Death Qualified Part 54

His expression was completely blank. Then he glanced about the room and said, "Here?"

She nodded and went on into the hallway to look for the den. She had not been past the deck before and was impressed by the luxury of the interior. Everything was white or gold, the wood pale; here and there a lovely dark blue in a cushion or a drape was all the contrast there was. A good decorator had done it all, she decided; all very hand some, expensive, precise, and inhuman.

She began to open drawers in a desk, and went from there to a sideboard with a single drawer, and then on to a table and finally found a drawer with a photo alb.u.m, and eventually she found a Polaroid of Clive. She let out a sigh.

She had been aware of Mike's presence throughout her search; he had stood watching her with his arms crossed over his chest. He moved aside when she walked from the room, back into the hallway, toward the gla.s.s doors again.

At the door he caught up with her and touched her arm.

She stopped moving. He reached out and touched her cheek very gently, ran his finger along her chin, all the time studying her face intently. His touch was the most arousing she had ever felt; she was confounded by the wave of eroticism that swept her, made her feel light headed. He looked as startled as she was by the blatancy of the s.e.xual need his touch had awakened. He looked frightened. He pulled his hand back and stepped back ward, just as she was drawing away. They both stood motionless staring, until she took another step away, and then another.

She shook her head hard and closed her eyes hard; when she opened her eyes and looked at him again, it was over, whatever it had been.

"I have to go," she said, surprised that her vocal cords responded normally, that her voice sounded normal.

He nodded.

"You know where to find me if you decide to come back," she said, and turned quickly and ran out across the deck, back over the lawn, and into the healing woods.

As soon as she was deep enough into the woods that the trees hid Doc's house, hid her, she stopped her stumbling flight and leaned against a tree trunk and breathed deeply.

"My G.o.d," she whispered, after a moment.

"My G.o.d."

They kept meeting on new grounds, the same two people creating ever-new patterns. At first it had been as if they had known each other for centuries, old friends, comfortable together, comfortable making love. Exciting, but comfortable, with few surprises. Then they had turned into shy adolescents, discovering s.e.x, discovering mutual attraction, discovering the other, and through the other the self. But this.. .. She had no word for what had happened.

l.u.s.t. Pa.s.sion. She shook her head. Shopworn words that meant nothing. She had gone through a period of l.u.s.t and pa.s.sion in her early college years when s.e.x had equated with life, and the partner had been whoever the current turn-on was. Each time it ended, she had been heartbroken, but even then, at an age that now seemed terribly young, she had known that endings were part of the game, accepted, looked forward to in some perverse secret way because each ending implied a new beginning, a rekindling of the excitement that went with the new other. Then Tony had' come along, and brought new excitement, new pa.s.sion, but never ease, never comfort.

Never that. All l.u.s.t, never trust, she remembered telling herself when she left him at the end. He had brought a sense of danger that had increased the excitement to a higher level than she had known, and she had mistaken that for love. Her first love lost, she had thought at the time, her first real betrayal. Since then, she had allowed no one to touch her, not in any real sense. Not even Mike.

She had set rules: He had to do this first, say that first, make the first move.. .. She had set up a testing program.

She bit her lip when she felt her eyes burning with tears.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it," she muttered under her breath.

She pushed herself away from the tree and started to walk again, her eyes downcast, watching for rocks on the trail, but no longer seeing rocks or anything else. G.o.dd.a.m.n it, she thought again, she didn't have time for this, not today. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and trudged through the woods.

Bailey arrived before twelve. He grinned when Barbara let him in the house.

"You want a smoking gun, I deliver a smoking gun. How's that for service?"

"Wonderful," she said dryly.

"Show me."

"The old man home?"

"No. You'll have to put up with just me. Coffee?"

"Always. Never turn down a potable, that's what my father taught me. Only thing he ever taught me, but if you get only one lesson, make it good." He pulled off his jacket and handed it over. He was carrying a rolled map..

They went to the kitchen table, where he unrolled his map and anch.o.r.ed the ends while she got the coffee. He took three spoons of sugar and heavy cream. How could he drink what he did, coffee, booze, whatever was available, and still run marathons? She waited impatiently until he had everything to his liking and then sipped his coffee before leaning over the map.

"Here," he said finally, "is where the girl was killed, on the Forest Service road. Red X. Okay?" She nodded.

"Okay, and down here, outlined in red, is a two-hundred-acre tract that was supposed to be cruised that week. And up here is seven hundred acres ditto. And finally, here, one more piece of woods, three hundred forty acres. Your boy had them all on his list, due in before the fifteenth of June when bids were due or something like that. He filed his report on this one first, Squaw Canyon." He pointed to a tract fifty miles north of his big red X. "He reported on the evening of June sixth," he said smugly.

"The day Janet Moseley was killed. Then on June eighth, he turned in this one, south of the scene of the crime, Shadow Rock.

And finally June twelfth, this one. Three Creek Meadow, that abuts the Forest Service road where they found the car. But, Barbara, sweetheart, all three reports were scrambled. They had to do them all over."

"Give me a break. Bailey. I'm not a descendant of Paul Bunyan, you know. What does that mean?"

He drank his coffee and set down the cup before he explained.

"How I see it, he never made it to Squaw Canyon that day and just turned in an estimate based on experience, but without knowing there's a really big burned-over section in there that doesn't have any trees.

He was off by five hundred thousand board feet. His Shadow Rock estimate is closer, off a couple hundred thousand board feet, and his Three Creek one is exactly the same as Shadow Rock. All wrong."

She shook her head and then studied the map.

"You said the Three Creek one was first on the list? He could have been in there the day Lucas drove in with Janet Moseley? Is that what you mean?"

"I don't mean anything. Just found it interesting. Say he was in there, and then hightailed it out again, up the highway to the area of Squaw Canyon, but didn't go all the way in. Getting too late by then. So he pretended he had done that one first. But he turned in a bad estimate, and he was too good at his job to make a mistake like that, three times yet."

She was tracing a possible route from the Forest Service road, back to the highway, north, back into the mountains again. She nodded.

"If that's what he did, he probably made sure people up there saw him," she said then.

Bailey chuckled.

"See? That's why I want a picture. I talked to Roy Whitehorse, who knows exactly where to go to show people a picture. Okay?"

"You're a d.a.m.n genius. Bailey!"

"I know. I know," he said, but he flushed with pleasure.

"Roy said something else pretty interesting. He said if your boy turned up with red lava dust on his truck, they would have noticed up there. They notice things like what you're driving, if you have a gun rack, what kind of mud you've picked up. There isn't any red lava where he was supposed to be that day. Just good old black lava rock roads and dirt roads, all through those canyons."

"I think we've got him, Bailey," she said softly.

"And if we do, I think your pal Roy and Sheriff LeMans should be the ones to take him. Or should I send Roy a bunch of roses?"

Bailey laughed.

"Okay if I breathe a word of that?"

She nodded.

"Oh, yes. And that b.a.s.t.a.r.d was telling everyone he began messing up his reports after Lucas was killed. Hah!"

When Bailey left, she put away the map and thought about lunch, but did nothing about it. Instead, she put on a sweater and went outside to stand at the rail, gazing at the river, thinking about Mike Dinesen and the new dimension that had suddenly appeared in their relationship.

Relationship, she thought then, with almost bitter intensity; that's what people called it now. Never love, but a relationship. Meaningful relationship, casual, friendly, whatever it was between two people had been neatly labeled and somehow sanitized.

As she gazed at the river her mood changed again, and she found that alarming also; quicksilver mood changes were not part of her usual pattern. But she relaxed with the new change and found herself thinking how fine it would be to be the river, to flow endlessly. Or a tree, to stand in the wind and rain and sway with their rhythms.

Or a rock. She smiled at herself and went back inside. So this was what it was like to be in love, she marveled.

The phone rang a few minutes later. Nell was calling to say she was back home, that she was going to take Carol to town to shop a little and see the Christmas decorations, and just spend a little time with her.

"I wanted them both to go," she said, but Travis ..

He's reached an age where he thinks shopping is women's work, I guess. Anyway, he'll be here, but I told him not to answer the phone. I just wanted to tell you."

"Thanks. I'm glad you did. Buy yourself something pretty and silly, okay? The more frivolous the better."

Poor Travis, Barbara thought when she hung up, he was old enough to stay home and not answer the phone and make himself a hot dog or something if he got hungry.

But he wasn't old enough to deal with the fact that his mother was accused of killing his father. Soon, she promised him silently; we'll settle this soon.

Frank returned, looking tired and cranky; he had not slept well either.

"We've got a week, at least," he said, hanging up his coat.

"But they intend to go after her again if she doesn't own up to it voluntarily. Tony's words. I stopped by the bank and got the Lucas tapes. Might as well have them here, listen to the whole bunch of them. I went by the bakery and got some decent bread."

She told him about Bailey; he nodded but didn't comment. He was regarding her closely when she started to talk about Nell and her plans for the afternoon. He waved that aside.

"What is it you're not telling me?" he asked, going past her to the kitchen. He went to the refrigerator and brought out cheese, placed it on a board, and the bakery bread on another one. He was starting to cut the bread when he looked up at her and said, "Well?"

"Nothing," she said helplessly. Then she blurted, "I'm in love."

The knife stopped sawing; he did not move for a moment, then started to cut again.

"Dad? I thought you'd be pleased."

He barely glanced at her as he cut another slice.

"Course I'm pleased," he said darkly.

"Have you seen him today? How is he?"

"I think he's all right. He needs time to straighten things out, that's all."

When Frank finished cutting bread and arranged the slices on the cheese board, he glanced at her.

His expression was stony.

"You think. What if you think wrong?"

She was deflated so quickly she gasped. All day she had not thought of that, she realized; she had denied the possibility ever since seeing him at Doc's house, but now the fear was with her again, deeper than ever.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

"your mother was a very fine cook," Frank said at dinner.

"And I'm an excellent cook. Where did we go wrong with you?"

She had insisted on making dinner.

"Fair's fair," she had said, and then burned the pork roast, under baked the apples, and forgot to salt the peas. The baked potatoes were fine. Although she had set the table for two, she had cooked enough for three; Mike had not showed up. She scowled and cut another bite of meat.

With coffee, Frank said, "Way I see it, you've solved the wrong murder. Good reason, I guess, for turning him in to LeMans. Maybe you can talk the sheriff into booking Clive for both murders. Tony sure as h.e.l.l would raise a stink."

"I know. There's not even enough for LeMans at this point. And I don't see any way to get any hard evidence, any proof. He'd be a good client right now for a shyster criminal lawyer."

They were both studiously avoiding any mention of Mike. She remembered what Bailey had said about Clive's ex-wife and told Frank. He cursed.

"So he'll find out what I was up to today," he said savagely, "and then what? Another rock through your windshield? A bullet through your head. G.o.dd.a.m.n it!"

"Well, I didn't put her in the D.A."s office, or see to it that they had a nice, friendly divorce," she snapped. Suddenly she became very still, thinking hard.

"What?" Frank asked.

"I'm not sure. Wait a minute." She sipped her coffee and then said, "Remember that I asked you who Nell was sleeping with when all this first came up? I never thought to ask the same thing about Clive. But he's a healthy, virile young man, divorced for what four, five years? Is he celibate? I doubt it. You would have heard from Lonnie if he was dating. Was he?"

Frank thought for a few seconds, then shook his head. "In fact, she tried to push him in that direction, from what I heard, and he joked it away." "He's terrified of AIDS, really spooked about promiscuity, about gays. It came up at that dinner party at his house. He was pretty vehement about the whole thing."

"Too vehement?" Frank asked softly.

"Maybe," she said, just as softly.

"Maybe he was."

Frank reflected about what he had seen of Clive, what he had heard, and then said, "He's the perfect Stevenson hero, n.o.ble, waiting patiently for the one woman he loves, worshipful from afar, never touching her. Everyone's been genuinely moved by his devotion, his open love for her.

A real Leatherstockings type. But is that enough, and if it is what can you do with it?"