An Alaskan Family Christmas
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Beth Carpenter
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18,8K
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19
HarlequinCHAPTER ONE
HOW COULD NATALIE’S favorite mystery writer have been so wrong? K. Krisman’s stakeout scenes always included tasty snacks, witty observations and, most importantly, relevant information. The only useful detail Natalie had gained in the last three days was how long it took for the layer of frost on the windshield to grow so thick it obscured her view of the postal store. She estimated another twenty minutes before she needed to scrape the glass.
A muffled ringing disturbed the silence inside the car. Natalie pulled off her mitten, unbuttoned her down coat, unzipped her wool sweater and managed to extract the phone from her flannel shirt pocket before it rolled over to voice mail. Brooke.
Natalie smiled. “Hi. How are you feeling this morning?” The plus side to this stakeout was that it got Natalie out of Brooke’s house early enough that she didn’t have to listen to her friend toss her cookies every morning. Not that Natalie wasn’t sympathetic, but why should they both suffer?
“Pretty good. Your crackers in bed idea helped. I have crumbs on my sheets, but it’s totally worth it.”
“I’m glad. The dean’s assistant mentioned it. Her second baby is due next month.” She’d also mentioned far more than Natalie ever wanted to know about overcrowded bladders, labor and episiotomies, but at least her advice was helping Brooke. Natalie checked her watch. “You’re up early.”
“I know. I’m catching a ride with one of the maintenance guys. Somebody called in sick, so they asked me to cover the desk.”
“Again?” Brooke had a degree in hotel management and was part of the supervisory team at a big resort in Fairbanks, and yet they were always getting her to fill in at registration or even clean rooms whenever they were short-staffed. Natalie bet Brooke’s boss never pushed a vacuum cleaner.
“I don’t mind. So, any sign of him yet?” Brooke’s voice was hopeful. Always. Which was the only reason Natalie was sitting in a frozen parking lot in Fairbanks, Alaska, at six in the morning. Because Brooke deserved answers.
“Sorry, not yet. Oh, wait, there’s somebody.” Natalie glanced up as a car pulled into the parking lot, but she quickly recognized the red Jeep. “Never mind. It’s just the barista to open the coffee cart. I’ll stay as long as I can today, but remember, I have to catch my plane to Anchorage this afternoon.”
“Yeah, I know you have the department Christmas party tomorrow. Are you taking a date?”
Natalie laughed. “You know I’ve had zero time for dating, especially in the last few months.”
“Well, you always said once you get your doctorate and a teaching position, you’d find time. I’m holding you to that.”
“Fine, once I move and start my new job, I’ll look around.”
“Good. Did you get the message from the dean in Anchorage yesterday asking you to call back so he could congratulate you on earning your PhD?”
Natalie scoffed. “He spent about two seconds on the congratulations and the next ten minutes trying to talk me into dumping my new job to cover for someone who’s going out on maternity leave. There’s always an ulterior motive.”
“That’s not true. Look at you. You’re doing me a huge favor without asking for anything in return. Although I really don’t think it’s necessary. Dane said he’d be back. Maybe he’ll pick up his mail this morning, and he’ll get my letter.”
“Maybe, but I’m starting to think he’s abandoned his post office box, or possibly he’s getting his mail forwarded somewhere else.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. That could be why he hasn’t answered my letter.” Brooke spoke as though Natalie had given her good news. Her mother really should have named her Pollyanna. “Maybe his mail hasn’t caught up with him yet.”
Natalie made a noncommittal noise. More likely he was married and kept a post office box his wife didn’t know about, but it was no use sharing her suspicions. Her friend would find out soon enough. Really, though, a PO box as his only means of communication? No cell phone? Not even a landline number? That didn’t ring any alarm bells for Brooke? “Are you sure you got the address right?”
“Yes, Dane wrote it down for me.”
Natalie frowned. Dane Rockford. Was it just her, or did that name sound as made-up as the rest of the story? Whatever. “Okay. I’ll keep watching until I have to catch my plane.”
“I really appreciate it. Just leave the car in the airport lot. I’ve got the extra keys. I’ll get someone to drive me over to pick it up after work. Oh, and don’t forget to plug it in. The battery’s not always reliable when it gets too cold.”
“I will, and I’ll call you if anything happens in the meantime. Have a good day at work.”
Natalie returned the phone to her pocket. Maybe she should cancel her flight and stay a few more days. Trouble was, she’d promised her coworker Marianne that she’d be at the party in Anchorage tomorrow night to say goodbye to everyone before she left the university, and she never liked to break a promise. But she could fly back to Fairbanks after Christmas for a few days if necessary.
The teenager at the coffee cart opened the shutters and turned to wave at Natalie. Sheepishly, Natalie waved back. So much for being inconspicuous. She’d only been there for a couple of hours the first day before the barista had knocked on her window and asked if she was okay. She’d been forced to come clean about why she was loitering around their parking lot. Fortunately, once she’d explained, the barista had been in full sympathy with the cause. She’d even shared the key to the bathroom in the adjoining mini mall.
Hopefully, Rockford—if that was his real name—wasn’t avoiding his mailbox because he’d spotted Brooke’s car in the parking lot. It didn’t help that it was a bright yellow car with a blue driver’s-side door. The original door had been damaged beyond repair in a parking lot mishap and, of course, the perpetrator had given Brooke a fake phone number and insurance information. Things like that happened to Brooke. They never seemed to dampen her outlook, though. She’d just gushed about how lucky she was to find a replacement door in the junkyard and how nice the guy at the garage was to install it on the cheap.
Natalie shivered. Despite the ridiculous number of layers she was wearing, she found it impossible to stay warm at thirty below zero while sitting still. According to the weather report, this cold would break and the weather would warm into the single digits around Christmas, but that wasn’t much help today. Growing up in Anchorage, Natalie thought she understood winter, but compared to Fairbanks, Anchorage was the tropics.
Speaking of tropical weather, Natalie checked the forecast for South Central New Mexico. Tomorrow’s high was sixty-eight, equivalent to a summer day in Anchorage. Bliss. She would be starting her new position as an associate professor there in exactly twenty-seven days. Assuming she didn’t die of hypothermia first.
She couldn’t leave Alaska, though, until she was sure Brooke was going to be okay. If nobody showed up today, it might be time to hire a professional to find this guy and serve him papers. Brooke wouldn’t like the idea, but then Brooke lived in her own reality.
Natalie considered starting the engine and running the heater, but she was down to a quarter tank of gas and she had another seven hours to get through. The Christmas lights draped over the coffee cart winked invitingly. Time to warm up from the inside out.
She wedged her puffy coat out from behind the steering wheel and made her way across the parking lot. Her barista friend, Tiff, a local college student, had a double cappuccino and a friendly smile waiting by the time she arrived. “Anything new in the manhunt?”
“Nope.” Natalie tugged her mitten off with her teeth, dug around in her coat pocket until she found her wallet and handed over her bank card. “Hopefully something will break today, because I have to fly out this afternoon.”
“I hope the jerk shows up soon, and you nail him to the wall.”
“I can’t,” Natalie admitted as she dropped a dollar into the tip jar. “I have strict orders to find out where he lives, report back and let my friend be the one to tell him about the baby. She wants to break it to him gently.”
“Really? I’d want to break something, and I wouldn’t be gentle.” Tiff slid her card through the reader and handed it back. “Say, could that be him?”
Natalie spun around, dropping her card and mitten as she turned. Sure enough, a man in a blue parka was getting out of the back seat of a small SUV and heading toward the door of the postal store, carrying a leather satchel. By the time she’d fished her bank card from the snow, spilling part of her cappuccino in the process, the man was already inside.
Natalie galloped across the parking lot but slowed to a casual saunter as she arrived at the door and went inside. An iron grate separated the store side from the post office boxes. She turned the corner and spotted the man in the second aisle. His hair looked freshly trimmed, but it was the same rich cocoa color as the shaggy mop on the man in the poorly focused selfie Brooke had shown her. It could be him.
Her quarry fished out a key and was inserting it into—yes!—box number 437. She stood farther down the row and pretended to be searching her pockets for a key. He removed a wad of mail, including a distinctive yellow envelope, and shoved it into his satchel. She only caught a brief glimpse of his face when he turned.
“Excuse me,” he muttered before stepping around her and walking out the door. As soon as he was inside the car, the driver shifted into gear and pulled toward the parking lot exit. Natalie had to race across the lot to Brooke’s car. She skidded on a slick spot and dropped her coffee cup. Stupid mittens. She almost turned back to pick it up—Natalie despised litterers—but realized the SUV was pulling out. She jumped into the driver’s seat. Miraculously, the car started on the first try. She fishtailed across the lot and reached the exit in time to see the gray SUV turn left at the stop sign.
She zoomed to the sign, waited for a snowplow to pass and turned left, but the SUV was nowhere to be seen. She drove on ahead and was just about to give up when she spotted it at the next intersection turning right. She switched across two lanes, almost clipping the bumper of a black truck. He laid on the horn. “Sorry,” she mouthed as he passed her. He shot her a rude gesture, not that she blamed him.
She made the turn and was able to follow the gray SUV without further incident until it pulled up in front of a barn-red building with a clock tower and a glass-fronted entryway. The train station. Two men got out and walked to the back of the SUV. When the liftgate opened, an enormous dog jumped out. This had to be the malamute Brooke had described.
They unloaded a large backpack, a crate, a satchel and an ice chest onto the sidewalk. The men exchanged a few words, and the SUV pulled away, leaving the guy Natalie was tailing standing there holding his dog’s leash. A porter pushed a trolley in his direction.
Now what? Natalie’s strategy had been to follow him to his house or job. Somewhere where Brooke and her lawyer—which Brooke would say she didn’t need but Natalie would insist upon—would be able to find him. The train station put a crimp in the plan.
Well, Natalie hadn’t sat in the cold for three days to give up now. She drove on to the parking lot, plugged Brooke’s block heater into the rail provided for that purpose, grabbed her tote and her suitcase, and went inside. The man with the big dog was talking to a woman in uniform, gesturing toward the blue-and-yellow train outside. While keeping one eye on him, Natalie made her way to the ticket window. “Where is this train heading?”
“Anchorage, passing through Denali.”
Perfect. She could follow Brooke’s mystery man and make her way to Anchorage at the same time. “I’ll take a ticket, please.” She pulled off her mittens and hat, tucking them into her coat pockets.
“One-way or round-trip?” the man asked.
“One-way.”
“I’ll need to see your identification.” He took her driver’s license and credit card and did his thing on the computer. She kept an eye on Rockford to make sure he wasn’t slipping out, but he was still engrossed in conversation. “Here you go.” The clerk handed her a ticket. “Train boards in twenty minutes. Arrival time is seven fifteen.”
She looked at her watch. “Tonight?”
“Yes. Enjoy.” The man smiled as though taking an entire day to cover the ground she could fly over in an hour was a bonus. At least she’d probably be warmer in the train than she would have been on the stakeout.
She tugged her roller bag away from the window. Her quarry was buckling a muzzle onto his dog. The huge malamute didn’t seem to be offended about this, judging by the sweep of his plumy tail. Must be a regulation of some kind. Rockford handed over the leash, and the train employee led the dog toward the train. Rockford wandered over to inspect the art on the wall of the waiting area. He carried only the satchel, so he must have checked his other luggage.
Natalie looked down at her suitcase. It was small, and since she was wearing most of the clothes she’d brought to Fairbanks, quite light. She could keep it with her instead of checking it, and that would give her a chance to find a taxi in Anchorage while Rockford was waiting to claim his luggage. Then all she had to do was follow him home, assuming taxi drivers really would “follow that car.”
She had a plan. Now it was time to check in with Brooke. Natalie slipped into the bathroom and pulled out her phone. It rang seven times before Brooke picked up.
“Natalie?” Brooke whispered. “Did he come?”
“He did! I followed him to the train station.” A woman came out of a stall and shot her a suspicious look. Natalie tried for an “I’m kidding” smile. The woman walked past her to the sink and turned on the faucet.
“That’s great,” Brooke was saying, but Natalie could hear someone in the background calling her over. “One minute,” she told them before she returned to the phone and whispered, “I’ll be there just as soon as I find someone to cover. We’re short-staffed today.”
“No time.” Natalie moved farther from the woman washing her hands and lowered her voice. “I have your car, remember, and the train boards in twenty minutes for Anchorage. I’ve got a ticket for the same train. Once we get to Anchorage, I’ll follow him to wherever he lives and let you know. Then you and your lawyer can pay him a visit, okay?”
“Are you sure it’s him?” As usual, Brooke was ignoring the words she didn’t want to hear. Like lawyer.
With one last suspicious look in Natalie’s direction, the other woman in the restroom pushed her way out the door. Natalie adjusted the strap of the tote that was sliding off her shoulder. “He has a malamute with him.”
“Vitus is there?”
“Who?”
“Vitus. The dog. He’s a sweetie pie.”
“Oh.” Too bad Natalie hadn’t been close enough to hear him call the dog. There couldn’t be too many malamutes named Vitus. “Besides the dog, he collected the mail, including your letter. I saw it.”
“Did he look happy when he saw the envelope?” Brooke asked eagerly.
Natalie knew what Brooke wanted to hear, but she couldn’t lie. “I’m not sure he noticed. Listen, I plugged in your car and left the keys under the mat. You’re okay to find a ride to pick it up?”
“Of course. Thank you, Natalie. I can’t believe you’re doing all this.”
“Thank you for letting me stay with you these last few weeks. Take care of yourself. I’ll call as soon as I know something.”
“Okay. And enjoy the train trip. I hear it’s beautiful.”
“I’ll send you some pictures. Bye.” Natalie shook her head and smiled. Leave it to Brooke to see the upside.
Natalie had lived her whole life in Alaska. Yes, winter was beautiful, in a monochromatic sort of way. But after thirty-two Alaskan winters, she was ready for something different. Ready to start the life she’d been working toward for so long. But Brooke was right. This train ride would be a last glimpse of what she was leaving behind. She might as well enjoy it.
After a quick call to cancel her flight, Natalie took a moment to remove a few layers of clothing before she passed out from the heat. She packed the sweater, hat, mittens and outer layer of socks in her suitcase, ran a brush through her hat-hair, and returned to the lobby, carrying her coat and dragging her suitcase. She looked around. No sign of Rockford.
Her heart rate jumped into overdrive. Had he slipped away while she was talking to Brooke? She should never have let him out of her sight.
But then she spotted him across the room as he straightened. He seemed to have gathered a bottle of water and some other spilled items and was handing them back to a woman who walked with a cane. She tucked them into a quilted bag and thanked him. Okay, he seemed nice enough.
Brooke claimed he was. They’d met when her tire had gone flat, leaving her stranded on a lonely road halfway between the hotel where she’d filled in for the late shift and her home. Her spare was flat, as well. She’d been about to call for a tow when he’d stopped to ask if she needed help. Natalie would have locked the doors and called the police, but Brooke the Trusting just climbed into a car with a total stranger. It was pure luck that the guy driving by at two in the morning happened to be an amateur northern lights photographer rather than an intoxicated ax murderer.
He’d given her a ride home. The next morning, he’d gotten the tire repaired and installed on her car before he’d shown up at her house to give her a ride to pick it up. Brooke said it was her idea that he should check out of his hotel and stay with her for the two weeks he was in town. In fact, Brooke claimed almost everything about their time together was her idea, but Natalie had her doubts. Nobody did anything for free. He probably had an endgame in mind from the moment he saw Brooke’s car on the side of the road, and it had all worked out just like he planned. A juicy little affair with no repercussions. Little did he know a bomb was about to drop.
An announcement came that it was time to board. Ignoring the seat assignment on her ticket, Natalie followed Rockford through the train. The seats all faced forward, except for the front seat of each car that faced backward with a table between it and the second seat, forming a sort of booth. In the third car, he chose the backward-facing seat. Good, that made him easy to watch. Natalie found an unoccupied seat about three rows back and across the aisle. The car was only about half full that morning, and the window seat beside her was vacant, as well. She lifted her small suitcase into the rack above her head, pulled out her latest K. Krisman mystery and settled in for a ride.
The train pulled forward. Rockford took out his phone and made a call. Natalie strained her ears, but she couldn’t hear him over the click-clack of the wheels on the track. Too bad she’d never learned to lip-read. He tucked the phone into his pocket and opened his satchel, pulling out a laptop computer which he booted up on the table in front of him. His face took on an expression of rapt concentration. His lips moved as he read. Natalie giggled to herself.
He squeezed together the finger and thumb of each hand, but she couldn’t see what he was holding. His left hand remained stationary, while his right moved in a circular, wrapping motion. Now that she was watching more closely, she didn’t think he was holding anything at all. After a moment, he nodded and pulled the computer closer to type something into it. Then he pushed it back again and repeated the winding motion. Very odd.
Anyway, he wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Natalie turned her attention toward the window. A pink glow painted the horizon, visible between the trunks of birch trees. Snow covered the ground like a plump down comforter, with a curving line of animal tracks forming the quilting. It really was quite lovely.
When she looked back, Rockford had stopped to admire the landscape, as well. He gazed out the window for several minutes, a small smile on his face, before he returned to his computer.
As the sky lightened, the details of the landscape began to become clear. Mountains, trees, rivers, all decorated with a blanket of pristine snow. An announcement came over the speaker. “Passengers, we have a moose sighting coming up ahead on the left.”
Natalie scooted over to the window seat to watch. There he was, a young bull rubbing against a tree trunk. He glanced toward the train, but he didn’t seem to be particularly alarmed. After a moment, he reached up to nibble at the twigs overhead.
Moose were common in and around Anchorage, but not so much that it didn’t spark a little thrill whenever Natalie spotted one. They were such bizarre creatures, their spindly legs all out of proportion with their chunky bodies. They thrived in the bogs and snow of Alaska, spending the winter extracting enough nourishment from twigs and bark to keep themselves alive until spring arrived.
Sometimes Natalie had felt like a moose in winter, surviving on part-time jobs, teaching freshman online courses, holding it together until she could earn her doctorate. But now she had her PhD, and that associate professorship in New Mexico was hers. She’d been lucky enough to have applied just as noted mathematician Dr. Benarjee had been recruited to a think tank in D.C. She’d taken over his classes and the lease on his apartment. All her worldly possessions, other than what she carried right now, were waiting in storage at her destination. Spring had finally arrived. She just needed to make sure Brooke was taken care of before she left Alaska.
The train rounded a bend, and the moose was lost from view. Natalie picked up her book and opened it to the bookmark, ready to settle in until Rockford made his move.
TANNER PAGED DOWN on his manuscript to the instructions for tying another variation of the classic Woolly Bugger. This would be his fifth book on fly tying, and he’d built a reputation for precision and clarity, which he intended to maintain.
He read through the steps he’d listed, acting them out with his hands as he read to make sure he hadn’t skipped any. Mentally, he tied off the thread and snipped it with scissors. Yes, that was correct.
Before moving to the next fly, he glanced up to see that woman looking at him again. Immediately she turned toward the window. All morning, even back in the train station, he’d had this eerie feeling someone was watching him. Was she the reason?
He studied her for a few seconds while her gaze remained on the window. Thick brown hair pushed back behind her shoulders, revealing silver drop-shaped earrings. A nice profile, with prominent cheekbones. She looked familiar. In fact, wasn’t that the same woman he’d almost bumped into in the post office that morning when he had been picking up Dane’s mail?
He supposed it was possible. Fairbanks wasn’t that big, and just like him, she might have made a quick mail run before she caught the train. She turned, and their eyes met for half a second before she picked up a book and opened it. He recognized the cover because he’d read the mystery last month when it first came out. Whoever she was, she had good taste in literature.
He turned back to his manuscript. He needed to get this final edit finished and the sample flies ready for the photographer by the middle of January, and he wasn’t likely to get much work time once he arrived at the family cabin, especially with Gen and the girls there. He loved his two nieces, but their presence was not conducive to accomplishing anything that required cohesive thought. The cabin was a great place for them to run off some of that pre-Christmas energy, though, and his cousin’s dog, Vitus, would be happy to run along with them.
Good thing Gen’s girls had been around to play with Vitus at Tanner’s place in Anchorage while he was dog-sitting. You’d never have guessed that up until last month Tanner’s nieces had spent their entire lives in Florida. At his house, they played outside in the snow for hours every day, gliding down the hill in his backyard on inflated rings and chasing Vitus in circles. Gen was going to have her hands full next fall when Evie started kindergarten and Maya didn’t have anyone to play with.
Tanner was glad he could offer them a place to stay while they regrouped. Starting over was never easy, especially when there were kids involved. Poor Gen had been completely blindsided when her husband of eight years informed her that he was quitting his job to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. Oh, and by the way, moving out, because he needed to surround himself with people who were “supportive.” Meaning a woman he’d apparently been seeing—or rather, cheating with—for some time. Tanner would have liked to fly to Florida to teach the jerk the definition of supportive, but for Gen’s sake, he stayed out of it.
Gen had been a stay-at-home mom. They had no savings to speak of. Gen got the house in the divorce, but by the time she’d sold it, paid off the mortgage and the real estate agent, and driven herself and her two daughters home to Alaska, there wasn’t much left over. She and the girls had moved in with Tanner. The last few weeks she’d been in supermom mode: baking cookies, wrapping presents, basically trying to make sure the girls had such a wonderful Christmas when they went to the cabin that they wouldn’t even miss their father.
Tanner had done his part, obtaining every item on his nieces’ extensive Santa list. On Christmas Eve at the cabin, he and the rest of the family would help the girls set out milk and cookies for Santa and read The Night Before Christmas, just like his dad used to read it to him and Gen when they were kids. Evie and Maya deserved a great Christmas.
He went back to the edits. When he got to the Russian River variations, he remembered that he hadn’t called about the samples Rob had sent for his approval. The train was coming into Healy, and his phone showed three bars. He dialed quickly. “Hi, Peggy.”
“Merry Christmas, Tanner. How was the signing?”
“It went very well. You did a great job with the publicity. Say, I may be about to go out of cell range. Is Rob handy?”
“Sure. I’ll transfer you.”
“Thanks. Merry Christmas.” A few seconds later, he heard the click as Rob picked up. “Hi, it’s Tanner. Listen, those bucktail samples you sent aren’t going to work. Too brittle, and the dye is uneven. We need to go back to the old supplier.”
“Are you sure we can’t make them work?” Rob, his partner, asked. “The price is—”
“Not relevant if the quality’s poor. Their peacock herl is fine and the marabou is excellent, but don’t order the bucktail.” That woman was watching Tanner again, but when their eyes met, she quickly looked away.
On the phone, Rob gave a long-suffering sigh. “Fine. I’ll order more of the bucktail from the supplier you like. How was the book signing?”
“Good. I’m on the train, so I might lose you any minute, but I’ll tell you more when I see you. I’m going to be at the cabin for the next few days, so no phone. I’ll get back to you after the new year.”
“No problem. I’m closing up the office and giving Peggy time off until January second.”
“Sounds good. Merry Christmas, Rob.”
“To you, as well.” The call ended.
Tanner shook his head. Rob was always tempted by bargains, but Tanner wasn’t going to put his name on anything that didn’t meet quality standards. Fortunately, Rob trusted his judgment. He opened his laptop again and went back to work. Several hours passed without Tanner realizing it until the porter came to announce the dining car was open for lunch. Right on cue, Tanner’s stomach growled.
The woman three rows back was still reading, but he could see her eyes dart toward him before disappearing behind the book. He couldn’t imagine what it was about him she found so fascinating. Tanner packed his laptop in his bag and looked toward her again. Curiosity won out. Instead of heading directly to the dining car, he moved to the aisle beside her. She pretended to be entirely engrossed in her reading.
“Excuse me.” When she didn’t look up, he touched her shoulder. “Ma’am?”
“Yes?” She held her place in the book with her finger and frowned at him.
“Would you care to join me in the dining car for lunch?”
