The End of The Road (19 page)

“You sound happy,” Amy said, coming to stand across the counter from me.

“Blame it on the snow,” I told her. “I’ll probably be singing ‘Jingle Bells’ soon.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

“You can set the table,” I told her, waving a hand in the direction of the cupboard in which I keep the dishes. “The plates are over there and the silverware is in the drawer below.”

I filled a platter with scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast and took it to the table, along with steaming mugs of the fresh coffee and some of Becky’s homemade peach jam.

Before sitting down I went across the room and pulled back the curtains covering the sliding glass doors that led to the deck, letting in the light and the view of the bay and mountains beyond.

The table set, Amy came across to stand beside me and look out.

“What a beautiful place to live,” she said. “With a scene like that, how could anyone leave?”

“Many don’t. The last few years we’ve had an influx of people moving here. Most come as tourists and decide they want to stay—or at least have a place to come back to for the summer months, as many are snowbirds that go south for the winter. They buy or build houses with views of Kachemak Bay from the bluff above town and property values have soared because of it.

“I’m lucky though. This property was outside the city limits when my fir st husband, Joe, bought it and built this house. Now it’s worth what seems like a small fortune to me.”

We went back to the table, soon finished breakfast, and were drinking our second mugs of coffee.

“You know,” Amy said thoughtfully, setting hers down. “Last night I told you about my search for John across the country. But I don’t know how and when you came to know him here in Alaska. Would you tell me about it?”

I realized that she was right. I had done a lot of listening and almost no talking about my short acquaintance with and limited knowledge of John.

“There isn’t much to tell,” I assured her. “But I’ll tell you what I know.”

“How did you meet him?”

“Completely by accident,” I told her.

“Stretch and I had gone for a walk on the spit,” I began, remembering back to that day of wind and weather coming in from the west. “It looked like rain, so we headed for my car, but Stretch’s attention was caught by a man who was sitting at a picnic table, warming his hands on a paper cup of coffee from a restaurant across the street that was still open out of season.

“I got talking with him, introduced myself and Stretch, and he said his name was John Walker, that he had come from Anchorage on the Homer Stage Line, a shuttle that goes back and forth between there and here a couple of times a week, and that he had walked out from town to take a look at the spit.

“In a few minutes it did start to rain, so I offered him a ride back to town and dropped him off at the Driftwood Inn.”

“But you saw him again,” Amy said.

“Yes. I asked how long he planned to be in town and he said he had planned to go back to Anchorage on the Monday shuttle, but as he thanked me for the ride he said a thing I can’t get out of my mind, especially now that he’s gone. He told me he liked it here so much that, as he put it—and I quote,
Who knows? I like it here so far—interesting place—friendly people. Maybe I’ll decide to spend what’s left of my life at the end of the road
.”

She stared at me, eyes wide.

“He actually said:
what’s left of my life
and
the end of the road
?” she asked. “What an odd way of putting it.”

“Yes, he did. And I thought that, too—even more after I was told that he had killed himself. But I think that’s what he meant all along—part of why he came here—as far from anywhere he came from and could get in this country.”

“When did you see him again?”

“My son, Joe, had flown up from Seattle for one of his short visits and I had asked a few friends of mine and his to come for dinner that Saturday evening. So, on impulse, I called and invited John to join us and he did. We all enjoyed his quiet company and there was nothing to indicate what he had in mind.”

“Was that the last time you saw him?”

“It was, but not his last contact. Sometime in the night before he died, he brought two books he had picked up at one of our local bookstores and left them on my front step, wrapped in plastic, with a note asking me to either keep them or return them to where he had bought them. I thought he had probably caught the early shuttle and was already gone, but that it was a little odd that he didn’t leave them at the Driftwood Inn, or the bookstore itself that’s just a couple of blocks away. As I told you, this picture of Marty”—I picked it up from where I had left it on the table as I went on—“the woman you say is . . .
was
. . . his wife, was tucked into one of them like a bookmark.”

Amy frowned, leaned forward, and looked thoughtfully down into the coffee mug that she was holding between her two hands.

“And he never told you where he was from?” she asked, looking up again.

“No. My son, Joe, asked him and was told he was
from the South
. But, aside from that, he never really talked about himself in any detail at all.”

“He had changed a lot,” she said slowly. “I wonder—”

“You know,” I interrupted, “I’m forgetting that I should call the state troopers’ office in Anchor Point and see if I can get ahold of Alan Nelson, so you can talk to him. He needs to know the things you’ve told me. And he can tell us if they know anything new at the crime lab in Anchorage, where they took his body.”

I got up from the table and went to the phone, but there was no dial tone when I picked it up to make the call. I put a finger on the hang-up button and jiggled it a couple of times, but the line remained dead.

“Damn,” I swore in frustration. “Must have something to do with heavy new snow on the lines.” It was a thing I didn’t remember ever happening before, but figured that there’s always a first time for just about everything.

I fished my cell phone out of the purse that I had left sitting on the kitchen counter the evening before. But I got no success there, either. Evidently I had inadvertently left it turned on the day before, or not noticed the battery was getting low, because it was also dead.

Hooking it up to the charger I keep handy at the back of the kitchen counter, I left it to absorb new strength and turned to Amy with a question.

“Do you have . . .”

But she was already shaking her head.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been using disposables and need to get a new one.”

I thought for a moment. I could do one of two things. Either I could wait for the cell to charge, or I could drive down to the police station in the middle of town and contact Trooper Nelson through them.

I decided on the latter and told Amy what I intended to do.

“Will you mind staying here while I’m gone?” I questioned. “I’ll be back in less than half an hour.”

“Not at all,” she told me. “I’ll clean up the breakfast dishes while you’re gone.”

Leaving Stretch with company, I put on my coat and boots and was out the door five minutes later, forgetting to lock the door behind me until I remembered on the road into town. Knowing Amy was there and that I wouldn’t be away long, I decided not to go back, and continued on to the police station.

Once there, I told them about my telephone problems and they called the troopers’ office in Anchor Point for me. Trooper Nelson, however, was in Kenai, over ninety miles away, for a meeting of some kind, and wouldn’t be back until sometime late that afternoon. I left a message asking him to contact me on my cell phone, which I knew would be charged by the time he called. After thanking the helpful woman in the offic e at the police station, I went back to my car and headed home.

Pulling into my driveway, I noticed that Amy’s car was no longer next to where I parked mine. That puzzled me.

I walked up to the door and found it closed, but unlocked. That worried me.

I went inside and called Stretch, who, to my relief, trotted out from the fireplace side of the big room and gave me a questioning look that clearly meant
Where the heck have you been
and
why did you leave me here?

Locking the door behind me, I called Amy’s name, but got no answer.

The breakfast dishes were still on the table, the pot still keeping what was left of the coffee warm in the kitchen. But her coat was gone from the hook by the door.

Upstairs in Joe’s bedroom I found her suitcase also gone and the bed left unmade.

Gone! She had simply disappeared! In a hurry, evidently, knowing I would very shortly be back. Why? And where? But mostly . . . why?

After taking the dishes to the kitchen I refilled my mug with coffee and sat down at the table to think it over.

Near the table was a wastebasket that I kept there for tossing away mail I didn’t want to keep, paper napkins, and other such recyclable stuff that I felt guilty putting in the garbage pail under the sink. I glanced into it casually, thinking it needed emptying.

Then I stopped, leaned and picked out several pieces of a familiar photograph that I knew I had not and would not have thrown into it. It had been torn through several times by someone who clearly wanted it destroyed. That someone must have been Amy.

Like a jigsaw puzzle I laid the small pieces carefully together, searching the wastebasket for a couple of missing ones until I found and added them to make the picture complete.

What lay before me on the table was the photo Andy had found in the O’Brian book and given to me—the woman Amy had said was John’s wife, Marty.

It simply didn’t make sense, unless what Amy had told me the evening before didn’t make sense, either.

Did it?

NINETEEN

AMY DID NOT COME BACK THAT DAY, as I thought she might.

I called the telephone company on my partially charged cell phone and a young repairman showed up just after noon and fixed my phones in five minutes.

“All three were unplugged,” he said, with a glance that told me he thought I had done it myself and was probably suffering from Alzheimer’s at what he considered my advanced age.

I assured him I had not, but was sure that, assuming I had, he chalked that up as proof of his theory.

Trooper Alan Nelson called my cell phone late that afternoon from Kenai before starting back to Anchor Point. Hearing that I had several important things to tell and show him, he asked me to wait until he got there, which would be as soon as possible, and showed up on my doorstep just before seven o’clock.

He came in the door after stomping snow from his boots, hung his coat and hat on a hook by the door, and followed me to the table, taking a long look at the shotgun that I had placed once again on the counter by the door.

“Trouble?” he asked as he sat down and looked down at Stretch, who had come trotting across the room. “Hey there, buddy.”

“Trouble prevention,” I told him. “You’ve had a long day. Can I get you something to eat?”

“Thanks, but I grabbed a burger and ate it in the car on the way down,” he told me. “A cup of coffee would be welcome though.”

I poured him some, added cream when he nodded as I held it up, brought the mug to the table, and sat down facing him.

He directed another nod at the photograph I had carefully taped together while I waited for him to arrive.

“Who is this?” he asked me.

“Supposed to be John’s wife,” I told him.

“How do you know that? And why did you tear it up?”

“I didn’t,” I assured him. “I found it in my wastebasket when I came back from the police station, where I called because neither of my phones were working. But let me go back to just after you were last here. You already know that John left a couple of books for me to return to the bookstore, right?”

He did.

“So, I took them back and didn’t think any more about it.”

“Then what?”

“Well, when the article about his suicide came out in last Wednesday’s paper, my phone practically never stopped ringing. You know how gossip spreads like wildfire in this town. So I decided on the spur of the moment to fly up to Anchorage, then went on to visit friends in Wasilla, just to get away for a couple of days. You probably know Alex Jensen, who’s a trooper based in Palmer. I stayed with him and his lady, Jessie Arnold.”

He nodded that he did.

“I flew back yesterday on Grant’s noon flight, and when I got home I found my front door unlocked and open a crack. Checking inside I could tell that someone had stayed here while I was gone—actually slept in my bed. Made me furious—still does. I immediately washed all the linen, not thinking there might be something to identify whoever had slept there.

“Whoever it was must have found the key I kept in the shed by the driveway, because it’s missing. So a friend came and replaced the lock on the door for me, bless him.”