Sendoff for a Snitch (9 page)

I stood there dumbly, feeling clumsy and out of place with the spindly furniture, delicately patterned rugs, and dusty rose curtains.

“Lie down,” she directed, “and I’ll cover you up.”

The pillowcase was white, with lace and little pink flowers embroidered on it. I’d lost my hair tie somewhere along the line. I was sure my hair was filthy. Not to mention I usually worked up a good sweat at work. It didn’t seem right to put my head on that pillow.

“Lie down,” she repeated.

I eased myself onto the couch and lay down with my head on the pillow. It had a smell that reminded me of spring at the Colemans, the foster home where I’d spent the happiest years of my life. My mind searched for a word for it. Lilacs. That was it. The Colemans’ yard had a row of lilacs along the property line in back.

Nicole settled a soft blanket over me and smoothed it, followed by a heavier quilt. My eyes closed.

“Think you’ll be warm enough?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled, but I was already almost asleep.

When I woke up, I had no idea how much time had passed. Dim light shone through the expansive windows. Rain drummed at the panes, but without its previous ferocity. Lying there for a moment, I mindlessly savored the soft warmth of my makeshift bed.

Then my brain started to kick into gear. Where the hell was I?

I ached all over. Had I been in a fight? I tried to clear my head.

The mental image of the woman and children on top of the SUV in the flooded underpass came back to me.

Running my hand over the soft fabric against my chest, I remembered. I was in Mandy’s back parlor, with all its delicate furnishings. I’d better move carefully.

What time was it? Did I have to go to work tonight? I couldn’t afford to miss a shift. And I certainly didn’t want to be let go for not showing up and not calling in.

What day was it? I’d gotten off work on Saturday morning. An overtime shift. My workweek started at midnight Sunday—really Monday morning. So I should have at least a whole day to worry about that. I hoped.

Lying here forever was not an option. I had a feeling my battered body was going to protest any movement at all. I rolled over.

I was right.

Heaving myself to a sitting position, I flexed my shoulder muscles and ran my hand over a tender spot on my back. Was that where I’d been rammed by a big floating branch or something?

The shirts and socks I hadn’t been able to manage before lay on a chair nearby. I reached over and grabbed the socks, pulling them on. This time, my fingers obeyed me, although reluctantly, and I didn’t feel like I was going to keel over on my face any minute. A decided improvement.

The air was chilly. Could Mandy’s emergency generator start the furnace? Shivering, I peeled off the sweater, put on the other shirts, and then put the sweater on again over them.

Shuffling my feet around on the floor, I found the warm slippers and stuck my feet in them. Light outlined a door. I opened it and stepped into the hallway.

Voices came from beyond the hallway, toward the kitchen. I went in there.

An enticing aroma of fried onions and sausage tickled my nose.

Nicole and Mandy were sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in fluffy pink robes.

Mandy jumped up and gave me a hug. “Jesse! How are you feeling?”

I returned the hug awkwardly. My mouth was dry, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to form words. I licked my lips. “Okay,” I managed to croak out.

She pulled a chair out for me. I slipped into it.

Nicole got up and poured tea for all of us. She took a loaf of something from a breadbox on the counter and cut off a few slices, which she put on a plate.

“Thanks for bringing me here and letting me stay. I was really tired. And cold.” I grinned. “And confused.”

Mandy nodded. “It was the least I could do, after you were so brave, rescuing those kids and their mother.”

I shrugged. “Couldn’t just let them stay there.”

“Nobody else seemed to have a real problem with that.”

I remembered the man who’d stepped into the water and then retreated. “They just didn’t know what to do about it.”

“But you did it.”

“Had to try something.” I sniffed the enticing aromas.

Nicole put the plate on the table. “Banana bread,” she said, getting another mug and filling it with tea. “It’s a little old, but it’s still good.”

I took a piece and bit into it. “My foster mother used to make this,” I said, “when the bananas started to turn black.”

Nicole laughed. “That’s when I make it, too.”

“It’s still raining pretty hard,” Mandy said. “Do you want me to give you a ride over to your place? You can see if it’s really flooded. The power’s off all over town, though. Thank goodness I decided to get that generator.”

I had no desire to go back to my apartment while it was still raining so hard. If I could get near it. It would be depressing.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to get in it,” I said. “It’s a basement apartment. The whole area was pretty flooded when I went by this morning. A friend from work said I could go stay at her place. She wasn’t going to be home till late. But that was last night, I guess.”

“I can give you a ride over there, then,” she said. “After breakfast. Until then, you can stay here. Is that okay with you, Nicci?” She smiled fondly at the other woman.

Nicole nodded. “Of course.”

Mandy cast an intense look at her that I couldn’t read. “This is your home now, too. And I wouldn’t want to do anything that made you uncomfortable.”

Nicole reached over and patted her hand. “If you’re comfortable with him staying here, then I am, too.”

I didn’t want to put them in an awkward position. “Look, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want me here,” I said. “I mean, I’m on parole and all. I can go stay someplace else.”

“Nonsense.” Nicole’s hand closed over Mandy’s. “Mandy told me all about how you talked her out of doing anything outrageous when Sterling was driving her crazy.”

With an effort, I kept a straight face. Mandy had tried to hire me to kill Sterling so she could get away from him. I’d pointed out that that was what divorce was for and taken her to her lawyer’s office. He’d made sure she had a safe house in which to stay while he plowed through the legal tangles.

Mandy nodded in agreement. “I owe you. So just stay here for a little while. We have a breakfast strata in the toaster oven. It should be done in about a half hour. Then I can drive you over to your friend’s.”

I had no idea what a breakfast strata was, but if it was the source of those wonderful scents, I’d love to have some. Gratefully, I nodded.

“Let’s go check out the news and weather,” Nicole said, getting up. “The TV’s in the middle parlor. We didn’t want to make any noise and wake you up. One outlet in there is hooked into the generator.”

I drained my mug of tea and followed them.

The middle parlor was furnished in spindly chairs and fringed lampshades with another patterned rug on the floor. Gingerly, I eased myself into one of the chairs, afraid it would collapse beneath my bulk. But it held.

Mandy picked up something that looked like a TV remote control, pointed it toward the fireplace, and clicked it.

A fully built fire sprang to life. I stared at it.

Seeing my puzzlement, Mandy laughed. “Gas,” she said. “It doesn’t need any electricity. And it throws off some nice heat.”

Nicole nodded. “We might as well eat in here, too, when the strata’s done.”

Sounded like a plan to me.

Mandy switched on the TV. I stared at that, too. It wasn’t like any TV I’d seen before. It was about four feet long and really thin. How could everything needed to get a TV show be in that huge wafer? But it worked fine.

She flipped through the channels until she came to a local all-news broadcast.

The flooding was the main item being covered. Pictures of the river overflowing its banks, an electrical substation sitting in the middle of a water-covered lot on fire. An SUV on its side floated lazily in a flooded underpass at the mouth of a tunnel.

Mandy shivered. “That’s where we were.”

“Good thing Jesse got the people out of it before it tipped over,” Nicole said.

Next was a scene of emergency service workers with chain saws, bathed in flashing red lights, cutting huge downed trees into manageable pieces and heaving them into piles next to the road.

They flashed to pictures of the exterior of the prison outside town. A place with which I was very familiar, but from an entirely different perspective. I couldn’t remember ever seeing it from the outside, at least in the daylight. Prison transports ran at night.

The sight of it made me wince. Instead of the usual spotlights sweeping the area between the inner and outer perimeter fences, the dimmer emergency lights were on. That meant the entire complex had no power. And that meant the only light the cells were getting would be from the generator-operated backup lights in the centers of the tiers. The heat was probably off. And the kitchen wouldn’t be operational, meaning no hot meals. Once a day, employees would bring around an entire day’s food in paper sacks while the inmates remained locked in their cells. I knew a lot of people would wolf everything down right away and then have nothing until the next day.

I wondered if the plumbing was working, or if the sewers had backed up. Not a pleasant thought.

The picture on the screen switched to a weather map. The rain would continue through the night, with more flooding. The announcer went into how this mega-storm had formed, a moisture-laden front swirling in from the Atlantic and merging with a system coming over the mountains. It seemed to be stuck now, right over us. The last time a storm of this magnitude had stalled over the area had been in 1972, when Hurricane Agnes had hovered over the area for days, dumping rain and flooding rivers.

That had been in June, though, not early spring like this, so they hadn’t had to contend with snowmelt in the mountains or ice on the river.

A state of emergency had been declared in Rothsburg. Most places of business, including the factories, were closed until further notice. So I didn’t have to worry about getting to work.

And my paycheck would be missing those hours.

Nicole set up fancy little tables next to the chairs in the parlor for us to eat breakfast. She brought in plates with large rectangles of casserole. The plates were delicate china with dainty painted flowers and a gold rim. I reached for the plate she’d put next to me, but it felt so fragile in my work-roughened hand that I put it back down and pushed it to the center of the little table. It might be valuable, and I was terrified it would crumble in my grasp.

Apparently, strata was some kind of baked egg dish with sausage and onions and cheese and slices of apple. It was really good. I wondered if it was hard to make. The ingredients were pretty affordable, and I bet Kelly and her kids would love it.

“Your clothes are still wet,” Mandy said as she collected the plates. “And even if they’d dried, I’m afraid they’re not very clean.”

That was an understatement. I’d worn them to work, where I sweated a lot, then into the dirty floodwaters. Not to mention the “extra” clothes that had been thrown around the restroom floor. And the socks dunked in the toilet.

I knew I could wear some of them, if I had to—I had a very limited wardrobe, and one of the major chores in my life was trying to have enough clean and dry clothing for work. I didn’t seem to have much success in that area.

Since I couldn’t exactly go around naked, I’d have to wear them regardless of their condition if Mandy wanted the things she’d lent me back.

But I’d really hoped she’d let me keep the things she’d lent me, at least until I could get my stuff to the laundromat.

“So,” she said, “I’ve got all of Sterling’s things. I suppose I can get rid of them, but I haven’t yet. You can have some if you can use any of it. Mostly he wore suits to work, but when he moved here, he got a lot of things from some of those outfitter catalogs. He said he might want to get a deer license and hunt, but he never did. Want to see if you want any?”

I was in no position to be choosy. And if any of them were like the cashmere sweater, I’d thoroughly enjoy them for as long as I could. “Yes, ma’am. I’d appreciate anything you can lend me. I’ll make sure it’s clean when I bring it back.”

“Oh, you can have it. I don’t want any of it back. I put some of it in the morning room.”

A mourning room? I’d never heard of such a thing. Maybe where the ashes of departed family members were kept? Or mementos? Surely it wouldn’t be caskets with actual bodies. But I didn’t want to appear totally ignorant, so I didn’t ask.

I followed her to a little room off the dining room. Gathering light, although still muted by the storm, shone through the large windows. The room faced east, and on a sunny day, it would be flooded with morning sunlight.

There was no urn with ashes that I saw, and no photographs or certificates or such. Definitely no caskets.

But there was a huge pile of warm clothes, some of it with the tags still on. Chamois cloth shirts. Rugged flannel-lined pants. Long underwear and thermal socks. An unfashionable, but very serviceable waterproof poncho. Best of all, an almost-new, down-filled jacket and a pair of high-topped leather boots.

My hungry eyes went to the boots. I picked them up. They weren’t steel-toed, so I couldn’t wear them to work, and they were a half a size too big, but I bet if I wore two pairs of socks, they’d fit just fine. And I could save my steel-toed boots for work.

“I wish I could offer you a shower,” Mandy said. “The generator won’t run the hot water tank. But you could change into whatever you want.”

It was hard to figure out what to say. “Thank you,” seemed appropriate, if inadequate, so I said that.