Blind Descent-pigeion 6 (32 page)

  The litany clicked through her mind with the familiar resonance of rosary beads, and Anna laughed out loud. An hour wouldn't even scratch the surface of her psyche. Visions of weekly visits for the next thirty years would dance sugarplumlike through the psychologist's head. Coontz would think he'd stumbled onto a veritable gold mine.

  No sense getting his hopes up.

  Deciding to be late, Anna turned off the highway into the Carlsbad municipal air terminal. The airstrip wasn't much different from a dozen other small-town airstrips she had flown into for one reason or another. Meager landscape vegetation, planted with the best intentions then abandoned, clung to life around the front of the terminal. Small aircraft, belonging to those with the money or the passion to support a private plane, were tied down beside the taxiway.

  Anna parked in the same spot she'd used when she came to fetch Frieda's mother and went inside. A young woman stood behind the counter, her chin propped in her hands, talking to a boy dressed in the uniform of the West: cowboy boots, Levi's, western shirt, and tractor cap.

  As Anna blew in on a gust of cold wind, the conversation stopped. Wide intelligent eyes lit up a face already half smiling and ready to be of assistance; someone who enjoyed her work and was good at it. Given that Anna wanted rules broken, this was not an auspicious sign.

  With patience and unfailing good manners Becky-or so the name tag on her chest proclaimed-repeated the regulations about divulging the contents of passenger lists on commercial flights. Anna pushed until the woman began running out of new ways to say the same thing, then accepted that this cat would have to be skinned another way.

  Having no appreciable weight to throw around in New Mexico, she couldn't lean on Becky. But she could lean on Jewel. Before Laymon's secretary had managed to blank her computer screen, Anna had gotten a glimpse and an inkling as to why she was such a mumbling idiot around her boss. When she got back up the hill, she would approach this issue from another angle.

 Dr. Coontz was a woman. The hour went quickly, and Anna enjoyed herself. She walked a thin line trying to maintain her integrity, to show just enough neurosis to be of interest but not so much she'd have to live it down later. Another visit wouldn't be a bad thing if it bought her more time in Carlsbad. They parted with mutual assurances of goodwill.

  Roxbury wasn't a common name, and Carlsbad was a small town. So small, in fact, the public phones actually had phone books attached to them. Only one Roxbury was listed. Having neither pen nor pencil, Anna started to rip the page from the directory, an act prompted by seeing it done repeatedly in the movies. Before the tear was half an inch long, she had to stop. Lying, stealing, mayhem, adultery-all those were crimes she had committed or might commit if the wind was blowing from the right quarter and she was so inclined. But petty vandalism was right up there with littering. An unpardonable breach of personal etiquette and public decorum. Making up a nonsense rhyme to cement 10672 Luna Vista in her mind, Anna left the phone book only slightly worse for having known her.

  It didn't take long to put herself and the Neon outside the cyclone fence around the widow's house on the northwestern edge of town. Low to the ground and built of brick, the Roxburys' home was indistinguishable from the others in the same tract built in the sixties. A brick sided carport, the bricks mortared in an open lattice to the windward side, housed a dusty burgundy 1985 Honda Accord, the kind Anna would have chosen was she organizing a vehicular tail. Make, model, and color were so common as to render it invisible.

  This aggressive tedium didn't cause her to question the accuracy of the address she'd memorized. Two tricycles with identical pink ribbons feathering down from the handlebars were parked to one side of the front door. Two kiddie swings with offensive but safety-minded plastic bucket chairs hung from a branch of a leafless tree in the front yard.

  Two child-restraint seats peeked through the rear window of the Honda.

  Mary Chapin Carpenter's "I Feel Lucky" was on the Neon's radio. Anna waited till the end of the song, procrastinating because she didn't. Visiting widows was a chore she'd been given more than once. Logic being since she was woman and a widow, she could help. No one could help, nothing. Even women who'd lost husbands they didn't love or didn't like-drunkards, philanderers, bums, and bores-staggered under the blow of their death. Most from that category recovered to flourish-or found another man to hate-in fairly short order. For the first few days though, widows of all stripes shared similar fear of the future and brutal severance from the past.

  Mrs. Roxbury would be no different. Because of the boyfriend she'd have a giant chip on her shoulder that was bound to be dislodged by Anna's first question. Bracing herself for an unpleasant interview, Anna tripped the childproof latch on the gate and walked to the front door. A benevolent cover would be best, she decided. Questions pertaining to marital problems and infidelity would usually be answered more truthfully by the gossips than by those directly involved.

  Mrs. Roxbury answered the bell almost the instant Anna rang. She was attended by two identical yapping shih tzus, a house of twins. Brent's wife was a small woman, well proportioned and carefully made-up. Her hair was cut short and layered, an easy cut to maintain for the mother of toddlers. Her features were ordinary but pleasant, like the house and the car.

  "I'm Anna Pigeon," she introduced herself as the woman quieted the dogs. "I was caving with Brent."

  "I recognize you from the funeral," Mrs. Roxbury said politely, her voice a soft Southern drawl. "Won't you come in?" The children, lying on their identical bellies in front of a television set alive with the abrasive colors of a cartoon show, didn't even turn to see who was calling. Anna was led across neutral tan carpeting into a tidy kitchen that smelled of coffee and roasting meat.

  "Brent did so much work with the Park Service we wanted to write an obituary for him for Ranger Magazine," Anna lied easily. "People who knew him would like a chance to say good-bye." To her own ears she sounded treacly, but Mrs. Roxbury seemed not to mind. She refilled her own coffee cup, poured one for Anna, and shoved two bowls of white powder in her direction. Guessing which one was the cream substitute, Anna spooned a gob into her cup.

  "That's very nice," Mrs. Roxbury said, and sat down, leaning slightly forward, eyes wide, the personification of being "all ears."

  "How long had your husband been interested in caving?" Anna asked to prime the pump.

  "Oh, forever," the Mrs. said. She looked expectantly at Anna, then asked, "Don't you want to take notes? I always forget things if I don't take notes."

  "I forgot pen and paper," Anna admitted sheepishly. Roxbury's wife smiled suddenly, and Anna knew why the dentist loved her. She had perfect teeth, square and white and even, not in the least feral. Totally beguiling.

  "I'll get some." She hopped happily to her feet and bustled out of the kitchen.

  Ineptness, a wonderful tool. Guaranteed to take people off their guard. And in this instance Anna didn't even have to feign it. Settled again with a Woody Woodpecker pencil and a Leonardo Da Doodle pad between them, Anna resumed the "interview."

  Brent was a graduate in geology from a college "somewhere in Virginia." He was an only child, his mother was dead and his father "long gone." Anna took that to mean he'd left the family in some fashion other than feet first. Brent and Amy-as the woman invited Anna to call her-had been married for four years. They'd met in Springfield, Missouri, where Amy worked as a dental hygienist. Both had wanted children. From the way Amy looked first in the direction of her daughters then down at her coffee, Anna suspected this had been a strong motivator on her part. Maybe on Brent's as well. Amy would have been somewhere between thirty-three and thirty-six, the ticking of the biological clock growing ever louder.

  "Previous marriages?" Anna asked, trying to sound professional.

  "No," Amy answered readily. "A first for the both of us."

  Anna kept quiet, in the hope silence would goad her into telling more than she intended.

  "Brent was a late bloomer. His mother suffered a long illness. He stayed with her. I never knew Mother Roxbury. She died before we met."

  "Do you still work?" Anna asked, her pencil poised as if the answer was relevant to the obituary.

  "I'm a hygienist for a dentist here in town," she said, and she blushed. "But I'm hoping to quit soon so I can spend more time at home with the girls. Brent and I just never had the money."

  Anna didn't need to ask where the money was to come from.

  Roxbury might have had life insurance, but that would be icing on the cake. The blush pretty much told it all. Though death, violence, and infidelity intruded, Anna couldn't but envy Amy. She loved her fat dentist with transparent girlish adoration.

  "I don't like it here," Amy said with sudden candor. Coffee, chat, and an interested ear fooled her into thinking she'd found a friend. Stifling a stab of conscience, Anna mimicked the "all ears" posture and made listening noises, the indistinct murmurs of reassurance her sister had taught her.

  "It's too . . . too everything. Except green. Everything just dries up and blows away. Even the people are dry. Tough and strong. Stringy." She laughed. "I guess you can tell I'm a southern girl. I don't want to climb and ride horses and fight rattlesnakes. And nobody goes to church. Not that I'm a real churchy person, but it's good for children to be raised in the church, a community, something to give them a sense of morals, of their place in God's world. Potluck is a dirty word here, and only Indians play bingo. Jeff ... my boss ... well, I've got a chance to move to Memphis. Now that-" Realizing too late she'd chattered beyond the limits set by a formal interview, Amy buried her nose in her coffee cup. When Amy came up for air, Anna could tell she was embarrassed. She rose partway out of her chair, suddenly desperate to get rid of her company.

  Anna glanced over her shoulder at the clock on the kitchen wall, pretending to notice how time had flown. "Oh dear, I've taken up way too much of your time," she said to calm Amy's nerves. "One more quick question, then I guess I'd really better go." The end in sight, her faux pas apparently unnoticed, Amy lowered her round behind to the chair seat again.

  "Did Brent have a military record? Lots of our readers are vets," Anna explained. "They set a lot of store by that sort of thing."

  "I think he had a high draft number or maybe one of those college deferments," Amy told her, and Anna could detect nothing to suggest she lied. "Anyway, he never had to go. They were drafting people back then."

  Amy wasn't aware of her husband's dishonorable discharge.

  Anna thanked her and promised to send her a copy of the bogus obituary. Remembering to take the worthless notes, she left the widow to her coffee, her dogs, and her children.

  Several things of interest had been disclosed. Amy wanted out of Carlsbad, and Jeff, her boss, the boyfriend, was a ticket back to the lush Christian greenery of the South. Moving out of state would have upped the stakes in the custody battle. A separation of a thousand miles rendered joint custody impossible on any practical level. Somebody was going to lose their children, the children they had come together for the purpose of creating.

  As the adulteress, Amy might have lost that battle. Might have. A weak motive for murder. The scene just wouldn't play out in Anna's head. Amy would possibly kill to protect her children, but Anna couldn't see her doing it with a high-powered rifle. A self-professed southern girl with a hatred of the desert wouldn't be likely to have the knowledge or the canniness to traverse several miles of damp soil without leaving a single track for Anna to find. Though Anna hadn't peeked into the woman's closet, she doubted she'd find a pair of fire boots among the Reeboks and Liz Claibornes. McCarty had suggested the dentist boyfriend for the role of the shooter, but the man at the funeral had been too fat. The figure in camo retreating from Big Manhole had not been fat.

  On the surface, the things Anna had learned were not illuminating, but she cranked over the Neon's engine with a light heart and rising optimism. Nothing Amy said went against her original theory. Brent's death was not a freak coincidence. A jealous boyfriend hadn't shot him. A crazed wife hadn't hired it done. Brent had been killed because Frieda was killed.

  Yearning for Guy Clark and settling for Clint Black, Anna switched on the country-western station. Compared to the past few days, she was feeling positively gay.

 17

Darkness had folded quietly around the buildings by the time Anna arrived back in the park. A thread of gold leaked from the blind on the window to the right of the doorway. Within, there was wine and food, a cat, and the companionship of three murder suspects. It felt like home to Anna. Parking the Neon beside Zeddie's Volvo, she sat for a minute enjoying the night. Much of her adult life had been lived alone. For society, she had her work and the telephone. Half-read books remained undisturbed till she returned for them. Food in the refrigerator waited till she, or mold, ate it. No one snatched her covers, hogged her bed, used her toothbrush, or maladjusted the driver's seat in her car.

  Loneliness became a way of life after Zachary was killed. At some point the stings and barbs had worn away until all that remained was a soothing aloneness. Periodically Anna invited men possessing charm or wit or lovely physiques to share her space. Visitors only, passersby; she'd never allowed anyone to grow too comfortable in her quarters.