Nevada Barr - Track Of The Cat

"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.

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.