Charlaine Harris - A Fool and His Honey

Karl got up and shook Martin’s hand, and they did the shoulder-patting ritual. Deep affection.

“The little sumbitch-‘scuse me, Aurora-is just lucky I didn’t fix his wagon for good,” Karl said, white teeth gleaming.

“I only laid off because he was your niece’s husband.”

“This was since they got married?”

“Yeah, in fact this was last week. Right before he showed up on your doorstep down in Georgia, dead. Maybe he wanted to drive down in a jeep.”

“The police know about this?”

“Yeah, I told ‘em after I heard Craig got killed. Told ’em I had a key to the house here. They come out here to take a gander.”

Karl Bagosian looked so exotic I found I had expected him to have a foreign accent. It was a little shocking to hear a homely midwestern voice coming from his mouth. I thought of him in harem pants. I clamped my lips together.

“What are you smiling about?” Martin asked from my elbow. I jumped.

“Would you like some more coffee, honey?” I asked.

“Lord, she’s no bigger than a flea, Martin.”

I particularly dislike to be talked about as if I weren’t there. But this was Martin’s friend.

“Small but mean,” Martin said. I looked up, startled, and he was smiling… Lucky for him.

“Was the house very different than it is now? When you brought the police out here?” I asked Karl.

He took a swallow of coffee, raised the cup to me in appreciation. Since Martin had made it, that compliment wasn’t due me, but I nodded anyway.

“Yes, the house was a mess,” Karl said bluntly. “All I did was hang up the clothes and vacuum, run the dishwasher. That made a big difference.”

“Thank you,” I said, impressed at his enterprise. “Did the police seem to think anything had happened here in the house?”

“It was just like they’d gone shopping,” Karl said, shaking his head. “Like they were both going to be back any moment. Oh, I forgot to empty the wastebaskets that day, I just recalled. Sorry. Darlene was with me, but that girl is bone lazy.”

“How old is Darlene now?” Martin pulled out a chair, settled in opposite his friend.

“She’s twenty-six.”

Martin was seriously shocked. “Not… your daughter, Darlene? Is twenty-six?”

Karl nodded. “And she’s my youngest. Darlene is responsible for every one of these gray hairs.”

“How old are your others, now?” Martin sounded apprehensive.

Karl cast his eyes up, as if the answer would be written on the high ceiling. “Lessee. Gil is thirty, ‘bout to be thirty-one. Therese is twenty-nine.”

Martin looked at me, horrified. I shrugged, smiling. The difference in our ages had always bothered Martin more than me. Martin, who worked out and played killer racquetball, had always had the body of a younger man. Not that my experience was that broad… but he’d always pleased me, and he knew it. As far as mental attitudes went, Martin and I had our differences, but no more than any two people have.

“How old are you, Aurora? Martin’s looking worried.” Karl was not a man who would miss much. “My wife Phoebe is just a kid, too; she’s twenty-five.”

“I’m older than your wife and your children.” I gestured toward his mug, asking if he wanted a refill.

“No, thanks,” Karl said. “Martin, you ready to run me back into town?”

“Thanks for bringing the Jeep out, Karl,” I said. I perceived that it was mano a mano time, and I was being left behind.

“Do you need me to get anything while I’m in town, Roe?” Martin was already putting on his coat and sliding the cell phone into his pocket. I sighed, but tried to keep it silent. Tracking down a scrap of paper took a minute, but I quickly made a list of things we’d neglected to get the day before.

In the back of my mind was the fear the snow would get worse, and we’d be marooned out here. What if we lost our heat?

What if whoever had killed Craig came here looking for Regina?

This was a thought so sudden and shocking that I really regretted having it, especially since I was watching the bright red Jeep recede down the driveway with Martin and Karl inside when the idea came to full bloom in my mind.

I paced around the house distractedly, trying to rid myself of the fear. It hardly made sense that whoever killed Craig in Georgia would come looking here-and that was assuming the killer hadn’t been Regina herself. I managed to talk myself out of the worst of my funk, but a quarter of an hour later I was still padding around the house in two pairs of socks, staring out the windows at the snow.

After checking on the now-napping Hayden, I pulled on my boots and stuffed the baby monitor in my coat pocket. Gloved and hatted, I stepped out the south-facing front door and watched my boots sink into the snow.

I’d seen ice, I’d seen sleet, and one memorable January we’d had three inches of snow and been out of school for two and a half days. But I’d never in my life seen white stuff this deep, probably six to eight inches. I knew from what Martin had said about his childhood that it was likely this snow wouldn’t melt for weeks, but only be deepened by subsequent storms.

The sky was an oppressive leaden gray, just like yesterday. It seemed quite probable to me that-amazing though the thought was-it was going to snow again. If we’d been on a vacation in a ski lodge with lots of fireplaces and smiling servers, that would’ve been one thing. But out here in Farm Country, with the fireplace in the living room that at least also served our bedroom upstairs, we’d have to do a lot of the fetching and carrying if our electricity went out. The other rooms would be icy. I made a mental note to use the stove to prepare as many bottles of formula as I could, while I had the wherewithal.

Since I wanted to stay close enough for the monitor to work, I’d been tramping around the house in a circle. I’d noted with relief that there was a woodpile in the western side yard, the one furthest from the road, and I’d even brushed some of the snow off the wood to check that the pile was as large as it seemed.

But as I prepared to slog off and finish my circuit, I spied something I hadn’t noticed earlier. There were other footprints in the snow, prints that had been made some time in the night, since they were half filled in. Though it was a little hard to tell the heel end from the toe end, there was no mistaking these prints for deer tracks, or the trail of any other kind of wildlife.

Feeling like Hawkeye, I visually followed the marks. The prints approached the front-facing kitchen window from the south, across the fields, and then circled the house; just like my path, but closer to the windows, so the owner of the prints could look into the rooms.

Or maybe the steps left and returned? But that was crazy. Why would Martin climb out the window to leave the house? He’d entered at the back porch door this morning. I could see his tracks, still crisp and clear, and I recognized the tread of his boots. He’d come out that back door, tromped over to an oak tree, walked even further west away from the road, rotated in a tight circle to take in the view, and made his way back to the same door.

I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat.

Someone else had been lurking around the farmhouse. I tried like hell to think of another reasonable-or even unreasonable-explanation, but I could think of none, not a single damn one.

The snow had done such a great job of cheering up Martin that I hated to deflate his balloon. But I decided I had to tell him about the tracks. I cut short my expedition and stomped my boots on the back steps as Martin had done, leaving mine on the little rug where his had rested earlier, right inside the door. On the kitchen counter close to the dining table, Martin had left the little Corinth phone book open to the yellow pages (Car Dealerships) and I spared a moment to be deeply thankful that Regina and Craig had had phone service.