Nevada Barr - Track Of The Cat

Did that mean anything? Had Christina killed her lover in passion? Or just to get back the photos? Was Sheila Drury blackmailing her? Some might think it a form of poetic justice to do in their blackmailer at the scene of their indiscretion. But a mile upstream through rough country? And what was the pack all about?

Could Drury have been blackmailing anyone else?

"Slow down, slow down," Anna murmured. Pressing Piedmont 's tail to her upper lip, she twirled the tip as if it were the end of a blond mustache. "We must use the little gray cells."

The few left I haven't drowned, she thought. Against her better judgment, she took another sip of Sauvignon Blanc. Clearheadedness, desirable as it might be, couldn't compete with habit.

On the back of an announcement of an equal opportunity meeting Anna wrote: WHO HAD REASONS TO KILL SHEILA DRURY and underlined it.

Christina Walters. She'd already been through that.

Craig Eastern. He hated Drury-if "hated" wasn't too strong a word-for her attempts to develop the camping area for R.V. sites. Harland Roberts thought Craig was crazy enough to hurt her, why not Sheila?

Mrs. Thomas Drury. She'd mentioned something about insurance money. There'd been problems between mother and daughter. That had been fairly obvious. Try as she might, Anna couldn't picture Mrs. Drury more than four feet off a paved trail.

Who else? She stared at the blank sheet of paper. Rogelio? Because Sheila was opposed to reintroducing prairie dogs?

"My mother-in-law," Anna said dryly. "Because Ranger Drury had such appalling manners as to eat ice cream with a grapefruit spoon?"

Piedmont was not amused. Anna laughed, a snort of silent amusement. What now? Form some intelligent theory then set about questioning the suspects? "Where were you at such and such a time?"

A knock startled her from her musings, startled Piedmont from her shoulders. Automatically she checked her radio, turned up the squelch. It was working. If there was an ambulance run or a problem in the campground they'd've radioed-for a ranger's 20,000 a year, she was on call twenty-four hours a day. Who would come to her door? It occurred to her that emergencies were more common than social calls anymore. The thought made her suddenly lonely.

"Come in," she hollered. The door rattled and she realized she'd locked it. Embarrassed at her newly suspicious nature, Anna bounded across the room to open the door.

Christina Walters was on the top step. Just as Anna jerked the door wide, she was turning to go. Looking a little shamefaced at being caught creeping away, the woman turned back.

Given her recent speculations and the color photos that were lying on her desk, Anna could think of nothing to say. Even the old stand-bys of "Good evening. May I help you?" and "Won't you come in?" had deserted her.

"I came for that beer," Christina Walters said shyly and looked up at Anna with eyes as dark and unfathomable as Zachary Taylor's. The same velvet brown that Anna'd lost herself in so many times. "May I come in?"

"Sure," Anna answered ungraciously and stood aside more like a doorman than a hostess.

Christina walked in, seemingly over her shyness of a moment before. She studied the few postcards Anna had taped up on the wall with an apparently unfeigned interest. Piedmont came out from his skulking place under the table and twined himself around her ankles as if she were a long-lost cousin.

Anna watched, still with no words in her brain, as Christina picked the cat up and coiled him around her neck as if she'd been doing it all her life. She was wearing a jersey dress. The elongated tank top clung to her from shoulders to hips, then flared long, ending at mid-calf. On her feet were rubber thongs. The dress was Kelly green, the thongs lavender. Somehow Christina made it look fashionable. Piedmont, gold and shameless, completed the picture by draping himself like a fox fur across her shoulders.

Anna could smell the faint scent of White Linen.

Christina turned and smiled. Anna closed the door. Was the woman trying to seduce her? Or was it simply the knowledge that the possibility existed that preyed on her mind?

Wanting to destroy the silence, Anna punched the PLAY button on the tape player. The Chenille Sisters. Auto-rewind had brought them back to "I Wanna Be Seduced." Anna punched it off.

Christina, Piedmont slithering down in her arms to be held like a baby, was working her way around the single room that comprised all of Anna's living quarters. Pleasant, not prying, merely polite, she was taking in the fragments of Anna's life. Soon those dark eyes would stray across the desk top, across the snapshots.

"A beer," Anna said. "I've got wine. I'm drinking wine. Would you rather have that?"

"White wine would be nice," Christina replied, sounding genuinely delighted.

"You can sit." Like a traffic cop, Anna pointed to the arm chair. Besides being the only chair, it had the advantage of being on the other side of the room from the desk. Not only was Anna unsure whether or not she wanted Christina to know she had found the pictures-if, indeed, it was Christina who had been in Drury's trailer searching-but there was something about Christina Walters that made Anna want to spare her any shock, any unpleasantness. Though they were of her, the snaps seemed too explicit for Christina's dark eyes.

Anna did an awkward dip scooping up the offending photographs, and retreated to the kitchen area. Hidden behind the refrigerator door, she stuffed them into the hip pocket of her Levi's. Shortly thereafter, she emerged with a liter bottle of wine. Hoping she looked innocent but managing only to look relieved, she said inanely: "I got it."

Christina laughed. "One glass will do for starters-I'm a cheap date."

"I doubt that." Words came before thought. Though they sounded harsh, Anna meant them as a compliment. She waited a second to see how Christina would take it.

The woman smiled easily, crossed her long legs. Piedmont jumped to the floor. Lovely as it was, it was not a good lap for curling up in.

Anna poured a glass of wine for her guest and, returning to the desk, she topped off her own. The bottle she set on the floor by the kerosene lamp.

"Light it," Christina said. It sounded like the eager request of a child and not an order.

Fumbling with matches, Anna lit the lamp.

Christina Walters dropped gracefully to the floor and began looking through the tape collection Anna kept in shoe boxes beneath the coffee table. Seemingly she had more poise sitting on a stranger's carpet than Anna could muster in a straight-backed chair in her own home.

As she read the spines of the cassettes, Christina chatted comfortably of music. "I used to sing in the church choir when I was growing up in Tennessee," she said and she laughed. A nice round rich sound from somewhere deeper than nerves or politeness. "Momma thought I was such a devout little thing till she found out I only put up with all the talk about Jesus so I could have the music. There was a stop to choir after that, though not to church."

Anna smiled, handed Christina her wine. She took it in long tapered fingers, nails polished but not sharp or unkind-looking.

"To old friends and better days," Christina said. Sadness touched her face, warmed the brown eyes.

Anna felt her throat constrict. "Old friends," she repeated and drank to other dark eyes and lamp-lit nights.

"How about this? Sophistication in the wilderness. I love it." Christina held up Cole Porter's Anything Goes.

"One of my favorites," Anna replied, pleased that Christina had chosen that instead of a modern popular musician. "I sing some of those songs to Gideon to keep us both awake on the trail."

"I'll bet he loves it." Christina dropped the tape in.