Kitabı oxu: «The Price Of Silence»

Praise for the novels of
KATE WILHELM

“Wilhelm claims a leading place in the ranks of trial suspense writers.”

—Publishers Weekly

“The smoothest mystery novel to come along in quite a while.”

—Associated Press on Clear and Convincing Proof

“As always, genre veteran Wilhelm creates a thought-provoking, complex plot that will keep readers interested.”

—Booklist on The Unbidden Truth

“Her carefully crafted approach to the legal thriller continues to separate Wilhelm from the competition.”

—Publishers Weekly on No Defense

“Sensitive, thought-provoking, and involving, Death Qualified is an unqualified success.”

—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Wilhelm is a masterful storyteller whose novels have just the right blend of solid plot, compelling mystery, and great courtroom drama.”

—Library Journal

“Brilliantly plotted, lyrically written, alluring and magical…Wilhelm’s story is a wrenching masterpiece about love, loyalty, and lies.”

—Booklist on The Good Children

“Engrossing plot twists…”

—Publishers Weekly on Clear and Convincing Proof

KATE WILHELM
The Price of Silence

The Price of Silence

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Prologue

The Bend News, July, 1888

Four people perished in a fire that destroyed the Warden House last week in the town of Brindle. Dead in the fire were Mrs. Michael Hilliard, Mr. Joe Warden, the original founder of the historic inn, Mr. Harold Ivers, a traveling salesman, and Miss Dorothy Conway, an employee at the inn. Surviving the blaze was Mr. Michael Hilliard, and Daniel Warden, aged eight. The cause of the fire is unknown.

The fire bell woke me up that night. I ran to Ma’s room, but they weren’t there, and I ran outside. Ma was in the street, and across the way I could see the fire. The flames were shooting up high, with great showers of sparks. People were running everywhere, dipping water from the creek, throwing it on, other people were screaming and yelling. Horses were going crazy, plunging into the creek, up the other side. I stood next to Ma and she put her arm around my shoulders and held me tight. I wanted to get nearer, but she wouldn’t let me go.

The roof crashed down and made a geyser of ashes and sparks. The smell was terrible and the smoke made my eyes tear and I felt I was choking. Mostly I remember how afraid I was.

Pa came and when he saw me, he told me to get back in bed. He sounded mad and I ran back in and got in bed. But in a little while I got up again and listened to what they were saying. Pa said Brother McNulty would keep Daniel Warden with him, raise him with his own children. But Joe Warden, Janey, one of the girls and a traveling man had been in the building. “Gone,” he said. “God’s judgment, His punishment.”

I ran back to bed before they saw me. I knew Pa would give me a whipping if he found me up again. And I thought about Janey and another girl burning up. I had never heard of Janey, and I hadn’t known another girl lived right there in that house.

The next day Ma kept me in the kitchen with her most of the time. Because of the revival, and Reverend McNulty and his family, we were feeding a lot of people every day, and I peeled potatoes until I thought my fingers would fall off. It was so hot with the fire in the stove all day, my hair was sticking to my head, and my skirt sticking to my legs. I asked Ma who Janey was and she pinched my arm and said I must never mention that name again.

After we ate dinner and washed the dishes there was the tent revival and Reverend McNulty talked about sinful women and hellfire and brimstone. He was red-faced and yelled a lot, gesturing while he preached. He scared me. And it was so hot in the tent, it was like we were getting a taste of hellfire.

The day of the funeral everyone from town went, and folks came in from the countryside and even Bend. Pa talked about Joe Warden first, then Reverend McNulty talked a long time and Pa said a long prayer. Men lowered the coffin all the way and Pa threw in a handful of dirt and said, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

No one had much to say over the traveling man, just things like God rest his soul.

I thought they’d go on to the other two graves already dug, but Pa told me to get back in the wagon. I waited until he went to talk to somebody else and asked Ma if they were going to bury Janey and the other girl, and she pinched my arm harder than she ever did before. She said, “I told you never to say that name. Now get yourself to the wagon and wait.”

I climbed up in the back of the wagon and waited a long time. A hot wind kept blowing grit and dust everywhere, and there wasn’t any shade. Just the dry dirt and sage and rocks. I was itchy all over and so dried out I couldn’t have cried even if I’d wanted to. Since Pa was the regular preacher, it always seemed like everyone wanted a word with him, and we were almost the last ones to leave. The horse had just started to walk when I saw Mr. Hilliard standing by one of the other open graves. The men brought the coffin and put it in and began to shovel dirt on top. Mr. Hilliard just stood there. I don’t think anyone said a thing. At least no preacher said anything.

At first I thought Mr. Hilliard looked funny in his long black coat and a stovepipe hat, but then I felt sorry for him because he looked lonesome all by himself by the men shoveling dirt. I didn’t know whose grave was being filled in.

Our house was crowded again all afternoon until dinner time, and then there was the revival in the tent that was like an oven. I was glad enough to get to bed that night, and Ma said she was ready to drop.

But I woke up again, freezing cold. All the feather beds were put away for the summer and I went to ask Ma for a cover, but they weren’t in their bed, and I heard Pa’s voice in the sitting room. They were on their knees and he was praying about God’s judgment, but Ma was crying. She had on her robe with a blanket around her, but she was shivering and crying, and I started to cry too. I ran to Ma and she pulled me under the blanket with her. She was shaking all over and I was, too. I never had been so cold in my life, even in the winter, and I thought we were dying.

I must have cried myself to sleep, sitting on the floor with Ma, wrapped in the blanket. When I woke up again, I was in bed and it was already hot.

I didn’t get an answer to my question about Janey until I was a grown woman and married. My friend Eliza whispered that Janey had been married to Mr. Hilliard, but she was one of the bad girls at that House, and she either drowned her own baby, or else she was with a man when the baby wandered out to the creek and fell in.

I can’t remember that anyone ever said her name out loud, and I know I never did after that.

This is what I remember about the fire and the days after. Annabelle Bolton. November 5, 1943.

One

Todd drove into the parking lot behind her town-house apartment building that sweltering afternoon in August and braced herself for the next few minutes. She knew Barney was already home; she had spotted his truck parked back in the separate section reserved for oversize vehicles. He would greet her, hope lightening his face, and she would shake her head. Then he would try to cheer her up. They spent a great deal of time trying to cheer each other up these days, and that was about as futile as her going out for yet another job interview.

Overqualified, today’s idiot had said; they could start her at nine dollars an hour at best. But, he had added with the perfected personnel director’s smile she had come to loathe, they would keep her résumé on file for a possible future opening.

She pulled away from the back of the seat, where her blouse was plastered to the leather. Neither of them was using air-conditioning, not in the car and truck, not in the apartment. Trudging up the flight of stairs to their apartment, she drew in a deep breath and straightened her back, ready to smile and wave away the disappointing interview as inconsequential, just like the others.

The apartment was as hot as outside, the only sound was that of a whirring fan. She took off her shoes and, carrying them, walked to the door of the second bedroom, Barney’s studio. He had fallen asleep in a chair, his notebook and pen on the floor, a book on his chest. With his curly hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, he looked like a little boy worn out from softball practice.

“It isn’t fair,” she whispered, backing away from the door. Barney had worked his way through college, taking summer jobs, odd jobs, whatever he could find, and now, with his dissertation to write in the next two years, they were two weeks away from real desperation. In two weeks her unemployment would run out, and they couldn’t survive on Barney’s job in a book distributor’s warehouse—exhausting work that paid very little and left him too tired to work on the dissertation when he came home.

It wasn’t fair, she thought again, as she went through the spacious and beautiful apartment to the master bedroom. There were scant furnishings, not because they had been unwilling or unable to buy furniture, but because neither of them had wanted to take the time to shop. A bed, a chest of drawers, a few other pieces from Goodwill that they had bought when they first married three years earlier. Now she was more than grateful that they were such poor shoppers. What few new pieces they had acquired had gone on credit cards—an overpriced sofa, a good chair, Barney’s desk…. She could admit that they had been like kids in a candy store with a dollar to spend, buying on impulse with no thought of tomorrow.

When they rented the town house, sixteen months earlier, they had given little heed to the price. Her job had paid too well to consider cost. They had bought her Acura and his truck, and now owed more on both than they could realize by selling them. In February her company had been taken over, and she had not worked since.

But they had a great view of Mount Hood, she thought, eyeing it out the bedroom window as she stripped off her sodden interview clothes, and put on shorts and a tank top. Silent with feet bare, she wandered out to the kitchen to make iced tea. Barney had brought in the mail and she glanced at it listlessly as she waited for the water to boil. Bills, pleas for money, offers for credit cards…She picked up an envelope addressed to G. Todd Fielding, the name she used on her résumés, and frowned at the return address: The Brindle Times. From Brindle, Oregon.

“Where the hell is Brindle, Oregon?” she muttered, opening the envelope. She had sent her last résumé to a box number. She sat down at the kitchen table and read the enclosed letter, then read it again.

“The person we are looking for must have editorial skills, computer skills, and the ability to lay out a newspaper as well as periodicals. From your résumé and the journal you submitted it appears that you have the necessary skills. You would have to relocate, however. If you are interested, call any afternoon and we can arrange for a telephone interview.”

The letter practically quoted her own résumé, she thought in wonder. That was exactly the kind of work she had done for nearly three years. Her hand was shaking as she reached for the telephone, but she drew back. Where the hell was Brindle?

She located the town on the state road map, and had to fight back tears. On the other side of the mountains, south of Bend. Barney had to teach two classes during the coming year. It was bad enough to have to drive from Portland to Corvallis, as he had been doing this past year, but across the mountains?

She finished making tea, then sat and read the letter one more time. It was her job, she thought, exactly right for her, made to order for her.

She considered the alternatives. She could not support them on the kind of money she had been offered in her job search. If Barney had to work even part-time while teaching his classes, he would not be able to finish the dissertation in the next two years. His adviser would retire, and, university politics being what they were, he might be stranded.

They had already cut frills, everything that could be cut, and were still left with car payments, student loans, health insurance, rent, utilities, food. They could not afford the town house, but neither could they afford to move with first and last months’ rent payable in advance, plus a cleaning deposit. She knew to the penny how much they had to have each month, and even if both of them worked at entry-level jobs they probably couldn’t make it.

All right, she thought angrily, don’t go down that road again. She had traveled it so often, she could do it sound asleep, and frequently did. No more recriminations about past stupidity, she and Barney had agreed, think alternatives instead.

If Barney could arrange his two classes for consecutive days, go over one day, come back the next…One long commute a week…He could stay in a motel one night a week…Have the rest of the week free…What he needed was access to a library—their apartment was crammed with the library books he needed for his research—and time. A lot of time without exhaustion from menial labor and, more important, without worry about money.

She picked up the letter and went to the bedroom, closed the door softly, then sat on the edge of the bed and dialed.

In the office of The Brindle Times, Johnny Colonna was glaring at his mother, who was holding the weekly edition of the newspaper and shaking it furiously.

“It’s a shambles, a mess, a loathsome unholy mess!” she said again. “I won’t have it, Johnny. I’m telling you, I won’t have it! I’ll shut down before I let a mess like this go out again!”

He looked relieved when the phone rang. “Yes,” he snapped. “Who?” He held his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s that woman, Fielding, the one who sent her résumé last week.”

“Tell her we’ll call back in five minutes. And I’ll do the talking.”

He repeated the message and hung up. “Mother, I thought we decided on Stan Beacham. Why bother talking to this one?”

“I haven’t decided on anyone,” she said. “That man’s a twit. He’d stay just as long as it took to find something better. And he doesn’t know any more about computers than you do. I’ll get her résumé and make the call in here.”

Ignoring the sullen look that crossed her son’s face, Ruth Ann marched from his office, crossed the outer office to her own and picked up Todd Fielding’s folder. None of the three women in the outer office dared glance at her on her first trip across their space, nor on her return. When Ruth Ann was in a snit, it was best to look very busy.

Ruth Ann was eighty, and from the time of her father’s death when she was twenty-one, she had published, edited and, for much of the time, written every word in the newspaper. And, she had decided that morning, reading the latest edition, she would be damned if she would see it become a piece of crap. Crap, she repeated to herself. That was what it was turning into. Ungrammatical, words misspelled, one story cut off in midsection, strings of gibberish…Crap!

She placed the call herself, seated at Johnny’s desk, while he took up a stance of martyrdom at the window. He blamed it all on the computer system he had installed the previous year. They would get the hang of it, he had said more than once. It just took time. Everyone knew it took time. Well, time had just run out, she thought as Todd Fielding answered the phone on the first ring.

“Ms. Fielding, my name is Ruth Ann Colonna and I’m the publisher of The Brindle Times. I was quite impressed by your résumé. And by the quality of the trade journal you provided. I have to tell you up front that we could not pay you the kind of salary you were receiving previously, however there is a house available rent-free through another party, therefore not to be considered part of your pay package. You would be responsible for property taxes and insurance, roughly a thousand or a little more annually. We offer excellent health benefits.”

Ruth Ann watched Johnny stiffen, wheel about and shake his head. She ignored him. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about the journal,” she said.

It was a long interview. Ruth Ann asked questions, and Todd answered in a straightforward way. When Ruth Ann asked what Barney’s dissertation was, Todd said, “The Cultural, Political and Religious Movements that Account for the Fluctuations in the Ascendancy of Rationalistic Belief Systems.”

Ruth Ann laughed. “My God! That’s a mouthful. A philosopher, for goodness sake! I didn’t know anyone studied philosophy these days.”

When Ruth Ann finally hung up, she regarded Johnny thoughtfully. “She’ll do,” she said.

“Mother, be reasonable. You can’t hire someone you never even met on the basis of a phone call. And whose house are you offering a stranger?”

“As for the first part, I believe I just did,” Ruth Ann said. “And the house is Mattie and Hal Tilden’s. Mattie begged me to put someone in it. Their insurance has quadrupled since it’s been empty, and she knows an empty house invites trouble. But you’re right about strangers. The Fieldings will come over on Friday to meet in person. And, Johnny, I suppose you haven’t even glanced at that journal, or paid much attention to her résumé. I suggest you look them over carefully. She’s had art training, and studied all sorts of computer technology, software and hardware, whatever that means. You don’t know a pixel from a pixie, and neither do I, but she does. She can edit, and she’s a good writer. She has excellent recommendations. If you take the press in the direction you’re thinking of, you’ll need someone just like her.”

She walked to the door, paused and said, “I want to see every word, every paragraph, every ad on paper before you go to press next week. Every goddamn word.”

In her bedroom Todd disconnected and carefully put the phone down on the bed. She stood up, flung her hands in the air and screamed a Tarzan yell of triumph, then raced from the room, only to meet Barney in the hall. He looked sleep-dazed and bewildered.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“It’s going to work! I’ve got a job! Oh, God, you’re wearing too many clothes!” She began to pull at his shirt. “We need to celebrate! Right now!” Giving up on his shirt, she yanked off her tank top, and started to wriggle out of her shorts.

Two

On Thursday morning Todd sat cross-legged on the floor, both arms crossed over her breasts, fingers crossed on both hands. When Barney glanced at her as he started to dial, she crossed her eyes.

Sputtering with laughter, he hit the disconnect button. “Stop that!”

“Can’t. This is how I work magic.”

He turned his back and dialed Victor Franz’s number. Victor was his adviser, his mentor, a father substitute who treated Barney like a protégé.

She listened to him explain the situation, and then could make no sense of his monosyllabic end of the conversation. “Yes…. No…. Sounds good…. No problem….”

He hung up and turned around to her, his eyes shining. “You’re a witch,” he said. “Classes on Thursdays and Fridays. He’ll arrange it. And no motel. He said I should plan to use one of his kids’ rooms.”

Victor’s three children were all grown and gone, and he and his wife were keeping a big farmhouse with several acres of apple trees until he retired in two years. They also had two big, shaggy Australian shepherd dogs and numerous cats.

“But there’s a catch,” Barney said, pulling Todd to her feet. “Once a month I have to stay over until Sunday while he and Ginny go to the coast to visit her folks. I have to dog-sit, cat-sit and house-sit.”

“Oh no!” she cried in mock dismay. “And have his library at your disposal! Merciless man!”

Barney laughed and drew her closer, biting her ear not at all gently. “Witch! I think we need to celebrate again.”

They were both subdued when they approached Brindle on Friday. The Great Basin desert stretched out to infinity on one side of the highway, and the Cascades loomed on the other. One looked as dead as a lunar landscape, the other, thinly populated here with ponderosa pines, was as unmoving as a painting. The only signs of life were the cars and trucks on the road.

“You’ll be bored to death out here,” Barney said.

“Won’t. I’ll take up bird-watching. I wonder if there are birds? But you’ll be miserable.”

“Nope. I’ll wander barefoot in the desert, grow a long beard, have visions and become a revered prophet.”

“We are arriving,” she said a moment later. On the left, a mammoth greenhouse seemed ridiculously out of place considering that the temperature was 101. A motel, a gas station with a small convenience store attached, a Safeway…Another store, general merchandise, a tourist-type souvenir store, another motel with a café, a rock shop…It looked like a movie set waiting for the actors. Behind one of the gas stations, a group of manufactured homes stood baking in the sun.

“We turn right on First Street,” she said. It came up fast and Barney made the turn. Now a larger building came into view, a two-story hotel, with a lot of well-maintained greenery visible, and a few more shops. “Right again on Spruce,” she said. Brindle had turned into a real village with houses and yards, green things growing, a restaurant, a few people going on about their business. She spotted the Bolton Building with a neat sign: The Brindle Times, and Barney pulled to the curb and parked.

“Ready or not,” he murmured, and patted her thigh. “Just don’t go into your magic pose. Okay?”

“I’ll try to restrain myself,” she said, uncrossing her fingers.

She had told Ruth Ann Colonna that they would arrive between one and two, and it was ten minutes after one when they entered the building. A pretty, round-faced young woman met them.

“Mrs. Fielding? They’re expecting you. I’ll tell Johnny you’re here. Just a sec.” She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and sandals. She crossed the outer office, tapped on a door, then entered another room. Two other women looked them over as they waited, an older woman, possibly in her sixties, and a lean young Latina.

The door across the room opened and the one who had met them reappeared, followed closely by a thick-set man with straight black hair. He had a dark tan and big brown eyes.

“Ms. Fielding? Mr. Fielding? Johnny Colonna. Glad to meet you. Come in, come in.” He clasped her hand briefly, nodded to Barney and led the way into his office, where he introduced Ruth Ann.

Todd had assumed that Mrs. Colonna was his wife, and was surprised to meet the old woman. She was taller than Todd and as straight as a stick, without a hint of extra fat; her skin was weathered and wrinkled with a tan as dark as her son’s, and her hair pure white and straight, cut short. Her eyes were startling, green with flecks of amber. She looked sinewy, tough, impervious to the elements. She was wearing faded chinos and a cotton shirt.

Todd was beginning to feel overdressed in her interview clothes—skirt, blouse, panty hose.

Waving Todd and Barney to chairs, Johnny went behind his desk to his own chair, cleared his throat, and then said, “I was impressed by the journal you sent us, but I’m afraid that we’re not doing anything quite like that. We have a weekly newspaper, and a few circulars, nothing like you’re used to working with.”

Without glancing at him, Ruth Ann handed Todd a copy of the latest edition of the newspaper, the one that had infuriated her. “Can you tell by looking it over what went wrong? Theodore, our editor, swears that he edited the copy himself, and he’s been quite good in the past. And I know beyond any doubt that my own editorial was letter perfect.” She sat in a chair close to Todd’s.

As Todd began to examine the newspaper, Ruth Ann turned to Barney. “Do you have computer expertise also, Mr. Fielding?”

Barney shook his head. “Not a bit. I use a word processor and when I goof, as I do all the time, she fixes it.” He nodded at Todd, who was frowning at the newspaper.

She turned to the last page, then looked at Ruth Ann. “It’s lost the formatting. And the columns aren’t set. Also, someone tried to use text and graphic boxes without setting the parameters.” She would have continued, but Ruth Ann held up her hand.

“If I edited all the paper copy and someone put it in the computer, would it end up garbled like that?”

“Until the program is straightened out, the errors fixed, the formatting reset, things like that, it would probably come out about like this.”

Ruth Ann’s lips tightened. “What are those strings of gibberish?” She leaned over and pointed to a string of codes.

“It looks like different programs were used and codes from one ended up in the text without being translated.”

“Ms. Fielding—may I call you Todd? How long would it take you to straighten out the programs, fix things, print a decent edition if you had the copy?”

Johnny made a throat-clearing sound and Ruth Ann turned to snap at him, “Have you understood a word she’s said?”

“You know I don’t know anything about computers.”

“And neither does anyone else in this office. That’s the problem.” She looked at Todd again.

“I could run off an edition in a day or two if I had all the prepared copy. But it would be makeshift. To fix things the way they should be fixed? I can’t be sure until I know what programs are in use, how many people have access to them, if there are templates, or if they have to be set up. It could be a matter of days, or it could take several weeks. And after all that, your people, anyone who uses the programs, should be trained. I can’t say without more information.”

“When can you start?”

“I thought you said you would want someone by the first of September,” Todd said.

“I want someone now, today, Monday. Todd, if you can start sooner, I would appreciate it. We will cover your relocation expenses, hire movers to come in and pack your things, haul them down here. Meanwhile you could stay in the hotel, Warden House. Would that be acceptable?”

Startled, Todd glanced at Barney. He nodded at her and stood up, then said, “Mrs. Colonna, I think Todd and I should take a few minutes to talk about this.”

“Yes, you should,” she said. “Come along. I’ll take you to my office.” She led the way back through the outer office to the opposite side and opened a door. “My room,” she said. “This is where you’ll be working, Todd, at least until Theodore leaves in September. When you’re ready, just come back to Johnny’s office. Take as long as you like.” She looked around, shrugged, then left, closing the door after her.

It was a bigger office than Johnny’s, and while his had been neat and tidy, this room was cluttered—an old desk, two old chairs, boxes on the floor, papers all over the desktop. A separate desk held only a computer.

“Barney, we can’t just abandon our stuff,” Todd said.

“Honey, that old lady is desperate,” he said softly. He looked at the vintage desk, faded framed photographs on the wall, wooden file cabinets. “This is her baby,” he said. “She has to save it, and she can see a savior in you. We won’t abandon anything. I’ll take care of stuff in Portland and you can go to work. Do you want to start right away? That’s the only question.”

She crossed the office to a tall window with venetian blinds, wooden blinds. She hadn’t seen blinds like that since…Never, she realized. She had never seen blinds like that. Barney had pegged Ruth Ann Colonna exactly right, she thought then. She had been considering the work aspect of the interview, but he had seen through that to the person who had not actually pleaded with her to start, but had come close.

In Johnny’s office again, Ruth Ann sat down and said, “We have to do something now. We can’t afford another issue like that one. How many complaints have you fielded so far?”

He rubbed his eyes. “Plenty. I know we do. It’s just the expense with money so tight.”

“How many times have you brought in a consultant this past year? At fifty dollars an hour. They come in, spend three or four hours fixing things and for a week or two everything seems to work and then it turns into garbage again. We have to have someone in house to keep things working right and to train everyone here.”

“I’m not fighting you,” he said, holding out both hands in a placating gesture. “See. I agree. But, Lord, they look like kids, both of them.”

“They are kids,” she said. “Pretty, precocious children who understand the world they’re inheriting, which is more than I can say for myself. All right. I’ll take them over to the Tilden house and leave the key with them, and afterward I have to go see Louise. And, Johnny, see to it that Shinny behaves himself. She’s to be the editor in charge and he has to accept that.”

Lou Shinizer called himself a reporter; she called him many things but never that. In her opinion he was incapable of writing a yard-sale sign, and in fact he did little more than run around and pick up handouts from various sources, but someone had to do it. He fancied himself a ladies’ man. She was certain Todd would swat him down fast. Shinny did not like to be swatted down.

That evening when Ruth Ann arrived home, she went straight to the kitchen to mix herself a tall glass of bourbon and ice water. Maria Bird was dicing onions, and she looked up as her husband Thomas Bird entered by the back door carrying a Jack Daniels’ carton.

“What’s that?” Maria asked.

At the same time Thomas Bird asked, “Where do you want me to put this?”

“With the others,” Ruth Ann said, sitting down at the kitchen table. “Papers,” she said to Maria. “And don’t ask what kind because I don’t know. Louise insisted that I stop by her house and pick up that stuff. She’s fading away, Maria.” Thomas Bird walked past them with the box.

“I know,” Maria said. “And she’s ready. But you have no business running around all day in this heat, or you’ll be in the same shape she’s in.”

Maria was five feet two inches tall, stocky, with lustrous black hair done up in intricate braids laced with red ribbons. She had come to help out when Johnny was born, a teenage girl fresh out of high school. Leone had called her “the little Indian girl.” He had left them all when Johnny was two, as if he had fulfilled his duty here and it was time to move on. Maria had stayed. A few years later, Maria had brought Thomas Bird in to introduce him, almost as if asking permission to marry him. He was not much taller than she was, and powerfully built. Ruth Ann had no illusions about who ran her household—they did. She had told them fifteen years earlier that she had named them in her will. They would get the house, Johnny would get the press. She had few if any secrets from Maria, and Maria, no doubt, shared everything she knew with Thomas Bird.

Sipping her drink while Maria prepared dinner, Ruth Ann told her about Todd and Barney. “Shaggy chestnut hair, big eyes like milk chocolate, and a brain. She’ll come back on Sunday and start on Monday and Barney will see to things in Portland and come along in a couple of weeks. He’s like a curly-haired boy, maybe a little younger than she is, or at least he looks younger. She’s twenty-eight. They loved the house, but it needs to be cleaned.”

Maria nodded; she would see to it.

“I reassured them,” Ruth Ann continued, “that the Tildens will likely be away for years.” Their daughter had been widowed by an accident that had left her partially paralyzed, and there were three young children. She knew the Tildens were not going to return to Brindle until the youngsters were grown. Ruth Ann sighed. One after another of her generation, leaving one way or another. Louise, whom she had gone to see in the nursing home, was eighty-eight, on her way out. She took another sip of her drink.

“Anyway, Louise insisted that I go over to the house and pick up that box. Deborah was supposed to bring it around weeks ago, but she’s been too busy and kept forgetting. If I’m going to write the history of Brindle I need that material, Louise said. Strange to be so lucid, and she is, and so weak. She’s entirely bedridden now.”

Maria tightened her lips. It didn’t pay to dwell on the natural order of things, she sometimes said, and didn’t repeat it now, but Ruth Ann got the message and did not continue. She would write Louise’s obit that weekend, have it ready. She would kill Lou Shinizer before she let him touch it.

From the kitchen table she could see that the sun had cleared the mountains, and shadows were forming out on the patio. She picked up her drink and walked to the door. “Can I do anything in here?” she asked. Maria said no, the way she always did. Ruth Ann went out to the patio and sat down again. The air had cooled rapidly as the sun moved on its westward track.

Seeing her old friend that day, knowing her end was so near, had stirred up too many memories, she mused. She had suddenly remembered with startling clarity the last time she had seen her father alive, sixty years ago. Stricken with pneumonia, he had struggled for breath under the oxygen tent they used in those days, only a few years before the penicillin that would have saved him. He had said something about the paper, or papers, save the paper…something. Today Louise had said almost the same thing: she had saved the papers.

After her father’s funeral, Ruth Ann had gone back to Eugene, to the women’s dorm to pack up her belongings and go home again, to take charge of the press, to save the paper. She had worked with her father from the time she was a child and knew exactly what had to be done, while her mother was totally ignorant of every aspect of it.

For years after that, she had lived with her mother in their little house on Spruce Street, two blocks from the Bolton Building that her father had built to house the newspaper. And then Leone had entered her life. She smiled faintly. She had been thirty-eight, in love for the first time, captivated by a pretty face and a charming accent. Leone had done two good things: fathered a child, and built the house Ruth Ann lived in now. A good house, he had said, a Mediterranean house, stucco, with a red tile roof, and wide overhangs to keep out the summer sun, let in the winter light, spacious rooms, this semi-enclosed patio. She took a longer drink. Leone had believed she was wealthy, she had come to realize, and when he learned that she wasn’t, he had pouted like a child. Johnny had his beautiful eyes and some of the same gestures, which she didn’t understand. He had no memory of his father, how could he have learned those gestures? One of those riddles jealously guarded by the genes. She finished her drink.

She brought her thoughts back to the question of papers. After her mother died, Ruth Ann had gone to Spruce Street to pack up the house, and she had found half a dozen boxes of papers that she had never known existed. Now she wondered if her father had told both of them to save the paper, or papers, and if her mother had done so without ever mentioning it. Ruth Ann had moved the boxes to one of the empty rooms and they were still there.

Three

Wednesday night, Todd was dreaming. The presses were running, newspapers shooting out like disks from toy guns, flying out randomly, falling in heaps here, there, everywhere. When she tried to catch one, it eluded her, and she ran around a cavernous room pulling switches, jabbing buttons, trying to stop the press gone wild. An arctic wind stirred the papers, blew them around in a blizzard that blinded her, threatened to smother her.

Abruptly she woke up, shivering uncontrollably, struggling with the sheet and thin coverlet on her bed. The room was freezing. Groping for the light switch, she sat up amid the tangle of bedding. She had turned off the air conditioner earlier and opened a window; now she wrapped the coverlet around her shoulders and crossed the room to close the window. She didn’t even have a heavy robe, not in August, she thought in disgust. The air-conditioner control was set to Off; she turned it to Heat, but the cold was penetrating, unrelenting. She went to the bathroom and turned on the hot water in the tub. When she looked in the mirror, she saw that her lips were pale, not quite blue, but close, and she couldn’t stop shaking. In the tub of hot water, gradually warming up, she decided she had to get out of this creepy hotel, go to the house that was to be her home for the next two years.

At first, she had been charmed by the hotel lobby, its vaulted ceiling, the intricate pattern of inlaid wood flooring, the marble counter at the registration desk, all turn-of-the-century elegance. But the suite she was in was not charming. Two small rooms that had seemed quaint, cozy and inviting had changed, become oppressive. Now this. Air-conditioning gone crazy, and no one to call at two-thirty in the morning.

She closed her eyes as the steam rose from the hot water. She wanted to be home with Barney, feel his warmth next to her, feel his arm over her, his legs pressing against hers. Realizing how close she was to tears, she shook her head angrily. Not her style. She missed him, and she was tired. That was all it amounted to, fatigue and loneliness.

Ruth Ann shivered and pulled the cover up higher, vaguely aware of Maria, who had entered her bedroom. Maria put an electric blanket over her and plugged it in, then sat in a nearby chair, wrapped in her own woolen blanket. Ruth Ann slid back into a dream-laden sleep. She was examining the newspaper with a screaming banner headline: Murder. She looked at the text, but it dissolved into a blank white space before she could focus on it. She turned the page; again the text melted into whiteness when she tried to read it. She could see pages of dense, crisp black text on white, but wherever she paused and tried to read, the text vanished. “I can’t see it, Dad,” she said plaintively.

“I didn’t have time to write it,” he said from somewhere behind her. When she turned to look at him, he vanished just as the print had done.

“Hush, Ruth Ann. Hush,” Maria whispered. “Go back to sleep now.”

Gradually the warmth of the blanket stilled her shaking, and she slipped deeper into sleep. When she woke up again, the electric blanket was gone and her room was pleasantly warm. She tried without success to recall her dreams, gave it up, and reflected instead on the miracle Todd had wrought. This week’s newspaper was fine, perfect, the way it should be, and she had told Todd to take the day off, to relax and get some rest, exactly what she herself intended to do. She felt as if she had run a marathon, which in a sense was what they had done over the past three days.

Todd checked out that morning, loaded her bags into the Acura, and then went to the newspaper to look over the computer programs. Once there, she stopped by Johnny’s office. His door was open and she tapped lightly and entered. He beamed at her.

“I thought you were taking the day off,” he said. “You deserve it.”

“I am. I just wanted to get an idea of what all was installed on the computer. It’s a real mess, jumbled with stuff you don’t need, and missing a few things that you do. You really should have a firewall and a better utilities program. I’m going to have to uninstall just about everything down to the operating system and then reinstall things. It would be best if I do that after office hours. If you have no objection I’ll network my laptop into the system, back up everything onto it, and do a lot of the work at home and try not to disrupt things here while I’m at it.”

He spread his hands. “Say no more. Todd, whatever it needs, do it. Blanket permission, no questions asked. Good enough?” He grinned at her. “Just don’t tell me about it.”

She laughed and turned away from the door, paused and said, “Good enough. Is this place locked up tight after hours?”

“I’ll get another key and drop it off at the hotel for you.”

She shook her head. “I’m moving into the Tilden house today. I have to see to the electricity and phone, transfer them to our name, things like that. I’ll drop by here later and pick up the key.”

Mildred, the round-faced woman who handled the classifieds, smiled broadly at Todd when she left Johnny’s doorway. “You’ve put him in the best mood he’s had in months,” Mildred said in a low voice. “Good job.”

Toni, the accountant, nodded and mouthed the same words: “Good job.”

Todd felt buoyed when she left the building and looked around. “Good job,” she repeated to herself, pleased with the praise, with her acceptance. “It really is going to work,” she said under her breath.

She took her time getting to her new home, winding in and out of the streets slowly. Back here, away from the highway, it was a pretty little town, with neat houses and yards, not a lot of greenery, but not desert, either. That changed as she drove north on one of the streets, where the houses ended and the desert took over. It was about another half mile to North Crest Loop; although the street had been finished all the way to it, building had stopped, and the continuation of the street was in poor repair. Scattered pine trees had achieved mature growth, and there was a lot of sage and rank grasses. It was like that on Juniper, her street, and apparently that way on all of them, as if the planners had anticipated development to continue north. Instead, it had moved south, on the other side of Brindle Creek, and east on the other side of the highway, leaving this end of town barren. There was a park along the creek front, a block wide, several blocks long with shade trees, picnic tables, a playground. Children were playing there now, a few women were on benches chatting.

Brindle, she had learned, had been named after the small stream that bisected the town. Joe Warden had ridden this far and stopped when his horse, a brindled mare, went lame. The stream, no more than ten feet across and shallow, flashed silver against black and brown lava, colored like his horse. He called it Brindle Creek, and years later, when the town was incorporated, the name stuck. There was a footbridge at the park, and she had heard there was another one up farther. She had not seen it yet.

It didn’t take long to explore the town. She headed for her house, repeated it under her breath, “Her house.” She loved it—the juniper paneling, polished plank floors, bay windows, fireplaces in two rooms…. But she had to buy opaque shades for the bedroom—Barney woke up if any light hit his eyes—and dishes, a few at least until their stuff was delivered, sheets to last until they got their own, a towel or two…. Wandering through the house, she made a list, and then headed for Bend, a discount store, the utility company, telephone company….

It was nearly five when she returned to the office, and very hot again. She was not sweating, to her surprise, and realized that the air was so arid that perspiration must evaporate as fast as it formed. She felt parched.

Johnny was chatting with another man in the outer office when she entered. “Todd,” Johnny said, smiling, “I was beginning to think you’d gotten lost in the great metropolis of Bend. Come meet our doctor. Sam Rawleigh, everyone’s doctor in these parts. Todd Fielding.”

Dr. Rawleigh was tall and very handsome, like a television personality or a movie actor. Dark wavy hair, touched with grey at the temples, regular features, even a square chin with a slight cleft. As a young man he must have been a knockout, she thought, shaking hands. Now, fifty-something, he was still one of the handsomest men she had ever met. His eyes were dark brown, eyebrows with enough of an arch to suggest flirtatiousness, and a tan that was so smooth and even it looked like a salon tan.

“Todd, I’ve been listening to your praises,” he said. “But no one mentioned that you are also beautiful. It’s a pleasure.”

She felt the heat rise on her cheeks. God, she thought, he must have to fight off his female patients with a baseball bat.

“We were on our way across the street for a drink,” Dr. Rawleigh said. “Join us.”

She started to shake her head, and he added, “What I prescribe for you is an iced double espresso. You look as if you’ve had quite a day in heat you haven’t yet become accustomed to.”

“Good heavens!” she said. “That sounds irresistible. Just like that, you talked me into it.”

“I’ll pick up that key for you,” Johnny said, and strolled back to his office.

They crossed the street and sat under an awning at Carl’s Café, where Todd could smell pine trees, desert and heat. She hadn’t realized heat had its own particular odor, but she was certain that was what she sniffed in the dry air. Both men ordered beer and she had her espresso, then sighed with contentment at her first sip. Just right.

“You didn’t like our hotel?” Dr. Rawleigh asked after taking a long drink.

“It isn’t that,” she said. “I want to get the house in order, get settled—but I have to admit that having the air conditioner go crazy in the middle of the night was not a real inducement to try another night there.”

“It wasn’t the air conditioner,” Johnny said. “We get a crazy inversion or something now and then and a blanket of cold air settles over the whole area, then dissipates after a time.”

“In August?”

“Any month. No one has really explained it, but it happens.”

“Have you felt the water in the creek?” Dr. Rawleigh asked. “It’s like ice water year round. Up at Warm Springs it comes out hot, here it’s ice water. The inversion is sort of like that—except that it’s air, not water. The volcanoes around here are strange, not like other mountains. That frigid air mass has been happening ever since I’ve been around, off and on, unpredictable. I was here for months before I experienced one. You’re here less than a week and there it is. Go figure.”

“Surely a meteorologist can explain it,” Todd said. “I never felt cold air like that before in my life.”

“We’ve had a couple come in,” Johnny said, “and nothing happens. They leave again thinking we’re all balmy. We’re okay. This land is what’s crazy.”

He laughed. “For a good look at our crazy land, some time after the weather cools a bit, you and your husband should take a day hike up to the creek head,” Dr. Rawleigh said. “Great view from up there. It’s a good hike, five or six miles up and back. Up Crest Loop to a narrow bridge, and take the left road, a dirt road. The Loop winds on around a while, past my place, and eventually back down to the highway, but the dirt road turns into a trail up a ways and eventually you’ll come to a big boulder, and gushing out from under it is where Brindle Creek begins. It isn’t a difficult hike, but watch out for rattlesnakes. They’re up there this time of year. Anyway, it’s dry as a bone above the boulder, nothing to indicate that it’s the source of pure ice water. You can fill your water bottles, perfectly safe up there. You don’t want to do that down farther, but it starts out absolutely pure. The creek comes tumbling down the terraces, through town, under the highway bridge, and on for another mile or two and then takes a dive. Gone.”

“What do you mean, gone? Gone where?”

“Underground. The Great Basin is jealous. No water that goes in ever gets out again. Just the way it is.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Todd said. She finished her espresso and picked up her purse. “I have to be going. It’s nice meeting you, Dr. Rawleigh. Thanks for the prescription. It was exactly right.”

“Please,” he said. “Just Sam. The little kids call me Dr. Rawleigh because their moms make them, then it turns into Dr. Sam, and before you know it, just plain old Sam. We’re all on first names here, even us outsiders.”

“You’re an outsider?”

“Going on twenty-one years now. Came, married a local girl, stayed, but I’m an outsider. An observer. You get used to it.”

Although Johnny looked a little uncomfortable, he did not dispute the doctor’s words. He shrugged and waved to the waitress for the check, and Todd left them at the table, bemused. So far everyone had treated her exactly the way she would have expected, kindly, with friendliness, without a trace of suspicion or distrust.

That night she called Barney and told him about her day and he told her about his, then said huskily, “The movers will come on Tuesday, and the minute they’re out the door, so am I.”

Just as huskily she said, “Good. Then I will try to be patient and not run away with the handsome doctor.”

When she hung up, she closed her eyes tight and drew in a long breath. She had never been so lonesome in her life.

Four

“And on your left, is the one and only Coombs greenhouse where at this very moment an acre of tomatoes is getting sunburned, or sun dried, or something. The Coombs girls are both in their sixties.” Todd was the tour guide, pointing out the must-see sights to Barney as they strolled. They had been there a month, but this was the first weekend free of settling-in chores. “I have to take pictures at their mother’s funeral, at least at the cemetery, on Monday. Half the county will be there, according to Ruth Ann.” Sobering, she said. “Ruth Ann wrote a very touching obituary. She’s really a fine writer. Anyway, coming up on the right is Miss Lizzy’s gift shop, where you will find plates with the map of Oregon, Chief Joseph’s last stand, some of the loveliest carved or sculpted birds I’ve ever seen, a rendition of the Oregon Trail on bark—” She frowned at Barney, who had started to laugh.

“Sir, this is a serious business.”

“You’re babbling.”

“I know. You have to remember that as one of four children, and just a girl, no one ever paid any attention to anything I said, so I stopped saying much of anything until I found you—Oh, look. There’s Sam’s Explorer. He’s going into the rock shop. Come on, you can meet him. The owner is Jacko. No last name. Just Jacko.” She hurried him along.

During the past month, she had made it a point to enter every business establishment in town and introduce herself. Her cause, she had explained to Barney, was to be known so that if anything happened, someone would think to tell her. Also, she had said, Shinny, their star reporter, didn’t know the difference between a grocery list and a news story. So far the most compelling bit of news he had reported had been the town-council meeting; they were debating where on the highway to put a traffic light. North end of town, or at Crest Loop? The debate, she had added, had been raging for two years.

Jacko’s shop was a single room with aisles barely wide enough to maneuver in, crowded on both sides by bins of rocks, baskets of rocks, a long counter so cluttered with rocks there was never enough space to fill out a receipt, a showcase filled with cut and polished rocks, and another one with rocks that had been carved, inset into wooden frames, rested on black pedestals, or simply tumbled about. An agate-framed clock said nine fifteen, and always said nine fifteen, but its snowflake agate was beautiful. It was dark blue with white flecks that looked adrift throughout. In the rear of the shop was a workbench crowded with lapidary equipment.

When Todd and Barney entered the shop, Sam was leaning on the counter, where he and Jacko were examining something. Both men looked up.

“Hi,” Todd said. “This is Barney. My husband.” After the introductions, they all looked at a geode on the counter. The hollow rock was as big as a grapefruit, and had been cut into two pieces.

“I never saw one that big,” Todd said. “It’s awesome.” It was neatly halved, the cavity filled with glittering crystals of quartz streaked with pale blue. She looked at Jacko. “Is it for sale?”

“Ask him,” Jacko said, jerking his thumb at Sam. “He found it and sawed it open. He brings in stuff like that to rile me.” Jacko was short, no more than five feet five, and his head was totally bald, but he had a great beard with enough hair that if it had been amply divided between his pate and his chin there would have been hair left over.

Barney was examining the geode. “Wow, that is a beauty. How did you manage to saw it like that?”

Two big crystals had been split almost exactly in half, and the cut edges smoothed and polished to a mirror finish.

“Just luck,” Sam said. “No way of knowing what you’re going to find until you open one of them, and I happened to hit it right. I thought I’d have them made into bookends, juniper wood, curved like a wave breaking with these set in. If Thomas Bird will carve the stands, they’ll make a pretty pair.”

“A fantastic pair,” Barney said. “Where did you find it?”

Jacko snorted and Sam grinned, then said, “Does a fisherman tell where he caught the fifteen-pound trout? Out there.” He waved his hand generally toward the vast desert.

“You have equipment to cut rocks and polish them, all that?” Todd asked.

Jacko made his peculiar snort of laughter again. “He’s got stuff that makes mine look like a kid’s first tool kit.” He motioned to Todd to follow and started to move away, saying, “He had to build a special room to house his equipment. Look, I got some new crystals in last week.”

While she looked at the new crystals, Barney and Sam chatted about the desert and rock hounds. “It gets in the blood,” Sam said. “You always think that next time you’ll find something even better, or you find a streak and have to force yourself to leave it, hoping no one else will come along before you get back to it. Come up to the house sometime, let me show you my collection.”

Todd shook her head at Jacko. “I’m waiting for a clearance sale.” Turning to Sam she said, “We took that hike last weekend, up to the start of the creek. It’s beautiful up there. Thanks for telling me about it.” She glanced at her watch. “We should be going,” she said to Barney. They were on their way for a cookout with Jan and Seth MacMichaels.

Outside again, heading toward the manufactured houses where Jan and Seth lived, she said, “Chief Ollie Briscoe began calling Seth Sonny, and now almost everyone does, and he hates it. So don’t call him Sonny.”

“I wouldn’t have thought of it until you told me not to. Now, I don’t know. What if it pops out?”

“Ollie also said he’s a loaded gun looking for someone to shoot. So watch it. That’s all I can say.”

They both laughed. Jan worked at Safeway and Seth was fulfilling a two-year contract as a police officer in Brindle, his first job after finishing police academy. Eventually he wanted to work as a investigator for the state police, she told Barney, but he was too young and green, and with the budget cuts they had endured, the department wasn’t hiring anyway.

It was unfortunate, Todd thought a few minutes later, but Seth did look like someone who should be called Sonny. He was tall and broad, built like a football player, a high-school varsity player, with a lot of reddish-blond hair, a big open face, and candid blue eyes. He was sunburned, as if he never really tanned, but burned again and again. His nose was peeling. Jan was dimply and cute with masses of dark curly hair, heavy eye makeup, and a Barbie-doll figure.

They were seated under an awning at the rear of the house that was radiating heat, as was the concrete slab of a deck. “Bake in the summer, freeze in the winter,” Jan said. “I can’t tell you how jealous I was when I heard you got a real house. It wasn’t available when we were looking.” She took a long drink of beer from a can. Seth was grilling buffalo burgers. “When we get back out in the real world,” she said, “I intend to go back to school. I think it’s terrific that you’ve hung in there like you have.”

“To study what?” Barney asked.

“I don’t know. Something to do with people. No computers, and no numbers.”

Barney grinned and held up his beer can in a salute. “My sentiments exactly.”

“These are about ready,” Seth said. “Hon, you want to bring out that tray?”

Jan stood up and went inside, came back with a tray of salads from Safeway. “Chow,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind store salad. It’s too hot in there to cook. Thank God, it’s not as hot as last month, and by this time next month we’ll be freezing. That’s Brindle for you.”

After a bite or two of the buffalo burger, Todd said it was delicious. “Have you given up on beef?”

“Not if it’s local,” Seth said. He told them about a butcher shop out of Bend, local beef only. “If it comes from Grace Rawleigh’s ranch, you know it’s going to be great. Have you met her yet? She’s a direct descendant of the town’s founder, Joe Warden.”

They hadn’t. “You’re in for a treat,” Jan said with more than a touch of malice. “And now that her daughter Lisa’s in town for a visit, it’s like a two-scooper treat.”

Seth gave her a stern look and she grinned and shrugged. “Just repeating what I’ve heard. I haven’t met Lisa,” she said to Todd. “But from talk I hear at the store, she’s a bundle of fun. A ballbuster, if you get what I mean.”

Seth put his can down. “Jan, cut it out.”

“Okay. I’ll keep it clean. She and her ex are having a big fight over the spoils of a divorce, her third. From what I’ve heard, Lisa doesn’t feel like she’s met a man until she’s slept with him. And she’s a serial marrier who believes in marital freedom.” She rolled her eyes and grinned at Seth. “Clean enough?”

“Jesus,” he muttered. Before Jan could say more, he said, “Lisa lives down in L.A. She’s into movies, maybe produces or directs, something like that, not as an actress. She comes back every few years for a visit and sometimes, they tell me, there’s trouble while she’s here. And that’s all we know about her.” He gave Jan a warning look.

For a moment she met his look with an expression of defiance. Then she averted her gaze. “Plus she has mysterious plans for Brindle. She’s thirty-five. And that’s really all we know about her.”

But it wasn’t all, Todd thought. A new tension was in the air, the silence uncomfortable. “Are Sam and Grace still married?” she asked. “They don’t seem to live together.”

“They don’t,” Jan said promptly. “He lives in that big ugly stone house on Crest Loop, the one that looks like a gargoyle looming over the town. It’s Grace’s house but she hangs out at the ranch when she isn’t traveling. She’s gone a lot and hardly ever gets over here except to lay down the law about this or that. The hotel is hers, too. There’s a general manager or something who runs it. Mort Cline.”

“It seems to me that in such a small community, where everyone knows all about everyone else, there shouldn’t be any crime to speak of or any need to lay down the law,” Barney said.

Seth kept his gaze on a bun he was slathering with mustard as he said, “Just last week I had to break up a brawl. Three eight-year-olds in the park going at it. And yesterday I had to go tell an old man to stop burning trash outside. A real crime wave.” He put a burger on the bun and bit into it.