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Authors: Cindy Myers

BOOK: The View From Here
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The sound of a car engine whining up the grade made her freeze. The sound grew louder; then the vehicle turned into the drive of the cabin and stopped.
A door slammed, followed by the crunch of shoes on gravel. Not a woman's footsteps, though. These were too heavy. They clumped up the steps, across the porch to the door, and stopped. Cassie held her breath, waiting for a knock. It must be a friend of Maggie's who didn't realize she wasn't home. That, or an annoyingly enterprising salesman.
But no knock came. Instead, the knob rattled and the door creaked open. Too late, Cassie realized she'd forgotten to lock the door behind her. She peered around the opening of the alcove and stifled a gasp.
A man she'd never seen before stood beside the love seat. He was short and balding, with a small paunch showing beneath his golf shirt. He wore bright white tennis shoes, the kind that always make men's feet look like small boats. He glanced around the room and zeroed in on the boxes marked
Fragile.
He headed straight for them and pulled the top box from the pile and ripped it open.
Cassie watched, fascinated, as he lifted out what looked at first like a basketball-size wad of Bubble Wrap. He pulled at the tape that held the wrap in place, but it refused to give.
He turned away from the boxes and Cassie ducked back into the alcove just in time to avoid being seen. But the man moved into the kitchen and returned a few seconds later with a large knife. He sawed at the tape and began unwinding the Bubble Wrap. Finally, like the heart emerging from an artichoke, he held up a fluted glass vase, the pale green of seawater.
Smiling to himself, the man clumsily wrapped the vase once more in about half the Bubble Wrap he'd removed and stuffed it back in the box. Then he picked up the box and headed toward the door.
He was going to steal the vase and whatever else was in the box. Of all the nerve! He couldn't just waltz in here and help himself to someone else's belongings. Cassie had come to take back what belonged to her, but she couldn't stand by and let him
rob
Maggie. She stepped out from the alcove. “Stop right this minute!” she called.
The man yelped—actually yelped—and juggled the box frantically before clutching it to his chest. He turned and stared at Cassie, wide-eyed. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked.
“That is no way to address a lady,” she said primly. Her grandmother had taught her that etiquette, if wielded with the proper attitude, could be as effective a weapon as a sword. She moved farther into the room. “Where do you think you're going with Ms. Stevens's belongings?”
He drew himself up to his full height—all of five-eight, from what Cassie could tell. “These don't belong to Maggie. She was merely storing them for me.”
Was he seriously suggesting someone who lived in a 600-square-foot cabin would offer to store something for someone else? Cassie couldn't see it. If someone as tidy as Maggie was going to have boxes taking up precious space in her home, they were going to belong to her, not some dumpy guy. “I don't believe you,” she said.
The man scowled, wrinkles cascading all the way up his forehead. He resembled one of those wrinkly dogs—a bloodhound or a Shar-Pei. The image made Cassie less afraid. “What business is it of yours?” the man asked. “Who are you?”
“A friend.” Not exactly the truth, but if he was going to lie, she could do so, too. She took a step sideways, toward the kitchen knife he'd discarded on the floor. “If Maggie was storing something for someone, she would have told me,” she said.
“What are you? Her roommate? Fine. Then I'm the ex-husband. The bastard she's probably told you about. I gave her this glass and now I'm taking it back. And you can't stop me.”
Without looking back, he balanced the box on one hip and turned and opened the door.
Cassie stooped to pick up the knife. She didn't know what she'd do with it, exactly, but maybe he'd respond to a threat. At least she'd be able to protect herself if he tried anything.
“Aarrgh! What the fu—?”
Cassie looked up from reaching for the knife in time to see the box slide down the man's leg and bounce on the floor. She caught a glimpse of brown and white—was that fur?—and heard the scrabble of footsteps on the front porch. The man's arms windmilled and he flailed wildly at the door, throwing himself against it until it closed.
Ashen faced, he gaped at Cassie. “What the fuck was that?” he gasped.
Cassie clucked her tongue. “Profanity is the sign of a poor vocabulary.”
“I don't need a grammar lesson here, Grandma. Just tell me what the hell that is on Maggie's front porch.”
At that moment, a large pale snout pressed against the window beside the door. The man shrieked and backed up toward the love seat, tripping over the box of glass as he did so, which sent him sprawling. No better than he deserved for calling her Grandma. But the fall put him a little too close to the knife. She kicked it across the room, where it slid under the stairs. Then she turned and stared, fascinated, at the bighorn ram that looked back at her with soulful eyes. “It's a bighorn sheep,” she said.
“It attacked me,” the man said, still prone on the floor.
“Bighorns aren't generally known to attack humans.”
“I don't give a fuck what they generally do. This one attacked me as soon as I tried to go out the door.”
The ram did seem to be guarding Maggie's door. When Cassie moved toward it, he left the window and she could hear his hooves scrabbling on the floorboards on the other side of the door. “Apparently he doesn't want us to leave,” she said.
The man sat up. “Well, make him leave. I've got to get out of here.”
Cassie sat on the edge of the love seat, as far from the man as the small room allowed. “I don't think there's anything I can do about the ram,” she said. “Until it decides to go away on its own, we're stuck here.”
“Well, shoot it. I thought all you mountain people had guns.”
“No, that's all you Texans.” She immediately wished she could take the words back. He didn't have a gun, did he? Surely not. He was the type of little man who would have felt the need to wave it around before now. “It's illegal to shoot a sheep without a tag,” she said. “And right now is not hunting season.”
“We're talking self-defense. That animal attacked me.”
“If I did have a gun, I'd just as soon shoot you,” she said coolly. “After all, you did break in and were stealing Maggie's glass.”
“It's my glass. I told you. I paid for every damn piece of it.” Cassie could have made a similar argument about the book she'd come to retrieve—well, except for the payment part. But in her case, it was the truth. “You said earlier you gave the glass to her.” She had certainly never
given
Jake the book, only loaned it, with the understanding that he'd return it. Which he hadn't. So in this case, he was the thief.
She forced her attention back to the man. “If you gave it to her, the glass belongs to her.”
“Goddammit!” The man rose and took a step toward her. Cassie's heart hammered so hard she thought it must be visible through her clothing, but she kept her gaze steady on the man and fixed him with her best librarian's glare. “If you lay one finger on me, sir, I will kick you in the balls so hard you will be tasting them for the rest of your unnatural life.”
The man froze, then swallowed hard. Cassie continued to glare. She didn't know if she could really kick him that hard, but what man wanted to risk finding out?
Chapter 21
“I
know why Carter was so anxious to get the Steuben.” Barb's voice rang with triumph across the crackly cell phone connection.
“Why is that?” Maggie steered with one hand around the first curve up the road toward the cabin. She didn't believe in driving while talking on the phone, but there was no place to pull over on this narrow stretch, and she was in a hurry to get to the cabin and back to town to finish putting together the paper. She couldn't believe she'd left her flash drive with the story on last night's town council meeting on the table by the sofa. Rick had pitched a fit when she told him. Then again, Rick was always pitching a fit about something, and since no one else would work for the wages he paid—and certainly no one would do as good a job as Maggie did—she didn't think her position at the paper was in jeopardy.
Still, she needed to grab the flash drive and hurry back to the office, or they'd be there until midnight putting the paper together. “I'm sorry, Barb, we had a bad connection there for a minute. Could you repeat that last part?” And this time, Maggie would pay attention.
“Francine wants the glass.”
“Francine?” The woman already had more money than God, and she had Maggie's husband—now she wanted the Steuben, too?
“Yes, I heard from Jillian Patel, who heard it from Francine's cousin Michaela Jarvis, that Francine's best friend and chief rival, Anita Dickson, has this fabulous collection of Lalique glassware. So Francine decided that she needs to one-up Anita with a collection of vintage Steuben. Carter's job is to get the Steuben. She doesn't care how, but you can bet she's reminded him that he bought his first wife a collection of Steuben, so doesn't she deserve the same consideration?”
“And Carter, being the lazy cheap bastard he is, decided the easiest solution is to give her
my
collection.”
“Exactly. He'll buy it off you and present it to Francine, fait accompli.”
“Thanks, Barb. I'll let you know how it goes.” She hung up the phone and tossed it onto the seat beside her. She'd throw every piece of glass down a mine shaft before she'd sell it to Carter to give to Francine.
She rounded a curve faster than she should have, gravel flying. “Calm down, Maggie,” she told herself. “Deep breaths. You can handle Carter.”
A single taillight glowed ahead. As the dust settled, she recognized a familiar figure on a motorcycle. Jameso hunched over the bike, the set of his shoulders kindling a mix of longing and fury in her. Maybe she'd chase him down and confront him about the way he'd slept with her, then proceeded to ignore her. Or maybe she'd skip the conversation altogether and pound him with a tire iron.
She followed Jameso for more than five miles, fingers white-knuckled on the steering wheel. Maybe he was headed to her cabin right now, to apologize for ignoring her and to beg her forgiveness. She enjoyed a pleasant few moments fantasizing about making him grovel before she granted his wish. But then he turned off on a side road, giving no sign he'd ever seen her behind him.
Fine. Let him be that way. The last thing she needed in her life right now was another damn man.
The anger that had been simmering since Barb's phone call exploded when she turned into her drive and saw a familiar white rental parked crookedly in front of the cabin. Carter! Damn the man, what was he doing here? She'd tell him exactly what she thought of him and his selfish ass, and then she'd chase him off the property with an ax if she had to.
She skidded to a halt beside the rental and was out of the vehicle while the engine was still backfiring. Winston greeted her at the bottom of the steps, butting her playfully. “Not now, Winston,” she said. “I'm busy.” The ram followed her onto the porch. She shoved him aside to get into the house.
“It's about damn time you got here!” A familiar, irritated voice greeted her. Carter stalked toward her. One of the boxes of glass sat in the middle of the floor and he shoved it aside with one foot to get closer to her. “Between that damn animal on your front steps and your roommate here, I can't get out of this town soon enough.”
“Roommate?”
He looked over his shoulder and Maggie stared at Cassie Wynock, perched on the edge of the love seat like an old-fashioned schoolmarm come to tea. “Hello, Maggie,” she said coolly. “I didn't expect you home until this evening.”
“I forgot something.” Maggie marched to the table and snatched up the flash drive. She addressed Carter first. “What are you doing in my house, uninvited?”
“I came to talk to you about the Steuben. The door was unlocked, so I let myself in.”
“He was going to steal those boxes,” Cassie said. “He would have, too, if I hadn't stopped him.”
“You had nothing to do with it, bitch. It was that damned wild animal out there on the front porch.”
“Don't you dare call me bitch!” Cassie rose, but Maggie's glare silenced her. She'd deal with the librarian later. For now, she wanted to focus her wrath on Carter.
She moved closer to him and stared directly into his beady little eyes. “You are not getting the Steuben,” she said, her voice soft, so that he had to strain to hear. “You are going to leave this house and this county and this state, and never come back.”
“It's a free country. I can go anywhere I want.”
She leaned closer. “If you
ever
come near me again, I won't bother calling the police. Do you know how many mine shafts there are in these mountains? You would disappear and no one would ever see you again.”
His eyes looked less beady, widened in alarm. “You'd be the first person the police would suspect of murder,” he said.
“I don't think so. After all, I'm just meek little Maggie Stevens. I never so much as hurt a fly. But you could be the first. Now get out before I throw you out.”
He scrambled toward the door but stopped with his hand on the knob. “What about that beast out there?”
She laughed. “What about him?”
“He attacked me before.”
She went to the kitchen cabinet and took out three Lorna Doones. Then she took out three more. Winston deserved a reward for keeping her two intruders at bay. “While he's eating the cookies, you can leave,” she said to Carter as she passed.
She felt him scoot past her while Winston nibbled the cookies from her hand. The engine on the rental squealed; then the car fishtailed out of the drive, sending up a rooster tail of dust.
Maggie returned to the house and Cassie, who was seated on the love seat once more, as still and upright as an artist's model. “What are you doing here?” Maggie asked.
“I came to look for my book,” she said. “That man interrupted me before I found it.”
“How did you get in? I always lock the door.”
“There was a key over the lintel.”
Maggie didn't want to know how Cassie knew about the key. “And you thought you'd use it to come in and help yourself to my belongings.”
“The book belongs to me,” Cassie said. “I wouldn't have laid a finger on anything else.”
“Wait here a minute.” Maggie went upstairs and retrieved the book from the shelf by the bed. She took it to Cassie. “It's all marked up inside,” she said. “That's why I didn't want to give it to you. I knew it would upset you.”
Cassie paged through the book, the lines around her eyes deepening as she took in the obliterated text. “Why would Jake do something like that?” she asked.
“I don't know,” Maggie said. “I didn't know him and I don't understand him—any more than I understand any man.”
Cassie closed the book and nodded. “That man who was here—you were married to him?”
“Yes.” Sometimes it was difficult to believe now.
“He's not very nice.”
“No.”
“I heard what you said to him. That wasn't very nice either.”
“No, it wasn't.”
“But it was very good.” A small smile played around Cassie's mouth. “It doesn't pay to let a man get away with too much.”
“No, it doesn't.” She ran her thumb under the chain around her neck. She'd let Carter get away with too much for too many years. She smiled, remembering the shocked, scared look in his eyes when she'd threatened him. He hadn't been expecting that from meek little Maggie.
She really hadn't expected it from herself. But the rage and frustration had taken over. Or maybe she'd been channeling the ghost of her dead father, who no doubt would have tossed Carter out on his ass, and maybe Cassie, too.
She glanced at the woman beside her, who was running her hands over and over the cover of the book, stroking it. She didn't know what her father had said or done to hurt Cassie; she didn't want to know. But the cruelty of men could drive a woman to do strange things, so Maggie would overlook this particular lapse in judgment. “Are we even now?” she asked.
Cassie looked up. “What?”
“You have your book back. Are we even now? No more enemies.”
“Of course.” She stood, not meeting Maggie's gaze.
“Come into the library tomorrow morning and I'll issue you a library card.” She walked to the door and let herself out without a glance back.
Maggie picked up the box of glass and stacked it back with the others. So far the stuff had brought her nothing but trouble. She thought about opening the box and checking to make sure the pieces were intact. Maybe she'd take out a few and find a place to display them. But the idea roused no emotion—not sadness or curiosity or anything at all.
Carter had tried to steal the glass from her, but in the end he'd taken something else. Any sentiment she'd associated with the collection had left with him. She might even say he'd done her a favor. That and a library card weren't bad for an afternoon's work.
 
“How does this stuff get into such bad shape sitting in a box for a year?” Danielle attempted to unfold a clump of red, white, and blue bunting that looked as if it had been run over by a car before being stuffed into the cardboard carton.
“It's like this every year.” Lucille pulled out a banner advertising Hard Rock Days. “But once everything goes up, it doesn't look so bad.”
“How old is all this stuff anyway?” Olivia wrinkled her nose at a string of red and blue pennants, their pointed tips bent back on themselves.
“Probably older than you are,” Lucille said. “Is the iron hot? We're going to have to iron all of this.”
“How did I get appointed to the decorating committee?” Olivia asked. She wet a finger and touched it to the iron, which sizzled satisfactorily.
“You were in the store when I decided it was time to get out the decorations,” Lucille said.
“Lucky us.” Danielle smiled and laid the bunting over the ironing board. “We don't have to actually hang this stuff, do we?”
“No, the power company sends someone over to handle that.” Lucille smoothed the banner over her front counter. “I think I've got some black paint somewhere, to touch up the lettering on this banner.”
“Why doesn't this cheapskate town spring for some new decorations?” Olivia asked.
“Because we're broke. And cheap. And these will look fine once we work on them a little.”
The bells on the door of the shop jangled and Maggie backed in, her arms wrapped around a large carton. “Another volunteer,” Danielle said.
“Lucille, you take consignments, don't you?” Maggie asked.
“I do. What do you have there?”
Maggie deposited the box on the front counter, on top of the banner. “Steuben glassware. I've got four boxes I want to sell.”
“Steuben?” Lucille frowned. “You'd get more money for something like that selling it on eBay, or at a shop in Denver.”
“I don't want to fool with that. Can you sell it for me? I don't mind paying your commission.”
“I can sell anything eventually. And I know a few collectors who might be interested. Let's see.”
Maggie ripped the tape off the top of the box and took out several wrapped bundles. Olivia and Danielle put aside their work to watch as Lucille peeled away layers of Bubble Wrap from around delicate vases, goblets, figurines, and bowls in orange, green, blue and pink.
“This is gorgeous,” Olivia breathed, stroking the rim of a pink and white bowl with the tip of one finger. “Why would you ever want to sell it?”
“My ex-husband gave me that bowl for my birthday two years ago,” Maggie said. “The next day he left town on a ‘business trip.' Turns out he went to Cancun with his mistress. I got the bowl; she got a vacation at the beach.”

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