The Serpents Trail

by Sue Henry

  “Don’t you ever cry, Maxine?” he asked suddenly.

  The insinuation in his question stunned me into silence that grew into a lump of resentment, which, rather than take exception to, I swallowed. How I grieved for Sarah was my business.

  I had considered telling him what the hospital had reported to Westover concerning Sarah’s death—thinking he might have some clue to who had made the attempt on her life—but, again, changed my mind. It was another thing that would wait till I had examined a few ideas more carefully. Instead I gathered my thoughts, ignored his query, and defended Sarah.

  “She cared enough to be your friend all her life,” I told him. I get stern when people are self-indulgent, even when they may have some right to it. “That’s no small thing, is it? Does love always have to be the way you want it, or measured by some personal standard to count? People only have their own kind to give. I think that every bit of what she felt for you she gave as well as she could.”

  We can’t help loving who we love. Ed’s disappointment and sense of loss reminded me how lucky I had been to have had not one, but two good marriages that were equitable and loving on both sides. Things do tend to come full circle, though not always in the way you expect.

  “You’re right,” he admitted, turning to me a bit shamefaced. “I’m being selfish. I’m going to miss her—a lot. But then—I’ve always missed her, really.”

  “I’m going to miss her, too. But I think that as long as we remember her she’s still around. I’ve found myself talking to her in the last couple of days.”

  I put my feet down to stop the swing’s slight movement.

  “Just think how she would have loved this—a couple of senior citizens hogging the playground equipment.”

  He looked around and noticed, as I had, that a couple of small boys who were standing on one foot, then the other, were clearly wishing we would abandon the swings.

  Collecting our shoes, we left them to it and walked back across the grass toward the parking lot.

  “Thanks, Maxie.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He drove me back to my home-on-wheels and, when he had pulled up at the curb, I turned, wanting to give him something comforting.

  “Sarah left you some kind of letter,” I told him. “It’s sealed in an envelope, so I didn’t open it.”

  “Where is it? Can I have it now?”

  “I left it with her attorney. I’m sorry. I found it in the house with a couple of others and took them to Don Westover’s office this morning. I’ll ask him when you can have it—get it for you if I can.”

  “Please.”

  I hesitated a moment, deciding, then asked, “What do you know about Salt Lake, Ed?”

  He gave me a blank, uncomprehending look, shook his head and shrugged. “Nothing much. It’s in Utah—Mormon Tabernacle Choir—Winter Olympics. Why?”

  “Oh, I just wondered if you’d been there and what it was like,” I hedged. “I’ve come through there on my way here more than once—did this trip down—but I’ve never stopped. It’s not important. I was just curious.”

  When he had driven away, I went to the motor home to get Stretch and give him a quick run, feeling a bit guilty for having had my adventure in the park without him. Glad to see me, he was even more glad to be let out and made it clear by taking advantage of the front yard to check out each shrub and tree, even the front steps, where I sat down to watch him for a few minutes.

  I had been considering Salt Lake as the evening progressed. It seemed to have more to do with all this than I had originally thought, especially now that I had met Jamie. Had she gone back there with the pages she had taken from my bag? Could I find her if I followed? Aside from that idea, there was now not only the name and address on the card that had been in the otherwise empty box in that basement room, but also Wilson and the LDS Family History Library. It was a Salt Lake number. Who were these people and how did they relate to Sarah? Could any of them have some connection to her death? I had a feeling Mildred Scott could be the person who had sent the photographs and the letters about Jamie and her son through all those years.

  Her name was the best clue I had and, with Sarah’s gathering three whole days away, I was tempted to go to Salt Lake and see if I could find some answers. Why not? It was only a couple of hundred miles, so I could leave early and be there around lunchtime. The idea was appealing in another way as well.

  As I said, I enjoy traveling, especially in my new Winnebago, which I had hardly broken in. Having my house on my back, so to speak, relieves me of hunting up hotels that will accept the presence of my mini-dachshund pal, of lugging suitcases up and down stairs or elevators, of making do without my favorite coffee, traipsing up and down hallways in search of ice, eating restaurant food, sleeping in strange beds, and a whole host of similar things that weary me. The motor home allows me to stop where I want to, move around in familiar comfort when I’m parked, and see what I am passing on the way to—wherever. If I want to stay awhile and need ground transportation, I can always rent a small car for a reasonable amount and return it—and its maintenance—when I’m ready to take to the road again.

  Airplane travel gives you little in the way of scenery—often just the tops of clouds or unreal scenery like the patchwork quilt of Middle America. Half the time when I fly I come home with some cold or flu that results from the recirculation of air—and germs—in the cabin, and I hate being packed in with strangers like sardines in a can. Even in first class you are always bumping elbows, or getting stuck beside someone with a restless, noisy child, or who wants to chat their way from Anchorage to—wherever. Planes are great for one thing—getting you where you want to go in a hurry. At my age there is almost nowhere I need, or want, to go in that much of a hurry. I much prefer to cruise at my own rate of speed along unfamiliar highways, explore whatever catches my interest, and make new friends in places where I can live in my own space.

  So, going to Salt Lake would be no hardship—no hardship at all.

  I sat on the step, one elbow on a knee, fist under my chin, rubbing Stretch’s ears with the opposite hand, and considered the trip as dark crept in and the streetlights blinked on to gild the edges of the leaves on the trees by the curb and mosaic the sidewalk with their shadows. Across the street the television was entertaining its watcher again and once more I heard another cricket chirp somewhere under the hydrangeas beside the steps.

  A car turned off Seventh and did a slow, almost silent cruise along Chipeta. I watched it pull over to park in front of where I sat and realized it was a police car.

  Two men got out—a tall one in uniform and a shorter, wider one in slacks and a rather baggy sports jacket—and came up the walk. I recognized the uniformed one from his unexpected appearance in Sarah’s doorway the night I had arrived to find her bedroom in such a state of chaos.

  “Ms. McNabb?” he questioned, when they were halfway up the walk.

  “Yes.”

  “Officer Bellamy. I was here the other night.”

  “I remember you.” I got up and held out a hand, which he shook.

  “Detective Soames,” he said, introducing his companion, who nodded in my direction. “I had a call from Don Westover and told him we’d check to make sure everything was okay here. Understand you had another break-in. You should have called us.”

  “Probably, but there was no one in the house by the time I discovered it and no evidence I could see that would have helped you.”

  He gave me a half-indulgent smile and shook his head at my seeming lack of common sense.

  “You couldn’t know that. We have methods . . .”

  “I’ll call you if there’s another,” I interrupted firmly, “but I’m sure there won’t be. It turned out to be a relative and everything’s fine now. By the way, who was it that called about the break-in that first night?”

  “We don’t know. It was made from a stolen cell phone and hasn’t been used again.”

  Interesting.
/>   Detective Soames had taken out a notebook and was clearly waiting for an end to our exchange.

  “Was there something else?”

  “Yes,” he stepped forward and raised a pen over paper. “I’m investigating the suspicious circumstances of Mrs. Nunamaker’s death and I need answers to a few questions. When did you arrive in Grand Junction, Ms. McNabb?”

  I related my day of travel and arrival on the day of the thunderstorm.

  “Is there anyone who can assure us that you were on the road between here and Pocatello, Idaho, that day?”

  “You’re investigating me?” I asked in disbelief.

  “We have to follow up on everyone who was here that day,” he told me smoothly. “You were inside the house when the call came in about the break-in, so you’re on that list.”

  Biting my tongue against my first response, I thought back to that day of approximately three hundred and fifty miles of driving.

  “The restaurant was crowded where I stopped for lunch on the way down, so I doubt they’d remember me. I hesitated at service stations a couple of times, but didn’t talk to anyone, even an attendant,” I told him. “I put my gas on a credit card.”

  “Do you have the receipts?”

  When I had retrieved them from the Winnebago, he checked the time and dates, and nodded. “These will do.”

  “I want them back.”

  Another nod. “I’ll make copies and be sure you get them. Is there anyone that you know was with her in the house the day she was hospitalized?”

  Jamie, I thought, but didn’t say so. How could I explain a tangle of relationship I didn’t completely understand or even know was legitimate, for that matter? I could give them her name later, if appropriate.

  I shook my head in answer to his question. His eyes narrowed in response to my denial, but he shrugged and put away his notebook.

  “Oh,” I said, remembering. “I almost forgot. There was a nurse who was coming twice a day to give Sarah her medicine.”

  He took out his notebook again. “You know her name?”

  “Never met her.”

  He wrote something and put it away again.

  “You’re sure everything’s okay here?” Officer Bellamy asked. “Want us to check the house again?”

  “No, it’s fine. I’ve already gone through it and cleared up the mess.”

  His slightly pained expression insinuated that in the process I had carelessly destroyed any possible evidence. Under the calm exterior I had determined to maintain, I was feeling a certain amount of derisive amusement at the officiousness the two of them displayed. It must have showed when I glanced up at him, because he suddenly grinned and shrugged his shoulders in a more friendly, I’m-not-really-such-a-bad-guy sort of way. He was younger than he looked.

  “We’re really on the side of the righteous, Ms. McNabb,” he told me. The grin was so infectious and almost adolescent that I couldn’t help returning it.

  “Does your mother know you harass old ladies?” I teased.

  “Yeah, she does—and would want me to apologize.”

  Detective Soames watched this bit of friendly nonsense with evident cynicism and did not smile, but turned with Bellamy and walked toward the car without another word.

  I waited for him to get into the passenger seat and close the door before I called out to Officer Bellamy, who was on his way around to the driver’s side.

  He came trotting back up the walk with a questioning look.

  “You said to let you know if I was leaving town,” I told him. “Tomorrow I’m going to run up to Salt Lake for a couple of days, then I’ll be back. Is that all right?”

  “Sure,” he said, still smiling. “You’re not under arrest. Here’s my card—give me a call when you get back. I want to be sure no one else harasses you, okay?”

  I agreed and watched them both pull away before I took Stretch home to bed.

  Once inside the Winnebago, with the shades drawn and everything closed up for the night, I decided to take a break from all speculation and picked up a book I had been meaning to read on the Northern Rockies and the Colorado Plateau. Settling at the dinette with a cup of tea and a piece of Doris Chapman’s chocolate cake, I leafed through page after page of beautiful pictures of places I would like to see, until I found a section of text that told me how natural stone arches are formed. It was a fascinating book and the cake—with homemade frosting, not that sticky stuff from a can—was great. In no time at all, I had eaten a second piece and was falling asleep over the pages somewhere between Canyonlands National Park and Monument Valley.

  I stuck a marker in the book and, setting it aside for another night, headed for bed, yawning and totally forgetting that I had intended to keep an eye on Sarah’s house in case Jamie Stover returned.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  WHEN THE SUN ROSE THE NEXT MORNING BEFORE SIX, I was already up and cheerfully anticipating a day on the road. After a quick breakfast for Stretch and myself—scrambled eggs and toast for me from Doris’s loaf of bread—I cleaned up the galley and stashed away everything that could roll, rattle, or fall before I set the rig in motion. I turned off the gas and made sure the refrigerator was switched from AC power it ran on when parked to the DC the automotive system would provide as we traveled.

  I made phone calls—one to Westover’s office, to make sure there was nothing I needed to do before leaving—and one to Ed Norris, to let him know I would be gone for two or three days. Ed wanted to know why I needed to go to Salt Lake, but I put him off with a comment or two about the need to get away by myself for a space. I was a little anxious that he would offer to come along, as he had made it clear he was inclined to count on me for company, but to my relief he didn’t. He was a grown man, after all, and could take care of himself. I had other things I needed to do—questions to answer that I didn’t want to share.

  Stretch, who always knows when I’m about to go somewhere, padded around eagerly, getting under my feet at every turn. Finally, I picked him up and deposited him in his basket over the passenger seat, where he could watch without tripping me.

  “Take a gander from there,” I told him. “No worries, mate—I’m not going without you this time.”

  When everything inside was shipshape, I let him outside for a bit while I unhooked the lines for water and electricity from Sarah’s house, filled the water tank, coiled and packed the lines away neatly in an outside compartment, and was ready to go.

  Before leaving, I took the clean casserole dish and cake pan that had held Doris’s food offerings, the leftover contents of which I had transferred to plastic containers, and walked across to knock on her front door. She answered almost immediately with a smile.

  “Going somewhere?” she asked as I handed her the dishes, along with additional thanks.

  Did nothing get past this woman?

  “Just a quick trip to Salt Lake,” I told her. “I’ll be back day after tomorrow.”

  To forestall questions, I gave her the details of Sarah’s gathering. She immediately offered to provide food, of course, and looked disappointed when I told her we would keep it simple and serve only the family wine Sarah had requested.

  “Well, I guess if that’s what you think best. But it seems a little . . .” she let her comment drift off, rather than sound critical.

  “That’s it,” I told her. “We’ll do it just as she wanted.”

  “Would you like me to pick up the newspapers from the front porch?” she offered. “So the house won’t look empty—considering that burglar the other night, I mean.”

  News does travel fast, doesn’t it? Well, the police had been rather obvious with their shouts and flashing lights, and neighbors will talk.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” I told her, and, as I went back to Sarah’s to check the front porch before leaving, thought about daily mail delivery which, coming and going through the back door, I hadn’t remembered, either.

  There were two newspapers on the porch, which I collected
and took inside, using the same key that fit the back door. In the vestibule, I, for the first time, noticed a box on the wall into which mail fell as it was pushed through a slot from outside. In it were several envelopes that I flipped through and found were nothing but an electric bill and some advertisements. Along with two accompanying catalogs, I laid them on the desk in the alcove and went out again, locking the door behind me.

  As I pulled the Winnebago out of the driveway onto Chipeta Avenue, Doris waved from her porch. I waved back and was on my way.

  In just under half an hour I had found a service station along Horizon Drive with facilities where I could empty my holding tanks and fill the gas tank, and had driven up the entrance ramp onto Interstate Highway 70, headed northwest. Having passed Fruita and the turnoff to the Colorado National Monument, I went over the Colorado River, up a long rise and was crossing the state line into Utah at eight o’clock—the sweeping curve of the Book Cliffs visible on my right.

  Highway 70 is a comfortable two lanes each direction with a wide median, easy to drive and to allow other drivers to pass a motor home—as many of them think they must, even if one is traveling as fast as they want to go. From past experience, I can understand their wish to be able to see the road and possible obstacles ahead, but often they cut back in too close for safety, and do not consider how much farther it takes a much heavier motor home to slow down or stop.

  The road rose and fell over low clay hills scattered with sagebrush, an arid introduction to the northeast edge of the Colorado Plateau that takes up huge parts of Four Corners Country—Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. It tempted me to turn south and explore an area I had always wanted to see that is even more spectacular than the Colorado National Monument.

  Southeast Utah near Highway 70 is peppered with wonderful names—Mule Shoe, Yellow Cat Flat, Winter Camp Wash, Professor Creek, Hotel Mesa. Passing the town of Cisco, I knew that Arches National Park was not far away, with the town of Moab just below. With a mission established, I resisted. The canyon-filled country could wait for another day, when I had no commitments. Rather than travel two sides of a triangle and in order to save myself sixty-five miles, just past Green River I turned north on Route 6, which is a narrower two-lane road that runs about one hundred thirty miles to join north-south Interstate Highway 15 just below Provo, Utah.