A Superior Death

After she got off the phone with Molly, Anna sat awhile in the dark. Some enterprising person had disabled the light beside the waiting bench, so the mosquitoes at least had to find their suppers the old-fashioned way.

Nights in the desert had never seemed dark to Anna. Here, under the canopy of trees, the darkness was absolute. At first she had hated it. Over the weeks she had come to know it, to hear its many soft voices. This night it soothed her. It was a night one could immerse oneself in: still seeing, still hearing, still a part of, but unseen. Wrapped in summer darkness, Anna felt safe and alone but not lonely. Shut away from the sometimes forbidding beauty of the heavens, the scent of pine and loam and budding leaves all around her, she felt firmly a part of the earth and it was a comfort.

Footsteps, muted voices intruded and she stood up, melted into the trees off the path. Two people, walking without a light, came up the trail from the marina. They sat on the bench Anna had vacated. She could hear the whisper of fabric sweeping over the wooden seat. “You go first.”

Anna recognized Damien’s voice. The whisper was probably his cape. A light flickered as the door to the telephone booth was opened and for a second Tinker was lit like an actor on a stage. Then all was dark again.

Anna slipped quietly away. She didn’t want to talk with Tinker or Damien tonight. This was not their kind of death. This one had a corpse and a widow.

Patience Bittner found Anna on the deck halfway down her third burgundy. The night sky was pricked full of light but the velvet darkness on the island remained inviolate. Muffled in a dark sweater and black beret, Anna was part of a living shadow beneath the thimbleberry bushes that overhung the deck.

Patience swept out through the double doors like a woman pursued. At the railing she stopped, her hands resting on the wood, her head drooping forward. Anna could see the movement of the pale shining hair. Patience wore white trousers and a light-colored shirt of shimmery material. Not a good outfit for hiding, Anna thought, and decided she had better make her presence known before the woman stumbled across her and scared herself to death.

“Don’t be afraid,” Anna whispered.

Patience screamed. A short stab of sound.

“Sorry,” Anna apologized. “I guess coming out of the dark those are three pretty terrifying words. It’s me, Anna Pigeon.”

“Oh Lord…”

Anna could hear Patience taking deep breaths, lowering her pulse rate.

“Do you always creep about like that?” the woman demanded.

Anna took umbrage. She’d felt it was good of her to have given up a moment of her privacy to save Patience a coronary. The alcohol had made her quite benevolent. “I’m not creeping. I’m sitting and drinking. Not at all the same thing. Creeping suggests the active. I am the personification of the passive. Letting the night soak in.”

Patience had recovered herself; her irritation at being startled had passed. Using her hands like a woman still night-blind, she shuffled over from the railing and sat down on the deck near Anna. “You work on the other side of the island, don’t you?”

“Amygdaloid.”

“Not your days off. I remember.”

“No,” Anna said. “I was with the group that found Denny. I came back with Lucas to break the news to Jo.”

“Found? My God. Tell me!” Anna felt strong ringers grabbing at her, strong arms shaking her. Patience’s panic was thick in the air between them and all at once Anna was unpleasantly sober. She caught Patience’s hands and held them with difficulty. It had not occurred to her that Patience would not have heard. The news would have shot through the park community within half an hour of Jim and Ralph’s setting foot on Mott. But Patience was a concessionaire, the lodge manager. She was not on the grapevine. At least not the evening edition.

“Shh. Shh. It’s okay. You’re okay,” Anna said, wondering what Denny had been to Patience. “Denny’s had an accident. We found his body today. I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

“My God,” Patience said again and she moaned, a ghostly creaking in the night. “Where was he?”

“Inside the Kamloops.”

Patience twitched. Anna felt it like an electric shock running through her arms and hands. Patience took a breath, a shushing sound. Anna wished she could see her face but the darkness in the shadow of the thimbleberry was absolute. Patience’s hands stopped quivering. She returned Anna’s hold with a firm pressure, then tried to withdraw. There was a sense of gathering, of control; a powerful woman remembering who she was.

“Denny was very kind to Carrie-and me-when we first got here. We were such city slickers. Afraid of wolves and the Windigo; hadn’t sense enough to come in out of the rain. Denny took us under his wing. That’s not going to be forgotten.”

Eulogy was the first step toward recovery. Patience Bittner would be all right. Anna loosed her hands.

“Do you have a place to sleep?” Patience asked.

“I’ll sleep on the Lorelei.”

“Ralph’s a sweetheart, but his housekeeping leaves something to be desired. Stay with Carrie and me.” Anna hesitated. “Please,” Patience urged. “I’d like to have someone to talk to.”

Patience put the lodge to bed at midnight and Anna followed her home. In the last of the four lodge buildings sprinkled along the western shore of Rock Harbor, she shared an apartment with her daughter. There was nothing rustic or romantic about the decor-the furnishings looked to have been borrowed from a doctor’s waiting room-but the sliding glass doors opening out of the living room looked across the harbor to the lush shores of Raspberry Island.

Carrie Bittner wasn’t home, a fact that irritated her mother. Patience put her domestic disappointments aside, however, and turned on her hostess’s charm. Though it was transparent, it was effective. Patience knew how to put people at their ease, and Anna was glad to have been rescued from a mildewed bed aboard Pilcher’s boat. The hot shower, the strains of Rampal on the compact disc player, and the loan of one of Patience’s flannel gowns were welcome luxuries at the end of a trying day.

As Anna curled up on the sofa, Patience uncorked a bottle of Pinot Noir. Words of protest were in Anna’s mouth but Patience forestalled them.

“This is an excellent wine,” she said. “It warms without intoxicating. I promise. Tonight we both need it. Wine is important.”

“You’ve said that before.”

Patience smiled without embarrassment. “I suppose I have. I’ll probably say it again. Wine is history, comfort and strength, food and drink, art and commerce. You can’t say that about much else.” She handed Anna a small glass of dark purple liquid. She raised hers to the light, met Anna’s eye, and said: “Over the lips and through the gums, look out stomach, here it comes.”

Anna enjoyed both the wine and the company. She told Patience all she dared of Denny’s whereabouts. The exact details, the 1900s captain’s uniform, the lack of any scuba gear, the precise location, Anna kept to herself. She knew that whoever handled the case would want as much information as possible to be known only to themselves and the killer.

It was close to one o’clock in the morning when Carrie Bittner came home. She had the flushed, excited look that can only be explained by young love or other covert night actions. As Patience scolded her off to her room, Anna wondered which of the busboys dared to court the boss’s daughter.

Patience apologized unnecessarily and followed her daughter to bed. Though soothed by wine and warmth, Anna still was not sleepy. For the third time that day she dug in her daypack for Ivanhoe. So much had transpired since last she’d turned its pages, it seemed that Rebecca must surely have perished from old age by now.

Anna couldn’t concentrate. Putting the book away, she came across Christina’s letter, brought on the Ranger III, unopened, forgotten amid the Sturm and Drang of the past thirty-six hours. She tucked her blankets around her on the sofa and opened the letter. Alison had drawn her a picture of Piedmont. He looked like a yellow and red armadillo but there was an authentic paw print to prove otherwise. Anna smiled at the struggle that must have ensued before Piedmont had let one of his perfect golden paws be pressed into an ink