The Deepest Water

by Kate Wilhelm

  Lieutenant Caldwell cleared his throat, a gentle nudge that a question was still in the air. Abby said, "I doubt they'd let him through without barking a lot."

  "How about Willa Ashford?"

  He had been leading back to her all along, she realized. Wearily she said, "Ask her. I don't know."

  By the time they reached Eugene and he pulled into the parking lot of a motel on Franklin Boulevard, she had a pounding headache. "Home," he said. "You can take over the driving now. I appreciate the time you've given us today, how hard it must have been for you. Thanks. I'll be in touch."

  They both got out and she walked around the van to get behind the wheel. "Good night, Mrs. Connors," he said, then strode away.

  She drove home.

  Coop always maintained that dogs, at least the dogs he trained, understood a limited number of words, and the first thing to do with one of them was to lead it around the property and say repeatedly, "Home."

  "Then it will know where it can go and can't," he had said.

  When Jud got Spook from Coop Halburtson, she had been a puppy, not quite eight weeks old, still a ball of gray fluff; Abby had carried her as Jud rowed across the finger.

  "Have you named her yet?"

  He said no. "How about Dust Ball?"

  "Oh, Dad!" She studied the little dog. "She looks like Casper. You know, the Friendly Ghost?"

  "Thank God, Casper isn't a girl's name," he said. "I can't see myself living with a dog named Casper."

  "Casperella?" They both laughed. She considered Ghost, but shook her head. You didn't really want to walk around calling ghosts. If not simultaneously, then no more than a half beat apart, they both said, "Spook." And Spook she was. Later Jud had reported wryly that Coop was putting both him and Spook through some schooling.

  After they both graduated, when Coop said it was time, Abby had trailed along with Jud when he led Spook around e cabin and the surrounding area that was her territory, and far as Abby knew, Spook had never strayed off the property, nor had she allowed any stranger to enter it without a challenge.

  Now Abby proceeded to introduce Spook to another new home. She snapped on the leash and led the dog around the backyard, all along a high fence, past the attached garage, to the front yard, around the house, and back inside through the rear patio door. Although the yard was small and well lit, it was a slow process; Spook had to squat again and again, marking her territory, and she had to smell just about everything. "Home," Abby said over and over. Spook wagged her tail in apparent understanding.

  Inside the house Abby took her through each room. She would repeat the whole process the next day, just to be sure, she thought then, in the kitchen making a pot of coffee. It was after six, but Brice had said he would work late all this week, catch-up time. She took two aspirin tablets and sat down to wait for the coffee to drip. Spook lay at her feet; her ears twitched now and then as she registered unfamiliar noises—a car on the street, a neighbor's door closing, something Abby couldn't even hear. That was how Spook had been at the cabin; she knew whenever a boat was in the finger, and she never let out a sound unless and until it landed at Jud's property.

  "If only you could talk," Abby murmured. "If only you could." She was trying to construct a scene that had her father up in the aerie, and Spook anywhere except near him. Then she must have heard someone dock and started barking at an intruder in the middle of the night. Jud could have admitted someone, put Spook out, then gone back upstairs. She shook her head. In the middle of the night? How? She kept coming back to it. How had anyone crossed without launching a boat from Coop's ramp? And his dogs had not barked.

  "Someone must have been there already, all evening," she whispered. Had Spook barked because she wanted in, not because an intruder had come? She stared at the shaggy gray dog whose ears kept twitching. That was the only scenario that made any sense. Someone must have gone to the cabin early, before dark, and stayed overnight, left as soon as there was enough light to get through the narrow passage back to the park ramps. Or to one of the cottages.

  She was still at the table, sipping coffee, when suddenly Spook jumped up and began to bark, and now Abby heard it, too. A car in the driveway, then the garage door opening.

  "Quiet, Spook," she said. "It's Brice." The dog stopped barking, still on full alert but quiet. Abby hurried to the front door before Brice reached it, and opened it to await him.

  "Hi," she said when he entered. "Hi." She stretched out both arms to him, and he grabbed her and held her so hard that it hurt.

  "Oh, God!" he whispered into her hair. "God, I've been so scared. Abby, you're okay? You're okay!"

  She nodded against his chest. "I'm okay."

  Spook sat down and watched them; her tail swept back and forth, back and forth.

  A little later, sitting on the couch with her head on his shoulder, Abby began to tell Brice about her day, why the murderer couldn't have been a stranger, a camper or anyone like that.

  She stopped talking when he drew away in order to watch her face, as if he didn't yet believe she had come out of the stupor that had benumbed her all week.

  "You don't know how it made me feel," she said, "knowing that I could have been there, might have prevented it somehow. But it had to be someone Spook knows, not a stranger. If I'd been there when she came in, she would have stayed for a while probably, then left, the way they do up there. She could have gone back the next day, or any other day, when I wasn't there."

  Brice nodded. "I think you're right, honey. You realize you kept saying she?"

  "I know," she said. "But a man wouldn't have been invited to spend the night. Dad would have taken him across the finger and driven him home, to the cottage or wherever. Dr. Beard-well stayed too late a couple of times, and that's what happened."

  Brice took her hand. "Abby, don't breathe a word of what you think about this. Oh, you can tell the cop your theory, but no one else. Okay? Will you keep mum about what you think happened?"

  Surprised, she said, "Who would I tell?"

  "I don't know. The Halburtsons. That old gossip, Felicia Shaeffer. Someone. I just don't think you should let it be known that you might have seen something, noticed something, or even suspect something." He tightened the pressure on her hand.

  "I'd have no reason to mention anything to them," she said. Then very slowly she added, "You really mean Willa, don't you?"

  "I'd include her in the people you shouldn't say much to," he admitted.

  "She had nothing to do with it," Abby said. "You don't know how much she loved him. She would never have done anything to hurt him." She pulled her hand away. "You just don't realize how she felt about him."

  "I think I do," he said soberly. "Today I had a talk with Harvey Durham about the cashier's checks. He should know something," Brice said, "but he claims he doesn't have a clue about them. Who they were for, anything. But, Abby, it smacks of blackmail, extortion, something like that. Why the secret otherwise? Why not just regular checks? But what if there's a woman out there somewhere, maybe with a child, someone Jud had to pay off over the years? What if Willa found out about her, about a son or daughter he never acknowledged but had to support? What if he was married to her? You don't know, and neither do I. But someone was raking in a lot of money. And if it was anything like that, and Willa realized she was going to be dumped the way all the others were over the years ..."

  Aghast, she stared at him. She had forgotten about the cashier's checks, more than a hundred thousand dollars unaccounted for. Could Jud have been paying off a woman, supporting another family? She remembered the two bottles of champagne. A celebration. To introduce her to her stepmother? Maybe that was who was with him that night. And he told her it was over? Why champagne if that was the case? They were being reconciled? Her headache had come back.

  "Honey," Brice said, "I didn't mean to upset you all over again. And that might be way off base, but the fact is, we don't know what those checks were for, and I think you should let the police do their
own work, and just not be talking about it with anyone."

  She nodded. "I'll tell the lieutenant that in the past a woman did go over and spend the night and leave the following day. It happened, and could have happened again. Someone could have stayed and left at daybreak."

  "Good. And now, let's talk about food. Out, or order something in? I choose ordering in. Sound okay to you?"

  "Okay," she said.

  She felt as if days and days had passed with her in a drugged state, unable to keep anything in conscious memory long enough to consider what it meant. Next week, she thought, she might sign a contract that would eventually bring in more than a million dollars, and she had not given it a single thought. Of course, she wouldn't see a penny of it until six months had passed, but even so, a million dollars! And then she thought about the two codicils her father had added to his will, another datum she had not wondered about, had simply accepted as given. Why had he done that? Why, why, why... ? All the things she had ignored seemed to be surfacing in waves, and they all ended with the same question: why?

  7

  The trouble with their neighborhood, Abby said on Sunday, was that there was no good place to walk a dog. It was a neighborhood for rising young professionals: doctors and dentists who, like Brice, were still paying off their school loans, lawyers who had not yet been made partners in prestigious firms, financial advisers on the way up. Landscaping was meticulous everywhere, with gardeners who came in regularly to maintain it, houses modestly upscale, SUVs in abundance, soccer moms the norm, a good neighborhood. Although Abby had blanched when she first saw the size of their mortgage payments, Brice had insisted that this was the place to be, and they managed to keep up payments, to keep up with all the Joneses, but if Jud had not footed her education expenses with checks twice as big as her school costs, she would be working full-time, she knew.

  Cars were not that numerous, and bikes not too bad, but there were no sidewalks, and Spook flinched when anything on wheels got near. She was a forest dog, a cabin dog, a recluse of a dog, not a city dog. Spook did not like this neighborhood.

  "I'll take her to the Arboretum," Abby said, picking at a sandwich at the kitchen table with Brice. He had been working all weekend, still catching up, he said, but since she had little real knowledge of what he actually did at work, she couldn't imagine how he could catch up at home. The stock market had to be open and running for him to buy and sell, that much she knew. He often talked about his clients, but aside from buying, selling, or advising them about investments, trusts, annuities, what else was there for him to do? Recordkeeping, for one thing, he had said tiredly, research investment possibilities in a constantly changing market. Review various portfolios so he would have some notion of what to tell old man Donaldson, or Mrs. Meyers.... He was way behind after a week of doing little or nothing.

  "You want to take a long walk, climb one of the trails up Mount Pisgah?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "Can't. But you should go soon if you decide to hike up a mountain. It's going to rain later on, according to the Weather Channel. Tonight, let's go out for dinner. Deal?"

  She nodded. "Deal." She knew she needed exercise as much as Spook did; the little bit of rowing she had done had made her back and arms sore, not a good sign. Since Brice went to the gym three days a week, he probably didn't feel the need for movement the way she did, but also, she had to admit to herself, she couldn't face any more of the sympathy cards and notes, the condolences that had poured in from all over the country. Jud had touched the lives of many people, and many of them had reacted to his death emotionally. Now she was working through the box of cards and letters, responding briefly to each one.

  Brice returned upstairs to his study and work, and she cleared the table, put things in the dishwasher, and got ready to leave. The phone rang and she paused to listen to the incoming call, then snatched up the phone.

  "Willa? I'm here."

  "Abby, I'm glad you picked up. Are you all right? How are you?"

  "Okay. I'm okay. Willa, the police are looking for you, state police."

  "I know. They've left messages on my machine. I'll give them a call, but, Abby, I have to see you before I talk to them. Can we meet somewhere?"

  Involuntarily Abby glanced up the stairs, then lowered her voice. "Yes. I'll come over to your place."

  "No. I'm not home. I don't want the police to know I'm back until after we talk, and they might come to the house. I suspect one of the neighbors was asked to call them when I turned up."

  "Where are you now?"

  "Safeway, at Eighteenth and Oak. I'll wait out front."

  Willa Ashford was forty-one and didn't try to pretend otherwise. Her chestnut-colored hair had streaks of white already, and she seldom wore any makeup and was careless about how she dressed, usually in jeans and sweatshirts or sweaters, and running shoes. Abby thought she was beautiful.

  She had had a crush on Willa her freshman year, when Willa had been her instructor. At the time, Abby and Matthew Petrie were together, fighting most of the time, and with so little money that, although they both worked while they were attending school, they often didn't know if they would be able to pay the rent or buy groceries. The threat of being put out on the street had been ever present. Willa had appeared so serene, so self-assured and composed, so beautiful and intelligent, everything that Abby knew she herself wasn't, she had set up Willa as an ideal that no other woman could even approach. She had loved her, with reverence and adoration, the way she imagined good Catholics felt toward Mary.

  In the spring of her freshman year, Abby had dropped out of school; there would be time later for her to go back, she and Matthew had said, and he had only one more semester to go; he would graduate, then work while she got her degree. The only thing she missed, she had confided to her friend Jonelle, was Willa. And Jonelle had said wisely, "Honey, you're looking for the perfect mother, someone whose shoulder you can cry on. Your life is the pits, and she would make the fairy-tale mother for you to run to; that's what you miss."

  She and Matthew maxed out their credit cards, borrowed heavily, skimped on everything; she worked at a restaurant and often took food home with her, hidden in her backpack. Then she learned that Matthew was into video poker, and although he graduated and got a job, money was scarcer than ever. Seventeen months after they were married, they separated, with the divorce following swiftly, financed by Jud.

  During Abby's year of absence from college, Willa's husband died of pancreatic cancer. Then, when Abby registered to return to school, she had needed permission from Willa to be readmitted to her class; she had gone to her office without an appointment, unannounced, and found Willa drawn and pale.

  "Will you take me back?" Abby asked at the door, reluctant to intrude on such obvious grief. "I'm sorry I dropped out. I'm single again, and I want to work toward my degree."

  "You got a divorce?"

  Abby nodded. "I'm sorry about your husband."

  Willa had been at her desk; she came around it and motioned Abby to come in all the way and sit down. "I'm sorry about your marriage," she said, closing the door. "I know how hard that can be."

  There were tears in her eyes, and she turned away quickly; then without knowing how it happened, Abby found herself holding Willa, and Willa weeping on her shoulder. That day they became friends, more than friends; Abby found a sister that day.

  The bond deepened and strengthened over the next few years; Abby changed her major to art history and, later, began to work at the museum, where Willa had been appointed director when the former director retired.

  When Abby realized that Willa was seeing Jud, seeing a lot of him, sleeping with him, she had been outraged, furious: "Leave him alone! Back off now while you can. You don't know what he's like!"

  "I know him," Willa had said calmly. "Maybe better than you do."

  "You don't! He'll use you. He'll take and take, and when he's done, he'll be off with someone else. I know exactly what he's like. He'll kill you. You
're not like the others."

  "Abby, for heaven's sake! You're talking about your father!"

  "And I love him more than I can say, but I'm not blind. I've watched him all these years, using women, then putting them in his novels as if they had been objects to be examined under a microscope, dissected, spread out for the world to see, and finally discarded." She drew in a long breath, fighting to control her fury, her anguish. "Willa, please, you must know about some of the others, how he's treated them. You're too good for that. You deserve someone who will really love you, not just for a fling, but forever. And he can't. He just can't be that way. He isn't mean or vicious, he's just..." She spread her hands helplessly. "He's what he is. He'll hurt you. Kill you."

  They were in the back courtyard at the museum, where several statues gazed endlessly into a reflecting pond. When a few people came out to stroll, Willa started to walk away; Abby caught her arm.