The Deepest Water (14 page)

“They kept saying snow in the mountains,” he said, holding Abby close. “It scares me when you’re up there in the snow.”

“Just in the pass,” she said. “And not much. We have a lot to bring in. Volunteers accepted.”

Later, at the airport in Eugene, Abby helped Christina unload her baggage, and get it into a cart. There was an awkward pause as they regarded one another. Christina was once again the stylish New Yorker, her makeup perfect, her hair perfect; Abby felt like a bum in her old jeans and boots, her poncho. Christina held out her hand and they shook hands solemnly. “He said you were always the most terrific kid in the world,” Christina said. “I think you’re still a terrific kid. Thanks.”

Abby drove home through the driving rain and let herself in; Spook greeted her as if she had been gone for months. Brice came down the stairs as she was getting her poncho off.

“You really look exhausted,” he said, studying her face. “You’re trying to do too much, too soon. Sit down and we’ll have a quiet drink and talk.”

He had a fire going in the living room; she sank down gratefully on the couch and leaned her head back. Brice went to the kitchen and returned with a tray that held cheese, crackers, and Irish coffee.

“She’s the most brittle woman I’ve ever seen,” he said, sitting next to Abby on the couch. He put one of the cups in her hand. “What all did she take back with her?”

“A copy of the novel manuscript, and a lot of short stories and essays. Some go back nearly thirty years.” The coffee was very good, not too strong with Irish, heavy whipped cream on top, sweet. Just what she needed. They were quiet for a time, sipping the coffee, eating cheese.

“Is the novel finished, publishable?” he asked when she put her cup down, empty.

“She said it’s very good. He told Willa it was finished, so it just needs piecing together, we think. She’s going to work on it in New York, and I’ll work on it here. Between us, we’ll get it in shape.”

Brice reached for a piece of cheese, and then said slowly, “You’ve talked to Willa? I thought…. Never mind. The police are asking a lot of questions about her. They asked me if I believed her story, that Jud proposed. I had to say no. I don’t believe it. And if she’s lying about that….”

She felt very tired. The warmth of the house, the fire, the Irish in the coffee had relaxed her; she wanted to go to sleep. She had forgotten that she had not yet told him about her walk with Willa. Sunday night, when she arrived home, Brice had been furious at the office secretary, who had put a memo in his in-box that a client was due Monday morning, and had not included his file for Brice to review. He had gone back to the office to find it himself. All they had talked about on Monday night was Jud’s contract; Brice had been stunned by the amount of the option, fifty thousand dollars, and the purchase price if they made the movie: one and a half million. Tuesday? She no longer could remember why she had not brought up her conversations with Willa, only that she hadn’t. Then she recalled his anger because the police had gone to the office that day and asked his associates questions. That had not been a good time to bring up Willa, either. Well, she thought, now it was out in the open. “Willa doesn’t lie,” she said. “Why can’t you accept her word?”

“She wasn’t his type,” Brice said after a moment. “Honey, you love people so much, you’re blinded. Your father wasn’t the type to settle down with one woman. And Willa wouldn’t accept less than that finally, no more than I would, or you would. But you can’t see that affair the way the rest of the world sees it.”

“You hardly even know her,” Abby said. “What makes you so sure what she would settle for?”

“I know her well enough to know that she’s steady, responsible, that she has a lot of self-respect. Like your mother. Like you.”

“Like you,” Abby said, trying to keep her anger in check.

“Yes, like me. Darling, face it, Jud wasn’t like us. I’m not saying bad or evil or anything like that, just different.”

“And you think that this steady, stable, responsible woman went out there and shot him dead,” Abby said harshly.

Brice flushed slightly. “Yes, I do. I think Willa killed your father because he told her he was going away as soon as the novel was wrapped up. He hinted as much last summer, remember?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t remember anything like that.”

“He said there was a lot of world he hadn’t seen yet, he had a lot of catching up to do, starting with southern France and Italy, that he needed a rest from words, from books, and a lot of looking to do.”

“He and Willa planned to go to Italy in April,” she said, remembering the conversation he was talking about. They had been on the back ledge; her feet had been in the water, they had all been swimming. The basalt had absorbed a lot of heat, hot under them, the water cold on her feet.

“He didn’t say that,” Brice said.

“She did.”

Later that day she and Jud had gone to visit Felicia. Brice had begged off; he had said he wanted to nap, but she had thought that he simply didn’t want to spend any time with Felicia, who, he had said once, was a terrific bore. Jud had warned her that she would get sunburned if she didn’t put a shirt on, and she had worn one of his over her bathing suit. She blinked hard, trying to erase the memory of rowing her father across the lake to Felicia’s cottage. He had laughed and said she had lost the touch, she was getting soft.

“What else did the police have to say?”

“That lieutenant wants to see you tomorrow. He brought a list of people who had signed in at the camp sites, to see if I recognized any names. I didn’t. And he had a picture, a drawing of a guy who flew into Bend that night. I never saw him before. He wants you to give him a call first thing in the morning.”

“Now they think someone might have flown to Bend, walked to the lake, swum across and shot my father,” she said scornfully, thinking of Felicia’s mysterious stranger.

“I don’t know what in hell they think,” Brice said. “But not that; it’s just another one of the lieutenant’s loose ends. They’re more interested in Willa.” He looked at the fire then. “What they’re suggesting is that she could have driven up Friday afternoon, all the way up to the cabin. During the night they had a quarrel, he signed off, and she shot him, and then searched for whatever he had written about her, and the next morning she drove back down and out.”

Abby’s mouth had gone dry as he spoke. Willa had been questioned for over two hours on Monday; she had been badly shaken afterward, and had said practically nothing about the session. Abby shook her head. “I don’t believe it! I’ll never believe it!”

Brice turned to her, his face stiff in a frown, his expression remote. “The point is, you don’t know,” he said intensely. “They don’t either. But it could have been like that. I think you shouldn’t be working at the museum for the next few weeks, not until this thing is settled, done with, until they come up with answers. And, for the love of God, don’t spend time with her, tell her anything you suspect, confide in any way. Not yet.”

Abby stood up, her arms folded tightly against her body. Before she could say anything, Brice shook his head, and motioned her back down. She remained standing.

“Honey, listen, if they clear her, if that guy who flew into Bend did it, they’ll nab him eventually, and I’ll apologize. Maybe he was an extortionist, a blackmailer. Maybe he’s still hanging around. No one knows. But, Abby, you have to take the suspicion of Willa’s involvement seriously, consider it a possibility, and be careful. That lieutenant, Caldwell, he’s taking it seriously, and he’s no fool.”

He leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes for a moment; he looked bone-tired and very young, and frightened. “Lieutenant Caldwell suggested that you should be very careful. Honey, you should keep away from all of this, don’t speculate, don’t voice your suspicions, just get on with those sympathy notes, see if you can put the novel together, do whatever else you have piled up. Start thinking about what you want to do with a lot of money. Make plans. Next week you’ll get the Hollywood contract, and that’s going to take time to read, to study. You don’t need the museum job on top of everything else. If you decide to go back to it in a year or two, or just a month or two, it’ll be there. But keep away from Willa for now. Please.”

“Put it out of mind, get on with life, let the police handle everything,” she said bitterly. “That’s what you’re really saying, isn’t it? You think I give a shit about the money, the contract, plans for next year? I haven’t given any of that shit a single thought. All I can think of is that someone shot and killed my father! Can’t you grasp that? Someone killed him, and if there’s anything I can do to help find out who that was, I’ll do it. If I need to talk to Willa, or Felicia, or anyone else to try to sort it out for myself, I’ll talk to her. If I get an idea—
speculate
—and if that speculation seems valid, I’ll tell the police. I’m not going to back off and wait and see what happens. I can’t!”

“Goddamn it, Abby! That’s all you can do! You start prying, meddling, and you put yourself in danger! That’s what you can accomplish.” He jumped up and went to the hearth, poked at the fire viciously, then swung around to face her. He was very pale. “Let me tell you what I’ve been seeing happen to you. First a kind of deep shock that I was afraid you might not snap out of, might need medical care for, even an institution. And now some kind of obsessive behavior that’s even scarier. You’re becoming obsessed, even delusional if you believe you can do the police work. They come up with a likely theory and you simply dismiss it without a second thought. For more than two years you and Willa were distant, hardly even friends, and now suddenly you believe every word she utters! That’s irrational, Abby, and it’s scary.”

She turned her back and started to walk away stiffly.

“Damn it, Abby, this needs saying, and you need to listen! You had a rift with your father; everyone does sooner or later. You had to cut that string, if not over one thing, then something else would have come along. Kids have to cut the strings! I did. You did. We all have to. You couldn’t keep jumping into the car and running out there every time he snapped his fingers. You know that and you’re denying it, and you’re letting your guilt drive you into some kind of paranoid thinking.”

“Who the fuck appointed you to be my shrink?” she cried furiously, jerking around to face him again. “Just back off! You’re not my keeper.”

“You need a keeper!” Suddenly he stiffened, staring at her. Slowly he replaced the poker he was still holding. “Christ!” he whispered. “He’s doing it now, after his death. He couldn’t do it alive, and now he’s doing it, coming between us, separating us.”

“He never tried to come between us!”

“He did, in a thousand little ways. You were blind to his manipulations, his little digs. He never liked me, from the day we first met, he had it in for me, and you were blind to that. I never said a word, I couldn’t. Your fixation was too deep, and it didn’t matter, not really; as long as we were together, you were happy with me, our life, the rest didn’t matter. Let him dig and poke, I thought. You were my wife, we loved each other, and you would come to see him one day, see the truth about him.”

Abby shook her head. “It wasn’t like that,” she said angrily. “He was willing to accept you; you were the one who was judgmental, too disapproving of him, of his lifestyle, living out alone like that. Before you knew anything about his past, the women, any of it, you were disapproving. The first time I took you out to the cabin, you said, he’s strange, isn’t he, not quite all there. I said he was reclusive, people who lived out like that tended to be reclusive, but so what? And the time we went up to the hot springs and you were so shocked because people took off all their clothes. Shocked that he had allowed me to go there ever. He thought that was funny. For you to be that shocked. He said with a body like yours you should strip to the buff most of the time. You acted like a preacher warding off an unrepentant sinner, and he thought that was funny.”

“Everything I take seriously, he thought was funny,” Brice said. “He mocked everything I did and said.”

“Well, you really never said much to him, did you?” She heard her voice become sharper and drew in a breath, then said in a more conciliatory tone, “I can’t remember a real conversation between you two ever. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about money, finances, and you turned mute when it came to books or art. I wasn’t blind to what was happening. There it was, and it was okay. I could love you both, different as you were, I could and did love you both. I never expected or wanted you to be more like him, or for him to be like you. All right, you disapproved of my father, so did I a lot of times. I could accept that. But he never did or said a thing to try to come between us, never. He was generous to us, and he left us strictly alone. No gratuitous advice, or questions, or interference of any sort.”

“If I was out of line, I’m sorry,” Brice said, his face wooden, his voice almost toneless.

“Not
if,
” she snapped.

He hesitated, then nodded. “I’m sorry. Let’s just say we saw the same things and interpreted them different ways. Leave it at that. And, Abby, we’re having the first quarrel we’ve ever had, and it’s about him. At least you can agree to that, can’t you?”

“I’m not sure it’s about him,” she said slowly. “I don’t know what it’s about.” She started to walk toward the foyer. “But let’s leave it alone. Is there anything in the house for dinner? I don’t want to go out. I’m too grubby and in no mood to get dolled up. I’d rather have a pizza or something later on. Right now I’m going to start hauling that stuff upstairs.”

Brice closed the fire screen. “Pizza’s okay. I’m going up, too. I’ll carry those boxes.”

Her room had become a cluttered mess, she thought disgustedly, after Brice set down the third carton and withdrew in silence. Novel, short stories, the bits and pieces of Jud’s life, her life, everyone’s life in another box. The box of notes she had already written and not mailed yet, and the other box with the sympathy notes she had not answered… And now a stack of computer disks, and she knew there was not space on her computer to hold the contents. She was still too angry, and too tired, to start sorting, organizing, putting away… She sat down at her desk and closed her eyes.