Page 64 of Shadows Reel

“I hope so,” she said.

He hoped so, too.

—

It was the second quarterand Dallas was down by nine and Joe was awakened by Marybeth shaking his shoulder.

“I’m worried about Lola,” she said.

Joe sat up and rubbed his eyes. “I forgot about her,” he said.

“I thought she’d come by for dessert at least. I’ve been waiting for her to call for a ride before I slice the pies.”

“Did you call her?”

“Twice. She doesn’t have a cell and her phone just rings and rings. She doesn’t have it set up for messages.”

“I hope she didn’t fall down and break her hip or something,” Joe said. “Maybe she had a little too much peppermint schnapps.”

Marybeth said, “I suppose she could have driven into town for a holiday meal at the senior center. But to ease my mind, I think you should go check on her.”

Joe glanced at the game. Dallas was now down by sixteen. But he really didn’t care.

He sat up. “Okay.”

“Thank you, Joe.”

—

With Daisy on his heels,Joe walked to his pickup and out through the front gate. The day had warmed into the fifties and the clouds had parted over the Bighorns. It was a remarkably temperate Thanksgiving Day.

Sunlight streamed through cloud holes to bathe sections of the timber in bronze light. A golden eagle hovered in place over the tops of the trees to the north, looking for mice in the undergrowth.

He opened the passenger door and Daisy bounded in. It was less than a five-minute drive from Joe’s house to Lola’s trailer. For once, the cow moose wasn’t there to block his progress. He’d fooled her, he thought, by mixing up his routine. She was prepared to interfere with him at dawn and after dusk as he came home, but she wasn’t ready to lumber out on the road when he was driving from his house in the midafternoon.

He became concerned when he saw that Lola’s older-model white SUV was parked behind her trailer. She hadn’t driven into town. The porch light was on over the metal front door as well, which was unusual. Lola was a stickler for not “wasting electricity.”

Joe left Daisy in the cab. He didn’t want his dog barking at Lola’s cat.

He rapped hard on her front door. “Lola? It’s Joe. Are you in there?”

There was a faint muffled sound from inside. The audio was from her television.

He knocked again. “Lola?”

There was no response. He tried the door handle. Locked.

Since there wasn’t a window or peephole in the trailer door, Joe moved to the right side of her wooden porch and leaned over the railing so he could see inside her front room from a window that he knew looked in on her living room. Her blinds were open.

He could see images flickering across the screen of her television. The back of her couch was to him, but he couldn’t see her head above the top of it. Her cat was curled up on the armrest of a recliner and it eyed him coldly.

“Lola?” he said while rapping on the glass.

Nothing.

Then, almost out of his angle of vision to his left, he saw her shoes. They were heavy orthopedic shoes and her feet were in them. Lola was on her back on the floor and her legs were splayed out on the linoleum. Joe couldn’t see Lola’s upper torso from where he was on the porch.

Her legs weren’t moving.