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Shortly before the ten o'clock news, she devolved from stalking to outright snooping. Access with permission and no supervision to the home of one of the five people who could have had a hand-or a butt-in Frieda's demise: this was opportunity knocking loud and clear. A
The photos weren't hidden away like a dirty secret but proudly displayed on bedside table and mantel: Zeddie and Peter McCarty gri
Did this flaunting of an adulterous relationship indicate that Zeddie knew it would soon be on the road to legit? Did she hope Mrs. McCarty might drop by to borrow a cup of carabiners, see the pictures, and run screaming for a divorce lawyer? Was it indicative of a sixties-like scorn for traditional values in keeping with Ms. Dillard's nuevo-hippie armpit hair? Or was it as simple as a girl wanting to show off her boyfriend and trusting that a twelve-hundred-mile separation from his significant other would keep her from getting caught?
The skiing picture was several years old, judging by the length of Zeddie's hair, a good six to eight inches shorter than she wore it now. The autumn leaves shot was more recent, not last autumn but this one. Zeddie had been with McCarty before and during his marriage. It wasn't unlikely she had plans to be around after. Would those plans include pushing several dump trucks' worth of dirt down on his bride? Earlier suspicions to the contrary, Sondra McCarty was nowhere to be found, and Zeddie had spent the night in her husband's arms. If Sondra had counted on the rock slide to solve her marital woes, she'd been sorely disappointed. Zeddie, on the other hand, had come out smelling like a rose.
Experience told A
Unless Zeddie thought Sondra was down in the hole when she shoved the rock. Unless Sondra thought it was Zeddie when she pushed the rock. In the perilous midnight of a cave, a case of mistaken identity wasn't too far-fetched. But the second time someone had actually died: Frieda. Coincidence? Luck of the draw? Frieda and A
The mechanism of the crimes carried with it no gender co
Circular thinking; it tired A
Other than the photos, she found little of interest. Zeddie had submerged herself more or less completely into the NPS lifestyle. Wall pictures were of wilderness views and sports, magazines focused on wildlife and land management issues. A
She was back out on the patio, basking in the light from the stars and ignoring the increasing cold when the telephone began ringing. Though she'd spent less than forty-eight hours buried in Lechuguilla, the things of the world had become alien to her. The phone bell jarred, a mildly upsetting intrusion that had little to do with her. Any moment now the caller would hang up or the machine would answer. She turned back to the desert, a breathtaking vista separated from her only by a low cinder-block wall. Zeddie's house was on a rise; her patio looked down over the Carlsbad complex, across miles of silvered desert to the shadowy beak of El Capitan, forty miles away in Texas.
The ringing continued. A
Stomping back into the house, she snatched the receiver from the cradle.
"Yeah?" Phone etiquette had deserted her.
"A
It had never crossed her mind that the call might be for her. Staying in another woman's house in another woman's park, she'd felt as isolated as if she'd borrowed a condo on Pluto.
"This is she," she said formally, phone etiquette returning with a vengeance. "May I ask who is calling?"
"It's Frederick."
A
"Frederick Stanton?" she blurted out after a painfully long silence.
"Come on, A
Hers wasn't. "It has." Excitement, the sick variety, wallowed in her belly, mixing with anxiety, embarrassment, and cheap beer.
"I guess it has," he admitted, and she relaxed a degree or two. She knew she was spoiling for a fight: with him, with Mother Teresa, with anybody. This conversation was a tightrope she must walk, a high wire between the maudlin and the shrewish. Unarmed, in a stranger's sweats, she felt unequal to the task. She felt unequal to anything but a cup of cocoa and a Perry Mason rerun.
Groping for a neutral remark, she said, "How did you find me?"
"I'm the FBI guy, remember?"
"It's coming back to me." Self-preservation kept her from saying anything more.
"You were on the news," he said. "Coming out of that cave. They said Frieda didn't survive."
A
Guilt won. It was amazing that a Methodist childhood could be so completely eclipsed by four years at a Catholic high school.
"The anchor we'd tied into gave out. Frieda and I fell thirty feet. I landed on top of her, my knee on her windpipe. My weight crushed her larynx. Either she suffocated or I snapped her spine." A
Herself for the deed, and Frederick for not loving Frieda sufficiently in the brief time he'd known her.
"Do you want me to beat you up about it?" he asked calmly.
That was a shrink question, a Molly question. Guilt vanished to be replaced by tears. Anger was still very much extant.
A
"I've had a real bad day," she said, and laughed. Laughter turned to tears. She hid them with silence. Zach, her husband, lover, soulmate, so many years dead she'd almost managed to lose count, would have known why that was fu
Feeling doomed to a lifetime of loneliness, A
"Thanks for calling, Frederick," she said evenly, and was rewarded by a brief frisson of pride. "I didn't know I'd made the news. I'd better call Molly and let her know I'm okay."