Dashing Through the Snow Read online

  DASHING THROUGH THE SNOW

  LISA G. RILEY

  Copyright © January 2012 by Lisa G. Riley at Smashwords

  All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Lisa G. Riley.

  Cover Artist: Whit Holcomb

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While it might refer to actual historical events and actual locales might be mentioned, the names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my family, which is not near as crazy as Lily’s and Smith’s, but we’re colorful enough.

  In remembrance:

  Mrs. Gloria Riley

  Mrs. Helen Mitchell

  Mrs. Geneva Cravens

  I miss you three wonderful ladies every day.

  Chapter One

  Christmas Season, 1981

  “See the pretty baby, darling? See the pretty baby? Say ‘pretty baby’. Come on, say it. Pre-tty bay-bie.”

  Held suspended over the bassinet as he was, two-year old Smith Cameron dutifully repeated the words his mother encouraged him to say as he stared at what appeared to be a little brown ball buried in a red blanket. Besides the silky pink bow holding the fluffy black hair on top of its head, his toddler brain could find nothing really interesting about the baby, but he grinned because his doting mother and auntie had both rewarded his compliance with kisses and snuggles.

  “That’s right, baby boy,” he listened to his mother say as he continued to watch the ball to see if it would do something interesting. “That’s the pretty baby Lily, and she’s going to be yours to take care of forever and ever. She’s a very special Christmas present. She’s an early Christmas present!”

  Smith perked up at the words Christmas and present. He was eager to experience this phenomenon that he’d been hearing so much about lately. The books his mother read to him made him impatient for the presents and the mysterious man in the red suit to get there. But then he was distracted by his auntie as she appeared to chastise his mother. “Now, Darla, while we want Smith to love her, let’s not go all medieval on them and betroth them.”

  “Oh, I know,” his mother said. “But wouldn’t it be wonderful if they did grow up and marry?”

  Smith didn’t understand a word they were saying and he was beginning to get tired of not having this Christmas thing happen. He screwed his face up, prepared to wail, but then the baby did something wholly familiar to him and he grinned. Uncle Rowdy had told him all about this. “Pwetty baby fawt,” he said as he wrinkled his nose at the odor before giggling uncontrollably. He clapped his hands in delight. “Mewwy Chwistmas!”

  ***

  Thanksgiving 2011

  Muscles tense with fear and nervousness; Lily Carstairs tried to blend with the shadows as she stared across the street at her target. The three-story house was a gorgeous beacon in the dark night. She took a deep breath, and silently told herself to calm down. She’d been trying to mentally prepare herself for this task for days, but the risk in it was so high that she hadn’t really succeeded. She pulled black leather gloves over sweaty palms and then reached up to assure herself—for at least the third time—that her black watch cap was pulled on tight. “So far from home,” she murmured in a voice that shook with nerves as she took one last look around the tony street, crowded with some of Chicago’s priciest real estate. It was quite removed from her middle class neighborhood back home in Sheffield-Chatham.

  She swallowed hard before taking a deep bracing breath. “It’s now or never, Lily girl.” And so saying, she took off, her long legs eating up the distance between the streets in seconds. She ran cross the expansive lawn, did double-time up the stairs and finally took a flying leap to land on one of four wide brick posts that bordered the portico of the house. Another jump and she was grabbing onto two rungs of the limestone railing that ringed the balcony of the master bedroom on the second floor.

  “Shit!” One hand slipped and she hung suspended in the air for a moment as the triceps muscle of her right arm shook with the effort of taking on the extra weight. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” Panic was all consuming when her body began to swing a bit from the force. Grunting softly through gritted teeth, Lily desperately flung her left hand up to catch hold again and finally was able to pull herself up and over the rail to land lightly on the balcony.

  Unable to take even a few seconds to calm her racing heart, in motions that appeared almost seamless, she pulled a black baseball cap from her back pocket and pulled it on over the watch cap. Just as quickly, she found a hidden button in the cap’s bill and pressed it. A tiny row of small lights sewn into the edge of the bill flicked on and she breathed a sigh of relief. She’d ordered the cap online and had been a little concerned about its effectiveness. She bent to study the lock on the French doors. “Steady as she goes,” she murmured as she pulled out her burglar tools and went at the lock.

  The chintzy lock easily gave way. “Thank God.”

  She turned the hat off, pulled one of the doors open, put her head in just enough to look around and then crept inside when she saw that the room was empty. She could hear muffled voices coming from downstairs and prayed that the fancy Thanksgiving dinner wasn’t breaking up just yet. She turned her hat back on and did a slow turn so the lights illuminated whatever her gaze landed on.

  She ran her gaze dismissively past the connecting bath. “Bingo,” she whispered to the two doors of the closet. “I know you hold all the secret goodies – enough for someone like me to live the rest of her life on.”

  Lily actually only wanted one thing: the Watley diamond. Famous for its age, beauty and size, the seventy carat gem had been set in platinum by order of Andre Watley more than fifty years before. He’d given it to his wife on the occasion of the birth of their only child.

  Her goal in sight, Lily’s breathing accelerated and she started towards the closet. Suddenly, light exploded around her, blinding her for a few seconds and she panicked again. Heart hammering, she turned back towards the French doors. She heard the unmistakable click of a gun and stiffened, stopping dead in her tracks.

  “Hold it right there!” A gruff, husky voice commanded. “Take another step and there’ll be a bullet in the back of your head. You feel lucky?” Abrupt unnerving silence and then a soft, satisfied, “Punk?”

  Tired and miserable, Lily sat and willed herself not to cry while her warden stared at her in severe disapproval. She wanted to close her eyes, but made herself return the stare.

  “I think you actually might be a candidate for Joliet. Seeing as how you were caught right at the scene, you’d fit in with all the rest of the criminals.”

  Lily said nothing, just stared back and resisted the urge to say something snide in return. Her first mission and she’d failed. She’d been so sure she could get away with it.

  “You’re lucky the homeowner didn’t panic and blow your fool brains out –”

  This time Lily couldn’t hold back and sighed with impatience. She rolled her eyes at the tall, thin woman
standing over her. “Oh, come on, Gran. Given that it was a fake gun, you’re exaggerating a bit, aren’t you?” she said in a stifled voice, her disappointment in herself almost choking her.

  “You’re lucky it wasn’t real!” Candace Carstairs retorted, her nut brown eyes flaring while two spots of red flagged her light brown cheeks, highlighting her anger.

  Lily shook her head. “Of course it wasn’t real! Aunt Amelia doesn’t actually have a real gun,” she said, referring to Amelia Watley, the owner of the house, her grandmother’s best friend since childhood and most recently, Candace’s roommate. The two widows had decided to live together a few months before, saying that they’d promised each other years ago that if both of their husbands died before them they’d take a page from the “Golden Girls” book and become roommates.

  “That. Is not. The point!”

  Candace continued to fuss and Lily did her best not to take offense. She knew the older woman was simply worried about her and her recent choice of career. Lily resorted to a tactic from her childhood. She partially tuned out her grandmother’s words, waited for a time when it seemed appropriate to respond and then did so. “Yes, Gran.”

  “Did it even occur to you that you might get caught?”

  “Yes, Gran.”

  “And what was your plan in that highly likely event? Bat those big brown eyes of yours and cry until someone took pity on you?”

  My plan was to come along quietly, just as I did tonight, Lily thought, but what she said was, “No, Gran.”

  “Are you even listening to me?”

  “No, Gr – I mean, yes, Gran.”

  Her grandmother snorted and Lily sighed again. She reminded herself that Candace loved her and had helped her a great deal in getting her detective’s license. It’s the only thing that made Lily keep her mouth shut and let Candace get it all out. Besides, all signs pointed to the rant winding down.

  “And another thing, young lady,” Candace began and Lily grimaced and looked over at the cherubic face of Amelia Watley who smiled and winked at her. Lily suppressed a grin. “By the way, Aunt Amelia,” she said quickly when Candace finally paused for breath again, “You need a better lock on those French doors upstairs. Any criminal –”

  “Which brings us back to you,” Candace said smugly, making Amelia chuckle appreciatively.

  Lily whipped her head around to look at her grandmother. “I’m not a criminal! I was just practicing in case I ever have to break in somewhere for a client.”

  Her grandmother rolled her eyes and sat down next to her. Lily looked at her and knew she was still in store for “a good talking-to,” as her grandmother called her little scoldings, but Lily really just wanted to hug her. Candace was her biggest supporter and always had been. It had, in fact, been her idea that Lily attempt to break into Amelia’s house sometime during Lily’s two-week visit just to see if she could get away with it.

  Lily didn’t bother to point that out. “What gave me away?” she asked before her grandmother could speak, and turning back to Amelia, Lily grasped her hand and gently pulled her down to the sofa so that she had an eighty-year old widow sitting on either side of her. “I mean, when I left after dinner earlier you thought I was going to a movie. How did you know I was upstairs? I know you didn’t hear me.”

  Amelia opened her mouth to answer, but Candace beat her to it. “Humph. We heard you all right. It sounded like a herd of elephants was up there!”

  Frowning, Lily looked at her grandmother again -- this time with pure disbelief. “You couldn’t have! I was as light as a feather! All of those years of ballet and gymnastics couldn’t have been that --”

  Amelia’s husky chuckles filled the room again. “Your grandmother is joking, dear. We didn’t hear you. Candace figured you’d be back to try to break in tonight. After all, you haven’t much time left on your little vacation. You’ll be going home to Sheffield-Chatham day after tomorrow.”

  “Yes, that and the fact that you forget that I know my granddaughter.”

  Lily looked sheepishly at her grandmother. “What do you mean? I really gave myself away that badly?”

  Candace pursed her lips. “Noooo,” she drawled, “I never suspected anything, even though you -- a self-described fashion-connoisseur-on-a-tight-budget -- were apparently willing to walk eight to ten blocks in two feet of snow wearing a pair of two hundred dollar sneakers.”

  “Now, now, Gran. No need for that disapproval I hear in your voice. I told you I got them at a huge discount. Huge,” Lily repeated distractedly as she looked down at the black and silver sneakers on her feet. She curled her toes in delight. She adored the shoes. She’d fallen in love with them the minute she’d seen them. As she recalled that particular love-at-first-sight moment, she felt that same familiar rush she always felt when she got a bargain…the triumph…the joy…the -- “Ow!” Lily rubbed her arm where she’d been pinched. “Gran!”

  “Focus, Lily Elise, f-o-c-u-s,” Candace enunciated the letters while also signing them right in Lily’s face. “Focus!”

  Lips twitching at her grandmother’s brand of sarcasm, Lily kissed her cheek. “Must I? I mean, really, just look at them, Gran!” she demanded and stuck her feet out to turn them side to side for a view of the shoes. “They’re so very purrty. And even with all their adorableness, they served my purpose so well tonight that -- okay, okay,” she hastened with a laugh and held her hands up in defense when Candace made a pincer-like motion with her fingers.

  Candace shook her head. “Will you quit acting so empty-headed? I swear I don’t know why I put up with you.”

  “Beats me,” Lily said with a shrug. “Must be something in the water,” she posited and went back to the conversation they’d been having before she’d been so gloriously distracted. “Where were we? So you made me for a fraud when I told you I was going to walk to the movies?”

  “The fact that you were barely out the door before you pulled on that watch cap was another clue. And by the way, where did you get that cap with the lights?”

  “I bought it online. I was surprised it worked as well as it did because I got it pretty cheaply. I had my pen light just in case, though. As for the watch cap, I had to be as incognito as possible.”

  “I realize that, but since you were a little girl you’ve refused to wear winter caps for fear of messing up that precious hair of yours. Those little fits you used to throw --”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking --” Lily began with all the dignity she could muster.

  “I’m afraid the fights you had with your mother are almost legendary, dear,” said Amelia, who was from Sheffield-Chatham and still kept a house there even fifty-five years after moving to the big city. “No point in denying them.”

  “Anywaaay,” Lily sing-songed under her breath. “So, I was found out because of my own fabulous sense of fashion, hmm? It won’t happen again, trust me.”

  With a worried frown, Candace said, “Let’s hope you’ll never have to do any breaking and entering to get a job done.”

  “Yeah, let’s hope,” Lily echoed, wondering how long it would be before she got her first job. “I can’t wait,” she murmured as she thought about her newly minted private detective’s license.

  Chapter Two

  Christmas 1984

  “Lily, Lily, Lily!” Smith said in excitement as he jumped up and down.

  “Yes, darling. Lily’s here,” his mother said and Smith felt her fingers gently brush through his hair. “And so are your Auntie Glenda and Uncle Peter. But it’s a long way from Sheffield-Chatham to Dallas, and Lily’s probably tired and napping. Don’t get upset if she doesn’t come down right away.”

  “No, Lily won’t nap. She wants to see me.”

  “Where’s my Smif? I want my Smif!”

  Smith smiled smugly at his mother before turning towards the demanding toddler voice. “Here I am, Lily,” he called. When Lily turned around to see him and her face lit up with happiness, Smith grinned.

  “Look at
my pretty hair, Smif! And my dress, too! Lookie, lookie, lookie!” she said as she ran towards him as swiftly as her three-year old legs would carry her.

  Smith’s grin widened in awed delight when he took in her hair and what she was wearing. It was a velvety green dress embroidered with bows. The bows covered the dress and seemed to be in every color imaginable. A matching green velvet bow caught her hair up in a high ponytail from which curls spilled all around her head, but it was all the bows that impressed him the most.

  “Wow, Lily-bud!” he exclaimed as they wrapped arms around each other. “You look just like one of my presents!”

  December 10th, 2011

  Like everyone else in Palmer’s Apothecary, Lily paused in what she was doing when she heard the sound of glass shattering outside the shop. And then there was the sound of a car alarm going off -- the same alarm that every car owner in the world seemed to have. In less than ten seconds, the sound became annoying.

  “Dude,” Quincy said dispassionately, “that can’t be good.”

  She turned to her nineteen-year old cousin who was a sweet kid, but in the best of times tried her patience with his teenage façade of studied indifference and his ubiquitous use of the word ‘dude’ in all its various forms (dude, dudette and the always-popular: duuuude!). But today was really trying because he’d shown up on her doorstep early that morning, claiming that he’d be her assistant. She was opening her office for the first time today and Lily had been too excited to call her parents or his to yell at them for interfering. She knew that they had some silly idea that Quincy would protect her during what they viewed as just another one of her larks in her never ending quest to find herself.

  As the lone female born in her generation, Lily had grown used to this kind of over-protective behavior from her parents, aunts and uncles, but she was not going to let them ruin things for her. If she’d shown Quincy the door, one of her older, more difficult male cousins -- there were nineteen of them -- would have just appeared to take his place, and she didn’t want that. So, she’d determined that she’d put up with Quincy for a few hours. She knew she could get rid of him easily; it only took a little planning.