Chapter Twenty-One

The storm left the long valley buried in an expanse of alabaster. Icicles dripped like shards from the eaves, and the tall pine behind Meredith’s house accumulated pillows of white on its branches. A winter’s gloom settled in with low clouds hanging over the tops of the surrounding peaks while dawn awakened late and dim.

There would be no school and no leaving the home front on this day. Meredith checked on the growing rabbits, their hutch tucked under the dining table, grateful they would soon be moving to Honey’s barn. Her anger toward Honey had morphed into a deep, hopeless frustration; the woman was unstoppable. Yet there was something so sweet and genuine about her as well, it was impossible to want to stop her either. In any case, getting the rabbits out of the trailer was an offer Meredith wasn’t about to refuse.

She tugged on her boots, heaved on her coat and geared up for the task of shoveling a pathway to the house. Even though they possessed everything they needed in the trailer, Meredith routinely checked the house for further damage. There was no stopping the erosion of the roof in Jamie’s bedroom; once started, it continued to cave in piece by piece. After hauling her daughter’s furniture and belongings into the hallway, Meredith avoided the room altogether.

The latest concern was a growing stain in the corner of the kitchen ceiling. It was as if, once started, the rotting away of her home accelerated its pace. Against her will, the case seemed to be building toward knocking the house down and starting over. Room by room, piece by piece, this one was disintegrating. All she could do was watch it happen, put buckets under any new drips and lock the door again behind her.

Except for days like today, when her kids needed space to run unhindered by coats, and she needed a change of scenery. Poisonous mushrooms…just as she predicted…were at the root of the deaths in Twin Lakes. For the first night in a week, Brian didn’t appear in her dreams. It was as if being right about something banished his critical voice.

The first step out the trailer’s door sunk her thigh high into the drifts. Her house appeared to be miles away, ten thousand shovels full of snow or more in the distance. She debated whether they really needed to access the house at all. The place could moulder and sink into the ground for all she cared. But staying cooped inside and stuck with two energetic children wasn’t an option. They all would need more space to roam. She gripped the shovel and dug in.

Over the past months, muscles had toned on her already lean frame. Walking, gardening, and fixing up the house took a different type of strength than what was needed when she was an apartment dweller. Being a homeowner, especially of a fixer-upper, was a daily workout all its own. Shoveling snow, however, was on a whole new level. Her arms and back ached from lifting and twisting, but she soldiered on. A third of the way to the house, Meredith stopped and dropped the shovel.

She stripped off her thin gloves and considered the blisters rubbed open on her palms. Around her was the deepest silence she’d ever experienced, all sounds muted by the snow below and clouds above. Everything was still except a narrow column of smoke from a distant chimney. She marched back to the trailer. “Everyone out,” she ordered.

Bundled into their winter gear, just their round faces showing, Jamie and Atticus spilled out of the trailer armed with hand shovels. Meredith wielded her own shovel again and angled a thin line straight for the house. She tasked her children with widening the path behind her.

Is it terrible to make a toddler shovel snow? Or is this what people called character building?

In truth, Atticus didn’t help much with his plastic shovel and pail, meant more for playtime at the beach than child labor. He squatted and dug a hole for awhile. Jamie, though, chopped and hacked away.

“Mom, phone.”

Meredith stopped and listened. Across the yard, her old-fashioned land line phone rang, its long spiral cord tethering the handset to a wall inside the house. “They’ll have to wait until we’re dug out.”

The phone rang on for another minute before the ringing stopped. Few people called since she knew only a handful of people, so the call was probably from a salesman. It couldn’t be Curtis, Honey or Crusty since they knew she stayed nights in the trailer. The more she considered it, though, the more she worried. What if one of her friends was hurt from the powerful overnight storm? What if they were checking on her and she wasn’t answering?

“Mom, phone again.”

“I hear it.” Meredith stopped to rest, the jangling of the phone cutting into her nerves. There was nothing like an unanswered phone to build anxiety. She judged clearing the span to the house would take them another half hour and her arms were rebelling. A series of powerful running leaps could have carried her there, but traversing the deep drifts would have soaked her pants. Besides, she was too tired to leap. “Whoever it is will have to wait.”

She sat down on the flat scoop of her snow shovel and took deep breaths. Jamie continued to shovel, undaunted by the fact the drifts reached her waist. Meredith pondered her daughter’s stouthearted energy and why someone would call on this snowy morning.

“I’m going back to the trailer for a minute,” she finally decided. “Be right back.”

Three living people had the number for her emergency cell phone, the pre-paid phone she used only in a crisis. They were her entire circle of friends. Honey, Crusty and Curtis, even if they got on her nerves from time to time, they were the best friends she’d ever known. Even if, on occasion, she swore she never wanted to see them again. One thing was for certain: if she was ever in trouble, these were friends who would never let her down. If something important arose, they would try her cell phone as well.

Just as Meredith touched the handle on the trailer, her cell phone rang from the charger inside. She yanked open the door and lunged for her phone. “What happened?”

It was Curtis, sounding anxious. “Meredith.”

A car accident. A house fire. Curtis injured and in the hospital. Images flashed through her mind. “What is it? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Where are you? Why haven’t you been answering your phone? Is everyone okay over there?”

“We’re out shoveling, halfway between the house and trailer.”

She heard him exhale a breath. “I was worried. When you didn’t answer. No one answered.”

“We’re okay.” There was a pause. “Curtis?”

His voice sounded anguished. “There’s been another poisoning in Twin Lakes.”

Meredith gasped. This one couldn’t be accidental, not after the community was warned about mixing up their mushrooms. A new poisoning would be deliberate. Meredith had no doubt who was behind this latest one. “Who did she poison this time? Who else did she kill?”

“Carolyn. Caro. She was found unconscious in a puddle of vomit. She’s in the hospital but isn’t expected to make it.”

I knew it. I was right all along. Feeling victorious in the face of Caro’s imminent death was terrible, but Meredith couldn’t help it. The people of Twin Lakes protected their own and they’d circled their wagons around a murderer.

Curtis surprised her with an order. “You have to come with me.”

“What? Where? The snow’s too deep to go anywhere.”

“I have a plow on my truck,” he said. “We need to get to the hospital in Mountain Home to talk to Carolyn before…if she’s still…if she can talk. She’s the only one who can say for certain where the poison came from. Brooke…” Meredith heard him swallow. “Brooke is the link between all three. I need you there to be a second set of ears for me.”

His distress and frustration were obvious. He’d been led by the rules of hard evidence and found nothing to pursue. He wanted to believe good of a very bad person and now someone else would die because of it. He wanted to do the right thing so badly that he ended up doing the wrong thing. This could be the event to change him from believing in the good nature of people. Why had she ever wanted him to turn sour and suspicious? Her heart ached for him.

“Of course, I’ll go.”

****

Honey brightened upon seeing them and hearing there was another poisoning. “I’ll watch the kids. You two go on and take care of business. You’ll let me know all the details when you get back.”

Meredith was amazed as always at the woman's cheerful attitude in the face of any calamity, seizing any opportunity to be at the forefront of gossip. She was equally amazed Curtis wanted her along on his trip to the hospital. His jaw was tight and gaze distant when he picked her up and he said little with her children in the truck.

Honey shooed Jamie and Atticus inside her house and walked onto her own freshly shoveled porch to see Meredith and Curtis on their way.

“Thank you for this.” Meredith placed one hand on Curtis’s arm as she turned to say goodbye to Honey.

Honey straightened her shoulders. “We take care of each other out here.”

****

Caro was unconscious when they arrived at the hospital, alone in the room except for the sound of beeping machines. Solution bags hung from poles stood guard next to her bed, dripping steady beats into chambers which led into the clear plastic tubes running into her arm. A tube snaked into her mouth and emitted a rhythmic hiss. Heavy bags weighed beneath her eyes and her skin had taken on a gray cast. The only sign she lived was the steady blip of the heart monitor.

Meredith stood at the door, and memories flooded her from when her mother died of alcohol poisoning all those years ago. It occurred to her that her mother would have been younger than Caro when she died and the thought depressed her. At the time, her mother seemed a million years old, her face sunken and lined, her body wasted to a skeleton’s frame from years of drinking her daily meals. There’d been so much desperation packed into the hours her mother lingered in the space between life and death. When it was over, Meredith didn’t feel the relief of a foregone conclusion; she was a child losing her mother and her only lifeline.

“Carolyn.” Curtis spoke in a hushed voice. “Caro.”

There was no response from the bed and no flicker of Caro’s eyelids to indicate an awareness they were in the room.

A nurse appeared at Meredith’s shoulder. “We’re trying to locate next of kin.”

Meredith glanced from the nurse to Caro’s bed. “Is she going to…can she talk?”

The nurse eyed her. “Are you related?”

Curtis turned and pointed to the star pinned to his chest to announce his official status. Then his expression lightened. “Mary? Mary Marks?”

“Curtis Barnaby. I haven’t seen you in forever. I heard you ran for sheriff. Good for you. How’re your parents and sister?”

He worked up a friendly smile for the nurse. “They’re all fine. How about you?”

Meredith looked between them, annoyed by the idle chitchat over a dying woman’s bed. Crucial business was at hand. “Excuse me. The woman lying in bed here, stuck full of tubes. Can she talk?”

Nurse Marks kept her gaze on Curtis. “Your associate? We have privacy laws about this kind of thing.”

He gave a short nod, his expression growing somber once again. “My associate,” he agreed.

The nurse turned her attention to Meredith. “She’s in complete organ failure. We’re trying to find next-of-kin.” The nurse warmed up to her subject. “This type of poisonous mushroom, once it’s well into the system, works quietly and fast. They air-lifted her here but it was much too late. The poison’s destroyed her liver and now has progressed onto her other organs. There’s no reversing the damage at this point. The next step is heart failure.”

“She’s…”

“…going to die.” The nurse finished Meredith’s sentence. “Soon.”

Curtis’ shoulders sagged. Meredith knew the news landed hard upon him—a third death in his county, on his watch.

Nurse Marks gestured down the corridor. “Her friends are in the chapel. You might want to talk to them.”

“Her friends?” Meredith asked.

“Well, a friend and her priest.”

Meredith’s eyes widened. The murderess was in the hospital.

Curtis edged to her side and gripped her by one elbow, squeezing lightly as though to warn her not to say anything more. “Say hello to your family for me,” he said quickly to Nurse Marks, as they hurried from the room.

Father Michael emerged from the chapel as they approached. His expression grave, he startled when he saw them and then stood firmly in front of the door. “She’s praying for her friend. Please respect her time.”

Meredith made a scoffing noise. “Her friend?”

“I’m afraid I have to insist this time.” Curtis said gravely.

Father Michael’s eyes misted. “I beg you. Please leave her alone. She’s a good person, faultless in all this…this mess. No sin that isn’t being punished.” He bit his lip and abruptly strode away from them.

Meredith and Curtis traded glances. She dashed after the priest and Curtis followed. “You know something.” It was just short of an accusation.

He stopped and his shoulders slumped. “I don’t know why all this happened. Or why God would let such a good woman suffer.”

Meredith had a feeling he wasn’t talking about Caro. “You have to tell us what you know. What did Brooke do?”

His eyebrows raised and he let out a huff. “Brooke did nothing. I told you she’s faultless. I can’t say more. Confession is a sacrament.” He glanced down the corridor toward Caro’s room.

Meredith squared her shoulders. Now was the time to shake out the truth. Caro, Brooke, and Father Michael—there was some sort of strange threesome here she didn’t understand, a relationship going beyond one of friendship and prayer.

“I’ll tell you what happened then,” Meredith said, her voice steady and sure. “Brooke poisoned her husband because she was tired of him. She poisoned Father Karl too because…because…for some reason. Then Caro found out, so Brooke poisoned her, too.”

Curtis shot her a warning look. “Meredith…”

Father Michael stared at her in horror. “Absolutely not. Absolutely not. That’s not what happened at all.”

Brooke’s soft voice floated to them from the door of the chapel where she’d just emerged. “I’ll tell them. What difference does it make now?”

They swung around as one and stared at her. Even disheveled, Brooke was lovely. Her dark hair framed her heart-shaped face and swept against her shoulders. It was clear she’d dressed hurriedly, sliding on a pair of jeans accentuating her curvy figure, topped by an oversized T-shirt that must have been Jacob’s. The sight infuriated Meredith. How dare she wear her dead husband’s clothes. What a cold-hearted killer Brooke must be.

“Yes,” Meredith demanded. “Tell us everything.”

Father Michael shook his head, but the motion wasn’t a refusal. It was a sad movement, a defeat.

Brooke lifted her gaze to the priest, and something unsaid passed between them. “Caro told me what she confessed to you. I’m not breaking a sacrament by telling.”

She turned to Curtis, ignoring Meredith. “Caro and I grew up together. We’ve always been best friends. When we were teenagers, I helped her through her mother’s death and she helped me through acne and dating. When we grew up, I helped her through a divorce and she’s been with me through…” Brooke hesitated only slightly. “…Jacob’s instability.”

Father Michael put a comforting hand on Brooke’s shoulder.

“Caro would cook for us during the week,” she continued. “Jacob’s cooking was terrible; too much salt or not enough, raw or overcooked. He couldn’t concentrate on recipes anymore so he’d put strange things in our meals, like strawberry jam on fish and hot pepper in pancakes.” She gazed down the corridor toward Caro’s room. “Caro, though, is wonderful in the kitchen. She offered to help and would make enough for several meals and we’d freeze individual meals so I’d have them when I got home from work late.”

She paused and her voice dropped to nearly a whisper. “It was the soup. I didn’t know or I wouldn’t have taken it to the church, for Father Karl to have at Thanksgiving. I knew he’d be alone and I wanted him to have something. It was the soup.” Brooke gave a dry-eyed sob. “I didn’t know.”

Curtis spoke gently. “You’re saying Caro put something in the soup?”

“It was an accident. I’m sure of it.” The words burst from Brooke and she looked up, defying Curtis to disagree. She gave Meredith an angry glance. “Caro told me it was an accident. She picked some mushrooms on a hike and put them in the soup she made for us. Jacob ate the soup that Saturday night when I was late coming home from a shopping trip in Boise. After he died, I didn’t eat much at all and the soup just sat in the freezer. So, I took some to Father Karl. After he died too, and poison was discovered, Caro figured out what happened. She was in torment afterward.”

Meredith listened to the story with doubt. The story was possible; there was no one to vouch for Brooke’s story. There was no one except her to confirm Caro was at fault. Except for a priest who was unwilling to talk. She glanced at Curtis and recognized sympathy in his face. You’re too good and trusting, she thought.

“We only have your word on this,” Meredith said. “Caro’s dying and Father Michael’s not talking.” She glared at Father Michael who appeared deep in thought.

“I cannot break the holy sacrament of the confessional. I can tell you though…” he studied the floor tiles… “I’ve never known Brooke to tell a lie.”

“Still sounds fishy to me,” Meredith muttered.

“If the deaths of Jacob and Father Karl were accidental, as you say, then what happened to Caro?” Curtis asked.

Brooke didn’t speak for a moment and Father Karl turned and walked down the hall. She waited until he was out of earshot. “Caro was devastated over what happened. Two people dead. One was my husband and the other her priest.” Brooke glared at Meredith. “Then, people showed up at my door making accusations. Can you imagine how she felt?”

Meredith’s mouth gaped at the accusation she somehow played a role in Caro’s death. Brooke choked out her next words. “She went on a hike and picked more of those mushrooms. They found pieces in Caro’s stomach when they pumped it.”

Hospital monitors beeped and nurses’ shoes pattered on the tiles. Curtis gazed down the hallway toward Father Michael with a frown. Meredith held her breath, her mind racing to pick apart Brooke’s story. No witnesses, she realized. There was no one to back up Brooke’s story except Father Michael.

Curtis touched Brooke’s shoulder. “You should be with her now.”

****

Caro died hours later. After a hurried conference call with the Twin Falls doctor and the High County coroner, Curtis agreed the death would be ruled a suicide. Meredith wasn’t convinced. The deaths hinged on Brooke’s hospital hallway testimony and Father Michael’s support of her. Hadn’t Jacob and Brooke been having marriage problems? Hadn’t Jacob worried his wife wanted to kill him? Caro never woke up to confirm she purposely ingested the destroying angels. It rankled her Brooke slipped in a veiled accusation of her own, suggesting Meredith was partially at fault for Caro’s death.

She sat next to Curtis on a second chair they’d set onto his back deck, snow cleared away, a blanket over their laps and ski caps settled over their ears. Their hands were bare of gloves despite the sub-freezing temperature, but Meredith didn’t feel the chill. Curtis laced his fingers through hers and drew them up to his lips. He kissed her fingertips before lowering their interlaced hands again. Meredith’s heart raced at the touch.

Curtis gazed out over the yard where Jamie ferried Atticus along on a sled, shouting out she was a sled dog. “My grandfather always said the job of sheriff was twofold: to keep people safe and to make them feel safe.”

Meredith waited. Three people were dead; they hadn’t been safe at all.

“He said if people feel safe, a sheriff has a job for life,” he added, his voice low.

She squeezed his hand, unable to believe Curtis would knowingly let a murderer go free in order to keep the illusion there was no crime in his county. But she heard him convincing himself he made the right decision.

“Murder’s the last thing I want to consider when someone dies,” he said, his voice coming stronger now. “Most people are good, hard-working, and generous.”

Atticus tumbled off the sled and Jamie stopped to help him up. The two of them started barking in unison and ran back and forth across the snow.

“Sometimes they do. Commit murder,” Meredith said, thinking of Brian.

Curtis gave her hand a gentle squeeze in return, just enough so she knew he was aware of her thoughts. She gazed at him and was glad he was such a kind-hearted person, even if a murderess would go free. Life was complicated and murky, full of half-truths and uncomfortable decisions.

Being given a choice is the gift, she reminded herself. In some instances, choosing was difficult; where to live or whether someone was a true friend, or even between a murder and an accident.

Meredith knew one thing though: If she needed to make a choice of who to trust in the end, she’d choose Curtis.