Chapter Four
After Keith Nygard finished up his lecture, Jimmy got back in his truck, still holding the hanky to his nose; he turned the key, put the Ford in gear, and pulled away from the curb. Cassie sat next to him, arms crossed, knees crossed, face working.
“You got any more smart ideas?” Jimmy mumbled through the hanky.
“You let him make fools out of us in front of everybody,” she said back.
“Some old guy from the cities, you said. Back right down.”
“Gonna be all over town.”
“I tripped and fell down on the ice,” Jimmy said.
“Bullshit. He spun you around and dropped you on your ass and got away with it, just like his fucking kid punched Teddy-”
“Mom, don’t swear. Dad tripped. Me too.” Teddy spoke up from the rear seat, where he pressed the ice pack the nurse gave him against his nose.
“No, I’m the one who tripped when I had to marry your dad,” Cassie muttered. And suddenly she had trouble breathing, as if the air they were taking in changed in their lungs and came out poison. She jammed her finger on the door panel controls and opened the windows, flooding the cab with icy air.
“Mommm,” Teddy protested.
“For Christ’s sake,” Jimmy said, and he hit his controls. The windows started up. Cassie jammed on hers again and sent the windows down again. An electric whine cycled as they both hit their controls and the windows jumped up, then down, then froze, stuck in their tracks.
They glared at each other.
Then Cassie relented, took her finger off the controls, and crossed her arms across her chest again. Jimmy closed the windows. They drove in silence for a while, no sound except the tap of Teddy’s GameBoy in the backseat.
Cassie spoke first. “So, what you gonna do?”
“Drive the speed limit home.” He craned his neck to check the rearview mirror, dabbed at his nose with the hanky. “Seeing how I got Keith on my tail.”
Another glum interval of silence. Then Cassie started in again. “He was a lot older than you, too. I saw some gray in his hair, over his ears.”
“Not now, Cassie. Please.” He sighed, seeing how no way she was going to back off; she was getting that feral Bodine vendetta fix in her eyes.
“I heard Keith talking to him,” Cassie said. “His name is Phil Broker. He rents Harry Griffin’s place, the one on Twelve, across the lake from us. Works for Griffin part-time.”
Jimmy grimaced, inspected the blood on the hanky, put it down, and tested his nose with the fingers of his free hand. The bleeding had stopped. He turned to his wife. “Part-time on the stone crew won’t pay much on that new Tundra he’s driving, or the freight on that house. Not after all the work Griffin put in fixing it up to rent to summer folks.”
“What’s Griffin pay his laborers?”
“About ten, fifteen bucks an hour.”
“Don’t fit, does it?” Cassie said.
“So? Maybe he’s got some money.”
“Then what’s he doing working labor part-time for crazy Harry Griffin? See, it doesn’t fit. Plus how he had you so fast. Like he’s used to putting men on the ground. Another thing. The way Keith was talking to him, kinda like two dogs sniffing each other out…”
“What are you getting at?”
“Dunno, just something,” Cassie said. Then she turned to the backseat. “How you doing, hon?”
“Okay, I guess.” Teddy was hunched over, preoccupied with the GameBoy in his free hand.
“No, you’re not okay. You’re in pain. And that’s what you’ll tell Ed Durning at the clinic. We’re gonna get you X-rayed for your neck.”
“Huh?”
“Your neck, it hurts, don’t it?”
“Ah? I don’t-”
“It hurts, honey. You tell Ed it hurts.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“She’ll apologize for hitting you. In front of everybody. I insist on it. We’ll make them pay.”
Jimmy accelerated around a bend and checked the mirror again. “Can you believe this shit? Fuckin’ Keith. He’s gonna follow us all the way home.”
“Dad, you said the F word. You and Mom both.”
“Don’t swear around Teddy. You know how I can’t stand that,” Cassie said in a strict voice.
Jimmy sighed. “Yeah, right. Teddy, I apologize for using bad language. Now, look, Cassie-Keith gave me a warning, says to back off this thing.”
“‘Keith says,’” Cassie pronounced with mincing sarcasm.
“He’s the sheriff, for Christ’s sake.”
“They don’t look after him like they should…”
“Cassie,” he said patiently, “we don’t need Ed Durning in on this. I want you to start cooling down now before it gets-”
She cut him with a look. “Gets what? Out of control.
Jimmy winced and looked away from her seething voice, and they drove in silence for a minute. Then he said, “Just take it easy, okay.”
“I just worry,” Cassie said.
“I know you do.” He dropped the subject, fixed his eyes ahead on the road. “I’ll drop you home. I have to get back to the garage.”
It took Jimmy and Cassie fifteen minutes to drive to the east end of the big lake where they lived in Jimmy’s dad’s house on the ten acres of prime real estate Jimmy had inherited. When they moved in three years ago, the woods had screened them. When Cassie was growing up, it had been the biggest house on the lake. Now there were new log homes dripping balconies and gables a hundred yards off on either side. Cassie stared at the bright new houses, all that glass and stonework. Lodgepole pine-they’d build the houses in Colorado. Take them apart, truck them cross-country, and put them back together. Like the summer people were mocking the older place where Cassie lived, boarded up in tired brown cedar siding…
The first thing Cassie did after Jimmy dropped them off was wave to Keith as he drove away in his police car. Keith was a sweet man. Her guardian angel.
But waving to Keith was one thing. Listening to him was another. The morning churned in her chest, dredging up gobs of anger, fear, and self-consciousness. This called for a response. No way she was going to back off on that guy and his snotty little kid.
Teddy drifted to his room to change out of his shirt and play his computer games. Cassie went for the kitchen phone, tapped in the number for the school office, and got Madge.
“So who are they, Madge?” she asked by way of hello.
“Honest, Cassie, I don’t have the slightest idea. New people. They showed up in January,” Madge said in a hushed tone.
“You gotta know something.”
“Well, there is one thing. Nobody’s ever seen the mother, just the dad. He registered her, drops her off, and picks her up every day.”
“That’s a little weird,” Cassie said, pausing slightly to furrow her brow. “Thanks, Madge.” She ended the call abruptly.
No-show mom-that didn’t fit either. The thing was taking a suspicious shape in her mind. She went to the living room, where they kept a tripod telescope to look out over the lake. Slowly she focused the lens and searched the west shore. Griffin’s was the narrow green house with the wraparound deck, cedar siding, a rusted tin roof, and
