Anna Pigeon - Blind Descent Part 18

Zeddie and Peter wrapped together in the darkness; such a sudden coupling after the separation of husband and wife spoke of great need or great a.s.surance. Anna had a.s.sumed it was the wall of dirt between Peter and his spouse that gave them the confidence to turn to each other so publicly. A wall of dirt on top of that same spouse would be just as rea.s.suring and a whole lot more final.

Trying to tie them to Frieda was what had kept them on the back burner of Anna's mind. Both had had ample opportunity to kill her. Peter was her physician for the first forty-eight hours after the rock had struck her. Their culpability in her eventual death was too great a stretch. Factoring out the original attempt on Frieda's life-an opinion held by nearly everyone but Anna-and putting Sondra in the place of the corpse du jour, it was no stretch at all. Brent's shooting could be explained as well. Peter and or Zeddie arranged for Sondra's death in the ill-begotten rock fall. Brent saw something. Brent was silenced. Zeddie made a much better suspect for desert stalking and sharpshooting than either Amy or the boyfriend.

"d.a.m.n." Anna had only just been forgiven for accusing Zeddie and Peter of murder. To do it again was liable to get her thrown off her couch. Or killed. Shoving herself up from the table, she stared at the winter-bleak patio. Wandering through the kitchen, she blindly looked into the refrigerator. Hopeful, Calcite swished around her ankles. Anna picked her up and set her abstractedly on the kitchen counter. The cat twitched her tail, and Anna caught it. Loose ends. The Zeddie-McCarty-Sondra triangle tied up a lot of loose ends.

Calcite jumped to the floor when a sigh gusted from Anna's lungs. The solution didn't sit well. The sequence of events rendered Frieda's death so unnecessary, so peripheral. Was that what was bothering her? The idea that her friend's death had been meaningless, a by-product? Anna shook off the thought. No one else had seen Frieda's face, heard the tremor of certainty and horror as she described looking up, seeing her headlamp flash over a gloved hand rolling down a stone, the fear and the sadness born of knowing someone wished to take her life from her.

Anna cleared her mind. Like it or not, she would have to tackle Zeddie.

18.

Sondra was, as advertised, a royal pain in the patootie. Possibly not above blackmailing a man into marrying her. An ambitious woman who wanted to do it the old-fas.h.i.+oned way, climbing the ladder one man at a time. From what Rhonda had uncovered, she had used her evil wiles to s.n.a.t.c.h another woman's beau. Plenty of reasons to hate her. More than enough never to have her over for dinner. But murder? Intelligent people-at least sane intelligent people-realized that murder was doing it the hard way. Zeddie and Peter were worldly enough to know things could be lived through, faced down, or bought off with less backlash than murder. Breaking that strongest of taboos was usually a step taken in desperation. Adultery, fornication-the stuff of love triangles-just weren't that big a deal anymore. Photos on Zeddie's mantel indicated she and Peter had been together since his marriage. Clearly it was not necessary to do so over his wife's dead body. Either they were not as sane as Anna presumed, or there was something she was missing.

Why had McCarty allowed himself to be blackmailed into matrimony? Why had he gone on vacation with his wife, girlfriend, and ex-girlfriend? Did he like the fireworks? Was it a game, one that had taken an unexpectedly ugly turn?

Tawdry questions, half answered with half-truths, jammed Anna's brain like sand poured into a piston engine. Before she blew a gasket, she decided to stop thinking. Her stomach reminded her it was past lunch. Her watch told her it was one thirty. Zeddie, Peter, and Curt should have crawled out of the arteries of New Mexico by now. Curt and Peter would be home shortly, eager for hot showers and clean clothes. They would probably spend the afternoon watching a ball game. December: Anna couldn't remember if it was baseball, football, or basketball season, but undoubtedly Madison Avenue had arranged for one sport or another to peddle beer and cars on a Sunday afternoon. Mere fire and brimstone, a murder investigation couldn't compete. She would have to postpone Peter and start with Zeddie. She had a feeling the "something more" she sought lurked in that quarter.

Due to a small flu epidemic thinning the ranks of interpretive rangers, Zeddie said she had "one b.i.t.c.h of a day." Closing her eyes, Anna focused on the morning's breakfast banter. Like children on holiday, Zeddie and Peter had milkshakes for breakfast. Shoulder to shoulder, they sipped through candy-cane-striped plastic straws. Each time Zed-die looked away, Peter snaked his straw over at an angle and snorkeled up her ice cream. The picture triggered something, but not the information she wanted. What was it Zeddie had been saying while Peter pilfered her milkshake? "Off-trail in the morning and the Urinal in the afternoon."

From the scuttleb.u.t.t, Anna had deduced that the Urinal was a stretch of trail above the Big Room in Carlsbad Caverns. It was so named by the interpreters because it was about ninety minutes into the cave, the length of time the male bladder could comfortably transport a couple cups of coffee. A dark and twisty portion of trail afforded an irresistible temptation.

Years had pa.s.sed since Anna had been in Carlsbad Caverns. Walking out of the twilight zone, she smelled the musty breath of the underground home of a dwindling but still impressive population of Mexican freetail bats. After the initial unpleasantness of leaving behind real air and the light of day, she was overwhelmed by the intricacy and immensity of the cavern. Wide and well kept, with discreet lighting, the path curved down through glossy formations and vaulted ceilings dripping with icicles of stone. Long buried, a statistic floated into her mind. Someone had once told her that more than two thousand formations a year were destroyed or stolen by visitors. On some level, she'd been expecting the cavern to appear tired, more shopworn than she remembered. The opposite was true. The park had rejuvenated the cave and the trails. Along the way she saw teams of volunteers un.o.btrusively tending to the resource. Four women in soft-soled shoes painstakingly tweezed lint from the rugged rock faces. Tons of lint and hair from tourists circulated on air currents. Without constant intervention the innards of the cave would take on the aspect of an overused clothes dryer. Another group, armed with sponges, brushes, and pails, erased muddy footprints of those insensitive enough to walk off the paved trail.

The expected pinch of claustrophobia failed to materialize, and Anna enjoyed the trip. After the suffocating confines of parts of Lechuguilla, the light, airy cavern felt like what it was: a walk in the park. Spiraling ever downward, each turn producing a view more splendid than the last, Anna considered the words she would use to share it with Molly. Inadequate metaphors were all she could muster: a cathedral, a ballroom, a whale's belly, a set for The Phantom of the Opera. In its uniqueness and magnificence, Carlsbad paupered the imagination. Unremitting opulence jaded the eye until it became possible to wander this unsung wonderland without seeing any but formations so stupendous they forced one away from the conversation of one's fellows or the contemplation of the dinner to be had when one returned to the world above.

Periodically Anna drifted by a troglodyte in the green and gray of the NPS uniform: rangers roving the trail, providing information, a.s.sistance, and a watchful eye for a resource so domesticated it could no longer protect itself. Cloaked in darkness and civilian clothes, she pa.s.sed with a nod or a wave, happy to be another faceless tourist.

On a zigzagging segment where the path descended steeply toward the Big Room, a chamber the size of fourteen football fields according to the brochure, Anna found Zeddie Dillard. One foot on the low stone wall with which the Park Service bordered the asphalt-an attempt to keep people from stomping the entire cave floor into a likeness of a Safeway parking lot-she addressed a group of girls. Blue Birds or Brownies, something organized by age. Mellifluous in speech as in song, her voice hummed warmly in the dim cavern.

They were stopped at a natural viewpoint. A thoughtful government had provided a tasteful stone bench by the trail. Anna sat, half listening to the lecture and marveling at the panorama. The trail was considerably above the Big Room. Several more twists, turns, and tunnels would have to be negotiated before reaching the promised land. The zig where Anna sat provided a sneak preview, a peek from the stone shrouded mountainside into the valley. Faint lights marked a sinuous path through a vast plain dotted with unimaginable monsters frozen for all eternity. Seen from above, it reminded Anna of flying into a strange city by night: pinp.r.i.c.ks of light, canyons of darkness, mystery, unvoiced hopes and veiled threats.

The gaggle of girls trickled downhill. Zeddie turned, the professional smile of the tour guide barely discernible even to eyes accustomed to the dark.

"Hey, Anna," she said with what sounded like relief. Dropping heavily onto the bench at her side, she said, "Boy, am I beat. I've got half a mind to come down with the flu myself. I could use the time in bed."

Both of them thought of Peter McCarty. Anna didn't so much as snicker, but Zeddie felt the vibrations. "Rest. Sleep. h.e.l.l . . ." Her words petered out. Then Anna did laugh.

Sniffing audibly, Zeddie said, "Do I smell Plumeria?"

"I've been playing with your toys," Anna admitted.

"Good for the soul. Even Xena the Warrior Princess wears a little eye shadow. I'm bored with men who think strong and s.e.xy is an oxymoron."

"Heavy on the moron?" Anna suggested. Zeddie leaned over, b.u.mping her with a shoulder that was no longer cold. Anna was touched. She liked Zeddie, liked to think well of her and be thought well of in return.

Two tourists, twined together like unpruned ivy, walked past. They smiled and nodded at Zeddie. The flat hat, the uniform, brought that out in people. Rangers, like firemen and comic-strip bears, were considered benevolent creatures. That as much as anything made Anna wince when she had to bust somebody. It was bad for the image.

"I oughtn't to be sitting," Zeddie said idly. "It looks bad." She made no move to get up. The morning's tour would have taken a toll even on such a robust specimen as Zeddie Dillard. She was tired, vulnerable. Anna might not get a better opportunity.

"Have you ever sung in the Big Room?" Anna asked, putting off the inevitable dissolution of their budding friends.h.i.+p.

"'Ghost Riders in the Sky.'"

Leaning her head back, Anna stared into a heaven eternally dark. Thunderheads, canyons, spires, defied gravity. Utah's Canyon Lands in a Salvador Dali nightmare. "Good choice," she said.

Carlsbad, the destination of as many as three-quarters of a million tourists each year, had none of the baffling silence of Lechuguilla. She and Zeddie were no more isolated than two women on a bench at the Guggenheim on a Sunday afternoon. In exposing the visual grandeur of the cavern, the soul of the cave had been compromised, as outer s.p.a.ce was compromised by the bits of metal flung into it. Once man intruded, perfect solitude was banished. In this instance, Anna felt it was an improvement. Safety in numbers.

The comfortable quiet on the bench grew strained. Zeddie broke it first. "Dare I hope this is purely a social call?"

"I wish it were," Anna replied wearily.

"Are you going to accuse me of murder again?"

"More or less."

Zeddie snorted, but there was humor in the rude noise, and Anna took heart.

"Well, let's have it," Zeddie said. "Jealousy? A fortune in jewels? An inheritance: Frieda was my secret twin separated at birth?"

Anna searched for the words that would convey meanings only slowly becoming clear. "It's kind of a two-parter," she said. "There's Frieda. Then there's Sondra McCarty."

"Sondra's gone," Zeddie said with a frankness that caught Anna off guard. "And good riddance. That woman was a boil on the b.u.t.t of humanity."

"Gone?" Anna tensed for a confession laced with hard-core rationalizations.

"Peter got rid of her," Zeddie said, pride of owners.h.i.+p in her voice. "'Bout d.a.m.n time."

She was too open, cheery. Anna was getting confused and a little nervous. What she had here was either a misunderstanding or an undiagnosed psychopath. She sought clarification with a gentle probe. "I hate to pry-"

"Hah!"

"Okay. I like to pry. How about this: Why in G.o.d's name did Peter think it was such a terrific idea to go on an expedition with his wife and his girlfriend and his ex-girlfriend?"

"The ex is no big deal," Zeddie said. "That was years ago. Frieda and Peter were friends. Shoot, Frieda and I were friends. With the notable exception of the Boil, I've always liked Pete's taste in women."

A clutter of tourists, jangling cameras and Anna's nerves, clattered down the trail. Duty calling, Zeddie left the bench and answered questions for a few minutes. Anna's favorite came from a scrawny youth in trousers so large the crotch hobbled him at the knees. "What does the cave weigh?"

The group was swallowed by the shadows, and Zeddie returned to the bench. "What do you want to bet that boy'll p.i.s.s in the Urinal?"

Bowing to Zeddie's greater experience in things scatological, Anna declined the wager.

"Where were we?" Zeddie said, then, "Oh, right, you were interrogating me about the most intimate personal aspects of my life that are none of your business."

"That's it in a nutsh.e.l.l," Anna conceded. "You, Peter, and the Mrs. along on the same trip. That's where we left off."

"It does sound kinky when you put it like that. I was going through a bad time. Peter wanted to be with me. The sentiment was mutual. This survey came up. I w.a.n.gled two places on it through Frieda. At the last minute Sondra dug in her heels. It was bring her or call the whole thing off. He brought her. Peter and I have known each other a long time, been through a lot together. We don't have to sleep in the same bed-though I've got to admit it's nice. Just being together, having a chance to talk, was enough."

"I take it Sondra didn't know about you two?"

"We were broken up when they got married."

"Why did he marry her, blackmail?"

"Rebound. I broke up with him. He's older than I am, established. I'm not ready to become Mrs. Doctor anybody. There are things I want to do. To make it stick, I made it brutal. Just fooling myself. I'm as addicted to Peter as he is to me. But I'm d.a.m.ned if I'll marry him. He was beginning to feel like an aging Warren Beatty with no Annette Bening in sight. Sondra showed up and waltzed him down the aisle. Therapy waiting to happen."

"Does he want a divorce?"

"Yeah. It embarra.s.ses the h.e.l.l out of him. They haven't been married all that long. He did make a fool of himself. We all do now and again. But he wants out. She was just too much of a b.i.t.c.h."

Anna let the information soak in. Zeddie genuinely seemed not to care that Peter was wed, not to want to marry him herself. It fit with the other things Anna had observed: the free spiritedness, the fierce independence, the hint of tie-dye and incense. According to her-and the story had the mundane ring of truth-Sondra had not blackmailed Peter into matrimony. She'd caught him on the bounce and parlayed it into a white veil and a wedding band. Blackmail must have come later, been used not to acquire the husband but to control him.

Zeddie was kidding herself if she believed Sondra was not aware of her relations.h.i.+p with the doctor. In the beginning Sondra may not have known, but after the forced intimacy of several days underground she would have figured it out. Secret lovers seldom fool anyone but themselves. The discipline of an Olivier is required to lie with body language over a protracted period. There's too much to control: looks, gestures, position, voice. Women are especially adept at reading the signs. When a husband and a younger woman are involved, the senses become preternaturally acute. Sondra knew. A few questions to Frieda or Curt would have told her Zeddie, like herself and Frieda, had once been a patient of Dr. McCarty's. Two would be added to two, and Sondra would have enough leverage to keep Peter married to her or walk away with a hefty divorce settlement.

Anna had heard her threaten Peter with those choices. During that part of the rescue the team had been strung out along the route, each with a job to perform in the problematic evacuation. Peter would not have had a chance to talk with Zeddie, not before Katie's Pigtail. Zeddie wouldn't have known Sondra was going to play hardball.

"... was too much of a b.i.t.c.h . . . was a boil . . ." Zeddie had used the past tense when speaking of the doctor's wife.

"Was a boil. You said 'was.'"

"Too crude for you?" Zeddie asked offhandedly. "Too bad. It's about the nicest thing I can think of to say about her."

"Was. Not is. Why the past tense?"

"Okay. Is."

Not a flicker of self-consciousness. Anna got no inkling that Zeddie had been caught in a trap, given herself away.

"As long as she's not a boil on my personal b.u.t.t, I couldn't care less. What're you, her press agent?"

"I only asked because Sondra never came out of Lechuguilla."

Zeddie snorted her truncated laugh. "Yes she did."

"Nope. Never came out, never rode down to town, never flew out of the Carlsbad Airport."

"You're kidding." Zeddie sounded hopeful.

"Not kidding."

"Jesus." Zeddie took off her flat hat so she could lean back against the stone. Stretching her heavy legs, she drummed her heels softly against the asphalt; an obstruction just waiting for a tourist to trip over it. Anna sat without speaking, watching gray ghostly visitors glide along pathways below.

"Sondra never came out?"

"Never did."

"Jesus," Zeddie repeated. "Is this the part where you accuse me of murder?"

"No," Anna said. "Not quite yet." She was thinking of that something else that had been troubling her. "You said Peter came down because you were going through a bad time."

Zeddie didn't reply, and for the first time since they'd sat down together Anna sensed wariness. "What was that about?" she pressed.

"Just some personal demons. I intend to keep them that way."

Warning was clear in her voice. Anna chose to ignore it. "You had an older sister?"

"Darla," Zeddie said dully.

"She was killed in a climbing accident, wasn't she?"

Zeddie didn't say anything. Had they not been so close, Anna wouldn't have seen her nod. Her chin dipped toward her chest in acquiescence or defeat.

"Ten years or thereabouts?" Anna asked.

"Ten years this month."

The tenth anniversary of her sister's death; Anna could understand how that would cause a bad patch, emotionally speaking. "Was Frieda there when it happened?"

Again the nod. Before Anna could go on, Zeddie looked up like a woman coming out of anesthesia. Anna didn't need light to see the anger burning in her face. "What are you saying?" Zeddie demanded. The hard edge to her voice should have tipped Anna off, but it didn't.

"That maybe what happened to your sister happened to Frieda."

Anna never saw the blow coming. Suddenly she was facedown on the path with a buzzing in her right ear and a feeling the world had fallen in on her. Imposing as a limestone formation, Zeddie towered above her. In the velvet semidark Anna could not see her face. She could see strong hands bunched into fists next to muscular thighs and the broad expanse of shoulder looming between her and the vastness of the cavern's ceiling. The shadowed bulk moved back. Anna curled into a tight ball, readying for a kick in the ribs.

"Oh my gos.h.!.+ What happened?" A voice piped through the gloom. Half a dozen tourists, smelling of catsup and cologne, pattered down. The herd closed around Anna.

Zeddie reached down. Anna clasped her wrist and was hauled to her feet. "I tripped," she said to the concerned crowd.

"Watch your footing," Zeddie said to the visitors. "These paths can be treacherous. Are you all right?" she asked Anna because the audience expected it of her in her role as the ranger.

"Right as rain," Anna said. The clout behind her ear had been delivered by the meaty part of Zeddie's forearm. No harm was done, but she was stunned and disconcerted.

When the group pa.s.sed out of earshot, Zeddie turned. Not willing to take another hit, Anna stepped back. Evidently Zeddie thought better of fisticuffs, but her rage was undiminished.

"Get out," she said. "Out of my cave, out of my house, out of my park. Stay the f.u.c.k away from me."

There was no give in her face, no c.h.i.n.ks in her armor. Anna didn't precisely turn tail and run, but a hasty departure was the only option she'd left herself. Having backed out of range, lest Zeddie change her mind about using physical violence, she walked through the Urinal, cut across a corner of the Big Room, and caught an elevator back up the seven hundred fifty feet to the real world.

No question about it, Anna had hit a nerve. For that matter, so had Zeddie. A pervasive ache was spreading from behind Anna's ear up to her temple and down her neck into her shoulder.