Expiration Date (8 page)

Scritchh, scritchh, scritchh …

Eve Coates heard the sound in the dead of a Thursday night, and her eyes sprang open. Normally she would’ve been snuggled like a spoon in a drawer with her husband of forty-seven years, but now her body turned stiff beneath the toasty eiderdown. Her fluffy pillows gave little comfort.

Tonight she was alone. Mr. Coates had traveled north to Silverton.

Scritchh, scritchh …

Probably one of them critters
, she told herself. If it weren’t for them in the first place, she wouldn’t be in this predicament.

Rats, field mice, possums … Whatever they were, they’d been messing with the crops, and her husband, Mitchell, was fed up. Couldn’t blame him after the years of attention he’d given this property. Built their family a little slice of heaven here on the edge of Junction City.

Problem was, he couldn’t rid the place of these pests.

Aggravated, he’d picked up a container of poison at Ace Hardware a couple of days ago, then spread it around the farm as the label instructed. This morning she’d been at his side while he checked the barn and the fence line, but he’d found nothing. None of the little beasts. No sign that the stuff was doing its job.

Mitchell said it was the final straw—and when he said it, he meant it. He’d decided to go north to see his brother for some advice, said he’d be back by sundown.

Three hours ago he had called with the bad news.

“Eve, I might not make it home tonight,” he told her. “Van’s gone belly up. Could be the fuel injection, could be somethin’ simple. We’ll try to get her fixed up so I can head back soon as possible.”

“What about supper? You gonna sleep there at Donny’s?”

“I’ll be just fine, darlin’. Good news is, Donny’s got some chemicals for me to use, swears they’ll do the trick. Mean stuff, downright nasty. When I’m done, those buggers won’t know what hit ’em. Stuff’s so powerful you hafta wear a mask while spraying it.”

“Sounds dangerous. You be careful, Mitchell.”

“Don’t you worry. I won’t start glowing in the bedroom or nothin’.”

At that, she heard Donny’s distinctive hooting in the background. Not a bad guy for a brother-in-law, though he did have his quirks. As for Mitchell, he was a good man. Almost fifty years since their wedding at First Presbyterian on a warm spring day.

Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell Coates …

She still liked the sound of it. Did that make her a hopeless romantic? Well, why not? Sure, the grandkids puckered their little faces and squirmed when Gramps and Grams got snuggly, but they found reassurance in the farm’s atmosphere, and Eve took pleasure in that. Families didn’t always stay together like they used to. Had to hold on to the old ways.

A plain fact: she and her man, they were a dying breed.

“You don’t worry about a thing,” Mitchell had told her before ending the phone call. “I’ll be home before you know it.”

That was just it, though. She was worried. There was that sound again.

Scritchh, scritchh … krr-thump!

What were the critters doing, having a party out there? She smiled at the thought, but her fears stayed close by. Her mind flashed to the loaded shotgun her husband kept stowed in the corner of the closet. No sir, that was just silly. A last-ditch option. Sure, with a little prompting from her man, she’d fired the thing a time or two, but she hadn’t enjoyed it, not one bit. Thing could blow a hole in a concrete wall.

She settled for an alternative.

In a flurry of movement, she flicked the clock radio to FM jazz oldies, then burrowed herself under a mound of pillows and covers. Creating an opening with her elbow, she inhaled cool air. With the muffled sounds of Duke Ellington lulling her to sleep, she curved her body into the space her husband usually occupied.

She missed having his little potbelly to wrap her arms around—two spoons in a drawer. Life really wasn’t all that complicated; people just liked to make it that way.

In her billowy cocoon, Eve began to snore.

Through the lace curtains, Asgoth saw the still form beneath the eiderdown. The inactivity confused him. Hadn’t the woman heard his noisemaking? Was she a hard sleeper? This was supposed to be easy. He’d coordinated events flawlessly thus far, and his friends in Silverton had waylaid Mr. Coates without a hitch.

Now it was a matter of executing the rest of the plan. If he failed to placate the Consortium’s members, he had little doubt as to his next destination.

Hell …

Under another name perhaps—Fresno, Salem, Olympia—but hell all the same. He ground his teeth at the thought of further isolation.

After midnight, a set of lights sliced through the rows of corn at his back, then stabbed at the side of the barn. Mr. Coates had arrived. After the necessary delay, the boys in Silverton had carried out Asgoth’s orders by getting the man’s rattletrap van back on the highway.

The vehicle now wobbled from view around the far side of the barn, the lights went out, and springs creaked as the driver disembarked. Mitchell Coates entered the barn with a large canister and gas mask in hand.

Asgoth grinned. Time to wake the lady. To let fear become a weapon.

He dropped an object into the potting soil, then with a gnarled branch, clawed at the siding along the bedroom window.

Clay stepped into the kitchen. His mother was fluttering about, excited about the newest cookware she’d purchased at her ladies’ gathering this evening. Gerald, set into action by her presence, was tying off a garbage bag and marching
out to the garage. His sporadic grunts were all the response Della needed to continue her exuberant chatter.

Clay moaned. High school revisited. Mom and the old man deep in denial, coping with their relational flaws by gorging on activity, by heading separate directions in the name of calendars and commitments and kids. Long reign codependency.

See, Dr. Gerringer, I’m beginning to recognize the symptoms
.

As Clay tried to slip down the hall, his mother’s voice caught him halfway.

“Oh, Clay, you’re home.”

“Yep.”

“Did you see the baking stone I …”

Clay elbowed the door closed, dropped a rented Xbox game on the bed.

Della came to check on him, as though she held a lifetime pass into his privacy.

“Whaddya want?” he barked at the door.

“Your day go well?”

“Yeah, sure.” Stretched on the bed, toes hanging off the end, he felt infantile and foolish. “Not exactly the job I would’ve picked, but it pays. As usual, the old man has my life mapped out for me.”

“It’s his way, you know that. He wants the world for you.”

“I’d rather he just butted out.”

“He’s trying to help. He sees the difficulties you’ve faced in the past year, and it upsets him that he can’t fix everything for you.”

“I’ve never asked him to.”

“Been quite some time since we all lived under the same roof, Clay. We all have adjustments to make. You’ll have to give me some leeway and Gerald, too.”

Not
Dad
, but
Gerald
. Della had always recognized the rift between father and son. At certain moments Clay believed his mother alone had the ability to fathom his inner conflicts. She understood. She’d seen his toddler hands reaching out for the father who shunned contact; she’d heard the oft-repeated manifesto: “Gotta be a man’s man. You got that, Son?”

“Now,” she said, “why don’t you come sit at the dining table. I’ll reheat the supper I made for you. I bet you’ve missed your mother’s cooking.”

Della could stray so far off the path that Clay questioned her altogether. “Actually,” he snarled into his pillow, “I’ve missed Jenni’s cooking.”

“You coming?” Della said through the closed door.

“Coming.”

“Dollface?”

“Coming!”

“By the way,” she said as he shoved into the hall, “you got a phone call earlier on. I thought I might mention it while out of earshot of your father.”

“Don’t tell me.”

“It was Mylisha. Mylisha French.”

“I said, don’t tell me! As if I don’t have enough to think about already.”

Eve Coates bolted up this time. The torturous scratching was only feet away.

Behind the wall, right there!

She dropped to her knees at the bedside and waited until the scratching repeated. This time it was further down the house, and she thought she heard heavy footsteps. From the radio, a rich tenor voice continued serenading the night.

She decided she couldn’t just sit here until some unknown attacker came for her. She had to put her panic aside and deal with this. That’s what Mitchell would tell her.

Eve whispered, “Oh, Mitchell, where are you? Why tonight of all nights?”

On hands and knees, she scurried to the closet and slid back the door. Her fingers felt along the metal runner in the carpet, the roll of wrapping paper, the shoes and boots and her only pair of high heels—which, she reflected, she hadn’t worn since brother-in-law Donny’s latest wedding in the lodge at Odell Lake.

The polished stock of the shotgun renewed her confidence. A little, at least.

She inched up the wall into a standing position, weapon at her side. She could do this. Her arm brushed against a picture frame on the wall. In the
photo, Mitchell stood proudly beside that train engine downtown, the one he’d helped repaint.

Now don’t do nothin’ silly
, she told herself.
Be ready!

She cocked the gun the way her husband had shown her and moved into the hallway. She wondered if the intruder had entered the house. If it was an intruder at all. Maybe a big animal. Had she left a window open? What about the cat’s door? The last cougar to kill a person in Oregon had been only a couple of miles from here.

Past the parlor and into the kitchen, she crept. With the shotgun’s barrel resting on the counter, she picked up the phone and dialed 911. A woman answered. Her steady voice encouraged Eve to collect her thoughts.

“Need to report an intruder on our property,” Eve said. “A thief, I think.”

“Are you at your home? On Dane Lane?”

“Oh my goodness, I can hear ’em moving around outside.”

“Ma’am, you’ll have to speak up.”

“They’re outside. I’m afraid they … they might hear me.”

“Can you see, is it a person? Could it be a dog or a cat? Maybe a raccoon?”

“Reckon so,” she said. “Could be just about anything. Please, what do I do?”

“Take it easy now, and tell me your name. To whom am I speaking?”

“Eve. Eve Coates. My husband, he’s—”

“Okay, Mrs. Coates, I want you to breathe deeply and stay calm. I’ll dispatch an officer to your home. You sit tight, and everything’ll be fine. He should be there within ten minutes.”

Lights were moving inside the barn, throwing pale spears into the dirt and compost pile outside. Someone was out there. Maybe more than one of them. What did they want anyway? Unspeakable answers spun through her head.

Ten minutes? That’s much too long. That’s forever!

“By then it might be too late,” she said, feeling indignant and alone.

“Ma’am, it’d be best if—”

She pushed the phone back onto its hook. She couldn’t sit here like a trapped animal. She had to act. She hadn’t survived raising three boys without a little fire in these bones, no sir. If this intruder thought she’d be a
defenseless little old lady waiting for trouble, he was wrong. Eve Coates was mad, and she’d let him know it.