Cover of Night Read online

  She went into the kitchen, feeling as if she were stepping into the twilight zone. Mr. Harris literally jumped when he saw her, his face turning red, as if he knew she’d overheard. Cate jerked her thoughts back to Mr. Layton’s weird actions and away from the possibility of a romance going on beneath her nose. “The guest in number three climbed out the window and left,” she said, then lifted her shoulders in an “I don’t know what the hell’s going on” gesture.

  “Out the window?” Sherry echoed, equally puzzled. “Why did he do that?”

  “I don’t know. I have his credit card number, so it isn’t as if he can run out on the bill. And his stuff’s still here.”

  “Maybe he just wanted to climb out the window, see if he could.”

  “Maybe. Or he’s nuts.”

  “Or that,” Sherry agreed. “How many nights is he staying?”

  “Just last night. Checkout’s at eleven, so he should be back soon.” Though where on earth he could have gone, she couldn’t imagine, unless he’d felt a sudden urge to visit the feed store. Trail Stop didn’t have any shops or restaurants; if he’d wanted breakfast, he should have eaten here. The nearest honest-to-God town was an hour’s drive away, so he wouldn’t have time to go there, eat, then get back before it was time to check out—not to mention that it would be self-defeating, if he simply hadn’t wanted to eat with strangers.

  Mr. Harris cleared his throat. “I’ll be…um—” He looked around, clearly discomfited.

  Guessing that he didn’t know where to put his empty cup, Cate said, “I’ll take it,” and held out her hand. “Thanks for stopping by. I wish you’d let me pay you, though.”

  He stubbornly shook his head as he gave the cup to her. Determined to be more friendly, she continued, “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

  “None of us know how we got along before Cal settled here,” Sherry said cheerfully, moving to the sink, where she began loading dishes into the dishwasher. “Waited a week or more for someone from town whenever we needed repairs, I guess.”

  Cate was vaguely surprised; she’d thought Mr. Harris had always been here. He certainly fit in with the locals as if he’d lived here all his life. The sense of shame rose in her throat again. Sherry referred to him by his first name, while Cate had always called him Mr. Harris, effectively putting him at a distance. She didn’t know why she did it, but there it was.

  “Mommmmy!” Tucker bellowed from the top of the stairs. “Time’s up!”

  Sherry chuckled, and Cate saw a brief smile tug at Mr. Harris’s mouth as he gave Sherry a two-fingered salute and picked up his toolbox, evidently intent on making a getaway before the boys came back downstairs.

  Cate rolled her eyes heavenward, silently asking for a little peace and quiet, then stepped into the hall. “Tell Tanner he may get out of the naughty chair.”

  “Awwight!” The gleeful shout was followed by the sounds of jumping. “Tannuh! Mommy said to get up! Let’s build a fort and bawwicade me and you in it.” Caught up in his enthusiasm for his game, he ran back to their room.

  Cate was torn between amusement at his Elmer Fudd pronunciation and puzzlement at his word choice. Barricade? Where had he come up with that? Maybe they’d been watching old westerns on television; she needed to keep a closer watch on their entertainment.

  She checked the dining room: it was empty; the morning rush was over. After she and Sherry cleaned the dining room and kitchen and Mr. Layton returned to get his things, she could change the sheets on the bed and clean the room, then she’d have the rest of the day to get things ready for her mother’s visit.

  Mr. Harris had left. Going over to help with the dishes, Cate bumped her hip against Sherry’s. “So, what’s up with you and Mr. Harris? Is there something going on between you two?”

  Sherry’s mouth fell open, and she gave Cate a look of absolute astonishment. “Good God, no. What gave you that idea?”

  Her reaction was so genuine that Cate felt foolish for having jumped to the wrong conclusion. “He was talking to you.”

  “Well, hell, Cal talks to a lot of people.”

  “Not that I’ve seen, he doesn’t.”

  “He’s just a little shy,” Sherry said, in what was probably the understatement of the month. “Besides, I’m old enough to be his mother.”

  “You are not—unless you were really, really precocious.”

  “Okay, so that’s an exaggeration. I do like Cal—a lot. He’s a smart man. He might not have a college degree, but he can fix just about anything.”

  Cate agreed with that. Whatever needed repair at the B and B, from carpentry to electrical work to plumbing, Mr. Harris handled it. He also filled in as a mechanic, if need be. If ever anyone had been born to be a handyman, Mr. Harris had been.

  Ten years before, fresh out of college with her degree in marketing, she would have disdained people who did physical work—people with their names sewn on their pockets, as they had been described in her circle—but she was older and wiser now, she hoped. The world needed all types to make things work, from the planners to the doers, and in this little community someone who could fix things was worth his weight in gold.

  She began cleaning the dining room while Sherry finished in the kitchen; then she vacuumed and dusted downstairs—at least in all the public areas. Thank goodness the huge old Victorian had two parlors. The front one, the big one, was for use by her guests. The small one in back was the den where she and the boys relaxed in the evenings, where they watched television and played games. She didn’t bother even picking up their toys in there; for one thing, her mother wasn’t due for hours yet and the boys would have their things dragged out again before she got here, so Cate didn’t waste the effort.

  Sherry poked her head out of the kitchen door. “All through in here. I’ll see you in the morning. Hope your mom gets here okay.”

  “Thanks. I do, too; she’ll never let me hear the end of it if she has car trouble or something.”

  Trail Stop was so remote that there was no easy way to get there, no nearby airports for commercial flights, and only one road in. Because her mother hated the small propeller planes she could have flown on to get closer, and because renting any sort of vehicle at their tiny landing strip was almost “mission impossible,” she chose to fly into Boise, where she knew there would be rentals available. That made for a long drive and yet another sore point with her concerning Cate’s chosen home. She didn’t like having her daughter and grandsons living in another state, she didn’t like Idaho—give her a metropolitan area over a rural one any day—and she didn’t like the inordinate trouble it took her to visit. She didn’t like it that Cate had bought a B and B, which meant she seldom had any free time; in fact, Cate had visited her parents only once since buying the B and B.

  All of those were valid points. Cate admitted it, and had even told her mother so. She herself would have preferred to stay in Seattle, if she’d had a choice.

  But she hadn’t, so she’d done what she’d thought was best for the twins. When Derek died, leaving her with nine-month-old twins, not only had she been devastated by losing him, she had been forced to face reality about their finances. Their combined incomes had provided a good living, but Cate had gone to part-time when the boys were born and most of her work she’d done from home. With Derek gone, she had to work full-time, but the cost of quality day care for the boys had been prohibitive. It almost didn’t pay for her to work. Her mother couldn’t help with their care, because she worked, too.

  They had savings, and Derek had purchased a hundred-thousand-dollar insurance policy, intending to add to it as his income increased. They’d thought they had all the time in the world. Who could have anticipated a healthy, thirty-year-old man dying from a staph infection that attacked his heart? He’d gone rock climbing for the first time since the twins were born, scraped his leg, and the doctors said the bacteria had likely entered his body through the small wound. Roughly thirty percent of people carry the bacteria o