Страница 38 из 74
Unfortunately, when A
Dead ends.
That was when, faced with an afternoon basking in Dottie Dierkz's grief, A
Holden and his wife lived in a modest house on the outskirts of the town of Carlsbad. Outbuildings, a requisite in the West, cluttered the lot beside and behind the house: an old garage with a door that wouldn't close, two trucks, a horse trailer with one flat tire, a barn with a horse without sense enough to get in out of the rain standing miserably nearby, and a dog house, sans dog, with a peeling tar-paper roof. Other items scattered around completed a look that A
She parked the sedan in front of a picket fence denuded of paint by wind-blown sand and let herself through the gate. The tiny porch was overflowing with cowboy detritus: deer antlers, rusting metal pieces of machinery that, like bleached skulls and pine cones, created their own artistic statement. To one side of the door a square picture window framed a book-covered table lit by a single lamp. On such a gray day, the golden glow was welcoming. A
The door was opened before her knuckles could fall a second time. A woman a good ten or fifteen years Holden's junior smiled at her with the hushed apologetic look that unmistakably says "nap time." A
Holden was napping as well. He and Andrew were curled up together on the boy's little bed. A
Tillman's wife was classically beautiful, with thick lustrous hair that fell past her shoulders and wide-set green eyes under winged brows that had probably never known a pair of tweezers. She was model thin, with long slender arms and tapered fingers. When she talked her hands sketched graceful pictures in the air to accompany her words. Holden's wife was young enough and pretty enough to dislike on sight, but she gave A
Rhonda pushed aside a paper plate full of multicolored Play-Doh and put her elbows on the painted wood of the kitchen table. "Holden's driving me nuts," she said, and she and A
A
"How's Holden doing?" A
"Not good," Rhonda replied in her hushed nap-time voice. The softness made A
"'Tain't so," A
Rhonda nodded, her hair shining in the overhead light. "Holden no longer believes in your butt-print," she said. "It's like he won't let himself believe. Some sort of punishment. He said he would have known if somebody had gone up there."
"No, he wouldn't have," A
"Not seen," Rhonda said. "Known. He's getting metaphysical in his delusions."
"Damn it." A
"Talk to him?" Rhonda asked.
"Sure."
"It won't do any good."
"Probably not." They sat in companionable silence for a while. A fat white cat with Siamese markings from one ancestor cut into tiger rings from another jumped up on the table and stretched out full length, his paws pushing gently against the base of A
"You know you're not allowed on the table when we have company," Rhonda said. The cat twitched its tail in disdain.
"Are you a caver?" A
"I used to be. Not so much anymore. When you're married to the Holden Tillman it gets old." There was a tinge of bitterness there, but A
A
"I used to go to all the grotto meetings. Get involved in all that. My last year I was president of the local grotto. No more."
Grottos. Local groups of cavers. That was the key. A
"Are you going to help Holden?"
A
"Not a problem. Holden hasn't killed anybody in years. He puts spiders outside. Even big hairy ones." Rhonda got more cookies from a jar on the counter and refilled their wineglasses. "Fire away."
A