A Superior Death

she had of Denny. One was particularly nice. It was Denny in a ship captain’s uniform.”

“That was my brother’s,” Mrs. Castle said, pleased either with the memory or with her ability to recall it.

“Do you still have it? The uniform?”

“Why yes! Yes, I do. Those kids wanted to play with it. It’s with Denny’s old things in the upstairs bedroom. Do you want to see it?”

That was exactly what Anna wanted. She was grateful her prying seemed to give the woman some pleasure.

Denny’s upstairs bedroom had long been out of use for anything but storage and had taken on the dust-and- dead-flies smell of an attic. Old clothes hung on racks. Tattered books and ruined long-playing records were stacked along the walls. There were boxes of shoes and belts and a shelf of dusty vases. Mrs. Castle wended her way though these relics to a blue plastic and aluminum trunk-a cheap recreation of an old steamer trunk.

“Denny’s. He wanted to be a seafaring man since he was a little boy,” she said as she opened the trunk. “Oh dear.”

Anna came to look over her shoulder. The trunk was very nearly empty. Only a half-dozen books and a child’s cowboy hat remained. It reeked of mothballs.

“I was sure it was in this trunk.” Mrs. Castle’s hands began to flutter, her eyes to wander over the clutter.

“Was it here when you showed it to the kids-to Hawk and Holly?” Anna asked gently. “When they came to visit you.”

“Why yes! Yes, it was.”

“Maybe they borrowed it,” Anna suggested.

“No,” Mrs. Castle said firmly. “I would have remembered. They stole it. They’re wild, those two. They’re horrid bad children. They were playing up here and they took it. They’ll not play with any of Denny’s toys again until they apologize.”

Denny was once again alive in his mother’s mind. Anna was glad to leave it that way.

On the drive back the facts lined themselves up oppressively in Anna’s mind. Holly was not gay and could have been Denny’s lover. The bruise indicated that Denny had been wearing his diving gear; the bloody froth, that he had been breathing compressed air; and the knife, that he had dived the Kamloops. It was logical to assume he had been killed there. That meant he had been killed by another diver, an experienced one. He had been found in a costume Hawk and Holly had stolen. Anna had seen his gear back aboard the 3rd Sister.

She remembered the night aboard the Belle Isle, remembered Hawk’s tears on her throat, and wondered if he cried for his sins.

SEVENTEEN

Christina found Anna sitting in the glider under the white lilac bush in the backyard. A low fog had rolled in off the lake and, though it was July, the night was cold. Anna had draped one of Ally’s dinosaur-covered beach towels around her shoulders to ward off the chill. Hugging herself in an old Levi’s jacket, Christina sat down next to her and began rocking.

A popping noise came, as of distant gunfire. In the fog the sound was directionless.

“Somebody is getting off to an early start,” Anna remarked.

“Mmm.” They rocked in silence. The lilacs were long since blown. Glossy leaves shone black all around and overhead. Light glowed from the back porch, illuminating without penetrating the mist. “Ally’s preschool is having a Fourth of July picnic tomorrow down on the lake.”

“Can’t go,” Anna said. “I’m going back to the island. If it’s clear enough, I’ll fly. Otherwise I’ll take the Ranger Three.”

“Are you missing Zach?” Chris asked gently.

“Today’s his birthday.”

“I know.”

Anna looked at her friend. The smooth oval of her face was ageless in the diffused light: idealized. She looked like a woman from another time, a time before aerobics and Nautilus machines, when women were rounder and, of necessity, kinder. “I don’t make a big commemorative occasion out of it,” Anna said, irritated at being so transparent. “I just think of things.”

“Why don’t you call your sister?”

As Chris said it, Anna realized how much she wanted to talk with Molly. Childishly, she sat a bit longer lest Christina know how surely she had hit the proverbial nail’s head. “Do you see much of Roberta these days?” she asked.

“Mmmhmm.” Chris had a self-satisfied smile that made Anna nervous. It was selfish to hope Christina would never marry, never set up housekeeping with a lover, but that was what Anna wished.

“I don’t desert my friends because I find a lover,” Christina said quietly.

Anna stood abruptly. The glider clanked in protest. “I’m going to call my sister. I can hide more from a psychiatrist than a psychic,” she grumbled as she plowed through the fog toward the porch light.

Molly picked up on the second ring.

“Can you listen without a cigarette?” Anna demanded peevishly, not bothering to say hello.

“Nope.” A shush, a scratch, a sigh followed, proving that more than one of Mrs. Pigeon’s daughters could be stubborn.

“You’re on hold,” Anna said. “I’m getting a drink.” When she got back to the phone she could hear Molly’s laughter even before she put the receiver to her ear. It was a distinctive cackle, a “heh, heh, heh” usually associated with caricatures of dirty old men.

“Well,” Molly said as Anna’s presence crackled down the wires. “Now that we’ve both got one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel, what’s up?”

“There’s this guy-” Anna began.

“So far so good. Sex, adventure, romance. I like this story.”

“He’s seven or eight years younger than I am-” Anna pushed on.

“Better and better. Endurance, virility, flexibility, longevity. Does he have a baby brother?”

“I spent the night with Hawk last week.”

“ ‘Hawk’? Lordy, Lordy, to be just forty,” Molly cackled.

“Dammit, will you shut up and listen?”

“Sorry,” Molly said, suddenly businesslike. “What do you feel about all this?”

“Goddammit,” Anna exploded. “Nothing. Let me finish. Then I’ll feel something, okay?”

“Mmmm”-a yes murmured with tobacco smoke.

Anna counted to ten in her head, took a deep breath. “Erase, erase,” she said, their childhood code for a clear slate, a new start.

“Erase, erase,” Molly agreed. “So, you slept with a guy named Hawk.”

“Yes. It was okay. Kind of strange but okay. I could like him.”

“Like? Don’t go hog-wild, Anna. You don’t want to put yourself out on an emotional limb here. ‘Like’ could lead to ‘like pretty much,’ and that’s just two jumps from ‘real fond.’ You don’t want to rush into anything.”

“Do people really pay you a hundred and fifty dollars an hour for this?” Anna asked sourly, but she was smiling and let it show in her voice.

“Why? Do you think I’m selling myself too cheap? I’m thinking of starting an Inner Child Baby-sitting Service to bring in a little pin money.”

Anna laughed. “Okay. Back to me. Here’s the rub: It’s looking a whole lot like Hawk and probably his sister, Holly, committed the Denny Castle murder. Maybe a love triangle thing. Maybe to get a boat worth a quarter of a million. Maybe drugs.”

There followed a moment of stunned silence which Anna thoroughly enjoyed.

“Jesus,” Molly said finally. “No wonder you never watch the soaps. They pale by comparison.”