But she didn’t question, just greeted the girl and then invited us all to take a seat in the dining room while she got dinner on the table. I would have offered to help her, but frankly, I was on my last legs. I sank down into the ladder-back chair.
Chance and Jesse followed Miss Minnie into the kitchen. At first she tried to shoo them out, and then she gave in. “I reckon I can get the food on the table, boys.” Shannon and I both stifled a snicker at hearing them called “boys.” “But it would be a great help if you’d slide the leaf into the dining room table. It’s just right back there. . . .”
She had chairs enough already, so I just kept out of the way as the guys pulled off the tablecloth, fitted the extra wood in place, and locked it. The cloth went back on and we were ready to go. Before long, we all sat down with hot bowls of vegetable soup, a platter of piping hot corn bread, and real butter.
I remembered that Miss Minnie would want to say a short blessing first, so I spared myself the awkwardness of beginning before the hostess. I nudged Shannon, who sat beside me, spoon on the way to her mouth. Fortunately, the lady kept it short. She was a considerate hostess, and she put down a dish of cold minced chicken for Butch. He trotted to the dining room as we all dug in.
While we ate, conversation was sparse. We made small talk about where I’d been since I left, and how I’d met Chance. Miss Minnie was quite taken with the romance of my returning his lost keys, as if it meant I held the keys to his heart or something. She made a little joke along those lines, and Chance slid me a weighted look. Everyone laughed politely, but I could tell Jesse wanted me to say that Chance and I weren’t together anymore, not like she seemed to think.
For the sake of honesty, I did. “We’re just friends now, though.”
Miss Minnie raised her brows in surprise. “Does he know that?”
Chance frowned at me. “Unfortunately, yes.”
After we traded soup bowls for slices of Bundt cake, I felt almost up to bridging the subject we needed to discuss. Even then, I ate a few bites first, not wanting to miss dessert entirely if she took umbrage and chucked us out. Before I could decide what to say, Miss Minnie stood up.
“Go on, now. You can take your plates into the living room. I’ll make a pot of coffee and we’ll just visit a spell.”
“That sounds wonderful,” I said. “Thank you so much. It was delicious.”
The other three echoed my words with real sincerity. Living like we did, we missed out on home-cooked meals and grandmotherly kindness. At least, that held true for Chance and me; I wasn’t sure why Shannon wouldn’t have been eating well at home, unless she suspected her mother of tampering with her food. At this point I wouldn’t doubt it. But Jesse was the lucky one; he had a mother and a father waiting at home. She made pumpkin pie from vegetables his father grew at home. His family sounded impossibly idyllic, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like, sliding into a Fourth of July picnic at his side.
It sounded like everything I’d always wanted.
Five minutes after we sat down in the living room, Miss Minnie brought in a real silver tray, laid with fine eggshell china and old-fashioned cream and sugar bowls. She set the platter on the coffee table, casting us back to older times when it was actually used for that purpose, just like we were doing now. She carefully fixed each cup according to our specifications and then sat back in her rose velvet armchair, looking pleased.
Butch trotted in with nothing to report and fuzz on top of his head. I dusted him off and pulled him into my lap. Stroking a dog had to be one of the best relaxation techniques in the world. He burrowed into the crook of my arm and went to sleep.
“I don’t get visitors like I used to,” she remarked again. “I’m just that happy to see you, Corine. I always did wonder what became of you.”
I’d never get a better segue. “I’m well . . . but there’s a reason I came back.” Chance gave an encouraging nod, so I went on. “I need to find out the truth behind my mother’s death. I know something’s wrong here. I know about the thing in the woods, and that there’s evil running free in town. I already know all that, but people aren’t talking. I have no reason to think you will, other than your apparent fondness for me, but I’m willing to trade on that. The fact is, you may be our only hope for putting all the pieces together.”
Her hands shook as she curled her thin, blue-veined fingers around her cup, and her lined face went pale as milk. “Lord, Lord,” she breathed, turning her face upward as if in appeal to a god I no longer believed in. “The end of days has come at last.”
Unlucky Break
Things went to hell without a handbasket.
It was as if I’d flipped a switch, and the nice old lady who had served us supper disappeared. In her place sat a dire Cassandra prophesying doom and gloom. As the shadows lengthened, even her face looked different somehow, full of mad premonition.
“I saw them,” she said, staring at nothing. “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They’ve ridden through town more than once. At first I tried to pretend I didn’t see them, but the way they came and went . . . Oh, I knew.” She nodded sagely. “I knew.”
“Uh-huh,” Chance said, seeming worried.
He wasn’t the only one.
“But what they don’t know is that four angels come to banish them.” She blessed us with a beatific smile. “I should have known about you.” Miss Minnie nodded at me. “Eyes full of heaven and such an unearthly power in your hands. I should have had faith.”
“In what?” Shannon asked.
I guessed she didn’t identify herself as a guardian angel.
“In the Lord,” Miss Minnie answered. “The time of tribulation is on us.”
What do you say to that, really?
To give him credit, Jesse tried to make sense of it. “What have you seen that makes you think—”
“‘There was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.’” The old woman closed her eyes, obviously reciting from memory. “ ‘There fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters . . . there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key to the bottomless pit.’ ”
“It’s from Revelation,” Jesse muttered. “Obviously those verses hold symbolic meaning for her, but I don’t know what she’s talking about.”
With a little shiver, I realized we’d already found one of the places she was referencing. I’d noticed the ground around the hollow tree in the wood looked as though it had been hit by an asteroid, dead earth, almost charred, where the monster stored its trinkets. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit—it sure sounded like Miss Minnie thought whatever lived out there came straight from hell.
“You think we can prevent the earthquake, fire, and blood?” I asked, feeling my way through what felt like a mental mine-field.
“You will,” she said with certainty. “Or nobody. The Lord’s will be done.”
Try as we might, we couldn’t get any more sense out of her. After that pronouncement, she turned her face toward the wall and her eyes went strange and glassy, as if she gazed at some war-blasted inner landscape. Mentioning the wrongness in Kilmer seemed to have triggered an episode.
Butch leaped down from my lap, trotted over to her, and licked her dangling hand. We stayed until she came back to herself; it didn’t take long. She fluttered her lashes at us and patted her white hair nervously.
“Did I doze off? I’m sorry.”
“If you’re tired, I guess we should go.” Jesse pushed to his feet.
He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, so his face looked positively bristly, and dark circles shadowed his eyes. Clearly he hadn’t been sleeping well, but I’d been too self-absorbed to notice. What would it cost him, being here? Would he miss an important hearing? Was he allowed to cross state lines while on suspension and under investigation for possible misconduct? For the first time I considered that he might have put me ahead of his career. I exhaled shakily and shoved back the question of how important I truly was to him.
Before leaving, I tucked a white crochet afghan around Miss Minnie’s knees. She smiled up at me, drowsy from her spell. “I hope you’ll come back.” As we stood there, her eyes drifted closed again, as if she were too weary to stay awake a second longer.
I scooped the dog into my arms and we headed for the door. We couldn’t deadbolt it for her, but it did lock on the way out. Full dark had fallen while we ate, and the shadows seemed ominous. Pausing on the porch, I scanned the empty street. Butch whined, putting me on high alert.
The nearby houses had their curtains and shades drawn tight, and only tiny trickles of light gave a hint there was anybody home at all. The weather wasn’t brilliant, true, but you expected more foot traffic in a town this size, and people being neighborly. But we hadn’t seen either at all in Kilmer.
I expected an oily spill to break away from the others and try to drain the life out of me. In Laredo, it had happened more times than I could count. But this was a different enemy, less outright power and more guile. In some ways, our enemies in Kilmer might prove more dangerous.
“Well, that was pointless,” Shannon muttered.
She started to say more, and then a sharp sound split the night, like a truck backfiring, only—
“Get down,” Jesse growled.
I dove off the porch and behind the hedge as the flowerpot on the wrought-iron patio table broke wide-open and showered me in dirt. Two more shots rang out, and Jesse’s body thumped beside me. For a brief, terrifying moment, I thought he’d been hit, and then he rolled, peering backward beneath the hedge. He wouldn’t be moving so easily with a slug in him.