by Barr, Nevada
The near miss left her shaken. Taken as a last straw dropped upon the back of a camel who’d been stoned literally and pilloried metaphorically, it weighed heavily. Tears threatened. Anna cursed them down. Anger followed, but one look at the animal, standing now, gazing trustingly in her direction, left it nowhere to bestow itself.
“Come on, baby,” she said, letting herself out of the vehicle. “It’s time you were home in bed.” The same could be said for her. The beneficial effects of her brief catnap were wearing off.
At the sound of her voice Flicka bleated and scampered over to butt his head against the palms of her hands. Unfailingly enchanted by the little creature, Anna folded herself down in the grass and lost herself in the wonder of his spotted back, the liquid eyes, the strong willowy neck and tiny perfect hooves.
“Miles to go before I sleep,” she explained when she finally forced herself to rise. “And miles to go. Come on. Let’s get you home. Your fairy godmothers will be worried.”
The truck was well off the road, so Anna left it where it was and walked to the wall. The gate was an unlovely modern addition of welded pipe and sheep wire. Usually it stood open. Tonight it was shut, effectively penning Flicka out. Were Dot and Mona weaning the fawn, teaching him to go back to the wild? Anna abandoned the thought as soon as it surfaced. The VIPs were too sensible to shut an animal as young and unafraid as Flicka out on a public road at night.
“After you,” she said, and shooed the fawn in ahead of her. He didn’t take much urging. Like any child, at supper-time he wanted to be home and safe and fed. As she latched the gate behind her, she could hear his hooves clattering on the stones of the cottage’s front walk.
Inside the wall, parked to one side where it was not visible from the road, was an ATV. She wondered who had come calling that was too hoity-toity to park in the street like everyone else.
Flicka was scraping at the door with sharp hooves, punctuating this polite request for admittance with rattling butts to the door-frame. Either the old ladies weren’t at home or they were hard of hearing.
Having followed the fawn up the walk, Anna rapped on the door and hollered: “Anybody home? It’s Anna from fire crew.”
Muttering emanated from within and she realized how quiet the house had been. The cottage didn’t have air-conditioning. Windows on either side of the door were open, the light and air shut inside by tightly closed mini-blinds. A voice carried through as if Anna were inside with them.
“Who is it?”
Mona: without the stalwart, clever woman in evidence to back up the voice, Anna heard the tremor of age. “Anna Pigeon from fire crew,” she repeated.
More muttering, footsteps; then Dot came to the door. She didn’t look pleased to have someone show up on her doorstep after eleven at night. Anna played her only card. “I found Flicka,” she said, and unabashedly hid behind his adorable spots. Dot’s face softened at once, so much so that Anna was afraid she was going to burst into tears.
Pushing open the screen, Dot knelt down, her fat knees filling the sill, and gathered Flicka into her arms. She buried her face against the fawn’s neck, knocking her glasses askew. “Flicka, we’ve been so worried about you,” she said into the silken hide.
“Was he lost?” Anna asked. “If he ran off, he must have decided which side his bread was buttered on. I found him curled up in the middle of the road out front.” No response from Dot. Anna was somehow disappointed. “I nearly ran him over,” she added. Even with the prod, the expected gush of thanks was not forthcoming.
Dot scooped Flicka up and carried him inside.
“Anna, come in,” Mona called.
A sensitive individual might have been put off by Dot’s snub, but Anna wasn’t yet ready to go back to the apartment and do her duty, so she trailed the woman and fawn inside.
The cottage had pioneered the concept of a Great Room when it was an architectural convenience rather than a status symbol. A single multipurpose room was easier to build and heat than a house cobbled up into private areas. Dot and Mona had filled the compact space with the clutter of academia. Books, papers, boxes, teacups, and overfilled ashtrays spilled across the dining table and all but three of the chairs. Two of these were occupied. Mona sat upright in a ladder-back chair. A cigarette burned in her right hand. Her left rested on a Coke can on the table. She looked tired and distracted. It added years to her already considerable account.
Marty Schlessinger sat behind the table between Mona and the empty chair. One hand was on the table. The fingers trembled ever so slightly, like an aspen in a light breeze. Probably high, Anna thought.
Dot, Flicka captive in her arms, perched on the edge of the third chair. Anna was left standing. “Turtle stuff?” she asked, to fill the awkward silence she’d brought in with her.
“Always,” Mona said.
Thick as a pea soup fog, silence descended again, the only sound Mona’s fiddling with the pop-top on her Coke. Clickclickclick.
“The files are for shit,” Schlessinger said. His voice was cool and even. If he’d been using for a while, he probably functioned better high than straight. As if on cue, Dot and Mona nodded sagely. Click. Click. Click.
Whatever they were up to, Anna was not needed to make a fourth. She took one more stab at an invitation. “An all-nighter?” she asked, reminded of college and speed and last-minute cramming.
“Surely not.” Mona. Clickclickclick.
So much for fantasies of procrastination. Anna was forced to take the hint. “I’ve got to run,” she said. “Places to go, people to meet, all that sort of thing.” No one said a word. Three pairs of eyes followed her as she beat a hasty retreat to the door.
“Thanks for bringing Flicka in—” Dot hollered as the screen banged shut.
“But don’t let the door slap your ass on the way out,” Anna finished the sentence.
THE CHABLIS HAD fallen, making two dead soldiers littering the coffee table. Fluorescent curls of Cheetos provided a surrealistic array of splattered intestines to further the theme. Tabby and Lynette, heads together, were giggling over a Victoria’s Secret catalogue; a scene from a pajama party at a home for unwed mothers.
“Hey, Anna.” Lynette’s voice was delicately blurred by a wash of white wine. “Did you get what you needed done done? We missed you.”
“Short hair makes you look ten years younger.” Tabby repeated a compliment from earlier in the evening just to be personable. Wine had worked its spell on her. Her cheeks flushed prettily and the tight reins of tears had been loosed at the corners of her eyes, restoring her girlishness.
Here, at least, Anna was welcomed. Not for long, she reminded herself.
The phone rang, jarring Anna but apparently delighting the others. Tabby snatched it up, burbling a happy, “Hello!” Joy was slapped from her face by the vicious hand of memory. “Oh, it’s you,” she said coldly. Then to Anna: “It’s for you.”
“Was it something I said?” came Dijon’s voice.
Anna remembered the cruel moments of forgetfulness after Zach had died. Tabby had thought it was Todd calling. “Nope. What’s up?”
“Jesus. If I wasn’t so bored, I’d hang up. Nothing’s up. Zip. Nada. A bust of a bust. Captain whosis—the Coast Guard guy—got tired of waiting and we nabbed ’em. Two old farts grilling wieners on a houseboat full of weed. Talk about your adrenaline rush.”
Anna smiled. “No fisticuffs?”
“Shit—shoot, no. Not even an interrogation under hot lights. Hull told the Hansons they’re suspected of a double homicide as well as marijuana cultivation and they fell all over themselves to cooperate.
“Hammond was putting the squeeze on them. Louise swore he made them plant three times what they had. ‘Just plain greedy’ she called him.” Dijon laughed. “According to her they were just poor pitiful servants. Since they burned Hammond’s share of the crop, she seemed to think we should let them keep theirs out of pure gratitude. Both swore Hammond did the whole booby trap deal all by his self
and they, like good citizens, removed the hazard as soon as they found out. Like there’s anybody left alive to say different.”
“How about the sabotage?” Anna was uncomfortably aware of Lynette and Tabby hanging on every word of her side of the conversation.
“ ‘Not guilty.’ What did you think they’d say?”
A tiny irrational hope that had dared to stir in Anna’s breast was quashed. “You guys coming back anytime soon?” she asked.
“You’re kidding, right? We’ll be filling out forms longer than the perps’ jail sentences.”
Fifteen seconds of silence ticked by while Anna shuffled her thoughts. A look at Tabby decided her. The girl was small, frail, drunk, pregnant, and unarmed. Piece of cake, Anna thought sourly.
“Thanks for calling, Dijon. I was worried about you all. Good talking to you, old buddy.” Dijon’s voice jolted in Anna’s ear.
“Right. All that,” she said absently, and hung up the phone.
Anna pulled up a kitchen chair and sat across the table from the women, where she could see them yet keep her distance and her mobility. “I’ve got some pictures I want you to look at.” She cleared away the magazine and Cheetos, then dealt the snapshots out, right side up, to her audience on the couch. Tabby and Lynette put on faces depicting interest and enthusiasm, willing to be amused, happy to let Anna in on the fun.
“What a lovely place,” Lynette said, absorbed in the photos as well as the role of girlfriend. “Northwest? Olympic maybe?”
Anna was watching Tabby. At first she’d looked at the snapshots with the same slightly bleary good cheer as the interpretive ranger. Slowly it dawned on her what the photos were of and where they’d come from. The party look drained from her eyes, then the blood from her cheeks. She became so pale Anna was afraid she’d faint. Her small swollen hands pulled away from the photographs and comforted one another on her lap. Her mouth contorted, ready to cry. Anna had prepared herself for waterworks but none came. Eventually even a river of tears must run dry.
Grabbing her belly, Tabby began to breathe in short, shallow gasps.
“Don’t you even think about having that baby now,” Anna said sharply. “Open your eyes.” Tabby opened them. “Breathe in slowly and regularly.” Tabby did.
“What’s going on?” Lynette asked.
“Shh,” Anna hushed her. “You breathing?” Tabby gulped and nodded. “Tell me what happened. I’ve mostly figured it out, but I want to hear it from you. Then we’ll decide how best to handle it, okay?”
“Okay,” Tabby whispered, and reached for her glass. It was empty.
“I’ve got more in the car,” Lynette said. “It’s warm, but—”
“We don’t need more,” Anna cut her off. “Tabby is going to be just fine. We’re going to work this out.” She let a stillness settle around them. Anna’s rudeness had sufficed to cut through Lynette’s alcohol haze and she sat meekly on the couch waiting for events to unfold.
“I’m . . . going to be sick,” Tabby said.
“No you’re not,” Anna told her. “You’ll feel better after you talk to me.”
Tabby laid her head back and closed her eyes. All the tension went from her body. Her fingers ceased their stranglehold on one another and her hands opened like flowers, palm up on her thighs. “I wanted to tell,” she whispered, and Anna hitched her chair closer to hear. “But if I told I’d go to jail. The baby would be born in jail. My little boy.” She opened her eyes and looked at Anna. “They won’t let you keep a baby in prison, will they?”
“I don’t know,” Anna said honestly.
“They’d take him. I know they would. Who’d leave a baby with a murderer? He’d know I killed his daddy.” From a deeper well of grief, Tabby drew up tears thick as glycerine. They slid over her temples to disappear into her hair.
“There’s the burning bed precedent,” Anna said without much hope. “Extenuating circumstances. Hammond was stalking you, wasn’t he?”
Tabby nodded, her fine hair scrunching into a halo against the back of the sofa. “He started not long after he came to the Cascades. At first I was flattered. He paid attention to me and gave me little things—a flower, a pretty rock, like that. I wouldn’t ever go farther and he started being mean. Following me. Letting me know he could find me no matter where I went, that he could get into our house even if we locked it. He read my mail. Left things on the seat of my car when I’d locked all the doors. Showing me how easy it would be to get me. I talked to the police. The only real ones were in Hope and they had no say in the park. Hope’s not even in the United States. Todd and his two seasonals were the only law enforcement in the district. Slattery never got seen doing anything by anybody but me and sometimes I’d say he’d been somewhere bothering me and he could find some girl to say he’d been with her. The Park Service was kind of wanting Todd to keep out out it, being as he was my husband and all, but there was nobody else. I don’t think they believed me anyway.
“Todd got pretty crazy. I was scared he’d get hurt or kill Slattery and go to jail. We got an apartment in town where there’d be people around—people who could help me if anything . . . happened. Slattery started doing the same things in town. I filed a restraining order a couple of times. The police thought I was just trying to get attention because my husband was in the park and stuff. Then I’d tell them about Slattery bothering me in the park but that wasn’t even in Canada. Finally they talked to Slattery but he sounded so good and I sounded so stupid. And we were Americans and everything was just screwed up. Slattery said the restraining orders didn’t mean anything. And he was right—he still found me no matter how hard I tried never to be alone. He threatened to hurt Todd, so I withdrew my complaints.
“I got pregnant and Todd put in for a transfer. Slattery won, we ran. I thought that would be the end of it. Then he showed up here. He’d followed us. Everything started over. But now there was the baby. Slattery said things about the baby. That I was pregnant made him mad. He said he’d kill the baby if I didn’t do certain things. You know . . . things.”
“I get the picture,” Anna said.
“Now I think I’m going to be sick,” Lynette said.
“Be my guest. Go on,” Anna told Tabby.
“Todd was losing it. That’s what we were fighting about that night you broke us up.”
“He said he’d leave you.”
Tabby jerked her head up. It bobbed independently from the slack body as if a puppeteer had pulled but one string. “No sir,” she said childishly.
“ ‘You would leave me.’ ” Anna quoted her words back at her.
“Did he think you’d encouraged Slattery?” Lynette asked gently.
“No. No. Nothing like that.” Looking both alarmed and mystified, Tabby fought her way upright on the sofa. A cloud moved away from her sun and she smiled in the midst of this grisly recital. Obviously the threat of Todd’s leaving was a greater evil than stalking or being stalked. “I remember why I said that,” she said with relief. “Todd said he was going to kill Slattery and I said he’d go to jail and he said that was okay and I said it wasn’t, because then he’d leave me.”
“Why was he on the plane with Hammond?” Anna asked.
Tabby dropped her face in her hands and rocked herself forward and back around the embryonic Todd junior. “I don’t know. Maybe he wanted a place to talk to him in private. I don’t know. I swear to God I didn’t know Slattery wasn’t going by himself. I never would have done it, never, if I knew somebody else might be hurt. I was just scared. Then Todd got in . . .” Her voice trailed off. Anna and Lynette exchanged looks. Anna was half afraid Lynette’s beliefs were going to lure her into saying something inane about God teaching lessons in his Old Testament persona. The look of empathy on Lynette’s face made Anna ashamed of the thought. Kindness and Christianity were equally revered—or synonymous—in Lynette’s heart.
“So you sabotaged the Beechcraft,” Anna summed up for Tabby.
“Yes.”
�
��Do you know who the brown-haired woman is, the one in the other pictures?”
Tabby shook her head.
“No matter,” Anna said. “If she was another of Hammond’s victims, he won’t be bothering her anymore.”
“Can I get a drink of water?” Tabby pleaded.
“Go with her,” Anna said to Lynette.
A self-confessed murderess and a drunken lover of the deceased left the scene. Anna couldn’t dredge up an iota of concern. She couldn’t picture Tabby taking it on the lam in a stolen VW bug. Trusting in her judgment of human nature was born more of habit than experience. She’d written Tabby off as a suspect, deeming her too ineffectual to ruin the Beech. Who knows, Anna thought indifferently, maybe she was wrong again and Tabby would come charging back through the kitchen door wielding a bread knife à la Psycho.
Inept fumbling noises emanated from that general direction. “Let me do it,” she heard Lynette say, then ice cubes falling into a glass, clickclickclick.
“Dammit.” Anna jumped up from the chair. “Tabby!” she hollered as she bounded toward the kitchen. “Tabby!” By the second shout she was almost on top of the girl. Big-eyed and miserable, Tabby leaned against the counter clutching her water glass with both hands like a little kid.
“How did you do it?” Anna demanded, taking hold of the narrow shoulders.
Tabby folded in on herself, shrinking from Anna’s touch. “I was scared,” Tabby cried with a convincingly terrified quaver in her voice.
“Stop it,” Lynette said, and laid her hand on Anna’s wrist.
“No,” Anna said. “This is good news. How did you do it, Tabby? How did you know how to break the airplane so it would crash?”
“I was doing the dishes and a sandwich bag fell in the sink. It went down and settled over the drain so the water wouldn’t go out.”
