The Deepest Water (10 page)

A little later they found a log to sit on and they talked quietly. Now and then Spook checked in, gave them a kiss and left to explore again.

Basically Jud had finished the book, Willa said, but he had a little clean-up work to do; he had to shuffle the pieces around and get them in order, then make a final printout, and he would be done. About two weeks, he had said. He had planned to move in with her, and they would have spent weekends at the cabin.

“I couldn’t get away until April,” Willa said, “and then we were going to go to Italy, spend three months… A delayed honeymoon. He said he wanted me to teach him how to see art.”

Willa glanced at Abby. “You remember that day we had an argument over him?”

“God, yes!”

“You really shook me,” Willa said. “You were giving voice to all the problems and uncertainties I was wrestling with. I couldn’t reconcile the three images of one man. He came to a show at the museum once, long before I met him, and someone pointed him out to me and said who he was, the world-famous writer, hermit, and reincarnation of Don Juan, all in one pretty package. He was handsome, and with a woman, of course. Then there was the father you talked about a lot, loving, warm, funny, capable of anything and everything, a perfect godlike father. And the man I grew to know and to love. I wouldn’t say naive exactly, but tentative, shy, sort of hesitant. Afraid of me. That was it, he was afraid of me in a curious way, and so careful with me, as if one wrong word, one wrong act would send me flying away. I was having a lot of trouble trying to sort things out the day you spoke your mind. I knew I loved him, and I had accepted that I might be dumped, as you so elegantly put it, and I had decided I would risk that. I had to risk that. But then I realized that he was just as afraid as I was. In spite of what we had been through, both of us, we were like two kids trying out being in love for the first time.”

When she became silent, and the silence stretched out to where it would have been awkward to refer back to that time, Abby told her about the lieutenant and the detective, about going to the cabin with them, everything. “Did he ever mention the cashier’s checks to you?”

Willa shook her head. “One hundred forty-five thousand! He told me he had mortgaged the cabin years ago and had given Matthew Petrie fifteen thousand dollars, but that much money! No. Could he have been giving Matthew money all these years?”

“What for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Friday night, it had to have been someone he knew well,” Abby said after a moment. “That’s the only way I can see someone being in the cabin in the middle of the night. Someone got stranded there, or planned to stay until dark, something like that.” She looked at the ground. “I thought it was a woman,” she mumbled.

“I would have thought the same thing a few years ago.”

After a moment, Abby asked, “Did he say why he gave Matthew that money, fifteen thousand dollars?”

“To pay off debts. Your ex-husband was going to skip and leave you with a mountain of debts, creditors. Jud said you were so determined not to be a burden, so independent, that he didn’t think you would let him pay them off if you knew he had mortgaged the cabin to raise the money. He made your ex go with him and pay people in person, with him watching. He wanted you to be free to go back to school, not feel obligated to work as a waitress and pay Matthew’s bills.”

“He never told me,” Abby whispered. The money for the divorce lawyer must have come from the mortgage, too, she realized. As recently as eight years ago, Jud had still been poverty-stricken, just as she had been.

Spook ran back to them, and this time lay at their feet panting, her tongue hanging out, sides heaving. She looked very happy.

Clouds had moved in and the air was degrees colder and smelled of approaching rain. Above them the fir trees rustled in a rising wind, as if in anticipation.

“We should start back,” Abby said.

They began to retrace their way down the mountain, this time with the dog staying close by, as if she had had enough exploring for one outing.

Close to the valley floor, Abby put the leash back on Spook, and during the brief stop, Willa said, “You know no one’s going to believe he actually proposed, that we were going to be married.”

Abby looked at her, startled, then slowly nodded. It was true. Who would believe it? They hadn’t told anyone.

“It’s made me feel awkward,” Willa said quietly. “That’s why I didn’t want to come around when your relatives were there. They would have looked on me as the new conquest, something like that, not as his fiancée.” She ducked her head and started to walk.

“How did you find out?” Abby asked. “Who told you?”

“The police called me, looking for you. Jud said you were going to the coast with Jonelle and a couple of other friends, and that’s what I told them. Then… I just got in my car and began to drive, and I ended up in Bandon and checked into a motel. There didn’t seem to be anyone I could talk to. Or maybe I had to be alone. I came back for the service, then took off again. Now they’ll have to question me, I guess. I’ll tell them why Jud called you, about our engagement, but I had to tell you first.”

“I’m glad you did.” He had sounded so happy, and she had said no, she couldn’t make it.

Silently they walked past the barn, past the administration building. Other people were leaving now before the rain moved in, the first people they had seen. Their silence continued as they drove back into town.

At the Safeway lot Willa motioned toward the side. “I left my car over there. I imagine the police will want to talk to me first thing in the morning. Will you come back to work yet?”

“Yes. I’ll be there tomorrow. After… after they ask you questions, let’s go out for coffee or something.” She reached for Willa’s hand and for another moment they sat there holding hands. Abby was thinking that of all the people Jud had known, loved, and left, they probably were the only two people who had really loved him; knowing exactly what he was like, they had loved him.

8

It was no use, Abby thought on Monday at the museum. She and two other graduate students were supposed to be packing up statues that had been on loan, but she kept forgetting what she was doing, and became as immobile as one of the figures being crated. When Willa finally appeared at the door of the workroom, Abby fled with her. Willa had been in her office for hours with the lieutenant and his detective assistant.

Abby didn’t ask a thing, and Willa didn’t volunteer anything as they left the museum, threaded their way through a vast parking lot crammed full, crossed the street, and entered a cafe. At the table, with coffee before them, Willa finally spoke.

“There must be a hundred different ways to ask the same question, and they used them all.” She was wan and listless, withdrawn. “Didn’t we tell anyone at all we planned to be married? Not even my mother?” She grimaced. “That would be like hiring a television spot, or a float to go up and down every street in town broadcasting the news.” She took a deep breath and looked out the window. “How can you prove you were home by yourself if you didn’t see anyone, or if no one saw you? I don’t know.” When she lifted her coffee cup, her hand was shaking.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Abby said quickly. “They’re asking everyone questions like that, not just you.”

Willa looked at her sadly and didn’t respond. After a moment, she said, “You might as well go back home. You must have a lot of things to attend to.”

“The condolence notes,” Abby said. “Walk the dog. Wait for the agent to call. Then I’ll have to go to the cabin for a few days.” But it was true, she was useless at work, she might as well be home.

She found she could only read a few of the condolences before she had to stop, get up, and walk away, and she kept listening for the doorbell, for the telephone, for a call to say they had found him, they had the killer, it was over. The day and night seemed without end.

Christina Maas called on Tuesday; she would take a late flight to Eugene, and could they go to the cabin the following day, Wednesday? Maybe Abby, she suggested, could buy a few things for them to eat, breakfast stuff, snacks, lunch, and they could eat dinner out. Her suggestion sounded like an order, but Abby was grateful for anything that forced her to act.

“The movie contract is a done deal,” Christina said before she hung up. “I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”

Abby picked her up at her motel on Wednesday morning. Christina was wearing fawn-colored wool slacks, a long fur-lined raincoat, fancy boots—her “roughing it” clothes, no doubt, Abby thought derisively.

Christina eyed Spook. “He won’t come leaping over the seat or anything, will he?”

“That’s Spook, and she’s well-mannered,” Abby said shortly; then she started the long drive to the lake.

On the way, Christina filled her in with more details about the movie contract than she could grasp, and she stopped listening after a while. But she was awed; Christina had been negotiating this one contract for five months. Abby couldn’t imagine how one agreement could take such a long time.

Already, in just a few days, the landscape had changed; the scarlets and golds were gone, many of the deciduous trees were bare; from now until spring the dark firs would reign on this side of the high pass, then pines, and finally junipers. The front that had brought rain to the valley had been harsher in the mountains; there was snow at the higher elevations.

At the lake, after parking the van and carrying their supplies to the ramp, Abby started to pull the rowboat from the shed, and Christina stopped moving.

“I’m not getting in that little boat,” she said. “It’s too small. Where is the cabin?”

Abby pointed. “We go by boat or we don’t go at all.” She worked the boat down to the water and tied it to a tree stump, then went back for the backpack and their groceries. She tossed the backpack into the boat, added the bags of supplies and then took Christina’s suitcase from her.

Christina was staring at the boat in horror. After a wild look all around, she moaned, and fearfully climbed in. Abby motioned to Spook, who leaped in and sat down, and then she released the rope and pushed off, rocking the boat more than she needed to. She stepped in at the last second, sat down and took up the oars.

Christina clutched both sides of the rowboat desperately all the way across the finger, and by the time Abby pulled up at the ledge, she looked as if she might become seasick, she was so gray. Abby held the boat steady while Christina gingerly stepped out. Then Spook jumped out and raced around the cabin.

“My God!” Christina said then. “I thought it was just a cabin on a shore somewhere.”

Exactly, Abby thought. She tied up, and they walked around the cabin to the front, where Spook was standing, wagging her tail furiously; Abby unlocked the door and pushed it open. Spook darted in, whining. “I’ll turn up the heat and then go back for our stuff,” Abby said. “This is it.” She knew Spook would be tearing around inside, upstairs, down, searching for Jud. And she knew she couldn’t bear to watch.

She tended to the thermostat, unlatched the dog door, and went back out; Christina didn’t offer to help, but stood huddled in her coat as her color gradually returned.

Then, everything unloaded, they both went up the stairs. “His study, the aerie,” Abby said.

“Good God! How many boxes are there?” Christina said, inside the doorway. She walked to the desk and put her hand on the stack of manuscript. “Is this the novel?”

“Yes.”

Christina gazed about the room frowning. “He must have kept every scrap of paper for his whole life. What’s in the file cabinets?”

“More papers, manuscripts, correspondence. I don’t know what all.”

“Well, we’ll have to have a division of labor, won’t we?” Christina crossed the room, pulled open a file drawer, and glanced inside some of the folders. “Warranties, things like that. And computer stuff.” She opened a carton and looked at the top sheets of paper. “More of the same, it looks like. And what’s this?” She pulled out a few pages paper-clipped together. “A story? Could be.” With a sigh she dropped the papers back into the carton.

“Why don’t you take the novel manuscript downstairs, and I’ll start going through things up here,” Abby said, trying to keep her hostility buried. She could admire Christina’s cool efficiency, she thought, but not in close quarters. Watching her drop Jud’s papers like that had sent a cold blast through her, and she realized she did not want that woman to handle Jud’s private papers at all.

“My idea, too,” Christina said. “The dog won’t be darting in and out a lot, will it?”

“I doubt it,” Abby said in a tight, strained voice. “She’ll probably come up here and hang out with me after she’s had a good look around.”

“Well, let’s get started. If you can separate out the stories, essays, things like that and make a stack, I’ll start with the novel. Oh, and the advertising copy he wrote, that might prove useful, too. But no warranties or computer programs.” She picked up the manuscript, then paused. “Correspondence should be in a separate stack.”

Silently Abby agreed. That was exactly what she intended to do, separate out everything personal and private. Christina carried the novel manuscript downstairs, and Abby sat on the floor and after a minute or two, time needed to loosen the knot inside, she opened a carton of papers.

Presently Spook came up the stairs, and after sniffing everything in the aerie, lay down with her head on Abby’s leg.

The only sound was of papers rustling, the wind outside the windows, and occasionally Christina’s cell phone. When her voice intruded, Abby got up and closed the door.

She had emptied one box, and had piles of like papers in a semi-circle around her—fanfold computer stuff in one pile, advertising copy in one, papers clipped together in another, some miscellaneous things she hadn’t decided about… The papers clipped together were on fanfold paper, too, but they had been torn apart, many of them edited in pencil, bits of stories, sketches, ideas, even complete stories, she thought, but she had read little so far. Now she stopped moving altogether as she looked over the next paper-clipped set.