Beneath the Ashes:: An Alaska Mystery by Sue Henry

Author:Sue Henry [Henry, Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Alaska, Cozy, Crime, Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Thriller, Women Sleuths
ISBN: 9780380798926
Google: TRShmAEACAAJ
Amazon: 162815263X
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2001-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

13

JUST LOOKING AT THE BLACK RUIN OF HER CABIN MADE Jessie want to cry. Grief lay like a stone in the pit of her stomach, and her chest ached with the refusal to allow tears. Control was too hard to come by to risk losing it. She simply could not imagine anyone who could hate her enough to do this, but the thought kept recurring that Anne’s problems could somehow be responsible for the disaster. In no way did she think that Anne had told her the complete or even the most accurate account of the history and rationale behind her sudden unexpected trip to Alaska. The woman had told her only as much as she felt was necessary—not the whole truth. Jessie felt used and angry—both at herself for allowing it, for walking into such a situation—and at Anne, who seemed to feel that everyone in her life should exist to respond to her demands.

More than anything she could think of, Jessie wished it were several days earlier, that none of it had happened, and that she had nothing on her mind but the hard work of spring training. As she began the morning routine of caring for her dogs, she tried to concentrate on their needs and get on with that training, get a team harnessed up, let the rest take care of itself until she had time to accept her losses and decide how she would deal with them.

But, however much she would like to have taken some of her dogs and found solace somewhere on a trail, it was soon clear that it would not be possible to escape the depressing remains of the fire. All through the long day, people kept showing up in her yard—mushers, personal friends, acquaintances, her insurance agent, Iditarod committee members, fans—people Jessie had never even met but who had followed her racing career. She soon lost track of how many. They came to express their support, bringing gifts of food, dishes, pots and pans, a card table and two chairs, a roll-away bed, towels, blankets, sheets and pillows, a small electric stove with an oven. The young son of a neighbor even insisted on loaning her his teddy bear. “You can keep Bumper till you get a new house. Okay?”

Toni Dunbar and Carol Hooker, long-time friends and racing fans, came all the way from Anchorage with a car full of clothes they thought would fit her. “You made the Daily News this morning,” they said, when she asked how they knew about the fire, and handed her a copy. The picture on the front page showed Jessie working hard with a shovel, light reflected on her exhausted, sooty face from the fire in the background. She vaguely remembered a photographer in the confusion of the night before.

Half the state trooper detachment from Palmer found one reason or another to stop by with offers of off-duty help—friends and coworkers of Alex Jensen, who had grown to be her friends, too.

Billy Steward’s

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