Reichs, Kathy - Fatal Voyage

I looked icicles at him. I would have preferred a lifetime of tax audits to telling Crowe of the Volvo incident.

She listened without interrupting.

“Did you get the license number?”

“No.”

“Can you describe the driver?”

“Wearing a cap.”

“What kind of cap?”

“I couldn't tell.” I could feel my cheeks flush with humiliation.

“Was anyone else present?”

“No. I checked. Look, the whole thing may have been an accident. Maybe it was a kid peeling out in Daddy's Volvo.”

“Is that what you think?” The celery eyes were locked on mine.

“No. I don't know.”

I placed my hands on the tabletop, pulled them back, and wiped spilled beer onto my jeans.

“While I was on the reservation I thought of something that might be helpful,” I said, changing the subject.

“Oh?”

I described the foot bone research and explained how the measurements could be used to determine racial background.

“So I may be able to sort out your rainbow coalition.”

“I'll talk with Daniel Wahnetah's kin tomorrow.”

She swirled the ice in her 7UP.

“But I unearthed some interesting facts about George Adair.”

“The missing angler?”

A Crowe nod.

“Adair saw his doctor twelve times during the past year. Seven of those visits were for throat problems. The other five were for pain in his feet.”

“Hot dog.”

“It gets better. Adair's only gone one week, his grieving widow takes a trip to Las Vegas with the next-door neighbor.”

I waited while she drained her 7UP.

“The neighbor is George Adair's best friend.”

“And fishing buddy?”

“You've got it.”

THE NEXT MORNING I SLEPT UNTIL EIGHT, FED BOYD, AND OVERdosed on one of Ruby's mountain breakfasts. My hostess had bonded with the dog, and that day's Scripture lauded the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and things that creepeth upon the earth. I wondered if Boyd qualified as a creeper but didn't ask.

Ryan hadn't appeared by the time I left the dining room. Either he was out early, sacking in, or passing up the hotcakes, bacon, and grits. We'd returned from Injun Joe's around eleven the previous night, and he'd proffered his usual invitation. I'd left him on the front porch, swinging without me.

I was climbing to Magnolia when my cell phone rang. It was Primrose, calling from the incident morgue.

“You must have risen with the birds.”

“Have you been outside?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

“It's a great gettin'-up morning out there.”

“Did you get the fax?”

“I surely did. Studied the descriptions and diagrams and took every measurement.”

“You're amazing, Primrose.”

I double-stepped the last few stairs, raced to my room, and opened the file on case number 387. After jotting down the new figures, we compared Primrose's data with that which I'd already collected.

“Each of your measurements is within one millimeter of mine,” I said. “You're good.”

“You got that right.”

Confident that inter-observer error would not be a problem, I thanked her, and asked when I could get the chapter. She suggested I meet her at the parking lot gate in twenty minutes. In her opinion, entry into the morgue was not yet an option for me.

Primrose must have been watching, for as soon as I left the highway she emerged through the morgue's back door and began picking her way across the lot, cane in one hand, plastic grocery bag in the other.

Meanwhile, the guard came forward, read my license plate, and checked a clipboard. Then he shook his head, held one hand in a halt gesture, and signaled me to reverse direction with the other. Primrose approached him and said a few words.

The guard continued to signal and shake his head. Primrose leaned close and spoke again, old black woman to young black man. The guard rolled his eyes, then folded his hands across his chest and watched her continue toward my car, a five-star general in boots, fatigues, and granny bun.

Leaning on her cane, she handed the bag through the driver's-side window. Her face was serious a moment, then a smile lighted her eyes, and she patted me on the shoulder.

“Don't you pay this trouble no mind, Tempe. You haven't done any of those things and they'll see that soon.”

“Thanks, Primrose. You're right, but it's hard.”

“Course it is. But I'm keeping you in my prayers.”

Her voice was as soothing as a Brandenburg Concerto.

“In the meantime, you just take one day at a time. One damn day at a time.”

With that she turned and set off toward the morgue.

I'd rarely heard Primrose Hobbs curse.

Back in my room, I pulled out the chapter, flipped to Table IV, plugged in the measurements, and did the math.

The foot classified as American Indian.

I calculated again, using a second function.

Though closer to the cluster for African Americans, the foot still fell with the Native Americans.

George Adair was white, Jeremiah Mitchell was black. So much for the missing fisherman and the man who'd borrowed his neighbor's ax.

Unless he'd wandered back to the reservation, Daniel Wahnetah was looking like a match.

I checked my watch. Ten forty-five. Late enough.

The sheriff was not in. No. They would not phone her at home. No. They would not give out her pager number. Was this an emergency? They would relay the message that I had called.

Damn. Why hadn't I gotten Crowe's pager number?

For the next two hours I engaged in irrelevant activity, directed by the brain for tension relief rather than goal attainment. Behaviorists call it displacement.

Following a laundry session involving panties in the bathroom sink, I sorted and organized the contents of my briefcase, deleted temporary files from my laptop, balanced my checkbook, and rearranged Ruby's glass animal collection. I then phoned my daughter, sister, and estranged husband.

Pete did not answer, and I assumed he was still in Indiana. Katy did not answer, and I made no assumptions. Harry kept me on the phone for forty minutes. She was quitting her job, having trouble with her teeth, and dating a man named Alvin from Denton. Or was it Denton from Alvin?

I was testing the ring options on my phone when a strange baying arose from the yard, like a hound in a Bela Lugosi movie. Peering through the screen, I saw Boyd seated in the middle of his run, head thrown back, a wail rising from his throat.

“Boyd.”

He stopped howling and looked around. Far down the mountain I heard a siren.

“I'm up here.”

The dog stood and cocked his head, then the purple tongue slid out.

“Look up, boy.”

Reverse cock.

“Up!” I clapped my hands.

The chow spun, ran to the end of the pen, sat, and resumed his love song to the ambulance.

The first thing one notices on meeting Boyd is his disproportionately large head. It was becoming clear that the dog's cranial capacity was in no way related to the size of his intellect.

Grabbing jacket and leash, I headed out.

The temperature was still warm, but the sky was slowly filling with dark-centered clouds. Wind flapped my jacket and gusted leaves and pine needles across the gravel road.

This time we did the uphill lap first, Boyd charging ahead, huffing and coughing as the collar tightened across his larynx. He raced from tree to tree, sniffing and squirting, while I gazed into the valley below, each of us enjoying the mountain in our own way.

We'd gone perhaps a half mile when Boyd froze and his head shot up. The fur went stiff along his spine, his mouth half opened, and a growl rose from the back of his throat, a sound quite different from the siren display.