'Yeah. Just a little pocket here, I guess. We was always fixin' to get together with them fellers at the National Weather Service and maybe find out why, but never did get around to it.'
Pointedly, Rourke said, 'Well, there's always tomorrow,' and smiled.
'Hey, there you go.' Al laughed. 'All set.' He withdrew the nozzle and started to replace the gas cap.
Checking the pump, Rourke reached into his pocket for his money clip. He handed the man a twenty.
il get some—
'Keep the change.' Rourke smiled, remounting the Harley, starting it, and upping the kickstand.
'Say . . . thanks, Abe.' Al waved.
'O.K.' Rourke nodded. They were all insane, he decided, as he started back into the street. . . .
'You're a good cook,' Rourke told her, looking up from the steak and eggs nearly finished on the blue- willow plate in front of him.
'I don't usually get the chance.' She smiled. 'Living alone and all.'
He smiled back at her. 'You haven't lost your touch.'
She turned back to the sink and shut off the water, then turned back to him, wiping her hands on her apron. 'You haven't asked me any questions yet.'
'You promised it'd all be made clear. I'm waiting for you, I guess.' He smiled. He had questions, but wanted to hear her answers first somehow. 'I gather that because I'm supposed to be your brother, it's assumed I'll go along with whatever's going on here?'
'That's right,' she said, smoothing the apron with her hands, then sitting down opposite him. She poured more coffee into the blue-willow cup, then set the electric percolator down on the table top on a large trivet. 'I called work—told them I'd be in late. They understood, with my brother coming to town and all.'
Rourke forked the last piece of steak, then looked at the woman across from him. 'Telephones?'
'Um-hmm.' She nodded, smiling.
He looked on the table at the folded newspaper. 'May I?'
'We're probably the only town this size in America with a daily newspaper,' she said with a definite air of pride, handing it to him.
He opened the paper. The headline read: HALLOWEEN FESTIVITIES SET FOR
TONIGHT. A heading on a column read: SCHOOL BOARD ELECTION RESULTS TALLIED
'School board election?'
'Day before yesterday.' She smiled.
'And yesterday was the Fourth of July.'
'Um-hmm.' She nodded, fingering back a wisp of dark hair with a touch of gray in it.
'And tonight's Halloween?'
'For the children—they love it so.' She smiled.
'Tomorrow night Thanksgiving?'
'Yes.'
Rourke sipped at his coffee; she had drunk from the same pot so he trusted it. He trusted nothing else in the town.
Sarah Rourke put a fresh piece of wood into the freestanding stove; it had been converted from propane, she guessed. There were plenty of chairs and table legs remaining and the weather seemed to be moderating slightly.
She stood up, letting the children continue to sleep in the bed. She had thrown the bodies overboard, and all of the bedding. Because of the fresh air, the mattress hadn't taken on the smell of the bodies, of the dead man and woman. They had worn wedding rings, and Sarah assumed they had been husband and wife.
The ice had melted sufficiently on the deck of the houseboat, and she could walk there—with care. She leaned against the rope railing; the ice there had completely melted and the rope was wet beneath her fingertips.
She stared out onto the lake, wondering what horrors lay ahead on the shore.
After disposing of the bodies, she had gotten the houseboat belayed to a large tree trunk growing near enough to the water, then she'd brought Michael and Annie down the rise with the horses. She had usedTildie and Sam as draft animals to tow the houseboat along the water's edge, toward a better and more even piece of shoreline and to a jetty nearby. There children and animals had boarded. The animals were now tethered in
the center of the main room of the houseboat—the carpet destroyed and the animals cramped, but warmer. Then with Michael and Annie, she had rigged an anchor from a heavy deadfall tree the horses had towed down. She had planned to pole the boat away from the shoreline if possible and had been in the process of searching for something with which to do the poling when Annie had pressed a switch on the engine controls—the engines had rumbled to life for an instant. Sarah had dried off the battery terminals, then started the engines again; this time the engines caught. Twin inboards, she had determined, and the fuel gauges read over half full. She had used the engine power to bring them to the center of the lake, and had dropped the anchor there for a safe night— the first she had spent in—She lurched forward, against the railing, hearing a tearing sound, the breaking of wood, the straining of metal. Behind her, the anchor rope had broken. She stared dumbly at where it had been, then down at the water.
There was a current. There hadn't been a current.
