four

It’s not a date, Death reminded himself. He paused at the last stop sign before turning onto Wren’s street and glanced dubiously at the small bouquet in his passenger seat.

Madeline had had very definite ideas about flowers, and he wasn’t really sure if her standards were hers alone or if they were shared by women everywhere. If they were, he was screwed. Madeline had expected roses, a dozen long-stemmed preferred, though half of that was acceptable if they were arranged in a lead crystal vase with greenery and baby’s breath. The roses should be pink or red, and the florist’s name on the box or gift card was as important as the type of flower.

Death tried to imagine, just for a second, how she would have reacted to a fistful of irises, plucked from a muddy ditch and wrapped in newspaper. He also worried a little about whether he might be insulting Wren by giving her something Madeline would have considered so far beneath her. His current finances, though, didn’t run to long-stemmed roses, and he really wanted to give Wren flowers. His mother hadn’t raised him to take advantage of a woman’s kindness and not at least try to repay it.

He sighed, scrubbed a hand down the side of his face and made the final turn onto a narrow, tree-lined street in a residential neighborhood at the edge of town. He pulled into the driveway behind her truck and took a minute to study his surroundings. After all these months, he still had a tendency toward hyper-vigilance. A car backfiring could send him diving for cover. But he wasn’t suffering from PTSD. He told himself that on a daily basis.

Wren Morgan lived in a one-story white house with a deep, shadowed front porch, its roof supported on big, square pillars, with a rickety white picket fence around the front yard. A big red oak shaded the front. The largest branch sported a tire swing and a rut worn through the patchy grass showed it was well-used.

Death grabbed his flowers and swung down out of the Jeep. He entered the yard through a gap in the side fence and a three-legged hound dog pulled itself up and limped over to meet him.

Death stopped to rub her head and speak to her before he climbed the broad stone stair to the porch. A scruffy yellow tomcat lay like a sphinx on the left-hand plinth at the top of the stair rail. One ear was torn from fighting, a scratch ran across his nose between his eyes and his fur stood in odd spikes, a testament to old injuries long healed. Death paused beside him and the cat narrowed his eyes belligerently but suffered his ears to be scratched. Death laughed.

“You remind me of Chief McKee,” he said.

“Who’s Chief McKee?” Wren asked from the doorway. She wore an apron over her jeans and there was a smudge of flour across her nose.

“A retired Chief Petty Officer I met at the VA in Arlington. He was a Vietnam vet. A double-amputee—he lost both legs just above the knee. He had crippling arthritis, he was hard of hearing and blind in one eye. When I met him, he’d gone in to have his hand X-rayed. He punched out a twenty three-year-old college wrestler who insulted his granddaughter.”

Wren laughed, a musical sound, warm with affection. “Yes, that sounds like Thomas all right.”

“Thomas? Really? Not Mortimer or Methuselah or Puggsly?”

“I didn’t name him,” she defended herself. “The people down the street got him when he was a cute little kitten. When he got big and cantankerous, they pitched him out to fend for himself.”

Death grimaced. “Gotta love people like that. What about—?” he tipped his head toward the dog.

“That’s Lucy. She was like that when I found her. The vet thinks she got caught in a trap and chewed off her leg to escape.”

“I see. I think you take in strays, Miss Morgan.”

“There’s a lot to be said for strays,” she answered, and held the screen door open for him.

Death paused to wipe his feet on the mat before edging past her into a shadowy living room, already lit with the soft glow of lamps in the early evening. This wasn’t a house you’d see in any magazine. Faded throw rugs were scattered across the hardwood floor. The furniture was mismatched, slightly shabby but comfortable-looking. Barn wood shelving lined the walls, holding an apparently random collection of books and DVDs and an eclectic assortment of knickknacks.

“I, um, I brought you some flowers.” Nervously, Death offered up the bouquet.

Wren’s face lit up and her voice, when she spoke, was filled with warmth. “Irises! My favorite! They’re beautiful! Thank you!”

He shrugged nervously, ready to apologize that they were nothing fancier, but she lifted them to her face to breathe in the scent, closing her eyes and tipping her head with delight. The purple flowers and her red hair shouldn’t have gone together in the slightest, but there in the soft golden glow of the lamplight, somehow they did.

She closed the door behind him and turned to lead the way deeper into the house. “Come on into the kitchen. Dinner’s almost ready. I stopped by between auctions and put a roast in the slow cooker. There’s biscuits in the oven and I was just making a salad.” With her hands full of flowers, she tossed her head at a high shelf over the sink that held about a dozen old odd jars and bottles. “Can you reach me down that milk bottle?”

Death fetched her the bottle and she arranged the irises with a careless flair. Cooking filled the kitchen, the richness of the roast beef and the heady smell of biscuits baking. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Um, yeah. Can you set the roast on the table? The stoneware insert just lifts out of the slow cooker. There’s hot pads in that drawer there.”

He did as she asked, setting the hot bowl on a wrought iron trivet, as she pulled the biscuits from the oven and dumped them into a napkin-lined basket. The table was already set with a selection of mismatched, colored glass dishes. The atmosphere was warm and homey and for a moment he was transported back to his mother’s kitchen—tussling with Randy while Gram and Gramp and Nonna Rogers laughed at them. Dad cuffing them on the backs of their heads and telling them to use their big-boy manners.

Death swallowed hard around the lump in his throat and surreptitiously wiped his eyes.

Wren tossed the salad one last time and set it on the table and Death held her chair for her before he seated himself. He tucked his napkin into his lap.

“This is really nice,” he said. “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

“It was no trouble.”

They were busy for a moment passing plates back and forth, serving themselves, buttering biscuits.

“You know, I haven’t had a home-cooked meal since before I went overseas.”

Wren cocked an eyebrow at him. “She didn’t cook for you?”

He followed her gaze to his own left hand. The tan burned into his skin by the hot Afghanistan sun was beginning to fade, but it was still dark enough for the white circle around his ring finger to stand out in stark relief.

“You don’t want to hear my sob story.”

“You’ve obviously heard mine.”

“Touché.” He took a minute to eat another biscuit, thinking it out.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Death shook his head a bit and waved his hand dismissively. “It’s okay. It’s just not a very interesting story. Not nearly as entertaining as finding out your fiancé’s gay.”

Wren frowned at him. “I’m glad everyone thinks that’s entertaining. Personally, I found it more humiliating than anything.”

He had the grace to look abashed. “I’m sorry,” he said gently, reaching across the table to touch her hand. “You’re right, and I shouldn’t make fun of you. God knows, I’ve seen my share of humiliation, too.” He pulled his hands back, scrubbed his palms against his jeans. “Madeline and I were married right out of high school. I guess she was expecting life to be all rainbows and sunshine. Heck, maybe we both were. It didn’t work out that way. And, to be fair, it’s never easy, being a Marine spouse. She left me while I was in Afghanistan. Cleaned out our bank account and was gone.”

“I’m sorry. That sucks.”

“Yeah, and that wasn’t the half of it. After I was discharged, she came back broke and pregnant and wanted me to take care of her.”

“What’d you do?”

“I took care of her, until her baby was born. But I didn’t take her back.” Death pulled together the tattered fragments of his dignity and looked Wren in the eye. “I was a Marine. The motto’s ‘Semper Fi’, not ‘Semper Doormat’.”

“Good for you!”

Death gave her a small but genuine smile. “You asked if I had issues, those would be my issues.”

“Everyone has issues,” Wren said. “That doesn’t mean … I don’t know.” She tapered off, not sure if she dared say what she was thinking, but Death gave her a wistful smile and she suspected he knew what she’d left unsaid.

They topped off dinner with apple pie and ice cream, then Death helped her put away leftovers and stack their dishes in the sink. When they were ready to start going through Mrs. Fairchild’s papers, Wren took an old soda bottle from the windowsill, half filled it with water and put a single iris into it to take with them into the living room.

She set the iris in the middle of the coffee table and nodded toward a closed door to one side. “There are five and a half file boxes full of papers,” she said. “I’ve got them stacked in the corner of the bedroom.”

Death gave her a wicked grin. “Are you trying to lure me into your bedroom?”

Wren blushed and scowled at him. “Do you want to see the files?”

“Of course. And your bedroom.” He pushed the door open and went in, looking around curiously. Like the rest of the house, the bedroom was furnished with scarred, mismatched furniture. A sturdy wooden four-poster bed held a handmade quilt in primary colors. A huge, oval mirror topped a massive dresser and Death counted five lamps, each with a fancy shade and some sort of floral motif. The overall effect was one of character and comfort.

The file boxes were stacked in a corner off to his left. Beside them, there was a pile of plastic grocery sacks filled with old clothes. Death noticed a familiar-looking scrap of cloth and, in spite of himself, reached into one of the bags to pull out a ratty pair of men’s underwear.

Wren laughed. “Scary what people will sell in a yard sale, isn’t it?”

“Not as scary as the fact that you bought it.”

“I didn’t buy it!”

“You stole it?”

She snatched the garment from him and smacked him with it before cramming it back into the bag. “Okay, so I guess I did buy it, but not specifically.” She caught the question in his eyes and explained. “On Saturdays, sometimes, I go around the yard sales when they’re closing. People don’t like to take things back in the house and put them away again, so a lot of times they’ll let you have whatever’s left for next to nothing. I wash them and mend them and then give them to the thrift shops.”

“That’s very public spirited of you.”

She gave him a cheeky grin. “It takes a village to raise a village idiot.”

Death pulled a battered baseball cap from one of the sacks and smashed it down over her head. Then he grabbed up the nearest box of files and carried it out into the living room. Wren, still wearing the cap, followed with another box.

“Do you want to just start with these and get more when we’re done?”

“That’s a plan.” Death set his box down on the floor at one end of the coffee table and dropped onto the sofa. “You got any idea what’s in these?”

“Um, not really.” Wren set her box down on the table and dropped onto the other end of the couch. She glanced at Death, across the short expanse of sofa cushions, then pulled the box over to the seat between them.

Death grinned. “Removing temptation?”

“You hush.”

Still laughing, Death popped the lid off of his box and pulled out a handful of papers. “I got … phone bills. Looks like about forty years worth of phone bills. Good grief! Did this woman never throw anything away?”

“I’ve got a copy of the deed, some legal-ey lookin’ stuff and a map.” Wren turned the map sideways and then upside-down. “I can never read these,” she complained. “Why is it they never put in landmarks?”

“Like what? ‘Go down past the old red barn and turn left when you see a cow standing in a field?’”

“Old Man Pickering’s.”

“What?”

“That’s how you get to Old Man Pickering’s. Of course, it’s a mule, not a cow, but I reckon you’re a city slicker so you probably wouldn’t know the difference.”

“Cute. But what if you have to go somewhere farther away, like, say, Chicago?”

“That’s easy. I’ve got a compass in my truck. Chicago’s northwest, so I just drive northwest until I run into a big city.”

Death grinned so big it hurt and leaned over the file box between them to whisper in her ear. “Chicago’s northeast.”

Wren gave him a level glare. “I’d hit a city eventually.”

“Bismarck, maybe.” He took the map from her. “Hey, a plat map! This could be useful.”

“Oh, I’ve got something else you should see, too!”

“Does it involve cleavage?” he teased as she jumped up and crossed to a bookshelf. She blushed and he laughed at her. “Just think of me as a tutorial on how to tell if a guy’s gay or not. Trying to see down your shirt: straight guy.”

“You’re incorrigible,” Wren scolded, handing him a sheaf of papers and seating herself on the floor on the other side of the coffee table.

He spread out the papers on the table. “What is this?”

“Sanbourne Insurance fire map from 1873. They put out thousands of large-scale maps of small towns in the late 1800s, to help insurance adjustors set premiums. See, the large buildings have written descriptions tagged on and it shows outbuildings, roads, wells, cisterns …”

“Where’s the Campbell house?”

Wren reached across, circling a spot on the map. Death leaned in close to see. There was a muffled pop and the next instant every detail was sharp and clear and seemed to move in slow-motion, he could smell Wren’s soap and the light, green scent of the iris between them; see the freckles on her arm and the wood grain in the table top.

Something buzzed past his cheek and the soda bottle exploded in a shower of glass and water.

Wren blinked, bewildered. Water droplets and glass shards glittered in her hair. “My flower blew up!”

Death was already in motion, diving across the coffee table. He tackled her to the ground, rolling her into the dubious cover of an old recliner and covering her with his own body.

“That was a bullet. Someone out front is shooting at us.”