ALL THAT GLITTERS, chapter 1

chapter 18

Chapter 18

Empty streets in Vermont’s capital city never happened except on stormy nights like this. Lucky hadn’t been away long enough to forget – and the two and a half months of college in Boston seemed a lifetime ago, instead of a mere seventeen hours. She hunched her shoulders, tugging the hood of her jacket tighter around her head and face, adjusting the scarf over her nose and mouth. Real winter clothing for Vermont called for more layers than this, and better gloves, too.

The wind pushed the cold hard against her forehead. Hand stuffed in her pockets, she pressed forward against it, feeling for the snowmachine track with each sliding step. As the rows of stores to either side of State Street ended, giving was to the big hotel and government buildings, the snow blew up in her face, making her blink constantly. Faint lights in a few upstairs rooms glowed beyond the curtain of icy crystals. The streetlamps cast small circles of blue-white, sealed off from ground level. Lucky strained to see ahead, focusing on the circle of lights she’d spotted earlier, the ones on the State House dome itself.

A roar from behind her forced her off the road. The town snowplow. By habit, she scooted onto the sidewalk to let it pass. Oh, no! The scrape of the blade wiped out the snowmachine track she’d been following. Now what?

Accidentally her thumb pressed the connection button of her cell phone and Michelle’s anxious voice spoke faintly. “Lucky? Are you all right?”

Lucky grabbed the phone out of the pocket and slid it inside her hood. “Sorry. I’m fine. Did you send the webcam pictures to Ann Davila yet?”

“Five minutes ago. Where are you?”

“State Street, just coming to the park in front of the State House. Hold on, I’ve lost the track.” She took the phone out of her hood, brushed a finger across the keypad to make the inside light come on, and bent close to the road surface. Could she light the remains of the track that way? No, the snowplow sweep was wide and thorough. Lucky lifted the phone again. “I’ll call you back in a moment. Gotta concentrate.”

The hump of an uneven and well-iced manhole in the roadway tripped her and she stumbled, barely catching her balance in time to stay vertical. Swerving to the right side of the road, she found the track after all – the machine had left the roadway and taken a shortcut across the actual lawn of the fancy domed structure.

Her phone vibrated and she checked that it was Michelle again, before answering.

“Roger’s on his way to you. Wait for him, he says. You should even see his headlights already. He’s with Jon in the SUV.”

“I see them,” Lucky agreed. The snow-caked vehicle stopped next to her, engine still running. Roger jumped out and shone a flashlight on the tracks.

“Same place as before. They’re cutting back the same way they came. And I know where they’re going. I think they’re using the old State Police building down on Terrace Street.”

“So what do we do? Do we go there, ourselves?” Lucky shivered. She wished she trusted the police to help, instead of the way they kept pursuing her mother.

“Jon and I go there, but just to watch. Lucky, you should go back to the store. Michelle said you’ve got stuff to set up with the lawyer and all that. Go be the communications hub, would you? Here, we’ll give you a ride back.”

Lucky shook her head. “I can run back there. It won’t take me any time really, if I’m not watching for tracks. You guys go ahead and stake out the house. But – you won’t get close, right? You won’t let them see you? Don’t get hurt!” Her voice rose. She raised a snowy glove to her mouth, trying to calm down.

Roger threw both arms around her, the cold snowy edges of his coat bumping her face. “We’ll be fine. But you’re not okay. Climb into the truck.”

For a moment she hesitated, but she knew it was more important for Roger and Jon to get moving. She shook her head again and pushed away. “Call me when you get there.” Determinedly, she pushed herself to trot away, reminding herself it was only one long block to the bookstore. Behind her she heard Roger scramble back in with Jon, and the slipping sound of the truck’s tires finding traction and moving away.

Lucky turned around for just a moment and watched the taillights vanish into the snow. She paused to stare at the State House, and a sudden flicker of light up inside the dome – not around it, but in it. It couldn’t have anything to do with the criminals, could it? No, of course not. Still, things were bunching in strange ways: the governor’s books, the tracks of the snowmachine cutting through the state properties, the mention of the old State Police building. On the other hand, there was scuzzy Sean, and the packages of pot, and – could her father’s tax fight with the governor be why those pages about a legalized marijuana tax were in the box of books? Her head spun with details that wouldn’t quite fit together.

As she rounded the corner, sprinting across the small bridge and toward the back door of the bookstore, she slipped again, and this time she couldn’t catch herself but fell flat in the roadway, where she felt the icy hard edge of a snowmachine track against her cheek. She brushed off the snow as she stood up, and pulled off a glove to call Michelle and Sandy and ask them to move the barricade away and open the door.

As she did, she realized there was more than snow on her glove.

There was birdseed.