Barnstorming (Gail Mccarthy Mysteries) by Laura Crum Read Free Book Online Page B

my new little shack,” I greeted her. “We can be private there.”
    As I led Jeri across the porch of the new house and through the glass door and flipped on the lights, I was conscious of a sense of pride all out of proportion to the situation. Our new cabin was tiny, about five hundred square feet, and featured one small but airy main room, surrounded by windows, a half kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom for Mac. We had built it in anticipation of the time, soon to come, when sleeping on a futon on the floor of our bedroom would not be enough private space for our son, and already he spent much of his time in his new bedroom, though he wasn’t quite ready to sleep there yet.
    The click of the light switch lit a rough glass sconce shaped like a half moon above the door, and a hidden light in the alcove across the room. Jeri’s mouth parted slightly as she gazed about. I grinned.
    “This is great,” she said. “Did you build it yourselves?”
    “Mostly. Blue had a contractor friend who helped.”
    The room we stood in was twenty by twenty with a high open-beam ceiling lined with willow twigs. Windowed like a screen porch, with a floor of rough-planked hand-scraped hickory boards and walls plastered with orangey-gold clay, the room was both small and simple and yet oddly spacious and stark. In one corner was a raised alcove, defined by the deep red trunk of a madrone, which provided the corner pillar. A hanging scroll in the alcove showed grass blowing in the wind. There was little furniture—a wicker rocking chair and a simple futon couch which folded out to make a bed. A small burgundy-toned prayer rug lay in front of the couch and a cedar chest in the corner supported Blue’s bagpipes.
    “We call this the music room,” I said. “It’s where Blue plays his bagpipes. They’re loud. It’s a good thing we’ve got a separate house. Would you like a tour of the whole place before we start? It won’t take long.”
    “Sure,” Jeri said, still gazing about in apparent fascination.
    I led the way to Mac’s room, through the beaded curtain, and watched Jeri peer at the antique desk in front of the turquoise-blue wall, a special request of Mac’s and his favorite color. Mac’s bed had a rust-colored quilt and a wool blanket with a Native American design of galloping horses.
    “The bathroom is the best part,” I said. “Blue wanted a big shower.”
    The small bathroom boasted a handmade concrete counter with a beaten copper sink and a five-by-five walk-in shower, tiled in stone, with a glass-block exterior wall that filled the space with light.
    “I love glass block,” said Jeri, gazing at the wall somewhat wistfully. “This is great,” she added.
    “We had fun with it,” I said, and led the way back to the main room.
    Settling into the rocker, I watched Jeri take the end of the couch and bring out her small recorder. Her smooth blond head, sporting a neat, short cut and showing no gray, I noticed, was bent over for a minute as she fiddled with the dials. I felt a sudden rush of fondness, remembering all of our previous interactions. I liked Jeri Ward. We’d known each other in an off-again on-again way for twenty years. Somehow we had never become intimate friends, perhaps because neither she nor I was the type to make many close friendships. Nonetheless, I liked her very much, and sensed that the feeling was mutual.
    “Did you find anything interesting in the woods?” I asked her.
    “Not really. Not yet,” she muttered, not looking up. “The scene-of-crime guys are still there.” And then, “I just got back from Lazy Valley Stable. I had a guy from there come pick up the horse.”
    “Was it the trainer, Jonah Wakefield?”
    “Yeah, that’s what he said his name was. Young, dark, clearly thinks he’s God’s gift to women.”
    “That would be Jonah,” I agreed. “Does he know Jane’s dead?”
    “It was pretty much impossible not to tell him,” Jeri said. “Given that I had to put