Born To Die

leash, hung it up, and took off her coat, gloves, scarf, and hat. Beneath the outer layer was a red sweater with white dots… just like the dog’s.

“You knit,” Alvarez observed.

“Voraciously! Never met a skein of mohair that I didn’t love!” The dog’s nose was at the crack of the pantry door, so she gave him half a doggy biscuit and said, “I’ll put on some tea.”

Alvarez tried to decline, but it was of no use. Lois Emmerson declared they both needed to be “warmed up,” and it became increasingly evident that the older woman, as she heated water in the microwave, was lonely. Single. No children. Just Kaiser for company and the poor excuse of a cook, Frannie, as family. It appeared as if she wanted to talk, so Alvarez took off her coat and tossed it on an empty bar stool.

“You were saying that there was something about Jocelyn Wallis that bothered you.”

“No, I don’t think so.” The microwave dinged, and Lois was on it like a flea on a dog, quickly sliding the glass measuring pitcher out of the microwave. Deftly, as if she’d done it a million times, she began pouring steaming water from the pitcher into twin porcelain cups that bore the stains of countless uses. She plopped a used tea bag into her cup, then asked, “Orange pekoe or English breakfast?”

“Pekoe,” Alvarez said, just to keep the conversation flowing. She was standing in the dining area, the kitchen counter separating them, and watched as Lois found some loose tea and dropped a spoonful into the second cup.

Once the tea was steeping, Lois slid that cup across the Formica.

Alvarez reminded, “You said, ‘She was a nice enough girl, or woman, really, just a little. .,’ and then you didn’t finish. What were you going to say?”

“Oh. Well.” As if she were suddenly lost in thought, Lois dunked her tea bag several times, then let it steep. “Jocelyn was complicated, not that I knew her all that well.” She pinched the last drops of tea out of the tiny wet bag, then tossed it into the trash. Immediately Kaiser stuck his long nose into the open container. “Out of there, mister! You know better!”

Tail between his legs, the doxie scurried out of the kitchen. A step behind him, Lois walked into the dining area and waved Alvarez into one of the antique chairs.

“What do you mean, ‘complicated’?”

“Maybe that’s the wrong word.” Blowing across her cup, Lois settled onto a well-worn cushion in one of the chairs. She rested her elbows on the table. “Jocelyn was young and. . not really wild, more like enthusiastic and so anxious to fall in love. She’d already been married, y’know. Not once, but twice, and what was she? Thirty-four?” Disapproval etched the lines near the corners of Lois’s mouth.

“Thirty-five,” Alvarez said. “It’s not uncommon these days to be married several times by that age.”

“Oh, I know. I know, and I’m not judging her.” Shaking her head emphatically, she added, “But it seemed to me that she was looking for a man. Really looking hard. Had dated online, I think, and then there was the father of one of her students, and she just was getting a little desperate.” She tasted her tea. “Again, in my opinion.”

“A lot of men visit her?”

Lois was sipping, but she lifted her free hand and waggled it, as if she didn’t really know the answer. Maybe yes. Maybe no.

“There were some that I saw around here. But I’m not a snoop, so I wouldn’t really know. There was the rancher who was a father to one of her students. I think I mentioned him. Trask or Trevor or. . Tall. Good- looking.”

“Trace O’Halleran.”

“That’s the one. But that relationship was a while ago.” She pursed her lips as she remembered. “I think she was very disappointed about that one. Her biological clock was really ticking.”

“Had she been dating anyone recently?”

“No one I could name. But there were a couple, I think. One man, tall and looked kind of like a bodybuilder, carried himself that way, you know, erect, stiff-shouldered. Drove a dark truck, I think. I only remember because Kaiser, the little stinker, lifted his leg on the truck’s front tire. A Michelin. I remember.”

“Local plates?”

“Oh. . I have no idea.” She was shaking her head. “The second Kaiser did his thing, I hurried into the house.”

“Do you remember what kind of truck?” Alvarez asked. This was probably nothing, but they didn’t have a lot to go on.

“No. . but it was large, not one of those smaller ones.”

“Domestic?”

She shrugged. “All I remember is that it was dark. Black or blue or gray and was fairly new, I think, no dents, and had really nice tires.” She smothered a little bit of a smile, as if her dog were such a naughty, but clever little beast.

“But you didn’t get a look at the man’s face.”

“No.”

“What about his ethnic background or race? White? Black? Hispanic?”

“White. . I think. Can’t be sure.”

So much for identifying the mystery man.

“He was here often?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I just noticed his truck a couple of times. Only saw him once, walking up to the door, and I was behind him, with Kaiser.” Offering a feeble smile, she said, “Sorry.”

“You said there was a second one?”

“Oh. . maybe. Maybe not.” Lois thought it over. “Might’ve been just the one with the dark truck.”

Alvarez asked a few more questions but got no more information. Ms. Emmerson knew little about Jocelyn’s friends, though she thought most of her social life was through people she worked with at Evergreen Elementary. She had heard of a sister living somewhere out of state and parents maybe; the two women had essentially met at the mailbox or the common area or the parking lot when Jocelyn was jogging and Lois was walking Kaiser. The information Lois had gleaned had been in bits and pieces.

Alvarez learned what she could, which wasn’t much more, then drained the remaining tea from her cup. She was standing, intent on ending the impromptu visit, when Lois looked up at her expectantly.

“Mind if I read the leaves?”

“Pardon?”

“The tea leaves in your cup. That’s why I gave you loose leaves, so I could read them.”

“You do that?” Alvarez couldn’t believe it. Since moving to Grizzly Falls, she’d met Ivor Hicks, who swore he’d been abducted and probed by aliens, and Grace Perchant, the woman who believed she spoke to ghosts and saw the future, and now this… woman, who looked like an ex-librarian, was going to read the dregs of her hot beverage?

“Of course I can.”

“Have at it,” she offered, but Lois had already stood and rounded the table so that she could peer into the cup. She turned it upside down on a napkin so that the final drips of tea were removed from the cup; then she righted the porcelain again and studied what remained inside.

“Oh, my. . hmmm. .”

Alvarez wasn’t going to rise to the so obvious bait.

“This is interesting,” Lois went on and, when Alvarez didn’t respond, said, “It looks like you’re in for a change… work-related, maybe? Or… maybe not. Certainly a love interest. There’s a heart in your near future, but. .” She frowned.

Don’t ask! However, the words tumbled out of her mouth. “But what?”

“There’s danger, too… evil.” She pointed to a squiggle of small leaves on the rim of the cup. “This is the present, and here, the heart, a little further into the future. .” One of her graying eyebrows lifted. “A new boyfriend?”

“I doubt it.” Alvarez pulled her coat from the bar stool.

“I take it you’re a nonbeliever.”

“Depends upon what you’re asking me to believe in.” She was just shrugging into the coat’s sleeves when Kaiser, who had been lying beneath the table, scrambled to his feet. Barking madly, he raced to the sliding door,