Levon's Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’d only get stuck again. And you’re the first person to come by in over an hour,” she said.
    He stepped back as she opened the door and stepped out after raising the window. She wore leather boots with jeans tucked in. Both looked as pricey as the parka.
    “Then I can give you a lift. You’re on the lake?”
    “Yes. The Moulson’s house. They’re letting me stay there while I do some work. Though I wish they’d been more strident in their warnings about Maine winters.”
    “What did they tell you?”
    “That I’d freeze my ass off!” she said and a laugh exploded from her.
    He allowed a smile.
    “I thought that was just an expression!” She laughed again.
    “Well, my truck is warm and I know where the Moulson place is,” he said and held an arm out for her to take.
    She blinked at the offered elbow before putting her arm in his and allowing him to walk her to his truck through the calf-deep drift she’d created around her car.
    “I take it from your accent and manners that you are some kind of Southern gentleman,” she said as he guided her. The boots she wore were fancy but the slick soles were not made for travel in snow.
    “Just an Arkansas redneck, ma’am,” he lied.
    “Ma’am? Call me Lee, please.”
    “I’m Mitch Roeder,” Levon lied once more.
    He helped her into the cab of the truck and crossed in front of the cab to climb behind the wheel and take off.
    The Ram followed Mohawk, the road that ran around the circumference of Lake Bellevue. The locals still called it Gourd Lake for its shape: fat and oval at its southern base, narrowing to a neck that led to another, smaller span of water to the north. The developer who’d subdivided the parcels all around renamed it for the nearest town, a flyspeck along the county road ten miles east. Cecile’s place was the only landmark. A gas station and a combination convenience and hardware store that also served as the local post office backed by a few homes owned by lifetime Mainers. Bellevue was a misleading name Anglicized from what was probably a joke name given it by the original French settlers. The only view the town offered was pine forest for hundreds of miles in every direction.
    The twenty-two homes distributed around the lake shore ranged from mini-mansions to full-blown palaces. They belonged to financiers, a retired senator, a television producer, three trial lawyers, a construction contractor from Boston, a software developer from San Francisco and a handbag designer from Italy. They were empty in the winter except for a few guests here and there. That meant they were empty most of the year since Maine winters tended to start early and then stubbornly hang on when the rest of the country was starting to wear t-shirts. They were boarded up and shut down, running only enough electric to keep the pipes from freezing. The boats were out of the water and locked up in boathouses until spring. Pools were drained and all the toys put away.
    “You don’t seem to be having any trouble navigating through this,” Lee remarked as the Ram rolled along easily, following the buried roadway through the trees.
    “Your Merc is good in light snow. But it just doesn’t have the clearance for this kind of depth.”
    “If I’d known that I could have saved some money and bought a truck like this. Appearances over practicality has always been my downfall.” She sighed.
    He had nothing to say to that.
    “I went down to Bellevue to buy some things I needed. Do you believe that they don’t get any newspapers until the beginning of April? The woman behind the counter suggested that I Google whatever I needed to know. It’s the only store still open so I suppose I have to put up with that colorful character until the snow melts.”
    Levon had no remark for that. Cecile down at the Bellevue Market and Hardware
was
colorful.
    “And what brings
you
to stay in this godforsaken place in the dead of winter? I’m doing some writing and so crave