Death Qualified Part 4

"Okay," Nell said after a sip, "when I got home this afternoon, two guys were getting ready to cut down that n.o.ble fir at the end of my drive. I told them to stop, but they laughed, so I went for the rifle. That's all there is to that."

"And that made Chuck mad?" Jessie asked in wonder.

"Doc, would you mix me another, please?" She held out her gla.s.s. She drank old-fas.h.i.+oneds. Doc took it and went behind Nell to the table that held the liquor and wine.

"You think Chuck sent them?" Doc asked.

"He wouldn't do a d.a.m.n fool thing like that."

"Who else? He knows that usually I hang around and talk to Mikey and Gina, and whoever else shows up on bookmobile day. Normally I wouldn't even have got home until nearly five. Today .. . today was different, and I caught them just starting."

"Now, Nell," Frank said judiciously, "that's highly circ.u.mstantial. Lots of folks know you meet that library on wheels."

"But lots of folks aren't out to hara.s.s me Chuck is, and you know it. I ran him off that trail he was trying to cut down to my beach. I won't let him or his drunken fishermen on my land, and I won't sell him a right of way.

He has his reasons," she finished darkly.

"You threatened him?" Clive asked then.

"Chuck claims those guys said you threatened him."

"Sure I did. I said I'd shoot anyone who set foot on my land uninvited."

"For G.o.d's sake!" Clive snapped.

"Why didn't you just tell them who you are, that you own that d.a.m.n tree? Did you even look at their work order? Maybe they just made a simple mistake wrong house, wrong tree."

"I did try to tell them, and they thought it was funny.

They didn't think it was funny when I said I'd shoot out the tires of their truck, and when the one guy kept coming, he didn't think it was that funny when I pointed the rifle at his midsection, south of the equator. That wiped the grin right off his stupid face."

"Well, they probably thought the owner of the property lived in the big house, like you'd expect," Lonnie said, standing near the doorway, and not likely to budge until she had heard it all.

"How most people do it is the owner lives in the big house, and the servants live in the little house."

"Lonnie, don't start," Nell muttered.

"Just don't start."

Lonnie sniffed, then looked at Jessie.

"How many for dinner is all I want to know. Time to get started on that, anyways."

There was discussion and persuasion, and in the end they all agreed to stay. Lonnie nodded in a way that said she had known it all along. She cleaned Frank Holloway's place once a week, and did for Clive every other week; she cooked for Doc and Jessie most nights and worked in their house three days a week. She was an indifferent housekeeper but an excellent cook, and for her there were no secrets in Turner's Point. Between her and Doc and Frank, Nell realized, all their medical, legal, and personal lives were tracked on an almost daily basis. Even though Lonnie did nothing for her, she knew the woman was keeping tabs on her just as if she had been hired to do so.

Nell took almost malicious satisfaction in knowing that Lonnie had not ferreted out her secret, hers and Doc's.

"Nell," Clive said, after the dinner talk was finally over, "tell me about those" guys, who they worked for."

She glared at him and got up to pour herself more wine.

"I knew you'd take their side," she said coldly.

"Or did you tell them how many board feet were there for the taking?"

Clive tightened his lips; a flush spread over his face. He was a few years older than Nell, but he was boyish-looking, especially now, blus.h.i.+ng.

"He's right, Nell," Frank said then.

"You'll have to get in touch with the company and straighten it out if there's been a mistake in the work order. And find out who put the order in if your name was on it."

"Clovis something," she said.

"Clovis Wood Products."

"Never heard of them," Clive said.

"You sure?"

She shrugged and returned to her chair.

"Use your phone a minute, Doc?" Clive asked. When Doc nodded, he went inside the house. The others looked at the river in silence.

How far had she got by now? Nell found herself wondering She fought against the image of a woman being wafted among the drowned trees, pausing here, there, drifting on, her hair getting entangled in a sharp limb, tethered by her long hair that had looked like sea weed.. ..

Clive returned, more puzzled than before.

"It's a company out of Salem," he said.

"Small company, mostly residential work, landscapers for businesses, that sort of thing, not loggers."

"Well, then it's a simple mistake, Nell," Doc said.

"Wrong place, wrong tree, wrong county even." He laughed.

"Maybe," Nell said, wanting to leave it alone, not talk about it any more. They had had her name, she thought.

Mrs. Kendricks.

"Look at it this way, Nell," Frank said then in his thoughtful, lawyerly way.

"Chuck wants to get access to that little beach. Everyone knows that.

"Course, it's not your beach, and you know that. Anyone can pull in there by boat day or night, no problem." Nell made a rude noise, and he lowered his head and looked at her over the tops of his half gla.s.ses.

"It's reasonable for you not to want a trail through your land, and not to want the beach turned into a public picnic area. Granted. Now what's un reasonable is for Chuck to make an enemy out of you.

He's tried persuasion. He's tried bribery. He's tried just bulling his way through by starting a trail. Presently he'll probably think of something else to try. But it won't be a frontal attack. Honey, there's not a living person in this county thinks you can be swayed by cutting one of your trees. And Chuck's not stupid."

He regarded her steadily until at last, with reluctance, she had to nod. Chuck was not stupid, and that would have been a stupid thing for him to try. But someone had sent them, and they had her name. At the same moment she thought: Lucas!

She stood up.

"I just remembered something," she said, her voice harsh even to her ears.

"I won't stay. I have to go home."

Jessie reached out for her.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

"I feel sick. Too much going on today. I have to do something. I'll call you, Jessie. Tomorrow.

I'll call you." She knew she sounded insane, but nothing she could think of saying was right; she put down her gla.s.s and started to walk fast.

"Nell, I'll drive you home," Clive said, at her side, his hand on her arm.

"No!" She shrugged away from him.

"No, I want to walk, something I have to think about. I'm okay, not really sick. Headache. That's all. I have a headache."

"Let me," Doc said quietly, coming up to her.

"I'll go part way with you, Nell."

Silently she nodded, and they walked toward the woods together. Out of range of the others still on the deck, she said in a low voice, "Lucas must have sent those men. He tried that before. And his father said he's on his way here.

I think he's already here, watching. Don't come tonight.

Don't call. He's somewhere near."

"For G.o.d's sake! Has he threatened you? Get an in junction, keep him away!"

She shook her head.

"It's all right, Doc. Just stay away until he's gone. Don't give him any ammunition." She tried to smile.

"He'd know if he saw us together. He'd know. And it would be a weapon."

Doc stopped walking, his hand braked her in mid-stride.

"Are you going to let him in your bed again?"

She touched his cheek gently.

"No. Go on back. Just tell them I'm upset, too much happened today. Over wrought. Isn't that the word? Good Victorian genteel women got overwrought all the time, didn't they?"

He started to reach for her; she backed away, shaking her head. After a moment, he turned and stalked back toward his house. She watched briefly, then resumed her walk home.

Lucas, she thought again. Lucas. Until that second on the deck it had not seemed quite real, not true that he was on his way here after all those years, but now she felt certain that he was close, and she did not know yet how she would deal with him this time. She began to hurry. If she had believed it before, she never would have left Travis alone. Not even for a minute.

SIX.

nell put the truck in the garage and locked the door.

She locked the door to the shed where the tractor and mower were stored, and then went inside her house to hurry through the rooms to check windows, door locks, outside lights. Futile, she knew; the door locks were a joke. Besides, he wouldn't come here, expect to find her in the little house; they had lived together in the main house. She frowned. He might walk in on Tawna; she would have to warn her and James to keep their doors locked.

That was how it had been last time. She had come downstairs from putting Travis to bed; Grampa had been dozing in front of the television. She had entered the kitchen to see Lucas outlined against the evening sky.

She caught her breath at the sharpness of the memory, the s.e.xual awakening the memory jolted into being. She shook her head. Never again. He had stayed three weeks, and on September tenth, he had gone. Carol had been born the following June, six years ago this month. She shook her head again, harder. She would kill him first, she thought grimly.

The phone rang, startling her. For an instant she had that peculiar twinge in her stomach, the way she always did if the phone rang when the children were out some 5 where, always for just that one instant certain something terrible had happened to one of them. She picked up the receiver. It was John Kendricks, her father-in-law.

"Is he there yet?" he asked with an uncharacteristic brusqueness.

"No. I haven't heard a thing from him."

"Nell, honey, me and Amy, we can't get it out of our heads that he's in bad trouble. And we're thinking it would be a good idea if the kids aren't there when he shows up.

What if the police are after him, I mean?"

"Police? Why would they be?"

"That's just it, honey. We don't know. But there's bad trouble. We know that."

She shook her head and had to moisten her lips in order to speak.

"Maybe he isn't even coming here."

"Oh, he will. He will. And, honey, me and Amy, we'd like to take the kids over to visit with Janet and Clan for a few days, a week."

Janet was his daughter, Clan her husband. He was a rancher in the Blue Mountains area.

"You're really worried, aren't you?" Nell asked in a low tone.

There was a pause, then he said gruffly, "Guess we're all worried. Something's wrong. He's my son, but those kids are my grandkids. Whatever he's done, well, he's a grown man, but they haven't done anything to bring them trouble. Anyway, that's what me and Amy's been talking about all evening, all day. And I wanted to call."

They talked a few more minutes, and she said she would call back later if it didn't get too late. Anytime, he said firmly. And he could pick them up by ten in the morning, if she could have things ready by then.

What kind of trouble did he expect, she asked silently when she hung up. Police bursting in with drawn guns?

Lucas raving, crazy, on drugs? Did they think she and Lucas would fight, frighten the children? She started to prowl the house again, seeing nothing. They knew that if he showed up again, she intended to throw him out. She had told them. About time, Amy, his mother, had said through tight lips. John, his father, had embraced her and kissed her cheek.