Shadow Valley. Michael R. Collings
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mostly covered with scrub brush, with an occasional patch here and there that was probably some farmer’s pasturage, or a field that in past years would have been nearing harvest time. On the other side of the valley, the mountains rose in a rough parapet, seeming to lean protectively over the intervening landscape.
“Perhaps she thought that beauty should count for something,” Ella said, with an edge to her voice that sounded as rough as the porch railing, splintered and worn. “Perhaps she thought that history—that time and family and memory—were worth more than outsiders were offering.”
Lila stiffened. She had heard a similar tone in house after house over the past weeks. Usually it modulated rapidly into outright anger and indignation.
But Ella didn’t live in Shadow Valley. She hadn’t been at the meeting, nor did her name appear on any of the deeds Lila had examined.
“What...,” Lila started to say.
Behind her, one of the front windows shattered with a high, ringing craaak!
CHAPTER FOUR
Lila dropped to her knees. Her heart was racing but her breath seemed to have stopped entirely. She tried to make herself as small as possible, hunching behind one of the porch uprights.
When her ears stopped ringing, she forced herself to speak.
“Ella,” she whispered hoarsely. Her voice didn’t sound like her own. “Are you all right?”
She didn’t dare move to look behind her.
“Yes,” Ella said. “I’m fine. Are you?”
“Yes, I think so.” Lila had felt nothing. She didn’t think she had been injured at all. But she was certain that she knew what had happened.
One of the farmers—most likely one she had met and talked with—had figured out where she still had to go, had followed her, and from the shelter of one of the clumps of wild rose had taken a shot at her.
And missed.
She told herself not to move. Not yet.
“Do you see anyone out there, Ella?”
Pause.
Silence.
Then: “No, I don’t think so. Do you think it is safe?”
Lila risked a glance over her shoulder. One of the panes in the nearest window was gone, leaving behind only ragged shards that looked dangerously sharp...wicked sharp, her grandmother might have said.
But the window itself was several feet away, closer to the center of the long porch span; and Lila and Ella had been together near the swing at the far end. She had not been near the window at all.
Surely anyone who was anything like a decent shot would have come closer if they wanted to do her...or Ella...harm.
Cautiously she straightened, then stood.
Nothing.
She heard the rustle of clothing behind her and turned to see Ella coming from around the back of the swing. Apparently she had taken refuge there as soon as she had heard the shot.
“Still nothing,” Ella said, peering over the top of the car. “Whoever was there is either gone, or hasn’t moved at all since....”
“But why now? Why here?” Lila took one step toward the broken window, then stopped.
There was no response from the shooter, wherever he...or she...might be.
“Still nothing?”
“No.” Ella sounded as if she had recovered from her fright. Her voice was low but steady. It made Lila feel slightly more courageous.
She bent low and reached for her briefcase, pulling it toward her from where she had dropped it. She knelt and opened it. Her cell phone was still in the leather case attached to the inside. She slipped it out and began punching numbers. She didn’t have to look them up. By now she knew them from memory.
“Who are you calling?” Ella whispered.
“State police,” Lila said, depressing the final key.
One ring.
Two.
Then...static.
Nothing but static.
Lila stared at the phone, then hit the “end call” button. She was certain that she had had sufficient bars to enable a call. She looked down at the cell. Three bars. Enough for a call. Not optimal, but enough.
She entered the telephone number again.
One ring.
Two.
Then...static.
“That’s not possible!”
“What?”
Lila quickly explained what had happened, all the while ending the call, punching in the numbers once more, hearing the two rings...and then the static.
“It just did it again.”
“Cell service can be funny out here,” Ella said. “Landlines, too. Something about the way the mountains jut up, some say. Or the minerals in some of the ridges.”
“But to ring twice, then cut out....”
Ella shrugged. “Maybe it’s like the car. If you try again later, you might get through. You never know out here.”
Lila looked at her but the other woman seemed serious. Okay, we’ll let the cell catch its breath and then dial again. Who knows?
Aloud she said, “I’ve called the office plenty of times from Shadow Valley and never had this happen.” But she slipped her cell into her pocket anyway and took another step toward the shattered window.
Glass fragments glittered in the weathered frame, winking at her in the afternoon light that filtered through the shadows on the porch. It looked as if the bottom of the frame was encased in diamonds...or at least in rhinestones. The light flickered bright and silvery against the dark background. Even the drapery lining seemed dark and solid against the dancing movement of the light.
“Wait a minute,” Lila said. She took yet another step toward the window. She was only two or three feet away.
Her feet crunched on something on the porch. Through the soles of her shoes, it felt like fine gravel, small and fragile but rough for all of that.
She looked down.
She was standing in a patch of glass...crushed, almost pulverized. She shifted her foot. The sound grated against the silence.
“That’s not right.”
“What?” Ella said, coming closer and staring at the planks.
“That,” Lila said, pointing to the tiny fragments. “That’s from the window. But it’s on the outside.”
“The outside?”
“Yes, and I’ll bet....” Oblivious to the fact that a minute before she had been cowering behind a wooden support, desperately hoping not to draw any more attention from the hidden shooter, she leaned forward and carefully thrust her hand through the empty frame. There were enough glass fragments still embedded in the decades-old putty to cut her fairly seriously if she drew her arm across them, but she had to find out.
She grasped the faded drapery lining—it felt like some sort of muslin, but stiff, either with accumulated dust and dirt or simply with age—and pulled it slowly to one side, exposing a smooth section perhaps eighteen inches across.
A smooth section.
She let the fabric drop and withdrew her hand.
“What?” Ella repeated.
“There should have been a bullet hole there,” Lila said. “But there isn’t. And the broken