The Deepest Water (3 page)

Caldwell had asked something else, she realized, something she had not heard. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Did he stay here with you when he came to town?” Caldwell repeated.

She shook her head. Jud had never spent a single night in this house.

“Did he stay with Willa Ashford?”

“I don’t know,” she said faintly. “You have to ask her.”

Finally Caldwell stood up. “Just one more thing, Mrs. Connors, then we’ll leave you in peace. As I said, we’ve had to go through his papers, records, all that. But the problem is you’re the only one we know who can look over the cabin and make sure nothing’s missing, that things are pretty much like he kept them. Can you go out there with us tomorrow?”

“Jesus!” Brice snapped. “For God’s sake, can’t you see what this is doing to her? That’s too goddamn much to ask!”

Caldwell kept his gaze on Abby. “The crime lab technicians have gone over things, there’s nothing left to see. It’s been padlocked ever since the sheriff got there, but we need someone like you to have a look around before anyone takes a notion to break in or something. How long a drive is it from here?”

“Two hours,” she said. He was just doing his job, she thought bleakly. That was all it meant to him, another job to get over with, move on to something else. Then she thought, that was what she wanted, too. To find out who shot her father in the face on Friday night. She nodded.

“Good. Nine? Is that okay with you? We’ll pick you up at nine.”

She nodded again. She remained on the sofa, with her hands clasped tightly when Brice took them to the door.

“I just don’t think you should come,” Abby said to Brice after the officers left. “There won’t be anything for you to do, and you must have a ton of work to catch up with.”

“I don’t want you to go off with them alone. Let’s take the box, give your father his burial, then close up the place for now. We can drive Jud’s van home.”

“No!” She took a breath, then said calmly, “I’m not ready yet, and not with them along. Not with police watching. It… it has to be private.” She realized that she had already decided to bury her father’s ashes alone, not with anyone else present. It had to be private. She was not aware of having thought it through before, but the idea was firmly implanted in her mind. Maybe she had known that ever since the day Jud had told her his wishes, an implicit part of his instructions, unstated, but communicated.

“Okay,” Brice said. He looked almost rigid, his mouth tight with frustration. “We’ll leave that for later, but I should be with you when you go back the first time. I don’t care what they’ve cleaned up, it’s going to be hard for you to go back.”

The doorbell rang and he glanced at his watch. “Christ, it must be that agent. We’ll talk about this when I get home, okay? Call me if you need anything. I’ll be at the office all afternoon.” He went to admit Christina Maas.

Abby met Christina in the foyer, surprised to see the woman enter with a roll-on suitcase, briefcase, dressed in a black pant suit with a silvery blouse, ready to travel. Or to move in?

“I have a five o’clock plane to L.A.,” Christina said. “So I checked out of the hotel already. I can get a cab from here, can’t I?”

Brice said sure, call for a cab when she was ready to go; he blew Abby a kiss and left the two women in the foyer, where Abby regarded her guest with suspicion and even hostility. Christina had been one of Jud’s women, she knew with certainty, and she didn’t know how to act with her. How to treat her. Clearly Christina had not shed many tears over Jud’s death; her makeup was too perfect for that, untouched by human tears. She was tall, five feet ten, almost too thin, with what Abby thought of as big-city style, New York style, her hair was pale, nearly platinum, beautifully coiffed and moussed, her nails manicured, ivory, a heavy gold chain her only jewelry.

“Is there someplace where we can spread out some papers?” Christina asked, glancing into the living room, dismissing it.

Abby nodded and led the way to the breakfast table where she began to pick up the coffee cups. Now that she could see Christina in a better light, she realized she was older than she had first appeared. Tiny lines about her eyes and mouth betrayed her in spite of the makeup. Forty-something, not pretty at all, just smart looking.

“Abby,” Christina said, watching her wipe the table, “we might clear the air before we start. Jud told me you suspected that we’d had an affair, and that you didn’t approve. I’m sorry. I cared for him very deeply, but it was over a long time ago, and afterward we became good friends as well as business associates.” She sat down and placed her briefcase on the floor.

“The police questioned me yesterday about Jud’s work, how he got paid, how much, when, everything. I told them exactly what I’m going to tell you. Better to tell them up front than wait for a subpoena.” She was brisk, businesslike, as if to say there should be no doubt about this meeting; it was purely business. “You’re the literary executor. That means you have to approve of any deals I make, or reject them. It means that you can choose to have a different agent handle his unpublished work, if you want to go that route, but I’ll still handle everything I handled in the past—foreign sales, for instance. The movie deal I’m negotiating now. I can make the deal, negotiate, do it all, but you have to approve and sign the contract.”

Abby listened to her mutely, hardly able to comprehend the meaning of her words as Christina continued to talk about the agreement she and Jud had reached, and what it meant now that Abby was the literary executor, the contract that Abby would have to sign agreeing to the arrangement with the agent.

Then Christina began to spread papers out on the table, and presently she asked if there was any coffee. Later, when Christina began to talk about a tax attorney, Abby shook her head.

“Stop. I don’t understand the contract you’re talking about, the Hollywood deal you’re talking about, subsidiary rights, any of this.”

“What it means,” Christina said slowly, “is that if these various deals go through, if you approve and sign the contracts, you’re going to make a hell of a lot of money. Not all at once, and not until the terms of the will are satisfied about the six-month waiting period, but over the next few years, perhaps a lot of years.” She regarded Abby through narrowed eyes. “Jud and I kept in close touch. He said he was wrapping up a new novel, that it would be finished almost any day now. I think he meant it, that the new work was either completed, or nearly done. Do you know if it’s done?”

“No.” Was that what his call had been about, the completion of the new novel? He always was happy when he finished; he always wanted to celebrate, and she had said no, she couldn’t make it.

“You have a decision facing you,” Christina was saying. “Do I handle the new work, or do you get a new agent?”

Abby had not even thought of getting a new agent, and wouldn’t know how to start. “He trusted you,” she said. “He wouldn’t want me to change anything.”

“Good. But you’re right, this is too much all at once. I made copies of his files, the royalty statements, our correspondence, and notes about our telephone calls concerning the movie deal I’m working on. I’m going down to L.A. from here to try to get a final contract we can all agree to. I’ll leave all the copies with you. Go over the material and whatever you don’t understand, jot down questions. I’ll give you a call early next week, and then, Abby, if you’re up to it, I’ll want to look through his past work. He said he had a lot of stuff he never even showed anyone. I want to see it. And I have to read the new novel. He said it was all in the cabin. Can we go there together, go through his papers together, see if there’s anything else publishable? The policeman I talked to said there are file cases, and boxes and boxes of papers. We’ll have to sort through everything.”

Abby nodded. “I’ll take you there.”

After Christina left, Abby returned to the table and stared at the many file folders the agent had prepared for her. It wasn’t fair, she thought. All those years with nothing, no money, no job, nothing, and now, too late, all that money. Jud never had held a job longer than a few months; he had written advertising copy and detested doing it, had written a lot of technical things, manuals, computer documentation, even programs, but only when things got truly desperate, only long enough to pay the electric bill, or pay rent for a few months… When Lynne finally could take it no longer, the uncertainty of a paycheck, or having heat in the winter, never knowing if there would be enough food next week, next month, she had left him, after years of holding jobs herself, years of bitter fighting.

Jud’s first novel had been published in 1989, and had not made him very much money, but the next one in 1991 had made money, and the last one four years ago had made a lot of money and would be making much, much more, according to Christina.

And if the new novel was finished… Abby whispered, “It’s not fair.”

She gathered up the file folders and took them to the guest room, the room she used for her school work, and her dissertation, the room her mother had used. She could still smell Lynne’s perfume lingering in the air. She put the folders in the desk drawer; no more for now, she thought. She didn’t want to discuss any of it with Brice, not yet, not until she had grasped what it all meant. He would take over the management of the money, she knew; that was his specialty, managing money. The thought of making plans for investments, purchases, travel, all the things he would want to discuss repulsed her. Not yet, not so soon.

She went to his study, picked up the mahogany box and carried it to her room, and placed it on her own desk.

Standing with both hands on the box, she knew that she would find a way to prevent Brice’s going to the cabin the following day. She did not want him to go through her father’s papers, not until she had sorted them all out. She didn’t want him to read her father’s short stories, his novel, which might be completed by now. First she had to read the new novel, and then she might decide to bury it with her father’s ashes.

3

Brice came home late, looking tired and harried. “The market goes up, they want to sell; it goes down they want to buy. Those who aren’t on the phone yelping are in the office yelping. Buy at ten, sell at noon, buy again at two… Stacks of unanswered calls to get to…”

She put her fingers on his lips, aware that he had to talk about the office; he was trying to put the past week behind him, behind them, trying not to think of the coming visit to the cabin. “We have to start getting our lives in place again,” she said. “You have to take care of your clients, or they’ll do their yelping to the head office, and I have to go to the cabin tomorrow. I’ll drive the van home and bring Spook with me. Then we’ll have the weekend to get some rest.” She began to tell him about Christina Maas, the Hollywood contract she was negotiating. “I’ll tag along tomorrow,” he said, interrupting her.

“You’d just be in the way,” she said. “There’s nothing there for you to do. I’ll be safe enough with a couple of cops at my elbow.”

His grin in response to hers was weak, but he agreed.

Now, driving on Highway 58, with Caldwell at the wheel, Abby in the front seat and Detective Varney in the back, they were passing through the small dying town of Oakridge. They had not yet reached the high mountains, but the road was curvy and there was a lot of traffic, people getting an early start on a weekend outing, logging trucks, RVs, commercial trucks. It was one of the most dangerous routes across the Cascades, with fatal accidents year after year; today it would take longer than the two hours Abby had predicted.

“How did your father stumble across such a remote cabin?” Caldwell asked, picking up speed again outside the town, along with everyone else on the road.

“It was his father’s before. Grandfather was transferred down to Santa Rosa, and he was going to let it go for back taxes, I guess, so Dad bought it for what was owed the state. He spent every summer and most weekends up there when he was a kid. I did too.”

Caldwell muttered a curse as an oncoming driver pulled out to pass; there was nowhere to move over, no room to pass either. The idiot driver pulled back in line.

Abby had hardly noticed. She was remembering the scene when Lynne learned that Jud was taking over the cabin. “You’re paying his taxes! What with? We can’t even afford to get our own place.”

“I told you, I took the job with Aaronson. Dad will carry a loan for a few months.”

“For a lousy cabin you’ll get a job! Look at that bathroom! Look at that kitchen sink! We live like dogs and you want to buy a cabin in the woods!”

“Wait ’til you see it. You’ll love it as much as I do. And pudding face here will, too. Won’t you?”

Abby had nodded. “Why is it called Two-Finger Lake?” She was coloring pictures.

“Make a fist,” Jud said. “Here, put your hand down on the paper first. Now, trace around it with your crayon, all around.”

She traced her fist, then looked at him. She was four.

“Okay. Good. Now stick out your first two fingers.”

She put out her little finger and her ring finger, and he laughed. “Wrong two. This one, and this one.” He touched her forefinger and middle finger and she extended them, keeping the rest of her hand fisted on the outline she had traced. Jud took the crayon and drew around the two fingers. “And there it is! Two-Finger Lake. See?”

She studied the object they had drawn and shook her head. “It’s a rabbit,” she said.

Jud laughed. “Damned if it isn’t. Okay. It’s Rabbit Lake, and our cabin is right here, on the lower ear.” The setting for all his novels had been Rabbit Lake.

She loved it already that day, with as much fervor as Lynne hated it. Neither of them ever changed her mind about the cabin on Rabbit Lake.

“Did he actually live out there, or just hang out between other things?” Caldwell asked, bringing Abby back to the present, back to the reality of her father’s murder.

“For years we just went up for weekends, and summers. After I graduated from high school he moved all the way out.” When she married Matthew Petrie he moved all the way out, she should have said, if she had been more literal about the facts. He had taken an apartment for her sake, so she could finish high school in Eugene, and as soon as she was out from underfoot, two weeks after her graduation, one week after her marriage, he was gone. Within a month he had finished his first novel, and a year later it had been published.