Kate. God, her taste in music . . . most of the stuff was hurtin' lovesick truck drivers singing to their hound-dogs, trash or worse, but Alice could stand Johnny Cash. "Folsom Prison Blues" this was, she recognized it instantly and shivered once again. He sang about killing a man, shooting him just for thrills.
Her hand jumped to the selector and switched over to the CD player. Gentle plucked notes filled the air. Alice let them wash over her.
Killed just for thrills. But those sacrifices weren't thrill killings. Mayan or Aztec ritual, instead. Offerings to the gods to make the sun rise every day. Or to drink the Power that death released.
Jackie. Tupash. Jaguar. The stone circle. Rowan blood.
Alice felt sick. Her knees turned shaky and she sank back into a chair. Atropos flowed into her lap and bumped noses with her, concerned, offering warmth and purrs and silky fur to stroke.
I've got to find Kate and warn her.
*~*~*
Kate had vanished. No answer on the cell phone, no answer at her trailer, no answer over at Lew's old house where she still had the phone connected. No echo of that distinctive Dodge truck engine rumbling through the village. Not parked at the trailer, not parked at Lew's. Alice checked, prowling the twisted autumn streets of Stonefort in her battered rust-bucket Subaru. And then she had to get back to the House. Wood delivery, scheduled weeks ago.
She watched Em Beals and his crew stack firewood in the second shed, frowning. Not at the quality of the wood, not a rotten stick in the load, all clean and it rang damn near dry when the chunks thumped into the stack for all that she'd ordered green, but at the count.
"That don't look like five cord to me."
Em didn't even turn. "Racked it up at my wood-yard. Five cord plus. I give good measure."
"Don't doubt. But I know how much that shed holds. Six and a half, maybe seven, I make it."
Now he stopped tossing splits to his helper and shrugged. "Loose-stacked for dryin'. Spreads out."
"I know how much that shed holds, 'loose-stacked for drying.' You'll never feed the wife and kids by giving your work away. How much do I owe you?"
He turned back to unloading his truck. "I'll send you a bill."
Oh, hell. He was going to be difficult. "Emmanuel Anson Beals, I asked how much I owe you. You got a family to feed."
He tossed the last two sticks over the tailgate and stood up in his truck bed, hands on his hip-bones, and stretched kinks out of his spine. "Seems I remember you spent two weeks solid with Millie, after she lost the baby. We never saw a bill for that."
Pigheaded clamdiggers . . . "The hospital paid me."
A shake of his head. "Hospital never paid for two weeks care, twenty-four hours a day, plus cooking, cleaning, sleeping with the kids. We still owe you. Wood's just on the account. I've got maybe two days in it, total, plus diesel and chainsaw gas."
"Em, either you take a check with you or you leave this dooryard with some bad thoughts following you. Take your choice."
He winced. His family had lived in Stonefort long enough to know damned well what "bad thoughts" meant from the resident witch. "Five cord, fifty bucks a cord."
And he'd charge family or close friends a hundred a cord. Going rate this fall, cost of fuel oil being what it was. But if she wrote out a check for that, he'd never cash it. Come to think of it . . . she ducked back into the house and came out with her wallet instead of the checkbook. "Six cords, fifty bucks a cord, three hundred."
She counted out cash, tens and twenties plus some slight-of-hand. He shook his head and took it. Sometimes you just had to be firm with these people.
Switch the subject before he gets stubborn. Or counts the bills himself and sees the fifties you palmed in to make fair value. "You seen Kate around town? Her cell phone's switched off and I need to talk to her."
That drew a lifted eyebrow. "I think I saw her headed out by Davidson's Brook. Maybe an hour, two ago. When we were bringing the second load."
He climbed into his truck with his helpers, started it up with a diesel roar, and pulled out, leaving her frowning. Davidson's Brook? Damn-all out that way, scattered houses and the tidal creek where Morgans used to careen their ships to clean the hulls.
Kate's mom and stepfather lived out there, but that just meant she'd be more likely to take another road. Kate avoided them like they carried plague. Probably even worse now that those missing legal papers had added tension to the mix.
Alice shook her head and turned back to the woodshed. World might be screwed up and all, but she had next year's wood in while she was still burning the last of last year's. Dry wood under cover was money in the bank. That had been true since before Stonefort ever heard of banks.
Then she noticed Daniel Morgan by the corner of the house, that Morgan way of never being visible until he wanted to be seen. She wondered how long he'd been there. He still seemed more Indian than any dye job had a right.
"You look like a man with a question."
"Two, really. You got a minute?"
She nodded and led him into the house, into the parlor, sat, and waited. He didn't look happy.
"Couple of things, like I said. Ben's been an ass, not like him at all, that blow-up about Gary and his girlfriend. Now the boy's gone missing. You've got a way of finding people. I don't want to know
