Pancakes & Pandemonium - Culinary Competition Mystery #6

Chapter 3

(Carla)

"Look...Miss Ellie is dancing," Carla said as she wiggled the stuffed elephant around. Macy giggled until Carla tried to dab at her runny nose with a wad of toilet paper. Then the baby's momentary happy mood instantly changed to angry-demon mode. She cringed as a potentially mirror-shattering screech filled the small bathroom. The fascination of sitting in the bathtub with blankets and stuffed animals, instead of water and squirt toys, had obviously begun to wear off. Macy didn't understand that her momma was trying to keep her safe. Right before she had closed the door, Carla had heard the wind bearing down on their home with a swiftly increasing roar.

Macy was struggling with another cold that she'd caught at daycare. Carla was exhausted from juggling the sick baby and working at the doctor's office. Bruce had become a too-much-work and too-little-family kind of guy thanks to an overload of unsolved cases. It seemed that all of them were going through a difficult phase, not just the sick baby. Carla laid her head on the tile wall. She was in the middle of a real emergency weather situation, and her brain was stirring up a mental catastrophe. Lovely.

Even though she and the baby were deep inside the townhouse, in a windowless bathroom, she could still hear the wind howling. A loud thump silenced Macy's whimpers. The baby's eyes grew wide as she looked around. Whatever had caused the noise must've been large since Carla could feel the shock waves through the bottom of the bathtub. She turned on the battery-powered lantern and said, "Look, we're having an adventure."

She wasn't sure how much her daughter understood since she was only fourteen months old, but the declaration seemed to soothe her. Carla took a deep breath and kissed the top of Macy's head when she snuggled up against her. "I wonder where your daddy is."

Her cell phone was sitting on the edge of the tub, but it showed that there was no signal. It had disappeared during the call from her mother, warning them to take cover, and never came back. Usually she had excellent reception anywhere in the house, so the outage almost surely was caused by the storm in some way. So there she was—sitting in the bathtub with a fussy baby and no idea what was happening outside the claustrophobic bathroom's walls.

And then the electricity went out.

Macy clapped her hands and snuggled deeper into Carla's arms. She had forgotten that the lantern had a shade with moon and star shapes cut out of it. A bit of relief seeped into her anxiety because the baby was calmly enjoying the constellation projected onto the ceiling, instead of fussing. Hurricanes didn't hit Michigan. The possibility of one moving so far inland from the Atlantic Ocean was nonexistent, especially during the time of the year when a blizzard would be more likely, but she imagined that being trapped in one was similar to what she was going through. How many people in Kellerton were huddled together wondering what would happen next? How was her mom doing at the bazaar?

Carla wrapped herself and Macy in one of the afghans that she had piled into the tub. Was it her imagination, or was it already getting colder? Was the wind dying down? What was happening outside? Those, and about a hundred other, questions raced through her mind as she quietly hummed a lullaby.

After a few minutes, she felt Macy relax. She had fallen asleep along with Carla's left leg, which she had curled up to make a comfortable spot for the baby to nestle into. It did sound as though the wind had died down. Carefully she laid Macy on the cushion of blankets, covered her up with another one, and then climbed out of the tub. A flurry of tingles shot up her leg as the nerves came back to life while she limped across the tile floor. When she cracked open the bathroom door, dim light shining through the patio doors in the living room greeted her. She could see the diminutive apple tree that Bruce had planted in the backyard. Its fragile trunk was broken—snapped off just below the first set of branches. The delicate twigs now reached toward the ground, instead of the sky. Gravel-sized hail covered the yard that had been cleared of snow by a recent unseasonably warm spell.

She glanced back to make sure that Macy was still asleep. She was, so Carla raced upstairs. In the master bathroom, she discovered a water stain on the ceiling. Judging from the way the apple tree had fallen, that corner of the roof had taken the full force of the wind. From the master bedroom's window, she could see much larger trees broken off in the woods behind the yard. Discolored patches, where shingles had been blown off, spotted all of the neighbors' roofs.

A phone started ringing, but it wasn't her cell phone. She sprinted back downstairs. There was still a landline phone in Bruce's office, specifically so the police department could reach him even when there was a disruption in cellular phone service. She banged her knee on the office chair when she lunged to pick up the receiver. That was going to leave a colorful mark. "Hello?"

"Are you and Macy okay?"

Her husband's deep voice was calm no matter what situation he was in. It made her feel a little better to hear from him, even though she wondered why he hadn't called, like her mother did, to warn her to take cover from the vicious storm. Had he been so engrossed in examining evidence for one of the murder cases that he didn't realize it was coming? She sighed. Sort of like the same way she was so busy trying to comfort their sick daughter that she hadn't even noticed the emergency warning sirens or the foreboding sky.

"The electricity is out and the roof is leaking a bit upstairs, but we're fine. Where are you?"

"I rode out the storm at the station. I'm going to try to make it home as soon as possible, but we're getting reports of fallen trees on houses and across roads. It sounds like the power is out all over town. I don't know how long it'll be before I can find a way home."

Carla stood up straighter as a surge of energy shot through her. She'd taken care of Macy pretty much by herself for months thanks to Bruce's schedule. That day wasn't much different. "We'll be fine. I've got this."

"I'm leaving right now. I love you. Tell Macy her daddy loves her too."

She hung up the phone and peeked in on Macy. The baby was still asleep but had wiggled around enough to completely uncover herself. Carla gently laid an afghan over top of her then went back into the living room to peer out the windows.

Strips of siding were strewn across the street and yards like giant party streamers. Shingles, roof vents, and tree limbs were the confetti left behind by the crazy weather party. The pop-up camper in the driveway across the road was sitting on its side. Rather unbelievably, the sun was shining brightly. Everything glittered and twinkled from the droplets of rain that clung to the tips of branches and dripped from the eaves.

A few people emerged from their houses. Even from a distance, Carla could see the looks of shock and disbelief on their faces. It had been snowing a week earlier. What had just happened?

Macy cried out softly. It sounded like she was having a dream, but Carla checked on her. She was still sound asleep, now clutching Miss Ellie the Elephant. The baby probably had no idea what was going on, but Carla did. Their lives had just been turned upside down by a freak, winter thunderstorm.

The former-emergency room nurse side of her kicked in. It was definitely getting colder. Wet clothes wouldn't work to keep them warm. The leak in the roof wasn't far from the closet. If one rainstorm had happened, another one could follow. Adrenalin helped her make it upstairs in record time. She gathered armfuls of her and Bruce's winter clothes from the closet and shuttled them back downstairs to pile on the bench near the door that led to the garage. She had no idea what the roof looked like. It could be more like a slice of Swiss cheese than a water-tight barrier. The first floor would be the safest place to store anything that needed to stay dry.

She was out of breath after making four trips up and down, but at least she was warm. Macy had once again managed to wiggle out from beneath the blanket while she slept. A good nap, like the baby was currently in the middle of, had been a rarity thanks to the runny nose and coughing. Once again she laid the blanket over her daughter and tucked it in a bit, under the folded blanket she was lying on. Maybe it would stay in place a bit longer. Keeping the sick child, who reveled in the naked freedom of bath time, fully and warmly clothed until the electricity came back on would surely be a battle of wills.

The sound of a motor drew Carla out of the bathroom. She watched out the front window as a man on a four-wheeler wove between the fallen branches and debris on the street. At one point he had to back up and go a different direction because he couldn't squeeze between two large branches. If that small and nimble of a vehicle was having problems navigating their street, how long would it take for Bruce to get across town in his giant pickup?