by Kate Wilhelm
"He didn't say that," Brice said.
"She did."
Later that day she and Jud had gone to visit Felicia. Brice had begged off; he had said he wanted to nap, but she had thought that he simply didn't want to spend any time with Felicia, who, he had said once, was a terrific bore. Jud had warned her that she would get sunburned if she didn't put a shirt on, and she had worn one of his over her bathing suit. She blinked hard, trying to erase the memory of rowing her father across the lake to Felicia's cottage. He had laughed and said she had lost the touch, she was getting soft.
"What else did the police have to say?"
"That lieutenant wants to see you tomorrow. He brought a list of people who had signed in at the campsites, to see if I recognized any names. I didn't. And he had a picture, a drawing of a guy who flew into Bend that night. I never saw him before. He wants you to give him a call first thing in the morning.
"Now they think someone might have flown to Bend, walked to the lake, swum across and shot my father," she said scornfully, thinking of Felicia's mysterious stranger.
"I don't know what in hell they think," Brice said. "But not that; it's just another one of the lieutenant's loose ends. They're more interested in Willa." He looked at the fire then. "What they're suggesting is that she could have driven up Friday afternoon, all the way up to the cabin. During the night they had a quarrel, he signed off, and she shot him and then searched for whatever he had written about her, and the next morning she drove back down and out."
Abby's mouth had gone dry as he spoke. Willa had been questioned for more than two hours on Monday; she had been badly shaken afterward and had said practically nothing about the session. Abby shook her head. "I don't believe it! I'll never believe it!"
Brice turned to her, his face stiff in a frown, his expression remote. "The point is, you don't know," he said intensely. "They don't, either. But it could have been like that. I think you shouldn't be working at the museum for the next few weeks, not until this thing is settled, done with, until they come up with answers. And, for the love of God, don't spend time with her, tell her anything you suspect, confide in any way. Not yet."
Abby stood up, her arms folded tightly against her body. Before she could say anything, Brice shook his head and motioned her back down. She remained standing.
"Honey, listen, if they clear her, if that guy who flew into Bend did it, they'll nab him eventually, and I'll apologize. Maybe he was an extortionist, a blackmailer. Maybe he's still hanging around. No one knows. But, Abby, you have to take the suspicion of Willa's involvement seriously, consider it a possibility, and be careful. That lieutenant, Caldwell, he's taking it seriously, and he's no fool."
He leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes for a moment; he looked bone tired and very young, and frightened. "Lieutenant Caldwell suggested that you should be very careful. Honey, you should keep away from all of this, don't speculate, don't voice your suspicions, just get on with those sympathy notes, see if you can put the novel together, do whatever else you have piled up. Start thinking about what you want to do with a lot of money. Make plans. Next week you'll get the Hollywood contract, and that's going to take time to read, to study. You don't need the museum job on top of everything else. If you decide to go back to it in a year or two, or just a month or two, it'll be there. But keep away from Willa for now. Please."
"Put it out of mind, get on with life, let the police handle everything," she said bitterly. "That's what you're really saying, isn't it? You think I give a shit about the money, the contract, plans for next year? I haven't given any of that shit a single thought. All I can think of is that someone shot and killed my father! Can't you grasp that? Someone killed him, and if there's anything I can do to help find out who that was, I'll do it. If I need to talk to Willa, or Felicia, or anyone else to try to sort it out for myself, I'll talk to her. If I get an idea— speculate—and if that speculation seems valid, I'll tell the police. I'm not going to back off and wait and see what happens. I can't!"
"Goddamn it, Abby! That's all you can do! You start prying, meddling, and you put yourself in danger! That's what you can accomplish." He jumped up and went to the hearth, poked at the fire viciously, then swung around to face her. He was very pale. "Let me tell you what I've been seeing happen to you. First a kind of deep shock that I was afraid you might not snap out of, might need medical care for, even an institution. And now some kind of obsessive behavior that's even scarier. You're becoming obsessed, even delusional if you believe you can do the police work. They come up with a likely theory, and you simply dismiss it without a second thought. For more than two years you and Willa were distant, hardly even friends, and now suddenly you believe every word she utters! That's irrational, Abby, and it's scary."
She turned her back and started to walk away stiffly.
"Damn it, Abby, this needs saying, and you need to listen! You had a rift with your father; everyone does sooner or later. You had to cut that string, if not over one thing, then something else would have come along. Kids have to cut the strings! I did. You did. We all have to. You couldn't keep jumping into the car and running out there every time he snapped his fingers. You know that and you're denying it, and you're letting your guilt drive you into some kind of paranoid thinking."
"Who the fuck appointed you to be my shrink?" she cried furiously, jerking around to face him again. "Just back off! You're not my keeper."
"You need a keeper!" Suddenly he stiffened, staring at her. Slowly he replaced the poker he was still holding. "Christ!" he whispered. "He's doing it now, after his death. He couldn't do it alive, and now he's doing it, coming between us, separating us."
"He never tried to come between us!"
"He did, in a thousand little ways. You were blind to his manipulations, his little digs. He never liked me; from the day we first met, he had it in for me, and you were blind to that. I never said a word, I couldn't. Your fixation was too deep, and it didn't matter, not really; as long as we were together, you were happy with me, our life, the rest didn't matter. Let him dig and poke, I thought. You were my wife, we loved each other, and you would come to see him one day, see the truth about him."
Abby shook her head. "It wasn't like that," she said angrily. "He was willing to accept you; you were the one who was judgmental, too disapproving of him, of his lifestyle, living out alone like that. Before you knew anything about his past, the women, any of it, you were disapproving. The first time I took you out to the cabin, you said, He's strange, isn't he, not quite all there. I said he was reclusive, people who lived out like that tended to be reclusive, but so what? And the time we went up to the hot spring and you were so shocked because people took off all their clothes. Shocked that he had allowed me to go there ever. He thought that was funny. For you to be that shocked. He said with a body like yours you should strip to the buff most of the time. You acted like a preacher warding off an unrepentant sinner, and he thought that was funny."
"Everything I take seriously, he thought was funny," Brice said. "He mocked everything I did and said."
"Well, you really never said much to him, did you?" She heard her voice become sharper and drew in a breath, then said in a more conciliatory tone, "I can't remember a real conversation between you two ever. He didn't give a rat's ass about money, finances, and you turned mute when it came to books or art. I wasn't blind to what was happening. There it was, and it was okay. I could love you both, different as you were; I could and did love you both. I never expected or wanted you to be more like him, or for him to be like you. All right, you disapproved of my father, so did I a lot of times. I could accept that. But he never did or said a thing to try to come between us, never. He was generous to us, and he left us strictly alone. No gratuitous advice, or questions, or interference of any sort."
"If I was out of line, I'm sorry," Brice said, his face wooden, his voice almost toneless.
"Not if," she snapped.
He hesitated, then nodded. "I'm sorry. Let'
s just say we saw the same things and interpreted them different ways. Leave it at that. And, Abby, we're having the first quarrel we've ever had, and it's about him. At least you can agree to that, can't you?
"I'm not sure it's about him," she said slowly. "I don't know what it's about." She started to walk toward the foyer. "But let's leave it alone. Is there anything in the house for dinner? I don't want to go out. I'm too grubby and in no mood to get dolled up. I'd rather have a pizza or something later on. Right now I'm going to start hauling that stuff upstairs."
Brice closed the fire screen. "Pizza's okay. I'm going up, too. I'll carry those boxes."
Her room had become a cluttered mess, she thought disgustedly after Brice set down the third carton and withdrew in silence. Novel, short stories, the bits and pieces of Jud's life, her life, everyone's life in another box. The box of notes she had already written and not mailed yet, and the other box with the sympathy notes she had not answered ... And now a stack of computer disks, and she knew there wasn't space on her computer to hold the contents. She was still too angry, and too tired, to start sorting, organizing, putting away. . .. She sat down at her desk and closed her eyes.
No one ever mentioned how exhausted the survivors would be, she thought. In novels and movies they simply picked up the pieces and got on with things. How would Jud have handled that fight downstairs? she wondered then. And her eyes jerked open. Had he written about their fight over Willa? Had he seen her point of view? Had he written himself as villain? Her gaze fixed on the box that held his unpublished and un-publishable scraps, scenes, his camcorder reports. Their fight had been about Willa. Had he already been in love with her two years ago? What had he written about Willa?
Suddenly it occurred to her that her fight with Brice had started out with Willa; that was the root of it. Willa. Twice now. The only really bitter fight she'd ever had with her father, about Willa. The only fight at all she had ever had with Brice, about Willa.
She wondered again how Jud would have written about her fight with Brice. He would have seen both sides, she told herself, and tried to make her mind work the way Jud's mind had. Brice's side: worried about her, frightened that she had been more than a little crazy for a week, more frightened that she seemed oblivious to what he believed was the truth, that she could be in danger if she meddled in police matters, that Willa was a prime suspect and could be dangerous. As aware as she was that if anyone fell into the lake, that person could die; the water was so cold now that hypothermia would be swift following the shock of a plunge into ice water. Worried about her driving in the snow; she had not told him about the studded tires, but that wouldn't have alleviated his worry all that much. He always said it was the other guy you had to be afraid of when it snowed, a maniac losing control, going into a skid, hitting you.
And, of course, he was a survivor, too, probably almost as tired as she was. And the stress of having the police suspect him, as, of course, they did. Motive: money. What else? Her money, but his, too, as far as the police were concerned. Having the police check his alibi, question his associates, check the motel he had stayed in, everything.
Then, his work. This was always a bad time of year, starting to prepare the annual reports for the clients, on top of the day-to-day routine. Preparing for the annual audit, making sure everything was in order. And this year was particularly bad, as he had said, with the market doing insane gyrations and clients who were anxious and demanding.
From his point of view, she was the one being unsympathetic and unyielding, unreasonable at a time when they both were under such tremendous stress that they needed each other's support, not withdrawal and contention. She bit her lip as the realization hit her that this was probably how Jud had worked through so many things, by seeing both sides clearly.
She sat thinking, unmoving for a long time, and finally decided that it didn't really matter if they believed different things; it had never mattered in the past, and it didn't now. They were different in almost all ways, but neither of them had cared. She could never believe Willa had killed Jud, and he did believe it was a possibility. Since neither of them knew anything concrete about Jud's death, there was no reason to talk about it. All they could do was speculate, and then quarrel. So, leave it alone. He wanted her to stop working at the museum, and gazing at the many boxes of papers scattered about the room, she agreed, she should quit for now. Attend to matters at hand. And he would have to accept that she was seeing Felicia now and then. No reason to say every day, she told herself, but neither would she pretend she wasn't seeing her. Compromise, she told herself. Take the first step, or the anger that had arisen would deepen and become too ugly to deal with later. What she would not do was let it simmer just below the surface the way her fight with Jud had simmered for two years. She nodded at her own reasonableness and left the study.
It was after six-thirty when she tapped on his door, then opened it. "Pizza? Anchovies?"
He looked startled, almost disbelieving. It was a standing joke: he had said once that anchovies on pizza made him want to throw up. She always suggested them. She grinned at him, and he got up from his desk, crossed to her, and put his arm around her shoulder, and together they went downstairs to discuss pizzas.
11
Waiting for Lieutenant Caldwell to arrive the next morning, Abby went over the list of errands she had to do that day: drop by the museum and pick up the few things she had left there. She had called Willa and told her she wouldn't be able to keep working for a while. She had to buy a laptop computer. Knowing she couldn't afford it, she had decided to use a credit card, and by the time the charge appeared, she would have something ready to tell Brice. In six months she might become a rich bitch, she thought darkly, but today she was broke. On reflection, it seemed this had been her life as long as she could remember, always something coming in tomorrow, seldom enough today. She returned to her mental list. She had called Felicia and planned to go there from the computer store. Then grocery shop. It was time to start cooking again.
Lieutenant Caldwell arrived promptly at ten, as he had said he would. He looked different, she thought, admitting him, and realized it was because he was wearing a very nice business suit, dark gray wool, even a necktie, and he was carrying a well-worn briefcase. He looked like an attorney.
He petted Spook, who had come to sniff him, renewing acquaintances. "How are you?" he asked Abby. "Feeling a little better, I hope."
"I am," she said. "Can I get you coffee?"
"Thanks," he said. "I'd love some. I hate that drive from Salem. I hate I-Five," he added. "Is the mutt adapting to city life okay?"
"She's fine," Abby said coldly, and turned to go to the kitchen. The lieutenant followed.
"Maybe we could sit in here and talk," he said, gazing about the kitchen, the dinette table. "I'm a kitchen kind of person at heart."
She shrugged and started to make coffee. He sat down at the table, opened his briefcase and pulled out a folder, then put the briefcase on the floor.
"Just a few things I'd like to show you, talk over with you," he said. "I don't want to take up too much of your time, and I'm due in court right after the lunch break."
She looked at him in surprise. An attorney going to court; she had been right. "This case, my father's murder?"
"No, no, nothing to do with it. In my work, things sort of pile up, old cases, new ones. This is an old one."
She came to the table as the coffee dripped through the machine. "It takes a couple of minutes."
"Yeah, I know. Okay, first, this drawing. It's an artist's drawing from a description we got. Familiar to you?"
She studied the drawing he placed on the table before her. Male, long blond hair, two gold studs in one ear... the man Brice had told her about. She shook her head. "He flew into Bend that night?" she asked. "Didn't he have to give his name or something? I didn't know there were flights to Bend at night."
"No commercial flights. This was a private delivery company. You know, steaks from Ne
w York, orchids from Hawaii. Special wedding dress from Chicago. Things like that. Pay enough, and you can get delivery on the same day of almost anything from almost anywhere. Sometimes the pilots make a few extra bucks hauling a passenger. Against company policy, but the pilots are underpaid and the company turns a blind eye to anything they can't afford to see. So anyway, this guy knew about the regular Friday-night delivery to Bend, and he offered the pilot two hundred bucks for a ride. No name asked for, none given." He sighed and moved the picture aside.
Abby went to pour the coffee and brought the filled mugs to the table. He took his black, he said, and thanked her. "But you should add some cream and sugar to yours," he added. "And eat a doughnut or something."
She felt her cheeks grow hot. "What else do you have?" she asked crossly.
"A list of people who reserved campsites for that Friday. Fourteen sites in use Friday, more folks drifted in on Saturday, but we passed on them." He handed the list to her.
She scanned the names, then started over and considered each one. Finally she shook her head. "But what about the others in the groups? This one says a party of four, or six in this one."
