Blowing Smoke

by Barbara Block

  I didn’t believe Sinclair hadn’t seen Pat Humphrey. I didn’t believe that she hadn’t been here, but there was no point in calling him a liar—at least not yet. A couple of miles later, while I was mulling over my options, I spotted a minimart by the side of the road, pulled over, put in twelve bucks’ worth of gas, and went inside.

  “Do you know this woman?” I asked the clerk behind the counter.

  He tore his attention away from the television and focused on the picture I was holding out to him. His eyes lit up. “What’s she done?”

  “Nothing. I need to talk to her.”

  “Oh.” His shoulders slumped. He frowned. “I thought it would be something interesting. Like she killed someone and chopped ’em up.”

  “Maybe next week. So you have seen her.”

  He scratched one of the pimples on his face. “What will you give me if I tell you?”

  I did my best tough-guy impersonation. “I’ll let you live.”

  The kid snickered. “Seriously.”

  It was nice to know I couldn’t even intimidate a seventeen-year-old boy. “Here.” I dug in my pocket and took out a wadded-up ten-dollar bill and threw it on the counter. “This is all the cash I have.”

  “What do you live on? Food stamps?”

  “If you feel that wary ...” And I reached over to take it back.

  “That’s all right.” The kid smoothed the bill out and put it in his pocket. “She was here about three hours ago. She bought some gas and a couple of chocolate bars.”

  “She didn’t happen to say where she was going?”

  “Nope. Just gave me her money.”

  “Do you know where she’s staying?”

  “Yeah. With that loony up the road.”

  “The Reverend Ascending Moon?”

  “Ascending Moon my ass. My ass. Get it?” The kid cackled and slapped the counter. “I don’t know. Sometimes I just crack myself up.”

  I took a piece of bubblegum out of the box on the counter, unwrapped it, and popped it in my mouth.

  “Hey, what about the gas?” the kid yelled as I walked out the store.

  “Deduct it from the ten I gave you.”

  “You owe me twelve.”

  “Oops.” And I got in my car and went back to the center.

  A group of five men and women were doing tai chi under the evening shade of a maple tree, while another woman was looking at the river through a pair of binoculars.

  The lobby of the lodge was empty when I walked inside, although I heard voices. I followed the sounds into the dining room. Ten people were sitting at two round tables in the small wood-paneled room. I stood at the entrance for a few seconds and watched them pick at the mass of brown-colored food on their plates. Then I went inside and showed them all Humphrey’s picture. No one in the group had seen her.

  “We just got here a little while ago,” one of the men explained.

  Before I could ask him anything else, Sinclair appeared at my elbow. “You’ve come back, I see.”

  I wondered if the smile he was wearing would fool his guests. “I already told you I need to talk to Pat Humphrey.”

  Sinclair’s smile grew till it threatened to split his face. “You can see she’s not here.”

  I allowed him to take me by the arm and steer me back into the lobby. “The kid that works at the minimart said she was.”

  Sinclair started laughing and ended up snorting instead. “You’re taking his word against mine?”

  “Yes, I am. Maybe I should start knocking on the cabin doors.”

  “You can’t do that,” Sinclair protested. “I won’t have you disturbing my guests any more than you already have.”

  “Call the cops.”

  Sinclair wrung his hands. “This is a place of peace.”

  “I need to speak to Pat Humphrey.”

  “And I’m telling you she’s not here.”

  “And I’m telling you I don’t believe you.”

  “Please.” Sinclair came around the counter and touched my shoulder. “Let’s go into my office and talk this out.”

  As he spoke to me, his eyes flickered out toward the lake and back and then toward the lake and back again. It was a slight movement—it couldn’t have taken more than twenty seconds—but it was enough. I turned my head and followed his glance. At first, all I saw was one of the motorboats that had been tied up putt-putting away from the dock. Two figures were sitting in it. They both had hats on. They were both dressed in khakis and short-sleeved white shirts. One was thinner than the other. I couldn’t see their faces because the setting sun was reflecting off the water in a way that obscured my vision, but from the look on Sinclair’s face, I had a pretty good idea who one of those figures was.

  I cursed under my breath and ran out of the lodge.

  “Wait. Come back.” Sinclair’s voice floated behind me as I sped down the lawn toward the woman standing on the shore, gazing at the sunset through her binoculars.

  “I need those for a second,” I told her as I wrenched them out of her hands.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  “I’ll give them right back,” I promised as I focused in on the two figures in the boat.

  I felt something hard prod me in the ribs and heard Sinclair’s voice say, “Do it now.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I whirled around. Sinclair was holding a bolt-action rifle. The woman grabbed the binoculars back from me and scurried away, pausing every now and then to look over her shoulder. Probably to make sure I wasn’t coming after her. In a short while, she disappeared into the lodge.

  “I don’t know who sent you, and I don’t care,” he said. “What I do know is that you’re upsetting people, and I can’t have that.”

  I gestured toward the weapon. “That’s not very peaceful of you.”

  “Sometimes peace needs to be protected.” Sinclair took a couple of steps back, but he was still aiming his rifle right at my midsection. “I want you to get in your car and drive out of here. And I don’t want you coming back.”

  The boat I’d been watching was moving on the water now at a good clip. It dodged another motorboat, then headed into the open waterway. I wondered where the hell Humphrey was going.

  “First tell me where Pat Humphrey is heading and I will.”

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to insist on anything,” Sinclair said, emphasizing his point by jabbing me in the ribs with the barrel of his rifle again.

  That was his mistake.

  First Geoff had pointed his Glock at me, and now here was Sinclair with his rifle doing the same thing. On another day I might have been scared, on another day I might have left. But not today. Today I was pissed. Sometimes there are definite advantages to being in a really bad mood.

  “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to poke people with that,” I snapped. “That’s for shooting deer.”

  Then, before Sinclair knew what was happening, I’d grabbed the barrel of the rifle and wrenched it out of his hands. Sinclair’s jaw went slack with surprise as I aimed the weapon at him.

  “How do you like it?”

  He put his hands in the air palms out and began backing away. “Please don’t shoot me,” he pleaded.

  “Don’t worry. Not that I wouldn’t like to, but you’re not worth serving jail time for,” I told him. Then I turned and started for the lake.

  “What are you doing?” he cried as I flung the rifle as far away from the shore as I could manage.

  “My own weapon-management program.” I watched it sink below the waves. “This way no one gets hurt.” In the mood I was in, I was afraid I might plug him if I had the chance.

  When I turned back, Sinclair looked as if he were going to cry. He rubbed his hands across his chest. “Do you know how much that cost?”

  “I thought Wal-Mart sold those things pretty cheap.”

  He flushed. “You had no right to do that. None. I have to be able to defend my property.”

  “Ag
ainst what? Marauding squirrels?”

  Sinclair drew himself up. “I will protect my clients’ right to privacy to the death.”

  “Oh, please. Now where did Pat Humphrey go?”

  He took a deep breath and shrugged. “I didn’t even know she was in that boat. You were the one looking through the glasses, not me.”

  Talking with him was pointless. I started back up the grass, with Sinclair tagging along besides me. His skullcap kept slipping off his head, and he kept pushing it back on. Finally, he gave up, took it off, and put it in his pocket.

  “Try bobby pins,” I told him. “It works for the Orthodox Jews.” When I got about twenty feet away from the lodge, I stopped and studied the area.

  “You have to go,” Sinclair yammered in my ear. “If you don’t go, I will be forced to call the police.”

  I ignored him and concentrated on trying to figure out where Pat Humphrey had been staying. There were only two possibilities. The lodge or the cabins. But the lodge had only one entrance, which ruled that out, because Pat Humphrey would have had to have gone by me when she left and she hadn’t. I checked the outside of the building just to make sure I hadn’t overlooked an exit, then went inside.

  “What are you doing?” Sinclair squeaked as I walked behind the counter and pulled the sign-in book toward me.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” I said as I quickly ran my finger down the pages.

  Apparently the Center for Enlightened Self-Awareness hadn’t caught on with the holiday crowd yet. Not many people had registered over the past month, and Pat Humphrey wasn’t one of the people that had—or if she had, she hadn’t done it under her own name. There was only one other thing I could think of to do: look in the cabins. Which meant I needed the passkey, because Sinclair was not about to help me. I scanned the area around the counter. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t by the mailboxes, either.

  “Come out from there.” Sinclair slapped the counter. “Come out this instant. You’re not allowed. That’s for employees only.”

  “Pretend I am.” The damned thing had to be here somewhere. And then I spotted it hanging on a hook over where the telephone was.

  “Leave that key alone,” Sinclair cried as he reached over the counter and tried to grab it.

  But I was faster. I got it first. Sinclair straightened up and dabbed at the beads of perspiration covering his forehead with the sleeve of his robe while I clenched the key in my hand.

  I came out from behind the desk. “Tell me which cabin Pat Humphrey is staying in and I won’t go into the others.”

  “But she isn’t here,” Sinclair wailed.

  “Okay. Wrong tense. Was here. Fine,” I told Sinclair when he didn’t answer. “If that’s the way you want it.” I walked out the door and strode across the lawn. Sinclair, holding his robes up to mid-calf, dogged my steps.

  “And even if she was, what difference could it possibly make,” a panting Sinclair demanded.

  I skirted a tree stump. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not going to make any, but as long as I’m here, I’d like to see for myself.”

  “You mean you’re going to go through all of these cabins?” Sinclair said as I knocked on the first one.

  “That’s the general idea.”

  I waited for a response. When there wasn’t any, I knocked again. A moment after that, I opened the door and went inside. The first thing I noticed was the musty smell, the same smell as the cabins in which I’d stayed in the Catskills when I was a kid.

  “You should open a window and air this place out,” I said as I looked around.

  The room was large. The furnishings consisted of matching made-up twin beds, two nightstands, an oval-shaped rag rug, two white dressers, and an old chair in the corner. The place looked untenanted, but I checked the closet and the dresser drawers to make sure. They were empty. I walked into the bathroom and peered into the medicine chest. Those shelves were empty, too.

  “See,” Sinclair cried triumphantly as I closed the door to cabin one and went on to cabin two. “What did I tell you? You’re just wasting your time.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  But that was vacant as well. So was cabin number three.

  “How long are you going to do this for?” Sinclair demanded of me while I trudged toward the fourth cabin.

  “Until I find what I’m looking for.”

  “The woman in here is sick,” Sinclair said when I reached it. “She’s resting, and I won’t have her disturbed.”

  “I think I’ll let her tell me that.”

  He stepped in front of me and spread his arms out, attempting to bar my way. “She’s under a doctor’s care.”

  “Really?” I went around him.

  “Yes, really.” Sinclair’s voice rose.

  “If she’s that ill, why isn’t she in a hospital?”

  He grabbed my arm. “Her emotional state is extremely fragile. Are you prepared to take responsibility for precipitating a crisis?”

  I shook him off. “Absolutely. I’ve done worse.” By now I was about five inches away from the door.

  “At least let me go in and prepare her.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He went for my arm again. This time he knocked the passkey to the ground. I ignored it.

  “Wait,” he said as I rapped on the door.

  “Who is it?” a woman asked.

  A moment later, Amy stepped outside.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A my froze when she saw me. She was wearing a white robe and a pendant similar to the one Sinclair had on. Her dark hair looked as if it needed to be brushed, and her eye makeup was half rubbed off.

  “Well, well, well,” I said. “What a pleasant surprise seeing you here.”

  “I tried to keep her away,” Sinclair told her.

  Amy moved her hand away from the doorknob and managed a slight smile. “It’s all right. No harm done.”

  “I take it you’re a member of this particular establishment?”

  Amy flushed. “What if I am?”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking about how pleased your mother will be.”

  “My spiritual life is none of my mother’s business.”

  “In this case, given the circumstances, I think I’m going to have to disagree.”

  Amy shrugged. “Then tell her. I don’t care. In fact, I want you to. I insist on it.” She began raking her fingers through her hair. “You know, I feel sorry for her.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because she has no connection with anything other than her own base needs. None of my family does.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

  Sinclair broke in. “Sister Uma. I was telling Robin you were sick. That you needed your rest.”

  “Sister Uma?” I raised an eyebrow.

  Amy drew herself up and grasped her medallion in her right hand. “It’s Hindi,” she informed me. “It’s my chosen name. It means Blessed. It comes from Genesis in the Bible.” And she closed her eyes and recited, “ ‘I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations: kings of peoples shall come from her.’ ”

  Looking at Amy, I decided if she were God’s idea of blessed, I’d take another road.

  “I’d still come here even if the center didn’t exist.” Amy indicated the area. “I love it here. I always have. The colors. The smells. The sounds of the water and the wind. The cows in the fields. I used to dream about them when I was a little girl.” Amy straightened her shoulders. “Coming here for me is like going to sessin. The Reverend Ascending Moon helps me focus,” she said. “He helps me center myself.”

  “You mean you’re off-kilter?”

  Amy glowered at me. “You can make fun if you want, but it just shows how closed off to new thoughts and feelings you are. They threaten you.”

  “Have you thought that the reason I’m speaking to you this way is because I’m tired of being lied to.”

  Amy took a deep breath. “There is truth
in everything.”

  “Really? How profound. Do you know that the Reverend Ascending Moon, as you call him, is Paul Sinclair, a two-bit petty crook from Buffalo.”

  Amy ran a hand up and down the chain of her pendant. “I know all about the reverend’s past history. It’s irrelevant. People change. People evolve. You have to allow for that possibility.”

  “Fine. Tell me where Pat Humphrey evolved to and I’ll leave.”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “Can’t you see how upset Sister is?” Sinclair demanded of me.

  I ignored him. “You do know what happened at the estate?”

  “I know,” Amy whispered.

  “I’d think you’d want to be there lending your mother moral support.”

  Amy picked a strand of dark thread off her robe. “She doesn’t need me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She looked down at the floor.

  “But she needs Pat Humphrey, right? Is that why you’re not going to tell me where she is?”

  Amy remained silent.

  “Did you also know that your brother might be in trouble? That he might be charged? That Pat Humphrey might have information relevant to Shana Driscoll’s death?”

  “I want to lie down,” Amy said.

  “When we’re done.”

  “Can’t you leave me alone,” she wailed. “We didn’t talk. I swear I didn’t even know she was here.” She dissolved in a puddle of tears, but I was unmoved. I had the feeling she was one of those women that started crying the moment she didn’t like how things were going.

  I pushed by her and went inside the cabin. The odor of sandalwood hung in the air.

  “Hey,” Amy cried as I walked inside. “You can’t come in here. What are you doing?”

  “Checking things out.” I scrutinized the room. There were two beds. Both were unmade.

  “I’m sick,” Amy said sullenly. “I need rest.”

  “So Sinclair told me.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that he wasn’t there anymore. I wondered if he really had gone to call the police. Hopefully, I’d be out of here before they arrived.