Page 16 of Snow River

It was Sunday, and The Fang wouldn’t open until mid-afternoon.Now that it was nearly October, business had slowed to a steady trickle of locals and hunters.Soon he would cut the hours even further as the town settled into the magically slow rhythm of winter.His favorite time of year.

The door opened and Lila blinked at him.Her hair was tied back in a sunflower-patterned bandanna, and the smell of wood polish hovered around her.

“You aren’t cleaning, are you?”he asked, alarmed, thinking of Ani’s warning that Lila always deep-cleaned before taking off.

She wrinkled her nose at him.“Is that a problem?”

“Are you…am I about to lose my bartender again?”

“What?Oh.No.”She opened the door farther for him to come inside.“Sometimes a cleaning binge is just a cleaning binge.”

He gazed around the space that had once been the storefront of the hardware store and was now a living room.Everything—furniture, old steamer trunks, ancient whiskey barrels, the creepy dress form, even the cast iron anvil—had been pushed to the center of the room.

“The baseboards were a disgrace,” Lila explained.“Allison would be appalled.I’ve been scrubbing them all morning.”

Was it odd for a renter to care so much about baseboards?“Who’s Allison?”

“Allison Casey.The woman who used to live here.”She gestured at the dress form as if that explained anything.“She was a stickler for a spotless shop.”

“Oh.Is that something you,” he waved at his own head, “sensed?”

“It’s history, as a matter of fact.I found this.”She pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of her apron.“It’s a list of chores.Daily, weekly, monthly.She was very organized and meticulous.The least I can do is not let the place fall apart while I’m here.”

She gave him a sunny smile.It was lethal, that smile.It could sneak under your skin and tell you everything was wonderful and right with the world.

He cleared his throat.“Can you take a break?”

“Um…sure, but aren’t we closed right now?”

“This isn’t for The Fang.I’ve been thinking about your blip.I want to try something.”

A shadow fell across her face.“Will it help figure out who killed that woman?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, well, anything’s worth a try.I can’t stop thinking about her.I’ve been doing some research on her.”She untied her apron and tossed it onto a tin bread box painted with flowers, now faded with age.Lila was such a bright spirit, it seemed odd that she’d be surrounded by so much old junk.And yet she seemed to fit right in, somehow.

In the passenger seat of his truck, she toed off her sneakers and folded her legs into a cross-legged position.As they cruised down the main road, he watched a bald eagle land on the top of the Magic Breakfast Bus and focus its predatory gaze toward the ground.

“What research?”

“It seemed like an odd kind of coincidence that Rita Casey and Allison Casey had the same last name.I wanted to see if they were related, and if that was why she was here in Alaska.I racked up a pretty big Wi-Fi bill at the general store just to come up empty.”

“No connection?”

“I can’t say for sure.Allison came from the East Coast, and Rita’s family has been in Oregon for generations.”

“It’s not an uncommon name.”

“No, not really.Still, it seems odd.Like history repeating itself, almost.”

That sounded far-fetched to him.“If you look hard enough, you can find patterns everywhere.Doesn’t mean anything.I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.”

“Yeah…that is the logical conclusion.”She spoke the word “logical” as if she didn’t like the way it felt on her tongue.

He looked over at her, amused.“Got a problem with logic?”

“I mean, it’s fine as far as it goes.”She shrugged her shoulders.“But it can also get in the way.”

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