And the battle—brief but epic—was over.
But the process—the almost interminable process—of consuming the mouse was only beginning.
CHAPTER ONE
“Hello?”
“Lynn, dear, it that you?”
“Victoria?” I darted a quick glance at the old-fashioned Big-Ben wind-up alarm clock on the pine nightstand. Its rigid arms pointed to 7:15. Not that long past dawn.
Even for what was essentially a farming community like Fox Creek, it was a bit early for a telephone call, especially a simple social call to exchange the latest recipes or gossip about the doings of wayward youngsters or brag about the splendid state of one’s gladiolas.
“Victoria, are you all right?” My voice was harsher than usual, both because I had only been awake a few minutes and because of the sudden fear that made me sit bolt upright in bed.
“I’m just fine, dear.”
“Are you sure? It’s only....”
“Yes, of course I’m sure. I just need to ask a favor. It’s about a friend of mine.”
By this time, I was on my feet, cell phone in hand, and on my way to the closet, mentally choosing which clothes I could throw on if Victoria Sears needed me right away.
“But you’re okay?” I repeated. Victoria was, after all, well into her seventies, coming up on her eighties with a speed that I wasn’t sure she herself sometimes recognized, and fiercely independent. Even knowing her for only a few weeks, I couldn’t imagine anything short of a life-threatening emergency that would make the woman call—and call for help—this early. Victoria was a stickler for the proper forms.
Victoria laughed. It was a light, pleasant sound, like water running over stones in a creek bed in early spring. But we were already close enough friends for me to detect something more, a hint of darkness, beneath the sound. That small undercurrent frightened me.
“I’m fine. Really. But I do need your help with...with something that might be rather urgent.”
I had already pulled on a pair of jeans and was shifting the cell phone to my other hand so I could work my way into a blouse.
“What is it?”
“Well, a very dear friend of mine is...is in a bit of trouble, I think. I just got a call from Carver—the Ellises live next door to her—asking if I could get down there as soon as possible.”
“Do you need me to drive you?” Victoria owned a sturdy vehicle and was more than capable of driving herself anywhere she wanted. Perhaps she was more shaken up than I had imagined over her friend’s difficulty—whatever it was—and didn’t trust herself on the road.
“If you could I would greatly appreciate it. The Behemoth”—that was her pet name for her station wagon—“is laid up at the moment. She’s in the garage in town. If you could just pick me up and take me down-mountain and drop me off at the Ellises, I’d....”
“I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“You don’t need to hurry too fast. I don’t think there is any real rush. Not any more. It’s...well, I’m not sure there’s really anything I can do, but I did tell Janet Ellis that I’d be there.”
“I’m almost out the door, Victoria,” I said, buttoning the last button on my blouse.
“Thank you, Lynn dear. I truly appreciate it.”
She hung up.
I rummaged around in my drawer for a thick pair of socks and dropped onto the rumpled bed to put them on. My high-topped hiking boots—a fashion statement I would never dreamed of wearing before I arrived in Fox Creek only a couple of months earlier—were lying by the side of the bed where I had left them the previous afternoon after a long, luxurious tramp into the low mountains behind my cabin. Toppled onto their sides, the boots looked comically like a couple of exhausted soldiers taking a welcome but unexpected breather.
I didn’t know what Victoria might need me for, but I knew enough about the area to come prepared. The last time I had shared an emergency with Victoria, we had had to hike up and down the mountains abutting her home twice, making one of the trips by flashlight long after dark, and this time I was determined to be ready for anything.
I grabbed a bagel from the refrigerator and gulped down a quick glass of icy milk. At the doorway, I nearly bolted through before I remembered to take my floppy straw hat down from the rack and jam it on my head. Estelle had instructed me to take a hat whenever I went anywhere, and her advice had proved useful several times now.
Okay—bagel, milk, hat. Check. And I was on my way.
Victoria’s home—she called it a cabin but it was really much more than that—was only a mile and a quarter from the place I was renting from my mother’s friends, Estelle and Edgar Van Etten. The first time I met Victoria, on that memorable day when Alix Macrorie’s body had been discovered at the foot of Porcupine Falls, I had walked the distance. Physically it had taken me the better part of half an hour but internally, the trek had seemed infinitely longer.
It had been the first anniversary of Terry and Shawn’s deaths, and the last thing I had wanted was to let anyone else intrude on my private sorrows. But I had promised Estelle, and I had made the trip.
And in many ways, that short walk had saved my life.
Now I had a chance to repay Victoria in some small measure for what she had done for me that day.
It took a little more than five minutes of bouncing along the rutted road to get to Victoria’s, but not much more. She was waiting for me at the gate that led from a low picket fence through a garden of carefully cultivated wild flowers to the front door of her house.
She was dressed in what I recognized as her get-out-and-get-to-work garb: loose jeans that would have looked absolutely ridiculous on any other woman her age but that seemed perfect for her; a riotously flowered blouse that must certainly have been hand-sewn but would have passed muster in any made-to-order store; sturdy boots of the same brand as my own (not a surprise, since she had taken me shopping shortly after the furor over Alix’s death had subsided and instructed me in the relative merits of half a dozen possibilities); and her own wide-brimmed floppy hat. Her over-sized handbag hung loosely from its shoulder strap.
She waved a cheery greeting as I pulled up at the fence, but I thought I saw a certain grimness beneath her welcoming smile.
I had barely pulled to a stop before she was at the car door, had opened it, and was settling herself in the passenger seat, cinching her seat belt with a dexterity that would have put a woman thirty years her junior to shame.
With one hand she gestured—rather imperiously, perhaps, but I was used to her mannerisms—back down the road.
“Head on into town. The Ellises live just on the other side.”
Since the road dead-ended at Victoria’s fence, it took me a couple of minutes to maneuver the car around, but finally we were aimed in the right direction. I hit the gas and we took off down the road.
Victoria didn’t say much. At first she sat ramrod stiff, clutching the top of her handbag, which told me that she was far more concerned about whatever we were about to confront than she was willing to admit.
Something was wrong, seriously wrong.
I knew her well enough to understand that when it was time, she would tell me everything I needed to know. She was normally a fountain of information, at times downright chatty, but today she seemed more taciturn than I had ever seen her.
We continued toward Fox Creek—“down-mountain” as the natives would have said—until we passed Estelle and Edgar’s