Wear Something Red Read online

Chapter 6

  They spent the next hour and a half taking inventory of what renovations were required. Shana even found a ladder and went up to the roof for a quick inspection before she could be stopped.

  The roof was the best news they had. It was only about three or four years old and was in excellent condition. The gutters, having been replaced at the same time, were also in good repair except for one down pipe at the back corner by the kitchen that had been torn away. The driveway was aggregate and only had two minor cracks in it, along with one oil stain.

  Shana retrieved a folder with paper in it from her backpack in the Mazda and also brought in the two sleeping bags. She wrote until Joan was sure she’d get a cramp.

  This time last year as everything had exploded around her and then gone dark, she had believed she’d lost all this. Of all that lingered from the Crowley farm the worst was remembering she had given up on ever seeing Michael and Shana again.

  “Okay,” Shana said as they stood in the living room and she went down the list she’d made, “the bedrooms are good. I’ll take the front one so we have one between us. I will paint mine ice-drop green. The middle bedroom will be my office.”

  “Ah . . . my office.”

  “The computer room. We can put up a chair rail like the one in the hallway and do garnet red below and off-white above it.”

  “Not ice-drop green?”

  Shana stuck out her tongue.

  “The carpet in there is blue. You did notice that, right?”

  “That goes. There’s a hardwood floor underneath it. It just needs to be refinished and it’ll look great. That area rug we brought from our old office will match everything perfectly.”

  “My old office.”

  “Your master bathroom is, well, you’re sort of stuck with lovely pink and white and mauve tiles until we dynamite it.”

  “I like your idea of putting a bigger tub in the main bath.”

  Shana sagged a bit. “This is going to be a lot of work and there’s only two weeks before school starts.” She flipped through the four pages. “And it’s going to be expensive. I know you got some kind of settlement for. . . .”

  “We’ll have enough.”

  “The furnace really sucks.”

  She quoted Shana’s favorite assessment, “A total nuclear meltdown redo.”

  “The hot water tank needs to go, too.”

  “I know; you put it on the list.”

  “The kitchen’s a complete do over.”

  She sounded just like Michael when she said that.

  Joan rubbed her eyes. “God, it’s dusty in here.”

  “Where should we sleep, here or upstairs?”

  There was such comfort in that question. It was their biggest adventure in Portland when they were renovating that old mansion. Shana loved having to spend the night in her sleeping bag. It was camping out at home.

  Money wasn’t a problem. Michael’s life insurance payout, his police pension survivors benefits and the money they got from selling the old mansion left enough to cover the costs of this place plus the renovations and still leave her able to take a few years with Shana before having to go back to work. Becoming the new sheriff of Dominion put an end to that plan.

  “Mom?”

  “Huh?”

  “Should we clean up first or just bring everything in? Are we sleeping up or down?” Shana got her impatience from. . . .

  She took the list from Shana and set it on the front window sill. “I have an idea. Why don’t we go for a ride before supper? I’ll show you one of my favorite spots when I was just getting started. It’s about twenty miles out and back from here.”

  “I’ll unload the bikes, you get the gear. Don’t dawdle.”

  “I don’t dawdle.”

  “You were always the last one ready. We always had to wait. . . .” Shana hugged her and kissed her cheek. “Just don’t dawdle, okay?”

  Joan watched out the bay window as Shana opened the combination lock to get the bikes off the roof rack. She wiped a tear from her eye and took a deep breath.

  “That’s the last of them.”

  Father had murdered mother here, had tried to kill her and had then taken his own life a day after she’d turned nineteen. In the last year, she had to first deal with the deaths of eleven of her team at the Crowley farm and then the death of Michael three months later. Friends, colleagues and family had danced around rumors of infidelity after Michael died. She had left the FBI six months after his funeral, two months after Wong and Torres had committed suicide on the same night while talking to each other on the phone. One month ago, she was hired as the new sheriff. She’d promised herself then to shed no more tears once they reached Dominion.

  Why did people make such stupid promises to themselves?

  What had she brought Shana to? Do-Dads specialized in additive manufacturing, including what they called the latest in 3D printing, something she had trouble understanding. Karyon Research was a biomedical company based in Widow Creek about thirty miles to the west. These new members of Dominion’s business community were supposed to bring between 800 and 1000 new jobs once they were up and running within the next year.

  Dominion had a ten and twenty year plan of growth that was supposed to one day make them larger than Bend, which seemed to be important to city council. Kate, Leo and Harry had told her all this as if they had to sell Dominion to her more than she had to convince them she was the best candidate.

  Had the other candidates been offered first and turned them down?

  On arrival, she finds out that Kate and Leo are enemies. Mattie sides with Leo and wants to convince her that Kate and Susan are the deserved outcasts. Then there was Madsen refusing to ride off into the Sunset Retirement Home just yet.

  Shana startled her when she growled from the front door, “Mom, stop dawdling.”