California Schemin' (26 page)

“Yeah, right. You know what really proves our
manliness?”

We shook our heads.

“Shaved heads. Makes guys look like giant
dicks. Can’t get more manly than that.” Jeremy laughed at us and
turned away, clumping up the stairs.

“What’s got into him?” I asked Meg. “He never
used to say stuff like that.”

“He’s on the varsity basketball team.
Apparently, they all talk like that. His dad says he’s going to
crack down on him, but he won’t. I think he’s secretly pleased that
Jer’s growing up. It’s pathetic.”

“So what’s been happening around here? Anyone
dump their truck in the river?”

“Nah, everybody’s been concentrating on
finding you. And when we discovered you were in California, about
ten people volunteered to go help find you. Tom sent Steve, and the
rest of us chewed our nails and ate too many donuts while we waited
for you to show up.”

“Hey, I forgot to tell you. Shirl proposed to
Steve Leftsky, and he accepted immediately. Smart guy. They’re
going to get married in May.”

“No kidding. It’s about time.”

A day later I was in the office catching up
on official reporter duties, which meant I was trying to figure out
what to write about next. It was the hardest part of my job,
searching the Internet for items of interest because not a thing
was happening in town.

The door banged open, and Meg waltzed in.

“Beau’s downstairs in the coffee shop, and he
wants to talk to you.” She was using the singsong voice she used
when she was teasing me about men. I waited for her to start in on
the whole he loves you, he wants your baby routine. When she
didn’t, I shrugged and went down to the coffee shop.

He was sitting in a booth at the back, which
I thought was kind of unusual. It was easier to sit at the front of
the coffee shop when your leg was in a cast. I sat on the bench
across from him, ready for some heavy duty flirting, but the look
on his face stopped me.

“Okay, spit it out.” I tried to ignore the
stone that had materialized in my stomach.

“I come home hoping for some peace while my
leg is healing, and what happens? You get caught up in the dead
woman thing again.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose”

“I don’t want to spend my life worrying about
what’s happening to you. I can’t do this, Bree. I thought I could,
but I can’t.”

“Can’t what? What are you saying
exactly?”

“I can’t spend all my time worrying what I’ll
find next time I see you. It’s not any better when we’re together,
because then I’m worrying about what’s going to happen to me, too.
Shit, those days in California when I was a hostage and didn’t know
it were the most relaxing I’ve had since Jim dumped you. Not that I
want you to go back to him. Actually, it would work better for me
if you just stayed single.”

“It works better for you if I just stay
single?” I was getting dumped again. No surprise. Well, a little
surprise. I cast back through my previous dumpings. I was pretty
sure this wasn’t the first time someone had wanted me to stay
single. Men didn’t want to be with me, but they didn’t want anyone
else to be with me either.

“If you’re single, then I don’t have to deal
with my jealousy. I won’t be tempted to try and win you back. If
you’re with someone, I have to stifle my urge to kill the bastard
and take you back. It takes way less energy.”

“You want me to stay single so you don’t have
to stop yourself from killing the guy I’m dating, but you don’t
want to stay with me because you’ll have to worry too much?” My
mind was reeling with the logic of it all, or maybe that was the
lack of logic.

“Pretty much.”

“In other words your inability to deal with
your emotions is my fault, and if I just lived right, you’d be
okay? Is that what you’re saying?” Anger was starting to burn in my
chest.

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that. I just
prefer the quiet life. You are the antithesis of that. Trouble
follows you around like a dog.”

“Speaking of dogs, what about Beans? What are
you going to do with him?”

“Keep him. He can still come and stay with
you when I’m away.”

“You’re dumping me and asking me to continue
to take care of your dog? Why am I not surprised?”

I sat with my feet propped on the bench
across from me, taking it all in and recapping in my mind. It was
the same every time. I don’t want to be with you anymore, but I
still want you to do me favors. Yep, that was the usual story.

“I can’t make you want to be with me, but
don’t ask me to take care of your dog. He’s your responsibility. If
you didn’t want to take care of him, you shouldn’t have adopted
him.”

“I took him because I knew you wanted him. I
did it for you. Anyway, he’s old enough now that Tank won’t eat
him. He can be your dog.”

“I don’t want another dog.” I almost added I
couldn’t afford another dog, but that would be ridiculous. It
couldn’t cost more than a five spot a month to keep that dog happy.
Anyway, this wasn’t a fight about the dog.

“You always want another dog. I understood
when you were afraid Tank was going to eat him, but now? I think
we’ve established that Beans has mastered Tank.”

“Will you leave the dog out of it already?
This is not about the dog. It’s about you dumping me for the quiet
life. Last I knew I was the one person you’d been waiting for your
whole life. I’m having a hard time believing that you are letting
that go because of a couple of freak incidents.”

“But I am, MacGowan. I can’t stand living
with a pain in my stomach all the time. I can’t do my best work if
I’m always trying to keep track of where you are. You know why I
didn’t tell anyone I was going to California? I just wanted a few
days’ peace. No news of your latest body. No fires, no floods. Just
peace. Not a battle to the death in the back of a moving Jeep.”

I nodded and got up. What could I say to
that? A battle to the death in the back of a moving Jeep. I went
back to work.

Spring was finally threatening to arrive in
Vermont. Snow persisted in the shadows and hollows, and my road was
a mud hole; but the sun, when it appeared, was warm, and there was
the smell of spring on the wind. There had been a media blitz when
Senator Wallace disappeared, but after that died down, there hadn’t
been any news or sightings of him. The excitement in South Royalton
was Steve and Shirl’s upcoming wedding.

Bets were being swapped at the local bar. A
third of the community’s members were willing to put good money on
the wedding being a non-starter. If Steve was smart, he wouldn’t
show. There was a lot of good-natured bickering over their chances
of staying married, and Meg had asked me to do an article on the
failure rate of peace officers’ marriages.

I was doing internet research. It was kind of
depressing. The sound of the dogs barking interrupted my train of
thought.

“Shut up! I’m working in here!” I shouted. I
figured they could hear me even though the door was closed. The
barking didn’t stop. If anything, it got louder and more frantic.
Not good. I got up to see what animal they had cornered. It
wouldn’t be the first time I had to call the dogs into the house so
a poor raccoon they had treed could escape.

I knew the moment I opened the door that it
wasn’t a raccoon. The odor smacked me in the face and made my eyes
run. Great. I opened the kennels I kept on the porch for occasions
like this and called the dogs. Ranger and Hank bounded up the
stairs, tails going a mile a minute, their goofy faces all pleased
with themselves. They reeked. My eyes stung, and I had to stifle a
desire to puke.

“Annie! Diesel! Get you butts up here!
Now!”

Diesel came first trotting sideways, torn
between obeying his mom and the marvelous toy he’d been playing
with. Annie came last, head down, tail between her legs. She knew
she’d been bad. I about died when they got close. If anything, they
smelled worse than Hank and Ranger. Ho, boy.

I went in search of peroxide, but there
wasn’t any in the house. The dogs would just have to stink until
morning.

I sat back down at the keyboard and tried to
concentrate on my article. I really needed to show Meg some
progress, but before I hit a single key Annie was sounding again,
not her normal bark, but the deep baying of a hound dog. Puzzled, I
looked out the window in the porch door. That stinking skunk had
come right up onto the porch and was attempting to pull Annie’s bed
out from under her between the bars of the crate.

“What the …” I turned on the porch light and
banged on the door, but the skunk ignored me. 1850s farmhouses are
not generally airtight, and the smell coming under the door was
making my nose burn. The lights were on, the dogs were going
absolutely nuts, I was banging on the door, and that stupid skunk
was trying to steal Annie’s bed. I had to tell Meg about this.

“Rabid,” she said. “It’s got to be rabid. You
need to call the game warden.”

“It’s gone now. I’ll call the warden, but I
don’t think he’s going to want to search for it.”

“Everything else OK? Do you know when Beau’s
coming home?”

“No, last I heard – oh, my God! That little
bugger is back again. He just backed up to Diesel’s crate and
sprayed him again. I’ll call you back. The smell is awful.”

I hung up the phone and dropped it on the
kitchen table. How was I going to lure that sucker off my porch? I
grabbed a can of Annabelle’s cat food and popped the lid. Slipping
out of the door on the other side of the house I skirted around
until I was in the drive on the porch side. I waved the can around
in the air hoping that the smell would attract the skunk, then I
set the can on the ground, ran back around the house and into the
kitchen.

Picking up the phone, I dialed Max as I went
to look out the window. The skunk was still poking his nose into
the kennels, taunting the dogs, but he must have caught the scent
of the cat food because he lifted his nose in the air and sniffed.
He was ambling down the stairs as Max answered his phone.

“Max!” I interrupted his greeting. “Grab your
.22 and get down here. I’ve got this weird skunk tormenting my
dogs.”

“Why don’t you shoot him yourself? You used
to do target practice with your brothers.”

“I don’t have any guns down here. I got rid
of them when Meg started having kids. Oh, just get down here, will
you?”

I hung up the phone. I was antsy, jiggling my
leg and hoping Max would get here before the skunk took off. I
really didn’t want my dogs bitten by a crazy, rabid Pepé Le Pew
from hell. The skunk finished his food and wandered off toward the
chicken house. I wasn’t worried about the chickens; the coop was
critter proof as long as the gate was shut, which I knew it
was.

Max arrived in time to see our stinky friend
disappear into the weeds behind the house. He took a shot at the
creature, but I don’t think he hit it.

“Shoot!” I wasn’t mad at Max as much as I was
disappointed we hadn’t gotten rid of the skunk.

“I can’t shoot, Bree. Can’t hit what I can’t
see. Sorry it took me so long. I had to put on my pants.”

“No, I didn’t mean for you to
shoot
, I
meant shoot like
dang
, dang, that stupid skunk got away.
That’s all. I appreciate you coming down here, though.”

“Well, call me if he comes back again.” Max
headed back up the road, .22 over his shoulder.

It seemed smarter to go in the back way, even
though the skunk was gone. No point in dragging more stink into the
house than necessary. The phone was ringing when I walked in. I
hurried to pick it up.

“So what happened?” Meg’s voice was
excited.

“Boy, you’d think I was going to win the
lottery from the sound of you. Nothing happened. I lured the skunk
off the porch with a can of cat food, which it proceeded to eat
before Max got down here. Now it’ll come back thinking it’ll get
more tuna or something. I’d hate skunks if they weren’t so damn
funny.” Truthfully, I found it hard to hate many things except Lucy
Howe. She was a sneaky little back stabber, and she deserved to be
hated. Now she was a real skunk.

When I came downstairs the next morning, the
skunk was curled up on the top of Annie’s crate. I found my cell
phone and snapped a picture, since no one would believe me if I
didn’t have a picture. I popped the tops on a couple of cans of cat
food and went outside in my pajamas. Walking around to the kitchen
porch, I dropped a trail of cat food from my house down the road to
a spot where an unused run-off pipe ran under the road. I set the
can in the ditch next to the culvert and backed away. I was hoping
that the radio fence would keep the dogs from the skunk, and the
proximity to a good sleeping place would keep the skunk away from
the house. I trotted back up the road hoping no one would drive by
and see me in my jammies. Not that they were indecent, a pair of
sweat shorts and a T-shirt, but I didn’t need any more talk than
usual about me in town.

The skunk and I got into a routine. I fed him
morning and evening, he stayed away from the house. We had a deal.
I was satisfied with the arrangement. Tom offered to kill the
thing, but I declined. The thing was now named Stripes. Meg thought
I was crazy, and Tom just shook his head at me, but I was okay with
it. It saved me from killing a fellow creature and kept the stink
out of the house.

The day of Steve’s wedding, I was out of cat
food. I ran a little dry dog food down the road to the culvert and
hoped that satisfied Stripes for the time being. Then I went
upstairs and stood in front of my closet door, the usual dilemma
staring me in the face. I didn’t know what to wear. The black dress
I bought in California was cute, but I was afraid to wear black to
a wedding. Black was a funeral color. So I pulled out an almost
modest red dress and the black shoes from California. Then I drove
down the hill into town to get my hair done.