Cold River - Carla Neggers [110]
Hannah turned from the window. “I’m going out to talk to him.”
“He’s working at the Whittaker place, isn’t he? He might appreciate the company. Vivian isn’t an easy person. She can be belittling and controlling. Lowell doesn’t say anything, but he must notice. People order their lives in different ways, but when a couple relies on that kind of communication style…it doesn’t make them easy to be around.”
“Communication style?”
“All right.” He shrugged, grinning. “So I’d smother her with a pillow if I were married to her.”
“Then you’d come before a judge in the state of Vermont and off you’d go to prison. You can’t take the law into your own hands.”
“That doesn’t mean one can’t fantasize.” He sighed, sitting back, his scone barely touched. “You’re under a lot of strain, Hannah. Everyone in town is. We’re all struggling to get back to normal, but until we have answers, it’ll be difficult.”
“What’s on your mind, Judge?”
“Crime and punishment.”
“Are you talking about Bowie or my father?”
“Neither. I’m talking about you.”
“I learned a love of the woods and New England history from my father. I’m not making excuses for Bowie, if that’s what you’re worried about. If he’s involved with these killers—wittingly or unwittingly…” She felt a tightness in her throat. “I was rough on him last night. He’s had a chance to think, and so have I.”
“Hannah—”
She smiled at him as she got to her feet. “I’ll take my cell phone and call you if we get into a snowball fight.”
She left him at his table and went into the center hall and back to the mudroom. She grabbed her coat, hat and gloves and slipped on the boots she’d worn when she’d snowshoed up Cameron Mountain to find Drew’s cabin.
It was below zero, the coldest morning yet of the winter. She got in her car and gave it a minute to warm up before she headed out past the common and up along the river.
She pulled in next to Bowie’s van in the turnaround at the guesthouse and parked tight next to a snowbank. Even with her hat yanked down over her ears and forehead and her jacket zipped up to her chin, she could feel the brutal cold as she made her way along the walk. It had been shoveled since this last snowfall, but not sanded or salted.
She quickly mounted the porch steps and noticed the storm door was ajar. She knocked on the doorjamb and called Bowie, but he didn’t come.
A dog barked behind her, and she went back down the steps. The wind stirred up the fresh snow, whipping it into her face. She spotted Poe wandering by himself under the weeping willows down by the frozen, white-blanketed duck pond.
Where was Bowie?
Hannah saw only the black lab’s prints in the snow. The ski tracks on the slope down from the Whittakers’ farmhouse were dusted over with undisturbed fresh snow. With the brutal windchill, she doubted either Vivian or Lowell would be out for a recreational spin across the meadow anytime soon.
“Come on, Poe,” Hannah said. “Let’s get you warm and go find your master.”
She couldn’t stifle a prickly feeling as she stepped into the knee-deep snow.
Thirty
Sean had collected Elijah out at his house on the lake just as the sunrise consumed the sky in shades of red, orange and lavender, which made his life in Southern California seem very far away. His brother wasn’t in a good mood as they drove up Cameron Mountain Road to their sister’s house. “Hannah’s got to live in Black Falls after you go back to Beverly Hills,” Elijah said.
“Who’s to say I didn’t sleep on her couch?”
“I’m just saying. Be careful.”
“Elijah—”
“She doesn’t have to explain herself to me, and neither do you. People in town know her better than she gives us credit for, or better than she realizes. That bar fight in March changed things for her. She’s been off balance, wondering if people think those bastards were telling the truth about her.”
“I wish I’d shut them up sooner.”
“Yeah. A.J. and I do, too. Instead we let Bowie tear their damn heads off. All in all, I think he was restrained. Doesn’t mean he should have done it.”
Or, Sean knew, that any of