thicker than water. That’s the thing about cliches, you know. They are usually true.
29
I woke to a gray dawn, certain I’d heard a noise off my left elbow. It went click-click, like the sound a lockpick makes when someone is trying to open a door. But I had been dreaming about a raven, its talons clicking as it walked across the table to peck my eyes out.
Both sounds stopped as I came awake and sat up in the bed.
It was Sunday, the day of rest.
Television promised more rain, followed by bad weather. The weather clown played with his million-dollar toys, swirling clouds over a map and grinning with all thirty-two as he did his dance. But this was a floor show next to the competition. Evil, two-faced evangelists pranced about, talked of Jesus and money in the same foul breath, and sheared their glass-eyed flock. Praise the lord, suckers.
The radio was fixed to an oldies station, with something called a salute to the British Invasion already in progress. I got “Eleanor Rigby” as a curtain call to my shave-and-shower, and I stood in the buff anticipating every beat and lyric, for all the good it did me.
The clock was pushing nine, and my departure seemed somehow less urgent than it had at midnight, Nothing was open yet. Check-in at the Hilton wasn’t till three o’clock. The library, another of my scheduled stops, informed by recorded message that its Sunday hours were one to five p.m. I had time on my hands.
I sat on the bed and started my phone checks. It was ten o’clock in Taos.
I punched out the number and heard it ring.
“Hello?”
“Jonelle Jeffords?”
“Who are you?”
It didn’t seem to matter so I told her my real name, then began to improvise. “I’m a friend of the court. The judge in Seattle gave me the job of getting Miss Rigby back to New Mexico in the burglary of your house. I need to ask you a few questions.”
She expelled her breath like a hot radiator.
“Goddammit, can’t you people leave us alone?”
This was a strange attitude for a victim, but I already knew she was not the run of the mill victim. I put an official tone in my voice and said, “Most people who’ve been burglarized cooperate. I find your attitude a little unusual. Is there a reason for that?”
She hung there a moment, surprised, then said, “My husband is very upset by all this. It’s going to be bad enough having to go to court when they finally do bring that crazy girl back here. What can I tell you that hasn’t already been asked and answered fifty times?”
“I’m sure you’re tired of answering questions. But I’m in Seattle, I don’t have access to the files they’ve built in Taos, and I need to know more about what she stole from you. Otherwise I don’t know how you expect to get your property back.”
“I don’t want it back. I should’ve burned it years ago.”
“Burned what?”
“That book.”
“It was mainly a book, then, that she took from you?”
“If I’d just given it to her when she first came here, maybe she’d‘ve just gone away. Then none of this would’ve happened.”
“Where did you get the book?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. It’s personal business, very old business. It doesn’t have any bearing on this.”
“It might, if we have to determine who owns it.”
“What are you saying, that
“I’m just asking a few questions, Mrs. Jeffords. If I seem to be going in a way you don’t like, it’s your attitude that’s leading me there. You’re going to have to answer these questions, you know, sooner or later.”
“Listen to me, sir, and understand what I’m telling you. My husband is extremely upset by all this. He’s outside now on the deck, he’ll be in here any minute, and the last thing I need is for him to find me talking to you about that crazy girl. It hasn’t been easy coping with this. She could’ve killed us. Charlie gets a little crazy himself just thinking about it. If you call here again, you’ll cause me a lot of trouble.”
“Can you describe the book?”
“No! Can’t I make you understand English? I haven’t even looked at it in twenty years.”
“Are you familiar with the names Slater or Pruitt?”
