by Sarah Dreher
"Boneset gave us tea made of illegal recreational drugs?"
"…even though it always made you funny in the head..."
"She could have gotten us in big trouble."
“... I'm not surprised you couldn't sleep."
"That stuff carries mandatory prison terms."
Gwen laughed. "Come on, Stoner, this isn't exactly Narc-ville. Nobody's going to find out."
"That's not the point. She should have told us. We might have... scruples or something."
"That's not likely." "But if we did..."
"True," Gwen said thoughtfully. "It is a matter of etiquette."
Stoner scrubbed her face with her hands, erasing the last traces of sleepiness. "Assuming it was marijuana. Lots of things smell like that."
"Not exactly."
She picked up the mug from the bedside table and sniffed it. It was marijuana, all right. Even the valerian couldn't hide its sweet-smokey odor.
"So what did you find out with all that running around last night?" Gwen asked as she slipped her hand under Stoner's tee-shirt and stroked her back.
"Not much." She flopped over onto her stomach and gave into the feeling of Gwen's firm, soft hands against her skin.
"Incidentally, my love," Gwen said, "I don't exactly appreciate you running off in the middle of the night that way."
"Sorry," Stoner mumbled. Sleep was trying to drag her back. "There wasn't any other way to run off."
"You know what I mean."
"I saw something. I wanted to check it out."
"What did you see?"
"A light."
“What kind of light?"
"Flashlight light."
"And?"
"Nothing. I found Divi Divi's car—on account of the scripts and all—but all I could tell was that she likes Dairy Queen Blizzards."
"Definitely the sign of a criminal mind," Gwen said.
"I went down to the barn, but it didn't look as if anything had been touched."
"Then why did you go out the second time?"
Stoner twisted her head around and looked up at her. “What second time?"
"You went out, and then you came in, and then you went out, and came in again."
"I didn't."
Her hand stopped moving. "You did, Stoner. I heard you."
“You were asleep."
"I woke up, and then I went back to sleep. But I heard what I heard."
"I only went out once, Gwen."
Gwen was silent for a moment. "How would you know? You were stoned."
"So were you."
"Not that stoned."
Something was wrong here. Something deeply, seriously wrong. Stoner sat up. ''You don't believe me, do you?"
Gwen looked away. "Of course I do."
"No, you don't." She waited. Gwen didn't answer. "Gwen."
“We're going to miss breakfast," Gwen said. She swung her feet onto the floor.
"Gwen."
"Okay, I believe you." Gwen glanced at her quickly, then away. ''You didn't leave twice, or come back twice. It was my imagination."
"Why would I do that?"
"How should I know?" Gwen snapped. "After all, it wasn't really true." She slipped into the bathroom and locked the door.
Stoner felt anxiety like a fist in her stomach. This was crazy. Or maybe Gwen was crazy. She'd never lied to Gwen, not in all the time they'd been together. And even if she'd wanted to—which she really never had—she was no good at it, anyway.
Maybe she'd done something she didn't know about, accidentally, to make Gwen not trust her.
She tried to think, but couldn't come up with anything.
The shower was running.
They'd been together the whole day yesterday. There hadn't been anything.
This was wrong. They loved each other. They weren't supposed to be having secrets and strangenesses and unvoiced distrust.
Calm down, she told herself. This is just some morning weirdness. Some before-coffee whatever.
She dressed quickly, and tried not to think, and sat down on the bed to wait for Gwen.
The shower stopped. The bathroom door opened. Gwen peeked around. She looked as if she'd been crying. "I'm sorry," she said.
Stoner went to her and took her—wet naked body and all—in her arms. "It's okay." Relief ran through her veins like blood. "It was just a... thing."
Gwen hung onto her. "1 don't know what happened. I must be premenstrual."
"That's probably it." Gwen's hair was wet against her cheek. She knew that wasn't it. But it was all right now. It had passed. Forget it. "Get dressed and let's go eat." She forced a grin. "Unless you're planning to go like that and give the whole dining room a thrill."
"It's just so strange," Gwen said as she tossed her comb onto the dresser and picked up the empty mug. "I know one thing for sure. I'll never touch Boneset's tea again."
Stoner punched the automatic lock on the door and started to pull it closed. Then she remembered. “Wait a minute. I want to bring that note Sherry gave us. I thought of a way to check it against Rebecca's book."
She opened her underwear drawer and rummaged through the socks. No note.
Puzzled, she searched the tee-shirt drawer. Nothing there, either.
"Gwen," she called, "did you move the note?"
"Nope."
"It's not here."
"It must be here." Gwen yanked her drawers from the dresser and tossed the contents onto the bed. "I don't have it."
"Neither do I."
They looked at each other.
"Stoner," Gwen said, "are you sure you locked the door when you went out last night?"
"I always do. It's automatic with me."
"But do you remember doing it last night?"
"Not specifically..."
Gwen frowned. "Then I'm not crazy, and I didn't dream it. Someone was in our room while you were out."
They ran into Boneset in the lobby. She was wearing a paisley granny-skirt and light-weight unbleached muslin vest. Her hair was pulled back and up, and formed into a bun. Yesterday's baby butch had become today's Earth Mother.
"Hey," she called cheerily, "how'd you sleep last night?"
"Great," Stoner said in what she hoped was a convincing replica of enthusiasm. "The tea was wonderful.”
"It certainly was," Gwen agreed, and handed her the mug. She lowered her voice. "Incidentally, you don't have to worry. We won't tell."
Boneset looked at them quizzically. "Tell what?"
"About your secret ingredient."
"The dong quai? It gives it an odd flavor, but it's no secret."
"The other secret ingredient," Stoner said.
"I don't know what you mean."
Gwen leaned close to her. "The marijuana."
The woman turned the color of strawberry ice cream. "There's no marijuana in that tea. I'd never do that."
"You wouldn't?" Gwen asked, puzzled and taken aback.
"Of course not. What if you had a drug problem or something? That'd be really tacky. And how'd I explain it to my AA group? ‘I didn't slip, folks. But someone saved my life and I turned her on.' " She snorted. "That'd go over like a lead balloon, wouldn't it? Before you could say 'Higher Power,' everyone in the group'd be taking my inventory."
"Wait a minute," Stoner said. "You're telling me you didn't spike the tea?"
"That's what she's telling you," Gwen said.
”Besides," Boneset said, her voice rising, "one of those older women's an ex-cop. Who knows where her head's at. Do you know where her head's at?"
"I haven't met her," Stoner said, keeping her own voice low and intimate in the hope that Boneset would follow suit. "Look, we might have been mistaken..."
The woman sniffed the residue at the bottom of the mug. "It's pot, all right. Jesus! Maybe someone's messed with my herbs. Maybe someone's trying to set me up."
Maybe. If so, it meant that there had been two incidents directed at Boneset, which gave her the best score in the compa
ny. Boneset: 2. Roseann: 1.
"First the ladder, now this." Boneset wrinkled her forehead. "I assumed the ladder was an accident, but... You suppose maybe someone has it in for me?"
"I don't know," Stoner said. "Can you think of anyone who might?"
"Not in this lifetime. This might be some heavy Karmic shit."
Possible, but not helpful for our immediate purposes.
"What about someone you might have offended," she said, not sure quite how to put it, "when you were... doing whatever you were doing that you're in AA about?"
"I doubt it," Boneset said. "I was living in Eugene, Oregon, at the time. Anyone who'd follow me across the country just to get even has a real problem."
"That's just it," Gwen said. "Whoever's doing this might have a real problem."
Boneset dropped into the nearest chair. It was a high-backed, stiff wing chair, the kind of miserably uncomfortable antique Stoner's mother aspired to. "Bummer," the woman said.
Stoner wondered if they had given away too much already. She wished she didn't have to work under cover. It made it nearly impossible to ask the kinds of questions she wanted, needed to ask. If she could do this openly, she could call everyone together, have them make anonymous lists of known or suspected enemies and see who got the highest score, have them all keeping track of suspicious incidents or persons. She could turn this ragged group of women into a lean, mean detecting machine.
Oh, God. She rubbed her face. She was starting to reason like the CIA. Her mind was still as loose and fluttery as a wind sock in a gale. She ought to know better than to think before coffee. Or try to think before coffee, since what she was doing fell somewhat short of rational thought.
"I don't know what to do," Boneset said. "I mean, this is truly scary." Gwen patted her shoulder in a reassuring way. "Maybe it would be best not to mention it to anyone else—you know, let whoever's doing it think they're getting away with it. Stoner and I can keep an eye on things, sort of behind the scenes."
Boneset looked at her gratefully. ''You'd really do that?"
"Of course," Stoner said.
"If anything happens and we don't see it," Gwen said, "just come tell me about it. We're teching together. Nobody'll suspect anything."
Gwen was amazing. She'd managed to put them on the receiving end of information without giving anything away. And she'd done it before breakfast.
“If it's not too personal," Gwen was asking, "what were you addicted to?"
Boneset rolled her eyes. "Everything. Alcohol, food, drugs, sex, love, you name it."
"Marijuana?" Stoner put in.
"Of course. If it altered your consciousness, I used it."
The Dyke Hikers swarmed by on their way to the dining room, hard, healthy, sun-tanned bodies impatient for exertion. They jostled and laughed and shouted to each other and filled the room with noise and activity. If that energy could be harnessed, Stoner thought, it would light all of Las Vegas.
“We'd better go in," Boneset said when the throng had passed and she could be heard. "We have a long day ahead. Feel free to join our table if you want."
"Thanks," Gwen said. "But something's not right with the plumbing in our room. We need to talk to Sherry about it."
"Good luck," Boneset said as she got up and headed for the dining room. "That woman's a maniac in the morning. I used to think she was on uppers. Then I realized she just gets high on crisis." With a wave of her hand she disappeared behind the French doors.
"I don't know how you do it," Stoner said when they were alone.
"Do what?"
"Make up things so easily. I mean, the way you size up a situation and come up with the perfect cover story... It's kind of uncanny."
"Thank you," Gwen said modestly. "It comes from being raised in the south."
"Kind of sociopathic, actually."
''Yankees,'' Gwen said with a sigh. "What's sociopathic to you is just gracious to us."
“Well, that's frightening," Stoner said.
Gwen squeezed her shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Remember, The Confederacy lost the War. It'll never catch on."
They found themselves jammed into a corner table that was too small to support a game of solitaire but set for two diners. Sherry was making the rounds of the tables. Gwen buried herself in her menu.
There was a pattern emerging here, Stoner thought in her morning-woozley way which sometimes gave her her best, if not most bizarre, ideas. Roseann's script had been altered, which made her look incompetent in front of the others. And Boneset had been frightened, which could make her go for her tea, which would put her in danger of being re-addicted, or at the very least would be a blow to her self-esteem. Both women had been attacked at their points of vulnerability.
Whoever was behind this not only knew a lot about the women of Demeter Ascending, but was smart and very mean.
And how about Sherry? What was her Achilles' heel in this production?
The waitress was waiting. Stoner ordered coffee and a blueberry muffin. Gwen ordered a breakfast big enough to meet one's breakfast needs for a year.
"It's not fair," Stoner grumbled. "You eat breakfast like a trucker and never gain weight."
"All my metabolism happens in the morning." Gwen glanced up and flashed Sherry a smile.
Sherry made her way over to them, stopping by the other tables. Laughing at someone's joke, examining the rim of a glass. Jotting things in a tiny note book with a little silver pen. Obviously, Sherry made it her business to attend to all guest complaints personally.
She pocketed her note book and approached their table. "What a morning," she said with a heavy sigh.
"Problems?" Gwen asked.
Sherry dug out her note book and flipped it open.
To Stoner, it had a slightly theatrical quality, a gesture bigger than life. But it was morning, and everything seemed exaggerated to her in the morning. A car starting up on the street was an Army tank headed for her living room. A singing bird was a trumpet's blare. Sunlight was a spot light turned directly in her face. The odor of a cup of brewing coffee was like a warehouse stacked to the rafters with French Roast, going up in flames.
"Cobweb," Sherry read. "Corner of a bathroom on the second floor. Two chipped glasses, have to call the dishwasher repair people. It might indicate a malfunction. Sticky dresser drawer on one. Flowers need to be changed in the lobby." She closed it with an efficient snap. "The usual joys of inn-keeping.”
Joys? This went beyond joys. This was... was environmental harassment. So what if a cobweb showed up in a bathroom? It wasn't inhabited, was it? Dresser drawers stuck all the time, especially in August, especially in the Maine woods. As for chipped glasses, glasses got chipped, it was what glasses did. It kept you from getting bored with the old pattern. She wondered how desperate you had to be to work for Sherry Dodder.
"Do you enjoy it?" she asked.
"Actually, I do, in a perverted sort of way. How about you two, any complaints?"
"None," Stoner said quickly. The ceiling would have to fall in on their beds before she'd let their room go on Sherry's list.
"I guess you heard about last evening," Gwen said as she buttered her blueberry muffin. "The ladder?"
"I certainly did," Sherry said, noticing a smudge mark on Stoner's knife handle and adding it to her list. Someone would probably be fired for it. "Fortunate no one got hurt. I'm not sure our insurance would cover it. Unconventional use of building. Usual loopholes." She glanced up at Stoner from her writing. "Do you need me to file a claim for you?"
Stoner shook her head, a little surprised at Sherry's attitude. It seemed almost callous. "I don't know about Boneset, though. She was pretty shaken up."
"But not injured, thanks to you." A brisk smile crossed her face. "How are..." She leaned closer. "...things going?"
She thought about telling Sherry about the marijuana and the missing note, but decided not to. It made her feel as if she were reporting in, which always reminded her of having to answer to her
parents, which she hated, which was probably why she had gone into the independent travel business, so she could work for herself and avoid authority. Why Marylou, who never seemed to have to answer to her parents, had decided to join her was another question. Probably, knowing Marylou, it had just seemed like a good idea at the time.
But there was more to her reticence here than mere parental baggage. She wanted to remain as autonomous as she could. Avoid potentially awkward alliances. Have to be objective. Can't get involved, lose your perspective. She'd never read a book on being a private detective, but she was sure they all offered that bit of advice.
She hoped Gwen, who was usually open and chatty as a wren in the morning, wouldn't spill the beans.
"There was one thing last night," she said, quickly grabbing on the event most likely to have been seen by others. "I saw someone crossing the lawn to the barn, with a flashlight."
Sherry frowned. “We don't have any flashlights. They were stolen, remember?"
"The place is probably loaded with flashlights," Gwen said. "People carry them in their cars. I'm sure at least one of the hikers..."
Sherry looked alarmed. "You suspect the Dyke Hikers?"
"No, I'm only saying there are undoubtedly more flashlights around than you think."
"I have one, myself," Stoner added. "But it wasn't me."
"Do you know what time it was?" Sherry asked.
"I'm not sure. I'd gone to bed, then woke up and saw it."
"I slept the whole night through," Sherry said. "I don't think I even looked out the window after I turned off the light."
“Well..." Stoner stirred sugar into the coffee that had finally arrived. ''You might want to check out the barn. See if there's anything missing, and let me know."
"I will," Sherry said solemnly.
"Also," Stoner said, letting a bit of business-like gruffness slip into her voice, "who has access to the room keys?"
Sherry's eyes grew large and round. "Only the guests and the housekeeper. Why?"
"No particular reason. Just checking."
"What about yourself?" Gwen asked as she broke into her omelet. "Do you have a pass key? For emergencies?"
"There is one," Sherry admitted. “We keep it in the safe."
"Who has the combination?"
"I do, of course. And the security people."