Rita wasn't faring so well. For reasons Anna was beginning to get an inkling of, if not a handle on, she was absolutely miserable and doing a bad job of disguising the fact. Color had drained from beneath her tan, giving an unbecoming grayish cast to either side of her nose. Restless plucking and tucking had managed to drag hair out of her usually neat ponytail. The strands hung down straight and greasy-looking in front of her ears.
"Did Proffit have a pack with him when he waylaid you?" Anna asked Ray.
"Not that I saw. He could've had it stashed nearby I guess. He had his water bottle. I remember that."
"Did he hike out with you?"
"No. He said it was his last day in the park and he was going to enjoy it right there under that tree. His 'last resting place' he called it." Raymond laughed. Anna looked at him quizzically having missed the joke. "Guess you had to have been there," Ray said.
"That fits with the note he left me," Rita put in. "It sounds like he's decided to leave the area. I can't say as I blame him." This last had a bitter edge to it and Anna shot the young woman a hard look. Ray didn't know about the blood from the backpack. Anna had decided to keep that bit of grisly information under wraps till she'd had a chance to talk with Lorraine about it. Put with the other half-truths, retracted accusations, means and opportunity, it would be enough to get an arrest warrant. If nothing else, they had him on reckless endangerment and leaving the scene of an accident, if not attempted murder and assaulting a federal.aw enforcement officer.
Rita did know. Anna wondered why she didn't seem to hold it against Proffit. Was she in love with him? He was seven or eight years younger rhan she was but that meant little. Proffit was handsome in a wild boyish way and had an undeniable charm. Anna hadn't been the least surprised that he was such a hit with the teenybopper set. He possessed that in-effable magic that makes whatever one does seem cool. When Anna was in high school a boy named Steve Stricker had had it. She and her friend Paul used to sit around trying to figure out why when Steve did it- whatever it was-it was cool and when they did it it was just stupid.
Maybe the adolescent panache appealed to Rita. Maybe the intense passion with which Proffit approached life. Maybe it was the shared God and the seductive frenzy of praying together.
Anna turned her attention back to their host. "Why did you believe him?" she asked Ray. "The mice. The live trap. The girls. I'd think twice before taking Proffit's word for anything."
Raymond thought about her question, giving it due consideration. As he gathered his thoughts, she had a few of her own. Because she'd been immersed in it up to her eyeballs, it felt as if the saga of Robert Proffit's on-again, off-again status as a suspect was headline news and had been for months. In reality, all that had transpired had happened in the last four or five days. Most of it wasn't common knowledge. Raymond would not know Beth and Alexis had said Candace stayed with Robert, then recanted. He wouldn't know about the strange visitation Heath Jarrod had endured. Seen in this light, Ray's taking the word of a man he'd come to know well, a man who'd worked hand-in-glove with the rangers during a long and heartbreaking search, didn't strike her as odd as it had a minute before.
Of course there were still Minnie and Mickey and their little friends tortured and murdered.
"I've thought a lot about the mouse thing," Ray said eventually. "There wasn't really anybody else who could have done it except maybe me or Rita. Still, it makes no sense. I kind of have to believe he did it for a rea-son. If he did it at all. You know, an experiment or a warning or... I don't know. It's just a feeling. I can't explain it any better."
"Ray's right," Rita said. "Robert would be incapable of anything like that. He's the only person I know who really wouldn't hurt a fly. He'd put it out."
Anna drank her tea, stared out the window and tried to figure out why Rita's remark, harmless enough but for a bit of hyperbole, made her uneasy.
It wasn't until supper had been eaten, the dishes done and the ache in her back fortified against by two Advil, that the answer came. Anna was making her way to the privy, an action which, forever after, would make her think of mice, when she realized what bothered her.
Rita had known what "the mouse thing" was.
sixteen
Colorado was arguably one of the most beautiful states in the Union. Probably among the most scenic areas on earth. At least parts of it were. The Rollin' Roost RV park was not one of these parts. What was gilt-edged summer ten miles west was sun-baked doldrums outside Heath's window. Another thing Heath missed about being ambulatory: now it was such a production getting in and out of anywhere, she could no longer just "run out for cigarettes" when guests threatened to bore her to death, a fate that seemed ever more probable as the woman on the couch babbled on. And on.
Gwen, who had a sixth sense about who was going to be excruciatingly tedious, made her escape early on the scooter. The limpet was, after all, Heath's pet project. She pulled her gaze back into the well-appointed recreation vehicle, grown claustrophobic from too many hours, and now too many people, inside. Had she the legs of Man O' War she knew she wouldn't have left anyway. The hungry, hurt, hopeful, hopeless face of Beth Dwayne, her very own limpet, kept her more firmly rooted to her seat than her damaged spinal cord could. This was the third "supervised visit" that had been allowed since she and her aunt moved into the Rollin' Roost four days before. The first had been with full retinue: Momma, Poppa and Alexis Sheppard filling in what space remained after the plump Mrs. Dwayne and her daughter squeezed in around Heath's wheelchair. Later it was just Sharon Sheppard and Mrs. Dwayne in atten-dance. Now just Mrs. Dwayne. Heath asked after Alexis but had been told only that she "hadn't been feeling well." Heath had hoped, finally, she'd have a chance to really talk with Beth, but that was not happening.
Beth's mom had grown way too comfortable. For the past hour- Heath glanced at her watch, half-hour, just four o'clock, sixty minutes before alcohol was socially acceptable-Mrs. Dwayne had been droning on about Mr. Sheppard, his great deeds, his love of the Lord, his special connection with heaven and with Mrs. Dwayne.
Anna Pigeon suspected Mrs. Dwayne of being another Mrs. Sheppard, and Heath agreed. Had the woman not been so god-awful boring, she might even have felt sympathy for her. She was dumpy and plain and older than the lithe, blond Mrs. Sheppard. The green-eyed monster was catholic in nature and no respecter of cults, creeds or customs. Again she looked at her watch. Four-oh-two. Heath was rather surprised she'd not given up and gone home to her cozy condo in Boulder. In this first great outdoor adventure, she and Gwen hadn't traveled more than a couple hours from home. More than once-more than a hundred times were she honest with herself-she'd thought of it. Each time, the limpet's eyes stopped her. For reasons that Heath didn't understand, Beth looked to her as the capable one, the strong one, the trusted one. The one who could move mountains. Not Ranger Pigeon with her great big gun or Mr. Shep-pard with his great big ego or her mother with her great big mouth. Her. Heath Jarrod. A woman broken on a pile of rock and ice. Heath knew she could not lose that look even as she felt a fraud for accepting it.
Four-oh-five. The limpet looked up from where she sat docilely by her mother. Those eyes. Heath had to find a way to talk with her. Necessity mothered invention: "Would you like a cherry cordial?" she intruded into Mrs. Dwayne's monologue. "It's quite good, if a little sweet."
The word "sweet" caught the woman's attention. "A cordial? Don't they have alcohol in them?"
"Not enough to matter," Heath lied easily. The cherry cordial in Gwen's private stash was a hundred and eighty proof, but Heath kept that to herself.
"Maybe a taste," Mrs. Dwayne said.
Heath poured enough over ice to take out a regiment of Cossacks and gave it to Beth's mother, then put a couple of tablespoons in a glass of ice water so she could keep her guest company.
The piously abstemious Mrs. Dwayne took to drink with a passion. Within a quarter of an hour she'd sucked down a third of the syrupy stuff. Within half an hour she was waxing rhapsodic about Heath's great kind-ness to her family. By twenty minutes of five she was revealing herself as a mean drunk.
"Sharon-Mrs. Sheppard-is no better than she should be," she con-fided owlishly. "When she was brought to us she was a skinny little pinch of a girl, fifteen or sixteen-I can't remember. Her folks had come down from our sister group in Canada but they didn't last long. Oh no. The desert just wasn't good enough for them. Mr. Sheppard wasn't good enough for them," she added, as if this proved what ungrateful malcon-tents they truly were. 'According to the divine couple, Elijah Farmer, this Canadian, for heaven's sake-oh, he was an American but that wears right off after a few years if you ask me-was the prophet and Mr. Shep-pard was just a big nothing. That didn't go over with Mr. Sheppard at all." She laughed a nasty little laugh. "Didn't he just send them packing! But little Miss Sharon, all baby-blue eyes and cotton-candy hair. She had her sights set, that's all I'm going to say. Had 'em set way high, snooting around like a golden virgin child. Well. I had my doubts about that and I told Mr. Sheppard as much. But you know men, even those chosen by God, have penises." This last word was whispered, hissed actually, as if the male appendage was a form of demonic possession visited upon half the human race. "It made him crazy for her. He would have her. So he did. And Alexis is no better. Little tramp. Serves Sharon right. She's getting just what she deserves. It wouldn't surprise me one little bit if Alexis took the girls up into the hills for whatever, then came traipsing back when she tired of the game."
Mrs. Dwayne had begun slurring her words. The glass was empty. Heath smiled. "Can I get you another glass? Talking is thirsty work," she offered.
"Just a wee sip," Mrs. Dwayne demurred.
By six, the woman was out cold, slumped in an untidy heap on the sofa, snoring loudly.
Heath took the glass from her hand and set it on the counter. For what seemed like a very long time Beth stared at the grumbling heap that was her mother. "Will she be all right?" she finally asked.
"She'll be fine," Heath said. "How about you? Will you be fine?" She rolled close to the sofa. "You can talk to me, you know."
Beth looked at her mother, snoring peacefully two feet away.
"She's asleep. Nobody can hear us but Wiley, and he's good at keeping secrets."
"You won't tell anybody, will you?" She shot a significant look at the snorer lest Heath be unaware who "anybody" was.
"I won't," Heath swore. "Scout's honor."
"Like Daniel Boone?"
The question made Heath acutely aware of how little their home schooling was going to prepare them for the greater world. But that wasn't its aim. Keeping them in the fold was closer to the mark.
"Yeah," Heath said, not wanting to get sidetracked into Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, Brownies and Bluebirds.
"Robert talked to me and Alexis," Beth told her.
"I know. Said goodbye and that he was going to find Candace. That lady ranger called and told me."
"No." Beth leaned forward till her face was scarcely a foot from Heath's, and whispered, "Since then."
"He came again?"
The girl nodded.
''What did he want?"
"He told us that Candace was alive and he knew how to find her." Given the cheery message, the sudden tears that accompanied it were incongruous. They splattered on the lenses of Beth's old-fashioned glasses, then trickled beneath the plastic frame.
Despite the tears and big eyes, she didn't sound terribly frightened. More hopeful than anything. Hopeful for what? That their friend still lived? And what did the tears indicate? Relief? Sorrow?
Several days had passed since Heath last talked with Anna Pigeon. Last she'd heard, Robert was still missing and still the prime suspect in the abduction. Not wanting to frighten Beth back into the web of secrecy and lies she'd been trapped in, Heath carefully asked, "How is it that he knows where she is?"
Clearly Beth hadn't given this much thought. She was of an age when facts, or purported facts, are shoveled at children by the truckload. Not having the experience to weigh them, all information is more or less accepted at face value, the proclamations of the sages given the same weight as those of the girl sitting one row ahead in homeroom.
"I guess he found her," Beth said finally.
'And then he came back to New Canaan? When?"
"Last night. That's why I had to see you today, to tell you Candace is okay."
"You actually saw Robert last night?" Heath was trying not to sound too anything: too skeptical, too excited, too interested.
The limpet looked toward her mother but Mrs. Dwayne was down for the count. "We didn't see him, exactly, but he talked to us."
"How did he talk to you if you didn't see him? He came to your bed-room window or what?"
"No. Alexis and I don't sleep together. I'm still in the girls' quarters with the little kids. But every night after the evening service it's our job to take the trash out to the barrels behind the house and burn it. It's fun. lighting fires."
