Girls’ Night Out

My name is Twinkle Winkleman. I’m sure my daddy, Leonard Winkleman, thought the name was hilariously funny when he wrote it down on my birth certificate—funny for him, maybe, but not for me. That handle was a pain in my ass for most of my childhood and not a whole lot of fun for some of my classmates, either.

In grade school, I punched the lights out of more than one would-be bully for following me around the playground bellowing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” at the top of his lungs. Eventually most of the boys and some of the girls, too, figured out they if they messed with my name, they were likely to have a close encounter with my fists. Once they got that message, my quality of life improved immeasurably. As an adult, I’ve finally come to appreciate Daddy’s sense of humor. Now, when the occasional dim bulb raises that issue, all I do is level an icy, unblinking stare in his or her direction. That usually ends the discussion without my having to say a word.

When I was done working on Maude that Saturday evening and was ready to go back into the house, I had put in a full day’s work. Maude is the 1973 International Harvester Travelall that Daddy, flush with cash at the time, had bought new off the lot in 1973. He spent the next thirty years making sure Maude was in good running condition, although in his final years, once he was confined to a wheelchair, I did the work for him but always under his direct supervision and scrutiny.

When I was a kid, cell phones and video games didn’t exist. In grade school the girls played with jacks and boys played with marbles. At home, girls messed around with Barbie dolls and boys did whatever boys did back then. Not me—I spent most of my childhood in Daddy’s garage, standing on a stool next to him with his head and chest buried under the hood as he worked to fix whatever ailed some vehicle or other.

In the process, he taught me everything I needed to know about mechanics. Daddy was dyslexic, although no one ever mentioned that to him back when he was struggling in school and everyone, teachers included, were busy calling him stupid. Over time he managed to develop some rudimentary reading and writing skills, especially when it came to auto parts, but he knew everything there was to know about making car engines run, and he was a great teacher.

After Daddy passed away, his beloved Maude came to me. Along with the vehicle, I inherited what he called Maude’s Bible, the multivolume record of her service history. There, in lined notebooks and written in print form rather than cursive, Daddy maintained a complete record of Maude’s mechanical upkeep, including the dates of every oil change, brake job, battery replacement, and engine overhaul from 1973 up to the time of his death. Once Daddy was gone, I took over. That’s when the record began being written in cursive.

According to the Bible, Maude’s gas tank had been replaced on April 8, 2001. The original sending unit had stopped working years earlier, which meant that the gas gauge always indicated she had a full tank even when Maude was running on empty. I managed that problem for years by simply keeping track of the mileage between fill-ups. Daddy was one of those guys who always maintained that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But once the replacement tank itself developed a slow leak, I decided the time had come to redo the entire system with a new fuel pump, filter, fuel lines, gas tank, and sending unit. That took the better part of the day. When the job was completed and dutifully recorded in the Bible, I went on to the second part of the job—bringing Maude’s annual winterizing routine up to snuff.

I don’t have to work at a regular job because I’m more or less an heiress, albeit an unlikely one. Daddy grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Despite his learning disability, he managed to bluff his way through grade school but dropped out of high school his junior year. Because he’d been held back a couple of times, he was already eighteen by then. He went straight to the army recruiter’s office and joined up. After serving in the army, he came home as a full-fledged mechanic and went to work in a garage owned by a friend of the family. He may have been short on reading, writing, and arithmetic, but when it came to repairing vehicles, he was a whiz. As a working mechanic, he made good money. He was also handsome as all get-out, enough so that he managed to reel in a true beauty. Unfortunately my parents’ natural good looks skipped a generation and weren’t passed along to me. When my son, Tad, came along, he was a handsome devil, too—Daddy’s spitting image.

Although I’ve seen photographs of my mother, I have no actual memory of her, since I was only a year old when Daddy pulled up stakes. With me and my older brother, Chad, in tow, we left Tulsa in the dust and moved to faraway Anchorage. Once there, Daddy found steady employment in yet another garage, this time as the chief mechanic and manager. He took the position primarily because it came complete with an upstairs two-bedroom apartment.

By then Chad was old enough to go to school. As for me? If there was a preschool for kids my age in the neighborhood, Daddy didn’t send me there. His idea of childcare was to stuff me into a pair of Oshkosh overalls, carry me downstairs, and let me wander around the garage so he could keep an eye on me while he worked on cars. For as long as I can remember, Daddy and his friends called me Button. I didn’t find out until the day of Daddy’s funeral that the origin of that name was due to the fact that when I was little, everyone in the garage—workers and customers alike—thought I was cute as a button.

Daddy always passed himself off as a widower, which, as it turns out, was more or less the truth. Although we had some interactions with Daddy’s folks back in Oklahoma, there was never any contact with our mother’s side of the family. That was something that puzzled Chad and me, especially when Daddy completely stonewalled any questions we asked about her. According to him, she was dead and that was that. Chad was always rebellious, and he and Daddy never saw eye to eye. If Daddy said something was up, Chad insisted it was down. After graduating from high school, he left home and joined the air force instead of the army. On his first leave, he went straight back to Oklahoma and dug up the real story.

When I was six months old, our mother had run off with a smooth-talking car salesman in town, who earned twice as much as Daddy did. A little more sleuthing on Chad’s part revealed that the two runaway lovebirds died in a car crash in Texas less than two months after leaving Tulsa. Since the divorce was never finalized, Daddy was a widower, all right, just not in the usual sense of the word.

Once Chad clued me in on what had really happened, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as any kind of father and son relationship was concerned. Daddy simply wrote my brother out of his life. To my knowledge, they never exchanged another word. After that, the only time they ever occupied the same room was when they both came to the mortuary to attend my son’s funeral.

Once Chad was out of Daddy’s life, he was mostly out of mine as well. The truth is, the two of us had never been especially close. For one thing, I was five years younger than he was. When we were kids, he constantly gave me all kinds of grief, calling me a spoiled brat and claiming I was Daddy’s favorite, which, come to think of it, was probably true. When Daddy passed away ten years ago in 2012, I let Chad know about Daddy’s passing, of course, but he refused to come to the funeral.

Once the will was read and I discovered our father had left everything to me, I offered to split things fifty-fifty with Chad, but he turned me down cold. He said that since I was the one who’d had to spend my whole life putting up with the stubborn old goat, he thought I deserved every penny. Let’s just say no one in my immediate family ever got the memo about turning the other cheek, and we’re not big on forgiving and forgetting, either.

Anyway, I was in middle school when Daddy’s boss, the owner of the garage in Anchorage, took sick. At that point, Daddy was able to buy the business, not only the garage, but the land it sat on as well. Years later, when a big corporation showed up in town wanting to buy the property to build a high-rise, Daddy sold out and walked away with a bundle. With that sudden influx of money he not only paid cash for Maude but also for a large piece of property on the outskirts of town, where he set about building a house.

At the time, our place was not only outside the city limits, it was also out of reach of city planning and zoning requirements. As a result, when he built his own place—the one I still occupy—he included an attached, customized garage, complete with two bays, two hydraulic lifts, and a whole wall of bright red Sears and Roebuck tool chests and cabinets. Believe me, those were chosen, installed, and filled long before he picked out a single kitchen cabinet or appliance. In his book, equipping the garage took precedence to furnishing the house. Once we moved in, he kept on doing what he’d always done—working on cars with me, his little gearhead, right beside him, drinking it all in.

About that time, Daddy spotted another need in town, which he decided to address by starting Anchorage’s first-ever car service. Over time, he and Maude built up quite a reputation. In the dead of Alaskan winters, they were able to get people where they wanted to go no matter what kind of weather Mother Nature dished out. The car service business grew like crazy. Eventually he was forced to buy more vehicles and bring on more drivers. When the next corporate buyer came to town, Daddy sold that business, too, reserving the right for me to operate a one-vehicle car service for as long as I wished, and which I still do on occasion.

With a good chunk of my inheritance still in the bank, I don’t need a regular job—which I would no doubt hate, by the way—but that doesn’t mean I don’t watch my pennies. I take on some garage work—mostly rehabbing collector cars and keeping beloved old V-8s in good running order for a few select, longtime customers. As for the car service operation? TW Transportation generally operates on a seasonal basis. Maude and I hit the road when everyone else prefers to be hanging out at home with their feet propped up in front of a blazing fire.

In terms of running the car service, wintertime Alaska is my favorite time of year. Helping people get home for the holidays is something that appeals to me. Maude and I are both at our best in difficult driving conditions. We can get people to destinations by traveling iced-over roadways where most hotshot Uber drivers would fear to put their steel-belted radials.

The weatherman was predicting that the year’s first major snowstorm was due to start sometime overnight. Just because I may have put off my winterizing chores until the last minute, I didn’t skip any steps or cut any corners. I checked all fluids, repacked wheel bearings, changed brake pads, installed new wiper blades, and traded my fair-weather tires for a trusty set of Blizzaks. My last task for the day was using the garage’s winch to reattach my wintertime-driving essential—a removable snow plow.

As I worked, good old-fashioned Country/Western music blared through Daddy’s now-antique high-fi system while I hummed along to his favorites. I mined “Sixteen Tons” with Tennessee Ernie Ford, went out “Walking After Midnight” with Patsy Cline, was left talking to those “Four Walls” with Gentleman Jim Reeves, and rode with Glen Campbell on his way to Phoenix. Then, of course, there was Johnny Cash’s classic, “A Boy Name Sue.” That one hit the charts the year I was born. I always feel a sense of kinship with that poor kid, and I’m pretty sure Daddy was intent on toughening me up when he gave me my similarly oddball name.

That whole Saturday, while working out in the garage, I had been breathing in the delectable aroma of my daughter-in-law’s venison stew, simmering away in a Crock-Pot on the kitchen counter. When it comes to making venison stew, Cindy Winkleman’s can’t be beat. Once I finished attaching the snow plow it was time to clean my tools and put them away. As per usual, when it was time to deal with the wrenches, I started thinking about Daddy’s pumpkin pies.

One of my second-grade arithmetic homework assignments called for writing down the numbers from one to five hundred in a tablet. It was boring as hell. I hated it, and I let Daddy know I hated it. But the night I was complaining about that assignment happened to be the night before Thanksgiving. Not surprisingly he was baking pumpkin pies, which were almost as good as Cindy’s venison stew.

The next day, when it was time for dessert, he came to the table with one of his freshly baked pies in hand along with a knife, a sheet of paper, and a pencil.

“Finished with your homework assignment?” he asked.

I nodded.

“And when you wrote down all those boring numbers at school this week, where did you start—with what number?” he asked.

I thought it was a trick question, because Daddy was good at those. “Number one, I guess,” I said.

“Right,” he said, moving the pie until it was directly in front of me. “Now, how many pieces of pie do you see here?”

“One,” I said.

“Right again.” He drew a circle on the paper and wrote the number one on it. Then he took the knife and drew a line directly through the middle of the pie. “How many pieces do you see now?” he asked.

“Two,” I answered.

“Right again,” he told me. “I just cut the pie in half—into two pieces.” On the paper he drew another circle with a line through it. On each side he wrote 1/2 and 1/2. “Now, if you take those two half pies and add them together, what do you have?”

“A whole pie?” I asked.

“Bingo.”

He sliced the pie again, this time into quarters, and then drew another circle on the papers, this time adding 1/4 notations. “We now have four quarters. If you add those pieces together, what do you get?”

This was starting to be fun. The idea that those boring numbers could be broken into pieces somehow made them more interesting, and this time I knew the right answer before I said it aloud. “A whole pie!”

“Atta girl,” Daddy said, beaming at me. Then, to my dismay, he cut into the pie again. The next set of pieces were a lot smaller than the first ones had been. I had been hoping for one of those quarter slices, although the eighths weren’t that bad. But then he divided it again, this time into sixteenths. Those pieces were tiny.

“So now you get to choose your piece of pie,” he said. “What size do you want—a quarter or five sixteenths?”

So I counted the tiny slices off one by one, touching the crust with my fingers. “Five sixteenths,” I told him confidently, and that’s what he dished up for me—a piece that was made up of five sixteenths. I could see at a glance that it was bigger than a quarter. Once he slathered the five-sixteenths piece with a layer of whipping cream and set it in front of me, the fact that my portion was made up of five separate pieces was completely invisible. He was the one stuck with less than a quarter.

We enjoyed our dessert, but once we’d both cleaned our plates, Daddy reached into the pocket of his coveralls and pulled out two of his wrenches. His tools were always perfectly clean, and the numbers on them were clearly visible. One was labeled one inch and the other was five sixteenths.

“From now on,” he said, “when it’s time to put away tools, you’ll be in charge of the wrenches. Each wrench goes in a certain slot in the appropriate tool drawer. Both the wrenches and their slots are clearly marked. When I’m working and call for a wrench of some size, you’ll be my gofer and bring it to me on the double. Got it?”

“Got it,” I said.

“And when we’re done for the day, it’ll be your responsibility to put them back in the right places so it’ll be easy to find them again when we need them.”

From then on, that’s how it worked with me putting away his wrenches Eventually I didn’t even have to read the labels to know which was which. I could tell just by looking at them.

By the time fourth grade rolled around and everyone else in my class was struggling with fractions, I was in my element. Thanks to Daddy’s pumpkin pie, I went straight to the head of the fraction class. I remember Mrs. Markham, the teacher, telling me that since fractions were so easy for me, maybe I should consider being a mathematician or a teacher when I grew up.

I remember shaking my head. “I don’t think so,” I told her. “I want to be a mechanic, just like my daddy.”

With my tools cleaned and properly put away that Saturday, I banked the fire in the garage’s woodburning stove so the garage would stay warm overnight and I wouldn’t have to start the fire from scratch in the morning. I had winterized Maude today. Tomorrow I’d do the same thing for Cindy’s Jeep Cherokee. Since Cindy isn’t the kind of person who gives her car a name, she calls her vehicle, the “Jeep.”

I went inside, shed my coveralls, washed up, and headed for the kitchen, intent on my daughter-in-law’s venison stew rather than on Daddy’s pumpkin pie.

It turns out Cindy Winkleman is my daughter-in-law in much the same way Daddy was a widower—which is to say not exactly. Fifteen years ago, just back from a honeymoon trip to Hawaii, my son, Tad, stopped by the house with his bride in tow and asked if Cindy could stay with me for a couple of days while he flew down to Seattle to take care of some “unfinished business.” That was the last time either Cindy or I saw him. He was alive when he left for Seattle and came back home as ashes in a funeral urn.

It turns out Tad’s “unfinished business” had to do with a previous wife whose divorce hadn’t quite been finalized by the time he and Cindy tied the knot. That was the same stunt Tad’s father, Larry Rhomer, had pulled on me years earlier. Daddy may have taught me all there was to know about auto mechanics and hunting and fishing, but he hadn’t taught me diddly-squat about dealing with men. That ill-fated marriage blew apart a month or so after I turned up pregnant and prior to my getting around to changing my maiden name. When the dust settled and the divorce was final, I was still Twinkle Winkleman, and once Tad was born, Winkleman was his last name, too.

From the time Tad was able to walk and talk, he was a handful. Raising him as a single mom hadn’t been a picnic for either one of us. Like his uncle Chad, Tad was a bullheaded troublemaker. I hate to think about how many times I was summoned to the principal’s office because he’d gotten in trouble for pulling some off-the-wall stunt. We were at loggerheads most of the time he was growing up, and when he left home shortly after high school graduation, I don’t know which of us was more relieved.

He spent a number of years fishing halibut with a crew based in Seattle. He was in his midtwenties when, fresh off a trip and with a pocketful of money, he came back to Anchorage for a visit. That’s when he hooked up with Cindy. Once he announced they were getting married, I thought he’d finally gotten himself on the straight and narrow. Not so. A few months later he was dead.

After leaving Cindy with me, he had gone to see wife number one at her family home in West Seattle. I suppose he was hoping to somehow resolve his now-complex marital situation. The young woman’s father, not at all pleased to see him, had hauled out a revolver and plugged Tad in the heart, right there in the family living room. He was declared dead at the scene without ever being taken to a hospital.

Naturally Seattle PD contacted Anchorage PD, and they sent officers out to notify us about what had happened, including the details that had led up to the shooting. It was bad enough just learning that he was dead, but finding out about the existence of that other woman in Tad’s life was utterly devastating for Cindy. As for me? I was grief-stricken, too, but I was more furious than sad. As far as I know, Tad had never once laid eyes on his biological father, but clearly there must have been a genetic marker for bigamy lurking somewhere in my son’s DNA.

With Tad dead, Cindy was left completely on her own. Both her parents had gone off the rails on drugs while she was a child, and she’d grown up in a series of foster homes. As far as family was concerned, I was it. She’d managed to graduate from high school and was working as a waitress in Anchorage when she met Tad. He died on the first of December of 2007. Since Tad was legally married to someone else, and since the wronged wife was cleared of any involvement in his homicide, she was considered Tad’s legal heir as far as his vehicle and group life insurance was concerned, so Cindy ended up dead broke. Given that, there was no way in hell I was going to turn Cindy out into the cold cruel world with Christmas coming on. Instead, I persuaded her to stay on with me for what I thought would be a few weeks or maybe a couple of months. Fifteen years later, she’s still here.

Once that first awful holiday season was over, I helped Cindy obtain an attorney so she could go to court and have her marriage to Tad declared void. That was a way of more or less normalizing her situation, and it was the first step in helping her recover. That kind of devastating emotional damage takes a long time to heal. Even now I’m sometimes not sure she’s entirely over it.

News about Tad’s homicide never made much of a splash as far as Anchorage media coverage was concerned. His funeral was a small affair in a mortuary attended by family—Daddy and Chad included—and a few close friends. Most of the attendees knew the truth about what had happened, but since Cindy decided to keep her new last name, it was easy for everyone else to assume she was a widow. Over time it became easier for both Cindy and me to go along with that bit of fiction. By now we’ve lived together for so long that some folks seem to be under the impression that we’re actually mother and daughter. Cindy generally attempts to disabuse them of that notion, but I don’t bother. When people make that mistaken assumption, I just let it be. Why’s that? Because, in my heart of hearts, Cindy has become the daughter I never had.

As I said, it took time and effort to duct-tape the poor girl’s shattered ego back together so she could start moving forward. I managed to convince her that she needed more than just a high school diploma to support herself and encouraged her to go back to school. Eventually, once she had her GED, she enrolled at the University of Alaska in Anchorage where she earned both a BA and master’s degree in business. Now in her midthirties, she’s a CPA with one of Anchorage’s leading accounting firms.

At this point, she could easily live on her own, but we’re comfortable where we are. I enjoy her company, and she seems to enjoy mine. The house is big enough to allow both of us our privacy. She has her own living space upstairs while I have most of the ground floor to myself, with the exception of the kitchen, living room, and laundry room, which we share.

Over time we’ve developed something close to a symbiotic relationship. In addition to being a marvelous cook and a tip-top housekeeper, Cindy is as dependable as the day is long—something my son never was. She handles all of my tedious bookkeeping and accounting needs, for which I’m eternally grateful. My part of the bargain is keeping a roof over both our heads, buying the groceries, and maintaining her tricked-out Jeep Cherokee in top-notch running condition.

Walking into the kitchen that night, I was surprised to find only two places set at the kitchen table. Saturday is the only night of the week when Cindy kicks up her heels. That’s when she and her best friend, Leslie Jenkins, have their weekly Girls’ Night Out.

Cindy and Leslie work for the same firm and have become great friends. Leslie is divorced. Although she’s several years older than Cindy, she still has two preteen kids at home. On weekends, when the kids are with Leslie’s ex, she and Cindy party hearty. Usually Leslie stops by for an early dinner at our place, then, with one or the other of them serving as designated driver for the evening, the two of them hit the road for a night of singing and drinking with a group of like-minded thirty- and forty-somethings at a local karaoke joint called Do-Re-Mi.

I was pouring milk into our glasses when Cindy showed up in the kitchen doorway. She’s a lovely young woman, and once she’s properly gussied up for an evening on the town, she’s a regular knockout. I often find myself hoping that more than just drinking and singing goes on at the Do-Re-Mi. I’d like to think that somehow, somewhere Cindy will meet up with Mr. Right. When it comes to living happily ever after, Cindy Winkleman is someone who certainly deserves it.

“No Leslie tonight?” I asked.

Cindy frowned and shook her head. “She called and canceled.”

“Not sick, I hope,” I said.

“More like sick in the head,” Cindy replied.

She went straight to the counter and began dishing up our bowls of stew. I’m not someone who can let that kind of a statement go unquestioned. “Why?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

“She’s got a new boyfriend,” Cindy said with a sigh. “His name is James. He’s an asshole.”

“You’ve met him?”

“Oh, I’ve met him all right, and so has everyone else. They hooked up over the internet a few weeks ago, and she’s completely gaga over the guy. He dropped by the Do-Re-Mi last Saturday and tried to pick a fight with one of the regulars, Matt Coffer.”

Cindy hadn’t mentioned a word about a possible altercation during the previous week’s outing, but I managed to keep my mouth shut while she continued.

“Matt and Leslie both love show tunes, and they often perform duets. Just because they were singing together, James claimed Matt was flirting with Leslie. Of course he couldn’t have been more wrong. Matt’s gay as a giggle, and his longtime partner was there at the time—as he usually is. Things were about to get ugly when the bartender intervened. He made James leave. When Leslie called me a little while ago and said she wouldn’t be able to show up tonight, I figured out that James’s nose is probably still out of joint after last week, and he doesn’t want her to come.”

There’s a red flag for you, I thought. I may not know a lot about men, but I understand enough to know that dating someone who separates a woman from her friends early on in a relationship is always a bad sign.

“Sounds like a real winner,” I remarked.

“You can say that again,” Cindy replied.

While we ate our stew, we discussed our day. While I’d been working in the garage, Cindy hadn’t been sitting around eating bonbons. She’d been working, too—mulching. Did I tell you Cindy is also our gardener-in-chief? She has both a wintertime greenhouse and a summertime garden that keep us in fresh vegetables on a year-round basis. And she’s almost as religious about doing her annual mulching chores as I am about Maude’s regularly scheduled oil changes.

Other than that, we ate our stew in relative silence, and believe me, it was glorious. Not quite as wonderful as Daddy’s pumpkin pie, but close. Wanting Cindy to still be able to enjoy her night out, as we finished our meal, I offered to come along as her designated driver.

“Thanks, but no need,” she replied. “I’m there for the singing and the company. I can stick to coffee and/or orange juice, because I’ll be damned if I’ll let that asshole James win. He may have ruined Leslie’s evening, but he’s sure as hell isn’t wrecking mine!”

Good for you! I thought.

Since Cindy does most of the cooking, I do most of the mealtime cleanup. I had just finished loading the freshly scoured Crock-Pot into the dishwasher when Cindy came flying through the kitchen in a blind panic because she couldn’t find her car keys. This is not an unusual occurrence. In fact, the previous Christmas I had given her a decorative key chain complete with an attached AirTag. I pulled out my phone, checked the Find My app, and enlarged the image surrounding the blinking red dot.

“It’s in the mudroom,” I informed her.

“Crap,” she said. “I must have left it in my gardening jacket after I picked up that load of mulch this afternoon.”

With car keys in hand, Cindy was out of there in a jiffy, and I was grateful for the prospect of a whole evening with me in sole control of the TV remote. When it comes to Saturday night viewing, there’s not a whole lot on network TV these days. As far as I’m concerned, Saturday Night Live stopped being funny years ago, but that didn’t mean I was left high and dry.

In addition to introducing me to the delicacy of fried green tomatoes, Cindy Winkleman has also brought two modern miracles to my attention—not just regular streaming, but also the diverse wonders of YouTube. Without those, I would have spent my solo Saturday nights endlessly rewatching Daddy’s library of DVDs, additions to which stopped abruptly with his passing. Let’s just say I know the dialogue to some of those old movies by heart from beginning to end.

But YouTube is an amazing place. Sooner or later, almost everything shows up there. In fact there are art channels where you can literally spend hours watching paint dry. Those definitely aren’t for me. I settled into my recliner, formerly Daddy’s, and prepared to watch several episodes of my favorite program ever—Vice Grip Garage.

The star of the show is a handsome young guy named Derek Bieri, who hails from the Upper Midwest and happens to be one hell of a shade tree mechanic. He starts every episode with the following caution: “I am an idiot. Don’t do as I do, and only follow my advice if you’re desperate.”

Truth be told, Derek reminds me a lot of Daddy, and maybe that’s why I like the show so much. Daddy loved coaxing old broken-down engines back to life. Derek’s specialty is buying cars sight unseen. He drags them out of wherever they’ve been parked for the last twenty-five or thirty years—barns, fields, swamps, or forests—starts them up, and gets them roadworthy enough to drive back home to Tennessee where, after rehabbing them, he sells them.

The episode I started with that night was about an old Ford Econoline van that had been parked in a gully for so long that Derek and a buddy had to use chain saws to take down the grove of trees that had grown up in and around it. His down-home solutions for getting aging engines to turn over are hilarious and inventive if not exactly OSHA approved. I remember him cleaning some balky old part back to life by dropping it into a bucket of brake fluid and setting it on fire. I enjoy his perpetual optimism and his deliberate misuse of the English language. He calls spark plugs “sparkolaters.” And the closest he comes to saying bad words is the occasional frustrated, “Oh, for Pete’s sake!”

In the episode mentioned above, after prying the rust-welded wheel hubs off and replacing them, he and his buddy headed home, only to have the vehicle catch fire along the way. They put out the flames and kept on driving, making it home eventually, but just barely.

As a gearhead born and bred, I find the show endlessly fascinating. I mowed through several episodes that evening, but since they’re not exactly long on plot, eventually I fell asleep. I woke up because I was cold. I was about to add another log to the woodburning stove when I discovered it was two o’clock in the morning. Since the porch light was still on, I knew right off the bat that Cindy was late getting home. She jokes that she’s a lot like Cinderella and has to be home before midnight to keep her Jeep from turning into a pumpkin.

Concerned but not really worried, I dialed her number and was surprised when, after several rings, the call went to voice mail. Believe me, Cindy Winkleman is part of that generation whose cell phones are never out of reach! I gave it ten minutes before trying again—with the same result. That’s when I started to worry.

Do-Re-Mi is located in an abandoned bank branch in a strip mall that’s only a couple of miles away, but the route from here to there isn’t exactly a straight line. It suddenly occurred to me that she might have had car trouble or hit some stray animal on her way home—a moose, for example, or even a bear. That kind of thing happens in Alaska. In fact, it had happened to me the previous spring, when, just after breakup, my snow plow had a close encounter with a grizzly who darted out in front of me. At only three hundred pounds, he was no doubt a juvenile who was too dumb to know he should stay out of traffic. Smarter ones are a lot larger.

Once I saw him, there was no time to stop, and I hit the bugger square on. Had it not been for the snow plow, that might well have been the end of Maude. As it was, the bear was badly injured. I had to use the .357 Magnum I keep under my driver’s seat to put the poor thing out of his misery. This year when wintertime car service customers need to keep warm, they’ll have the authentic Alaska experience of snuggling under the newly tanned bearskin rug stowed in the back of Maude’s passenger compartment.

After that second unanswered call to Cindy’s phone, I waited another ten minutes before trying for a third time, but making three calls in half an hour was my limit. It was time to go look for her. However, before leaving the house for a possible nighttime rescue, I donned a clean pair of duck-lined coveralls with a matching jacket. Then, with a woolen knit cap pulled over my head and with insulated mittens in hand, I grabbed Maude’s keys and headed out. It was snowing by then—a precursor to the expected blizzard. Since there weren’t any other vehicles on the road, I took my sweet time as I drove along, scanning the shoulders on either side of the road for any sort of traffic mishap. I saw nothing at all—zippo!

As soon as I pulled into the strip mall’s parking lot, I saw Cindy’s Cherokee parked toward the back of Do-Re-Mi’s building. It was the only vehicle there, and that worried me. A neon sign announced the club’s name in glaring pink, but the joint itself was closed, buttoned up, and dark.

So where the hell is she? I wondered. Pulling up next to the Jeep, I got out of Maude to check things over. Pressing my nose up to the Jeep’s driver’s side window, I peered inside. Cindy’s purse was in its usual spot on the passenger seat. When I tried the handle, the door opened. That was worrisome. Like Daddy and his beloved Travelall, Cindy had bought the Cherokee fresh off the lot. This was her first-ever brand-new vehicle, and she never walked away from it without locking the doors!

Wondering if her phone was somehow buried inside the depths of her purse, I tried calling the number again. The phone rang all right, but not from inside the purse or even from inside the vehicle. This time the sound came from someplace else—somewhere outside. I found it a few seconds later—completely out of sight under the vehicle, and not just barely under it, either. In order to reach the phone, I had to go around to the passenger side of the vehicle and get down on my hands and knees to grab it. If Cindy had dropped her phone accidentally, I knew for sure she would have crawled through broken glass to retrieve it. Something or someone had prevented her from doing so. That left me with one burning question: What the hell had happened here?

Searching for answers, I turned to the phone itself. Cindy’s password on both her phone and home computer is her birthday. Once I typed that in, I located her call history. There were four missed calls—all of them from me. The three incoming calls immediately preceding my missed ones were all from Leslie to Cindy. They had been made over the course of the evening. Each of them had lasted for several minutes. The idea that the two of them would have been in touch by phone was hardly a surprise.

Next I went to her message app. A series of texts between Leslie and Cindy was front and center, and I quickly scanned through it:

It’s not the same without you here. It pisses me off that he’s telling you what you can and can’t do. I don’t like the way he’s bossing you around.

He says he doesn’t like crowds.

That’s bullshit. What he doesn’t like is your friends. He’s trying to isolate you.

Is Matt there?

Yes, but he looks like hell, and he lost a tooth.

Tell him I’m sorry about what happened.

Why should you apologize? James is the one who should be apologizing. He’s just lucky Matt isn’t going to file charges.

So where’s James right now?

He went out a while ago. He’ll be back soon.

He went out and left you stuck at home? On Saturday night? That sucks, girl. If he’s treating you this way only a few weeks in . . .

Maybe I will come down for a little while, just long enough to say hi.

Good. You need to stick up for yourself. What’s sauce for the goose and all that.

Okay. See you in a little.

The next text stream started thirty minutes later and it began with a message from Leslie.

I’m outside, but after what happened with Matt, I’m feeling a little weird about showing up. Do you mind coming outside and walking in with me.

Not at all. I’ll be right there.

That exchange had taken place shortly after eleven. Other than my unanswered calls, Cindy’s response was the last activity showing on Cindy’s phone. I looked around the parking lot one more time. Leslie drives a Subaru. If she had driven to the club in that, most likely it would have been there, too, but it wasn’t. That led me to believe that maybe Cindy and Leslie had left the Do-Re-Mi together in Cindy’s Subaru. Since Leslie’s number was right there on the phone in my hand, my next step was to call her. When that call, too, went straight to voice mail without any ringing at all, my concern rose to the next level. There were any number of reasons why that might have happened, and none of which were good. What the hell was going on?

Maybe they’d decided to go to Leslie’s place. I didn’t know the actual location, just that she lived closer to downtown Anchorage than we do. Using the contacts list in Cindy’s phone I was able to find Leslie’s address, and, with Siri’s help, I had turn-by-turn directions for driving there.

Fifteen minutes later, when I arrived at Leslie’s house, the place was completely dark. Nobody answered the door, and a peek through the garage door window revealed that Leslie’s Subaru was still parked inside.

So where the hell are they? I asked myself. That’s when I hit the panic button and called 911.

“What is the nature of your emergency?”

“It’s my daughter-in-law,” I said. “She didn’t come home on time tonight, and I need to file a missing person’s report.”

“What’s your daughter-in-law’s name?”

“Cindy—Cindy Winkleman.”

“How old is she?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“When did you last see her?”

“She left the house just after dinner to go to a karaoke joint called Do-Re-Mi. When she wasn’t home by two, I came looking for her. I found her car in the club’s parking lot. The doors were unlocked. Her purse was inside, but she wasn’t there.”

“Any sign of a struggle?”

“Some. Her phone was on the ground under the vehicle.”

“Nothing else? No blood. No sign of gunfire?

“Nothing.”

“In other words, at this point she’s only been missing for a couple of hours?”

That’s when I realized the whole conversation was about to go south. The 911 operator was about to tell me that as an adult, Cindy is allowed to come and go as she pleases, etc., etc., etc. In other words, until the twenty-four-hour timer ran down on the case, 911 operators weren’t going to lift a finger.

“Never mind,” I muttered. “I’ll handle this myself.”

With that, I ended the call. Then, taking Cindy’s purse and phone with me, I fired up Maude and drove straight to Anchorage PD. I should have known I was about to be stonewalled again—same song, second verse—because the desk sergeant, someone I didn’t know, went by the exact same playbook 911 operators were using: How old was Cindy? When had I last seen her? Had this ever happened before? I repeated the whole story.

When I finished, the guy leaned back in his chair, leered up at me, and said, “Maybe your daughter left the club for a little hanky-panky and didn’t want to discuss that delicate situation with her mother.”

Which told me he hadn’t been listening to a word I said. “Cindy’s not my daughter,” I said stiffly. “She’s my daughter-in-law.”

“Then maybe you should give your son a call,” he suggested. “Maybe he knows where she is.”

There was a pane of bulletproof glass between us, and I was tempted to punch my fist right through it.

“I would,” I snarled back at him, “except he’s been dead for the past fifteen years!”

With that, I turned on my heel and marched out of the lobby. I’m only five-five, but I stomped through that lobby in a towering rage, so mad I could have spit nails. As it was, I settled for a long string of muttered cusswords. Once back inside Maude, I sat there for the better part of a minute literally shaking with fury and wondering what the hell I was going to do next.

Every once in a while, God has to reach down out of the sky and whack me a good one upside the head just to get my attention. That’s when I remembered Cindy’s car keys and, more importantly, the AirTag on the key ring. The keys hadn’t been in the ignition or on the floorboard, and I hadn’t seen them in her purse, either.

I’m a woman who believes in pockets—not the kinds of useless pretend ones that turn up in women’s clothing. Real pockets are built to hold more than a couple of tissues, and whatever’s inside them doesn’t fall out the minute you sit down somewhere. That’s why I generally wear men’s jeans or coveralls and have them tailored to fit my relatively short and not-so-slender body.

Cindy believes in purses, the bigger the better. Rather than go digging through the contents of her bottomless purse in search of the missing key fob, I hauled out my cell phone, fired it up, and once more located the Find My app. Since I don’t lose things—car keys or cell phones—the items listed on the app are all Cindy’s rather than mine. As soon as I hit on the key icon, the light came on indicating the key fob had been located. The problem is, it wasn’t anywhere near the purse. Instead, the light was blinking at a spot somewhere out in the boondocks, a good ten miles beyond my place and well outside the current city limits. If Cindy was there, my asking for assistance from Anchorage PD wouldn’t do me a bit of good. Whatever was going on was happening well outside their jurisdiction.

I thought about calling the Alaska Troopers directly, but I didn’t bother. Chances are they’d recite the same BS I’d already gotten from 911 and Anchorage PD. No, if I wanted to do something about Cindy tonight, I’d have to make like the Little Red Hen and do it myself. With that in mind, I fired up Maude, my trusty partner, and off we went.

It was snowing harder by then—lots harder—but at that hour of the morning, traffic was utterly nonexistent as was visibility, which made speeding out of the question. By the time I was even with the blinking red light on my tracker, I was deep in the woods and far from any sign of civilization. There was no mailbox along the side of the road or any indication of a dwelling, either, so I drove right past the virtually invisible turnoff without even seeing it. Realizing my mistake, I pulled over, performed an illegal U-turn, and went back the way I had come. This time I caught sight of a road sign with the words West Brashear Road virtually invisible in the falling snow.

As I stared at the narrow dirt track leading off into the woods, a shiver passed through my body. It had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with dread. Here I was, all alone in the middle of nowhere, in a near blizzard, in the wee hours of the morning, and facing an unknown and possibly dangerous opponent. As I turned off the highway, some kind of a sixth sense—the one responsible for self-preservation—kicked in. I immediately switched off the headlights and inched forward with the path ahead lit by nothing more than Maude’s dim parking lights.

I’m a woman who thrives in what is often considered to be a dangerous occupation. Unlike employers who have the opportunity to interview potential job applicants, I can’t run background checks on my prospective customers. They call me up, tell me where they want to go and when. That’s it. They aren’t required to provide references or even any form of ID. People boarding commercial flights in airports have to pass through security checkpoints. People climbing into car service vehicles do not. There’s no way to know if some Tom, Dick, or Harry hiring a ride from hither to yon is a perfectly harmless individual or an armed-to-the-teeth nutcase.

A lot of my passengers are college-aged kids coming and going over the holidays or at the end or beginning of terms. I don’t worry about them very much, and for good reason. In most cases, I could whip their asses with one hand tied behind my back. In fact, a couple of years ago, a pair of smart-assed freshmen UAA hockey players, ones who weren’t necessarily long on brains, tried to stiff me out of my fare.

Chad Winkleman wasn’t much when it came to being a protective big brother, but for high school graduation he gave me my very own set of brass knuckles. A couple of years ago, while dealing with the two hockey punks, those brass knuckles came in very handy.

As they were laughing their heads off and grabbing their bags out of Maude’s luggage compartment, I turned my phone on record, put on my brass knuckles, and then proceeded to clean their clocks. After knocking both of them out cold, I duct-taped them together face-to-face with their hands fastened behind their backs. Then left them on the shoulder of the road and called for the Alaska State Troopers to come pick them up. I suspect that event may have turned me into something of a legend on the UAA campus. Word must have gotten out that I was a force to be reckoned with, because I haven’t had a lick of trouble with any of my other student passengers from that day to this.

But then there are the concerning ones—the guys who look a bit sketchy or whose stories about who they are or where they’re from or where they’re going just don’t add up. Those are the ones who give me pause. Since I’m often out in the boonies with those guys, miles from help or backup, I’ve learned to take precautions. For starters, I’ll have the brass knuckles invisibly in place before they ever step foot inside my vehicle. I encourage single male passengers to ride up front with me. I tell them that way they’ll have more legroom than they would in back, but it’s really so I can keep an eye on what they’re up to.

I believe I mentioned earlier that I keep a .357 Magnum under Maude’s driver’s seat, and there’s a loaded Colt 45 in the glove box, but those aren’t the kinds of weapons you haul out and wave around just for the hell of it. You don’t deploy that kind of fire power unless you intend to use it, so as I inched along the narrow track, I had plenty of time to consider my options. I knew full well that pulling the trigger on either of those could result in lethal consequences. The problem is, in this situation, I had no idea what level of force, if any, would be called for. With that in mind, I settled on something less deadly.

I stopped the car’s forward movement long enough to slip on the brass knuckles. By no means is the Colt the only thing I carry around in what most people refer to as a glove compartment. I call it my Just In Case compartment, and I keep it stocked with all sorts of emergency equipment. In addition to a ski mask (useful for doing car repairs in subzero temperatures), my inventory of essential items includes both a can of bear spray and a fully charged Taser. All three of those—the ski mask, bear spray, and Taser—fit neatly into the right-hand pocket of my Carhartt jacket, making them all instantly accessible. See what I mean about the advantage of pockets over purses?

With Maude back in gear, I inched forward once more. The now trackless snow visible ahead of me indicated that no one had come or gone this way since the snow had started to fall, so whoever had brought Cindy’s car keys to this desolate place was most likely still here.

A hundred yards or so farther down the track I caught a glimpse of a faint light of some kind blinking through the towering trees. That suggested I was approaching a building, most likely a residence. In the meantime, the red dot on my Find My app revealed that Cindy’s key fob was also dead ahead. Rather than step on the brakes, I doused the parking lights, shut down the engine, and allowed Maude to roll to a slow stop. After opening the window, I listened to the stark silence all around me. By then I was close enough to the place that any dog worth his salt should have been raising the alarm and barking his head off, but obviously no dog was present. That was good news. Even so, before exiting the vehicle. I checked my phone one last time.

Surprisingly enough I still had service, I could have dialed 911 right then, but what if, key fob be damned, I was wrong about all this? What if the tracker was here, and Cindy wasn’t? Maybe both the 911 operator and the jerk of a desk sergeant at Anchorage PD were right, and whatever was going on here was a completely innocent postkaraoke get-together rather than some kind of life-or-death situation? In that case, my showing up accompanied by a squad of cop cars with flashing lights and blaring sirens would turn me into a laughingstock and do irreparable harm to Cindy’s social standing with her friends and acquaintances.

But then again, what if I was right? What if James really was the kind of monster who had taken both Leslie and Cindy and was holding them hostage? And since I was out there all by my lonesome, if this went south, no one would have the foggiest idea that I had gone missing, and they wouldn’t have any idea about where to start looking, either. With that in mind, I decided to leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs with someone I knew I could trust. That’s where I hit on a friend of mine, someone I had met several years earlier, a private investigator from the Lower Forty-Eight named J. P. Beaumont.

Beau is a retired Seattle PD homicide cop. I met him when he came to Anchorage on a missing persons case, which eventually turned out to be both a homicide and an attempted homicide. He had arrived in Anchorage in the dead of winter and had called TW Transportation in search of a car and driver. Originally it was supposed to be a one-day gig that turned into several. At the very end, when a stone-cold killer was about to hightail it out of town on a private plane, Maude and I put an end to her escape plan by breaking through a security gate at the local airport and stopping her aircraft on the tarmac with my snow plow parked nose to nose with her little Piper Cherokee.

In the aftermath of that incident, when the feds were about to throw my ass in jail due to my purported airport security breach, Beau and a Homer homicide detective named Marvin Price both came to my rescue. That’s how their names ended up in my contacts list. In terms of trusting them, I could have reached out to either one of them, but here’s the problem. Sworn police officers come with jurisdictional constraints. Marvin Price’s territory ends at the Homer city limits. Private investigators are free to operate wherever they damned well please, so J. P. Beaumont was it.

Holding the phone up to my face, I turned on the mic and sent him a long low-voiced text message:

Twinkle Winkleman here. I’m speaking from outside a residence on West Brashear Road north of Anchorage. My daughter-in-law, Cindy, failed to return from an outing last night. Her friend, Leslie Jenkins, may also be missing. I believe Leslie’s new boyfriend, someone named James—no last name—may be holding them against their will. My attempts to report the girls as missing have been stonewalled. Everybody wants me to wait twenty-four hours. That’s bullshit, so I’m going in alone. If you don’t hear from me by morning, please contact the Alaska State Troopers and let them know. Thanks, Twink.

After pressing send, I turned off the phone, stowed it in my other jacket pocket—the empty one, and reached for Samson—that’s what I call my bear rug. At the time I had my dead grizzly’s hide tanned, I was already planning on having him along on my travels as one of Maude’s back seat accoutrements. For one thing, it would make a great conversation piece for wide-eyed out-of-state tourists, who could tell the folks back home that they’d used a real bearskin rug to keep warm while being driven around the wilds of Alaska by yours truly. But there’s also a more practical motive to my madness that makes Samson an important addition to my collection of basic survival equipment.

I do a lot of bad-weather driving on dodgy back roads in the middle of nowhere. Maude is dependable as all get-out, but if we ever happen to come to grief on some frigid night, having the warmth of that bearskin rug could well mean the difference between life and death. To that end, I’d asked that a series of Velcro straps be attached to the underside of the rug. Most of the time, they’re completely out of sight, but if need be, I can use them to fasten the rug around me and hold it in place. With no idea about how long I was going to be outside in the weather or what kind of opponent I’d be facing, that’s what I needed those Velcro straps to do that night—hold the rug in place.

Lights are instantly visible even in a snowstorm while something dark disappears. After fastening the rug around my waist and tightening the straps around my legs and arms, I was ready to rumble. Taken together, my coveralls, jacket, and ski mask, to say nothing of the bearskin rug, all functioned as an invisibility cloak as I crept toward the lights of what I believed to be a residence.

My arms and legs are far shorter than the legs on that poor grizzly. Once the rug was strapped in place, the arms fell below my knees and the legs dragged behind me as I walked, making forward movement difficult. I shambled along like a stiff-legged monster.

By then, Maude’s parking lights had been switched off long enough for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Ahead of me I made out the vague shape of a structure of some kind—a small cabin, perhaps, rather than a more substantial house. The flickering orange glow from what I assumed to be a pair of front windows suggested that the place was lit by a kerosene lamp rather than anything electric. Woodsmoke filling the air made it clear that either a fireplace or a woodburning stove was in use. All of that suggested that this was most likely a primitive cabin probably used for hunting parties rather than functioning as a permanent residence.

As I made my stealthy approach, skeletal remains of one junked car after another emerged out of the darkness. Using them as cover, I silently zigzagged my way forward. It was only because I followed that somewhat roundabout route that I noticed there were lit windows located at the back of the cabin as well as in the front.

I cautiously approached one of those and peered inside. One quick glimpse told me everything I needed to know. A figure lay on the black-and-white ticking of a bare mattress on what appeared to be a twin-sized bed, one that came with an old-fashioned iron bedstead. I immediately recognized the clothing Cindy had been wearing when she left the house earlier that evening. She lay with her hands and feet secured to the bedstead by zip ties. Cindy’s eyes were closed. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not, so there was no way to know if she was dead or alive. I was tempted to tap on the window to try to rouse her, but fearing the sound might carry from there to the front room, I didn’t. I’m anything but a girlie-girl, but in that moment my knees seemed to weaken under me. After leaning against the window frame for a steadying moment, I gathered myself, took a deep breath, and moved on.

I picked my way around the far side of the cabin, and that’s what it was—little more than a basic two-room shack. If it didn’t have power, there was a better than even chance that it had no indoor plumbing, either.

Approaching a window at the far end of the front room, I paused before looking inside, and there was Leslie. Sitting in a rough-hewn chair, she was stark naked with a layer of duct tape plastered over her mouth. Wide awake and wild-eyed, she struggled against the zip tie restraints that held her to the arms and legs of the chair. Leslie is a little mite of a thing. The chair was so big that her bound legs dangled three inches above the floor.

Unable to see her captor, I didn’t dare do anything to let either of them know that help was at hand. Instead, I tried to assess the seriousness of her injuries. Clearly she’d taken a beating. What was visible of her face was black-and-blue. One eye was almost completely swollen shut. A trail of bloody tracks, some of them still bleeding, covered her body. They looked like penetrating stab wounds that were relatively shallow. That told me they were meant to be painful rather than fatal. So that was this asshole’s game—torturing her to begin with. Killing her would come later. James was saving that for dessert.

“You miserable son of a bitch!” I muttered under my breath. “So where the hell are you?”

I had to step away from the window in order to move to the other side of it. That’s when I finally caught sight of the SOB. Seemingly sound asleep, he was seated in front of the blazing fireplace, stretched out in a bedraggled leather recliner. An almost empty tequila bottle sat on the floor inches from his fingertips. Obviously he had tired of whatever games he’d been playing with his victim and was having a little snooze before moving on to whatever came next.

Passed out, he didn’t look particularly formidable. He was probably somewhere around six feet tall, an ordinary looking guy wearing a plaid flannel shirt and worn Levi’s. He was in his stocking feet, with a pair of work boots sitting nearby. Close at hand was a battered side table that held the old-fashioned kerosene lamp. Next to that lay a pistol—a .380 Ruger semi-automatic—and a still-bloody pearl-handled steak knife. The moment I saw the knife and handgun a call to 911 was definitely in order, but if the monster awakened to the sound of lights and sirens, what would he do then? Leslie for sure and maybe Cindy, too, were still alive at the moment, but once a contingent of law enforcement officers appeared on the scene, there was a good chance they’d both be dead before any would-be rescuers could gain entry.

My first instinct was to charge inside and shoot the drunken asshole right where he sat, but in order to do that, I needed more in my pocket than a Taser and a can of bear spray. Shuffling along in my makeshift gear, I made my way back to Maude. Once there, I moved the Taser and bear spray to my left-hand pocket and replaced them with some additional items from the glove box—the Colt, my Swiss Army knife, and a handful of my own zip ties. Then I dialed 911 for a second time.

“Nine-one-one. What is the nature of your emergency?”

This time the call was answered by a different operator, but obviously, all those people work off the same script.

“My name is Twinkle Winkleman,” I announced. “I’m at a cabin on West Brashear Road about three quarters of a mile off the highway. That’s where I observed an armed and unidentified male suspect holding two female victims hostage. One of them is bleeding profusely from multiple stab wounds, but she’s still alive. I was unable to determine the other victim’s condition.”

“Did you say Brashear Road?”

“Yes, West Brashear Road.”

“I believe that situation has already been called in,” he reported. “Trooper units are currently on their way to that location and should be arriving within the next ten minutes.”

With that good news in mind, I hung up and switched my phone’s ringer to silent. If he tried calling me back, I wouldn’t hear it and neither would James, but chances are I wouldn’t be in a position to answer it anyway. I couldn’t imagine how troopers could already be on their way to the cabin, but if that was the case, I wasn’t going to argue the point. Since they were due to arrive within the next ten minutes, I was pretty sure my Colt and I could hold the fort that long. In order to do so, however, I decided to create what a former president once called shock and awe.

I turned the phone’s messaging app back on and sent a second text to J. P. Beaumont. “This is Twink again. I’ve just notified 911 of the situation on West Brashear Road where I can now confirm that an armed individual is holding two female victims hostage, one of whom appears to be seriously injured. Troopers are on their way. I am going to attempt to draw the suspect out of the cabin and away from the victims in order to keep them from further harm.”

With that, I fired up Maude. Using only the parking lights, I once again moved forward. On my way back to the Travelall from the cabin, I had determined that not all of the vehicles parked there were junkers. One, a fairly new Toyota Tundra crew cab with a shell over the bed, was parked next to the cabin’s rickety front porch. I hadn’t messed with the truck on my way past for fear of setting off an alarm, but once all hell broke loose, I had every intention of using my Swiss Army knife to disable one or more of the tires. James Nolastname might get away from me, but he wouldn’t get far in a vehicle with a couple of flats.

But right that minute, my primary target was the cabin’s rickety front porch. Maude comes complete with a serious rooftop luggage rack, which carries the full load of wooden packing crates holding my extensive collection of Travelall spare parts. If I encounter car trouble somewhere far from civilization, I like to be able to paw through my traveling parts inventory so I can fix whatever’s wrong on the spot. All those spare parts add up to a large amount of metal that adds a lot of heft to Maude’s already considerable weight. My plan was to slam into the porch’s nearest corner, using the snow plow to peel the flimsy structure away from the cabin. I figured the fully loaded luggage rack would function as a turtle shell and protect me from any and all falling debris. If that wasn’t an appropriate way to rouse Mr. Bad Guy from his long winter’s nap, I didn’t know what was!

As I neared the cabin, I shifted into first gear, intending to use horsepower rather than speed to bring down the porch. When it comes to brute force, Maude can’t be beat. By the time the snow plow made contact with the post, I already had the driver’s door open. With Maude still in gear and pointed straight ahead, I bailed from the moving vehicle, hitting the ground rolling. As expected, the bearskin provided more than adequate padding for that singular stunt of derring-do. When I came in contact with the Tundra, I wiggled underneath and immediately set to work with the army knife, slicing deep gashes in both of the front tires. With that goal accomplished, I turned my attention back to the cabin with my Colt in hand. I immediately caught sight of an armed man standing silhouetted in the lit doorway of the cabin. I realized later that before coming out to check on what was going on, he must have paused long enough to pull on his boots. That’s what had given me enough time to deal with the tires.

He stood in the doorway like a statue for what seemed like a long time. With the porch obliterated, had he taken another step forward, he would have fallen all the way to the ground. By the time he got there, Maude was still moving. Still standing in the doorway, he fired off a barrage of bullets in the Travelall’s direction, emptying the pistol’s clip into her back window and through some of her upholstery. If I’d been in the driver’s seat at the time, there’s a good chance I would have been history.

When he paused to reload, I saw my chance. “Drop it,” I ordered scooting out from under his pickup.

The Tundra was black, and so was I. At first he must have heard my voice, but he didn’t see me. He hesitated for a moment, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from.

“Drop it or I’ll shoot,” I snarled.

When he didn’t comply, I decided I could afford to waste one shot. I fired. He instantly dropped the gun and grabbed his neck. Evidently the walls of the cabin were so old and brittle that the wood splintered upon impact. By the time the guy realized he hadn’t been hit by an actual bullet, his .38 had landed on a piece of tin that had once been part of the porch roof. The weapon slid to the ground and came to rest close enough to me that I was able to kick it away. In order to reach it, he’d have to come past me.

“What the hell?” he demanded.

“On the ground,” I ordered. “Hands behind your back.”

He hesitated for a moment, but my first shot, that near miss, had seemingly made a believer of him. After a long pause, he finally complied, dropping onto the pile of splintered wood that had once been the front porch. The debris was dusty enough that he had a sudden fit of sneezing, which somehow tickled my funny bone, and my sudden fit of laughter absolutely infuriated him.

“You came after me disguised as a bear?” he demanded in disbelief, raising his head far enough off the woodpile to get a better look at me.

“What can I tell you?” I replied. “I’ve always been a sucker for Halloween costumes.”

“I’ll kill you for this,” he vowed.

Although my right hand is by far my dominant one, I’m reasonably ambidextrous.

“Just so you know,” I told him, “I have a Colt 45 in my right hand and a fully charged Taser in my left. From the looks of what you did to Leslie, I’d as soon shoot you as look at you, but because I don’t want to end up in jail, if I have to settle for frying your balls with 50,000 volts of electricity, I will. With you on your belly like that, I might not be able to manage a direct hit, but believe me, it’ll be close enough.”

I couldn’t tell for sure, but I believe his butt cheeks did a serious involuntary squeeze right about then. I know mine would have.

“So what, we’re stuck in a Mexican standoff for the rest of the night?”

He was right about that, of course. It would take both hands to secure him with one of my zip ties, but I wasn’t about to relinquish either the Taser or the Colt, to say nothing of both of them.

“Not that long,” I told him cheerily. “Just until the cops get here.”

“What cops?”

Maude was still in gear. She had plowed into something big—it turned out to be the remains of a long-dead tow truck—and had pushed that up against something else that wasn’t giving an inch. Over the whine of her spinning tires and laboring engine, I heard the first welcome wail of an approaching siren. James—we hadn’t been properly introduced, but I was pretty sure that’s who he was—must have heard it, too. He started to get up. I fired off another warning shot. That one hit close enough to his head that, in the light from the doorway, I saw a little cloud of dust float upward from a spot only inches from his right ear. Without further argument, he resumed his prone position with his hands back where they belonged.

By then the sirens were louder, and I saw speeding headlights bouncing through the trees. Moments later, car doors slammed shut and a collection of boots came charging toward us.

“Hands in the air!” one of the officers shouted.

“I have a weapon,” I called back. “A handgun. My name is Twinkle Winkleman, I’m holding the suspect on the ground at gunpoint.”

“Put down your weapon, Ms. Winkleman. We’ll take it from here.”

He didn’t have to say it twice. I immediately put my weapon on the snowy ground. Then I was torn. My first instinct was to rush inside the house to check on Leslie and Cindy, but then two EMTs raced up to where I was standing. They stumbled to a stop when they got their first look at the bearskin rug, but they managed to take it in stride.

“Where are the victims?” one of them demanded.

“Inside,” I told them, pointing, “one in the front room and one in the back.”

Knowing they were far more qualified to deal with Leslie’s and Cindy’s situation than I was, I headed for the laboring Travelall, shambling along like a reasonable imitation of Big Foot. When I caught up with Maude, she was still doing her best to take down whatever was barring her way. It turned out that she had shoved the tow truck up against the base of a towering Douglas fir, and neither Maude nor tree was prepared to give an inch.

When I finally switched off the engine, I don’t know who was more relieved, Maude or me. I could only hope that I’d shut her down before the poor old girl blew a gasket. At that point a welcome silence fell over the clearing surrounding the cabin, a quiet broken only by sporadic radio chatter from the various patrol cars parked at the scene.

I pulled off the bearskin rug, shook it free of snow, and left it where it belonged—on Maude’s back seat. Then I began walking back to the cabin where I figured I’d be in for hours of police interviews. On the way, the trooper in charge, Sergeant Jonathan Dawes, pulled me aside.

“Hey, Ms. Winkleman,” he said. “What the hell went on here?”

Jonathan Dawes and I go way back. I’ve known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Jon and my son went to grade school and high school together. They were also in the same Cub Scout den where I was the den mother. Tad’s been dead for a decade and a half while Jon is now a sergeant with the Alaska State Troopers. He may be all grown-up, but no matter how much time has passed, I’m still Mrs. Winkleman in Jon Dawes’s book. That probably won’t ever change.

So I gave him the highlights. By the time we reached the cabin, an ambulance was backed up close to the woodpile that had once been a front porch. A pair of EMTs was maneuvering a loaded gurney inside.

If I had asked them what was going on, I’m sure I would have been given the brush-off, but Jonathan fixed that by questioning another EMT, who wasn’t involved in the actual loading process.

“Who’s this?”

“Stabbing victim,” came the curt answer. “Name’s Leslie Jenkins.”

“And the other one?”

“That would be Cynthia Winkleman. She received a blow to the head and may have been dosed with some kind of date rape drug. She’s dazed and confused but not in any apparent danger. Since we don’t have a second ambulance on hand, one of the troopers will be transporting her to the ER in Anchorage in his patrol car so she can be checked out.”

“Thank God,” I breathed and meant it.

Jon turned to me. “Tad’s widow?” he asked.

Clearly Jon was one of those people who most likely knew that Tad had been murdered without ever hearing the gory details about my son’s tangled marital situation.

I nodded and let it go at that. What I wanted to do more than anything was race back to Maude and make tracks to the ER myself, but that didn’t happen. A detective named Ramona Many Trees caught up with me before I got away.

“Mind if I ask a few questions?” she asked.

That was completely rhetorical. I was going to answer her questions whether I minded or not.

“Of course,” I said. “No problem.”

And it wasn’t a few questions. Detective Many Trees had a whole litany of them. It was snowing harder by then and cold as all get-out. Without my protective rug, I was freezing, and I was relieved beyond words when she ushered me into the warmth of an idling squad car, where she recorded my interview on the vehicle’s interior dash cam.

I told the whole story from beginning to end. In the process, I turned over Cindy’s phone and directed her to the texts. By the time she finished reading through them, I realized that most likely James, posing as Leslie, was the one who had sent that last one, the message that had lured Cindy out of the bar and into the parking lot.

“What’s James’s last name?” I asked.

Detective Many Trees gave me a sidelong glance. I fully expected her to ignore my question, but she didn’t. “Hawkins,” she replied. “James Earl Hawkins. He’s known to law enforcement. He has numerous warrants from the Lower Forty-Eight, so we’ll be able to hold him on those while we set about making our case.”

Lower Forty-Eight is what some folks around here refer to as the remainder of the US of A, but most of the Alaskans I know, including me, call it “Outside.” If James Hawkins had Outside warrants, that was good news indeed, and I was going to do everything in my power to help law enforcement “make their case” and put the asshole in prison where he belonged.

In the meantime, it was closing in on seven o’clock in the morning. After all the excitement, I was worn to a nub. When I used my hand to cover a yawn, Detective Many Trees got the hint and took pity on me.

“You must be bushed,” she said sympathetically. “If you’d like, I can have one of the troopers drive you home.”

The problem is, I had zero intention of going home. I wanted to go to the hospital.

“Thanks,” I said. “Maude and I will be fine.”

She frowned. “Maude?”

“Sorry,” I said. “That’s what I call my Travelall—Maude. She was my father’s originally, but she’s been mine ever since he passed away.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said quickly.

“Thanks, but not to worry,” I told her. “It happened a long time ago.”

There were still cops at the scene, taking photos and collecting evidence as I made my way back to Maude. Earlier when I had shut down the engine, I hadn’t examined the Travelall’s front end. Now I did, and what I saw wasn’t pretty. The snow plow had driven itself so far into the wrecked tow truck that when I tried to back away, most of the truck came along for the ride. I had to collect my trusty ball-peen hammer from the toolbox and use that to get us loose from the debris. Doing that warmed me right up. By the time Maude and I pulled out and headed for the highway, I wasn’t the least bit cold.

At the hospital, I found that several patrol cars had preceded me. Uniformed officers first and later Detective Many Trees or some other investigator would arrive eventually to interview the victims once they were up to being questioned.

I went straight to the ER’s reception desk. “I’m Twinkle Winkleman,” I announced.

The receptionist nodded knowingly. “Cindy’s mother?” Rather than correct her, I simply nodded.

“She’s in the third bay down,” the receptionist told me, pointing the way.

I followed her directions to the third curtained-off hospital bed. Seeing Cindy alive and safe in bed sent a wave of relief crashing over me. A nurse stood on the far side of her bed checking monitors. Cindy was sawing logs. Have I mentioned that Cindy snores? She does—like crazy. Her bedroom is upstairs, but there are times I can hear her all the way down in the living room.

The nurse turned and looked at me. “She was anxious and confused, most likely due to whatever drug she was given during the incident,” the nurse explained. “The doctor gave her a safe sedative so she could sleep. She’s in the process of being admitted. We’ll be keeping her overnight for observation.”

There weren’t any chairs inside the bay, and there wasn’t much point in my standing there watching Cindy sleep and listening to her snore, so I went back out to the waiting room to see if I could gather any information on Leslie. And who should I find sitting there? None other than Sgt. Jonathan Dawes. He was sitting with his legs stretched out and with his fur-lined wintertime trooper cap resting on his lap. His chin was on his chest. Like Cindy, he was also snoozing, but he started awake the moment I sat down next to him.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Sleeping,” I replied. “How’s Leslie?”

“In the OR,” he answered. “Some of her blunt-force trauma requires surgical intervention.”

“Has someone contacted her ex and her kids?” I asked.

Jon nodded. “Ward Jenkins is listed as her next of kin. He and the kids were spending the weekend with his parents over in Homer. They’re on their way back here now and should be here around nine or so.”

I’m not exactly close to Leslie’s kids, but I know them, and I was determined to hang around long enough to greet them when they got there. Walking into an ER knowing that their mother had just been attacked and undergone surgery would be a scary proposition. I figured the least I could do was be a familiar face in the crowd.

So that’s what I did—I settled in to wait—because that’s what people are supposed to do in waiting rooms. I was about to doze off myself when Sgt. Jon Dawes spoke again.

“I had a crush on her, you know,” he said quietly.

“On Leslie?” I asked.

“Heavens no,” he answered, “on Cindy. I was fresh out of the academy. I was working Patrol for Anchorage PD, and she was waiting tables in a diner where my buddies and I used to go. I was working up my courage to ask her out, when Tad came back into town and swept her off her feet. With him fresh off a halibut trip and loaded with money, I didn’t stand a chance.”

I heard the genuine regret in his voice. “Too bad,” I said. “Considering the way Tad ended up, you would have been a better choice.”

He laughed aloud. “You might mention that to Kathy.”

“Who’s she?” I asked.

“My ex,” he answered. “I latched on to the very next girl who crossed my path. When Kathy turned up, I wasn’t about to let her get away, too, or so I thought. Turns out, once the reality of living on a beginning cop’s salary set in, she was out of there.”

“It happens,” I said. “Any kids?”

“Thankfully, no,” Jon replied. “I was raised by a single mom, and it wasn’t all sweetness and light. I always wanted to have kids, but I couldn’t stand the idea of putting them through the same kind of childhood I had.”

Suddenly Sgt. Jonathan Dawes had my undivided attention. Where the hell had he been all this time?

“Ever do karaoke?” I asked. Subtlety has never been my strong point, but I doubt he noticed, and I noticed him not noticing!

“Never,” he said. “I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

Somehow, I didn’t think that was going to be a problem, because if I had anything to do with it, he was going to be visiting Do-Re-Mi sometime soon. For what I had in mind, Jon’s propensity for singing off-key wouldn’t be an issue. I’m not big on being a matchmaker, but in this case I thought I could rise to the occasion.

After that, a new group of people hustled into the waiting room from outside. An inexperienced driver had skidded off the road in the snow and was seriously injured. He had been rushed directly into surgery, and his entire extended family had shown up to keep vigil.

“I have a question,” I asked eventually.

“What’s that,” Jon wanted to know.

“Who called it in?” I asked. “When I dialed 911, I was told troopers were already on the way.”

“Marvin Price,” he answered.

“As in Marvin Price, the homicide cop in Homer?”

“The very one,” Jon answered. “He said some guy from Seattle—I forget his name—called and said you were in trouble. Price notified Dispatch, telling them we needed to get to West Brashear Road in a hell of a hurry.”

I excused myself then. I went to the ladies’ room and called Homer PD from there. Price was already at his desk.

“Twinkle Winkleman here,” I told him when he came on the line. “Thank you. The troopers showed up just in time to save my bacon.”

That wasn’t completely true. I’d had things pretty well under control by the time they got there, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Glad to hear it,” Marvin said. “Do you want to let J.P. know or should I?

“I’ll be glad to call him,” I said. “But it was the middle of the night when I sent him those messages. I thought he’d be sound asleep and wouldn’t get my text until sometime later this morning, but the troopers were there within minutes.”

“He wasn’t asleep,” Marvin responded. “He was actually wide-awake and in a hospital waiting room. His grandson was undergoing an emergency appendectomy, and he and his wife were there keeping the parents company.”

“Bad for the grandson but lucky for me,” I observed.

“For sure,” Marvin agreed.

But hearing about what sounded like Beau’s big happy family made me wonder if someday there might be a possibility of another big happy family in my own life.

When I’m working on cars, I always know exactly which two pieces fit together and how they should connect. At one time I had thought Tad and Cindy would be good for each other, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. This time, though, I knew I was right. Cindy Winkleman’s biological clock was audibly ticking, and I hoped she hadn’t run out of time, because I was pretty sure, she and Sgt. Jonathan Dawes would make a great set of terrific parents.

For the first time in my life, I could hardly wait to turn into something I never thought I’d be—Grandma Twinkle Winkleman. Believe me, no matter what kind of kids Jon and Cindy have, I’m going to make damn sure they know a V-8 from a V-6. Electric cars may be the wave of the future, but there are plenty of people out there who are going to need to keep their old-time gas-guzzlers up and running. I’m going to do my part to see to it that a new generation of gearhead mechanics comes along to fill that bill.

An Excerpt from Den of Iniquity

Thirsting for more from J. A. Jance? Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next J. P. Beaumont novel . . .

Former Seattle homicide cop J. P. Beaumont faces trouble in the small town of Ashford. Both his personal and professional lives have been thrown into turmoil. Beau’s daughter and son-in-law are having marital troubles, and his grandson, a senior in high school, shows up on his doorstep, wanting to live with J.P. and his wife, Mel, as he finishes out the school year. Meanwhile, Beau has also been tasked with looking into what appears to be an accidental death after a young man overdoses on fentanyl. His investigation leads him to believe that the death was not what it seemed, and he closes in on a group of the most unlikely suspects.

As the case becomes more complicated than he could have imagined, it will take everything Beau has to track down a dangerous group of vigilante killers.

DEN OF INIQUITY

Coming Fall 2024 from William Morrow

Prologue

Seattle, Washington

Thursday, November 22, 2018

Thanksgiving Day 2018 dawned dark, cold, rainy, and windy as hell in Seattle, Washington. That’s hardly surprising. November in the Pacific Northwest is always dark and rainy. But on this day in particular, the steady downpour was accompanied by a raw wind blowing down from the north. A seemingly endless line of people stood outside a dilapidated brick warehouse on Seattle’s somewhat seedy waterfront where there was zero shelter from the weather. They hunkered down there, hoping that once they stepped into the warehouse turned food bank they’d find a little warmth from the bone-chilling cold as well as a free Turkey Day dinner.

Inside an army of volunteers from various churches all over the city scurried around arranging tables and chairs, setting up serving lines, and putting out the food. By the time the doors opened promptly at ten a.m., the people waiting outside had been there for so long that a few of them were becoming belligerent.

That was not unexpected, and several of the heftier members of the volunteer crew had been drafted to provide security and maintain order. One of those was Darius Jackson, a member of the crew from the Mount Zion Baptist Church. He was six four and two hundred and eighty pounds. One look from him was generally enough to settle whatever trouble might be brewing among those waiting for their share of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, and gravy.

Not long ago, Darius would likely have been on the receiving end of one of those free dinners. Now thanks to his grandmother Matilda Jackson, he was out of jail, back on the straight and narrow, and working as a bouncer for a popular but sketchy bar on Rainier Avenue South. The place was owned by someone who was a friend of one of his grandmother’s many acquaintances. When Darius had agreed to accept the job offer, Granny had taken him to the woodshed and given him the lay of the land.

“It’s a job,” she told him, “and you need a job right now. I don’t approve of drinking, but there aren’t that many places that will give someone like you so much as a second chance to say nothing of a job. But just because you work in a place like that doesn’t mean you’ve got a license to be drinking. You’re living with me now instead of out on the streets or in some homeless camp. You come home with booze on your breath, you’re out. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Got it.”

“And on Sunday mornings you’d best be dressed in your good clothes and have your butt on the pew right next to me when services start at Mount Zion.”

“Got that, too,” he replied.

That conversation had occurred months earlier, but Darius was still taking it to heart. He was working the same job and was still living in his grandmother’s place just off Martin Luther King Way in the Rainier Valley. As a seventh grader, abandoned by his drug-addicted mother, living with Grandma Jackson had been mandatory rather than optional. The judge had given him a choice—go to juvie until he turned twenty-one or take probation and go live with his grandmother. He had chosen door number two. No matter how late he got off shift on Sunday mornings, she made sure he was present and accounted for at Mount Zion’s morning services, but back when he was a kid and there under duress, he’d slept through a lot of it and paid scant attention to the rest. At the time all that crap about loving your neighbor as yourself just didn’t grab him.

Unsurprisingly, once in high school, Darius had taken up with the wrong crowd, which had led him straight into the arms of the wrong kind of girl. Gypsy Tomkins had been bad news from the get-go. She was a wild child who was beautiful but tough as nails. Once she had Darius in her clutches, everything his grandmother had ever tried to teach him went out the window. Compared to him, Gypsy had been tiny—five two and barely a hundred pounds soaking wet—but from the time Darius was fifteen, he had been putty in her vividly manicured hands.

Eventually, since Gypsy’s family was involved in the drug trade, Darius was, too. As for their personal relationship? It lasted for years but had become more and more volatile over time until recurring bouts of domestic violence between them became the order of the day. Gypsy always knew exactly which buttons to push to drive Darius over the edge. As soon as she succeeded, she’d call the cops on him—screaming into the phone that he was beating her or threatening to kill her. Once officers showed up, she would somehow manage to convince them that he was the one at fault. As a consequence, he was the one who usually got hauled off to jail. The next day, of course, when they’d let him out because Gypsy hadn’t gone through with pressing charges, she’d laugh it off and act like it was all some kind of joke.

Darius knew this was messed up and wrong, but he loved her and could never quite bring himself to walk away. During their last screaming match, she had pulled a knife on him. He’d managed to get it away from her, but in the course of the struggle, she’d sliced open her hand and was still bleeding when she called 911. This time, though, when he went to jail, Gypsy did press charges. He ended up doing six months in the King County Jail for assault. When he got out, he learned that she had sworn out a protection order on him. He wasn’t allowed inside the house even long enough to collect his stuff. Left with nothing but the clothes on his back and nowhere to live, he’d gone crawling back to Granny.

Once on the outside he’d soon learned that Gypsy had taken up with someone else during his absence. Two months later, Gypsy and her new boyfriend had been found shot to death in an alleyway in the Denny Regrade. Darius was her ex, so naturally the cops came around asking questions. His job as a bouncer—the one Granny had found for him—had saved his bacon, though, because at the time of Gypsy’s death he’d been at work at a place with all kinds of surveillance cameras, and those had given Darius an airtight alibi. That didn’t mean the cops didn’t question him about it or check his hands for gunshot residue, but eventually there was nothing to link him to the double homicide, and he was cleared.

Darius knew it was only by the grace of God and Granny’s job that he’d dodged being charged and possibly even convicted of the two murders. That was one of the reasons, maybe even the main one, that this time when he accompanied Granny to services at Mount Zion, he did pay attention. He found himself listening intently to what the reverend had to say. He let himself get caught up in both the Word and the music. Finally, one Sunday when people were invited to come forward to be saved, he got up and went, finding himself a whole new lease on life in the process. Which was why this year, when the call went out for Mount Zion’s crew of volunteers for serving Thanksgiving Day dinner at the food bank, Darius had signed up.

It was well after dark when, while patrolling the line, Darius caught sight of an older woman leaning heavily on the end of her overloaded shopping cart. A few sprigs of white hair stuck out from under her hoodie. Swaying unsteadily on her feet, she looked as though she was about to keel over.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked. “You don’t have to wait in line. If you’re not feeling well, I’ll be glad to escort you inside.”

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I’m too tired to eat anything. If you’d just walk me back to my van, I’ll be fine.”

“Where is it?” he asked.

“Over there a block or two,” she said, nodding toward the south.

“Are you sure? Do you think you can make it that far?”

“I think I can,” she said, “but would you mind helping with the cart? I have some money. I can pay you.”

“Paying me won’t be necessary,” he assured her. “I’m glad to help.”

Darius went back to the head of the line and told one of the other volunteers that he was escorting someone back to her van. That was the last time anyone reported speaking to him. The next morning his lifeless body was found two blocks away lying next to an alleyway dumpster.

During the brief investigation that followed, footage from one of the warehouse’s security cameras showed two people threading their way through the parking lot. The hulking Black male walking beside a comparatively much shorter female was clearly Darius Jackson. The other individual, one who appeared to be Caucasian and somewhat overweight, was pushing a grocery cart so full of goods that it was almost as tall as she was. However, the grainy quality of the video made it impossible to make out any facial features. Law enforcement was never able to locate or identify the apparently homeless woman, and no sign of her shopping cart was ever found, either.

An autopsy performed by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that Darius had died of a fatal dose of fentanyl. His death was ruled to be accidental, and the case was closed. No further investigation was deemed necessary.

Chapter 1

Bellingham, Washington

Friday, February 14, 2020

Valentine’s Day 2020 dawned clear and cold in Bellingham, Washington. For most people in the area that was a welcome change from several weeks of mixed rain and snow—definitely not suitable for walking. But with the twenty-four-hour news cycle consumed with the looming Covid pandemic, outside was exactly where I wanted to be. So I called Hank Mitchell, my next-door neighbor, and asked if he and his black-and-tan Chihuahua, Mr. Bean, aka Beanie, would like to join my Irish wolfhound, Sarah, and me for a walk along our street, Bayside Road. I’m sure passersby find us an interesting foursome—two old guys accompanied by a stately Irish wolfhound with a bouncy, noisy Chihuahua yapping at her ankles.

The Mitchells’ place is just down the hill from ours. When my wife, Mel, and I first moved into the neighborhood, their house had been a real eyesore. That was one of the reasons our house had been so affordable. Bayside Road, our street, is hilly. The blue tarp covering the leaky roof of the house next door had been fully visible from our living room windows. In the Pacific Northwest, tarp-covered houses are often vacant and generally regarded as teardowns. The problem is, this one was occupied by a whole slew of people with random vehicles coming and going at odd hours.

Mel happens to be the chief of police in Bellingham, Washington. From a law enforcement standpoint, that kind of activity is typical of drug houses inhabited by squatters up to no good. Before Mel had a chance to have anyone look into it, however, the residence became the subject of a police investigation when someone called in an anonymous tip asking for a welfare check on Lorraine Mitchell, the elderly woman who lived there.

By the time uniformed officers arrived on the scene, they found Lorraine, age ninety-four, deceased in her bed, apparently from natural causes. She had been gone for at least a week before the cops showed up. No one else was found at the residence, including Lorraine’s supposed caretaker, and the place had been stripped clean of anything of value except for a derelict 1966 Shelby Mustang found rotting away in the garage. The vehicle probably would have been worth some money on the open market, but there’s a good chance none of the lowlifes hanging around the place had bothered to steal it because they had no idea how to drive a standard transmission.

Within a matter of weeks, the tarp disappeared and decades of accumulated trash was carted away. The house was gutted down to the studs in preparation for a total rehab. And that’s when and how I first met Hank, the new owner who, as it turned out, had a lifetime connection by marriage to Lorraine and had a personal interest in the place. He was a retired contractor. Rather than wielding a hammer himself, with Mr. Bean at his side, he was happy to serve as a sidewalk supervisor and observe the construction project from afar.

Hank is a couple of years younger than I am. When we first met, I was not yet a dog-person, so I wasn’t exactly charmed by the obnoxious presence of Mr. Bean, but over time Hank and I became friends. While the remodel on their place continued, my life changed when an enormous Irish wolfhound named Lucy, my first dog ever, came into my life. She and Mr. Bean soon became fast friends. The same holds true of Sarah, Irish wolfhound number two. In the meantime, Hank’s and my friendship has continued to flourish.

Growing up I had school pals, of course. In college I developed a network of drinking buddies, some of whom became holdovers in my new life once I became a cop. After that my friends were mostly LEOs, law enforcement officers of one stripe or another. When I went through rehab and sobered up, I became friends with any number of people in recovery, but Hank Mitchell is my first ever friend who also happens to be a next-door neighbor.

On our walks, by mutual agreement, we avoid discussing the news. It’s all bad, anyway, so why bother? Instead, as we stroll along, we share the stories of our lives, and that’s how I learned about Hank’s somewhat challenging connection to our now deceased neighbor. It turned out Lorraine Mitchell had not only been Hank’s father’s first wife; she’d also been a very troublesome one.

As a teenager in the early forties, Lorraine Harding had been hot stuff at Bellingham High. Despite the fact that she had been two years older than Henry, the couple had been high school sweethearts. They married shortly after Henry graduated and days before he shipped out to serve his country during World War II. Lorraine didn’t exactly sign up to be Rosie the Riveter in his absence, building up an unsavory reputation around town for playing the field while he was off serving his country. When word of her escapades got back to Daniel Mitchell, Hank’s grandfather, a local attorney with a family reputation to uphold, the old man had been less than pleased.

Hank’s father spent his time in the service in the Army Corps of Engineers. When he came home, he joined his uncle’s construction business and built the place on Bayside expecting it to be his and Lorraine’s forever home. Once he found out about her extramarital exploits, he tried to divorce her, but by then Lorraine had her eye fixed firmly on the prize, the Mitchell family’s considerable fortune, and she refused to leave quietly, if at all.

Henry could easily have gotten a divorce by going to court and charging her with adultery, but in small-town Bellingham the resulting scandal would have been devastating. So his father, the attorney, worked out a deal. Since no children were involved, there was no question of child support. Instead, Lorraine was offered a generous amount of alimony. She was also allowed to stay in the house until such time as she should marry. At that time, the alimony would cease and the home on Bayside would revert either to her former husband or to his estate.

Henry Sr. remarried shortly after the divorce became final, and Hank, an only child, was the result of that second marriage. In the meantime, Lorraine, the cast-off first wife, remained a fly in the ointment for the remainder of Henry’s life. She refused to remarry and didn’t die. Instead, she engaged in one scandalous romantic entanglement after another, always making sure none of them ended up at the altar. As a consequence, she continued receiving alimony checks until Henry Sr.’s death in the early nineties.

Over the years, as the value of her monthly alimony checks had dwindled, Lorraine had been forced to supplement her income by working as a bartender. Once the checks stopped altogether, she began taking in lodgers to make ends meet, including the parade of very dodgy-looking lowlifes Mel and I had seen coming and going from her house.

At some point after Henry Sr.’s death, Hank, the son from that second marriage and a widower himself by then, became aware that Lorraine had stopped paying taxes on the property. To keep the house from going into foreclosure, he had brought the taxes up-to-date and kept them current with the idea that at some point he’d turn the property on Bayside Road into a retirement dream house for him and his relatively new wife, Ellen.

Their relationship is similar to Mel’s and mine in that Hank’s retired from the construction business now while Ellen is still employed full-time. That’s another reason we don’t discuss the news. With Covid bearing down, we were both worried about how that would impact both of our still-working wives—Mel is at Bellingham PD and Ellen is a 911 supervisor at WHAT-COMM, Whatcom County’s emergency communications center.

“What are you and Mel doing for Valentine’s Day?” Hank asked.

“I scored a reservation at Dirty Dan’s,” I told him. In my opinion, Dirty Dan’s is Fairhaven’s premier fine dining establishment. “What about you?”

“Ellen’s working tonight. We’ll be doing our Valentine’s celebration on Sunday, her next day off.”

When we reached our driveway, Sarah and I peeled away and walked down to the house where I spotted an unfamiliar vehicle—an older-model Honda Accord—parked next to the garage. As we approached the car, the driver’s door swung open and a long drink of water climbed out. It took a moment for me to recognize my grandson, Kyle.

Because Kyle and his parents—my daughter Kelly and her husband, Jeremy—had spent the previous Christmas with Jeremy’s folks in Southern California, the last time I had seen the boy—make that the young man—in the flesh had been during a family excursion to Cannon Beach the previous summer. He seemed to have shot up half a foot since then and was now a good two inches taller than I am.

“Hey, Kyle,” I said, grabbing him into a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“Wanted to see you is all, I guess,” he muttered noncommittally into my shoulder, accepting the hug but not exactly returning it.

His terse response didn’t sound as though he was overjoyed to see me, and the lack of useful information in his reply got my attention, causing me to begin putting together the logistical aspects of this unexpected, early-afternoon visit.

At the moment it was just after two o’clock in the afternoon. My daughter’s family lives in Ashland, a few miles north of the Oregon/California border. Their place is a good nine-hour drive from ours. As far as I knew, this was a school day, so not only was Kyle missing school, he would have had to leave home in the wee hours of the morning to turn up so far north at this time of day.

As he backed away from me, I glanced at his car. It seemed to be loaded to the gills. In the back seat, I caught sight of what looked like the top rim of a bass drum. Mel and I had given Kyle his first drum set as a Christmas present several years earlier while he was still in junior high. If he had left home with his drum set in tow, this was not a good sign. Something was definitely up.

At that point, Sarah stepped up to give him a brief sniff before honoring him with a welcoming wag of her tail. Kyle had no idea, but knowing the dog as I do, I understood Kyle had just been granted my Irish wolfhound’s instant stamp of approval.

“It’s cold out here,” I suggested. “How about we go inside? Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

Whoever heard of an eighteen-year-old kid who wasn’t hungry? I took that as another bad sign. Something serious was going on here, and I was determined to pry the whole story out of him.

About the Author

J. A. Jance is the New York Times bestselling author of the J. P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, the Ali Reynolds series, and the Walker Family series, along with a volume of poetry. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, she lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington.

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Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Excerpt from Den of Iniquity copyright © 2024 by J. A. Jance.

girls’ night out. Copyright © 2024 by J.A. Jance. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.

Digital Edition JULY 2024 ISBN: 978-0-06-337197-2

Cover design by Richard L. Aquan

Cover photograph © Rena Tan/Alamy Stock Photo

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