The Christmas Room

  She wasn’t clear on exactly how Caleb knew that Samuel Conacher had seen Cam and Kirstin kissing. So far as she knew, her grandson had been in school all day, and Cam hadn’t told her differently. Oh, well, treat me like a mushroom, she thought. I’ll be just fine. Only she wasn’t. Cam had been working so hard to build his business. Even while meeting with Kirstin so often, he’d still gone out in the morning and again in the afternoon to dig up clients. Now, before he’d even made a sale, Conacher might start gunning for him.

  Might? She scoffed at herself. There was no question about it. The man had a fearful reputation in Rustlers’ Gulch for destroying anyone who looked twice at his daughter. And Cam had done more than just look.

  Angry and frightened for her son, Maddie saved the original draft of her book under a different title and began rewriting her work in progress, which would now feature Sam Conacher as her murder victim. Caleb had gotten home a couple hours after his father had, so she knew her grandson was safe and otherwise occupied.

  She thought of this writing activity as a therapeutic foray, and she had no intention of sticking with it. When she got her resentment toward Conacher out of her system, she’d return to her first, well-drafted plot.

  She envisioned Sam to look a lot like Gus, the wiry cowboy in the television series Lonesome Dove. She altered his appearance a little to avoid any accusations of copyright infringement, and as she revised the existing chapters, the hours flew by. Even better, she thoroughly enjoyed herself by making the killing gorier and more torturous. She left the fictitious name of her original victim the same, only now he was a cattle and land monger without scruples. Her readers loved when a victim had it coming, and Sam Conacher definitely deserved to suffer. Maddie couldn’t help but wonder how many young fellows he had ruined.

  Cam startled her half to death by tapping on her trailer door before opening it. “Dinner’s ready, Mom.”

  Maddie saved her work, hurried to tidy up, and went to join her family for the evening meal. When she walked into the wall tent, she saw Caleb slumped in one of the swivel rockers. “Hi, darling. You didn’t stop in after school for an afternoon snack.”

  “When I got home, I had to talk with Dad. For hours.”

  Maddie glanced at her son, who rolled his eyes. “Forget the drama, Caleb. Tell Gram what you did.”

  Caleb sighed. “I skipped lunch, woodshop, and Spanish, and I didn’t notify you or Dad to let you know where I was.”

  “Oh.” Maddie preferred to keep her nose out of it when Caleb got in trouble. It was Cam’s job to be the disciplinarian. “I see.”

  “Probably not,” Caleb said. “I came home, parked by the front gate, and walked way downriver to spy on Dad and Kirstin.”

  “Again?” Maddie wanted to call back the word the instant she said it, but she’d been taken off guard.

  “What do you mean, again?” Cam sent his son a smoldering look. “Don’t tell me you’ve done it before today.”

  “Okay, I won’t.” Caleb looked at his father and sighed. “Only once, Dad. It was the first time you met her over there. I had a half day at school, and I was bored. Nothing interesting happened. I was worried that you needed a how-to manual.”

  Cam met Maddie’s gaze. “You knew about this and didn’t see fit to tell me?”

  “I didn’t think it was a serious infraction, Cam. More just harmless curiosity.”

  “It’s not your place to decide what’s serious and what isn’t.”

  This was why Maddie preferred not to be involved in disciplining her grandson. “Bad call on my part, I guess. I apologize.”

  Cam pinched the bridge of his nose and then waved his hand as if to clear the air. “Mom, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Of course you have every right to decide what’s serious. You and Dad helped raise him. Maybe I’m the one blowing this all out of proportion.”

  “No.” Maddie hated to take sides against Caleb. He was a dear, sweet boy. But she didn’t want to sway Cam into thinking this was all just silliness. “Caleb skipped school today. And I believe he was trespassing on Conacher’s ranch, and Montanans take that very seriously.” She met her grandson’s gaze. “I gave you a pass the first time, Caleb. I believed you realized that you’d done something wrong and wouldn’t do it again. If I led you to think otherwise, I’m sorry. But I don’t think I did. You wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to hide the activity this time if you thought it was an okay thing to do.”

  “Now are you going to lecture me, too?” Caleb asked.

  “Hmm.” Maddie stepped over to the stove and saw that Cam had fixed a steak-strip stir-fry. “Do I need to?”

  “No.”

  “Awesome. Then you can tell me why what you did was wrong, starting with skipping school and not telling me or your dad where you were.”

  Caleb groaned. “Our address isn’t officially on the rolls yet. If I’d been in a wreck, the police might not have been able to locate where I live. You and Dad thought I was at school. If I had been kidnapped, you wouldn’t have known where to start looking for me.”

  “What about spying on people?” Maddie asked.

  “I didn’t think it was really spying. They were on state land, where anyone could have seen them. It wasn’t like I peeked through a window to watch them.”

  “Thank you for pointing out the difference between spying and spying.” Maddie filled a plate and handed it to Cam. “Now explain why it was wrong.”

  “Well, Dad says it should have been his decision who he allowed to see him kissing Kirstin. A stranger is one thing, and his son is another thing. As my father, his job is to set a good example for me, so when he knows I’m watching him, he tries to be on his best behavior. But when he doesn’t know I’m watching, sometimes he isn’t perfect, just like I wasn’t perfect today. He’s never done anything really bad, but sometimes he deserves a break from being a father. I didn’t think of it quite that way.”

  Maddie glanced at Cam. He inclined his head almost imperceptibly to let her know that he found his son’s response satisfactory. “Nice way to put it,” she told her grandson. “And I think it’s wonderful that your father cares more about what you think of him than he does about a stranger’s opinion.”

  “Yeah.” Caleb stuck out one booted foot and studied it. “Dad and Kirstin also got chased today by a bull moose, which makes Dad even more upset about me skipping class and hanging out along the river.” Before Maddie could ask questions, Caleb continued. “What if it had visited our side of the river and I’d had no tree to climb? Plus, some things are private, and everybody knows they are. Like when Dad and I first got here. We didn’t have the portable toilet here then, and we had to hide out in the woods to go. If someone had spied on us, that person would have known we wanted privacy. It was implied by the nature of what we were doing, Dad says. So kissing a girl is sort of the same.”

  Maddie stuck a filled plate under Caleb’s chin and then handed him a tall cup of milk. “Very nice, Caleb. I’m confident now that you have a firm grasp of what an invasion of privacy is.” She winked at Cam. “I’m also sure your father now realizes that an implied need for privacy may not be enough when he’s kissing a lady.”

  Cam snorted, sat down, and waited for Maddie to take the seat beside him. “Shall we say the blessing?”

  • • •

  After Cam and Caleb went to the cabin for some much-needed father-and-son time, Maddie did the dishes, smiling over Caleb’s transgressions that day. The youngster had intended no harm, after all. She was grateful that Cam had gotten right on top of it, though. The boy needed to let her or his father know where he was. It was a courtesy to those who loved him. Both Maddie and Cam extended that consideration to each other and to Caleb as well.

  Well, she thought, as she dried a skillet, she didn’t always do that these days. When she went for chemo treatments or a consultation with her oncologist, s
he implied that she was going for physical therapy. She refused to feel guilty about that. She always had her cell phone so they could call her, and she didn’t actually lie. A treatment was a treatment, and she was saving those she loved from hours of unnecessary worry about her health.

  When the kitchen area was clean, Maddie went to feed her outdoor cats and lock them in their safe house for the night. Then she headed inside her trailer, eager to resume writing. She was enjoying this different slant on the story. It allowed her to vent. In the morning she’d put her professional hat back on, but for tonight, she would allow herself to play.

  As the evening wore on, she felt deliciously evil as she revamped the plot, mentally applauding herself for this idea because it provided her with countless suspects, men who detested the victim because he had ruined them. Heck, she thought. Maybe I’m really onto something with this. Her fans would love it. And it had been months since she’d been so completely in her writing zone. The real world faded away.

  Long after Cam tapped on the trailer door to wish her good night, Maddie continued to work. She didn’t call it a day until her murderer needed to figure out how to dispose of the dismembered body. She had to come up with something extremely clever. That was her trademark.

  After performing her nightly ablutions, she snuggled down in bed with two of her cats, one a fluffy black feline with white markings that didn’t get along with the others, and Sissy, a mostly white kitty with black patches who weighed less than eight pounds, glowed eerily white after dark, and would be easy pickings for a raptor if there ever came an evening when Maddie couldn’t get her into the cathouse. Maddie hoped to convert both felines to indoor living in order to keep them safe.

  The two cats began to purr. Maddie, loving the silky push of fur against her fingertips, cuddled Sissy close and smiled as the cat’s motor revved to a higher gear. Sasha, who apparently didn’t like people much more than she did other members of her species, retreated to lie upon the unoccupied pillow. Maddie was exhausted. She was just now feeling better after her last treatment and had put in a long day.

  She drew in a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and let her body relax. The next instant, she slipped into the blackness of slumber.

  • • •

  Shortly after noon the next day, Maddie was making herself a cup of aromatic ginger tea. She’d started drinking it to settle her stomach after chemo treatments, and now it had grown on her. She enjoyed at least one serving a day, if not two. She liked the ritual of bobbing the tea bag in the hot water and watching the ginger release its deep golden color and delicious scent.

  Suddenly the trailer rocked violently. She froze and snapped her gaze to the front window. The striped awning, which provided her front yard with shade late in the afternoon, jerked skyward and then, just as suddenly, plunged onto the support braces. Hurrying over to the table, Maddie peered out the glass pane to see her welcome mat go airborne and flatten against the wire fence that Cam and Caleb had built to enclose her front yard. Then her cute yard table lifted, went sideways, and crashed into one of the matching white chairs. High wind. The awning was being whipped so violently in the strong gusts that it was in danger of being torn from the metal siding. Maddie knew she needed to roll back the canvas.

  She grabbed a light jacket and drew it on as she went outside. The instant she gained the porch, the power of Mother Nature nearly knocked her off the step. Across the river, conifer and deciduous trees bent under the force one moment and then whipped erect. At the edge of her mind, Maddie recognized that the violent gusts followed by abrupt cessations were a storm pattern that could snap huge trees like toothpicks.

  They had never experienced any high wind on this property, and that posed a problem for Maddie. Cam had never shown her how to operate the awning braces and retractable arms. It can’t be rocket science, Maddie assured herself. Retired baby boomers, many of them suffering from early-stage dementia, traveled the whole country in massive RVs, and they used awnings. If it was all that complicated, they’d forget how.

  Another violent updraft of wind prodded Maddie to do something instead of hold on to the railing. She grabbed an awning extender arm, and just as she did, another gust pulled the canvas upward, lifting Maddie off her feet. Where is Cam when I need him? she wondered. Unfortunately, he had driven to Missoula to pick up supplies and meet with a real estate associate. He probably wouldn’t be back for hours, and Caleb was at school. It was up to her to figure out how the support mechanisms worked and rescue her little home on wheels. It was too darling to let it be destroyed.

  When her feet touched ground again, Maddie lost her balance and fell on the gravel rump first. Upon impact, she knew Caleb was right. She’d lost a lot of weight and had little padding left. Pain shot through her hips. She couldn’t move for a moment. Her short hair whipped across her eyes, blinding her as she struggled to stand. She’d no sooner regained her feet than the storage tent, a twelve-by-twenty carport canopy, caught an upward draft and went skyward like a gigantic kite. Horrified, Maddie watched it somersault and land on top of her trailer.

  Afraid that the wind might damage Cam’s extra-large wall tent next, Maddie ran from her yard to check its tie-downs. They could make do without her trailer, but the cook shack was vital. She was glad to see that Cam had used sturdy rebar stakes and rope that wouldn’t break under extreme tension. It was the shelter where they cooked, did dishes, washed laundry, and sat around the fire at night, so it was crucial to their comfort. Before trying to retrieve the storage shelter, she made sure the ropes that anchored the cook shack were snug. Each time she bent over, her backside hurt as she straightened. I detest getting old, she thought. But the alternative is even worse.

  When she tried to walk against the wind, her legs trembled with the effort. She quickly ran short of breath. Chemo treatments did this to her. It took at least three days to feel better and a couple more to fully recover. How on earth was she going to get that heap of plastic tarp and metal framework off the roof of her miniature home?

  Making her way toward the three-hundred-gallon water tank, she noticed that all the dogs had run for cover under the trailer. The wind was scary, and Maddie didn’t blame them for hiding. At least they hadn’t chosen to cower around her feet. If she could crawl up onto the tank, she might be able to grab a handful of tarp, but if she pulled on it, the whole works might come down on top of her. If she got knocked off the water vessel, she would fall to the ground. All she needed was to break a hip. She’d end up recuperating in a motel room and leaving Cam here to care for all her animals and his as well. That didn’t sound pleasant for either of them.

  As suddenly as the wind had struck, it died down. Relieved, Maddie did her best to climb up on the tank, but it was slick, heavy plastic, and there were no footholds. Just as she gave up and slid back down, she glimpsed a man on horseback to her right. He’d ridden into their camp as if he owned the place. His smirk suggested that he found her predicament amusing.

  Maddie turned to face him. He emanated strength, superiority, and arrogance. She knew who he was the instant she clapped eyes on him. Samuel Conacher in the flesh. He sat tall and formidable in the saddle and shifted his lean weight as his red horse sidestepped. He wore a tan Stetson that had seen better days. She noted that he’d anchored it to his head during the wind with a chin string. His sideburns had turned white, but his sooty eyebrows and mustache, peppered with gray, indicated that the original color had been black. His weathered features looked as if they’d been carved from granite, especially his mouth. Maddie wondered if he ever smiled.

  What really upset her, though, was that he looked nothing like the character Gus in Lonesome Dove. In Maddie’s mind, this was the man who would ruin her son’s reputation simply because he had dared to meet Kirstin across the river. She hated him on sight.

  “Looks like you have a problem on your hands.” His voice rang deep and set her nerves on edge.

 
“How may I help you?” Maddie asked, endeavoring to be cordial.

  “I’m here to powwow with the randy, useless, uneducated little fucker that’s sniffing after my daughter.”

  Uneducated? Useless? Maddie had an Irish temper, and it ignited. She wouldn’t give this man the satisfaction of seeing her try to defend her son, who had degrees in both fish and game biology and civil engineering. Planting her hands on her hips, she said, “When you say daughter, are you referring to that black-haired tart whose only talent is wiggling her hips to tantalize every decent man who gets within a hundred yards of her?”

  Conacher stiffened his shoulders, which revealed, even with a shirt as camouflage, that he was well muscled. Maddie wasn’t impressed. She’d detested him at first sight, and he hadn’t risen in her opinion a hair. Even worse, now she would have to revise three chapters of her book to torture the right man.

  She wasn’t a woman who wilted during a confrontation. Instead she informed Conacher, “Only gutter slime uses the F word in a lady’s presence, and only a lazy, good-for-nothing jerk sits on a horse while an old woman’s camp is destroyed by a windstorm. How long were you watching me?”

  “Long enough for it to get interesting.” He leveled his steel blue gaze on her. “And you aren’t that old. Just for your information, white trash isn’t welcome in this valley. I was hoping all your shit would blow clear to Kansas.”

  Her blood roiled.

  “It appears that your son isn’t here, so I’ll take my leave.” He turned his horse and rode toward his ranch. “I’ll catch the randy bastard another time. For his sake, you’d better hope I’m not as pissed off as I am right now.”

  Maddie was so furious that she wanted to throw things at him. White trash? She wouldn’t take that lying down. She picked up a rock, knotted her fist over it, and imagined aiming it straight at the delineated depression of his spine. Maybe she could hit him with enough force to knock him out of the saddle. But no. She wouldn’t stoop to his level. But oh, boy, was she ever going to get even with him somehow.