Track of the Cat (10 page)

"Why didn't he get Alison then?"

"He tried but I went on the stand and lied my way out of it. There wasn't any proof. And I guess I didn't look like the judge's idea of one of

'them.' He'll never give up, though."

"He loves Alison that much? Or hates you?"

"Both in his way, I guess. But what he really loves is winning and what he can't stand is losing."

A moment passed in silence. Christina looked through the pictures again but this time there were no tears. When she'd finished, she held them out to Anna.

"Keep them," Anna said.

"You loved somebody!" Christina sounded faintly surprised.

"Did you think of me as the Snow Queen, a heart of ice?"

Christina was quiet so long, Anna thought she wasn't going to reply.

"I suppose I did," she said finally. "You seem so tough, so together, lifting heavy weights and driving big trucks. It's easier to believe other people are tough-unfeeling-then you don't have to be careful of them. You can go right on along being careful only of yourself. If you have a heart," Christina said gently, "it's made of gold." She held the corner of the bundle of pictures over the chimney of the lamp. Flames bloomed green and blue from the developing chemical.

"It's a shame," Anna said. "They were really the only pictures Sheila ever took that were worth a damn."

Christina left at nine-forty; eleven-forty New York time. Anna decided to risk Molly's displeasure, gambling she'd still be up watching Jay Leno.

For this call, Anna went to the pay phone down the road half a mile at the Pine Springs Store. The laundry room in the Cholla Chateau was too public.

"It's me. Did I wake you up?" Anna asked.

"Nope. This is the City That Never Sleeps. Tonight I know why. The people in 3C won't let it. I knew I should have moved when they took up clog dancing." There was a sudden silence in the listening darkness of the phone lines, a hushed breath, a sense of palpable relief.

"Still smoking?" Anna asked.

"Still drinking?" Molly returned.

"Like a fish."

"Like a chimney."

"By sixty-two you'll be dead of emphysema like Aunt Gertie."

"By seventy-four you'll fall drunk in the upper pond and drown like Gramma Davis."

"Come to West Texas. At least mix your smoke with some real air," Anna said and, as always, she felt a fluttering of hope that this time Molly would say yes. And wouldn't cancel out at the last minute.

"Too many crazy clients," Molly said with a laugh.

"Speaking of crazy," Anna blurted out, "I think I may be gay."

"Woman to woman love? Politically correct. Low risk of disease. High chance of getting grant money for artistic endeavors. That'll be a hundred and forty-five dollars."

"Molly..."

"You're serious. Okay." There followed a silence through which Anna could hear her sister changing gears, dropping the banter. Now they would talk.

Relief welled up like a warm spring.

"And Rogelio?" Molly asked.

"Rogelio is..." Anna searched for the words that would sum up the man who had appeared in and disappeared out of her bed for the last eight months.

"Rogelio is every inch a man."

"Nine," Molly said dryly.

"Give or take."

"Your occasionally torrid past indicates a degree of heterosexuality that I, as a licensed psychiatrist, cannot overlook," Molly said.

"Tonight I think I felt myself leaning toward a torrid future with Christina."

"Christina?"

"Every inch a woman. Christina Walters. She's the clerk-typist here."

Anna heard Molly sigh-or light a cigarette. "What?" she demanded.

Two beats of black silence pounded through the phone wires. "What do you feel about all this?" her sister asked.

The doctor was IN.

"Mostly confusion."

"Okay. Tell me about Christina."

Anna was glad to talk of the woman. She was surprised at her eagerness.

Was it the same as the girlish longing to tell her friends of the new boy in her life?

For over three-quarters of an hour, way past midnight Eastern Daylight time, Molly listened. When Anna had squeezed out her last thought on the subject, Molly listened ten seconds more.

"Christina sounds like a nice woman," she said at last and Anna felt disappointed.

"Is that all?" she demanded.

"Anna, I don't want to throw cold water on your new career as a lesbian.

Lord knows it would increase my status in therapists' circles if I could produce a sibling who was a bona fide gay woman, but how long has it been since you've made a friend?"

"I have friends," Anna retorted.

"I don't think so. I think you used to have friends. After Zach was killed-and you finally sobered up-you took out of New York City like all the demons of hell were after you. You became Smokey Bear's right-hand man and you've never looked back. When I run into your old friends at Saks they're wearing black arm bands. Everybody thinks you died, too."

"None of my friends could afford Saks," Anna snapped.

"All right," Molly said. "When I'm at Saks, I see them through the window waiting for the bus to the Lower East Side. But you get my point."

"Maybe I don't."

"Maybe you do. Maybe you need a girlfriend. Maybe you're overwhelmed that this woman was warm and kind and female. Maybe you're gun-shy of attachment because Zach left you. Maybe you miss Zach's feminine side."

"You're shrinking me," Anna complained.

"You're the one with the sexual identity crisis. What do you want?"

"Rogelio has a feminine side," Anna countered.

"From what you've told me, Rogelio has a weak side. Not at all the same."

"I'll think about that," Anna promised. "I never know whether you're being commercial or merely profound."

Molly laughed, unoffended. "Hey, one's as good as the other these days.

Maybe you are turning gay. That's well and good. I just wanted to give you some other things to think about. Powerful need for affection, identification-all that underrated and over-exploited sisterhood stuff-is visceral. Feels almost sexual to those not in touch with themselves."

Anna started to protest that she was in touch with herself, but the lie was too bold for her. "One more complication," she said and felt a wicked pleasure in having a real bomb to drop. "Christina Walters is my prime suspect in what I'm increasingly sure is the murder of the Dog Canyon Ranger."

There was a most satisfying silence on the other end of the line. Anna smiled.

"When I told Mother and Dad I wanted a playmate, I was hinting for a kitten," Molly said. "I liked being an only child. Do you hear this?"

There was a shushing sound, then Molly's voice again. "That was me pouring myself a medicinal scotch and soda. You have till I finish it to fill in the rest of the story. Then I'm going to bed. Ready? Go!"

Anna told her largely conjectural story of love, lust, blackmail, and murder.

"How?" Molly asked flatly when she had finished. "Lured her lover upstream like a demented salmon and coshed her with a cactus?"

"Maybe," Anna said. "I've not done 'how' just yet. I'm working on 'why.'

Christina Walters, my . . . friend ... is the only real good 'why' I've got so far."

"Work on 'how,' " Molly advised. "Take my professional word for it: everybody's got ten good reasons to do away with everybody else. It's just nobody knows how. Do 'how.' "

There was an odd little clink, like a tiny distant bell. "That," said Molly, "was the last ice-cube hitting my teeth. Goodnight."

"Goodnight," Anna returned but the line had gone dead.

8

LOOK at the bright side, Gideon," Anna addressed the grouchy-looking ears as the horse dragged his feet, stumbling with childish ill grace up the Frijole Trail away from the barn. "Even with tack I probably weigh less than you'd be packing if you were working for Harland."

It was Thursday and Harland had his mule packer using Pesky and the mules to haul coolers full of food and beer into the trail crew where they were spiked out on the Tejas Trail in the high country.

Paul had sent Anna to ride the Guadalupe Peak Trail. Usually hot Thursdays in June were quiet. With temperatures creeping near the hundred-degree mark and no water available at any of the backcountry campgrounds, only the hardy and the foolhardy were packing in. But this Thursday was the annual Pentecostal Church's fund-raising hike up the highest peak in Texas.

Churches from all over Texas, New Mexico, and as far away as Oklahoma participated. Every year somebody got hurt, half a dozen people broke park rules, and nearly everybody littered.

Anna began whistling "Nearer My God to Thee," and the horse pricked up his ears. "Gonna be a good day, Gideon," she said. "It's not every day you're guaranteed to be hailed as a hero or the anti-Christ or both by sundown."

The beauty of the Chihuahuan Desert had been smoothing the wrinkles from Anna's mind since she'd saddled up at eight a.m. The winds had finally stopped. There would be a reprieve from their incessant scour until probably November. Cholla-the skinny cactus which grew up in angular, spine-covered branches-was beginning to bloom. Festive pink blossoms the size of teacups and looking for all the world like they had been fashioned from crepe paper enlivened the uncompromising cacti. Mexicans called them Velas de Coyotes-candles of the coyotes. Prickly pear pads carried one, two, ten yellow blooms, and the grasses were rich with wildflowers.

In the midst of all this spiritual plenty Anna was annoyed to find herself once again thinking of death. "Molly said we must concentrate on

'how.' Think, Gideon, think." Anna spoke to keep Gideon awake. On the familiar trail from the Frijole ranch house to the Pine Springs campground-three miles he'd done a hundred times-Gideon tended to doze off while he walked. Then if anything-western diamondback rattler or monarch butterfly-woke him suddenly, he'd jump right out from under his rider.

"Okay, Gideon," Anna conceded. "I know you've only got horse brains for brains. I'll think. You listen.

"Quick 'whys.' Maybe in New York everybody has ten good reasons for killing everybody else but in West Texas we are somewhat more civilized.

We like the personal touch.

"Water bar, old buddy .

Gideon's hoof crashed into the stone set crosswise on the trail and Anna patted his neck reassuringly. "Such a Nureyev you are, a veritable Baryshnikov.

"Okay. The 'whys' in short. Christina's still first with love, lust, and blackmail to her credit. Second, the mysterious Erik of legend and lore who kills with a Toyota. Karl coming in third with job envy. We'll squeeze Craig Eastern in fourth place because he's crazy and maybe crazy enough to kill to keep the moneylenders out of the temple-the developers out of Dog Canyon. Fourth and a half: Mrs. Drury with her insurance money. Rogelio fifth with his homeless prairie dogs." Gideon cocked one furry ear.

"What?" Anna demanded. "Who did I forget? Okay. No family favoritism.

Last but not least, mother-in-law Edith, spurred on to violence by Emily Post over the grapefruit spoon in the ice cream incident.

"Pretty slim pickins', Gideon, my little hay-burner. All my suspects are your basic Caspar Milquetoast types."

Gideon snorted, blowing the flies and dust from his nostrils.

"Right," Anna conceded. "We were to do 'how.' "

For a while they rode without speaking, Gideon heaving great complaining sighs, Anna ignoring them. Two military helicopters out of Halloran Air Force Base flew over and Anna shook her fist at them. The airways over the wilderness were supposedly regulated but it seemed all the fly-boys fancied themselves the new Tom Cruise.

"'How' for Christina." Gideon started as if he'd been goosed with a cattle prod. "Aha! Caught you napping," Anna crowed. "Christina could've lured Sheila into the canyon any number of ways. A simple invite even.

Sheila, being the stronger of the two, would carry the pack. Then . . .

Then what, Gideon? Help me here. Aren't you a highly trained police horse? Knocked her over the head? No sign of head trauma. Poisoned her?

That's got possibilities. Wait for the autopsy. Frightened her to death?

Too farfetched. Drugged her, slathered her with catnip, and waited for a lion to finish the job?"

Gideon stopped, relieved himself in the trail, grunting with unselfconscious equine satisfaction.

"Fair enough," Anna admitted. "We'll drop the catnip angle and leave it at Christina/Poison. Who's next? Ah. Erik. Ditto Erik-if there is an Erik."

Anna fell silent. Had Christina spun her story from scratch, banking on the fact that Anna, a middle-aged woman, more or less alone, a widow without any close friends, would be an easy mark? A few compliments, some laughter, and she'd be so thrilled just to be paid attention to she'd bite anything, swallow it hook, line, and sinker?

"Wouldn't I feel a total horse's ass. Nothing personal, Gideon." The scene she'd painted made Anna cringe but she didn't believe it, not entirely. From long experience she knew that she wore her loneliness like armor. Very few people ever recognized it for what it was. To the casual observer it looked very like arrogance.

Sometimes it was.

"So: Erik, in a jealous rage, talks Sheila into coming to this secluded spot and: one; breaks her neck. Is Erik a big man? Two; injects her with poison. Is the ex-Mr. Walters a chemist or pharmacist?" Anna remembered Christina's mentioning investment banking. "Bored her to death with Ginny Maes and Fanny Maes? I've got it! Smothers her with his down sleeping bag, lays her gently in the saw grass figuring by the time she's found the water will obscure prints, tracks, and marks. Smothering's got possibilities. Wait for the autopsy.

"Karl's next, Gideon. Maybe you want to tune out so you don't have to hear your buddy slandered." Gideon wouldn't dignify that with an answer and Anna went on with her musings. "Karl could've gotten her up there on any of a dozen pretexts: undiscovered pictographs, rare plants. He's powerful. Smothering, neck snapping, it'd be a piece of cake. He wouldn't even break a sweat. Then carry her into the grass.