Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon 13 - Hard Truth

by Hard Truth(lit)

  Of course there were still Minnie and Mickey and their little friends tortured and murdered.

  "I've thought a lot about the mouse thing," Ray said eventually. "There wasn't really anybody else who could have done it except maybe me or Rita. Still, it makes no sense. I kind of have to believe he did it for a rea-son. If he did it at all. You know, an experiment or a warning or... I don't know. It's just a feeling. I can't explain it any better."

  "Ray's right," Rita said. "Robert would be incapable of anything like that. He's the only person I know who really wouldn't hurt a fly. He'd put it out."

  Anna drank her tea, stared out the window and tried to figure out why Rita's remark, harmless enough but for a bit of hyperbole, made her uneasy.

  It wasn't until supper had been eaten, the dishes done and the ache in her back fortified against by two Advil, that the answer came. Anna was making her way to the privy, an action which, forever after, would make her think of mice, when she realized what bothered her.

  Rita had known what "the mouse thing" was.

  sixteen

  Colorado was arguably one of the most beautiful states in the Union. Probably among the most scenic areas on earth. At least parts of it were. The Rollin' Roost RV park was not one of these parts. What was gilt-edged summer ten miles west was sun-baked doldrums outside Heath's window. Another thing Heath missed about being ambulatory: now it was such a production getting in and out of anywhere, she could no longer just "run out for cigarettes" when guests threatened to bore her to death, a fate that seemed ever more probable as the woman on the couch babbled on. And on.

  Gwen, who had a sixth sense about who was going to be excruciatingly tedious, made her escape early on the scooter. The limpet was, after all, Heath's pet project. She pulled her gaze back into the well-appointed recreation vehicle, grown claustrophobic from too many hours, and now too many people, inside. Had she the legs of Man O' War she knew she wouldn't have left anyway. The hungry, hurt, hopeful, hopeless face of Beth Dwayne, her very own limpet, kept her more firmly rooted to her seat than her damaged spinal cord could. This was the third "supervised visit" that had been allowed since she and her aunt moved into the Rollin' Roost four days before. The first had been with full retinue: Momma, Poppa and Alexis Sheppard filling in what space remained after the plump Mrs. Dwayne and her daughter squeezed in around Heath's wheelchair. Later it was just Sharon Sheppard and Mrs. Dwayne in atten-dance. Now just Mrs. Dwayne. Heath asked after Alexis but had been told only that she "hadn't been feeling well." Heath had hoped, finally, she'd have a chance to really talk with Beth, but that was not happening.

  Beth's mom had grown way too comfortable. For the past hour- Heath glanced at her watch, half-hour, just four o'clock, sixty minutes before alcohol was socially acceptable-Mrs. Dwayne had been droning on about Mr. Sheppard, his great deeds, his love of the Lord, his special connection with heaven and with Mrs. Dwayne.

  Anna Pigeon suspected Mrs. Dwayne of being another Mrs. Sheppard, and Heath agreed. Had the woman not been so god-awful boring, she might even have felt sympathy for her. She was dumpy and plain and older than the lithe, blond Mrs. Sheppard. The green-eyed monster was catholic in nature and no respecter of cults, creeds or customs. Again she looked at her watch. Four-oh-two. Heath was rather surprised she'd not given up and gone home to her cozy condo in Boulder. In this first great outdoor adventure, she and Gwen hadn't traveled more than a couple hours from home. More than once-more than a hundred times were she honest with herself-she'd thought of it. Each time, the limpet's eyes stopped her. For reasons that Heath didn't understand, Beth looked to her as the capable one, the strong one, the trusted one. The one who could move mountains. Not Ranger Pigeon with her great big gun or Mr. Shep-pard with his great big ego or her mother with her great big mouth. Her. Heath Jarrod. A woman broken on a pile of rock and ice. Heath knew she could not lose that look even as she felt a fraud for accepting it.

  Four-oh-five. The limpet looked up from where she sat docilely by her mother. Those eyes. Heath had to find a way to talk with her. Necessity mothered invention: "Would you like a cherry cordial?" she intruded into Mrs. Dwayne's monologue. "It's quite good, if a little sweet."

  The word "sweet" caught the woman's attention. "A cordial? Don't they have alcohol in them?"

  "Not enough to matter," Heath lied easily. The cherry cordial in Gwen's private stash was a hundred and eighty proof, but Heath kept that to herself.

  "Maybe a taste," Mrs. Dwayne said.

  Heath poured enough over ice to take out a regiment of Cossacks and gave it to Beth's mother, then put a couple of tablespoons in a glass of ice water so she could keep her guest company.

  The piously abstemious Mrs. Dwayne took to drink with a passion. Within a quarter of an hour she'd sucked down a third of the syrupy stuff. Within half an hour she was waxing rhapsodic about Heath's great kind-ness to her family. By twenty minutes of five she was revealing herself as a mean drunk.

  "Sharon-Mrs. Sheppard-is no better than she should be," she con-fided owlishly. "When she was brought to us she was a skinny little pinch of a girl, fifteen or sixteen-I can't remember. Her folks had come down from our sister group in Canada but they didn't last long. Oh no. The desert just wasn't good enough for them. Mr. Sheppard wasn't good enough for them," she added, as if this proved what ungrateful malcon-tents they truly were. 'According to the divine couple, Elijah Farmer, this Canadian, for heaven's sake-oh, he was an American but that wears right off after a few years if you ask me-was the prophet and Mr. Shep-pard was just a big nothing. That didn't go over with Mr. Sheppard at all." She laughed a nasty little laugh. "Didn't he just send them packing! But little Miss Sharon, all baby-blue eyes and cotton-candy hair. She had her sights set, that's all I'm going to say. Had 'em set way high, snooting around like a golden virgin child. Well. I had my doubts about that and I told Mr. Sheppard as much. But you know men, even those chosen by God, have penises." This last word was whispered, hissed actually, as if the male appendage was a form of demonic possession visited upon half the human race. "It made him crazy for her. He would have her. So he did. And Alexis is no better. Little tramp. Serves Sharon right. She's getting just what she deserves. It wouldn't surprise me one little bit if Alexis took the girls up into the hills for whatever, then came traipsing back when she tired of the game."

  Mrs. Dwayne had begun slurring her words. The glass was empty. Heath smiled. "Can I get you another glass? Talking is thirsty work," she offered.

  "Just a wee sip," Mrs. Dwayne demurred.

  By six, the woman was out cold, slumped in an untidy heap on the sofa, snoring loudly.

  Heath took the glass from her hand and set it on the counter. For what seemed like a very long time Beth stared at the grumbling heap that was her mother. "Will she be all right?" she finally asked.

  "She'll be fine," Heath said. "How about you? Will you be fine?" She rolled close to the sofa. "You can talk to me, you know."

  Beth looked at her mother, snoring peacefully two feet away.

  "She's asleep. Nobody can hear us but Wiley, and he's good at keeping secrets."

  "You won't tell anybody, will you?" She shot a significant look at the snorer lest Heath be unaware who "anybody" was.

  "I won't," Heath swore. "Scout's honor."

  "Like Daniel Boone?"

  The question made Heath acutely aware of how little their home schooling was going to prepare them for the greater world. But that wasn't its aim. Keeping them in the fold was closer to the mark.

  "Yeah," Heath said, not wanting to get sidetracked into Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, Brownies and Bluebirds.

  "Robert talked to me and Alexis," Beth told her.

  "I know. Said goodbye and that he was going to find Candace. That lady ranger called and told me."

  "No." Beth leaned forward till her face was scarcely a foot from Heath's, and whispered, "Since then."

  "He came again?"

  The girl nodded.

  ''What did he want?"


  "He told us that Candace was alive and he knew how to find her." Given the cheery message, the sudden tears that accompanied it were incongruous. They splattered on the lenses of Beth's old-fashioned glasses, then trickled beneath the plastic frame.

  Despite the tears and big eyes, she didn't sound terribly frightened. More hopeful than anything. Hopeful for what? That their friend still lived? And what did the tears indicate? Relief? Sorrow?

  Several days had passed since Heath last talked with Anna Pigeon. Last she'd heard, Robert was still missing and still the prime suspect in the abduction. Not wanting to frighten Beth back into the web of secrecy and lies she'd been trapped in, Heath carefully asked, "How is it that he knows where she is?"

  Clearly Beth hadn't given this much thought. She was of an age when facts, or purported facts, are shoveled at children by the truckload. Not having the experience to weigh them, all information is more or less accepted at face value, the proclamations of the sages given the same weight as those of the girl sitting one row ahead in homeroom.

  "I guess he found her," Beth said finally.

  'And then he came back to New Canaan? When?"

  "Last night. That's why I had to see you today, to tell you Candace is okay."

  "You actually saw Robert last night?" Heath was trying not to sound too anything: too skeptical, too excited, too interested.

  The limpet looked toward her mother but Mrs. Dwayne was down for the count. "We didn't see him, exactly, but he talked to us."

  "How did he talk to you if you didn't see him? He came to your bed-room window or what?"

  "No. Alexis and I don't sleep together. I'm still in the girls' quarters with the little kids. But every night after the evening service it's our job to take the trash out to the barrels behind the house and burn it. It's fun. lighting fires."

  Heath nodded. As a girl she'd had pyromaniacal tendencies as well. She loved fire. Couldn't leave it alone. When her father found her playing with fire behind the big propane tank, it had scared him so much he changed the rules. Instead of being forbidden to ignite things she was given permission to play with fire all she wanted as long as she did it under his supervision. The apprenticeship had served her well. Regardless of weather, she could get a campfire going when others failed.

  "So you were out burning the garbage," she said. "What happened then?"

  "Well, it was dark and the cans are pretty far out. There's brush all around and we heard Robert's voice. He said Candace was okay."

  For a while they sat in silence, Mrs. Dwayne snoring softly, Beth look-ing at Heath as if she expected her to pull a rabbit out of a hat or some-thing similarly miraculous. Heath was fresh out of rabbits, out of magic of any kind. She needed help. She needed to talk to Ranger Pigeon. She needed to shift this burden of love and trust off onto a person who could deal with it. A whole person. In the end she knew she couldn't. Abled or disabled, she was the one Beth had chosen as her champion.

  "What else?" she asked gently.

  "Robert asked us to go with him."

  That sent a shaft of ice down Heath's spine. "He did?"

  "He said to follow him."

  "Did you want to?"

  Beth didn't choose to answer but Heath could see the indecision, temptation warring with fear in her face.

  "Momma came out then, hollering for us, and we had to go in."

  Thank god for Momma, Heath thought. So many questions needed answering it was a physical hardship to keep herself from riding rough-shod over the child. The missing weeks, Candace, Heath sensed these were not areas Beth could go into yet.

  "Why might you want to leave home?" she asked instead.

  For a while she didn't think Beth was going to tell her. The girl looked to her comatose mother, to Wiley, flopped on the rug in front of the sink, out the window at the enormous RV parked next door. "We wouldn't. Not really, I guess. I mean, where would we go? We're not even old enough to drive. But Alexis wants to a lot. She says it's hard not being in the girls' quarters anymore. Maybe Robert could take care of us." She looked plead-ingly up at Heath. "You know, till we're old enough to get jobs."

  That was a lot more answer than Heath had bargained for, and she felt a wave of helplessness so great it put that of merely not walking for a few decades to shame. She wanted to grab the child and hold her safe from the shadowy evils that permeated her young life but she didn't even have a firm grip on what those evils were, what menaced the limpet from with-out and what from within. Feeling a failure but not knowing what else to do, she changed the subject.

  "What's wrong with Alexis? Your mom said she wasn't feeling well."

  The disappointment in Beth's eyes stung. The declaration that fol-lowed stunned her. "Morning sickness," Beth said matter-of-factly.

  "Who is the father?" Heath asked, attempting to sound as calm and accepting as her young friend.

  This question brought on the embarrassment and horror that Heath had felt was missing from the original declaration.

  "Oh no. Oh no." The limpet curled down into the couch reminding Heath of the girl she'd been when she'd first come out of the woods.

  "Does it have to do with the time you can't remember?" Heath asked gently.

  Beth looked like a small animal cornered by wolves. Heath thought to retract her question, then decided to let it lie. Whatever had happened to the children during the weeks they were missing, it would be a boon psychologically if they could talk about it.

  The annoying Mrs. Dwayne chose this moment to puff and snort herself awake. Heath could happily have strangled her but Beth looked relieved.

  "My goodness!" Mrs. Dwayne exclaimed. "I must have been more tired than I thought. We'd best be getting home." With a minimum of lurching and stumbling, she gathered her purse and her daughter and loaded them into the old Dodge Caravan the New Canaanites shared.

  Heath felt mildly guilty allowing an inebriate behind the wheel, but consoled herself with the thought that there wasn't much to collide with between Rollin' Roost and the commune, and the rough dirt road would keep Mrs. Dwayne's speed down.

  Watching them go, she realized how desperately she, too, needed to move, to be free of the aluminum box she was calling home at the moment.

  Having lowered herself down on the hydraulic lift, she rolled around to the other side of the RV where she could see the mountains. Heath was as tired as if she'd scaled the highest peak in the Rockies. For the first time since the fall, she realized there were more challenging and worth-while mountains to climb than those made of granite and ice.

  seventeen

  Raymond gave up his bunk and slept in the room dedicated to tools. The mattress on the bunk Anna claimed was old and flat, the metal mesh sprung, but after a night spent on granite and manzanita it felt like the Plaza Hotel on Central Park to her. She was asleep long before Rita deemed it time to turn in. Regardless of the relentless ache from nape to knees, she might have gone on sleeping through the night had it not been for Fern Lake Cabin's legacy of mice. Or what she first took to be mice.

  A noise which, to a sleep-drugged mind, sounded like the squeak of a sizable rodent, forced Anna awake in the strange chill hours between midnight and dawn. Through the wall she bunked against came the sounds of mutterings and thrashings and bumpings. Too big to be mice. For a while Anna lay staring at the slightly darker darkness of the bunk over hers, hoping for a return to silence and, if she was lucky, the analgesic of sleep.

  Having served her time in tents and other thin-walled communal liv-ing situations, she wasn't terribly surprised when the thumps settled into the rhythmic pulse of the mating dance. Knowing she would disturb no one, Anna clicked on the tiny Mag-Lite she carried as part of her standard pocket detritus. Three-forty-seven A.M. The bottom bunk opposite was unoccupied, as she'd expected it would be. At least her rest had not been broken entirely in vain. One mystery was solved: why Rita, a backcountry ranger who hiked for a living, would go hiking into Fern Lake on her day off. Anna smiled and switched off the
Mag-Lite. If a Christian were hell-bent on a little fornication, Fern Lake was certainly a beautiful place for it.

  Morning came as a misery. Each and every tissue in Anna's back begged her not to move, screamed at her as she pulled on her shorts and shirt, and tried in every way possible to convince her that she'd aged forty years overnight. She winced out into the living area to find Ray and Rita drinking coffee and looking annoyingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Spurred on by a temporary hatred of all good cheer, she said, "The mice were certainly restive last night."