A Single Eye (44 page)

I did a whirlwind check of the kitchen and Barry's room, recalled that I hadn't seen food in Roshi's room, and slapped some peanut butter and jelly on bread; it's hard to be too sick for peanut butter and jelly, and, in fact, he had seemed much stronger when he was talking to Maureen than he had hours earlier. I made two sandwiches and managed to down half of my own before Amber and I got back to Roshi's cabin.

Maureen was standing by the door. When I walked in she and Roshi merely bowed to each other before she left with Amber. It was a simple move, done in unison, but like a kiss, it said more than words could manage. I could guess what passed between them, but I would only have been guessing. I shut the door and when I looked at Roshi there was no telltale smile or drooped eye of sadness. The moment with Maureen was gone and I thought he was focusing on me. But when he put out his hand I realized the attraction was the peanut butter sandwich.

“Didn't Rob bring you dinner?” I asked while he wolfed.

“No,” he got out between bites.

He was eating with such gusto I was both relieved and afraid the sandwich would be too much after his near-fast of the last couple days. But there wasn't a chance I would deter him. The mundane quality of that cheered me a bit. And Rob's failing at the basic jisha duties made me feel downright smug. With relief I watched Leo devour the brown bread, and, with a snakelike flick of his tongue, catch an errant squirt of jelly before it fell to the floor. His skin had a flush of pink; he was sitting normally. He looked like a man who had not merely stepped back from death's door, but leapt back.

“Roshi, I hope Maureen will be okay with Amber. You know this has been really hard on Amber. She's lost her memory of her brother.”

I half expected him to comment that that memory was illusion, but he nodded sympathetically, and finished the sandwich. “I told her it would be hard. She didn't believe me. I thought she might need this last chance to know about her brother. But I didn't know her. Still, we'll see.”

I could still feel the quiver of Amber's back as it had been against my hand, feel her shaking from anger and fear. What was the matter with Leo? Was he off in some Zen cloud? “Leo, this isn't a regular sesshin. Of course, she's scared. Somebody pushed her brother off the bridge! There's a murderer here!”

“No one is after her. Only I am the target.”

“Maybe. But she doesn't believe that.”

He took a deep, controlled, but angry-sounding breath. For a moment I thought I'd gone too far and, no matter how deficient Rob was as jisha, I'd be fired again. From the zendo came the slap of the door shutting and almost immediately soft-soled shoes splatting down the steps. It surprised me how clearly sound carried at night in the country. It was not quite ten o'clock. Barry had left hours ago. The paramedics should have been here hours ago. “Roshi, did the medics come and go already?”

“Medics?”

“Barry called them when he got to a phone.”

He was looking at the spot where Maureen had sat, his face scrunched in the kind of indecisive worry roshis were supposed to be beyond.

“Surely the medics would come here, even though it's night, wouldn't they?”

“Let's see.” He pushed himself up, and nothing I said dissuaded him from putting on his robes, his parka, and his boots and heading out across the quad amid the students hurrying to the bathhouse or their cabins, and down to the road. The only choice I had was whether or not to follow.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-SEVEN

L
eo was in full Roshi mode. He was moving slowly in his long brown robe, but in such a stately fashion he seemed like a brown-masted schooner in full sail as he proceeded along his path to the bathhouse. One of the advantages of being roshi is not waiting in line. But that doesn't mean not having to wait till the stalls empty.

I stood outside, shivering in the fog-chilled air, wishing there had been a gracious way to ask Maureen for my sweater back since she was headed to spend the night under Barry's blankets, and trying to decide if it was worth the effort to confront Roshi with any of the sixteen supremely sensible reasons for not heading down to the road in the dark to wait for the paramedics.

It felt so good to be back worrying about Leo in this familiar way, as his jisha again, worrying if he'd be warm enough outside waiting for the reliable paramedics, and most of all to know he wasn't Aeneas's killer, that I hadn't really focused on Amber's question. If not Leo, who
had
killed Aeneas?

Someone acting on impulse, from anger or necessity or both. Aeneas wouldn't have discerned anything, exposed anything, repeated anything. He only snatched things. Like a dog, he snatched and ran, teasing the owner with whatever was in that manila envelope. I could imagine him jumping up on the ledge-rail of the bridge, all part of the game. And I could imagine the chaser, desperate for his envelope, making a grab for it, and shoving Aeneas. It wouldn't have been planned. No premeditated murder would have culminated with the victim's body abandoned in the stream in a spot two people passed within minutes.

Planned or not, dead is dead. Someone murdered Aeneas.

But why stay at a monastery in the woods near Aeneas's body? Was it from fear that Maureen would transplant the maple and uncover the body? Was there evidence on the body? The killer's skin under Aeneas's fingernails? Something else? Or just the killer's fear of it? Was he waiting, wondering how long it took for the evidence to deteriorate? Each year he would have felt safer. The body was being eaten away, the maple growing larger.

What had Leo said about the red maple when we almost hit it driving in here?
When we get the road paved, we'll take out that maple
. Not
if, when
.

The bathhouse door swung open and this time it was Leo. One look at his face—eyes narrowed, those bushy brown brows lowered, wide lips pressed hard together—confirmed his determination. I followed him silently.

One of the paths led from the bathhouse to the parking lot, but he didn't take that. Instead he veered to the right and steamed toward the kitchen, his robe beneath his parka catching the wind. A student, possibly the path-sweeping lawyer from Vermont, passed him and nodded in half-recognition. Otherwise the way was empty. Students were permitted to go to the kitchen for tea after the last zazen period, but by then bed was too inviting. I did wonder if we would find Rob there and what explanation he would give for ignoring Roshi all afternoon.

And then the obvious struck me. If he'd poisoned his long-time teacher, his supposed friend, of course he couldn't face him. Nor could he kill him, not at the time when he was the one known to have access to him. So he let him lie there unattended, a sick man who could have had a crisis, and who did go hungry all afternoon. I didn't like Rob, but I had credited him with relentless responsibility. It infuriated me to think he could switch it off like that, like tossing a kitten in the river. I hoped now we did find him in the kitchen. When Roshi walked up to him, I wanted to see his face.

Documents are kept in manila envelopes. Deeds to the surrounding land; bills of sale for construction; correspondence with the hierarchy in San Francisco about Leo, mutual assumptions Leo would be edged out in a couple years. Rob was a lawyer; he would have preserved copies of everything, including both sides of correspondence. There were plenty of documents he wouldn't have wanted made public that day, at the opening, in front of the roshis and priests and Buddhists from all over the West Coast.

Leo strode into the kitchen. But there was no one else there, no illumination but two plug-in night lights in sockets by either door that made the room seem larger. He flicked on the overhead light in the chocolate kitchen. The click resounded in the silence. The bright bulb shone off the white paint. The still, red melangeur was no longer mixing cocoa with lecithin and large-grain sugar; the white conche pipe was not tumbling chocolate till its texture met even Barry's standards; the silvery metal table that looked like something out of an autopsy room was bare and shiny. Whatever warmth there had been from heating the gruel for dinner had dissipated, and the smell of cocoa that had given this kitchen its homey appeal was all but gone. It was as if Barry had taken it with him.

Roshi shook the kettle, lit the flame underneath, checked the height as he must have done every time he'd heated water. He walked to the cupboard, pulled out two plain white cups—not the sturdy little handleless mugs students used in sesshin, but the kind of delicate cups that rest on saucers. He set cup on saucer with no tinkle of china, foot on tile as silently as if on carpet. Moving almost as if in slow motion, he reached for the cocoa shelf.

I braced, poised to snatch the Special Reserve canister out of his hand. No way would I have him put that cocoa in his mouth again. But then he did the oddest thing of all. He bypassed the tin of cocoa Barry had made for practice period, ignored the Roshi's Special Reserve tin, and plucked a packet of commercial cocoa. How had Barry let that packet sully his cocoa cabinet?

The hiss of the kettle blew like a steam engine in this silent room. I jumped back, but Leo took the noise in stride, poured a small bit of cocoa in each cup, and added half a cup of water. He returned the kettle, found a spoon, stirred and handed me a cup. “Smells good, huh?” They were the first words he'd spoken since we'd left his cabin.

I looked from him to the cocoa. I understood this was a lesson. I didn't want to be fooled. I wanted to understand. And yet, beyond whatever symbolic meaning it had, it did smell good. It smelled delicious. I thought of that first wonderful cup of cocoa I had gotten here, the one I'd taken outside Monday and sipped as if I were drinking in Heaven. I inhaled deeply and I smiled.

“Drink.”

I smiled and sipped. “Yuck! It's awful. Worse than awful.” I plunked the cup down and picked up the cocoa packet. “It's still half full. Roshi, you have to use the whole thing. Even then it can be weak. But this, this is terrible. I can make you a decent cup. We've got good cocoa here and the water's still hot. There's no need for us to drink this swill. It'll only take—”

“Drink this,” he said, and sipped his own.

Frowning, I picked up my cup and prepared to down it in one big gulp. He caught my hand. It was the first time his hand had touched mine, and it seemed a very personal thing. His fingers and palm were calloused but they felt soft. Perhaps it was the way he cupped his hand, or maybe even his intent coming though the flesh. I remembered him—Leo—in the truck looking at me and me wondering if he was staring a mite longer than strictly necessary and thinking of the affairs nurtured in isolated places like this, like flower bulbs forced in tight vases.

“Drink,” he repeated. He released his hand. It may have lingered a moment, but more likely I was imagining that so I didn't feel so foolish about the memory.

Whatever his intention, the result was I did drink the miserable cocoa slowly, tasting it, trying to treat it like instant coffee, as a brown liquid with no connection to its decent cousins. I didn't get to like it, but I did drink it. I took the cups to wash, and when I turned back he was making two more cocoas, this time with Barry's good cocoa, and in good-sized mugs. As he poured, I inhaled and smiled. He smiled back that wide kidlike grin. He turned off the overhead light, leaving the kitchen in the dim glow of the night-lights. Then he lifted the mugs, walked across the kitchen and up the stairs to the loft to Amber and Maureen, the aroma lingering behind him.

I stood in the half-dark, fuming. I'd understood his lesson and
this
was my reward! The aroma of the good cocoa teased me. I'd barely eaten all day, because I was taking care of Roshi then, taking care of Maureen, and now
she
got the good cocoa.

But, the water was still hot, and the good cocoa was in the cabinet. I strode over, feet rapping the floor, yanked out the good stuff and helped myself to a heaping spoonful. Righteously, I poured the hot water, stirred, and defiantly drank. The cocoa was good, very good. But when it was gone, I missed my pique.

The door opened behind me. I nearly dropped the mug. It was only when a whiff of cold air brushed my cheek that I realized the noise wasn't Roshi coming back downstairs. I turned slowly, cup still in hand, expecting to see Rob heading deliberately for the kettle and a final cup of tea after a hard day of directing.