Endangered Species (22 page)

"Hookworms."

"Computer nerds."

"Schoolteachers."

The two women exchanged comments with such rapidity, many of them

fraught with private humor, that Anna was dizzied.  She helped herself

to a pastry to steady her mind.

"But a dear with his wife," Mona concluded.  Both faces grew somber so

suddenly and in such concert with one another that only an inhaled crumb

and a brief coughing fit rescued Anna from laughter.

"How is Tabby?" Dot asked with what looked to be very real if belated

concern.

Anna saw no reason not to tell them.  Theoretically everyone was a

suspect and appearances could be deceiving, but Dot and Mona struck her

as women who had outgrown murder.  Mona lit a Virginia Slim and Dot

folded her hands attentively as Anna began.  Good listeners; Anna bet

they'd been excellent teachers.

She told them as much as she knew.  Mitch Hanson had dropped Lynette and

Tabby off at Plum Orchard around six the evening before, and Anna found

herself in the awkward role of playing hostess to the returning owner.

Tabby hadn't cared, hadn't seemed to notice.  Had Norman Hull's

comments, and her own rudimentary knowledge of pharmacology, not come

into play, Anna would have thought Tabby was drugged.  Her movements

were slow, her responses to questions and other stimuli sluggish.  Her

head moved first, her eyes tracking a second later.  Her speech, though

not slurred, gave that impression.  Tabby would lose interest in what

she was saying before the thought was complete and her sentences often

dribbled to a stop in the middle.

Crippling depression; it didn't take Anna long to recognize it .

After Zach died she'd swum in those dark waters.  That had been years

ago but she could still remember.  Her body remembered: the weight

behind the breastbone, the pressure at the base of the skull, the

tedious exhausting necessity to breathe in and breathe out, the endless

theatrical that demons put on just behind the eyes, making it impossible

to focus on the words of those still living.

Overlying this miasma of grief in Tabby was a need for selfdestruction

only held at bay by the life she carried within her.  Damage she could

do that would not touch the baby, Tabby welcomed .

Making tea, Anna caught her pressing her fingers against the red rings

of the electric burner.  The flesh was white as ash when Anna snatched

them off and held them under the cold water tap.

Later, when Anna thought Tabby was working on a cross-stitch of three

goslings traipsing after a bonneted goose, she found the girl was

repeatedly plunging the needle into the flesh of her forearm .

She was spelling something out with dots of fresh blood.  When Anna

tried to read it, she smeared the letters and let herself be washed and

anointed with Neosporin.

There followed an earnest lecture as Anna told her that everything she

did, right down to destructive thoughts and watching the six o'clock

news, affected her unborn child.  Maybe Anna was telling the truth.  Who

could know?

Lynette was no help.  She only stayed a quarter of an hour, then,

refusing a ride from Anna, walked the mile and a half home.  Either she

had problems of her own or she'd caught Tabby's sadness.  The usually

bright eyes were lackluster and she scarcely spoke.  Anna had little

doubt some well-meaning person of the male persuasion with only slightly

ulterior motives would turn up to succor the young woman, so she let her

go without argument, relieved not to have two zombies in the house.

When Anna had finished her story, Dot said: "Lynette was sweet on

Slattery," clearing up at least one of the minor mysteries.

"Was he sweet on her?" Anna unconsciously picked up the other woman , s

phrasing.

Mona answered ." With Slattery who could tell?"

"He was unilaterally charming," Dot explained ." Pleasant for

antiquarian educators but no doubt aggravating for sweet young things."

Anna's radio grumbled, reminding her she wasn't paid to sit around

having coffee.  After weaseling an invitation to come play with Flicka

anytime she wanted, she took her leave.

Driving south, she considered her conversation with the two women.  Had

Tabby targeted Todd because he "would leave her"?

Lynette targeted Hammond for flirting with septuagenarians?  Or was the

one that got away, Norman Hull, the intended target?  Motive was a

stumbling block when the identity of the intended victim was up for

grabs.

Love was a respectable motive for murder, well represented in fact and

fiction, but it wasn't Anna's favorite for this type of crime .

Love, the kind that could get one killed, was passionate, immediate,

dramatic-at least a majority of the time.  In crimes of the heart there

was often, quite literally, a smoking gun.

Murder by sabotage or-if Wayne had his way-by incompetence, breathed

cold.

In some evil recess of her mind Anna was pleased it had happened on her

shift.  Presuppression was deadly dull.  Taken from a purely heartless

point of view, a murder investigation was downright entertaining.

Anna laughed at the wickedness of the thought and was instantly punished

by an echo of pain from behind her left ear .

Abruptly her mood changed, reality setting in with a vengeance,

reminding her to stay alert lest her demise prove amusing to someone

else; someone she owed one hell of a headache.

N THE NORTH END of the island were the Cumberland MounOtains-hillocks

not nearly so majestic as the thines-left behind when the sea severed

the island's tip.  Across a causeway, that tip still existed, privately

owned.  Because it was inaccessible and therefore mysterious, Anna was

fantasizing about swimming the narrow channel and exploring it.  Of

course she never would.  There were ten standard firefighting orders.

Had there been an eleventh, it might have said that the instant a

firefighter left her station there was bound to be a call-out.

"What time is it?" Dijon asked.

"Two minutes later than last time you asked."

They lay side by side on the hood of the truck, their backs against the

windshield.  Having finished their sack lunches, they'd declared siesta

appropriate, and as long as Guy didn't catch them at it, it would be.

Neither worried; stealth and all-terrain vehicles were mutually

exclusive.

"We could go feed the baby alligators," Dijon suggested.

"I am shocked," Anna said mildly ." Maggie-Mary would get us.  Besides,

it's against Superintendent's Orders." Feeding wild animals human food

was seldom healthy for them, and feeding wild animals that could grow up

to feed on you, unwise at the best of times.

"Pissing in the wind," Dijon defended himself.

As oblique as the comment was, Anna understood.  Tourists, island

dwellers, fishermen-everyone-had hand-fed the little gators since they

were hatchlings.  Now the babies, all fourteen of them, were a couple of

feet long.  Whenever a human approached the pool they lived in, they all

came crowding around like pigeons in the park.  But with pointier teeth.

So far Anna had kept to the moral high ground and not given in to the

temptation to feed them, but she watched Rick and Dijoll do it and

enjoyed the show, which was just as bad.  Hypocrite, she reproved

herself, but there was no power behind the thought.  the day was too

warm, the clatter of cicadas too soothing, and the baby gators too much

fun to watch for her to get up a strong case against herself.

Her mind wandered off the glittering Atlantic and onto earthier things.

Alice Utterback had located the aircraft logs at the office at the St.

Marys airport where Hammond had his mechanic work done.  They were all

in order and up-to-date.  The Beechcraft had been given its hundred-hour

check two weeks prior to the accident .

At that time everything had been in order and signed off on.  The

mechanic, an older man and a staple in St.  Marys, not only had the

recommendations of his peers but had no idea who owned the airplane when

he worked on it, or who might or might not be living with Hammond in the

future.  That left sabotage, intentional and deadly.

"What do you know about either of the guys killed in the crash?"

Anna asked.  She was aware that she avoided the use of their names .

She didn't want to make it personal.

"Sleuthing, eh?" Dijon said in a passable English accent ." Why not.

I've been to law enforcement school and I could pass for Denzel

Washington."

"In your dreams."

"Most of what I got's from Lynette," Dijon said ." Hearsay.  Not

admissible.  I got an eighty-two on that exam."

"Bully for you."

"Lynette had the hots for Hammond.  You'd think the sun rose and set in

his pants."

"Wouldn't give you the time of day?"

"You got it.  And to resist me you have to admit she must've had it

bad."

Anna laughed ." Rick teaching you how to brag?"

"If it's true, it ain't bragging.  Lynette seemed kind of down, so me

and Rick dropped by her place last night with a couple of sixpacks."

Anna's guess that Lynette wouldn't suffer for broad shoulders to cry on

had been right on the money.

"Rick and Lynette got pretty smashed-"

"Not you?"

"Me?  You kidding?  The stuff has no effect on me anymore.

"Anyway .  .  ." Anna prompted.

"What do you mean anyway?  You're the one keeps interrupting, lousing up

the flow."

"Sorry."

"Could you grovel and beseech me?"

"Not that sorry."

"Anyway," Dijon went on amiably, "it pretty much turned into a Pity

party, which was okay by me.  Women cry, you get to hold 'em .

Beats sitting around staring at you old farts all night."

" You have a heart as big as all outdoors," Anna said dryly.

", do, don't I?  She'd met Slattery a few years back-before she got on

permanent she was a seasonal up in Alaska somewhere.  They went at it

hot and heavy, then he started screwing around on her .

Lynette didn't say that.  'Betrayed my trust,' is how she put it."

" Screwing around," Anna agreed.

" Hey, you are old, aren't you?"

"I've been around the block."

"Before I was born."

Anna let that pass.  She couldn't think of an adequate rejoinder.

Besides, it was true ." So he comes here and they start up again?"

"Lynette's story is that he'd seen the light, found God, been washed in

the blood of the lamb.  Lynette's big into Jesus, did you know that"'

" Nope."

" Me neither.  She seems so cool."

" Maybe the one doesn't preclude the other," Anna said.

Dijon snorted ." She says Hammond came crawling back on his belly all

drippy with true repentance and talking diamond rings and picket fences

and having her babies."

A break in the conversation followed that neither of them bothered to

fill.  The sounds of summer were sufficient to banish silence with

quiet.

" He wanted to get laid," Anna said after a minute.