Bad Company

by Sarah Dreher

  Well, it was vaguely reminiscent of times when she was a child—an adolescent. Times she'd come downstairs in the morning to find her mother indulging in the Great Silence, which seemed to come out of nowhere and could go on for days, and usually ended with her mother screaming at her over something she'd done in all innocence, never thinking it was wrong.

  Things had been like that a lot at home before she ran away. The rules changed from minute to minute, so something that had been okay ten minutes ago was suddenly the worst thing you could possibly do, and you had clearly done it on purpose to upset your mother. A deliberately malicious act planned to ruin her day, when she had so few good days, nasty child that you were.

  It was Edith's professional opinion that Stoner's mother was mentally ill. Or, as she put it, "a psyche with more holes than Swiss cheese."

  It wasn't much comfort to the kid she'd been, though. The one who'd been damaged. The one she still carried around with her. The one she wanted to care about, but who kept getting in the way...

  “What's wrong?" Gwen asked.

  Startled, Stoner said, "Huh?"

  ''You're so quiet."

  "I was thinking about my mother."

  Gwen took her hand. "Has she been after you again?"

  "Only in my mind." Gwen's hand felt good.

  "Do you think she'll come visit us after we move?"

  "I doubt it." She let herself feel small for a moment, safe inside Gwen's hand.

  "I'd like to meet her, the venomous old bag," Gwen said. She laughed her velvet laugh. ''You, me, Marylou, and Aunt Hermione all under one roof. What a menagerie."

  "Out in the wilds of western Massachusetts. My mother wouldn't go near Shelburne Falls on a dare."

  "Then we're safe," Gwen said with a mock sigh of relief. "I won't have to change the locks."

  "Gwen, we haven't even seen the locks ourselves."

  "Well, the minute we do, I'm changing them." She slipped her arm around Stoner's shoulders. "That woman's not getting near you again, Stoner. Not until or unless you set the time and place."

  They'd reached the door to the inn. The setting sun made long shadows, softened in the humidity-drenched air. The odor of freshly cut grass hung heavy.

  Inside, Clara sat in her wheel chair in the coolness of the dark, seeming to sleep. Stoner closed the screen door carefully, so she wouldn't wake her.

  "Really!" said Clara in a loud voice. She motioned Stoner over. "First you ask me to keep watch, then you go creeping around, trying to slip past me. Fine example you set. Now half the guests here will creep around out of deference to the old coot. How am I supposed to do my job?" She peered toward the door. "Who's that?"

  Gwen came forward. "Gwen Owens," she said, and shook hands.

  "Couldn't see you against the light," the older woman said. ''You looked like an angel."

  "Thank you," Gwen said. "I guess."

  "I probably look like the devil." She pulled a tiny notebook from her pocket, lifted her glasses from their perch on top of her head, and read.

  "Anything?" Stoner asked.

  "Lots of ins and outs." Clara dropped her voice. "Nothing suspicious." She tore off the sheet of paper. "You can look it over. Most everybody who came through is traveling in pairs or more. Except for Gwen, here. And Sherry."

  "What about Sherry?" Stoner asked, glancing through the list Clara had made. Her handwriting was so small, she could have engraved the Equal Rights Amendment on the head of a pin.

  Clara took the sheet of paper back. "Came in with herself, here..." She pointed her pencil at Gwen. "... at 1:35. Dodder went to the kitchen. 2:04, Dodder left kitchen, went to her room. 2:27 Dodder went to barn. Came in with Rebecca and Roseann just now."

  "How do you know she went to her room?"

  "Followed her. It's right down the hall from ours."

  "And she went straight from there to the barn?"

  ''Yep.''

  "Wait a minute," Gwen said. "Are you saying you suspect Sherry?"

  "Suspect everyone and no one," Clara declared. "Leave no stone unturned, and no tern un-stoned. Speaking of which, what's this I hear about marijuana in the herbal tea last night?"

  Stoner whistled. ''You don't miss much."

  “I told you, people talk. Anything new on that?"

  "Nothing. I don't think Boneset did it, but I have no idea who could."

  "There's no problem getting it," Clara said. "There's a patch growing wild on the other side of the lake." She waited.

  Stoner didn't say anything. She couldn't think of anything to say. Finding the marijuana patch didn't tell her anything, except that anyone in the Cottage had the opportunity to spike the tea. Anyone who knew about it, of course. And if Clara had heard, it was probably dining room gossip.

  "Well," Clara said, "don't you want to know how I know?"

  "Sure."

  "Saw it with my own two eyes. It might take me longer to get around than it used to, but I can still do it."

  "That's good to know," Stoner said. "It makes you my prime suspect."

  Clara looked appropriately shocked.

  ''You have means and opportunity. All I have to do is figure out the motive."

  Clara grinned hugely. "That's what I like to see. Ingenuity. I might be able to teach you a few things."

  "Always willing," Stoner said. The idea appealed to her. If she was going to continue to find herself answering calls for help—and everything seemed to point in that direction—it would be good to know what she was doing. But for now she just wanted to get away from it. Away from clueless mysteries, and artistic temperament, and people whose emotions were all over the place. Away from everything and everyone but Gwen. "Not tonight, though. Tonight I want to give my head a rest."

  "Good idea," Clara said with a nod. "Helps to clear the brain. Sometimes you come up with an idea when you least expect it."

  "If I come up with an idea," Stoner replied, "I can guarantee it'll be unexpected."

  They went upstairs and stripped out of their dusty, sweaty clothes. The shower was too cramped for joint bathing, so Stoner went first. Wrapping a towel around herself, she stood for a while and listened to the sound of Gwen's voice singing above the water.

  She climbed into her bra and pants and shorts, then reached into her t-shirt drawer. Her hand touched something that shouldn't have been there. Something hard and oddly shaped. She pulled the drawer fully open.

  It was the note that had been missing this morning. But it was fastened to one of her shirts.

  With a knife.

  Chapter Eight

  She pulled her paddle from the lake and let it rest across the gunwales. Beads of water ran down the throat and dripped from the blade like slow rain. Circles widened from the falling drops, flattening to blend with the lake's own movement. Birds swooped low over the water and dipped to take a drink or veered sharply in pursuit of the moths that rode the slow breeze where air met water.

  Swallows, she thought, or maybe swifts. The swallows should be leaving soon. She'd noticed them on the way up, perched in evenly-spaced rows on telephone wires. Learning to come together in flocks, preparing for the great migration as the evening light grew shorter and the air turned autumn dry.

  In the bow of the canoe, Gwen shifted her paddle. It made a softly hollow "thunk," and Stoner was glad the canoe wasn't aluminum. The sound of wood on canvas belonged with cradle-rocking water and the purple-skye evening.

  Gwen had been silent through dinner and on the trip out. Stoner hadn't had much to say, either, thinking about the knife. They'd agreed to pretend they hadn't found it, and to try to see if anyone was watching them with particular intensity during dinner.

  Nobody seemed to be.

  Once again, she wished Aunt Hermione were here. She'd have held the knife, cleared her mind, and possibly picked up a clue or two from its vibrations. Stoner had tried it herself, holding it carefully in the palm of her hand, trying not to get fingerprints on it. The images that came to her hadn't told her
anything: yellow light, anger mixed with pleasure, and a string of what looked like tiny bright green beads. Hardly a clue of major significance. So she'd turned it over to Clara. Maybe she could come up with something, using a more professional and less mystical approach.

  And Gwen had sworn she didn't have the slightest association to it.

  It made Stoner wonder why she'd gone a little pale when she'd shown it to her.

  She knew it was best to leave Gwen to her own devices when she was turning things over in her mind. But the silent minutes had stretched into nearly half an hour now. She was growing impatient. More than impatient, worried.

  "Gwen," she said softly.

  Gwen turned to her.

  "You thought something about that knife, didn't you?"

  Gwen shook her head and looked guilty.

  ''You know something and you don't want to know it."

  "Maybe." She fell silent again.

  Stoner waited her out.

  "I think I've seen it before," she said at last. "In Boneset's tool box."

  Of course. That's what was odd about it. It looked like a pocket knife, but not really a pocket knife. The blades were heavy, the handle of black wood. The screw driver blade didn't have the bottle/can opener function of camping knives, but was long and sturdy. And there was a wire cutter. An electrician's knife.

  But Boneset?

  She was more than willing to admit people weren't always what they seemed. She'd known women who presented themselves to the world as helpful, caring, and dependable, for example, while behind the scenes they made terrible messes. Of course, nobody believed it except their victims, because they were so good at their public image. Street angels.

  Were they dealing with a street angel in Boneset?

  Possibly.

  "When did you see it?" she asked.

  "Last night, maybe, or this morning. At the barn."

  ''You mean just lying there in the box? And the box was open?"

  Gwen nodded.

  "Does she usually leave her tool box like that?"

  "I think so."

  "Then," Stoner said, "anyone could have picked it up. Besides, Boneset certainly didn't rig that ladder rung. She wouldn't take that kind of risk, even to throw people off her trail. At least, I can't imagine it. People are capable of anything, of course, but..." She'd expected Gwen to look relieved. She didn't. "Something else is bothering you, isn't it?"

  Gwen looked away.

  "Gwen."

  "I'm fine, just hot and frustrated. It seems as if every time we get close to an answer, it just evaporates."

  "True." She didn't believe her. She couldn't think of anything to say.

  Gwen didn't say anything.

  The evening deepened. Mosquitoes began to hum. Water patted against the side of the canoe. A sliver of moon rose in the east in a pewter crescent.

  "You suspect Sherry," Gwen said at last, flatly.

  "Among others."

  "No, you think it's her." It sounded like blame.

  "I don't, Gwen, really."

  "She thinks you do."

  Stoner shrugged. "I can't help that. I tried to reassure her. I thought I had."

  ''You're not being fair, Stoner. She's trying really hard to help."

  "Fine." She was beginning to be annoyed.

  "I wish you'd keep an open mind."

  "My mind is open. If it were any more open, my brains would fall out."

  "I don't think so."

  "Okay, you don't think so." Her anger came into focus. She tried to deflect it. "Do you want to go to the ritual?"

  "All right."

  Stoner turned the canoe around and headed for shore. She felt stubborn and mean, and at the same time terribly lonely. "What did she say?" she asked, trying to keep her voice non-committal.

  Gwen's voice drifted back through the near-darkness. "She didn't have to say much. I could tell she was upset."

  Yeah, well, I'm upset, too. Can you tell that? "I asked her a couple of questions, that's all."

  "Accusations?"

  She fumbled a stroke and splashed them both with water and was glad. "They were questions. If she took them as accusations, it's not my fault. Maybe she has a guilty conscience."

  ''You made her cry," Gwen said as she wiped the water from the back of her neck with her t-shirt.

  "She cries easily." She dug her paddle in the water roughly. "Did she say I made her cry?"

  "No, but I could tell."

  ''You could tell she was upset, and you could tell I upset her. You're certainly perceptive today."

  Gwen turned to look at her. Her face was a white balloon in the night. "Will you stop this? I know how you can be, Stoner. Once you have an idea, you just charge in. People can get hurt."

  She couldn't believe Gwen was saying these things. "When did I ever charge in and hurt you?"

  There was a brief pause.

  Hah! Stoner thought. Can't think of anything, can you?

  "In Wyoming," Gwen said. "When you said those things about Bryan, you hurt me."

  "He was trying to kill you. I had to make you listen."

  "Well..." Gwen seemed to be at a loss for words. "You could have been more tactful."

  ''You hit me. How tactful was that?"

  Gwen didn't answer.

  Somehow it didn't give Stoner much satisfaction to have won that round. "Gwen, this is ridiculous."

  "I know. I'm just asking you to be a little kinder to Sherry, to try to understand where she's coming from, and you take it like..."

  "I don't have the vaguest idea where she's coming from," Stoner said loudly. "That's the whole problem with her."

  Gwen sighed. "She's only trying to keep the theater together, Stoner. And run the Cottage. So if she's not perfect, if she doesn't do and say things to absolutely convince you she has nothing to do with all this... Maybe you could cut her a little slack."

  Cut her a little slack? Gwen never used language like that. Being around Gwen was being in a slang-free environment. Except for "these are the 90s," and she only said that to get a rise out of Stoner.

  She started to point that out, but she didn't want to fight. Really, really didn't want to fight. "Okay," she said, "I'll try to be careful." She wanted to add, "of the baby's precious feelings," but stopped herself.

  "Thank you," Gwen said. Her voice was formal.

  It made Stoner want to cry. But there were already more than enough people crying around here, thank you very much. She wouldn't dream of upstaging Sherry Dodder.

  The canoe touched the side of the pier and squealed against the old rubber tires that acted as bumpers. Stoner held it steady while Gwen got out. Gwen turned and offered her a hand.

  "I can make it," Stoner said. "Just keep it still."

  She wanted to take Gwen's hand, wanted it terribly. But she was afraid her touch would be as impersonal as her voice, and that would be too horrible.

  They hauled the canoe from the water in silence, and stowed it on its rack in the boat house and hung the paddles against the wall where they belonged.

  From the distance they heard the sound of drumming. "Sounds as if the ritual's starting," Gwen said. "Want to go?"

  Stoner shrugged. "If you do." What she wanted was for this creepiness to go away and never come back.

  "Stoner, I love you," Gwen said suddenly.

  “What?" It was too dark to see her now.

  "Love you. I don't want us to argue."

  "Neither do I." She felt Gwen take her hand, and held on tight. "I'm sorry I hurt you in Wyoming," she said. "I never meant to."

  "I was out of my mind," Gwen said. "To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure what you said." She slipped an arm around Stoner's waist and turned her toward her. "And I'm sorry I jumped on you just now. I really don't think you're insensitive. Sherry's probably premenstrual or something. Maybe I am, too."

  "Probably." Which didn't address the fact that Gwen had accepted her accusations in the first place, or that she still thought Stone
r had been too blunt in Wyoming. It made her wonder what else Gwen thought that she didn't know about.

  Gwen's fingertips found Stoner's mouth in the darkness. "Forgive me?" she asked softly.

  Stoner thought about it all. It wasn't worth arguing or worrying about. She loved her. That was what mattered. "Of course I forgive you," she said, and kissed her.

  Women were coming along the path, talking softly, a few humming a chant.

  "I think we missed the ceremony," Gwen whispered.

  "No, we didn't," Stoner said. "What we just did was the Goddess' ritual. 'All acts of love and pleasure,' remember?"

  Gwen pulled away a little and rested her neck on Stoner's arm. Night air rushed in between them, cooling them as it touched their perspiration-soaked nakedness. "Did Aunt Hermione tell you that?"

  "Yeah. But she wouldn't tell me how she knew."

  Gwen laughed. "Use your imagination. Grace D' Addario may have taught her about Wicca, but I think she taught her a few other things, too. I wish we'd brought a picnic."

  "Hungry?" Stoner grinned in the darkness. Gwen was always hungry after they'd made love.

  "Ravenous."

  "Maybe we can raid the kitchen."

  "In a while," Gwen said, and snuggled up to her.

  Stoner toyed with Gwen's hair. It felt so good to be together and at ease again. Their love-making had been...

  ...desperate, something inside her said. A break in the strangeness. Time out of time.

  She shoved the thought away. Things were okay...

  ...for now...

  ...and she refused to let her insecurities spoil it.

  Gwen was reaching for her clothes. The path took her across Stoner, so they were skin-to-skin again.

  She touched Gwen's back. She loved the feel of it, and the way she knew every bump and dip and tiny break in the smoothness. She even knew her freckles so well that she imagined she could sense the change in color, even in the darkness.

  To know someone so well, to love someone in so many ways, made everything else irrelevant. Even Sherry Dodder was irrelevant.

  Sherry Dodder was also just outside the boat house. They could hear her voice—perky, slightly demanding, insanely enthusiastic for the time of night. "Listen, guys. I'm calling a set-building session right now."