The Refuge Read online

  Praise for Maxie McNabb—

  “the most refreshingly original protagonist

  to come along in years” (Rick Riordan)

  The Refuge

  “Exciting…Readers will immediately take to the heroine.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Intriguing…entertaining.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Tooth of Time

  “Enjoyable…. Maxie is terrific in her latest caper…. Fans will want to hitch a ride with Maxie and Stretch as they find the Land of Enchantment enchanting but dangerous.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Fans of Henry’s Jessie Arnold series will enjoy.”

  —Library Journal

  “Should resonate with fans of cozy and atmospheric mysteries.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Serpents Trail

  “Hooray! Maxie McNabb [has] driven her Winnebago right into my heart.”

  —Margaret Maron

  “Devotees of Henry’s Alaska mysteries will be delighted to see sixty-three-year-old Maxie McNabb, the Winnebago-driving, free-spirited widow, starring in this gentle whodunit…. Promises to be a long and popular run of adventures.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Sue Henry, known for her scenic Alaska mysteries, shows she can entertain readers with a Lower Forty-eight tale.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “The first entry in a new series from the Anthony and Ma-cavity Award–winning author of the Jessie Arnold series features an involving tale of old secrets, new revelations, and an endearingly mature protagonist.”

  —Library Journal

  “Another winner…a fine series debut.”

  —Booklist

  Praise for the Jessie Arnold mystery series

  “Twice as vivid as Michener’s natural Alaska, at about a thousandth the length.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “The twists and turns keep you turning the pages…. A thoroughly good read.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Henry revels in the wilderness of Alaskan scenery and keeps the tension mounting…. A fine adventure.”

  —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “This fast-paced page-turner will make the miles fly during any trip.”

  —Boston Herald

  “[Henry’s] descriptions of Alaska’s wilderness make you want to take the next flight out, buy heavy sweaters, or at least curl up with an afghan, a cup of steaming hot chocolate, and the book.”

  —The Phoenix Gazette

  “[Her] grasp of tense storytelling and strong characterization matches her with Sue Grafton. Give her a try—she’ll challenge your powers of perception and deduction.”

  —The Colorado Springs Gazette

  “Sue Henry is an agile writer…hard to put down.”

  —The Charleston Post and Courier

  THE REFUGE

  A Maxie and Stretch Mystery

  SUE HENRY

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Sue Henry, 2007

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1175-5

  OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For Becky Lundqvist,

  generous in sharing adventures,

  her house in Hawaii,

  her Alaskan island refuge,

  and many years of friendship, laughter,

  and

  Farkel.

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Acknowledgments

  With many thanks to:

  Harper’s Car and Truck (and Motor Home) Rental of Hilo, Hawaii, for their assistance in providing information and advice concerning RVing on the Big Island.

  Chad Oyster and Rob Lanum of ABC RV Sales, Anchorage, Alaska, for information on Lance truck campers like those for rent in Hawaii.

  Peter Eseroma and Stephen Schwartzengraber of Island Wide Plumbing Service, Hilo, Hawaii.

  All the friendly, helpful people at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park (the Refuge), and Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden.

  Captain Beans’ Dinner Cruise, an experience not to be missed.

  Helen and Greg Hopkins and their two children, Ruby and Finn, for our sea kayaking adventure on Kealakekua Bay.

  My agent, Dominick Abel; my editor, Tom Colgan; and his assistant, Sandy Harding. And to my son, Eric, Art Forge Unlimited, for creating great maps and photographs.

  ONE

  SOMETIME IN THE DEEP OF THE NIGHT I BECAME VAGUELY aware of a soft breeze blowing on my face and the gentle susurrus of a window curtain moving above my head. For a breath or two I didn’t move, eyes closed, dreamily curious and a bit puzzled by those sensations in combination with the sound of rain pouring down outside the window. Could it have been the low percussion of its arrival on the roof that had roused me?

  I opened my eyes to the shadowy dark, sat up, and swung my feet over the side of the bed onto—a polished wood floor, surprisingly cool and certainly not a part of my well-known bedroom. From what I could see, the size and configuration of the space in which I found myself was unfamiliar and, in my sleepy state, disorienting.

  Sitting there, bemused, I was reminded of other times I had come awake in the dark of an unfamiliar room, with the same bewildered reaction: Where am I? But as I assessed the space, one significant clue caught my attention.

  Though most of the room was dark, a kind of half-light from some artificial outside source illuminated the window curtains that were being ballooned by the breeze and allowed me to see that they were made of a yellow fabric with wide bands of green leaves and red and white flowers—hibiscus blossoms! Though known from pictures and southern places I had visited, the print of these curtains was certainly not native to my home in Alaska.

  Then the penny finally dropped. Hawaii! I was in Hawaii, on the Big Island, where I had arrived unexpectedly, having made no previous plans of my own to visit. I had intended to spend the summer at home in Homer, Alaska, in the house that is most comfortingly mine, recuperating from nine stressful months in the Southwest’s Four Corners area of the Lower Forty-eight in my Winnebago motor home, so waking to confusion in the dark made sense. I had never thought to be in Karen’s Hilo house, where a torrential, tropical rain could come sweeping in on my first night to rouse and befuddle me. But it was without doubt where I now found myself, tired after a five-hour plane ride.

  More awake and feeling better for having identified my surroundings, I s
at quietly, appreciating the clean scent of the breeze, the rhythm of the rain hammering on the roof over my head, and the xylophonic water music it made as it fell from the eaves into pools that must have quickly accumulated below. I had read somewhere that Hilo was on the rainy side of the largest island of the Hawaiian chain, so this must be rain that arrived on a regular basis and disappeared almost at once into the soil that, unlike Alaska’s, is never frozen, always thirsty for water and damp beneath the surface. No wonder whatever seeds find their way into such soil sprout and grow quickly in rich profusion in our fiftieth state.

  Satisfied, I was about to lie down and go back to sleep, when, suddenly, within the splash of running water there was a reminder of something I had half-heard and subconsciously retained—a different kind of sound, just the hint of a clink, soft and metallic that had nothing to do with rain. Listening intently, I waited, holding my breath until it came again, faint and far away, either within the house or close outside. I sat very still, anticipating another repetition; it came almost immediately, bringing me to my feet and across to the door, which I had left half-open to allow circulation in the room.

  As I stepped through it and went quietly barefoot along a hallway, I could hear the rain on the roof of the single-story dwelling lessen in intensity. The hall ended at the living room, where I paused again to listen and was once more rewarded with that quiet clink and the scrape of metal contacting metal to my right. Someone outside was trying to insert either a key that didn’t fit or some metal tool into the dead bolt of the front door of Karen’s house.

  The sound was as small as that a mouse might make in gnawing at something within a closed cupboard. Someone was clearly trying to get in—evidently to break in, for with a key that fit there would have been no such trouble in opening the door easily, quickly, and most of all, quietly.

  I crept cautiously forward, focused on the door, hands extended in front of me in the obscurity of that dark corner, feeling a bit mouselike myself. Then, unluckily and without warning, my left shin collided painfully with a low stool, and it slid with a screech across the bare wood floor and fell over with a crash. That clatter, along with the curse it elicited from me, was responsible for an instant termination of sound from outside.

  There was a long, expectant pause while both I and whoever was on the other side of the door froze to listen in suspenseful silence, but I heard nothing but the slow trickle of water still slowly falling into puddles. The invisible presence beyond the door was the first to capitulate. I heard footsteps go pounding away through the carport that lay just beyond the front step.

  Moving as quickly as possible, with care not to encounter another obstacle, I reached the entry, found and fumbled with the knob that released the dead bolt, yanked open the door, and went out onto the step—too late. All I caught was a glimpse of a shadowy figure, no more than a swiftly moving silhouette in dark clothing going away from the carport to disappear around the corner of the house—gone before I could get any real impression of size, age, or gender.

  It was no use chasing after the middle-of-the-night visitor, who would, I was sure, have vanished completely before I could reach that corner. So I stood where I was, clinging to the handle of the screen door, looking out at the carport and surrounding yard in the small amount of pale light that filtered in through the branches of a tree from a streetlight perhaps thirty yards away.

  The house was situated in the rear third of a large rectangular lot, with a bigger, two-story residence between it and the street. That more formidable building faced passing traffic, turning its back on Karen’s single-story rental as if the smaller house were a less acceptable, adopted sister standing a bit too close behind.

  The rain had stopped, leaving only a musical drip or two to disturb the puddles beneath the eaves.

  “Maxie?” Karen’s concerned voice questioned behind me. “Was that someone at the door? What’s going on?”

  She switched on the overhead light in the living room behind me and I turned to see her standing near the hallway, leaning on the one crutch she could awkwardly manage with casts on both her left ankle and forearm, having hobbled that far from her bedroom.

  Half an hour later, with cups of tea I had suggested and made, we were sitting with the dining table between us; she with her back to the kitchen as I explained that it was indeed someone at the door—but evidently not a visitor she would have welcomed—how I had heard the surreptitious sounds of attempted entry, and my blunder in knocking over the stool in the dark that alerted and discouraged whoever it had been.

  “Well,” she said, “the crash was probably a good thing. It might have been dangerous for you to suddenly throw open the door and confront whoever was trying to get in, don’t you think?”

  I stared at her, recalling how disinclined to deal with anything disagreeable I knew Karen had always been. She would rather rationalize trouble away or, if possible, let someone else take responsibility for it.

  She looked back at me with blue eyes innocently wide, permed blond hair in tangles from her pillow, and yawned. She hadn’t changed a bit. A small woman, she looked pretty much as she always had, though there were now lines in her face, darkening circles under her eyes, and, like my own, her jawline had softened under the chin.

  Well, I thought to myself, we’re both showing signs of our senior status.

  So I agreed that opening the door might possibly have been dangerous, but I doubted it, considering how fast the intruder had vanished. I wished, though, that I had been able to get more than a fleeting impression that was of no use whatsoever in establishing the identity of the prowler.

  Uneasily I wondered what Karen would have done if she had been alone in the house, disabled as she currently was.

  “Shouldn’t we be calling the police?” I asked her.

  Again she shrugged the idea off. “What good would it do? He—she—didn’t get in and is long gone now. You can’t identify whoever it was and, anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just more harassment from the new owner and landlord. Less than a month after I moved in here the original landlord sold the place to Mr. Taylor and he let me know he wanted me out as soon as possible, though I had signed a six-month lease. It’s part of why I decided to move back to Alaska. He’s a horrible man who’s been harassing me constantly—calling to see if I’m still here, showing up at odd hours, using his key to get in without notice. I know he’s been here when I’ve been out, because things have been moved and once the door was unlocked when I came back. So you see, it could have been him. Maybe he’s resorted to trying to scare me away now.”

  “Coming in without your permission isn’t legal. Why haven’t you reported him?”

  “Oh, I’ll be gone soon and he’d just deny it. It didn’t seem worth the trouble.”

  “Why does he want you out so badly?”

  “I don’t know. He won’t say. I’ve done nothing wrong. Maybe he wants to live here—or has another tenant he wants to move in. The property sits between two office buildings and that makes me wonder if he intends to tear down both houses and sell the land to some developer. Whatever….”

  Heaving a sigh of resignation, she rubbed at her forehead with the back of her uninjured hand as if she had a headache, took a sip of tea, set the cup back in its saucer, and leaned back in her chair to say, “If only he would believe that I want out of here as much—maybe more—than he wants me gone. Why can’t he just back off to let me get on with it as fast as possible? What have I ever done to make him so unreasonable anyway? Nothing. I’ve been hurt! Why can’t he understand and sympathize with that? I was doing okay with the packing until this happened.”

  She lifted her left arm in its cast as example of “this.”

  “Oh, Maxie. I can’t tell you how very thankful I am to have you here. It is so good of you to leave home and—well—just come. Thank you.”