Track Of The Cat

by Nevada Barr

  "Not dispatched, executed."

  Piedmont opened one orange eye at the sound of her voice but he was not awake, his third eyelid remained half closed.

  "Somebody done her in, Piedmont. Miss Scarlet did it in the library with the pinking shears. Colonel Mustard did it in the kitchen with a cougar."

  The snapshots from Sheila Drury's clothes rod were facedown on the desk. Turning them over one by one, she looked through them slowly. They'd been taken not far from where she had found Drury's body. Less than a mile downstream where the creek flowed from one emerald pool to the next over a wide smooth floor of stone.

  Did that mean anything? Had Christina killed her lover in passion? Or just to get back the photos? Was Sheila Drury blackmailing her? Some might think it a form of poetic justice to do in their blackmailer at the scene of their indiscretion. But a mile upstream through rough country? And what was the pack all about?

  Could Drury have been blackmailing anyone else?

  "Slow down, slow down," Anna murmured. Pressing Piedmont 's tail to her upper lip, she twirled the tip as if it were the end of a blond mustache. "We must use the little gray cells."

  The few left I haven't drowned, she thought. Against her better judgment, she took another sip of Sauvignon Blanc. Clearheadedness, desirable as it might be, couldn't compete with habit.

  On the back of an announcement of an equal opportunity meeting Anna wrote: WHO HAD REASONS TO KILL SHEILA DRURY and underlined it.

  Christina Walters. She'd already been through that.

  Craig Eastern. He hated Drury-if "hated" wasn't too strong a word-for her attempts to develop the camping area for R.V. sites. Harland Roberts thought Craig was crazy enough to hurt her, why not Sheila?

  Mrs. Thomas Drury. She'd mentioned something about insurance money. There'd been problems between mother and daughter. That had been fairly obvious. Try as she might, Anna couldn't picture Mrs. Drury more than four feet off a paved trail.

  Who else? She stared at the blank sheet of paper. Rogelio? Because Sheila was opposed to reintroducing prairie dogs?

  "My mother-in-law," Anna said dryly. "Because Ranger Drury had such appalling manners as to eat ice cream with a grapefruit spoon?"

  Piedmont was not amused. Anna laughed, a snort of silent amusement. What now? Form some intelligent theory then set about questioning the suspects? "Where were you at such and such a time?"

  A knock startled her from her musings, startled Piedmont from her shoulders. Automatically she checked her radio, turned up the squelch. It was working. If there was an ambulance run or a problem in the campground they'd've radioed-for a ranger's 20,000 a year, she was on call twenty-four hours a day. Who would come to her door? It occurred to her that emergencies were more common than social calls anymore. The thought made her suddenly lonely.

  "Come in," she hollered. The door rattled and she realized she'd locked it. Embarrassed at her newly suspicious nature, Anna bounded across the room to open the door.

  Christina Walters was on the top step. Just as Anna jerked the door wide, she was turning to go. Looking a little shamefaced at being caught creeping away, the woman turned back.

  Given her recent speculations and the color photos that were lying on her desk, Anna could think of nothing to say. Even the old stand-bys of "Good evening. May I help you?" and "Won't you come in?" had deserted her.

  "I came for that beer," Christina Walters said shyly and looked up at Anna with eyes as dark and unfathomable as Zachary Taylor's. The same velvet brown that Anna'd lost herself in so many times. "May I come in?"

  "Sure," Anna answered ungraciously and stood aside more like a doorman than a hostess.

  Christina walked in, seemingly over her shyness of a moment before. She studied the few postcards Anna had taped up on the wall with an apparently unfeigned interest. Piedmont came out from his skulking place under the table and twined himself around her ankles as if she were a long-lost cousin.

  Anna watched, still with no words in her brain, as Christina picked the cat up and coiled him around her neck as if she'd been doing it all her life. She was wearing a jersey dress. The elongated tank top clung to her from shoulders to hips, then flared long, ending at mid-calf. On her feet were rubber thongs. The dress was Kelly green, the thongs lavender. Somehow Christina made it look fashionable. Piedmont, gold and shameless, completed the picture by draping himself like a fox fur across her shoulders.

  Anna could smell the faint scent of White Linen.

  Christina turned and smiled. Anna closed the door. Was the woman trying to seduce her? Or was it simply the knowledge that the possibility existed that preyed on her mind?

  Wanting to destroy the silence, Anna punched the PLAY button on the tape player. The Chenille Sisters. Auto-rewind had brought them back to "I Wanna Be Seduced." Anna punched it off.

  Christina, Piedmont slithering down in her arms to be held like a baby, was working her way around the single room that comprised all of Anna's living quarters. Pleasant, not prying, merely polite, she was taking in the fragments of Anna's life. Soon those dark eyes would stray across the desk top, across the snapshots.

  "A beer," Anna said. "I've got wine. I'm drinking wine. Would you rather have that?"

  "White wine would be nice," Christina replied, sounding genuinely delighted.

  "You can sit." Like a traffic cop, Anna pointed to the arm chair. Besides being the only chair, it had the advantage of being on the other side of the room from the desk. Not only was Anna unsure whether or not she wanted Christina to know she had found the pictures-if, indeed, it was Christina who had been in Drury's trailer searching-but there was something about Christina Walters that made Anna want to spare her any shock, any unpleasantness. Though they were of her, the snaps seemed too explicit for Christina's dark eyes.

  Anna did an awkward dip scooping up the offending photographs, and retreated to the kitchen area. Hidden behind the refrigerator door, she stuffed them into the hip pocket of her Levi's. Shortly thereafter, she emerged with a liter bottle of wine. Hoping she looked innocent but managing only to look relieved, she said inanely: "I got it."

  Christina laughed. "One glass will do for starters-I'm a cheap date."

  "I doubt that." Words came before thought. Though they sounded harsh, Anna meant them as a compliment. She waited a second to see how Christina would take it.

  The woman smiled easily, crossed her long legs. Piedmont jumped to the floor. Lovely as it was, it was not a good lap for curling up in.

  Anna poured a glass of wine for her guest and, returning to the desk, she topped off her own. The bottle she set on the floor by the kerosene lamp.

  "Light it," Christina said. It sounded like the eager request of a child and not an order.

  Fumbling with matches, Anna lit the lamp.

  Christina Walters dropped gracefully to the floor and began looking through the tape collection Anna kept in shoe boxes beneath the coffee table. Seemingly she had more poise sitting on a stranger's carpet than Anna could muster in a straight-backed chair in her own home.

  As she read the spines of the cassettes, Christina chatted comfortably of music. "I used to sing in the church choir when I was growing up in Tennessee," she said and she laughed. A nice round rich sound from somewhere deeper than nerves or politeness. "Momma thought I was such a devout little thing till she found out I only put up with all the talk about Jesus so I could have the music. There was a stop to choir after that, though not to church."

  Anna smiled, handed Christina her wine. She took it in long tapered fingers, nails polished but not sharp or unkind-looking.

  "To old friends and better days," Christina said. Sadness touched her face, warmed the brown eyes.

  Anna felt her throat constrict. "Old friends," she repeated and drank to other dark eyes and lamp-lit nights.

  "How about this? Sophistication in the wilderness. I love it." Christina held up Cole Porter's Anything Goes.

  "One of my favorites," Anna replied, pleased that Ch
ristina had chosen that instead of a modern popular musician. "I sing some of those songs to Gideon to keep us both awake on the trail."

  "I'll bet he loves it." Christina dropped the tape in.

  Anna suspected she was trying to put her at ease. What surprised her was how well it was working. "I think Gideon misses the good old days when rangers whistled "The Streets of Laredo.' "

  Piedmont, creeping along the sides of the room, skulking under the furniture, sprang out to pounce on the hem of Christina's dress. Putting her hand under the fabric, she moved it around creating a mole for him to kill.

  It impressed Anna that she put Piedmont 's amusement before the well-being of her garment.

  "I want to get Alison a kitten," Christina said. "She needs to learn to be kind because she is bigger, more powerful than something. She needs to have some little life depend on her now. I don't expect she'll ever have a little sister to practice on."

  Sadness weighed on Christina's voice and Anna, who'd never much cared for children, found herself wishing Christina could have another. "Alison's the little blond girl on the pink tricycle, isn't she?" Anna asked and the other woman nodded, looking pleased Anna had noticed. "She's a pretty little girl."

  Christina said nothing but there was something in her look that made Anna laugh at herself. "Listen to me," she said. "I'm carrying on the tradition. As if pretty were the best and most important thing a little girl could be."

  Christina refilled her own glass, then poured Anna more wine. Anna accepted her taking the role of hostess as easily as Christina had assumed it.

  "Let me try again," Anna said as she slid down on the floor, her back against the desk, her legs stretched out. "She looks like a sharp, determined, organized little girl. How's that?"

  "Perfect!" Christina said, and she actually clapped her hands. Somehow it wasn't phony or coy or childish or any of the things Anna might have thought had the gesture come from someone else. It was charming.

  "Alison is terrifyingly organized and she's just turned four last month. Why did you say 'organized'? It's an odd word to describe a child."

  "I can see her thinking," Anna explained. "See the little wheels and cogs and gears turning as she plots out her course through the houses."

  "She is my light," Christina said. "Everything that is good and worthwhile about me has surfaced in that little person. All the bent and broken bits were left out. Alison means the world to me."

  There was an edge of desperation-or determination-in Christina's voice that made Anna think now she was to hear the real reason for the visit. Disappointment-minor, Anna told herself-ached behind her sternum. She wished this had been just a social call. The ache deepened as she remembered the snapshots in her pocket.

  The tape clicked to an end. Neither of them moved to turn it over. Christina was looking into Anna's face and, though Anna wanted to look away, she found she couldn't.

  "You found the pictures, didn't you?" the woman asked softly.

  "Inside the clothes rod in the bedroom closet," Anna replied.

  Despite the situation, Christina laughed. "For heaven's sake!" she said. "I'm impressed. You must be a regular Miss Marple."

  She was impressed, Anna could tell. She liked it. And she felt a fool for liking it. "You… went into Ranger Drury's and looked through her collection."

  "We broke in, yes."

  "We?"

  "Alison and I."

  In spite of herself, Anna smiled. It hardly seemed a deadly duo, this gentle woman and her child. A thought struck Anna: "The dishes and the garbage. You cleaned up."

  "The heat made it smell," Christina said simply, as if Sheila could come home and be offended by it.

  Anna had more questions, but it seemed if she waited Christina would fill the awkward silences as she had been doing since she arrived. Truth or lies, Anna was curious to see what she would say.

  As if I'd know the difference, Anna said to herself. But she thought she would.

  "Could I see them?" Christina asked.

  Wondering what kind of a cop she was to hand over her best and only evidence to the prime suspect, Anna took the snapshots from her pocket and gave them to Christina. Two women sitting companionably talking of children and music over a glass of wine: it seemed absurd to refuse a request on the grounds of suspected murder.

  There were twelve pictures. Christina looked through them slowly. Her eyes filled with tears. Anna got to her feet and fetched a wad of toilet paper from the bathroom. When she came back she didn't settle again to her comfortable place on the carpet but perched vulture-like on the edge of the straight-backed chair. "I haven't any Kleenex," she apologized as she held out the tissue.

  "This is fine. Thank you." Christina blew her nose.

  Anna was speculating whether or not she had murdered her lover, but when Christina looked up there was such loneliness in her brown eyes Anna found herself saying with honesty as well as compassion: "Those are beautiful photographs."

  The simple kindness seemed to undo Christina and the trickle of tears became a river. Anna knew from experience that tears made men nervous. Though she certainly enjoyed them less, they bothered her no more than laughter.

  In a minute or two the sobs subsided. Christina took a deep drink of her wine and sighed as if she were breathing out her very soul.

  "I thought maybe she was blackmailing you," Anna said. "Though who'd care these days is beyond me. But maybe you wanted to go to seminary, become an Episcopal priest, run for Congress, or Mrs. America. Was she?"

  Christina shook her head. "She threatened sometimes. Half kidding you know, wanting to make me 'come out of the closet'. I like it just fine in the closet. But Sheila'd never have done it."

  "Because she loved you?"

  "No. I don't know that she did love me. Because she was a very ethical person. Painfully so. She used to boast-and it was true in a lot of ways-that she had no morals but she did have ethics. To tell someone else's secrets would not have been an ethical thing to do."

  "Why did you break in, search her picture collection?"

  "I was afraid if the pictures turned up in her effects they might be made public in some way. Then Erik would find out like he finds out everything. He would use them to prove I was an unfit mother. He'd take Alison from me."

  "Erik is Alison's father?"

  "Legally."

  Anna looked at her questioningly. It had nothing to do with Drury or lions, and she couldn't bring herself to voice mere curiosity.

  "After Erik and I had been trying a while we found out his sperm count was too low-practically nil-and what few little guys there were, were pretty poor swimmers. 'Weak specimens' the doctor called them. Alison's daddy is the turkey baster. High tech, though. We had it done in a fancy clinic in San Raphael."

  "I take it, it was not an amicable divorce," Anna ventured and Christina laughed bitterly.

  "No. Erik was having an affair with his corner office and his mahogany desk at an investment banking firm in San Francisco and I was having an affair with the woman who came to do the stenciling in the nursery.

  "Erik had been pretty upset over the sperm count thing even though it really didn't matter much to me. I guess having his wife run off with another woman was more than he could take. He even threatened to kill her. He actually waited at her off ramp and rammed Linda's car with his Toyota. He was just trying to scare us, I think. It worked. Linda moved to Seattle. I lost touch with her after a while."

  "Why didn't he get Alison then?"

  "He tried but I went on the stand and lied my way out of it. There wasn't any proof. And I guess I didn't look like the judge's idea of one of 'them.' He'll never give up, though."

  "He loves Alison that much? Or hates you?"

  "Both in his way, I guess. But what he really loves is winning and what he can't stand is losing."

  A moment passed in silence. Christina looked through the pictures again but this time there were no tears. When she'd finished, she held them out to Anna.


  "Keep them," Anna said.

  "You loved somebody!" Christina sounded faintly surprised.

  "Did you think of me as the Snow Queen, a heart of ice?"

  Christina was quiet so long, Anna thought she wasn't going to reply.

  "I suppose I did," she said finally. "You seem so tough, so together, lifting heavy weights and driving big trucks. It's easier to believe other people are tough-unfeeling-then you don't have to be careful of them. You can go right on along being careful only of yourself. If you have a heart," Christina said gently, "it's made of gold." She held the corner of the bundle of pictures over the chimney of the lamp. Flames bloomed green and blue from the developing chemical.

  "It's a shame," Anna said. "They were really the only pictures Sheila ever took that were worth a damn."

  Christina left at nine-forty; eleven-forty New York time. Anna decided to risk Molly's displeasure, gambling she'd still be up watching Jay Leno.

  For this call, Anna went to the pay phone down the road half a mile at the Pine Springs Store. The laundry room in the Cholla Chateau was too public.

  "It's me. Did I wake you up?" Anna asked.

  "Nope. This is the City That Never Sleeps. Tonight I know why. The people in 3C won't let it. I knew I should have moved when they took up clog dancing." There was a sudden silence in the listening darkness of the phone lines, a hushed breath, a sense of palpable relief.

  "Still smoking?" Anna asked.

  "Still drinking?" Molly returned.

  "Like a fish."

  "Like a chimney."

  "By sixty-two you'll be dead of emphysema like Aunt Gertie."

  "By seventy-four you'll fall drunk in the upper pond and drown like Gramma Davis."

  "Come to West Texas. At least mix your smoke with some real air," Anna said and, as always, she felt a fluttering of hope that this time Molly would say yes. And wouldn't cancel out at the last minute.

  "Too many crazy clients," Molly said with a laugh.

  "Speaking of crazy," Anna blurted out, "I think I may be gay."

  "Woman to woman love? Politically correct. Low risk of disease. High chance of getting grant money for artistic endeavors. That'll be a hundred and forty-five dollars."