The Croning Part 4

"Good. Not our problem."

"We got enough of our own."

"Yep."

The men chuckled, and now it shrank to a sliver, the wedge of ice in Agent Crane's gut. Later, after a greasy dinner at the Rattlesnake Prairie truck stop, they checked into a no-tell motel, left a 5am wakeup call with the night clerk.

Crane donned his bifocals and burned the midnight oil, scanning a briefcase load of papers, including geological surveys on the substrata of the Wenatchee Valley region and a corresponding environmental report doc.u.menting its effects on the local ecosystems. Then there was the twenty-page compilation of homicide, a.s.sault and missing persons statistics. This latter read like a segment from the Detroit Free Press crime insert rather than the description of an agrarian county populated by vineyards, orchards and farms. Eventually he switched off the bedside lamp, sat against the wall, sipping bottled water. Barton snored across the room. Agent Crane couldn't banish Plimpton's red mouth from his mind. Freezing rain pelted the roof. The wind returned, hungry. The tall lamp in the parking lot emitted a cheerless glow and at some point it wavered and snuffed like a blown candle.

Black.

Right before Agent Crane went down for the count, the night terrors of childhood rushed over his skin and paralyzed him on the cheap bed in the unlit room. A door squeaked softly as it swung to and fro, to and fro, and stopped. The blinds shivered as if beneath the faintest stir of breath. He was a child in dread of the yawning closet door, a grown man pinioned to a bed, a federal agent leaning over a dying man in a rundown farmhouse, and his personal gloaming approached from all points at once.

Plimpton whispered, They Who Wait love you, Tommy.

Agent Crane inhaled to scream, but the blood was already pouring in.

CHAPTER THREE.

The Rabbits Running in the Ditch (Now) Autumn was around the corner after a scorching summer. Of late, the days remained dry and hot, while evenings saw starry skies and crisp temperatures. Don wandered to the yard some evenings and watched the star fields blink and burn, his heart filled with a profound sense of disquiet he couldn't identify. The cold impa.s.sive stars didn't bother him so much as the gaps between them did. He was old, though. Old and unsteady in mind and body. A real flakey dude, according to his loving wife.

The feeling was always gone by morning.

During the last official week of summer, he dusted off his beloved 1968 Firebird and squired Mich.e.l.le into town for dinner and drinks as an early sixtieth anniversary present. Don had booked reservations at the Inn of Old Wales, a traditional Welsh pub and restaurant incongruously transplanted inside a refurbished Spanish mission, half an hour from their farmhouse in the Waddell Valley. Due to a combination of circ.u.mstances and her reticence to appear anywhere within a thousand yards of a tavern, this was but the second occasion he'd managed to drag her to the inn.

It was a now or never sort of proposition. The twins would arrive for an impromptu vacation in the morning: Kurt and his new wife, the princess from Hong Kong; and Holly with a girlfriend who accompanied her every summer on various adventures. Next week, Don was scheduled to moderate lectures regarding the Cryptozoic Geomorphology exhibit at the Redfield Memorial Museum of Natural History, and Mich.e.l.le would leave for an anthropology summit in Turkey, the latest destination of her annual Eastern pilgrimage. Don wished like h.e.l.l he could hop a ride with his wife; he dreaded moderating the panel of stuffed-shirt academic rivals, all of them with axes to grind and scores to settle, before an audience of, well, dozens, if one included the light and sound technicians, the caterers and custodians.

Don and Mich.e.l.le took the impending hubbub in stride. Theirs were lives characterized by steady, placid routine, punctuated with moments of absolute anarchy. Hers was a formidable presence in the field of comparative anthropology, due in part to no mean skill at writing brilliantly flamboyant papers and securing lucrative grants through savvy and guile. Her detractors grumbled that she wasn't likely to depart the game unless it was feet first, and probably in the belly of an anaconda, or after succ.u.mbing to some dreadful foreign scourge such as malaria. Meanwhile, Don served the Evergreen State University as a geophysics professor emeritus.

The drive went pleasantly enough, even if the Firebird's brakes were tight and Don tended to overcorrect on the bends-he'd packed the beast away a decade past and only fired it up for a yearly shakedown cruise. His wife preferred he stuck to the Volvo or their minivan, especially now that he wore thick gla.s.ses and his reflexes were nearly shot to pieces and he tended to forget things, although that part had gone on for several decades, at least. She claimed it was against her policy to ride around in a muscle car with a octogenarian at the wheel.

We must hurry, my sweet, or the Grand Prix shall start without us, he'd said when he zoomed up to the front door. She frowned in dismay at his prescription sungla.s.ses, driving gloves, and the checkered scarf wrapped around his neck-which he'd worn just to get her goat. Don eventually coaxed Mich.e.l.le into the car by champing a rose in his teeth and patting the pa.s.senger seat. Oh, you old fool, she said, t.i.ttering into her hand.

They crossed into Olympia under orange skies, and followed potholed avenues through historic neighborhoods, winding serpentine along the ridges; then, racing between the majestic shadows of one-hundred-twenty-year-old maples. The road continued until the coastline curved and separated from the city proper.

Mich.e.l.le gasped happily when the inn hove into view atop a bald crest several switchbacks above their rapidly moving car. "Oh, my-I'd forgotten how lovely it is." Her sungla.s.ses reflected the fires of sunset. She wore a kerchief and bonnet like Vivian Leigh.

He cast sneaking glances at her, admiring the exquisite beauty she'd matured into, feeling a pang of l.u.s.t that he hadn't shaken since their first date, the first time she'd lifted her dress and wrapped her powerful legs around his waist-and he belayed that line of thought immediately lest they fly off the road into a ditch due to his amorous distraction.

At eighty-two and a half, Mich.e.l.le conceded to a solitary vanity: her long, dark hair had bleached dead white and she preferred to disguise that fact in public. The scars, on the other hand, didn't affect her self-confidence. Her face and torso bore marks from injuries suffered during a jeep wreck. Years and years ago, while on an expedition into the heart of Siberia, her driver flipped their vehicle on a muddy road in the foothills two hundred miles from the nearest town. She'd nearly died on the forty-hour trip to the hospital and no amount of surgery ever disguised the disfigurement-a jagged, white valley that slashed from her left temple, across her breast and arced to its terminus at her hip bone. Don was consulting a mining firm in the wilds of the Olympic Peninsula and didn't receive news of the accident and Mich.e.l.le's brush with death for nearly a week. Yet another hazy interlude of his past that he'd resigned himself to never fully recollecting. Perhaps it was better to forget.

Don smiled at Mich.e.l.le to disperse his sentimental melancholy and talked about their destination. He'd been meeting Argyle Arden, Robby Gold and Turk Standish and the rest of the boys here for fifteen years to drink and play at darts. In 1911, the mission had been transported, brick by brick, from San Francisco and rea.s.sembled at its current perch above the Olympia Harbor. It was soon converted to a Roman Catholic priory at the behest of local founding father and resident eccentric, Murray Blanchard III.

The building changed hands numerous times during the Depression, and again after the turmoil of the '40s and then sat vacant until 1975 when Earlagh Teague bought it from the city for a song. The Welshman, with the a.s.sistance of a dynamo wife and five doughty sons, transformed the relic into something of a monument; a cross between fine contemporary dining and old world hostelry. Inside, it was vaulted and airy. Balconies formed a wide crescent above the oak bar and the scatter of small dining tables and booths. The darts room lay beyond an arch just off the main gallery, sporting the requisite cork targets and a set of shopworn pool tables. There, a handful of bawdy old salts and genteel ruffians congregated daily, slugging beer and laying wagers on their shooting hands or whatever sporting event might be televised on the ancient black and white.

Miller, party of two, Don told the hostess, a mildly impatient girl with preternaturally rosy cheeks. She was new; staff came and went with regular frequency. They were escorted to a table on the northeast balcony with a lovely bay window view of the distant swath of darkening water and countryside. Tiny lights of sloops and barges bobbed on the harbor, glittered on the wooded hillsides where deep green gave way to streaks of red and gold, and approaching night.

They ordered a bottle of wine. The waiter lighted candles in elegant wrought iron sconces. A few couples drifted in, trailing murmurs of conversation and laughter. Finely dressed seniors; the men wore oversized watches and crisp silk ties; the women were decked in stately dresses, feathered hats and pearl necklaces; and everybody's dentures snowy white and aglow with petroleum jelly. Below, on a small dais, a white-bearded fiddler in a plaid jacket and a bowler tuned his instrument and began a Celtic jig. Mich.e.l.le sipped her wine. She studied the pennants and heraldic shields, and the stained gla.s.s mosaic of Mary that reflected its colors across nearby tables.

Don adored his wife; her radiant joy warmed him more thoroughly than the half bottle of Merlot had. At moments like these, the wrinkles and seams smoothed away, she very much resembled the baby-faced bride he'd whisked off to that quaint resort in Maui for their honeymoon. It boggled him Truman manned the Oval Office while they spent the last of their meager savings on two hedonistic weeks of sun, surf and s.e.x.

Dinner came and went, and most of the wine too. For dessert, the staff lugged in a six-layer chocolate cake, and, on a silver platter, the imperiously decorous headwaiter presented Mich.e.l.le with a platinum chain in a mother of pearl box. Don secretly ordered the gift at Malloy Jewelers some months prior to this joyous event. Mich.e.l.le dangled the chain in the candlelight, cheeks flushed, lips quivering, and burst into tears. She buried her neatly coiffed head between her forearms.

"I'm just glad I've still got what it takes to make you happy after all these years," Don said drolly. He quaffed the remainder of his gla.s.s. Mich.e.l.le's shoulders shook harder. Her answer was m.u.f.fled by her arms and when Don said, "What's that, dear?" she raised her mascara-streaked face and sobbed, "I am happy, d.a.m.n it!" He considered this development and poured another gla.s.s for both of them. Silence is indeed golden, my boy, his grandfather had often muttered as a piece of advice gleaned from a long, rocky marriage to a woman vastly more temperamental than Mich.e.l.le. Dear old Grandma. She'd been a case to the end, G.o.d love her.

Mich.e.l.le s.n.a.t.c.hed a hanky from her purse and bolted for the ladies room. Don noted she'd taken the chain with her, which was a good sign. He hoped. Mich.e.l.le didn't cry often-she'd never been an overly emotional girl. She claimed high pa.s.sion dangerous to people in her profession, especially afield. Peruvian Bushmen and New Guinea headhunters weren't impressed by weepy foreign broads.

Don gazed out the window, down into the parking lot, and noticed a couple of people lurking near his car. For a moment he stared, bemused, leaning sideways in his seat, the gla.s.s halfway to his lips. The parking lot was rather cramped, and populated by perhaps a dozen vehicles. The sodium lamp had fizzed to life, thus he easily discerned the dark figures on the pa.s.senger side. He hesitated, wondering if they might belong to the Studebaker parked two slots over; but no, the shadowy fellows were quite plainly crouched to get a better look at the interior, and gads! had the Firebird slightly rocked, an unmistakable precursor to the door or window being jimmied?

"Well, good luck, mate," said an elderly gentleman in a leisure suit and bowtie. He patted Don on the shoulder in pa.s.sing. The man's companion, a handsome woman with tall, burnished hair, smiled at Don. You pathetic lout, her cold, pitying expression seemed to say.

"Eh?" He groped for understanding of this exchange, and then realized they thought Mich.e.l.le had fled their romantic dinner due to some churlishness on his part. "Er, yes, thank you." He quickly checked the lot again and caught not one, but four mysterious figures skulking away into the deeper shadows-and they hadn't been crouching; they were kids. A gaggle of miscreant children, he realized. Brazen hooligans having a last bash before summer vacation came to a crashing halt and they went swept into the loving arms of the public education system. Their handiwork was everywhere these days; the downtown bus terminal vandalized with graffiti and broken windows, shattered street lamps and mangled mailboxes. Luckily, the blinking red dash light of the alarm system was sufficient to deter would-be scoundrels.

"Honey, look who I found," Mich.e.l.le said. Her face scrubbed and cheerful in a runner-up at the beauty pageant kind of way; the chain gleamed between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She stood arm-in-arm with a matronly woman Don vaguely recognized. What was her name? He racked his brain while Mich.e.l.le smiled expectantly and her friend waited with the blandly uncomfortable expression of a confirmed stoic. "You remember Celeste, don't you, dear? We worked in Alaska on the Tlingit cultural study in '86. Her husband's Rudy Hannah. Rudy Hannah? Lead occupational therapist for North Thurston Public Schools."

"Why, of course," Don said, not remembering anything of the sort, although it sounded right. Another example of the white gaps in his mind. Now that he was old enough to be entombed in a pyramid, everyone wrote his lapses off as incipient dementia-during middle-age his distaff students thought his stammering and stuttering to retrieve an elementary fact or quote, or his constant neglect of personal grooming, or his tendency to misplace his gla.s.ses and notes, were endearing qualities. In his prime as a spelunking, devil-may-care geologist, that stuff had made his friends and colleagues very nervous. It used to make Don nervous as well, but he'd learned to adjust. No other choice besides madness.

As for this vaguely familiar Celeste person, he gave himself a pa.s.s. His wife was a popular lady; from Washington to Beijing, her a.s.sociates were legion. "Hullo, um, Celeste. A pleasure." He rose and pecked the woman's hand, surrept.i.tiously checking the window in the process. Mr. Bowtie and his big-haired wife were slamming the doors of the Studebaker. When he looked up, Mich.e.l.le pretended not to be annoyed, and Celeste gave her a patently fake smile, a perfunctory gesture of civility. We both know your husband's an a.s.s. She might as well have rolled her eyes. Don had that effect on women. Invariably, and despite his best efforts at urbanity and charm, they sniffed out his essential oafishness, or so he'd come to believe. There were worse curses. Mich.e.l.le put up with his occasional bouts of idiocy and that paid for all.

"I asked Celeste to join us. Look, Celeste, there's an extra chair at that table." Before Don could open his mouth to express an opinion one way or another, they were all cozy and ordering another bottle of wine. Don listened to them chatter and considered asking where Rudy might be, and decided against it. One never knew when one might be setting foot in a bear trap. He smiled aimlessly when the cone of conversation turned his direction; otherwise his mind wandered.

He eventually stood and walked to the landing, ostensibly to stretch his aching back. He flagged the next waiter, a tall kid named Roy Lee, according to his tag. Don requested he compliment the chef, and also, management might wish to know some local kids were scoping the parking lot.

The waiter nodded. "Yes, thank you, sir; I'll relay your concerns to my supervisor." He lowered his voice in a gesture of sincerest confidentiality and said, "One of the girls chased them out of the ladies room earlier. I guess they were vandalizing the stalls. We don't get this sort of thing too often. Middle school pranksters, I'd wager."

"Heavens! You alerted the authorities, I presume..."

"We don't like to disturb our guests. Besides, Marie never really got a close enough look to identify them." Roy seemed embarra.s.sed. "I think they scared her. She won't talk about it."

"Really?" Don said. "That's despicable. Poor girl."

"Yeah, she's rattled. I hope you don't mind me saying I'd like to thrash those little punks if they threatened her." He cracked his knuckles.

"I understand," Don said. "Thank you again."

Roy shook it off and his mask of obsequiousness snapped in place. "By all means, sir."

On the way home, he said to Mich.e.l.le, "What did Celeste say about Istanbul?" They'd exited the well-lit city streets and were zipping along stretches of pasture broken by hills and copses of old-growth trees. He kept his eyes glued to the road, alert for deer. Clouds crept in during supper and it was black as a mine shaft. The radio was down so low it might as well have been off. She didn't care for music anymore unless it was tribal or certain strains of Bronze Age Korean court music.

"Oh? She asked if I'd packed for the trip yet. She procrastinates-like you."

"I don't procrastinate. She's going too, eh?"

"Every year, dear." Her face was slack from too much wine, and slightly green in the eerie dashboard glow. She slurred ever so faintly when she said, "Me an' Barbara, an' Lynne-"

"Lynne Victory? Oh, man alive. She's a looker."

"Shaddup. Barbara an' Lynne, and Justine French. An' Celeste. Girls Club."

"I'm sure it's a hoot." Don took a sharp corner. Something rolled over in the trunk. A solid, ka-thump. "Probably just an excuse to get soused and watch dirty movies-if your friends are anything like mine." He had scant idea what format these summits followed. They occurred each year a different city in a different country-last year Glasgow; the year before that Manitoba; and before that Peking; although it was frequently held in relatively unknown regions of satellite states that came and went, formed and dissipated in the shadows of their mother lands-the Soviet Union, Africa, and Yugoslavia. Anywhere there's a party, Mich.e.l.le had quipped.

"It's an occasion to discuss important scientific theory an' bond socially an' professionally. An' for your information, we drink wine coolers an' watch art films." She chuckled and tilted her head back, allowing gravity to slide her around in the bucket seat like she was on a kiddy version of a tilt-a-whirl.

"Hey, one of the waiters told me the ladies restroom was vandalized. Was it pretty bad?"

"Huh-uh."

"Oh," Don said. "Roy mentioned some kids fooling around in there."

"Who's Roy?" She slurred more as her head lolled.

"The waiter I talked to. He said they vandalized the stalls."

"Wha-oh, that. It wasn't much. Just some graffiti. Celeste was kinda scandalized, but you gotta laugh at these things. Tagging is what it's called. We got gangs here too, y'know."

"As long as the b.u.g.g.e.rs don't tag my car."

She turned to regard him. "Oh, they were messing with the car?" Her eyes were owlish.

"Eh. Everything's in order." He laughed and patted her hand and she nodded and closed her eyes.

The Firebird hugged another corner on a steep grade. As Don downshifted, something in the trunk ka-thumped again. "Okay," he muttered and pulled over where the shoulder widened in a saddle of foothills. Off the pa.s.senger side, a steep slope climbed rapidly. Farther up, near the snowline, lay a radio beacon, a ranger station and an observatory owned by a co-op of three universities and a board of wealthy private citizens. He and Mich.e.l.le had driven there once; the view from the observatory encompa.s.sed the valley. He cranked the emergency brake, hit the flashers and leaned over Mich.e.l.le to retrieve a flashlight from the glove compartment.

"Huh, whazzat?" she said, plucking at his sleeve.

"Don't worry, sweetie. I have to check something. Just be a minute."

"Huh-um. Don't get hit," she said drowsily.

"Righto." He took a breath, steeling his nerves, and climbed out. There weren't any other cars on the road. The air pressed chilly and damp and the darkness seemed vast around the feeble bubble of the Firebird's headlights, the flashlight in Don's hand. Treetops soughed in the grip of a high, rushing breeze that funneled through hidden creek beds and hollows. Branches crashed at some distance as the wind shook them.

Storm coming. Don opened the trunk and shined the weak flashlight beam over the tire, the tire iron, a box of flares and a bandolier of wrenches and sockets. The culprit was the jack; it had come free of its mooring and jounced around. He sighed and secured it, casting brief glances over his shoulder to ensure another vehicle wasn't slaloming around the corner-Sat.u.r.day night and drunks cruised the highways and byways.

His giant shadow spread on the white gravel and the asphalt. He gasped then at the face in the brush that overhung the ditch at the perimeter of his light. The face was flat and misshapen as something from a dream, with a cruel black mouth and black eyes, a shark's eyes, but horribly askew. Don shined his beam directly at the spot and an eddy of cool, damp breeze caught dead leaves and swirled them to pieces. It swept bare the crosscut of a large chunk of slate. Alkaline drainage dribbled across its face and congealed in inkblots.

My lord, getting jumpy in our old age, aren't we? I shouldn't have let those hooligans spook me so easily. He preferred to blame this latest startle on the rational after-effects of worry for his beloved car, the knowledge his best years were long gone and he and Mich.e.l.le were vulnerable even to rowdy kids acting with malice aforethought.

However, the snapping branches, the moaning wind, the absolute impenetrability of the darkness oppressed and intimidated him. Incipient nyctophobia; he'd self-diagnosed by plugging the symptoms into Web MD. Unlike his darling wife, he wasn't cut out for wilderness expeditions anymore; not after dark. Even the prospect of pitching an overnight tent at one of the nearby parks unnerved him. In the latter stages of his career he performed his vocation from the safety of an office, a lab, or the infrequent daytrip. His youthful postings to remote research camps gradually became a source of major anxiety; occasions to be endured as a necessary evil. He enjoyed the country as far as that went, just so long as when night fell he could flip the switch and have lights go on.

Don raised his eyes to the seam between the hinges of the trunk and the rear window. This revealed a sliver of the interior of the car, faintly illuminated by the radio dial. Mich.e.l.le had twisted in her seat and swung her head toward his activities. She was silhouetted and thus utterly inscrutable. The wind pushed the trees around again; handfuls of twigs pinged the canvas; a dust devil skated circles in the road. Glad to shut the trunk, he hurriedly retreated into the shelter of the car. "All fixed," he said as he buckled in. Mich.e.l.le didn't reply. She slumped, fast asleep; a trace of drool glistened at the corner of her mouth. Don dabbed it with his sleeve, mildly perplexed at how he'd so clearly, yet mistakenly, saw her gazing at him moments before. His brain was apparently deliquescing.

He rolled onto the road. From the trunk: ka-thump! "Hang it." Don stamped the accelerator.

Come the dawn, the sky threatened and fumed, but no storm descended upon them. The radio girl said be ready, folks, it's only a matter of time.

The Millers' home was located in the bucolic and slightly depressed Waddell Valley, a shallow, crooked notch in the heavily forested Black Hills a few miles from the state capital. A potholed country blacktop wound past quiet farms where cattle and horses lazily grazed in the few fields and pastures not lost to creeping wilderness. Mich.e.l.le inherited the Olympia residence in 1963 from her aunts Yvonne and Gretchen, who'd lost their husbands in the First World War and later moved to New Hampshire to spend their declining years with the eastern branch of the Mock family. The ladies bequeathed Mich.e.l.le most of their possessions-nearly a century's worth-and to this day, the Millers had yet to replace the original antique furniture, paintings and knick-knacks, much less sort through the troves in the attic, the huge, labyrinthine cellar, or the barn loft.

The building was a yellow and white three-story farmhouse with two large additions (one being a half-tower of ivy-twined brick that rose a solid story above the roof peak) and a stone chimney running up the side. It sat on a hill at the end of a dirt lane and at night theirs were the only lighted windows in the area. Twin magnolias loomed in the backyard near the barn he'd repainted and converted into a garage and workshop. The trees were monsters, studded by thick, mossy knurls and scaled in tough bark that reminded him of ossified crocodile hide.

As a boy, Kurt drove Don batty by climbing into the uppermost branches and swinging like his idol Tarzan. He'd recently discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard and for the next few months there was h.e.l.l to pay. Kurt only quit his brachiating hijinks after Don vowed to cut the trees down and make a complete set of dining room furniture. Kurt had been, and still was, a monumental pain in the a.s.s compared to his sweet sister. Mich.e.l.le snorted and shook her head when she heard Don talk about Holly as if she were G.o.d's own angel. Dream on, bucko; she's her mother's child, Mich.e.l.le would say with a cryptic arch to her brow before resuming her absorption of raw data in the form of moth-eaten journals, blood-stained logbooks and typewritten reports stacked knee-high to a giraffe in the study. The "keep out, if you know what's good for you" room.

This ancient farmhouse had been the Millers' summer home until nine months previous when Don finally agreed to sell the Spanish colonial in San Francisco, which they had lived in and done business from two-thirds of each year during the 1970s, ideally situated as it was at the plexus of Mich.e.l.le's international travels. Don certainly preferred the hacienda in the city, a smaller, brighter, inarguably cheerier domicile, but ages ago his wife insisted they remove themselves to Washington State during the summers-the children required fresh air and an at least minimal exposure to nature.

Of course, around 1980 with the kids going to college and both Don and Mich.e.l.le receiving excellent offers from Washington-based inst.i.tutions to work and teach, they'd divided their years nearly in half between the Bay Area and humble Olympia, with friends and a.s.sociates by the gross pulling them in twain. Thus, the Millers never did quite become settled in either locale-an experience akin to migrating constantly between two familiar hotels on never-ending business trips.

Now that quasi-retirement had segued into the real thing, it seemed prudent and sensible to relocate permanently. Living expenses were substantially lower and the country setting far more tranquil than in San Francisco. Finally, Mich.e.l.le had expressed the ambition to conduct a genealogical survey of her ancestry, and the old farmhouse was literally stuffed with books and notes from generations as far back as the Huguenots' expeditious retreat from Europe, although Mock family origins predated that era by an inestimable margin.

Many a lazy afternoon found Don lounging in the porch swing, a gla.s.s of lemonade in hand, fanning himself with a good solid naturalism book while squirrels chattered in the trees and an occasional vehicle trundled past on the main road. The property, like most land in the Waddell Valley, originally belonged to a gentleman farmer, a Dutchman, who sold Yvonne Mock the parcel in 1902. G.o.d alone knew for certain when the house itself was built (however it was renovated twice), but rumor had it the foundation was laid in 1853, which placed it as one of the oldest surviving residences in Olympia. One could only imagine what its walls had witnessed. The surrounding field spread in an irregular rectangle for several hundred yards, hemmed by a rusty wire fence. Gra.s.s and wild-flowers and sapling birches overran the environs. Forested hills reared at the boundaries. Don's black Labrador Thule went crazy chasing rabbits from one end of the property to the other.

The closest neighbors were the Hertzes just up the road-a blond, ruddy family. Blonde wife; three or four blond, chubby boys; two blonde girls, the elder of the pair in junior high; all of them a matched set like a nest of goslings. Only papa Hertz with his rugged, sunburned face and unflinching Icelandic eyes seemed more than a Disney caricature made flesh. Dietrich was a dirt-poor dairyman, who'd sold off the majority of the acreage his dad, a second-generation farmer, had bequeathed as his legacy. Dietrich was down to a half dozen cows and the plot his house and barn occupied. A laconic fellow, he curtly tipped his hat to Don in pa.s.sing and slid his gaze around Mich.e.l.le, content to pretend she didn't exist. She laughed and explained that was typical of salt of the earth, G.o.d-fearing men, certainly nothing for Don to bristle at. Besides, Dietrich appeared capable of ripping off her husband's arms-My goodness, the size of his hands. Only auto mechanics, stonemasons and dairymen had hands like those.

Misty Villa lay a quarter mile in the opposite direction. The greenbelt subdivision had gone in around 1969 and was populated by middle-cla.s.s folks who lived in newish houses with vinyl siding and faux brick and rock exteriors. Don and Mich.e.l.le were once acquainted with an architect who designed a modernized cabin at the end of one of the subdivision's ubiquitous circle drives. They attended a few barbeques and c.o.c.ktail parties, exchanged Christmas cards. The architect moved to Brazil in the early 1990s after being drafted by some corporation that built skysc.r.a.per offices and luxury hotels in the poorer regions of the world so the executives and business partners would have a clean, air-conditioned habitat while they organized and consolidated industry in developing countries. Dan something. The Millers hadn't occasion to meet anyone else in the neighborhood; their friends lived chiefly inside the city limits of Olympia, Tacoma and Seattle, and to the four corners of the continent. They'd chosen the Waddell Valley precisely for that reason-close enough to whisk into town at a moment's notice, but remote enough casual visits were unusual.

This morning, Thule lay snorting and whimpering on the kitchen tiles near the back door that let out to a covered walkway and Mich.e.l.le's greenhouse. Last night's storm had arrived in furious glory. Rain poured down the windows. Wind slammed the roof and rapped the doors, whistled in the gutters and the chimney. The buzzing transistor on the counter reported heavy weather was here to stay-three or four days minimum. High wind and flood warnings had already been issued for Pierce and Thurston counties.

Don sat at the kitchen table in the predawn gloom. He wore his bathrobe and a pair of fluffy slippers and sipped a mug of instant coffee. The porch light shuddered with each savage buffet and momentarily dimmed as if plunged underwater. He listened for the sound of Mich.e.l.le stirring from bed to make breakfast in advance of the kids' arrival, but she was still sleeping it off, for which he was thankful. She absolutely never slept in, unless she'd been drinking or taking heavy duty cold medication, and even then she usually dragged herself out of bed to carry on. Carry on, carry on, was Mich.e.l.le's motto and Don could only surmise this comprised a Mock family tradition.

Don knew precious little about the Mocks beyond hints and rumors. As with Don, Mich.e.l.le's parents died young: Theresa Mock (none of the women took married names) from tuberculosis contracted during an adventure in China at the age of forty-eight, and Landon Caine by a stroke eleven years and one remarriage later. Don shook hands with the parents during his own wedding, the sole occasion he'd ever seen or spoken to them. Mich.e.l.le had made it clear early on that her familial relations were strained. She wasn't kidding.

On Holly's sixth birthday, Mich.e.l.le flew her (but not little Kurt) to a family conclave in New England, but as for Don, besides his brief encounter with the parents, he'd only met a younger sister, and before that, an aunt Babette; a mummified lady who dressed in basic black. Her eyebrows were permanently inked in lieu of the real thing. Babette Mock grudgingly consented to meet Don after she discovered he moonlighted as an antiquarian and a journeyman bibliophile with expertise in geomorphic history. In her declining years (that dragged on for two and a half decades) Babette had frequently toured the West Coast for rare ma.n.u.scripts, which sounded far more interesting than the reality. Unfortunately, Don had been unable to procure certain texts pertaining to geophysical anomalies and that was the last they'd spoken.

There were several other aunts, a bushel of female cousins and Mich.e.l.le's stepmother Cornelia, but no uncles. Mich.e.l.le's twin brother Michael had served as an Army sniper. The military loved his hands; stone steady were those hands, those steely fingers that once tapped the ivories of cla.s.sical piano. No Millers possessed musical talent to speak of, although most suffered an acute appreciation of the sublime art, and thus Michael fascinated Don.

The subject of Michael inevitably provoked a melancholy sigh from Mich.e.l.le. Mom wanted to ship him to Julliard. d.a.m.n it, Mikey, you decided to be a lifer in the military instead. Selfish b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He and eight other soldiers were lost in a helicopter crash during a mission near the South Korean border in the fall of 1952. An eerie a.n.a.logue to how Don had lost his own father a few years earlier. Mock men die young, his wife said with grim cheer whenever he'd pressed the issue. Don had last spoken to her brother over the phone when he called for Christmas. They'd vowed to buy one another drinks when Michael's tour in Korea ended.

Sometimes Don pondered on the sort of man Michael would've become if the rocket had spun eight feet to the port side. He imagined the clean-cut boy from the pictures in Mich.e.l.le's wallet coming home, eyes a bit wiser, face worn from the jungles and the worry, dressed now in the formal wear of a Beethoven or a Bach in some dim concert hall, bent over the keyboard of a grand piano while the gentry in the gallery leaned forward in their ma.s.sed and breathless silence, hanging upon the movements of those fingers poised to work their prestidigitation upon the sacred keys, those same fingers that cradled a walnut stock and squeezed the trigger on G.o.d knew how many targets, had instead curled tight and black in the heart of a conflagration and were reduced to dust.

Don was uncertain if this was the reason Mich.e.l.le had had a strained relationship with her relatives, most of whom, obviously, were pa.s.sed on to the Great Beyond. In any event, they'd almost never visited, seldom called, just sent the occasional handwritten letter done in script so cramped and esoteric, it proved unfathomable to Don's weak eyes.

Mich.e.l.le, as per her custom from the first date onward, kept mum, except to say her relatives were odd ducks, and better off in Maine and New Hampshire. According to Mich.e.l.le's admittedly vague accounts of her genealogical origins, the sprawling family tree sank its roots in the Balkans, and to a minor degree, Eastern Germany and obscure territories along the Pyrenees. Researching that tree had become yet another of her all-consuming pa.s.sions and appeared as if it might keep her occupied until the Reaper came to collect his due.

Numerous photographs of the Mock clan decorated the parlor; more were scattered about the house on the landing and in various alcoves-the formal kind where the men stood rigid as wooden posts in top hats and coattails, and the women sat primly in dresses with bustles that made their rumps resemble cabooses; everybody posed and shot against featureless backdrops. An austere and decidedly unfriendly lot, judging by their sallow, joyless faces.

Don's own family were Midwesterners, lapsed Catholics, mainly. His younger brothers were long-retired attorneys. His elder brothers, now dead and gone for several years, or so the rumors had it, were odd ducks who'd gone the route of iconoclasts and professional dilettantes; however most of the family worked in law offices, museums and private schools. Lots and lots of curators and English professors in the Miller line. He joked that family reunions resembled conventions of J.R.R. Tolkien fanatics; everybody wore tweed, smoked a pipe and smelled of chalk dust.

The most interesting of the lot were benevolently eccentric and this disappointed him. All of the truly remarkable persons, persons of zest and vibrancy had died, like his parents and war-hero grandfather, or vanished, like his elder siblings, consumed by time and life unceasing. Maybe that was one's reward for coloring outside the lines. His attraction to eccentricity, while being somewhat of a fuddy-duddy in his own affairs, was likely the secret to sixty years of marriage with Mich.e.l.le. She was precisely loony enough to keep his heart racing.

Cold hands fell upon his shoulders and he spilled coffee onto his robe. Mich.e.l.le kissed the top of his head where the remnants of his hair held the line. "Whoops. Better trim that hair in your ears, yeah?" She tweaked his lobe to accentuate her point. "I'm going to get dressed. Put more coffee on, will you? And peel some potatoes. There's a dear."

"Ack!" Don wiped at the widening stain. "For the love of Pete, don't sneak around like that! This isn't the jungle, y'know!" He called after her shadow as it floated up the staircase.