Free Stranded by Lorena McCourtney Page A

“I just know I wouldn’t want to be living there,” he finally muttered.
    “We’re looking forward to it,” I said firmly.
    At the house, I cautiously let Koop out of the cat carrier, making sure all the outside doors were securely closed. I didn’t want him to get frightened and bolt. But I should have known Koop was too laid-back a feline gentleman for that. On a busy but calm tour, he investigated the jungle-fungus sofa and jumped to the piano, leaving delicate cat tracks in the dust. He checked out the windowsills in the tower room and prowled under the dining room table. In the kitchen, he hissed at the khaki-covered cot, which still commemorated Hiram’s heavy smoking habit. He checked out the bedrooms, including a foray into the depths of the armoire, then left us to continue his tour upstairs.
    Abilene chose one of the single beds in the smaller bedroom for her living quarters. I debated between the other single in the same room and the master bedroom. The master bedroom, I finally decided. It was a bit gaudy for my taste, but what other chance would I ever have to sleep in a velvet-canopied bed with three carousel horses for company?
    We found a serviceable washer and dryer in a utility room beyond the kitchen and caught up on laundry, including the sheets and blankets from Abilene’s room. Ol’ Norman, Nutty Norman as Chris Sterling had called him, apparently scorned showers as city-folk nonsense. Both beds in that room smelled of unwashed body, old smoke, and garlic, with a scattering of gritty sand in the foot area. We turned the mattresses too.
    The sheets in the master bedroom were crisp and new, delicately patterned in tiny yellow roses, almost as if prepared and waiting for someone special. Lucinda? No, because after the wedding they’d planned to live in her place, not here. Perhaps just leftovers from the last wife who had occupied the room. They didn’t look as if they needed washing, but we washed them anyway.
    We moved the cot from the kitchen to one of the empty rooms and dined on TV dinners from Hiram’s plentiful supply. A few minutes later I answered the unexpected chime of the doorbell and was surprised to find Kelli standing there. From the front door, town lights winding through the valley below looked fragile and insignificant beneath the black silhouettes of mountains looming against the star-studded night sky.
    “I just wanted to make sure everything was okay,” she said brightly. She waved a sack. “I thought a housewarming party might be in order. I hope you like double-chocolate pecan crunch ice cream and Twix cookies? And I brought a copy of the Hello Telegraph . It’s the local weekly newspaper.”
    Ice cream and newspaper were a sweet and thoughtful gesture, but at the same time I suspected an ulterior motive on Kelli’s part. Not a bad ulterior motive. Just a bit of loneliness in a town that obviously hadn’t taken her under its protective wing. I wondered if she intended to stay on in Hello after she got Hiram’s estate settled. I wondered, too, why she’d come to Hello in the first place. Maybe I could work those subjects into the conversation on the way out to the mine.
    I led her through to the kitchen, by far the most homey room in the big old house. We’d turned on the electric fireplace, and it put out both heat and flickering flames, which, though imitation, added a nice aura of coziness. A scent of perking coffee rose from the old, blue-enamel pot on the stove.
    Kelli lifted her nose and sniffed appreciatively. “There’s nothing like coffee from Uncle Hiram’s old blue pot. He said the wives were always wanting him to switch to some fancy coffeemaker, but that was where he put his foot down. They could change the furniture all they wanted, but his coffeepot stayed.” Again I heard that note of affection in her voice. If I wasn’t already convinced Kelli couldn’t have murdered her uncle, this settled it.
    “I’ll get dishes for the ice cream,”