Winter at the Door (13 page)

“They called you, too, huh?” he greeted Lizzie. Then, sizing up the situation swiftly, he backed to the edge of the drop-off where the animal had seemingly attempted to commit pigicide.

Whining, the winch on the truck lowered a heavy metal clip down to the teens, who fastened it to the creature’s makeshift harness. Moments later, the pig rose through the chilly air, its little piggy hooves pawing unhappily.

The only hitch came when the airborne farm animal abruptly transferred some of what had been inside it to a location outside of it. But the kid standing just below jumped sideways out of the pig’s target area in the nick of time, and after that—

“Thanks,” Lizzie said inadequately as Washburn helped lead the animal up a ramp to the youthful crew’s pickup bed. Swatting the pig’s rump to urge it along, he slammed the tailgate shut.

“Hey, no problem. Glad that’s all you turned out to need,” he responded as the teenagers’ truck pulled away. “You go on up the road a little ways, though, you can meet the lady I told you about, Althea Sprague.”

“No kidding. That’s her pig?”

A dozen yards off, Dylan busied himself getting Rascal back into the Blazer. If he recalled meeting Washburn, he gave no sign of it.

“Sure is, and I’ll bet she’d like to thank you,” Washburn said. Then, “So when can I get you back to my place again?”

He really did have the brightest, smartest eyes, and the way he’d handled the pig problem was nothing short of masterful.

“Get there before sunset, I can show you around outside. And not to brag, but steak’s not the only thing I can—”

“Hi,” said Dylan, coming up from behind them with a smile. A
pleasant
smile, that only someone who knew him well would realize was not a bit pleasant.

“Lizzie, I don’t mean to rush you—”

He looked at his wristwatch. There was no reason he had to rush. But he wanted to send a message, apparently; glancing over at Dylan, Washburn got it loud and clear.

“I’d better get moving, too, I’ve got a rabies-shot clinic scheduled at the office later,” he said, hopping into his truck with the ease of a much smaller man and pulling away.

But not before catching Lizzie’s eye and shooting her a wink that was, if not suggestive, certainly friendly in the extreme.

“Guy thinks he walks on water,” Dylan groused when they were back in the Blazer, “just because he knows how to hoist a pig.”

Which was pretty funny, and so was the sight of Dylan Hudson being made jealous by a backcountry veterinarian.

A pleasant, decent-looking, intelligent, and very
effective
member of the profession, too, she couldn’t help thinking. That he could cook was just a side benefit.

“Yeah,” she said. “He thinks well of himself, all right.”

And so do I
, she thought but didn’t add, surprising herself; she wouldn’t have said Trey Washburn was her type. Still, the crooked grin that had accompanied his wink stayed with her, sweet as a blown kiss.

Absolutely so do I
. “Listen, I want to talk to that woman, Althea Sprague. You want to drop me off, take the Blazer? Come back in half an hour, maybe, and we’ll talk some more?”

Because she still had to hear the rest of what he had to say about Nicki—
if anything
, she thought skeptically—but sitting and waiting for her had never been his thing, and he agreed. When they got to the farm with
Sprague
on the mailbox, though, and he saw Washburn’s red truck in the yard, he changed his mind.

“I’ll wait,” he said when she’d parked. He settled himself in the passenger seat. “Don’t be too long,” he added, eyeing the veterinarian’s vehicle.

“Yeah, right.” Letting Rascal out of the back seat, she made a face at Dylan, then turned her back on him and went in.

“Oh! You wonderful woman, you!” cried Althea Sprague. “Thank you so much for finding Mister Wiggle!”

Lizzie looked at Washburn, who was having trouble holding back a laugh. “That,” she ventured, “is the pig’s name?”

“Well, of course it is, dear, what did you think, it was one of our names? Now sit right down here, dear, and let me make you a nice hot cup of—what did you say she liked, Trey, should we give her coffee or would she rather have a real drink?”

Althea Sprague, a small, wiry woman with a puff of hair like a gone-to-seed dandelion on her head, darted around her farmhouse kitchen with such relentless energy, she was hard to focus on.

“Coffee’s fine, please.”
You’re the one who could use a drink
, Lizzie thought when she saw how nervous the woman was, and why would that be? But then a possible reason occurred to her.

Outside the kitchen windows, the kids who’d brought the pig home were back to raking leaves, cutting firewood, and hauling feed for the animals in the penned yards. Lizzie saw sheep, goats, more spotted pigs, and a couple of bony-looking horses.

“Our new arrivals,” said Althea, looking out over Lizzie’s shoulder. “We’ll fatten them up soon enough.”

This was, Althea went on to inform Lizzie, a rescue farm for creatures whose previous owners could no longer feed them.

“Trey helps me tremendously,” she added to the veterinarian, who bowed shyly at the praise. But a few minutes later when Trey had gone, Lizzie cut through the small talk.

“I’m sorry about your late husband.” Dillard, his name had been.

Chevrier wouldn’t have confided his suspicions to the widow. But she was nervous about something, Lizzie guessed she knew what, and when Althea spoke, she confirmed it.

“I didn’t kill him,” she said. And rushing on, “Oh, I know Cody thinks he’s keeping it close to the vest, his worry that Dillard was murdered. But I’ve known Cody all my life, he doesn’t ask questions for no reason. And,” she added, sounding a little desperate, “now he’s got you here, a Boston homicide detective.”

She made it sound like such a thing was unimaginable, or nearly. “And you’re worried that maybe I’ll think you did it?”

“Yes,” Althea admitted reluctantly. “Dill was a son of a bitch when he was drunk, and at the end he always was.”

She inhaled shakily. “That’s why everyone thinks I’m better off without him. Except,” she added, “me.”

“You do seem to have landed on your feet,” said Lizzie. “If that’s not too awful a thing to say.”

“Of course I have,” retorted Althea. “It doesn’t mean that … I mean, what was I supposed to do, crawl into a hole and—”

Interrupting herself, she tapped hard on the window with the small but nicely cut diamond of her engagement ring, which Lizzie noted she was still wearing along with her wedding band.

“Those kids,” she explained of the youths roughhousing just outside, “they’re from a community service program in Houlton. I get
them to work here and they get school credit in return. And mostly they’re great, but sometimes you have to—”

“Refocus them?” One teen straddled a fence rail, pretending it was a bucking bronco, while the others tried dragging him off. But at Althea’s window-rapping, they got back to pitchforking hay.

“Right.” Althea bustled back around the kitchen. Unlike the Brantwells’ place, her establishment hadn’t seen fresh paint in a while, or any Cadillac Escalades in the driveway, either.

But in the kitchen the old black woodstove radiated warmly, and the kids running in and out for tools, drinks, and snacks all had happy looks on their faces despite their much-patched, faded sets of outdoor clothes.

“I bought this place with Dillard’s life insurance from his job as a cop,” said his widow. “And I can’t say life’s not easier without him, because it is. A lot,” she emphasized, looking back out the window, “easier.”

Past the haystack, the view was of the pigpen; Althea smiled at the sight of one large spotted porker—Mister Wiggle, or possibly some other very fortunate creature—plunging his snout delightedly into a trough of what looked like potato peels.

“But I loved him,” Althea said. “Even at his worst, I got awfully mad at him and all, but …” She turned from the window. “Do you know what I mean? That a person can make you so angry, but the fact is that you love them and that’s all there is to it? You just do?”

Outside, bliss spread on the pig’s face. “Yeah. Yeah, I do know about that, actually,” said Lizzie, “but—”

“Well then, you understand. So tell Cody I thank him for his concern. But he’s got it all wrong about Dillard,” Althea said. “I think it’s even messing his mind up a little.”

She looked around the old farm kitchen with its bare wooden floor, beat-up white metal cabinets and sink unit, and wheezing, ancient refrigerator, then went on:

“He got loaded that night the same way he did every night. Dillard did, I mean. And our septic pipe had frozen the way it did every winter, and he’d put off fixing it the way he had every winter.”

The tiny woman with the dandelion fluff of brown hair sighed heavily as she remembered. “So what I suppose is, he went out the back door and stood on the back step and peed off the side of the porch the way he’d been doing since the pipe froze. And then he must’ve stepped
off
the porch. For a cigarette, I guess.”

Lizzie tipped her head questioningly.

“He didn’t want to get the smell inside ’cause he’d promised me that he’d quit,” Althea explained, rolling her eyes to show how serious that idea was, coming from her husband.

Lizzie imagined the next part. “And there was a frozen patch on the ground, wasn’t there?”

From peeing off the porch the way he’d been doing
. “An icy patch, from all those nights before where he’d been …”

Hearing it, Lizzie could see it: the feet hitting the slick spot, flying up in the air in an instant, and the head coming down,
thud
.

“That’s right,” Althea said softly. “Must’ve been early in the evening when it happened, too, because by the time I got home from work and found him, he was already frozen nearly solid.”

Her eyes sparkled with tears. “He was good company when he was sober, Dillard was.”

“Yeah.” They stood there together a minute watching the pig eat his potato peelings. “Yeah, I’m sorry for your loss.”

Lizzie walked to the door. “So, let me get something straight, though. You don’t think there’s anyone else, either, who might’ve had anything to do with your husband’s death?”

Althea shook her head sadly. “No. I mean for one thing, why bother? The way he was drinking, he’d have been gone soon anyway.”

“I see.” In the yard, Rascal romped with Althea’s dogs. “Well, listen, for what it’s worth I really don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

Althea’s face brightened. “I appreciate that. It’s just that when I heard he’d hired you, I was afraid that …”

Yeah
, thought Lizzie,
and I wonder who else drew their own conclusions about Chevrier bringing me on?
Maybe the sheriff’s suspicions weren’t quite as close to his vest as he thought.

“Don’t think of it anymore,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, I was just out here to find a lost pig.”

“Thanks,” said Althea again, her smile now so relieved that when Lizzie walked back to the Blazer, calling for Rascal, who galloped cooperatively along behind her, she felt she’d already done all she needed to for today. Find a pig, then eliminate an anxiety for someone—“Hey, back in Boston I could go all week without doing that much good,” she told Dylan as they headed back toward Bearkill. “But now, about this lost hunter of yours …”

Still thinking,
So some fool got lost in the woods, so what?

Dylan just wanted her attention, that was all; it was a risk she hadn’t considered before, that he might take advantage of the situation. But this was Dylan, after all, so how likely was it that he wouldn’t?

A silence, then: “She’s here,” Dylan said finally. “Lizzie, I think Nicki’s in Allagash, or near it.”

For an instant she thought she might lose control of the vehicle. Then her vision cleared and her hands steadied.

“I figured you’d better finish catching your pig before I told you,” he said, ducking away when she made as if to swat him.

“No, really,” he added, “my guy, the hunting guide, he’s not going to be ready for us for a couple of hours anyway.”

Why not?
she wondered immediately, always the suspicious cop. Back in Boston she’d told civilians when they were meeting and where, not the other way around. But before she could ask:

“The hunter I told you about, while he was out there,” Dylan said, “he saw a little blond girl. After the guide lost track of him, he wandered around, stumbled into an encampment, and—”

“Could it have been just someone’s house?” And by extension just someone’s kid, not the child Lizzie was looking for at all.

Dylan shook his head. “Guy didn’t think so. Said it was some kind of a weird situation, really way out there in the forest and not a normal house or—”

“Can he find it again?” Suddenly the rural landscape, only a backdrop moments before, shimmered with possibilities.

With hope. “He doesn’t know. I was on my way to see if I could get
anything out of him, that’s why I swung by to check in with you. Want to come along?”

“Oh, do I,” she replied, preparing to turn south at the highway intersection, back toward Bearkill. “Where are we meeting him, at the diner?”

Grammy’s, she meant, but Dylan stopped her before she made the turn. “Oh, no, he’s not coming down here. He’s got a camp to run, hunters coming and going. He can’t just up and leave.” He pointed north on the highway. “I’m going to him. Seventy miles or so, way up thataway.”

“Oh,” she said. “So that’ll take like …”

“Good chunk of the rest of the day. He’s on an island, takes a boat ride to get there even after the drive, but …” He looked impatient. “Why, you got something to do? Go help give rabies shots, maybe?”

“Oh, stop it,” she retorted. “I just—”

There was no reason, really, why she shouldn’t go, but she should let Chevrier know; she was still new here, after all, and if he tried to find her and couldn’t, he might become alarmed.

On the other hand, if she did tell him, and he objected …

“Lizzie, it’s already nearly noon and it gets dark early, remember?” Dylan persisted. “And I don’t know when that visiting hunter is leaving the camp.”