Tamarack County

CHAPTER 4

Cork arrived home well after midnight. Stephen was still up, sitting on the sofa in the living room, texting on his cell phone. Trixie was asleep at his feet. Cork stood in the kitchen doorway, exhausted and cold to the bone, staring at his son, who seemed oblivious to his presence.

“School day tomorrow,” Cork said. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

Stephen looked up suddenly, caught by surprise. “Just a sec, Dad,” he said, finished his text message, and laid the phone down next to him on the sofa cushion.

“Marlee?” Cork asked.

Stephen looked chagrined. “Marlee.”

Stephen had been seeing a good deal of Marlee Daychild lately. Cork wasn’t certain what the status of their relationship actually was, but in Stephen’s parlance they were “just, you know, talking.”

“She has school tomorrow, too,” Cork said. “You both need your sleep.”

Stephen didn’t respond to that directly. He’d become adept lately at detouring a conversation when it wasn’t going in a way advantageous to him. He said, “Did you find Mrs. Carter?”

The truth was that Cork wanted to talk with someone, it was already well past time for Stephen to be in bed, and a few more minutes wouldn’t matter, so he said, “Let’s go into the kitchen. I need to eat something.”

Trixie roused herself, stretched, and trotted along behind them. She went directly to her water bowl near the side door and lapped awhile.

Cork went to the coffeemaker. The pot still held enough for one cup of cold brew. He got a mug from the cupboard, filled it from the pot, put it in the microwave to heat, then turned back to Stephen, who’d sat at the table with his cell phone in easy reach.

“So,” Cork said, leaning his butt against the counter and crossing his arms over his chest, “did Annie tell you why she’s leaving the sisters?”

Stephen’s eyes went wide, his whole face a momentary bloom of surprise. He recovered quickly and said, “What makes you think she’s leaving?”

“She’s home too early. She’s clearly in emotional distress. She won’t talk to me about it. And I’m pretty sure she didn’t kill anybody. Am I wrong?”

Stephen considered a moment. “I should let Annie tell you.”

“So I’m right,” Cork said. “Has she told you why?”

Stephen seemed to realize denial was useless. He shrugged. “She hasn’t told me or Jenny. She just said that she’s decided not to stay with the sisters. She’s pretty torn up about it. Don’t tell her I told you, okay?”

“We’re good,” Cork said.

The microwave beeped. Cork took out the hot mug, grabbed the cookie jar from the counter, and brought these things to the table. He lifted the lid of the jar, pulled out two chocolate chip cookies, and slid one across the table to his son.

Stephen took the cookie and repeated his earlier question. “Did you find Mrs. Carter?”

Before Cork could answer, Jenny stepped into the kitchen. She wore a white chenille robe and fluffy white slippers, and her hair was mussed from sleep.

“Thought I heard you guys,” she said.

She came to the table and sat down next to Stephen. Cork plucked a cookie from the jar and handed it to her.

“Any coffee left?” she asked with a yawn.

“I killed the pot,” Cork said.

From the kitchen doorway, Anne said, “I could make another.”

Cork let out a dramatic sigh. “Doesn’t anybody in this house ever sleep?”

“Waaboo,” Jenny said. “He sleeps like a dream.”

“Anybody else hungry?” Stephen piped up.

Cork said, “The truth is I’m famished.”

“I’ll make us some eggs,” Anne offered and went to the refrigerator. “Did you find Mrs. Carter?”

Cork took a sip of his coffee, then lowered his mug. He meant to set it gently on the tabletop, but the cold and fatigue weighed heavily on all his muscles, and the mug went down with a startling bang.

“Sorry,” he said. “No, we didn’t. All we found was a yearling deer that looked like it had been brought down by wolves. No sign at all of Evelyn.”

“Will they try with rescue dogs?” Jenny asked.

“Already did. Gratz brought out two of his best. They picked up nothing.”

“No scent?”

“That’s right. Nothing at all leading away from her car.”

“What does it mean?”

“The conditions were difficult, lots of wind, so that might have been the reason,” Cork said. “But Gratz insists his air dogs are good enough that shouldn’t be a problem. So the only thing that seems to make sense is somebody stopped and picked her up.”

Jenny said, “In which case, she’d be home by now.”

“That would be the assumption. But clearly incorrect. When Marsha called an end to the search tonight, Evelyn still hadn’t come home. The Judge was pretty insistent that we keep looking.”

“Will you?”

“We’d still be out there right now, but the storm’s officially a blizzard. We lost Able Breen for a while, and when we finally found him, Marsha didn’t want to risk losing anybody else. We’ll go out again first thing in the morning, but the storm will have covered up everything by then. We’ve already searched the most logical areas, so I don’t know where else we’ll sweep.”

“What about a helicopter or something?” Stephen suggested.

Which was how he and Cork had searched for Stephen’s mother when she, too, had gone missing in a snowstorm. In the end, the helicopter hadn’t made any difference.

“That’s a good idea, and Marsha’s already on it,” Cork told him. “The Forest Service is loaning us one of their Bells and also a De Havilland Beaver. They’ll join us tomorrow, provided this storm has broken.”

Jenny propped an elbow on the tabletop and rested her chin on her fist. She frowned. “Was Evelyn’s car stuck in the snow?”

He shook his head. “Out of gas.”

“On the Old Babbitt Road? What was she doing out there on a night like this?”

“Question of the day. And it gets even curiouser,” Cork said. “She filled up her tank yesterday and, according to the Judge, hasn’t really gone anywhere since. That Buick of hers probably holds twenty gallons.”

“So she covered a lot of ground tonight,” Jenny said.

“It certainly appears that way. One speculation is that she was disoriented for some reason. Just drove and drove until the gas was gone.”

Stephen said, “Disoriented why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a stroke or something.”

“Prescription drugs?” Jenny offered. “Some kind of bad reaction?”

“Possibly,” Cork said.

“Where all did you search?” Stephen asked.

Anne had the eggs going in a frying pan, along with several precooked link sausages. The smell intensified Cork’s hunger to the point of distraction. He was dead tired and didn’t want to go over all the details of the failed search again, so he said, “Let’s talk about this tomorrow, okay? I’m bushed.”

Stephen’s cell phone chimed.

Jenny gave him a playful nudge with her elbow. “Marlee?”

“Tell her good night,” Cork said firmly.

They ate the eggs Anne had scrambled and the sausage and talked about Christmas and Christmases past, and by the time they turned out the lights and went to bed, it was very late. Cork was exhausted. It had been an unusual night, Anne mysteriously home too early and a good woman mysteriously gone, but as he settled gratefully into bed, with all his children gathered around him in his house once again, he found himself unusually happy.