her head…
“Okay,” Annie said, holding her voice steady. “I’ll take a run over to her place and see if she’s there.”
“Let us know-”
“I will, I will. Thanks, Marie.”
She hung up and drew a shallow, shaky breath. For a panicky moment she couldn’t think straight, couldn’t recall where she’d parked her car. Then she remembered-the county parking structure, a couple of blocks from here. Yes.
She walked swiftly to Alameda Street. The main branch of the public library rose on her right, a handful of taller buildings assembled behind it. None stood higher than thirty-five stories.
For the most part, downtown Tucson could have been downtown Des Moines or Tulsa or Toledo, any small city that had begun as a few square blocks of brick and concrete. Outside the small historic district, there was little in the town’s business section that was distinctive. The area retained none of the Wild West flavor of Tucson’s outlying horse ranches and saguaro forests; it owned no particular charm or glamour, save perhaps for one evocative street name, Broadway, said to have been the inspiration of a visiting New Yorker at the turn of the century.
Though big-city magic was absent here, so were the worst excesses of urban blight. A few transients slept in El Presidio Park, and some spidery graffiti clung to alleyways and street signs, but otherwise downtown remained remarkably orderly and clean.
Whitewashed walls gleamed in the strong sunlight. Patches of grass made squares and crescents of green. Mulberry trees sighed, lovesick, in a gentle breath of breeze.
Annie barely noticed any of it. Her mind replayed the phone conversation, hunting among Marie’s words for some overlooked clue, finding none.
This was bad. Really bad.
Erin was in trouble. Might be injured.
Even… dead.
Ugly thought. A shiver skipped over her shoulders.
“No way,” she said firmly, drawing a stare from a vendor at a sandwich cart.
Erin couldn’t be dead. Annie refused to so much as consider the possibility.
People died all the time, but not her sister.
15
The radio came on when her car started, a blast of Billy Ray Cyrus exploding from the speakers.
Annie punched the on-off button, silencing Billy Ray, and swung the red Miata out of its parking space. At the exit-ramp gatehouse, money and a receipt changed hands, and then she was on the street, hooking north on Church Avenue and east on Sixth Street, heading for Erin’s apartment complex at Broadway and Pantano.
The little sports car was fun to drive, but Annie was too agitated to have any fun now as she cut from lane to lane, bypassing slower traffic, running yellow lights. Normally she didn’t drive like a maniac-well, not this much of a maniac, anyway-but the apprehension that had been building in her for the past twelve hours had reached fever pitch. She had to know if Erin was all right.
Tension set her teeth on edge. She rolled down the window to feel the rush of air on her face.
At Campbell she cut over to Broadway. Vermilion blooms of mariposo lily and purple owl clover blurred past on the landscaped median strip. Despite worry and preoccupation, she greeted the spring blossoms with a smile.
The sight of flowers always pleased her. Flowers, she often thought, had saved her life.
For weeks after that night in 1973, she had been lost, disoriented, a seven-year-old girl with the face of a shell-shocked soldier. The flowers in Lydia’s garden had brought her back. Watering them, plucking weeds, tending to each bud as if it were her precious child, she had found a way to ground herself, to reconnect with reality.
Her sister had spent her teenage years educating herself in the mind’s darker recesses, struggling to understand madness and evil. Annie had never wanted to understand. She had wanted only to escape life’s horror. In gardens and nurseries and florists’ shops, she did.
It took her years to realize that she loved flowers less for their beauty than for the simple fact that they could not hurt her.
Even a tame dog could bite. A kitten could scratch. A loving father…
But flowers were safe, always.
Almost in Erin’s neighborhood now. The older, more crowded part of town was receding, replaced by newer shopping plazas on larger lots. Developments of tract homes and condos occupied curving mazes of side streets with ersatz Spanish names. The mountains slouched on all horizons, their outlines sharp against a sky scudded with shredded-cotton clouds.
Pantano Fountains, Erin’s place, glided into view. Annie parked outside the lobby and walked briskly to the front door.
She fingered the intercom, buzzed Erin’s apartment. No reply.
Fumbling in her purse, she found the set of duplicate keys Erin had given her. Opened the door, entered the lobby.
The manager was on duty in her glass-walled office, talking on the phone, her words muted by the glass. A white-haired lady with a proud, lined face; Annie had met her several times when visiting Erin on weekends.
What was her name? Mrs. Williams. Right.
Might be necessary to talk with her later, but for now Annie simply sketched a wave through the glass as she hurried to the elevator. She pressed the call button, and the doors parted at once.
As she was traveling to the top floor, she realized suddenly that she should have checked the carport to see if Erin’s Taurus was in its reserved space. That way she would already know if Erin was home.
But of course Erin wasn’t home. She hadn’t answered the intercom, after all.
Unless she couldn’t answer.
A seizure would pass in a few minutes, Annie reminded herself. And it wouldn’t be fatal.
But suppose Erin had been in the shower when she collapsed-suppose her prone body had obstructed the drain, and she’d drowned in six inches of water. Suppose…
The elevator let her off on the penthouse floor. She ran for Erin’s apartment, propelled by panic.
At the door she hesitated, then knocked loudly.
“Erin?”
No response.
She inserted the key-no, wrong, that was the lobby key, try the other one. Got the door open finally and peered in.
Again: “Erin?”
Still nothing.
Slowly she stepped inside.
The lights of the apartment were off, the windows darkened by drawn curtains with blackout liners to hold back the desert sun. She found the wall switch and brightened the living room. It looked orderly and normal, almost magically clean, as always-and Erin was nowhere in sight.
From the bedroom, a faint sound. Music. Some classical composition. Rippling piano keys and a weeping violin.
Annie darted into the bedroom, briefly thrilled by hope-a thrill that died when she found the room similarly unoccupied, the clock radio on the nightstand playing to no audience.
The alarm feature was set to switch on the radio at 7:15. Apparently there was no automatic shut-off. Strange, though, that Erin hadn’t turned it off herself before leaving.
The bed was unmade, another oddity. Erin, the neatness freak, invariably fluffed her pillows and smoothed the bedspread upon arising. Loose, tangled sheets were not part of her world.
Her purse was gone, but nothing else of value that Annie could see.
