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Authors: Eric Rickstad
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restaurant,” Rath said.
“They don’t allow Friendly’s in Stowe. What else you got?”
“I stopped by the Lost Mountain Inn. Nothing. No one there saw anything odd about her behavior. She punched out as usual, and said ‘See you tomorrow.’ Listen. Let’s catch up in person after Stowe. I’m wiped.” Rath rested the bottle of Lagavulin on his chest. “Get yourself a massage at the Double Black Diamond while you’re there.”
“The wife’d just love that.”
“She’ll be too pissed you’re volunteering a Sunday to care.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
Rath hung up, took a slug of scotch, and lay back in the bath, looking at his notes. So. So. So.
Sew your own buttons, his mother would say.
Her old-fashioned sense of humor had gotten her through tough times. Rath wondered if it would have gotten her through the aftermath of Laura’s murder? Not for the first time, he was glad she’d not lived to suffer that. She’d suffered enough.
The winter Rath was nine his mother had broken an ankle on an icy sidewalk. When his father had come home to see her in a cast, he’d said, “They shoot horses for less,” and strode into the kitchen to clank glasses and crack ice trays, giving sound to his inner fury as he poured a highball of straight club soda.
He’d been on the wagon for weeks, and Rath had wished he’d fall back off it. When drinking, Rath’s father tossed the ball around, took the family out for ice cream, bought his wife candy— gestures unheard of when sober. Rath preferred him this way. But when his father drank, he also never got to work at his barbershop, and the place would go shuttered for days. Rath’s mother would pick up nightly waitressing gigs to supplement her full-time job as a drugstore clerk, working doubles all weekend until sick with exhaustion.
When the old man sobered, he’d find his clientele had dwindled, and his mood would darken. Each day sober, each second, was more ominously tense than the last. He became a stick of lit dynamite, his smoldering fuse sucking up the oxygen in the house as the inevitable explosion approached.
He’d never struck any of them. In moments of self-pity, he’d return to the refrain: “At least I never hit none of you.” It made Rath wonder what abuses the old man had suffered as a boy to make this a shining accomplishment. He’d never hit them. But he’d broken chairs. Broken his hand driving it through a wall, a hairsbreadth from his wife’s face. Broken his wife’s heart.
When sober, his eyes wandered, too. He’d had the broad build, blue eyes, and black hair he’d passed to his son, and women were readily sucked into his orbit. Before Laura’s murder, Rath had shunned relationships because he’d felt the old man’s weakness for women festering inside him and had never wanted to hurt a woman as his father had hurt his mother.
Rath glanced at his notes now.
Mandy: a knockout. People react strongly to her looks. Glaze over.
Mandy’s mother was biased about her daughter’s looks. But Gale wasn’t. Nor was Madeline. Gale admitted she envied Mandy. He looked at his next note: Mandy on pill.
She was likely having sex though that was not a certainty. She never brought boys home. Not one person he’d spoken with knew of a boy in her life.
Double Black Diamond Resort.
She could have picked the Starmont notepad up anywhere. Rath’s junk drawer was choked with refrigerator magnets and notepads from places he’d never been, without his having a clue how they’d ended up in his drawer.
His mind came back to the birth-control pills. If she was on the pill, would she have left the apartment without the prescription if she intended to be gone for more than a day? He should have checked the date on the package. For all he knew, they were months old. Did she have a boyfriend? If so, where was he?
Chapter 12
G ROUT BARGED PAST the Double Black Diamond’s bellhop. One look at the kid’s flat, wide-faced bone structure, the
“They don’t allow Friendly’s in Stowe. What else you got?”
“I stopped by the Lost Mountain Inn. Nothing. No one there saw anything odd about her behavior. She punched out as usual, and said ‘See you tomorrow.’ Listen. Let’s catch up in person after Stowe. I’m wiped.” Rath rested the bottle of Lagavulin on his chest. “Get yourself a massage at the Double Black Diamond while you’re there.”
“The wife’d just love that.”
“She’ll be too pissed you’re volunteering a Sunday to care.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
Rath hung up, took a slug of scotch, and lay back in the bath, looking at his notes. So. So. So.
Sew your own buttons, his mother would say.
Her old-fashioned sense of humor had gotten her through tough times. Rath wondered if it would have gotten her through the aftermath of Laura’s murder? Not for the first time, he was glad she’d not lived to suffer that. She’d suffered enough.
The winter Rath was nine his mother had broken an ankle on an icy sidewalk. When his father had come home to see her in a cast, he’d said, “They shoot horses for less,” and strode into the kitchen to clank glasses and crack ice trays, giving sound to his inner fury as he poured a highball of straight club soda.
He’d been on the wagon for weeks, and Rath had wished he’d fall back off it. When drinking, Rath’s father tossed the ball around, took the family out for ice cream, bought his wife candy— gestures unheard of when sober. Rath preferred him this way. But when his father drank, he also never got to work at his barbershop, and the place would go shuttered for days. Rath’s mother would pick up nightly waitressing gigs to supplement her full-time job as a drugstore clerk, working doubles all weekend until sick with exhaustion.
When the old man sobered, he’d find his clientele had dwindled, and his mood would darken. Each day sober, each second, was more ominously tense than the last. He became a stick of lit dynamite, his smoldering fuse sucking up the oxygen in the house as the inevitable explosion approached.
He’d never struck any of them. In moments of self-pity, he’d return to the refrain: “At least I never hit none of you.” It made Rath wonder what abuses the old man had suffered as a boy to make this a shining accomplishment. He’d never hit them. But he’d broken chairs. Broken his hand driving it through a wall, a hairsbreadth from his wife’s face. Broken his wife’s heart.
When sober, his eyes wandered, too. He’d had the broad build, blue eyes, and black hair he’d passed to his son, and women were readily sucked into his orbit. Before Laura’s murder, Rath had shunned relationships because he’d felt the old man’s weakness for women festering inside him and had never wanted to hurt a woman as his father had hurt his mother.
Rath glanced at his notes now.
Mandy: a knockout. People react strongly to her looks. Glaze over.
Mandy’s mother was biased about her daughter’s looks. But Gale wasn’t. Nor was Madeline. Gale admitted she envied Mandy. He looked at his next note: Mandy on pill.
She was likely having sex though that was not a certainty. She never brought boys home. Not one person he’d spoken with knew of a boy in her life.
Double Black Diamond Resort.
She could have picked the Starmont notepad up anywhere. Rath’s junk drawer was choked with refrigerator magnets and notepads from places he’d never been, without his having a clue how they’d ended up in his drawer.
His mind came back to the birth-control pills. If she was on the pill, would she have left the apartment without the prescription if she intended to be gone for more than a day? He should have checked the date on the package. For all he knew, they were months old. Did she have a boyfriend? If so, where was he?
Chapter 12
G ROUT BARGED PAST the Double Black Diamond’s bellhop. One look at the kid’s flat, wide-faced bone structure, the
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