Christine Rimmer - The Midnight Rider Takes A Bride

It was Lola.

Two

She lay faceup, with her eyes closed. Adora thought that she looked peaceful, except for the bloodless pallor of her skin. A dented tin pail had rolled a few feet away from her, spilling a shiny trail of blackberries out across the ground.

“God. Ma...” The gentle voice wasn’t much above a whisper, but Adora’s heart stopped at the anguish in it.

He shoved around her, ran to Lola, dropped to his knees at her side. “Ma...” Frantically he felt for a pulse. “Ma. Come on, Ma...” He tipped her head back, checked beyond her pale lips for any obstruction and then began to breath into her mouth.

Adora stood rooted to the spot, feeling outside her own body somehow. As if she weren’t really there. As if the desperate man kneeling on the ground wasn’t Jed Ryder. And the still form of the woman wasn’t anyone she knew.

Because that pale, lifeless figure just couldn’t be Lola. Not Lola, who worked for her. Lola, with her scratchy voice and dry sense of humor. Lola, who took care of all the older ladies on Senior Citizen Discount Day, who was so funny and patient with them, giving them the same boring cuts every time and never getting fed up because they wouldn’t even spring for a set or a blow-dry.

Jed looked up at her. Now he was calm. A terrible calm.

“Jed?” she asked, hoping for reassurance, hoping he would tell her that Lola wasn’t really dead.

“Get help,” he said in a whisper that rang in her ears like a shout. “Run like hell.”

And she did. She turned and ran back the way they’d come. She tore along that trail, shoving branches aside, scrambling upward when the trail climbed, half sliding. half running when the trail cut downhill. Each breath burned in her lungs, and her blood pounded so loud through her body that she could hear nothing else. She stumbled often but somehow managed to keep herself from actually falling.

The going got easier once she staggered up the bank that led to the bridge. From there, she ran on pavement, which wasn’t nearly as tough as running on the rocky, uneven trail. She tore down the street as fast as her shaking legs would carry her, her heart working so hard it felt as if it might explode in her chest.

Tilly Simpson, who worked as Doc Mott’s assistant, nurse and EMT combined, was standing behind the little counter on one side of the waiting room when Adora burst in the door of the clinic.

Tilly’s mouth dropped open.

Adora pressed a hand to her side, gulping for breath, noticing distantly that there were no patients waiting. The big clock on the fake-wood-paneled wall between the two Norman Rockwell prints said it was 2:39.

Tilly started sputtering. “Adora, what—?”

“It’s Lola,” Adora got out between starving gulps for air, “Lola Pierce. Down the Trout Creek Trail. Oh Tilly, I think she’s dead.”

They allowed Adora to ride in the ambulance, a very short ride, down the street and around the corner with the siren blaring. And then they let her carry the lightweight, roll-up stretcher, since both the doctor and Tilly had plenty to carry themselves. They tore down the bank to creekside as fast as they could go. But they weren’t more than a few hundred yards along the trail when Jed came loping toward them with Lola’s lifeless body cradled in his arms—and desolation in his eyes.

A few minutes later, right there on the trail, Doc Mott pronounced Lola dead. He looked at Jed with weary regret. “It was a stroke, I think. Or possibly a heart attack. There’ll be an autopsy. And then we can be sure.”

Jed said nothing, only nodded. They’d already laid Lola on the stretcher. Doc Mott took one end, and Jed took the other.

A small crowd had gathered near the ambulance when Jed and Doc Mott reached the top of the bank. Carefully, the two men hoisted their unmoving burden over the low railing onto the bridge. Adora and Tilly followed close behind, laden with the equipment that, in the end, had been of no use.

“Stand back, folks,” Doc Mott said, as they put Lola on the cot in the back of the ambulance. “Please, folks. Stand back.”

Adora could hear them whispering.

“It’s Lola. Lola Pierce.”

“Gone?”

“Yeah, it sure looks like it.”

Deputy Don Peebles, whom Adora had known since grade school, had just emerged from his big, sheriff’s office four-by-four. “What’s the story here. Doc?”

“Lola Pierce has died.”

“Of what?”

“I can’t say for sure at this point. Looks like a stroke or a heart attack. The autopsy will tell us more.” Doc Mott closed the double doors on Lola’s still form.

“Who found the body?”

“Jed here.” Doc Mott nodded in Jed’s direction. “And Adora Beaudine.”

Don turned to Jed. “I’ll have a few questions for you, Ryder.” He looked for and found Adora. “And you too, Dory.”

“You can ask your questions later,” Jed said. “I gotta get to my sister.”

“I’ll ask my questions now.” Don spoke in a tone of unyielding authority.

Adora stepped up. “Can you make it quick, Don? Please? Tiff’s only eleven. Jed should be with her.”

Don shook his head. “I’ve got a job to do. Dory. Now both of you just move over there, beside my vehicle.”

Adora glanced at Jed, whose jaw seemed set in concrete; he looked as if he had no intention of following Deputy Don’s orders. Just what he needs right now, she thought grimly. To get in trouble with the law.

“Come on, Jed,” she coaxed.

He didn’t budge. So she grabbed his huge, hard arm and pulled on it until he went with her to where Don had pointed.

The deputy was already turning, assuming responsibility for crowd control. “All right now, folks. You’ll have to step away from the ambulance. Tilly’s ready to move out.” He gave a quick salute to Tilly as she climbed into the cab on the driver’s side.

Doc Mott came over to Jed and Adora. He spoke quietly to Jed. “We’ll be taking your mom back to the clinic. From there, she’ll go to Reno, where the Washoe County Coroner will handle the autopsy. The whole procedure could take anywhere from twenty-four hours to a few days. You’ll want to have chosen a funeral home by the time they release the body.”

“Okay.”

The doc glanced toward the ambulance where Tilly was waiting for him, and then turned back to Jed. “Folks in town know you treated your mom right, Jed. And it is important that you be with your sister now. I’ll tell Don to make it snappy.”

“Thanks,” Jed muttered.

“No problem.” After sharing a few quiet words with the deputy; Doc Mott got in the ambulance, and Tilly carefully steered it out onto the small bridge. Moments later, the big white van disappeared, turning left onto Buckland Avenue, headed back to the clinic.

Don instructed Adora to wait several yards away while he talked to Jed. And then he wouldn’t let Jed go until he’d heard Adora’s side of the story. He did make it reasonably quick, though. Within ten minutes of asking the first question, he was nodding at Jed, who leaned against the bridge railing, muscular arms crossed over his powerful chest, looking impatient and more dangerous than usual.

“Okay, you can go,” Don said. “You’ll be hearing from me again, as soon as we get the autopsy results.”

Jed dropped his crossed arms and straightened from the railing. Without a word he headed for home.

The crowd was breaking up, but the folks who still hung around watched Jed as he strode past them. Adora could see the sympathy in their eyes. But none of them said anything; none of them reached out. He was wild Jed Ryder, after all. And who could say what he might do?

Lizzie Spooner, who’d shown up a few minutes before and had been waiting patiently for Don to finish with Adora, now moved to her side. “You okay?”

Adora blinked and looked at her friend.

Lizzie frowned. “You look bad. Come on. I’ll take you back to your place. I was just over there, looking for you. I signed for a package. From your mother. A present, I’ll bet. Let’s go and—”

Jed was almost at the turn to Bridge Street by then. Adora realized she couldn’t just let him go. “Jed!”

Jed stopped. He turned. He hadn’t put those shades back on after she’d fallen on the trail, so she was able to meet his eyes. She saw willingness in them. If she wanted to go with him, to be there when he broke the awful news to Tiff, it was okay with him.

“Wait up!” she called. She felt Lizzie’s hand clutching her arm. She brushed it off. “Gotta go.”

“But, Dory....”

“I’ll call you.”

“I left the package on the back step.”

“Thanks. Later, really.” And she took off at a run.

Jed waited, but only until she caught up with him. And then he was moving again, walking fast.

“I want to get my bike.” They had reached the corner of Church and Bridge. “You go on over to the house.”

“Should I go in without you?”

He cast her a grim smile. “Walk slow. And I’ll beat you there.”

“Okay.”

He took off at a dead run. Adora turned the corner onto Church Street, walking slowly, as Jed had told her to, thinking about Tiffany, who was waiting for her mother to come home.

Jed parked his bike in the attached garage and he and Adora entered the trim wood frame cottage through the kitchen.

They went straight to the living room. There, the first thing Adora noticed was the scent of spiced apple potpourri. She spotted the source: a green glass bowl on a side table, filled with the stuff. Adora had made that potpourri herself.

And Lola had loved it. “It’s autumn and apple pie and my grandma huggin’ me, all just from a smell,” she had declared.

So of course Adora had given her some.

But she would never give her any again.

Blinking back tears, Adora looked around the tidy room, at silk freesias in a dimestore vase on a cheap veneer coffee table. At People magazines and Ladies’ Home Journals arranged in a fan. At the two slightly threadbare flowered easy chairs and the tan velour couch.

Tiff was asleep on that couch, curled up on her side, with one hand under her head and the other pressed against her heart. Her silky auburn hair, which Adora had cut into a cute little wedge for her, lay smooth and straight against her soft cheek. She was smiling a little, as if her dreams were sweet ones.

Looking at her, Adora just wanted to let her go right on sleeping. She glanced at Jed and thought he felt the same.

But then, as if she’d sensed them watching her, Tiff opened her eyes. For a moment she seemed dazed. Then her eyes cleared and her sleepy smile grew wider. She sat up and yawned.

“What’s up, guys?” She looked from Adora to her brother and back again. And her smile faded. Worry clouded her dark eyes. “What?”

Jed dropped to the couch beside her and wrapped one of those huge arms around her. “Tiff...” And that was all he seemed to be able to say.

Tiff nudged her shoulder against him, fond and impatient at the same time. “What?” She looked at Adora for an answer. “Dory, come on...”

Adora prayed for the right words to come to her.

Before they did, Jed said, “It’s Ma.”

Tiff turned to him. “Mom?”

Jed nodded.

Tiff worried her lower lip. “I don’t...um. What do you mean?”

Jed started to speak.

But before he could get a word out, Tiff went on, “It’s weird. I was just dreaming about Mom. She hugged me. She said never to forget how much she loves me. That’s kind of funny, huh? Like I could forget something like that. You know how she is, always grabbing me and kissin’ on me and saying I’m her precious baby girl. She looked...really peaceful in my dream. But her skin was too white, you know?”