When Snow Falls

2

“Do you think I should ask him?”

Sitting in the passenger seat of her friend’s Prius, Cheyenne pulled her gaze away from Joe DeMarco. Together with his father, he owned the only service station in town. He was facing away from them, standing in one of the auto repair bays, while her best friend, Eve Harmon, got back behind the wheel. They hadn’t really needed gas, but they left the Gold Nugget B and B in the hands of Cheyenne’s kitchen helper to come here as often as possible, hoping to bump into him.

“Of course you should.” Cheyenne forced a smile. It wasn’t easy to encourage Eve to ask Joe out. Joe might be a relatively recent infatuation for Eve, but Chey had had a crush on him since forever. Not that she’d ever told anyone. She was fairly certain it was the best-kept secret in town.

Fingering the thick, knitted scarf tied around her neck, Eve worried her lip. “I don’t know....”

“What do you have to lose?” Chey asked.

“Face, I guess. I want him to ask me.”

“I once heard Gail say he wasn’t interested in a stepparent situation for his girls.”

“He only has them every other weekend. And I’d be a great stepmom!”

“That’s true, but he’s always seen us as his little sister’s friends. Maybe he feels he’s too old for us. For you,” she quickly amended.

Fortunately, Eve didn’t seem to catch the slip. “He’s nice, but…sort of preoccupied when I’m around. I can’t really get his attention.”

As Chey watched, Joe turned, saw her sitting in the car and waved. Instantly, her cheeks flushed hot. That was all it took—a wave. He’d had that effect on her ever since Anita had first carted them into town in her old Skylark. She’d never forget how hungry she and Presley had been that day. While her mother counted out the change they’d scrounged up to buy gas, she’d left Presley, who wanted to stay in the car, and went to the minimart. They didn’t have the money for food. She’d just wanted to look, to imagine what it would be like if she could indulge in one of the many treats displayed on those shelves.

When it was time to leave, Anita had called her twice. Chey remembered because her mother had then shouted for her to “get her ass moving” and thumped her on the head.

Stomach growling, Cheyenne had dragged herself from the Hostess aisle to the door, where Joe had caught up with her long enough to hand her two packages of the Twinkies she’d been eyeing. Embarrassed because she knew they looked as poor as they were, she’d tried to give them back, but he’d insisted the snacks were past their sale date and he was about to toss them.

It wasn’t until she was back inside the car, groaning in pleasure and devouring those Twinkies with Presley, that she’d taken a closer look at the wrappers. The expiration dates hadn’t passed. Neither one was even close.

Cheyenne was pretty sure she’d been in love with Joe ever since that day. Or maybe it was a couple of weeks later, when she first saw him at school. He was a handsome, popular senior, she a lowly freshman, when he’d noticed some kid making fun of her ill-fitting dress. He’d immediately walked over and sent that boy running. Then he’d grinned at her as if he somehow saw the sensitive girl, who’d already been through far too much, beneath the ratty hair and secondhand clothes.

“How’d he treat you at the Chamber of Commerce mixer last night?” she asked, picking at her nails so she wouldn’t be tempted to look at him again. It had broken her heart when he’d married right out of high school. But then he’d divorced and returned to Whiskey Creek and, at twenty-six, she’d been granted a second chance—not that anything had happened in the five years since.

Eve slid the receipt for the gas purchase into her purse. “He said hello. That was about it.”

Cheyenne hated that she was secretly pleased by this report. She wanted Eve to be happy more than anyone else in the world, even if it meant she couldn’t have Joe. Eve was like a sister to her, one she could both love and admire. Eve’s family, the Harmons, had taken Cheyenne in at various points during the past seventeen years. They’d given her a job in the kitchen of the family inn, trained her to cook and let her take over when their other cook moved away. She owed them so much.

Suppressing a twinge of conscience, she attempted to make a joke about the situation. “He should be grateful for your patronage. You come here more than anyone else. He probably wonders what you do with all those bags of chips you buy. He’d be able to tell if you were eating them.”

Eve laughed but sobered immediately. “Do you think I’m being too obvious?”

That was hard to tell. Joe was always friendly. He just never called or did anything else to show special interest—in either one of them.

Cheyenne drew a bolstering breath. “Why don’t you see if Gail will give him a nudge?”

His sister was part of their clique, a clique that had been friends since grade school—except for her, of course. She was fourteen when they moved to town. Presley had been sixteen.

“Gail would love to see Joe marry again,” she added. “Especially someone who’ll treat him better than his ex.” Gail had no doubt been too caught up in her own life to notice that Eve suddenly had a thing for her big brother. A year ago, she’d married a famous movie star who’d been a PR client and had her hands full coping with all the changes that required.

“She and Simon are in L.A. He’s working on a movie.”

“That doesn’t mean she never talks to Joe.”

With a frown, Eve started the car. “No, but…I’m not ready to go that far yet.”

Now that Eve had aborted her mission to invite Joe to dinner, Cheyenne could relax for the moment. “So you’re not going to ask him out?”

“Not right now. Maybe I’ll work up the courage later.”

Cheyenne nodded. She needed to forget about Joe, finally get it through her head—and her heart—that there was no chance he’d ever return her interest. As long as Eve wanted him, it didn’t matter even if he did.

* * *

“What are you doing here? It’s too cold to be sitting outside.”

Cheyenne turned to see Eve, who’d been as busy as she had since their trip to the gas station, weaving carefully through the headstones of the old cemetery next to the inn. “Just thinking.”

It was the slowest part of the day, between the morning rush when they prepared a fancy breakfast for the inn’s guests and cleaned the rooms, and three o’clock, the time new patrons began to trickle in. She would’ve run home to check on her mother. She normally did. But this afternoon she couldn’t bring herself to make the effort. Presley was there; she’d call if Anita’s situation worsened.

Eve’s footsteps crunched in the patchy snow. Since her boots were more for looks than bad weather, she watched where she was going until she got close enough to avoid ruining the pretty black suede. Then her eyes cut to the words carved in the closest headstone—also the oldest and largest—as if they made her uncomfortable.

They probably did. They made everyone uncomfortable.

Here lies our little angel, brutally murdered at six years. May God strike down the killer who took her from us, and send him into the fiery pits of hell. Mary Margaret Hatfield, daughter of Harriett and John Hatfield, 1865–1871

“Are you feeling bad that we’re planning to capitalize on the mystery of her murder?” Adjusting the scarf around her neck, Eve perched on the garden bench next to Chey.

Eve didn’t have to say who she was. “Maybe a little.” Not only had Mary been born in the home that was now Eve’s parents’ B and B, she’d died there. Her murder had taken place well over a century ago, but just about everyone in town knew the terrible details. She’d been found in the basement, strangled. There’d been no indication as to who’d killed her.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do it.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Cheyenne responded. “You and your parents will lose the inn if we don’t do something.” If that happened, Chey would be without a job, too, but she could probably get on somewhere else. It was Eve’s situation that concerned her. The Gold Nugget meant so much to the Harmon family. Over the years, especially during the past twelve months, they’d dumped everything they had into the business.

Eve hugged herself for added warmth. “I know. I keep telling myself that publicizing a haunting isn’t a big deal. It’s such an old crime. It just adds atmosphere, right? But…we’re talking about a girl who died a violent death. Her ghost really could be lingering here.”

Cheyenne straightened in surprise. “I thought you didn’t believe in things like that. I thought you said every rattle and creak could be explained as the settling of an old house.”

“Since I’m so often at the inn alone, it’s easier to believe that. There’s no point in scaring myself to death. But—” Eve met her eyes “—a lot of people do believe in the paranormal.”

Chey frowned at the sea of headstones surrounding her. For the most part they were organized in neat rows, but crookedness in certain spots suggested a random beginning. “Do you remember, shortly after we moved here, when my mother got mad because I stayed with you part of the time and with Gail part of the time and I didn’t come home for a couple of days? She tied me to that tree.” Cheyenne pointed to the big oak in the corner, which was located close to another bench.

Eve grimaced. “How could I forget? You spent the entire night out here. When my father found you the next morning, he was furious that she could do such a thing to her own child. But…your mother pretty much wrote the book on how to be a terrible parent.”

After that incident, Cheyenne had gone to live with the Harmons for three months—until her mother’s cancer took a turn for the worse. Because she hated feeling like a burden on people who shouldn’t have to take care of her, and because Presley wanted her to come home, she’d eventually gone back. “At first I was terrified to be trapped in the dark, so close to Mary’s grave.”

The memories of that warm, summer night often lingered on the fringes of her mind. They were partly what drew her out here.

“But after a couple of hours,” she went on, “I felt this strange sort of peace, as if she was with me and didn’t want me to be frightened. I even started talking to her.” Uncomfortable admitting this, since she’d never told Eve before, she laughed to make herself sound a little less crazy. “I know it was all my imagination, but I’ve never been frightened of her since.”

“You don’t feel like you’re betraying a friend by using her death or her ghost or whatever in our marketing ideas?”

Cheyenne shook her head. “We could never squelch the rumors, anyway. A good ghost story gets handed down generation after generation.”

“But we’ll be playing into it,” Eve argued. “And do you really think we have to go so far as to change the name?”

Cheyenne studied the Victorian-style building just beyond the black-iron filigree fence that surrounded the cemetery. All the Christmas garland and lights made the inn look magical, but underneath the decorations it needed caulking and paint and some dry-rot repair. New plumbing, too. “Saving the inn will require a total makeover, Eve. The place should get a new name to go with it. That feels like a clean start. And I like calling it Little Mary’s. Adding ‘Gold Country’s Only Haunted Bed-and-Breakfast,’ softens the darkness of it.”

“My parents don’t agree.” Eve kicked at the snow.

“Things are different than when they were in charge.”

“You mean the Russos hadn’t opened A Room with a View,” she grumbled. “Still…” She sighed. “I can’t help feeling bad about using what happened to Mary to book rooms.”

“We’re trying to save her home.” An idea occurred to Chey that brought her to her feet. “Hey, maybe we can save the inn and do her a favor at the same time.”

Eve’s eyebrows slid up. “What are you talking about?”

“What if we get Unsolved Mysteries or one of those shows to come out here and do a segment on Mary’s murder, see if they can convince forensic profilers and detectives to take a look at the scene and try to solve the case?”

Eve blew on her hands, then rubbed them together. “How would we even reach the right people?”

“Are you kidding? One of our best friends owns a PR company. If Gail can’t get in touch with the producer, I bet her movie-star husband has contacts who could. Simon might even be willing to do a guest spot on the show, to mention that this inn is in his wife’s hometown. We’d be a shoe-in if Simon’s name was attached.”

“I don’t want to impose on him, Chey. He already sent us those movie props for our new haunted house theme—not that we’ll be able to use them now that we’re going with a restoration.”

“He won’t mind,” she said. “It wouldn’t take more than an hour of his time. Just a quick cameo appearance. Come on. Getting the B and B on a show like that would be great PR for our grand reopening. We’d blow the competition away. It might also bring Mary some peace.” She bent closer to Eve. “Think about it. What if we finally solve the mystery?”

Grooves of concern appeared in Eve’s normally smooth forehead. “That would be great, but does it mean we hold off on the renovations until these forensic people have a look?” Now that her parents had retired and left her in charge, her first consideration was, and had to be, how to cover the mortgage payments, especially now that her parents had done all they could to help financially. “Because I can’t really do that,” she added. “Riley’s about the only one, besides you, who isn’t going on the cruise on Sunday and part of the reason he’s staying is to start the improvements so we can reopen in January.”

Eve and five other friends were taking a ten-day Caribbean cruise for the holidays. They were leaving this weekend and wouldn’t get back until the day after Christmas.

“We won’t have to change the schedule,” Cheyenne said. “We’re not renovating the basement.” No one had ever changed anything down there, which gave her hope that, one way or another, the mystery could be solved.

The darkening sky threatened another storm. Eve stood as she glanced up. “It’s a long shot that they’d be able to tell anything after a century and a half.”

“A long shot is better than no shot at all. Even if they don’t end up solving the crime, we’d get the PR. It’s a national show. You can’t buy publicity like that.”

Linking her arm through Chey’s, Eve pulled her toward the shelter of the inn. “Okay, fine. We’ll see what we can do to get their interest, but not until after I’m back and the holidays are over.”

“That should work,” Cheyenne said as they walked. “But why aren’t you more excited? It’s exactly what we need to get the word out.”

“You’re right. I’m just…stressed. It’s a great idea. Gail’s going to be mad she didn’t come up with it first.” Eve gave her a conspirator’s smile, but it disappeared almost immediately. “How’s your mother doing?”

Cheyenne didn’t want to dwell on the cantankerous woman who awaited her at the end of each day. She had only a couple of hours until she was off work, hours that would pass far too soon. Then Presley would head over to the casino and she’d be in for another endless night with Anita. “She’s hanging in there.”

“How much longer do you think she’ll last?”

“Who knows? The doctor says it could be a few days or a few weeks.”

Eve stopped, jerking Cheyenne to a stop with her. “Maybe I should cancel my trip. I’ve been thinking of doing that, anyway.”

“No.” Cheyenne wasn’t willing to let Eve miss the cruise she’d scrimped and saved for, the vacation she’d talked about for twenty-four months.

“But what if your mother dies while we’re gone? You’d have to deal with that all by yourself.” She lowered her voice even though there wasn’t anyone around to overhear. “Lord knows Presley’s not much support.”

“Presley does what she can. And your folks are here. I’m sure they’d offer me whatever I need.” The cold was beginning to seep into Cheyenne’s bones. Suddenly anxious to get inside, she tugged Eve to get her moving again. “Anyway, I don’t think any of our friends particularly want to go to Anita’s funeral.”

“We’re all too angry at her to like her very much,” she admitted. “But we want to be there for you.”

“You are. Always.”

“I can’t believe the cancer came back, and that she went downhill so fast.”

“It’s bad timing, what with Christmas and all. But you can’t miss the cruise. There’s no canceling at this late date. You wouldn’t be able to get a refund.”

Eve made a sound of impatience. “I had no business spending that money in the first place. If I’d had any idea we wouldn’t recover after A Room with a View opened…”

Chey held the gate as they passed through. “I know. But look at it this way. The money’s spent. We have a plan for rescuing the inn. And Anita will probably survive until the new year. She may have her faults, but she’s tough. No one could argue with that.”

Once they reached the welcome mat, Eve stomped the dampness from her boots. “I wish you were going with us.”

So did Cheyenne. But she hadn’t even made an effort. She’d known from the onset, when the idea had first been proposed during one of their Friday morning get-togethers at the coffee shop, that she’d never be able to afford the trip. The Harmons paid her what they could, but she didn’t make a lot. And either her mother or her sister always needed financial help. “I don’t have a birth certificate, remember? I can’t get a passport without one.”

“We could’ve gotten a copy of your birth certificate somehow.”

“Not if my mother can’t remember where I was born!”

A roll of the eyes told Chey what Eve thought of that. What mother didn’t have this information? “There has to be another way to find it. We just need to do the research.”

Cheyenne knew it would be a lot harder to come up with than Eve imagined. There weren’t even many pictures of her and Presley as children. For several years they’d lived out of a car, which made it impossible to collect much memorabilia. Even Presley’s birth certificate had fallen by the wayside when, shortly after Anita was diagnosed with cancer for the first time, they’d come back to the motel where they’d been staying to find the manager had thrown all their stuff away because Anita hadn’t been able to come up with the payment.

Cheyenne had shared that incident with Eve and the others. But she hadn’t told them about the blonde woman in her dreams, how any type of snowfall made her feel bereft, or the suspicions that went along with her earliest memories. Intimating that her mother might’ve kidnapped her would be a very serious accusation. And she wasn’t sure she could trust that the images in her mind were accurate. She needed some sort of proof before she went that far.

“I’ll be fine here,” she said. “I’m overseeing the renovations for you.”

“My folks could’ve done that. They’re not leaving to visit my aunt until February.”

Cheyenne slipped into the warmth of the inn and was immediately enveloped by the scent of the expensive pine-and-mulberry potpourri they purchased to impress their guests. “This way they won’t have to,” she said, but she knew it wasn’t going to be easy to face Christmas with all her friends gone, her mother dying and the inn closed for remodeling.

3

Presley sat next to her mother’s bed, chain-smoking while watching her sleep. Part of her felt guilty about spewing carcinogens into the air Anita was breathing. She knew Chey would have sent her to the porch if she were home. But it was cold outside, and Presley didn’t see how a little secondhand smoke could make any difference now.

The small TV on the dresser droned on in the background. They were supposed to be watching The Bold and the Beautiful. It was their favorite soap; they’d followed it for years. But her mother was so drugged she could hardly keep her eyes open. She drifted in and out of consciousness, scarcely aware that Presley was in the room.

Once again, the morphine on the nightstand drew Presley’s attention. She’d already taken a swallow of it, but she was tempted to drink more—or head over to the blue shack down the hill where she could buy crystal meth. She had to be careful not to take too much of her mother’s supply. The state would provide only a limited amount. The hospice nurse, who came in every Monday, kept a close eye on it, and so did Cheyenne.

Anita moaned, shifting as if she couldn’t get comfortable, and opened her eyes. Then she saw Presley and made an attempt to rally. “What’s happening…on our show?”

She recognized the voices of the actors, knew what she was supposed to be doing even though she’d been asleep for twenty minutes or more.

“Nothing new,” Presley replied to cover for the fact that she hadn’t really been watching, either.

“Have they shown Thomas?”

He was Anita’s favorite. She’d loved that bit about the ecstasy-induced weekend with Brooke and whether or not he’d slept with his stepmother. “Not today.” That she’d noticed, anyway.

“What’s happening with Ridge?”

“He was kissing his ex-wife before the last commercial.” Presley had seen that much, but even if she hadn’t, Ridge cheating with his ex was a safe bet. The writers had kept that love triangle going for several seasons.

“If he doesn’t choose between Brooke and Taylor soon, I’ll miss it.” Her eyes drifted shut. Presley assumed she’d fallen back asleep, but she spoke a few seconds later. “You’d better quit smoking, or you’ll wind up like me.”

Presley wanted to quit. She remembered how yellow her mother’s teeth had been before she lost them to poor hygiene. But now was not the time to fight that battle. She needed all the help she could get just to survive each day. “I will. Later.”

“Right.” Her mother coughed as she tried to laugh.

“Mom?”

Anita took a deep breath. It was getting harder and harder for her to speak. Sometimes she didn’t have the energy for it at all. “What?”