trusted.'
The driver eased the truck through a cautious three-point turn and headed back toward town. Patrice lowered the pistol into his lap.
'I hope she's correct,' DeBruyne said. 'From what she tells me, you sound quite entertaining. I'd like to have a drink with you one day. Rather than to your memory.'
The phone felt like it had the weight of an anvil.
'Are you there?' Laurie said.
The sound of her voice burned right through me.
'Yeah,' I said.
'I'm sorry I ran. I lost my nerve, alone in that motel. I called Guy-Luc. He sent a plane for me. I didn't know those men would be on it.'
'It's OK,' I said. I'd decided already that we were even, and maybe that I even owed her, for the persuading she'd done. 'If you get questioned, you and I never saw each other. Your husband was acting scary, you took off, and that's all you know.'
I listened to her breathing for a few more seconds.
'I really do care for you, Hugh,' she said. 'I meant what I said about our kinship.'
The connection ended.
Goddamn me, I almost could have believed her.
The truck pulled up beside mine, right where they'd picked me up. I started to open the door, but the driver turned to look straight at me for the first time and, with one hand gesturing eloquently, growled a sentence. I could tell this was French, but it was too fast for me to catch. Along with his words came a blast of garlic I could almost taste. I stared back helplessly, wondering what final trap they were springing.
'He ask your pardon that we break your tire and not help to repair it,' Patrice translated. 'Mais faut qu'on parte-we must go. You understand?'
I started nodding and kept on. 'Yeah, sure. Don't worry, I've done it a million times. Thanks, though.'
He tipped his hat, Old West style. The window rolled up. They drove away.
The bullet hole that had caused the flat was neatly centered in the treads-not surprisingly, a very professional job. I got the spare on in record time, in spite of my hands shaking and my head swiveling like a Ping-Pong ball in play. I just knew that the next thing coming down the pike would be Bill LaTray, leaping out of his rig and piling into me like a freight train.
When I finally drove through the gate to my cabin, the first thing that hit me was the lingering smell of the lumber that Laurie had burned.
60
I called Bill's Bail Bonds first thing, apologized to Bill for the trouble I'd caused him, and informed him that Gary Varna had cut me loose. He didn't seem angry-considering what he dealt with routinely, this was no doubt a mosquito bite-and he told me I could come by any time to pick up my refund. I offered to pay a late fee, but he said forget it, and that he'd be glad to buy me a drink.
I took that to mean that I was still a potentially valuable client.
There were a few phone messages on my machine, and I started to check them, then stopped. I didn't want any kind of news just now, good or bad-only to bask in the rapture of being back in my own place, with nobody trying to kill me. I was fried with fatigue but too wired to sleep. I started puttering around and trying to think about banal necessities like groceries, laundry, and a new used tire.
But I was uneasy, and after a few minutes, I couldn't ignore that a bad switch had flipped in my head. The privacy I'd always loved up here felt like emptiness, and the solitude, a loneliness that almost amounted to dread.
It wasn't because nobody else was around.
I knew it was temporary, just a function of the last couple of days' madness. But I couldn't get past the restlessness. I decided to take a shot at tying up one more loose end-following up my guess that Laurie had gotten her information about Celia from Beatrice Pettyjohn, Reuben's wife. I drove back to town.
Reuben had moved Beatrice to the Pineview Assisted Living Facility after her Alzheimer's disease got to be too much for him to handle. It was a nice new place out by the golf course. The woman at the admitting desk told me I was welcome to see Beatrice, but warned me that she got combative when something touched her off, and that this wasn't uncommon. I asked if she had many visitors. Yes, the desk lady said, obviously proud of this connection to ranching royalty. Reuben stopped by often, other old friends came occasionally, and a new friend had come by several times over the past couple of months-Mrs. Wesley Balcomb.
A young woman attendant went with me to Beatrice's private room. She was propped up in bed watching the Weather Channel on TV. Her formidable bearing had lessened-she'd become pale and thin. But she still had a sharpness in her eyes.
I hadn't been at all sure that she'd recognize me, or understand who I was if she did. But the instant she saw me, it was clear that she knew at least one thing-she didn't like me any better now than before. I'd thought I might have to coax her into conversation, but she took the bit and ran with it.
'Oh, the way you looked at her,' she said witheringly. 'You were the worst of them all.'
The attendant gave me a glance that was wary but maybe also interested.
Clearly, there was no point in formalities here, or in trying to persuade Beatrice contrary to what was set in her mind.
'What did you think when she first came back, Beatrice?' I said.
'I told her she didn't have any more business here now than she ever did, and she could just turn around and leave again. That's what.'
'But she didn't. She started coming to see you here, right? What did you talk about-the old days at the ranch?'
Beatrice's eyes took on a crafty look. 'She asked about you plenty. So you're finally getting what you wanted, is that it?'
'No,' I said, but it was futile-I had set her off. Her look changed again, this time to anger, and she struggled to get up out of bed, clenching one gnarled blue-veined hand into a fist and punching at me.
'Time for you to go-oh,' the attendant said, in a playful singsong tone.
I backed away with a hasty apology, and left the building. I got into my truck, but then just sat there, watching the few golfers still strolling the links.
I could see why Beatrice would have grabbed at the connection with Celia the first time she'd seen Laurie, like she'd done with me just now. If there was one thing that would stick in her addled mind, it would be the obsession about what had destroyed her family.
That mistaken identity must have triggered the first part of Laurie's scheme. She'd then managed to pump Beatrice for information, maybe by overcoming the hostility and making friends, maybe by playing on fear- pretending that she'd come back from the dead to settle matters.
It didn't make me feel any better to think I might have fallen for the same trick as a delusional elderly woman.
I knew that being objective about Beatrice was impossible for me. Even before Celia's death, I hadn't liked her any better than she'd liked me. I knew that was uncharitable, what with her illness. I knew, too, that she'd had good reason for disapproving of Celia's attempt to work her way toward the Pettyjohn fortune in a time-honored, but not exactly honorable, fashion.
Still, to my mind, nothing justified the haughtiness that Beatrice had shown. In holding that Celia wasn't good enough for Pete, she'd really meant not good enough for herself. That and her coldness toward her husband had added a lot of fuel to the engine of the disaster. A less arrogant and more generous woman would have accepted her son's wishes in spite of her own feelings, or at least found a way to handle the situation without causing such grief.
In any event, learning about Laurie's visits here pretty well satisfied me as the solution to the mystery of how
