A Superior Death

anticipate the alcohol. Onto the mysteries of the night, Anna projected the petty mysteries of the days, listing them for herself in no particular order.

Number one: Denny Castle, dead, one hundred and ninety-five feet below the lake’s surface, dressed in a costume that was supposed to be in a trunk in his mother’s attic.

Frederick Stanton believed the death was drug-related. Profiles indicated traffic between the U.S. and Canada. Profiles indicated the 3rd Sister as a red-hot possibility. And she was the only concession working the island that week with known dive capabilities. If Stanton could get a case up, the 3rd Sister would be impounded. The Bradshaws would be out of a living and, more to the point, out of a life. Diving was all they had, all they cared about.

Number two: Mrs. Scotty Butkus had vanished, beaten certainly, and, if Tinker and Damien were right, consumed as if by a Windigo, the cannibalistic demon said to haunt the north woods.

Number three: Tinker and Damien now had a mystery all their own. Who was threatening them? What happened in 1978 to, in, or because of “Hopkins”?

Four: Why had Jim Tattinger been running without lights near the Kamloops wreck forty-eight hours before the body was scheduled to be brought up?

And five-or was she already to six? What was Denny to Holly, and why was it so laughable to Hawk that there could be a romance there?

Why was Molly’s client wearing suspenders and a belt? More to the point, how was Hawk Bradshaw in bed?

Anna laughed. The wine was kicking in. In the close darkness, she smiled over her list. Some of the mysteries were going to be a whole lot more fun to solve than others.

A clatter of footsteps broke into her thoughts. Invisible in the shadowless dark, she lay still. The clatter ended in a flop. A pale shape dumped itself on the wooden step a couple of yards from Anna. The shape was fidgety. Anna could hear the scuffling, plucking sounds as of restless fingers and feet fiddling about. The breathing was slightly adenoidal.

“Evening, Carrie Ann.” There was a satisfying squawk from the girl. “Sorry if I startled you,” Anna lied mildly. “Out to enjoy the evening?”

“Not hardly.” Carrie, at thirteen, had already mastered the art of adolescent sullenness. Two words, and the night, the stars, the glittering lake, were dismissed as entertainments for the aged.

“Ah.” Anna wished the child would sulk and flop back to where she’d come from.

Carrie squirmed, a shush of denimed buttocks over the wood. “Mom send you out here to keep an eye on me?”

“I was here first,” Anna replied, repressing the urge to add: “You silly little shit.”

Mystery number seven-or was it eight? Who was Carrie Ann’s boyfriend, and, outside a small circle of friends, who the fuck cared? The wine was very much in control. Anna noticed her vocabulary deteriorating. Till she’d moved in with Christina, she’d never given it a thought except at her mother-in-law’s dinner table. Christina’d never said anything, but the first time Alison had announced that Jimmy Fulton was a fuckhead, one perfectly shaped brown eyebrow had been raised in Anna’s direction. Since then she had weeded the four-letter words from her conversations.

Anna knocked back the last swallow of the Graves as if it were a shot of vodka and refilled her glass. “Why would Patience want me to keep an eye on you? Are you harassing the wildlife, camping out of bounds, running a white slave trade, what?”

“Nothing,” Carrie grumbled. “Mom thinks I’m a baby.”

Anna forbore comment.

With the teenager’s paranoid ear, Carrie heard the implied agreement. “I’m not. I’m thirteen. Juliet Whatsername was married when she was thirteen.”

“And dead at thirteen and a half. Careful of your allusions.”

“Mom grew up in the sixties. She probably slept with every guy in Santa Cruz. Now it’s like sex has been recalled or something. Like a Pinto. Rear-ended once and it blows up.”

Anna laughed. Carrie didn’t join her. The sentence hadn’t been meant as a joke. “There’s AIDS,” Anna offered.

“Oh. Yeah. Like everybody’s got AIDS,” Carrie sneered. “Can I have some of that wine?”

“Nope.”

“You drink too much.”

Anna was glad she had never had children.

Carrie began scooting over to where Anna sat. Anna hoped she would get splinters in her butt, but the gods were not with her and Carrie arrived unharmed. She snatched up the Graves from where Anna had it sitting on the deck and held it close to her face. “Graves. Mom’s giving you the good stuff,” she said.

Anna guessed she’d already picked up more about wines than most adults would ever know. “I’m impressed,” she admitted.

“Mom likes to pretend she’s cosmopolitan.” Carrie shrugged off the compliment she’d worked so hard for. “I’ve been drinking wine since I was five.”

“Watered?” Anna needled.

“I guess,” Carrie replied indifferently. “You ought to ask her for some of her secret stash. But you can’t guzzle it.”

Anna was growing tired of the company. Not wanting to relinquish her corner of the night, she chose silence hoping Carrie would grow bored and go away.

“Carrie!” came a call.

“Oh God,” the girl groaned. “Mom.” She lumbered off.

Whether to or from the voice, Anna didn’t care. Just so long as it was away from her.

“Carrie!”

Evidently Carrie Ann had run from, not to. Short staccato steps announced the arrival of high-heeled pumps on the wooden deck. A faint scent of perfume invaded the clean night air as Patience came round the bulge of thimbleberry branches. A flashlight raked across Anna’s face and she winced.

“Sorry,” Patience said curtly. “Have you seen Carrie? I’m going to strangle her.”

“In that case, yes I have. She went thataway.” Anna waved into the darkness back the way Patience had come.

“She must’ve slipped off the edge of the deck and run around through the bushes. Little beast.” Patience sighed, clicked off the flashlight, and sat down on the step. “I’m damned if I’m going to go running after her. She’ll come home eventually.”

“You can strangle her then,” Anna suggested.

“Don’t think I won’t.”

“I encourage it,” Anna said, inadvertently awakening the protective maternal instincts.

“Carrie Ann is not like she is,” Patience defended her offspring. “She was always a biddable child. Who thought she’d go through the terrible twos eleven years later than most children? It’s this damn boyfriend. If I knew who he was I’d have him off this island in a second. I don’t know why Carrie is being such a little ass about it. Why she doesn’t just let me meet the boy. I’m such a monster? She’s old enough to have a date. It’s this sneaking that’s got me so crazy. What’s the big deal about this boy? We haven’t any coloreds working up here this summer.”

“Coloreds.” Anna hadn’t heard that term in a long time. If Patience wanted to nurture a cosmopolitan image she would have to update her bigotries.

“What else could generate all this creeping around and lying?” Patience asked.

Anna could think of a dozen answers. Not feeling particularly soothing at the moment, she began to list them: “Married man, convicted felon, illegal alien, older man, older woman, drug dealer, alcoholic-”

“Enough!” Patience cried. “I feel better already just talking with you.” She laughed. “Any Graves left?”

“A glass or two.” Anna handed the bottle to Patience.

“I never do this.” A white flutter blurred the darkness. She took a swig from the bottle, then neatly wiped the mouth clean with her hankie.

“Keep it,” Anna offered. “I owe you a drink for procuring good wines. A touch of class. Helps maintain our civilized veneer in the wilderness.”