Chapter Twenty-Two Ashley
TWENTY-TWO ASHLEY
The Loon’s Call Pub was decorated in much the same way as the motel: worn-out hunting motifs.
A dusty deer head with enormous antlers hung on the wall, along with a moose head and a stuffed trout.
In front of the neon Budweiser sign, a weasel of some sort was posed with his front right paw raised, head cocked, frozen and waiting with dim, scratched glass eyes.
Country music drifted from a tinny-sounding speaker somewhere.
Two heavyset men in flannel shirts and ball caps were sitting at the bar, nursing beers and talking quietly.
They swiveled their heads around like owls when the bells on the door announced Ash and Mal’s arrival.
A third man, with tangled hair, a thick beard, and filthy clothes, sat at the far end of the bar.
Another man in navy work pants and matching jacket sat at a table near the door—he looked up from his sandwich and fries and glared at them.
No sign of the woman Ashley had seen walking in earlier.
If she’d even been there at all.
“Artistic license,” Ash said, grinning at him.
As they made their way to a table toward the back, Malcolm stopped, studying another old framed photo on the wall: two girls in dresses with matching ribbons in their hair, one maybe ten, the other twelve or thirteen. He pointed to the older, more serious-looking one: “She kinda looks like you.”
But Ashley barely glanced at the photo. Her eyes were drawn to the shelves behind the bar to the left of the deer painting, where rows of liquor bottles were crowded together.
Standing among them were half a dozen little dolls similar to the one at Lorelei’s: yarn hair, wooden painted faces, little cloth outfits.
As if they too had just noticed her gaze, she felt all of their tiny painted-on eyes watching her.
Ash and Malcolm settled in at a table. There was yet another old photo on the wall above them: a shot of Main Street with a horse-drawn wagon. The photo was a little out of focus, making the driver of the wagon seem almost ghostly, his bearded face blurred, body lost in a long coat.
A waitress came through the swinging doors from the kitchen and watched them for a long moment. She turned back to confer with someone on the other side of the doors. Finally, she decided it was time to come over to their table.
She arrived with menus and place settings. Ash guessed her to be around forty, with dyed red hair, growing out at the roots.
She set down menus and silverware with a clang.
“Anything to drink?” she asked.
They both ordered the burger and beer special. The waitress sighed as if they were inconveniencing her greatly, but jotted their order on her pad and sauntered back toward the kitchen.
She came right back out with a burger that she put in front of the disheveled man at the bar.
“Compliments of Jeff,” she said with a smile.
The man was smiling down at the plate. “He even put a fried egg on top.”
She nodded at him. “We’re thinking of putting it on the menu. Naming it after you—the Sad Willy Special.”
He laughed. “That would be something. You tell Jeff thanks for me, will ya?”
She looked over at Ashley and Malcolm’s table. She was studying Malcolm now, squinting at him, her face all pinched up in concentration like he was a problem she was trying to solve. Though Mal didn’t notice, Ash certainly did.
After a few long seconds of this, the waitress turned away, grabbed two mugs, and went over to the beer taps.
At the end of the counter, the man who was apparently known as Sad Willy dove into his burger, eating quickly, messily, egg yolk and ketchup running down his beard.
The man in the blue work clothes said something inaudible to the waitress, pushed his chair back, and walked over to them. “Ashley Flanders,” he said, looking at Ash. It wasn’t a question.
“H-how—” she stammered. Did she dare hope that this man had known her mother?
“Jack St. James,” he said, looking down at them. “I own the motel. My wife, Liz, told me you’d checked in.”
“Hi there! Malcolm Flanders,” Mal said, standing up and putting out his hand. Jack looked at his hand, then took it and gave it an unenthusiastic shake.
“I’m afraid my wife made a mistake,” Jack said.
“Oh?” Ash leaned back in her seat, not breaking eye contact with him.
“We aren’t supposed to be accepting guests right now.”
“Why’s that?” Mal asked.
“The heat’s out.”
“I think we’ll be okay,” Mal said congenially. “We’ve got blankets and the bedspreads. And Ash and I, we’re used to camping out. We can rough it without heat for a couple of nights.”
“Wiring’s iffy too,” Jack added. “Haven’t had a chance to have it fixed. Might not be safe.” The words hung in the air a moment.
Ash took in a breath. “Seeing as we already paid for two rooms for two nights, I think we’ll take our chances, if that’s okay.”
He seemed to consider, then nodded. “Suit yourself,” he said. He turned and went back to his table.
“Way to run a business,” Mal whispered to Ash. “Trying to kick out your only two customers?”
Ash shook off the chill she felt—not from the draft coming in through the door and windows, but from the man’s obvious warning: Might not be safe.
The waitress came back and dropped off two beers. She set the mugs down hard, the glass clacking against the table, the beer spilling over, then turned and walked away without a word.
Mal picked up his glass and Ashley clinked hers against his. “To the warm hospitality of Boone’s Ferry,” he said with a mischievous grin.
“May it comfort us through the cold nights at Deer Run,” she added.
They took long sips of their beers.
“I still can’t believe Endicott’s house has been in the family all this time.” Mal was rolling up his napkin now. “That Gram never mentioned it.”
“Yeah, I still can’t get my head around it,” Ash admitted.
“Kind of makes you wonder, huh?” Mal said. “I mean, what else wasn’t she telling us?”
Ash thought of her mother’s letter: I came here to find the truth that you’ve worked so hard to hide from me.
“So where is it again?” Malcolm asked, setting down his mug. “The house?”
“Right on Main Street. Number 84.”
“We must have driven right by it on the way in! Did you see it? Did you notice?”
Ashley shook her head. “I was too busy trying to navigate.”
“Let’s go take a look. Right after dinner,” he said. “We can knock on the door, meet this Josephine Banks lady.”
“Let’s do it.” She tried to sound confident. This was why she’d come after all, wasn’t it?
So why did she feel such a sense of dread, her whole body thrumming, telling her to get out of town?
She kept scanning the tavern, searching the shadows, half expecting her bloodied mother to be there in the corner, watching. But the only ones watching were the four men, who kept looking their way but pretending not to.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said, keeping her voice low. Mal leaned forward, his excitement now tempered with concern.
“What is it?”
“You know when we just talked with Lorelei and she told us about the fire that destroyed the town hall?”
He nodded.
“That fire happened on the very next day after Mom wrote that letter to Gram. She was probably still here.”
Mal was quiet for a few seconds. “Huh. Well, that’s a strange coincidence.” He ran his finger over the condensation on his mug of beer.
“Coincidence?” Ashley almost laughed.
“So what are you saying? That Mom had something to do with the fire?” He flashed her a look of concern, a you’re not having crazy thoughts again, are you kind of look.
“I have no idea, but it’s weird, right?”
He shook his head. “You’ve gotta stop trying to solve riddles that don’t exist, making things more complicated than they need to be.
It seems like she came to Boone’s Ferry a few days before…
” He trailed off. “Which you have to admit is not likely to cheer anybody up. There’s no big conspiracy or mystery.
It’s just a shitty, heartbreaking thing that happened. ”
Mal reached out his hand for hers.
She pulled her hand away. “No. You believe what you want. But I can’t believe Mom would—”
“Maybe you didn’t know her as well as you thought you did,” Mal interrupted. “Maybe none of us did.”
The waitress arrived with their burgers, dropping them off unceremoniously.
The burgers looked good, and the plates were piled high with homemade potato chips.
But Ashley, who had been starving an hour ago, no longer had much of an appetite.
She looked up at the photo of the horse-drawn cart above their table, her eyes glazed with tears, and realized she’d been so focused on the blurry driver that she hadn’t noticed the contents of the wagon.
There, draped across the back of it, was a dead horse, black or dark brown with a white spot on its face, its head tilted at an unnatural angle, hanging off the edge of the wagon.