Ill Wind

by Nevada Barr

  Getting even seemed a possibility. By leaving the corpse in such an odd place perhaps the avenger had hoped to pay back not only the dead but, in some way, the living—the widow, a friend, or even the National Park Service. Again Anna pulled out the notebook. “Enemies?” went under “Life Insurance.”

  Greed was Anna’s favorite. Greed seemed to motivate a goodly number of human behaviors, murder among them. But, if greed were the motivating factor, the grandstand play of laying the corpse in the fire ring of a kiva struck her as out of place.

  Why wouldn’t the body be buried, hidden, disposed of somehow? Only the very naive would think Stacy’s remains would go undiscovered in Cliff Palace. Even if the archaeologists or the stabilization crew didn’t stumble across it, eventually the odor or the vultures would have given the location away.

  Stacy was meant to be found. To prove something? To frighten someone? To stop the search before too many noses were poked into too many places? Beneath “Enemies” Anna scribbled “Where Else Should We Have Looked?” and “Greed/Rose” with an arrow drawn back up to “Life Insurance.”

  She’d run out of stones. The stretch of road through the cut was clean. Disappointed to have completed so pleasantly mindless a task, she began to walk back along the highway to where she’d left her patrol car.

  A gold Honda Accord was stopped fifty yards or so from her vehicle. The hood was up in the international symbol for motorist in distress. Anna perked up, walked a little faster. Citizen assists were good clean ranger work, the equivalent of firemen rescuing kittens from trees.

  A generous behind covered in rich plum fabric was swaying rhythmically to the left of the front fender. Anna approached the far side of the vehicle and looked under the hood. An exceedingly round woman with a froth of chestnut curls shot with gray and held off her face by a yellow plastic banana was chanting “drat, drat, drat” and shaking small dimpled fists at an unresponsive engine. Her face was as round as the rest of her and showed no signs of age. Earrings of green-and-yellow parrots dangled to her shoulders, the birds looking at home against the print of a Hawaiian shirt.

  “Trouble?” Anna said by way of greeting.

  The woman looked up, bright blue eyes sharp-focused behind glasses nearly half and inch thick. “Oh, hello. Do you know anything about these horrid things?”

  Her voice was high and had a singsong quality about it that was exquisitely comforting. Anna, who usually disliked voices in the upper registers, placed it instantly. In her mind she heard Billie Burke in The Wizard of Oz asking Dorothy, “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” The resemblance didn’t end there. This woman was big, two hundred pounds or so, but seemingly as light and translucent as the bubble in which the Good Witch of the North traveled.

  She shook her fists again and Anna half expected her to float with the effort.

  “I only know about six things to poke,” Anna apologized. “If that doesn’t work, I call a tow truck.”

  “Ooooh.” The woman sounded wickedly delighted. “Let’s poke.”

  Anna laughed and took a hard look at her companion. The familiarity wasn’t born just of fairy tales. “You’re Aunt Hattie!” she declared. Bella hadn’t described her aunt in physical terms but she had painted such a clear picture of her spirit, Anna was certain. Hattie bore a slight resemblance to her sister, Rose, but her features were more refined and looked to have been sculpted by laughter where Rose’s were etched by discontent. Rose carried less weight, but she seemed cursed by gravity. The pounds dragged her down. Hattie was buoyant, uplifting.

  While Bella’s aunt tried the starter, Anna pushed butterfly valves and rattled air filters. Finally, noting a depressing lack of fuel squirting into the carburetor, she gave it up as a lost cause and radioed Dispatch to call a tow truck from Cortez.

  The Honda disposed of, Anna gave Hattie a lift to the mesa top. Hattie appeared completely at her ease, simply sitting, riding, watching the scenery. Hattie had seemed at ease shaking her fists over a dead engine and Anna was surprised to find herself at an unaccustomed comfort level as well.

  “You came because of Stacy?” Anna asked.

  “For Bella.”

  “Rose call you?”

  “Bella,” Hattie said again, and laughed. “This is a bit of a surprise visit, I’m afraid. But I don’t think Rose’ll mind. She’ll have so much on her mind. And I do think she will have a hard time of it without Stacy. He was a good man and Rose isn’t used to that.”

  “Her first husband?” Anna prodded.

  “A pig face. Rose was besotted.” Hattie shrugged soft graceful shoulders. “Where’s the fun? I liked Stacy. And Bella liked Stacy.”

  This last was clearly the most heavily weighted factor in the equation and Anna let it sit without comment for a while. Remembering the conversation she’d had with Bella about her aunt and how she “lifts you up, zoop, zoop, zoop,” Anna said: “Bella will be glad you’ve come.”

  “Bella’s a magical spirit,” Hattie said. “Till I got to know her I’d pretty much forgotten how the world looks when you’re new.”

  Not new anymore. After a murder the newness got lost. Even at six—perhaps especially at six. This would rob Bella’s world of a lot of magic.

  Hattie scrunched down in the passenger seat and leaned her head back. The breeze through the open window ruffled her hair, teasing it into a froth around the banana clip. The parrots danced gaily. Life cloaked Bella’s aunt so vibrantly; coupled with the scent of pine and the warmth of the sun, made it infinitely precious. Anna could remember a time, the years after Zach died, when it was a tremendous burden. One she might have shucked if it hadn’t been for Molly and a good healthy dose of cowardice.

  “Do you think Stacy could have committed suicide?” she asked impulsively.

  Hattie straightened up, the languor gone, the blue eyes sharp. “Rose said he was killed.”

  Anna sensed a question behind the statement and waited, hoping the silence would draw it out. On the radio a country-western artist began singing “When I say no I mean maybe.” Anna switched it off.

  Conning the car around the last in a series of hairpin curves, she started up the last climb to the mesa top where Far View Lodge looked down over the southwest. An oversized RV plodded ahead at twenty-six miles an hour. Anna was glad of the delay. Once the buildings came in sight, tour-guide questions would distract them both.

  “That would be the worst possible thing for Bella,” Hattie said at last. “The worst kind of abandonment. The most awful rejection. God, I hope not.”

  “But maybe... ?”

  “Bella, in a little kid’s way, thinks maybe. She never said so much but Rose and Stacy had a shouting match on the phone the night he disappeared. Bella thinks about that. Rose wouldn’t’ve bothered to hide it from her. Rose is a tad self-centered. She believes anything she says or thinks is worthy of publication. God forbid one of her emotions should go unvented.”

  The acid touch cut through what Anna had perceived as an almost too-sweet soul and she delighted in it. A few snakes and snails made the sugar and spice more interesting.

  “What was the fight about? Did Bella say?”

  “She thinks it was about her. A six-year-old’s view of the world is limited. My guess is it was about money. Rose always argued about money—even when she had it.”

  Rose hadn’t mentioned a fight. That didn’t surprise Anna. Couples were often embarrassed they quarreled, never quite believing it was as common as dandruff in most marriages. If the fight had been over money, Rose might have had more than one reason for not mentioning it. Insurance companies didn’t pay off on suicides.

  They crested the hill and the mesa spread south; a green tabletop. The RV turned on its blinker and lumbered off the road into the Visitors’ Center parking lot. Talk turned to other things.

  By the time they reached the housing loop it was midday and the place was deserted. Anna let the patrol car roll to a stop under the tree in the Meyerses’ yard, then got out to r
etrieve Hattie’s luggage from the trunk.

  The screen door banged open and Rose cried, “Hattie!”

  As the women embraced in the middle of the walk, Anna dragged the heavy bags from the back of the car. On Hattie’s side the hug appeared to be heartfelt, but Rose was kissing air. “What a surprise,” she said. And: “I hope you packed a lunch. Stacy left us nothing to live on. Nothing.”

  Anna slammed the trunk a bit harder than necessary.

  “Are those yours?” Rose eyed the size of the suitcases.

  “All mine,” Hattie said cheerfully.

  “You can put them in the front room,” Rose directed Anna.

  As her younger sister turned to reenter the house, Hattie put her fists on her ample hips and cocked one eyebrow at Anna in a perfect parody of a disapproving schoolmarm. Anna laughed and hefted the bags. Bella had been right. Zoop, zoop, zoop.

  As she dumped the luggage and turned to go, Rose issued a last directive.

  “Bella took her sandwich over to eat with that Drew. Tell her her aunt’s paying us a visit.”

  Anna resisted the urge to pull a forelock and back humbly out the door.

  Irritation short-circuited her brain till she’d driven out of the housing loop. As she was turning right at the stop sign to backtrack around the island of piñons separating the houses from the maintenance yard, the short exchange between the sisters sprang back into her thoughts with sudden clarity.

  “Stacy left us with nothing to live on. Nothing.”

  No insurance; no insurance, no suicide-dressed-as-murder. At least not for monetary reasons. That was one item Anna could cross off her list.

  Bella was just leaving the fire cache. She walked her bike, laboriously pushing it ahead of her as if the machine were as heavy as her heart.

  Anna pulled up beside her, letting the Ford creep along at idle, keeping pace with the child. “I’ve got some good news for you,” she said.

  Bella didn’t even look up. There was no more good news to be had in the world.

  “Your aunt Hattie’s here,” Anna said quickly.

  “Aunt Hattie?” Something, maybe two parts relief and three parts joy, enlivened Bella’s face. “That’s okay then.” She pulled herself astride the bike and began pedaling.

  “Wait,” Anna called as she cruised up beside the girl again. “What did your mama and Stacy fight about on the telephone?”

  Bella stopped, shot Anna a cold look.

  Anna couldn’t back down. “It might be important,” she said.

  Whatever Bella weighed in her mind evidently came out in Anna’s favor. “Some man,” she said, and rode down the path into the trees.

  Suicide was back. Because Rose, like the infamous ex, had “too many people she just had to meet”? Or murder by the jealous boyfriend? Both solutions were too mundane and melodramatic for Anna’s taste. But if people died only for good reasons, a lot of mortuaries would go begging.

  ELEVEN

  ANNA HAD BARRICADED HERSELF IN HER ROOM. Etta James singing “Stop the Wedding” on the boom box served to block the tinny sounds of “Wheel of Fortune” coming from the other room. Anna wasn’t in the mood for Jamie, even if she was abusing Vanna White. A glass of chardonnay waited on the dresser by the bed. Anna sat cross-legged in the middle of a Mexican blanket bought when she’d worked in Texas. The phone was in her lap.

  As the wine worked its way down into the muscles of her neck, she let her head rest against the wall. Tonight she would go easy. There must be no more black holes.

  Molly answered on the third ring. “Yes?” she said peremptorily.

  For an instant Anna felt like slamming down the receiver, hiding in silence. The prospect was too lonely. “It’s just me,” she said, sounding unnecessarily cheerful.

  “How are you feeling?” Molly asked, and Anna knew she would not be allowed to pretend last night had never happened.

  “Better than I was,” she admitted.

  “A little hair of the dog?”

  “No,” Anna lied. “Anyway, that’s not what I called to talk about.”

  “Better me now than the entire staff at Hazelden in a couple of years. You’ve got a problem, Anna.”

  Anna took a long sip of the chardonnay in a lame gesture of rebellion. “No. I’ve got a solution.”

  There was a sucking silence, then Molly mumbling: “Ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five . . .”

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Trying to count up how many times in my umpteen years’ practice I’ve heard that one. It’s no go, Anna. Normal people—at least people over the age of seventeen—don’t drink until they black out.”

  “I didn’t black out.” Second lie in as many minutes. Anna was beginning to worry herself.

  “What did we talk about the third time you called me?” Molly demanded.

  “Oh shit.” Anna vaguely remembered the one call. “Okay. I blacked out.”

  “Hah.”

  “ ‘Hah’? Is that substance-abuse parlance? One blackout does not an alcoholic make.”

  “What’s the magic number? Three? Ten?”

  Anna chose not to answer.

  “Okay, talk about Stacy Meyers.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to.” Anna felt peevish.

  “That’s not the idea I got during call number three at four-ten A.M. this morning.”

  Anna sighed, fortified herself with another draught of wine. “How many times did I call?”

  “I don’t have the foggiest. After number three I unplugged my phone.”

  Depression settled like coal dust across Anna’s mind. “Tough love? Or are you just in a very bad mood?”

  “I want you to take this seriously, not to weasel, charm, or rationalize your way out of it.”

  “It won’t happen again,” Anna snapped.

  “It happened.”

  “A friend of mine was murdered.”

  “Stacy Meyers.”

  The conversation had come full circle. Anna told Molly about Stacy, his wit and intense brown eyes, his undeserving wife and high ideals.

  When she had finished, Molly said: “You kept calling him Zach last night.”

  “Caught the girl in the Freudian slip?” Anna teased.

  “Freud was a deeply troubled man,” Molly returned.

  “In vino veritas, then?”

  “Hardly. Maybe in mucho vino mega confusion. You had the two men mixed up in your mind last night. There was a physical resemblance?”

  “Slight.”

  “A similar intensity?”

  Anna said nothing.

  “Confusion, Anna. That’s what I heard. Lots of it. Psychological wounds are like soft-tissue injuries. You get hurt in the same place twice and they may never heal. You need clarity right now, not oblivion. The time for that, if there ever was one, is long past. No sense playing that scene out again. This time you might not survive, and boy would I be pissed.

  “Gotta go,” Molly finished. “Stay alert.”

  “What’s a ‘lert’?” Anna whispered the childhood joke into a dead phone line.

  She finished the glass of wine but didn’t pour herself a second. Clarity: she thought about that for a while. There were times reality didn’t have all that much to recommend it. “Like now,” she said to the face in the mirror, then, thinking of Bella, was shamed out of her self-pity. “Clarity,” she repeated aloud, and slipped on her moccasins. At least she could do what she was good at: aggravating people into telling her more than they wanted to.

  Down on Chapin it was significantly warmer. The difference between summer and fall, shorts and long pants.

  Anna slowed the Rambler to an idle and crept past the houses trying to organize her thoughts. Day’s end; it was warm and the light would last till nine o’clock or later. People were out walking dogs, sitting at picnic tables gossiping while dinners cooked on outdoor grills. Several members of the helitack crew sat on the steps of the fire dorm drinking beer. Drew waved her over, pointing at the bottle of Colt
45 in his hand.

  “The devil is at mine elbow,” Anna muttered. She pulled the Rambler in and parked in front of the dorm. Drew, Jimmy, and Paul sat on the steps looking for all the world like fraternity boys on a Saturday afternoon.

  “How goes the hunt?” Drew asked.

  “An arrest is imminent,” Anna said, and declined another offer of beer.

  “It won’t help Bella,” Drew said. “She’s breaking my heart, poor little kid. Who’d’ve thought she’d take it so hard? Stacy wasn’t even her real dad. With all that threat of cutting her legs up, I’d’ve thought she might be relieved. She hid it pretty good, but it scared her a lot. What a waste.” Drew sucked down half a Colt at one gulp.

  “Sure you won’t have a brewski?” Jimmy asked as he popped another for Drew and one for himself. Anna wasn’t at all sure she wouldn’t so she took her leave.

  By the time she parked under the tree in front of the Meyerses’ bungalow, her plan still hadn’t taken on any real form. She toyed with the idea of returning to Far View but the need to keep busy forced her out of the car.

  The door was open. She peered through the screen. The front room was a mess of magazines and newspapers. The couch, desk, and much of the floor were littered with them. No toys, she noted. A television, a TV Guide open on top of it, stared with a blank eye from a small table in the corner. Familiar sounds of an evening game show came from elsewhere in the house.

  A TV in the kitchen or bedroom, Anna guessed. “Hello, anybody home?” She rapped lightly on the door frame.

  Clattering from the kitchen answered her query. A moment later Rose Meyers appeared on the other side of the screen. “Yes?” she said when she saw Anna on the doorstep.

  “In the neighborhood,” Anna said. “Just thought I’d drop by.”

  “No one is here. Hattie and Bella went for a walk.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Rose looked nonplussed. Several seconds ticked by during which she evidently remembered her manners. “Would you like to come in for a minute?” she offered.

  “Thanks. That would be nice.”

  Rose stood aside, holding the door, while Anna slunk by. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything. . . .” Anna began, and waited for the usual reassurances but none were offered.