Death Climbs a Tree (3 page)

But now she could see Andrew and another man in the clearing, facing off. The stocky man wore jeans, boots, and a stripe of blaze orange on his jacket. An orange cap with a bill hid his hair, but nothing could obscure his freckles or his sunburned nose. At the moment, only his short legs kept him from being nose to nose with Andrew.

“She'll be up there exactly as long as we let her be.” The man reached up to punctuate his words with stiff finger jabs to Andrew's chest.

Andrew stood his ground, but his words were mild. “Not up to me.”

“You better believe it. We have a schedule to keep, and when she's in the way, I call in the cops and out she goes.” Two more jabs with the last three words.

Andrew looked down at him. “Keep your hands to yourself,” he said softly.

“Or what?”

“Or
I
may be the one to call the cops,” Joan said.

The man whirled. “What the … who are you?”

“My name is Spencer. The man you're poking is my son. My husband is Lieutenant Fred Lundquist of the Oliver Police Department.” She didn't ordinarily throw Fred at people like that. Still, it seemed the thing to do at the moment. She expected Andrew would tell her to butt out, but he looked amused.

The man actually pulled off his cap, uncovering a shock of hair even redder than his nose. If he'd ditch the hat, he wouldn't need that vest, even in hunting season. “Tom Walcher. Walcher Construction.” He stuck out the hand that had been jabbing Andrew.

Startled, she gave him hers and wished she hadn't when he crunched her fingers.

“Look, lady,” he said. “You gotta understand, that woman's sitting on top of our job site. She's a liability to us, and we can't be responsible for what might happen to her way up there. Besides, we've got a schedule to meet. If that woman up there and your son down here get in our way, we'll stop them.”

“Legally, I hope.”

“They're not legal! There's a law against trespassers, and that's what you all are: trespassers.”

Joan turned to her son. “Are we done here, Andrew?”

“I think so.” He put the phone to his ear. “Sylvia, I'll talk to you later.” He stuck it back in his pocket. “And you, I'm sure, Mr. Walcher.” He slung Sylvia's garbage over his back far more casually than he'd picked it up. “Come on, Mom.”

Joan turned her back on Tom Walcher and walked carefully past the bulldozer tracks and stumps to the car. Not a good time to fall on her face. Andrew, with his surefooted boots and long legs, reached the Honda ahead of her, but her dignity was intact. She watched him open the hatch and stick the bags in the back. Don't break, she begged the bags. Please don't break!

3

On the way back to town, she asked him, “Where are you going to dump that stuff?”

“Don't worry, Mom. I'll take care of it.” He reconsidered. “You mind if I throw her laundry in with mine? She won't have much.”

Her Andrew, volunteering to do laundry? Had he fallen for Sylvia? Or only her environmental cause?

“Go right ahead.”

He flipped his cell phone open. “Sylvia? You okay?” He listened. “Nah, I think he's all bark. But if you have any trouble with Walcher or anybody else, you call.… Sure, me or Skirv or any of the others. We'll be there in a flash.… Uh-huh. See you.” And he tucked the phone away.

Didn't sound like a guy calling a woman who interested him. She supposed Skirv could be the percussion player she knew from the orchestra, but as unreliable as he was, she'd hate to need him for anything important. And she couldn't imagine him standing up to Tom Walcher.

“Andrew, do you think you could get out there in time to stop any trouble?”

“If you could lend me the car, maybe. It's not as if you used it during the day.”

Joan felt herself being sucked deeper and deeper.

“Don't get into something you can't handle.”

He laughed. “Walcher? You saw him. You called his bluff with Fred, and he folded.”

She wished she could be so sure. She pulled up at the Oliver Senior Citizens' Center and left the motor running. “I'll walk home—you leave the car there. If you need it for a real emergency, call the center and let me know. Leave a message if I don't answer.”

“Thanks, Mom.” He unfolded himself from the passenger seat and came around to take her place behind the wheel. “That reminds me. Rebecca called earlier. Nothing special, she said. She's fine. Just kind of checking in.”

“Does she want me to call back?”

“Nope. Just said to tell you she loved you.”

That was something. For years her daughter wouldn't have made such a call. Nowadays, she even made noises about coming home to Oliver to be married, whenever she and the concert violinist to whom she was engaged got around to it. Joan would call her, but not now. She was already tight for time.

She stood at the door to the center and watched Andrew drive off. It felt strange to arrive at work in a car. At least she wouldn't miss out on walking home.

“Trouble at home?” Annie Jordan asked when Joan went in. Annie was a stalwart at the center who answered the phone and did whatever else was needed without thought of payment for her services. This morning she was sitting at Joan's desk, an Aran pullover taking shape under her ever-present knitting needles and crooked, arthritic fingers. She reached up to stick a cable needle into the white bun on her head.

Joan checked her watch. Late enough that she probably should have called ahead. Well, there had to be some perks to being the center's director. “No, we're fine. I went out to see the tree sitter who was in the paper this morning. She's one of my violinists.”

“I saw that article. Can you imagine doing that?” Annie hardly looked at the complicated pattern she was creating in yarn.

“I can now. I drove out there with Andrew. He took her some food.”

“He sweet on her?”

“Hard to tell these days.” Joan kept her voice casual, but she knew it wouldn't fool Annie. “I don't think so.” I hope not, she thought. She's much too old for him. At least thirty. Though who am I to say? Fred's that much older than I am.

Her attempt to be rational wasn't working. The difference between her early forties and Fred's early fifties hardly seemed to matter, but at twenty-one, Andrew was still a college student and her baby. She was fighting an uphill battle to try to remember that he was an adult.

“I knew her mother,” Annie said. “She looks just like her.”

“Knew?”

“She died young. Hit by a truck. Those girls had to finish growing up by themselves. Their father was never much use. Then he died, too.”

How much difference had that made in how Sylvia turned out? Joan had been a grown woman by the time her own parents died. Young, but grown. “And she has a sister?”

“Two or three. They've scattered. Sylvia's pretty much on her own now. I wonder if she'll lose her job over this business.”

“She said she had vacation time coming.”

“If they honor it,” Annie said.

“She works at Fulford. Why wouldn't they honor it?”

“You never know. People can always find an excuse to let you go.”

“If she loses her job, the orchestra might lose her for good.” A new worry, but she banished it. The orchestra was her other job. It wasn't fair to the center to let it intrude here. “Anything happening here, Annie?”

Annie tucked her knitting into its bag and yielded Joan's desk chair. She waved at the mail. “A few phone messages, but nothing to worry about. You want me to put your name in the pot for lunch?” The center was a senior nutrition site, which served low-cost hot meals at noon. Annie called them “eats for old folks,” but anyone was welcome to eat there, and Joan did from time to time, especially during the cold winter months.

“Yes, please.” She hadn't asked Andrew to fix her a sandwich while he was raiding the kitchen for Sylvia, and the elderly Fuji apple in her desk drawer wouldn't see her through the day. Odds were good she wouldn't manage supper before rehearsal in the evening, either.

Routine as it was, the rest of the morning flew by. Long before lunchtime, the meat loaf and apple pie were calling to Joan's nose. She made herself take part in the center's late-morning exercise class to make up for the morning walk she'd missed, but also to keep herself from drooling over the papers on her desk.

When the time finally came, Sylvia Purcell was the topic of those gathered at the long folding tables.

“I remember how we loved those woods when we were children,” one man said. “We tramped through them and thought we were great outdoorsmen.”

“And what are we going to breathe when they cut down all the trees, I'd like to know,” said his wife. “Someone ought to give that girl in the tree a medal.”

“Her father would split a gut if he knew she was pulling such a dumb stunt,” a second man said.

“I think her mother would get a kick out of it,” said the woman next to him. “She was big on environmental causes. That woman had more causes than anyone else I know.”

“She cared about poor people,” Annie said. “And this project they're fighting is for poor people.”

“Yes,” said Mabel Dunn. “Like Cindy Thickstun. You know Cindy, and her daughter. The daughter has four little kids and barely makes ends meet. Since her husband took off, she's been living with her mom. That makes six people in Cindy's little two-bedroom house. Cindy's sleeping on the sofa, and her grandchildren are really getting on her nerves, day after day, all cramped like that. She can't pay their rent, and she's desperate to move them into decent housing her daughter can afford. I know they're on the list for those apartments. That's who Miss Save-the-Trees is hurting.”

“And Diane Barnhart, who cleans for me,” said Annie. “Diane has the contract to clean all those apartments when the construction is finished. It comes to way more than she makes in a year. She's married, but Bert's unemployment ran out months ago, so now he helps her. I don't think they have enough to eat.”

The moist, flavorful meat loaf turned to dust in Joan's mouth. Did Sylvia have any idea? Did she care?

Did Andrew?

Later, at home, she still hadn't seen him by the time she had to leave for rehearsal, but she left him a note offering to drive the next time he went. Not that he and Sylvia would be likely to change their minds because of Cindy Thickstun's daughter or Diane Barnhart's need for work. She already knew what Sylvia would say: low-income housing would be fine, but not there.

Still, they should hear about it from someone other than Mr. Walcher.

*   *   *

The tension in the orchestra put a mere tree sitter out of her head. Alex Campbell, pointing her baton like a dagger, descended on Joan the minute she lugged the box of music onto the stage.

“You knew she wouldn't be here and you didn't tell me! How could you do that to me? How can I play this concert with so few firsts? Where do you expect me to find another violin at this late date? The board won't let me hire one!”

Trying to stop Alex in mid-rant would only prolong it. Joan waited her out.

“I have a couple of leads, Alex. Haven't heard back yet.”

“And you're just sitting on your backside waiting for them to call you?” She was off again.

“I'll let you know the minute I know more.”

Birdie Eads, now sitting in Sylvia's chair, next to Nicholas Zeller, looked as if she'd lost her best friend, as indeed she had. For the near future, anyhow.

While they were rehearsing the Britten, Nicholas pounced on her more than once, increasing Birdie's obvious misery. Once, Joan could see, it was because Birdie didn't turn a page quickly enough for him. Usually on the outside chair of the second stand, she was used to having the player next to her do that job. To make matters worse, Alex drilled the violins mercilessly in the segment of the piece that illustrated what their instruments could do. Birdie was near tears when Alex exploded at all of them for less than absolute clarity in the rapid, very high runs at the end. Joan thought the flutes and piccolo passage had sounded much more jumbled, but they had escaped. Not that she wanted to hear them raked over the coals in the same way.

Jim Chandler's smiles in Birdie's direction as he introduced the violins again and again when Alex made them go back over their bit didn't seem to help at all. Nor did the rest Birdie got while the violas worked to maintain a full tone on the long legato lines in their part. Finally, the whole orchestra struggled to hang together in the fugue at the end. It would be easier, Joan suspected, if they all practiced the theme at home until they could play it up to tempo. But she knew the odds were against that. Too many players, herself among them, lived busy lives and trusted the notes to sink into their brains and fingers in just two hours a week.

During the break, Birdie was still sitting in her seat, shrunk into herself. Joan made a point of speaking to her.

“You holding up all right without Sylvia?”

“I hate him!” Birdie burst out, and then covered her mouth with her hand and looked around as if to check whether Nicholas had noticed.

“He didn't hear you. He's back there eating cookies. Look, Birdie, if it's that bad, I can arrange with Alex to move someone else up here and let you go back to your old seat.”

“It doesn't matter.” But her face screamed the opposite of her quiet words.

“You sure?”

Birdie nodded.

“All right. But if you change your mind, you tell me, and I'll do it. He doesn't scare me a bit. I have children his age.”

A little smile. “Thanks.”

“Good. Bad enough we have to do without Sylvia. You're just as important.”

At the end of the rehearsal, the substitute oboe player snagged Joan to beg a ride home, and for the moment she forgot about the violins' woes.