Authors: Charlene Weir
Up in Smoke
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Contents
Other Police Chief Susan Wren Mysteries
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FOR MY SIBLINGS, MEL, VERN, BERNEAL, AND CAROL. AND IN LOVING MEMORY OF ELLEN AND NORM. ALL THE BROTHERS ARE VALIANT AND ALL THE SISTERS VIRTUOUS.
FOR MY SON AND DAUGHTER, CHRISTOPHER AND LESLIE, WITH MUCH LOVE AND THANKFULNESS FOR MY GREAT GOOD FORTUNE IN HAVING THEM.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe endless gratitude and thanks to my editor, Ruth Cavin. If there is any grace and cohesiveness in my books, it is due to her diligent and ever sharp editorial pencil. She is a joy to work with.
Boundless thanks to my agent, Meg Ruley, who took on an unknown long ago and has stuck with me even though I'm still an unknown. Thanks also to her assistant, Annelise Robey.
Grateful appreciation goes to Avis, Pat, Barbara, Elise, and LaRae for all the help, encouragement, and “there, there” pats on the back.
And once again Suzanne Schwartz, R.N., F.N.P., came through for me when I needed medical information. Not only were my questions answered, but a generous invitation was given to call upon her with future questions. Much thanks.
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O lost, and by the wind grieved ⦠come back again!
THOMAS WOLFE
Look Homeward, Angel
1
Thin clouds floated across the night sky and the air smelled of coming rain. Fireflies blinked on and off, crickets chirped, and cicadas buzzed in mad frenzy, singing away the last heat of summer.
She was heavy, awkward to carry, and the blanket wrapped around her kept slipping. The garage was dark but enough light slanted in from the front porch to make the Mustang visible. When swinging her around, her feet struck a stack of rakes and shovels leaning in the corner. They clattered to the cement floor.
Damn it!
Inside the house, the dog barked furiously, throwing itself at the connecting door.
Trunk won't open! Oh God, come on! Stuck! Come on, come on!
There. Okay.
The car dipped as her weight landed heavily inside. The trunk lid slammed shut with a solid thunk.
A shattering crash of window glass came from the back of the house.
The dog raced into the garage. Hackles raised, it lowered its head, threatening, growling with menace.
Just as it attacked, a swipe with a shovel and a kick dropped it in its tracks.
2
Casilda had been on the road too long. Mind-numbing fatigue painted hallucinatory images, turning ordinary trees, rocks, and mailboxes on posts into animals about to leap in front of her. The windshield wipers swished and thunked through hypnotic arcs. The Honda's headlights flashed on a square of wood, a spray-painted sign.
Baptized with Fire!
She jerked alert with an unwarranted sense of impending doom. The high beams plowed through the dark, striking silver reflections from slanting rain, the only color in the entire universe. This was black-and-white Kansas before the tornado hit and Technicolor blossomed.
Piteous howls came from within the cat carrier buckled in the passenger seat. Lightning forked across the black sky. Cass hunched over the wheel and counted
one two three four
to find out how far it was. She thought the formula was one mile for each count.
Thunder rumbled.
Montgomery Cadwallader the cat shrieked.
“We couldn't be lost. We're almost there. I promise. Couldn't you ease up?”
His answer was a blood-curdling scream. With everything she owned in the trunk, she'd driven nonstop from Las Vegas, eighteen hours so far, that being easier than trying to deal with the cat at a motel.
Three and a half weeks was long enough in the city that never slept, neon lights, slot machines, blackjack, and people hoarding eternal hope. Of its own volition, her hand left the steering wheel, wrapped itself around the opposite wrist and her thumb felt the crisscrossed scars on the soft vincible skin on the inside. Deliberately, she changed hands and rubbed similar scars on the opposite wrist. Old scars, no longer sharp and angry looking, only pale and ineffectual. She could still recall the astonishing rich red well of blood. After long months fighting the Black Dog of Depression with prescriptions and hours of therapy, she'd felt an overwhelming sense of relief and the sweet feeling of peace as pain seeped away with her blood.
At forty-six, after three careers, she was going home. When she left twenty years ago, she'd had Aunt Jean, then she'd added a husband, andâafter so many years of thinking it'd never happenâa baby girl. Now she was alone, except for a cat, and a gun in the bottom of the suitcase.
Her eyes burned and her head throbbed more savagely with each passing hour. She tried rolling down the window for fresh air but got soaked when rain blew in. She wanted to pull over and yowl, too.
Count your blessings,
she told herself.
It's near the end of October, this could be snow.
Black Dog!
She stood on the brakes. The Honda fishtailed and whipped a fast 360. As though on ice, it hydroplaned sideways and came to a stop with the passenger-side wheels in the mud.
The Black Dog crouched on the road with rain pounding down on sodden fur.
For a moment, Cass thought she'd slipped back over the edge into mental illness, that the depression had returned with ironic cruelty. Been down this road and ended up road kill.
She let her head fall to the seatback and waited for madness to take her. Slowly, the sounds of pounding heart, drumming rain, shushing wind, and unhappy cat assaulted her with wicked taunting reality.
She blinked scratchy eyes and peered through the water sluicing down the windshield. The dog crouched on the asphalt looked so much like her imagined Black Dog of Depression that she started to shake.
“Pull it together, Cass!”
Leaning past the carrier to reach the glove box, she fumbled for the flashlight and grabbed a scarf to tie around her head.
Sloshing through inch-deep water standing on the road, she moved the flash beam over the animal. It snarled. Wind tugged at her scarf and tore it away, rain poured over her head, lashed her face and soaked her sweatshirt.
Looked like a wolf. No wolves in Kansas. Except prairie wolves, local name for coyotes. Must be a coyote. Badly injured or it would run. Rabid? Coyotes get rabies? Dogs did, foxes did, skunks did. Probably coyotes did.
Now what? She couldn't just leave it here. It raised its head and stared at her, eyes glassy in the flashlight beam. A crack of lightning lit up the dark. Dog, not coyote. Can't just leave it to get hit by another car.
She edged closer. The dog, probably a relative of Cujo, watched with demonic eyes. She stopped. It struggled to its feet and stood on three legs, one hind leg curled up against its belly, lips pulled tight in a snarl.
“It's me or nothing, pal.”
The dog growled.
“I'm the Good Samaritan and you're going to bite the hell out of me, aren't you?” Calling herself all kinds of a fool, she inched closer, hand held out. The dog stayed firm, teeth bared, growling low in its throat. Getting wetter and wetter, she just waited, talking softly.
After what seemed forever and was maybe two minutes, the dog gave a slow tail wag and limped up to her. She ran a hand over its head. It yelped. “And I thought I was having a bad day.” Carefully and gently, she palpated the shivering dog, neck, back, abdomen, and finally legs.
Too dumb from lack of sleep to figure a solution, she peered straight ahead hoping to see headlights of another car. All she could see was rain. If she left the dog here, a vehicle could zip along and squash it flat. An eerie chill of being watched ran through her. She looked around, then shook it off. She was in the middle of nowhere, standing in a thunderstorm. Who could be watching? And what did it matter anyway? The dog whimpered with canine misery and swished a dripping tail.
“I'm beginning to feel sorry for you.”
It scooted close and leaned against her leg, looking as dejected and pathetic as a dog could get.
“Come on,” she said with resignation.
Hopping on three legs to the car, the dog managed with a little boost of its rear end to scrabble onto the back seat. Just as Cass slid under the wheel, the dog shook itself and water flew everywhere. She sighed.
“You want to hear the good news?” she said to her hitchhiker. After hour upon hour of piercing shrieks, the cat was silent. The arrival of a strange dog had stopped Monty's complaining. Groping around the carrier, her hands found a towel and she blotted her face, too late realizing it smelled of something that should be inside a cat.
“Oh, shit.” Her whole body ached, she was sopping wet, probably lost, had a mad cat, a rabid dog, and she'd just wiped her face with cat puke. It didn't get any better than this.
She drove on.
The road unrolled in a steady black ribbon of asphalt. Without Monty to keep her awake, the drum of rain and the swish of tires were soporific.
Three miles slipped past.
Lights, made mystical from rain rippling down the windshield, appeared on the low hills. Like Brigadoon, Hampstead rose up from the gloom.
Falcon Road ran along an embankment that led down to the Kaw River. At the far end of the road, she pulled in the driveway and cut the ignition. She slumped back, muscle spasms tingling up her legs.
Frogs carried on a joyous chorus with basses and baritones and the occasional deep croak, like a drumbeat accent.
She wanted a shower and a bed, or maybe a chair to sit in and weep. She looked at the dog, it looked back with serious eyes. She sighed. Livestock first.
After her aunt's funeral five weeks ago, Casilda had cleaned out all perishables, arranged for mail to be forwarded, closed up the house, taken Monty, and fled to Las Vegas. Opening the door was like walking back into a previous life. Everything was as it had been when Jean was alive. Victorian sofa covered in flowered brocade, afghan folded across the back, two high-backed chairs upholstered in blue velvetâjust the thing for cat hairsâold upright piano with pictures of Cass and her husband and daughter on the top, silver candlesticks on the mantle, framed picture of a prairie scene on the wall above. Logs in the fireplace waiting for a match, bookmark in the novel on the armchair,
Hampstead Herald
on the coffee table. All that her aunt possessed was still where Jean had left it.
