Better To Rest Part 9

This time the ravens croak was mocking and derisive. He rolled up the window so he didnt have to listen to it and headed for River Road.

The house was dark when he pulled into the driveway, the narrow windows in their old-fashioned wooden frames presenting a blank and bland appearance to the world. When no one answered his knock he stepped inside. The kitchen was sealed off with crime-scene tape. The living room was much as theyd left it that afternoon.

He walked down the hallway and into the bathroom. It was small and narrow, with shelves on every spare inch of wall and the floor s.p.a.ce reduced by clothes hamper, wastebasket, and a freestanding electric chrome towel rack that heated the towels hanging on it. The tub had a rubber-coated wire shelf stretched across it, filled end to end with bath salts, soaps and oils, a loofah, a pumice stone and a manicure set.

One shelf held six different kinds of shampoo and conditioner, bottles and bottles of body lotion and a cut-gla.s.s heart full of cotton b.a.l.l.s. Another shelf held thirteen kinds of nail polish, from bright red to dark green, and all the accompanying paraphernalia for putting it on and taking it off. Liam hadnt seen anything like it since hed lived with Jenny. Wy didnt do nail polish or makeup. Not that he minded. Or that she needed it.

A washcloth hung from a dragonfly hook over the sink. A silver porpoise, a green frog with one leg extended behind him, and a bronze twig formed the door and cupboard pulls of the sink cabinet. One drawer was full of exotically scented cakes of soap, another full of spare toothbrushes and small tubes of toothpaste. A third held several prescriptions, an anti-inflammatory, something for pain, and an antibiotic. The anti-inflammatory and the pain pills were three years out of date, the antibiotic only seven months so. Hidden in the back of the drawer beneath an arm splint with Velcro fastenings was a v.a.g.i.n.al moisturizer. The box was half-empty of tubes.

Liam shut the drawer again with more haste than finesse. He stood there for a moment, an unaccustomed flush on his cheeks at this unexpected and unwelcome glimpse into Lydias personal life. Shed been seventy-four, for crissake. Probably had more to do with comfort than, well, than s.e.xual activity.

Jim Earls words came back to him: Wasnt for lack of trying it wasnt me. Wasnt for lack of trying it wasnt me.

He couldnt remember ever being disconcerted by a discovery at a crime scene before. The first casualty of murder was privacy, and in fifteen years of tossing crime scenes he had discovered pretty much everything there was to find out about people, good and bad. He remembered the five men on the short list for the murder of a twelve-year-old girl, and on the basis of what he had found tucked away in every suspects house how he would have fingered any of the five except for the man who actually did the kidnapping, raping, torture and murder. Hed come out of that case, one of the first after his probation was up, with the conviction that nothing would ever surprise him again. "You dont want to know what your neighbors are really up to, John Dillinger Barton had told him afterward, and truer words were never spoken. For a while, when he walked down a street, he would study the faces pa.s.sing him and wonder what they had secreted in their bas.e.m.e.nts, behind the headboards of their beds, in the crawl s.p.a.ce between ceiling and roof.

Now he stood stock-still, frozen into embarra.s.sed immobility at the prospect of a seventy-four-year-old woman having a s.e.xual relationship.

Although... n.o.body said it was a rule you ever had to stop having s.e.x. He certainly couldnt think of a day when he would want to. Why should Lydia have been any different? Hed read somewhere that a lot of women became more comfortable with s.e.x after menopause, after the possibility of bearing a child had pa.s.sed. While men could father children into senility.

As it did often, but never often enough, the memory of Charlie came back to him. Charlie and his bright blue eyes and his red cheeks and his fat little fists and his dimpled legs kicking madly in the air and his gurgling laughter and his wounded cry when someone had the gall to put him down in his crib when it wasnt his idea to be left there at all, uh-uh, and he said so, loud and clear. His son. Jennys son. Taken from him by a drunk driver before his second year.

If Liam had been climbing the golden staircase up till then, it was all downhill from there. Hed stopped feeling, had stopped caring, had just stopped, period, until one day it was just too much trouble to respond to a call and five people had frozen to death in Denali Park.

And then he had come to Newenham and found Wy again, and suddenly breathing out and breathing in were not quite the effort they had been the moment before. Was it only six months ago? The beginning of May, spring in the Alaska Bush. A time of renewal that had spread open its arms and included him in its embrace.

Or so it had seemed.

He wandered through the house, hat in hand. There were photographs everywhere, including the bathroom, pictures of family, children mostly, baby pictures, school pictures, snapshots of the family gathered around a Christmas tree, looking for Easter eggs in the alders in the backyard, on the deck of a seiner named the Daisy Rose, Daisy Rose, on the bank of the river with the house visible at the top of the cliff. He recognized the children, tracing their faces back in time to rosy-cheeked babies wrapped in the same soft white afghan. There was a picture of a teenage Lydia on a beach, posing with twenty or so others her age in a shot that smelled of Senior Skip Day. Some of the faces looked familiar to Liam, although he couldnt quite place any of them. A tall, painfully thin boy had an arm draped around her shoulder and was laughing down at her. It wasnt the man in the family photographs. She looked straight into the camera with a wide, joyous smile that in no way belied the determined set to her jaw. She had looked very like that when she had marched into the post, all flags flying. on the bank of the river with the house visible at the top of the cliff. He recognized the children, tracing their faces back in time to rosy-cheeked babies wrapped in the same soft white afghan. There was a picture of a teenage Lydia on a beach, posing with twenty or so others her age in a shot that smelled of Senior Skip Day. Some of the faces looked familiar to Liam, although he couldnt quite place any of them. A tall, painfully thin boy had an arm draped around her shoulder and was laughing down at her. It wasnt the man in the family photographs. She looked straight into the camera with a wide, joyous smile that in no way belied the determined set to her jaw. She had looked very like that when she had marched into the post, all flags flying.

Her bedroom was ruffled and bowed within an inch of its life, and he wondered if shed had it redecorated when her husband died. The curtains, comforter, pillow shams and padded headboard were trimmed in eyelet lace, and there was a vanity with a tiny stool padded in white velvet sitting before it. Dozens of bottles of scent in weird and varied shapes lined up in front of a mirror with an elaborate gilt frame, and the Kleenex box was hidden by a porcelain cover with hummingbirds painted on it. "I am a female, female, Liam said, and then tried to remember where the line came from. Oh, yeah. Flower Drum Song Flower Drum Song . Jenny and her musicals. . Jenny and her musicals.

The other two bedrooms had the lingering resonance of adolescence, try as Lydia had to transform them into a guest room and an office. The guest room held a queen-size bed and a dresser, which were nearly crowded out by a pile of stuffed bears, a large cardboard box of basketb.a.l.l.s and a shelf full of well-thumbed picture books, including the entire Dr. Seuss oeuvre. The office walls had been reserved for graduation pictures, four of them, eight-by-elevens in gilt frames, mortarboards tilted to the correct angle, ta.s.sels hanging on the correct side, Betsy slimmer and serious and dignified, Stan bluff and hearty like his father, Jerry thin to the point of emaciation and anxious about what was going to happen to him now, Karen giving the photographer an up-from-under look that said plainly, Know what it would be even more fun to do? Know what it would be even more fun to do?

For all her froufrou taste, Lydia had been a neat creature. Her bills were filed by utility name in the top drawer of a two-drawer filing cabinet. The bottom drawer held tax returns going back thirty years. Liam opened the most recent one and raised an eyebrow. Stanley Tompkins Sr., unlike many of his Bristol Bay contemporaries, must have saved his money from the years when the Bristol Bay salmon runs were the largest in the world. His widow had been very well-off, although youd never have known it. On the evidence feminine to the core, still, Lydia wasnt the diamonds-and-champagne type.

Like the kitchen, the office was dated but functional. An old Smith-Corona electric hummed pleasantly into life when Liam pushed the switch. The office telephone was a heavy black desktop model with a rotary dial. There was no computer, no fax machine, no scanner, no printer. No answering machine. His heart warmed to her even more. Heaven, to Liam, was anywhere without an answering machine. He hated that little blinking red light that signaled messages waiting.

He went back to her bedroom, not because he wanted to search it further but because of all the rooms in the house it seemed the most hers. He was afraid he would collapse the vanity stool if he sat on it, so he perched, gingerly at first, on the edge of her bed. "Tell me what you know, Lydia, he murmured. "Who did this to you, and why?

He thought of fetching paper and pencil from the office to lay out one of his grids, with Lydia in a box at the center and arrows pointing to possible suspects, but he couldnt summon up the necessary energy. He was suddenly so tired. He didnt think Lydia would mind if he closed his eyes for a few minutes.

He dreamed, dark dreams. John Dillinger Barton, disappointment and disapproval on his face. Charlie in the morgue, so tiny, so helpless, so white and cold and broken beyond repair. Jenny, day after day, month after month, quiet and abnormally still in her hospital bed, eyelids closed, face immobile except for what seemed like a tiny smile at the corners of her lips. Jim uncomfortable in a suit and a tie, standing next to an open grave.

Wy. She had the most marvelous mouth, lush, full-lipped. She didnt wear lipstick; a man didnt have to worry about getting all smeared up. Hed wanted to kiss her the first time he saw her, and only managed to keep his hands off her because, first, he was married and a father and, second, she was his pilot, en route to a crime scene.

It turned out she was just as attracted to him, and it hadnt been long before theyd both begun behaving very badly indeed, culminating in a long weekend in Anchorage, at the end of which she had broken it off and disappeared. Hed gone back to Charlie and Jenny knowing she was right, knowing that they were doing the right thing, knowing, too, that the sun didnt shine the same way it had before he had met her. He had tried for contentment. He hoped Jenny had never known, but the experienced philanderers he heard talking in the locker room at the club said wives always knew. G.o.d, he hoped she hadnt.

Wy would creep into his mind unbidden and unwelcome, once when he was making love to Jenny and doing his d.a.m.nedest to do his best by her. Jenny came and then he did and all he could think of was Wy and her mouth and her hair and her arms and the way she made him feel.

He could almost imagine her there now, her teeth nipping at his jaw, her hands deft on his belt, that lush red mouth nibbling at his own. He was hard in an instant. He pushed up into her hand and she made a low, purring sound. Her breast was covered; with an impatient sound he nudged the fabric aside, fumbled for the snap on her bra and sighed his relief when her breast snugged into his hand. He turned his mouth in to her kiss. She sucked his tongue into her mouth, and his pants were no longer big enough to contain him, he could hardly breathe, he ripped at his zipper.

"Let me, she said.

The sound of her voice pulled him fully awake with a jerk that nearly dislocated his fifth, sixth, and seventh vertebrae. "What the h.e.l.l?

"No, let me, she said, sliding both hands inside his open fly and bending down. Her mouth was wet, warm, and eager.

He grabbed her arms and pushed her off him, ignoring her protest. He rolled off the bed and staggered to the light switch next to the door. When the overhead light went on it revealed Karen Tompkins, looking much more like a cat than a kitten now, one who was in lapping distance of the cream. Her hip-huggers were unsnapped and the zipper halfway down over a taut, smooth belly. Her sweater was pushed up over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her eyes were heavy, and she smiled. She sprawled on her back, her legs spread, and she slid a hand between them and up, crooking a finger, beckoning him back to the bed.

He couldnt remember the last time hed been this hard without Wy in the room. He caught sight of himself in the vanity mirror, his shirt unb.u.t.toned, his pants unzipped, the head of his c.o.c.k peeping out of the top of his shorts, still wet from her mouth. The fact that he was in uniform, or rather, almost out of it, was as shameful as the fact that hed almost cheated on Wy. He stuffed everything back in and zipped up again with some difficulty.

Karen pouted. She had a lower lip a man could suck on until next Tuesday. Her mother had had the same lip, he remembered. He avoided looking straight at it. "Could you zip up, please? When she stretched instead, giving a soft little moan while she was at it, he said, "Just put it all together again, Karen, okay?

She sighed and slid off the bed, walking to within arms reach. Everything got pulled down and refastened, although it seemed to take her forever and she pouted the whole time. When she was done and giving him that patented come-hither, up-from-under look that shed been working on since high school, he said, "What the h.e.l.l do you think you were doing?

She shrugged, and one side of the wide-necked sweater slid down a shoulder. "Whos been sleeping in my bed? she said, and smiled a long, slow, seductive smile.

In that moment, she looked so much like her mother that it was difficult not to meld the two women in his mind. "Its not your bed; its your mothers.

She shrugged again. The sweater slipped a little more. "Its not my fault if you choose to snooze in Moms bed. Lets just say you were a temptation too strong to resist. She backed up a step and gave the mattress a testing shove. "Mmmm, she said, and smiled at him. "Ive always liked this bed. And G.o.d knows Mom got enough use out of it. You sure?

"Im sure, he said grimly.

And he was.

Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pushed at the sweater in a sigh.

Wasnt he?

"What are you doing here, anyway? she said, wandering over to the vanity and picking up the perfume bottles one at a time.

He was a grown man, with adolescence far in the past. He no longer thought with his c.o.c.k. If she was going to take things coolly, he was going to be even cooler. "I didnt have time to go over the place as thoroughly as I wanted this afternoon.

"Hmm. She uncapped a bottle and sprayed an infinitesimal amount on the inside of her wrist. She held it out to him. "What do you think?

"Very nice, he said without leaning forward to smell.

"Very nice, she said, mocking. "Is that the best you can do? A woman wants her perfume to be irresistible.

"I looked at your moms files, he said. "She was pretty well-off.

She shrugged an indifferent shoulder. "Dad was a good fisherman, and they saved their money.

"I didnt find a copy of a will. Was there one, do you know?

She shrugged again. The sweater slipped all the way off her shoulder and halfway down her arm. She skimmed a finger down and pulled it back up very slowly, watching him all the while, one speculative brow raised, her mouth curved in a smug smile. "I guess. Mom said there was.

"Where is it?

"I dont know.

"Did your mom have an attorney?

"Probably Ed Kaufman. Hes pretty much everyones lawyer around these parts.

"Do you know who inherits your mothers estate?

"Its divided three ways.

"Three?

"Me, Betsy and Ted.

"Jerry doesnt get any?

"Dad said hed just p.i.s.s away whatever he got left. The way he left things, when Jerry got too down and out Mom was supposed to help him. Now that Moms dead, were supposed to.

She wasnt exactly overcome with grief, Liam noted, and with tremendous relief felt that knowledge reach his shorts. "Who were your mothers friends around town?

"Well, there was us.

His stare was patient, and he waited.

She pouted, what she obviously considered to be her very best thing, and when that didnt work pouted harder. "She had a book club that met once a month. They used to meet once a year in Anchorage or somewhere, too. I guess theyd know her best.

"Who were they? He wrote down their names. "Okay, thats all, I think. He closed his notebook and pocketed it.

She followed him to the door. "Yall come back now, you hear? she called after him.

The Blazer was doing seventy-two on the unpaved surface of the River Road, ice, ruts, potholes, washouts, rock slides, snow drifts and all, in ninety seconds flat.

December 8, 1941 The news about Pearl Harbor came over the radio. The CO stood us down to listen. Sounds like the guys in Pearl really got it in the neck. Pearl was our main base in the Pacific. Whats to stop the j.a.ps now? Im so thankful Helens back in Birmingham. They cant get to her there. The CO says we have to expect an attack and put everybody on alert. Were standing one in four watches on the aircraft in case of sabotage. March is b.i.t.c.hing but then March is always b.i.t.c.hing. I think hes got a girl in town, hes always off base when we arnt in the air. Im not sure Roepke really knows were at war hes always got his nose stuck in a book and when I asked him what he thought about Pearl he said, the barley, the onion, or the oyster?

Peters worried about family hes got at home. The way the bra.s.s talks theyre expecting an invasion of j.a.p forces any minute and for sure the people in the islands and on the coast will get hit first. He wants to send money home and he asked me if I know anyone whos flying to Russia. He really harps on this Russia thing.

NINE.

By ten oclock Liam still wasnt home, and Wy was restless, the conversation with Jo replaying in her head. Was Jo right? Was Wy so untrusting that she was afraid to make a commitment? If so, was that something she could live with, or something she had to change? Did she want to change it? Which, when it came down to it, meant one thing: Was she ready to commit the rest of her life to Liam Campbell?

One thing seemed sure: Men left her. Men came into her life, made her love them, and left. Her father, Bob DeCreft, Liam.

She could get really angry about that if she wanted to. She could let herself get royally p.i.s.sed off.

The conversation shed had with Tim that evening came back. Sooner or later you have to accept what happened to make you angry, acknowledge it and move on. Sooner or later you have to accept what happened to make you angry, acknowledge it and move on.

Her father had given her life. Bob had given her wings. Liam had taught her to love. Would she change any of it, just to spare herself pain?

No. She would not.

There. It was amazing how much relief one unequivocal answer provided.

There were other questions she needed answers to. Would Liam stay in Newenham or return to Anchorage? If he stayed, was she willing to make him a permanent part of her life? If he went, would she go with him? Would Tim?

She went out on the deck. It was crisp and cold, with frost already forming underfoot. The stars burned white-hot holes in the night sky and were reflected in the river below. They called it the Nushugak but really, it should have been called Bristol Bay Route 1. It carried boats up and down its one-hundred-fifty-mile length all summer long, and then it froze over and turned into a highway for snow machines, lasting until breakup. The river was the breath of life for Newenham and the hundred villages and homesteads and fish camps along its length. Wy liked living next to it. Sooner or later, everyone you knew floated or drove by.

Sooner or later, it brought everyone home.

She dropped into horse stance, to see if tai chi would give her some peace of mind, but they were working on the four Fair Ladies and she needed Moses to untangle her.

Or Liam.

Screw it.

She went back inside, started her computer and got on-line. She checked her Web site first, to see if anyone had posted a reservation. The Web site was a new innovation and had cost her a lot of money, but contrary to her fear that no one would search the Net for "air taxiBristol Bay, it was already paying off. Four caribou hunters from Anchorage wanted a ride to Mulchatna. Someone else wanted to take his girlfriend and another couple out to a lodge at Outuchiwenat Mountain. A pilot up in Niniltna she had met at the air show in Anchorage the year before had written complimenting her Web site and asking her who maintained it. She sent confirmations to the first two and a name, phone number and e-mail address to the pilot.

She wasnt sleepy, and the house was very quiet. The crack beneath Tims door was dark. Maybe Liam had driven back up to the crash site, although she couldnt think why. On impulse she keyed into a search engine and looked up DC-3s. The amount of information that came up made her blink.

The Douglas C-47 Skytrain was a redesign of the civilian DC-3 twin-engine commercial airliner, which she already knew. The RAF called them Dakotas, the U.S. Navy the less romantic R4D. The military used it to transport troops and cargo, including carrying paratroopers over enemy territory, especially during the Normandy invasion. She shuddered. Why the h.e.l.l anyone would want to jump out of an airplane was beyond her. The whole point was to stay in the air, where the Wright brothers had intended you to be, until you were ready to come down with, not without, your aircraft.

This of course led memory back to the previous summer, when none other than Trooper Liam Campbell had jumped out of a Piper Super Cub into a lake in hot pursuit of a felon getting away on a four-wheeler. The Super Cub had been hers and shed been on the stick at the time, aiding and abetting the aforesaid trooper. Plus the felon hadnt been quite as felonious as previously thought.

Which, of course, was completely different from parachuting into a war zone. She clicked on the first link in the list and thought shed made a mistake when a site on Lend-Lease popped up. She knew what Lend-Lease was, sort of: It was the act under which the United States shipped war materials to friendlies in World War II before Pearl Harbor brought them directly into the war themselves. March 11, 1941, was when the site said the act had gone into effect. The j.a.panese attack had come barely nine months later. She thought of the glacial processes of the Federal Aviation Administration, and nine months didnt seem long enough to move the federal government into that much action.

Theyd called it "An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States, and like all government doc.u.ments, it went on forever. She waded through the notwithstanding notwithstanding s and the s and the heretofore heretofore s until she got to what seemed to be the relevant clause. It began, of course, with s until she got to what seemed to be the relevant clause. It began, of course, with Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law, the President may, from time to time, when he deems it in the interest of national defense, authorize the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, or the head of any other department or agency of the Government (1) To manufacture in a.r.s.enals, factories, and shipyards under their jurisdiction, or otherwise procure, to the extent to which funds are made available therefor[e], or contracts are authorized from time to time by the Congress, or both, any defense article for the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.

Any defense article for the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital. That seemed pretty broad, even for the president of the United States. Someone should have been looking over Roosevelts shoulder. Where was Congress? Where was Jesse Helms? She was pretty sure her teacher had mentioned something about checks and balances between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government in her high school civics cla.s.s. That seemed pretty broad, even for the president of the United States. Someone should have been looking over Roosevelts shoulder. Where was Congress? Where was Jesse Helms? She was pretty sure her teacher had mentioned something about checks and balances between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government in her high school civics cla.s.s.

And then, after he caused them to be built, the act said the president could sell them, transfer them, lend them, or lease them. The act covered food, machinery, and services. Harry Hopkins, FDRs good friend and true, started the ball rolling before handing it off to one Edward R. Stettinius Jr., of whom Wy had never heard and probably never would again. Originally intended to benefit China and the British empire back when Churchill was still fighting like h.e.l.l to keep it one, in November 1941 the act was extended to include the Soviet Union. Yeah, that had worked out well.

The budget for Lend-Lease was a billion three, back when a billion three was serious money. Of course, in the way of government programs everywhere, it wound up costing much more than that, exceeding $50 billion in the end. n.o.body ever paid it all back. Most of the countries settled for lesser amounts within fifteen years, although the USSR didnt get to the table until 1972.

She scrolled down. Well, well.

It turned out that C-47s came under the heading of defense article. defense article.

She wondered, a little guiltily, if any of this stuff should have been a surprise to her. She held a degree in education, which had included a three-hundred-level cla.s.s in Alaskan history. Had they studied Lend-Lease? Seemed like they ought to have, but she couldnt remember doing so. True, she hadnt been the most dedicated student ever to pa.s.s through the doors of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Wy had gone to college at the behest of her adoptive parents, teachers both. The only cla.s.ses shed ever taught had been during her student-teaching internships, as the day after graduation shed enrolled in flight school. Shed soloed after eight hours and from then on, as much time as possible was spent in the air, filling up her flight log until three years ago when Bob DeCreft, in antic.i.p.ation of his eminent retirement, offered her the Nushugak Air Taxi Service at a bargain-bas.e.m.e.nt price. The sale brought her a Piper Super Cub, a Cessna 180, two tie-downs at the Mad Trapper Memorial Airport, a shed at same, and a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house on the Nushugak River. It also brought her a lot of goodwill in Bristol Bay. People were willing to take on faith anyone Bob DeCreft recommended.

Professionally, it was what she had been aiming at since shed earned her pilots license; a business small enough to run by herself that kept her in the air most of her working hours. Personally, there had been two benefits, one expected and one not: It got her out of Anchorage and away from Liam, at the time a much-married man and father, and, one day on a flight into Ualik, it had brought her Tim.

So she couldnt complain, and neither could her parents, retired now and living in Anchorage, with twelve weeks of each winter spent in a condo on a golf course on the Big Island. They couldnt say she had wasted her education, independent businesswoman that she was now. But the fact of the matter was, shed never been that good a student. It was probably more rebellion than anything else. She was maintaining an outward show of compliance by studying something her parents wanted her to, while determining inwardly to retain as little of it as possible.