Nevada Barr - Track Of The Cat

Pesky butted his head against Anna, rubbing the flies from his face. Absently, she scratched his forehead with her knuckles.

ALIBIS.

They came right after CLUES.

TIME to have another "beer" with Christina Walters. Anna fervently hoped she had spent all that deadly Friday with at least seven nuns who never slept. Or, better yet, in jail.

Rubberbands clamped in her teeth, she rebraided her hair. "Stalling?" she asked her reflection in the bathroom mirror. "Or primping?" For the fourteenth time she glanced at the clock: 6:17. When did one drop in on a mother-and-child? When did four-year-olds eat supper? Anna didn't feel up to interrogating Christina while her little girl looked on, round-eyed, over her bowl of SpaghettiOs. Not that Christina seemed a SpaghettiOs type of mother.

Not like me, Anna thought. Christina would be a four-major-food-groups kind of mother.

6:21.

Anna combed the braids out with her fingers, left her hair loose and crimped. Annoyed at herself for caring, she purposely-or spitefully-pulled on ragged jeans and a faded sweatshirt Rogelio had salvaged from some good-will box in El Paso because it had Mickey Mouse on it. Still and all, she was wearing perfume-"Heartsong" from the Tucson Coop-and she carried a nice Pinot Noir she'd been saving.

Christina and Alison lived in one of the two-bedroom-with-garage houses sprinkled down the curving roadway from where the seasonals, Anna, and two bachelor maintenance men were housed. Housing was always at a premium in the parks and usually sub-standard. Anna was lucky: she didn't much care. The Walters lived in what Anna referred to as the "real" houses: houses with washers and dryers and telephones and televisions and families.

The unmistakable racket of plastic wheels on pavement let Anna know supper was either over or not yet called. Alison was riding her pink tricycle in tight circles on the smooth cement pad in front of the garage.

"Hi," Anna said. "Is your mother home?"

It was a stupid question. Alison probably knew it but, being a well-brought-up child, chose to overlook it. "Momma's in the back," she announced. "I'm not to go on the black."

Anna stared a second before she realized what Alison meant. She was not to ride her tricycle off the white cement slab onto the black asphalt and into the road and traffic. Hence the tight circles. "Good idea," Anna said and: "The backyard?"

Alison nodded, starting up her trike again with burring engine noise blown out through pursed lips.

Christina, wearing white painter's overalls and a pale yellow tank top, knelt near the chainlink fence weeding a flower bed rich with the colors of marigolds and snapdragons.

"Exotics," Anna said, "take a lot of water to maintain in the desert."

"Good evening," Christina returned, mocking Anna gently. "Did you just drop by to abuse me?" As she stood, she smiled and held open the gate.

"More or less," Anna replied truthfully. "But I brought an anesthetic."

Christina nodded appreciatively as she read the label on the wine bottle. "I like reds better than whites. Even in summer I like the warmth."

Anna laughed for the sheer pleasure of hearing one of her pet thoughts voiced by someone else.

"It'll be better aged an hour or so." Christina set the wine just inside the porch door. "Ally and I were going to come by and abduct you this evening. We need your expert advice.

"Honey? Ready to go?" she called, shooing Anna out the garden gate as the tricycle clattered down the walk beside the house to meet them. In mild but not unpleasant confusion, Anna waited as Christina supervised the putting away of the trike.

"Do you want to tell Ranger Pigeon where we're going?" Christina asked as the three of them walked out the drive and turned up past the seasonal housing.

"Anna," Anna said.

Alison bounded away ahead of them, then walked backward several yards in front. "Dottie's neighbor's cat had kittens. Momma said I could have one and that you knew how to pick the best one because you had an orange cat."

"Dottie Bernard lives up at the highway camp," Christina explained. "She sits with Alison week days."

Anna was flattered-all out of proportion to the event, she told herself-but still, she enjoyed the feeling. Maybe Molly was right. Maybe it had been too long since she'd had a friend. Too many years spent looking at other human beings as merely creatures the wildlands needed to be protected from.

In the end Christina may have been sorry she asked Anna along. To Alison's great delight, Anna's expert advice was two kittens, so they could play together when she was away at the sitter's all day.

" Piedmont doesn't have anyone to play with," Christina said half accusingly.

" Piedmont was an only child," Anna returned.

"Like Ally." Christina looked sad for an instant then banished it with a smile. "Two kittens," she said.

Alison picked out two black kittens, one with a white mustache, one with two white front paws. They carried them home in a cardboard VCR box. Under Anna's supervision it was converted into a litter box and food and warm milk set out to make the kittens feel at home.

"You mustn't play with them too much," Anna warned, echoing words she remembered her mother saying over the furry heads of the many kittens she and Molly had dragged home over the years. "Or they'll get sick. And you must be especially gentle with them for a few days because they'll miss their momma."

When they'd all three been settled in front of the TV, Alison watching Cheers and the kittens curled together asleep on her lap, Christina made microwave popcorn and opened the Pinot Noir.

"My hair is so mousey!" she said with an implied snort of disgust. "I'm thinking of getting it permed or streaked or something. What do you think?"

Girl-talk. God! how Anna had missed it without ever knowing she was. Much-maligned girl-talk: sweethearts and hair, new clothes and getting your colors done, movies and books and music and gossip. But not the backbiting and undercutting that stung like a canker through all levels of the Park Service. Real gossip; gossip about why people did the bizarre things they did, said the outrageous things they said, believed the improbable things they believed. Gossip to ferret out what people must be thinking, what made them tick. So much more satisfying than the mannish "I told the so-and-so, I said by God" variety that had buffeted Anna's ears for so long.

They talked through two television shows, through putting Alison to bed, through the last of the wine. Anna forgot the reason she'd needed to talk with Christina in the first place.

Cups of decaf in their hands, they had moved out onto the back porch and were sitting in darkness watching the heat lightning flicker on the horizon over Van Horn sixty miles to the south when she remembered.

Then she only wanted to forget it again, for all time, but she knew she couldn't. Rightly or wrongly, she felt she'd come to know Christina too well to creep around about it.

"I've been thinking a lot about Sheila's death," she said without preamble. "Some new things have come up that make me think she was murdered, then the murder was covered up by somebody wanting it to look like a lion killed her."

There was a long silence, deepened by the distant sound of thunder. Anna wished she could see Christina's face but the darkness under the porch roof was too deep.

"Oh my Lord. To kill her… That can't be right. It takes such hate. Watching the life go from someone… Forcing it out. No, Anna, that can't be right. Why would anyone kill Sheila?"

All Anna's answers froze on her tongue. So long had she been contemplating this murder, she had forgotten it would be a shock to Chris, would ruin her sleep and haunt her when she was awake. Unless she had done it. Especially if she had done it.