Airport and flown back to the Bay Area. The airport had a couple of clunker planes I could rent for a nominal fee, but Hy had told me they were untrustworthy, and from a cursory inspection I’d concluded he was correct.
Maybe a picnic. Pack a good book, pick up a sandwich from the Food Mart deli, and go-where? Well, the old Willow Grove Lodge had nice grounds and a dock overlooking the lake. It was closed and isolated. The only people likely to show up there would be real-estate agents with prospective buyers, and I doubted that would happen. If it did, I’d concoct some story to explain my presence and leave.
The main lodge and six cabins that were scattered over several cottonwood- and willow-shaded acres looked shabby. True, the cabins had never been in great condition, but their nineteen-fifties-vintage furnishings, smoke- stained woodstoves, primitive kitchens, and underlying odor of dry rot reminded me of the resorts where my financially strapped family had stayed on summer vacations during my childhood. And even after the death of her husband, Rose Whittington had worked hard to keep the place up. Now the cabins’ green trim was blistered and faded, dark brown wood splintered and cracked, composition roofs sagging. Graffiti decorated their walls. Rose’s garden had long gone to the weeds. A developer’s dream: bulldoze it and put up condos or a luxury hotel. The hell with the love and care that the Whittingtons had put into this place over their fifty-year marriage, let alone the happy memories of all the people who’d stayed here.
Of course, it was hard to argue with a would-be buyer’s logic; these buildings were not salvageable. I only hoped that whoever bought the acreage would leave the trees.
I parked behind the lodge where the Land Rover couldn’t be seen from the highway, carried my deli lunch down the rocky slope to the rickety dock, and spread an old blanket on its planks. Sat down, feeling the pale autumn sunshine on my face. The lake rippled on the stones below, and in the distance I could see plovers doing touch- and-goes on the massive central island. The lake is a major stop on the Pacific Flyway, along which approximately a hundred thousand migratory birds travel, and over the years I’ve seen most every kind there. If the lake had not been saved through the efforts of dedicated environmentalists like Hy, the birds would have had a long journey to their next stop.
Suddenly I didn’t feel as sad about the Willow Grove Lodge’s demise. Long after whatever replaced it was gone, the lake would endure.
The book I’d brought along wasn’t very engaging-a long-winded narrative about a former alcoholic holed up in the woods to contemplate what he claimed wasn’t a midlife crisis, but that damned well sounded like one, as I should know. After I finished my lunch, I dozed off while reading and woke to a chill wind gusting off the lake. The shadows of the trees had moved over me.
I sat up, disoriented. In my peripheral vision, something moved through the dark grove to the right. I turned my head, narrowed my eyes. Nothing there. Then I saw it again-a figure that darted from trunk to trunk, creating a ripple effect.
An animal? A person? Either way, I was the interloper here. Time to get going.
I folded the blanket, grabbed the book and the sack of leavings from my picnic. At the Land Rover I looked back at the grove. No more motion, but a prickly sensation arose at the base of my spine, spread up to the back of my neck. Something colder than the wind washed over me.
My old woolen peacoat was in the Land Rover and before I drove out I put it on. As I stopped at the top of the drive, I saw the yellow-leafed aspens in the declivities of the hills to the far side of the highway swaying softly in the breeze; the late afternoon sunlight made them gleam like a river of molten gold.
There had been gold in these hills long ago and some poor veins remained. Normally the beauty of this view would have entranced me, but now its glow was dimmed by the aura of what I’d felt at the lodge. I thought of the ravages that cyanide-which the big mining companies had used to extract gold from the waste dumps and tailings of played-out claims-had wreaked upon the land.
The thought took me back to the case I’d been working here when I met Hy, investigating a conglomerate that planned to start up a large-scale and environmentally unsound mining operation above a semi-ghost town called Promiseville. I remembered us fleeing hand in hand from a dynamite blast that took out a part of a mountain. And Hy saying, as we lay on the ground gasping and panting from our flight, “… You’ve got even more of a death wish than I do.”
I waited for a logging truck to pass, then turned left toward town. The highway topped a rise, then began a gradual descent into Vernon. Halfway down I saw an old brown pickup truck, its paint spotted gray like a piebald horse. It was pulled onto the opposite shoulder and, as I approached, its passenger-side door flew open and the figure of a woman hurtled out into the ditch. The truck’s driver-bearded, with a knit cap pulled low on his brow-got out and stood on the edge of the ditch, yelling down at her.
Reflexively I U-turned across the highway and pulled onto the shoulder. As I jumped out of the Rover the man turned, his features mostly obscured by his hat and turned-up collar.
“Just a family fight, lady,” he said in a rough voice. “No need to get involved.”
“The hell you say!” I started forward just as the woman clawed her way up the incline. It was the Indian girl whose face had been haunting my dreams. Now her long hair was tangled, and she looked dazed.
The man made a menacing gesture toward me. I braced for an attack, feet spread wide, arms flexed. He stood still, studying me, then muttered something that sounded like “Ah, fuck it!” He whirled and got into the pickup, revved its engine, and sped off, spraying gravel.
I went over and helped the girl to her feet. I couldn’t tell if she recognized me or not; her expression was blank.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“… Yes, I’m okay. No big deal.” She brushed at her clothing, smoothed down her hair. She was dressed more warmly than she had been the last time I saw her, in a quilted jacket, jeans, and hiking boots.
“What happened here?”
She shrugged. “I said it was no big deal.”
“Do you need a ride someplace? I can-”
“Look,” she said, “it’s none of your business. Okay? I take care of myself, nobody else does.” Then she turned and began walking the way the truck had gone.
I watched until she disappeared over the rise, berating myself for trying to intervene in a private matter. It was as if I had a compulsion to get involved in things that didn’t concern me-just as I’d often involved myself too deeply in cases I’d handled. Dammit, why couldn’t I leave people alone? That was what I wanted to do, wasn’t it? It was what I’d been telling myself.
I got back into the Land Rover. A fight with a relative or her boyfriend, I thought. They live someplace up the highway and by the time she gets there he’ll be sorry.
As she said, it was none of my business. She didn’t want my help.
No, I couldn’t. Or, more correctly, wouldn’t. That kind of uninvited snooping had no place in the new life I was hoping to create.
I stopped by the Food Mart because I was getting low on milk. And only for that reason.
But as the tired-looking woman at the checkstand was ringing up my purchases-I can never go into a grocery store and buy just one item-I said, “There was an Indian girl waiting for a ride outside here last Tuesday night. I wonder if you know her?” I described her and what she was wearing.
The checker nodded and began bagging my groceries. “That’s Amy Perez. She stocks shelves here a couple days a week. What d’you want with her?”
“She… dropped something, and I’d like to return it.” God, the lies that rippled off my tongue after so many years in my business! It had gotten to the point that I didn’t need to think them up ahead of time.
“You can give it to me, I’ll see she gets it.”
“Actually, I’d like to return it in person. It’s a bracelet, and I want to ask her where she got it, so I can buy one for myself.”
The checker shrugged. “Well, I don’t know where she’s living these days. She moves around a lot, you know
