Cedar Mill. No one in town would have anything to do with him. His family—their reaction had been even worse. His father claimed they couldn’t hold up their heads with his deed putting a big black mark on their good name and reputations. But he was alive, for whatever that was worth. He wasn’t the same, but alive.

Awake now, he was relieved to find himself in his rented room in Powell Springs.

Slowly he rolled over to his back in the darkness of the quiet room in the quiet house, and felt the crisp sheets brush against his bare skin. He was conscious of Amy Jacobsen lying just on the other side of the wall. Nothing about her personality should draw him to her. He was no angel, but she had done a dishonorable thing, trying to steal her sister’s intended. She possessed all the charm of a bottle of castor oil, and he hadn’t seen her smile even once yet. Thanks to her, h
e’d
have to take his wash to Wegners, which was damned inconvenient, and that lit a low flame under his patience with her. But there was something . . . something about her that wouldn’t let him cross her off the list of images that floated across his mind during the day. Something bad had happened to her, of that he was certain. Whatever it had been, it was enough to change her from what h
e’d
heard was a sparkling, confident, though selfish young woman into someone who looked ten years older than she probably was.

But, hell, everyone had their secrets. Some, like his, were bad enough to destroy lives—it had cost him everything.

So, she had hers. He had his own.

Outside, the rain was back, driven by heavy wind gusts that rustled the trees and shrubs and slammed hard drops against the windows. The sound served to remind him that her life was complicated by a lot of things, including a husband, and that only a fool wouldn’t keep his distance.

Bax pulled the covers up to his chest to ward off the chill and waited for sleep—and maybe that damned dream—to claim him again.

The next morning, the sky was still gray and threatened rain. With her sleeves rolled up and wearing an apron over a black skirt, Amy stood at the Maytag electric washing machine on the back porch. It was only a year old, and Deirdre told her that Mrs. Donaldson had bought it just before she fell ill. To Amy, it was a wonder of technology that bordered on magic. It cut in half the drudgery of washing. In the tub, a load of Bax’s shirts and underwear agitated beneath the layer of suds created by curls of laundry soap she had shaved from a bar of Fels-Naptha. She had originally planned to charge him and Tom Sommers for this. But after Bax stepped in to help her with Sylvia Dilworth, she felt she owed him something, even though that help had been uninvited, and it was exasperating. She couldn’t very well give him free laundry and expect Tom to pay, so her plan to make money from this drained away with the wash water. It would be just this one time, though. She was determined that a single good deed wouldn’t obligate her to a never-ending handout.