Nevada Barr - A Superior Death

The door of the cabin was open. From within came the sound of a woman’s tuneless humming. Across the honey-colored wooden floors, Anna could see Jo Castle bent over the counter labeling corked test tubes and storing them upright in a wooden rack. The long hair curved out around the oversized glasses frames, then fell till it was forced out again by her wide hips.

Jo saw them before they had a chance to knock. And she knew there was bad news before they had a chance to speak.

“What?” she demanded, looking from one to the other. Then more sharply: “What?”

Lucas took an audible breath. In the short eternity while he was collecting his thoughts, forming his sentences, Anna could see the strain rip through the muscles of Jo Castle’s face, turning each to stone as it passed.

“It’s god-awful, Jo,” Anna said. “Denny’s been killed.” And Anna started to cry. Jo Castle left the test tube she’d been labeling on the counter, its contents slowly seeping out, and walked straight into Anna’s arms as if she had always found solace there.

Sandra Fox and Trixy came over at ten-thirty after Trixy’s evening program. Sandra had a casserole that smelled enticingly of onion and garlic and cheese. Women could sit with grief, hold its hand, watch it pour from the eyes of friends and children, lie down beside it and help it to rest. Their delicate strength would weave a net strong as spun steel, keep the widow Castle from hitting bottom.

Anna slipped out the kitchen door. She would stay the night in Rock Harbor and check on Jo in the morning before she bummed a ride back to Amygdaloid. For a time Jo would need her. Not because she was a friend, but because Anna, too, had lost her husband. Sandra had only lost her eyes, Trixy her parents. In the arrogance of grief, Jo would not believe that they could understand.

Evidently Lucas had radioed for a lift back to Mott. He had left the Lorelei so Anna could get back to Rock, and she blessed him for a true gentleman.

“Tell me a story,” Anna said into the mouthpiece. “I’ve had a real bad day.”

“What kind of a story?” Molly asked. “One where all the bad guys die?”

“One where nobody dies and the girl gets Robert Redford.”

“Is this a New York story, or do they live happily ever after?”

Anna laughed. “Does anybody?”

“If they do they never pay me a hundred and fifty bucks an hour to hear about it. What’s wrong, Anna?”

“Zach’s still dead.”

“Zach and Franco.”

“Better make it a story with no plot and great costumes,” Anna said. “Tell me about your Westchester wine soirée.”

“That turned out to be a hoot. At eight hundred and twenty bucks a pop, I wasn’t allowed to sip the elixir of the gods, of course. Us peons had to settle for some French stuff. But the Palates sipped and swirled and sniffed. Three of them said it was the True Vintage-not unlike, I gathered from their tone, a splinter from the True Cross-and the other two swore it was a hoax. My client was in the hoax contingent, as you might imagine. Nothing makes a bona fide Seeker more neurotic than having one of his fellows stumble across the holy grail before he does.

“How’s that for a story: mystery, romance, tuxedos. And Zach’s still dead. What’s up, Anna?”

“A diver who worked here was killed on one of the wrecks. I just got done telling his wife.”

There was sympathetic silence from New York. In the background Anna could hear police sirens.

“You know the saddest part?” Anna said. “She hasn’t got a sister to tell her stories.”

After she got off the phone with Molly, Anna sat awhile in the dark. Some enterprising person had disabled the light beside the waiting bench, so the mosquitoes at least had to find their suppers the old-fashioned way.

Nights in the desert had never seemed dark to Anna. Here, under the canopy of trees, the darkness was absolute. At first she had hated it. Over the weeks she had come to know it, to hear its many soft voices. This night it soothed her. It was a night one could immerse oneself in: still seeing, still hearing, still a part of, but unseen. Wrapped in summer darkness, Anna felt safe and alone but not lonely. Shut away from the sometimes forbidding beauty of the heavens, the scent of pine and loam and budding leaves all around her, she felt firmly a part of the earth and it was a comfort.

Footsteps, muted voices intruded and she stood up, melted into the trees off the path. Two people, walking without a light, came up the trail from the marina. They sat on the bench Anna had vacated. She could hear the whisper of fabric sweeping over the wooden seat. “You go first.”

Anna recognized Damien’s voice. The whisper was probably his cape. A light flickered as the door to the telephone booth was opened and for a second Tinker was lit like an actor on a stage. Then all was dark again.

Anna slipped quietly away. She didn’t want to talk with Tinker or Damien tonight. This was not their kind of death. This one had a corpse and a widow.

Patience Bittner found Anna on the deck halfway down her third burgundy. The night sky was pricked full of light but the velvet darkness on the island remained inviolate. Muffled in a dark sweater and black beret, Anna was part of a living shadow beneath the thimbleberry bushes that overhung the deck.

Patience swept out through the double doors like a woman pursued. At the railing she stopped, her hands resting on the wood, her head drooping forward. Anna could see the movement of the pale shining hair. Patience wore white trousers and a light-colored shirt of shimmery material. Not a good outfit for hiding, Anna thought, and decided she had better make her presence known before the woman stumbled across her and scared herself to death.

“Don’t be afraid,” Anna whispered.

Patience screamed. A short stab of sound.

“Sorry,” Anna apologized. “I guess coming out of the dark those are three pretty terrifying words. It’s me, Anna Pigeon.”

“Oh Lord…”

Anna could hear Patience taking deep breaths, lowering her pulse rate.

“Do you always creep about like that?” the woman demanded.

Anna took umbrage. She’d felt it was good of her to have given up a moment of her privacy to save Patience a coronary. The alcohol had made her quite benevolent. “I’m not creeping. I’m sitting and drinking. Not at all the same thing. Creeping suggests the active. I am the personification of the passive. Letting the night soak in.”

Patience had recovered herself; her irritation at being startled had passed. Using her hands like a woman still night-blind, she shuffled over from the railing and sat down on the deck near Anna. “You work on the other side of the island, don’t you?”

“Amygdaloid.”

“Not your days off. I remember.”

“No,” Anna said. “I was with the group that found Denny. I came back with Lucas to break the news to Jo.”

“Found? My God. Tell me!” Anna felt strong ringers grabbing at her, strong arms shaking her. Patience’s panic was thick in the air between them and all at once Anna was unpleasantly sober. She caught Patience’s hands and held them with difficulty. It had not occurred to her that Patience would not have heard. The news would have shot through the park community within half an hour of Jim and Ralph’s setting foot on Mott. But Patience was a concessionaire, the lodge manager. She was not on the grapevine. At least not the evening edition.

“Shh. Shh. It’s okay. You’re okay,” Anna said, wondering what Denny had been to Patience. “Denny’s had an accident. We found his body today. I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

“My God,” Patience said again and she moaned, a ghostly creaking in the night. “Where was he?”