One Frosty Night. Janice Kay Johnson
opening the lumberyard your idea?” he asked.
“Well...we talked about it.” She showed some shyness. Didn’t want to imply she was smarter than her father, he suspected. “Hamilton’s went out of business the summer between my junior and senior years in college. So...I guess I might have prodded Dad some.”
Ben nodded. “Your mother was receptive to your ideas?”
“Willing to think about them, anyway.” Olivia made a face. “As she pointed out, the higher the receipts, the better price she’ll get if she does decide to sell.”
Was it possible the business had been in Charles’s name alone, meaning Marian now had to wait for probate to sell it anyway? The house had presumably been in both their names, so she wouldn’t be hampered the same way. Could that be why she’d so generously encouraged Olivia to try to build business? If so, Ben wished she’d been honest with her daughter. Otherwise, Olivia was going to be hurt when probate was complete and her mother brought down the hammer.
Damn, he hoped that wasn’t the case.
“You’d be working for your mom,” he pointed out.
She made a horrible face at him. “I am so trying not to think of it that way.”
He laughed and didn’t argue when she then decided she really needed to get back to work. A glance at his watch startled him; they’d been talking longer than he’d realized.
She was so insistent on splitting the bill, he had to agree. He reminded himself of his philosophy with teenagers: don’t push. Olivia was as wary as any adult-leery sixteen-year-old.
He winced at the thought. Yeah, she had been sixteen when he’d broken up with her. Not a good memory. Leery was probably a good word for what she felt, though, assuming it wasn’t way stronger.
During the short drive, she said suddenly, “Chief Weigand has been really closemouthed about the girl. Everybody talks about her freezing to death, but is that really what happened? Was she injured? Sick? Drunk? Has he said anything to you?”
“I think it’s clear the freezing to death part is accurate, but you’re right. He hasn’t wanted to say what else he knows. I’m actually surprised he’s been able to keep so much information close to his chest.”
Olivia would know what he meant. Small town translated to few secrets and gossip transmitted at a speed faster than light. Which made the mystery all the more shocking—and it all the more improbable that nobody at all knew anything. Nonetheless, Ben didn’t like the idea that any number of people might know little bits of something, puzzle pieces that, if shared, would put together the whole picture. Yes, there was lots of talk about her death, but he’d have expected some of those puzzle pieces to be slotted into place by now. And yet not a one had been.
The girl had to have hitched a ride with someone, for example. And since the highway closed in winter only a few miles past Crescent Creek, that ride had been with someone going to Crescent Creek, not a trucker passing through. If she’d been in good health, not drunk, not injured, she wouldn’t have died out there however cold the night. If she was drunk—she probably hadn’t gotten that way alone. If injured—how?
And, God, he had a sudden thought he should have had earlier. The autopsy would have revealed whether she’d had sex recently before her death. Was there any chance Phil Weigand had some DNA and was waiting patiently for a suspect to emerge to whom he could match it?
No, I’m reaching, he told himself, trying to tamp down that anxiety. There’d been no suggestion of murder. Sure, everyone wanted to know how she’d gotten there and why she hadn’t asked for help, but mostly they wanted to know who she was.
Still—damn, he wished he knew whether Carson had been at that kegger.
Olivia gave no sign of noticing his abstraction. The moment he braked in front of the hardware store, once again double-parking, she reached for the door handle. “I’ll let you know if I hear any more,” she said breezily and hopped out. “Thanks for listening.”
He barely had a chance to say goodbye before she was gone. There was not the slightest suggestion she’d enjoyed talking to him, would welcome a call asking her out.
On his way to pick her up, he’d been worried about what she’d heard but had also felt...hopeful. Having her call the very next day after they’d talked... Now, half a block from the hardware store, he had to sit briefly at one of the town’s four red lights. The hope had leaked out, as if it were air in a balloon she’d punctured.
What he’d been doing was dreaming, without the slightest encouragement.
Would they have made it, if he’d been patient and smart enough to wait for Olivia to grow up? He grunted. No way to know. Water under the bridge.
Besides, her mother might announce tomorrow that she was putting the business up for sale along with the house.
Maybe, Ben admitted, bleakly, for him that might be for the best.
* * *
SUNDAY MORNING, BEN woke to an astonishing silence. Frowning, he focused on the digital clock on the bedside table, groaning as soon as he saw what time it was. He’d overslept. Mom wouldn’t approve if he didn’t appear at church.
Thinking about it, he threw off his covers. Was Carson still asleep? And, damn it, given the hour, why was it so quiet out there?
His suspicion was confirmed the minute he looked out the window. The world was cloaked in white, and the snow was still coming down in lazy, gentle flakes.
Well, the Lord was going to be responsible for skimpy attendance at his houses of worship this Sunday morning.
“Hey!” Carson’s voice came from behind him. “It’s awesome!”
“Well, at least it’s Sunday.”
“Bummer,” his son said. “If this was tomorrow, we could have had a day off.”
“You may still get one off, although it’s not coming down the way it must have during the night.”
A storm had been forecast, but not the eight inches or more that already blanketed the front yard and street.
Now that he listened, he heard a snowplow working in the distance. He’d be able to get around with his four-wheel drive, but not everyone would. He and Carson could have their driveway shoveled in twenty minutes, but folks farther out of town with long driveways...
No surprise, it was Olivia he was thinking about. She and her mother would be trapped this morning. Unless—
“Let’s have breakfast,” he suggested, “then get out and clear our driveway.”
“Do we have to?”
He laughed and clapped Carson on the back. “We have to. But I’m not making you go anywhere if you don’t want to.”
“We don’t have to go to church?” the boy asked hopefully.
“We wouldn’t make it in time if we wanted to.” He had only a small moment of guilt at having implied he didn’t much want to go, either.
As he mixed up pancake batter a few minutes later, Ben decided to wait until they were outside and their muscles warmed up before he suggested performing a good deed. He could pretend it had just occurred to him.
Yep. His kid wouldn’t see right through that.
And...which part of giving up didn’t he get?
As he watched butter sizzle on the griddle, Ben admitted that he wouldn’t be giving up, not until he heard Olivia had left town again, and for good this time.
Worse came to worst, he and Carson could feel virtuous because they had performed a good deed.
* * *
“WHO ON EARTH...?”